Bye bye blogger, hello wordpress

Click the pic to be brought to www.redmum.ie

Red Mum is moving.

Right this is it, I am finally taking the plunge and packing up, getting in the decorators and moving (after many months - eek 18months - of paying for it and doing nothing) to my redmum.ie domain and about time too.

So so long blogger, you have been good to me and Wordpress be gentle with me. If you have any advice on templates etc do stop by and leave a comment. If you were generous enough to have given me a link before, I would deeply appreciate you updating your blogroll.

And thats it, nothing to see here, move along now (to Red Mum of course).

I have a garden...

OKAY okay saying I have a garden is a massive overstatement, I actually have a back yard and cannot wait until the weather is better and I can be out pottering around the yard all the time.

I spent the weekend planting lots and lots of things. Trouble is if even half of the seeds I planted take hold I will have no room to potter, (the dog is already complaining); it will be an explosion of green things. So far there are tomatoes, lots, carrots, again lots, all sorts of flowers, herbs as well as potatoes.



Nanny picked me up a little greenhouse which I put up last week and appears to be doing the job, if slight steamy/condensation when it rains is anything to go by. In fact I opened them earlier to put in stuff and there was almost a puff of warm air coming out. If you have a small space and fancy one too the greenhouse cost £9.99 in Poundstretcher and I also saw them this weekend in Aldi for 20 euro and very handy and fairly sturdy they are too.





You may also remember the bulbs I planted in a pot before I moved and which started to sprout as I didn't get them outside quick enough. I put the pots outside when we moved in and promptly forgot about them until I realised that in the middle of all the long green shoots all these lovely things have been appearing and yes I planted way too many things in one pot. But who cares. There were also daffodils in this growth but they have obviously been strangled.





No container is safe from planting either. And this definitely ticks the container criteria for me, I bought these minging things for the Young Wan for a outdoor pursuits weekend with school only I brought home two left, or was it right, feet. So I have cut holes in the boot here and there and stuck some herb seeds into the holes. Who knows if they will take but time will tell.





So where on earth am I going to put all this greenery? Well at the moment there is still stuff from the move to be shifted from the back so a good portion of the yard isn't usable. Once it is gone I am gonna look for a handy wo/man to help, I am a pretty handy woman but there are somethings I am not going to attempt or should I say should not attempt. I tried to hang my hanging basket of strawberry plants from a bracket which I attempted to hammer into the yard wall with a masonry nail but I just couldn't manage it. So they are hanging on the clothes line hook for the moment.



I think it will probably need a drill and as handy as I am I don't have a drill preferring for someone else who knows what they are doing to do it. And I will need more of using the walls if all my plants take because there won't be enough floor space.

This post (and the garden/yard) is something that I have wanted to do for a while having spent the last couple of years showing off my window boxes from the flat on the blog, the idea of having a larger outdoor space is just fantastic.

I should also hat tip S who had an idea that is perhaps being leaned on in this post but as we have had many discussions on such things I hope/believe he'll understand. (Sorry for being cryptic perhaps S will enlighten everyone at some stage.)





The above pix show my garden/yard before we moved in and the last and bigger pic shows nearlyish the same view of the first pic as it looks now. It looks dramatically different now, the first pic would be very different now as I have a pile of stuff to go stored there; stuff like bin bags of rubble, our recycling and rubbish bags which I have been storing in the coal shed until I have space for an actual bin. I will have to have a bin as there are loads of cats who tear the rubbish bags apart.

As a result the back is organised chaos, one side has stuff for the skip and the other side is coming down with pots and plants. So until the skip stuff is sorted I can't really find permanent homes for what has already been planted, never mind where to put everything that will be coming up in the next couple of weeks.



I intend to get some steel shelves to put the vegetables I'm growing and as I said earlier hang other things around the walls. At some stage as well I intend to get a table and two chairs, anymore is being wildly optimistic, actually a table and two chairs is being kinda optimistic already but I will somehow squeeze them in.

