"You just end up buying things for them, you never shop for yourself anymore," said a friend of mine, when I was expecting my first baby. And indeed, lots of other people have echoed that since. Many's the mum who has had a rare child-free shopping trip, only to find herself shopping for her kids. I ...
"Well if you could just stop asking stupid questions!" said the loud man on the DART, making me jump. He wasn't talking to me, he was talking to a woman sitting opposite him. My eyebrows went up. Who talks to anyone like that? "Here's another one," he said then, "Why did the dog cross the road?" Ah. ...
As I surveyed the entire contents of my shopping bag yesterday - two packets of similar-but-not-the-same crackers and nothing else at all - it struck me that this scene, and the lead-up to it, quite aptly summed up my parenting. It started when we realised we were out of cream crackers, and I had to go to ...
A day off while the kids are in school? I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it. As for a whole week? Never. And I'm guessing most parents are the same - it feels like a waste to take a week off when the kids are in school or in crèche. Annual leave is precious, ...
"S. Q." *sniffle* "U. I." *sniffle* "R. R. E. L." *full-blown tears* That was my five-year-old one evening recently, doing his spellings for his upcoming test. It was 5.30pm and I really should have stopped at that point, but I figured if he could just get the spellings done, we'd leave the tricky-word revision for another day. I was chatting ...
Rhonda Doyle has been working with eBay since they first set up in Dublin in 2004, taking on a number of different roles as the company expanded. She lives in Sandymount, Dublin with her son Jack and husband Jeff. Here, she talks about the benefits of flexible working, the challenge to find me-time, and why ...
At 9.34pm on Monday night, I pressed send on book 2, and off it went into the ether. Obviously nobody was at the other end of the email at 9.34pm on Monday night, and it wasn't due in until Tuesday but I needed to stop editing and let it go. Then I sat back to watch ...