-
Nearly Never Ran The…
Last Sunday was my second ‘competitive’ running race of the year. I run at least once a week with the Balbriggan Road Runners group. There are not enough superlatives to describe how great and supportive they all are. Normally on a run day I chart my progress using my FitBit to time how long it takes me to run the distance we’ve set ourselves that night, it’s always over 5km though. Which makes it easy to see how I’m doing from one day to the next, one route to the next. Competitive running (so to speak) is a bit different because we have a chip in a bib number that…
-
Monitoring Your Child’s Internet Access
I originally wrote this piece in 2013 and unfortunately I’m reviewing it today in the light of discussion about children’s internet access and online safety today.
-
How Does She Do It?
It’s a question I’m often asked. I try to explain my weekly work schedule in the home and outside of the home and I see people’s eyes glaze over. In truth, the writing part of my life is not a hardship. I could sit at a computer and write my heart out. Some days I have to restrain myself from writing too much and ignoring all the other tasks put on pause while I write something that’s on my mind.
-
Mental Load – Food For Thought
There’s a point in a recent documentary on RTÉ1, called Ireland’s Health Divide, where Dr Eva Orsmond can’t get her head around a woman from Limerick buying so much processed food. The woman says that she doesn’t buy Coke (Cola) anymore because it’s worse than the other bottles of fizzy drinks on the countertop in front of her. Then Dr Eva looks incredulously at the woman not understanding how she came to that assumption. Perhaps even with more than a little judgement.
-
Leaving Cert Results Day
Being ancient (according to my children) means that I remember this day in crystal moments, not as a full day. Driving my mother mad by not collecting my results until later on in the day. Crying bitter tears as I missed my number one choice on the CAO by 5 points. Going to another school with friends to get their results. Standing in a local pub with a drink in my hand that evening not knowing how to celebrate as I felt like I’d failed.
-
Learning From A Two Week Digital Detox
Originally published in October 2015. Sure it’s only two weeks I said to myself as I mailed my essential contacts to let them know that I wouldn’t be available for a fortnight. I set up a blogpost so that readers would know what I was up to. Then I deleted social media applications from my smart phone. Yes. I deleted them so that I wouldn’t be tempted to use them. I turned off every single notification I could, after I’d made sure to take a note of all-important passwords. Yep I was ready to become disconnected. In August 2014 I did something similar, but this time it was for a…
-
Opinion: Food Headlines Worth Banning
Let’s ban the urgency of headlines when talking about food when talking about food OMG if you read one thing about food today, read this, quick. Before everybody else reads it. Does this sound familiar to you? It certainly does to me, and I’m tired of it. A quick trawl through articles published in Ireland by bloggers, online magazines, and newspapers in the past month reveal the following headline samples:
-
Crying Over Onions
It was the onions. The blasted onions. Everything up until I started watering the onions was manageable. I had kept my emotions relatively in check. Then as I started to water the onions the memories flooded back and I started to cry. There was a glass of water on the table at tea time in the Summer. We’d invariably have fresh salad for tea. Home cooked ham, tomatoes, lettuce, a slice of homemade brown soda bread, but not cucumbers. Grandad didn’t particularly like cucumbers. In the glass on the table would be fresh baby onions or giant scallions, peeled but still in one piece. Eye-wateringly peppery in taste. Grandad used…
-
Tuesday 19th July, 2011 – Tracker Mortgage Update
I’m crying. Big fat dirty tears of despair are running down my face. It’s the kind of ugly cry that I never want to be seen in public, yet here I am. Standing in the Community Welfare Office with my husband, trying to figure out how we will manage while he’s temporarily laid off over the Summer months. The Welfare Officer shifts in her seat, embarrassed. I turn and push the buggy away from the window that separates (protects) the staff from the public. Eyes sympathetically follow me as I wrestle a tissue out of my pocket, push the buggy with our 2 year old with one hand and blow.…
-
Homegrown Food 2017
Every evening when I get back from the allotment I look at my hands. They’re not as soft as they used to be, yet the children still say my touch is just as light as when they themselves were pumpkin-sized. They’re not the prettiest hands you’ll see and after a long day working at the plot there will always be a little lingering dirt even after the third soak. These are the hands that nourish my family, I grow food, and then cook it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way This is my seventh year of growing my own food on an allotment but I grew some food…
-
What Happens From Here?
I’m starting 2017 in a state of flux because so much is up in the air. What happens from here? How will we manage our mortgage/bills and what are my plans for the future? It’s a question I’ve been asked quite a bit over the past few weeks or so, since we finally got our letter and confirmation from Ulster Bank that we were indeed on the wrong interest rate for about the last 6+ years. We have been wrongly charged, we know that we ended up in arrears, needlessly for a substantial part of them.
-
The Solstice Brought Hope
Wednesday morning, long, LONG, before the dawn, I tweeted a message about the days getting longer and that the Solstice brought hope. I’ve not been sleeping very well, the stress of everything has been taking its toll. Later on that day as I waited for the letterbox to click, just as I have done everyday since the CEO of Ulster Bank made that promise at the Oireachtas Finance Committee, I felt that hope wane. The letterbox didn’t click at the usual time and the day got longer. Still no sign of the postman. I sent out a message to the neighbours asking had the postman been yet. Yes, he had,…
