Getting Over Disney

twitter bios I have considered and not entirely dismissed

Dot — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:04:37 +0000

She bangs the drum.

Hasn’t approved of anything in years.

Would like to live alone with a faithful old hound. Lives instead with an excitable pissing puppy.

Slowly dying, paper cut by paper cut.

Wrong with abandon.

Will one day be a thin girl who runs like she’s being chased by a fat girl. Because she is.

Acts her shoe size, acts her bra size, never acts her age.

Sweet talker and quiet life enthusiast.

That sex and chicken joke was probably about me.

Finds small talk dull. Enjoys the company of quiet types and bastards.

Now so smart that almost everyone is an effort.

What’s small is big

Dot — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:14:31 +0000

They say it will be a year of bad firsts. Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, all spent thinking about someone who isn’t there. Very happily I had a granddad for my birthday. Christmas I will spend in Dublin and summarily avoid home. My first bad first would have been my graduation last night – so I didn’t go. Graduations, in my house, are newsworthy stuff. Congratulation comes from all sides, pictures must be taken and pictures must go in the paper. Granddads are impressed and tell you that you didn’t lick your brains up off the ground. Everyone has a birthday, so birthdays don’t matter so much. Doing something that only you can do, does. Not feeling praised for your little burst of ‘look, I have a family trait! It’s brains!’ is killer, even if you’re too old for it to be.

You can avoid occasion but you can’t avoid things that were only ever big inside your head.

So my first bad first comes tomorrow and the day after that. Elections without Granddad. Who knew there was such a thing? Who will lead the convoy of cars from the house to the polling station? Who’ll throw their eyes up to heaven about my naïve 24-year-old candidate preferences? Who’ll have the inside track from tallymen and pollsters?

This is still stupid hard and why wouldn’t it be? It’s only been three months.

I got published in The Dubliner a few weeks back. It was great. And then there was that niggling ‘that’s the thing that would’ve really raised a smile. Imagine, his paper that he always bought, and a magazine slipping out of it with my picture and my name and my words. Not degrees or websites that you could be impressed by but never connect with. Something you actually read, something you like, and them liking me’.

But I suppose you might as well roll with the tough stuff while it’s tough. So I’ll vote and then I’ll do my first trip to the grave since the funeral, say hello and start getting used to where you are and where you’re not. Where I am and where I’m not.

14-10-11

Dot — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:50:33 +0000

Letting someone think that they are wrong, bad, in need of changing or otherwise contributing to however down they feel just so that you can be right, good and unchanging is a very, very unforgiveable thing to do.

Jolitics

Dot — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:31:34 +0000

Reasons to vote for Gay Mitchell:

The Senor is banging his daughter and would like to do so in the Aras (syntax intended).

Reasons to vote for Dana:

She looks like my mate’s Ma.

Reasons to vote for Martin McGuinness:

Just to see what the fuck would happen.

Reasons to vote for Mary Davis:

None. Ever.

Reasons to vote for Michael D:

Poems.

Reasons to vote for David Norris:

Just to see what the fuck would happen.

Reasons to vote for Sean Gallagher:

He is not a conniving fuckwit, Eurosceptic, mad about himself, a terrorist, about to die or bland as fuck.

Conclusions:

You can find a reason to like anyone. Except Mary Davis. Man she riles me up the wrong way.

Birthday!

Dot — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:35:51 +0000

When I turn 25 next May (not much more than 6 months to a quarter century – how depressing) I’m having a 20th anniversary of my 5th birthday. Sure I stole the idea, but it will still be amazing. Everyone must wear party dresses and give me colouring books as presents. There will be rice krispie buns, fizzy drinks full of carcinogens, a cake that my Dad only remembered to make an hour beforehand and lots and lots of chicken – because even when I was five, I knew my vices.

Diane Connolly is not invited because she told our mums that I bit her and I actually didn’t. I didn’t even know I liked biting ‘til I was at least 16. She once brought porridge to school in her pencil case because she didn’t have time to eat her breakfast. I think we all know who to believe on this one.

It’s going to be a shocking sight because I knew lots of girls when I was five but now mostly I know boys – still I think some of them could look good in dresses. I’m going to send out children’s party invitations so you must let me know your address. I am from a time before you had to invite everyone in your class to be inclusive, which I’m not sure how I feel about. My Mum invited everyone anyway – presumably because she thought she was Jesus and had designs on feeding the 500.

I would like a balloon, but it’s not mandatory, and we will play Catch and Hide and Go Seek, and Tip the Can – but not kiss catch because we are five. You can bring your mums if you want and they can have tea in the living room with my mum. Or they can pick you up after. I hope they’re not late – that drives my mum proper mental, because she’s ‘not a bloody babysitter’.

Won’t it be lovely?

The only thing is, I don’t have my house anymore, and I’ve never had a birthday without my garden. I’m not sure where we’re going to take pictures of everyone having a great time, or where we’ll go when the washing up is being done. We’ll work something out. Try to sing Happy Birthday very fast and don’t even do the jolly good fellow bit – people looking at me makes me so fidgety and hot.

