The Dog Days Really ARE Over

So, as I hinted in my last post, my mum's other dog died. This post will therefore contain potentially offensive subject matter about dead dogs. Again. You have been warned.

Now the poor thing was about 110 years old and had already survived cancer and a stroke which left it lying under a garden shrub for days on end and walking sideways evermore cannoning of furniture like a staggering drunk (but yet always daftly happy) so it wasn't ENTIRELY unexpected, but all the same for someone as bereaved as my mum to basically lose the last thing she lives with, it was pretty sad all round.

The dog of course chose to die on my birthday.

Well done dog.

Bravo.

I shall toast you every time I get another bloody year older and remember the time you ate one of my best 'going out shoes' when you were a puppy and I nearly killed my brother for leaving my bedroom door open.

Luckily I didn't know about the dog dying because I was on a windy cliff top with my ex-husband and two children out of mobile phone range for the entire week.

I can't say I'm entirely unhappy about this coincidence as it did mean my brother was the one who got the 7am phone call informing him of the dog's demise which is probably fair as I had to get the previous dog actually killed which is like SO much worse surely (stamp foot, toss hair and sulk in true sibling fashion). All he had to do was turn up once it this one was already dead and sort it out.....

I asked him to guest spot on here and tell it how it was but he declined so I'll have to do it for him and try to do his Services to Deceased Dogs proud.

So anyway he dragged his wife - his poor long suffering wife (god love her, her family are so erm normal compared to ours, just nice lovely people. Since being with my brother there are things she has been exposed to by our family that NO woman should have to suffer including my dad's testicles, a horse trying to die under a fence, various people's arses, way too many funerals and now THIS) and baby out of bed and went to bury the dog.

On arrival the dog was lying in the doorway between the kitchen and lounge.

'Right mum, you best call Jonny to come and dig the hole'.

'Oh I have, he's gone away, he's not back today'.

'Argh'.

'Can't you just leave her there? You know for a few days? JUST LEAVE HER' (mother starts up a somewhat theatrical wail a bit like they do in the Middle East).

My brother nervously exchanges glances with his wife.

'Err mum, you can't actually LEAVE the dog there for like DAYS. What are we meant to do? Step over it every time we want to move rooms? Let the children use it as a climbing frame? 'Come on kids! Who needs a teddy when you've got a real life dog - and it's guaranteed safe to play with! And yes that is real life poo coming out of it's butt'. NO NO NO NO NO. I'll dig the bloody hole - like NOW'.

And thus my brother found himself in a small corner of Somerset trying to dig a big hole for a big dead dog. On rock hard summer baked soil.

A few hours (yes hours) in he was in despair and needing further guidance. Where can one turn to on the matter of dog burial? It's not like you can call up one of your many friends who specialise in grave digging during their leisure times. Or get a book out the library. Or call a charitable helpline (and even if you could, like most charitable helplines it would probably say 'thank you for your call, you really must be desperate, however due to lack of funding our offices are currently closed, we are open between the hours of 10.30 and 11 every other Tuesday if the month starts with an M when we would be happy to take your call. You can not leave a message. If it's that bad there's always The Samaritans. Goodbye').

Nope - in a situation like this there can be no answer but Google. And thus he found himself locked in the toilet, Googling 'how to bury a dead dog' on his phone.....

Interesting facts which I can pass on to you all, should you be in a similar situation soon and not able to Google, is that the dog should be placed 4 foot down and about 5 inches below the surface you should place a layer of chicken wire to deter scavengers. Lets be frank here - the last thing my mother needed was the dead dog's head turning up on her garden bench 'Godfather stylee' several weeks later.

And so back he went, with the help of an axe and some wire (god knows where he got the wire from) and dug and dug and dug...

Three hours (yes three hours) later he was looking at this:

(Note: the white fluffy at the base of the picture is NOT the dead dog. That would be sick. It's my brother's live dog, Mildred, who came to inspect proceedings and probably left with more questions than answers).

So he now had a hole big enough for the dog. Actually looking again at that picture even I will admit that's pretty impressive work. It looks the work of a frantic and desperate man. A man driven by the desire to stop his mother turning a decaying dog into a piece of interior design.

He went to retrieve the dog.

By this time his poor wife had given up trying to restrain their 18 month old son and had had to put him down on the floor and for 3 solid hours dissuade him from climbing aboard the dead dog for a ride (remember the dog is lying in the doorway between the two rooms which make up the downstairs of my mum's house - it's not like you could shut the door.....).

