Brief re-opening...

So I post because I spent a few days in Ireland, visiting Cork and Galway, and I want to thank everybody I saw during the trip.

Galway was nice.
It was as if time had stopped. The only thing that had changed was Dean's belly, really (she looks gorgeous!). Well, and everything else, but it didn't matter.




But I must say it was inmensely depressing in Cork.
There were highlights, of course (they should know who they are).
But it was a "let's close up this episode" kind of visit, and I can't say I enjoyed the feeling.




Yes, this is going to be just this abstract.

Anyway, now.
Maybe you remember I mentieoned in my last post that I had writen something, that had become obsolete, and that I had left it back somewhere?
Well, I found it. I read it. I am going to post it.

And the I will close down the blog again until further notice.

Cheers to the readers :)

"A tale of how badly life sucks", or, "Rainy Sundays"

It has been pretty difficult to shorten the list of possible titles for this text to just those two, so I'm going to be liberal with myself and let them both be.
Here are some others that would describe (some of) the feelings within my chest:

3.-Perfect Things that Can't Be
4.-The Nostalgia of Air Views of a City You're Leaving Behind
5.-Goodbyes were Invented by the Devil
6.-Lonely Cats are Pitiful Beings
7.-Ever though that "Galway" kind of sounds like "go away"? // My Friends Moved to Go Away City
8.-On Pulled Out Roots that Dry and Die
9.-Crying around Corners (and Chests)
10.-Taking back steps I took forward (hurts)
11.-Last Post Until Further Notice
12.-Empty Houses
13.-Coming to Terms with the Uncontrollable Aspects of my Life /No

It will all make sense as the post develops, so I'll better get started.

I didn't say anything to most people, but it was a month last Thursday since I got to know that I have to leave Eire for an undefined time span. That one was a hectic week as well, filled with events such as the following:
WEDNESDAY Dean: "OhMyGodI'mPregnant"
THURSDAY Doctor day with my pregnant brother;
                     .1:Are you going to breastfeed?
                     .2:Coming back home after the whole day with no battery on the phone and finding 20 missed calls from Mom. Running to top up, calling, having to go back to Spain.
                     .3:Thinking that D&D would me my last one and wanting to die on my way back from it.
FRIDAY Hey, let's lose consciousness, I bet it's fun like.

Anyway, days passed by and the rush to leave decreased. I thought that would give me some time to come to terms with the idea and the situation at home, but, ermh, no, it didn't.

We finally moved away from the hellish house we were living in on the 19th of March. The new house is so very lovely but I'm not going to get into any details here because...
...Ben got offered the best job ever in Go Away city on the 20th of March. The starting date of the job was the 31st of the same month.
My brother is having the worst pregnancy ever, and I already had my flight booked for the 5th of April, so the initial idea of her staying in Cork if Ben got the job was quickly thrown away.
In the following week, we sealed a few gaps and then...

The goodbyes started. I hate them. I hate all the "It's not like it's forever"s, "You will be back soon anyway"s, "Go Away is not even that far away"s, "You'll see how you get to like it there"s, and "Your father will get better in no time"s.
Oh, there, I said it.

Ben and Dean left on Saturday morning. Oh, fuck. The only thing my cat and I have done since is to cry around corners. The house is so quiet I can't breathe. I even "slept" with Gwen last night! With my cat!

Now, today I went on with some more goodbyes. It was the Firetruck, and I've got to say life is the most unfair thing ever. We met in the city and then we went to his very fancy apartment overlooking the whole frigging town. And looking at the whole thing,at every single building, at the river and the marina and the tiny little streets,... it kept me from breathing.

Then, I managed to relax (a bit) and even if I was sad and down, we played around and cooked lunch and had it. It was remarkably yummy.
And everything was nice until we finished and there was nothing else to do but holding tight to each other so that the physical contact made up for the future absence of poking.

It was nice to hug forever like that, because it was something I couldn't do with Dean - either Ben was around saying "Go Away is not that far", or we were both too broken about parting for the hug to feel good.

But it was alright with the Firetruck because he was so serene, smiling his perpetual stupid smile at the infinite, and I could cry a little against his chest without it being too messy.
And still, in all that warmth, I could only think of how perfect Cork looked from the windows and how I can't stay, and of how perfect the hug felt and how it could only be a goodbye hug.
And then, he has walked me outside and held a Berlin umbrella as we hugged one last time under the rain, and after that, he has given me a bunch of tissues and said the umbrella is mine now. And I've walked away. Back "home". Holding an umbrella during the whole way probably for the first time ever.


