bookshoplaura

This is so me, it's not even funny. Whenever I like someone I get unbelievably awkward and this makes me appear rude and a little more sarcastic than usual (which is more sarcastic than is socially acceptable). Now the good thing about this is that the guy in question generally has no idea whatsoever that I'm interested and that's for the best. I'm not just saying that, I actually mean it because if there's anything I've perfected in the 18 years since I first started noticing boys in that way, It's the art of the highly unsuitable crush. So all around me people my age are doing all sorts of grown up things like buying houses, getting married and having babies and me? well I'm worrying about the fact that I've put up weight and am still attracted to the worst kind of plonkers out there. In all I am a contradiction in terms. On one level I complain about the way men objectify women. Breaking it down as though we are just a sum of our more attracti...

I have many many opinions on a wide range of subjects but it's really socially acceptable to share them all the time. Which is most unfortunate for me. I have always struggled with hiding my true feelings and often get told I should probably speak my mind less (I'm totally working on it) but I think if people should hear the stuff I'm keeping to myself if they think the things I actually say are bad. I can't help myself sometimes and it can be really damn hard to sit there nodding mutely when you know someone's wrong either just in your gut or because they clearly have no grasp of the facts of the matter. I can almost hear the clearly constructed sentences begging to get out and can nearly taste blood because I'm biting my lip that hard to avoid opinion over spill. The truth of the matter is that most people only have a very close group of friends with whom they can actually speak their minds and even then you can't say everything you're thinking e...

I hate to break it to you folks but I fear I might be on the way out. This week despite not being at work and having many hours of leisure time to play around with I have the energy levels of a sloth. I am not just tired, I am beyond tired and actively craving naps. Like wishing that there was a rollover plan for every nap I refused as a child.  Now there's a number of possibilities for my overwhelming exhaustion. I haven't been feeling much muscle pain from the gym but I've been training all week so perhaps I'm super tired from all the Crossfit. Another option is that I'm just run down and thus it is important to remember that the act of buying multi vitamins does little for my well being if I keep forgetting to take them. It could also be something I'm eating or not eating. I'm eating more fruit than your average fruit bat but I have awful tendency to restrict myself to the same three or four vegetables which is both boring and somewhat lacking in n...

I think this quote holds true. Food is one of the biggest things people use to deal with anxiety and it's fast becoming a really big problem. I think it starts when were small and given a treat for good behavior or a biscuit because you fell and hurt your knee. It sends the message that food is a reward, food is a comfort blanket and when you reach the point in your life when you no longer need to ask for permission on opening the biscuit tin you will find those things stay with you. I don't think people really think about what were eating and the effect our diet may be having on our bodies. Its almost as if as a nation we're in collective denial. I am equally lucky and unlucky that my body seems to act like my conscience when it comes to food whether I want it to or not. On the one hand I have to not over do the sugar or junk food because I will get physically sick from it but then on the other had I not spent so many years abusing my body by willfully eating all anxie...

So a good friend of mine has a birthday coming up and I decided in a fit of brokeness/ creativity to revive an old tradition of giving her a handmade card. Now before you start thinking awww that must be lovely let me just remind you of two facts. One is my very limited drawing capabilities. One good example of this is that today I was playing with my four year old niece and she asked me to draw a butterfly so I did and she copied it, my sister could not tell which drawing was which. Yes, I really am that bad. The other thing is I'm not really into soppy sentimental type stuff so I'm more likely to traverse down memory lane by regaling friends with hilarious drunken antics than talking about that really special moment we shared. Anyway It was while trying to put this card together that I realized how terribly immature I still am on a very basic level. There is still a part of me that wants to tell every small child to not grow up because it's trap but that's not wha...

I don't have kids of my own but I do seem to spend enough time in the company of other people's to find myself frequently fielding awkward questions and sometimes it's okay to lie. I'm not on any level advocating telling children the sort of lies that will scare them or leave them with some pretty big questions. In fact I usually lie to avoid the big questions all together. The thing with children is that they haven't yet learned the social niceties that we use as adults to navigate our social interactions so they will ask the sort of questions most of us are far too polite to. They will marvel at how very old you are or at least how old it sounds to them and then decide as a grown up you must hold the same sort of knowledge as their parents. It's not so much a case of me feeling that parents necessarily know any more about the kind of issues that a kid is likely to start questioning but just that a parent is best equipped to decide what sort of informatio...

