Almost 3 year old is finally flirting with the idea of using a toilet. He first showed an interest a year ago but is now starting to get serious and moving the relationship on to the next stage.
First thing in the morning he comes downstairs, removes his nappy with a flourish, and takes himself off to the toilet to have a pee. Unlike his brothers, who at his age happily sat on the toilet to have a pee, he insists on standing ‘like daddy’, which is tricky given his short stature and means he needs to slightly elevate himself onto his tiptoes. On completion of this morning ritual, we dutifully applaud and hug him and he happily basks in the praise. So far so good.
The problem is, roughly three hours later, he'll wander off into a corner, again remove nappy and take a dump on the floor.
If I'm not in the room, he will go and fetch toilet roll and anti bacterial spray and go to work on the mess. Usually, by the time I realise what's happening, he looks like he's on a dirty protest.
Carrying him at arms length up to the bath, I try explain why he needs to inform me when he feels the need to use the toilet, but at this stage he’s in firm denial of the whole event, insisting 'I did go on the toilet mama, I DID'.
It’s a phase, I know, I’ve been here three times already and I’m a firm believer in letting them get on with it and work it out for themselves.
In fact, I’m often at a loss when other mothers ask me how I ‘toilet trained’ my children. You see, the very phrase itself demands my participation, it implies a programme, an objective and frankly there is enough to do each day without putting myself through the trauma of trying convince a toddler that he needs to sit on that big scary seat with a hole and run the risk of being swallowed up by it.
I found that each child reached a point where they naturally wanted to use the toilet, a stage which was preceded by the whole standing in the corner and denying that they needed to ‘go’ phase.
My approach to parenthood has always been one of ‘take the easiest route’. As babies this worked wonderfully. They cried, I fed them, they stopped crying. They woke in the night, I fed them, they went back to sleep. Sometimes I used to think that other mothers were, at best, mad, at worse simply making it all up, when they told me they hadn’t slept in days because of the 'baby'. The nightmare of walking the floor at 3am just didn’t feature in my children's babyhood. I had the secret but obvious formula!
Cry+milk=stop crying/go to sleep.
So I was lucky, the babies were easy, so I kept having them. However, nobody told me about the whole toddler/rest of their life phase, which has proven to be far more complicated than the baby routine. A simple stroll through the mall with four of them is enough to get the entire staff involved.
This is due to the fact that almost three year old insists on going into every shop we pass (often emerging, inexplicably, with chocolates), while 5 year old boy runs on ahead, inevitably losing us, almost 7 year old boy insists on one cartwheel for every three steps he takes and eldest girl, almost certainly hormonal (at 8), weeps at the unfairness of life (she can't go to 'Claire's', wants a drink, hates having 3 brothers...etc..). At times it feels like we're a travelling circus, or dubious celebrities, as the staff emerge from each shop we pass, to discuss and witness our progress from one end of the mall to the other. ‘Oh ma’am, haha, you can’t control your children, haha’ one giggling staff member told me recently.
Even crossing the road makes me feel like I’m in a scene from Mission Impossible. The other day we took them to ‘Fun City’ (fun for who?) in order to throw them all in the crèche and buy ourselves a child-free hour. DH helpfully sat in the food court finishing lunch while I herded them towards the crèche. Almost three year old immediately ran for the little merry-go-round and proceeded to climb on, eldest girl ran off in the other direction towards the car games, 5 year old boy was tugging my sleeve looking for tokens while I fished in my bag for one of those blasted cards they insist you use in there. Almost 7 year old was out of sight.
Finding my wallet but no card, I shot a look around for almost three year old, who has a tendency to attach himself to other families, and as I did so, I stepped back and found something under my feet, thinking it was almost three year old, I attempted to side step him but this child was bigger and longer and somehow became entangled with my flip flops as my feet swept up in front of me and I landed, arse first, onto his head.
At this point splayed on top of the child, I twisted around to discover that is was almost 7 year old boy who was my victim. As we disentagled ourselves, the staff made a rush to help but I waved them away ‘it’s fine, really’ ( I had a massive bruise on my thigh for days). Shamed and furious, but feeling sorry for almost 7 year old, the side of his head very, very red, I scrambled to my feet with as much dignity I could muster, and gathered up my bags and buggy.