When I first knew that I had to leave, I thought of it as pulling out my life's roots and planting it again carelessly, leaving all the tips out to dry. I also thought that it's not the first time I do that and that it never felt so bad before.
So I had to work on the metaphor a bit further.
It doesn't hurt to pull out your life's roots when they are buried in dry, sterile rocks or in debris. But the process is painful when they come out of the fresh, watered ground of a garden, specially if they were intertwined with other roots, of other lives.
Getting to the garden was a tough task, but it was done, but now, will all the flowers admit back an unattended hawthorn bush that left its place? Won't there be a beautiful rosebush on its place by the time it can come back?

Reflections

I'm back in Spain once more, but I won't be telling you about my life this time.
I just want to share a couple of ideas.

First one came to me as I was enjoying the nice music in Sin É last Saturday. I was chatting about music with S. (she's amazing :)) and...
I wish I had the courae to attempt things even if I knew they were hard for me, even if I wasn't positive they would turn out alright.
She says she has no musical abilities at all but she wants to learn how to play the trumpet so hard and she totally sees her future self as someone who can play it, and she's so happy when she talks about it. I simply can't do that.

Second... second is hard.
I believe I've found out what I don't like about my life in Ireland: people come, and then, they leave. I've said "Goodbye" to so many people so many times during my tiem here. None is a safe choice.
And I'm pretty down about this point right now.

That's all. See you soon :)

blah blah blah blah blah

I'm going to Spain again for a few days next week, and I'm not any prepared for it.
Visiting home is always anxiety inducing, but when I come back, the soothing effect of the Lee is there for me.
I can't be sure the Lee will be any soothing this time, though, and I'm worried.

I was supposed to meet E. sometime this weekend but I didn't get any word from him and it's so unsettleing! Our time is short! I'm slowly realizing how unprepared I am for him to go, because everything up there is about that too.
So hopefully I'll hang out with him tomorrow, and if not I'll go occupate Dean's sofa, and we'll watch Howl's Moving Castle there. Maybe both? That'd be definitely awesome!

Anyway, on the bright side:
Yesterday I had so much fun doing crafts with Dean, we're like little kids! Seriously: we bought this crafting kit for the child she's minding, but in the exact moment when we got home, we opened it and starting creating foam monsters and... well, I don't think the poor biy will be able to make anything with it, but he'll be allowed to play with our creations!

Today was completely eventless, and also, I've run pout of cigarretes. Eh, what if that is were all the anxiety comes from? :P

Cheers, whoever's reading!

people keeps and keeps leaving...

The fact that I'm specially sensible too the speed in which everyone I know seems to be leaving Cork may or may not be caused by M.'s absence this week. She knows how to make herself missed, you see.
But that doesn't mean it is not an objective fact.
People are indeed leaving, and it is worse than I thought it would be...
At the begining, it was people that had came to stay for a few months (like me) and that were OK with leaving when the time came (unlike me. How are they psychologically able to get out of this place? Has Murphy no strength over them?).
But now...
People I had taken as an idiosyncratic part of Cork are leaving too. S., and most of all E. God, E. is leaving Cork, and everything seems to lack logic now.

And now... now it is me who is stuck here, ...
When everyone leaves, M. will have a boyfriend and I will be stuck in a city that I love and that I don't want to want to leave but I wont have a life, and it is already starting to feel depressing.

But I'm fighting it hard.

However, as a positive point, today's Writing Group meeting has been very nice, and it wasn't even an actual session but just a meeting :) And also, because little A. is leaving too I met her in Thursday and it was very nice! And she got to come to D&D because it was her last chance (to have an opinion about E. :P) and I think it was a specially pleasant one! I got to chat with a few people who are very very nice but with whom I don't normally chat because... I don't normally talk to anyone... and it felt ood and warm...

And well, I thought that, even if the city is emptied of the people I love, those great gatherings of awesome people will still be working and they will always feel warm, because they are what make this city my city, and that the sunset will always look amazing from the living room's window, and that Cork will always have the Lee in the middle, and that the memories I made with those people will never fade, because that's my brain for you.


