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It's that time of year again where everyone sits down and takes stock of their life so far and resolves to do better in the year that comes, making promises they have no hope of keeping. I am looking back tonight because tomorrow my brain will be too fried after a twelve hour shift (and another to follow on New Years Day) to do very much of anything.  I don't think its been too bad a year but mind you I hadn't set myself much in the way of resolutions so its hard to fall short of nothing. All the same 2015 will be the year I finally got out of retail and into social care which I had been swearing I would do for the last three years, I think I had reached the point where people stopped believing me. I had been the girl who cried I'm quitting so many times I think it took people a little while to believe me when I finally got to say it to my boss. I remember I was so nervous she thought I was about to tell her I was seriously ill. I got that out of the way in January

This year I was delighted to make it home for Christmas even though I didn't feel it approaching. In my current line of work the nature of the work I do isn't any different at this time of year. To be fair I can't say I really missed the hustle and bustle of the festive season. I did visit my former work place on Christmas week and I can say I was only too happy to run out of there once I realised how crowded it was. I worked twelve hour shifts the two days before Christmas so my suitcase was well packed and in my car heading to work Christmas Eve. After a truly woeful nights sleep I was planning to get through the day on sugar and the promise of three days off and thankfully I got through it without any major incidents and was down at my parents house before 10 feeling ready for bed. I thought it would feel strange when we were all gathered together in my parents new house, this would be our first Christmas not in Beechmount but it felt like we had been doing it

I remember my nieces a year or so back asking me in an incredulous tone how long it takes to learn to drive because for as long as they could remember I had L plates on my car. The answer in my case is four years. Admittedly I probably could have gotten my full licence sooner if I hadn't been so hesitant to do my test in the three years that have passed since my last attempt. I get very anxious during tests or Interviews and so do not perform particularly well at either. I will put that in my list of things I need to work on in the new year. In time since I have learned to drive I feel I have accomplished a lot and yet I will go out of my way to avoid having to parallel park because I feel like its always going to be my Achilles heel. At least I have come a long way from the days when I used to feel anxious about getting into my car and was likely to bunny hop across roundabouts in third gear. The problem with learning to drive is that the older you do the harder it is and I wa

If there ever was a woman who needed mindfulness I would be her. I am a big ball of stress, sugar and coffee most of the time and the rest of the time I run on stress alone. For those of you not familiar with mindfulness, its not a new concept. Eckhart Tolle is quite well known in spiritual circles for bring the idea to light with his Power of Now and its quite straightforward. It's about living in the moment and actually enjoying and experiencing things as they happen. I am not very good at this. I frequently find myself driving somewhere and realise I have missed a good chunk of the journey. This is probably because I know the route well enough that I am driving on automatic but this is worrying both from a mental and safety point of view. I eat much too fast. Often I don't quite taste the food. As you can imagine this plays havoc on my digestive system as well as meaning I often eat more than I intended at any one sitting. Just recently I ate a sour dough sandwich so fas

I have found that being an adult involves a lot more paying of bills and a lot less eating ice-cream in my pyjamas than I envisioned when I was younger. I wish someone had told me, as I rushed to be more sophisticated, more grown up, more adult that this is what it would be like and I might have taken my time getting here. A lot of being an adult seems to be faking it until you either work out what's going or someone calls you out for being the fraud you feel like most of time. I still can't help looking around when someone calls for a grown up until it dawns that's me, I'm the grown up. I can't help wondering if that feeling ever really goes away. I think I pictured myself more together, my life in a neater order and not hastily thrown together as I do my best to cope with adult challenges without consulting my mum too often. Then again I also use to discuss sharing a house with several close friends without even contemplating children or partners. If that had

Prepare to declare me very boring but my idea of partying over the Christmas season will largely involve pyjama parties. By that I mean me in my pyjamas on my own in bed.  To be fair it's not just this year that I'll have missed out on the mile long queues and fighting my way to the bar. I've sat this season out for a few years running and actually it suits me just fine to not be there. I see to have reached a point in my life where I no longer have fear of missing out ( fomo ) and it's more like fear of having to socialise in large crowds of drunk people.  The funny thing is I'm dating someone who is virtually my polar opposite and who's been asking me for weeks what our New Years plans are. The honest answer is I think I'll sit this one out. Luckily for me the decision was pretty much taken out of my hands by the fact that I'm working until 9pm on New Years Eve and back in at 9 am New Years Day so my options for socialising are limited at best. My b

