bookshoplaura

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...

I am an all or nothing type of girl. Or woman would be probably be more accurate except it's a label I haven't really gotten comfortable using to describe myself so let's just say I am an all or nothing type of girl-woman. I like to commit myself fully even when it leads to my downfall. If it can really be said that we learn from our mistakes then I will consider myself well educated. Personally I prefer to make the mistake a few times before going to the bother of learning from it. I have been told many times that I am too honest in my blog and also in my life but I don't know how to be less so. I tend to sit in thoughtful silence or just say everything that's in my head no matter how random or occasionally inappropriate it might be. I often wish the delay between the thought entering my head and exiting my mouth was longer. When I'm into someone I wear my heart on my sleeve and it's only asking for trouble. I want to play it cool and be mysterious ye...

As someone on the front line as far as Christmas is concerned, in the children's section of a book shop I am almost as christmassy as the elf they once had me dress up as, I have noticed an alarming trend in children's picture books in the run up to Christmas. They are getting ruder and slightly more disgusting. Not that it's completely limited to christmas books as I did see one Dirty Bertie noisy book entitled 'Pooh, Is that you Bertie?' and when you press the button it emits a long wet fart sound, beautiful stuff. Anyway last Christmas some guy from Busted (other random now forgotten pop group) wrote a children's book called the Dinosaur who pooed Christmas. Now you might be thinking you know what this is about but the reality is worse. As a responsible bookseller (and lover of books) I read most of the new picture books as they arrive and I felt the bad kind of dirty after reading this one. The basic plot is about a not very nice little boy who demands a...

Little ray of sunshine that I am, I have more than one thing on my list of dislikes but there is one that irks me above all others (at least today it does) and that is passive aggressive behavior. I am many things and I know too honest is certainly one of them but there is one thing I will stand behind and that is if I don't like you then you will probably know all about it and not because I will deliberately be a bitch but I just wont make an effort to be friendly beyond pleasantries. I am assuming this is one of the times where my chronic ability to lie convincingly comes into play. Not everyone is like me though and I think that's a shame because life would be a far more level playing field if you knew where you stood. Sometimes people are not honest enough or brave enough to allow their true feelings show through and that's usually where passive aggressive behavior comes in to it.  Sometimes I tire of having to see the haze of anger that lies beneath someones smile w...

Recently I saw a film that was most definitely not a romantic comedy but it made a rather interesting comparison to those sort of films and porn. Before you spit out your tea in disgust just give me a quick moment to explain. What the movie was saying is that porn gives me unrealistic expectations about what women look like, how they behave mostly when it comes to sex while romantic comedies create these men who don't exist and are only 'perfect' because they were written that way. In either case you are setting yourself up from a fall. Fortunately for me my cynical nature usually takes over so i am more inclined to feel a tad nauseous than swoon at how the leading man is portrayed. Okay maybe sometimes I get just a weency bit fluttery watching a pre packaged love story but I still keep one foot firmly esconced in reality so there's no danger of me getting carried away. I actually refused to watch the notebook on principal and I don't think I am missing out ...

I am a self confessed, terrible liar. Not that I need to confess anything because all you have to do is watch me try to lie my way out of something convincingly and your deductive skills should do all the work for you. I am the sort of twitchy, red faced liar who gets a little bit clammy while spinning an unconvincing tale. Now I am not just saying this because it is a skill I will never master but I actually think this is a good thing. The trouble with people who are very good liars is that how trustworthy they are is directly proportionate to how well they can lie. Sometimes you find yourself wondering if what you're being told is the truth or are you just falling for bullshit again while they laugh (secretly) at your gullibility. Perhaps its just me who worries about such things but I am in equal parts cynical and gullible mostly due to experience and it leads to very confusing times for me. Feeling like you believe what you're being told but also incredibly suspicious t...

I remember the first time I heard Eckhart Tolle speak. I was 19 and my dad collected me from the airport, I had just gotten back from visiting my sister in Spain and in his car he had this cd playing. I don't remember the words being said but I found it hysterically funny because Eckhart Tolle sounded a lot like Gollum ( how unfortunate for him) from The Lord of the rings franchise. Years later I voluntarily picked up the book 'the power of now' and realized that he actually made a lot of sense and there's something to be said for his way of thinking. 'The power of now' is about how to live in the moment, not to be lost in past regrets/ victories or consumed by thoughts of your future. Honestly it's an area where I could still use a little guidance. It's all very well to read something and acknowledge it makes more sense than the way you currently live your life but it's quite another to actually implement the necessary changes. I think you c...

I like to wonder if there's a cut off point where I will no longer snigger at anything vaguely sexual. Logic would suggest that if such an Age existed then surely I'd have reached it by now. I'm technically a fully fledged adult and spend most of my time doing very grown up things and yet I  Undo this facade every time i am the only   Giggling at some almost dirty sounding phrase or word and everyone Turns to stare while i go bright red and mumble an  Apology. Now perhaps it's not a question of maturity. It is said that you have to grow older but you don't have grow up and I think that's a concept I can get behind.  Now if you're not overly familiar with crossfit then you'd be forgiven for thinking that the barrage of dirty sounding terms are hilarious but after over two years training there I really should be less amused. Among the funnier words that get that get thrown around in your average crossfit gym are snatch, box , clean and jerk a...

