Monthly Archives: May 2015

Happy Birthday!

Posted in life by

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Tomorrow is a very special day.

Tomorrow is your birthday!

It’s a special day for me because it marks the day you entered the world, and for that I am grateful because I treasure having you in my life.

This road we’ve walked together has not always been smooth. We’ve encountered more than our fair share of potholes, speed bumps and unexpected twists and turns. It’s been difficult and painful and at times we worried we wouldn’t make it.

And yet here we are; still travelling it, side by side, hand in hand.

We were just babies when we met! Right now, I am looking at the strip of passport photos of us mucking around that is on our fridge… My God! were we ever that young?!

We had the privilege of growing up together.

I remember the sweet, shy, insecure boy I fell head over heels for… skinny, goofy and cute beyond belief. I look at you today in awe and wonder at the self-assured, sexy, confident man you have grown into. And I was there to watch it happen, right before my very eyes.

I want to acknowledge today all the amazing things you have done for me and all the ways you have enhanced my life; so here goes…

 ❤️

You’ve seen the ugliest parts of me and you stayed despite them.

When I cried, you wiped my tears and rocked me in your arms.

When I fell, you picked me up, dusted me off and helped me move on.

When my legs were unsteady, you held my hand and guided me.

When I binged and became overweight, you loved me anyway.

When I went crazy and dropped seriously underweight, you loved me and supported me.

When I doubted myself, you reassured me.

When I hated myself, you fought to show me you loved me.

When I fucked up and hurt you, you forgave me.

 ❤️

When I laugh, you laugh along with me.

When I dance, you have learned to dance with me.

When I am silly, you join me and we are silly together.

When I am wrong, you tell me.

When I am right… you’ve learned to acknowledge it!

 ❤️

With you I feel safe, protected, important.

You put me first.

 ❤️

You are my best friend, my partner, my lover, my soulmate.

For your birthday, I wish you everything that is good…

I wish you happiness, joy, laughter, love, health, luck, success… everything.

If I could give you all that, I would.

What I give to you is me.

All of me, body, spirit, heart, mind and soul.

I give it to you to keep, forever.

Happy Birthday my love!

❤️

Now… let’s go rock out to the Foos!  (yeah… you are meant to click there babe!)

💋

(ps: sorry for the very clichéd and hackneyed road metaphor!)

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Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com

All rights reserved.

Just The Tip…

Posted in life by

IMG_5309 Are you a tipper?

Are you  generous tipper?

In Ireland we don’t have much of a tipping culture. It is very much a discretionary choice and it is not frowned upon to not tip at all. The OH and I have very different attitudes towards tipping. He always tips… even if the service was substandard or mediocre. When the service is good, he tips very generously… too generously in my opinion.

I don’t think I’m a mean person… I will and I do tip, but I do it when I feel it has been deserved.

I am kind of in agreement with Mr. Pink on this one…

It occurs to me, why tip a hairdresser but not dental hygienist? Why tip a waitress but not an air steward or helpful shop assistant or your aerobic instructor? Why do we select certain professions to tip whilst not tipping others? In America it is customary to tip the bartender for simply pouring you a beer, but not the cook in the kitchen. Why do we feel that we must tip someone for simply carrying out their job?

I understand that in many countries, once again America springs to mind, tipping is culturally very important. This is because typically people in the service jobs that receive tips are only paid the minimum wage, if that, so it is understood that tipping is a necessary part of their pay. In fact in America, federal law ALLOWS tips to be used to take servers’ salaries up to the minimum wage! I think it is shocking, and just plain wrong, that employers can get away with paying people as little as $2-$3 per hour.

I argue that, rather than supporting a system where the government allows employers to drastically underpay their staff, which in turn puts pressure on customers to subsidise their meagre pay cheque, why not tighten the regulations about minimum pay and treat employees with the respect they deserve and pay them according to their worth? This way, people in service jobs are paid a fair and decent wage, employers are forced to act responsibly, the government gets more tax revenue and the awkward social etiquette of tipping is eradicated.

