A Warm Welcome

The Blonde bounded in, full of joy and hugs, eager to please. She buried her nose in his crotch by way of a greeting, while I ushered the Urchin out into the garden for our customary hello (where I hold her still so's I can pat her on the head and pretend she's a normal dog, and she squrims and wets herself). Satisfied that I'd squeezed her bladder dry, I let her back in. She's cute! he exclaimed, and picked her up to give her a hug, whereupon she promptly sprayed his hoodie with piss.

He'll learn.

Rub A Dub Dub

I looked the email up again and dialled the number. "Primal's Porno Palace" an efficient voice barked in an official tone. "Erm..." I countered, my cheeks burning. Just what the fuck was I getting myself into?

Half an hour later we were in his kitchen, sitting down to polite tea and Viscounts before settling down to business. Annie was bright and breezy, as if she does this kind of thing every day. Primal seemed right at home, but then it was his kitchen.

Me? I was shiteing myself.

I hate having my photograph taken. I am both unphotogenic and vain, and as a result I am a notoriously reluctant subject. But I was flattered by Annie's request, and she's so sympathetic, sweet and reassuring that I figured I could take her easily if I didn't like the results; burn the evidence, hide the body.

When it came down to it, taking my clothes off was easy. Not snotting myself as I clambered into the beautiful cast iron tub whilst trying to maintain some semblance of dignity - not so much. She tells me that I am an excellent poser, I choose to believe she means it as a compliment. It's not that I preen, you see, just that I am really really good at staying still. Two years as a public servant will do that to a girl, but at least now I am reassured that should the Gaeilgeoir jobs market dry up, I have the option of a career as an artist's model. As I look down the barrel of another Monday morning in the office, sitting on my nudie hole and getting paid for it looks quite attractive. Mind you, I have already spent the greater part of this morning doing little more than sitting on my hole and getting paid for it, albeit with a few layers of fabric between my seat and the chair.

She emailed me the final photo yesterday evening. It's beautiful.

Ghost Writing

me:
write me a blog post, will you? my weekend was so dull that my brain has died.

alarmingly charming and biddable man:
Sure! What topic were you thinking of?

me:
anything.

Honestly, kids, were it left to me I would have summarised my weekend thusly -

Sweeney Todd was okay. Funny Games U.S. was disappointing. I brought the dogs for a swim. It rained a lot. I waited ages for a bus. For nothing. Kings was depressing. Tesco was closed.

~The end~

I went on a wonderful camping trip to Cork last weekend but by the time I had recovered well enough to tell you about it, the stories were stale. Overcome by ennui after my attempts to stay on the straight and narrow this weekend, I spent my evening chatting idly and making plans instead of writing anything worth posting. But the alarmingly charming and biddable man (who has been holed up in a shed writing a script for the last few weeks, and will evidently do anything to avoid it) has kindly summarised my weekend for me, in snappy lines and short scriptwriter sentences:

I awoke last Sunday to a tent filled with the bilious tang of my brother's puke. Some wake-up call. After three solid weekends of debauchery, I decided I should probably take it easy. I would give my overworked organs a weekend off. A decision aided by having various friends and housemates abandon me for weddings and other dubious reasons.

The reward of a boozy Sunday afternoon helped steel my resolve for the barren desert that is Kildare on a Saturday night. My sobriety was quickly taken advantage by a sister wanting a lift into town. The journey that followed featured a leaky roof, aquaplaning and at least one near-death experience.

Upon returning home, I discovered my body covered in welts the size of pound coins. Not midges this time, but my other bete noir: MSG. I knew full well that those jalapeno tortilla chips wouldn't do me any favours, but was a bit much. I finished off the night with a shitload of antihistimines and a cold shower.

I awoke this morning at 8:30. I'm usually looking at this time from the other side. At least there was the boozy afternoon to look forward to.

My ostensible drinking partner returned from coaching spin classes and had a lie down. (A correspondent ponders that spin class 'sounds like an aerobic version of sufi dancing'. I clarified that it's more like cycling on the spot with someone shouting at you.) Too much shouting, perhaps, as he decided to get a head's start on the night's puking instead.

