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As part of my mini holiday I have been home for two days and much as I intended to get super fit in this time, I only managed to fit in two classes. Mind you, at tonight's class I did vomit a little in mouth ( from burpees) so I feel like I deserve a little extra credit for that. I did however spend a lot of time on both days earning some extra auntie Laura credits by minding two of my favourite ladies. The nieces or half the reason i respond to the title auntie Laura ( that and the fact that it makes me sound cool) One major bonus of this ( aside from giving my sister a bit of space to get some work done) is the hilarious conversations I get to be witness to. The girls are five and seven and very much prone to blurting out whatever's in their heads at a given moment. I think it's good to make note of these now because someday soon they will be a lot more grown up and I'm sure to have forgotten most if it. I do have a head like a sieve. We spent most of yeste...

I'm not sure my few days off are entirely accidental but given that I thought I was back in work on Saturday until my hours for this week went up, I shall continue to call it that and consider it a happy accident. A few months back when I was putting in my holidays for the summer I had two days left over and I thought sure I'll book myself a weekend off and find something nice to do with it when the time comes and then promptly forgot about it. It was just a happy accident that the weekend I picked happened to fall just after my two days off. Plus its a bank holiday weekend so it was like all the wins all together. Last summer I think I used all my holiday days hanging around Clonmel and going to the gym but even if that was how I wanted to spend my days off, I'm pretty sure my partner in crime (boyfriend) would take issue with it. As it happens I was planning on going home Thursday and Friday anyway so it works out like a happy little compromise, I can pop home and do a...

As I continue my quest to learn the Irish language I might be starting to question my intelligence if not my sanity. I remember Irish being awkward and unpleasant on the ear but I certainly Don't remember it being this damn hard. That might be because I learned it first as a child, it's a shame I seem to have forgotten so much of what was drummed into me in school.  To give myself some credit, so far I have been sticking to my self designated plan to study a chapter every night as tedious as that might be and I'm finding my Brain feels a little bit fried by the time I finish the exercises at the end of the chapter. I've taken to throwing on my cop show of choice ( at the moment it's south land but before that it was law and order Svu )and sitting on my Couch in my pyjamas half watching the show while I fill my note book with all the Irish grammar and vocabulary a girl could Want. For the record that's not very much at all. And I can't help ...

What did you do With your Friday night ?  Oh you were in the pub. That's nice. I was at the opera. I know it makes me sound very sophisticated unless you've actually met me in person. now I'm at least 35% more cultured. That ought to win me brownie points though I'm not sure with whom. Perhaps the crowd that normally attend this sort of thing will think  I'm hip but then again given that Most people there had a good 10-15 years on me, I'm not entirely sure I want to impress them. So not only did I attend an opera last night but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not sure I'd consider myself a convert just yet  because liking one opera does not make me an opera fan but I might just be more open to giving seeing another one a shot instead of just dismissing it out of hand, despite how fond I've become of my method for dealing With the unfamiliar. It seems my concerns about dress code were unwarranted and I probably could have turned up th...

Tonight I am going to my very first Opera. To the best of my knowledge opera isn't really my thing but that is mainly based on the snatches of operatic singing I have heard over the years. My boyfriend works in marketing for Theatre Royal so he managed to get free tickets.  They are showing the première of the first Irish Opera on a fairly tiny stage.   Now I'm not sure if I like opera but I do like free. I mentioned to a friend of mine that I had to head back to Waterford early as we were going to see an Opera and she said it would be just like Pretty woman so somehow attending an Opera must turn me into an escort either that or she meant I might be a bit out of place at something so fancy. I think she might be right. Having nothing to base it on, I have no idea what to expect. My boyfriend suggested I dress up but we have different ideas about what that might entail and I'm not quite sure how dressed up I'm expected to get. Now obviously I have some cop on so I...

Today was my day off and for a change I decided I would be more productive if I stayed in Waterford. I usually head home to the gym but I've been doing a small workout at home and I haven't been eating crap so weighing it up I figured I could probably risk skipping a class or two without turning into a complete blimp. Aside from the super exciting task of cleaning my apartment, the number one item on my to do list was to pay a visit to my local library and see if they had anything that could help me learn Irish. I had tried the internet and can't say I was ever going to get very far with any of the free websites I had managed to gather. I don't do so well with links on my computer. Mostly they sit in neatly organized folders on my browser and remain untouched. However with an actual book I am more inclined to sit down and study.  It seems I was in luck as the library had buckets of stuff to help me learn a language I should already know so I promptly signed myself u...

I have had a very good weekend indeed. After recovering from severe princess exhaustion and having a very exciting ( read non eventful early night) Saturday evening. I was all ready to go on another adventure with my boyfriend. I swear, if it was left up to me, we would spend a lot of more of my days off lying on my sofa but he had spotted a film festival in Cork city that looked interesting so we called it a date. I had never actually driven to Cork city and I had no intention of attempting the journey any time soon because it was a bigger city and I'd never been there. Probably not the best justification for not attempting a journey but I am a woman set in my ways. However I was persuaded that it would be so much nicer than the bus ( this is true) so I rose to the occasion and agreed I would brave the journey. Plus I had heard a rumor (read an article) stating that Milanos (only my favourite pizza place) had started doing a gluten free pizza and I was very keen to investi...

