Moving On

I will be starting the final 4 weeks of my course next Monday. It will be spent on computerised accounts and then I will be finished with FAS. This is the last time. I will not be coming back for more retraining. Maybe an odd night class in Accounts but the full time study is over. I really need to get working and bringing home the bacon. It has been great to get this retraining and I feel like a new person. I will miss the place and the routine and especially my fried egg and potato cake at 10 o clock every day.
I applied to a local business in our village of Grange for 4 weeks work experience and am waiting to hear back. My next door neighbours suggested I go there and mention their names as they are friends with the owner. It’s a beautiful tiling showroom with branches all over the country. They manufacture and export to all parts of Europe. It’s a very successful business. I remember when the owner Martin Gilroy started it many years ago. I am always fascinated when I see phenomenally successful businesses being created from scratch. What abilities do these people have that they can go to such heights. It must be the vision thing as George Bush Senior used to say. Vision and dreams seem to be similar but eons apart. Anyway I would be very glad to get the opportunity to work in such a nice place for a few weeks.
I did the bookkeeping for my sister-in -law’s playschool and mailed it off to the accountant yesterday. It was quite draining to be working on books again but the beauty of the computer is it cuts that work down so much. I just need to learn the software package and I will be marketing myself to the small businesses in the area. This is such familiar territory for me. Frankly it would have been nice to get a job and a pay check and not be chasing the buck again but I see no jobs.
Ultan is getting over his cold and is back at school. Rian is going to the respite house today. It is called “Suamhneas” which means serenity or pleasantness in IrishI . It is a cute brown bungalow on the old Dublin Rd and Rian has been asking to go there for months now. He can eventually go on sleepovers but for today we will just try a few hours. It is time to let him have some independence. He is almost 11 and we have to be cognisant of his future. Unfortunately it has a long waiting list of children and parents who need respite much more than me. I really do not feel the need of a break from Rian but I want him to get out of the family a little bit for his own good
Cesar is moving along with his business ideas and is applying for a mentor from Sligo Enterprise. I am very glad of this. I am not knowledgeable and get tired of cheering him up and on.
Autumn is almost here and we have had a few beautiful dry days. No chance of a blog without a comment on the weather. The temp is going down in the mornings and at night. We put the heat on last night for half an hour. We are very frugal with the oil. Cesar installed a beautiful stove in the living room and I light it every night. Coal and firelighters are my fuels. Same as 30 years ago! The kids and I never go to bed without our hot water bottles and so are quite snug.
All is well

Back to school

The kids are back in school for a week now and all is well. Rian is thrilled to be back and has already had his first horse riding lesson of the term. He brought home potatoes from their little garden and very good they were too. Another one of my dreams to keep in mind! My father was a terrific gardener and kept the house supplied with vegetables all year around. Ultan is not so enthusiastic but really is a lot better off than if he was sitting at home all day. Of course Cesar is getting his equilibrium back now that his time is his own again and as a result the pressure is off me also. It’s hard enough to keep kids entertained in a dry climate but try it in a place where it seems to rain every day.
We just had a perfect weekend. It was 60 degrees, dry and sunny. I went to see Mum on Saturday and we went for lunch in the Landmark Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon. This place really lives up to its name. It was built on the Sligo to Dublin road looking onto the River Shannon with all its boats and cruisers. Carrick is a booming town also because the Bank of America has its operations headquarters there employing 1000 people. I am not one of them because I was turned down for a job there when I moved back here first. In retrospect it was a blessing as I feel I can do a lot better on my current path without having to commute for two hours a day. Anyway, Mum and I had a lovely lunch. I had a delicious potato and leek soup and Mum had a prawn sandwich in these most perfect surroundings. We got her groceries and I drove back to Grange through the beautiful countryside.
Of course on Sunday after Mass the kids and I went to Water World in Bundoran and Go Karting afterwards. They ate chips in the Adventure Park looking out on the Atlantic sparkling in the sun. We came home and ate the jambalaya that was cooking in the slow cooker all day. A perfect day!
Here is my question. If sunny days are so wonderful because they are so rare is it sweeter to have a shit climate as opposed to a great one where they are a dime a dozen?