Head held high, I herded my now silent children towards the crèche (almost 7 year old boy looked as if he was suffering post traumatic shock disorder) and then limped back to DH who laughed like a drain at my misadventure.
Parenthood isn’t easy, especially when you’re on the flat of your back in Fun City (DH loved that line...for all the wrong reasons) or cleaning up a pooh-smeared sofa. It will get easier, or at least the current set of problems (ie, incontinence, running in front of traffic, cartwheeling in public) will be replaced with more sophisticated problems, but then there is always boarding school....
Saturday 31 October 2009
Wednesday 28 October 2009
How not to be a domestic goddess....
I need a cleaner. What had been the selling point of my new house has now become the bane of my life. Prior to moving in I had been heard airily proclaiming -
‘oh, it’s lovely, all open-plan downstairs, lovely and bright! And since it’s smaller it will be sooo much easier to keep clean’.
WRONG! It’s a bloody nightmare because whereas in my last place there were a labyrinth of rooms to chuck things into, in this place there is nowhere to hide. The lovely open spaces are filled with piles of washing, school bags and paperwork. Open-plan is the kiss of death unless you have enough storage to match the size of the room or you are uber organised.
Having a cleaner has a good effect on me, it keeps me on the straight and narrow. In my previous house I had one and on the days that she visited I would spend the morning tidying up, cleaning toilets, generally making her job a little less difficult. And mysteriously, what might take me days to get through she would have finished in 2 hours.
They say that a clean house is a sign of a wasted life, but what is a messy house a sign of? It's not as if I'm spending all my time in the gym, juggling a hectic social life or the CEO of a company. A dirty, messy house in my opinion, results in a very disorganised life. It's a vicious circle of mess and despair.
These days being a ‘Monica’ or ‘OCD’ is a fashionable sobriquet for being a very good housekeeper (which doesn't sound half as quirky or trendy). My mother would have fallen into this catagory. So obsessed with order and tidiness, she would rush us to finish our dinner so that she could wash the plates. To her, to linger over a boozy dinner was a nightmare and only resulted in further unneccessary mess. As a teenager I decided to treat my parents and cook dinner for them. In an attempt to create a nice relaxed atmosphere, I lit some candles and put on some nice jazz. She came in, turned on the lights, turned off the music and blew out the candles. Taking in the blackened wicks , she accused me ‘you’ve ruined them, I have to throw them away now!’
I’m guessing that her obsession with cleanliness and order had the opposite effect on me. Since she did everything for me, I found moving away from home traumatic on so many levels. I remember starting boarding school as a 12 year old. I had no idea how to make my bed in the mornings (or brush my hair, or find my shoes) and my cubicle was a disgrace with dirty washing strewn all over the floor. I once ventured down to the laundry (it was more like a magdalene laundry…..it was a convent) and after spending an hour trying to wrestle with the archaic spinner I gave in and just brought it all home at weekends.
I once went on a school trip to (the former) Yugoslavia. We were staying in a hotel in Umag where one night there was a burglary in one of the rooms. The police were obliged to knock on the door of each room to check that nothing had been taken. I was sharing a room with another girl and between us we were total sloths, our room was testement to this with a ransacked collection of clothes, souvenirs and empty wrappers. The policeman and hotel manager took in the catastrophic mess around us and concluded that the burglary was worse than they had initially thought. Red faced I was obliged to admit that it wasn’t a break in but rather our own mess.
But having someone to clean my mess sits uneasily with me. After all, on my UAE residents visa I’m described as a ‘housewife’ which heavily implies that I spend my days creating an orderly and harmonious home for my husband and children where the oven constantly churns out home baked treats and each rooms sports a vase of freshly cut flowers. That I waft from room to room, duster in hand wearing a Cath Kidston apron and get my hair and nails done once a week.
The truth is so far from that it’s not funny. I spend hours trying to organise things but I’m so easily distracted that just washing the floor can take half the day. Only last week, arriving home after a night away, I was industriously sweeping up some crumbs in the living room when DH announced he was going upstairs for a shower. 40 minutes later he re-emerged and double took as I was still standing in the exact same spot, broom in hand and the crumbs were still on the floor.
-‘err, you were doing that when I went up’
-‘I know, but I had to send an email, check online for flights, phone my brother and there was something good on the telly...’
