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I might have mentioned this once or twice before or a lot. It might have up a lot but I have a teeny little issue with sugar or two issues. One is that it makes me really really sick and two is that I can never have just a little bit. I either stay away completely or I go completely mad like completely.  But I think I might have reached a low point tonight. On a sugar fuelled rampage that started on Stephens day which has pretty much consisted of ; me nomming all the chocolate, feeling really ill , regretting said binge ,craving more chocolate and so it continues.  at the moment malteasers are my poison of choice and trust me given the effect they have on my stomach, poison is the best word to describe it. You know those  Share size bags, well that's what I've been buying except I've only been sharing them with myself. I'm not sure If that counts.   on some level I know there's something kind of insane about willingly eating lots of something guara...

Tonight, With no other plans lined up I sat down to watch a movie my boyfriend had downloaded for me and I was feeling  Pretty good about my choice of viewing because world cinema is fairly educational, isn't it ? Ah well at least it is generally a better calibre of movie than your usual Hollywood blockbuster or perhaps that's just the film snob in me coming out. Considering the last movie I'd watched was that new one called the internship about Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson reinventing themselves as google interns. Take my advice and give that one a miss. Some entertaining jokes and a somewhat heartwarming underdogs win ending but overall utter tripe.  Now tonight's lesson is to be more observant and to read the synopsis before watching a movie instead of looking at the poster on imdb and reading the first two lines of the summary and saying that's niiiice because it wasn't. now I am not here to critique the plot itself or the camera work or any of th...

S This New Year's Eve there's every possibility I'll do what I did last New Year's Eve which is nothing at all, not even watch a TV countdown.  The world won't explode either way , I won't care and at the end of the day it's just another Tuesday night except TV is shit. Or perhaps, for the first time in a good few years I might be very brave and venture out. eek Up until a few years ago I went out of my way to try and have a really good New Year's Eve despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that all the previous ones were unmitigated disasters. There was the year I was 20 and living in Switzerland. When I had been booking my flights home for Christmas I had only just been living there for a few weeks and couldn't imagine wanting to spend more than a week at home so I found myself back in an empty Swiss apartment New Year's Eve with only a box set of Audrey Hepburn movies to keep me company. Or the year after that when I was li...

I was always the one in my family first up on Christmas morning, impatiently waiting for everyone to get up so we could get to the good part, the present opening. But the last four years we've had a tiny person in the house at Christmas time so I'm no longer the most  excited person in the house.  This year my niece is four and a half and was the most excited I've ever seen her about Christmas. last year it all got a bit much and she actually cried after seeing her Santa presents. snacks were left out last night and a note was pinned on the Christmas tree ( at Santa's height ) asking him to make a special effort to be quiet so as not to wake her up. Obviously  It was the child's idea. Christmas is definitely a lot better with a small Santa believer around and it brings Back the magic that was lost the moment I realised my parents were actually the ones putting the presents under the tree, eating the mince pies we left out on Christmas Eve and writing tho...

For me going home for Christmas has always been a pretty big deal. And until I started working in retail again I was always home and cosy by the fire at least a few days before Christmas Eve with my  Presents wrapped and the ones under the tree thoroughly inspected . With the notable exception of the year I moved home from Edinburgh and the snow was so bad I almost didn't make it home at all.  The last two years I have been working right up until Christmas Eve and loving every second of it. Okay maybe not, mostly counting down until I can go home for Christmas and mentally preparing for the trip home. Which mostly  Involves making lists in my head of what I'll need to bring with me, in order to be better organized of course. This year was no different. The night before Christmas Eve I had a bag full of clothes packed. Mind you I was tired and sick so I had no idea what I was actually shoving in the bag. I'm lucky I didn't arrive home with only one shoe. an...

Last night we had our work Christmas party and I spent all yesterday veering between definitely not going to the work party as I was much too sick ( with the longest running head cold ever !) and thinking maybe I would go down for a While and that I might even have some wine. A brave choice given the effect wine normally has on me and the fact that I had a 9.30 start this morning. In the end I decided I had enough of feeling tired and bored and that seeing as  Lately my stomach seemed to be sick pretty much all the time from Poor food choices then what difference would a little wine make.  Donning my vintage sequinned dress  and abandoning plans to tame some incredibly disobedient hair I made my way around the corner to the hotel where the party was on with with one of the girls who was also choosing to skip the meal .A convenient choice of venue if I do say so myself. First things first we hit the bar on Our way to the party and I swear after four mo...