So for now I am coming down with growing things, outside, in the bathroom and all over the kitchen and its great. Roll on the summer.

Moving on - a big rant

WELL WE have moved, nearly and completely. I say nearly in that there is still a car load of stuff to bring up from the other place. Mostly from an unused wardrobe in the old flat which housed my old LPs, my enlarger and other photographic equipment.

I went and squared up things financially with the old landlord and I have to say it was a huge relief. I was half worried that I might owe more than I bargained for. The fact that I spent most of last year looking for the rent book, which mysteriously walked therefore rent receipts were written in diaries, notebooks, even scraps of paper, didn’t help my financial calculations at all.

Once that was done the Young Wan and I grabbed a box, just so we wouldn’t feel guilty about being in the house and not lifting something before heading back to the wonderfully heated new place. As we were walking along I realised I had the mightiest grin on my face and a skip in my step. The relief of leaving our former home behind is even more than I expected.

It has been the longest move in the world, as some of you might remember, when it all started back at the end of the summer. There was me under the illusion that moving only took that long when you were buying a house, not renting. But in fairness the pace has suited me, just so long as we were well in for Christmas and we are.

While the ball started rolling during the summer on maybe moving, I didn’t get to see the place till the end of September and since then my weekends have been spent either packing, chucking out, unpacking or painting. I still have the kitchen to paint but everything else has been glossed and emulsioned within an inch of it’s life. It’s funny though I keep finding little bits and pieces that I want to go over but all that will wait until another day.

I always knew I would be delighted to leave but actually doing so is fantastic. Bear in mind we have been living there for nearly 13 years. Prior to that we had been living in a house previously occupied by an elderly man who was living in a home subsidised by our rent. When he passed away the house was put on the market and I was flat hunting in January.

Looking for somewhere to live with a young child was always challenging, but that particular time was made all the more challenging by the fact that not only did I have a toddler, I was also a student on the Back to Education allowance meaning that not only was I a student but I was also on the dole. All in all that was three strikes against me at that time in the private-rented sector.

So we looked and looked. The stories I could tell you about how landlords would treat us while viewing places are shocking even now to me. I remember one particular time where I was looking at the place with a friend. It was horrible yet typical for my price range at the time. It was depressing, dreary and dark. The kitchen was in the living room and was partitioned off cutting off some of the little natural light coming into the room.

I remember feeling very desperate at this time, we had been looking for a month and had already moved temporarily into a room in a pal’s house, but the Young Wan was behaving a little out of character and had reverted a bit and I could only conclude that we needed to get our home as quickly as possible.

So I was looking at this place and thinking if I give it a lick of paint it might be better when the landlord said ‘is it for you two?

‘No’ I said ‘it is for me and my daughter’.

He then asked if I was on rent allowance and if so he didn’t want our kind as tenants adding ‘no offence’.

As I turned on my heels, I said ‘offence taken’ and something else thanking him for taking the decision on whether or not to rent this hovel from my hands and how only I was desperate I wouldn’t even entertain looking at it in the first place.

This eventually brought us over time to the flat where have we lived for more than a decade. At the time the landlord asked me what I was looking for and I said a home and so it was.

But I never ever thought I would still be living there 13 years later, the rented sector just soared way out of my reach. So we were stuck in the house where the windows were caving in on themselves, where there was no heating except for an open fire in the living room, where there was no running hot water in either the bathroom or kitchen sinks.

We adapted, the kettle was always on the boil for dishes; and the shower head pulled perfectly over to the bathroom sink for hot water to wash. I learned how you could carry briquettes for longer and further on your shoulder than cutting the fingers off yourself attempting to cart them in your hands, I also learned how coal from the North is warmer and burns better than the plastic shite you buy in garages here.

For a long time I was more worried about being able to continue to pay the rent and bills on what I was bringing in never mind move to somewhere better. I felt like one false move on my part and we could be literally forced out of Dublin, if that makes sense. There was one stage when Dublin become seriously expensive and I really fretted about what we were going to do.