Bless him but he doesn’t complain, he’s rather bewildered by it I think and besides, feminism has triumphed to the point that he daren’t question me in case I go on a rant about how I had to give up my (non-existent) career to bear and rear his offspring.
Besides, having live-in 'help' (I can't bring myself to use the word 'maid' it conjures up images of mob caps and episodes of 'Upstairs, Downstairs') is positively de riguer here in the UAE. More than once I've heard 'No maid, no nanny, are you crazy, you've got four kids!' like it's some sort of nasty disease. At home you have to make a regular appearance in Hello magazine to be able afford such a luxury. Of course the idea is tempting, but it just seems too much bother, although having someone to clean up after dinner, or to watch the kids while I go to the supermarket would be in the realm of Jim'll fix it in terms of dreams come true!
I have a friend who confided that she doesn’t go downstairs in the morning until the entire upstairs is clean, tidy and perfect. She is downstairs by 7am! My housekeeping goals for the week are more modest, aiming for having everything done by, say, Thursday, by which time it’s all messed up again anyway.
I’m always amazed when I am invited for an impromptu coffee by a mother at the school gate.
-‘what NOW?’ I will ask.
-‘Yes, why not?’ they will reply.
-‘Don’t you need to like, tidy up?’,
-‘well, it’s a mess but I don’t mind if you don’t mind’ they’ll cheerily reply.
Inevitably the house is perfect, not just all the toys are picked up off the floor and rubbish kicked under the sofa, but polished, dusted, with scatter cushions thoughtfully placed. They make fresh coffee and have home baked cakes. Often, bafflingly, they’ll offer to show me around the rest of the house where I’ll be shown every perfect room, right down to the en suite bathroom.
I prefer a 3 days warning before I entertain and even at that, I can only just about manage a tidy living room (albeit with graffitied walls), and then I’ll forget the milk and there won’t be any sugar in the house.
So I’m going to phone the cleaning services this week and book someone to come at the end of the week. I need that long to prepare. It doesn't matter what standard of service they give, it can't be any worse than my own. Although we'll probably have to book into a hotel for the weekend to ensure that it's still nice by Sunday, I do like starting the week with a tidy house.
‘oh, it’s lovely, all open-plan downstairs, lovely and bright! And since it’s smaller it will be sooo much easier to keep clean’.
WRONG! It’s a bloody nightmare because whereas in my last place there were a labyrinth of rooms to chuck things into, in this place there is nowhere to hide. The lovely open spaces are filled with piles of washing, school bags and paperwork. Open-plan is the kiss of death unless you have enough storage to match the size of the room or you are uber organised.
Having a cleaner has a good effect on me, it keeps me on the straight and narrow. In my previous house I had one and on the days that she visited I would spend the morning tidying up, cleaning toilets, generally making her job a little less difficult. And mysteriously, what might take me days to get through she would have finished in 2 hours.
They say that a clean house is a sign of a wasted life, but what is a messy house a sign of? It's not as if I'm spending all my time in the gym, juggling a hectic social life or the CEO of a company. A dirty, messy house in my opinion, results in a very disorganised life. It's a vicious circle of mess and despair.
These days being a ‘Monica’ or ‘OCD’ is a fashionable sobriquet for being a very good housekeeper (which doesn't sound half as quirky or trendy). My mother would have fallen into this catagory. So obsessed with order and tidiness, she would rush us to finish our dinner so that she could wash the plates. To her, to linger over a boozy dinner was a nightmare and only resulted in further unneccessary mess. As a teenager I decided to treat my parents and cook dinner for them. In an attempt to create a nice relaxed atmosphere, I lit some candles and put on some nice jazz. She came in, turned on the lights, turned off the music and blew out the candles. Taking in the blackened wicks , she accused me ‘you’ve ruined them, I have to throw them away now!’
I’m guessing that her obsession with cleanliness and order had the opposite effect on me. Since she did everything for me, I found moving away from home traumatic on so many levels. I remember starting boarding school as a 12 year old. I had no idea how to make my bed in the mornings (or brush my hair, or find my shoes) and my cubicle was a disgrace with dirty washing strewn all over the floor. I once ventured down to the laundry (it was more like a magdalene laundry…..it was a convent) and after spending an hour trying to wrestle with the archaic spinner I gave in and just brought it all home at weekends.
