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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 h...

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 ...

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 brai...

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 pl...

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...