It's all about the small things Yesterday I was in work in a bad way. I was all out of sleep and running on empty.  If you're wondering what that looks like the answer is not very pretty. I was tired and hungry and the icing on the proverbial cake was that my muscles were in bits. I had done the mother of all workouts  Friday morning  and due to my own stupidity (forgot to bring my protein shaker home and then headed back to Waterford  without my protein) I had no protein shake and was forced to hobble around work in a painful manner making a face everytime I had to bend over to pick something up. Which on Saturday is about every two minutes so a fun day all round. By 5.30 I kind of looked like I was falling apart and not in a hot mess sort of way, just the mess , no hot. My sister had taken pity on my body of doom ( my muscles were so sore it hurt to cough, true story)  and had brought my protein into the shop but I was trying to work...

Laughter is said to be the best medicine and aside from actual medicine then this might actually be true. A really good laugh makes the world seem like a better place which is probably why people go out of their way to experience this feeling. Intuitively you would not think that laughter is the sort of thing that could be forced but there are whole groups of people in America who meet for laughter therapy which consists of fake laughing ( or the charity laugh as I call it) until you actually end up laughing. I've read its fairly effective but really it's just incredibly strange. Only in America eh. Personally I prefer my levels of amusement to go up naturally. Nothing like a chat with friends or a good bit of comedy to get you giggling your way to feeling better. Last night in this effort to heal myself through comedy ( okay fine I just wanted to be entertained) I went to see David O'Doherty do some stand up live and it was well worth the money as my sides were hurtin...

I would have achieved a lot more by this point in my life If I hadn't lost quite so much time to daydreaming. Even updating my blog can sometimes take almost an hour because I pause during typing to get lost during some reverie. I'm sure its just a sign of creative mind so really that's good thing but try telling me that when my alarm went off twenty minutes ago and I'm too lost in my own thoughts to have gotten my ass out of bed. I think as a child, in primary school, virtually every report card said that I was bright but needed to spend less time daydreaming. That's easier said than done. Sometimes there's not enough going on in the now to hold my attention. Surely daydreaming is a natural response to boredom. Although some say every time you day dream it's actually your brain having a very mild epileptic fit. This is certainly a lot less charming and perhaps a tad worrying given the frequency with which my mind tends to wander. I am not dreaming of ...

There's something kind of peaceful about  Being up early in the morning when no one else is and you can gently move through your morning routine without having to interact with another human being.  I get up about an hour and a half before I need to go to work especially to cater for my desire to potter about for a bit. Mornings do not bring out my efficient side and I've decided on balance than rather than have those few more minutes sleep that I would prefer to waste that time reading a bit of my book while I dry my hair and then maybe a bit more of the book until I check time and remember I'm actually supposed to be getting ready for work and have to rush through everything else.  This morning I virtually crawled Out of bed into the shower refusing to fully wake up until I was at least half washed and afterwards I sat on my couch drinking tea as the morning sun came in the window, just enjoying the peace before my housemate got up and allowing me to go f...

It seems earlier and earlier each year Christmas creeps up on us. I heard rumors that Brown Thomas had a Christmas tree up in August which is frankly a little disgusting and makes you wonder what's next, selection boxes in july? I am in a position of being unable to avoid all things Christmas because in retail it's a pretty big deal and even more so for me, someone who sells books for children so I'd want to buck up and get in the spirit of things. While I can't actively look forward to the madness and mayhem that is sure to follow in the coming weeks ; the shop being insanely busy, things selling out and not coming back in fast enough and everything getting absolutely trashed there are however some aspects of all this that I do like. Before you ask it's not the Christmas music but I will admit to have a bit of a soft spot for the old classics like Doris day's version of Here comes Santa Claus and provided I don't actually have to hear it until December,...

I don't worry if I break a mirror or take a shortcut to avoid walking under a ladder. I'm not concerned when a black cat crosses my path and Friday the 13th is always just another Friday to me. So you could say I'm not superstitious and for the most part you'd be right but I do have some odd little quirks that might be interpreted otherwise if you didn't know better.  I do occasionally worry about jinxing things which is a silly thing for someone who usually finds comfort in the logical. The last time I was applying for jobs, I got an interview very early on in the job hunt but in truth it wasn't a job I actually wanted so I didn't go. At the time I remember worrying that I had some how jinxed my chances of getting a job by virtually turning down that one. I didn't get another interview for quite some time and even though logic dictates the unlikelihood of those two facts being connected I was still prone to worrying I had somehow created the sit...