I once went on a school trip to (the former) Yugoslavia. We were staying in a hotel in Umag where one night there was a burglary in one of the rooms. The police were obliged to knock on the door of each room to check that nothing had been taken. I was sharing a room with another girl and between us we were total sloths, our room was testement to this with a ransacked collection of clothes, souvenirs and empty wrappers. The policeman and hotel manager took in the catastrophic mess around us and concluded that the burglary was worse than they had initially thought. Red faced I was obliged to admit that it wasn’t a break in but rather our own mess.
But having someone to clean my mess sits uneasily with me. After all, on my UAE residents visa I’m described as a ‘housewife’ which heavily implies that I spend my days creating an orderly and harmonious home for my husband and children where the oven constantly churns out home baked treats and each rooms sports a vase of freshly cut flowers. That I waft from room to room, duster in hand wearing a Cath Kidston apron and get my hair and nails done once a week.
The truth is so far from that it’s not funny. I spend hours trying to organise things but I’m so easily distracted that just washing the floor can take half the day. Only last week, arriving home after a night away, I was industriously sweeping up some crumbs in the living room when DH announced he was going upstairs for a shower. 40 minutes later he re-emerged and double took as I was still standing in the exact same spot, broom in hand and the crumbs were still on the floor.
-‘err, you were doing that when I went up’
-‘I know, but I had to send an email, check online for flights, phone my brother and there was something good on the telly...’
Bless him but he doesn’t complain, he’s rather bewildered by it I think and besides, feminism has triumphed to the point that he daren’t question me in case I go on a rant about how I had to give up my (non-existent) career to bear and rear his offspring.
Besides, having live-in 'help' (I can't bring myself to use the word 'maid' it conjures up images of mob caps and episodes of 'Upstairs, Downstairs') is positively de riguer here in the UAE. More than once I've heard 'No maid, no nanny, are you crazy, you've got four kids!' like it's some sort of nasty disease. At home you have to make a regular appearance in Hello magazine to be able afford such a luxury. Of course the idea is tempting, but it just seems too much bother, although having someone to clean up after dinner, or to watch the kids while I go to the supermarket would be in the realm of Jim'll fix it in terms of dreams come true!
I have a friend who confided that she doesn’t go downstairs in the morning until the entire upstairs is clean, tidy and perfect. She is downstairs by 7am! My housekeeping goals for the week are more modest, aiming for having everything done by, say, Thursday, by which time it’s all messed up again anyway.
I’m always amazed when I am invited for an impromptu coffee by a mother at the school gate.
-‘what NOW?’ I will ask.
-‘Yes, why not?’ they will reply.
-‘Don’t you need to like, tidy up?’,
-‘well, it’s a mess but I don’t mind if you don’t mind’ they’ll cheerily reply.
Inevitably the house is perfect, not just all the toys are picked up off the floor and rubbish kicked under the sofa, but polished, dusted, with scatter cushions thoughtfully placed. They make fresh coffee and have home baked cakes. Often, bafflingly, they’ll offer to show me around the rest of the house where I’ll be shown every perfect room, right down to the en suite bathroom.
I prefer a 3 days warning before I entertain and even at that, I can only just about manage a tidy living room (albeit with graffitied walls), and then I’ll forget the milk and there won’t be any sugar in the house.
So I’m going to phone the cleaning services this week and book someone to come at the end of the week. I need that long to prepare. It doesn't matter what standard of service they give, it can't be any worse than my own. Although we'll probably have to book into a hotel for the weekend to ensure that it's still nice by Sunday, I do like starting the week with a tidy house.
Thursday 22 October 2009
Chaos
I was born a month prematurely, and that was the last time I was early for anything. Even then, it was an elective cesarean so I wasn't even responsible for this uncommon punctuality.
I am terminally late for everything: when it comes to time-keeping, I enter the realm of ‘magical thinking’ where an appointment for 12.30pm, 15 minutes drive away, means I leave the house at 12.25pm. This sounds like straightforward bad manners but it's more complicated than that and is rather a combination of a misplaced optimism, a tendency to blur uncomfortable facts, as well as a need to be in crisis mode at all times (I have the same philosophy with money). The result is that I’m permanently late, harassed and apologetic. I have cunningly set all my clocks 5 minutes fast which is a pointless exercise since I merely make a mental adjustment whenever I look at them.