I maybe , might be, just a little bit of a control freak, just a little bit. I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of and generally it keeps things ticking along quite nicely. I like order, control and lists. Lists are good.  I think everyone is like this to some degree or other. If you look at the need for control as a scale and some people are further along than others. They might refer to as it as being particular, being a bit OCD or just liking things a certain but it all adds up to the same thing. If you like  things done a particular way and it drives you crazy when others don't do it then you know what I'm talking about.   I find in 'the castle' ( as I like to refer to the children's section because its designed to look like one) at christmas time , it's all one long battle for control or   Order . I like to have the place organized a certain way but at this time of year between the recommendations, finding books, restocking a...

In case you're wondering how my week is going the short  answer is not great.  Mostly because I have a dose and a half of the man flu and I'm taking it like a man would. That's not well incase that wasn't clear. This is my second bout of fluey type cold thing since winter started and I'm not enjoying my second round any more than the first. In actual fact It's a lot worse because the week before Christmas is the worst time ever to be sick.  Yes it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas in that the shop is completely insane and I am doing my level best to guess what people might want to buy between now and Christmas Eve to ensure I have enough of it. All of this in a shop so busy you can't move most of the time and it's hard to get two steps without someone asking where something is or if you could make a recommendation. Most of it is fine and the majority of people know how to be pleasant but you will always get a few who are fussy...

I like Christmas as much as the next person assuming that the next person is somewhere between Ebenezer Scrooge And buddy the elf. But the fact that I have been mostly single in the run up to Christmas is not a cause of great concern for me. I would go so far to say that given my track record ( in terms of presents I have received ) I am usually a little relieved to only have friends and family to buy for.  I would like to make a point of stating that I have not deliberately remained single Just to avoid the fiasco of present swapping, it has just worked out that way. A happy coincidence if you will.  With the exception of last Christmas when I was casually seeing a guy, or so I thought until he insisted ( despite much resistance on my part ) on paying for my iPhone upgrade so I had to go and panic but him some sort of gift without really knowing what he liked. In my defence it was pretty casual so I was totally unprepared for the whole gift exchange.  Wh...

For such a prolific list maker it's almost surprising I don't have an actual bucket list. I enjoy writing lists quite a lot, it makes me feel more organized and also I just like planning things in my head. Maybe It's strange but it calms me when it's something I'm worried about and it only serves to heighten the anticipation if its something I'm looking forward to. I'm Unashamedly a bit of a nerd when it comes to that sort of thing. I even have been known to add one or two completed items to a to do list just to give myself that feeling of achievement. I don't see the point in deciding exactly what I want to achieve before I die seeing as no one can actually tell me when that will be. I'd only feel foolish if I had 100 things and it turns out I'm going to die before I hit 40 and god forbid I die feeling like an under achiever or worse an Idiot. I think I'd prefer to aim low and surprise myself. That's me all over , ever the...

I know Christmas is getting really close because even if I wasn't putting my deductive skills to work on this one, people just keep on telling me. In the shop You can feel they are almost fizzy With excitement as they shop up a storm and count down to the big day with some sort of frenzy. I, however, have been looking forward to this weekend more. Lets be clear I am not a reincarnation of Ebenezer Scrooge going around bah humbugging other people for their Christmas cheer. I used to be the one in my family who was teased for my over excitement about Christmas well into adulthood but sadly being a grown up is sucking about as much as I Expected and slowly I'm Losing my favourite parts. I used to love buying presents and spending loads of time with family but this year im kinda broke plus I only get two days off In a row for Christmas forgive me if I'm not decking myself out in tinsel .  This weekend however is a pretty big deal to me. Three whole days off all to m...

It may not come as a shock to most people, that I am not exactly a domestic goddess, least of all me but I realized how far off the mark I am tonight when I spent a solid 15 minutes searching for an iron only to realize we don't have one in this apartment. This wouldn't be that bad  Except for the fact that I've been living here almost 2 months now and tonight is the first time I've looked. Which means I haven't ironed anything in the last two months. My mother would be horrified. Mind you I had an iron in my last place and I don't think I plugged it in once in the year that I lived there . What can I say, ironing is not my forte. Clothes have been known to look more wrinkled by the time I am finished than when I started. So I shop accordingly, no linens in my wardrobe but ironing is only part of the reason for that.  I am one of those people who likes to live somewhere clean but doesn't necessarily enjoy the process of cleaning so sometimes it a...

