Beards, babies, & builders

Hello! So it's that time again, one of those 3 or 4 moments in the year when I decide I'm going to do a blog and then update it again soon...then pour an hour or two into a blog, and don't follow it up for 4 months. Why break the habit of a lifetime eh?

I'M COMMMING HOOOME

Oops, ignore that, just listening to some music. 

Now. Where was I? It's probably better for you, the reader, if I stop typing stream of consciousness is it? It's funner for me this way though. Discipline, where are you? 

I'm killing time right now. I've got the new Busted song...

blaring and I'm trying to think of a segue from that into my beard. There doesn't appear to be a good one. Wait, I have it! Ignore the previous 137 words/687 characters/1 video, this blog begins...NOW.

So this afternoon we had a visit from my auntie Linda. Linda is the only of my Dad's siblings I see. Terry is in Canada and Dave is a recluse. I've made an effort to build a relationship with Linda along with her husband & kids, my uncle & cousins respectively over the past 5 years, and as we home in on my Dad's 15th anniversary, that feels like a prescient choice. Anyway, we tend to see each other every 3/4 months for a catch up. As such, last time she saw me was just before Christmas. Her face when she saw the mane of hair currently obscuring my facial features was a mixture of shock and horror that probably mirrored that of thousands of Busted fans who awoke this morning to the bands new synth pop tune "Coming Home" 12 years on from the glorious pop punk days of "Year 3000" not sure exactly what they were hearing (see how I did that!? GO ON, GIVE IT A LISTEN).

The beard, the hair, the whole fucking mess. Where to begin? The start? Works for me. There was no grand plan involved here ('do I look like a guy with a plan?'). I was buzzing my hair last October. 2 all over, on the beard as well. To be fair, it looked sharp. It was just...I couldn't be arsed. Have you ever tried to shave the back of your own head? It's not as easy as it sounds. So I buzzed it, on Halloween, and then I didn't buzz it for a few weeks. Then another few. As Christmas approached, so too did a dilemma, which played out as follows in my brain:
"What's happening on my head? And my face? It's just growing. Someone should really do something. Anyone? Seriously, ANY one? Right, well if no one is going to volunteer, we need a plan". Whoever you are, you've probably known me a while. Whatever you think of how I've looked over the years, the undeniable fact was I have always looked exactly as I have wanted to look. I am vain. Always have been. When I had a pink mohawk, I dyed it every 2 days to keep the colour. When I had blonde highlights, I needed those bad boys topped up every couple months. When my hair was long, I kept a straightener in my desk at work. No, genuinely, I did. Do you know how exhausting it is being fixated on your appearance that much? I mean, I bet some of you really do. It's a pain in the arse. And it's so fruitless. I can remember fixating, obsessing on a single rogue strand of hair that wouldn't gel up into my mohawk right, or that wouldn't straighten as much as the rest. LIKE ANYONE ELSE GAVE A FLYING FUCK! But that's my nature. And so formed a germ of an idea. How would it be just to not give a fuck? Just to let it all grow. No cutting, no trimming. No straighteners, no hairdye, no hair gel, nothing. I pondered what that would look and feel like. Would I learn anything? What would people around me think? Knowing how my brain works as well as I do, I was aware that the second this thing got tough, I was likely to cave and cut it all off. So aware that the only thing that trumps my vanity is my ego, I decided to make it a challenge. Remember the magician David Blaine sat above London in a glass chamber for 44 days refusing to eat? "Above the Below" he called it. This would be my above the below. Let's make it a year. Last time I shaved was October 31st, so the countdown is on and the rules are simple. NO shaving, NO trimming, NO dying, NO hair product. 1 full year.


The mathematicians among you will have worked out that we have just passed the half way mark. You know how often you imagine how something will go, but then when you experience it, it's completely different? Yeah? Well this isn't like that. This has gone EXACTLY as I'd imagined. I feel exactly about how I look as I expected to feel. And others apparently feel even more repulsed than I. Friends, family members, colleagues, ex girlfriends...one and all have queued up to make me aware of this fact. Amongst the sharper lines - I've let myself go, 'Is your wife ok with you looking like that?', I used to look so much better, 'Would you not just trim your mustache!?", "No Kenny, just no", "No really, IS YOUR WIFE OK WITH YOU LOOKING LIKE THAT?" and we go on. Perhaps the most amusing part is every single one from a woman. I never knew my looks were so appreciated previously but anyway, at least I've something to go back to come November (I hope). I had imagined people telling me most of these things, but truthfully nothing prepares you for the overwhelming feedback that you need to do something about how you look. However, and this is the key, that was the whole point in the beginning. As someone who's spent my life being vain and fixating on looking my best, I wanted to experience what it would be like to not look my best and know it. And believe me, I know it now. 