That’s what she said

Dot — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:38:56 +0000

I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.

- Holly Golightly

Walk this way

Dot — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:12:09 +0000

"I need a picture of a boy walking home from school and I can’t find one."

"OK. I’ll look…"

13 seconds later…

"What about this one?"

"The description says he’s on his way to school…"

"And how do you think the people reading the book will be able to tell which direction he’s going in? The school isn’t visible."

"Oh. Good point."

"Yes. Well, let me know if I can help you with anything else… that you should reasonably be able to figure out for yourself."

6 weeks out

Dot — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:51:00 +0000

Today conspired. I used the word ‘Granddad’ and unexpectedly lost my shit, crying for fifteen minutes before sleeping for an hour. I don’t know where it came from. And even the crying is different. I used to be a silent type of crier, streams of tears and no sound, only gulpy if I had to talk. Now I can’t catch my breath and have big, loud sobs. It makes me think I’ve never before been as upset as I thought I was at the time.

When I woke up my iPod shuffled only The Drugs Don’t Work – cruel bastard – and I dissolved again.

My step-aunt commented on a photo of granddad and I on my Facebook. ‘Lovely photo – hard to believe he’s gone.’ Hard for you, is it? How hard do you think it is to have grief hit you in the face every time someone decides to bring him up?

The image in my head is the same every time. On the Wednesday night before Granddad died I went in to his room to say goodnight before going home. He’d been asleep all day despite the people around him. When I came in, my aunt said ‘Daddy, Sinead’s come to say goodnight’. I went up and held his hand for a minute before turning to leave, because by then I couldn’t talk around him without bawling. When you can recall very easily being carried around by someone, lifting in and out of lorry cabs and sitting on their knee, it ruins you to note that their legs are gone to nothing are barely a bump under the duvet. Bawling comes easy. When I said ‘see you tomorrow’ he opened his eyes and reached out his hand and that over-my-shoulder image goes around and around in my head. I walked back. I held his hand. He kept looking at me, not able to talk. I kept saying ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and took back my hand and was gone. I did see him tomorrow, but he never opened his eyes again. I had known it, in the way I never thought I’d believe in. I wanted to say ‘I love you’ and hug him but there were too many people and I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to acknowledge to someone that they were dying. It broke me when people came in and talked above him – ‘how is he?’ – I included him in all my answers, ‘he’s tired today – aren’t you granddad?’ – stop acting like he can’t hear, he can.

They keep telling me I was the last one he saw. They keep treating me like a kid and everyone kindly acknowledges that I must be having it really rough, pet and favourite grandchild as I was. People being nice about it doesn’t help even though it’s better than a hindrance.

Bestie’s making me go to a bereavement counsellor cos apparently you’re not still supposed to be like this two months later – but I don’t see why not. I knew him for 24 years. I didn’t know time without him. And now I’m supposed to go that long again with no granddad? I think I can lose my shit all I like, actually. I don’t mind if people don’t know what to say to me or avoid it. I would. But telling me I should be starting to deal with it?

Besto’s Ex lost her Grandma last weekend. Same sort of situation, as close as I was to my granddad. I told her today that it slowly gets better, I was convinced I was being honest because I hadn’t bawled in a week or two. And now? Now I think I’ll forego meeting her in a restaurant and cook in one of our houses so we can bawl together.

We did it

Dot — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:09:01 +0000

“Darce?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m all moany lately, I have to quit it. I’m going to have really good sex with you, you’ll really enjoy it."

"Thanks."

“No seriously… it’s going to be all about you. I’m going to find a part of your body that you didn’t even know you could get pleasure from."

"Okay, Dora the Explorer."

Later…

"We did it, We did it, We did it, hurray! Lo hicimos! We did it!"

"Have you been waiting to sing that all sex?"

"Yeah, ever since you said the Dora thing."

"Dora, I have had a lot of good sex in my life, but nobody makes me laugh like you do."

"Thanks. It was really hard not to laugh for the last 20 seconds when I was waiting to start singing."

"You’re loopy."

"Yep…. Darce?"

"Mmm?"

"Howcomes you slept with Kellii with two i’s?"

"She has laryngitis."

"Okay…"

"That’s why I slept with her. Do you know how funny it is to watch someone make moany screamy faces and not make a sound?"

"Bahah…Darce?"

"Mmm?"

"Is she downstairs?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Darce?"

"Mmm?"

"Can we have sex again so I can scream my face off… because I can?"

"Yes dear."

"Lo hicimos! Hurray!"

The Book Making Machine

Dot — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:23:49 +0000

“How come last year’s hours on Book 2 were much lower than the 2010 hours on Book 1?”

“We got a voice-activated plugin for the Book Making Machine so now you just describe what you want to it and it produces the book, instead of before when you had to feed it pages of text and sample stick-man drawings.”

“What’s the real answer?”

“Book 1 designer used Quark, Book 2 designer used InDesign. Quark is awful.”

“Was that so hard?”

“I find it difficult to explain publishing processes to people who get paid more than me to know the answer.”

I don’t know how I don’t get myself fired.