I have heard horror stories, again mostly from America, of people being hounded and publicly shamed for not leaving a tip that the server felt was sufficient, or of people being chased out on the street by a server who was upset at the absence of a tip.

There are countries where tipping is virtually non-existent or even discouraged or forbidden. In Australia, Spain, Singapore, Switzerland and New Zealand tipping it not customary or expected. It is illegal in Argentina, considered insulting in Japan, Oman and Yemen, and is included in the price in many other countries, hence rendering it pointless.

How about the fact that not every one is in a position to tip well, if at all?

I don’t work outside the home. I am financially dependent on the OH and I don’t feel that when I go to my hairdresser, who owns and runs her own very successful business, that I should have to pay her any extra over the already high prices she charges. She is very skilled at her profession, but she earns more than I do, (seeing as I earn nothing), so it seems perfectly okay to me that I do not tip her. Instead, I always review her highly on Facebook, recommend her salon and thank her for doing such a good job whenever I visit. She has the security of knowing that she has a loyal repeat customer in me, and has had for the past 8 years.

The OH has a theory that men tip more often and more generously than women. I am not sure I agree with him on this, so I’d love it if you took my poll and let’s see who is right! Or leave me a comment answering these questions: FullSizeRender

I guess you guys think I am a mean, crotchety, parsimonious, penny-pinching, miserly Scrooge now! But honestly… I am really a nice person and generous too… just don’t expect a tip automatically from me! image1 Ciao! 💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com All rights reserved.

Word for Wednesday #16

Posted in W4W, Word for Wednesday by

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Play along with me  here.

This week’s word is pluviophile.

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Living in Ireland, it is fortunate that I do like the rain! We get plenty of it.

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I enjoy the peace of sitting, looking out the window at rainfall, watching the droplets of water run down the glass, listening to the relaxing sound of it on the roof.

I remember walking home one time, a sudden heavy rain shower hit and I was totally unprepared. I remember feeling slightly irritated for half a second and then thinking, “Fuck it!” and raising my face up into the deluge and smiling, feeling the water wash over me. It felt great! I was walking along, drenched to the skin, smiling and laughing to myself. I probably looked like a crazy woman but I didn’t care. It felt… cleansing.

We have a special way of describing rain here in Ireland. You would often hear older people say, “Sure, it’s a grand soft day, thank god.” This refers to a type of rain we get here, more than mist but not quite a full rain shower… drizzle maybe… but even less so. Mizzle!

The poet Winifred M. Letts, although English, spent quite a bit of her childhood in Ireland and wrote this lovely poem about our ‘soft days’:

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Yes, the rain can be annoying, inconvenient and can ruin plans for days out, but without it I wouldn’t have my glorious garden. I wouldn’t live in a country that truly does have at least 40 shades of green decorating our countryside. I hail from Co. Wicklow, which is known as ‘The Garden of Ireland’, and it is simply breathtaking in it’s wild beauty… thanks to our soft days!

I encourage you all to come visit my lovely country.

The people are friendly and funny, the views are spectacular, the food is delicious and the craic is mighty!

But don’t forget to pack a raincoat!

Ciao!

💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com
All rights reserved.

Words That Changed My Life…

Posted in funny, life by

Sometimes we can trace back how our lives have turned out to the smallest of things, like words that were spoken to you or by you.

*

The OH was a shy guy when I met him, chatty once he was comfortable with you, but never the type to make the first move, (more about that later!). We made friends in second year of college.  I always tried to copy his homework because he was better at Chemistry than I was. I laughed at his jokes and stories in class and I liked him, but never really saw him as anything more than a mate.

I was walking home from the pub one night, a bit brokenhearted that my latest crush wasn’t showing me much reciprocal interest, and there he was on the bridge. We stopped to chat and, out of the blue, (and very unlike the shy guy I had come to know), he offered to walk me home… in the direction he had just come from, even though his house was just around the corner.

That moment of bravery on his part, when he uttered the words, “Can I walk you home?” was the start of something bigger than either of us could ever have imagined. I do believe, in that moment, everything I felt about him changed, just like that.