This tardiness is a common trait in my family where no holiday was complete without missing either a ferry or a plane. Somewhere in my distant memory is the grainy image of my family sitting crestfallen on the side of the dock in Liverpool as the ferry makes it's rapid departure towards Ireland. My father once tried to convince staff on the runway to stop a plane he'd missed at Knock airport. It being Knock, I think they almost considered it.
When I was six my father decided we would drive to Italy from the UK for our summer holiay. I can recall rattling around in the back of a mini bus as we made our way through five countries, as well as the treacherous ascent and descent through the Swiss Alps, only to arrive three days later at our holiday apartment to be informed by a dismayed landlady that we were a week late!
My problem is I have an equal measure of tardiness and a need for approval, which is a very bad combination because not only will I definitely be late, I’ll definitely feel terrible about it as well. My sister suffers from the same questionable time-keeping, but doesn’t care. Her attitude is one of 'if they want to be upset about my being late, it's their problem' Once after several stern letters from the school regarding her children's consistent lateness, she challenged them to provide her a school bus so the children wouldn’t be late any more. She actually got it! I envy her insensitivity. In fact, I once did the ladies mini marathon with her in Dublin, for which we were so late that the start line had been taken away by the time we got there (we got distracted in Marks & Spencer).
But the lateness is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my need to live on the edge (albeit a very domesticated and mundane ‘edge’). I don’t feel whole unless I have a current crisis and they present themselves (or are cultivated) on a daily basis. I’ve self-diagnosed my 'condition' as chaos addiction. Take yesterday for example. At midnight, every night, my PC pings up a message saying ‘Renew daughters passport’. I’ve been listening to this ping for months. The process has crept along slowly. It started with a series of emails to the Irish Embassy's office in Abu Dhabi and after a month, DH eventually made it in to collect an application form. Another 2 weeks and eventually we had her photos taken. By the end of the week I was feeling confident enough to inform the school that the children would not be in attendance the following day as we needed to go into Abu Dhabi and get the application forms witnessed. So far, so painfully drawn out.
And so, the following morning I woke, dressed, got the children up, and at that point decided to gather all the necessary documents. And this is where the chaos addiction comes into play. Any reasonable person would have sought out all the necessary paperwork prior to the event. First thing missing was our original marriage certificate. I had 2 photocopies but no original. Brushing that aside, I went to the counter where all the passports are. I found one, my 2 year old's. Two more proved to be in the car. Mine eventually surfaced in a mess of documents near the desk. In fact, every family members except the one needed, my daughters. I phoned DH, ‘where is it? You MUST have it!’ DH insisted he didn’t. After 10 minutes of searching I concluded it was lost and we may as well go to Abu Dhabi anyway and just declare it lost and apply for a new one. Simple. In to the car I piled everyone and off we headed with the paltry documents we had. Ten minutes into the journey and I decided to phone the embassy office to tell them of my change of plan. The chilling words of the girl at the end of the phone caused me to pull over and place my head on the steering wheel;
'You will need a police report in order to apply for a new one.'
Now, in Ireland this would be a mild inconvenience, enough to make me complain loudly about bureaucracy gone mad.
But this isn’t Ireland.
Turning the car around, I phoned DH to say ‘I’m not leaving here without that bloody passport’. I skidded to a stop outside the house and proceeded to tear the place apart. Sofas were upturned, bookshelves cleared, boxes turned upside down. I grabbed two-year-old and five-year-old ‘Now guys, I know you’re involved, WHERE IS IT??’ (this wasn’t unreasonable of me, last time something went missing we searched for half an hour before turning on five-year-old-boy who calmly lead us to the end of the garden to a pile of sand and presented us with the lost item). Both feigned total ignorance.
After half an hour of fruitless searching I reasoned ‘how hard can getting a police report be? (oh, such folly!) and phoned DH to say ‘you go and get the report, I’ll meet you at the office’.
Two hours later as I crawled through Abu Dhabi traffic, DH phoned to inform me that having been directed to three different locations he eventually was told the tragic truth. He would need to –
-visit 4 different offices around the city in order to gain various stamps and forms
-go to the Sharia court (NO!! I wailed, that’s where they behead people!!)