So present day, at the half way mark, the honest, brutal truth. I am DYING to hack at it all. The most jarring thing for me personally is seeing my hair this long and it's all my natural mousy brown colour. Whenever I've had any length in my hair whatsoever I've had some black or blonde in there. I've never liked the colour. It's...noncommittal. It's bleh. And it's bloody curly. My kingdom for straight hair! Hairdresser (no, not a barber, a HAIRDRESSER) once told me that everyone who sat in her hair with wavy hair wished their hair was straight and everyone who had wavy hair wished theirs was straight. Is that just the best metaphor for the human condition you've ever heard? I digress. The moustache, I will readily acknowledge, is out-fucking-rageous. There is no excuse for a man in employment and not living on the streets to have this 'tache. It is the one thing I really want to trim. But I can't. It's the rules. It's funny how my brain works. I've no problems cheating playing football but THE IMAGINARY RULES OF BEARD GROWING CANNOT BE COMPROMISED.

In other news, BABIES! Well, BABY. Yes that's right, there's one of them en route. This pregnancy has been so different to the last one, it's night and day. (says me...if you ask MT, she might tell you different given she's been growing the bloody thing). With Carra, I was in a different point in my life. I was not well and hadn't been for a while. And I was working full time. Trying to hold down a full time job while you're ill is hard work, so I was sleeping a lot more. As such, MT and I would head to bed about the same time at night when she was pregnant. We would talk at length about babies' growth. I would talk to the baby through her stomach. Our weekends were focused on baby prep. Carra was our whole world. The difference this time is that Carra is still our whole world. As anyone with kids will know, a 2 year old is a full time job. Plus, given I work part time and I'm a dad a lot of the time we've developed a routine where MT & Carra go to bed at 9 or so (Mom has to do the bedtime routine...Dada is banned :( ), and I stay up watching footie or wrestling until 11 or 12. Ergo, those hours spent focusing on the baby haven't been there. And honestly, I have had this undercurrent of anxiety for the past few months about that. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail, right? My only saving grace is that if memory serves me correctly, truly, nothing can prepare you anyway. I am hoping this baby is a wake up call of sorts. I find myself in a daze of my own making these days (or these daze, should I say?)