Now, it's all well and good to enter a weekend anticipating wholesale mischief and being denied... But to spend the weekend behaving yourself, even helping others, only to have the rug pulled out at the last minute? Well... that's just plain mean.

There's Nothing Quite Like...

...dirt under your fingernails to remind you that

(a) you're back in Kildare for the weekend.
(b) your rubber arms saw you banjoed in the Naas Court Hotel. Again.
(c) your brother didn't leave the key out as promised.
(d) you've been rooting in the flowerbeds for 15 minutes looking for the key that he forgot to leave out.
(e) you've been throwing lumps of said flowerbeds at his window (any window) in an effort to wake the cunt... and
(f) you've decided to wreak revenge by leaving mucky, buttery fingerprints all over his laptop. Serves him right.

Though he'll likely be fine in the morning.

Pulled Back From The Brink

She came home from a 5 hour lunch to find me still sitting at the kitchen table, unwashed and goggle eyed with grammar. "How's the study going?" I seethe silently, knowing that a polite answer is expected but will not be forthcoming. "Are you alright?" "Yes" I mutter distractedly. "Did you have lunch? Did you eat the chilli I left for you? Was it alright?" I grit my teeth and mumble something about brown bread and cheese, hunger suddenly gnawing at my insides and tears welling up in my eyes. If she notices she has the good grace not to mention it. She busies herself getting dinner underway, garlic potatoes, steak. Then she suggests that we go to see Indiana Jones; it opens in the local cinema tonight.

"It would give you an excuse to have a shower."

Study's Going Great, Thanks!

The kid next door is a creepy article. I was woken this morning by her screeching "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" in faux operatic style as she swung with what could only be described as a vengeance on her garden swing. She seems possessed of a violent energy, not youthful exuberance or anything like it but a barely contained malice - like that kid in the Exorcist right before her head spins and she pukes pea soup all over the shop. (I was going to include a picture but they were all too scary). Her treehouse conveniently overlooks our patio so an otherwise pleasant morning spent reading in the garden is ruined by the uneasy suspicion that there's an evil 9 year old lurking in the foliage above your head, reading your unhip science fiction novel study notes over your shoulder.

It's not off the ground she licks it. Her dad is so annoying that my siblings and I now have Ade-Alert, an alarm system* that triggers if he's lurking when one of us goes to leave the house, or if he's passing by and peering in the sitting room window. Which he does a lot. It took me a while to put my finger on who it was he reminds me of and then this morning as his rictus grin drifted past the window again it came to me - Ted, the robotic Bluebeard from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know - my pop culture references are impossibly cool.

It's been an sickeningly long bank holiday weekend; I've been on study leave from work since last Wednesday and am edging ever closer to panic and madness. One more hissed hellooooooo from the treehouse will tip me over and all they'll find of the child will be her shoes.

*When I say "system" I mean of course that one of us spots him and feigns panic, whispering "Ade-Alert" repeatedly until we've all ducked and run for cover. Because talking to him would result in a slow painful death, or a nasty rash at the very least. We're 27, 26 and 22.

Not All Dogs Go To Heaven

I believe I may have mentioned the Urchin's little bastard ways before, albeit in an affectionate and jovial manner. She's treading on thin ice today though. Or perhaps not so much treading on it as bouncing up and down obnoxiously and overenthusiastically, wearing jackboots and daring it to crack.

I'm away from the shiny distractions of the big city this weekend in an effort to get my head down and get some assignments finished. Sitting with my parents last night we heard a tinkling sound coming from the kitchen, like sleigh bells, or an errant wind chime. We sat, ears cocked, trying to figure out what the fuck it was. Eventually curiosity got the better of Mam and she went to investigate, which is when she found Lila dancing on the kitchen table, enthusiastically licking the cutlery having already enjoyed a feast of butter and sugar from their respective dishes.