.A lot of people have a difficult relationship with food but mine is a bit more complicated and twisty than most. I've spent most of my life as a fussy eater, something it's been difficult to grow out of but let's just call me a work in progress and leave it there. Then there's the added component of my vegetarianism, gluten intolerance and weird thing with sugar. If all of that wasn't enough for you to digest then there's also my emotional relationship with food. I spent many years just being weird about food but not really examining the relationship. I was awkward and picky and preferred to prepare my own food and not discuss my diet. As I have gotten older and become more of an adult and been forced to adapt my diet somewhat for health reasons, I have started to pay more attention to my disfunctional relationship with all things edible.  My bizarre love hate thing with sugar would be a prime example of this. Over the last few years I have discovered sugar

As Christmas gets closer I am sure we are very well aware what time of year it is but I have only just started feeling a little bit festive. This is my first Christmas as a care worker and after three Christmases in the Bookstore it feels like a relief. My job is exactly the same as it was a few weeks ago and I am no more under pressure than I would be at any other time of year. I only have to step back inside the Bookshop to remember the frantic energy this time of year brings to those in retail. Its nice when the bad weather just means you wont get out for a walk rather than sales being impacted and thus your manager being extra grumpy (which would be the only reason you'd really have cared). The one thing that was likely to be different this year is that while all shops close for a day or two over Christmas, you are not guaranteed that same break, however short, when working in care. Some clients are with family over Christmas and others need constant care. I have been waiting

I can still remember the first time I had set foot in Momo Restaurant. To be fair it would be worrying if I couldn't given that they have only been open just over a year now. Anyway, I digress, it was New Years Eve and myself and my boyfriend were looking to do something low key to mark the occasion. I am happy to stay in and wear pyjamas and be in bed before the New Year has even been rung in but my lovely boyfriend would like to be at some great party making new memories to carry him in to the year ahead. As a compromise we said we could join another couple in going to Momo for food and music and then have a few drinks in a bar after. At that point I had heard quite a bit about Momo and had been repeatedly saying we must go in and try it. They had only been open a few weeks but there had been considerable buzz about the restaurant and everything I had seen and heard had piqued my interest so I was only delighted to have an excuse to finally try it out. As it happened we ha

In Waterford there lies a place which once a month becomes transformed from church to an enchanting place where music can be heard and creative minds come together. If you saw St Patrick's Gateway on any ordinary night you would not be able to imagine how magnificent a venue it can become. Last Friday was the third in the series of The Between The Bars events, a venture which brings national acts down to our forgotten corner of the world as well as championing some of the best talent the South East has to offer. Naturally I have been at all of them and I have been blown away every single time. December's Between The Bars featured Susan O'Neill and her band the Low Standards. I took advantage of the great deal Momo Restaurant have on for the night and it does help that they are just down the hill on Patrick's Street. Might be worth keeping in mind for January's Between The Bars (featuring David Kitt and Band Of Clouds) that with tickets for the gig you can a

If I were to be completely honest I would tell you that my life these days involves a lot more fluffy slippers than it does sparkly dresses even in the festive season. I assume its fair to start calling it that now December is upon us. These days my lifestyle is pretty healthy and not because I am on some sort of quest but just small changes I have made in the last year have amounted to such. I don't drink alcohol any more. I might drink again at some point in the future but after almost a year without it I doubt it. I gave up sugar some months ago and I am quite hopeful for the sake of my health and my waistline that this will be the one that sticks. I don't eat processed foods for the most part. I am going to Crossfit classes every chance I get and some days I think its the only thing keeping me sane. I am even trying to cull back my coffee habit, my last remaining vice but one bad nights sleep might just topple me over the edge and send me running to the closest barista.

