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I sit here on the last day of 2016 feeling I need to write something to sum up the past year and yet I am finding there is not much to say. As years go it was not overly eventful. I got a newer car and changed jobs and joined and left the gym more times than I can count so I am no longer sure if I am ending the year fatter or slimmer than I started it. Nor am I certain that any of this actually matters. No great disasters befell me in the last year so I can be grateful for that and hope for more of the same in the year to come.  This year I wont be setting resolutions and I can no longer remember if I said the same last year but I know if I set any that I definitely didn't keep them which can be true of those I have set most years. There's something about the high hopes you have for what lies ahead as you see the New Year in and they seem to dissipate early into January when you hope that no one remembers the promises you made. Naturally I hope for a better year, to be he

If you were hoping for a blog post on the upper echelons of society then you have come to the wrong place. Instead this is a shout out to any one who works nights on a permanent basis in whatever line of work they are in. To the doctors , nurses, care staff, cleaners, factory workers and all. As you may have gathered, given how much I have been banging on about it, I am in the middle of a night rotation. For a month (14 nights in total) I am on night shifts and then I will return to days until my turn rolls around again. Admittedly I am coping a little better than expected in that I haven't totally fallen apart. I am however completely exhausted on a full time basis and generally unwilling to stray too far from my apartment even on my days off lest another opportunity to get a bit of sleep should arise. I would hate to miss it.  The thing about nights is they kind of take over your life when you're on them or at least they do for me. I am more focused on sleeping than eat

This year seems to have flown by in some sort of blur and it feels like I have only blinked and its the 23rd of December or the Eve of Christmas Eve. I am one of the lucky ones in that my presents are bought, wrapped and many of my family ones have been distributed already seeing as I wont be there on Christmas Day to give them out. Instead of being out in town in the mayhem and endless lines of traffic I am at home mentally preparing myself for my long weekend of nights and of course decorating my potted plant when I hastily realised I had nowhere to put presents. I felt it was important to improvise as myself and my boyfriend will be having our mini Christmas here. This morning instead of having a long luxurious lie in, like one should when facing into a weekend of night shifts, I was up early and making my way out to Seagull bakery to get some delicious coffee and the good pastries before they sold out. I then decided on a whim to try and track down Spelt-bakers mince pies.

This is not the first time I have worked nights so it would be fair to say I know what to expect. I sit at home drinking a coffee and my bag is packed. I have snacks and tea and things to doodle on, I will be wearing extra layers for the cold part of the night and I know there will be jobs to do in work to keep me going so fortunately it wont be a night of sitting. All the same I feel apprehensive heading in. I am less worried about the night itself and more so about the last hour and the drive home and then the overwhelming tiredness that follows plus the way that there never seems be enough sleep to fill the void and then before you know it you are up drinking coffee, with a bag packed, preparing for my next night at work. All weekend I have been preparing myself for what lies ahead, the nights at Christmas and trying to make sure I am as prepared I can be and stocking up on sleep as though that will insulate me against the sleep I will be missing in coming weeks. Today

Sourdough bread is one of those things I discovered rather late in life. In time before I discovered my gluten intolerance I could eat any bread I chose and the name sourdough conjured up an unpleasant taste in my mouth so naturally I never bothered to taste it and see if my assumptions were correct. Fast forward to about three years ago when I occasionally dabbled in spelt bread but couldn't stomach regular bread and my sister told me I should be okay to eat sourdough pizza because the process involved in making sourdough kills a lot of the gluten. This was terribly exciting news plus it was delicious pizza and then for the first time ever I began to look out  for Sourdough breads. Luckily for me it was around this time the real bread movement began to gain popularity and said breads weren't actually too difficult to find. Waterford is not a bad old spot for decent food and we are very lucky to have the likes of Ardkeen stores selling artisan foods you can't get elsewh

As with all things in life, relationships take work and in a bid to improve ours, my boyfriend and I have agreed that it would help if I make more an effort to be more sociable. He also has his part to play but being sociable is definitely not something he needs to work at. I am aware that for most people it might seem like no big deal but seeing as I have, in recent months, cultivated my introversion into an art form so for me this is a daunting task. I find that more often than not, if given the choice I would prefer to stay home where it is cosy and safe and there all together less people. To give myself some credit though I have been actively pushing myself to participate in social events since we agreed it was something I could be working on. Mind you I have only started very recently and I am not yet working nights so it might be a bit soon as to call this particular plan a success.  In this bid to appear like a regular human woman, I accepted an invite to accompany my boyf