The Blonde, Alpha, is a polite and exceptionally well-behaved creature; affectionate, apologetic, undemanding. The ideal dog, a posterpup for Golden Retrievers. The Urchin, Lila, is a bad little bastard. I refer to her as an urchin because that's what she was - an abandoned pup. I found her in the car park of the swimming pool three years ago, wearing a collar but no tag. She was painfully skinny, excited and very scared, and the receptionist told me that she'd been there for hours. I took her up to the local vets, presuming they'd take her in. They laughed at me and gave me phone numbers for the pound and for PAWS. I called the pound who said to drop her on over, but warned me that she'd be destroyed if she wasn't claimed. No, then. I called PAWS who advised me that they didn't take puppies. I left notices in every vet's in town, with the local paper, with the Gardaí, with the "lost pets" slot on the local radio. And then I brought her home, to a delighted Blonde (Luckie, the love of my life and her constant companion, had to be put down a year before and she was lonely). Oh, and an absolutely fucking furious Dad.

I called PAWS again, pretending (really convincingly) to be someone else. This time they told me that they didn't take small dogs. Mam and Dad flew to New Zealand the following morning, and Lila settled into her new home by eating a large hole in the plaster of the kitchen wall - in the shape of things to come.

Free To A Good Home

The Blonde

Likes:

• Sleeping.
• Sliotars.
• Swimming.
• Sticking her head down the drain in the garden to look for tasty tidbits.

Dislikes:

• Baths necessitated by an idiotic compulsion to stick her head down the drain in the garden to look for tasty tidbits.

The Urchin

Likes:

• Attention.
• Fighting.
• Dry riding.
• Prancing on the table when I've left the room, spraying hummus all over her face and my study notes.

Dislikes:

• Getting caught. Also; baths.

Sometimes It's Good To Be Home

Tramping around the racecourse this evening with the Blonde rolling ecstatically in the grass and the Urchin tugging at her leash, wearing my miniskirt, my wellies and my big coat (which GingerBeard says makes me look like Brenda Fricker in Home Alone II). Watching the sun go down over Naas and my fingers turn blue with the cold. Eating pizza on the couch with my mam and dad, watching Addams Family Values and trying to decide who I'd most like to be - Wednesday or Morticia (Morticia, definitely, she got to kiss Raul Julia). Sharing my brother's Lindt Easter bunny (Santy didn't bring us any Easter eggs this year - instead we've bought bicycles for some kids over in Kenya that my folks are going to visit. I was confused by this too). Dressing the Urchin in the chocolate bunny's ribbon and bell and laughing as the Blonde bodyslammed her into the kitchen presses in an effort to rip it off her. Having five people to cook for instead of one (unless you count Great Friday, when I cooked for everyone I've ever fucking met). Getting used to home being home again.

And having my own little corner of the city to retreat to tomorrow when it all becomes a bit too much for me.

For AJ, Because He's Nosy*

So yeah, Friday night. A mate of mine from college had called me the week before, he was to go to someone's 30th in Naas on the Friday and wanted me to come along. Always happy to oblige a friend by crashing a stranger's birthday party, I packed a bag and high-hoed to my country abode to reprise my role as the hostess with the mostess.

I decided that a few scoops might be in order before crashing the party so I roped my brother, the Hurler and the Bogman into coming for a few pints with me, knowing that if I got enough Smithwicks into them they'd be all on for coming to the shitey nightclub. Vital to my plan, you see, because had I gone with just the college mate he'd have made me dance, and nobody wants to see that. So, plied with Smithwicks and oiled with Smirnoff we headed up to the town's answer to purgatory; The Naas Court Hotel.