As time moved on rent increased dramatically tying us more to the flat. Trying to garner up a deposit was akin to getting a deposit for a mortgage no one would give you. I also resented paying out more for rent that friends’ who had recently bought properties were paying in their mortgage so even though I couldn’t afford the rent on a two-bed property I was making a principled stand by staying putt – eh really I was!

I recently read a mad blog post headline somewhere which stated something like landlords subsidise tenants due to high house prices and not being able to cover the mortgage with rent. I just thought WTF. I never ever remember seeing headlines on how tenants have subsidised landlords’ investments up until now. I would not like to calculate how much money I have handed out to my former landlord over the years and how it could have bought me a house.

At one stage nearly two years ago I put in for the affordable housing scheme in Dublin City Council (more on that in a moment) and I think from that moment on I had had enough. I needed and wanted to move more than anything. I had practically given up on the flat; it began to seriously depress me. But what could I do? Moving normally would take a deposit equivalent to what would have been a mortgage deposit not that long ago. I couldn’t afford the current rent levels on a two-bedroom place on my own.

That is a mad thing, because I have been working for years in relatively good jobs. I have a small household of which I am the head and unlike years before where the head of a household could expect to buy a house and keep the household on one salary, I was just about keeping my head above water. Moving was not an option despite my giving up on the flat.

One thing I do regret not doing when I first moved to Dublin all those years ago is not putting my name on the housing list. I had this mad notion that if I could get a place on my own then I should. I was also a bit fearful of where, if I had done so, I would be placed. Isolation with a young child and little money was not something I wanted to willingly go into.

Since then I have applied for some of Dublin City Council’s housing lottery draws, and am getting used to the ‘we are sorry but the draws have taken place and you were not selected’ letters. I hold little faith in that enabling me to buy our own home, never mind not being able to get the mortgage to purchase any property I might be offered, never mind being able to pay the mortgage on my own. So I think I will wait for the bottom to fall out of the market allowing me to step in and snap up something wonderful, course by then I may have saved something towards a deposit, or even better have won the lottery and then all my worries are over.

One thing I can say about all this is that I have done it all on my own. Bits of help here and there from friends aside, I have worked and paid for the roof over my daughter’s head and depended on no one but myself. I am proud of that AND now I am absolutely delighted to be moving on and leaving the former flat all behind.

I am delighted to live in a home that is warm, not one where you might as well have the window open because the draft coming in is so huge. I am delighted to not have to lug the weekly washing down the road to the launderette. I am delighted we have a bath; both Nanny and the Young Wan are also delighted, the dog on the other hand does not like the bath. The back yard is going to be well used and the fact that all visitors to the house do not have to go through my bedroom to use the bathroom is an added bonus.

Moving home feels like new beginnings not only for me but for my wee family. Yes I am still renting but it is a good move for us. I am telling you even the doggie is delighted with it all.

Where we have moved too is an area I know well having lived next door to it for so long. It is relatively close to town and close to lots of places perfect for photography. I cannot wait for Christmas and having time to potter about, take the dog for long walks with the camera stopping for coffee and all sorts.

You will have to wait for the before, during and after shots of moving. While we are beyond the ‘before’ and ‘during’ phases as most of the unpacking has been done; I am not yet at the ‘after’ stage. We still have curtains to buy and other bits and pieces but we are more than nearly there and it is great. But here is a sneaky peak



So here’s to new beginnings. Yeehhhharrrr ;) And many thanks for sticking out the many and probably boring posts, both here and on Flickr and Facebook (eh Twitter and Jaiku also) about moving. I cannot say there will not be more, in fact one is already stirring round my head entitled ‘I hate Vivaldi’ about my endeavours to have NTL connected. If anyone has even had to phone NTL *ahem* customer care line (HA) they will know what I mean.