MT and I first started discussing having another baby last July and right around that time we began to explore the options of either moving home or extending & renovating the house we had. The idea was to maybe do it before the next baby came along as it could be a tumultuous period and the more kids around, the harder it would be. However, it was very much just a thought. It didn't seem like a pressing issue. When we decided to try for a baby in August, I think in the back of our heads we both thought that would probably give it about a year or so before anything needed to be done. Of course, what neither of us had counted on was the incredible power & quality of my 'boys'. Swimmers, one and all. If they'd been on the Titanic, those motherfuckers would have swam to shore! Once we realised MT was expecting, suddenly the clock was ticking. The 7 months between then and now have FLOWN by and mostly in a blur of home stores and kitchen showrooms and bricks and plaster and paint etc etc. I have bought two houses, and I have moved house a bunch of times. Nothing has ever come close to the stresses and strains of extending, converting, renovating & rebuilding the house you already do own. For starters you've got to pick EVERYTHING. If you want to test a marraige - SOFT FURNISHINGS. That's the big one. Oh sure - love, trust, communication - these are cornerstones of any good relationship. But find me the couple that can pick a fucking kitchen tile together and I'll show you happy ever after. Tiles, floors, sofas, chairs, tables, kitchen units, wall colours, room layouts...MT and I must have traversed Dublin 10 times over looking at every tile in the county before picking anything. And talk about a pressure situation...you're spending 95 THOUSAND EURO on your house but the first thing anyone will see is THIS FUCKING TILE SO YOU'D BETTER PICK WELL! (Can you tell it was hard to pick the tile? That's what I'm getting at here). Anyone who's ever gotten a mortgage knows the hassle you go through there. Then there's moving out. Find a place that's going to take you for 2 months but not charge you an arm and a leg. You've got to get as much of your shit out of this place as possible because, let's be honest, what's left behind isn't going to be the same when you get back. Getting the house done seems comparatively trauma free when compared with other parts of the process. It was actually kind of a relief to see the back of the house in a pile of rubble. Progress. Moving back in was equal parts relief & devastation. The sheer joy at being back in your own home is immense. And it's a wonderful feeling to see everything is taking shape. But then you realise there's so much left to do. Pictures to be hung, furniture to be built, stuff to be unpacked, floors to be hoovered and mopped, then hoover and mopped, then hoovered and mopped, then...well you get my point, but honestly, we are still picking dust up off the floor 6 weeks later. As the person who tries to take ownership of the organisation of all these things to allow MT to focus on the pesky business of pregnancy, it feels like I've been in a blur of "Oh, I've got to do X" forever. Only the kicker is that now there really is little left for me to do. Honestly, I cannot believe how great my house looks. It's perfect. I've typed this blog in the new living room which feels twice as big with the redesign, and I've had a 4k stream of a caribbean beach on the TV the whole time which is remarkably calming. When I leave this room I step into a big long hall way with doors either side to the playroom, downstairs bathroom, utility room and the big ass new kitchen. I often feel like I am in someone else's house. I genuinely pinch myself. But yet...I can't shake that feeling that I'm still behind, chasing my tail. I'm a hamster that's been on a wheel so long that the room won't stop spinning even though I'm standing on solid ground. So I guess my hope is that nothing will bring me back to solid ground with a thump quite like baby.

In the interim, Michelle Branch has just popped up on my iTunes with a timely message. If I just...

Breathe.

As always, any thoughts, feedback, opinions or otherwise...please comment below or email me at kennymurphy2105@gmail.com

New Years Evolution

Tis the season to be rolly, tra la la la la, la la la la

It's that time of year. Stomachs are swollen and bloated, and gyms are bleeding money as people regretting the season of excess plump down their cash, deciding to get in their best shape and resolving to lose that gut in the new year. A new years resolution, you might call it. 

I have never been one for new years resolutions. My resolve has never been any stronger or weaker in January than the rest of the year so the concept doesn't really ring true with me. And apparently I'm not alone - did you know that 75% of a gyms memberships are sold in the month of January, and the economics of the business are dependent on the fact that most people won't actually use their membership more than 5 times? True story. My point is this - I don't believe that the new year can bring about a revolution. Change, in my mind, must be gradual to be effective, and I am not just talking about the size and shape of your gut here.

That said, I like to take stock and see where I'm at once in a while and I can think of no better time than the present. 2016 is going to be a year of great change for both myself and my family, and it's prudent to reflect on the year that's been to help me plan for the year ahead. 

So another calendar year is in the books. 2015 eh? Fuck I'm old. It was 1998 like a week ago wasn't it? Some years go by and feel relatively uneventful - 2014 was, all things considered, pretty quiet on the western front. But 2015 has seen a lot of change, some major challengs and a bunch of fun, most of it centering around one person. (Hint, she's less than 3 feet tall.) 

(No, not MT. She is marginally more than 3 feet tall).

I'll break 2015 into chunks because my word has it been eventful. The most tangible change has probably been in work. As 2015 rolled in, I was working in Noonan. Resource, the facilities services company I'd worked in for 2 years, had mercifully gone out of business and been taken over by Noonan the prior September, with my switch over happening in November. I could not have been happier about Resource being absorbed because  - and I feel free to speak about the company openly and honestly given it no longer exists - it was a truly horrendous work environment. When I applied for that job the spec was unclear but what was clear was the salary was good and the office was less than a mile from my front door. Ultimately it was massively understaffed, wildly disorganized, and most troublingly the people I was reporting into were completely unprofessional and had no problem being very aggressive and confrontational. It was not uncommon to be asked "What the fuck are you playing at?" or told "just get it fucking sorted" in relation to a project you were working on. Body language and tone of voice are hard to quantify in a blog, but it's key to note that both were strong and aggressive, bordering on intimidating at times. Indeed I am loathe to confrontation myself but at times so bad was it that I had no choice but to firmly and assertively pull certain individuals aside and tell them it was not acceptable to speak to me in that way. Things would change in the short term but never in the long term. The perfect anecdote to give you an idea of the work environment was the lone time I rang in sick. I had been working 15 months and had not missed an hour, much less a day sick. I was genuinely really ill and went to the doctor on the weekend. I was diagnosed with a chest infection and signed off for a week. I rang my manager. 