Some people say that I look like my mum  and others can't see the resemblance but usually,the moment I open my mouth only to have some sarcastic retort trip fall out, it becomes a little more obvious.  My mother always told me my skirts were  Too short and my tops too low-cut but now she complains I cover too much. I buy one ankle length skirt ( I saw one on a customer Recently and instantly wanted it) and she describes it as too long and being too much like a burka. We had to pause for a moment and laugh at that complaint. My mother always told me I ate too many  Sweets and cakes ( she was right, I did) And that I needed to look after my health and now she gives out that I'm too strict in my diet. She tuts as I refuse the chocolate she's offering and mumble no thanks to the ice-cream and instead devour a Punnet of strawberries ( surely the exorbitant cost makes them as much of a luxury as the taste)  My mother taught me to hold my head u...

For my last two years of college I worked  In a call centre taking calls for Aol broadbands' cancellation department  . We used to call it aohell and joke that we sold our souls when we signed the contract and in a way we weren't far wrong. The money was good, like really good but the pressure to sell was high and chances are if you were doing really well then you were either extremely persuasive or not quite playing by the rules. I was not one of the best but I comforted myself With the knowledge that I was not one of the worst either. One thing I learned during my time there ( apart from a deep hatred of call centres ) was that I am not a born sales person. I can only sell a product if I genuinely think its good and when you're in cancellations  Constantly hearing people ranting about the terrible service they've been receiving, I started to feel like I was peddling utter crap and I found it hard to go home and count my money If I wasn't able to do so ...

I Came across this video recently online and it really got me thinking. It was made by the founder of the everyday sexism project http://youtu.be/PBeNfSoMqjY and it talks about the large numbers of women who have experienced sexual harassment regularly from an early age and encourages them to shout back by tweeting their experiences of everyday sexism. I think the thing that struck me most about the whole thing was how normalized sexual harassment has become in our society and how accepting we are of things that should quite frankly horrify us. Many of the women whose stories featured in the video mentioned being in public places such as a bus stop and had a strange man masturbate while sitting near them and I was somewhat taken aback by how common an occurrence this seems to be but simultaneously relieved that I have never had the misfortune to experience this and I hope I never will. My own experiences of everyday sexism pale in comparison to accounts like that, so much so th...

So last night I was watching the advert my younger brother made for Aig. (See attached link and prepare for lols)   http://samandmikey.com/the-best-ad-ever/  and laughing and also thinking how cool it was that my brother is making actual ads that show on the t.v. like a modern day Don Draper only without the drinking problem or womanizing tendencies. He's fairly creative and also quite funny so it's pretty cool that the general public is now getting to see this. The night before I got a call from my older sister who was on her way home from work. She's trained as a make up artist and has just recently started working crazy hours as she's gotten some work as a make up artist on the set of a t.v. show and she was just calling to tell me that Chris O'Dowd (comedian from the IT crowd and Bridesmaids) was on the set next to hers and he's pretty cute in person. So another talented and creative member of the family out there doing some pretty cool work. Jealous muc...

Today I found myself sitting outside a cafe in town just soaking up the sun, feeling like I should be getting as much of it as possible because I'd been let out of work early (it was quiet and I was owed some time off). Anyway I'm sitting there reading my book and this attractive man asks if he can sit at the table and while he's sitting there I'm trying to check him out but also look like I'm reading (and probably doing an awful job of it) until I see the book he's reading and it's some awful Chris Ryan type modern military fiction and I find myself thinking never mind. It was only as this thought formed in my head that I realized quite how often I find myself doing this. Now I have made some pretty big mistakes in the last few years and there's been more than one questionable boyfriend so perhaps I could have done with a bit more of this judgmental side of personality making an appearance during my twenties and warning me to run far far away. M...

This is me after a square of chocolate only I have more teeth. It's official I am back eating sugar and my chocoholic-ism is getting out of hand. It's possible you might be laughing at my supposed to addiction to sugary treats but I was helping a customer find a book on addiction recently (gambling addiction, In case you are wondering) and a lot of the books that cover a wide range of addictive behaviors also include chocolate. Probably best not to refer to it as an addiction in front of people who are dealing with the consequences of something far more serious because I don't think I've ever heard of someone losing their house because of their problems with chocolate but maybe I could be the first.  No okay so I'm not quite that bad and for the most part I keep it under control but I'm good at the all or nothing way of living and not so great at everything in moderation. For the few months that I went sugar free I was a little fanatical about it. Sorry abou...

I left school in 2000, yes that's right a whole 13 years ago and that's making me feel pretty old right now. So 13 years ago I sat my Leaving Certificate in the Loreto Clonmel and in the many years that have passed since then I have gone on  to do many things with my life from a number of crappy jobs; a year abroad au pairing; a two year childcare course and of course my four years studying social care in Waterford IT but on some level I haven't quite put that time behind me. I don't feel the need to tell many people this because for the most part it doesn't really matter at this point in my life but for years I was haunted by that question 'What did you get in your leaving cert?'. Truth be told my Leaving results were a complete and utter shambles and I've worked long and hard to get a degree just so I could remove my results from my C.V. Now here's a bit of background to put this into context for you. I changed schools just as I was going into ...