Okay the epic post is now done…

RM column November 2nd - On packing rubbish

RM column November 2nd - On packing rubbish

The home move is still ongoing, I tell you it is not easy to do while working and not certainly not easy to sort through some 12 years of hoarding.

Some people are hoarders and some aren’t, we are the former unfortunately for us with regard to the move.

While a lot of stuff has been packed and moved to the new place, the flat doesn’t look like much has been moved at all. So far the Young Wan’s room is kinda moved completely, bar clothes she needs, her bed and some furniture.

And would you believe the room still manages to look like a complete and utter tip, well I would.
So while the packing is an ongoing thing and working full-time means little is done until the weekend – the fact that I don’t drive means even more delays as we wait for obliging friends with transport to help shift stuff.

At the same time we are painting the new place, when I say we, I actually mean mostly me, the Young Wan in terms of overall painting is more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe that is unfair because she was instrumental in providing the finishing touches to the bedrooms.

We would both start with the rollers, while I apply the paint quickly and with as minimal splashage as I can, herself is swooshing paint all over the place, she is covered, I am covered and anything within a particular radius is covered.

On top of that there is a lot of flaffing about; by the time the Young Wan is ready to begin to paint I have nearly the wall rollered.
There is absolutely no point in trying to hurry her along, but we discovered that one thing she is great at doing is going along after me and touching up the areas I can’t reach with the brush. So we are both happy and working away together in harmony and that suits me fine.
The packing is another matter.

Where I am using this move to clear away the clutter and hoarding I talked about earlier, it appears the Young Wan has been doing the lazy man’s burden method of packing.
Despite being told to cull, hard, I have found bags with dubious things in them, such as rubbish, stuff like single socks that I know have been single for some time or bits and pieces of paper.
So not only has some rubbish been packed, stuff that should have been thrown out, but it has been moved to the new house despite the fact that I am trying to make the new house a new start with no clutter.

And now it will have to be unpacked and then thrown out.

She has been warned though that if I find anything like that I will go spare, I will throw a wobbly, so her best bet is NOT to do that with any future packing.

I wouldn’t mind but I have explained really simply what we need to do and the best way to do it not to mention why they are being done that way. Herself has generally ignored those instructions, done it her way and in some cases knocked us back half a day over the short enough weekend moving work because of basically bad packing.

Besides all that things are going well, slowly but well (fingers crossed). And thankfully we are not stuck to deadlines to move which would be a nightmare, it would all get done but it would be a stress-ridden nightmare.

At the rate we are going it could be another couple of weeks, ah well, what can you do?

Teenagers are not the only ones who need privacy

PARENTS have been mislead, completely and utterly. Here we are trying to give our kids/teenagers space/privacy, when the little ahem dears do not return the favour.

In our house part of that lack of privacy for adults is obviously down to the fact that I have an (AHEM) en-suite bathroom so that means my bedroom is a rat-run for everyone who comes into the flat and who needs to utilise the amenities. Therefore the Young Wan does too. In fact my room is her room or so it has become over the last couple of years.

When she was younger this wasn't a problem but as she has gotten older and maybe as her room has gotten messier, she has spilled over into the only space in the flat that is mine, toilet runs aside of course. And my lack of privacy has gotten worse and it is starting to wear heavy on me.

As parents we believe that we need to give our kids privacy, we need to show trust, we need to allow them to grow and develop. But wait a minute what about when they consistently violate our privacy or maybe it is just herself. But if there is something to be hoked through, she has done it down to traipsing friends through my room.

At one stage it was so bad that I would threaten to lock my room and leave her a bucket in which to do her ahem business in, but I couldn't bring myself to carry out the threat, who could. But looking back on it given recent events, it really doesn't sound as bad a threat as it once did, jaysus tonight it actually sounds reasonable.

That is because all hell broke loose tonight, I don't want to go into it because I won't violate her privacy in that way, but I am actually quite upset about it. I know I blog about our lives, sometimes warts and all but I have my own boundaries regarding that and there are lines I won't cross.