"Well what the fuck am I supposed to do for staff for the week now Kenny? Someone is going to have to pay for a fucking temp you know. We need to have a serious chat when you get back in". Oh, and he docked my pay for the week. Number of times he asked how I was feeling, before, during or after my illness? 0.

Ultimately I stuck it out because they agreed to accomadate my request for part time hours and it seemed inevitable to me the place would shut and I might get a few quid when it did. 

When I made the switch to Noonan, all initially seemed good. I was offered redundancy but told they had the exact role they wanted me for in mind and that my work hours (830 - 500, Monday, Thursday and Friday) perfectly fitted in with it if I chose to stay. Alas, I should have known better than to trust blindly The role never materialized and instead my first few months were spent doing quite literally anything they could find. Some days it was scanning and indexing. Data entry. Typing word documents. Etc, etc. I was happier than when I was in resource but it didn't strike me as a positive that the very first thing they'd told me was a lie. Also, I'd been due a certain amount of holiday pay accrued in resource when they'd taken over. I asked and asked for info on it - would I get the holiday time itself, or pay in lieu? I was told not to worry, it would be sorted. Again, I took them at their word. Eventually by March they'd found a defined role for me - industrial admin. It was mostly payroll. It could often be extremely tedious work. But it was straight forward and relatively low pressure. So long as everyone got paid on time and correctly, all was well. After the intensity of Carole Nash and Resource, I didn't mind that. Ultimately though, on the whole I was slightly unhappy. It felt like every time I'd be told or promised something, they wouldn't follow through on their word. And the work was easy and low pressure but also tedious.

In April, I got a call from Aly, who had hired me all the way back in 2006 in Carole Nash. I'd spoken with her briefly about a job opportunity that she may have for me a few months prior, but when I hadn't heard from her in a while I thought maybe it wasn't going to materialize. So I was delighted when she suggested we meet for coffee. The job was going to be working back in bike insurance. 

This is where I must be honest about something that I've not often spoken about. Some people know what they want to do in life. MT dressed up as a nurse for Halloween when she was 3. Now she does it every day. I never knew what I wanted to do. But what I did know was that while I struggled with the structure & politics of the company, I had enjoyed working in Carole Nash immensely a lot of the time during the nearly 7 years spent there. Bikers are an odd bunch and having gotten acclimated to their wacky ways and indoctrinated into their culture, I had come to enjoy the job. It could be mundane and repetitive by times - but that's any job. So when things came to a head in CN, while it felt like the right time to move on from the company - I had already been interviewing for jobs when I got the boot - I wasn't ready to move on from the work itself. Given how small an industry the bike insurance one is in this country, it felt like that door had closed on me for good - even more so when I started working part time. And this is the part I didn't much speak of - that bothered me. Like, it REALLY bothered me. For the longest time. It just felt so unfinished. And I can't think of a better word. I had done 7 years in that industry and I wasn't done. So it would bug me. Intermittently, every few months, I'd think about it and get worked up. I am a passionate person and I like to at the very least be interested in what I do. Working in facilities for 2 years almost killed me. Many hours of my life were spent on the phone to managers of various branches of Heatons or Bank Of Ireland who barked down the line about how dirty their branch was because our cleaning staff hadn't shown. Once - just once - I wish I could've told them "You know, I really don't give a fuck" or even just politely asked "Is it really worth getting this worked up over?". Granted I am not as passionate about motorbike insurance as I am about, say, Liverpool, but it keeps me interested. Ergo when I met Aly about going to work for Principal, I was very keen to put something together. I was nervous because given that Principal is a brand new company in this country and I wanted to work part time, I thought that could be a spanner in the works, and I didn't want to get my hopes up. Luckily, Aly had no problems accomadating me and just like that, I was back. 