If I were so inclined to right a semi definitive list of my pet peeves then I would probably start with the words 'pet peeves', It annoys me just saying it and I think surely someone somewhere could have could have come up with a better word to describe the petty irritations in life. If I was to set aside sometime and really dedicate myself to the cause I could probably have a whole new blog updated daily on the the things that really bug the crap out of me but life gets in the way so I will do my utmost to limit it to this one post. At this particular moment in time, as someone who idly scans my facebook feed several times a day and I am noticing it is virtually polluted with the internets' latest offering, some gimmick called bitstrips which allows you to create a cartoon version of yourself and then post pictures of your cartoon self doing the unfunniest things possible with someone else (who has also taken the time out of their busy day to make a cartoon likeness of...

Laura is having one of those days where her brain won't brain and coherent sentences are a struggle. I was going to try and continue this blog post in the third person for a change but I'm only a sentence in and I'm already really annoying myself. I'm already on my fourth attempt at updating my blog but have had to hastily abandon ship when I realize I'm writing utter nonsense. It may be only lunch time but I can tell you now that today will not be a productive day for me. I am always trying to find something new and interesting and a little bit different to my blog posts about and some days it's a bit of a struggle particularly when I can't even think in full sentences, yea that kind of tired where you feel really bummed out for no reason. That's me today. So how do you keep people reading when you have nothing new to say or at least nothing new that you are willing to blog about ? I'm sure there are other ways but today I am blogging about this...

I'll be the first to admit I like a good foreign film despite the reaction I usually get from those around me. I know that generally admitting to really liking world cinema is considered a tad pretentious and I know this because I've been told as much on several occasions but it's not as though I'm sitting around just watching avant garde French films, smoking gauloises' and talking about how sophisticated I am. I just like them, there's some I even love and I think people who won't watch a film purely because it's subtitled are really missing out. Years ago when I worked in Chartbusters (a franchise now long gone) and they had quite a good selection of world cinema films (plus some super dodgy low grade porn but that's a conversation for another blog post) and I got to really indulge my interest in discovering new films. Let's just say I was one of the people who always brought home five free dvd's a week and wished we were entitled to m...

At what point in my life am I supposed to abandon my liking for glitter, please don't say now. I had one of those moments today where I felt old because I passed the urban decay stand and saw the full array of liquid glitter eyeliners that I used to have in every colour and I thought damn I miss those, whatever happened to them and realized they had probably gone off and gotten thrown away. I had to fight the urge to buy just one, they are oh so pretty but I'm wondering have I passed the age where it's acceptable. Is it like pigtails, will I look ridiculous if I keep doing it well into my thirties.  I think the real question is how much can a grown woman shimmer before she looks like she's trying really hard to be a fairy. I'm still a little hooked on my urban decay eyeshadow which is all either shimmery or glittery (it's not my fault it's just how they make it) and I was wearing one such glittery eye shadow in work a few months back but the glitter has ...

When I was in my teens I was embarrassed to be seen going into Penneys and there's not a hope in hell I would have admitted to buying something from there. I was too busy lusting over unaffordable items from French Connection and for a few years in my early twenties, buying them. Paying 80 quid for a cardigan and telling myself it was a bargain, clearly I was high. In my student years and in the middle of a God awful recession I find my attitude, as well as everyone else's has changed and getting a bargain from Penney's seems to be worn like a badge of pride. "Oooh I love your dress, where did you get it?" "Penneys - 10 euro" lest anyone think you went to any special effort or expense to look good. I will admit there is a certain lure in knowing that your money will go much further but I'm starting to wonder does it matter if all you're doing is throwing away your money on stuff you don't want or that will fall apart just as you've ...

I'm feeling pretty sick and sorry for myself as I've been sniffling my way through the last three days. I know I don't actually have the flu because I've been able to get up and go to work. When I worked in Boots a few years back the pharmacist there told us that if someone comes in claiming to have the flu then they don't because if they had the flu they wouldn't actually be able to get out of bed. This leads me to conclude that I might have the man flu or in laymans terms the common cold. As I have asserted before I truly make a terrible patient. I feel very sorry for myself whenever I am even a little bit unwell. It's probably lucky I can't day sick days at my leisure or I'd have probably have spent two of the last three days in bed recovering. Mind you, had I done that for even I day I might be a little better than I am now. I'm cold and my nose is running like a tap which means I am the woman with an endless supply of tissues. It's...

I often get asked where I eat when I eat out and it always makes me laugh and then laugh some more because I don't actually eat out. True story. Upon reflection I do realize this is actually kind of sad but my options are limited so I think my last trip to a restaurant was back when I could still eat pizza. And yes that was the only thing I ate out. These days I am still limited but the limitations are a different breed. When I was kid, I was the one you didn't want to have over for dinner. I was a pain in the ass. I only ate certain things and I was unwilling to compromise. I was not the child eating something to be polite. I was the one adamant she was not hungry while her stomach rumbled ominously. I remember once going to stay with my aunt for a few days and after two days she had to send me home because I wasn't actually eating anything at all and she was pretty worried. My sisters used to tell me when I was younger that when I became an adult my fussy eating would...