Secret Spots

I let my feet hang loose off the pedals for just a moment, and the bike coasted for a few feet before stopping. The silence of nature descended on my ears like a physical weight. I stood still while the light wind cooled my face, and I reveled in the moment. On my right two horses grazed quietly, and beyond them was the beautiful Atlantic ocean, sparkly teal in the full mid-morning sun. Up the gradual hills to my left rose countless rock hedges, put together with obvious attention to detail. No mortar was used in the completion, only simple stacking techniques probably passed from one generation to the next. Lines and lines of these archaic rock walls turned the landscape into a unique display of ingenuity. Ireland isnt known for their roaming tree groves after all, and is in fact one of the most deforested areas of Europe.

To Jon & I, the perfect vacation spot is somewhere out of the way. We've always liked places that feel untouched, as if we're the only ones who know the secret. Especially since living in the capitol of the country now, we crave the hushed atmosphere only found on the road less taken. The beauty of the Aran Islands is hard to caricature in words, and we both fell perfectly in love with the place. It's the kind of region that feels unspoiled by modern living, seemingly stuck in time where people hang their clothes to dry in the sea-breeze air, and rely on the family livestock to sustain you through a harsh winter.

Its easy to be romantic about a place like the Aran Islands, wild and almost frightening in its sincerity. We saw more cows than people while biking about all day. There's only two ferries a day from the island: one at 10am going in, and one at 5pm going out. Hard luck if you miss one. As we stepped off the ferry, it was jarring to be suddenly assaulted by about fifty men standing by their vans, forcefully hawking tours of the island to every passerby. For a minute it really felt like Mexico or China, where they never really leave you alone, and if you buy anything it only gets worse.

But once we made it through the gauntlet to the bike shop and payed our measly 10euro a bike, we were really on our way. The next five or so hours were incredible, and so relaxing. Jon & I decided we will definitely be going back to stay in a B&B. Our very favorite B&B is the Shaw House Inn in Ferndale, California, but the Aran Islands may become our Irish fave while we're here. Its definitely our little secret.

St. Patrick Approves This Message

People had hyped St. Patrick's Day for us to where we went to bed with feelings akin to Christmas Eve. The present was going to be the big parade, passing right under our window! Big Window Bonus #389: Front row seats, every time! So when we woke up to a double-decker bus parked in front of our view of the street, we were less than pleased. Then they parked a second one behind that, cutting our view from full-on epic, to a hole here & there between the buses that were apparently for "the press". But they didnt stop there. Soon the paramedics came behind those buses, and set up two tents that we could nearly touch with our feet dangling from our sill. We were in the nose-bleeds by the time the city was done shattering our hopes for the morning. Did I mention the two giant buses remained nearly empty for the entire parade?

Feeling festive anyway, we bought 2 Ireland flags and hung one outside each window sill. My mother sent us blimp-like balloons (about 2 feet long each)! When the crowd got bigger, we let them fart along in the air above them, dissolving into hilarity when one landed in front of an unsuspecting face in the multitude. Jon made green pancakes for our guests who came to watch the parade with us, and we cooked loads of rashers. Rashers rashers rashers. My Irish friend even taught me how to make an honest Irish Coffee, including hand-whipped cream! I didnt believe her when she said it was easy to make, so I bought a can of aerosol whip, JUST in case...but I was so wrong! I will never buy pre-made whipped cream again!

It was so amazing to be in Ireland for their biggest holiday of the year. The city was entirely packed with tourists from all over the world. Most of them wore gaudy green Leprechaun hats, or chartreuse sweatshirts loudly pronouncing "IRELAND", just in case they forgot where they were. Jon's sister had just flown in from the States the night before, so she got a first-rate introduction to our fair isle! I learned new things too, like a clover and a shamrock are not the same thing at all, and corned beef & cabbage is a decidedly American tradition. Also, its only St. Patrick's Day, or Paddy's Day. Never St. Patty's, or St. Paddy's Day. Semantics, yet pertinent.

Without exception, this was the best St. Patrick's Day we've ever had. I hope the double-decker bus industry go out of business before next year though. Hope yours was just as fun!

Such a Beach

Who needs to travel the world when you could travel to California? I probably dont need to share how much I love our home state, because if you know me you already hear it enough. My heart quickens when I realize I get to visit that land of my forefathers again in less than a week! It quickens a little more when it hits home that Ill be trekking all alone this time, far from the only Directionally Intelligent one in our marriage. One time I got lost in a mall for two hours because I couldnt find an exit. When I finally found the glorious portal to my known universe (the parking lot, another maze), it was nowhere near where I had entered that fun-house hall of mirrors to begin with, and had to walk for fifteen minutes around the perimeter of the building until I finally began to recognize the shrubbery. Another time I was in my car going to pick Jon up after work. That story is too long and complicated to even share coherently (ask me sometime), but suffice it to say that what should have been a fifteen minute gallop down the road turned out to be a tear-inducing escapade of missed exits, and terrifying traffic-stopping U-turns.

So flying across the world should be no sweat! Whats that? My hands are trembling just writing this entry? You bet they are, Im freaking out. It doesnt help that we just saw the movie called "The Grey", in which there is an extremely realistic and honestly frightening depiction of a plane crash over some pretty gnarly snow-capped peaks. Guess Ill remember to pack my thermos with many small knives, just in case we have to fight off some giant, man-eating wolves when we crash.

Good thing I watch a lot of Bear Grylls! In fact, probably enough to where Im fairly confidant (while sitting on my cushy couch drinking my chocolatey coffee) that in a wilderness sans giant man-eating wolves, I would survive long enough for Bear's camera crew to find me. And dont give me stats about more people dying in car crashes than in plane crashes. Do the guys who write those stats even take into account people like me who are in planes more often than in cars? My personal chances of being in a plane accident versus a car accident must be exponentially higher than the median.

Im really not actually worried though. I have a fair amount of time between layovers, so heres to making each connection in time! There are four planes, three layovers, and a bag to catch at the end of it all. But I have a couple good books by my favorite proven authors (Stephen King & Anne Rice), and plan to buy lots of nice coffee to stay awake, since it will be midnight when I reach my final destination (no relevance to the movie called the same).

See you soon, my lovely California!

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Happy London Birthday

Being in Europe has given me a greater appreciation for how humongous the Americas really are. If you look at a global map, the entire country of Ireland could fit inside just the state of California nearly three times! Jon & I really love our home state. Where else can you start the day at the top of a snow-covered mountain with a snowboard, and end the day in the cool Pacific surf? California's got Hollywood, the Golden Gate, and the Gold Rush. We're home to Half Dome, Clint Eastwood, and Disneyland too. It's magical; a place where nobodies become movie stars, and movie stars become the President. It's like a country all it's own, with enough big ticket attractions to last a lifetime, and a list of hidden gems to last another. We know other states have stuff, but California is made of the best stuff.

One thing Europe has that the States dont though, is cheap flights. For my sister's 21st birthday, we bought 4 round trip tickets to London for under 150 Euro! Jon's been to London a few times for work, but I had never been and I wanted to give Abby a trip to a place with a name she could brag about. The flight was arduous (45 minutes!?) but somehow we made it through. The city is big there, but felt a little empty. Probably because we were there in major off-peak, and the air was so cold it felt like my eyeballs were becoming snowballs. On the other hand, off-peak means we rode the London Eye without having to stand in line for nine hours first.We even got to be in the only red capsule on the wheel!

Off-peak however, does not always mean cheaper. Since England is England, and they run on the super-power called the Pound, the numbers felt smaller as long as you didnt try to convert it back in to Euro. Or the Dollar. At that point youre better off just not knowing how much youre actually spending. I also love how pretty Pounds & Euros are compared to green American Dollars. But I digress. Stuff's expensive in any currency.

London was full of firsts for us all. For example, it was my first time staying in a dorm-style hostel. A piece of my dignity died every time I had to walk down those stained carpeted stairs to the colder-than-being-outside toilet, or to take a "shower" in that gnat-infested torture chamber of lukewarm water and athlete's foot. I never knew it was possible to get out of a shower & feel dirtier than when you got in. I cant say Ill ever stay in another dorm-style hostel again, but it was worth being able to be within walking distance of the Thames and Big Ben! 

We feel so incredibly blessed to be seeing the world, and getting to travel to so many cool places we never before imagined we'd see. I'm so pleased to be able to share that kind of experience with my only sister, too. It's things like this that will stay with us forever. We'll talk about it with our kids around the table at Christmas twenty years from now, the way we still talk about the Christmases & Thanksgivings spent at Lake Tahoe with everyone cramped together in a wood cabin. Family is everything. So Happy Birthday, Abigail! We love you!

A Tree Among Thorns

The day we bought the 4th Christmas tree of our married life was SO horrible. It was the kind of day where the alarm goes off late, and the coffee is already cold. So many things went wrong, that if I wrote about all of them, youd get pretty sad too. It started off not bad though. We got to Skype with some friends in the States, and had a whole list of fun things to do on a fun Saturday in Dublin: Christmas shopping! The Zoo! But nothing went like it was supposed to, and everything slowly fell apart. As thing after thing didnt work out, it was progressively more difficult to stand near each other. The most significant disappointment that day Ill tell you about, was us trying to find our Christmas tree.

This Christmas is obviously one of the most poignant of our lives yet. For so many reasons, this year will stand out in our memories forever. One of the highlights will undoubtedly be the fact that Jon & I, for the first time ever, get to host family, in our very own home, for a major holiday. Its not like a practice holiday that people only minimally care about because they get time off work for it, like Columbus Day or President's Day. People only know when its President's Day because when they stop by the bank, the sticky note taped to the glass says, "Closed during business hours again, because you really needed to cash that check to buy food for your family, and generally just to piss you off. Oh and its President's Day." But Christmas? Thats a real life holiday folks, one that the whole world knows about! Banks are still closed, but nobody cares! Hosting the family for Christmas is just about the biggest honor you can have bestowed on you, and you cannot take it lightly. Needless to say, getting The Tree to set the stage was paramount.

