Things I wish my mother had told me

That making dinners is far less fun than it looks.

When I was a child I thought my mother was the luckiest person on earth, because she got to decide what we had for dinner every day.

I used to think that if I was in charge of the menu we would have chips and burgers, or Christmas dinner with all the trimmings every day.  And some days we would just have cake or chocolate.  Maybe I’m a bit psychic.

Not about the Christmas dinners obviously, but about the having cake for dinner sometimes.

I was quite committed to dinner making when His Nibs and I first lived together.  I was always home first and sometimes had his dinner ready and on the table as he walked in the door. 

But then we moved to the country and I got heartily stick of having to cook after my long commute.  So I gave it up.

It’s a very boring carry on.  Even deciding what we’re going to eat gets boring after a while.  There’s only so many times you can ask yourself whether chicken fillets would be nice, or if you should be heart healthy and have fish, before you start hating your own cooker, in my experience.

It all turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, to be honest.

One way or the other, everybody should tell their children that once you leave home, no matter what age you are, no roast dinner will ever taste the same as your Mammy’s.

Pick Your Battles

I wish she’d told me that living with a man sometimes involves knowing how to pick your battles.  I could have saved many shouting sessions, and His Nibs wouldn’t have worn himself out running up and down the stairs of our building with his bags on his back, if I’d known that. 

Every cross word used to end up with one of us shouting that we were fed up of this, and that we should split up.  I couldn’t drive at the time, so I expected him to go.  I’d look a right clown walking around town with my bags hanging off me, wouldn’t I?  At least he could hide our shame in the boot of his car. 

At one stage he gave up unpacking and just wore his clothes straight out of his packed bags until the next fight.  It was dead handy.  No packing, just out the door, twenty minutes sulking time, and home. 

I think my mother is a bit of a secret feminist, and thinks that we should treat our husbands mean, and keep them keen.  Or maybe she doesn’t like her sons in law, and likes to see us giving them hell. 
One way or the other, please inform your daughters, ladies, that sometimes there’s no need to break up with her one true love because he won’t make her coffee every time she demands it or he dares to say the dinner is disgusting, even if that’s true.

We gave up all the running away from home when we bought the house.  I don’t know why.  I suppose neither of us want to go.  But the house brings its own problems, and something else I wish my mother had told me.
 

Owning a house isn’t that much fun either.

My mother was so proud when we bought the house that she forgot to tell me that once you buy a house your work is never done.  In our renting days, we used to moan and whinge if the landlord didn’t deal with our complaints within 24 hours. 

Once we bought the house we found out that it’s never ending.  If it’s not the heating breaking down, it’s the fridge, or the leaky tap that’s driving us mental, or the sofa needs replacing, or the whole place needs re-painting.  In fairness, that last one is pretty much a constant.  Between our cigarettes, our dogs, and our general scruffiness, I’d say if we repainted the whole place today it would need redoing again tomorrow.

Having rented one bedroom flats for years, we were delighted to finally have a bit of space to run around, and avoid each other in.  I even got to change the box room into what my sister would call a sulking room.  We call it the writing room, and it contains a desk, a laptop rest, a fancy leather chair and hundreds of notebooks, all just waiting for me to be struck by inspiration and write the great Irish novel.

I thought we’d never fight again. What was there to fight about, when we could just go to separate floors and avoid each other?  The house had never been lived in, it was brand new, and I was stupid enough to think it wouldn’t start giving trouble for at least ten years.

The first thing to go, if I remember rightly, was drinkable water.  There was so much lime in the water that we had to buy a water softening yoke that lives in the garden.  Too late, though, the lime had already destroyed the washing machine and the electric shower.  That was just the start of it.

You have to stop buying the clothes you want when you leave home

My mother should have given me this information as I walked out her front door, with my binbags full of possessions in my hands.  Although in fairness, the advice she was trying to get through to me at the time was probably more important.

When I lived with my parents, I would buy whatever was in fashion, and what I liked.  There were two reasons for this.  One, I was only a wee slip of a thing at the time, and two, my mother did all my ironing.  These days, I have to check the labels of everything, to check that they’re not dry clean only, and that, preferably, they don’t need to be ironed.  Or that they don’t need much ironing.  One thing I’ve learned over the last fifteen years, is that the hotter the iron needs to be, the less I want to buy the clothes.  Linen is not my friend.
 

High Heels aren’t worth it

It would have saved me years of torment if I’d known this from the time I was about fifteen.  I ended up marrying a man the same height as me.  So the four inch heel is not an option.  If I’d known, I would never have bothered.  Poor His Nibs looks like one of Santy’s elves when I wear heels. 

When I think of all the blisters, the pain, the teetering, the time I fell off my heels and broke my leg, I wonder why I bothered.  These days I wear flats all the time, or at most a pair of wedges.  In my heart I sort of think that every woman should know how to walk in heels, but what’s the point, if you’re never going to wear them?


