It's that time of year again

If I was counting (and I'm really not) I would tell you its approximately 11 days to my birthday. Okay its exactly 11 days to my birthday as I have the dubious delight of being someone whose birthday falls the day after St Patricks day. On the plus side this means I always know with certainty what day St  Patricks day will fall on and I have a parade to 'look forward to' every year near my birthday but on the downside it means that most of my friends have been pretty hungover for my birthday since my mid teens.

So I am going to be thirty three, eeeek. I will pause  now so you can tell me I don't look it and I will be pleasantly surprised or disgusted depending on how many years you knock off my actual age in your estimation. So far I have no real plans other than the fact that I have booked the weekend after my birthday off to ensure I don't spend it working nights which gives me the freedom to do something to mark it or lie in bed singing la la la nice and loudly while I pretend I am not another year older. I know that is terribly mature of me.

In all if I was to review my year I'd consider myself to be doing better in many respects than I was this time last year. As you might have gathered from almost every blog post I have written since the end of January, I am no longer working in retail. I had been trying to motivate myself into social care work for a long time now and reminding myself that I planned to have something resembling a career by the time I hit my thirties. Mind you back when I made these lofty plans I did think my thirties was really damn old. Now that I am here I don't feel too much different than I did in my twenties. Well except I drink a lot less, can drive and need a hell of a lot more sleep. I do occasionally need reminding that I am supposed to adult even when I want to lie under my spotty blanket colouring and reading Harry Potter ( you may laugh but these are actual activities I engage in my free time ).

So let's see what's going well. I have a job in social care, yay. That's great and I am still beyond excited to finally have my foot on a career ladder instead of a step ladder to hang decorations in the shop (which is as close as I got this time last year). I know my hours are a bit all over the place and sometimes the work can be challenging but I am opening up loads of new possibilities plus I will be a lot less uncomfortable the next time I run into one of my old lecturers seeing as I wont be serving them on the front till while they try to work out how they know my face. 

I still have my Stephen and that's going well. We haven't killed each other yet although we might have had some close calls when we've both been too hungry and I wont pick somewhere to eat out. My car is still running smoothly even though she looks so battered that my boyfriend wont allow me to beep at people we know when we're out in it. I am not really a shiny and sleek car kind of girl, my little toyota starlet gets me around just fine. I just need to get my full licence sorted and I will be flying ( or driving but just better)

So all of that is going great and aside from my social life which has taken a little bit of a dive the last few weeks as I work nights at weekends, the only other casualty of my new life style is my overall fitness/diet. I don't want to tell you what kind of junk I have been eating post night shift and the day after that when I am so sleepy and the day after that ( you can see where this is going) and then I am wrecked plus I have only made it home to Clonmel once since I started this job so aside from the days I walk to college I have been the laziest of lumps. I have promised myself however that I will get my arse in gear once I get my casual work payments sorted with the social welfare ( because my hours aren't guaranteed so it's a back up for the weeks I only work a few days) that I wont be so broke and I will start doing some sort of fitness classes be it kazoo (with the bouncy shoes) or crossfit or just paying someone to throw stuff at me until I work out. It looks like this may be getting sorted in the next week or so which means I have to follow through and then all will be rosy in the land of Laura. As always I will keep you posted. 

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