bookshoplaura

Last night I found myself messing around on goodreads. I had just downloaded the app and I was looking through their lists of commendable or popular books so I could start adding to my list of what I've read and it got me thinking. What if I was to compile a list of books I've read and I mean all of the books. What would such a list even look like, my thoughts would be ridiculous because even now with less time on my hands, I am an avid reader. I know for instance that I've read close to 300 books in just under two years. I'm using this an example because I started working in a bookshop in May 2012 and we're allowed to borrow books but we have to sign them in and out so I actually have a list of what I've read during that time and no I'm not counting picture books but I do read all the new ones as they come in.  I'm going to hazard a guess and say it would probably be in the thousands but there's far too many for me to ever remember without a lit

Sometimes when I'm in the middle of a crossfit class I feel as though I'm getting less fit as time goes on when in actuality its probably just a case that I'm not training enough. It is the down side to not living in the same town as the gym I train at. Some weeks I might only make it down for one class and I'd love to tell you that I make up for it by working out loads from the comfort of my apartment but up to about a week ago that would have been a big fat lie. It's hard to get out of bed and motivate yourself to exercise and that's why I've given up writing out workouts for myself, it's like I'd ever actually do them although the intentions were there. I find intentions don't do much to get you into skinny jeans. I am currently off sugar about two weeks now so my tummy is already a little smaller but I am trying to wean myself gently off the things I eat to fill the hole that sugar has left and that's a little harder. Hopefully I'l

From time to time I like to go through a mini existential crisis which involves me not so much wondering why I'm here on the planet but more what the hell I'm actually doing with my life. It's fun, I recommend you try it. If you didn't have your sarcasm filter on then I apologize, I'll just give you a minute to turn it up to high before I  go on. I think I'm just having moments where it dawns on me that I'm 32 now and not only am I not following the plan I used to have, I don't even have a new one to replace it. The problem is I have become a little too attached to procrastinating and instead of actually doing anything to resolve this life crisis, I wrap myself up like a burrito on the couch and turn my brain firmly onto the off position. As techniques for dealing with a quarter life crisis go, this might not be the best approach. Mostly because all it does is bury the problem until I'm ready to face it and so far that time is always too far off

Jimmy Fallon recently quipped that 1% of the population is intolerant to gluten and the other 99% is sick of hearing about it. I think he might be onto something. I try not to harp on too much about my long list of can't haves (except for in my blog which doesn't count because people are reading it of their own volition). Sometimes though, I can't help it. Someone offers me something like cake or asks why I go to so much trouble baking my own stuff and I can't explain my way around it without a vague reference to my wheat intolerance and so on. Naturally I find it only fair to assume that no one really wants to know the details of the ill effects both candida and IBS produce when I eat the things that feed or trigger them so I settle for something nice and vague about it upsetting my stomach and then we have a brief discussion about how awful it is to be me. To be clear, I am not the one saying it's awful being me. Yes, sometimes I gripe about everything I can&#

Back in the days when I had a bit more spare money, I wasn't so great at shopping. By that I mean I often bought things I only kind of liked and would wear a handful of times. I was a silly girl and I don't have a single one of those things now. French Connection cardigans at €80 a pop or that one Ted Baker dress for €110, were among some of my more frivolous purchases. Things have changed now though and the thing is while it mostly sucks to not have much in the way of spare cash, when I do have the money I am much better at shopping. It's almost  as though my ability to shop has been streamlined to the extent where the one time a year I go on a proper shopping spree, I usually manage to impress people with the spoils of my labour. Although I will admit I do get a bit stressed when in full shopping mode so I'm not entirely sure there's all that much to the notion of retail therapy. I do usually feel better when I buy myself one or two things so perhaps its just w

I'm pretty clever so I adapted one of the few recipes I can use into a birthday cake. Okay , well admittedly I had the idea but a friend of mine had done this recently ( after I had suggested it ) and I based the changes upon her very sucessful cake .  So to make this you will need grease proof paper , large mixing bowl , wooden spoon , two 8" cake tins and a hand mixer . Ingredients  Cake :  9oz butter 8 tbl coconut sugar  8 eggs  6 oz almond flour  6 oz gluten free flour ( I used buckwheat)  1 heaped tbl baking powder  Topping  6-7 tbl coconut oil 6-7 tbl cocoa powder  A good dollop of rice syrup  Rock salt  Chopped pecan nuts  1. Leave butter out to soften and then beat With hand mixer until creamy and then add sugar and beat some more. 2. When sugar and butter are well mixed, add eggs one by one and beat With hand mixer. 3. In a separate bowl mix the two flours with the baking powder. Then sieve the mix into the cake batt

( My 4 year old niece drew this beautiful portrait of me where I look kind of like a hooker but a really young one so its cool) I remember when I was 16 or 17 and I couldn't get into a nightclub for love nor money because I looked too damn young and frankly bouncers aren't stupid. I actually had to carry ID all through college ( even though I didn't start college until I was 24) and once when I was in first year, of college that is, I had to call my 18 year old housemate to come buy me drink because Tesco's wouldn't let me have it . I know it was a compliment really but back then it was more of an inconvenience. It's funny how much a few years can drastically change your outlook on these things because nowadays when someone tells me how young I look I automatically want to befriend them. Especially when they aren't saying it to be nice or because they are trying to Butter me up. When someone is genuinely shocked about my age ( in the good way)

