bookshoplaura

Do you know what a girl crush is? no. Well then take a seat and allow me to educate you. Now just to avoid confusion I'd like to stipulate that I don't mean in the usual sense of having a crush on someone, i.e. when you fancy someone or only watch Hawaii Five O because Alex O'loughlin (thats commander Steve McGarett) takes his shirt off in every episode. Like so but in a way that's totally relevant to the plot (those clever script writers). sorry  I got a little sidetracked there, now where was I, ah yes a girl crush is an entirely different thing. It's when you think a female celebrity is so very cool that you might like to hang out with them and maybe be friends and not just so you could name drop with all your non famous friends. so here's mine at the moment, Anna Kendrick. I don't know if you remember but she was in Twilight. Now If we were friends I'd be giving her a hard time about this, it wasn't a good choice, Anna ! but then agai...

I was looking at my blog introduction today and realized well its now got the wrong age so I changed the wording and then came the tough bit. How do you define yourself because I always get stuck when I encounter an introduce yourself bit on any sort of online profile. I even get all awkward and tongue tied when forced to do it in real life. The crux of the matter is this, when you are describing yourself to people who don't know where do you even start ? I usually launch with my name, age and then my career (or lack thereof ) but I can't help thinking is that really how I wish to define myself? are these my most important features or would my blog be any different if I was a twenty two year old working in an office.  Life is easier when people can get to know you face to face and make their own decisions about you but the moment you go online you are being judged from every angle and I just can't manage to sell myself. Possibly why I'd never survive in the worl...

I wish I could sleep for days, at this stage I feel like that's what it would take to get me back on track. I've read that in sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture and I can understand why, did you ever see how harassed someone looks when they haven't gotten enough sleep, well then its easy to imagine what no sleep could do. I used to maintain that the worst part of drinking is the hangover and I'm not going to back track and say I don't mind being hungover because now feels like a bad time to be telling dirty lies when my hangover is such a nasty beast that usually leaves me limping around woefully for at least a day after I've been drinking. What I am saying however is the Nausea/ headachey side of has now been usurped by sleep deprivation. Yes sleep deprivation might just be my true nemesis and If I don't escape it's clutches soon I'm at real risk of going a little mad ( okay well a bit more mad than I am already). So to recap you ...

I know what people say about Crossfit but I swear its really not a cult.  I've already made peace with the fact that most people who know me but don't crossfit think I'm bat shit insane for how I spend my days off, well that and the fact that I've almost completely removed processed and junk food from my diet. I'm not bothered about judging other people's diets or lifestyles (most of the time) but I feel I have reached a point in my life where my health and general well being is important to me so when I eat clean I feel so much better, simples. Really it's my choice and I'm not asking anyone else to follow suit because people are entitled to live their lives however they choose. It's a shame more people don't have that attitude to mine. I think people feel that healthy living is automatically a judgement on those who are less healthy but there's no point in losing sleep in worrying about things like that, that are outside my control when I...

I wasted for too much time leaving my happiness in the hands of others. Sometimes you just do what's easiest in life but you pay for it down the line when the realisation dawns that all this talk of destiny is rubbish and there's no such thing as meant to be. Your life will Only ever be what you make of it and the only person who can control your Happiness is you. I find life to be easier when you stop fighting the truth so I'm giving it a go, tracing lines through my own imperfections and then seeing what I can do to change. I'll admit that I have some control issues in that I haven't felt in control of my own life and I dealt with that by becoming.a child so rigid with food that I imagine other people's parents dreaded having me for tea. In a sort of what the hell are we going to feed the fussy vegetarian kid way. And then I blossomed into an incredibly fussy adult but I'm Slowly relinquishing my grasp and realising there's a lot more i have the ...

