belgianwaffle

Family

Gemütlichkeit – Part 1


Posted in: Family, Travel

We spent a week skiing in Austria. It was terrific. We went with Mr. Waffle’s brother and sister and their families as well as another family who were friends of Mr. Waffle’s brother. I felt a bit bad taking the children out of school for three days (they had two days off anyway for Patrick’s Day) but I have decided that, on balance, it was worth it.

Day 1 – 16 March

Following the unfortunate incident with the boarding pass in Denmark last summer (let us not speak of it), Mr. Waffle had prepared a folder with 7 tabs. It worked perfectly. But some people might have thought it was overkill. Fools.

We left the house at 4.30 in the morning. At 4, Daniel and I had the following conversation.

Him: What shoes should I bring to Austria, my school shoes or my runners?

Me: Your runners.

Him: Is this a good time to tell you that my runners have a hole?

No, it was not a good time.

At the airport my sister-in-law and her husband and child were mysteriously absent. It turned out that they had only got up at 5 and considering that we left the house at 4.30 and live closer to the airport than they do, it wasn’t entirely surprising that they were late. Their travails were not helped by having two planes to Salzburg leave at exactly the same time and then going to the wrong gate but they made it.

The flight was uneventful though I noted enviously that my brother-in-law and his kids were fast asleep on the flight while we were definitely tense and awake.

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There was a certain amount of tension all day. Although there was no difficulty in getting to the resort there was the usual logistical excitement of arranging lessons and ski hire. Also we had hired two apartments which were part of the hotel complex. The boys shared one and Mr Waffle, the princess and I were in the other. Sadly, she did not enjoy having her bed in the living area. “This is the most luxurious place I have ever stayed while skiing,” I told the children. Notwithstanding the bed in the living area, the children agreed that it was the most luxurious place they had ever stayed full stop.

We had booked in for half board and I approached dinner on the first night with some trepidation having a low opinion of both Austrian food and hotel food but I was so, so wrong. Dinner was terrific. Furthermore the children had their own table and selected their own food from the buffet and then went off to the games room to bond with their cousins (except herself who ditched the children and joined the grown ups – hotel had a great vegetarian menu as well, unexpected).

After a long day, things were definitely looking up.

Day 2 – 17 March

It was the most beautiful day. As a ski instructor waiting at the cafe for his class said to me dismissively, “Anyone can ski on a day like today. You need bad weather where you learn to ski with the feet not the eyes.” Ok fine, whatever, notes for the honours students, I’m still skiing with the eyes thanks.

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The children went for skiing lessons in the morning. Daniel and herself loved it. Michael did not.

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Mr. Waffle and I, 11 years out from our last skiing trip in 2008 took ourselves gingerly to the button lift and did a couple of green runs followed by a restorative cup of tea. Afterwards, I fell over slowly and gently on a blue slope and two nice German men stopped and picked me up. Frankly, this compares very favourably to my experiences in France where other skiers tended to swish by the fallen with a “Tsk”.

We took the children for lunch and watched in live time as they discovered it was sunny up the mountains (back to the hotel for sunglasses) yet also cold (back to the hotel for jackets).

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The boys had had enough but herself came to the easy slope with me and her aunt. She was really pretty good and I kept saying it was that week of skiing she had when she was five but she resisted that interpretation.

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We all took ourselves to the pool later which was pleasant but meant that after dinner we all went straight to bed, exhausted – a pattern which repeated itself all week.

Day 3 – 18 March

One of the nice things about this holiday was how the cousins got to see more of each other. Although the littlest cousin, S, (2 in June) didn’t join us for dinner, she was at breakfast each morning where she commanded her parents to meet her various needs. She talks a lot which is entertaining but doesn’t always get words quite right. For a while she called croissants “content” and it was very sweet to see her parents feeding her croissant and enquiring anxiously, “Good content?”

Good job that breakfast was good as the weather was quite awful (great, a chance to ski with the feet). When the children came back from skiing lessons, Michael pronounced that he had the worst two hours of his life and Daniel had hurt his knee. Herself continued to love the skiing but found her brothers’ fates haunting her.

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While our children were suffering, Mr. Waffle and I found the ski lift which would take us safely back to our hotel after a couple of gentle blue runs and went for a cup of tea with my sister-in-law and young S.

A very successful afternoon followed for herself who came out with me and her aunt and tried a more challenging blue run.

