Sunday Lunch

There is nothing I like more than going out to eat with you, dear husband of mine.  It’s always nice to sit down with a great friend and have a chat and pass judgement on passers by.  And we are lucky duckies, free as a breeze, eating out at least once and often twice every weekend.

There’s just a couple of tiny things it would be nice to iron out.

Firstly, just because you like one restaurant does not, I repeat, does not, mean that that’s the only place you like.  The place you like is a thirty minute drive from our house.  And when we get there, you always order the roast beef.  Every single time.  You even got a little bit sulky the last time we went and they didn’t have it. 

You might want to open your mind a little there.

Also, I’ll remind you that last Sunday when I refused to go to the same f-ing place again, we ended up not going out at all.  I think you have to admit that it’s possible that you might be getting a little bit set in your ways. 

Please promise that we can go to one place we’ve never been, next weekend.  Because the problem is this.  Even if we stop going out to eat, I’m not going to start doing any more grocery shopping.  And I doubt you are either.  Tuna and pasta can only keep you going for so long, you know.

After eating, we often go for a walk or something, and then go for a nice frothy cappuccino.  It’s around this time I start eyeing the lovely desserts.  I’m usually caught between some sort of roulade and lemon meringue pie.  I find it hard to choose between them. 

I’m sure nice husbands tend to buy the one I don’t get, so we can share both.  But you go the other way.  You insist that you don’t want any dessert at all.  That you don’t have a sweet tooth, that that stuff isn’t good for you.

Obviously I’ve learned to ignore this nonsense.  I make my choice and sit down with my frothy coffee, and frothy dessert.  I like to take my time over these little treats.  Especially because having being starved of decent dinners all week we tend to eat quickly when we get our feed at lunchtime.

The trouble starts the very second I put down my fork to look around me and enjoy myself.  There’s usually somebody who can’t control a child, or who is having a row, or trying to get away with clothes that they probably couldn’t get away with twenty years ago. 

I like to enjoy all these little views and comment on them to a completely disinterested husband. 

You know you’re hopeless at people watching don’t you?  Try to put your back into it.  Your eyesight is as good as mine, just try.

Anyway, that’s not the point I was trying to make.  What I was going to say is that the second I put down my fork you say

“Aren’t you going to eat that?”

Yes, I’m going to eat it.  I just bought it.  Just because I’m not wolfing it down as if I’ve been on the Atkins Diet doesn’t mean I don’t want it.  So I reply that yes, I’m eating it.

“What’s it like?”

“Lovely thanks.  You should have said yes when I asked if you wanted one.”

“God no, I couldn’t eat one of those.  Can I just taste it?”

I know what this means.  It means you’re going to take a massive piece, that doesn’t really fit on the fork.  Which annoys me, although I don’t know why.  Maybe I’m stingy by nature.

And you’ll take the fruitiest, creamiest part.  Usually the piece I’ve been eating around, to savour it till last.  Yes, I do that.  I think a lot of women do, to be honest.

And then when I get sulky and say something like

“Just take the fecking thing, if you want it”

You don’t start apologising and trying to make it better by offering me more coffee, you say something like

“Thanks love, if you’re sure you don’t want it.  It’s not bad, actually, is it?”

And then I want to pinch you.  Because you have now taken the biggest treat of my week, and ruined it.

So I start sulking.  And then you start asking me what’s wrong, and saying

“but sure, you gave it to me.  You offered it, you said I could have it if I wanted it.”

You’re driving me bonkers.  Would you please just order your own dessert?  If you don’t, I’ll stop ordering desserts too.

And you’ll probably pass out from sugar deprivation every Sunday, and miss the GAA.

Mirror Fasting

I read a completely bizarre item in the newspaper the other day.

Apparently, women who can’t cope with the stress of having to look good all the time, in these image conscious days, are now avoiding the mirror entirely.  It’s called mirror fasting.  Allegedly, and I say allegedly because I read this in a newspaper, so it may not be entirely true, these women become so stressed about their hair, their makeup, their weight and their clothes that they have to do something to combat the pressure.

Have you ever heard anything so completely mental in all your life?

There’s actually a name now, for when you lose all hope of staying size ten, and looking twenty years old, and give up on the whole thing.

Mirror fasting.