'No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent, wise words from Eleanor Roosevelt but more than a bite sized quotation to be thrown about when talking about empowered women, it's a concept worth thinking about. Since I've a whole week of no reading ( and not died from some sort of book starvation) I've had a lot of time to think, it's like my mind can't handle the inactivity so it plays out things that have bothered me throughout my day and this is a concept that struck a chord with me. I have been a bit of a pushover for a long time. When you want people to like you it's hard to say no and I'm hesitant to admit this but I guess I'd be described as sensitive, If it's to be taken at all, I'll take it personally. I know I shouldn't but I do. There's no point in saying no offence when you're gearing up to say something offensive. Anyway with all of this I realized something I've probably known for much longer than...

we had a wedding fair in work last night. As you do like, In a bookshop. To be Honest I'm not sure why we hosted it because I'm not sure what the shop gets out of it. Anyway the shop hosted one With the local suit place, cake makers, florist, jewellers and so on setting up stands in the shop and they drafted in staff as to model in the fashion show. My name was put down because apparently my stint as an elf/princess/witch indicated an interest in dressing up and I just went with it. I thought getting done up in a wedding dress might be fun. We had our dress fitting last week and I can't say that it made me want to get married anytime Soon but to be fair it was never high on my list of priorities to begin with. we were brought into a room with a mirrored wall And asked to strip down to our underwear ( one by one , not en-masse ) and I waited there trying not to scrutinize my reflection while the dress fitter muttered to herself about the dress not closing on me. It took ...

Not everyone knows the feeling of waking in the morning and feeling crushed by the weight of your own sadness but I've been there. Depression is not a logical beast, there is no reason for the waves of despair there just is. It's one of those things that people don't talk about. Perhaps it's the fear of not being believed or being judged but I figure hey, I'm going to be judged anyway. The very least I owe myself is a certain degree of honesty. I find for me this depression comes in waves, it ebbs and flows and at its worst its overpowering. For the most part I manage it well like a small Bold child that needs constant minding. And I find one good workout can shake The sadness when It threatens to bring me down. When I moved back to Ireland , to no job And a bad relationship, the days all Blurred together. I was angry and bored And despondent. It got better but first it got a whole lot worse. After 6 months teetering on the edge of my sanity I finally go...

When I was fifteen or so we got a computer and I used to go online and talk to people in chat rooms. Back then there wasn't really social networking so I mostly talked to strangers and my mother constantly warned me they weren't really teenage boys I was flirting with but dirty old men sitting at home touching themselves. Growing up I retained a little of cynicism but back then I believed the best in people and honestly in a chat room you had no way of knowing how many lies were being told. These days the internet is a far more complicated network for swapping information and everybody lies a little online. You might be shaking your head, adamant that you don't but there are few exceptions to this rule so chances are, you're not one of them. On Facebook or other social networking sites of choice (surely everyone uses Facebook as their main base ? I can't see Google + catching on) people are selective in what they post, what messages they send to friends and ph...

This morning yet again I found myself wasting time I didn't really have hunting for grey hairs with a tweezers, It would be fair to say I'm not aging gracefully. I'm fighting it every step of the way. The grey hairs keep on cropping up and alarmingly they are not just restricted to the easy reaches of beneath my fringe but appearing among the good hairs and ruining my center parting. Am I aware that I'm being ridiculous? most certainly but that doesn't mean I'll stop. I'm getting older and there's not a damn thing I can do about it except try my hardest to not look my age. The world is filled with people who feel the same way so some small comfort can be taken from that. It's all downhill from here or so people keep telling me with great cheer, all younger people. Like the aging process wont catch them too.  One of these days I'll tell someone my age and they wont be very surprised and that will be a sad day for me having taken great comfo...

So many people get in home from work and turn the television on and just tune out. Hands up if this sounds like you. I don't own a television but not because I'm making some sort of statement. I just couldn't afford one when I moved and I have the internet for T.v shows so I get by with a lot less than most people. You feel less inclined to have something on as background noise when you're only downloading shows you really like. I don't miss out because I also have books. Lots and lots of books and I use them to drown out the world. They are my favorite form of procrastination. I really became aware of how much I rely on them when I was instructed to have a whole week of reading deprivation as a creativity exercise. (Long boring story involving a book called the artists way) anyway I have been following the book guidelines as diligently as though I was being marked on the assignments but my reaction to this one was not that of a grown up. At first I thoug...