At this current moment in time I am sitting in front of my laptop feeling pretty shitty and my mouth is full of chocolate. funnily enough these two facts are connected in a catch 22 sort of way. In recent months I have learned that chocolate or any sugar makes me feel like a bag of crap in so many ways,  including feeling physically ill and somewhat depressed, but for as long as I can remember chocolate has been my go to when I'm feeling down or stressed or hungry or just because. As you can imagine they feed into each other which leaves me in a difficult position indeed or at least not a very pleasant one.  I'll be the first to admit I harbor some self destructive tendencies and I am sure most people do on some level or maybe not but I do feel better in  the belief that this is normal behavior. God forbid I ever do anything but fit in. In the grand scheme of things it is only sugar so it's not as if I am wrestling with a crystal meth habit, occasionally it helps to h...

When I was a child I dreamed of adventure all the time. I had a Vivid imagination and I saw possibilities everywhere. I remember we used to have this box of old keys at home and I was absolutely fascinated by them. I didn't see them for what they were which was a box of old keys for locks that we no longer had but instead used to wonder what mysterious doors they Might open and that might be beyond those doors. I longed to find treasure buried or maybe just left somewhere within easy reach. In the many intervening years between then and now a lot has changed for me. I have  Clearly become a grown up( would they allow me to drive a car if I wasn't !!)  But there's still a little part of me that likes the thought of finding treasure where you would least expect it. One of the gifts we have in work is this treasure ball. It's a ball of fancy tissue paper that you unravel and every time you take off a layer there's a gift inside. Like a really fancy pass the...

Secretly I wish I was ... 1. More organized. The nerd in me has insisted on doing this in a numbered list and I'm sure this already makes me more organized than many but still. This morning I got up at 8. It's the one day a week where I don't have work until 1 so I have four and a half hours until I need to leave the house from waking up and I honestly could not tell you where the time goes because I can guarantee come 12.30 I will be running around my apartment in a manner akin to a headless chicken trying to get everything organized and get to work with more than two minutes to spare. It seems the more time I have in the morning the less I seem to get done and that's probably in part because I am not a morning person, I wake groggy and half stuck to my duvet and once you remove the immediate need to get my ass out of bed I start to struggle. This morning I made grand plans. I had some cleaning I wanted to do, I was going to workout and write my blog and obviously ...

Tonight while I was mid burpee at home I found myself trying not to die but also weighing up the benefits of working out at home more. I had told my sister (who's also my crossfit coach) that I wouldn't be able to get down for a class this week and she kindly sent me on workout that I would never have chosen myself. The best part was a hundred burpees for time and they are largely the reason why I look like I fell into a container of blusher over an hour after completing the workout. If you are not familiar with them a burpee is a movement that involves jumping into a push up position and then jumping back up in the air and clapping your hands above your head. It might sound silly but it doesn't take many to make me look like I'm dying. I find that much like running while I might see some actual improvement over time my level of enjoyment does not go up. I saw a someecard recently that said if I am murdered and my body is found on a running track, please know I was ki...

Despite what my blog might lead you to believe, Complaining is not my number one hobby. I like many things, see I'm Actually a fairly happy person but there's more demand for my brand of dry sarcasm than there is for Pollyanna style musings about how great life is. I like technology that does was it's supposed to do. I would also like if I had a bit more of it in my life. It feels like sometimes the majority of technological wonders I rely are held together by little more than duct tape and a prayer to Whatever deity happens to be listening. I started off writing this post on my laptop but it spontaneously turned itself off which it's doing ever so frequently these days. Not to get too technical on you but it's pretty much fucked. It's not charging and I have to handle it as delicately as a baby, afraid to say anything that might so much as hurt its feelings incase that's enough to have it turn off indefinitely and I know that day is coming so I...