After much preparation ( I swear some of my college essays didn't take this much work ) the day of the Princess party was upon me. To get ready for this I had spent much time sourcing princess trivia for the quiz and collecting disney princess pictures for the guess the princess game and cutting them and sticking them. I picked out princess stories and prepared tiara pictures to colour in. I had emailed schools and arranged posters. I had bought two tiaras ( the first one was so tight it was like a migraine made of plastic, probably because it was made with a child's head in mind.) and nervously put a princess outfit together half worried I would be swamped by kids but also concerned it might end up just being me wandering around the shop totally overdressed with only a tiara to indicate I hadn't just gotten lost on my way back from some very fancy party.  Fortunately my fear of being the only one dressed up for an overly prepared party was not a genuine concern as befo...

Some of my regular readers may remember that a few days ago I pledged to go on a cleanse of sorts for 30 days. Partly to manage my sugar intake both for my weight and general well being. Anyone who's been reading this for a good while will know that I have a wonderful habit of pledging to do things and then not quite following through but this my friends is going to be different.  I have been detoxing since Monday and let me tell you so far it has not been pleasant. Now before you start to imagine that I am some sort of wine guzzling savage who can't go a day without it and fills the hours inbetween wine eating loaves of spelt bread dipped in sugar, my diet wasn't really all that bad. I did make my week that bit harder by having all the chocolate over the weekend like a very silly goose indeed. I survive with a very twisted sort of logic so having decided the detox would start Monday and finally acknowledging the wine I was going to have Friday ( because of the meal for ...

I have recently realized that the level of Irish my seven year old niece is getting close to surpassing my own. As useful as it is to be able to greet people formally or ask for permission for the toilet, I find I would be struggling to say anything else coherent in what should be my native tongue. It's a little embarrassing. Especially given that with a few glasses of wine (for the confidence, obviously) I could manage to hold a half decent conversation in French if I was called upon to do so. I have decided that the time has come to rectify this matter and I am doing my best to act on this urge before it leaves me. I will however confess that it is not solely my love of learning that is propelling me forward. I was having a conversation today with my sister about an acquaintance working in residential social care who's having a hard time of it and how I am finding it very difficult to even make myself apply for this kind of work. I recently ignored a series of emails fro...

I don't eat out much or ever really if I am to be completely honest. I'd love to blame that on my current dietary restrictions but the real truth is it's because I am a very fussy vegetarian and now with my current diet restrictions, even though I am willing to try more things, I am still not left with a lot of options. Any way much as I would like to not really go through the whole restaurant experience because nothing makes me feel socially awkward like having to explain to a waitress what I can't have, that's not always an option. It was my boyfriends birthday over the weekend and to celebrate he wanted me and a few of his close friends to go for dinner in one of the posher French restaurants in town. I'd have preferred to have skipped it because trying to find something to eat out and then trying not to look like a weirdo in front of everyone isn't really my idea of a good night out. Naturally I suppressed this rather selfish impulse and instead took ...

I've had pretty much the same hair cut since I was about four or five but I reckon if you find  a look that works for you then why not stick with it. Well I've played around with it a bit but I always come back to the bob. I think I've had a fringe for as long as I can remember apart from brief periods of madness in my youth where I tried to grow it out and then realized how fucking weird my face looks without it and promptly got it cut back in just to restore the status quo. Myself and the fringe have had our ups and downs. There was the time at age 6 or 7 I got my hands on a scissors and decided to give it a trim, sadly I knew little about cutting hair and had to endure several months with a triangle missing from my fringe. I'd like to say I've learned from the experience but that was not the last time I attempted to trim my fringe and the follow up attempts in my twenties were only marginally better and often ended with me shuffling shamefaced to my hairdresser...

I like to go through phases of reading bouts of non fiction on a particular subject. A few months ago it was the truth about sugar and now it's feminism But not as you'd know it. After almost devouring the everyday sexism book which proved to be relate-able, fascinating and some what harrowing a read , I was more than primed to read more on the topic. Then along came vagenda. What can I say , I was intrigued . It stems from A blog of the same name written by a group of women fed up by the way the media speaks to and portrays women. It's described as a zero tolerance guide to the media. I'm only a few chapters in but so far it's Keeping me interested and amused. Last   Night I was reading about how the beauty industry and women's magazines are co-conspirators in a somewhat sinister plot to make women more insecure in order to sell more Beauty products and treatments. The kind of thing that sounds completely far fetched until they break it down and th...

I was discussing my weekend (namely my hangover) with my sister today and she was surprised to hear I had been drinking wine. If you are wondering why she was so surprised it's because I have been off sugar for a full six weeks now and mysteriously not lost much weight despite eating fairly healthily most of the time and she couldn't figure it out until I mentioned the wine. So apparently wine is absolutely loaded with sugar, weird eh ? A fact I have been somewhat aware of but not really been willing to fully acknowledge mostly because I have been still drinking it at social occasions so its suited me to think as wine as other. It didn't help that one of  the diet books I'd read in recent months had somewhat advocated that when cutting out sugar that some wine was okay to drink. I didn't put too much thought into the matter as quite frankly I didn't want to. As my dad is so fond of saying ( and we all practice our terrible joke groan upon hearing it) I was li...

After many many days of working, I had this weekend off so myself and my boyfriend headed to Kilkenny for the day to catch a bit of the Rhythm and roots festival. Admitedly we didn't really think this one through and arrived down at lunch time to have a look in a few shops before going to the only venue (hotel Kilkenny) that was actually a bit outside the city in order to hear one of the bands. Once that was over we realized that we had a good four hours before the next one was due to start and it wasn't really worth our while hanging around so we went looking for somewhere to eat before heading home. If anyone has ever tried to eat out with me then they would know how much of a pleasure it is to find some where that I can and am willing to eat. After me turning down everywhere my boyfriend suggested we eventually agreed on an Italian place because Stephen was starving and  suffering from hungry man syndrome and I was probably only going to be able to have fries...