Kiss me...

So, as I think the whole world knows March 17th was indeed St Patrick's day. Living in a country other than Ireland now I think it's kind of weird that most other places seem to celebrate it to a much greater extent than Ireland. I mean I don't ever remember Belfast having a parade with a large amount of inflatables or having to queue for 6 blocks to get into a bar. As for the green beer...what's wrong with Guinness or Harp...at least they're the correct colour and actually Irish, imagine that! However I will admit I miss having the day off and watching the rugby.
I think what annoys me...like massively annoys me is this thing where everyone tries to prove their Irish. This isn't an annoyance which stems from me being 100% Northern Irish, nope, this stretches to all the sort of claims like this whether it be Irish, Spanish or Australian. I think it annoys me more because I live somewhere which is classed as a 'new' country and therefore a lot of people have immigrated here as supposed to being born here....myself included.
My peeve comes to a head on days like St Paddy's Day. Last year I heard someone proudly claim they were 1/12th Irish....yeah...and I'm 1/18th Apache. Seriously...that is how ridiculous it sounds. I don't even understand how you can be 1/12th something...how do you even work that out! I mean it doesn't annoy me if someone was to say oh my parents are Irish or my grandparents are Irish...even great grandparents. It's this 1/12th, 1/9th 1/whatever...what do you base this calculation on?!!? Clearly if you're telling someone you're a fraction Irish...you're not Irish. Like I said this goes for every country not just Ireland. I don't understand why people do it. Are they unwilling to say where they were born? Is there a need to belong to more than one country? I just don't really get it.
It gets better when they start to run through the shopping list of countries that a fraction of them belongs to. It usually goes something like 1/12th Irish, 1/9th Norwegian, 1/6th Japanese...I don't even know how they calculate this. To me it sounds like one of those ridiculous claims on Jerry Springer...I'm having an affair with my mum's brother's sister's best friend's uncle's hoover and want to marry it. I honestly don't get it...however next time someone says it to me I am tempted to say I am 1/6th Mexican just to see the looks on their faces at my blatant lie.

Growing Old in the Eyes of 4 Year Old.

I was driving my son to daycare this morning and explaining to him that his Granny and Grandpa are going away for a week because Grandpa has a meeting.
This led into a discussion about what exactly a meeting is. Once before once of my parent's friend's asked him in church what a meeting was and Ben had replied 'somewhere people go to talk a lot and eat'...I'd say he got it pretty much right. So today we broached this topic again and I explained, based on experience, it's where you go to hear people talk and for you to talk about really boring things that make you think about the 100 other places you'd rather be, such as eating your own eye out with a spoon. So Ben's take on meetings was...
"Mommy, when I'm older I'm going to go to a meeting where I talk for a long time about fireman jelly" (sounds like a better meeting than the ones I've been to...sign me up!
We stopped to get petrol on the way and when I got back into the car he decided to tell me what kind of car he wanted when he grows up...
"Mommy, when I'm older I want a red car with flashing red lights on the front and flashing red lights on the back and a siren"
"You mean you want a fire engine Ben?"
"Yes a fire engine...a red one"

You'd never guess that Ben wants to be a fireman with a fire engine and his favourite colour is red at all! At least he'll have his whole future planned out before he's 18. He can drive around in his fire engine holding long meetings about fire engine jelly!

The Art of Using a Forklift Truck

So March 2nd eventually came and I closed on my new house...yay! Two years of waiting and 2 and a half years of living in my parent's basemment came to an end. It was kind of sad and scary. Since I moved here I've lived with them and suddenly I'm not. It is exciting don't get me wrong but it's kind of weird. After a lot of kaffufal with the builders, mortgage people and lawyers I'm eventually in. I got the keys on the 2nd and started to move some of my stuff over. While I was waiting for my deliveries and the internet/cable/phone guy to hook me up I promptly, in full me style, did something so very retarded. I live in a townhouse with LOTS of stairs. I decided to carry a box up the stairs and slipped going up the stairs and heard a loud crack. Oh the pain that was now shooting through my foot.
I decided after I tried really hard to be a big girl and not cry that my foot was just in shock and would be fine...so I carried on moving my stuff and limping for the rest of the day. I got into my car and tried to put on my shoes to no avail with tears in my eyes. My mum then told me I should maybe go to A&E if it was really that bad. My mum is a nurse so therefore is totally ashamed at my low level of pain tolerance. However, I would like to point out I couldn't even get my slippers on and had to go to the hospital in slipper socks. I looked like a complete idiot because not only was a wearing slipper socks but every so often I had to stop limping because, as I told my mum...'my foot doesn't bend that way'. My mum had to leave me to go pick up my son for me so I was sitting in a wheelchair that looked more like a shopping cart wearing socks and feeling like an eejit. After a few x rays and an examination I was told I have a severely bruised foot (yup...feelin' like a bigger twat) and the put a bandage on it and sent me home.
After having been a tad stupid and hurting my foot I had to spend the following few days wearing tartan slippers with white pom poms to work...looked very dapper with my pencil skirt. I think everyone thought I'd just been let out of the mad house for the day. However the banjaxed foot meant that I wasn't able to lift anything on Saturday to assit with moving my furniture so my parents had to come to my aid. My mum is like a puzzle genius so she was trying to decipher how on earth to tilt things and move things to get them around the stairs.
We managed to come across 2 things that just wouldn't go...my bed spring and my solid pine bookcase. After attempting to sweet talk the builders on site we managed to get help from a lovely guy called Moses who forklifted them over my balcony. I think my heart was in my throat as me, my mum, my dad and my neighbour (from his balcony) tried to pull the furniture off the fork lift...especially when there was a crunch from the book shelf being pushed into the brick work. It's all ok though and I'm now officially moved in. I have 2 boxes left to unpack and some things my builder needs to fix...plaster stuff, paint stuff, fix my cupboards etc but it looks pretty spiffy.
My son on his first night sleeping there was a tad wary of the massive vault that leads to a skylight in his room. It's a nice feature but a tad scary. I told him my friend who's a guy thought it was super cool and was really jealous so that seemed to appease him. He has a little anxiety about the move because for as long as he can remember he's lived with his grandparents...he doesn't remember when he had his own room before that. So on his first day in the house he had a few wetting accidents but we aren't supposed to talk about those ever again. He's been fine since and is adjusting to not seeing his grandparents all the time. Instead he has claimed the house as his and one of the settees...telling me that the other I can use sometimes lol. Nice to see he chose the 3 seater for himself! Boys!!
So I'm down to 2 boxes left to unpack and some builders to chase to get things fixed but otherwise I am now a fully fledged home owner with horrible bills and actual proper house stuff to deal with...yay!! So at 24, with the house, child, car and career I think I may have some how managed to turn into a grown up...I'm not sure if I ok'd that decision or not but I seem to be there.