The college mate boogied his white Gaeltacht socks off while us cynical locals hung out by the door, keeping as much distance between us and the dancefloor and as little distance between us and both the bar and the emergency exit as possible. 3am came and it was time to go home to Abrakebabra and then begin the long walk home, arms outstretched in case a taxi might pass. We made it home, the college mate and I, him swinging two bags of Abra's finest cuisine and me brandishing the front door key triumphantly like it was some sort of prize. The brother was hot on our heels and only fucking delighted to be presented with a quarter pounder and garlic cheese fries (being a connoisseur of drunkards cuisine, he'd invented a snack the previous week; Ham Lollipops. Sesame seed grissoni - breadsticks to you and me - wrapped in sliced ham. Patent pending...). Belly full, he tottled off to bed and I set about making up a bed for the college mate on the snazzy fold-out couch, but I got sidetracked. It's true we've had the occasional sneaky smooch over the years, but not in a long time and I don't think either of us have been even remotely tempted for a long time. So I felt a bit funny about it the next day. Not excited, but not disappointed either. No regrets, just um. I haven't done that in a while.

*Joking, AJ, joking. I was planning to spill anyway but I've been busy til now.

Home on the Range: Update

The view, from all angles.

I'm sitting in the gloom on my couch bed, hiding from the builders. They keep shutting off the power. I'm tired and I'm starving but they're making lots of noise and the kitchen hob, kettle, everyfuckingthing in this house is electric. It's after 7pm now so I'm hoping that they'll leave soon. It's either that or my mam's paid them extra to keep me away from the biscuits and the drinks cabinet. I'm assuming that they'll turn the power on before they go, but I might well be disappointed. Not that it'll be a whole lot of use to me. Sure, I'll be able to cook, but they've ballsed up the cable connection for the telly so I've got 17 channels of snow. And this does not a happy Rosie make.

Having a Smashing Time on the N7

Commuting's a lark! Driving all the way into work in 2nd gear is great fun, and really good for the car too, I'd wager. I made it in in only 17 hours today, as opposed to yesterday's 23, quite an achievement.* The big blinky roadside sign that yesterday proclaimed "Accident Ahead at Newlands Cross" today said "Traffic's Shite, That's All" so relatively speaking, it wasn't a bad morning on the Naas Road. But there's always one. I witnessed first hand this morning the reason why there are so many accidents between Newlands and The Red Cow roundabout; pleasant smiley folk hand out free newspapers at the lights, and every dickhead in traffic starts reading them. Admittedly I've done it myself as a pedestrian and was almost mown down by a passing car (I tried it once on the bike but being the graceful master cyclist I am I dropped the paper and again, was almost mown down by a passing car). But if you've a tonne and a half of Ford Mondeo in your charge, spare a thought for the car in front and resume picking your nose and eating it instead.

*Drive times may be slightly exaggerated, but not by bloody much

Home on the Range

I'm on babysitting duty this week back home in my folks' house in Kildare. They headed off this morning, leaving me in charge of two dogs, two builders, an electrician and some other handy type person whose purpose I've already forgotten. It's nice to be back here, if a little strange. I haven't been home much over the last few months and things have changed in my absence. The house has been transformed, for starters. It looks beautiful, but I'm a little afraid to touch things in case I break them. I feel like a bit of a squatter, truth be told. I lost my room to my sister, and then lost my sister's room to my parents (I know, I know... one is unfortunate but two is just careless, etc.) but I have inherited a very expensive couch bed and some bespoke cupboards in the office. I think I'll get one of those signs kids put on their bedroom doors and nail it up on the office door for all to see; "Rosie's Room. Keep Out". It won't fit with the decor, but it'd give me a sense of owning the space.

There are some things I will thoroughly enjoy about being home for the week. Free food, for one. I'll be eating rings around myself. Having a car, and driving everywhere just because I can (though the novelty will wear off quickly with all the quality time I'll be spending on the N7, commuting to work). The two dogs greeting my appearance each morning with rapturous joy, one of them so excited she literally wets herself (it's rare I get that from my flatmates, much as they love me). It's very quiet without the family in residence though, and frustrating that I can't ask them where the fuck they've put everything (after the great remodelling it's like going to Tesco when they've had a shelf shuffle, you know it's there but you just can't find it).

The two dogs are staring pleadingly at me; the blonde with a sliotar stuffed in her gob, the street urchin with a mouthful of the blonde's hair in hers. They can fuck off though. It's lashing.