I'm a firm believer in fate over coincidence, and sure enough just before I was due to hand my notice in to Noonan to join Principal, Noonan informed me they wanted to change my hours and I had the choice to accept them, or take redundancy. In the end, I took redundancy, had a week off and started in Principal. Not bad eh? The first day in the office can only be described as surreal. It had been 2.5 years since I'd done the job, but honestly on my very first phone call, it was like I'd never been away. Happily, it has been as easy and pleasant in the 6 months since. Work is work - there are good days, great days but also days where you just can't seem to get going. But this is the first time in a long time where I've actually liked the company I work for and the environment I work in, which is the biggest positive of all. In my experience, it is very common for a company to sell you on the idea that they are employee friendly - "you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours". Resource had the tag line "investor in people" which couldn't have been further from the truth, while in Carole Nash I was constantly asked to go the extra mile and told that I'd be repaid in kind, which eventually led to a great resentment on my behalf when all those promises went unfulfilled. I am fiercely loyal and that is both an asset and a problem in my working life. It's been an asset because employers have seen me as someone who will multi task and do that bit extra to help out, but it's been my achilles heel because too often I've allowed myself to be exploited. In Principal, I've found that there is a culture that encourages both parties to help the other out when needs be. This year there have been issues that have led to me needing time off to mind Carra. Indeed one day I got a call from creche to tell me Carra was really upset and asking for me, in the middle of the working day. One word with my boss in any of these scenarios, and I've been able to get home and be a Dad. On the flip side, when the office is short staffed and someone needs to cover lunches because someone's off sick, or someone's got to go in late on a Saturday to get a policy set up, I have had no problem going in. They look after me, so I look after them. It seems so extraordinarily simple and yet most businesses are still so hamstrung by structures and procedures that their staff are resentful and speak about the company they work for with disdain. It is a really fantastic thing to go to work every day for a company that you truly want to help develop and grow, working for and with people you like, trust and respect and who treat you the same.

With all that said, for 2016 I am just hoping for the status quo to be maintained. I like the hours I work, I like the work that I do. It's my sincere belief and hope that as a team we can exceed all the targets we've had set for us this year and best of all, I will genuinely take pride in it when we do. 

So where to next? When the year began Carra was 19 months old and just beginning to leave 'babyhood' and become a real little girl. The pics below almost feel like a trick of the mind to me - can it really be only one year ago that she was wheeling around in her pram, or sitting in a highchair? The mere idea seems so ridiculous to me now. In her face and her body size, she looks like a babba then.

So much has changed. I wish that I'd spent more time documenting it. It seems like there is a new milestone, a change of some sort, every couple of months. When she was under 18 months, these were more tangible. The first time she crawled, stood, ate, spoke. This year she has developed mentally more than physically. She is her own little person now. She was always infused with a strong sense of self, right from day one. She's been animated, independent and demonstrative since her lungs kicked in and she let that first big wail out. But now she has all these little character traits. She can be such a tomboy at times. She loves watching Batman and she loves being Batman. About a year ago she started demanding we tie a towel around her neck. "That's my cape like Batman, Dada" she'd tell me. She watches wrestling with me and sometimes seems uninterested. Sometimes. But not when the Undertaker comes on the screen. Then she's transfixed. She likes to go to the park and play football with me too. But at the same time, she's a real little lady. She is obsessed with her "go" dresses. She first learned about dresses watching Frozen or "go" as she learned to call it with her limited dialogue when she was in (after the movie's theme tune "Let It Go". So dresses are GO dresses. She will only wear dresses. Look at any pics of her in the last year. If it's not bedtime, she's wearing a dress. She has a jewellery box and insists on wearing her necklace most days. She has a little handbag and when we go to creche, it has to have jewellery in it. Oh and 'Liddy'. Liddy is the lid off her milk bottles. Liddy is a bizarre comfort blanket of sorts. Liddy goes everywhere. She is fiercely strong willed and knows what she wants. Today we were driving and she told me "Dada you are driving too fast. Slow down. SLOW DOWN RIGHT!?". She has to dress herself and if you try and help her she'll take it off and start again on her own. She is wonderfully good fun. She demands music and insists Mom and Dada dance. And she's soft. She wants to be cuddled and feel loved, but only when she's ready. Her terms, not yours. 