Time had ticked on and rigamortis had set in.

This was not just a big dead dog. It was a big stiff dead dog.

And thus my poor sister-in-law found herself having to assist in making a shroud and wrestling the great big stiff dog into a wheelbarrow. I'm sure she's had better days. They then had to get the dog in the hole which posed several more logistical problems due to it's inflexibility.

But bravo - the dog is now buried beneath the apple trees and my mum is happy about that (well clearly she's not overly happy - she'd rather the dog wasn't dead but you get the idea).

I was informed of this when I returned from my holiday whilst standing on a damp recently washed patch of carpet.....

So that's it then - no more dogs. No more dog related fun and games. I for one will be glad of the rest.

Except tomorrow my mum is getting a puppy.....

ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

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The Dying Days

And so here we are in the dying days of August.

August - the month of dying.

This is a kind of catch up blog post and I warn you now - it's not all laughs. There are wry laughs in it and feel free to chuckle away - I do. But it's also a bit deep. Just to kind of warn you.

August wasn't always this way for me. After all August is the month of my birthday and it's summer and it's all fun fun fun...

Well, once upon a time it was.

It was GSCE results' day yesterday and as I watched many a carefree, tousle haired teen walking round the town holding their fluttering results sheets, it took me back to the August's of my childhood. They seemed to be filled with endless summer days and as the holidays began to ebb away and the shadows started to lengthen, we would sit outside under apple trees, sharing bottles of mixed spirits we'd stolen from our parents' drink cabinets (top tip learned from this: Baileys doesn't mix well with fruit based alcopops - it's like drinking vomit) and we'd watch the shooting stars and life seemed to be so free. So 'ours'.

My major worries could probably be listed as: 1. my spots 2. the fact I never tanned and 3. how could I get to a particular party or my life would probably BE LIKE TOTALLY OVER.

I whirled through life a hurricane. I leapt from triumph to disaster and always bounced. I felt I had the world at my feet. I felt safe. I felt I was on the brink of something big. The script told me everything was going to be wonderful.

Not long after that things began to change. Some people hurt me very badly and then a friend was killed in an accident. Life began to take on darker tones. Echoes and shadows. But that's what growing up is all about. I still felt I had it all at my feet and would just keep on tearing through it, dancing to my own tune.

Any now, here we are in my 'grown up' August. An August so filled with echoes and shadows that at times it feels almost like my winter.

So I haven't blogged because I've been too busy dealing with it all. Notable events have included:

- a week in a caravan with my ex-husband. People always look slightly torn between wonderment and horror when I tell them that but it's not like it was just me and him staring at the kitchenette and politely asking whose turn it was to grill the sausages. We took the children. And it was fine. Nice even. There's nothing even really blog worthy about it (well if you skip the bit where I accidentally ended up on the clubhouse stage in an anorak and couldn't get down before the compere noticed and shouted 'steady on love! It's not the X-Factor). I flew a stunt kite, ran along a beach, supervised a duff BBQ, lost at crazy golf, poured my life savings into the 2p slot machines and danced the 'waddle' with a woman in a giant seagull costume.

- my mum's 'other' dog dying. On my birthday of all days! Well done dog. Marvelous effort. Nothing like a stiff dog in the doorway to bring on that birthday cheer. There is a somewhat darkly comic blog post in this which I will save for another day.

- my youngest son's 4th birthday. This is not only a big day because my 'baby' is growing up and I feel like I haven't even really started his childhood yet but it's also the anniversary of the day I nearly died. For those of you that don't know the history I really did nearly die. I nearly died in my living room and in an ambulance and on a hospital trolley and finally in a high dependency bed. It was a jolly poor show all round. I'm as over it as I'll ever be. It seems 4 years is something of a watershed in grief. It really does feel like 'history' and I've already had the breakdown and the special counselling where a lady jiggles her finger in your eyes and re-sets your brain so you don't feel the need to sit in lay-bys crying every time you see an ambulance BUT (and it's quite a big but) there are still those ripples out there, rushing through the universe. At this time of year I notice everything feels that bit more 'current'. I hold my wrists more so nobody can hurt them. I drink more than I should. I sense the cooler edge in the days and feel a kind of tremble. A little bit of dread. I think that tremble is grief. Either that or I really HAVE been drinking too much..... I have that line running through my head....'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'. I wake up at 4am and don't now why but that line is there, whirling round like a stuck loop of tape.