I finished my last day shift for this year today. Now I am facing into the long weekend and a much needed break. I am also starting my month of nights on Monday and I am filled with trepidation at the thought. I work in care and nights are a part of the job but it doesn't leave me feeling any more enthusiastic about them. I have done night shifts before, not a full month of them but enough to know I do not fare well on them. I am hoping this time around they go a little smoother. Especially as I will be in over Christmas, something which did have me feeling a little sad but I am sure I will get on with it and salvage what is left of the Christmas once I come round from my catch up sleep.  I am trying my hardest not to eat too much crap in the run up to nights because I know the exhaustion will get the better of me and I will find it only too easy to be eating all around me and I'd prefer to not be a rounder version of myself when I  come out the other end. I am also brain

If you ask people what Christmas is really about they might say family which is an essential element but for me it's also about giving to others rather than writing an alphabetical list of presents you wish to receive for yourself.  I seem to get an almost pathological amount of pleasure buying gifts for other people. Now this either means I am a nice person or else I just really get into the retail aspect of retail therapy and the fact that I am not shopping for me means I don't even need to feel bad about how much money I am spending. I am generally conscientious when it comes to money so if I overspend I do tend to worry a little bit that I got carried away.  So technically I shouldn't have many to buy for this Christmas. We got rid of buying for everyone in the family a few years back to cut costs so I have to buy for one of my sisters and my boyfriend and then I'm done. Naturally that's not a whole lot of fun just shopping for two people so I improvise a l

I seem to somehow have become one of those women who is either perpetually trying to lose weight or blindly eating my feelings and hoping there are no consequences to said food binge. I think that sentence alone explains how I keep having weight to lose despite my mostly best efforts to be healthy. I recently committed to joining a coworker on some variation of the cabbage soup diet because apparently you lose a good bit from it and I was already weaning myself off sugar (again !). You start off eating soup (as many bowls as you like) and fruit and the next day you can eat veg too and it goes on in this exciting fashion for a week or two. Now if you are supposedly eating close to a pot of soup a say it doesn't specify when a working woman like myself is supposed to find time to make these many pots of soup. Nor does it factor in that as foodstuffs go that soup is actually very boring once you are two or three mouthfuls in. This all turns out to be much of a muchness because as

                      Okay so I probably could have picked a better title for this blog because it would be fair to say I am not feeling particularly festive at all. I have only just started making a genuine effort to get into the holiday spirit but its not like you can have a sip of some special christmassy drink and be off. I think I have begun to make peace with the fact that I wont be at my parents place Christmas day and will hopefully get down Stephens day instead. I am counting to beginning my night duty and am ever aware that its getting closer so I will need to get everything sorted while I still have some sort of brain function. I don't normally decorate my own home for Christmas. Aside from wrapped presents and a classic Christmas cd you could easily think it was any other time of the year. To be fair though I normally get home to my parents place by Christmas Eve where they will have the tree up and the presents out plus wreaths and holly and other Christmas bits on d

Sometimes, as is the way in life, I find myself in the company of someone particularly negative. I mean negative as in the glass isn't just half empty but it has smashed and cut someone. I am sure everyone knows at least one person who fits this description. Now I know there's very few people who actively enjoy that kind of input but I feel I might take it worse than some for one simple reason. I am incredibly sensitive to the emotions of other people and I am forever bringing home other peoples emotional baggage and thinking it's my own. Sometimes it takes me days to sort through it and realise it's not mine at all. It's draining to when you take this on and it can leave me feeling emotionally and physically exhausted. Now to be fair I am not little miss sunshine myself, I can be prone to bouts of problem finding where no solution will work and everything is going wrong, particularly if I am feeling down so it would be fair to say the last thing I need is encou

You don't need to do much digging to find out that I am big into Christmas. I love the lights and decorations and buying presents for other people. I love seeing family all together because its rare that all of us are in the one place these days. I have always been home for Christmas and most years I have been home at some point Christmas Eve. This is my second year working in a Social Care job so it should come as no surprise that this year I will be working over Christmas.  That's not the worst part of this story. Not only am I working for Christmas but I am working nights over Christmas. For lots of people this would not be a huge issue because they could get by on a few hours sleep and salvage the rest of the day but I am not one of those people. Anyone who has read my blog posts from long ago (well over a year ago) will be well aware that I am afflicted with something I like to call marshmallow brain after waking nights. I need loads of sleep but I can never get enough

I find I am getting increasingly more introverted. I don't mean as I get older because I know that's a given. Our personalities age like fine wines, Cantankerous old woman were not all sweetness and light as young girls, age just sharpens these traits. What I am talking about though is how over the last few months I am withdrawing socially to a noticeable extent. In the last few weeks I have found a number of pages dedicated to all things introvert on Facebook and in a way it's been a bit of an eye opener. A lot of the things I have always felt weird for feeling are not in fact unique to me. In some ways this has helped me to accept who I am as a person. On some level though I feel learning more about what it means to be an introvert has not exactly been beneficial to me. It's a bit like when you're feeling ill and you type your symptoms into google and it turns out that headache you had is actually something far more serious and by the time you have read all of t