You haven't really had a hangover until you've had the wine flu and considering that when I drink these, I usually go for wine, I am more than familiar with its many charms.  I have found that one of the least delightful things about getting older is that hangovers seem to just go on and on and on and even one glass of some cheap plonk can leave me feeling maudlin for days on end. There is some part of me that feels like I didn't sign up for this, not that there's anyone I can complain to. This weekend with me having a few days off and the joint festivities of my Birthday and Paddies day meant that I found myself doing two nights in a row. This is something I haven't done since college and everything suggests I am no longer able for this sort of carry on. Yes, it might be only four years since I left college but time moves faster in your thirties plus the fact that I wasn't ever really able for that sort of carry on but I chose to ignore it because why

As my birthday nears and I do my best to ignore the fact I am getting older whether I like it or not. I am still just as much of a child about my birthday. A fact my family still get great amusement from. I think I'd fooled myself into thinking I had grown up because I wasn't making a huge deal out of my birthday this year. I am not having a party or even doing anything momentous to mark the occasion unless you count the fact that I was out at a gig last night and I'm heading out with a few friends later on today, see I'm barely acknowledging the event. Last year I even worked on my birthday which was not cool but apparently they stop making special dispensations to mark birthdays once you get out of primary school and it seems a little unfair.  Anyway I thought I was doing pretty well until I realised that part of the reason I am waiting until Tuesday morning to come back to Waterford is the guarantee of a present to open when I wake up and I know that makes me sou

Mirrors are not my friend and I know I wont be the first person to admit this but It's true. They do me no favours most of the time. Except today when it would have benefited me to look in a mirror after my coffee break and I might have seen the bun I'd nommed left a chocolately smudge across my cheek and not walked around with it there for a full two hours. Aside from the mirrors in the gym that I steer well clear of ( only watching myself when I have the misfortune to be swinging from a bar like an ungraceful monkey) , my least favourite mirrors in the whole while world are changing rooms mirrors. I should take a very quick moment to mention that calling it a fiasco suggests something quite dramatic so technically the title of this post is a bit of a lie. Have you ever gone to a changing room feeling fine but ready to try on a few items and left empty handed, feeling sad and like you are too fat for clothes. Well that pretty much sums up my Penneys experience today. I was

Now you might be asking yourself what exactly is a fatastrophe ? it's a word I just made up to describe to describe the moment where you can no longer deny you've put on weight or a catastrophe involving fat. I have been noticing the weight creep on recently and mostly pretending i haven't because denial is way more fun and that way I don't actually have to do anything about it. I'm not exactly scratching my head over the cause, I have been eating more ( especially the sugar) and exercising less so this is not rocket science. All the same, it doesn't make the whole experience any more pleasant. Anyone who knew me / saw photos of me during my 20s can tell the whole thing was pretty fatastrophic and yes, when I say thing I do mean most of that decade. I wasn't completely oblivious. I did have functioning eyes so my weight gain was an undeniable fact but I did tell Myself little lies about how bad I'd gotten and then id soothe all the bad thou

  (me at 22 )  # (me at almost 32, close enough)  As it nears the tenth anniversary of my 22nd birthday, or my 32nd birthday in other words, I am trying valiantly to ignore how old I feel, especially when I remember how old I'm going to be and there's a bit of a holy shitballs moment.Mind you, that could be early onset dementia so perhaps that's to be expected. Mostly I will tell you I don't feel that old unless I talk to younger people and damn do they have a way of making you feel your age. I don't just mean the lingo you don't really see the appeal of but I am already noticing many of the pop culture references are a little beyond me and when I admit I am not really following the conversation, It makes me feel like I've just accidentally joined in a conversation about sports. Had I known what I was getting myself into I' d probably have just tuned out and read my book. The truth is some things have changed in the last 10 years and they are

They say working in a bookshop isn't glamorous, largely because it isn't but sometimes it can be fun. I'm sure most people haven't heard of World book day, I'm pretty sure I hadn't before I started working in a bookshop so I'll just assume you're as clueless as I was and give you a quick explanation. It's an event that was created to help celebrate reading worldwide. In Ireland and the Uk it happens on 6th March and for some reason in the rest of the world it's some time in April.  Anyway they give out vouchers in all of the schools and then bring out a selection of books that cost as much as the vouchers so every child gets a free book. And as well as that there's usually some other book related events for the month of March and that would be where my ingenious costume comes in. It was mentioned that some of the schools were having a dress as your favourite book character events which led to the shop I work hosting it's own, th

Despite being raised Catholic, it hasn't really stuck with me. Not that I've abandoned Catholicism in favour of atheism or anything drastic like that but I do go about religion in a rather half assed manner. I am reminded of this when lent rolls round and everyone is talking about what they will be giving up and I am not sure I will really be contributing or at least if I will it will be purely coincidental.  Yesterday I believe I said I was going to give up chocolate (AGAIN, I know ! right ) and really I know I should for many many reasons all valid and what not but today I felt a bit sad so I bought some and ate some and then day steadily went downhill from there and It had me wondering is it not half assed to only to 39 days of lent instead of the full 40. Mind you, this might be me making excuses because I am genuinely worried about my ability to really quit sugar. Truth be told I need more than lent to motivate me, perhaps a rehab facility would take me in. It doesn

In less than two weeks I will be 32, a fact that I am less than delighted about. Right now I am thrown on my couch barely able to string a sentence together because I had a few drinks on Saturday night and am now suffering the effects of wine and sleep deprivation two days later. In a way that kind of sums up my thirties for me. I saw a quote online a while back that something along of the lines of being an adult is all about making plans and wishing you hadn't. That much, I get. I feel like a lot of my twenties was spent in my pyjamas watching greys anatomy and wishing I could be out socialising and now my thirties seems to involve an awful lot of me putting on clothes and heading out to socialize when I wish I could be on my couch in my pyjamas watching greys anatomy. Trust me, the irony is not lost on me. Now I was always one for the epic hangovers but I was also a little bit silly about the fact that I am a lightweight, if you don't believe me just ask anyone who has ev