Brain Fart

Mea Culpa! I can't believe this, but while doing some housecleaning on the blog today I found this post from October that I never posted.

Sorry Niamh, I promise I didn't mean to be rude or ignore you!

Original text of post below:




Niamh is so cool! She nominated me as a Kreativ Blogger because she likes my take on expat life in Ireland and she thinks I'm funny. Boy, do I have her fooled! :-)

As with everything though, there's a catch. As in rules. But definitely ones I can live with: Link back to Niamh at Writer on the Way Home (now Irish Wanderings) because I think her blog is really thoughtful... and funny; List 7 things I love.

7 Things I Love:

1. Spending the day in my pajamas reading a book or catching up on my DVR
2. My cat lying on my chest and kneading my collarbone with her paw. Kitty love!
3. Belazu Balsamic Vinegar. When was the last time I actively researched a food item on the net and tracked it down because I couldn't live without it? I'd do it again for this lovely item!
4. Hugs from my niece and nephew. Any contact with my niece and nephew :-)
5. E-books. Having gone through the trauma of packing up (most) and selling (too many) of my books for the big move, I'm never putting myself in that position again! A portable harddrive is sooo much easier to move :-)
6. Speaking of which... my portable harddrive. Almost as small as my Palm Pilot PDA, but can hold 300 Mb.
7. And, as always... fried, ripe plantains.

Cat Fancy

Image by Harshad Sharma via Flickr

I had one of those wonderfully random conversations during tea break today.  Somehow, one of my coworkers got onto the topic of how much she hates cats.  For oh so many reasons including: their tendency to slink around your feet, brush you with their tails, and how they'll quietly sneak up on you (like a little furry, evil serial killer).  Not to mention the "fact" that the minute their loving humans breathe their last breath, the little carnivores immediately start munching on their owner's meaty parts. 

This was said in such a tone of horrified distaste and atavistic terror that the cat lovers at the table passed right by insult and dissolved into hysterical laughter.

But the best visual came when she recounted a recent news story she'd seen in which an American woman (it's always an American in these stories) was filmed breast feeding her cat!  EWWWWW!

All I can say is, she has a lot of trust in our maturity if she doesn't expect months of teasing and taking the piss to come out of this.  You can only give people so much material before they have to use it against you :-)

Welcome me back

So I've been away for awhile, okay a long while! No reflection on you, my scattered but wonderful readers and virtual co-adventurers. I just got busy and was actually enjoying having a life away from the computer. That's all over now :-) Not really, but I've been missing you all, so here I am!

Lots to tell about the past couple of months, but I decided to try filling you in as if I'd actually sat down and completed all the aborted posts I'd started. So here are a selection of vignettes from my Christmas and New Year adventures in pseudo-chronological order.

Shenanigans In the Real World (12/17/07): it's true, I have met Beth. How totally cool is that?! Think about it - you find a blog online written by someone who seems totally cool, you make a couple of comments on their blog and start chatting back and forth. Soon you're exchanging emails, then the occasional phone call, and a friendship is born. After having my guest room given away by Larry a few times (really, what's going on here Lars?), I finally managed to snag a visit this past weekend in The Big City. All I can say was I had a great time, and only partly because I got 95% of my Christmas shopping done :-) I just think it's amazing when someone you've never actually met turns out to be as fun and as much of a kindred spirit in real life as you imagined them to be. And Lars turned out to be OK too :-)

Battle of the Bulge (12/21/07): I just arrived in Miami a couple of days ago and already I'm in culture shock. My Lord, Americans are fat!

The True Meaning of Christmas (12/25/07): Without meaning to, and against all our efforts, we seem to have become trapped by the rampant consumerism of the season. Not the adults so much, but the children. How did this happen? My sister and husband work hard to set good boundaries and clear limits for their children. In fact my niece and nephew are the only kids, except for the children of my other Jamaican friends who grew up under the same kind of regime :-) and a select few others, whose childrearing I fully approve of. But still, Christmas had a small tinge of a nightmare. Gifts, stuff, coming out of the woodwork. My 2 year old nephew (who admittedly doesn't know any better), was like a wrapping opening machine, going from one package to the other ripping it open, then shoving it aside and moving on to the next one. He ended up trying to open his sister's and parents' gifts when he ran out of his own. And that took awhile because there was just so much darn stuff! My sister and brother-in-law finally had to end up choosing a selection to get stored away in the attic or outright donated somewhere else.