-PUT AN ADVERT IN THE PAPER and take the photocopy of this ad to their office
Undeterred, DH then asked if he could go and start the process immediately, and was told everywhere was closed for lunch. Quelle surprise!
So we went for lunch to assess the damage. We concluded that the passport was definitely in the house and we’d spend the weekend looking for it.
And so having driven two and a half hours to Abu Dhabi it turned out that it was all for nought (although I did buy a jolly nice dress for the ball). On the journey home, sometime outside Dubai (on the Abu Dhabi side), having passed countless petrol stations (one if which we actually stopped at so that my daughter could use the toilet) I realised my yellow light was showing that I was low on petrol. I decided to come off the bypass at Dubai and find a petrol station as I knew there wasn’t one from Dubai to RAK.
After driving around in the dark for 30 minutes I found myself rejoining the bypass with an empty petrol tank and a phone with a flat battery. I assessed the damage. I had an hour of a journey left and should I run out of petrol I would have no ability to contact DH to tell him of my dilemma. What on earth was I going to do? I kept going. I saw this on Top Gear once.
Miraculously I made it to Umm al Quain where I found a petrol station. I asked the manager if there was a pay phone, ostensibly to tell DH I was alright (he wouldn’t have been worried) but mainly to let him know that I hadn’t made it to the off license and it was closing in ten minutes. The manager, seeing that at this point I was wild eyed and manic having spent 6 hours with 4 kids in a car (not to mention the stress of having spent the last hour waiting for the car to glide to a hault on the side of the road, where, unable to contact DH, I would most certainly be murdered) kindly offered to let me use the office phone. Well, it was Thursday night and there was not a drop of alcohol in the house and DH would have assumed I had it covered… Feeling like I was back in the principals office, I recited DH’s phone number, holding my breath as he punched in the number. Handing me the receiver he said ‘it’s ringing’. He didn’t leave the room, he was going to hear this conversation. What was I going to say, that the drama which DH was unaware of was now over?
-Yes?
-Hi, err, I nearly ran out of petrol
-Oh, are you OK?
-Yes, I’m in Umm al Quawain, at the petrol station
-Oh, right
-Yes, it was terrible, and my phone was dead
-Yes, I saw that
-So, I’ll be home soon (ask about the booze!!!)
-Ok, well, see you then…oh, wait, have you been to the off license?
-No, you had better go now!!
-I’ve 5 minutes, gotta go
-bye
-bye
Handing back the phone I thanked the manager, wondering what he made of my side of this brief exchange.
While the guy filled the car I spent all the cash in my purse on goodies from the shop. Emerging minutes later laden with drinks and snacks I offered the petrol attendant my credit card to pay for the petrol. ‘Sorry ma'am, no credit cards’ he sang, pleased with himself. Taking my driving license as collateral he directed me to the nearest ATM (as an aside, I feel strongly that petrol stations and restaurants which don’t accept credit cards should inform the customer of this on arrival, after all, it’s not as if you can put your purchases back). Not following his directions too closely, I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up almost in Sharjah before I found a U turn where I could turn around a come back, adding an unnecessary 30 minutes onto what was already an agonising journey.
To cut a sorry tale short, I finally made it home and spent the whole weekend looking for the passport, to no avail. It wasn’t until I’d given up hope that I found myself walking out to the car, trancelike, opened the glove compartment and put my hand behind it where, sure enough, there it was. Drama over. Until the next one.
The point of this story is that each drama was predictable, unnecessary and utterly avoidable, from the missing documents, the pointless journey, ignoring the fuel gauge, using all available cash on unnecessary purchases resulting in mad dashes to ATM's and crucially, not keeping a well stocked drinks cabinet. But the chaos addiction is blind to these warning signs and always chooses the most difficult and hazardous route. I guess the psychology behind it is that constantly living in crisis mode means ignoring the smaller, humdrum banalities of daily life, instead focusing on the immediate drama as it unfolds. One day I hope to address this need for the theatrical, to bring some calm into my life, I could try therapy but no doubt I'd get there late and find they didn't accept credit cards.
