A Million Words

Late Thursday night I came down with a bout of mastitis, aches and pains all over, chills and general malliase.  I had a pretty good idea what was happening, so I went in to see the doctor right away. That kept me from writing on Friday, I was still pretty tired on Saturday, and by the time Sunday rolled around Nova had a fever, too.  We took her to the doctor yesterday afternoon. Now she and I are both on antibiotics and I haven't done any actual writing in days.   According to the doctor, Nova has an ear and throat infection resulting from her recent runny nose and cough. Also, her two top eye teeth are on the verge of breaking through the gum.  The result of all this is that she's nursing almost non-stop, more than she has since she was a newborn, I think.   Now, this is the first time in Nova's 17 months that she's had to take antibiotics, and it isn't pretty.  Toddler antibiotics come in a sticky yellow liquid form, and are supposed to be dosed out by the teasp...

For four weeks, from February to March, I stuffed all of my grocery shopping receipts into an envelope behind the i-pod on the bookshelf.  At the end of the four weeks, I tallied them up in a spreadsheet to find out how much I'd been spending and where I'd been spending it.  I wrote about the experiment here . My analysis led me into a lot of mumsy internet forum discussions about budgeting, meal planning, comparison shopping, etc. I moved into phase two of the experiment: creating a menu plan and organizing my pantry.  I started off by making a list of all the things I like to keep in stock in the cupboards, refrigerator, etc.  Well. I ended up with a list of about 150 items, including actual staples, baking supplies, spices and sauces for a variety of cuisines, cleaning products, medicines, etc. I could make a shorter list, but it wouldn't come close to including all the things we get from the grocery store.  Having made the list, I never look at it, but the process of ma...

Lately I've been thinking about starting a serious blog, with regular, reasonably frequent posts and content that other people might actually want to read.  To that end, I've whiled away most of the past week learning about blogs, websites, etc.  I have fallen behind the times.  Sure, I knew about twitter and indexing and submitting to search engines, but the intricacies of feeds, wordpress, etc. are all new to me.  I didn't even know how to set up a counter on this blog. I'm still looking for one.  I am making progress, though. Two days ago, I signed up for a website hosting account at Fat Cow, and this morning I figured out how to sign up for Google Analytics .  I was surprised to discover that it was free.  Why didn't I know that before?  I'm hoping to get all this sorted in the next few months, and to launch my new blog/website sometime this summer.  I'll probably even announce it here, just in case anyone stops by.

Noreen left this afternoon after a 5-week stay that turned into 5 months. I’ll miss her, and so will Nova and Mike, I think. She was possibly the easiest-to-live-with housemate I’ve ever had, and entertaining, too. She did introduce Nova to smoked salmon, which is getting expensive, but since it’s practically the only meat Nova will eat, it’s probably for the best. She also brought us nice cheese and good bread and bottles of wine all the time. Now we get to live on our own as a family, at least for a short while, and it’s a bit of a novelty. I suppose it will be more peaceful, but it’ll also be a bit dull. Who will help us keep Nova entertained now? We’ll have to get a dog. We made a cake for Noreen this afternoon before she got on the bus. Or rather, I mixed up some cake batter, baked it, and tried to roll it up into a nice roulade with some whipped cream, but I skipped a step and it fell apart into a cracked, disordered pile. Mike got out the writing icing and wrote “Go Away ...

Breaking news from Galway Harbor:  the oil tanks have been leveled.  Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday and today:   Now we can see the little fringe of green at the back of the parking lot, the area which is supposed to house the race village for the big Volvo Ocean Race hooha which is coming to town in a few weeks.  Looks like there's still a lot of rubble to clear.

Yesterday afternoon I attended my first ever poetry slam.  I've been wondering about slam poetry for a few years now, but between one thing and another I'd never actually been to a slam until yesterday.  I had heard that they were loud and full of hecklers, but that was in America. Here in Galway, poetry audiences are quiet and respectful, even at slams.   The slam took place at the Roisin Dubh, a pub which people frequently use as a landmark when giving directions in Galway.  I'd never been in there before, and found it much like any other bar, except very crowded for 3:00 in the afternoon.   About a dozen poets participated in the slam. First up was a young woman in a short, hot pink dress who did a piece about long-post-Woodstock wannabe psychedelia. I thought it was pretty good, but I couldn't follow the narrative thread of it at times, and her performance was a bit too nervous.  She was the best of the first few in my mind.  The next one I thought was good was a ma...

The Cuirt festival is on this week in Galway, and I'm thrilled that this year I'll be here and able to attend at least a few events.  I started off this morning with a workshop, which was a lot of fun but left me wondering: Am I getting old?  I am terribly ageist when it comes to writing workshops.  I can take each writer as an individual, but generally there are two groups in any class; those who aspire to careers as professional writers, and those who write primarily for their own amusement.  The career-oriented writers are generally younger, in their 20s and 30s, while most of the hobbyists have long since gone grey and retired from their day jobs.  I know that some of the older people will go on to write actual books while the younger ones lose heart in their creative endeavors, but I still felt more than a little discouraged when I looked around the table today.   The trouble was that the instructor, Nuala Ni Chonchuir (and yes, I'm too lazy to figure out how to put t...