And of course, there's another, funnier, blog post in the whole birthday shebang. The making of the cake. I have surpassed my previous Iggle Piggle legend with 'The Sad Pussy' but more on that another time (with pictures).

- Two days later was the first anniversary of my dad's death. Which conveniently enough was also his birthday. Bravo. Two birds with one stone and all that. I don't really know what to say about this. I feel like it all kind of happened in a dream (or nightmare) but now I'm starting to wake up and realise it wasn't just a bad dream. There are so many boxes of ridiculous horribleness that if I even stop to think they're real then WHAM - I shut the lid as quick as I can. The passing of this date also means I am now on the countdown to the bit where my marriage went KABOOM. I've never talked in detail about what really happened there - for that you'll need to buy the book. No seriously - much as I air MY dirty linen I don't air other people's but needless to say - I feel a bit odd about the thing. The tick tock of waiting for yet another 'significant date' (although once again conveniently it pretty much ties in the anniversary of the date I was sent off to a psychiatric unit four years back, so hey - look on the bright side - I've kept whole chunks of my annual calendar free of terror!).

- pressing on with the divorce. Never much fun I should imagine although it could be worse. In the middle of all of the above I had to invite three estate agents round to value the house. They arrived on a rainy day where both children were climbing the walls and all my wet laundry was trapped in the downstairs bathroom. I showed the first one in and welcomed him to chaos. We sat at the table talking about market values but he kept looking increasingly distracted.

'I there something bothering you?' I asked. I hoped he would say 'no just your amazing eyes/smile/hair (although it's unlikely to be the hair as, in a effort to stop tramps stroking my legs and wide-boys asking if I was up for it, I dyed it from blonde blonde to bright red. The juries still out on whether it worked but a drugged hippy did fondle my poncho last weekend. I'm not sure if this is a step or step down the ladder of attraction?).

'Err it's just your children' he said 'and what they're doing to that cat'.

Oh.

You see for his birthday the youngest got a doctor's kit. Operation Cat in now fully in swing and the cat undergoes about 3 pretend major surgeries a day.

'Nevermind that!' I shrugged 'let me show your round! Now here's the downstairs bathroom - sorry but this is where I have to take you on a tour of my knickers'.

This was supposed to be an apology for all the wet laundry but it came out not quite in the way I had hoped. I'm sure he feared he'd walked straight into the den of a deranged housewife trying to lure him into some kind of blackmail/live porn-stream sex chat. Although in hindsight it could have been worse. I could have said 'wet knickers'.

'Your hilarious!' he said.

'Yes' I replied 'but in all honestly you wouldn't live with me would you?'.

'No' he said 'in all honestly I wouldn't and to be frank you look like a woman on the edge'.

Astute observation there young man. Say it like it is.

- migraines. For reasons I can not begin to fathom (ha ha) I've been waking up to crushing migraines which mean I have to hide under a duvet, take drugs which border on 'amazingly trippy' and sob at small children to leave me alone/stop dragging my covers off/stop playing the duck whistle/stop BLOODY MOVING AND TALKING until I feel semi-alive. This is not a whole lot of fun.

- and then of course all the usual things of having young children on summer holidays and going to work and trying to keep a house (ha bloody ha).

So you see August has been kind of busy. And sometimes I look at other families going to stay with granny or having lots of days in the park (oh yes, I did have a day at the park. I got locked in the temporary toilet block whilst my children were locked in the car...... There was a quite a kerfuffle with that one I can tell thee.....) and I think 'when's that going to start for me? When am I just going to have a normal life?' but I know, deep down, in truth, for many people August - just like Christmas - in not a barrel of laughs. Very few people have 'normal' lives. Granted not all of them are quite as weird as this one but lots are a damn site harder.

Very few people get to adulthood and parenthood without having echoes and shadows and ghosts - and those that don't? Well they probably fall over and think the sky is caving when they get to 66 and mis-place their bus pass or crack a garden gnome (or something).

So it's OK.

I'm almost out of August.

And I've realised something else. There are two things that help to keep me vaguely sane (apart from my amazing friends who I never seem to have enough time for). Those are running and writing. They let the pressure blow from the boiling pot, without it the crack start widen the steam starts to blow. And of course in a month like this, especially when you are either working or caring for small children with no let up (bar the weekend with Badger Girl and the poncho - more on that later - but it was magnificent) there is just no physical opportunity whatsoever to run and no time to write.