I was the one who told my younger brother that Santa wasn't real. It was a long time ago and I'm pretty sure he's over it now but I did feel pretty bad about it for a while after. In my defense (because obviously I am going to have one) my sister had only just broken the news to me and I wasn't sure if my brother still believed or not. So I asked him and all bravado he said he didn't really think there was a Santa and I replied good because I was in Toymaster with the parents picking out your Christmas presents at which point his face just fell and I became the bad sister. I think I was a lot more innocent than kids are now. It was fairly common when I was younger for kids to believe in Santa well up until they hit that pre pubescent stage whereas nowadays you are lucky if you can stretch out that magical part of christmas until age 10.  As a child  I fully lapped up all things Santa Claus. I got over excited in the lead up to Christmas and I didn't questio...

As the countdown begins to the busiest time of the year in retail I suddenly remember how much I now dislike Christmas. Before you tune out and go off to watch the miracle on 34th street for the 1ooth time let me reassure you that this isn't going to be a big bad rant about the holiday season, not really. It's just today, on the first Sunday in December, with twenty three more shopping days to go, I found myself feeling overwhelmed in the children's section and feeling a little bit like I wanted to run away, far far way and thinking it's only getting started. The thing is I don't like crowds. I don't like them at all. I usually avoid Christmas shopping too close to Christmas for this reason. In fact I will often avoid being in a city close to Christmas. I don't go to really big festivals and it's all because crowds make me feel a little claustrophobic. I feel trapped and panicky and I start to get a bit annoyed at everyone and that's usually just...

When I was a child the Late late toy show marked the beginning of Christmas. It was where you got your ideas for your Santa letter because God forbid you sent your letter and then saw the best toy ever on the show. If you did not grow up with the the toy show as a part of every Christmas then you might be a little confused about this entire blog post so I'll take a quick moment to explain in case some non Irish native has gotten lost and finds themselves on my blog by mistake. The Late late show is an Irish chat show we all grew up on as many of us got by with two tv channels for many years and it didn't give you a whole lot of choices about what to watch. Now Ireland is not completely backward, Sky tv did become available in Ireland when I was growing up but my father didn't watch a lot of tv and by that reasoning we did without and I suffered through primary school hearing secondhand information about tv I never got to watch. Every year, the first Friday in December (or...

For as long as I can remember I have been wanting a toned stomach and some woman abs. Damn those toned bitches who go around flaunting their midriff in belly tops when I haven't dared to bare since I was 16 and didn't know any better. Mind you in my home town I had noticed a worrying trend of women with visible muffin top wearing belly tops of some description and trust me when I say no one wants to see that. I certainly didn't.  Every time you go looking for fitspiration pictures the women are wearing teeny tiny shorts and a top that leaves their whole mid section exposed eeek. Or not eek because they never have an inch of fat and usually have perfectly sculpted abs and maybe occasionally freaky looking muscle that I'd rather do without. Maybe I am chasing the impossible but I am still chasing it nonetheless. Genetics are against me as women do not naturally have flat stomachs and then there's cortisol and estrogen making it far more challenging than it trul...

With the sudden drop in temperature the perisher in me comes out. You would think as someone who grew up in house old enough to have invented dampness that I would have acclimatized by now but then you would be wrong. When im at home I'm fairly okay but then again I am usually wrapped in giant fluffy dressing gown that makes me resemble some sort of Russian Oligarch while I will myself to get dressed and go outside.  It's the sort of weather that hurts your face and that may be because it's the only part of me that's actually being exposed to the air. I leave for work wrapped in as many layers as I can while still being able to move my limbs freely because it can get chilly in the shop. Recently  I went all out and bought some woolish ( in that they probably don't contain any actual wool) leggings and a thermal vest. I was cosier than a cosy thing in work, it was lucky I havent ended up having a nap on one of the bean bags. Well lucky for me as I'm certai...

Whenever I'm driving home I throw on the radio to beat fm ( local pop music station) in the hope of something to wake me up or put me in a better mood so I can reach Clonmel in the mood to train instead of nap. I have begun to notice a few things though firstly a lot of the music makes me think about the gym and you might be surprised to hear its not because there's a sudden increase in songs about   Working out ( because there isn't) but the gym playlist is borrowed heavily from the charts and then plays on random so everytime I hear that song (which may or may not be called this) talk dirty to me I want to lift weights. And maybe the gym needs a different playlist.  The other thing is that some of the stuff is so awful I'd rather drive to silence and a bit of my own tuneless singing rush endure another second of it. I was listening to some awful tripe from that knob-jockey Jason derulo ( he works his name into every song therefore he's clearly a knob) an...