Bye, bye, January 2021, you were the WORST

January is never the easiest month to get through, but between vet bills, homeschooling, tooth trouble, and alcohol mishaps, Esther N McCarthy is particularly glad to see the back of the first 31 days of 2021.

Is it just me or has January 2021 lasted twelfty eons instead of the usual 31 days? It was the month that just would not end, like Zoom charades with your inlaws. ‘Free Willy. Uncle Marty, it's Free Willy, we get it. Put it away.’ 

I usually love January, the house is full of booze and poinsettias and you can take time to recharge because there’s no pressure to go out after all the high jinx and late nights and festive celebrations. Ha! I had one lunch out in the whole of December 2020. (Don’t get me wrong, it was amazing, I still have the bruises and the credit card bill to prove it.) 

But what do we get this January? We get The Godfather III of a lockdown: a disappointing third installment, Blue Monday, school closures, White House riots, the Mother and Baby Homes horror, and the nation goes from a relatively low Covid case base to having the world’s highest infection rate. Highest in the whole planet! Us!! In the middle of January, the seven-day rolling average hit 1,394 cases per million, we double the number of people in hospital, as were admitted in the first wave. And you couldn’t get supermarket loyalty points when you bought alcohol. This shit just got real.

The numbers really did become names in January. I go from not knowing anyone who had the virus, to loads. My friend who should have shares in Dettol, got it. This chick makes Mrs Hinch look like Oscar the Grouch. She’s putting Mr and Mrs Cillit Bang’s kids through college. She went nowhere without a mask and did big shops once a fortnight. But she got it. It adds to the constant background terror of someone I love getting sick - really sick - then this threadbare 'humour ' I'm using to get me through will be useless.

But anyway! In the first week of January, I break my molar on a mini Snickers (don’t you judge me, all the Teasers were gone). I had got an emergency appointment before Christmas because the same tooth was driving me daft. I was convinced it was going to have to come out, the pain was ridiculous, and this is coming from a girl who broke her back (and DOESN’T SHUT UP ABOUT IT, everyone who knows me, shouted.) The dentist told me it’s a tooth that’s got a root canal, there’s no nerve and the pain was from clenching my jaw at night.

“Are you experiencing extra stress lately?” he asked. 57 minutes later, I sense he regrets his question as he shoves me out the door with a prescription before I can start on the Existential Pandemic Worries list, having covered Family; (subsections Dog, Three-Legged Cat, Rodents); Liver, Insomnia, Trump, and Finances.

So I’d weakened the tooth enough for a bit of nutty nougat to finish it off, and the same day, homeschooling kicks in. This time around it includes the Deich ag a Deich where I have to be active with the five-year-old, being out of breath as Gaeilge. Fighting for bandwidth when five people have online business is ruthless. We’re still investigating Donglegate. Day two, we have the horror of realising the mike is on, and the muinteor, to whom I’ve just Seesawed a cute video of the dog decorated with love hearts and everyone saying muh-muh-madra five times, possibly hears me calling the same dog a thundering asshole because he nabbed the last bit of Brennan’s white sliced off the counter.

In the second week of January, my skin erupts. I have some (all the) wine, my rosacea remembers it exists and turns my face into a shimmering bumpy clown nose. The children shield their pasty little faces and I make an egg pop from 10 paces. The pup takes one look, his ears sag, and sticks his tail so far under his legs, he wipes his own arse as he backs away, yelping.

Bodhi the lurcher taking a nap after a walk. Eating random objects, including horse manure, can tucker a pup out.

In the third week of January, I have to bring the puppy to the vet. Again. I say puppy, he’s a galumphing muddle of a beast, all gangly giraffey legs, and slobber. Lurchers are known to be intensely loyal, sweet, gentle, affectionate creatures. And he is, he really is, but our fella’s a bit of a gom too, do you know that kind of way? He eats everything. Like things that Darwinism would suggest an animal wouldn't get to eat more than the once. 

Long ago, when we had dogs growing up, they roamed free-range, wandering off to do their business, coming back in time for tea - like the kids. If you found a chalky white turd on your hopscotch, you used it as target practice for your shoe polish box- it was no big deal. Now having a dog means picking up feces, it’s just part of the gig, I don’t mind that. But it means I get a fascinating look into the recent lower bowel activities of my mutt. I see surprisingly large, wonky-shaped plastic lumps, shells, and sparkling tinfoil winking at me through whippycone-shaped deposits. I’m pretty sure I saw one of my new poly clay earrings in there last Tuesday, but I didn’t confirm. Mono earrings are so hot right now.

There’s a field where we walk and there are horses there sometimes. He hoovers down their plops like it’s fecking caviar. He doesn’t even think about it. Single swallow. Gone. Must I carry him through the manure-dotted landscape in my arms? Does that not defeat the purpose of our ‘walk’?

Esther McCarthy's lurcher puppy , Bodhi, going for a walk on Inchydoney beach, Cork.

Anyway, January sees him listless, gloomy and vomiting. Off to the vets I go, via the bank manager to remortgage the gaff because for some reason, I STILL haven’t got pet insurance. Bodhi gets more ultrasounds than I did through three pregnancies but they can’t see a blockage, so he’s put on a drip and tummy tablets. I keep quiet about the horse manure, I can't face the judgment. I look up second-hand toddler slings he might fit into for our daily constitutionals and add ‘Stop dog eating shite’ to my to-do list. End Direct Provision and Separate Church and State are on there too. The three are all attainable, we just have to want it enough. 

About once a week I discard my stretchy loungewear and hoist myself into ‘normal’ clothes to talk on the news panel for the Today Show with Maura and Daithí and Sinead. In the fourth week of January, I try to fit into a dress my gorgeous auntie got me for Christmas. It won’t zip up and it’s bulging alarmingly in the midsection. It fit perfectly on December 25th. Thanks, Baileys. Thanks, mini Snickers and full-size Mint Crisp bars. Thanks, bucket of Keogh’s crisps I hid from the kids to eat on my own. Thanks, second breakfast and pre-brunch. Thanks, wine. Thanks, gin, thanks for NOTHING slimline tonic. Thanks, January.

So I roll on these squeezy knicker yokies over my normal undergarments and it gives me sufficient space to harness in the wobbly bits. I go into the green room (we’re all masked don’t worry) and the makeup maven, Kate The Miraculous, gets the zip up the last few inches. Just before go time, I realise I can’t actually breathe and fainting on live TV wouldn’t be the best look so I sneak into an empty room, quickly peel off the knickers and fling them in the corner. 

After the show, I go casually looking for them, I mean they are massive, like a boned parachute, they shouldn’t be hard to find. Turns out they had landed in Kate’s handbag and she had to fish them out with a shatterproof ruler and Kate, I’m sorry, that is NOT part of your job description. I was too morto to ask her to zip me back down. It took 45 minutes, some intense yoga and a Youtube How To Do A Houdini tutorial to get me out of that dress on my own.

It wouldn’t happen in May, that’s all I’m saying.