The title of this blog has no basis in truth but its something I like to repeat to myself when feeling bad about my attempts to squeeze into jeans that used to fit me. It's a shame we are celebrating muffin tops because mine is actually quite impressive. Admittedly I am doing my best to lose mine so it would be a rather short celebration ( I hope). I've only recently become alarmed at my weight gain over the last few months. Before that my stance was to ignore and eat some chocolate when I started to feel really bad which is a lot of what has gotten me into my current predicament. I am here now though and I staying strong on my path be healthier. The trouble with all of this is there is no quick fix. I know because I spend a lot of time on pinterest and I have looked. Even then I knew deep down that a healthy diet and exercise is the only way to a better body shape but I have been living in hope there's some secret way to get there faster that no one has told me about.

I am all for celebrating the fact that I am an introvert , I don't think there should be any shame in admitting this. Introverts unite ! separately, in our own homes and all that. The thing I feel confuses people is that because I work very hard at being sociable in certain situations (like work), I don't fit into their idea of what an introvert is. I shouldn't be chatty or sarcastic or friendly and so on. What people don't happen to realise is I find this all be exhausting. It takes a lot out of me to be putting myself out there and engaging with people. Plus I find interacting with others to be complicated emotionally. I often find, even with those close to me, that what they say and what they mean can be very different things and I can come away with a whole bag full of churning emotions because sometimes I have my own crap to deal with and selfish as it may sound I just don't have the emotional energy to dig deeper and get to the real issues behind the meanin

Before I begin, here's a quick disclaimer. The bread is not magic and the recipe is probably not a secret. For all I know it or some version of it has been shared multiple times on healthy eating blogs and I just haven't seen it but it's new to me and I for one am very very excited by it. I like bread, I like it a whole lot but bread unfortunately doesn't appear to like me a lot. This is something I've wrestled with a lot since discovering I'm gluten intolerant. By wrestled with I mean I have resisted the lure of regular bread but occasionally indulged in spelt and sourdough, over the years, and then suffered the consequences. I've also tried many a gluten free bread but they are usually over processed and some what tasteless.  I have also tried to plan my meals without bread but I do end up missing it after a few days.  Then recently in work someone was passing around this lovely brown bread that I just had to try for myself. So here goes. The ingred

I don't brag often but I can confidently say that I have self depreciation down to a fine art. I am witty and sharp and I can make a room laugh as I put myself down. This is something I have been doing ever since I can remember and it's almost a reflex at this point. When it comes complimenting myself, it's not common for me to do it outright, I'd prefer to downplay any talents/likeable parts of myself. Behind every quip lies a nugget of truth, something I, on some level, believe to be true about myself. I am just getting in with the joke before someone else does. I remember being younger and easily upset. Even now I struggle to not take everything personally but I have learned along the way that it's better and it hurts a lot less when everyone laughs with you rather than at you. But today, as I think back on the last blog post I have written in which I picked  apart my flaws for the amusement of others. I started to think about our culture and how it encou

You could say I have a love/hate relationship with fitness or maybe I am just really lazy when left to my own devices. I had reached the point with working out where I was actually scared to go back to it. I had been eating a lot of chocolate (and anything else with sugar in it) and feeling bad about it but then smothering those feelings in more chocolate so as you can imagine my weight has been creeping up. I am currently at the age (over 10) where my pot belly is getting increasingly less adorable as the days go by and there's only so much magic those hold you in garments can work. Plus I think there's a limit to how many of them you can wear at the same time without dying. I have been spending the week mentally preparing myself for the possibility of re-entering the gym and I am aware this sounds ridiculous but I find after a long hiatus it's actually quite difficult to get in for the first class and I have a wonderful ability to talk myself out of it when the notion

It feels like this until it doesn't There is no reasoning with the whirring of the mind like a clock ticking in the dark reminding you should be asleep but you are not . yet another thing you can't get right. No comparison that soothes my woes I read the news and know of many in worse circumstances but I am too consumed with my own to see beyond them. the shadow of the black dog still looms in empty spaces where my happiness falls. It's okay not to feel okay or so I've read on the internet so it must be true. There are times where I could not feel less okay and there lies the fear of something inside you being broken. Sometimes in the dark of the night, I doubt my own existence. I worry my anxious thoughts have tinged my skin. It feels like this until it doesn't. and then I keep my anxiety in my purse for special occasions and sleepless nights.