But that must change.

So from tomorrow running and writing go to the top of the priority list - even if it means I have to run up and down the stairs and write very short blog posts (I'm not sure if I'm actually capable of this - but we'll see).

So thank you people, for sticking by me through all of the journey so far. Who knows what's next? But even though life has not quite been how I could ever have imagined and those teenage days seem like they belong in another universe, I'm still dancing to my own tune and despite all the triumphs and disasters, I'm still bouncing (just).

xxx

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Life, Death and Love

Hello people.

Sorry I haven't been on for a while. Firstly I've had trouble getting on the internet full stop and then, even when I have, I've been too tired to actually type. I think if I could use one word to describe my current state it would be 'brittle'. I think that's like fragile but with harder edges. I feel so tired that I forget what I'm saying mid-sentence. I leave the keys in the car ignition and find out in the morning I've forgotten to take my clothes off when I went to bed.

I think the last year (or should that be years?) are catching up with me a bit now that I'm in a better place. They say that when you are going through things you kind of run on adrenaline and somehow cope (I guess my coping includes being consigned to a psychiatric unit but we won't dwell on that....) and it's when the dust settles that your body and mind go 'urgh'. A nice restful sunny summer should fix it.

On the better side of life I'm an Auntie! My brother and his wife (this is my lovely Sister in Law, not the 'Special Pasta' one - she hasn't any plans to breed - thank god. She's probably serve the baby up with raw onion and frozen mince) had a gorgeous baby boy 48 hours ago. This makes me very very happy indeed.

Meanwhile, the ceiling in the toddler's bedroom fell down and he's now sleeping in the office. The wall of the eldest son's bedroom was found to be rotten and he's now sleeping.......... IN OUR BLOODY BED. He doesn't make the best of bed partners. I wake up with his foot in my back. Or my face.

A bad bedfellow he might be, but he does provide me with a unique and rather lovely view of the world at times. As I'm beyond thinking this evening I shall present you with a summary of his thoughts on those things that make the world go round - namely Life, Death and Love.

On Life:

Me: Wow! Your baby cousin will be here soon! He's just getting ready to be born!
Him: When he comes out will the skin go back together?
Me: Erm, yes (sort of).
Him: I do know where the baby comes out you know.
Me: Do you? (Actually - why am I surprised. Given that this child has grown up in a house where a full set of graphic cross-sections of childbirth are kept beneath the sofa, including a rather fetching one of the baby's head rotating as it exits. We used to have a copy of 'Active Birth' in the bathroom but my OH was so alarmed by seeing that much pubic hair whilst cleaning his teeth that it was relocated to a locked cupboard).
Him: Yes mummy. That place which is SO hairy (does he read this blog?) AND has NO WILLY.

So there we have it.

On Death:

(Whilst feeding the 32 year old horse named Oscar who resides in a field behind my parent's house).

Him: Mummy why doesn't Oscar have shiny shoes on? (I'm guessing he means horse shoes here? Not patent Mary Janes?)
Me: Well he is VERY old so nobody rides him so he doesn't need shoes on. He just lives in this field.
Him: Yes, that's right. And soon he will die.
Me: Erm, yes, he will die one day (whilst thinking 'whhoooaaaa!').
Him: When he gets to the next number he will die (what? Is he some kind of horse prophet?)
Me: Maybe.
Him: But he won't mind.
Me: No that's right (he clearly knows more about horse after-life than I do).
Him: No he won't mind because all these years he's been stood in this field able to look at those telegraph poles and the pylons in the distance. That would make ANYONE happy. Anyone.

Obviously.

On Love:

Me: Now DON'T tell me anything about it but have you made anything at school this week to give me on Mother's Day?
Him: Yes. I've made you a card which is in my book bag and it's blue and on the front I have drawn you a BEAUTIFUL freight train diesel engine which is yellow and with a pylon in the background.

And he had.

Right I'm off to bed now to spend another night with the boy's (who loves me enough to draw me freight trains and believes that heaven lies at the feet of the pylons) feet in my face......

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Dead Pets' Cemetery

Well there has been blog-fodder aplenty this weekend, but more of that later this week.

Let's start with this morning (yes it's barely 8am but I've already been exposed to my daily dose of surrealism).

There are several ways which I would chose to spend 5am (the front runner, by a mile, being sleeping) but one way which is not on my 'yes please!' list is sitting cross legged on my eldest son's bedroom carpet having a philosophical discussion about death.