This might not be new but it's new to me, the other day I found out you can now buy padding to put in the back of your pants to make your bum look more pert and I thought what will they think of next. There's nothing left to fake, you can get hair, nails, tan and eyelashes and then there's bras to lift your boobs and knickers to suck in your tummy. Leaving you packaged up like a promise you won't be able to keep because it's all fake. Now I'm for making the best of what you've got but surely it gets to the stage where it's just false advertising. There's hoards of women out there bemoaning the fact that they just want to be loved for who they are but then go to great pains to hide their real selves. I've always wanted to look better but until Crossfit came my way I was doing very little about it besides moaning about how hard it was to lose weight and maybe slapping on a bit of make up and fake tan for a night out. And yes fake tan does mak...

(Pictured random health food store courtesy of google images) Prepare yourself, this is very much a rant. I was in town this morning before work and I stopped in my local health food store to buy some pukka teas. I was running dangerously low and I'm not sure how I'd manage if I ran out. But much to my surprise the prices have gone up yet again, So I bought them but I bought them angrily, In fact such was my anger I was in need of a cup of relax tea by the time I got home just to calm me down. So I work in an okay job that pays a reasonable wage and I'm trying hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle but I'm not sure I can afford to keep this up when I'm being robbed blind by my local health food store. I have been told that they put up the prices of of the products that are known to sell the best and I strongly suspect this is the case as the mini tubs of Booja Booja and pukka teas have both gone up twice in price in the last 6 months and I don't think that c...

If you're happy being single then good because there's a whole world out there. By happy I don't mean desperately seeking mr right but settling for mr right now because that's not happy, that's tolerating being single and it's not quite the same. everything I read on being single tells you how to enjoy it, celebrate and then hurry up and find someone to date but surely that's contradictory advice and is sending mixed signals. Why should life be a rush from one relationship to the next. I've never been one to believe that being with Anyone is better than being alone buy then again with my questionable taste in men I'd probably be wise to ignore my own advice. It's all not all getting drunk and crying along to all by myself so I think in that sense Bridget jones hasn't done single women Any favours in her portrayal of the single woman. I think while I identified With some of more squeamish moments, on the whole I have found my own pursuit ...

I spend an inordinate amount of my day battling adult worries. Worrying about my diet and my life and all the bloody bills, it's not fun. In fact I would go so far as to say it's the opposite of fun. and the worst part of it all is that it's so hard to switch off. Even when I'm eating or watching something on my laptop I can almost hear my brain whirring while it impatiently waits to interrupt my downtime with more pressing concerns. While all this is going on, recently on an outing to tk maxx I picked up a diet doodle diary. Its supposed to be a journal for food and exercise but has other tips plus things to doodle and I thought it would be a bit of fun seeing as I'm already attempting to diet and exercise. Naturally this also required markers, right. and with the purchase of these new favorite things I discovered something I had forgotten, coloring in is pretty damn soothing. It's like really cheap therapy because lets face retail therapy is a lot less fun w...

If I could write a letter to my sixteen year old self I'd have many things to say but I'd have prepare myself for a sixteen year old too stubborn to listen. I'd tell myself to hang on in there, life gets better and school doesn't last forever. Someday you will wake with out the dread in the pit of your belly and it might not be tomorrow but it will be soon. I'd tell myself to stand my ground, to not be pushed around so easily and to be prepared to fight for what I believe and true friends don't just casually toss you aside so pick yourself up and dust yourself off, It wont always be like this. I'd tell myself that you'll escape school intact and even if you're not planning for a future you'll have one anyway and years after you leave school you'll wake from dreams that you are back there and the relief will be palpable but that's okay. In years to come all of this won't matter so it's not worth crying yourself to sleep ov...

me and you - Niccolo Amaniti You and me is a story about a teenage boy striving to hide the fact that he is a loner. He pretends he has been invited on a skiing trip with friends from school but really he is hiding out for the week in the basement of his house, which he has filled with supplies. It's all going to plan until his estranged half sister shows up unexpectedly. This was quite an odd book, because of Its length it felt like the story had only got going and then the book was over. The story doesn't quite take the direction I was expecting. while well written I felt Like it was building up to an event that never happened. I would recommend this author but probably not this particular book

Is it wrong to refer to the heavier old version of me as a separate persona ? It doesn't really matter because I'm going to do it anyway. I think one of the biggest things about losing weight is the inability to properly see the change once it happens. Everyone says that other people will see it well before you do, much like the way it happens with weight gain but for different reasons. When I gained weight and couldn't see it that was denial, plain and simple and if I didn't know it was happening then I didn't have to admit something was going to have to change or I'd have become like the lady in the above photo looking lustily at a chocolate fountain, to be fair I probably wasn't far off having that sort of relationship with chocolate. With weight loss comes a whole new set of problems and the inability to see it stems from self perception. Now I wont go so far as to say its body dysmorphia as that's an actual condition that doesn't need to b...