On a funny note:
So today in the writing session I was talking to this Croacian girl, T, and we ended up talking about languages in Spain and she asked me about Basque and I told her that you can't understand it no matter how good your Spanish is, since it is not related it, and she said "Ohh so I understand everything now, that's why you don't have and Spanish accent when you speak English!!" And I was like "Ermh... no.". God, the Basque accent may be the only one worse that the Spanish one when it comes to speaking English xD

Culinary experiment of the day: Success!!!

I decided Wednesday was going to be my free day on this crazy pre-exam week. Oh, how I needed it!

So after picking up M. at her house and walking all the way to Douglas under an unbeliebablely warm sunshine, lying on the floor of "Art and Hobby" for about half an hour, having a latte and some apple pie (thanks for that, M.) as my only lunch (OK, that's not accurate, I also had an apple later!) walking back to Cork and meeting Oink there, and chatting and drawing, I got back home at 6.17 and hell, I was starving!
So I cooked myself some very Irish style dinner, and it was yummy, but I didn't feel like I'd finished handling food yet so after unsuccessfully trying to study for a while, I went back to the kitchen, opened all the drawers, thought for a minute and decided to cook... Chocolate Rice Pie!

After that, I failed to study for a while longer and then... I'm not going to say here what I've done then *Blush*, so I needed a treat, and I am now enjoying fancy glass of the rice pie I made.

Slightly too sweet, but it meets my needs xD. Great to have still warm.

It's really easy to make: You cook 3/4 of a unit rice on 1 unit of water with some (smaaaaall bit) of sugar and cinnamon and when the water dries you pour in 1 unit of milk and melt half a bar of coberture chocolate on it. Let cook until the rice is very tender. It should be creamy, not at all dry. While you get there, melt some more coverture chocolate, adding a bit of water. Pour the rice in the cups/bols/glasses and cover it with the melted cholocate. Sprinkles welcome.


Anyway yeah, as if I didn't have enough stuff to stress over with all the studying, and the bus-fligh-but-wait-bus home this Saturday, and the exams, and the enormous anxiety of going home just to visit and sleeping in my-bedroom-which-is-not-really-my-bedroom-anymore, I did THAT...


OhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGod.

Time goes By

So, as I explained on my last post, I went back to be looking for a job, and it's not easy, but my spirits are high.
Also, Mid Term is coming again already and even if that brings a personalised hell to all aupairs in the country M. has been given two free days so we are going to Belfast, yeah, why not, from Sunday to Tuesday, luckily being back on time for D&D? and...

Tuesday is also the day when Easons'/my birthday present to myself is arriving home! Yay! So I'll have to go and pick it up on the post office, but still! Books!
And talking about books I'm reading Cloud Atlas and it is very nice and charmingly complicated.

And also I need to very seriously get into studying, because finals are not that far away, and, well, I have got the flight to Spain booked and I'll be there for two weeks, one for my exams and the next one for a fun time with family and friends, or probably just family, and then M. will join me for a lovely half weekend or whatever in... yeah, finally... Dublin!

So that is a lot of travelling and as a result I won't be joining the next two Sceitse trips, and that makes me a little sad, but I hopefully will be there in July...! (Sorry, I tried, but it is too far away on time for me to be sincerely enthusiastic about it.)

Apart from all that, it's been like a couple of weeks since I went out of the shadows and became an official administrator of SPiC, which is not really a big thing, but still adds to the pile of responsabilities and small stuff I'm into.

In addition, it seems that now that I'm living in the city I absolutely can't miss any ICC meeting... or any other thing C. and  S. organise. And they are probably (certainly, even) into more stuff than M. and I are, so my life gets busier by the moment.


And all this scenario is missing the most important point of my life right now-

People are leaving. But not just people, like, people. I mean J. and Mi.. What is our live going to be from now on? Who will come and have a 4 hours long coffee at our sitting room?
Just thinking on their absence makes me feel empty...
...makes me think of how serious the compromise we joke about actually is. I can't go through this again.

And it brings to my mind that sentence with which that book begins "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friedns' nose" and how that book's main characters conclude that you can't pick your friends really, but you can pick their noses if necessary.
So whatever, I'm thinking of picking my friends.
Of picking settled friends, to be more accurate.

