Fairymix.com

I did it!

2011-11-24T18:16:00.003Z

I managed to get my act together and make my Christmas card prototype before even the 1st advent. That must be a first.

And here you have them, the template for this year's creation. And yes, the middle one is wonky on purpose.

Crafty, day 44
Originally uploaded by Babaloo

New project

2011-10-17T13:42:00.001+01:00

365 days, a set on Flickr.

Finally, a new post. I haven't had much time or energy to post lately. But what I have been doing is start a new project.
For one year, I will be taking one photo a day. It could be a landscape photo taken on a walk with the dogs. It could be something funny I spot. Or it could be something totally boring because I can't find anything interesting to photograph.
I will mainly be using the camera on my mobile phone and you can find the whole set, as it is slowly growing, on Flickr.
Enjoy!

vegging it and other stories

2011-08-13T13:30:00.008+01:00

At this point I'm not even sure how to begin. I haven't posted for so long that it feels like a million things have happened that you should know about. Although that makes my life sound a lot more exciting than it actually is.

And when I sit down to think about it, most of the things that have happened or that I have done aren't really that interesting to anyone else than me. I've passed my reflexology exams. I'm childminding full-time. The latter is only for another week, though, and from September I'll only be doing one day a week. From then on I'll have more time to concentrate on the massage side of things. About time, because with an 11 hour day 5 times a week, and occasionally longer days, I've not been able to even advertise to get more business.

Of the more important things, my little brother has set a date for his wedding, it'll be on the 3rd of September. He's even asked me to be witness at the civil ceremony. I'm over the moon for him. Of course I'm also happy that I'll get to travel to Switzerland. And yes, I have since met his wife-to-be who is a lovely and funny and clever woman.

I'm also signed up for another course, starting in early October. This is probably the last long one I'll be doing, the rest will be shorter courses. Like the ones I'll be doing near Dublin at the end of this month. So, Indian Head Massage, here I come!

And the last biggish thing that's happened, or that we've made happen I should probably say, is that we've gone vegetarian in our house. Interestingly, it was the biggest meat-eater in the house who sparked this off, so nobody can blame me! Since March we've only been eating whatever meat and fish were still in the freezer. I can't say I miss it. Not much at least. I feel better, physically and mentally. I've lost a bit of weight (although that may also have something to do with minding a 2 and 5 year old 5 days a week). I'm not going to go into the reasons for going vegetarian here in detail lest you feel I'm preaching. So there.

My busy schedule hasn't left me much time to shoot good photos but I've been using my phone for snapshots. And so I'll end this short catch up post with one of these photos. This was taken last Sunday evening from our living-room window. The upside of not having a nice summer is that we get to see quite a few rainbows.

bah

2011-04-23T20:06:00.007+01:00

I know, I know, I owe you at least 20 posts by now.

Let's just say, life is busy.

I'm studying. Or I should be.

I'm working. Child-minding again, 4 days per week at the moment.

I still waste an incredible amount of time on Facebook. And Twitter, occasionally.

I'm taking photos with my iPhone. Less with my proper camera.

So I figured if I can't bring myself to post anything sensible, then I'll at least give you some of the photos I take.

Dog walk this afternoon.

Good morning! Are you awake yet?

2011-02-20T10:49:00.001Z

We're back!

2011-02-02T14:30:00.001Z

Yes, I know you probably haven't even noticed that I was gone, considering I haven't been a very good blogger lately. But there's so many other things to do, like doing the reflexology treatments for my case studies, writing up those treatments, walking the dogs, reading books and, worst of all, Facebook. It's been a time-sucker par excellence. If you're not into games then you have no idea how addictive Facebook is.

But, that's not what I was going to talk about today. Because I did take the time to sit down and write. Yes, I should be writing up a treatment instead, you got me. But hey, what's was that with the gift horse? Right.

So, Felix, the dogs and I went on holidays for a week. We didn't go far, just a bit over an hour's drive from home, to the Sheep's Head peninsula. But what a change of scenery. And what a steal, with Sheep's Head being right between Beara and Mizen, you got three peninsulas for the price of one!

The weather was great for nearly the whole week, only about half a day of rain. But it was coooold! But we didn't only spend time climbing hills and cliffs and at the beach.

Luckily we had a very cozy livingroom with a fireplace:

And a comfy sofa:

That, unfortunately, was 'only' a three-seater, so we had to take turns:

I read 5 books that week. Yep. With no Facebook to distract me that was actually possible. I read

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Bag of Bones by Stephen King (left that at the cottage in exchange for Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, which I plan to read next)
Across the River by Alice Taylor
The Distant Echo by Val McDermid
Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard

My favourite of these was probably The Lacuna.

The cottage we rented was heaven for the dogs with a great garden and a little brook running through the back of the garden, perfect for quenching thirst after a day spent running up and down hills.

So, with no internet, no news (yes, they had a TV but still, with all that was going on in Irish politics I wanted to stay well clear of all that for a week) and hardly any radio we were all very relaxed in no time. So relaxed, that even Honey decided she could sit still for two minutes to indulge me and my camera:

I think she was trying to look like Jack here, she just got the ear wrong.

So, we're back and everyday life has taken right over again. No rest for the wicked. Not even for the not quite so wicked.

It's been how long?!

2011-01-19T20:32:00.001Z

Can't believe I haven't posted since before Christmas. Since last year. I've thought about it many times. I've even put it quite near the top of my To Do list. But, somehow, things a lot further down that list turned out to be more important. Or more doable.

So now I'm sitting here and I keep turning my head to get a good look at that fantastic, big, fat and cheesy-yellow moon out there. It's full moon tonight, I think. If I hadn't already tried many times to catch such a fantastic moon with my camera (and failed) I would try right now.

Instead I'm trying to figure out what to write. Apart from the obvious, that is. Which is that I hope you've had a good start to 2011 and that I wish each and every one of you that this year may bring mostly happiness and good things to you. We need a few niggles, though, to offset the happiness. And besides, the niggles and annoyances will be there anyway, whether we want or expect them or not.

This year has started well for us here. Mostly. We've had a thoroughly cold winter, then a thaw and now we're back to night frosts but gorgeous, sunny days. Well, that's what we had today at least.

At the end of last year I didn't expect this year to bring many surprises or highlights. I know I have my reflexology exams some time in May, but that's not a surprise and I doubt they should be classified as a highlight. As it is, I'm rather dreading them. But then I remember I felt the same about my holistic massage exams last year and I passed them too. So I'm determined not to panic.

But aside from this I didn't think there'd be much to 2011. Until I realised that there's going to be a 20 year school reunion. Or whatever you'd officially call this in English. To clarify, this year it's been 20 years since I left school. There's been many reunions since then, none of which I attended. Well, it is a bit of a hike from Ireland. Plus, I wasn't that interested anyway. I've not met most of my schoolmates in, oh, probably 15 years.

Somehow, though, a few things came together this time. I reconnected with one school friend via Facebook. I got a New Year's email from another good friend who told me of the upcoming reunion. I wasn't on the email distribution list, so I was never 'officially' told, you see. And somehow I began thinking that it could be quite interesting to meet up with some people again. Others, well, let's just say I feel no need to meet them again. So, I decided I'm going - provided my exams don't coincide with this reunion which is on the 27th and 28th of May. This could well happen, as all we know is that the exams are in May. They could be any time in that month. And even though I think it's unlikely that they'll leave them until the very end, knowing my luck it might just happen.

So that's big event number 1.

Big event number 2 doesn't have a date yet but a location. Switzerland. My little brother is getting married! I'm saying little but obviously he isn't that little anymore and besides, he is less than 3 years younger than me. He phoned me this week and told me the big news. They haven't set a date yet as they wanted to tell people first - it's going to be a small wedding, so there aren't that many people to consider as far as dates are concerned. I'm delighted for him and I can't wait to start planning this trip. And to think that I haven't even met the bride yet!

So, that's all the big news so far. Two trips abroad already in the pipeline, one to Germany and one to Switzerland. Depending on the dates it might be possible to combine the two but I'll have to wait and see. And for now it's safer to think about it as two separate trips especially since it would mean an awful lot of driving.

And on the 'home front' we're going on holidays for a week on Saturday. We're not going far, we're even staying in the same county. It's just going to be Felix, myself and the dogs. Salem the cat is not coming, but we have a neighbour coming in to feed him daily. As in the past, he'll probably be crying for us for the whole week. He should count himself lucky that he'll have the run of the house and no dogs to share the bed with. I can't wait for this now, I'm so looking forward to getting away for a bit.

So I'll see you all in a while and I hope I have plenty of photos to show you when I come back.

And now, even better - we have snow!

2010-12-18T13:48:00.010Z

It snowed yesterday for a few hours. Not enough in my book because what's on the ground now isn't going to last very long with the sun being out in full force today. They've also predicted more frost over night, so everything is going to freeze and driving will get nearly impossible.

But we don't care. We've done some last minute shopping today and I'll be making a big pot of stew tomorrow. That'll last us for two days and is just the right food for winter. Another winter dish is on the menu for tonight: mushroom and leek risotto.

Have a lovely weekend y'all!

And - we have a tree!

2010-12-14T14:11:00.012Z

You may remember that we didn't have a proper Christmas tree for the last few years. This was mostly for a lack of space in the living room, and let's face it, there's not much point in putting up a tree in the spare room where we would have the space. Also, we had a cast iron stove in the living room which created a lovely warmth but would've all but killed any tree we could have put up in its vicinity.

We have made do with a nice little wooden tree thing that takes little tea lights. Now, the stove is gone since last year. However, for some strange reason it never occurred to me that, as a consequence, we now had space to put up a tree. Until last Thursday that is.

So on Friday Felix and I went to the nearby Garden Centre to pick out a tree. It turned out it wasn't that difficult after all - we had kind of agreed to buy a potted one so we could plant it out in the garden in the spring and (just maybe) use it again as a Christmas tree next year.

There wasn't that much choice in potted trees, so we made our mind up fairly quickly. No discussion, we both picked the same one at the same time.

And here it is, just as it arrived at home:

As the one in the family with the most patience with tricky things like strings of Christmas lights, I was tasked with decorating the tree. Since we didn't want to spend more money (the tree was pricey enough) it was going to be a case of 'make do with what you have'. Turns out we had a whole box of straw decorations, never opened! They were kindly left to us by the previous owner of the house, together with other assorted decorations.

Stage One: Find the right space and right table for the tree.

Stage Two: Sort out the lights. Turns out 4 bulbs had blown but the rest is still working, so we didn't have to buy new ones this year.

Stage Three: Sort out the small matter of disguising the pot. A nice girl at the garden centre had wrapped the pot for us so we wouldn't have the soil all over the car. I left that wrapping paper on, got myself an old paper shopping bag, turned it inside out (surely didn't want advertisement for Dunnes Stores under the tree), popped the tree in (with a little help) and then tied some tinsel around it. Voila, a very sophisticated potting solution.

Stage Four: Proceed to drape ornaments in a seemingly casual but very classy way over the tree.

Turns out, the 'Recession Look' is quite a good look for a Christmas tree. What do you think? Honey approves, I think.

I'm not sure whether it looks better in daylight or at night. I just know that I love the smell.

(The photo at the very top is my 2nd favourite Christmas decoration this year, the 'star curtain' we put up in the study window. The bulbs in one of the big stars have blown, so I guess we'll have to get a new one next year.)

I'm still here

2010-12-01T15:48:00.004Z

Just a bit frozen, that's all.

Yes, we still have internet. We went back to our old provider and retracted our cancellation. What we don't have any more because we don't really need it, is a landline for the phone. We rarely use it, mostly to make calls to relatives in Germany who are not connected to the internet. Which would be my parents. And to pay a standing charge of at least 25 Euro per month for that, plus the call charges on top of that - well, we just figured we could make quite a few international calls from our mobile phones for that.

And, frozen? Yes, winter is here. Has been for a few days actually. Unlike the rest of the country, we haven't had much snow which is a pity. We only had a little dusting of it over the weekend and a little bit more yesterday. Temperatures are supposed stay as low as they are now which is around freezing. So far the roads haven't been too bad, so I was able to do the grocery shopping yesterday. They have forecast freezing fog overnight, so I'm expecting things to turn bad from tomorrow. The fog is going to settle on the hills, on the roads and freeze. So we'll have skating rinks instead of roads tomorrow.

The dogs don't mind the winter at all. Well, Honey doesn't. Jack doesn't like the very cold wind we've had for a few days but which, luckily, seems to have calmed down today. Honey just zooms around the place, probably even more exuberant than normal. Definetely too fast to take a photo of her in the snow. So I can only give you a photo of Jack - he does what he always does when we have snow. He licks it. He just walks around licking the ground, grass, stones, roads, you name it. And when he doesn't lick snow, he snuggles up in bed where it's nice and warm.

Stay warm and safe!

Right on the heels of the last post...

2010-11-15T15:43:00.001Z

... if not time-wise, definitely mood-wise. Today is a little worse than a meh day. It's Be Grumpy And Get Annoyed By Incompetent People Day. Yes.

For the last few weeks we've been having problems with our internet and phone provider. Since we live 'out in the shticks' we couldn't get proper broadband internet when we moved here. So we got wireless broadband, not quite as fast, not quite as reliable and not quite as reasonably priced at the time. But still, we had internet. And for our phone we had a landline.

So when our internet provider offered us phone via voice over IP for a lower price than our monthly landline rental, we switched a couple of months ago. It was a good offer, we already had our internet with them, so why not change. First mistake.

Since then we've had numerous outages, usually on the weekends or in the evenings, when their people have gone home. Since we now have our phone with them as well, this also meant that we had no phone (except for our mobiles, of course). Mostly there wasn't even an apology. When I finally had enough and sent them an email to ask if this was now the normal service and whether we could expect any improvements ever, they replied all was OK at their end. The problem must be with us then.

Really?!?!

After a few emails back and forth we decided we had enough and contacted the main Irish phone provider. I'm not going to name names here or I'll have a libel case against me next. We'd had some prior experience with them (not great) and so were pleasantly surprised when the lovely lady explained that, of course, we could not only get a landline but also broadband internet with them. We mentioned that we hadn't been able to get broadband through them before but that our neighbour two doors up had broadband with them. She checked the location and confirmed, yes, broadband was indeed available. We immediately signed up for a package with them, including the landline phone and broadband internet. The phone was switched on in less than 48 hours. Direct debit mandates arrived for the payments. The broadband modem was due to arrive within 5 business days. We cancelled our existing service effective the end of this month. Second mistake.

So when no modem had arrived today (business day 5 or 6, depending on when you start counting), Felix rang them to see what was going on.

It turns out that our line does not support broadband after all. So we have, effectively, been sold something we can't use. Requests for supervisor call backs had no result. Tweeting about it did, though. They were fast! They checked our line again and, no surprise, it really really doesn't support broadband.

We're still waiting for the call back to see where we go from here. We don't want/need their landline service, that only made sense in combination with the broadband. There is one other broadband provider for our area and we contacted them earlier. So far, no call back from them either.

As things stand we may have to resort to mobile broadband via one of those sticks you plug in. Goodbye wireless internet around the house!

What annoys me most, I suppose, is the fact that I was actually gullible enough to believe their service had changed. That, with more competition on the market, their staff had better training and knew what they were talking about.

What we have on our hands now, I guess, is the fight to be able to cancel their phone service without any cost to us. I bet they'll try and charge us for the week we've used it.

Mondays, eh. What a way to start the week!

On the plus side, and yes there is a plus side!, I now have a regular massage client. Things have been very slow business-wise. Ireland's economy is really in the dumps and things are not looking good at all, so luxuries like massages are what people cancel first if they need to save money. This client has booked me for every other week. I'm very happy with it because after a few once off bookings I really needed something regular, less for the money (one client every other week doesn't make much of an impact) and more for my self esteem I guess.

I have been trying to get 'gigs' for workplace massage but even here things are tough. My old company has been giving me the thumbs up but after they had to let a few people go recently I haven't heard from them again. Patience is a virtue, I guess, and I just have to hang in there and wait for them to get back to me. Eventually.

I'm also continuing with my reflexology course on Thursdays. It involves a LOT of practical work. More than the previous course. But it's going well and I'm about to start on my case studies.

So, this is about all that's happened since my last post. Lots of niggly things and a few good things. I will keep you updated on what happens with our internet connection and whether we'll end up paying for other people's incompetence or if they let us out of the contract without any problems.

Hope your week is starting better than mine!

(Oh, and that photo is completely random. This is what our bed looks like when we're not in it.)

Not having a good day?

2010-10-19T13:56:00.001+01:00

Starting the day today I realised it was one of those days when I make a conscious effort to be happy. Not that I'm depressed or very unhappy. No, far from it. It just looked like one of those 'meh days' right from the off. The sky is covered in clouds, I have nothing exciting on for today, apart from doing the grocery shopping and we all know how exciting that can get. [insert ironic smile here]

So, what do you do on a day like that? Well, I don't know. You tell me. Right after I tell you what I do on a day like this.

Starting as usual I have a mug of coffee in bed. While I check my emails. Yes. Right.

Then I prepare a good breakfast while Felix walks the dogs.

Then we have breakfast together when they get back. Well, Felix and I have it together, Jack wolves his down so fast he is usually finished by the time we sit down.

After breakfast we go back to bed for a bit.

(Note that so far this doesn't vary from our usual routine. Felix teaching in the evenings is insofar great as that we can often idle away the morning. It also means that he isn't home in the evenings which is less than great. But that's another story.)

At some stage I have to get dressed. Well, only if I don't want my elderly neighbour have me open the door on her in my pyjamas as it happened today, her commenting "oh, you're still in your morning attire, not to worry" to my apologetic face. After she was gone I realised it was 11.30am. Not quite morning anymore.

So when I get dressed on a meh day I try and make it either extra nice or extra comfortable. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, one coincides with the other. Not today. Today is comfortable: pale green combats, denim shirt and, as long as I'm inside the house, Crocs.

Meh days require special attention to looks, though. So a little treat with my favourite wake me up cream. Maybe some colour for my face? Not to forget a bit of perfume. Yes, definitely. I have several. All of them favourites of mine, or about to be lifted into that category. Perfumes usually last me ages because I normally forget to use them. Meh days make me remember the existence of those bottles on the dresser and shelf.

And while we're talking about smells. Certain smells always make me feel good. Like my mango body butter. Vanilla and coffee is also a brilliant combination. Drinking coffee with a little dash of vanilla sugar in it isn't bad either. Or a cup of this:

It's Rooibos tea with dried cornflower leaves and, this is the best bit, little white chocolate stars. No surprise it's called 'Lucky Star Tea'. My dear friend Gina brings it for me from Austria once a year. It's perfect for a meh day afternoon. After half an hour of yoga maybe?

And at the end of a meh day you can still brighten everything up with a nice dinner. Something that always makes me happy is pasta. Or risotto. Risotto is good. I love that it requires attention and some effort.

And then, you can always end your day with a bit of A Bit of Fry & Laurie. And wouldn't you know it, it didn't turn out to be such a meh day after all!

Weekend...

2010-09-26T20:44:00.000+01:00

After all the excitement

2010-09-22T15:39:00.000+01:00

Maybe you've been wondering how the week with my old friends went.

Well, I can only say, it went swimmingly. I admit it, I'd been just a teeny-tiny bit worried before Melanie arrived. What is she like now? Has she changed much? Will we still get along? But we managed to squeeze a Skype call into her hectic schedule, the day before she flew over. And that took away much of my worries - after an initial and very short awkwardness (my brain went my, she's grown up! - yeah, seriously!). Turns out we had a great time!

We spent the first night just talking until way past midnight, among an improvised picknick of baguette, cheese and yogurt on our hotel beds, as neither of us had felt much like going out for dinner.

The following day we went to see a few places around Killarney,

Ross Castle

Muckross House and Gardens

before driving home.

On Monday we went to Cork to have a look around there.

University College Cork, main quad

And then, on Tuesday afternoon, it was already time to say goodbye. But not before taking a picture to ensure this moment is saved for posterity. I had wanted to post a picture of the two of us 25 years ago right next to this one but unfortunately, as my parents are moving house, all photos are packed up in boxes already. So it will be a while until I get hold of the one I had in mind.

Mel and I, and Honey of course (and yes, those are my pyjama bottoms!)

