I'm a stalker get me out of here

I never imagined I would become a stalker. Not for me following Tom Cruise around or checking the celebrity magazines to see where Paris Hilton hangs out. But it seems I am a "stalker"....well a blog stalker if that makes sense!

I post about every six months due to laziness/ fatigue/the fact that I am a reporter and writing a blog is the last thing I want to do after a day on the computer. I work from home so I don't have colleagues as such. I meet fellow journalists in court or at various functions but I don't have anyone sitting next to me in my workspace.

When I get up in the morning I look at the RTE news website in Ireland. If it is a busy day I hop in the car and go to something or other. If it is a deadly quiet day I listen to the radio looking for ideas for stories and I trawl the internet etc.

Well that is the official party line. The reality is that on the super quiet days I read blogs. Bombadee, a woman I know in Pecatonica, IL introduced me to blogging so I have her site under my favourites. Generally to read blogs I go to her site. I start with hers then work through her links to their links and so on.

I never really thought anything about it until I read about people being able to check who was visiting their site. Seems I am officially a stalker!!! I read the same ten websites every day with the exception of maybe Saturday's. I often read the same blog twice in a day if I don't have time to finish it. (The phone rings and I have to do work!)

Does that make me a stalker? Is that normal behaviour? I am going to keep away from my usual blogs for about a week in case the authors feel "weirded out" by my stalker stats.

And authors..you know who you are...I promise you won't be getting any peculiar packages in the post with dead threats. No cut off fingers in the mail!!!! You won't have to hire a minder a la Kevin Costner in "The Bodyguard."
Yours Sincerely....a part time worker/full time mother who claims she doesn't have time to vacuum the house but magically manages to read blogs EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Getting Re-acquainted ....or not

One of my closest friends lives in Portland, Oregon. She works for the airlines and jokingly refers to herself as Martha Stewardess. She comes home to Ireland a few times a year. We first met when we were about 14. We could trade stories all day about boys we positively adored. My Howard Walsh tales are her Dennis McCarthy ones. Her crush of a million years ago recently got married. Even though its about 15 plus years since the glory days of the Dennis crush...I mourned for her!!! I said his new wife must be ugly etc. (How sad are we?!!)

Anyway, when she was home we decided to meet up with a girl who went to High (Secondary) School with us. We were fairly friendly with this girl but never close close if that makes sense. I imagined that we would go down to meet her for an hour and then if conversation started to dry up we would make our escape.

We met this girl and she asked us the usual questions...marital situation, employment, had we any kids and so on. After an initial burst of enthusiasm she lost interest in us. Of course Martha and I reverted to our childhood selves and got giddy. We ordered wine and said silly stuff. I could see this girl's thought process.....how awfully immature are they and so on.

So about an hour in to our meeting the girl announced she had to leave as she was driving up the country for work in the morning. We said our goodbyes and traded numbers safe in the knowledge that she was never going to call us again and vice versa . Then I just giggled aloud in the pub. It was like being dumped at High School. Like being told we didn't fit in to a certain gang. But the good thing was that my 31 year old self didn't want to fit in to her gang.

We had discussed getting older with this girl and I mentioned that it was difficult to get served by the young barman when there was a skinny half naked girl standing next to me. To which she replied "Oh, I have a 22 year old in work who is after me." I thought Martha was going to choke on her drink. I can safely say without an ounce of bitchiness that this girl didn't have a 22 year old after her when she was 22. Ok how mean a thing is that to say but it is fair comment.

I sensed the girl took great delight in my weight gain. She said we looked "pretty much the same" which somehow sounded like an insult. I do look pretty much the same bar the weight and a few wrinkles (ie. not the same) but Martha who was pretty in high school is now fabulous looking.

I imagine that if I met up with someone from High School and they looked significantly better I would say it. Ok you have to be diplomatic about it but you would find some way to pass on the compliment. Which leads me to the startling conclusion that I have grown up over the last 15 years!!!