I don't want this numb emptiness on my chest.


Anyway. 've been listening to this all day like.

Cork is that city where chance happens

...in case someone hadn't noticed yet.

But that's only the title for the post, I'm actually going to tell you about something completely unrelated, concretely, about the stuff that happens when the family becomes aware that you're living, tha tthis convivence is coming to and end.

Which is, mainly, shit.

No importa lo lovely que tu familia sea, que van a decidir pasar de ti, van a dejar de tener detalles bonitos y van a empezar a tenerlos feos. Supongo que es porque, total, si te queda un mes, no te vas a ir en dos semanas. Pues hay momentos en los que no me faltan ganas (lo que me falta es piso y curro).

De repente, tus horarios ya no son tus horarios y nadie te pregunta nada. Si no es imprescindible, tampoco te lo dicen. Ya irás tu viendo que no aparece nadie por el salón. Con un "thankyou" de pasada queda apañado.

Tu hostmom te deja colgada en la ciudad porque da igual que cada miércoles, religiosamente, tu vayas a y vuelvas de Cork con el niño porque su horario de clase coincide con tu mañana libre. Le montan una playdate y tú te las apañas. Si tienes que mendigar dinero para el autobús, pues mira.

Llegas el domingo a la noche a casa y te encuentras la fregadera desbordada con todos sus cacharros del fin de semana. Y sabes que cuando tu empieces a trabajar el lunes, eso va a seguir ahí.

De repente se decide que la petarda (que conste que yo a Ele la quiero mucho) se sienta a tu lado en la mesa. Y que se comporte como es debido pasa a ser deber tuyo por muy fuera de tu horario que estés (porque ya no tienes horario). Y tampoco se van a molestar en remarcar en hecho de que, in fact, sentada a tu lado sí parece humana, y sí se come la cena, y sí deja de jugar con [juguete estúpido tupo i-phone de imitación de plástico rosa] y no hay berrinches.

Y así un poco con todo.


Y si a esto le añades que Cork es la comarca hasta que te pones a buscar alojamiento y te encuentras con pequeños reductos Campoclareños/Mordorosos del copón infecto en medio de el barrio más fancy de la ciudad, y que después de dos intentos la calefacción central ha pasado a segundo plao y lo que prioriza es que el acceso sea una PUERTA, POR FAVOR Y GRACIAS, pues nada.

Pero una se ríe de todo, y cuando no le queda risa, se la deja prestada su otra mitad, que para algo está :) , y para algo están los D&D (sé que os debo alguna fotillo, a ver si me pongo a ello or something) (exactamente para liberarte del martes más estresante de tu vida como aupair en el cual to hostparents se fueron a un funeral que duró 6 horas, pero eso es ontra historia y debe ser contada en otra... entrada xD), y para algo está el chat, y para algo está Oink y para algo está todo. Cada pequeña cosita en su sitio. A veces, cuando nadie me mira, me planteo susurrar un pequeño "Gracias Murphy" sin tonillo irónico ni nada. Because Cork is that town where chance happens :)

My life is getting more and more weird every moment

A ver.

El último D&D fue relevante en dos aspectos que no comente:

1. "Edwin", que es un personaje muy curioso, nos invitó a un concierto de se grupo este viernes, que más tarde y via facebook descubrimos que en realidad era su fiesta de cumpleaños. Cuando todavía pensábamos que era sólo un concierto (aparte de montarnos una teoría conspiratoria) decidimos que molaría ir, y al descubrir que era su cumpleaños tooooodo se volvió muy awkward peeeeeero resulta que "Oink" va y...

2. Oink es la respuesta a algo que me preguntó M. la primera vez que vino a un D&D en condiciones: "¿Quién es ese chico y por qué no habla?. Y he decidido explotar mi sano interés en él.

Todo esto nos lleva a pretender ir a una fiesta de cumpleaños de un chico desconocido con, lógicamente, un regalo. Si resulta que no es el tipo de fiesta de cumpleaños en la cual se presupone que hay regalos, siempre podemos no dárselo...

Buffff.

Cuánta paciencia tengo que agradecerte, M. Porque yo en realidad no tengo cucharas para hacer esto.

Pero vamos a ver: hacer amistades irlandesas está dentro de la lista, ¿no?, pues eso.