The day after that, Marlene arrived. She also stayed only a few days and then moved on to my friend Belen's house for the remainder of her stay. We basically went to the same places (Killarney, Cork) but yesterday the three of us went on a great trip around Kinsale - a small and very picturesque harbour town in Co. Cork.

The weather couldn't have been better, both for Melanie's and Marlene's stay. Just look at the view from yesterday's lunch table:

Yes, I left my sunglasses in the car, hence the squinting.

So, a great week is over and life is back to normal. The weather is still exceptionally good for this time of year. The temperatures drop overnight but most days are sunny and very mild.

Hope you're all keeping well!

So, what's been happening?

2010-09-01T12:23:00.008+01:00

The answer is, a lot.

Jack has completed his course of meds and, as expected, they helped. He's been feeling a lot better and the itch is nearly completely gone. We did have two days a while ago (after he finished his meds, so it can't have been that) when he vomited a lot and didn't eat anything at all the following day. That, in Jack's book, is serious. For a dog whose brain is occupied thinking about food for most of the day it was worrying us a lot. But, seems like dogs know best, because after a day of fasting he was right as rain. I have no idea what caused the stomach upset as I'm sure he hadn't eaten any rubbish off the street (he's good like that, barely ever touches anything he finds).

We've been enjoying the last few weeks and days of Felix' time off. It's all relative, he's been working from home, but let's call it holidays because we need to call it something, right. So we've been going for lots of walks with the dogs because the weather has been very nice lately. Not too warm now, even chilly in the morning, but dry and generally sunny.

A while ago my friend Belen and I confirmed that an ex-colleague of ours who went back to Denmark about 9 years ago will be coming to stay with us for a week in September. So, Marlene is coming on the 15th to spend the first two nights at our's and then she'll move out to Belen's house for the rest of her stay here. I'm really looking forward to this as she's always been a lot of fun and we haven't seen each other in such a long time. We'll be spending all her time here chatting I guess!

So, while we were planning that and making arrangements for flights, trains and the like for Marlene, I got an email from an even older friend of mine. Not old in years, mind. But going back even longer than 9 years.

Melanie and I used to be best friends when we were growing up in the same small village, until we were maybe 10 or so. Her being a year younger she wasn't in my class at school and over time we made separate friends and didn't see so much of each other any more. We both moved away after we left school, so I haven't seen her at all for close to 20 years.

She now works for a developmental aid agency and has been living in Yemen for the last couple of years. As she's off to Germany for some meetings and seminars and is also due a week's holiday at the same time, she thought she'd use the opportunity to make a trip without her family and asked whether she could come to Ireland, so that we could meet up. I nearly had kittens with excitement! Only problem is that her available time clashes slightly with Marlene's stay here, so we had to juggle a bit.

So Melanie is arriving late on the 11th and staying until the 14th. Marlene is coming to stay on the 15th then. Just enough time to change the bed linen and give the house the once over with the vacuum cleaner!

The plan is for me to collect Melanie at Kerry airport. As it'll be late by the time we get out of there, we decided to stay overnight in a hotel in Killarney, so that we can do sightseeing and a trip to the lakes right after breakfast on the Sunday, before we drive home. Knowing us we'll probably end up talking the whole night, so we won't get out of bed before lunchtime on the Sunday!

I can't believe all this is happening now and so soon! I've been digging around in some old photos that I had brought from my parents a while ago but no luck, there was none of Melanie and myself that I could show you. I'm not even sure whether there have ever been any, I can't remember any in particular anyway. A phone call to my parents tonight is going to sort that out, though, I'm sure my mother knows exactly what photos of us she's got stashed away.

What I did find, though, is this adorable photo (well, I think so anyway) of my brother and me in the field across from our house, taken in spring 1980.

And with this I leave you for today as there are two dogs loitering around next to me. Taking a wild guess I'd say they want to go for a walk....

Getting old isn't easy....

2010-08-14T13:34:00.001+01:00

... not even for dogs.

When Jack came to us 2 years ago the vet guessed him to be 10 or 11. We therefore think that he is now 12. Maybe older. Who knows. He's certainly not telling.

Among all sorts of infections, he had extremely sore and red skin when he came to us. And he smelled. The vet diagnosed atopic dermatitis, which apparently is one of the most common skin conditions in dogs. With my limited understanding of medicine, I liken it to eczema in humans. But whatever it really is, it flares up about twice a year in Jack.

Originally we thought it was an allergy to grass as it flared up or got worse in the summer. Last year it started in April or May. This year he had one (relatively short) episode in winter. The vet explained that very cold weather could make it worse. Or very hot and humid weather. (Makes me kinda glad we don't have much of either here in Ireland!)

So we were surprised when this Spring Jack's skin remained normal. No redness, no itchiness, so sores, nothing. Then the summer came and in June we had some very hot weeks. Nothing. His skin showed no signs of redness. Hallelujah!

We were happy. We thought that maybe this was something that had cleared up for good or lessened with age and good treatment.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when it came back. As usual, it sneaked up on us, started with a little bit of redness under his belly. We thought we'll put some cream on it, that'll protect the skin (if he doesn't lick it off) and he'll be fine. Only that it got worse. No major outbreak like 2 years ago when he arrived here, mind you. But still bad enough to annoy him, to make him irritable and sore.

So we went to the vet's and got the magic pills. Atopica was the medication Peter the vet suggested last year. It was very expensive. But it worked. Within days Jack's skin was less red and itchy, and it cleared up nicely within about 2 weeks.

He's now been on the meds for 4 days and we're hoping to see a difference soon.

The itchiness has one very annoying side effect. It triggers the scratch reflex for his back legs. And since it's a reflex it happens any time. When he's sleeping. When he's walking. The latter is particularly bad because his hips are weakening as well. Or rather his muscles are. So now his legs slide apart (on surfaces like tiles or wooden floors) even more often than normal.

It also leads to Jack not sleeping well. Last night I heard him walking around on the landing and in the study, all the while one of his back paws kept knocking on the floor due to the scratch reflex. That was at 3.50 am. I got up, got him back on 'his' bed in the spare room. It's really the visitor's bed, but only if we actually have visitors. At all other times it's Jack's bed. At least that's what he thinks. So I sat there with him and cuddled him until he calmed down enough to go back to sleep.

Let's hope the itchiness disappears soon, for all our sakes!

But, hey, life isn't all that bad, not even for an old dog. Our neighbours to the left have a new dog. Well, they've had her for over two months now. It's a girl. And she's got puppies. And Jack is madly in love with her. Problem is only that Sandy doesn't like him. She snarls whenever he gets too close. Which apparently makes him pine for her even more.

So he has taken up sitting on the sofa and staring out the window, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Sandy. He is usually unsuccessful. Because not only is his hearing getting worse, he also can't see that well anymore.

But he still likes his food! And so he's a very happy dog at breakfast every day. Especially now because he gets his pill wrapped up in a small slice of ham.

There's still life in the old dog yet!

I love our garden in the summer

2010-08-11T22:03:00.000+01:00

This post could almost work without words.

Courgettes in the making.

Tomatoes outside the back door. They are yummy!

Sage

Me. Hard at work.

6th Blogoversary

2010-08-02T13:33:00.001+01:00

Due to popular demand (yes, Lane, I mean you!), there is cake to be had here today.

But you gotta be quick, as you can see there's only half of it left...

Cork Potpourri

2010-08-01T18:40:00.000+01:00

Wow, nearly a month since I have posted last.

And, double wow, nearly 6 years since I started this blog. The official blogoversary is tomorrow. There's not going to be any cake, though, so don't get too excited.

We have had Felix' sister, Evelyn, staying with us for 3 weeks and I can only say that we had a great time. We had lots of fun and went for plenty of long walks.

And took in some great views:

Felix and Evelyn made one road trip together. And then I took her to the Heritage Museum in Cobh.

The entrance area of the museum which was once the old train station. The new train station is now next door.

Before she went back home again, we made another trip to Cork City. For me, it was a trip down memory lane, as I took Evelyn along the little roads to where we first lived when we moved to Ireland (10 years ago this month! Another anniversary!). On the way we went through the grounds of St Finbar's Cathedral.

William Burges' Resurrection Angel

There is a local superstition which states that if the angel ever falls, it would signify the end of the world. Interestingly, this angel went missing a few years ago, sparking fears that the end of the world was indeed nigh. It mysteriously reappeared, though, unharmed as far as I know. Or was it just the horns (or trumpets or whatever you want to call them) that disappeared at the time? I couldn't find much online. So maybe all this is part of local history which as we all know isn't always accurate.

And then we went to University College Cork (UCC), where I studied for a year in 1998/99. More memories.

UCC main quad

Aula Maxima, UCC (where I sat a few exams at the time)

We ended up at the English Market in the City Centre, one of my favourite places in Cork City.

And had a well-deserved ice cream at the end of a good day. Al fresco.

(Note on photos: All are my own except for the first three, which are Evelyn's.)

All is well

2010-07-03T10:34:00.005+01:00

I have been busy since my last post.

Not only am I at the end of my childminding job (Monday is my last day). I have also managed to get my website live. You can now find me, or rather my holistic massage services, here.

I have received my first proper business cards (and I think they look fab!) and have started putting word about.

With the economy being as it is at the moment and summer holidays for many people upon us, I don't have much hope that anything will come out of my efforts any time soon. But, there's no time like the present and all that. So I've put up some small posters and am starting to hand out my cards.

So with all this work (both with the children and my own things) I'm glad I have my weekly Yoga class. Originally it was a course of 8 classes but I'm pretty sure that I will continue once this course is over. I'm not much into the spiritual aspect of Yoga (yet?) but I know the exercise makes me feel good and being in a room for an hour and a half, with nothing else to concentrate on but my own body, my own strength and my breath is nothing but good for me.

The added plus is that the teacher is a friend and former colleague of mine. She's only been into Yoga for a couple of years now and that is part what makes her classes work for me. She doesn't go off on a spiritual trip where newcomers like me can't follow but focuses on what is easy to feel. As she says, whether you're into the spiritual aspect yourself or not, Yoga will change you and your outlook. And you know what? She is right. I'm a lot more relaxed and I love being able to feel my own strength develop.

Aside from that - any news? Not really. Well, Germany is playing Argentina this afternoon in the quarter finals of this year's FIFA World Cup. Their last game (against England) was the first game of the World Cup that I actually watched. And it was a good one. For Germany. I won't even mention England here. So I'm going to watch this afternoon's game as well. I don't doubt that Argentina will win but if the German team can play as well as during their last game, then it could be an interesting 90 minutes.

Tomorrow Felix' sister Evelyn is coming to stay with us for three weeks. This means we have to do at least a rudimentary house cleaning today. Bah.

crafty me!

2010-06-19T18:05:00.000+01:00

I was supposed to work on my website today. Write something about massage, something about myself, set prices etc.

It's not my fault, Gabrielle aka The Green Gal is so damn crafty and inspiring. It's not my fault she has such lovely scraps of fabric at home and plenty of unused, empty jam jars. The results of her craftiness (is this a word?) can be found here.

The result of my attempt to avoid work is this:

And once the vases were done I had to go out and find some flowers to put in them, of course. My roses aren't in bloom yet.

I hope you found some excuse to avoid work today!

(On the risk of sounding repetitive, but you might have missed it before: The Green Gal is opening her brand new shop The Green Gables this weekend. Don't miss the grand opening!)

all a matter of perspective

2010-06-15T21:15:00.005+01:00

This conversation just happened outside our garden gate. I was about to walk the dogs, when two little girls from our street came up.

Chantelle (4), brandishing a brochure seemingly about a sports camp for children: "If you've got kids..."

Me (interrupting her as I was not in the mood for a Chantelle-style conversation which could take up to 2 hours): "But I don't." (As she well knows.)

Blank stares from both girls.

Keira (6): "Or grand-kids..."

Me: "Do I look that old?!"

Even blanker stares from both girls.

Me: "In order to have grand-kids you have to have kids first."

Blankest stares ever.

--
I'm 38. And while I'm no spring chicken, until tonight I thought I was still pretty young. It's all a matter of perspective.

the good news

2010-06-13T17:04:00.007+01:00

Yes, it's a bit of an evangelical title. Sorry about that.

But I do have good news. I got something in the post on Thursday. Do you want to see?

Yes, I passed my exams. With credit! Which was a bit of a surprise. I'm not trying to sound modest here, honestly. I would've been very happy with a simple pass. I was never a candidate for a distinction grade, that much was clear. But I felt one of the exams in particular hadn't gone so well and for a while I was even a bit worried I might've failed that. Which would've meant a repeat exam next year and until then I wouldn't have been able to practice. Which I am now.

Deep breath.

All weekend I've been busy setting up a website (thanks, Laurie, for the tip!), creating business cards, getting another mobile phone (I don't want crank calls or worse on my private phone) and trying to arrange insurance. And other bits and bobs.

Not that there's any particular hurry and, as Felix keeps reminding me, Rome wasn't built in a day either.

Another deep breath.

So I will write the text for my website over the coming weeks because that's how long it'll take for the business cards to arrive anyhow, and besides, there's no particular rush. Because I'm child-minding until early July anyway, so I don't have much time for anything else.

What I did have time for today, though, was harvesting our first batch of radishes. Aren't they gorgeous?!

Deep breath...

2010-06-07T13:36:00.014+01:00

When I had finished my exams a few weeks ago I was just relieved to have time for myself again, to read books that weren't text books and to generally be able to relax.

Somehow, it wasn't as I had imagined. I'm still child-minding and the little one is becoming more demanding (teething and having bouts of general separation anxiety I think) and so my work has become a bit more stressful. With the older boy I've been making cut-out dinosaurs, Lego-people and clown masks.

In the afternoon, when he is in playschool, I build brick towers with the little one or we go for walks. That's my day during the week. This job finishes at the start of July, and at this stage I am looking forward to a break then.

However, it's not all bad. I joined a Yoga class one of my friends is running. It's my 3rd beginners class in about 6 or 7 years. Somehow I never manage to keep things up or progress past a certain level. I'm now using muscles I knew I had (I did, after all, study for my anatomy exam!) but haven't used in years.

I've also been reading quite a few books that kept me busy for days at a time. Among them 'Lush Life' by Richard Price and the 1st book of the Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson (I have just started on the 2nd one - all unputdownable so far!).

Oh, and at the end of last month I was lucky enough to win a blog give-away. The lovely Gabrielle aka The Green Gal decided to give away some bunting that she'd made herself. Have a look at it in my kitchen:

Doesn't it look fab? I'm also thinking it would look great outside in the garden, should we get a nice summer this year.

As someone who loves colours but doesn't seem to have much artistic talent myself I love everything by Gabrielle I've seen so far. I would love to be able to create what she does. Alas, I'm a disaster at sewing and arts like crocheting are a complete mystery to me. But, wait for it, the good news is that in a very short while she will be opening her own online store. It'll happen the weekend after next, so I guess she's up to her eyeballs in work at the moment. You'll find Gabrielle's shop at The Green Gables and I personally can't wait to see what gems she'll be offering.

So, that's about all that's happened since my last post. Not a very exciting life at the moment but busy enough!

(Top photo, note: Completely random picture taken on a weekend walk with the dogs.)

Back to normal

2010-05-16T15:52:00.007+01:00

Yes, it is done. I'm through with all my exams, written and practical. I won't know whether I've passed until maybe the end of June, we were told it could take 6 to 8 weeks. Don't ask me why.

I guess I've passed the written ones, although the last one was a bit nasty. Everyone in our class thought so, but I suppose I'll have just scraped by.

It's amazing how difficult I found it to study. I've always known myself to be good at learning and having a good memory. What I hadn't taken into account was the fact that I hadn't studied for exams like this for about 15 years. It took me ages to get started and the most worrisome thing was that I kept forgetting things I had gone over the day before. All of this made for big nerves right before the exams.

The practical was the last exam, on Thursday morning, and it was surprisingly good. I was quite worried about it. Not because I'm not sure of what I'm doing when I'm massaging but because of the questions the examiner could've asked. She could've just asked me anything and what if I hadn't known the answer? The embarrassment!!! As it was, she was very nice and asked me something I knew. How many points she gave me for which part of the exam I don't know. I'm not even sure whether we'll ever be told how we fared exactly, except pass or fail. It would be interesting to know how we scored in each section, even if just so we know what to work on.

But now this is over and I have my weekends to myself again. Mind you, it's not that I spent all my weekends studying (maybe I should have, though). But it's just nice to be able to read a novel again without thinking that I should be reading a textbook instead. What a relief!

I had been hoping to have a week off from child-minding this coming week but that's not happening now. As it is, my 'contract' has been extended until July 5th, so I won't have any time off until then. Pity, I could've done without getting up early every day. But, on the other hand, the money comes in very handy and it's not that I don't like the job.

That's about all the news I have for you. I've been so preoccupied with the exams and studying that I have nothing else to report. We've had some fine weather lately even if it is still a little bit too cold for this time of the year. But we've spent some time in the garden already. This photo was taken literally an hour ago.

In case you're wondering, why we have plastic covers on the garden chairs, it's because there are birds (blackbirds and swallows I think) nesting in our attic and under the neighbours' roof. The amount of bird shit on the patio is astounding. Not a good time to hang laundry out, I'm telling you.

A little gem

2010-04-22T19:59:00.003+01:00

Instead of telling you what I've been doing and what I haven't (the first is working and the latter studying), I just want to share a little something with you. This is too good to keep for myself. And since I got this due to a recommendation on Twitter of all places, I'm going to pass it on.

The 'little something' is Sum written by David Eagleman, neuroscientist. It's a small book and a big book at the same time. 40 views into the afterlife, all possible, all interesting and as a whole, unputdownable. Some stories will make you smile, some might make you cry and all will make you think. I can't really tell you much more because that's impossible (try summarizing a book with 40 short essays or vignettes I suppose you'd call them). So if you come across it somewhere, in a bookshop, at a friend's house, the library, wherever, get it and read it!

We're starting to take off layers...

2010-04-11T14:49:00.008+01:00

Yes, it's so warm that we can walk the dogs without having to wear a jacket. Or even a sweater. Just in a flannel shirt was already too warm for me today.

And then we had tea in the garden. From our 'garden mugs'.

Earlier I had planted seeds of marjoram, courgettes, spinach, Swiss chard, radishes and put out the pots with sage and chilli. The chilli is yet to prove that it's chilli - I planted the seeds months ago and they have yet to show any sign of life.

Felix also did a general clean up of pots and flower beds. I helped. But not much. I do the planting around here:

We took this out today, just to air it, it was a bit musty from all the months in the shed:

Most of us were thoroughly enjoying the sun:

But one thought it was way too hot for his liking:

Guess you can always find something to complain about, if you're looking really, really hard...

A whole month!

2010-04-04T10:00:00.008+01:00

Yes, I can't believe it either. It's been nearly exactly a month since my last post. What on earth have I been doing?!

Well, we've had two birthdays in our house. Yes, in case you didn't remember it at the time, now is your chance to apologise! ;-)

We've had a very uneventful St Patrick's Day.

I've been minding the two boys every day. The little one got chicken pox 10 days ago. Oh, what fun! Luckily, I've already had them and so has the older boy, so at least we were all safe.

We've had frosty nights and icy cars in the morning for most of March. And we have had the first taste of Spring. The daffodils in our garden are in bloom. Well, some of them are. The hyacinths have poked their heads out and will be flowering soon.

I've been attending my massage course and we have been told our exams are going to be from May 10th to May 14th. This is little over a month away. I'm beginning to get worried now. It's not the practical part, I'm fairly confident with the actual massage. What I'm worried about is the Anatomy & Physiology part of the exams. There's just SO damn much to remember! And the muscles and bones are the least of my worries. It's the hormones that do my head in. Literally, ha ha.

But, I'm pushing all that aside this weekend. I have a three-day weekend and Felix is off for all of next week. So I'm just taking it easy. I'm finally catching up on my book reading. Having poured a tiny bit of water onto the power cable of my laptop yesterday, I've had no choice but to return to the books. We're not sure yet whether it's only the charger that's wrecked or if the damage is worse and it's actually the laptop itself. Knowing my luck, whatever it is, it's going to be costly!

But, on the positive side, we had hot cross buns yesterday:

I love hot cross buns, could eat them all day, with a bit of butter and some strawberry jam. Or even without the jam. I googled a recipe yesterday and realised they're not that difficult to make, so I'm now contemplating baking some after Easter. You see, the problem with hot cross buns is that you only get them around Easter. But who is going to stop me baking them, say, in June?! Ha!

What you can see to the right of the grinning Easter bunny is a tea-cosy my very industrious and talented friend Gina made as a present for me. She is great at knitting and crocheting and this kind of thing. I could barely knit a scarf, never mind anything like a tea-cosy.

That, in a nutshell is about all that happened since my last post. I hope you're all well and you're enjoying a long weekend!

Sunshine, Spring and a new haircut

2010-03-06T13:09:00.007Z

Right. This week was actually a very good week. If you've read my last post you'll know that the first week of minding the two children was very stressful. For both parties, I guess.

And then, on Monday, it was like someone had swapped little C for a totally new child. He smiles, he laughs, he wails for his food (and occasionally for his Mom, just for a few minutes, after she's left the house) and he plays. And he sleeps. Usually for at least an hour after I've dropped F off at his playschool. So we can go for a walk or for a drive and, since the sun has come out this week, I could even sit outside a cafe, have a lovely big cup of coffee and a big, fat blueberry muffin. And read up on liver functions in my anatomy book. Too much bliss isn't good for me either, I guess.

So, Spring is finally here I guess. We still have frost at night but gorgeous sunshine and mostly blue skies during the day. So it won't be long until my hyacinths and daffodils start to bloom.

And since Spring is a time of renewal I went and got my hair cut this morning. Here's the result (I thought you'd like to see what I'm talking about):

You can't see it very well in the photo but my hair is now quite short in the back, and a bit longer in front. Unfortunately I'm unable to take a photo of myself from the back, this one was hard enough. But you'll just have to believe me, I guess. :)

Have a great weekend y'all!

At the end of a tough week (and the start of a new one)

2010-02-28T10:05:00.007Z

Well, as you can see, I survived the first week of full-time child minding. Things went fairly well, considering that the little one (C, 10.5 months old) had a stomach bug over the weekend and had never been away from his Mom for longer than 2 hours or so. So on top of not feeling well at all (and requiring nappy changes every 2 or 3 hours) he was missing his mother terribly. And his big brother (F, 3.5 years old) who goes to play school in the afternoons. The afternoons were the tough times for C. Not so much for me because even though he cried a lot, basically whenever he didn't sleep or munch on his biscuit, I only had to look after one child. Dealing with the two in the morning requires a lot of patience, organisation and a very relaxed mindset.

And both are extremely well behaved, nice children. I can't imagine what it would be like having to look after two rascals.

So, my days now look like this: Get up at 7am, cup of coffee, shower, drive to work, have a quick chat with the mother of the kids before she leaves the house. Both boys wake up between 8.30 and 9.00am. Once they're both dressed, it's time for breakfast. That takes nearly an hour, with trying to get the little one to eat something that I am giving him, reminding the older boy to not play with his food and then finally cleaning up after us all. Oh, and I'm usually trying to get some breakfast in during that time as well.

Then it's playtime for as long as we can manage without the little one realising that his Mom isn't there. Once that's happened, playtime changes somewhat into 'distracting C at any cost' so he doesn't cry non-stop.

Somehow, over the course of the week C was getting used to me. The thing is, though, by now he has figured out that, even though he likes me, whenever I'm there his Mom is not.

By 1pm it's time for lunch. Then cleaning up and after that I drive F to play school, with the little one in the car seat behind me. He dozes off as soon as I turn on the children's music on CD and the car starts. Having dropped off F at play school, I usually drive for a little bit with C still asleep or, as I've done the last few days, I stop at the park, turn off the engine but leave the music playing (or he'll wake up!) and sit in the car for a while. Sometimes even I doze off!

I love this bit of quiet time every day. On one of our stops in the park we had a very nosy visitor:

This little guy was with us for about half an hour, first on one mirror, then the other. I think he was checking out the food situation in the car, hoping for a few crumbs of something or other. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be had from us.

After his afternoon nap it's time for a snack for C which he wouldn't really take this week, this may be down to the stomach virus or him missing his Mom. Or both. Then I try to play with him for a while, until he realises that his Mom isn't there and then it's time to try and calm a crying baby again. I usually do that until his Mom comes home around 5.15pm. Then we have another quick chat about how the day went and I'm off home. Finally.

So, overall, a week that was tough but not unexpectedly so. The only major complication was the fact that, after 4 days, I also got that nasty stomach virus that C had. It's been with me since, even though I thought I was over the hill yesterday. It means that instead of cooking a nice risotto for dinner tonight I will have to stick to chicken broth and salty crackers again. It'll be something from the freezer for Felix.

On top of this whole new workload I also managed to go into college yesterday for a day of classes. Normally my classes are Tuesday nights only but we have also been scheduled for 2 Saturdays. Yesterday was the first and the day after my birthday is the second (and last).

If you look at it one way I've had a very productive week. And, strangely enough, I feel quite energetic - if it wasn't for that stomach virus! I've managed to look after two children well enough (no disasters), one of them quite tricky at the moment, went to attend my Tuesday night class and went to my Saturday classes.

What I didn't manage to do is things around the house. Felix is doing a lot of the work that I would normally do. His work schedule has been changed to his benefit, so he can do both the morning and the afternoon walk with the dogs, on top of doing some of the housework. I do the evening walks then, except on Tuesdays when I've got my class. So overall, we're getting on with it and are muddling through. There's no more home cooking anymore on week nights because Felix comes home very late and won't eat a full dinner then. And this weekend there's no cooking either because I can't eat any of it.

So, please don't be surprised if you only get very occasional posts from me over the following weeks and months, I'm too busy and too tired in the evenings to post anything. At least for now. I will also have to try and squeeze in some study time, somewhere.

The good news is that Springs seems to be finally here. I walked around Cork City yesterday with nothing but a woolly jumper, no coat or jacket required. It was lovely and sunny and that made such a difference!

Hope Spring is on its way wherever you are!

an ear full

2010-02-18T17:55:00.006Z

This cute guy here has been having ear aches for the last few days. He's always had lots of gunk in his ears, so he gets an ear cleaner once a week. This week I've used that 3 times already and he still kept shaking his head and holding his head to one side. His right ear (the 'stand up' one) seemed to be blocked.

So today I had enough and took him to the vet. Peter gave him another ear cleaner, and tried to clean out his right ear a bit. Jack was quite patient but got a bit grumpy at some point, a sure sign that the ear really is sore. So we were sent home with ear drops (to be given once daily) and prednisolone tablets as an anti-inflammatory. I think he took those before, when we got him and he was in such a bad condition - including his ears. So we hope that this will help. And Jack is looking forward to get a slice of chicken or ham twice daily now. He doesn't care that it hides a tablet. Sheesh, he is so greedy he'd probably eat the tablet as it is, thinking it was a treat. I don't want to risk it though. He might realise after all and spit it out again. Chicken is much better, yes.

Nothing else has been happening here. I'm still going to start working as a full-time child-minder on Monday. And I'm still not looking forward to having so little time to study. Not that I'm doing any studying now that I've got so much time. Ahem.

Maybe I just need a good kick up the backside. And maybe I've just been listening to this song too often today. If it was a cassette tape it would be all wobbly by now, I've played it that much today.

By the way, I know next to nothing about the film, I just came across the song on its own. Has anyone see the film yet?

Still freezing

2010-02-11T11:43:00.000Z

It's still cold here and we have frost every night and in the mornings. There's no snow, however, and no rain during the day, so it's actually quite nice. This morning was absolutely beautiful, very cold but sunny and bright.

So no complaints about the weather front from us! Apart from the fact that my feet never seem to get warm these days.

We have recovered from our holiday on Achill insofar that we've gone back to work, in Felix' case, and studying in my case. Well, that's what I should be doing anyway. I'm really struggling to get down to it properly. On the other hand I'm making good progress with my case studies. I have two done completely and am in different stages of progress with the other three. In total it's 20 treatments I have to do and write up. I have done 14, with 2 more coming up this Sunday. I'm enjoying the practical side of things.

And it's good that I'm so far advanced with the case studies (some of my colleagues haven't even started yet!) as they have to be handed in at the beginning of May and, lo and behold, I'll have a full-time job as of February 22nd.

You will probably remember that I looked after a little four year old boy last year, until the end of the summer. That was for a couple of hours, once a week, only though. Now his family is back in Ireland and his mother has asked if I wanted to look after him and his 10 month old little brother full-time, for about three months. I said Yes. The older boy will be going to playschool in the afternoon, so I'll have both of them in the mornings and just the little one in the afternoons. I'm not kidding myself, it'll be tough because looking after toddlers isn't exactly a breeze. But I like the two boys and it's paid, so who am I to say No?!

The only problem is that I won't have time to study during the day and quite likely will be too tired in the evenings. That could be a problem when the exams are coming up in May. But maybe, just maybe, this is the kick in the backside I need to get my act together.

The other problem is that Felix also got more hours to teach this semester (yay, more money!). So these two will not be too happy for three months because they'll be alone a lot:

But Felix or I will manage to get home around lunchtime or early afternoon to take the dogs out for a walk, so hopefully they'll be fine. And they always have Salem the cat to amuse themselves with. ;-) And some things just have to be done. The dogs are spoiled (eh, and whose fault is that?!) and they'll just have to lump it. Same as everyone else. We can do with the money and it's going to be paying for dog food, treats and vet bills, too.

Righty-oh, that's it from here, the middle of Nowhere, out in the sticks, rural County Cork. I'm off to make a birthday card now for my Aunt and then, hopefully, I'll be able to sit down and read a chapter on the appendicular skeleton. Oh, the joys!

What a great week we've had!

2010-01-31T11:10:00.003Z

Yes, I couldn't think of another, clever, title. Because that's what we had on Achill Island - a great week with Felix' sisters.

It all started off with me forgetting my hiking boots. While packing and organising things for 4 adults and 2 dogs I completely forgot my own boots. Again. It has happened before, a couple of years ago. You'd think I'd put my boots top of my list after that first incident. Well, I didn't. So I had to go and buy new ones on Achill. That's how I ended up with a pair of great Yak boots:

Mine aren't exactly like that but similar. And I got them at a great price, too!

Achill being an island (connected by a bridge at Achill Sound), I had anticipated that we'd go for at least one bigger grocery shopping trip to the mainland. We were happy on our little island, though, and didn't leave it once in the week we stayed. The shops and supermarket on Achill had everything we needed, at a higher price probably but we didn't have to drive far or, in the case of the local shop, not at all to get bread or milk.

This was the early morning view from our house:

Yes, it was frosty at night and in the mornings but every day (except one) turned out lovely and mostly sunny. Over the top of our cars you can see a bit of grass land and then the dunes. You could walk to the beach in 5 minutes. There was a road in between but there was hardly any traffic ever, even though this was the main road running the length of the island.

This holiday will be remembered for a few things of which I have no photos.

One, it will be remembered as a reading holiday. A few times in the afternoon when I looked up I noticed that all four of us had our noses in a book while the dogs were asleep. It was usually very quiet, only the fire crackling softly. Thankfully there were two sofas in the living room, so with a bit of planning all dogs and humans fit onto the sofas.

Two, it will be remembered for the holiday when we saw a farmer and his sheep dogs at work right up the hill from where we were standing. The farmer was sitting in his car and whistling up the mountain, directing his two dogs sorting out a bunch of sheep. I have seen this on TV and read about it but never experienced it up close like this. Amazing! We had to keep our two guys on the lead which Jack wasn't too happy about. The instant he heard the whistles he started shaking, eager to go. He probably remembered the commands from before he was 'retired'. This time he had to make do with being a spectator, though.

Three, it will be remembered as the holiday where Honey ran down the Minaun mountain (1,553ft/466m) and back up, chasing either sheep or rabbits. We drove up the mountain, got out of the car and woosh, she was gone before we could even get the leads out. Felix and I spent a long time shouting and whistling after her, to no avail. Felix walked down half the mountain looking for her, with Jack in tow. Who decided to run his own mission after a while and disappeared as well. So we were two dogs short all of a sudden. Honey turned up first. I have never seen her so exhausted. We're not sure where she's been but we think she's run down most of the mountain and then back up. She is still sore today, 3 days later.
This is Felix and Evelyn admiring the view from the top of Minaun mountain - AFTER both dogs had returned:

But most of all this holiday will be remembered as very relaxing because that's what we did: Read, talk, eat, have fun and sleep:

Or, if not sleep, at least doze the afternoon away:

And of course I will remember this holiday as one where I took tons of photos, most of which I won't be able to show you, ever, or you would die of boredom. And this time I was caught in the act more than once:

And, for once, I can't say that I'm glad to be back home. I'd happily swap our 'back of beyond' and move to Achill full time. Ah, maybe one day...

Finally, snow!

2010-01-10T16:45:00.006Z

Finally, after nearly 4 weeks of cold weather and lots of ice, we got our snow in the South of Ireland, too. The rest of the country has had its share and I suspect they're already sick of it. But not us down in County Cork. Oh no! It finally started snowing around lunchtime today and the children are still outside making snowmen, throwing snow at each other or just generally having fun.

(Taken through the window, hence the blue tint. And it's getting dusky already.)

After our adventure episode yesterday I'm quite happy now today. For those of you on Facebook, you know already. An outside pipe in the back garden burst yesterday afternoon. We had a massive fountain there for about an hour as we couldn't turn off the mains (lack of tools). Luckily, we have great neighbours and Super Plumber lives in our village, too. Our neighbours went round to his house as we had no idea where he lives (a very secret location obviously, only known to the indigenous people) and alerted him to our plight. He came round in a flash and fixed a new piece of pipe with the water still going full pressure.

We had an ice skating rink in the back for a while but luckily most of the water ran off (down to our neighbours) or dried off before it froze again.

Now, with the fresh snow, the roads are even less passable than before as it's all extremely slippery. But SO pretty! And the upside is that Felix won't be able to get into work tomorrow, seeing that none of our small backroads will be cleared by then and driving conditions are just not safe enough. Praise the internet! He'll be able to do some work online at least.

I'll leave you with a shot of the big tree in our neighbours garden, seen from our back door.

Stay safe and warm, y'all!

A nice afternoon walk ...

2010-01-06T16:08:00.008Z

... in the cold.

Now, I don't think Laurie would classify this as cold. It's definitely not 'Minnesota winter cold'. But for Ireland, it's the coldest I have ever experienced.

But, the dogs don't care much. They still need to go out. And in the case of Honey, they WANT to go out. Jack could stay inside all day, he doesn't mind. He loves the bed and the sofa and the other bed. But Honey needs to run and she needs to chase birds and mice and whatever else she can find outside that's not frozen solid yet.

So we go. Slowly and carefully because it's all downhill from our house (and uphill on the way back, obviously) and the roads around here aren't gritted. So far we've always made it home without one of us breaking any limbs. Or doing themselves some other injury.

It's fun to watch the dogs skidding on the icy road, as they don't realise it's icy and it seems that they don't care much. I keep calling after Honey to slow down or she'll break something. Needless to say, I could also be mumbling some satanic incantations for all the good it does. She just keeps on running. And skidding. Occasionally.

So our afternoon walks are fun. But they're even more fun since I discovered 'ShakeItPhoto' for my iPhone. I have Gerry Hayes to thank for that. You'll find him here. He mostly sits around and drinks tea all day but occasionally he blogs. And he found 'ShakeItPhoto' for me. I have Gerry to thank for some frostbitten fingers as I just couldn't leave the phone in my pocket this afternoon. Thanks Gerry!

This nifty little application turns your photos into nostalgic Polaroids. If you have an iPhone I dare you not to get addicted. But I know most of you don't, so here are my first results from this afternoon. Go on, get jealous!

2009 - A bookish year

2010-01-05T12:33:00.002Z

I could have sworn I did a half-time list of the books I'd read in the first half of 2009 but it seems like I didn't. Either I'm getting old (I did one in 2008!) or that post has mysteriously disappeared. Either way, you don't know yet what I've read last year. And since I have nothing else to post about, except the continuing freeze here and the still icy roads etc etc etc, I thought I'd give you my list of books 2009.

January

The Skull Beneath The Skin - P. D. James
Inconceivable - Ben Elton
Tripwire - Lee Child
How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
Double Cross - James Patterson

February

Congo Journey - Redmond O'Hanlon
When We Were Orphans - Kazuro Ishiguro
Cross - Ken Bruen

March

King Solomon's Carpet - Barbara Vine
Secret Smile - Nicci French
The Alibi Man - Tami Hoag
While I Was Gone - Sue Miller
The Bonesetter's Daughter - Amy Tan
Hanna's Daughter - Marianne Fredriksson
The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards

April

Killing Me Softly - Nicci French
The Liar - Stephen Fry
Catch Me When I Fall - Nicci French
The Book Of Air And Shadows - Michael Gruber

May

Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
Gallowglass - Barbara Vine
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Death By Darjeeling - Laura Childs
The Sea - John Banville

June

Chocolat - Joanne Harris
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Memory Game - Nicci French
The Last Girls - Lee Smith
Notes On A Scandal - Zoe Heller
The Enemy - Lee Child

July

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Faceless - Martina Cole
The History Of Love - Nicole Krauss
Hollywood Wives - Jackie Collins
Empress Orchid - Anchee Min

August

Neuromancer - William Gibson
Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem - Peter Ackroyd
On The Edge - Richard Hammond
The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly
The Art Of Racing In The Rain - Garth Stein
Ein Ort Fuer Die Ewigkeit (A Place of Execution) - Val McDermid

September

Rose Madder - Stephen King
Addition - Toni Jordan
Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Torrents Of Spring - Ernest Hemingway
In The Forest - Edna O'Brien
The Interior - Lisa See

October

My Favourite Wife - Tony Parsons
Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King
Wild Decembers - Edna O'Brien
Payment In Blood - Elizabeth George
Bitter Medicine - Sara Paretsky
Chasing The Dime - Michael Connelly

November

Mane Gone Down - Michael Thomas
Snow Flower And The Secret Fan - Lisa See
Careless In Red - Elizabeth George
Such A Long Journey - Rohinton Mistry

December

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving
The Night Of the Mi'raj - Zoe Ferraris

61 books. And some of them I can't even remember, they were pretty forgettable. Two of them I didn't finish reading but I put them on this list to remember them anyway. I didn't finish these two for very different reasons. One, Tuesdays With Morrie, was so bad that I couldn't stand reading past the first few chapters. The other one, On The Road by Kerouac, wasn't bad but just didn't interest me. I'd had it on my To Read list for years but when I finally got round to it, it just wasn't that great.

Last year I have also exorcised Nicci French from my system. It's been a little guilty pleasure of mine but I've come to a point where I'm now officially sick of the same old formula that you find in every book.

January was a trashy reading month, we were in Donegal for a week with plenty of time to read and there was a bookshelf with books and once I'd finished my own books... actually the Ben Elton book wasn't bad at all, quite a lot of fun.

July was our 'trip to the Caribbean month' and I couldn't find the time to read. The books I read on the flights there and back were utter trash (Martina Cole and Judy Collins) but an easy read. The one book I read while we were there, The Time Traveller's Wife, is actually one of my books of the year. Once I got into the strange chronology of the book I loved it. I liked it so much that I definitely won't be watching the screen adaptation. It can only be wrong.

In August I visited my parents and I had so much time to read that week that I actually had to resort to reading a German book from my mother's shelf. The book itself was good, I like Val McDermid, but I kept translating back into English which kinda spoiled it for me. And it doesn't really speak for the translation.

Two books made me cry this year. Three Men In A Boat - with laughter. The Art Of Racing In The Rain - with sadness. I don't know if any of you have read this book but if you get the chance, read it. It is written from the perspective of a dog which makes it quite fun to read. Except for the very sad parts.

If I said that The Time Traveller's Wife was one of my books of the year, then The Road was the other one. It is probably the darkest book I have ever read and it gripped me immediately so that I couldn't put it down until I had finished it. It's not the first Cormac McCarthy book I've read (and neither will it be the last) but I'm pretty sure it's one of his best, if not the best. I think I read the first one (All The Pretty Horses) about 13 years ago but he still keeps amazing me with all the words you don't need to tell a great story.

So, 2009 was a year of rediscovering old favourites in the case of Stephen King and Rohinton Mistry and finding new ones, like Edna O'Brien.

And, I can tell you, 2010 has already started great with Johannes Cabal The Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard. It got this as a review copy from Waterstones and it was a total surprise. Haven't read anything so refreshing, funny and adventurous in a long time.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T09:36:00.005Z

I might be a day late but this is the first post of 2010 (2010, sounds snazzy, doesn't it?), so I'm wishing you all a very good year. May a few dreams come true, but not all - so you still have something to dream about when this year nears its end.

We've had a very quiet start to the New Year. Fireworks are illegal here (unless it's an official function type of gathering), none of the neighbours had a party, so we just watched a DVD and opened a bottle of bubbly at midnight. It was a very nice bottle that our friend Martha had brought from Germany, it was from an organic shop. A very nice bottle. Which we very nearly couldn't get open, so we were a bit late toasting the New Year. But no matter. We did get it open in the end.

It's still very cold here, for Ireland anyway. About -5 to -8 Celsius during the night and just a bit above freezing during the day. Thankfully the roads aren't icy but there's frost on the fields and hills every morning and sometimes it stays until the late afternoon. The photo is the view from the study window this morning.

Not much else to say, we will go back to hibernation after breakfast. There's books to be read. Dogs to be snuggled up to. And naps to be had.

Happy New Year!

It was the night before Christmas....

2009-12-24T15:52:00.003Z

Well, it's not night yet. It's late afternoon, the roads are very icy and it's cold but we still don't have any snow.

I've got plenty of food in the fridge, biscuits in the tins, books on the shelves and we won't run out of tea either.

All that's left to do is wish you all a very Merry Christmas in good company. And if it's your own company that you'll be spending Christmas in, then all the better as you won't have to fight anyone over the last biscuit in the tin.

Enjoy!

You gotta stop at some point...

2009-12-20T11:31:00.001Z

I know I told everyone I haven't been feeling very Christmassy at all. And it's true. I haven't. But the recent cold spell we've had here (and still have, -2 Celsius this morning, yay!) has me at least feeling wintery.

So I've been baking biscuits. Lots of them. And I have now officially run out of storage tins for them. But please don't think that I have turned our house into a 'cookie factory'. It's nothing of the sort. I just don't have that many storage tins. And then I had to give one of them up to put my baking ingredients into, the ones in open packets at least.

The reason for that is a mouse that had moved into my 'baking ingredients and general biscuit and sweet snacks storage cupboard' in the kitchen. I found out about her moving in by finding the plastic bag in which I had stored my flour bag in shreds one morning. I started to move out everything from that cupboard and found holes in packets of

flour
sugar (dark, caster, plain, icing)
cornflour
poppy seed (the mouse probably slept very well that night)
almonds
raisins
hazelnuts

and, worst of all, 5 out of 10 of my German 'Pudding' mixes (kind of a flan or blancmange type dessert).

I had to throw out all of them, obviously. I cleaned out the cupboard, thinking the mouse was probably long gone. Not so! The next morning she had eaten a hole into my one remaining packet of semolina.

That was the last straw. In went the mouse trap, a nice piece of cheese as bait. And, having all the other treasure removed from the cupboard, the mouse went for the cheese later that evening. End of mouse.

You wonder sometimes why we have one cat and two dogs (one of which is a mouse hunter, at least outdoors) living in the house...

Aaaanyways, this is why I had to give up one of my big biscuit tins - for safekeeping of my newly bought baking ingredients. In case the mouse had invited a few relatives for Christmas who are going to show up any day now. So now I'm a tin short.

But no matter, I'm only making one more batch anyway. Tuesday I've got to make a batch of cranberry biscuits as a present for one of my friends. I'm making edible presents this Christmas. So it's biscuits and pickled peppers & thyme in olive oil this year. Oh, and my own Christmas cards of course.

Are you ready for Christmas? Christmas itself is going to be quiet here, just the two of us. Or rather, the five of us (provided those mousey relatives don't turn up after all). Although neither the cat nor the dogs give a hoot about Christmas. And for the human members of the family it means, books, films, good food and lots of sleep. I'm definitely ready for that!

A new family member - for a little while

2009-12-08T12:27:00.001Z

Well, she's not so new actually. And she isn't really a full family member either. Still, I can't think why I never told you about her until today.

You may or may not know that we adopted Honey from the West Cork Animal Welfare Group. As the name already gives it away, they are a welfare group located in beautiful West Cork and they are run by a lovely lady called Jennifer. They have a website and ever since we got Honey from there I paid visits to their site.

But this is like sending a child into a candy store, just to inquire about something. The minute I clap eyes on those gorgeous dogs, all abandoned for one reason or another, I start thinking about whether our house could take another dog. Truth is, it can't. Neither can our bank account. Three animals, whether you want to think about it or not, cost a lot of money. Not only do they have to be fed, they also need to go to the vet's every now and then. At least once a year, for their vaccinations. If we go away where we can't take the dogs, they have to go to a boarding kennel. OK, this only happened once, for this summer's trip to St. John but it costs money.

And in times when salaries are being cut, extra taxes and levies imposed, we have less than in the previous years.

Unfortunately, this also means that more animals are abandoned than ever. The kennels at the welfare group now house almost double the number of dogs they were actually built for. This year they also opened up a cattery, to deal with the increasing number of homeless cats they encountered.

Anyways, a couple of months ago, during one of my irregular visits to their website and finding at least three dogs I would take home straight away, I came across their Sponsor A Dog section.

See, amongst all the dogs they take in are some that cannot be re-homed, for various reasons. Mostly it is, though, because the dogs have been too traumatised and don't trust any human enough to let them go to a family home. So the welfare group keeps those dogs in their kennels. They have an animal behavourist who comes and does some training with them to help them build up trust and confidence, but some dogs are simply staying there forever.

To make a long story short, we decided to sponsor Bailey.

Bailey is about three years old and has spent most of her life at the shelter. You can read up on her sad story here (please scroll way down the page).

Today we received a Christmas card from the welfare group and also their latest newsletter with an update on Bailey. We found that, hopefully, she won't be a part of our extended family for much longer.

It turns out that, while she is still timid, Bailey has been making good progress with the help of the animal behavourist and will soon be ready to go to a permanent home. From the New Year on she will be in the re-homing section of the website and hopefully she will find a good home that way.

This is great news and credit is due to the shelter and everyone who works for them. I expect that we will transfer our sponsorship to one of the other dogs that can't be re-homed.

That was November

2009-12-03T11:29:00.001Z

That's right, November is over. And I haven't posted in ages. When people start asking whether you're doing OK because you haven't posted in a while it's time. High time. So what have I been doing? Good question.

November was an eventful month. In a way. We've been busy.

Running and jumping through the woods. That's the dogs. I just walk.

Busy making cakes and cards:

Going to concerts, courtesy of our local Amnesty International group:

I got to go and see Steve Earle for free. It was one of the most amazing concerts I've ever been to and it had me buzzing for days afterwards, even carrying me through a routine visit to the dentist. (All my photos are so shaky and wobbly because this guy never stood still for even a second. I can't even pretend they're artfully blurred.)

Oh yes, and then Cork City and big parts of the county were flooded. You can see photos from the road going down past our house in my previous post. Ironically, many households in the city were without water for over a week but I think most of them are now back to normal.

When I haven't been doing all the above I've been busy avoiding to study, reading books (other than my anatomy and physiology book), watching DVDs and starting on my case studies for my massage training.

Yes, I have actually made a start on that. We have to do 5 case studies until about Easter. That's 5 people I have to do a series of 4 massage treatments for. They all have to be documented and those files are handed in to the examiners before we sit our exams in May. It was a bit of a leap to actually start practicing on someone other than Felix. I took the easy option and approached my friend Gina who was more than willing to be my first victim. We've had two sessions now, so I'm halfway through my first case study. Yippee!

It's actually going OK, apart from the fact that I keep messing up the sequence we're supposed to follow. Obviously, when you're practicing properly after you've qualified it's up to you how you massage and you adapt everything to suit your clients' needs. For the exams, however, we have to follow a specific sequence which goes through all the techniques and body parts in a certain order. This is to demonstrate that we are trained in everything and that we are able to perform a full body massage according to approved standards.

And I keep messing it up. I know all the techniques by now and I don't miss out on anything, it's just that I rearrange things when I'm actually massaging someone. However, I'm fairly confident that I will have the proper sequence down pat by the time the exams come around, it's just a matter of practice. Do the same thing over and over and over again and you'll remember. At least that's what I hope is going to happen.

And that was November. We're now into December and while I have worked out what I'm going to cook for Christmas I'm still not much in the mood to put up any decorations or start making biscuits. The perpetual rain here doesn't help me get into the proper mood either. Has the Christmas spirit arrived at your house yet?

P.S.: I'm currently thinking about putting the verification option back on my blog because I get quite a lot of spam comments, usually about 2 to 3 days after I have put up a new post. I hope you don't mind too much typing a few letters before you are able to post your comment. It will make things a lot easier for me.

Rainy Thursday

2009-11-19T13:30:00.006Z

We've had rain for the last week or so. Maybe even longer. I can't remember. Sometimes we managed to walk the dogs in the morning without getting wet. That was an achievement.

Yesterday things got worse. It got very windy and the rain got worse. We lost power four or five times within an hour or so. Thankfully it only lasted a short while and we didn't have to resort to reading books by candle light.

I got totally soaked walking the dogs last night before bed time. The wind was so nasty that neither of them wanted to do what we went out for. Sigh. Not only was I drenched, it was also totally pointless.

Today, the road that leads past our house and goes down the hill is flooded in the dip before it goes back up the hill. I know because I could see cars coming down the other hill (towards our place) this morning, they stopped and then turned back. The little stream in the dip below has totally flooded the road apparently.

You can see that brown band coming from the left in this picture, this is the stream. (This is the view from the study window where I'm sitting right now.)

With the weather being as it is, I'm not going outside today. Felix rang me from the way to work, saying that many roads are badly flooded and he just about made it in to work. He'll have to find another way back home tonight I guess. Problem is, almost all the roads are near rivers at one point or another. They'll probably all be flooded if it keeps raining like this. And so far, there's no end in sight.

Thankfully I don't have to go out today. I'll wait with the dogs' afternoon walk until they're close to bursting. That way they'll have to come out with me. They are already complaining but I don't think they know how bad it is outside. Jack will definitely change his mind the minute I open the door.

The plan is to weather this storm. I'm still in my pyjamas. I will keep drinking tea and eating mandarins. And maybe some banana bread later. As long as the power doesn't go again I'll be grand.

(Hope the weather is better where you are and if it isn't, just stay indoors and you'll be fine.)

=============
3pm update: I have just been down the hill with the dogs and this is what it looks like down there:

And now, one for the Ladies

2009-11-04T09:59:00.000Z

Although, let's face it, who else is reading my blog regularly?

For years I've suffered from PMS. Well, I guess Felix has also suffered but in a slightly different way. About a week to 10 days before my period was due I would already start to feel crappy. And crabby, yes. Add to that the actual days I had my period, about half of every month would be crappy for me. What a life!

A friend recommended Evening Primrose Oil to me as it had done wonders for her. I dutifully took the tablets for 5 months or thereabouts. Nothing. Absolutely nothing changed. Since I couldn't figure out anything else, I gave up.

Then, about a year ago I guess, I started drinking green tea again. I had tried it before (on recommendation of another friend) and hated it. It tasted like boiled grass, or what I imaged boiled grass would taste like.

At the time I had given up drinking coffee and was looking for an alternative to drink during the day. I ended up trying green tea again because Twinings had come out with some interesting new flavoured green teas. There was even one with cranberries! Turned out if you poured the water just before it boiled and only let the tea steep for a maximum of 2 minutes it didn't taste like boiled grass but was actually quite tasty.

So I started drinking it daily, some days I had one big mug, others I had two.

A month later I was shocked to have my period very suddenly (but on time) without having had any prior symptoms that would've alerted me. Odd. It took me a while to figure out what I had done differently that month. In the end I came to the conclusion that it was the green tea as I hadn't changed anything else in my diet or habits that month.

One month could well have been a fluke, though. So I paid attention for the next one and the one after that, all the time still drinking my daily cup or two of green tea. And the result was the same. No PMS or hardly any.

I did some (Google powered) research and ended up reading articles about why green tea would either help alleviate your PMS or would do nothing at all for you. So I knew as much as before.

But, either way, I found my PMS "drug" of choice and was able to get rid of this:

With a little help from our friends...

2009-11-02T12:47:00.002Z

A big Thank You to everyone who's clicked so many times on the link to that competition. When I entered this photo we started out as number 352 or something like that. We ended up on 12. Not bad for an old dog, eh?

The first 3 are getting dog (or cat) food, every entrant gets a money off voucher for an order from Husse and the top 50 also get a food sample.

Considering I order our dog food from Husse anyway, dutifully every month, a little money off voucher isn't bad. And someone's going to be happy with the sample. Being 1st would have been fantastic because we would've had dog food for free, for a year. I think it's my fault we didn't get to number 1 because I didn't realise that the number of hits per photo determined the winner until the competition was in its closing stages.

As you can see here, the winner is (predictably I might say) a cute little kitten and so is the 3rd placed photo. Taking this into account, a 12 year old, smelly, black and white Border Collie cum Jack Russell making it to number 12 is actually quite an achievement.

Thank you everyone!

To lighten up my day. And yours.

2009-10-20T12:37:00.003+01:00

I picked these from our garden the other day. And there's another pink rose in another vase. Yes, our roses are still in bloom. It's the middle of October.

But yesterday's weather was horrible and I fear it may have finished off at least the calendulas. The roses seem a bit hardier.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

I couldn't resist. Could you?

2009-10-13T13:43:00.004+01:00

I saw it and knew I HAD to have it. I'm not the world's maddest shopper. I love comfy clothes, like jeans and chunky sweaters and comfortable shoes. You definitely won't see me at a fashion show. It's more likely you'll spot me on "What Not To Wear" or whatever these clever advice and makeover shows are called.

But every now and then something just jumps out at me. And it happened on Sunday. I got an email from Lands' End about their latest offers and I ended up looking at their Sales section online. And then this lovely, cosy looking cardigan popped up. And with Autumn already here and Winter on our doorstep (well, almost) it looked very tempting.

What clinched it for me was the price, though. Reduced from GBP 70 to GBP 14.50. Wow!

I emailed my friend Gina the link because I knew this would be right up her street, too. And even though I had determined I wasn't going to spend any money on clothes anymore for this year (I had to buy two pair of jeans recently as my old ones are falling apart), we ended up ordering one cardigan each. Because we're sharing the postage, this lovely cardigan is going to cost us a bit less than 20 Euro each. Bargain or what?!

Now I just have to be patient until it's delivered. Which should be at the end of this week or early next week. And then I'm prepared for the chilly season!

A quick update

2009-10-05T14:06:00.003+01:00

Today is one of those days where I have a million and one little things to do. Well, some are littler than others. But they have been piling up. I'm just on my way to empty the dryer before folding the bed linen that's currently in there. And after that I'm taking the dogs for their afternoon walk. After which I will have to sit down and study. Before cleaning the kitchen counter. Or after?

But definitely not before I've shown you this photo of Salem who, for a change, is not sleeping on our bed but who snuck into the guest room to have his nap there. Right on top of Felix' clothes which were lying on the bed.

He is a lot better. Still limping but that's going to take a while. And just occasionally he still steps on the back of his paw as his leg is still weak. But we're getting there. Maybe the anti-inflammatory that Felix and I force into him once daily (and we've got the scratches to prove it!) is helping him along, too. At least I like to think that. Otherwise that little daily fight would be all for nothing.

Have a good Monday all!

A limpy cat and the referendum

2009-10-02T11:09:00.005+01:00

Last night Salem came home limping badly on his left front leg. It was a very odd limp because he didn't seem to be in pain and afraid to use the leg, it was more a dragging of his left leg. It was like he couldn't feel his paw and was dragging it on the floor.

He didn't seem to be in much pain as he let us handle him almost as usual. Still, we were worried.

So I drove him to the vet's first thing this morning. Peter the vet had a good look at him and concluded that nothing was fractured and there were no injuries to his skin either. Salem seems to have somehow damaged his radial nerve which is the largest nerve in the leg and in charge of extending the leg, wrist and toes. How this damage occurred, we don't know. Peter said it could have been a hard bump or a very awkward fall.

Prognosis depends on how bad the damage is. Peter's assessment is that about 60% of the nerve are currently "out of action" as Salem is able to occasionally use his leg like normal. There should be a slight improvement within about 2 weeks and if that's the case then he should be back to normal within a month. However, sometimes the damage is irreparable.

Salem got a shot of antibiotics, just on the off chance that there was a bite wounds somewhere that we missed and then we have a liquid anti-inflammatory to give him once daily for about 4 weeks. That'll be fun!

Since Salem is an outside cat we won't be able to keep him inside for a month or there would be murder. So he's now gone outside and the last time I saw him he was sitting on top of our compost box in the back garden. I'm obviously worried about him being outside but I hope he's clever enough to stay away from the roads and other dangers. There is no way he'd stay inside for a month without a fight and driving us around the bend.

Oh, and in other news, today Felix and I took the chance to exercise our rights as Irish citizens for the first time by voting in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Different from the elections, this was just a matter of one X in the right spot. What the right spot is is obviously up to you, if you're allowed to vote. But whatever way your thoughts run, please do go out to cast your vote today!

Intermission...

2009-09-21T16:25:00.006+01:00

While I should be studying right now I also had to walk the dogs. After their afternoon walk they usually get a small treat, Jack gets a special one that's good for his joints and Honey gets one to help keep her teeth clean.

Because I was feeling generous today I cut one pig's ear in half and gave them each one half of it. Now, I usually don't give the dogs bones or anything like this because Jack's teeth are pretty worn down and they're happy with their regular treats. I still had this pig's ear left, though, that came with my last order of dog food. Treat time for the dogs it was then!

So, this is Honey chewing on her half of that pig's ear:

After an initial sniff she was convinced this was a special treat and started chewing happily.

Now, and this is Jack with his half of the treat:

He sat there like this for about 15 minutes. Drooling, half of the ear in his mouth, the other half poking out like this. Whenever I came near him he started to growl.

Thinking he didn't know what to do with this special treat (as far as I remember he'd never had a pig's ear, not in the year he's been with us at least) I couldn't help but laugh at him. But then, once Honey had finished hers and had gone upstairs, he started to chew on it.

He was just waiting for her to leave the room! And for me to leave him in peace because once he was on his own in the living room I could hear him chewing away. He was guarding his special treat!

---------------------------------------------

(P.S.: Jack resolutely rejects the idea of him not knowing what to do with food. He was simply guarding it from Honey who is known to steal food from him. He also likes to draw your attention to his new Swedish dog bed, courtesy of IKEA!)

Back to school

2009-09-20T17:59:00.001+01:00

You may remember me telling you about my plans for 2009 which included going back to school. If you don't, you can read it again here.

Well, it's taken a while but last Tuesday I finally started the massage course I'd been wanting to take for nearly a year now. Last time I was just too late to sign up for it as classes had already started. So this year I made sure I was one of the first to register once the prospectus for the new year had come out.

Not only did we get right into things last week, but we were also sent home with an A4 size list of things to get. These include stationery like folders and notebooks but also massage supplies like towels, couch covers and of course text books. The best things on that list is the 'uniform' which we're supposed to wear. For the exams at least. It's black trousers, black shoes and a white tunic type top.

So I spent a lot of time last week shopping for the right things. Not having black trousers, except for a really dressy pair (for the one big do I attend once every decade) and black jeans, I had to go out and find a pair that was cheap enough and fit the bill. Lucky me, I ventured into the cheapest clothes store in Cork and came out with a very plain pair of black trousers for 5 Euro. Success!

Continuing the bargain hunt, I didn't go and buy the 3 books on the list in the local school book store but turned to Amazon instead, making a saving of about 6 Euro (and that's after the postage was added).

Most of the stationery supplies I ended up buying in Tesco's, a big supermarket chain, instead of the usual shops.

Now that I'm almost all sorted (some items were out of stock and will be delivered at a later stage) comes the hard part: I only have to make myself sit down to study.

The teacher was most insistent that this is a serious course (of course, you do get a proper diploma at the end, after I pass the exams at the end of May, IF I pass them that is) and we should start setting time aside for study now, instead of leaving everything till later. The lady is probably right.

So now I'm sitting here, staring at a chart of the bones in the wrist, hand and fingers. How the heck am I going to remember which one of these tiny bones is the Trapezium? And how is is different from the Trapezoid?! While I've never taken Anatomy in German I still knew the names of a lot of bones and muscles in the human body. Funny though, they've got entirely different names in English.

I don't think it's a matter of vocabulary, though. It is just that I am embarking into completely new territory. And you know what? It's dead exciting!

Sunday afternoon

2009-09-13T17:00:00.012+01:00

It's been so long that I don't even know where to start or what to say. Do you still know who I am? Have you missed me? Do I need an excuse for not posting for so long and being so lazy?

I had a great week in Germany with my parents. One day I met up with an old college friend of mine and we went shopping in town. Weather-wise that was the best day, it was just gorgeous sunshine all day. Which of course meant that we had to have some cold drinks in between our shopping escapades.

Other than that the weather wasn't so great, it was a mixed bag, not the week of glorious sunshine I had been hoping for. Maybe I jinxed it by packing my bikini, who knows. But that didn't matter so much. I read 4 books in that week, stuffed myself with cake and good food, tinkered with my parents' new digital camera (their first!) and didn't take a single photo of my own.

Back home then the weather just got worse. We had days and days of rain. The lawn in our back garden turned into a swamp. It was depressing.

But then, last Wednesday, our luck changed and the weather turned. It's now between 20 and 24 Celsius during the day and a chilly 7 or 8 degrees at night. There hasn't been any rain since last Tuesday and, according to the weather people, it's set to stay like this until next Friday. Fingers crossed.

So today we took a trip up the 'mountains' or what passes for it in our area here. We took the dogs, of course.

Honey loved it. She spent the whole time jumping around in the grass or sneaking up on mice (she never caught any, of course). Try and spot her in this photo! (Doesn't she have the perfect camouflage colour?)

Even Jack, who has been slowing down a bit lately and showing his (estimated) age of 11+, was trudging along happily.

And Felix and I enjoyed it, too. The view from up there is amazing and the sun was shining down on our backs and making the memories of all these dreadful, rainy "summer" months disappear. Sigh. This is why they're called "Sundays", I'm sure.

We are taking it easy this week...

2009-08-20T12:57:00.010+01:00

... as you can see. It's not only that the weather is pretty bad, it's rainy and warmish at the same time, but we also have a visitor. Martha, a friend from university days, has come to visit for a week. We haven't seen each other for about 5 years or so.

So we're having a good time. We're going for drives to see things, like down to West Cork.

We're eating lots of yummy food, only some of it home cooked. We're watching DVDs, reading and lazing around.

Oh, and we're taking lots of photos. Like these on our trip to the coast:

And of course, these two always come along for the ride:

You'll hear more from me over the weekend. Before I swan off to Germany on Tuesday, to visit my parents for a week.

(Photos of myself and the last two of the dogs courtesy of Martha.)

Beach Life, St. John 2009, Part 3

2009-08-04T17:14:00.007+01:00

I promised to tell you something about the beaches on St. John. It's hard to do this without getting 'wanderlust' to go back there. The fact that our summer here is more like autumn doesn't make things much easier. We definitely have our sights set on St. John for July 2010.

Arriving in Cruz Bay, St. John from the airport on St. Thomas we were way too tired to appreciate anything we saw. It was simply hot, humid and we just wanted to get to our accommodation, have a bite to eat and go to sleep.

So that's what we did. We arrived in Maho Bay Camps, registered and went up to our cabin. Too tired to unpack properly (Felix couldn't anyway, as he didn't have his luggage) we just changed into something light and went down to the pavilion to have dinner. As it gets dark at 7.30pm that's when dinner stops, too. So we didn't have much time.

The view from the pavilion is amazing and it was tempting to go down to the beach for a quick swim. But if we were tired before dinner we were completely knackered (as they say here) after eating. So we just stumbled back up the hill to our cabin and crashed into bed.

Because we went to sleep so early and our body clocks were still on Irish time we woke up at 4am. We waited until it started to get light and then we tramped down to the beach. We chose Big Maho Beach which you can only access via the Goat Trail, not steps like the ones that go down to Little Maho Beach.

The Goat Trail is literally that, a very narrow, steep trail that goes down the hill through trees and shrubbery. Felix only had his flip flop sandals that he had hurriedly bought in a shop near the ferry dock after we arrived, and it didn't make the descent to the beach easy for him.

But when we arrived, oh, what bliss! It was around 5am, there was nobody at the beach, nobody in the water either. The yachts and boats anchored in the bay looked deserted, too (everyone on board was probably still asleep). Wading out into the water nearly made me cry. The place was beautiful. The water was warm and silky smooth, with no noticeable current.

Early morning swim at Maho Bay

Both of us not really being big fans of lying in the sun all day and roast we usually got to the beach very early for a swim. Or very late.

We even went for a swim at night once. It was the evening of the wedding and we left the party fairly early, around 10pm. It was pitch dark and there are no street lamps once you leave Cruz Bay. At night the air is heavy with the scent of a particular flower the name of which we still haven't figured out. We think it might be frangipani but we're not sure. Anyway, it was dark, it was a tropical night, we'd been to a fantastic wedding (more about that some other time) and when we came back to Maho Bay we thought that a refreshing swim would be exactly the right thing.

So we just took our flashlights and went down all these steps to Little Maho Bay where we went for a swim in the dark. The only light was coming from the boats anchored in the bay. Again, we had the beach to ourselves. Nobody else was mad enough to go for a swim that late.

St. John is packed with fantastic beaches on the north shore. I admit that we didn't go to the beaches on the southern shore but apparently the northern beaches really are the best. My absolute favourite has to be Cinnamon Bay.

While Little Maho and Big (or Great) Maho were right on our doorstep, Cinnamon is bigger and we had it all to ourselves when we went there around 9am one morning. Well, almost all to ourselves. Someone had already been there and put up their chairs:

Cinnamon Bay beach

Cinnamon also had a campground nearby, and it has showers and toilets which is of course very handy.

A beach where we didn't go for a swim is Leinster Bay. That's because we just spotted it while driving past and we hadn't planned on going for a swim. Also, the beach seemed a bit rocky, so we just got out and soaked in the amazing colours. The water there really IS that blue and turquoise. It's no photographers' trick when you see those photos. (I wouldn't even know where to start to make them look that great!)

Leinster Bay

I really don't know why it is called Leinster Bay, it certainly doesn't bear any resemblance to Irish waters. At all.

The problem with taking pictures of beaches is that you take the picture looking out at the water from the beach. Unless you have a waterproof case for your camera (which I didn't) you don't take your camera out with you for a swim. So you miss everything that's behind you and you rarely get a good shot of the beach itself.

But on the Thursday the whole wedding party went on a snorkel trip around St. John on a catamaran. And on this trip I managed to get a shot of Cinnamon Bay, my favourite. Unfortunately, just at that moment a few clouds were hovering above us, so you don't get the full blast, sunshine picture. But you can still see how hilly St. John is.

Cinnamon Bay beach from a catamaran

You see, on St. John you're spoiled for choice if you want to go for a swim. A car is handy to get to all these beaches.

While we never stayed on the beach during lunchtime hours as it was way too hot then, we did go back in the afternoons. This is something you should consider carefully, though. While mosquitoes are around all the time, there is another creepy crawly that you don't want to encounter if you can help it: the sand flea, also known as no-see-um. These little blighters are near invisible and only come out in the late afternoon. Having gone for a swim at 4pm and not having applied the bug spray too carefully apparently, they feasted on me. I stopped counting after 40 bites as I got bored with it. Luckily I'm not allergic to these bites, so they didn't bother me too much as they didn't get very itchy. Apparently some people are allergic, though, and I really feel for them. I just had an interesting collection of red spots all over my legs, that was it. To my relief, I wasn't the only one who the sand fleas really liked. I saw a few people whose legs looked even worse than mine.

At Little Maho Bay

And just because I mentioned that we didn't swim at Leinster Bay, one other beach where we didn't go to swim is Trunk Bay. We went to Trunk Bay for the wedding, but that's a story for another day. You can already take a peek at the wedding location:

Trunk Bay from a vista point along North Shore Road

Ooops

2009-08-02T11:09:00.005+01:00

Nearly missed it. My blogoversary. It's today, and I nearly didn't realise. 5 years ago today I posted my first blog posts.

They were just random stuff, nothing great, not even a story. I was just playing around with how to post things. Most of the photos from those first posts were somehow swallowed up by Flickr where I originally uploaded my photos. Blogger has come a long way.

I was going to start on a beach post today, the one I promised you a while ago. But then I realised that the weather outside is so depressing that writing a beach post would just darken my mood even more. Maybe in a few days.

So instead I'll just show you the calendulas in our garden. My Mom gave me seeds when I visited my parents last winter and I dutifully put them in my flower bed a few months ago. It took them a while but they did manage to triumph over the slugs and the miserable Irish summer.

A little bit of colour on an otherwise gray and boring looking Sunday. Have a good one!

A very special place, St. John 2009, Part 2

2009-07-21T16:30:00.004+01:00

View from right: Great Maho Bay, Little Maho Bay and Francis Bay. The white spots you see between the trees are roofs of some of the cabins in Maho Bay Camps

When I booked my trip to St. John in January I took some time thinking about what accommodation to book. You basically have two options on St. John: A hotel or B&B or a private villa. The private villas usually don't have beach access but great views as most of them are up on a hill.

A villa clearly didn't make any sense for me (at that time I thought I was still going on my own but even with Felix any villa would've been too big for us). So that left the hotel or B&B/guesthouse option.

Most hotels on St. John have beach access, so that would have been a plus. The problem is that most hotels there are very expensive. At least for my pocket. So that was out. Plus, I can go to a hotel anywhere. I wanted something different.

So I checked out some of the guesthouses or B&Bs. They were all in Cruz Bay, the main town on the island. Somehow they didn't seem to give me what I wanted - close to nature, a quiet setting and something special, something that I couldn't get in Ireland. Oh, and it shouldn't break the bank, of course.

It was a tough brief. But it all suddenly fell into place when I stumbled across Maho B ay Camps. This eco-tourism resort started out in 1976 with just 18 tent cottages built within the boundaries of the Virgin Islands National Park. St. John is 75% National Park, therefore there are few traditional big resorts or hotels. Maho Bay Camps is built on wooden platforms to leave the soil undisturbed and avoid erosion. All the tents or cabins are built on stilts, connected by wooden walkways and lots of stairs. They have now grown to 114 cabins and several other buildings (kitchen, dining pavillion, bathhouses, a shop, an internet hut and lots more).

Before I booked I read up on everything I could get my hands on because I figured, paying a lot of money for flight tickets and being on the other side of the Atlantic I didn't want to end up in a place I'd hate from the word Go. The reviews, for example on Tripadvisor.com, were very helpful and mostly favourable. All pointed out the same things, though:

- Be prepared for a lot of walking as your cabin might be a good walk away from the main buildings. There are a LOT of steps to negotiate depending on where you're located.

- Take a flashlight as the walkways are not lit at night. Night falls early, it will be dark at 7.30pm.

- Take bug spray or lotion, you'll need it. Being set on a hillside, with access to the beach and in the middle of the forest you'll encounter lots of bugs.

- Don't worry about dress code, shorts, T-shirts and sandals are sufficient.

I figured that you'd get bugs pretty much everywhere on St. John, considering it's very hot and humid and there's so much forest around. One lady, though, was apparently totally freaked out by the mosquitoes and ended up moving to the slightly better equipped (and more expensive) Harmony Studios, also on the Maho Bay grounds. This one gave me food for thought. For about 5 minutes. I was going to the Caribbean - you can't avoid mosquitoes!

Some reviews were a bit scary, though. One mentioned finding a scorpion in their shoes in the morning. Yikes! I decided to ignore that one and shake my shoes out before putting them on in the morning. (Turned out I was wearing sandals or flip flops pretty much all the time and not even a scorpion could hide in there.)

I had selected Maho Bay Camps while I still thought I was going on my own. I figured there'd be plenty of interesting people in such a place, so if I felt I needed company I'd be sure to find some. As it happened, Felix decided to come with me after all and this trip was all the better for it.

Walkways in Maho Bay Camps

Both of us loved Maho Bay straight away. Yes, the heat and humidity was a lot to handle at first. Yes, there were a lot of steps (St. Felix carried both our bags all the way up to our cabin although not at the same time, remember, his bag was delayed). Yes, there were mosquitoes. Yes, there were sand fleas - and both absolutely loved me.

But our cabin was in the middle of the forest, we had little lizards in our cabin (they were our friends because they eat mosquitoes), hermit crabs living underneath our cabin and all sorts of birds twittering all day (and sometimes even at night). We had a gorgeous view from the dining pavillion where we had breakfast every day and dinner almost every night. The food was great. The other guests, as well as the staff, were all very laid back and friendly. It was easy to meet new people.

Signposts near our cabin in Maho Bay Camps

Our cabin was about 5 minutes walk away from reception and a little less from the dining pavillion. The upside was that it was a very quiet location but because Maho is in the National Park you're asked to be quiet from 10pm onwards, so noise wasn't an issue anyway.

Normally the cabins don't have a bathroom or toilet and no individual water source. Since we arrived in low season we had been allocated VIP-E cabin. I believe it's called VIP because it has its own water source (not potable, you still need to boil it for consumption but it's OK for brushing your teeth or washing dishes), is slightly bigger than the regular cabins (or maybe just a different shape, I'm not sure) and it has its own shower.

That shower was the best thing ever. Like the rest of the cabin it has no walls as such, it's made of screens and a canvas-like material. This is to a) protect you from the majority of bugs and b) to take advantage of what little breeze there is. The floor of the cabin and shower is simply made out of rough wooden boards with small gaps in between (less than a finger wide).

Having this shower meant we didn't have to treck to the bathing house as much (it was about 2 minutes walk away), only to use the toilet. And it was simply gorgeous having a coolish shower (all the water at Maho is cold or at maximum luke-warm to conserve energy but who wants a hot shower when it's 31 Celsius outside?!) in between the trees.

As for the bugs and other animals, it wasn't half as bad as some reviews had made it out to be. Yes, I got bitten by mosquitoes. But I never felt the sting. Yes, I got eaten alive by sand fleas (locally called no-see-ums for obvious reasons). I stopped counting after about 40 bites. But they weren't itchy at all. They only started getting itchy once I got back home and started wearing long clothes again. Yes, we had at least 3 lizards in the cabin. They ate mosquitoes and were really cute. The hermit crabs underneath the cabin were pretty cool, too. They move around very slowly, but they make a lot of noise rustling through the leaves on the ground.

I never told Felix that someone had mentioned scorpions. He later said if I had mentioned it he wouldn't have come with me, that would have scared him off.

It's very strange, I don't particularly like spiders, bugs and other creepy crawlies but I don't exactly get hysterical either when I encounter them. In Maho Bay it just all seemed so much part of the environment that I never gave them a second thought. There was that one big beetle I saw twice on the door of one of the toilets, the beetle with the vanilla coloured back. I just looked at him, mentally said 'Hello Vanilla Beetle', opened the toilet door and went in. I never thought twice about it. It was the same with the lizards. I called the first one Gordon, after Gordon Gecko. All the other ones were then also called Gordon because I could never really figure out if they were one and the same lizard or different ones. Judging by their size we had at least three different ones in the cabin but it could have been more. You could hear me say 'Good morning Gordon' every morning.

If I had a mouse or a lizard in our house here at home I'm 100% sure I would react differently.

VIP-E

Having written so much about the non-human inhabitants of our cabin, I'll just give you a short description of the layout of the cabin as such. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the outside of our cabin, so you'll have to make do with the one above that I found here. It's a bit old but I think it might well be our cabin, VIP-E, it looks exactly like it.

Through the door, you're standing right in the middle of the sitting and kitchen area. There are two sofas, a table with chairs and a small kitchenette. Since there's no drinking water source in the cabins you have to get your water in that blue canister, from one of the drinking water sources around the camp. This actually wasn't a big hassle for us, as every time we passed the dining pavilion, coming from the beach or going for a meal, we used to fill up our water bottles. We actually made do with one canister full for the whole week, just by filling our smaller water bottles regularly.

Through a doorway with a curtain (remember, no fixed walls or doors in any of the cabins to take advantage of the trade winds) and you're in the bedroom.

And from the bedroom we had access to our lovely shower.

That's the cabin, not much more to it. There are two ceiling fans and one portable fan. We had at least the fan above the bed going all night as it didn't really cool down at night.

You could call it rustic, certainly. But it really has all the necessities and we found ours to be very comfortable.

As for Maho Bay Camps, it is indeed a very special place. A lot of their staff are volunteers who come there to work for a minimum of one month, they get accommodation in return and a discount in the restaurant. Felix and I are seriously considering doing this. Not next year, because first we have to pay off everything we spent this year. But some time after that. IF Maho Bay Camps is still there then, that is.

Because, unfortunately, the lease for the land is running out soon and they can't afford to outright buy the land. The way things are at the moment Maho Bay Camps is set to close in July 2011 to be able to tear down all the cabins and other buildings as they need to leave the land 'as found' in January 2012. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is trying to raise enough money through donations to purchase the Maho Bay Camps land for permanent protection.

I completely support this idea as we experienced Maho Bay Camps as a lot more than just a resort. It's a place that encourages you to be careful with our natural resources, to reconsider your usage of water and electricity, to recycle (their art centre has a "Trash To Treasures" policy, they run glass making courses, clay works courses and more) and to generally be kind to the environment and the wild life. All this while you are having the holiday of a life-time!

I realise this was a very long post, I hope I didn't exhaust you. Next time we're going to the beach(es), please just follow Felix below down the 100 or so steps to Little Maho Bay....

Greetings...

2009-07-15T20:00:00.001+01:00

... from the New Irish.

Today Felix and I went to the District Court in Macroom to declare our fidelity to the Irish state.

We were told to simply show up and ask the clerk of the court to slot us in between the day's other business. Of course we were way too early. That was because we were nervous. You don't acquire a new citizenship every day. At least we don't.

We took Felix' sister Evelyn, who is visiting for two weeks, with us. She is a probation officer and was therefore keen to take a peek into an Irish courthouse.

Unfortunately, there are no photos from inside the building as we didn't dare take any photos. There weren't any signs clearly prohibiting photos but we thought better safe than sorry.

Once the clerk knew why we were there he asked Felix and myself to sit right in front. After the judge entered and the usual preliminary address by the clerk (mobile phones off etc.) he motioned Felix to the bench where he had to read out the declaration (having entered his personal details and signed it earlier in the presence of the clerk). Then it was my turn.

The acoustics made sure that everyone, even the tiniest mouse in the last corner, heard what we had to say. Then the judge smiled, signed, thanked me for my declaration and then congratulated me.

That was it. 3.5 years, a lot of paperwork, even more money and then a short cringe-worthy moment in front of maybe 50 people and that was it. We can call ourselves Irish now. Today's declaration has been sent off and we will receive our certificate of citizenship in due course. With which we can then apply for an Irish passport.

And I will not be colouring my hair green.

Whoever goes atraveling... St. John 2009, Part 1

2009-07-11T12:23:00.001+01:00

We knew it would be a long trip. It took 4 flights, Cork to London, London to New York, New York to Miami, Miami to St. Thomas, plus a layover of 8 hours in JFK. But I believed I would be able to sleep on the flight to New York or even at JFK.

I was deluding myself. Even with Laurie's tip about taking the dried cherries and some herbal sleeping/relaxation aid I wasn't able to sleep on the flight to JFK. Neither was Felix. But if there's one thing I have to praise American Airlines for (and there's more than one) it's their inflight entertainment. You have so much choice in films and other things to watch that it doesn't really get boring. I watched two episodes of House MD and was happy out. There were also at least 10 different feature films to choose from. I was very impressed. Aer Lingus eat your heart out! (On the trip to NY last year we had one feature film and you didn't even have your own screen.)

When we arrived in JFK we were able to drop off our bags immediately after customs, so at least we didn't have to lug them around with us. I knew it would be a long wait but it wasn't long enough to check into a hotel really.

What I didn't know was that JFK effectively shuts down at night. We weren't allowed through security until 3.30am. Until then we were all hanging around in the check in and arrivals area. Only one shop was open, so you could get a coffee and a little snack but that was it.

The chairs were uncomfortable and unsuitable for a nap really. So people were sleeping on the cold tiled floor or on one of the camp beds someone had put out. Unfortunately, there weren't enough for everyone and we were too late to grab one. So we spent the time until 3.30am wandering around, sitting down for a while trying to doze off and wandering around again. It was a very warm and humid night, so we also walked around outside but there wasn't much to see there either, apart from taxis.

Once we were let through security (the NY officials being famously rude) things improved slightly as at least there were enough seats for everyone, more toilets and some carpeted floor space. I found a corner to plug in my iPod charger and used the time to have a little rest.

Our 7.30am flight to Miami was on time. Interestingly enough there was an even earlier flight at 6am but that one hadn't shown up when I was booking our flights online. I'm not sure why. I have an inkling that the American website for American Airlines has different flight options than the Irish site. The problem is that the American site doesn't allow bookings with an Irish credit card. So you don't really have much choice but to use the Irish site to book. It's either that or pretend that you live in the UK because they do accept British credit cards. (Which I did to get Felix onto the same flights as myself when I booked for him, as some of the flights weren't available anymore on the Irish site where I had booked 4 months earlier. They were still available on the American site.)

Miami airport was a lot nicer than JFK but I don't remember much. It was a short stopover and the final flight to St. Thomas was on time also. By that time I couldn't have slept even if I wanted to, even if they'd had recliner chairs at the airport, I was way too nervous.

The arrival in St. Thomas was a shock. I had expected it to be hot. And it was. I knew it was going to be humid. But when we stepped off the plain it was like walking into a hot steamroom. It was like hitting a wall. And the arrivals hall wasn't air-conditioned. Everyone was milling around looking for their luggage, trying to get to the taxis and looking for something or someone.

We were looking for something, too. Felix' bag. Mine had arrived in due course with all the others from our flight. His didn't. So after checking all the other luggage belts we gave up and he went to the airline's office to report his bag missing. Sweat was pouring off our backs. It was a tiny office. It was packed with people. But it had air-condition!

His bag wasn't the only one that was delayed, that should have given us some consolation. But we were tired, we were stressed and we just wanted to get out of there and make our way to the ferry because we still had the trip to St. John ahead of us and then we'd still need to get to our accommodation. Luckily the lady behind the counter knew what she was doing and she was one of the most relaxed people I have ever met. (No surprise, she was working in an air-conditioned office!) I'll never forget the moment she said "Sir, your bag is not lost, it is just delayed!". That was the moment everything changed. We suddenly saw how common our situation was, that it wasn't the end of the world that Felix' bag wasn't there and that things would sort itself out. In short, we entered holiday mode.

We got a receipt for the delayed luggage and assurance that it would be brought to our accommodation as soon as it showed up which, according to the nice lady, would very likely be with the next flight. We were lucky in that respect because most people have to get to the ferry dock in St. John to collect their luggage. But because we were out in Maho Bay and they have a kind of taxi shuttle service set up with a local guy the airline just puts the delayed luggage on the next taxi and it's brought out to Maho Bay. Small mercies I suppose.

So, suitably calmed down we went outside with my bag and our backpacks and got a taxi to the ferry dock in Red Hook which is on the other side of St. Thomas. The taxis on St. Thomas are more like people carriers and they take 8 people or so at a time.

In the taxi we started talking with a couple who were also heading to St. John, Dave and Karen. The taxi trip to Red Hook takes about 45 minutes and there isn't much to see on the way. So we were busy talking. At some point we mentioned that we didn't just pick St. John as a holiday destination like that, we were actually going to a wedding there. The two said they were also invited to a wedding. Theirs was on Tuesday. So was ours. It turned out we were going to the same wedding. Laughter all around.

We all made it just in time to catch the Red Hook to Cruz Bay ferry. The ferry trip itself was just barely 20 minutes and it was lovely. After the heat in the arrivals hall and the taxi (the driver seemed to have switched off the air condition) the breeze was exactly what we needed.

This was the first proper look at St. John. We arrived in Cruz Bay and parted ways with Dave and Karen. We'd see them again on Monday evening when we were all going to a "meet and greet" at the Beach Bar, just off the ferry dock in Cruz Bay.

We headed off to find Mr Frett's taxi. He is a local taxi driver who has a shuttle service set up with Maho Bay Camps which is where we were heading. (On the map, Maho Bay is just above the J in the word "St. John", it's about a 30 minute taxi drive away from the main town of Cruz Bay.)

Mr Frett's taxi was easily found (this isn't his in the photo but it's very much like it, just in dark green) and I put my bag in and took a seat. Since Mr Frett himself wasn't there yet Felix decided to go and buy himself a few T-Shirts, shorts and sandals since he had nothing to wear but the long clothes he had put on more then 24 hours before in (comparatively) chilly Ireland.

The minute he walked off, Mr Frett arrived as it was time to leave. I told him Felix was still gone and if he couldn't wait which I'd completely understand, I'd have to get off and wait for Felix and we'd catch the next taxi out to Maho. Mr Frett decided to wait. Another passenger hopped off the taxi to go and find Felix to make him hurry up a bit as it turned out Maho Bay also had a shop and he'd be able to buy a few clothes there. Now two people were gone.

They both turned up eventually, separately and not without the rest of us getting slightly anxious about the delay and the fact that our partners had gone missing.

We finally were on the way to our final destination, Maho Bay Camps.

(to be continued...)

in a little while...

2009-07-09T16:25:00.000+01:00

This is going to be a bit of an apology. I had meant to have at least one post and pictures up by now.

Thing is, Felix' sister Evelyn is staying with us for two weeks and I'm kind of busy. Busy baking cakes with her. Busy going for walks with her and the dogs. Busy relaxing, watching DVDs, reading and just generally having a good time.

I'm also busy looking at photos of St. John and the wedding that people are starting to put up on Facebook. I'm getting very sentimental looking at them and I just want to go back immediately.

Oh, I have managed to upload all my photos to a Picasa web album and sent the link to friends and family. I haven't sent it to any of you because then you probably won't come by to read my posts anymore.

So, unfortunately, you'll have to wait for another while. The weather is supposedly going to be bad over the weekend, so I might manage to write one or two posts then.

(And, something else I've been busy doing is getting passport photos done and some other things organised. Felix and I have received notification that our application for Irish citizenship has been approved and now we're going in front of a judge next Wednesday for a declaration of fidelity etc. So watch this space!)

Back home...

2009-07-05T12:53:00.000+01:00

This is just a quick post to let you know that we arrived safely back home. It was a long trip there, not without a glitch, and a long trip back and we're exhausted. But it was worth it. Oh, was it worth it!

It was everything I expected and more. Everything you've seen or read about the colours in the Caribbean is true. The brochure pictures are not lying when they show you bright blue and turquoise waters and blindingly white beaches.

I'll post more over the next few days when I have sorted my photos and my thoughts.

For now I'm busy doing the laundry, showering off the sand and salt, snuggling up with the dogs (who, apparently, had a great time at the kennels) and the cat (who got into a fight and looks like a scruffy pirate), and getting used to wearing socks again.

P.S.: The photo is one of mine, just a little teaser. It's not photo shopped or enhanced in any way. This is Leinster Bay. One of the few beaches were we didn't actually go for a swim.

Countdown!

2009-06-22T08:41:00.009+01:00

Can't believe it's over 2 weeks since my last post. Where did the time go?!

It's now only 3 sleeps till our trip and I'm beginning to get nervous. We've got our bags out and are starting to pack. I still have to iron a few things. Not that they won't be creased anyway by the time we get there. But at least I'll only have to deal with new creases then, not the old ones, too.

We started taking our beta carotene capsules to help us get used to the sun. We're so used to the Irish temperatures, I imagine we'll get quite a shock when we arrive. I put up two little weather widgets here, to the left, so you can see what the temperatures are like here and also on St. John.

I had originally booked Felix and myself on the Reef Bay Hike, that's guided by National Park people on St. John. Apparently it's a very nice hike with a swim at the end and a boat trip back to town. You have to book in advance because it's in high demand.

Yesterday I cancelled that because my friend has now arranged a 'meet and greet' for all the guests that evening at The Beach Bar. Attending both would mean we'd be on our feet all day with almost no rest and it would only be our second full day there. I figure it would be a bit too much. So we'll just potter around ourselves. Apparently there are plenty of trails in the National Park, so I'm sure we'll manage on our own.

The dogs are obviously not going to be impressed, having to stay at the kennels. They can punish us afterwards, ha ha. But, cleverly, we've already got a treat lined up for when we get back. We come back to Cork on the Saturday and on Monday Felix' youngest sister is coming to stay for two weeks. Evelyn is a "dog woman" herself and Honey and Jack both love her. So hopefully this will distract both dogs from evil plots against us.

In preparation for the holiday I've had my hair cut and my eyebrows and lashes tinted. As usual, I looked like a clown on the first day. Or this is what I think anyway (Felix insists it isn't the case) as I'm so fair that the dark colour looks a bit incongruous at first, until I get used to it again. Then it looks quite nice.

I have no photos for you. Although the weather has been very nice lately I haven't really got round to taking any pictures of anything interesting. So you'll have to make do with this:

This is where the wedding reception is going to be in a week today. Doesn't it look amazing?! I will let you know if it really looked like this or if this is just a 'prettified' brochure photo.

Well, this is all I have for you today. I've got camera batteries to charge. A fridge to be cleaned. And a pre-holiday tan to be worked on.

New clothes for my blog...

2009-06-08T17:20:00.004+01:00

Well, a new header anyway. I don't think I need to change the overall colours with the new photo. Do you?

I thought with the lovely summer we had last week it was time for a change here, too. And then a fellow blogger, Korianne, suggested I look at Picnik. And she was right: It's so simple and fast! It's free, it's web based and very handy. I used to use Photoshop Elements for headers and resizing other photos but that's going to be a thing of the past now. Picnik rules!

By the way, the summer is gone now. It was gorgeous up to Friday and then the storm and rain came. Temperatures dropped drastically and we had a pretty rotten weekend. Today was a bit of a mixed bag again with a little bit of sunshine, a few showers and lots of clouds.

There's not much else happening here. Last week Felix and I both organised our Travel Authorisation for the US which you now need to get online before you travel. Last year, on my trip to New York, it was still a green form which we had to fill in at Shannon Airport before passing Immigration. It seems to be the same form, just in online format now.

Felix got his vaccinations today, so I bet his arm will be sore tomorrow. Mine was very sore for a few days after I got my injections a few weeks ago. Apparently that's normal.

Well, that's all folks. Hope you're all having a good start into the new week! Just 18 days till our trip!

How to survive an Irish summer and look 10 years younger!

2009-06-02T20:40:00.000+01:00

From this yesterday:

To this earlier today:

I know it doesn't come out too well in the photos but Jack looks like a pup again. Well, almost. If it wasn't for all the grey/white hairs in his coat that you can now see even better.

We're loving his new look! And he doesn't seem to mind. Katie, our lovely vet's assistant, said he was extremely patient, didn't even mind the clippers around his ears. He did get a bit restless when she came to his bum, though. No surprise there. He's got a sore spot around that area.

Apart from Jack looking very dapper now and hopefully having an easier time in this lovely summer weather, we can now see his sore allergy spots a lot easier.

And because Honey felt a bit left out with Jack being the centre of attention, she had to sit down and pose for me, too.

Hope you're all having a nice, summery time! (Apparently it's set to stay here until at least Thursday.)

News update

2009-05-27T22:27:00.001+01:00

First things first. Important things have happened. Felix is now coming with me to St. John, US Virgin Islands.

Yes, we're going to be stone broke after. But we're going to worry about that AFTER the trip.

And yes, this also means that Honey and Jack are going to a boarding kennel. Ann has recommended Best Buddies Kennels and Felix and I are going to have a look on Friday. We won't be able to show Honey and Jack around then because they've only had their kennel cough vaccinations today. But we will take them there to have a look before we finally leave them there when we go. Honey is surely going to take this harder than Jack (he'll be fine as long as there's food and a comfy place to sleep) but she'll also be OK.

And WE are going on holidays! It's our first long distance, proper holiday. Hooray!

Aaaaand, today I found the matching bag and sandals for the wedding. I took all your kind advice and decided that I would return the brown top that I had bought, got a refund and went and spent the money on a bag and sandals and a nice wallet (that I don't need for the wedding, obviously, but that I liked very much). And I had about a fiver left. Which I spent on the parking. Frugal or what?! (Says she who is earning next to no money but is still going on an expensive trip.)

Have a look:

Yes, the sandals aren't really blue but I thought I could get away with this sea green. You have no idea how tough it is to find a pair of sandals or similar shoes in blue or blueish. Impossible. At least in Cork today. I ended up in TK Maxx and found both there. It was the last place I was going to look as it was kind of on my back to the car park.

Now, the only thing I still need is a wedding present. All in good time.

Aaaanyway, just wanted to spread the good news and hear your verdict on the bag and shoes. Oh, and to warn you that we've made an appointment for Jack with the groomer. Well, the groomer is actually our vet's lovely assistant Katie. With Jack's skin so prone to flare ups and his allergy (we're now sure it's grass and not the food, he was fine all through the winter and it's only getting worse again since the Spring) having shorter hair will be good for him. So he's going on Tuesday. I'll make sure to take 'before' and 'after' photos!

Jack is now also chipped. Although there was a little problem as the vet's scanner wasn't reading the chip properly. He's not sure whether the chip or the scanner is the problem. So they'll check again on Tuesday when Jack goes in to get a 'haircut'. We'll see then if he needs a new chip or not.

Shhhh....

2009-05-24T16:15:00.004+01:00

... I don't want to jinx it but we're having a bit of a sunny day here. While normally May is a nice month with a good few sunny and warm days, this year it's been a big let down. So we're all enjoying it while we can.

I'm out having a cup of tea, sitting in a garden chair, reading a book.

Honey and Salem are enjoying the sun, too:

And Felix and Jack are in the new bed, having a nap. (New bed is fantastic, big, big, big and sooo comfy! We changed the furniture around a bit and now the bedroom looks great.)

A lazy Sunday afternoon. (I can hear the tune to go with that but I won't start to sing it, lest the neighbours think I've gone completely mad.)

Hope you can enjoy a similarly lazy and sunny Sunday afternoon!

...

2009-05-18T14:51:00.003+01:00

I never do two posts in one day but I just had to show you this, to help you understand why we need a new, bigger bed:

Preparations

2009-05-18T12:09:00.000+01:00

I've just come back from my GP's surgery where I saw the nurse about travel vaccinations. We went through my whole yellow vaccinations booklet from back when I was a child. Seems like I was sorted for most of the standard things anyway, she only gave me a combined Hepatitis A and typhoid vaccine. And tons of advice.

(And no, I didn't get an influenza vaccine, the picture is just for illustration purposes.)

She suggested I get a small mosquito net, that would save me fiddling around with sprays and lotions at night. Never considered it, I just assumed I'd use the lotion and spray that I've got already. But she might have a point. It's going to be hot and humid, do I really want to mess around with lotions then? I don't know, will have to think about this. Does anyone have any experience in this respect? Ever been to the Caribbean and used (or not used) a mosquito net? Let me know.

It's now only 39 days left until the big trip and it's starting to get real. I don't have ages anymore to lose another 5 kilos (I've lost 5.5kg already, since January), so that's likely not going to happen. I have to buy a few more things to take with me but most of them I have already sorted. Like sun lotion, aloe vera lotion, locks for my cabin and, most importantly, the top for the wedding.

I went off shopping last Friday with my friend Belen. We spent about 3 hours in Marks & Spencer, looking for something to go with my linen trousers. We were so set on something light blue (my friend has a light blue theme to her wedding) that, of course, we didn't find anything in blue that looked nice and fit. I tried about 10 dresses, thinking, I might forget about the top/trousers combination and go for a dress, it's a beach wedding after all. But, even though M&S has dresses in Short, Regular and Long, they were all just that tiny bit too short for me. Even the Long versions. Very disappointing. So after an hour of that I went back to trying tops to go with my trousers.

In the end I didn't buy anything blue at all, but a brown, multi-coloured top. It goes perfectly with my trousers. It's just not blue.

The blue came in, though, when Belen gave me an old beach kaftan-type thing in dark blues she's had for years. It's too big for her (Belen is tiny!) and it's a bit too dressy for the beach anyway. Funnily enough it fits me perfectly and with a dark blue strappy top underneath it looks great with my trousers. And, typically, when I asked Felix which option he preferred he thought the blue top looked better.

So now I have two options which I'll both take with me and then decide on the day what I feel like. I might end up wearing a 3 year old top that cost 5 Euro in Penney's to the wedding, what a laugh!

Option 1, brown:

Option 2, blue:

These photos don't really show much but at least you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. I really like the brown combination but the blue one might be more appropriate for a Caribbean beach wedding. On the other hand, if I wear the blue, I still need to find a blue bag to take with me. I've got a brown one, so no problems there. You'll just have to wait and see what I ended up wearing.

Tomorrow we'll get our new bed. Felix and I bought it four weeks ago and apparently it's going to be delivered tomorrow. That means we have to dismantle the old one after breakfast and carry the whole sorry lot downstairs as the delivery people will remove the old one but it has to be put out for them. They will, however, carry the new one upstairs, so that's a relief.

The old one was really too narrow for both of us and the mattress also needed replacing, so we're getting a completely new one tomorrow. A big one. Unfortunately, the delivery people cannot tell us when they'll come (not even approximately), so we'll have to be at home all day as they'll ring us only an hour in advance. But at least they could tell us what day they'll be here. *snigger* Well, we'll see what happens. They may not find us after all. Wouldn't be the first time delivery people get lost. It's mostly the ones that can't be bothered as our village is on the map, our street has a street sign and our house has got a number painted next to the door. No excuse really.

I'll have more to tell tomorrow, hopefully. Have a lovely Monday y'all!

This is May???

2009-05-17T14:19:00.008+01:00

It's the 17th of May, it's raining outside and we have the central heating on. We had exactly 2 lovely days last week where we managed to sit in the garden and I finally got the flower bed done.

But since then it's been gray and cold and pretty miserable.

So to cheer us up I made these earlier:

After less than 20 minutes in the oven they turned into these divine little things:

And after a bad week (I put my neck out on Wednesday and hurt my back on the fridge door last night) they did the trick.

Do you like the colourful silicone cups as much as I do? I saw these in the supermarket the other day and knew they were made for me. I never get round to buying the paper cases, so I never make muffins. Now I have no more excuse.

Have a good Sunday afternoon all!

A taste of Summer and we are taking it easy

2009-05-05T18:30:00.001+01:00

OK, it seems that my life is very quiet now as I can hardly think of anything to post about. In a way that's good, isn't it? That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

As you can see from the photo (and from the title, obviously), we're currently enjoying something of a taste of early summer here. It's been nice and sunny over the last few days, if a bit windy. But the breeze today was great for drying the washing, it all dried in a couple of hours today.

Salem the cat is enjoying the garden again and you can tell he's loving it. He is hardly seen inside the house, except when he's hungry and wants food. And to sleep at night. The rest of his time he spends who knows where.

Felix had his operation last Friday and came home on Saturday, sans gall bladder. Everything went OK, according to the surgeon. He's now recuperating at home, hence the taking it easy bit in the title.

Apart from taking it easy we have set up this in our back garden:

This now houses our cauliflower and broccoli plants as well as spring onions, radishes and two pots of basil. Well, future basil I hope. I found a pack of basil seeds the previous owner of the house left behind, they're seriously out of date but I thought I'd give it a go anyway and dumped the seeds in two pots. So far I've spied only one teeny green shoot. Well, maybe they're just slow.

I will have to take out the cauliflower and broccoli soon, though, as they're getting too high for the shelves. Hope they survive snail and flea attacks.

You may have noticed that I've taken off the LastFM music gadget on the left. What was once a free service is now no longer free, so I canceled my account. I'm listening to my iTunes instead. Just as good when you switch on the 'shuffle' function as you never know what you're going to get next.

Instead I have added a Twitter gadget thingy, so you can see what I've been up to. I did that because it turns out that I'm spending quite a lot of time on there. I have my Twitter account open via TweetDeck whenever I'm online and most days I'm actually enjoying the banter there. I didn't think I would because I thought 140 characters are nowhere near enough space to express yourself. What I'm finding instead is that I can't come up with enough to fill a blog post most days, so Twitter is a great substitute. Well, kind of.

Also, I'm starting to get nervous now about my trip. The airline has already slightly changed my flights, although there are no major changes and nothing will really inconvenience me. Only 52 days to go and I'm beginning to think about things like vaccinations, getting my hair cut before I go and finding a top to go with my linen trousers for the wedding. And the 1,001 things I have to take with me.

But, until then, I'm enjoying the sunshine here, long may it last!

Bright eyed and bushy-tailed

2009-04-22T19:21:00.007+01:00

... is what I am today. The coffee I had in the late afternoon might have something to do with that. But that's not all.

I went and got my new glasses today. I had an eye test and selected the new frames last Friday and they were ready today. That was pretty quick actually.

My last glasses and frames were at least six years old. Yes, and I know you should have an eye test every two years. But I was happy with my old frames, my eyesight didn't seem to have worsened, so I didn't bother.

But lately I've noticed my vision getting a bit blurry occasionally and I was bored with my old pair. So I went to Specsavers because they have great 2 for 1 offers.

So, here is the result. I did get one very subtle, everyday pair and one that's a bit more noticeable, but not exactly fancy either. You be the judge. I like them both.

Oh, what can I say...

2009-04-13T17:16:00.013+01:00

I don't know how it's possible that I've left it so long without a post. I haven't been on holidays, I haven't been ill, I haven't been working (well, apart from child minding) and I don't think I've done many other productive things.

I've wasted time online, on Facebook and on Twitter, certainly. I've read a few books, maybe that's it. None of them has been amazing, it's been mostly what I call "trashy thrillers". They're fun to read but not very memorable.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time changing my bank account. Or rather filling in all the forms the new bank needs and unearthing all the documents they want. Copy of passport. Bank statements from the last three months. Tax documents. Proof of address. And whatever else they can think of. I think I've got it all in order now, though.

And while I've been doing all these things, Spring has definitely come, there's no denying it now. The wind is still a bit chilly but there's been lots of sunshine, more than rain, over the last few days. I can hear our neighbour's lawnmower, a sure sign of the weather improving.

The gorse is brightening up the landscape with its bright yellow flowers that smell so yummy of a mixture of coconut and vanilla.

Mr Heron is back near the little river down the road from our house (which is not the river you see in the picture above, that's in Farran Wood). I'm sure it's the same one as last year. And the year before. I haven't had a chance yet to take photos of him. Not even sure it's a Him. I just like to think it is.

Flowers at the side of the road are making our daily walks with the dogs a little more cheerful now:

(These ones are actually a very pale yellow, it doesn't come out very well in the photo, this was just taken with my pokey mobile phone camera.)

Oh, and we've found a new animal on our walks, I had to look it up because I wasn't sure what it was. Turns out it's an American Mink. An immigrant mink!

(If you look closely you'll be able to spot it on the rock to the left, the little black fella. Again, apologies for the picture quality, I keep forgetting to take my camera.)

We chucked out the wood-burning stove in the living-room because it was well past it. But not until after cleaning out the chimney with the help of lovely Dani. She looked like a chimney sweeper afterwards. And we're still cleaning. I'm afraid we'll still find soot in nooks and crannies by Christmas.

We also had to have a plumber come out to fix the immersion. Amazingly enough someone did come, the day he was called, and he was early. Which is nearly unheard of in Ireland. Might the recession be responsible?

Having mentioned the big, bad R word already (I swore to myself I wouldn't, but there you go, you can't escape it), we've had to take more cuts salary-wise. And there's more on the way. The big problem is that all the cutting back measures we see seem to be haphazard and not very well thought out. And, worst of all, there doesn't seem to be a long-term plan. Most people, ourselves included, don't know how much money they'll have next month. And that's down to a government that seems to be completely unable to handle this crisis.

All we can hope for is that there will be elections soon and people will finally do what they should've done at the last election already (and, amazingly, maddeningly, didn't do): Give the current government a vote of no confidence.

Enough ranting about politics. I thoroughly sick of it, I don't even want to read the papers or watch the news.

And what have you been up to, tell me?

Enough of the good stuff

2009-03-26T14:00:00.001Z

Now that we're finally done with the birthdays and all the food that came with it this year, I'll have to pick up on my diet again. So far, I haven't dared step on the scales again. That chocolate cake my friend made and the chocolate my brother sent from Switzerland surely didn't help.

The problem is, I still have 3 large bars of the Swiss stuff left. I've put it in a cupboard in the kitchen where I don't see them every day. Nevertheless, I still know where they are, right? We'll see how it goes. So far I haven't succumbed to temptation just yet.

Spring is finally here although the weather has turned a bit unpredictable again over the last few days. We've had quite strong wind (not exactly storm but still, pretty strong) and a good number of showers as well. No point in hanging the washing out because it's either going to get wet or blown away.

With the weather turning a bit brighter (at least occasionally) I've been thinking about revamping the blog a bit. I think we need some new Spring colours. So you'll probably see a few changes over the next few days.

And now enough of the banter. Got more serious stuff to talk about. For years I've been thinking about doing the test to see if I can get into Mensa. It's been a self esteem thing for me.

In my job as a Team Manager in the call centre we had to do psychometric testing and it turned out I was in the top brackets for all the tests they did (we had 2 days of testing). In my feedback session the psychologists told me I was way overqualified for this job and they were worried I'd get bored. They were right. Well, I didn't get bored exactly. I got fed up. That's why I took a lower paid job in a different department at the time, just to get my brain into gear again.

I had been expecting these results, I wasn't completely surprised. To be honest, I was quite chuffed to have all this on paper. I've always loved brainteasers, word games, puzzles and all this kind of stuff.

So, for a while I've been thinking about doing the Mensa test. And then, last winter I finally ordered the home test and did it. It's very short and you've got a set time to do it and I thought it was very easy. Of course it's not supervised and nothing like the real test. And anyone could cheat. But if your result in that one is sufficient they invite you to take the real, supervised test.

The next possible date for me was on Felix' birthday in UCC (University College Cork). I had planned to prepare for it, eat all the good "brain food" and do some stuff online, just to get into the right mind set. And of course I did none of it. In the end I just went thinking that if I failed at least I'd know and that would be that.

The test lasted about 2.5 hours and it was HARD. I hadn't expected it to be that tough, seriously. While I was doing it I had to keep reminding myself that these tests are not designed for anyone to get all the questions right. They have to be open or they'll never be able to score everyone properly. Still, it kind of got to me that with most of the short test sequences I didn't have time to finish all the questions and in the ones where I did have the time I ended up guessing the last two or so answers because I just couldn't figure them out.

I came out of that test session completely exhausted. It felt like my brain had been fried. Plus, I had been a bit confused that nobody asked to enter your first language anywhere on the questionnaires, especially considering that one half of the tests were marked as "culture fair". The other half wasn't. But then they probably figured, if I'm taking the test in Ireland, I'd be up for it. If I wasn't able for it, I'd do the test in Germany. Which is a bit ridiculous because why would I go to Germany to do the test if I don't live there?! It's not like I'm here on holidays. I didn't find the language based tests too bad (they were hard, mind, but not impossible to solve) but I kept looking at one of the other people there, a Polish guy whose English clearly wasn't great. I kinda felt a bit sorry for him, I hope he knew what he had let himself in for.

They told us it would take 4 to 6 weeks to score the tests and then we'd hear from them. So I didn't expect the letter I got this morning. Not at all.

It was a big envelope, A4 size. I had to sit down to open it, I was a bit worried. Then I saw that the envelope was so big because they had put the Mensa membership magazine in it. That was a relief. Because why would they put that in if they didn't offer me membership?!

And I was right - I was successful! Hard to believe but my results were in the top 2% of the population which is their requirement for membership. They split the results into the Cattell Culture Fair scale (where I'm in the top 3%) and the Cattell B scale (which isn't culture fair, i.e. the language based tests) where I'm in the top 1%. In other words, all my worries about my first language not being English were completely unnecessary because I did better in the language based tests than in the other ones. Funny that.

So I did a little jig this morning when I read that letter. Not that any of this is going to get me a job or money or anything at all. It's not worth anything to anyone but me, probably. I've been thinking about why I went for it. And I guess, it's a bit like climbing a mountain. Because you can. Because you want to prove something to yourself. And others, I guess. Although I wouldn't know who that would be in my case. Don't think anyone cares about it one way or another.

And now I'm off to mind a very cute and funny 2.5 year old. Intellectually very stimulating. ;-)

And we've got another one!

2009-03-19T10:06:00.002Z

Birthday, that is. My own this time.

My friend Gina made a gorgeous cake for Felix and myself. She came by yesterday and I had a really tough time not eating a slice until today. Yes, I had a slice for breakfast. How decadent! Haven't had such a good looking (and tasting!) birthday cake in ages!

My brother Thomas had sent me a little parcel a couple of days ago. It contained a Nepalese bracelet he brought for me from his trip, a CD and 4 bars (150g each!) of the best chocolate in the world. I'm telling you, it is THE best. Cailler from Switzerland. If you can get it anywhere, buy it! One of the bars is already gone, the milk chocolate "Nougatine" one, Felix and I shared that one over the last few days. The other three are dark chocolate and, oh, how unfortunate, Felix doesn't like dark chocolate. I'll just have to eat them all by myself then.

Of course I wasn't even supposed to open the parcel until today. But since there was no note NOT to open it before today, I just did. I'm like a child that way, I can never wait. Of course Thomas told me off when he heard that I hadn't been able to contain myself.

Today is going to be a bit of a stressful day, what with childminding and my massage course. But then, tomorrow, I'll be going for lunch with some of my friends in Cork. Great opportunity for some window shopping, too.

Happy Birthday, Felix!

2009-03-14T12:35:00.002Z

(Cake not actually made by me. Mr Kipling makes great cakes, too.)

catch up

2009-03-11T11:17:00.001Z

Wow, a week has gone by and I haven't posted at all. I've thought about it a couple of times but nothing particularly interesting came to mind really.

Yesterday I took Honey to the vet for her annual booster vaccination. She was a model dog, no grumbling, no angst - she even let everyone pet her. Both the vet and his assistant hadn't met her yet. The last time we took Honey was for her last booster, a year ago, and our new vet, Peter, hadn't started yet and lovely Kate was off.

I think Honey enjoyed all the attention. We also guessed around once again what breeds might have made up her particular mix. In the end we settled for Setter and Terrier. Impossible to narrow it down any further.

While we were there I also had Honey chipped. Finding that Doberman last week made me do it. He was chipped but the chip wasn't registered, so it was of no use to the vet at all.

Honey was very brave when she got her two injections (one for the booster - small needle, and one for the chip - big needle).

Of course I also asked for an update on the Doberman. The people at the vet's haven't been able to find the owner and nobody seems to be out looking for him. I had put an ad on one of these free ad websites and a breeder contacted me asking for the chip number to see if it was one of the dogs she had sold. It wasn't. That's the only inquiry there was.

But, the good news is, there are two people interesting in taking him in. He is a gorgeous dog and it seems like they'll have no trouble finding a new home for him. One where he is actually wanted.

Felix has gone off on a conference today, he'll be back Friday. So I've got the house all to myself. Again. Well, myself and the four-legged creatures.

I'll have something to do, though. Apart from mindless internet surfing and watching TV, I mean. Because I've bagged myself a small babysitting job. Don't laugh now!

I wasn't out looking for a job, mind. I was on this free ad website where I placed the one about the Doberman and I thought, well, I could check what people charge for language grinds and tuition nowadays. Just to get an idea, to see if it's worth going back into that game. And while I was looking at language ads I stumbled across a name I knew. The lady whose job I took over in the last company I worked was looking for someone to mind her 2.5 year old son and speak German with him, a couple of afternoons a week. I thought it was quite a coincidence that I came across her ad.

Since I've minded children before and it's not a job I mind doing at all I sent her an email to see if she wanted to meet up. So we did on Sunday. And now I have my first afternoon today minding the little fella. Who is really cute, by the way. He already speaks German, since both his parents speak it as they lived in Germany for a long time. They aren't native speakers, however, hence the wish to find a native speaker as a child minder.

Clearly this is not a lifetime job or anything like it. But it'll bring in a little bit of money which might come in quite handy with all the cuts happening in this country at the moment.

So, that's about all the news there is from our little corner of the world. I'm spending my days repotting plants, walking the dogs, organising trips for Felix (after this one he's off to Dublin for two days at the end of the month). Oh, and then it's Felix' birthday on Saturday, St Patrick's Day next week and my birthday right after that. Looks like I'll be busy.

Oh, and in case you're interested, it's "only" 107 days left till I can see this view.

Updates

2009-03-03T11:42:00.007Z

... on both the dog and Felix.

Important things first - Felix is still not home. They've done a CT today and we're now waiting for the doctors to look at it and tell us what's going on. Our guess is that they'll let him go home later today since the pain is now manageable. Then they'll wait for the rest of the lab results to come through and then they'll decide on a course of action, probably next week. So at the moment, we're not much wiser than before since the endoscopy yesterday didn't show an ulcer.

And then the vet just rang me. Although the dog is chipped, the chip isn't registered. Which is a total bummer. Why have a dog chipped when you then don't register it?! Probably the breeder chipped him (they have to) and then when the dog was sold on, the new owners just didn't bother. The vet had a few more questions as to where and when I found the dog so they can ring the Gardai and the dog warden to see if any Doberman has been reported missing. What a pity.

And because I can't have a post without photos I'm going to show you that Spring has already made a valiant attempt here. That's the hyacinths and daffodils in our back garden, almost there!

And the lovely pink hyacinth in the kitchen, it's been flowering for weeks now. The kitchen smells lovely now! :)

Unfortunately, tonight is supposed to get frosty again and we'll have sleet and hail tomorrow. Great!

UPDATE (on a post titled "updates", I know, I know): Felix is finally home now. It's his gall bladder after all. It'll have to be removed but not now. The doctors said they'd have to wait 6 to 8 weeks until everything has calmed down. So he came home with a takeaway bag full of medication. I'm glad we have a diagnosis and that everything is in hand now.

Gone missing...

2009-03-02T15:59:00.001Z

... this young Doberman, about a year old.

We encountered him yesterday on our regular walk. He came bounding around the corner, happy to see someone. Jack wasn't impressed. Honey was confused. He just hopped around us, wanting to play.

Strangely enough he didn't follow us home. It was just as if he was waiting for someone at that particular spot.

When we went for our second walk, same route, he was still there. Again he was happy out to see us but then didn't follow us any further. I checked his collar but there was no tag, so no way of telling where he might belong.

With a heavy heart I had to leave him where he was.

Then, this morning, he had found his way up to our little row of houses. Every time someone opened the door he came bounding towards that person, obviously looking for someone or something.

I watched him all day. Nobody seemed to know where he belonged. Then, about an hour ago, I couldn't take it any longer. That dog looked so desperate, so lost. So I rang our vet in Macroom to see if they had heard of anyone missing a young Doberman. He hadn't but suggested I bring him in and they'd check if he was chipped and if he wasn't then they would find a good home for him. Hooray for our vet, Peter!

So I went outside and put a lead on the poor fella. He had no problem with that, he's a total pet. The problem was just getting him into the car. He stubbornly didn't want to hop on the back seat. Not even when I put treats on the seat. But, with the help of a neighbour, we lifted him into the boot in the end. Our Yaris is a kind of hatchback, so that should've been alright for him.

He was quiet during the 15 minute trip the vet's, there was not a sound from the boot. So quiet that I was getting worried. When I got out at the vets he had settled down and was looking quite comfortable there in the back. So much so that he didn't want to come out.

Peter, our vet, checked him over and agreed that he was very young, probably not much older than a year. Then he got the scanner to see if he was chipped. It took quite a while and several false alarms to find out that, indeed, he did have a chip implanted!

So, with a bit of luck, this poor fella will be going home to his family soon!

I can't tell you how relieved I am. He had been on my mind ever since I saw him first yesterday. I know I'm a softie and news must've travelled around the dog world in our area that we take in lost causes. Well, this one wasn't a lost cause and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the vet will be able to trace his owners.

(P.S.: No news of Felix yet, they're still doing tests today. We might know more this evening or else tomorrow.)

What a week!

2009-02-27T07:29:00.007Z

What a week we've been having! Are still having I should rather say.

It all started with a vomiting episode for Jack, just after my last post. Always nasty, but thankfully nothing to worry about. It didn't last long. Just caused a great amount of hassle, lots of cleaning and washing to be done. Urgh.

Then on Sunday, we didn't have any water until late in the afternoon. You see, we live out in the country, these things happen occasionally. Usually one of the neighbours rings whoever can fix things pretty soon. I mean, they all need water. But, strangely, not last Sunday. It was gone when I made coffee in the morning. I noticed because while there was still water coming from the tap the pressure was very low. By the afternoon it still hadn't come back.

And since I don't even know who to call I went round to some neighbours' houses to find out. Took a while. And it turns out one of them had just called someone half an hour ago. Eventually this someone came out and fixed it. We had water again just in time for dinner. Boy, was I glad to be able to have a shower!

Since Monday Felix had been having stomach pains again. He had this before, some time last year and he had to go into hospital in the end. They checked for ulcers and determined it was negative but that he'd had a bad inflammation and he's been on medication since.

This week it came back and he finally went to his GP on Wednesday. Who sent him straight into hospital. He stayed until the evening when I could take him home. They had given him something for the pain (including morphine!) and he did feel better.

Even though he was back home, I still had decided not to go to my Thursday night massage class. Just in case. And, boy, was that a good decision. Because by late afternoon yesterday the pain came back. With a vengeance. I drove him back into Accident and Emergency in Cork. Where, this time, he had to wait for ages to be seen. While he was still in excruciating pain. That's Irish hospitals for you.

In the end I drove home before he had been seen by anyone other than the triage nurse (who gave him 2 paracetamol against the pain, didn't help much). He called me a while later saying that he was finally inside a cubicle and was waiting to be seen by a doctor and there were 4 people ahead of him.

At midnight he rang again saying he was on a trolley in a corridor, waiting to be seen by a consultant. Because the doctor couldn't really figure out what was wrong either. They had only discharged him the day before and he should've been getting better, not worse.

At 2.20am he rang me, finally, saying he'd been brought to a room now and he was staying. Definitely for today, Friday. But probably over the weekend. They suspect it could be a duodenal ulcer and they need to run more tests (including an endoscopy, I guess) to figure it out. They may not be able to do all the tests today, so he might have to stay over the weekend to manage the pain.

I've just spoken to him again and he's on painkillers now, so he's better. However, he has of course slept hardly at all, so he's tired.

Depending on whatever tests they can do today I'll definitely go in for visiting hours at 2pm. Gotta bring him more books, his iPod, slippers and toothpaste. The necessary stuff.

Boy, what a week!

Oh, but on the positive side, dear Irene has given me a lovely award that I like very much:

Thank you, Irene! Yes, I have been good. :) Remember that I said I had to lose some weight and I was finally getting started on that? Well, I've lost 3.5kg since then. It's been a couple of weeks and I don't feel it's been a great hardship. I've even had a couple of beers and some crisps since then. There's still a good way to go (about another 10kg) but I'm on the right track I feel.

Oh yes, before I finish up and go and feed the cat - you may have spotted a new widget up on the left. That's a radio. You can listen to my favourite songs there. I've been hooked on Last.fm lately, it's a great website. Go check it out for yourself! They let you assemble all your favourite artists and you can listen to their music online, all for free. They also have a feature that recommends new music for you, based on your favourites. Oh, and they obviously give you a gadget for your blog, as you can see. I didn't put it on auto start because I hate it when music just starts playing. So it's your own choice whether you want to listen to it or not. But go and check out Last.fm anyway, whether you like my choice of music or not.

Have a good weekend all! I'll update you on Felix as soon as I have news.

UPDATE, 6pm: Been to see Felix and they're definitely keeping him in until at least Monday, so they can keep the pain under control. They sent him home before and he had to go back, in even worse pain, so I guess they want to avoid a repeat of that scenario. He's doing as well as can be expected, the pain meds he's getting only dull the pain but it's bearable he says. More tests to be done Monday, so we'll know more then. Hopefully.

Siesta

2009-02-19T14:26:00.002Z

The Good Life

2009-02-18T20:27:00.006Z

I've been stuck for things to post about lately. That's mainly because nothing much is happening in my life at the moment. I'm still very content to be at home, not having to work in an office, with complaining customers. Or complaining colleagues for that matter.

So, life is good. But can it be too good? When does good become boring? I'm not sure, I haven't found out yet. I'll let you know, though, when I do.

What I have been doing lately, is make meal plans for the week. I've never done this, on paper at least. I've always had some kind of plan in my head I suppose. But sometimes I have a brilliant idea what to make, say, on a Tuesday. And by the time Tuesday comes around I have forgotten what it was I wanted to make. Or I forgot to buy vital ingredients.

And since I like lists I figured I might just as well make a weekly meal plan. So I sit down, on a Saturday and Sunday mostly, and think of 7 meals I will be making during the coming week. That makes it easier to shop on a Monday or Tuesday. Sometimes I leave a day or two open until I have actually done the shopping, in case there are bargains to be had or something very delicious catches my eye.

And sometimes I change the plan again after I've been shopping. Like last week, when there was a bargain on broccoli. We had broccoli three times last week, in different forms. Not only was it cheap but I also love broccoli!

This whole meal plan thing also saves money, I'm sure. Because it makes me think about what I could make with things I have in the cupboard (I try and get one "cupboard meal" in every week) or what dishes I can make with something that's been on special offer in the shops. Like broccoli. ;)

The fact that I have time to do this on a weekend is a real pleasure because I also think about trying new things. I LOVE cookbooks. And I LOVE cookery shows on TV. I get tons of ideas every time I take a cookbook off the shelves. I don't make a new dish every week but I try to.

And this is a dish I tried the first time tonight. It's a great, warming soup for "almost Spring" evenings or even "still Winter" dinners. What's great is that you can just fill your bowl, get a good book and you can eat and read at the same time because all you need is a spoon in one hand. I like that!

So tonight I had Chickpea and Leek Soup. Thanks to Jamie Oliver for the recipe. (You may like him or not, he is a genius in the kitchen!) Felix will be able to try it when he comes home in about an hour. I already think it's delish!

(And yes, I am aware that bowl has a crack. But it's still my favourite soup bowl and it's staying until it falls apart completely.)

Happy Valentine's....

2009-02-14T15:16:00.006Z

This could make for an interesting meal....

I can't help it, those things just jump out at me. Papers, posters and signs. Even books sometimes. Does nobody proofread things anymore before they get published?

Do you do anything for Valentine's? We never have. I just don't see the point. If you want to be nice to your loved one you can be that any day of the year. Why just make an effort on the one day everyone thinks they have to? Isn't that a bit unimaginative?

I'm going to cook Felix a nice dinner tonight. Not because it's Valentine's day, though. Because he had to go into work today (like last Saturday, and the next 2). He'll get one of his favourite dinners tonight. And no, I'm not telling you what because then he'd know, too. :)

It's official

2009-02-10T10:40:00.000Z

It arrived this morning:

I don't think you can see it on this picture but the invite is absolutely gorgeous, all silver and they even had stamps made with their photos on them! (And one with their dog on it.)

And the venue is on the right side of St John, it's only about 3 beaches down from where I'm staying. I might be able to walk home in the evening, in case I can't get a taxi. And now have a look at this, is that a wedding venue or what?!

Early Morning Fun

2009-02-06T13:18:00.003Z

This is Jack's favourite moment of every day: When he can chase Honey out of the car and through Farran Wood. Unfortunately, he was too quick for me to get the exit from the car, they usually fall over each other.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

hibernating again

2009-02-04T15:16:00.002Z

Almost a week since my last post. There's not been much to post about, really. As you can see above 3/5 of the household are in hibernation most of the day.

We finally got a little bit of snow Monday night. It looked very pretty on Tuesday morning but it didn't last long.

The dogs don't really mind the snow. Honey doesn't anyway, she is a real all-weather dog with a great camouflage coat so you can hardly see any mud on her. Jack, on the other hand, with his white legs, usually looks like a pig when we get home from our walks.

Jack seems to like the snow. Every morning when there's been a light dusting of it on the paths in Farran Wood he keeps licking it up. It looks hilarious, he's just walking along licking the snow off the ground.

I've also been taking it easy. After booking the flights from Heathrow for the end of June I was still missing the Cork - Heathrow connection but that's now also booked. I also found 2 nice bikini bottoms in Debenhams last week. Greatly reduced, I might add.

They are partly the reason why I'm on a kind of a diet. I'm saying "kind of" because diets and I don't really go together. I hate being told what I can have for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between. Way too restrictive for me.

But I do really need to lose weight, no kidding. So on Monday last week, I started on a 5 day "detox". I think all these detox diets are humbug. What I do believe, though, is that I've eaten way too much rubbish food lately, starting with the Christmas period. So, for 5 days, I ate no dairy products, no wheat, lots and lots of veg and I also stopped the caffeine completely. No more coffee, no more black tea.

And, as the first time I gave up the coffee, I did get a headache for two days. By lunchtime the 2nd day it got better, though. Now my head feels much clearer. I only miss the taste and the smell of coffee in the morning. Badly. So I bought a jar of Kelkin's barley drink as an alternative. It's not the same but it's the closest I can get without buying decaf. Somehow the idea of decaf puts me off. I either want real coffee or none at all. The barley drink looks like coffee but doesn't really taste much like it. When we were small, we had something similar at home. Us kids had Caro coffee for breakfast. It is similar to the Kelkin stuff.

Since last Saturday I've gone back to eating dairy and wheat but in moderation and I'm watching what I eat. The overall goal is to lose about 10kg, that would be about 22 pounds I guess. A lot but since I'm not going to go on some crazy diet, I'll be losing it slowly, so it's more like a long-term plan. That means I'm going to have a beer every now and then, and I won't cut out the good and yummy stuff completely either (insert here: chocolate, cake, tortilla chips & dip, noodles, cheese etc). But, instead of snacking on crisps or other high calorie stuff while watching TV I discovered that sweet peppers and carrot sticks are actually not such a bad alternative. So far (touch wood), I'm not madly craving anything.

Other than that I haven't been doing much, apart from wasting time on Facebook I've been looking at more reviews and comments about St John and Maho Bay especially on Tripadvisor. Amazing how much you can get for your money what with all the anticipation. I'm only going on June 26th, yet I'm already having fun with that trip!

Interrupting my hibernation, I'm also still going to my Indian Head Massage classes every Thursday and I'm enjoying it. After the first class I was horribly sore but I might have mentioned that already. It got better after the 2nd class. I just hope I'm not making else sore myself!

Oh, the other day I was downstairs watching TV when I noticed that none of the four-legged inhabitants of this house were around. (Which is odd really because usually at least Jack is not far from where I am.) So I went upstairs to see where they were. And this is what I found:

Clearly, the bed is the best spot in the house at the moment. Which is why I'm heading back there now to read my book. And maybe take a little nap.

The way things go

2009-01-28T23:04:00.003Z

Sometimes you want to do something good and then things or circumstances conspire against you. You make a plan and you're looking forward to it and then it just doesn't work out. That's the way things go.

You already know that I donate blood regularly. The last time I did I saw a poster encouraging people to volunteer for platelet donation and I asked the nurses about it. They explained what's entailed and I filled in an application form. Platelet donations are needed for people with serious conditions, for example cancer patients after chemo but also other people undergoing major surgery. There are strict criteria for potential donors, for example you can't ever have had a blood transfusion nor can you have ever been pregnant.

Since I ticked all the boxes on their criteria list I figured I'd give it a shot. Platelets have a very short shelf life, so a constant supply is needed. During the donation process the platelets are filtered out and you get the rest of your blood back. So you can donate platelets more often, they ask that you go regularly, every 4 or 6 weeks. Also, the actual donation takes longer than the usual 15 minutes or so for normal blood donation, this is about an hour. You clearly have to have time on your hands. Something I definitely do.

So I eagerly awaited a response from the Irish Blood Transfusion Board (IBTS) to my application form. And it came pretty fast. They couldn't accept me because my blood contained the CMV virus. It's a herpes virus that between 60 and 80% of the population carry. It doesn't do you any harm but obviously you can't pass this on to someone whose immune system is already in bad shape. So they had to turn me down, regretfully.

This was back in November. I was very sorry that I wasn't able to donate because I don't have any problem with donating blood, I'm not scared of needles and my body replaces the blood. So why not give some of it away to someone who needs it?! Well, it wasn't to be, I would just go back to regular blood donation.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I received another letter from the IBTS. They have expanded their programme and could now also accept CMV blood as the platelets would not only go to cancer patients. I was asked to arrange for an interview in Cork, which I duly did.

The interview was today. The very first thing they checked (after taking my blood pressure) was to see if my veins were good enough for platelet donation. Now, they have to be wider and longer than they have to be for regular blood donation because the needle will be in for up to an hour as your own blood will be pumped back. The nurses back at the regular donation knew this and checked my veins after they heard I was interested. My veins are pretty good and my usual blood donation is finished in female record time of normally 8 minutes. (Men have bigger veines and therefore their blood flows faster.) The nurses really like me there because there's never any problem with me and I'm finished so fast. So they had a look and said they thought I'd be OK for platelet donation.

The nurses today didn't think so. They tried and tried, put the cuff on my upper arm, made me press a squeezy ball and looked at both arms. No good. My veins apparently aren't long enough, in the sense that they don't see enough of it in the spot where they can put the needle. They said I might end up with a massive bruise the length of my forearm when they pump my blood back after the platelets are filtered out.

There you go, it wasn't to be. It's taken me years to get my act together to start this and then my stupid veins aren't in good enough shape. I will have to go back to regular donations. :)

But, there is also good news. I booked the flights and accommodation for my Once In A Lifetime trip in June. Yay! I'm going on the 26th of June. That's ages away and I can't wait for time to fly so I can go! (And guess what, after the fiasco last time I'm not flying Aer Lingus this time.)

Back to school

2009-01-22T09:20:00.005Z

I have made my plans for 2009. I stopped working over a year ago. And while I love (in capital letters, really) being at home, looking after the dogs, reading, playing online Scramble on Facebook with Ann, cooking and generally being a lot more relaxed than ever before in my life - I figured it was time to find something to do that doesn't immediately evolve into a 9 to 5 job or anything stressful, yet could provide a little additional income and, more importantly, some new challenge for me.

It took me a long time to find what I wanted to do. I know a lot of you are really writers with some other daytime job to keep you going financially. But, while I love reading, I'm not a writer. I've tried. No good. So that wasn't an avenue I was going to pursue.

I did two stints in college. First time around I finished as a fully qualified social worker. Since that was back in Germany I would have to get my degree officially recognised here. Even after this, social work in Ireland is quite different to what is called social work in Germany. I've thought about it long and hard, but I don't want to be a social worker anymore.

The second time I went to university, after I couldn't get a job as a newly qualified social worker in Germany, I finished up with a BA in English Language & Literature and Geography. Now, while that may have helped me a lot to fit in here in Ireland, it doesn't automatically come with great job prospects.

After spending so many years in college I promised myself I was done with education. I was happy to have my weekends free and not having to complete assignments, write essays or study for exams.

So, there I was thinking about what skills I have that I could somehow convert into a job of sorts. Like I said, I don't want a full time job anywhere. What I would really like is something I can do from home and in my own time. Not as easy as it sounds.

Having figured out that none of my talents would give me what I wanted, i.e. something to do on a small scale and getting paid for it, I turned to look at interests I have that could provide me with what I wanted.

I came across my love for massage. What I love is getting a massage myself, obviously. But I have also always been interested in the physics of it, how it works, how you do it, how the human body reacts to it and so on. It didn't take me long to find a course offered by the Cork College of Commerce. It is a Diploma course in Holistic Massage and covers all the basics, from physiology to First Aid and setting up a business. This course is the basis for any other specialisation after, so you can branch out into other forms like Sports Massage. I had found what I was looking for.

The only problem is that this is a year long evening course that only starts in September/October. And, lucky me, I came across it in November. So I had almost a year to wait until I could start what I wanted to do.

Now, once I've got it clear in my head what I want to do (this goes for anything really), I need to get started. I feel the itch to do something. If I don't then this "idea" or plan is going to fade away eventually and nothing will come of it. So, just before Christmas, I enrolled in a 10 week course in Indian Head Massage. Just to have something to do. Plus, head massage is absolutely amazing and I'd love to know how to do it myself.

It was only a few days since I had booked in when I talked to one of my best friends about my plans. She started laughing. Another friend of ours sold her house and went back to Spain a while ago and left a lot of stuff in my friend's attic. Among all the furniture and other stuff is an almost brand new foldable massage table and all other equipment you need to get started with your own little business. This mutual friend of ours had done the very same course I'm going to do but then life happened and her plans changed and she had to leave everything behind. The way it looks, I will be able to get everything I need in mint condition for less than half the price. Once I've finished the Diploma course, that is. I can't believe my luck! It looks like a lot of things are falling into place.

So, I'm going to start learning something new again after quite a while.

The course starts today. After almost 9 years, I'm going back to school!

(A note on the photos: I'm the one on the far right in the 1st photo. Left is my best friend Alexandra and the little guy in the middle is Thorsten, another kid from our village. That day in September 1978 it was too cold to wear my favourite skirt, at least that's what my parents decided, so I had to wear jeans to school. I did insist on the "official" photo, that would be the 2nd picture, being taken after I had changed at home, though. Favourite skirt, favourite shoes at the time. The thing I'm holding in my hand is a kind of cardboard cornet children get on their 1st day at school in Germany. It's usually filled with sweets and little toys.)

all good things...

2009-01-20T10:00:00.001Z

... must come to an end. Stupid saying that. I wish they wouldn't.

Yes, our holiday in Donegal was good. More than that. It was fantastic!

We went to Downings which is almost at the tip of one of the northeastern peninsulas. (Bit too far from Kilcar, Laurie, we didn't get to visit your pub.)

It took us a little less than 8 hours to get there which means we really made good time, as we also took a couple of breaks on the way. Nothing long, just to stretch our legs and let the dogs have a pee.

The house was just as the pictures on the internet had promised. Yet, it was much nicer. We had a massive living room with a big leather sofa and a dining area. Gorgeous view from there. Then another room with another big leather sofa in front of the fire place and a TV. And another big table. The kitchen was smallish but well equipped. Three bedrooms, one with two double beds. Sea views from two of the three bedrooms. Unfortunately, only one bathroom. But we knew that before I booked this cottage and I figured we'd make do and rather have a great view. And we did. We also had a garden for the dogs to roam in, a patio area for the one smoker in the family and a driveway with enough space for both cars.

And, theoretically, we could've walked to the pub. In the end we didn't because there were no lights on the path to the pub and it was little more than a farm track, a bit treacherous in the dark.

It was Jack's first holiday with us and he behaved very well. Well, apart from that one day he was determined to work. With sheep. Honey had been on one trip with us before and her only problem was that her food bowl was not in the usual place, so she didn't eat as much as she would have at home. But none of our dogs starved.

Everyone immediately loved the big, comfy leather sofas:

Over the course of the week we experimented a bit, and the maximum we could fit on one sofa was either 3 humans and one dog or two humans and two dogs. We could also comfortably fit three humans. But that wasn't half as much fun.

The best about the house was the view, here are the sisters-in-law enjoying the afternoon sun:

Or take this, from outside the house:

Or, the evening view:

I was up very early every morning, so I was able to enjoy the sunrise, too:

The house was so comfy and the views so amazing that we didn't really want to go out at all. But we did.

We went to Glenveagh National Park:

We went to Horn Head:

And we went to lots of fantastic beaches.

I have tons of photos. My own 140 and then the ones my sisters-in-law took. I might just post random ones every day now until I run out. :-)

And then Jack and Honey went on holidays...

2009-01-19T11:34:00.002Z

The best thing about Donegal?

The beaches.

I think.

Or maybe the mountains?

If you ask Honey and Jack, however, you'll get a totally different answer.

The rabbits. (Of which they caught none.) But they tried hard. Very hard.

They also encountered sheep. One of them likes to chase them (Honey) and one of them likes to work with them (Jack). Jack actually herded some sheep together while we were all looking on, whistling and shouting for him to come back. The poor sheep didn't know what hit them. But, I have to say, he was a true professional. He had the one wayward sheep back with its flock in no time. (I was too preoccupied trying to call Jack back, so I totally forgot to take photos. Needless to say, he went on the leash when we went to this particular place the next day. Just in case he felt the need to work again.)

Honey, on the other hand, properly chased this lot:

The photo was obviously taken before she decided to mix things up a bit. She's definitely a chaser.

Honey also fought the famous blue ribbon of Donegal which ambushed us at one of the great beaches:

Needless to say, she did win in the end:

When Honey found no birds or sheep to chase and Jack found nothing he could herd together they started chasing each other.

Or they sat down to have their picture taken:

Or, Jack's last deed of the day, he helped Felix with his reading:

(Salem, however, was heart-broken according to our lovely neighbour who came in twice daily to feed him. But the rest of us all had a great time. More over the coming days.)

Time Out

2009-01-09T11:16:00.004Z

Today will be spent cleaning and cooking. Evelyn and Elisabeth are arriving into Cork around 7pm today.

And, as of tomorrow:

(photo "nicked" from here)

Travel Plans

2009-01-06T17:42:00.001Z

Yes, I've already spilled the beans in my last post. We're all going up to Donegal next Saturday. Felix' sisters are coming over from Germany on Friday and after breakfast on Saturday we'll be on the road.

It's a trip of about 8 hours I guess. We'll have to go with both cars as they're small cars and 4 adults plus two dogs and all the luggage (including 2 dog beds, dog food for a week and all our own stuff) wouldn't fit into one car. So it'll be quite an expedition.

There will be no internet up in the cottage we've booked (so no posts from me for a week unless I get round to preparing something before we go). But then, that's the point of the whole trip, to get away from it all. That, and showing Felix' sisters a truly beautiful part of Ireland. Felix and I have been to Donegal before, about 5 years ago or so and we loved it.

That previous trip was in summer, though. Clearly the weather won't be much to write home about this time round I expect. But we booked a house with sea view and if it gets really bad outside I don't mind sitting on the sofa all day with a cup of tea, a book and this view:

I know you're all dead jealous already. But wait. I think I can still top it all. I've been deliberating whether I should keep the next bit of news to myself for another little while and make a separate post out of it or not. As things are, I can't contain myself as I haven't been thinking about anything else since New Year's Eve.

Since I was about 13 or so I've had a pen friend from the Philippines. That was in the days of no email. We'd write each other letters very regularly, send little trinkets and also tapes that we'd recorded ourselves with music we liked and also our own voices. I was always waiting for the postman I was hoping for a letter from so far away.

We've kept in touch over the years, not as regular as before even though emails should've made that a bit easier. But lives get busier when you grow up.

My friend became a nurse and then went to the US to work. Over the years she's been working as a travelling nurse, so she's seen quite a bit of the US. I particularly loved her photos from her stay in Alaska.

Now she's back in California, permanently it seems. On New Year's Eve I got an email from her with some great news. She is getting married on June 30th and she'd like to see me at her wedding.

That in itself is marvellous, I think. Bear in mind that we've never actually met. We got close one year when my brother and I, still teenagers then, had persuaded my parents to allow us to go to the Philippines to see my friend. (Please don't ask me how we managed this, it still seems hard to believe that we actually talked them round.) In the end we didn't even get as far as booking tickets, due to beginning political unrests in the Philippines.

When I got her email I was jumping with joy for my friend. And in my reply I put the fateful words "I'd love to be there at your wedding".

And this is the kicker, she's getting married on a beach in St. John, US Virgin Islands.

Yes, the tickets are going to be ridiculously expensive (it's actually a lot cheaper to get to the British Virgin Islands from the UK as that's a much more popular destination), yes I'll lose 2 days just travelling, yes I'll have to go alone (Felix will be working, plus tickets for two would put this financially out of reach for us at the moment) but I'll be going to the Caribbean!!!

I haven't actually booked the flights or the accommodation yet as I'm still waiting for the "official" invitation, i.e. the paper version. Depending on whether my friend is making group arrangements for her family and other friends to stay at one particular hotel, I'll be booking my own accommodation. And I have found just the place.

It all started out by looking for something that wouldn't break the bank. And something where I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb, travelling on my own. Looking at the prices I immediately rejected most of the bigger hotels on the island. B&Bs or small hotels were an option, however, the reviews were very mixed. Plus, I like having a bit of space to myself, more than just a tiny bedroom and the option to cook a (simple) meal.

So I ended up at Maho Bay Camp. It started out in 1976 as one of the first eco-tourism destinations. Have a look at the link and you'll probably know why I'm so excited about this.

Go on, tell me you're jealous! :-)