Dance movies are my guilty pleasure, well they are my other guilty pleasure seeing as copious amounts of chocolate, trashy tv and the odd chick lit novel also fall into these categories. I think the key message here is that I need to deal with my guilt issues. So here's the thing, I actually consider myself to be a woman of reasonable intelligence. I have a degree; I can hold an intelligent conversation, I enjoy literary fiction and even though most people find it pretentious I genuinely enjoy world cinema but allow me to watch five minutes of any film ( and I mean any film !) that contains a significant amount of dancing and you'll find I'm hooked. If it's got dancing in it then I've watched it, loved it and wished the girl was me. I can no longer count the amount of times I have been known to proclaim 'I want to be a dancer !' conveniently forgetting my complete lack of rhythm and coordination.  I have watched dirty dancing many times over and a...

I  read a thing online the other day saying that cucumber is a vegetable that many vegetarians don't eat because of all the vegetables it has a nervous system most like that of a human and can feel pain. Isn't that kind of insane ! Now this was the first I had heard of this and I've been vegetarian all my life but I also don't know of any vegetarians who don't eat them for that reason. That being said I still had cucumber in my salad today because I quite like how it tastes and frankly the thought of not eating cucumber for moral reasons seems somewhat laughable. I didn't choose to be vegetarian so I never consciously decided meat was not for me but my parents decided they wanted to bring us up on a vegetarian diet and for the most part we all stuck to it. I still eat eggs and butter so it's not like I'm doing any of this for moral reasons nor do I feel the need to force my lifestyle choices down the throats of others. I think I'll leave that to ...

Sometimes it feels like the more work I put in the weaker I get and it makes me want to cry with frustration but usually I don't and this is good. I'm not sure whether or not crying in the gym would be more or less embarrassing than the time I quite dramatically fell off a box but I don't think I want to find out. My problem is this. I am a lazy bee, this is true and I don't know where my motivation goes but it sure goes somewhere so when I am home unless I am given specific workouts to do I often find myself sitting around the apartment looking pretty (or more often not looking that pretty slouched across the couch   eating or reading) and not really doing anything that active (does baking count as being active?no, how about eating things I've baked?) unless I've been specifically assigned a workout. Now I've been crossfitting long enough that I actually know enough exercises to give myself a varied work out but the big problem is that I won't actua...

If you're feeling too much like people are constantly telling you what you want to hear instead of actually telling you the truth and you're getting tired of it, well fear no more because I have the perfect solution to this. As adults we have learned how to behave in any number of social situations, what to say and the importance of tact but These are not things that come naturally. In fact I can readily think of a few people who still struggle with this. Because these are learned behaviours we go through our early years in life unencumbered by these   Social constraints, loudly saying what enters our heads without a thought for others. Often much to the embarrassment of our parents. Just ask my mother, even now she still remembers the many times I just blurted out something terribly inappropriate. So if you're looking for an honest opinion then all you need to do is find a small child and they will tell you the truth whether or not you are ready to hear it. now a...

Sometimes when I get a day off I can't help for wishing for more days off and the  More i enjoy my free time the more I wish I could have all the days off. One teeny little problem with that is about two years ago I had six full months of all the days off and it didn't actually feel like one long holiday. Even though logic dictates it should. The truth is that a holiday is really only enjoyable when you know you are going to be working again when it's over, regardless of how you feel about your job. I don't mind mine most of the time but as I get into the swing of days off where I'm baking cookies with my nieces and reading a really good book or two and working out plus drinking all the tea in m&s cafe and I think yea I could do more of this ( pretty Much sums today for  Me) but I'm conveniently forgetting that actual unemployment involves a lot more chronic boredom coupled with frequent desperate searches of multiple job sites that all seem to b...

I think if you were to sum up how I spend my time outside work, when I'm not in Clonmel training, it's pretty much trashy tv shows and good books. I like to strike a balance and for some reason I can easily watch made in Chelsea but shudder at the thought of reading Cecilia Ahearne ( admittedly my reading tastes were a lot less discerning before I worked in a bookshop and had to rely on what the library and second hand bookshops had to offer)  Tonight I found myself notably upset to discover that yet another American TV show that I've really been enjoying has been cancelled. ( stupid American TV networks) and I'm not saying I get too emotionally invested in TV shows except I do to the extent that I occasionally ( very occasionally) start to think of characters in them as people I actually know. The show in question this time around is one called smash and It's based around a group of people working on a musical but It's so good. Well it is if you're ...

