Unpacking

The container truck finally rolled down the lane on a Saturday morning at 10 0' clock. It came a week later than the four weeks as promised but we didn't sweat it. Rian kept asking for his toys and Ultan for his dirtbike but we knew it would come. I had got used to living in a clutter free environment and was enjoying it thoroughly As I have mentioned before Cesar does not travel lightly. The trailer was 40feet in all and held 250 boxes, a 22 ft motorbike trailer and two dirtbikes. Of course Queen Harley didn't even come in the container. She had to be flown separately by Lufthansa() for fear she might be manhandled by the shipping company and in a specially built box that took 4 days to be built by Cesar. Cesar felt ripped off by the freight company but the old Italian in Maryland that set up the container gave him a good price.
The Saturday morning was sunny and dry and our neighbour Cormac had lined up another neighbour Gerard to help . We all went like the clappers and the truck was emptied in less than two hours with no help from the burnt out exhausted driver. The trailer was a problem but the resourceful Cormac arranged for it to be wheeled out onto the loading at Martin Gilroy's Tiling Centre. One more time I am blessed with my neighbours.
We burst our chops for the rest of the day and by dinner time every box was in the house and my uncluttered environment was gone.

Trash

I really would like to digress here to talk about the extraordinary trash situation here. Our trash is collected every second week and recyclables on the alternate one. This is definitely an area where I am used to American spoiling. To put out a trash can we must walk to the small intersection nearest our house but we must also buy a label in the local L:ondis shop for €9.50, write our name and address on it and stick it on the can handle. We must also keep one copy of the label for tax purposes at the end of the year. We have to buy separate plastic bags for the different categories of recyclables (plastic,cans etc and and paper products) for €3.50 each and glass has to be bought to a local bottle bank outside the same Londis shop. Our Londis got an award for the best run recycling bank and is in fact owned by a returned emigrant from New York. The bottle bank in Sligo town outside the German grocery chain Lidle has. a problem with illegal dumping however and seems to have a hard time coping with people who pull up in cars, dump their trash and drive off. Now that's what I call cut and run.

Shipping our Belongings

This was big. We have a fair amount of stuff. Nothing fancy in the line of household goods in fact maybe a little bit shabby if anything. I had decided based on our camping days that I was not going out buying small irritating things ever again so I literally put all the kitchen things in supermarket bags tied them and piled them in boxes. This has served me well as I do not have to run out to the shop for a potato masher or some other fiddly item as I'm about to put dinner on the table. The real trouble was when Cesar applied this theory to his shed full of tools. Cesar is a one tool for one job man and there are a lot of them and he could not part with any of them. Now having said that he did clean the attic out of all the miscellaneous cables, broken strollers beta tapes etc. He also emptied the shed and packed everything himself.

Early Days

Rian,s behaviour was way off those first few weeks. The most challenging part was the echoing of everything we said. This was at it,s worst in the car and we were in the car a lot that first month taking care of all the bureaucracy that moving continent entails. We had to get PPS numbers and produce original birth certs for everything. To claim Children's Allowance we had to fill out Habitual Residency Forms and on and on and on. Poor Rian was finding the transition hard and was enhancing everybody's stress level. He just couldn't figure out what was going on and everything was enhanced by jetlag. The car trips were also hard on Ultan whose stutter was set off by Rian's staccato echoings. Of course don't forget the relentless rain.

The First Weeks contd

While I was in my enchanted haze at finally being back in Ireland, there were some negatives. Firstly our beautiful house does not have Broadband. This has been very hard for Cesar. Cesar is a techno junkie and therefore has no patience with older technology such as dial-up. He had wanted to hook us up with Vonage to be able to make Internet phonecalls and as a result our first phone bill was over €200. We were in sticker shock in general for our first month even after we stopped mentally converting to dollars. However, money apart, Internet would have helped him transition from one place to another. Eircom (the phone company) have told him that they will be bringing broadband to our area in September but I am not holding my breath. We did not find them to be reliable on setting up our landline. I think it took about a month to get it but of course in comparison to the days of yore when it took up to two years this is not great grounds for complaint. He had another company come to the house but do or die they could not get a signal. The price of our beautiful mountain!
We also made the unpleasant discovery that our US drivers licences aren' worth squid here. There is no reciprocity on that one and so at the age of 50 and driving for 30 years Cesar and I have been relegated to learner status which put our Insurance through the roof. Cesar was turned down completely for insurance on his Harley Davidson and would not be able to drive it at all (when it's not raining, of course)were it not for the fact that we have family members in the insurance business. At one stage his frustration level was so high that he went out and screamed at the mountain. He was rewarded the next day by it's complete disappearance into the misty rain.

The first weeks

We arrived in Sligo from the States June 22.The house we had rented unseen based on the judgement of our good friend Mary Mulvaney turned out to be beautiful.A cut stone exterior with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms with lots of light and painted yellow throughout I could not ask for more. Down a quiet lane about 12 miles from Sligo outside the village of Grange here was all the peace and quiet I was craving all those last few years in America. Surrounded by fields with wildflowers and munching cows and Benbulben and the Dartry mountains in the background I started to breathe again. As I put Rian (our autistic son) to bed those first few nights he was mesmerised by these cows and the mountain and I remembered that he had no window in his basement bedroom in Maryland.
The length of the days was a big surprise. I spent 21 years living in America but got home on vacation most years and thought that I remembered a lot about Irish life .God,I was exhilarated by these 11 o'clock twilights. I had also forgotten how wet a wet Summer in Ireland could be. Cesar (my Brazilian husband of 16 years) is claiming that there have been 112 continuous days of rain. As we have only been here for about 75 days I cannot say but the only let up in the rain seems to be since the kids went back to school this week. Some things are the same between here and Maryland even if there it was the heat that wouldn't let up.

I didn't mention the sea air. One of the biggest reasons for my craving to come home was that I missed being near the sea. Having grown up in Sligo in Finisklin with Deepwater dock across the street I felt very suffocated living in a Maryland suburb. Where was the point of the sun splitting the stones if there wasn't a bit of ocean in sight. While there were plenty of nice pools I needed seagulls and salty breezes. Well now I have them. Streedagh Strand is about 3 miles from our house and lots more beaches are in the vicinity and we are sleeping like logs.Oh happy me!