Taking advantage of a Sunday off in November, myself and the boyfriend decided to go for a nice stroll through town in search of food and to take a look at Winterval, I had somehow managed to forget that while it all looks pretty that Winterval is pretty much catering for families and the food stalls don't have a whole lot to offer someone on as strict a diet as myself. This would probably be quite a sad story if the first stall we had encountered on our walk to town had not been Slice Woodfire Pizza. When I first met John Keane, he was not actually making pizza but singing his own songs at an open mic night and doing a pretty great job of it might I add. It seems he his a man of many talents though and he is also excellent at making woodfire pizza. He started serving these to the general public over the summer in the New Street Gardens and has since branched out and gotten his own mobile trailer so he can set up anywhere in town and make his pizzas. The last few weeks he h

I am definitely more hermit than social butterfly at the weekends these days but as chance would have it I had a social engagement two weeks in a row and I had three whole days off work. After spending my Saturday afternoon in a very leisurely fashion, I was all dressed up and ready to go out by 7. A band called Wyvern Lingo were playing in Shortts Bar and we had tickets to go see them. The gig was on nice and early which suited me just fine because there's only so late I am inclined to be in the centre of town on a Saturday night sipping a fizzy water. I know, I live an exciting life.  Susan O'Neill accompanied by Michelle Haberlin were playing support and they warmed up the crowd nicely. Susan is a local singer who I have heard so much about but tonight was the first time I had the honour of hearing her sing and can I just say wow, what an amazing voice. She had a really rich tone to it and is a talented songwriter as well.   Her performance was so lovely that it has me

It feels like only days ago I found myself sitting in St Patrick's Gateway awaiting the debut of Between The Bars but a whole month has passed. Time as always seems to crawl by so slowly and then pass all at once. The very first Between The Bars gig featured Corner Boy and Ronan O Snodaigh and it created a great buzz in the South East. For the second event Elm, The Casanova Wave and In the Willows were all set to perform. It seems the people of Waterford knew they were in for a rare treat because crowds poured in as soon as the doors of St Patrick's opened. As always we began our night with a meal in Momo. They were offering a pre-concert deal of a two course meal with a wine or beer for €21.50 and I was glad we had booked our table because it appeared as though plenty were taking full advantage of this great offer with every seat filled as we sat down to eat. I really did mean to get something completely different but I had been dreaming about their falafels since m

The weird thing about healthier eating is some of the recipes people pass on to you. They sound implausible at best and disgusting at worst. The trouble is that even though I want to eat better and look better as a result I hate the feeling that I can't have any treats. I don't know why that concept is fundamentally so important to me but it is and so I spend much of my free time looking for better ways to treat myself. Then I usually follow that up by eating way too much of the healthier treat and being forced to take a break for a while. I recently learned how to make my own protein fudge and since discovered its a lot more calorific (mostly good calories but still) that I had thought, mostly because I was too busy scoffing it and feeling good about myself for eating so healthily. Its made up of almond butter, coconut oil, vanilla rice protein, cacao powder, rice syrup and pecan nuts so it shouldn't be too surprising that combining lots of good fats makes for fairly fa

Those of you who know me will be aware that I have no children. I have one nephew and three nieces but I know that's not even close to the same thing. I was asked a few months back to mind two of those nieces over a long weekend while my sister and her husband were away for work. The kids are pretty easy to mind so once I got the go ahead from work I agreed. Its not like I am a complete novice, I have babysat my nieces over night before and I work in social care so there are many elements of my day to day work that is similar to looking after children. I decided that myself and my boyfriend would go away for a few days just before said niece sitting because our two year anniversary was coming up and I thought it made more sense to take a longer holiday and do both. The week before said holiday I somehow ended up working 72 hours and was on my way to the airport only a few hours after finishing work on the Sunday. Due to us starting the holiday very tired and my inability to find

After much waiting, stressing and a whole lot of working my holidays finally came around. On Sunday night I got home from work around 10 and began preparing to leave for our airport bus a few hours later. For future notice I will remember that my holiday will be a lot more enjoyable if I actually manage to get some sleep beforehand or at least if I am not packing between my many shifts at work. As I mentioned before this was not my first trip to Belgium, my boyfriend had also been before but both under different circumstances. Himself with a group of friends and I had been with the college on an educational trip that also involved a lot of beer consumption. On our previous trips neither of us had spent much time in Brussels but it seemed like as good a choice as any for our holiday. We arrived in Brussels just after 10 and proceeded to get very lost trying to find our accommodation. It doesn't seem to matter if we are in the next town over or a few hundred miles away, myself