You see yesterday, my son found out that Satchmo had died.

No my son is not particularly upset about the demise of the original Satchmo - the world famous American Jazz Trumpeter who died in 1971. That would be odd.... This Satchmo was a large Silver Agouti Rex Boar (this means he was a big fat male guinea pig to those of you not acquainted with the Cavy Fancy).

Our Satchmo (god rest his soul):



The original Satchmo (also god rest his soul, although he never sat on my lap and certainly isn't buried in my garden):



You would have a job to confuse the two.

Don't ask why he was called Satchmo. It's complicated and you should be aware of my history in naming pets following my post entitled 'Happy Easter' dealing with the curious incident of the cockerel named Jesus and his gay disciples.

Anyway, our Satchmo actually died some time ago but my son hadn't noticed as the guinea pigs are my domain and kept in the back garden. What with all the bad weather he hadn't been out there for any length of time. And then the sun came out....

Whilst examining the hutches he noticed Satch was missing and thus the questions started. He seemed quite happy with my OH's explanation of 'he got very old and died, he's not here anymore' and that was that.

Until 5am this morning.

Son: 'Mummeeee, Mummeeee, Mummeeee'.

Me: 'Quiet! It's not time to get up'.

Son: 'Mummeee PLEASE'.

Me: 'Grrrr' followed by 'WHAT!?'.

Son: 'Mummy, where's Satchmo gone?'.

Me: (to myself: argh feck) 'Well he's died darling!'.

Son: 'But why?'.

Me: 'Well he got very old. He slowed down and got slower and slower and then stopped. That's what happens when things get very old and worn out'.

Son: 'But why did he get old?'

Me: 'Well everything gets old after a lot of time' (argh dangerous ground now... where is this leading? I need to change tack) 'Shall we get a new guinea pig then? One that looks the same? To replace him? (WHAT kind of message is that to give a child? 'It doesn't matter if something dies, you can easily replace it with a new improved younger version?!').

Son: 'But where is he?'.

Me: (OK the right answer here is not: under 2 foot of soil in the back garden being eaten by worms but at the same time I swore I was never going to go down the 'Heaven as a Religious Utopia route') 'Erm, his body is gone but his spirit has gone on to better place' (really really crap answer considering my son has as much idea about the concept of 'spirit' as he does about Calculus).

Son: 'BUT WHERE IS HE?'.

Me: (argh, sod it, it's 5am, here comes the cop out...) 'Heaven'.

Son: 'What IS heaven?'.

Me: 'A special place dead things go to'.

Son: 'But where is it?'.

Me: (argh, 5am and 4 year olds do not combine for an informed debate on metaphysics - here comes cop out two) 'In the stars darling, IN THE STARS!'.

Son: 'IN THE STARS! WHAT!? So can I see him then? In the stars?'.

Me: (my head is now filled with a strangely disturbing image of a serene dead guinea pig orbiting the moon) 'Well no, we can't see him, he's beyond the stars'.

Son: 'But mummy, there is NOTHING after the stars. The stars go on forever!'.

Me: (sigh) 'Well yes space goes on for ever, it's called infinity, but somewhere is a place for dead things' (bloody marvellous explanation there methinks).

Son: 'BUT WHERE!?'.

Me: 'Look he's in the stars. You can't see him because he's very far away and quite small when compared with very big things like the sun. He's with Rhy's cat!'.

Son: 'Are they together?'.

Me: 'Yes, they are never lonely in heaven, they have lots of friends' (good answer, surely I'm only seconds away from my 'Return to Bed'?).

Son: 'But Satchmo didn't like cats. They scared him'.

Me: (Argggh!!!) 'Well yes but it's different in heaven. Everybody is friends, nobody gets scared'

Son: 'But mummy....'.

Me: 'Look just play with your cars for a bit. I have to go back to bed or I might get a bit worn out and fall apart...' (WHY did I say that? Will he put 2 and 2 together and add on 'and die - just like Satchmo' to the end of my statement?).

Anyway I went back to bed and spent the next 40 minutes tossing and turning and mulling over the biggest questions in the Universe. And then I got up and made a cup of tea. With Elton John's Rocket Man going round and round my head - accompanied by the image of a furry rodent in a space suit.

Altogether now: 'Mar's ain't the kind of place to raise the Pigs, in fact it's cold as hell...'.

I have a feeling this week will be interesting.

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