Needless to say I am counting down the days until we are in the new house and my room is no one's space but mine and I am so gonna put the biggest lock on the door and woe betide any Young Wan who even thinks about going in there without permission.

Half-sitting half-lying

WELL I am now half-sitting half-lying on the sette with the laptop on my lap, it is as light as a feather, a glass of wine is poured and I am about to watch the second half of the last episode in series one of Heroes.

If my aching bones don't stop yelling soon I might not enjoy it, course in a couple of weeks I will have a bath to soothe my aching body. All the laundry is washed and my living room resembles a Chinese laundry as clothes are hung on every thing possible to dry and as with the bath in a couple of weeks, there will be no more launderettes, yeharrrrr, and radiators on which to dry clothes if I want. The heater is plugged in and of course in a couple of weeks I will only need to turn on the central heating.

Kinda makes it all worth it, doesn't it. And I cannot wait to have a housewarming/early birthday party in the new house, with a real Christmas tree in the corner now that I won't have industrial strength carpet tiles to grapple with to brush/vacuum up pine needles. I seriously cannot wait.

As an aside work on my domain has ceased, but I'll resurrect it shortly when I get a chance to get back to it.

A painting update - sorry about that...

OH MY GOD who would have thought painting a house would take so long, but it really is. Because we have been living in the flat where we are for the last 12/13 years I want the new place to feel completely new and have opted for a magnolia theme throughout the whole place, all fresh and new and lovely.

Working makes it harder to get it done sooner (so does not having a car) and the fact that it has mostly been the Young Wan and myself with paint brushes bar two evenings has made it all the slower. But I am delighted with today's efforts helped by a pal Mick. The living room is completely done bar some glossing and I am beginning to hate gloss, with an absolute passion. We also need to scrub the emulsion splatts and streaks from the laminate flooring, despite our best efforts to be clean painters we just arn't.

The hot press is in the living room and were a brown colour as was the frame around the door, so they are half done, I have painted the door frame and need to gloss the door but it has never been glossed so I'll get some undercoat ensuring that I don't to give it about three coats before it is done.

My room is completely finished, yehar, and the Young Wan's room only needs a coat of gloss on her door, the frame having been done this evening. We have been using the space underneath the Young Wan's loft-bed to store everything that has been packed and there is no space to move, so we cannot pack anymore until it is moved up to the new place. And I haven't a clue when that will happen, God I wish I had a car.

I will endeavour to get back to the new house some evening this week if my energy levels permit and finish the little glossing bits here and there and make a start on the kitchen and then we are a-rocking and a-rolling. Meaning we will get back to the a-packing, a-arrgghhh.

When it is all done and cleaned up, I will post some photographs of before, during and afterward. (I know I have said this before but so!) I should have been taking a lot more during, but when you are on a painting mission all other creative thoughts go out the window, (once brown gloss now a lovely magnolia).

So having spent six hours painting today the Young Wan and I are completely and utterly cream-crackered, my back hurts, my head hurts, my feet are screaming, I am dotted nearly all over in emulsion and my hands and fingers are covered in gloss. Oh and I have a permanent smell of gloss in my nostrils, nice!

I cannot wait for a weekend when I am not under pressure from painting, packing or unpacking and it will come soon time really soon.

Because I am working next weekend and won't be doing anything there at all I am going to try and get back and finish the painting over the week, I won't hold myself to that completely, given how tiring it is. Having worked five hours last Sunday on my feet constantly I was so knackered last Monday. This week will be busy enough without the added pressure of trying to get to the house when I am no more in the mood to do so. But I'll see how I feel as the week goes on. The ideal day would be to go up tomorrow evening and make some inroads into it all, I can't see me do that somehow.

And don't get me started on living on take-aways while we are doing this, we are both sick of them. But tonight we didn't get home till 8pm and the last thing I can think of doing is cooking, nevermind the fact that we have no food in, so a take-away it is then.

