Echoes

Yes, that's me! Not Miss America LIKE YOU ASSUMED, ASSUMPTA!!

OF COURSE! It's another glorious Monday! Where I got to sit in my little dark living room! And stare at spreadsheets.


Wife spent the afternoon in the back garden. Smothered in oil. Listening to Brazilian singer people. She's going through her Brazilian music phase right now. There's this MC Rebecca one. Horrifying singer. I mean awful. Yet, somehow her horrible voice makes me want to twerk? Which, readers, I cannot twerk. Wife likes to get into a particular genre of music for an undefined period of time. She will then systematically stab it to death with both our ears by over listening to it. To such an extent that we can never listen to any of those songs ever again. For a while, it was this cool world music stuff, these Arab Jews, singing live in these fabulous tea shops. They were great. Until she impaled them in our minds. I don't speak whatever ancient Yemeni dialect they were singing in, but I can sing every word. Then there was her Fiona Apple phase. Just the one Fiona Apple song, mind. Wife slaughtered her too, right through the eardrums. There was the Euphoria soundtrack period. A dark time. She would only listen to it on YouTube. The worst part? There was this endless wrap up ditty at the end of each song from the Euphoria soundtrack. I listened to that wrap up song 100,000 times. It still makes me angry even hearing the first few notes of it.


Anyway, she's been laid out, near naked in the garden all day. I've been plebbing around in the dark goth living room, being a pleb. Doing the jobs, sending the emails. As I warm myself up in the dark, dark living room, I look out at our ghetto garden paradise. I watch her, yellow headphones on, clothes tucked and squeezed to avoid tan lines. She also has, as CHOSEN reading material, a Spanish dictionary. That is what she chose to take with her into the sunshine. We are dramatically different human beings.


The weekend was actually excellent. Is it awful to say that I'm enjoying this now? The slow pace. The lack of rushing. The uncharacteristically weird healthiness this health crisis has spurred in me. The quality time allocated to friends and to each other. The creativity we've infused into making our home seem different each weekend. I'll be honest. It wasn't excellent. We actually had a spectacular weekend. I KNOW IT'S SO BORING TO TALK ABOUT YOUR WEEKEND! BUT IF YOU'RE READING MY BLOG YOU'VE BECOME INTIMATELY AWARE OF HOW TRULY BORING I AM SO LOOK! LISTEN! LOOK! It will still carve a nice 5 minute hole in your day for you by using your eyes to read this. If you can break away from your fascinating Spanish dictionary, that is.


What did we do, you aren't asking? WELL! We hosted our Quiz for our friends! Two nights in a row. I made lots of funny rounds. Including researching some of the worst wax works ever made and having that as my picture round. Wife did not do much to contribute. Too busy murdering Brazilian music. I also tested my friends on lots of hip hop music lyrics! Of which they had no clue! Even I found it amusing going through the guess the lyrics round. Reciting Jay Z and Tupac in a Blackrock accent. I also had a DIVA round where I researched some of the most DIVA things to ever happen. I was the main winner of that round due to the pleasure I got out of that research.

We awoke to Saturday, where IT WAS NOT RAINING for THE FIRST TIME IN COVID HISTORY. To celebrate, we went on a 14km posh hike through posh streets within our 2km. It was relaxing and fascinating and perfect and I couldn't ask for better. I declared to wife that this shall now be forever known as the 'posh hike'.


Sunday we went for an evening stroll. We happened upon an impromptu concert on this massive circle behind our house. It was brilliant. They had a serious sound system in a front driveway under a little marquee. A man with an angelic voice sang old romantic songs of Ireland. It was reverberating around the square. Echoes of classic Irish songs haunting us. A perfect orangey pink sky as its backdrop. A gentle breeze. A little chilly. I was wrapped up in my bright green coat. Melting into the big circular green. All green. All pink! And there was wife and I, doing slow pretend dance-runs, through the huge big bangor circle. A kinda dance jog, if you will. It was like some kind of beautiful movie. A moment you would write down if you were a romantic person. Slot it into some romantic movie I wouldn't watch. Wife tried to take a photo, but it wasn't the same as what we were experiencing. There's a heightened reality to it. It doesn't work on a phone photo. It was something completely different. Like a new look at our own home. In full technicolour. With surround sound. Especially when all you do is hike around posh houses and work, eat, workout, snooze and laugh in your own four walls. When we got home, we turned our house into a tiny Mexican restaurant. We gorged on filth. We dressed up. Wife decided to do her own Frida Kahlo make up. She looked more like Helga from Hey Arnold! Which made me cry with laughter. And I, well, I am not exaggerating when I say I looked deadly. I'd like to thank Lindsay Brin, creator of Moms into Fitness, for my Mexican outfit deadliness.


I've been a little out of sorts today. A lot to do with jealousy of the great big burning globe outside and me GOING ON ABOUT endless WEBINARS like USUAL. A lot to to do with our lovely elderly neighbour. She was being brought away in an ambulance earlier and I'm worrying about her. Even if you make your weekend turn into something spectacular, it's still difficult. The cheer can always be interrupted amidst a global pandemic. And it should be. It's not normal. It's horrible. I've found such peaceful and beautiful ways to avoid it, though. And I'm trying to enjoy this little slice of peace. Since we must do that for now. It's almost like when you're grieving and you feel you shouldn't laugh or enjoy yourself. I remember when my Mam was dying. The only thing I could watch was beauty pageants. Literally the only thing. It was peaceful. Watching them parade. Answering complex questions. It gave me some peace. I guess it was the predictability and gentle beauty of it. I was ignoring everything else. Just the walking and the waving, and I was at peace.

There's something particularly unique to this time. The fact that I got to do a dance with Wife. In a great big echoey circle! While a man sang beautifully and the sky was bright pink! And the green was bright green! It is definitely something that would not have happened before all this. The fact that I felt like AN ABSOLUTE RIDE last night may have happened in normal times. But I'm not sure it would have as quick. So I teeter. Between worry. And happiness. But the happiness is winning. It's right there. In a bright pink echoey masterpiece. On a big circle in Crumlin. I just have to try not feel shame about that I suppose? Worry can be there, but it's OK to feel happy, right? What would Miss America do?