In the good old days, which is sadly what I’m being forced to call my twenties now, it was perfectly normal and common to give up looking in the mirror for long periods of time. It was the halcyon days of grunge.  As long as you washed yourself, you were fine.

Even these days, I have far more non mirror days than mirror days.

I don’t look in the mirror when the infernal eyebrows are making a show of me.  Or when the snow white roots of my hair are showing.  Or most days, in fact, because the “falls back into place” haircut I’ve been tricked into paying for is standing out at all sorts of mental angles to my head.

But guess what?

I’ve never “mirror fasted” in my life.  I just haven’t looked in the mirror.  And I think that’s absolutely fine.

Who among us, in all honesty, is completely happy with the way we look?  Very few, I’d imagine.

I realise that I’m going to sound a hundred years old when I say this. But I really believe the whole nonsense of fake tan and fake eyelashes has gone too far.  If we’re going to live in a world where we have to have the eyelashes of Daisy the cow, and the hair of Cheryl Cole, just to go to work in the frigging morning, I’m perfectly happy to never look in the mirror.

I have a brain, and a personality, I hope.  And if I don’t, fake hair and eyelashes aren’t going to get me through life anyway.

I know I’m fat, and going grey, and should put on my makeup at six o’clock every morning, but honestly I cannot be arsed.  I’d rather spend the fifteen minutes getting an extra little sleep. 

I’d just like to make it perfectly clear that when I turn up in the morning with a visage that will frighten the life out of my colleagues, I’m not mirror fasting.

I’m just not buying into the nonsense of getting stressed out over my mirror image.

Dear Bank Manager

My bank statement arrived again yesterday.  His Nibs thought it was for the joint account and opened it.  Thanks for that.  I thought he was going to have a fit.  Apparently the level the overdraft has reached gave him an awful fright.

I, however, was well aware of what was coming.  If only I’d got in the door first.  I’m normally like quicksilver, getting the letter out of the letterbox and into a handbag that’s currently not being used, before he even thinks to ask if there’s any post.

Is there no chance of getting my statements emailed to a top secret address?  I don’t share my passwords with him.  The letterbox, however, is a completely different matter.

He seemed fascinated.  It turns out that when he was doing all the giving out about my buying handbags he thought they were cheap ones.  And he still thought I was wasting money.  When he saw the transactions with that particular shop, I thought he was going to faint.

And he was quite shouty about the shoes and the books as well.  I don’t know what he expects.  Surely I have a right to have something to put onto my feet, and to stimulate my brain?  When I put this to him, though, his sympathy wasn’t aroused.  He just yelped something about not being a centipede, and that if I never bought shoes again I’d still have enough to put on my feet for life.

I tried to use the Tesco transactions to calm him down, pointing out that I’m an excellent wife, and how well I look after him, and what have you.  But he, rather sourly, I thought, just told me that if the statement was restricted to good wife purchases, we’d be rolling in it, and not to change the subject.

I think it’s time you helped me out.  I’ve been a customer for years, after all.  I admit, there’s only one week in the month that I’m not in overdraft, but sure aren’t you making money on the interest?

And it’s not as if you have to chase me for any other money.  I don’t owe a penny on the credit card.  In fact, I think you’ll find you owe me 68 cent.  Fair enough, this good behaviour is seriously influenced by the fact that His Nibs and I share a credit card.  I know he gives out to me, but I’m not trying  to kill the poor soul altogether.  He can’t bear debt, you see, and a scary credit card bill might finish him off.

I’m not asking for any special favours.  I genuinely have tried to sort myself out.  In a number of ways.

First of all, I tried taking out a set amount of cash every week, and living on that amount only.

 The idea was that there would be money left over at the end of the month.  No more overdraft, and although I told myself that I’d save the leftover money, I was already thinking of little treats I could get myself as a reward for my frugal ways.

It didn’t work.  What happened was that I started drawing out the money on a Monday.  The little pile of cash in my purse would make me feel flush and I’d lose the run of myself for the day.  By Tuesday morning, about seventy five per cent of the weekly allowance was usually gone.  By Saturday, after three days of beans on toast for dinner and looking around the shops longingly, my purse would be dusty from lack of use, so I’d get next weeks money out immediately.  How can you get through a weekend without money?  In fairness?

Or I’d tell myself I was only spending a little over my cash budget and paying the hairdresser and what have you on my debit card.  So effectively I was spending the weekly allowance both in cash and on the card.