The latest time schedule and one I am sticking too is that we are due to move in by the start of December and will be well in by Christmas. What an amazing thought.

On a positive helping-hand note Nanny is back next week and she plans to sent a couple of hours unpacking during the day while we are at school and work, which will be brilliant.

I know this is an ongoing post and I do apologise for that but it is all encompassing for me. This move is one of the biggest life-enhancing times for the Young Wan and I and we cannot wait, you have no idea.

Some more things ticked off the moving to-do list

I AM absolutely knackered, we spent the day in the new house painting. So far we have managed to paint the Young Wan's room, the only thing left is to gloss her door and window sill. My room is also completely painted and my door, window sill and frame is glossed, so mark a tick against my room.

I used the last of the 10 litre tub last night on doing the bathroom which needed two coats to cover the green it was previously painted. So this morning I went to the local DIY shop, is it woefully sad to admit t I do enjoy walking around DIY shops, got more paint, bought more lavender plants (I am determined to have wonderful pots of lavender all over my back yeard) before heading back to the house.

So I began at 2pm-ish and gave the bathroom a second coat, glossed the doors and doorframe, then I glossed the little outside hall. All this took me and the Young Wan five and a half hours.

My feet are killing me, my back is yelling at me and I felt ill afterwards from all the paint fumes.

So what is left? The living room and kitchen, painting walls and glossing of doors. I'll go up one night this week after work and start the living room, I really hoped I would have that done this weekend, but how and ever. And that is before the last of the packing is done here.

Next weekend I hope to get some of the lesser-needed furniture moved up, book shelves, my dresser and the sofa. When they are moved along with my plants and other things I can really take stock on the last things to be done. It has been a long move, but it is hard to do while working, without a car and with the outrageous amounts of stuff we have to sort through. So the pace is suiting me, I still feel under pressure with it, but the pace is working.

At some stage soon I will post some before and after pics, or maybe I will leave that until we are in fully and you can get the full picture. Okay I am now officially turning off.

Moving again

NOT only are we moving, but here is moving too. Like our house move, God knows when I'll get the packing and unpacking done here. In the meantime has anyone suggestions for a nice clean wordpress template? Will let you know when the move is on.

The first load is ready to go

WHO knew I had so much stuff, well actually I did know that but it packing up a house is a long, arduous job. I have found so many things I had forgotten about, photographs, letters, drawings, you name it I have found it.

Some of which will be uploaded to Flickr and other stuff will be piled and filed away into a pile called stuff. You know what I mean, it is indefinable, things from college, certs from past courses, the Young Wan's artwork over the years, cards from herself, postcards, letters, you name it I found it over the weekend.

It has been a slow process with no moving date as such, more an idea of a time, it is easy to come home after work, make dinner, then flop for the evening. Weekends on the other hand are mad, I allow myself Saturday afternoon to relax and then get stuck in. Any other time I have moved I have had a timescale so it is hard working in a kinda vacuum without one. Though it takes a serious amount of pressure off on loads of levels, financially sorting out my current landlord and bills to the actual logistics of moving. I hope to have the use of friends' vans and need to work out when suits them and us and when we are ready to bring in the big guns of packing. Once I get the vans in I am moving the big heavy items so obviously I am not there yet, but I have to say one jaunt in a van with what we have packed so far would be good.

We have been packing away some stuff and stashing it in the Young Wan's room underneath her tall raised bed. Her room is packed away completely, or so she says and at the moment it is like a black bin bag attack in there. Hopefully some evening this week we can get them moved up to the new place. My room is a third done, the living room/kitchen has bits and pieces packed and there is still much to do, not bad for a small two-bedroom place, eh?

My plan is to paint what will be her room and then store what is already packed away in her new room while the rest of the house is sorted. That will leave me more room to continue packing and dumping away. I expect this packing nonsense will dominate a lot of things over the next while so pardon me if I bore you, but it is a massive big deal for us and one I am not going to be able to get away from, so if you are stopping by here neither will you I'm afraid.