Then, back to the hotel where Daniel was waiting for me to go to the pool. He asked to be allowed to go on his own next time. I hesitated. He said patiently, “Mum, I can stand with my head above water in every part of the pool. I’m thirteen.” I yielded.

As we walked across, I enquired whether his brother had had a shower. Yes. Did he change out of his ski socks? Quizzical eyebrow lift. It turns out he is not his brother’s keeper.

That night we thought fond thoughts of my parents-in-law who would have been 50 years married that day

Day 4 – 19 March

Mr. Waffle’s birthday. I gave him two books which I had tried to smuggle secretly to Austria. I don’t think it was really a surprise; packing was largely a shared enterprise. And a magazine subscription because he is hard to buy for and that is an easy present to transport.

We didn’t send Daniel to lessons in deference to his sore knee and took him out with us. Our gentle, undemanding pace was just the job for him. We went for a cup of tea and tried, largely unavailingly to ingratiate ourselves with young S who was out in her snowsuit with her mother.

I went to meet Michael from ski school with some trepidation. Unnecessary, he was triumphant. Skiing was the most fun ever and he was its greatest exponent. His sister found his exuberant confidence…trying.

We spent the afternoon with the cousins practicing – it was super because my guys needed the practice and they enjoyed skiing with their cousins – particularly Michael who, now that he had found his ski legs disdained any kind of turning as for the weak and ignored any advice that this technique might not be appropriate for all terrain. He beat me hollow in a race down the hill to his utter delight.

His sister asked me was she doing ok and I reassured her. Her father said, “It’s not a competition.” “Everything is a competition,” she and I said in unison. Mr. Waffle said to herself, “Seriously, whose philosophy do you prefer Brother Bear here who says that we are all of us working together or Sister Scorn over there who says that it’s a struggle for survival of the fittest?” Honestly, this is what you get if you marry a hippie. She thought for a bit and said, “Brother Bear probably but Sister Scorn is the voice I hear in my head.” Oh dear, sorry about that, sweetheart.

We bore off a cousin and went for a cup of tea and a bun to recover from our race down the hill and then, extravagantly taxied the 500 meters back to the hotel because we couldn’t face walking in our boots with our skis. Don’t judge.

When we got back, the girls went off to find their little cousin and Daniel and another cousin went swimming while Michael recovered from his exertions. I gave a waiter a packet of candles I had bought in the Spar and stretching my barely remembered Leaving Cert German to its limits explained that it was Mr. Waffle’s birthday. This was actually quite a nice thing about the resort – everyone spoke German all the time. Most of the tourists seemed to be from Germany or Eastern Europe and German was definitely the lingua franca. It made the children see vividly the point of studying German in school which was gratifying (at least they made up missed German lessons, I suppose).

When we arrived in to the dinner, the hotel had outdone themselves in making the table festive with runners and settings and a cake. The only off note was my Spar candles. I suspect they had their own, far superior, candles but thought I had a special dedication to my Spar ones. Alas. Mr. Waffle seemed pleased, however.

My brother-in-law, channelling the spirit of my late father-in-law ordered Prosecco for everyone. Herself had a glass. She was a bit underwhelmed. “Still,” said Mr. Waffle, “your first drink.” “Not at all,” said she, “Grandad was mad for giving me Prosecco.”

Cork


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland, Middle Child, Twins, Youngest Child

I went down to Cork for the weekend. When I left Dublin on Friday lunch time, it was warm and sunny. Like a fool, I decided it was warm enough to go to Cork without my coat. Honestly, am I nine or forty nine? Normally, I get lifts all the time but for a variety of dull reasons, I had to get myself around without lifts this weekend. This is relevant.

When I got to Cork on Friday evening it was lashing. I cycled glumly to my parents’ house on a Cork bike. My parents’ house is so warm that I had more or less steam dried in about an hour which was just as well as I only had a solitary pair of trousers with me.

The next morning I woke up with a pain in my tooth. This was doubly annoying as I was at the dentist last week. It wasn’t super painful but more numb like when you get an injection. Over the course of the day it spread all around my top teeth in a slightly disturbing development.

On Saturday morning I cycled in to town. Obviously, I could have taken a coat out from my parents’ house but I decided that the weather would hold. I don’t know why I would have decided that and with a certain inevitability I got soaked again on the way back to my parents’ house. As my general mouth pain spread, I began to wonder whether I had given myself Bell’s palsy by recklessly cycling around in the rain without a coat. But it got better over the course of the day and was on both sides so, I decided probably not.

