Moving Right Along…

Phew. That last post took it out of me.

When we left the hospital we walked (or, in my case, crawled) straight back to our building site. We had four weeks left to get out of our lousy rental and into our new home. My miracle baby cried mercilessly. I carried her everywhere in a sling, bouncing constantly as I cajoled carpenters and pleaded with plasterers. I snatched sleep in micro-naps, perched on the edge of the builder’s wheelbarrow. I was asked to make 752 (or thereabouts) decisions a day about doorknobs and architraves. I was threadbare.

My feelings about Small Girl’s birth were a confused mess of anger and relief. I never found time to figure them out.

Hemingway untangled the knot.

I feel a sense of resolution. The combination of reading and writing has spring-cleaned the inside of my head. It feels good.

I’m ready for new things.

Husband and I have not had a night away from the kids since before Small Girl’s dramatic entry to our lives. It’s time to start planning. I’m hoping for one night, maybe even two, in a quirky hotel room. We’ll need good food, that goes without saying. Something interesting to look at would be good so that we don’t have to talk about the kids the whole time. Bookshops lift my mood, clothes shops don’t. We can manage one, short, cheap flight from Cork but don’t want to waste time travelling. We probably can’t afford to do this until the Autumn, possibly even Autumn 2017 (yep, we don’t get out much!) so I have plenty of time to enjoy the research. All suggestions are welcome.

I mentioned my quest to The Grey Eye, over at Life as we see it (my very first WordPress follower!) and she created a super post just for me. Read about her Top 10 Romantic Destinations. There are some great ideas here. I’m leaning towards Amsterdam.

That may be all a pipe dream but, in the mean time, we have a huge treat in the offing. We have booked tickets to the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival at the end of May.

 

Food, words, gin, food, words…all in one of my absolute favourite places to spend a Sunday. Yeay! Can’t wait, can’t wait, can’t wait. I’ve booked into Prue Leith‘s talk. Did I say that I can’t wait?!

Another link I would like to highly recommend is to this Irish Times feature on Helen Dillon‘s house and garden in Dublin. This, my friends, is the dream. How she can bear to bid it farewell is beyond me.

 

Just one more link, and I am very proud of this one. Middle Girl has set up a book review blog. I’m nervous about letting her loose on the internet but she is very passionate about this. Everything is being filtered through me and I am watching like a tiger-mamma. I’m crossing my fingers that the WordPress community will be as kind to my girl as it has been to me. I’m also hoping that the reading plus writing formula will help my pre-teen to untangle her own goings-on.

She’s almost eleven, a voracious reader, a musician and an extraordinarily thoughtful young person. If you know any young people of similar interests please tell them to take a look at Treehouse Reads. This guy is the Guardian of the treehouse:

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