Amy’s Gripping Commentary

April 5 is the tenth anniversary of this website! I can’t believe that much time has passed. For an example of how it looked in times past, check out old deitchley.com. I had an even older site hosted in college (I was the first person in my dorm to be able to see — get this — PICTURES on the web using my data phone in my room), but that’s been, oh, 15 some years and it makes me feel old to think about it.

Now that that’s out of the way, no real news. I’m slowly organizing things at home after being away. With every item that goes to Goodwill or the used bookstore or the shredder or the free junk spot that is our curb, my mind clears a bit. Arliss also has shared her thoughts on being back home at her blog, including a few pictures.

Come on spring! The weather here is really crazy/unpredictable compared to what it was in Ireland.

Wow, that was a long unplanned blog break!

I am back in the United States. My year in Ireland turned out to be a year all over the place! Actually, looking at my complicated tax calendar:

I would definitely do it all again, but of course there were some low points too. I think those would have happened at home anyway so it doesn’t change my opinion of being abroad nor make me any less thankful (especially to my employer) for the experience.

I hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of months again beginning around Christmas. I guess I’ll attribute to that malaise why I haven’t been posting here, and I definitely feel better now after a bit of medical intervention in the midst of a lot of overwhelming stuff (largely managing a very demanding job with a lot of hours while trying not to be overwhelmed by another international move!). I’ve been home since early March and just now feel somewhat settled. We still have a lot of things to unpack and we haven’t properly restocked the pantry, but I’d say things are getting back to normal.

I still hope to catch up here on the missed travels, including Sweden, Tenerife, Amsterdam, Belgium, and around the rest of Ireland. I have lots more pictures to share.

Ms. Vegas bunny passed away less than a week before I got home, which was very sad. My other pets have come home now, including Arliss bunny with her much younger boyfriend (everyone is much younger when you’re an 11 year old bunny, it seems), the guinea pigs, and the frog. The dogs made it back ok and don’t seem to care where they live as long as we are with them.

Here’s to catching up!

Not only did Vienna not happen, but Prague didn’t either! We went to the airport on Saturday morning and our first flight was delayed four hours (not like they let us know until after we had checked in and the departure times came and went twice), which meant we would miss our connecting flight, which meant we may as well go home and forget it. And that’s what we did after I came to terms with no other options except staying overnight in Manchester (for hotel cost) to hopefully get on the next Prague flight Sunday afternoon for an extra couple hundred bucks, which would leave us less than 24 hours in Prague. I lost plenty of money on flights and hotels (which no travel insurance could help, since it doesn’t kick in until you are delayed for more than 24 hours), but I think I’m over it. Mostly.

Another weekend in icy Kinsale.

Then I got sick Sunday night anyway and stayed in bed all day Monday, so it was just as well to be stuck at home. Still bitter, though.

I was able to rebook one flight for free but it had to be back from Amsterdam, so that’s where we’re going next weekend! I hope. It was on our list too, but I’m sad we missed Vienna and Prague.

We took Emmy to the vet tonight and she has protein in her urine. PRAY it’s not her kidneys!! Waiting on bloodwork now.

Now nursing my white-spotted throat with fake Nyquil from the States! hooray

The lovely snow and winter harbor from our balcony

We were supposed to fly to Vienna today, but London Gatwick is closed due to snow so our flights were canceled and I went to work instead. Bummer! We’re trying to salvage the second half of the trip by flying on Saturday to Prague, but who knows what the weather will be doing. Let’s hope whatever it’s doing it won’t do it in Manchester.

Emmy stole a tub of butter tonight. Two nights ago she swiped a roll of paper towels and thoroughly enjoyed unrolling and tearing the sheets. Yesterday was her third birthday and I don’t think she stole anything!

Well, I think I made it through NaBloPoMo. The weather in Ireland turned cold a week ago and is now snowy and icy. They actually kicked us out of work early and two of three roads away from the plant were immediately blocked by jacknifed trucks. It took me an hour to drive my ten minute commute yesterday because an inch of snow became ice-rink roads. If they treated the roads it would have been fine. And if anyone knew how to drive on “slippy” roads it would have been better, but most locals are trying to go 5-10 mph and then they can’t get up the slick hills. There was a work email advising us to avoid routes with hills. hahahahahaha

Bad weather is all relative: I think this is only the second time in 30 years they closed work early due to snow, and the grass wasn’t even covered when we left. The roads were slushy but fine, but when all that freezes tonight… yuck. I’m kind of glad I went in Sunday to get some work done because this is a three day week for me as it is, and now I’m not as far behind with my projects. A guy at lunch said his kid was 11 before he even saw snow, so I believe it doesn’t happen often! I advised my fellow diners to take home cafeteria trays for their sledding pursuits. Other parts of the country received a LOT of snow so I guess our inch here and there isn’t so bad. But listening to the radio amuses me: today a weather person tried to explain why it felt a lot colder than it was when the wind was blowing (“we call that wind chill!”), there was a proud report of AN actual plow in the western part of the county, and we are getting lots of advice about dealing with the “bitterly cold” temperatures. Oooh… sometimes it drops to upper 20s!

David walked into town for pints with a friend but I opted for a nap on the couch with a Walter foot-warmer. Walter’s been puking for a couple of days and I hope he’s feeling better before we hop a plane Thursday for our next adventure. I also hope the bad weather doesn’t ground our plane!

I’ve got about two posts of pictures left from Spain, so may as well finish those too!

ongoing account of May trip to Spain

When we left the Alhambra to explore Granada, we found flamenco dancers and dressed up horses and riders everywhere. There were celebrations in the streets and several decorated crosses in plazas, which I think must have been our accidental visit during Dia de la Cruz (Day of the Cross) and related May celebrations, May Crosses. We had seen some decorated crosses in Málaga too but there was more of a party going on in Granada.

The last picture is our triumph over hours of wandering to find the ‘right’ food, which I’ll just say was my companions’ attempt to find ‘authentic’ food at some pricepoint I didn’t care about, while still trying to accommodate something I could eat. In the end I wouldn’t say I liked this food, but I’m glad I ate somewhere that was local and representative of the culture and that means it was still a good experience.

An Irish Thanksgiving meal: actually it was five Americans and a British guy, who has been quoted as saying the title of this post, which I think had something to do with not paying to swim in a pool. He had pumpkin pie for the first time (made with pumpkin we had our visitors bring from the States because you can’t get canned pumpkin here).

Our Irish coworkers wished us happy Thanksgiving way more times than I’ve ever heard it in the US and asked if we were going to take vacation days. Seeing as how it’s freezing cold here and there’s nothing to do in Ireland in November, we just went to work!

Emmy ate all the bread off the counter again today but we managed to have a nice spread and even heard Alice’s Restaurant on internet radio. Now it’s time for bed!

Phoning it in tonight… tired from work and visitors. Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow in the States! David’s mom is here and is cooking a dead bird. I made a pumpkin pie and Emmy the dog stole a loaf of bread from the counter, bread crumbs from the trash, and pearl barley and rice noodles from the pantry. Everyone plays a part… kind of glad I’m escaping at work most of the day.

Enjoy these cards from someecards.com and don’t eat too much mash (that’d be mashed potatoes)

This is a post about hygiene and personal space, if you ask me.
It’s about protecting relationships and appearances, if you ask David.

We let Walter sleep on the bed, but I’m very particular that it must be on top of the comforter. He stays between our feet. I do not allow dog hair in my sheets! But since David sleeps many hours later than I do, and he has no ability to keep the blankets in any sort of order (he does everything, even sleeping, with flair), and he tends to wrestle with Walter when he wakes up, sometimes I come home to find some dog hair on the bottom sheet near my pillow. This annoys me and grosses me out, but the best I can do is remind my messy sleeper to please pull up the covers and clean the sheets when I find dog hair on them. I am good about keeping the bed made but I can’t help what Mr.-Sleeps-Till-Noon does. (I’m tempted to train Walter not to get on the sheets because I think the success rate will be greater than training David.)

So yesterday I came home and found the covers in a tangle and decided the dog hair involved warranted washing the sheets. But when I pulled them back to take them off the bed: fuzzy pink footie sock-slippers way at the bottom of the bed! Except we don’t own any of those.

Now, another woman might assume her honey was having relations with a pink-socked woman while she was away at work. But I know David well enough to know he hates pink in a way that he would actually pick another person to have an affair with! The obvious answer came to both of us: the dogsitter.

Is anyone else as grossed out by this as I am? She sleeps in our bed and we didn’t know and slept in it too!

I could go on about how this probably came about and her general habits and all that, but the point is EWW don’t sleep in someone else’s used sheets! I’m sure Walter thinks it’s great. David is afraid it will be too awkward to tell her not to sleep there and she might be upset and not dogsit for us anymore. So he wants to be all passive-aggressive and just plan on washing the sheets when we get home from our trips!

Plus, when we give her the socks back (she always leaves something here), won’t she assume it’s ok to sleep in our bed since we didn’t say anything?

Am I crazy?

A pic of the new pup in the armchair

We went to trivia night run by the Lions Club at a local hotel this week and picked a GI Joe motto as our team name. I’m not sure where our friend Kathleen saw the signs but she invited us and our table of four (Kathleen, her sister, David, me) didn’t come in last but sure didn’t win! It was more fun than I expected. We were the youngest participants for sure! They were raising funds for local charities through the entrance fees and raffle tickets. It lasted over three hours! We also got a map of the defibrillators in town to keep in our wallets…

The MC was a dry-humor English guy and he sang Happy Birthday to people when they came out of the bathroom (because it really was the first lady’s birthday; “happy birthday to Sue, she is in the loo”). There was an entire round with questions related to lions.

Things we knew or guessed:
How long is elephant gestation? (I don’t know why I had this stored in my brain)
What was Beethoven’s disability?
Who designed St. Peter’s in Rome?
Who flew too close to the sun?
Year the US civil war began (no other table got it right!)
How many times Armagh won the All Ireland senior championships (I don’t remember now if it was about hurling or football, but we guessed the number, except I think David was reading lips at another table)
Largest cell in a human body
A LOT of questions about songs, from Bonnie Tyler to Tony Bennett to Phantom of the Opera to Eurovision

Things we got wrong:
Neil Diamond being the writer of a Monkees song (I put down Mickey Dolenz but actually had second thoughts about Neil thanks to my brother)
What team some famous soccer player played for (I crossed out Man United but it was right)
What town Gilbert O’Sullivan is from
Most of the names of streets associated with pictures of buildings in Kinsale
What year the Republic of Ireland became the republic (they multiple choiced it, so I guess not everyone here knows?)
Bono’s real name

The big prize was a hamper, which is what they call a prize basket, but it always makes me think of dirty laundry. We even get a Christmas hamper at work with a turkey AND a ham voucher. I’m curious what the mentioned vegetarian option is… and why they mailed a company-headed letter to everyone’s home to ask which butchers they want to use instead of just asking us at work!

We brought home Emmy a few days ago!

She came from Orchard Greyhound Sanctuary in County Offaly. David and I visited a few weeks ago and we went back with Walter this weekend to see who he liked. Turns out he didn’t care too much so we got to pick!

More info on Emmy’s page at rescue website

She is a bit shy but definitely has a silly side showing. She has claimed the honking octopus toy and carries it to whichever bed she decides to use–often hogging most of the couch! She likes David best and performs well as a footwarmer under his desk. Walter and Emmy are pretty much ignoring each other (which beats fighting) and I hope they will play together as they get to know each other. She will be three (two? trying to figure out this tattoo registry stuff) on December 1 and supposedly was given the racing name Coolarne Chancer, though I don’t think she ever raced. David keeps trying to call her Coolio but I have to put an end to that. While Emmy is a cute name, it’s awfully close to my own! Not sure if we’ll keep it.

After the first day she’s following me around too so at least she doesn’t only like David. She is a very sweet dog.

I felt it was time to have a new friend for Walter, but Casper’s ghost stays close in my mind. That made it hard to bring home Emmy. I’m sure we’ll develop a lovely relationship but I feel like I’m betraying “my” dog a little right now. Maybe Emmy honking the octopus is channeling when Casper played with it too.

I’m thankful it’s not political season here. We are able to watch NBC nightly news and Daily Show on TV, though we don’t see them every day. Mostly we hear on Facebook that it’s time to vote again. I admit it didn’t even occur to me to figure out absentee voting. Anyway, we don’t have any political ads to tire of, and I can’t believe it’s been two years since the US Presidential election.

I saw some humorous signs from the Rally to Restore Sanity at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbddc/5129948306/in/photostream/

I haven’t carved our pumpkin yet, and David says he’s getting candy for trick-or-treaters at the store now, at 5:30 on Halloween night. I had just planned to keep the light off! Halloween seems pretty popular here, with lots of decorations and everyone talking about parades and parties and fireworks. I have been incredibly lazy this weekend and barely got out of the house. Our biggest excursion was to the pub yesterday, the only way I could get David to join Walter and me on a walk.

An hour later the candy is gone. We’ve already fallen back with the clocks so the kids are panning for candy in the dark. It’s keeping Walter busy barking at the doorbell! David became crazy razor blade man and gave out apples when he ran out of candy. This place might be the 1950s but I hope they don’t still eat strangers’ apples.

I started this post several weeks back and thought I’d resurrect it.

All this travel means so many pretty pictures and not enough rants on my blog! That’s like going against my own philosophy. I’m afraid I’ll become extra boring if I’m not staying true to my roots. Or I’m growing older, I guess.

Pretty much all of these items were posted by US friends on Facebook. Either I don’t have enough acquaintances here to be close enough to be pissed off, or Americans really are self-centered and annoying.

home parties
fireworks killing dogs
going to the circus
purpose breeding your dog
hunting
whining about how much you hate moving (not you, TMC!)
right wing insistence on radical Islam’s focus
UK TV (it’s so American)

I guess I’m done now.

I thought of something else Ireland doesn’t have: big bags of potato chips. They only sell big bags full of single-serve bags of potato chips. Useless!

I’m trying to decide if I should do NaBloPoMo this year. I will never post a real post every day but I have a bajillion pictures and could do one a day pretty easily.

Someone at work made fun of me for saying awesome a few weeks back, even mimicking me with an American accent. So I tried not to say it so often (I didn’t realize I said it at all), and then our taxi driver made fun of me for saying awesome this weekend in Belfast. I looked it up and have said it 22 times on the blog. That’s not too much over four+ years, is it?

Finally feeling better after having a nasty upper respiratory thing last week, though the cough is lingering. I’ve been frustrated by lack of cold medicine here–all they do is take acetaminophen and suffer. You can get codeine OTC but not cold and flu treatment. I saw empty blister packs for something orange called DayNurse at another sick person’s desk and got excited that it might be like DayQuil, but it was just the same pain reliever crap. Anyway, I learned two new words for being sick: dosed and smothered. “Oh, you must be smothered!”

I also heard someone use the term away for slates, which I picked up at corkslang.com but had never heard in person before! It’s something like being content or everything’s hunky dory (the more common phrase is “happy days”).

A peace wall in Belfast. Our taxi driver was a little strange and looked like he might have been in Flock of Seagulls. I think he said the walls, gates, and checkpoints are currently scheduled to come down in 18 more years. The gates are still closed at night. I took the name “Peace Wall” to sound rather hopeful, but really I think it’s just acknowledging that the only reason there’s peace is because of the wall.

After being told we needed more evidence of our relationship to let David stay in Ireland, who officially ran past his passport stamp in mid-August, we had to come up with items of proof at least four years old (rather than the two years we were originally instructed). We took copies of emails from 2005 to the immigration Garda (police officer) last month in Bandon, who stamped them with her official mark and wrote on them that they were evidence of our relationship, but we still had to send the evidence to the Dublin offices.

What were the emails about? Oh, I helped him with a tangent when his calculator application wasn’t working, and he called me a butthead in one of them, and various other quotidian remarks. But they looked really stupid when we had to submit them to a government immigration agency!

I was also able to request cell phone records showing that I called his number, but my cell company had been bought out in the meantime and I had to arrange manual retrieval of the old records which were then mailed to my home in Indy and then we had to get them here. I mailed all this stuff to Dublin with our case numbers and cover letters. THEN I found out from our relocation company who talked to the immigration Garda that the government immigration offices were on a ‘go slow’ order, which is like a strike where you show up for work but don’t do a whole lot.

Magically, yesterday we received David’s permission to remain letter, so he can go get a real stamp from the Garda and now we can actually travel. It has been really annoying not to be able to book any flights with him! It’s too late to plan something for the upcoming long weekend but at least we can plan the rest of the year.

In the meantime, we bought a car, I’m home sick, and David is chasing Walter through the house with a pumpkin.

On Sunday I went to the Butter Museum in Cork, which turned out to be as dumb as it sounds. But I couldn’t live here and not go to a place called a Butter Museum, could I? It was created about 15 years ago and since there apparently haven’t been any amazing butter developments, the exhibits haven’t been updated. The general documentary opened very seriously with “Ireland owes much to butter,” which is true since they’ve been shipping butter out of Cork for centuries, but the film didn’t really talk about that. Then I saw a bizarre marketing documentary from the sixties when they started shipping Irish butter abroad in the modern era, developing a brand appealing to housewives by talking about the pretty girls and happy cows in Ireland and that “the cheddar cheese that comes from Ireland matures to the sound of harps.”

I’ll save you the €4 admission:

Butter found in a bog. They’re not sure if it was put there to be preserved for the off season or as a pagan ritual.

A cow marks the butter exchange building, big business back in the day

This part of Cork is known as Shandon. You can ring the bells in the church for a small fee

Kathleen, David and I visited Waterford city in County Waterford a couple months ago. The city is the oldest in Ireland and seems to have been routinely attacked over the centuries due to its coastal location near other parts of Europe. Of course the Vikings just seemed to attack everyone no matter where they went, and then Britain would follow up later, so maybe that wasn’t so unique among Irish towns. We also ventured into County Wexford to visit Hook Head.

1. The wool merchant

2-5. Waterford Crystal has been around awhile, but these days the big factory in Waterford town is shut down and they’ve built a tourist showcase plant instead. This change is so new that my guide book and GPS still wanted us to go to the old factory.

Waterford Crystal as a brand is still made elsewhere (like the Czech Republic), but as our guide, a former crystal cutter from the old plant told us, when the Waterford factory shut down, everyone lost pensions and retirement funds along with their jobs and benefits. He didn’t seem cut out for leading tours but maybe he gets to take turns with the other guys showing how the craft is kept alive. The little seahorse is the emblem for Waterford Crystal and has a shamrock shape in the tail.

6-8. Reginald’s Tower (note the toilet pic) is the “oldest urban civic building in Ireland, and the oldest monument to retain its Viking name. To this day, it remains Waterford’s most recognisable landmark. It is believed to be the first building in Ireland to use mortar.” (still the Wikipedia link) How does one divvy up the urban civic buildings from those that aren’t? Anyway the restoration was well done and on our way in we saw our guide from the crystal place out on the street.

9. We liked the banana peel sign at the ferry crossing from Passage East to Ballyhack. The ferry saves 55 km of driving!

10-12. Watch out for the freak waves and blow holes around Hook Head. The phrase “By Hook or by Crook” apparently refers to Cromwell taking Waterford either by this direction or the town of Crook nearby. The lighthouse is the oldest in Ireland.

13. Templetown, of Knights Templar fame, though the structures are newer

We stayed in a B&B in Caherciveen and then took a boat out to Skellig Michael on a Sunday morning in September. The number of visitors is limited at this fascinating island, and all the boats travel together. It’s a rough crossing. We felt ill but other people on the boat actually lost their Full Irish breakfasts. The Atlantic was rough enough that they weren’t sure the boats could go out until just before departure time. We often couldn’t see the other boats due to the big rolling waves.

I’ll quote Wikipedia because it’s hard to describe this site.

Skellig Michael (from Sceilig Mhichíl in the Irish language, meaning Michael’s rock), also known as Great Skellig, is a steep rocky island in the Atlantic Ocean about 9 miles (12 kilometres) from the coast of County Kerry, Ireland. It is the larger of the two Skellig Islands. After probably being founded in the 7th century, for 600 years the island was a centre of monastic life for Irish Christian monks. The Gaelic monastery, which is situated almost at the summit of the 230-metre-high rock became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is one of Europe’s better known but least accessible monasteries.

Since the extreme remoteness of Skellig Michael has until recently discouraged visitors, the site is exceptionally well preserved. The very spartan conditions inside the monastery illustrate the ascetic lifestyle practiced by early Irish Christians. The monks lived in stone ‘beehive’ huts (clochans), perched above nearly vertical cliff walls.

They aren’t kidding about how steep it is; there are 600 steps up the rocky cliffs, built by the monks centuries ago, and last year two people died at the site. There are now safety talks but no railings.

1. We left from Portmagee, known for Ireland’s runner-up Top Toilet in 2002!
2. A seal pokes out of the water
3. The boat dog, Nini, wants to get the seal!
4-13 are of Skellig Michael itself. Note all the stone stairs (6, 9, 13) and the beehive hut living quarters (7, 8). Do you know what 11 shows? A lot of wild bunny poo!
14. A view of Small Skellig, the other island, which is a bird sanctuary only, so no human visitors. All that white on the crags: birds. Skellig Michael is also a bird sanctuary, but alas, we were a little late for puffin season. David offended the guide when he asked what the big deal was with everyone loving puffins. She basically said she wasn’t going to waste her time telling him since he had that attitude.

The ride back was fortunately not as rough. We did not eat our packed lunches at the island since we weren’t feeling great from the morning trip and we took our fake Dramamine (it’s a prescription here)! This was an exceptional place to experience and just seemed such a drastic, effective way to ignore the world. I always find the sound of the crashing ocean focuses my thoughts inward. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad to live amongst bunnies and puffins.