 *

Fast forward a month or so, during which time the OH and I spent a lot more time together. I loved being with him, but we were still just buddies, even though I knew I wanted more. I was always around him, finding excuses to hang out. I even fell asleep on his sofa with him one night and when I woke in the morning I angled my face up so our lips were almost meeting and waited for him to wake up and accidentally kiss me. It didn’t work… he woke up and nearly fell off the sofa with shock!

[Sidenote: it sounds as if he wasn’t interested which is not true. Years later I asked about how we got together and he told me he had seen me on the very first day of college, a year prior to us ever talking, and he remembered what I was wearing and where I sat in class. He just never thought, (his words), he had a shot with me.]

As the weeks went on, and he remained as gentlemanly as ever, I became more and more frustrated, but with the cocky confidence of youth on my side, I was not going to admit defeat. I wanted this guy and I intended to get him.

After a half-term break we all returned to college and on the Sunday night before class hit the nightclub. We danced as a large group, no one-on-one dancing at all, we drank and had a laugh. Once the ‘slow set’ came on my friend Linda pushed the two of us out onto the dance floor, (as we had planned!), and we did the slow dance shuffle thing awkwardly. I kept my face very available for any kisses he might have wanted to plant but sadly the set ended and my lips remained untouched.

Linda took me aside, “WTF?!” and I decided it was time for me to ‘man up’ and take charge of this situation.

Slow set number two began and I gave him the “Are you dancin?” eyebrow raise and nod towards the floor and he got up.

We danced for all of a minute, my heart beating out of my chest with nerves, when I looked up at him and said the line, “If I do something, will we still be friends tomorrow?” He smiled down at me, (I think he knew what was about to happen), and said “Of course!” I leaned up and planted a very chaste kiss on his lips and as I pulled away he wrapped his arms around me and drew me in for a very deep kiss. We kissed all night and he walked me home.

 *

In Ireland, certainly back in 1991, people didn’t ‘date’. We ‘went out’ with people, we would “go” with someone. If you liked someone you were exclusive from day one until you broke up. As we stood at my door, arms around each other, I said, “So…” and waited to see what would happen.

“So…” he replied smiling, I repeated, “So…” and then he said the next couple of words that changed my life.

“So, do ya wanna go with me or what?”

Romantic huh? Of course, I said yes!

*

Fast forward seven years. We lived together practically from day one, he bought me a toothbrush and a hairbrush for his flat and I basically moved in one piece of clothes at a time.

One day we both had to get formally dressed to get headshots done for some CVs we were sending out to find work. We were lying on our double bed after we got home, me wearing my little business skirt, nylons, a bra and his necktie, (there’s an image!), and him in his open collared shirt trousers.

My parents had both died and I had a bit of inheritance. I was telling him about a chat I’d had with my older brother at the weekend about spending it and that life is short, see the world etc. etc.

We started fantasising about places we would like to holiday in, safari in Africa, the Caribbean, the Seychelles, The Maldives and I said, “Jesus, they are like… not just holidays! Those are serious honeymoon type places,” and he looked down at me and said, “Well let’s do that,” to which I replied something along the lines of “Yeah right, feck off!”

He looked at me and said it… “So, you wanna marry me or what?”, (the romantic devil).

He did have to ask me a few more times before I believed he was deadly serious. I said yes and then proceeded to get the shakes, trembling uncontrollably. So, he took my hand, brought me downstairs, made me beans on toast and fed me until I stopped shaking. (Even back then the guy knew how to give aftercare!)

 *

I look back at my life, and at how I got here, and the four most important lines that were ever said to me or that I ever said are imprinted on my memory:

“Can I walk you home?”

“If I do something will we still be friends tomorrow?”

“Wanna go with me or what?”

“Wanna marry me or what?”

 *

Such small little sentences that made such a difference. 53f5b35c2fa1d41015025c2a0c19fb21

I hold them in my heart always.

Ciao!

💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com

All rights reserved.

One Liner Wednesday

Posted in One Liner Wednesday by

nice

I have this framed on my kitchen wall as a reminder.

