Wanted:  One Mother\wife – like person to adopt a menagerie of men children and various forms of pooping\puking domestic wildlife.  Successful applicants will be required to fulfill and undertake the following criteria-

 

• Be an arduous task master when it comes to scraping dried cereal from the floor and kitchen table

 

• Be adept at  scrambling under beds and finding missing school ties and 35 over -due library books

 

•  Expertly utilise an entire weeks worth of towels to sop up bathtub overflows.  Sometimes blaming  it on the kids, but occasionally confessing to  a  few too many wines and a little distraction known as Facebook

 

•  Maintain a grown up, respectable telephone conversation with an “out sourced” Indian telephone operator, whilst silently separating fighting offspring with an expert arm yank

 

• Be able to keep a straight face during the most excruciating conversations with 5 year old boys about testicles and why it’s not a good idea to try and “pop” them!

 

• Convincingly appreciate (and keep forever!) the entire recycled waste of a small country (think Sweden) creatively fashioned  into various forms of art presented to you on Mothers Day morning 

 

• Successfully pretend to be going off to an office job as you go through the McDonald’s drive through for a coffee when in reality you merely going home to blog and Facebook

 

• Successfully  feign interest when the MOTH (Man Of The House)  is extolling the virtues of a square pie over a round pie

 

• Expertly hide yourself and the children in a darkened house as Mormons knock incessantly on the  front door

 

• Be a Maven  of emotional blackmail, frequently making statements like “everything I do for you kids, and I never get a thank you…………………..”

 

• Be  able to forage through knee deep refuse on Xmas afternoon, looking for instructions for toys that were accidentally thrown out, despite the garbage bin smelling like a cat’s died in there!

 

• Happily provide expert medical care to pseudo sick family members whilst bleeding out ones’ own ears. 

 

Clearly an exciting career opportunity for a highly motivated go getter.  Wages are non existent, however the successful applicant will have unlimited access to mountains of cold leftovers.

 

Interested parties, should not bother contacting me, I’ve already left!

 

“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.”

So, I found this blog space and I started typing.  I thought I was finally following God’s plan for myself.  Writing fit for human consumption.  My Gran once told me that to squander a God given gift was a sin.  For years I doubted that writing was the gift God meant for me.  I’m not a beautiful, poetic writer.  At times when I’m trying to be serious, I end up writing something wry and funny.  It’s a bit like catching your reflection in the mirror and realising that “that” is how you really look..not the picture in your head.  So, I continue to write the words as they come out, and so far it’s been a real joy.  However God has a new plan, parallel to this writing one, that has thrown a new challenge my way.

Slowly my health has been deteriorating, and with it my inspiration.  At the same time, a real sense of dis-loyalty has started to grow in my gut.  Why, after conquering my own emotional hurdles to get to this place, would God continue to make the path so difficult to traverse.  Why offer up such a wonderful prize and them make it so I can’t use it anymore?

Perhaps it is the prize for pride.  Lack of ego has kept me in the same place for all my life, unable to recognise my own importance.  I have strived, eventually listening when people said I could achieve greatness.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think like the Beatles did.  I’m not bigger than Jesus.  But I certainly started to feel like a loved member of his family.

So, a big lesson is in the learning for me here.  I see that very clearly, and I will continue to be patient.  But..there’s a sadness, and sense of missed opportunity.  That everyday I sit without writing is a day lost, words lost and unexpressed.

 

Paulo Coelho

 

He was off to tend the garden, maybe water the lawn, maybe pull some weeds.  The dog circled his feet in anticipation of hi-jinx.  As the MOTH wobbled out the backdoor grabbing for purchase with each step, I felt the old familiar fear reach up and twist my insides.  Our eyes met, and I looked away.  So did he.

Earlier this year the MOTH was diagnosed (after years of sypmtoms) with a genetic condition that affects his balance.  He wibbles and wobbles and teeters.  Sometimes he falls.  It is usually a younger persons disease, so the prognosis is not as grim.  However the outcome is always the same.  It is progressive and terminal.

Life tries to continue as normal after such devastating news, hence the gardening.  As he pottered in the yard, I began to prepare the evening meal, one ear listening for calls for help or just cries of frustration.  Imagine my surprise then when I looked up from the kitchen sink to see the MOTH swinging from a tree in the garden bed, pulling himself up off the path.  I gave him a curious look and he waved to indicate he was ok.  At this, I looked away knowing how uncomfortable he would become if I continued to  watch.  When I looked back a few minutes later, I found the MOTH and our friendly canine huddled in a garden bed, plotting some mischief .  Then I noticed something green trailing behind the dog.  Aha!  The garden hose!  It was when I noticed it had been looped through her collar, I realised I had to go out and investigate.  The MOTH had decided that as the garden bed was uneven terrain, the best way to navigate the soaker hose (you know the hose with holes all through it?) behind the bushes was to attach it to “Lassie’s” collar.  He would then coax her through, dragging the hose into position.    Knowing our dog, this was the most absurd scheme either of us had ever heard. Maybe if our dog really was Lassie and Timmy was stuck down a well this could have been a plausible solution.  Alas, mans best friend at our joint is a dumb as a box of rocks.   Neither of us could help but bursts into fits of laughter.

So how do you go on smiling after tragedy interrupts your plan for your life?  A lot of people say “If I didn’t laugh I’d cry.”  I don’t know if that’s entirely true, because you’ll always cry no matter how hard you try not too.  I believe that if you don’t laugh, if you take yourself too seriously, you’ll never try!  And trying is what gets us up each day.  God Bless you MOTH. 

 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill