Our lights are fixed (yay) which only means I have no excuse for not doing my essay on Lady Chatterley. I haven’t written an essay in about 10 years. I vaguely remember having to do one a week at uni and breezing through them in the space of an afternoon. Now the thought of doing one is quite terrifying.
I’ve raided every library in town for books and journals and I’ve done nothing but read about DH Lawrence for about 3 weeks now, but I haven’t actually written a word yet. And it’s due in less than 2 weeks.
Holy crap.
Someone help me. Or shoot me.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
Somehow I never realised quite how far north we live
It’s dark.
It rained so hard our electricity box exploded in a pretty shower of sparks and we have no lights.
We got up for work and it was dark, so we brushed our teeth by candlelight and watched the sunrise from the top deck of the bus.
When we got home from work it was dark. We lit more candles and made sandwiches. It seemed wrong to talk loudly so we whispered.
The sun set just after 4pm. We’ve turned the laptop on to light our game of scrabble.
The halogen heater sends a fiery eye across the room and back, over and over. Soon we’ll turn it off. And the laptop battery will die.
And then we’ll tiptoe through the darkness up to bed.
And I don’t mind at all. It seems right and peaceful to be in the dark at this time of year. As if we’ve been stubbornly trying to hold back a tide and now that we’ve lost the battle, we can relax and enjoy the waves.
At some point you have to accept the fact that you’re only 1000 miles from Scandinavia.
It rained so hard our electricity box exploded in a pretty shower of sparks and we have no lights.
We got up for work and it was dark, so we brushed our teeth by candlelight and watched the sunrise from the top deck of the bus.
When we got home from work it was dark. We lit more candles and made sandwiches. It seemed wrong to talk loudly so we whispered.
The sun set just after 4pm. We’ve turned the laptop on to light our game of scrabble.
The halogen heater sends a fiery eye across the room and back, over and over. Soon we’ll turn it off. And the laptop battery will die.
And then we’ll tiptoe through the darkness up to bed.
And I don’t mind at all. It seems right and peaceful to be in the dark at this time of year. As if we’ve been stubbornly trying to hold back a tide and now that we’ve lost the battle, we can relax and enjoy the waves.
At some point you have to accept the fact that you’re only 1000 miles from Scandinavia.
Monday, 9 November 2009
The Domestic Slob-ess
In Emily-Ville public enemy number one is Her Domestic Goddessness, Ms Nigella Lawson.
We hate her because she’s voluptuous in a sexy way (and not just ‘fat’ like the rest of us). We hate her because she only uses Italian flour. We hate her because her children’s birthday parties are filled with homemade cupcakes and homemade lemonade. We hate her because she can cook.
And we hate her because Babes quite fancies her.
Oh, he pretends he respects a woman who refused to learn to sew/knit/clean/cook or darn at her mother’s knee because she was too busy reading Jane Austen. But, deep inside, his inner bourgeois caveman is salivating at the image of Ms Lawson sucking freshly whipped cream off one perfectly manicured finger, wearing nothing but an apron as she serves him the home-cooked meal she’s spent her entire day on.
I can’t cook. And that’s different, and worse, than ‘I won’t cook’. I might, if I could, but I just plain suck at it. And what’s more, I have not the slightest interest in food. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach I’m seriously screwed. It’s only a matter of time before he runs off with a chef.
I have tried. But it turns out owning a hundred cookery books does not count. Especially if most of them are by Nigella, (Babes actually bought me the 'Domestic Goddess' book. Subtle.) because her recipes do not work for mere mortals. I think she does this on purpose to make the rest of us look bad.
But, however evil Nigella may be, there’s really no excuse for the state of my fridge this week. It was so bad I took a photo.
The sad thing is this is nothing new. It normally looks like this or worse, and I admit to throwing out about half the contents of this picture because they were off.
So, after a soul destroying 2 hours in Sainsburys, it now it looks like this!
Eat my flour dust, Nigella, you 1950’s throwback!
Actually it's not much better, is it? But look closely, there's SALAD in there. I am the uber domestic goddess, thank you very much.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Pimp my Pumpkin
I’ve been a bit absent on the blogosphere recently, but autumn is always a really busy time for me. At the moment I have two part time jobs, I’m doing two courses, I’m out 4 nights a week, and I’m working Saturdays. And something had to give.
Actually several things have ‘given’ and I’m beginning to think it’s not worth it. When your time and energy become really limited you start to see where your priorities lie. So far the things I’ve ditched in favour of fitting in a few more hours at work include blogging, writing, reading for pleasure, seeing my friends, seeing my family, seeing my husband, cooking, eating, housework, carving a pumpkin for Halloween, exercising, food shopping, gardening, watching re-runs of House, and ironing my clothes.
Some of these things I can live without. A little time pressure can be good for weaning you off watching too much TV. And I’m a terrible cook anyway. But when I realised I couldn’t even be bothered getting a Halloween pumpkin I knew things had gone too far.
So I rushed out and got one and carved it on Saturday. Well, I tried anyway. He’s not so much ‘terrifying’ as ‘harmless village idiot’ but it was the best I could do. My brother in law carved about 12 brilliant ones with a scalpel. They were very professional. But then his dog ate 3 of them and threw up in the middle of the party.
How was your Halloween?
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
The Nightmare Before Christmas
My blog is officially 1 year old! I looked back at the first few posts and it really doesn’t feel like a year ago all that stuff happened. How time does fly.
And now we’re back to the pathetic-ness that is Halloween, Ireland style. How does America manage to do 3 major holidays in the space of 2 months and do each of them bigger than us, when we can just about manage to work up a sweat over Christmas? For Halloween we stick a paper witch up in the office and try to pretend it isn’t happening.
Did you know the whole pumpkin thing came from Ireland. And was originally a turnip cos we’re not allowed colourful vegetables. And we haven’t moved on much. I remember turnip lanterns when I was wee. Try carving one of those. It’s like granite. And doesn’t taste much better.
Pumpkins are much nicer. Though my Granny would have had nothing to do with them. She might even have called them ‘newfangled’. And I do feel like a bit of a traitor using pumpkins instead of turnips. Or I would if I had any national pride. But I do hate admitting that America is in fact better at everything.
Oh well, I’m off to disembowel my pumpkin with an ice-cream scoop. What a way to go.
Anyone know any good ghost stories?
And now we’re back to the pathetic-ness that is Halloween, Ireland style. How does America manage to do 3 major holidays in the space of 2 months and do each of them bigger than us, when we can just about manage to work up a sweat over Christmas? For Halloween we stick a paper witch up in the office and try to pretend it isn’t happening.
Did you know the whole pumpkin thing came from Ireland. And was originally a turnip cos we’re not allowed colourful vegetables. And we haven’t moved on much. I remember turnip lanterns when I was wee. Try carving one of those. It’s like granite. And doesn’t taste much better.
Pumpkins are much nicer. Though my Granny would have had nothing to do with them. She might even have called them ‘newfangled’. And I do feel like a bit of a traitor using pumpkins instead of turnips. Or I would if I had any national pride. But I do hate admitting that America is in fact better at everything.
Oh well, I’m off to disembowel my pumpkin with an ice-cream scoop. What a way to go.
Anyone know any good ghost stories?
Monday, 26 October 2009
First Wives Club
On Saturday the library staff chucked the toddlers out, locked the shutters and decided we needed a drink. So off we went into town to get hammered. There was dancing and flirting, there were margaritas and falling over. And in the midst of it all, as usual, there was a good old bitch about the men (or lack thereof) in our respective lives.
This is standard practice for a girls’ night out and it would be extremely bad form not to join in wholeheartedly. And I did try. But it occurred to me that, in terms of men trouble, I’ve got nothing on these girls. I looked around me and did a mental summary of all the marriages represented. It looked like this:
Anne – widowed at 34
Fiona – husband left her with two young children. In process of getting divorced.
Judith – see ‘Fiona’
Sharon – Husband left ‘for some space’ and was seen last week with another woman
May – husband left when second child was 2 weeks old
Teri – had a fight with her husband before coming out and spent the night looking for someone to have an affair with in between yelling at him on her mobile
Maddie – on husband number 2. We don’t talk about husband number 1.
Sarah – widowed at 45.
Kate – stuck in a country she hates because she had a child with an Irish man, who she left when he hit her.
Roisin – see ‘Kate’ except he didn’t hit her, he just left her.
Tara – husband left 7 years ago for another woman and is in the process of trying to take Tara’s house.
Jocelyn – on husband number 2. He’s a manic depressive, 20 years older than her, with severe OCD. I dread to think what husband number 1 was like.
Amy – has a boyfriend she seems to like. But she’s only 20, give her time.
I don’t know whether to be grateful that I’m, apparently against all odds, happily married, or terrified that this is the unavoidable future of all married women. Is it just a librarian thing? Either way I’m screwed.
It’s not even the fact that people split up that I find so awful. These things happen, people fall out of love or fall for other people, and that’s bad enough, but it’s the fact that they seem to turn into absolute b*stards in the process.
This person was once the love of your life, and that may not be true anymore, but how do you go from that to the lies, bitching, underhanded tactics, using the kids as weapons and generally unbelievably hurtful and inconsiderate behaviour that seems to characterise all divorces? You wouldn’t treat a vague acquaintance so badly.
I’m looking at Babes and trying to imagine a future where the man who rushes to the kitchen if I so much as look thirsty could abandon me with a newborn or sleep with someone not much older behind my back. How could you be so horrible to anyone, never mind the person you’ve spent a huge part of your life with? What turns perfectly average husbands into such cruel arseholes? Is it just a midlife crisis thing? Cos if it is, buy a sports car! Don’t hit/abandon/publicly humiliate your wife!
I really find this quite depressing. How do you divorce/affair proof your marriage. Are there any successful marriages left?
This is standard practice for a girls’ night out and it would be extremely bad form not to join in wholeheartedly. And I did try. But it occurred to me that, in terms of men trouble, I’ve got nothing on these girls. I looked around me and did a mental summary of all the marriages represented. It looked like this:
Anne – widowed at 34
Fiona – husband left her with two young children. In process of getting divorced.
Judith – see ‘Fiona’
Sharon – Husband left ‘for some space’ and was seen last week with another woman
May – husband left when second child was 2 weeks old
Teri – had a fight with her husband before coming out and spent the night looking for someone to have an affair with in between yelling at him on her mobile
Maddie – on husband number 2. We don’t talk about husband number 1.
Sarah – widowed at 45.
Kate – stuck in a country she hates because she had a child with an Irish man, who she left when he hit her.
Roisin – see ‘Kate’ except he didn’t hit her, he just left her.
Tara – husband left 7 years ago for another woman and is in the process of trying to take Tara’s house.
Jocelyn – on husband number 2. He’s a manic depressive, 20 years older than her, with severe OCD. I dread to think what husband number 1 was like.
Amy – has a boyfriend she seems to like. But she’s only 20, give her time.
I don’t know whether to be grateful that I’m, apparently against all odds, happily married, or terrified that this is the unavoidable future of all married women. Is it just a librarian thing? Either way I’m screwed.
It’s not even the fact that people split up that I find so awful. These things happen, people fall out of love or fall for other people, and that’s bad enough, but it’s the fact that they seem to turn into absolute b*stards in the process.
This person was once the love of your life, and that may not be true anymore, but how do you go from that to the lies, bitching, underhanded tactics, using the kids as weapons and generally unbelievably hurtful and inconsiderate behaviour that seems to characterise all divorces? You wouldn’t treat a vague acquaintance so badly.
I’m looking at Babes and trying to imagine a future where the man who rushes to the kitchen if I so much as look thirsty could abandon me with a newborn or sleep with someone not much older behind my back. How could you be so horrible to anyone, never mind the person you’ve spent a huge part of your life with? What turns perfectly average husbands into such cruel arseholes? Is it just a midlife crisis thing? Cos if it is, buy a sports car! Don’t hit/abandon/publicly humiliate your wife!
I really find this quite depressing. How do you divorce/affair proof your marriage. Are there any successful marriages left?
Monday, 19 October 2009
Anarchy in the Stacks
I WANT THIS T-SHIRT!
Babes found it here.
It says on the site
I might get a tie to tie round my head too.
Babes found it here.
It says on the site
"In the librarian rap battle of the century , one would be left standing, the rest would be dewey decimated, and there was only one rule of the stacks:
Anarchy.
May book befoulers be kept looking over their shoulders. Every time they go to underline, highlight, dog-ear, or let a young child handle a book shortly after eating something with jelly, may they remember that some librarians don't believe in law."
Anarchy.
May book befoulers be kept looking over their shoulders. Every time they go to underline, highlight, dog-ear, or let a young child handle a book shortly after eating something with jelly, may they remember that some librarians don't believe in law."
I might get a tie to tie round my head too.
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