For the days you’ve lost the plot, can’t find the remote, need to pay more attention to your spouse, redecorate your bathroom or play with your kids, there are always ten ways;

• Ten ways to keep all your children entertained at the same time
• Ten ways to tell your children to ‘stop jumping on the couch’
• Ten ways to spend more time with your spouse
• Ten ways to cook minced beef
• Ten ways to give the middle child more attention
• Ten ways to use leftover pizza dough to entertain the children
• Ten ways to stop reading blogs that make you feel inadequate as a mother
• Ten ways to occupy the children while you’re trying to cook the minced dinner
• Ten ways to keep your sanity when they’re all crying at once
• Ten ways for you to keep calm when you just want to roar at them to ‘keep quiet’
• Ten ways to use alternative words to ‘don’t
• Ten ways to relax once they’ve gone to bed
• Ten ways not to eat the contents of the fridge
• Ten ways to make the most of your evening
• Ten ways to get ready for the next morning
• Ten ways to stop reading advice on childrearing and to use your own mothering instinct
• Ten ways to start afresh each day
• Ten ways to count your blessings

I’ve lost count.  I might just be starting a new trend.

There’s only one place for boys who have feasted on birthday cake and sweets of an afternoon; the outdoors. Late September provides them with the playground that pacifies all their senses. Waylaid from their evening escursion to bring in the cows, they meet another intrepid adventurer on the way to see a haunted house with his brother and abandon the trip to the cows.

I walk with the still young boys on their adventure aware that I’ll not accompany them for much longer on these trips, they speak with animation of rat-holes, goblins, ghosts and thorns making their way through the briars guarding their haunted house. As I eavedrop, I know that imagination will accompany them on as they create the story in their minds that will colour their evenings chat.

At the farmgate, they wave goodbye to their neighbour and fellow ghost buster and head down to help Dad bring in the cows. ‘Bye so Mom’, ‘I’ll have the dinner ready so, mind your brother.’ ‘See ya later.’ ‘Be careful.’ ‘Right so.’

Off they walk into the crisp late September evening as I watch them take to their next adventure. Off they go, I think as wonder what to make for supper all too aware that they’ll take it more and more themselves from here.

Where did I go wrong? A good Cork city woman putting two of my sons in Green and Gold today for Kerry day at school. They start the brain washing young these days. I gest, or maybe not. Don’t forget I tell them, you’re half Cork. ‘Yeah, yeah Mom.’

If you have nowhere better to be or your team alas has not made it to the All-Ireland, ahem, there are fewer places better to be the Friday morning before the football final than your nearest Kerry town. This morning I found myself in Tralee, trying to fit my youngest Kerry son into his first pair of shoes. New shoes on we strolled up the street to suss out the craic in the town for the weekend that’s in it. And there they were gathered in little groups, looking for any excuse to walk up the Mall to talk about Kerry’s chances; the Kerrymen.

My inner Corkwoman dancing on the spot at the audacity of these people lining their main street in Green and Gold for the Homecoming. With their guesthouse places in Dublin booked since before the Munster final for the third weekend in September.

I take my newly shoe-ed buachaill for a cup of coffee to The Grand in Denny Street to get to the heart of the football speculation. You’re sure to spot a former footballer and watch the natives talking in code around the subject of tickets.

‘Not a ticket to be got.’

“Like Gold dust.’

And you know that it’s in a very rare and unavoidable incident that will be talked about for decades when a Kerryman doesn’t get into Croke park of an All Ireland Sunday. Remember ’86 when I had to watch it from Quinn’s. You poor thing, almost as bad as the, is anyone listening, the defeat to Tyrone. Say nothing.

One man, shaking his head this morning, whispered into his coffee that they were putting on a ‘very strange team’ and if I didn’t know better, I think it was put there to rile the troops. I think I might have heard a spoon drop to break the silence in the wake of the non-believers comment. A strange team what have you. Paidi O’Shea was right you know, these fans, we’ve never seen anything like them. When Kerry go on the field, they do so with the might and force of a whole county, young and old on their backs expecting them to deliver the majesty that leaves the rest of Ireland open mouth-ed.

Yes, they’re ready for you Dublin, they’re on they’re way again to bring Sam ‘home’ again.

Sigh.

I’m beginning to think Mother Nature, and I’ll say this quietly, might not have been a mother after all. Or at the very least, when she was considering a mother’s health, she might have been on the amber nectar. I mean, if it were well thought out, a mother would never have a cold at the same time as her children. Never.

This weekend, I found myself in the shaky, shivery stage of my cold. You know, headache, sore nose, coughing. Thing was the children were just ahead of me in the cold phase. I vowed , each time I dragged my weary bones out of the bed that there would be an illness workshop along these lines over the coming weeks;

Morning Session

• How to blow your own nose
• Where to deposit the tissues when you’ve used them (i.e. not everywhere)
• How to be a good patient and avoid some woman someday accusing you of having the Man Flu
• How to avoid spreading your germs everywhere (put your hand up to your mouth when you’re coughing for the love of God)

Afternoon Session

• How to make your sick carer a hot whisky

It’s a bit like bolting the stable when the horse is sneezing his way out the gate. But who’d remember to shut the gate when you have three screaming small boys crying, ’tissue’ ‘nose’ ‘throat’ ‘Woe is me’ (ok, that was me).

And just when you’re starting to come around and you’re just about functioning again, opening your heavy eyes, you see the state the house has been left ‘in your absence’.  I think I might just rest my head on the keyboard for a little sleep. Achoo.

Thursday night I had to sew the crest on my son’s jumper. In doing so, I broke five needles and most probably my spirit. I mean how can you break needles? Am I the only person in the planet who has broken a needle? Cheap, lousy needles. Ninety exhausting minutes I spent on that simple task, sewing a crest on the jumper. I shudder. Why hadn’t I listened in Home Economics class? Simply, all I remember from the sewing room in school was the ten minutes at the end of class the teacher made us pick pins up off of the hardest, roughest, carpet two knees have ever knelt on. If only I had remembered that magnet weekly.

Where is this going? Oh yes, the crest. There is a generation of women who would tut at my sewing skills and I assure you they were all present (in my head) when I was sewing on that jumper. They’re Italian mammas, Irish mother-in-laws, Polish aunties (aren’t I cosmopolitan?) Jay, look at the paw on her sticking through the needle. Is that how you thread these days? She’ll be there ’til tomorrow. It’s supposed to be flat on the jumper not crumply. They hang around, this symphony of nags in my head, when I’m about to venture a new domestic task that I know I’m not all so good at, criticizing my every move.

Here’s my answer to my symphony of nags. Who cares? Why didn’t I just give it to someone expert at this so that I could after a long day of looking after children and cleaning a house just sit down and pour myself a glass of wine? Seriously. Beating myself up about a crest? And I know I’m not alone in this because everyday, every time I see a friend trying to wrestle with a cranky toddler or present a child with her lopsided attempt at cookies, I think really, are you judging your domestic abilities again? There you are (for example), all PHD-ed up berating yourself because you can’t remember the second verse of Jack and Jill. Something, something, balsamic vinegar and brown paper.

So sisters, if you’re doing it yourself, try not to judge your performance on impossible standards that were set in a different time, mood, in someone’s elses’ lifetime most likely. Just put the jumper in the bag and pay the lovely person in the shop to do it for you and concentrate on reminding yourself of all your potential, of all you have achieved, that you are not the sum of your domestic abilities. Phew. And for the love of God, don’t ever buy cheap needles.