The first bad omen of the day was that after walking ten minutes to the bank, it was closed so we couldnt cash the check. From there it just got worse. It was surprisingly hard to get a straight answer from people about where to find a Christmas tree to buy. Sometimes it was a language barrier (those are adorable cookies, but I meant a REAL tree) and sometimes just poor judgement on our part (just because she's carrying a wreath made from pine tree branches apparently doesnt mean she knows where the branches came from originally). Then we heard about trees in Smithfield.

We bought our tickets, hopped on the Luas, and four stops later, we got off again. Having never been to Smithfield before, we had only a vague idea about where to look (but were assured that we'd definitely find a tree there). Would you be surprised if I told you the mythical Christmas tree lot didnt come to greet us as the doors opened to Smithfield? The only trees we found were the sugar cookie kind. Thinking we were going to (definitely) find a tree there and have to carry it back, we didnt buy return tickets to the City Centre. Let me tell you, having to carry a tree by ourselves for 20 city blocks would have sucked, but having to walk all that way and NOT have a tree to show for it at the end was even more depressing.

By the time we finally got back to our sadly tree-less living room, half the day was over and we had spent it failing at life, and blaming each other. The worst part? We hadnt even done our grocery shopping, so we didnt even have a pizza to throw at the situation. Being grumpy and hungry is no way to shop for anything, especially not for groceries. Jon gets super frustrated in two seconds if he cant find something on the list, or when people practically rip the skin off his forearm with their sharply angled hand-carts, and then dont even bother to look back and apologize. Oh wait no, thats me. And so much for going to the Zoo.

Knowing that bad days like this are random and not the fault of anyone, we ate our chicken fingers and mashed potatoes in silence, trying to be civil until the calories recharged some spent energy. Since theres almost no bad mood that deliciously fatty food cant make better, we eventually re-grouped and decided to check out ONE LAST place we'd been told that there were (definitely) trees. We grudgingly re-bundled in the many layers we had earlier chucked to the far corners of the room in annoyance, and braved the icy wind one last time. Fifteen minutes later, my heart fluttered and the throb in my feet was suddenly less painful than before: I could see green just up ahead!

Being a good foot taller than the rest of the group, it was immediately obvious what tree would be coming home with us. I pointed, Jon paid, and we carried our living treasure home one joyful step at a time. I felt like Santa Claus carrying that tree. Adults pointed and smiled, and kids screamed, "Look Mommy!" It was like if we had started singing a carol, the entire city would have joined in with choreographed moves, and then there would be a really cool aerial shot of the Earth sprouting arms and hugging itself. World peace by Christmas tree. Our completely ruined day was instantly un-ruined by one sparkly green fir. The presents finally have a place to call home, and we are officially ready to host Christmas. Its going to be the best Christmas ever!

Christmas is Green this year, in so many ways!

Christmas is so close I can feel it! It smells like cinnamon buns and tastes like snowflakes, and its just 23 days and counting down to the best Christmas in history! Well, recent history. Ok just my personal history, but it still counts. We are having a simple Christmas this year, so far from home. And half our family will be missing on that special morning by the fire. But having half is SO much better than having no halves at all!

We are trying to spend our money wisely, and that means I cant decorate exactly like I would want to. There will be no fluffy green wreaths on the door or over the mantle. No pricey matching ornaments or expensive designer wrapping paper. No gorgeous ceramic nativity, glittering in the candle light. If you make your own decorations, does it count as being "green"? I know the "hey quit murdering the Earth with your mass-produced disposable products" sentiment is old news, but it still is a great excuse to skimp out & save money, even if youre not a total hippie! Im not extreme about it; I still went to the 2euro Store (like a Dollar Tree) and got some cute little birds to clip to the branches, and a pack of red velvet bows that were probably made in China or Indonesia by small children whos homes and lands are being ravaged by conglomerate outsourcing. Out of sight out of mind? But I really love a home-made Christmas, and I mean home made by me, not home-made by the people of the Etsy community (however awesomely talented they all are).

And the best part: home-made decorations can be easy and simple, and even basically free! This year, I spent hours cutting out nearly a hundred snowflakes out of white printer paper. Jon helped me string them together on kitchen twine, and hang them over the windows. Pretty much free decorating right there, especially because Jon got the paper from his work office. I even forced Jon to cut out a snowflake, but it was like the size of a pencil eraser and I "lost" it.

We are spending money for Christmas though, its impossible not to during a holiday, especially one as important as this one! We are buying a tree, and with the ridiculous ceilings we are blessed with here, it will be 10ft tall if I can find one that big! Carrying that up a flight of stairs will be fun for Jon. I let him do stuff like that so he feels involved. We also ordered a 17lb free-range turkey from a local farmer, for Christmas dinner! As I write this, the big guy is probably happy as a turkey can be, gobbling it up on the farm. I hope they're feeding him lots of stuffing. Thats how it gets in there, right?

But even if we didnt have a tree, or a turkey dinner, we will have family. And thats the absolute most important thing to us, no matter what holiday it is. Hope yours is just as awesome!