I now officially feel like an old fogey because all I could think of was how much my sister and I loved Christmas "in the old days". It had nothing to do with Santa (we weren't brought up to believe in Old St. Nick) and only about 60% to do with getting gifts :-) The whole season was special because of it's spiritual meaning and religious traditions, get-togethers with family and friends, and the ritual of Christmas morning - first early morning church service (6 am!), then breakfast, then opening gifts in rotation from person to person. We loved it. Even if we only got a handful of gifts each. I hope we're able to transmit something of the same experience to my niece and nephew, I really do.

The Surreal Life (12/28/07): spending a holiday at my sister's jungle cottage/amazingly landscaped house in Miami always makes me feel like I've left the real world behind. There's just something about not having any deadlines and living your days centered around the needs of the 2 amazing manifestations of my sister's (and my) DNA that just takes you out of your life. I have no responsibilities here except to engage in lengthy explorations of the backyard sandbox, take spontaneous trips to the zoo or the beach, or pretend I'm a soccer mom (or is that gymnastics aunt?) for a day. Nine days have passed since I dragged my whipped butt off the last connecting flight from Cork and it feels like I just got here yesterday. I can't wait till they come visiting in June! I wonder if they'll bring the same surreal world to Ireland with them?

Battle of the Bulge - II (12/29/07): Now I remember why it's so hard to keep the weight off here. I went to Macaroni Grill last night with my cousin and her beautiful and frighteningly athletic daughter and ordered one of my favorite pasta, cheese, and shrimp (not prawns) dishes. It smelled amazing and tasted even better, but it was so heavy and there was just so darn much of it that I could only eat about a quarter. The rest I brought back in a doggy bag. Has my stomach really shrunk that much? I'd like to think so :-) I have to admit though that a big part is just not having access to as much choice in Ireland. I'm overwhelmed now going into Tar-gay, or even just Eckerd Pharmacy, by just how much candy and sugared sodas and various crap calories packaged in pretty colors there are at the check-out counter and scattered everywhere. In fact, I'm overwhelmed just by the amount of choice in general!

I Feel The Need For Speed (12/29/07): How have I lived for 5 months without driving?! Since I still have not found someone to take over the lease on my beautiful Passat, it's been sitting in my cousin's garage in Raleigh patiently waiting for me to come back and give it some loving. And what a loving! I actually did get in some driving while with the family in Miami, but driving someone else's minivan around with a toddler and a talkative 5 yr old didn't give me quite the same rush as stepping into my own dream machine. The rush was totally unexpected but ohhh, so nice! The power beneath my feet, the authority of maneuvering a vehicle around vs. the innate helplessness of relying on my own 2 feet and the vicissitudes of public transportation, the sheer pleasure I got blasting the radio as loud as I could stand it with the sunroof open and putting the pedal-to-the-metal, driving way too fast down a straight, wide (4 lanes each way!) highway. There's nothing to beat it. Yeah, traffic was a bear and I rediscovered my inner impatient, angry cynic (there's nothing quite like road rage), but that first rush was totally worth it.



Worship (12/30/07): I love my church, I really really do! I knew I missed it. The small little Baptist fellowship I attend in Cork is great, but there's nothing like being around people who you've known for years (literally almost half my life now), in a fun setting that you're completely familiar and comfortable with, and knowing that your contributions were valued and are missed. I miss just knowing the rhythm of the place, including exactly how fast to sing the songs :-) Is it a Baptist thing where everything gets sung just a couple of beats too slow?

The message was great too, and only partly because it was given by the most recent minister I helped recruit :-) God wants us to enjoy life! We never seem to remember that part of the Good News. Dave also repeated a great rabbinical saying that I'm now taking as a personal challenge: God will call you to account for every permitted pleasure you refuse. I love that. I've got to get moving, there's a whole list of stuff I need to catch up on!