I visited my mother in the nursing home. She was awake and I knew that she recognised me because she looked at me and said, “Your hair is lovely.” This is literally all she said in the hour I was there. This is a long-standing fault line between us. She loves my hair long and I like it to be short; in fact, I think it really needs a cut. I’m glad she’s still in there somewhere in dementia land although the comment annoyed me as it invariably did when she was well, so some patterns seem to survive a great deal of change.

On Saturday night, my sister and I went to the cinema. We drove. Say what you like about the car, it’s good at keeping you dry.

I came back to Dublin early on Sunday morning. I cycled to the station in Cork and got soaked. I dried on the train. Then, I cycled home from the station and got soaked all over again. The rain in Dublin was considerably chillier than the rain in Cork. I arrived home freezing and damp to find that the builders had cut a power line and the heating. Unsatisfactory. Herself filled me a hot water bottle. On the plus side, my tooth pain completely disappeared. I suppose this is what this blog is going to be from now on as I move to my 50s: a litany of mysterious symptoms which come and go with no rhyme or reason.

On Sunday afternoon we went to inspect Dublin’s newest tourist attraction, the Vaults which was ok but more aimed at tourists than locals and probably for a younger crowd. We went off to a mild afternoon birthday celebration for Uncle A where Mr. Waffle dimmed the lights to blow out the candles causing unspeakable terror to my little niece, S. Is it bad that I found that mildly amusing? Herself babysat for them last night and as she went home, her aunt pressed a packet of Marietta biscuits into her hand, “Take these, please, we have to get rid of them, they’re like crack cocaine for S.”

When we got home we lit fires to try to keep us warm. It snowed outside. Overall, damp and chilly.

Michael is now taller than me as well. I suppose it’s only a question of time before Herself passes me out.

And how was your own weekend?

Choral Evening


Posted in: Family, Middle Child, Twins

Daniel was singing in a choral evening organised by the Dublin archdiocese last week. There were about 600 children from a range of different schools there the night we went all wearing their school uniforms. Mr. Waffle said that it felt like a kilt convention. Prize for most hideous uniform must go to the girls wearing lemon jumpers and matching kilts. I am indebted to herself for letting me know that they change colours every two years depending what year they are in and pointing me to the rainbow of colours up in the balcony. I bet they’re glad when they move on from lemon.

The evangelical modern uptempo songs preferred by the organisers do not appeal to me but Daniel quite enjoyed it as did his sister. She did not need to have recourse to her choice of reading for the evening (really, who, who, is this child?).

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Michael, however, continued reading his collected Sherlock Holmes almost throughout.

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He did pause in his reading to listen to his brother to read out a long passage on stage. I have to say Daniel read really, really well. There must have been a thousand people in the auditorium between performers and their loving relatives and he read fluently and clearly with emphasis in all the right places and didn’t seem even slightly nervous. He does not get that gift from me.

Afterwards the school nun said to me, “Wasn’t Daniel wonderful?” I said that he was and that I had already praised him. She said that he needed affirmation. “There is,” she added, “something self-serving about praise.” The children all love her but I tell you, people, she sees right through me. In the car on the way home, Mr. Waffle said, “I didn’t understand what Sr M meant about the difference between praise and affirmation.” Herself replied, “Mum praises, you affirm.” Of course, he is the child of hippies.

Durchhalten


Posted in: Dublin, Family, Ireland

Honestly, I can’t remember when I have had a more miserable January. At least 3 of us had the flu and we were all sick. I am only really better now. Poor Mr. Waffle is still going around coughing pathetically. His recovery was not, I imagine, in any way advanced by a shower of hail while he stood on the side of a GAA pitch this afternoon cheering Daniel on to a miserable defeat.

The works in the kitchen have been quite hideous. The house continues to be almost always filled with builders and dust. The temporary kitchen set up in the utility room is as hideous as you might imagine. We had many freezing weeks without a wall. The temperature in the temporary kitchen fell to as low as 8 degrees celsius and the olive oil solidified. For one hideous wet, rainy, cold miserable night we had to go out in the back garden to get to and from the temporary kitchen.

We enjoyed about a week of an earth floor in the kitchen which as depressing as it sounds. Particularly, when you see the cat eyeing it speculatively as a vast indoor toilet facility. Our tiles in the kitchen were laid on earth by the Victorians and, as Mr. Waffle said, there were worms there sticking their heads into the air for the first time since the build up to the Boer War. British worms.