Carra has taken everything in her stride - eating, walking, running, speaking, even teething - nothing has been that much trouble to her. But in November & December she was really challenged when suddenly she was landed in creche. Where previously she was minded by Nana Esther, circumstances suddenly precluded that. We put her into creche. At first, things seemed ok. But once she realized that the pattern was she'd go in and then be stuck there for 9 hours, she revolted. And she got sick. Every kid does when they start going to creche. It was so hard to see how all of this impacted her. So fierce and strong usually, Carra was weak, lacking in energy, mopey, confused, angry and sad. I would drop her to creche and she would roar, kick and scream, fighting so hard to stop me leaving it was not uncommon for her to vomit because she'd become so distressed. Then she would come home and be stuck to her parents. A few weeks after Nana Esther went AWOL, I went to Turkey for a week. After I came back, you could see how strongly she was impacted. Everywhere I went, she would have to go as well. If she woke in the night, she would roar for me to come. She was constantly scared I would go away. I felt tremendously guilty. Obviously circumstances dictate you can't be with your child 24/7 but it doesn't make it any easier to see them so constantly anxious and afraid of you going. You just feel like you've hurt them. Thankfully, after 5 - 6 weeks, in mid - late December, she began to acclimatize to the new setup. She made her first friend - Amelia - and she would tell us stories about her. Her stories are the best and a real sign of how her imagination has bloomed. On Christmas morning, she came into our room. We said to her we would go downstairs. She said that we had to wait 5 seconds because Santa and Rudolph were still down there, and Rudolph was eating his carrot. Moments like those are why when people ask me what my dreams in life were, I can tell them honestly that being a Dad was all I ever aspired to be. The gratification of seeing such joy in someone you helped to bring into the world is something that, and I know this is cliche, you will truly never understand unless you do it yourself. It is the single best feeling I've ever experienced. I am so excited to watch her develop in 2016. We are going to keep her in creche now regardless of what other options we might have because it's good for her development, and there's no sense in the upheaval of taking her out of creche now only to have to put her in again down the line. I am most excited about seeing her finish the journey from baby to little girl. I get excited about the conversations I can have with her when her dialogue gets a little more fleshed out and clearer, although I must admit it makes me sad to think there will come a day when she doesn't speak how she does now. My favourite is how she says the word 'the'. It is always pronounced THEE. "I am going to THEE bed with THEE milk and I will see you in THEE morning Dada'. So proper. I can't wait to see how she mingles with ner new sibling. And it will be wonderful to see her develop friendships thru creche and friends' children. 

When I look at her now compared to a year ago, she's grown so much. I wonder what she'll look like 12 months further down the line!

And finally...there were a bunch of other topics I wanted to tackle, both about the prior year (my health, my weight, my wife, my friends) and the one to come (our home, our baby...the new one!) but I'm running out of steam and need to tackle one key issue before I go: the YEARD. 

What is a yeard you say? A yeard is what it sounds like. A beard you've grown for a year. I stumbled across the concept a few weeks ago, and you know what, it's a bloody good idea. I have always been into my appearance. Now when I use that term, please interpret it correctly. God and my father did not bless me with the finest genetics - I hope I'm not ugly but I'm no bloody oil painting either. What I mean by into my appearance is I am constantly trying new things. I just get bored so easily. A few months back I was irritated by my hair - I had it super long, then trimmed it short with a fringe. I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of it so I buzzed it - 2 all over. I kept doing so for a month or two. And the beard too. Then, I just stopped. And you know what, I don't really want to start again. I've always been so precious about my hair - both on my head and on my face. When I had long hair it was straightened (I've created two kids, with a woman, so I feel like my hetero card is sufficiently stamped to use a hair straightener) and when it was short I'd use product. I was always trimming and neatening my beard or my stubble. But now I need to know. If this was 2000 years ago and I was holed up in some cave, venturing out only to kill food and bring it home to my family, just what would I look like? Well we are all about to find out. Not only am I not shaving or cutting my beard for the year, I am not trimming it either. And I think I'll do the same with my hair. I am going full on caveman. I just need to know what I can grow. And I don't care how stupid or ugly or homeless I look. Because beards kick ass.