So. Here we are. Still here. Still here! What is it – week 6? Week 66? Week 974? Does it even matter? We're just pushing through as best we can, knowing that there is an end in sight, and knowing that we've done this before and we've come out the other side. So what are ...
Lockdown ate our summer. It's a small thing in the bigger scheme; an it-is-what-it-is kind of thing. But still. I spent July worrying that the schools might not open in September and that we'd be back to homeschooling, then by the time it was announced that schools would open, and we could finally relax and ...
"This week is crazy," I said to my husband. "It'll calm down next week," he said, and I nodded. "Who are you kidding," said the little voice inside my head. "You've been saying it'll calm down next week since 2007, and it still hasn't." This is true. I've even blogged about it before I think (here) and I've ...
I am glum. I have no excuse. No reason to be glum. I mean, yes, it's been raining for 457 days solid now, so that might have something to do with it. This morning, for the first time this week, we could walk to school again. Such joy in that walk. And then back came the ...
One day, when I was eight, my teacher asked each of us to stand up and sing solo, one by one. I still remember the fear, standing up to sing the song. And I still remember the sting of humiliation when the girl beside me burst out laughing at my terrible singing. I still remember resenting Ms ...
Facing into a bout of temporary solo parenting, I had one and only one worry on my mind. It probably should have been mornings - how I'd get them in to school on time. My husband does most of the morning stuff while I amble from room to room telling various children to get up, then stand ...
Back at the turn of the century (the turn of this one I mean, I'm not here since the 1900s, despite what my kids think) I was working in my first job, and at the time, there was a preoccupation with productivity. Predicting it. Measuring it. Improving it. You can't manage what you can't measure, ...
"We'll fit loads in over the next few weeks," I'd said to the kids two weekends ago, not wanting to say what I really meant, which was, "There are only twelve more days left of summer holidays, let's make the most of it." Because I didn't want them on the countdown that I was already ...
It was eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and we'd been chatting to and entertained by our hosts, Jean and Dónal, for about an hour at that stage. We'd only met Dónal that morning but we'd meet Jean two days earlier when we'd arrived in her Airbnb in Ballybunion. She had welcomed us like old friends, although having ...
After 18 months of searching, fourteen thousand buckets of tears when we walked away from our old house, seven nail-biting weeks from "sale agreed" to "here are the keys", and a month of almost-done refurbishment, we're finally in our new house. And it's bliss. Except for all the things that aren't working yet, like the oven, ...