Anyway, this blog is all over the place. Don't know what I want to say. You here all this rubbish about high school friends being the best and so on. I have a few close friends from that time but the truth is that in any given high school at any time there is only about five people in your class that you actually like. The rest are just acquaintances.

I treasure my really good friends from school. But some people really do belong to the past. Filed under...'friends by circumstance' as opposed to 'friends by choice'.

Graveyard's -- A two year old's perspective

Just a little bit of advice. Never bring a two and a half year old boy to a graveyard. My aunt's anniversary is coming up later this week so I offered to go to the cemetery with my mother today.

When we arrived at the graveyard this afternoon my husband volunteered to stay in the car with our young son. In a fit of optimism...stupidity..call it what you like I said that he wouldn't be a problem and we started to walk in to the cemetery.

Now this is an old cemetery. My aunt was one of the last people to be buried there five years ago. She only got in (God I make it sound attractive!) because her family had an old plot. Graves date back to the 1800's. Many are sunken or in disrepair. Whole families are buried in a number of the plots. It is a big place and as Murphy's law would have it my aunt's plot is way in the back of the cemetery.

It started off well with my little boy holding my hand and chatting away. Then he realised that the cemetery resembled an obstacle course and started leaping Tigger like over every gravestone. He jumped off ledges. He tried to steal little figurines of the Virgin Mary. I swear I saw a small statue of Jesus make a run for cover.

I ran after him and managed to throw him to the ground before he fell in to an old grave belonging to an Italian family called the Silvestre's. ( There was even a picture of the mother -- I all but apologised to her).

It was sheer and utter madness. Got to my aunt's grave and being the morbid soul that I am instructed my son to "Say Hello to Josie." I forgot about Josie Jump one of his favourite characters in a TV programme called Balamory. Now as her name suggests Josie likes to bop about and that started my little boy off again.

So he stood on her grave singing "Josie Jump is my name. Laughing and sport are my games. I am always feeling rhythm..I feel it in my toes...it tingles through my body..go on and have a go." Lovely! I think my aunt would have appreciated the moment. She always loved a bit of anarchy. But that is another day's story.

Anyway, we put a few flowers on the grave and made a hasty retreat. Then I had the audacity to complain about my son when we got to the car. Like it was his fault. He cried on the way out saying he didn't want to leave. If grave jumping ever becomes an Olympic sport he will be our man!! It was like going to Disneyworld for him. He loved the place.

My favourite moment was when he saw a particularly majestic looking headstone with white little stones around it and said "Wow, what a great grave!" I was stressed out of my mind at the time but it is priceless now when I look back on it.

Maybe Babies -- A death with no sympathy card

Over one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage -- statistics are all fine and dandy. But nothing prepares you for when you are the statistic. My best friend who lives in another city phoned me the other day to say she had lost her baby. She was only six weeks pregnant.

But what a six weeks. She had the child's life planned out. She and her husband had told their respective families. She bought an outfit for an upcoming wedding in a bigger size with the expectation of being over two months pregnant. She imagined the house cluttered with baby chairs, cots, toys and all the other vital paraphenalia. The joyous family situation was no longer a dream but was due to becoming a concrete reality.

Then it happened. She noticed bleeding and went to the hospital where she was informed that she had lost the child.

The sense of sadness has been overwhelming for her. We discussed it at length and realised that nobody really talks about miscarriage. It seems to be still a taboo -- women talk about sex more openly than losing a baby.

My friend has had a lot of serious medical problems in recent years. But she was healthy again. We felt that losing the baby was particularly unfair in her case. Childish I know but there was a sense of hasn't she been through enough and all that.

Maybe it is our Catholic upbringing that is responsible for this train of thought -- recompense would follow suffering etc. All the mad talk about pain purifying a person for reward and so on. Her baby would have to live because she had tolerated a barrage of disappointment to reach this stage. We thought a positive outcome was as inevitable as the rising sun or the incoming tide.

However, it wasn't to be. I struggled to know what to say. Part of you wants to go down the "it will all work out well in the wash" route but you have to acknowledge the grief she is feeling now. I really do hope that she will have a baby in the future. I imagine she will -- but she doesn't want this future baby. She wants the baby she was carrying.