This blog post was inspired by a teenage book of the same name that was terribly trite that I don't think I'll be bothering to review it for my blog, yes it was that bad or it possibly wouldn't be if I was still 16. Though you wouldn't know it by how I behave I'm sadly well past 16 and I thought why tarnish my reputation as someone who reads good books with one terrible book. Anyway the plot of this book centers on a girl who realizes her boyfriend is cheating on her online and decides to recreate her grandmothers teenage years, forgo all technology and go vintage so to speak and It got me thinking. There really was no need for her to go all the way back to the 1960's for this. I was 16 in 1998 (yes, I'm that old) and I lived without most of the technology the main character chose to go without. In 1998 the only people I knew with mobile phones were business men and I didn't know them as such but I knew of them and I had no desire to have one of my...

I find after a night out I tend to wake with certain trepidation, mentally assessing any alcohol related injuries or desires to vomit before I dare to move from my bed. But even on mornings like this one where I woke knowing I had paced myself all night, Like a grown up (or woman who fears the many calories in wine), I still didn't know what to expect. Initially it all seemed good, no overwhelming bouts of nausea, no eye splitting headache and not a bruise to be found but as the last vestiges of sleep cleared I felt this overpowering wave of sadness that could only be cured by copious amounts of chocolate. and Boom there it is, the dreaded hangover depression and then I remembered I'm not eating chocolate right now and then it just became full on depression, Well not really but the lack of chocolate to channel my sadness into certainly didn't help. Hangover depression is the only part of the hangover worse than the being violently ill or the god  awful flashbacks of ...

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive in life is yourself. It's not exactly a revelation but that doesn't make it any less true. Sometimes the only thing that keeps a person going is their bitterness over a past grievance, wrong perceived or not and you don't realize this anger is rotting away inside you but telling someone to forgive and let go is a lot easier said than done. I have never been adept at expressing my anger, I think it scares me so I bury it deep inside saying nothing or finding an angry outburst is easily reduced to tears and this is frustrating and occasionally embarrassing. All this anger eats away at you leaving a mouth full of bitter words that go unspoken and taints the relationships you have and the ones you've yet to start and It's only now I'm seeing it all comes back to me. Every thought, every act, every unkind word are nothing more than what my reaction makes them. It is oh so easy to become emotionally attached to past pain an...

The Storyteller by Jodi Piccoult. Jodi's latest book is about a baker, Sage Singer, who is haunted by the death of her mother and hides from the world, baking at night. She strikes up a friendship with an older man from her grief group, Joseph Weber, a longstanding pillar of the community and she feels she has finally made a connection with someone until he asks her to help kill him and opens up about the terrible secrets of his past, he is not who he seems and Sage is forced to make a decision. In some ways A lot of Jodi Piccoult's books are similar in that they involve a moral dilemma of some description and many of her older books have the hook 'what would you do if....' on the cover but while it gives a structure to her books they still lack predictability and she has a way of drawing you in. I didn't want to stop reading but things like work and my inability to keep my eyes open late at night made me draw out finishing it longer than I would have wanted....

I have reached a breaking point with my IBS. I am sick of feeling sick all of the time and I've decided it's time for a change. Someone suggested I try the fodmap diet and I am giving it a go because at this stage anything is worth a try. The other day in work a customer actually asked me how pregnant I was, firstly that was downright bitchy, I was a little bloated that's all but it made me think enough is enough. Now for the wary among you Fodmap is not another faddy diet akin to the cabbage soup diet or that really messed up one where you get all your nutrients from a drip. Fodmap is an acronym for – Fermentable oligo-, Di- and Mono-saccharides and Polyols. Certain foods contain high amounts of these and people with gut disorders such as IBS will suffer if they eat those foods on a regular basis. Some of the more alluring side effects include bloating and the urge to belch (yea. it's about as sexy as it sounds.) So the diet isn't intended as a life long pl...