-
I am terminally late for everything: when it comes to time-keeping, I enter the realm of ‘magical thinking’ where an appointment for 12.30pm, 15 minutes drive away, means I leave the house at 12.25pm. This sounds like straightforward bad manners but it's more complicated than that and is rather a combination of a misplaced optimism, a tendency to blur uncomfortable facts, as well as a need to be in crisis mode at all times (I have the same philosophy with money). The result is that I’m permanently late, harassed and apologetic. I have cunningly set all my clocks 5 minutes fast which is a pointless exercise since I merely make a mental adjustment whenever I look at them.
This tardiness is a common trait in my family where no holiday was complete without missing either a ferry or a plane. Somewhere in my distant memory is the grainy image of my family sitting crestfallen on the side of the dock in Liverpool as the ferry makes it's rapid departure towards Ireland. My father once tried to convince staff on the runway to stop a plane he'd missed at Knock airport. It being Knock, I think they almost considered it.
When I was six my father decided we would drive to Italy from the UK for our summer holiay. I can recall rattling around in the back of a mini bus as we made our way through five countries, as well as the treacherous ascent and descent through the Swiss Alps, only to arrive three days later at our holiday apartment to be informed by a dismayed landlady that we were a week late!
My problem is I have an equal measure of tardiness and a need for approval, which is a very bad combination because not only will I definitely be late, I’ll definitely feel terrible about it as well. My sister suffers from the same questionable time-keeping, but doesn’t care. Her attitude is one of 'if they want to be upset about my being late, it's their problem' Once after several stern letters from the school regarding her children's consistent lateness, she challenged them to provide her a school bus so the children wouldn’t be late any more. She actually got it! I envy her insensitivity. In fact, I once did the ladies mini marathon with her in Dublin, for which we were so late that the start line had been taken away by the time we got there (we got distracted in Marks & Spencer).
But the lateness is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my need to live on the edge (albeit a very domesticated and mundane ‘edge’). I don’t feel whole unless I have a current crisis and they present themselves (or are cultivated) on a daily basis. I’ve self-diagnosed my 'condition' as chaos addiction. Take yesterday for example. At midnight, every night, my PC pings up a message saying ‘Renew daughters passport’. I’ve been listening to this ping for months. The process has crept along slowly. It started with a series of emails to the Irish Embassy's office in Abu Dhabi and after a month, DH eventually made it in to collect an application form. Another 2 weeks and eventually we had her photos taken. By the end of the week I was feeling confident enough to inform the school that the children would not be in attendance the following day as we needed to go into Abu Dhabi and get the application forms witnessed. So far, so painfully drawn out.
And so, the following morning I woke, dressed, got the children up, and at that point decided to gather all the necessary documents. And this is where the chaos addiction comes into play. Any reasonable person would have sought out all the necessary paperwork prior to the event. First thing missing was our original marriage certificate. I had 2 photocopies but no original. Brushing that aside, I went to the counter where all the passports are. I found one, my 2 year old's. Two more proved to be in the car. Mine eventually surfaced in a mess of documents near the desk. In fact, every family members except the one needed, my daughters. I phoned DH, ‘where is it? You MUST have it!’ DH insisted he didn’t. After 10 minutes of searching I concluded it was lost and we may as well go to Abu Dhabi anyway and just declare it lost and apply for a new one. Simple. In to the car I piled everyone and off we headed with the paltry documents we had. Ten minutes into the journey and I decided to phone the embassy office to tell them of my change of plan. The chilling words of the girl at the end of the phone caused me to pull over and place my head on the steering wheel;
'You will need a police report in order to apply for a new one.'
Now, in Ireland this would be a mild inconvenience, enough to make me complain loudly about bureaucracy gone mad.
But this isn’t Ireland.
Turning the car around, I phoned DH to say ‘I’m not leaving here without that bloody passport’. I skidded to a stop outside the house and proceeded to tear the place apart. Sofas were upturned, bookshelves cleared, boxes turned upside down. I grabbed two-year-old and five-year-old ‘Now guys, I know you’re involved, WHERE IS IT??’ (this wasn’t unreasonable of me, last time something went missing we searched for half an hour before turning on five-year-old-boy who calmly lead us to the end of the garden to a pile of sand and presented us with the lost item). Both feigned total ignorance.
After half an hour of fruitless searching I reasoned ‘how hard can getting a police report be? (oh, such folly!) and phoned DH to say ‘you go and get the report, I’ll meet you at the office’.