Kitty Love (12/31/07): Ah, there's nothing like the scorn of a high maintenance (possibly slightly spoiled?) cat who's been forced to live with a stranger (i.e., paid cat sitter and extremely patient professional) and several other animals for 5 months, without her owner around to provide the proper kowtowing and service! I was snubbed by my newly chubby sweetie today when I went by to see her. If only she knew how much money (lots!) and effort and angst I've put into finding her a good place to stay and preparing for her transfer overseas. Nahhh, she wouldn't give a hoot, she thinks it's her just due :-)



Overload (1/1/08): In contrast to my almost dreamy time in Miami over Christmas, my 4 days here at home in Raleigh have been crammed full! I've shopped to my heart's content, and my wallet's despair, and visited virtually every good friend I could find in town, some of them more than once! :-) I've loved it! Now I just have to find a way to cram everything into the previously empty suitcase and wrangle it back to Ireland. Remember my earlier smug complaints about rampant consumerism? Just call me Ms. Hypocrite.

Wheels! (1/27/08): It's small, cute, (relatively) cheap, and it's all mine. Yes! I am soooo ready to be mobile again. Walking everywhere may have been good for my waistline, but otherwise it was for the birds. Yesterday, for the first time, I had the freedom to go off exploring and, in some ways, I finally started to feel like I was in Ireland. My aussie friend, her 2 kids, and I meandered our way to Garryvoe Beach, Ballycotton, and several other very Irish sounding villages scattered across southeast Cork and the coast. We had a great time and I have the sand on my floorboards to prove it :-)


P.S. The picture is just a stock one, not my actual baby, but you get the idea.

Saga of the Monkey Cat and other updates

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update. Sorry folks, I've just been busy, busy, busy!

OK, so as of our last installment, I was happily anticipating the end of work at the Job From Hell (JFH) and of starting to get packed up to make my move. Thankfully, the end of work came quickly enough for there to be no dead bodies, though it has been pretty surreal being unemployed. It's only been 3 weeks, but I've never been out of work for so long before! It's been a real battle to not wallow in self-imposed guilt for not packing fast enough and for "wasting time". In my own defense though, it's pretty hard to push myself to pack consistently when I haven't known exactly when my leave date is. This also makes it hard to deal with people's excited but frustrating (because I just don't know!) and inevitable question - "So, when are you leaving?"

My understanding of the time frame had been that I would be getting my Irish work permit just about.... oh, like NOW! And, had been expecting to buy a ticket to fly out at the end of June. However, I've fallen afoul of the bureaucracy gods, and I can't even blame the government this time! I got a call from the recruiter yesterday letting me know that the Work Permit Authority didn't receive the application till June 7th and so anticipate that it will be another month!! That is so not what I was expecting to hear. What this tells me is that my new agency's HR department sat on it for almost 4 weeks (!) between when they got it from the recruiter with all of my information, accompanying documents, and Fedexed signature and when they deigned to submit it. What the heck were they doing with it all that time?

So, I'm probably not going to get the work permit for another 4 weeks!! What do I do with myself that long? I certainly didn't plan for this long of a "vacation" and, if I'd known they were going to sit around scratching their ***, I would have stuck around at the JFH for another 2 or 3 weeks and made some much needed money! That's the other big problem, I thought I was being cautious in my estimates, but did not budget for this kind of delay.

So, long story short, yesterday was a bad day. Today is better - I vented to my sister and cousin, and did a not so quick and quite intense supplication to the man upstairs for some major guidance (and maybe a nice lottery windfall). No windfall yet, but I have decided on a couple of things. I'm going to take some friends up on their invitation to their beach house for a couple of days next week, will now be packing like a madwoman to completely clear out my house by the end of next week and leave it available for new tenants starting July 1st (I'm already selling off some stuff through Craigslist - the dining room table goes tonight), and plan to trek down to Miami for the week of July 4th (Independence Day) to hang out with family and friends and eat cheap :-) In the meantime, there's still a million and one things to do. I think I'll be taking up my friends on the offers of packing help in the next several days and making a few trips to the storage place.