There were several dates for delivery of windows to make the kitchen weatherproof. This was even more important as doors between the kitchen and the rest of the house had to be removed. Two of the delivery dates were missed to no one’s real surprise but the windows and glass doors were delivered on February 4 and although the door doesn’t open and the bathroom window is not the colour we ordered, we are inclined to regard this as a definite step forward.

Meanwhile, like a fool, I am doing a course which required an assignment to be submitted by February 7. It had to be done in the course of January. You would think we were suffering enough but I enjoyed putting myself through that extra layer of misery. I am never doing another degree, diploma or anything unless it is for my own entertainment and maybe not even then.

My poor 93 year old father also got the flu and I was ringing him for daily updates on his condition. He’s almost recovered, thanks for asking. As I rang to hear his litany of woe and he sympathetically listened to mine, he would say, “there is only one thing for it ‘durchhalten'”.

I think the worst might be over. But it might not.

The Problems of Another Age


Posted in: Family

My aunt was telling me that, many years ago, my Granny got a new fur coat with which she was very pleased and she brought it home. Instead of hanging it up in the wardrobe she put it on a hook under a high shelf the better to admire it.

No sooner had she paused in her admiration than a stray bird flew in through the window and perched on the high shelf above her fancy new coat. It was the work of a moment for the cat, also in the room, to climb up the fur coat and secure the bird. I understand that the coat was never the same after. I suppose the bird wasn’t either.

Flu!


Posted in: Family

Saturday, January 5

So we drove back from Cork last Saturday morning. We got into Dublin just before lunch and all was well. I dropped herself into town to meet some friends. Would she wear a coat? She would not. “I’ll be inside the whole time,” she said. My riposte – “You are meeting your friends in St. Stephen’s Green, that is a park. Outside,” – was met with withering disdain.

I went home to start clearing out the kitchen for the builders who were due to start on Monday but Mr. Waffle said, “We’re all tired after the drive, will we do it tomorrow?” This was most unlike him but very welcome at the time. Subsequently, of course, it proved to be a big mistake. I’m sure there’s a moral there somewhere.

About 6 I got a call for herself wondering whether there was any chance of a lift as she was freezing. “Aha,” said I, “the absence of coat a mistake?” “Yes,” she conceded, “I also regret the sandals.” As I had been toting a hot water bottle around with me for the past hour as I was inexplicably cold, I hopped into the car with it and brought it to her. She was suitably grateful.

Sunday, January 6 – Epiphany

I slept badly and woke up feeling terrible. I couldn’t even go to mass, for Epiphany. But you know what I had to do? Clear the kitchen for the builders, that’s what. We all helped and it wasn’t quite as awful as you might imagine but I had a raging temperature and was unutterably miserable.

About 4 I was able to limp back to bed. Mr. Waffle made dinner and I came downstairs to make an attempt at eating it but my heart wasn’t in it and I definitively took to my bed at 8 that evening.

Meanwhile, Herself began to display symptoms, shivering away.

Monday, January 7

I don’t know when I was last so sick. I had a horribly disturbed and slightly hallucinatory night. My torso was too hot and my feet were freezing. Regular doses of paracetamol seemed to make no difference though I suppose they did.

About 20 years ago when living in Brussels, I had the flu and I thought to myself this is it again. I got out of bed once to go to the bathroom and that was pretty much it.

The builders turned up at 8 in the morning and started doing building things. The noise. The misery. I can so see why flu can be lethal to babies and old people. I am rarely sick and I feel my system is wearing itself out. Prediction is, nevertheless, that I am likely to live.

Mr. Waffle tended to the builders (lots of questions), me and the Princess. When the boys got home from school, Daniel didn’t fancy eating and felt tired so he went to bed. Was this a good sign, gentle reader?

Tuesday, January 8

Yet another disturbed night and really pretty miserable. Mr. Waffle dropped me into the GP where I waited to be seen for about an hour in a room full of miserable people. The GP confirmed the flu and said cheerfully, “Watch out for pneumonia though, that’s what we worry about.” Apparently it’s all related to the colour of your phlegm. God. I pointed out that I didn’t have a runny nose, something I felt, somehow that I ought to be congratulated on, and she said, quite pleased, “Yes that’s typical for flu.”