My friend expressed concern about turning this quest to have a baby in to the alpha and omega. She would like to have a sense of proportion about it. She has a great husband and that will always be the case baby or no baby. But then in the next breath she admits that it is all she thinks about. The complete package -- the ideal of the happy family.

For now tears are her constant companion. She says she weeps when she is on her own in the house, when she is walking along the street through bustling crowds or in bed at night. Swollen bellies seem to be everywhere when you have had a miscarriage. Older mothers annoy her because they have managed to have a career and a family whilst younger one provoke her wrath because they have made motherhood a priority.

I know she will work through this. She is an upbeat person. But it will take time. I just wish other women who have had miscarriages were more open about it. I think most people just put it behind them...they go on to have babies and forget about the pain of losing the 'maybe baby.'
Perhaps that is the best thing to do. Why torture yourself with what wasn't meant to be?

For now sadness is difficult to mask for her. She says she is morose -- sleepwalking through the motions of life.

I feel guilty in one way because my little son was unplanned. I wasn't exactly thrilled when I found out I was pregnant...it took me about three months to come around! Silly really when I look back on it. I pray that she will go on to have a baby. I just wish she didn't have to lose the one she was carrying.

ends

Glasses on a two year old

My little two and half year old son needs to wear glasses. We found out today. I know in the grand scheme of things this is nothing much. It isn't some major disorder. But I feel pretty sad about it.

We noticed that he was blinking an awful lot and decided to get it checked out. Our local optometrists recommended a particular consultant and Alex went for his appointment today with his Daddy. I was working this morning so I waited by the phone to see what was going to happen.

Now, to be honest I really didn't envisage him having to wear glasses as the outcome. I thought it was a little habit that he was going to grow out of. So when my husband called to say that he needed glasses I was a bit taken aback.

I think my initial tears stemmed out of this feeling of wanting everything in life to be perfect for him. I had a few minutes of imagining him at six in the schoolyard being bullied by other boys for being "Mr Four Eyes." He was going to be the kid never picked for the school team etc.

You want so much for your children that even the slightest setback breaks your heart. Silly isn't it?

Anyway, I skipped out of work early and we went to the local opticians to buy his new glasses. He tried on about ten pairs before we could find a small enough pair. He was bouncing off the walls after the kindly optometrist gave him a lollipop. I joked about having my own little Clark Kent around the place.

I have all but moved on from the 'poor baby' scenario to actually wondering how we are going to get him to wear the glasses. He has to wear them all the time if there is to be any hope of correcting his vision. We are due to return to the consultant in six months time to see if it has helped in any way.

Now Alex much as I love him is a child who can't sit still for two minutes. He pretty much refuses to wear hats. Getting a diaper on is like mediating with a dictator. Glasses twenty four seven. Wish me luck!

*Hope this post doesn't come across as being very trivial. I know it is stupid to be upset. Children are born all the time with weird diseases and genetic disorders and here I am crying about my son wearing glasses. It is just that he is so small. Such a tiny thing.

** Needless to say the poor vision comes from my side of the family. Roll on the lousy teeth and we can blame all his problems on me. Thanks Mom!!!

Sentimental attachment

Recently I read a kind of smug feature article about women who pass on their 'vintage' clothes to their daughters. You know the scene -- Mummy was a model in the 1970's and she kept a wonderful pair of trousers she wore to some exclusive club in her wardrobe for the last thirty years. She goes away and has a perfect daughter who low and behold can fit in to the size two jeans that Mommy wore all those years ago. Even better they are back in style...blah, blah, blah.

As I was reading it I thought what type of person keeps clothes for thirty years to pass on to their children ?Wedding dresses I can see -- christening robes through the generations I can appreciate but a regular skirt, dress and so on. I just couldn't fathom it.

Then I really started to think about it and I realised that I still have a brown velvet dress dating back to 1994 which I wore in Greece around the same time as I met my now husband. Note to Olivia...1994 is twelve years ago. Bet it will still be in my closet in twenty years time.