I am actually glowing but not in the good way. I'm aware you can't really see it in the photo but I  am red, not a little pink but red enough to clash with pink. True story. It's not an attractive look for  me and I am not all that delighted with the results of my stupidity. Out in the sun on a very hot day with only sunscreen on my  face, you think I'd have predicted this. I have however discovered that self inflicted injuries tend to get you a lot less sympathy and instead people are wincing and asking why would I do this to myself as though I intentionally decided to burn my skin in the same way that some people choose to sunbathe. But it's okay because I don't need the sympathy of others because I am perfectly good at feeling sorry for myself. One might say I have it down to an art form. My skin feels hot and tight and really all I want to do is fill a bath with chilled aloe vera gel and sit in it until the burning stops and then we all can laugh ...

I'm having a lazy sunny afternoon and I'm sitting on the decking of my parents summer house with a finished book beside me and I'm just gazing out at this view which is straight out of anywhere but Ireland. And yes, I know it's 'beer garden ' weather but I've never mastered the art of day time drinking plus the promise of a Monday working looms so I am by default my own designated driver. I'm sitting under a giant umbrella because I went for a walk this morning without sun cream on and I look like a giant pink and white bar. I could be sitting on a beach right now but i thought it best to not aggravate the sunburn any ab more than necessary And also, despite the fact that I do like being near the sea, I don't actually like sand because it gets everywhere and It's so damn grainy or crowds. I'm not a fan of them either but this unexpected heat wave pretty much guarantees them. It's strangely quiet down here and the only sound I ...

This evening I found myself at a bit of a loose end when I realized I was no longer needed to babysit and a whole free Sunday loomed ahead of me. We have been getting the kind of weather that's been unheard of in Ireland of late so I was determined to not be stuck inside my poxy little apartment wasting what everyone keeps telling me is going to be the last sunny day for a while ( way to let me enjoy the sunshine !)  Now luckily for me my parents own a holiday home ( house not caravan ) in Wexford, the next county over and knowing they'd be there this weekend I made an impulsive decision to pack a bag and head to fethard on sea. Yea that's really what this place is called. it's one of those places that's really nice when the sun is shining but for a large part of the year the sunny south east sounds more like some one was being sarcastic when they came up with that name.  The best part of having a car ( when it actually runs) is that I can just take off ...

People often talk about the one that got away. You know that break up you always regret, the person who could have been the one ( colour me dubious but I'm not sure I believe in that concept) but I am going to have to be honest here and say that it's not a concept I readily identify with. Generally speaking if I'm left with any regrets about relationships it's that I entered into them at all. Mind you that's because if I've established anything at all of late it's that I have horrible horrible taste in men. If I was to list desirable attributes in a man of my choosing then being a dickhead wouldn't actually make it onto the list but yet I seem to continually find myself with in relationships with them. This has lead me to believe that I am the one that got away. Not in the traditional sense. Because I am not about to brag about what a catch I am, I don't exactly excel as selling myself and I'm not certain there's all that much to sell. Wh...

I am a very stressed Laura because I am having what can only be known as a bad car day. And I am handling it well , I am not at all worked up or flustered. (okay so that would be a lie) I can feel the anxiety bubbling but the sounds of drunken scumbags a few hundred yards from apartment that are so loud that It sounds like the cast of shameless is in my living room is doing much to soothe my fractured nerves. No, actually that's not true I want to fucking kill them.  So My car, little Stella is about 15 years old and due to be NCT'd shortly as I am broker than a very broke thing I have been holding off getting her serviced until just before the date. I have money set aside and It would be easier to get everything fixed in one go but as the day draws nearer it feels like everything is going wrong.  Last week I noticed one of the front indicators is broken. Now I know for a fact I didn't hit anything which means someone hit my car while it was parked and drove off like ...

For a country that gets ridiculously little sun we seem to be a nation obsessed with tanning. Unless you really have been away on a sun holiday everyone thinks its fake. They just might not be willing to tell you to your face.  Now I used to be all about the tan. anyway of getting my skin to look more bronzed, well I've done it. Sitting outside the minute the sun makes an appearance with as much skin as possible bared or flaunting a body that really shouldn't have been in a bikini all in attempts to  get that golden glow but usually ending up all red and peely. I once gave sun beds a brief go but had to stop because I actually got sun-burnt on the sun bed, I didn't even know that was possible. It is because I once had an artificially sun burnt bum to show for it. true story. I also got spray tanned twice and if you don't mind too much having a woman spray you with a hose while you make stupid poses in paper knickers then you might just like a spray tan but I can...