As an introvert with anxious tendencies I spend an excessive amount of time worrying about how I come across to other people. I am not a natural socializer but my default, hanging back in conversations having many thoughts but not really sharing most of them, has been known to come across as standoffish so I make an effort to interact with others (most of the time) but I do so awkwardly with a complete lack of finesse. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and then thought about it for months? analysing what you said and how the other person appeared to react? oh me neither, I was just asking for a friend. Sometimes I get nervous and talk too much and I'm pretty sure I am making no sense just mashing sentences together to fill the silence aware that I am oversharing but can't seem to engage with my brain. I constantly put my foot in it , saying things I shouldn't. Sometimes I know I am saying the wrong thing as the words leave my mouth but by then the dam

How to get through a night shift. This is something I have been googling endlessly since I found myself agreeing to work nights all weekend. If there is some magic formula to working nights then I certainly haven't cracked it. I recently did my first two in the new job and pushed myself through by eating disgusting amounts of sugar and mainlining caffeine as though it was the cure to everything. You could technically say it worked in that I am alive to tell the tale of my night shift and I didn't fall asleep on the job. To be honest I had so much caffeine and sugar in me it's lucky I fell asleep again.I did however find myself crying the next day because I couldn't work out if I had enough money to eat out the next day and the thought of cooking overwhelmed me. Starting tomorrow night I have three night shifts to look forward to. I won't be able to make it to any of my boyfriends events this weekend which is a bummer. Well more so for me than him as he gets t

I've always been emotional. Just ask one of my siblings for their many examples of how easy it was to reduce me to tears as a child. It's one of those delightful qualities that seems to have followed me into adulthood. Yay for that. I don't half ass emotional states, when I feel something I go all in. This has mostly not turned out to be a good thing. I also tend to soak up the emotions of those around me like a sponge which can be somewhat exhausting. It does make me quite adept at taking the emotional temperature of a room but otherwise not all that helpful as skills go. Something I have noticed in recent years is my incredibly powerful emotional reactions to things on tv, in movies and books. It's something I found myself dwelling on just tonight when I found myself actually bawling my eyes out watching 'Me before you'. I wont tell you anything that will give away key plot points only that it's very sad and yet somehow reading the book did not

I was reading an article the other day about coffee and how it becomes less effective over time at waking you up if you're not getting enough sleep. It also mentioned the concept of sleep debt which is the idea that every time you have a broken nights sleep, it adds up and you end up with this sleep debt that can take you several nights of good sleep to work off. I liked the thought of this concept and as a woman who suffers badly without adequate sleep, sleep debt was the word I'd never had to explain what I experienced. Truth be told I'm a bit useless without enough sleep. My lovely other half will only be too happy to confirm this fact. I get very emotional and a bit dim and find myself overwhelmed by simple tasks. I recently did my first two waking nights since last year and I was going around in a fug for days afterward. This weekend, I am still recovering from it. A few years back it would not be unusual to hear me say that but I have since discovered that alcoh

In the early hours of this morning my other half peeled himself from the bed and headed out the door with a suitcase in hand. As he faces into the prospect of a holiday on an island off Denmark, I have the apartment to myself and I am not sure how I feel about that. I do happen to be one of those people that actually likes spending some time by myself, after a while without it I start to crave my own company but it seems to me there is a difference in choosing it for yourself and having it thrust upon you. I have been dating my boyfriend now for almost three years, living together just over a year and during this time we have never spent this long (he gets back on Monday) apart. I think I am feeling a little sorry for myself because I only grabbed a few hours sleep last night and I find sleep deprivation always drags my mood down. I am sure once I adjust to the emptiness of our place I will probably start to enjoy pottering around in silence.  I remember before I moved in with h

I have recently started to listening to music a lot more and I'm really enjoying It. I have a new app on my phone called 8 track and it gives me a selection of playlists depending on what sort of music I have said  I'm in the mood to hear. So I'm discovering new songs and remembering old favourites. It has got me thinking about how evocative music is and how one song can bring back so many memories. A few years back, in my final year in college we had some Belgian students come over as part of an exchange programme I was part of and we had the  Responsibility of entertaining them for the week. One of the nights the college organised for us to bring them to hear some traditional Irish music and I remember we were all singing along to sonny ( you know the one ...sonny dont go away, I'm here all alone, your daddy is a sailor that never comes home ) if you're anything like me you'll be singing it in your head by now. And I remember the Belgians thought

In less than 2 hours I will be back in work after a whole week off and 15 minutes after that I'll feel like I had never left. To say I am feeling unenthusiastic about the prospect would be understating it. I would like some more holidays please and thank you and this time I swear I will actually relax for some of it. I seem to have lost the ability to do nothing and now there's a very tired Laura who wishes that wasn't the case. The whole idea of my week off was that I had to move apartment and I knew looking at the state of my old place and the mountain of possessions I seem to have accumulated, despite my many moves over the last few years, that it would not be a one day job. Plus I'd already booked the weekend off to watch the wod warrior competition at the gym.  So it seemed I had a plan of sorts. Then I got it into my head that I didn't actually want to waste my week off just moving so I moved most of my stuff over the weekend and only had to spend