Home and crawled back into bed with the builders doing their thing in the kitchen and Mr. Waffle tending to two children and me. So miserable.

Michael came up to me when he came home from school. He was burning hot. “I felt really dizzy and hot today and I had a headache cycling home,” said he collapsing into the bed beside me.

I’m a bit confused about what happened next but about 8 in the evening, Michael said, “I need water.” Mr. Waffle’s voice came from the floor at the end of the bed saying, “You’ll have to get it yourself and can you go to your own bed”? Apparently, Mr. Waffle started to feel sick too and decided to construct a camp bed rather than move Michael. Everyone was getting a bit confused. There was no dinner and everyone was in bed by 6 we think.

Wednesday, January 9

I woke to the sound of the cat whining at the bedroom door. I went downstairs to feed her. While I rejoiced in my ability to walk downstairs with only the occasional pause to cough up phlegm ( not green – good news on phlegm watch), I was not super delighted to be besieged by builders asking hard questions about windows, flues and other matters.

With Mr. Waffle out of commission, I dragged myself around to the children’s rooms doling out paracetemol and the limited stock of sympathy I had available to me once I had used up most of it on myself and then took myself back to bed where Mr. Waffle was hacking up a lung while wearing a fetching damp face cloth on his forehead.

It feels like I have been sick forever. 3 full days in bed is a really long time for a grown-up to be sick.

Thursday, January 10

Herself was going to a concert with her friends – tickets part of her Christmas present and had to cancel due to ill-health.

I showered in the morning and began to feel a bit more human. Was this the beginning of the end?

The main builder who is an older gent waslooking a bit under the weather. I didn’t sleep last night he tells me between coughs. This could carry him off. And, as the GP said cheerfully, “In a closed environment like a house, it is very likely to spread.”

The boys’ parent teacher meetings were that evening so I left the house of illness and went to spread my germs around the school and, on the way home, Tesco. Feedback on the boys was all grand. Apparently Michael is a born presenter and now that 10% of his State exam marks are for a class-room based presentation, all the teachers seem to have noticed. The history teacher loves Daniel. One of their teachers is super scary and even I find him a bit scary so I didn’t find a way to work into the discussion this slightly amusing factlet which the Princess shared with me: “if we watch documentaries in English, he sits in the back of the class translating them into Irish, like we can’t understand them in English.” Ah yes, “Tosnaíonn an lae in san Serengeti..” I did, inadvertently, mention something about messing in class and he looked puzzled and said, “No, there is never any messing in my class.” I bet there isn’t. Meanwhile, when I asked the art teacher whether Michael was well-behaved in class she said, “Oh yes, in fact, if it gets too noisy, he asks everyone to be quiet and they are because they know if he says something, it must be really loud.” On application to Michael, he confirmed that this is true “But,” he added, “they don’t stay quiet for as long as I would like.” What on earth is that teacher thinking? And why is it that in one teacher’s class discipline is absolute and in another’s it’s like a zoo?

In a landmark moment on our road to recovery, we all sat around the table for dinner and everyone ate something.

Friday, January 11

The builders didn’t come. The main man has the flu.

I went back to work for the morning. Couldn’t face the bike so spread my germs around public transport (should no longer be infectious, really). It was alright but I felt pretty seedy still to be honest. All the others I left coughing at home. The fact that the kitchen is basically a dust bowl and a fine layer of dust now covers almost everything in the house probably isn’t helping our recovery.

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My sister rang to say that my father has the flu despite getting the jab. I rang to see how he was and he was alright. Not as whiny as me actually.

When I got home from work, it was to discover that my lovely sister-in-law had sent us a hamper of goodies to speed our recovery. It was the highlight of an otherwise miserable week.

We’ve had to feed the neighbours’ hens for the week so this has added a slightly farcical element to proceedings as poor Mr. Waffle regularly dragged himself next door to check the level of the feed bin and pick up the odd egg.

Saturday, January 12

Mr. Waffle, Daniel, Michael and I are still a bit under the weather but more or less alright. We all left the house today for non-essential purposes. Herself, however, is still miserable. “Maybe,” she said to me, “I’m getting pneumonia.” Dear God in heaven.

This is the worst start to the new year we have had in years. I suppose the only way is up?

Next year we are all getting the flu jab even if not 100% effective, it’s much better than nothing. If you haven’t already, I recommend it as flu is vile. I have learnt my lesson.