Be nice to yourself, it’s hard to be happy when someone’s mean to you all the time.

Thanks to Linda for this meme.

Word for Wednesday #15

Posted in W4W, Word for Wednesday by

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Play along here.

This week’s word is…

Abundance

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I love this word! Say it aloud and feel it on your tongue, how much your lips need to move to utter it… it feels full doesn’t it? it feels like what it describes…

In a world where it is all too easy to focus on the negative, on what we are lacking, on what we want but do not have, I think we perhaps need to focus on what we DO have.

I have love in abundance in my life. I have the OH who loves me. My dogs and I are crazily in love with each other. I have family that, although I do not see them often, I love and that love me. I have amazing friends who I can laugh with and lean on when I need to. Yes, I have love in abundance.

I have an abundance of laughter in my life also. I laugh every day, (unless I am in a depression phase), and I love to make other people laugh too. Nothing makes me happier than knowing I’ve entertained someone and brightened their day.

I look out onto my garden and see abundance in my beautiful lilac, which is overflowing with blooms, the branches weighed down under the burden of them. My other plants are not yet as developed but I know I can look forward to next month where they will be gloriously full and generously decorating my outside space.

I tend to plant scented flowers; lilac, daphne, stock, alyssum, roses, herbs… so, not only are my eyes filled with beauty but there is a heady abundance of complimentary fragrances that linger in different parts of the garden. A gentle breeze can result in a different concoction of them, every time creating a new, original perfume to enjoy.

I have two beautiful little blue tits nesting in my bird house, and I suspect they are raising their new family. I make sure to leave out plenty of fat balls and peanuts to help them. I want them to think of my garden as a well stocked pantry for them. Abundant with food for them and their little babies.

The abundance of beauty in my garden is something I am truly grateful for.

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As regular readers know, I am prone to bad days where the black dog comes back to sit heavily on my chest, weighing down on me and making it hard to breathe. On those dark days I try to remember the abundance of good things I have in my life. The love and laughter and beauty that is around me.

If you are having a hard time right now, maybe try to stop and mentally check in for the good things you have. It might be very hard to see them, almost impossible sometimes, but you know what? If you look, you will see there is love and light and, one day, you will feel better and when you do, recognise the abundance of the good things, file it away to brighten the darker days when they come along.

Here’s to plenty, to abundance!

Ciao!

💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com
All rights reserved.

Show, Don’t Tell

Posted in life, Writing by

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I have not been very active on my blogs lately for a number of reasons… depression, lack of energy, lack of motivation, lack of words!

I have had several ideas fermenting in the dark and dingy recesses of my mind though, images and pictures prompting me to come up with stories to match them.

One image in particular I simply couldn’t shake off was of a woman, sitting at a mirror, removing her make up. There was a heavy feeling of sadness and hopelessness around her and I wondered why. I felt she was wearing a mask, hiding behind the mascara and lipstick, the way so many of us do. But more so, she was hiding from herself. She could not face herself in the mirror. There was a deep sense of self loathing about her.

So today, on a whim, I sat down and opened my MacBook and just started to write. Her story developed as I wrote and it was completed in less than ten minutes.

I hesitated about whether to post it or not. It felt very unpolished, (well, ten minute stories usually are!), and I felt I hadn’t quite fulfilled the very wise brief issued by Anton Chekov above.

I wonder how other writers work? I would love to hear about your process.

Do you write fast or slow? Edit heavily or, like me, barely at all? Plan your story or just let it flow? How do you cope with blocks? What aspects of writing are most challenging for you?

Do you, like me, struggle sometimes to show and not tell? I think it is the mark of truly good writing and I aspire to it, although I do not always succeed.

I wonder too if you are like me. I don’t write at all for days, maybe for up to an entire week and then I have a day like today where I have churned out 4, (yes 4! Go me!), blog posts.

It is probably about having the time, or maybe it’s simply a headspace thing, I don’t know. I wonder as I write this how long it will be before I write again? I never write over the weekends because the OH is here and I think it is important to spend time away from the blogs and focus on us.

So I will wait to see if next week brings inspiration or not.

I hope it does. The days when I write are the best days!

Thanks for reading and please do comment about your writing process, I am all ears!

If you want the story and today’s other posts here they are!

The Mask

My ABCs

Wall of Tears

Ciao!

💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com
All rights reserved.

Wall of Tears

Posted in life by

If you have any unresolved issues in relation to grief you may not wish to read this post.

I was deeply saddened to read in my friend Annie‘s blog about her very recent loss of her mother after a long, difficult year of illness. It brought to mind my own lovely mother, whose hand I held as she took her last breath when I was only twenty years old.

My mother went to the doctor one day because her feet had swollen to uncomfortable, bloated size. She was sent immediately for tests and was told the swelling was called by severe deficiency of potassium. Her potassium level was so low that she had been walking around for months on the verge of a heart attack. That was shocking enough but there was much worse to come.

I called my mother from college and she told me she had to go into hospital to be treated for her potassium levels. My mother was admitted to hospital and never came back home.

She went into hospital on September 9th 1992 and died on October 9th 1992. She was 53.

I have no memory of the last time I ever saw her in our own family home. I imagine it must have been a Sunday evening as I left for college, but it was just another Sunday for me. If I had known that I would never see her again wearing her own clothes, sitting in her favourite chair, I would have seared that image of her into my memory. But I did not know and I cannot remember that day.

I do remember visiting her in hospital for the first time and walking into Intensive Care, scared by all the beeping monitors and drips, thinking “this doesn’t look good at all”. She, in typical Mammy mode, gave me a list of things she wanted me to get for her from home, written on a paper napkin. I still have that list. I think she wanted to give me a job to do to keep me feeling useful.

To cut a short story shorter, she was transferred to a bigger, better hospital. I recall driving home from there one evening with my older bother driving the car, my father in the passenger seat, (that alone should have warned me something was badly wrong), and me in the back seat. It was a silent hourlong journey. As we drove up to our house my brother reached his hand back between the front seats and grabbed mine tight  and squeezed it so hard it hurt. I started to get very, very scared.

We assembled in our living room, my father, older brother, my older sister and her husband and I was told that my mother had been diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to her liver. I stood frozen and started then to shake. I remember my brother-in-law gently taking me by the shoulders and guiding me to a seat. Then I remember my brother handing me something to drink. That is all I have of that night.

For a month we drove up and down to visit my mother in the hospital and at the time there was a lovely album out called A Woman’s Heart, featuring several well-known Irish female folk singers which we played in the car a lot on those journeys. One song in particular always spoke to me; Wall of Tears by Frances Black.

I twisted the words slightly to suit my situation. I changed the words Him or Her and cried quietly in the backseat of the car.

“Looking out my window, staring through the pain
I can’t see the rainbow for the rain
Someday Ill forget you, life goes on they say
But they don’t know what’s standing in my way
And there’s a wall of tears, I’ve got to get over
Got to stop thinking of him, got to learn not to love him
I know the sun will shine
I’m gonna be fine but until then
The rains gonna fall just like a wall of tears”

I am listening to it now and it still brings back the pain.

I miss my mother all the time. I left home when I was 17, for college, but I fell in love and decided to stay in my new town with my love so, apart from one summer, I never lived back home again. I missed that time with her. I left home during that period where mothers and daughters are still clashing constantly, fighting and struggling to understand each other. We never got to become friends, never got to know each other as women. My sister, eight years older than me, did get that and yes, I have always been jealous of that.

I am so grateful that the OH had a year of knowing my mother. It is such a comfort to me that he can share memories of her with me. He tells me often that I have turned into her. As I sing whilst cooking, or when certain expressions fall from my lips he will joke,”Hey Breeda, you’re back!” and we laugh.

As a kid, when I was told how similar I looked to her I would scrunch up my face with disgust and she would roll her eyes and say “Well thanks!” sarcastically. Now, I look at photographs and I see the resemblance, and it is incredibly striking. What’s more, I love it! My mother was a very beautiful woman, very striking, and whenever I am told that I look like her now I smile wide and say a very sincere thank you.

All I can say to Annie is that she will never stop missing her mom and she will feel the loss forever, but clichéd as it is, time really does help. The pain and sadness will lessen every day until you reach a point where thinking of her and remembering her will make you smile rather than cry.

For a long time after she died I couldn’t even talk about her or say her name but now, even though I write this with tears in my eyes, I am smiling; thinking of her funny habit of always having a bag of dry roasted peanuts in her pocket, her off-key singing, the constant clicking of her knitting needles, the way her eyes crossed comically when she looked up from reading while she adjusted to her new bifocals, playing competitive cross words against her… so many good memories.

Cherish your memories Annie.

Sending you love, peace and light.

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💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com
All rights reserved.

Word for Wednesday (W4W) #14

Posted in W4W, Word for Wednesday by

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Play along here.

This week’s word is…

Doohickey

I came across this wonderful, wacky word in TK Maxx the other day.

I was browsing the kitchen utensil aisle and happened upon a little gadget that I recognised as the special fork that is used to remove meat from lobster and crab claws. I leaned in to examine it and was delighted to see the packaging calling it a ‘Lobster Doohickey’.

The OH and I had a giggle at this new word… neither of us had ever heard of a doohickey before and I made a mental note to google it once I got back home.

And I did… to discover it is a term for an object you cannot remember the name for!

I love that the producers of the lobster FORK couldn’t quite remember that very elusive word… FORK! and felt compelled to name their product a doohickey! That tickles me no end…

Synonyms for doohickey include:  thingamabob, thingamajig, whatchamacallit, that-thing-you-know-what-I-mean, whatsit, thingy… (please feel free to add yours).

So, the makers of the lobster FORK could have labelled their product ‘Lobster Whatchamacallit’ or ‘Lobster Thingamajig’. I wonder why they settled on ‘Lobster Doohickey’?

Of course, me being me, I searched online and, sure enough, it does seem to be what they are called! And cheaper than TK Maxx too!

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Yes a silly post this week… I hope y’all join in and link back to me because I do really love reading what you guys and gals come up with!

Ciao!

💋

Copyright, 2015, k1kat.com
All rights reserved.

30 Truths

Posted in life by

I found this on sweetndirty.com’s blog and decided it could be fun to do. I have switched it up and instead of posting one a day for thirty days, I have opted to make them a single blog post, simply because the idea of writing a post every day for thirty days is just making my brain hurt!

01 : Something you hate about yourself.

Where to begin… I have many things I hate about myself, but I think the one that I hate most is my self-destructive nature. I am truly horrible to myself most of the time and it does not serve me in any way, yet I continue to do it. The irony of the situation is that in order to stop I must take steps in the direction of self-care and self-love, which of course is very hard to do if your default position is self-destruction and self-loathing. Go figure…

02 : Something you love about yourself.

Ok… (she swallows in preparation to write something nice about herself…)

I do love that I am a person that genuinely likes and cares about people. I find people fascinating, amazing, funny, lovely, intriguing. Yes there are nasty folk out there, but I believe the majority of them are that way because they are deeply unhappy and not because, to use the OH’s favourite saying, “people are cunts”. People are fundamentally good in my view and deserve compassion, love and acceptance. But then again the OH also says that I live in my own little bubble, so who knows?

03 : Something you have to forgive yourself for.

Oh so many things!

Being a bad daughter, bad friend, bad wife.

Fucking up so many times.

Letting myself down. Always letting myself down.

04 : Something you have to forgive someone for.

I have discovered that when someone hurts me I find it incredibly difficult to forgive and forget.

It is probably because if they have the power to hurt me that means I have let them in to my innermost self and have trusted them implicitly, so if they fuck up I feel very betrayed and let down. I am completely aware of how bad this makes me sound and I do not like this aspect of myself. As the well-known quote says, “holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”, I guess perhaps this is another aspect of my self-destructive mentality… Forgiving and letting go would make me feel better and yet I struggle with it. This is something I need to work on.

05 : Something you hope to do in your life.

I do hope to travel more, see more of the world and meet more interesting people. I have been fortunate enough to travel to Jamaica, Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, (never again!), England, Scotland, Wales, but that’s not enough!

I want to visit Tokyo so badly, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Iceland, go coast to coast across the USA, visit my bestie Felicity… and so much more!

My two dogs, the OH’s work schedule and, of course, money are all limiting factors to my dream but hopefully I will get there!

06 : Something you hope you never have to do.

I hope I never have to watch anyone I love in pain, which I know is completely unrealistic. I held the hands of both my parents as they took their last painful breaths and it is not a thing I ever want to have to experience again. Sadly, I am realistic enough to know there are very few guarantees that I can escape this awful possibility. Life sucks yeah?

07 : Someone who has made your life worth living for.

The OH. As a person who has first hand experience of depression and suicide ideation I can say that knowing the pain and devastation that it would cause him if I were ever to fatally harm myself has been my saving more than once.

I am not of the belief that suicide is a selfish act. I believe it is a desperate, final attempt to escape unbearable pain and suffering and for some people it feels the only option. Perhaps they do not have people in their lives that they feel would be hurt by their death, or perhaps they are simply not in a place where they can see that their death would impact on others.

I have always been fascinated by and drawn to death, (yes I know how weird that makes me sound), so, having contemplated how I would feel if anything were to ever happen to the OH, I clearly understand how much it would hurt him if I were to die… which made me resist the lure of the ultimate escape more than once. I could never do that to him.

On a lighter note, he makes my life worth living because he makes me laugh daily, supports me and loves me and caring for him and looking after him makes me happy.

And my two furry babies make my life worth living, as do my adorable nieces and nephews and godchildren.

08 : Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

I was bullied a bit at school over the years and suffered under some truly terrifying teachers as well, both of which made me dread going to school.

I had shitty, abusive boyfriends that had no clue how to behave in a relationship.

I have family members, alive and dead, that have made me feel like shit many times.

But hey… I’m still here! A bit battered and with bruised self-esteem, but still here.

09 : Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.

I had a best friend when I was in primary school, called Debbie. At some point during the summer between primary and secondary school she kind of… well, disappeared from my life. I never found out why, I think she may have gotten ill and her parents kept it all very quiet, but she never joined secondary school and I simply had to make new friends. It’s all very hazy.

10 : Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.

Hmmm…. You can’t escape family can you?

11 : Something people seem to compliment you the most on.

Oh crap! I don’t know! I do get people on twitter commenting on my eyes a lot so maybe I’ll go with that… my eyes.

12 : Something you never get compliments on.

I have never, ever, ever been checked out or hit on by a member of the opposite sex in real life. On twitter and other social media yes, but IRL… not a jot!

13 : A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)

Dear Green Day,

During my 20’s I had what I call my ‘wilderness years’, where I somehow and unknowns to myself, stopped living consciously. I slobbed out, took my life for granted and became very overweight.

Then one day I woke up and felt different. I felt RAGE that my life had turned out as it had. Your epic album American Idiot was out and I felt as if you were talking directly to me. I used your music to fuel my rage.

I bought every single song you ever recorded and played them as I walked furiously for miles each day, pounding the pavements until I got blisters, working out until I couldn’t move anymore, sweating and shaking with exhaustion.

I lost the weight. I rediscovered who I was before I got lost. I became me again. I wore make up, painted my nails, cared about my appearance, my clothes and my hair.

I became strong and confident.

Your music helped me through a very dark period and for that I’ll always be grateful.

14 : A hero that has let you down. (letter)

Sorry I can’t share this one with you all. It’s too personal.

15 : Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.

The OH.

We had some bad years… dreadful years where we both thought seriously about leaving. We found we could never do it. The thought of not being with each other was more painful than the pain being together was causing.

We stuck it out. We fought. We cried. We made it work. It wasn’t easy but then, most things worth having don’t come easy.

Oh… and coffee, me minus coffee is not a thing you want to experience.

16 : Someone or something you definitely could live without.

Toxic people.

Emotional vampires.

Drama queens.

Meanness.

Cruelty.

Rudeness.

Bigotry.

17 : A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.

I’m struggling with this one because I read fiction, pretty exclusively.

I rarely read non-fiction unless it is for studious reasons. I guess a lot of the text books I read during my Psych degree altered my views on how people are/work/act. Similarly, books I read about trauma and abuse when I trained to be a counselor helped educate me and helped me understand that subject.

18 : Your views on gay marriage.

We are about to have a referendum here in Ireland in a couple of weeks to decide whether to legalize gay marriage or not.

I am firmly in the Yes camp. In fact, I think it is deplorable that we have to have a referendum on it at all! I see this as a fundamental civil rights issue. The propaganda posters for the No vote I see plastered around are bigoted and offensive in the extreme. It reminds me of the bad old days where marriage between different religions or ethnicities were frowned upon.

Gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, trans, flexi and everything inbetween… we are all entitled to love.

We are all entitled to equality under the law. I find the ‘arguments’ against gay marriage incomprehensible, illogical and downright homophobic.

I will be out on the day voting YES! I hope it goes through and that future generations look back in amazement that it was ever even an issue.

19 : What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?

First of all I think they should never be mixed! Ever.

I do not hold any religious beliefs. I am an atheist and I believe in humanism. I respect that people have different belief systems to me and I believe they have every right to worship whatever god they choose to.

I do think it is wrong to impose your beliefs on anyone else and I think that the tradition of children being baptised and raised in a religion that they had no choosing in is flawed.

Basically I ask that you follow the advice below…

religion-penis

20 : Your views on drugs and alcohol.

I think as long as you are an adult, and you are not harming any one else, you are free to do to your body whatever the hell you choose to.

21 : (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?

I go and help her! No questions. I’m there right beside her, all fight is forgotten. This is one case where forgiveness comes easy… puts things into perspective. Maybe there is a lesson here for me…

22 : Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.

Oh man! Just ONE thing? Ha!

Ok… I wish I hadn’t passed on some pretty amazing opportunities I was offered in terms of advancing my education and career. I was too insecure and lacked the self-belief and so I chickened out, which I regret.

23 : Something you wish you had done in your life.

Spent more time getting to know my mother. We had the typical tumultuous teenage years, I moved away at 17 and she died when I was 20 so I never got that time with her.

24 : Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)

I think a lot of my answers are covered in these posts…

25 : The reason you believe you’re still alive today.

Wow! The OH, (see No. 07), feeling loved, Lily and Poppy, antidepressants!

26 : Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?

Again… see No. 7.

And read this post.

27 : What’s the best thing going for you right now?

I guess that I have good friends I can rely on and, yeah you guessed it… the OH! Also, my writing and blogging has had a very positive impact on my life and has brought me so much satisfaction.

28 : What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?

This is a tough one. I never felt the maternal thing… I chose, very consciously, not to have children. So, in my youth I would have opted for a termination if I had accidentally gotten pregnant. However, as I have gotten older I have wondered if I made the right choice. Have I missed out on a fundamental human experience? Would I have been a good mother?

I think now if I became pregnant by accident it would be a very different conversation in my head and also with the OH.

To answer this question honestly… I am not sure but I suspect I would be looking at maternity clothes… (The OH reads this and I wonder if he’s googling numbers for vasectomy clinics right now!)

29 : Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.

The self-destructive behaviours and thoughts.

If I could get a handle on them I believe I would be a much happier and more contented person. It is a daily struggle for me and I am not very optimistic that I will get there.

(And of course I want long, thick, glossy hair, a perfect figure and shitloads of money.)

30 : A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Oh no! I did NOT see this one coming…

I will think and try to write this one another day…

That was a very interesting, and slightly mood altering, (aka depressing), experiment.

I think I need some quiet time to reflect on things now.

I hope you enjoyed this post and maybe think about having a go yourself? You might learn something about yourself. Please ping back if you do!

Thanks for reading!

Ciao!

💋

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