I will never wear this dress again. It is out of fashion. It is covered in cigarette holes. I am probably about two stone (28 pounds) heavier. (Oh hell that sounds really bad!). Anyway, I think I keep this dress because it transports me in an instant to my 19 year old self.

I went to Crete with three of my friends to get a job for the summer. Well, that was the theory anyway. Turns out we went to one of the more authentic Greek islands where there isn't much of a tourist industry. We ran out of money after about two weeks and then lived on cheap chocolate baguettes for about another three weeks before we went home. Heaven knows how we scraped the money together to go in the first place but we did.

Now this little island didn't have much in the way of jobs but what it lacked in that department it made up for in the sailor and marine area. Americans were coming in in their hundreds to the port and there wasn't much in the way of women there. (Well besides the Greek women whose men were pretty possessive).

That month was the closest I ever got to being a supermodel. Here we were ordinary looking girls and we could pick and chose who we wanted. What fun! That said looking back on it we were all pretty innocent. It was more of a kiss and cuddle type scenario than anything else.

What I remember most about that time is the girly laughs. (Thank God my husband will never read this -- I am supposed to go on about falling in love etc). I have a vivid memory of falling off my seat with laughter when a marine called Forrest tried to chat my friend up. Doesn't sound funny now but at 19 with a couple of glasses of wine in you this is the stuff of hilarity.

Anyway, back to clothes...why do we keep things for so long when they are never going to see the light of day again? What is it with women and clothes? Let's face it there isn't a man alive who keeps a t shirt because he met his wife when he was wearing it. Men keep clothes because they are too lazy to throw them out. Women do so because it brings them back to a younger happier period. Often times we are delusional and think that if we lose that stone or two we will become our younger prettier selves.

So the brown dress is staying put in my wardrobe for now -- even if the silver hotpants from when I was 16 have finally made their way to the bin!!

Can you do the Riverdance?

I went for an interview for a job when I lived in the US and because I am Irish I was jokingly asked if I could "do the Riverdance." In the two years I spent there I was asked about 1,000 times if I knew someones Irish grandmother, great grandmother, tiny town in middle of no wheresville where their ancestors moved from etc. That was all fine and dandy. People were just being friendly.

What was really scary was when they said "You have a cute accent where are you from?" When I mentioned Ireland there was a confused moment followed by something like "Oh you are from Idaho, Iowa, Indianapolis?"

I was always stunned by this but really I shouldn't have been. Ireland is a tiny country. Maybe it is okay for large sections of the population not to know where it is. Let's face it how many people could find Angola on a map or Namibia before Angelina Jolie had her baby there and the world's media descended on the place?

I suppose because the US is so large it is hard for people not to be insular. It must be difficult to comprehend life outside America just because of the sheer size of the country and the fact that it is the dominant world culture. What I find offensive is when people don't try.

I don't fault Americans for this. It is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in this side of the world as well. Basically, we are all getting caught up in our own little bubble and are finding it more difficult to relate to or empathise with other cultures.

Celebrity worship is about all that unites cultures these days! I may not know a thing about Mexico but I bet if I spoke to a person from that country we would be able to find common ground by discussing the exploits of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston. How pathetic is that? (Don't get me wrong I enjoy celebrity gossip as much as the next person but it does rot the brain).

Hell I am rambling again. What I find inspiring about blogging is the potential to learn so much about different cultures. I read a blog today from a woman in Australia and it was great to be able to tune in to her frequency so to speak. Just to get a feeling for how she lives...a flavour of what it is to be like to be a mother of two on the other side of the world.

Oh back to the Irish thing. I apologise to any American I met in the States who was disappointed by the fact that I don't have red hair and freckles. People expect you to look like Nicole Kidman when the reality is that most Irish people have brown hair! Red heads are becoming a little thin on the grounds these days.

Oh, and I can't dance the Riverdance. Wish I went to Irish dancing lessons as a child -- how lucrative would that be these days. It is just that Irish dancing was so uncool when I was a youngster. Now it has come full circle and it is popular. What has the world come to?