I suppose the thing about having children is that you're probably never finished trying to tell them things, before they start thinking they know everything and stop listening.
 
I'd imagine that it's hard enough to keep them fed and warm and out of the Garda station without finding time to give them every little piece of advice that they could ever use.

I still wish I'd known this stuff though.

Chris-stress

Another fascinating online story today.
Travelodge, the hotel chain, commissioned a study into Christmas, the run up to it, the stress it causes, etc. etc.

Fascinatingly enough, half of men think women exaggerate the stress of Christmas, while a third think they could do a  better job of organising the festivities than their lady friend.

I’d like to see His Nibs effort at doing a better job than me. He wanted us to get a Marks and Spencer "Dine in for Two for €12.50" this year. 
The time he was sent to town for the selection boxes he ate two bars out of one of them on the way home. 
And even though he has to come up with only two presents, he doesn’t actually buy either of them.  I buy one, and take him around the shops pointing at the things I want for my own gift.

Having said that, I’m not a woman who sits up in the middle of the night yelping because I’ve forgotten to order a turkey, or starts grating bread into crumbs for the freezer in November. Because I’ve only made Christmas dinner once in my entire life, and that was just for His Nibs and me and one easy going guest, so it made damn all difference whether it was a success or not.  I suppose it wasn’t.

The roast potatoes were lovely, the gravy was instant, the turkey inexplicably came out of the oven looking like a large pork chop, having collapsed in on itself, and the stuffing was lost in the debacle, having squirted out of the turkey and landed in the cooking fat.  But I didn’t get stressed.  It was a dinner, no big deal.  I thought I was a bit of a hero, actually, to have made the effort at all.

And to be honest, I consider any dinner with Brussels sprouts a roaring success.  I didn’t care if the turkey came out of the oven in flitters, as long as there were sprouts.

My mother, who has run Christmas in the Murphy homestead for forty five years, is actually reasonably easy going also.  Fair enough, nobody is allowed into the gift zone (the sitting room) until fully dressed and fit to meet the world.  Shiny hair and makeup are encouraged – at half eight in the morning, can you imagine me?

But the year I suggested that we break with a lifetime's tradition, and resist opening our presents until three in the afternoon, when my brother would return from the long journey that visiting his daughters on Christmas morning necessitates, she just kicked in and went along with it. 

And she never discourages us from having a drinky very early in the day.  Maybe it’s because she is a teetotaller, and doesn’t take the difference between a glass of wine at lunchtime and a large brandy at eleven in the morning seriously.

I’m not from a family that gets into a massive state about Christmas.  I don’t really understand people letting it take over their lives for three months.

Every year, like every woman, and some of the men I know (very much excluding His Nibs, obviously) I make a list at least a page long of people who I need presents for.  I quite like buying presents, once I know what I want to get people, and if only every shop wasn’t packed to the rafters with other shoppers, Christmas music of ever increasing volume, and diminishing stock supplies.

I try to finish the gift buying about a week before Christmas,  then I wrap them all in one sitting, cutting fiddly bits of ribbon and curling and twisting it and sticking it to the paper in a way nobody except me cares about.  That part is a bit tedious, but there’s a great sense of achievement when it’s all finished.

 

I don’t get into an anxiety attack over it.  It’ll be fine.  All the people I buy presents for are quite fond of me, I hope, and probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid if I didn’t do it.  There’s no need to go into a state of collapse.

The Travelodge study also revealed that the week before Christmas is the worst of the year for sleep.  Apparently lots of people lie awake worrying about the festivities to come.

Now, I am not a bit surprised that some people wake up during the night in a sweat of panic about whether or not there’ll be anything under the tree for the children on Christmas morning.

Imagine my surprise when I read on to discover that the concerns at the top of the lists of those in the study are;

Keeping guests entertained

Planning meals

Getting embarrassed by a partner or child.

There’s a few quick answers to this.

Feck the guests, they’re getting their dinner, it’s up to them to do the entertaining.  The least they can do is tell stories and bring games (I recommend Cluedo, nothing like a good murder mystery to get the seasonal goodwill going) and do their share of making the fun.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

What planning the meals?  We all know what we’re having.  Just get everyone in the family to be in charge of one thing each, if it’s causing you to lose sleep.  We already have our plan for this year.  I will be in charge of roast potatoes and brussel sprouts.  But that’s because I want to make sure I get the lion’s share of them.

Finally, I don’t have any kids to embarrass me.  But believe me when I tell you, I’m familiar with the pain of having a partner who embarrasses you.  All I can say is that although it’s unlikely that he or she will ever learn to behave at this stage, there’s only so many times they can embarrass you before you stop feeling it.  Don’t worry about it.  One man’s embarrassing partner is another’s life and soul of the party.

Just get over it.  As long as Santy brings what he’s asked for, the rest will sort itself out.  Go to sleep and don’t be panicking over little things. It’ll be grand.