Well, how the heck is everyone? F**king awful, if you’re anything like me. The sunshine has finally arrived, and am I get a second to enjoy it? Of course not. I got the dreaded call to go back to work, and no easy transition was that, I can tell you.
I had aspirations of resting myself for a while, after the combined horrors of teaching online and home-schooling. I think I’m still suffering from PTSD, with early stages of cirrhosis of the liver too, no doubt. But didn’t the phone go at the end of August, with a man looking for someone to teach youngsters English in a local school. How LSB’s eyes lit up upon hearing that news. Frankly, I think he wanted me out of the house but he claims that necessity simply dictated that I should go. Stony broke we almost are, after staying in that f**king eco-cabin in Donegal and now back home, we’re forking out for all manner of activities so our children grow up to be well-rounded individuals. I’ll tell you who’s NOT well-rounded, nor well-rested either at the moment, and that’s me. More fried than a Glaswegian Mars Bar that’s had a double dip, that’s what I am.
Have you ever clapped eyes on those ‘Hama Beads’ that my children express a fondness for? Bastard things altogether: a million tiny pieces of plastic that get spilt over the floor and press into the soles of your feet when you’re trying to do your yoga. Well, imagine that a large tub of these has been upset over your carpet and you are trying to scootch them all up. That’s what it’s like when I try to write anything presently. The synapses just aren’t firing as there is too much afoot.
Teaching used to be trying enough, but as you can imagine with all this Covid shite, the stress has been upped significantly. Used to be you could sit in your room, waiting for your class to trot in. Instead, I am looking every bit the bewildered substitute teacher, as I shuttle around the building searching for rooms and attempting to follow the one-way system. I keep forgetting my mask and have to keep racing back to find it. Then it’s into the room and logging on and futtering about with a computer. Just getting the class started at all is a miracle.
So that’s school. Then there’s home, when I’m ever actually in it and not taxi-ing weans hither and thither. And no sooner are they dealt with, than there’s an animal annoying me to be walked or fed or removed from a clean pile of laundry. Speaking of wildlife, guess what befell me this VERY evening. I was perched upon the sofa, writing my blog for the first time in 3 weeks when The Small Child appeared at my shoulder. ‘I’m very sorry to interrupt you,’ she began, ‘But we are going to have to bath the dog.’
They often suggest bathing the dog, just as a fun activity, and I ignore them. I could tell by her tone, however, that this wasn’t just a notion. ‘She has rolled in dog dirt,’ went on the child. ‘And it is all over her neck. It smells really bad.’
Well that was the end of my peaceful half hour. Up I had to get, run the bath and lift said greyhound in, trying not to get smeared in shite in the process. Raging she was about it too. ‘Well that makes two of us,’ I told her, as I lathered doggy shampoo into the offending area.
So there you are. Not much writing has been done, of late, and tonight’s escapades should give you an idea what the tempo of life has been like. So to any one of you out there, who is currently working full-time and managing not to throttle those closest to them, fair play to you. I mean, I was stressed BEFORE I went back to work and now I’m just hoping I don’t give myself a hernia. Any tips, you know which way to send them.