So that didn’t last.

Then I decided that the best way to stop worrying about money was to simply stop checking my bank balance, and to tell myself that the amount I was spending couldn’t be more than the amount in my account. 

You’d be surprised how fast a month’s wages can go when you’re not thinking about it, as it happens.  I think the problem might have been that every time I went to buy something I blanked out all the other treats I’d had.

So that didn’t go well either.  As you can imagine, pay day provided a very nasty surprise that month.

And they say ignorance is bliss?

Anyway, as you can now see, I’ve done my best.  I’ve tried, and failed, to sort the problem out without your assistance.

I really think the time has come for you to step in.  In the spirit of our nation, kindly provide me with a bailout.  A one off payment, just to clear my overdraft, and I promise I won’t give you any further trouble.

I don’t want to point out the alternative, but if you force me, I’ll go so nuts with the overdraft, that you can forget about me ever paying it off again.

My Tweezers

Tweezers are a cruel master.

They have the power to make me look presentable, or to send me out into the world looking like an utter gobshite.

They even look dangerous.  Pointy, if they’re to be any use, or at least that’s been my experience.  And quite shiny, usually.  Sitting there, at the bottom of my makeup bag, twinkling at me, trying to entice me into their web of pain and torment.

I know what will happen if I allow myself to be tempted by their twinkle.  I’ll end up in agony for the night, and looking bonkers for weeks.  I’m leaving it to the professionals.  It’s faster, easier, equally painful, in fairness.  But somehow I’d rather pay someone else to hurt me than do it myself for nothing.

God knows, those tweezers are always at the top of my “How to Save Money” list.  When the overdraft is high and morale is low, I always decide that I’ll colour my own hair and shape my own eyebrows.

But before I’m paid again I’m using my overdraft for dying and waxing – who has the patience for all that plucking and shaping?  Seriously, who?  I know I’m an eejit and a wastrel and a spendthrift, but Christ Almighty, I have to put some value on my time too. 

And the eyebrow caper is always the same.  I start with the best of intentions.  I always do the right eye first, because I’m left handed, so it’s easier.

After what feels like hours of poking and tormenting myself, I look awful.  Red, shiny and painful.  Or like my lovely Dad used to say,

“with a head like a turkey cock’s”.

I presume boy turkeys are red of face, I don’t know, I’ve never met one.  If not, Dad might have been commenting on my surfeit of chins.

But I’m not going to focus on that possibility.

After the first eye, I have a break.  I have a cup of coffee, trying to ignore the stinging, pinched feeling all around my eyebrow.  It usually takes at least two cigarettes to get me back on my feet.  Gingerly, I approach the mirror.

I always hope that the major clean up operation I’ve done on one eyebrow will somehow, miraculously, make the second one look better.

Obviously it doesn’t.

I just look like the local maniac.

I have to hack away at the second eyebrow, in order that I might be able to leave the house in the morning.

And by now I’ll have lost all morale for the job.  I start thinking of ways to make up the money for the eyebrow waxing.  If we started drinking black coffee, for instance, we could stop buying milk.  Surely that would free up the price of a treatment every three weeks or so?  His Nibs isn’t keen.

Maybe we could cut back on the dog food.  Neither his Nibs nor the dogs seem keen on that idea.

Of course I could give up the cigarettes, that would save enough to bring the beautician to my house every Saturday and give me all treatments I want and a full massage I’d say.  But not yet, I’m not ready yet.  If I’d been able to see into the future when I had my first cigarette, and known that one day I’d consider giving up buying milk instead of cigarettes, I might have thought twice.

I have awful eyebrows.  They’re fine when they’re done, of course, but left to their own devices they sprawl like ivy in every direction.  They’re really dark and there’s no way you could miss them.  My sister and sister in law both have very fair eyebrows, I think they actually have to fill them in with those eyebrow pencils – possibly the only kind of makeup I’ve never ever bought in my life.  They always say how my eyebrows are lovely and strong and a feature of their own.  Yes, they are, I suppose.  But they’re also strong when I’m standing in front of the mirror  trying to pull them out, and my skin stretches so far off my forehead that it visibly pings back into place like something from Tom and Jerry when I finally pluck a hair out.

Bloody tweezers.  They’re only used when I’m both horrendous looking and broke.  No wonder I hate them.