Two hours later as I crawled through Abu Dhabi traffic, DH phoned to inform me that having been directed to three different locations he eventually was told the tragic truth. He would need to –
-visit 4 different offices around the city in order to gain various stamps and forms
-go to the Sharia court (NO!! I wailed, that’s where they behead people!!)
-PUT AN ADVERT IN THE PAPER and take the photocopy of this ad to their office
Undeterred, DH then asked if he could go and start the process immediately, and was told everywhere was closed for lunch. Quelle surprise!
So we went for lunch to assess the damage. We concluded that the passport was definitely in the house and we’d spend the weekend looking for it.
And so having driven two and a half hours to Abu Dhabi it turned out that it was all for nought (although I did buy a jolly nice dress for the ball). On the journey home, sometime outside Dubai (on the Abu Dhabi side), having passed countless petrol stations (one if which we actually stopped at so that my daughter could use the toilet) I realised my yellow light was showing that I was low on petrol. I decided to come off the bypass at Dubai and find a petrol station as I knew there wasn’t one from Dubai to RAK.
After driving around in the dark for 30 minutes I found myself rejoining the bypass with an empty petrol tank and a phone with a flat battery. I assessed the damage. I had an hour of a journey left and should I run out of petrol I would have no ability to contact DH to tell him of my dilemma. What on earth was I going to do? I kept going. I saw this on Top Gear once.
Miraculously I made it to Umm al Quain where I found a petrol station. I asked the manager if there was a pay phone, ostensibly to tell DH I was alright (he wouldn’t have been worried) but mainly to let him know that I hadn’t made it to the off license and it was closing in ten minutes. The manager, seeing that at this point I was wild eyed and manic having spent 6 hours with 4 kids in a car (not to mention the stress of having spent the last hour waiting for the car to glide to a hault on the side of the road, where, unable to contact DH, I would most certainly be murdered) kindly offered to let me use the office phone. Well, it was Thursday night and there was not a drop of alcohol in the house and DH would have assumed I had it covered… Feeling like I was back in the principals office, I recited DH’s phone number, holding my breath as he punched in the number. Handing me the receiver he said ‘it’s ringing’. He didn’t leave the room, he was going to hear this conversation. What was I going to say, that the drama which DH was unaware of was now over?
-Yes?
-Hi, err, I nearly ran out of petrol
-Oh, are you OK?
-Yes, I’m in Umm al Quawain, at the petrol station
-Oh, right
-Yes, it was terrible, and my phone was dead
-Yes, I saw that
-So, I’ll be home soon (ask about the booze!!!)
-Ok, well, see you then…oh, wait, have you been to the off license?
-No, you had better go now!!
-I’ve 5 minutes, gotta go
-bye
-bye
Handing back the phone I thanked the manager, wondering what he made of my side of this brief exchange.
While the guy filled the car I spent all the cash in my purse on goodies from the shop. Emerging minutes later laden with drinks and snacks I offered the petrol attendant my credit card to pay for the petrol. ‘Sorry ma'am, no credit cards’ he sang, pleased with himself. Taking my driving license as collateral he directed me to the nearest ATM (as an aside, I feel strongly that petrol stations and restaurants which don’t accept credit cards should inform the customer of this on arrival, after all, it’s not as if you can put your purchases back). Not following his directions too closely, I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up almost in Sharjah before I found a U turn where I could turn around a come back, adding an unnecessary 30 minutes onto what was already an agonising journey.
To cut a sorry tale short, I finally made it home and spent the whole weekend looking for the passport, to no avail. It wasn’t until I’d given up hope that I found myself walking out to the car, trancelike, opened the glove compartment and put my hand behind it where, sure enough, there it was. Drama over. Until the next one.
The point of this story is that each drama was predictable, unnecessary and utterly avoidable, from the missing documents, the pointless journey, ignoring the fuel gauge, using all available cash on unnecessary purchases resulting in mad dashes to ATM's and crucially, not keeping a well stocked drinks cabinet. But the chaos addiction is blind to these warning signs and always chooses the most difficult and hazardous route. I guess the psychology behind it is that constantly living in crisis mode means ignoring the smaller, humdrum banalities of daily life, instead focusing on the immediate drama as it unfolds. One day I hope to address this need for the theatrical, to bring some calm into my life, I could try therapy but no doubt I'd get there late and find they didn't accept credit cards.
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