Thankfully, my sweetie, the above referenced Monkey Cat (as a kitten, she looked just like a lemur), does have a place to stay for the 6 months before I can bring her over to Ireland. It's not free (my cousin's daughter "decided" to get asthma, so no free family visitation for the MC), but is still cheaper by far and a whole lot more humane than the worst case scenario, which would have been placing her in a kennel. Small wire cages and once a day free time, what a nightmare that would have been for her! In the meantime, I've gotten the initial microchipping and extra rabies booster done (more money draining from the overloaded wallet) and we're now waiting a couple more weeks before I have to take her back to the vet to get the blood sample, which I have to pay to be sent to a special Kansas (?!) lab to verify that her blood levels are optimal. After that, nothing to do but wait out the 6 month holding time before I can finish up the paperwork to bring her over.

Here's a picture of my baby. It's a little blurred, so it doesn't really do her total and complete cuteness justice!



Pretty much the last thing that's still hanging in the air for me is my car. Still no takers for assuming my lease, so I went ahead and listed it for sale yesterday. I would probably make enough to cover VW's payoff amount. Even if not, the remaining amount shouldn't be higher than it would be for me to continue to pay for the lease for several more months. We'll see.

Thankfully, not everything has been stressful. I have had a couple of extremely fun Bon Voyage parties (yeah, me!) and had a chance to hang out with some great friends at the local Irish pub "practicing" :-) I actually have another party on Saturday. Eating deep fried whitefish and hushpuppies while sitting out on the deck in the middle of the country. Darn, I really love the South sometimes! :-)

The ostrich system

I'm outing myself, but I have to admit something that those people who really, really know me well (as in know my dark side) have already figured out, which is that my default method of coping with stuff that I feel totally helpless, hopeless and/or inadequate about is by sticking my head in the sand and not picking it up till the world gives me a kick in the ass and I have no choice but to deal. This isn't the hating confrontation issue, another wonderful trait of mine that I'm sure I'll get to later. No, this is more the "maybe if I ignore it, the world will end I won't have to deal with it at all" strategy that I always tell myself I'm going to be mature enough to stop using. But, I never do.

The most recent example of this is my as yet refusal to start trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my cat once I move. Meesha is a neurotic, slightly manic-depressive tortoiseshell beauty who I alternately grumble at and attack with kisses because she can be just the sweetest most loving thing ever! [I'd insert a picture of my sweetie here if they weren't all taken with the film camera and so, as yet, not available digitally] And whoa betide the family, friend or acquaintance who dares to comment on her minor social skill deficits or tendency to nip when playing. This is my baby and I'll defend her till death! She may be "slightly" neurotic, but she's my neurotic.

OK, so back to my own neurotic-induced crisis. The thing is that, before I can bring Meesha over to Ireland, she has to go through a 6 month process here of microchipping, vaccines, tests, then a 6-month wait to make sure that she's not rabies infected. What that means is that she's going to have to stay with someone here while I'm getting settled in Ireland. Unfortunately, my cousin who I'd drafted to do this, had the nerve to somehow convince her daughter to come down with asthma! Which means, no free cat sitting. The nice thing about family is that you can browbeat them into doing all sorts of things. The bad thing is that you sort of have to take their word for it when they say their child could die! Unfortunately, substitute cat sitters who are pet-less (Meesha does not play well with others) are short among my pet-loving, baby-producing friends.

I should have already started researching my other options - tap into my other social networks, actually pay someone to foster her, try to convince my mother in Miami to take her? - but instead have apparently been just hoping that the right answer would appear out of the blue and I'd be rescued from actually having to deal with this myself. Unfortunately, I'm not the type of girl who gets visited by the chivalrous knight who's just begging to ride me off into the sunset. Maybe I should just pretend I'm a mature, independent-minded adult and actually try to deal with this like a manageable problem that has real solutions? Shrink, heal thyself! The sand in the hair look is just not a good one on you.