Notes from the other side (of the ocean) (or this side, depending on where you are)

This from when there was snow:

I was right: they don't have snow shovels in Ireland. You can't buy them. Everyone who has shovelled snow has done it with a heavy garden spade. If they're lucky, it's one with a square base; otherwise it's a wedge-shaped one that just makes life even more tedious. I saw a man with a rake earlier today, trying to clear behind his car. (A small, flat gardening one, not a big wide leaf-raking one.) There seem to be a lot of brooms employed too.

That said, not many people shovel, unless they have to. (And why would you, if you had to use a big metal yoke that wasn't even a useful shape for shifting stuff any distance?) They look at the footpaths outside their houses and tut-tut about how the county council isn't clearing anything up, but they only dig the bare minimum it takes to get the car out the gate and onto the sandy, mushy, slushy road. Otherwise they just sit at home and wait for it to melt away. Which it will do eventually, but perhaps only to be replaced by more in another few days.

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This from a bit later:

First we were snowed in; then we all got sick. As the plane landed in Dublin, Mabel began to sniffle, and so began the cold that we passed around between us for the entire time away, with a loving personalized touch for each of us: throat for B, sinuses for me, his signature cough for Monkey, and a quick virus for Mabel that gave her two nights of high temperatures and a fun trip to the nice Irish doctor to make sure she didn't have an infection of one sort or another.

In between, there were Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, various encounters with large and small people, family or otherwise, to terrify or mildly intimidate Monkey depending on how he was feeling and how much sleep he'd had, and whether or not he had decided that his shoes were going to be ridiculed by everyone in the greater Dublin area. Mabel, on the other had, lapped up the attention and flounced around the room giving kisses and hugs in a pink dress and a most delightful manner, just about redeeming us as parents who can produce displayable offspring.

Most people were very understanding about her brother and left him alone to warm up, or not, depending on the day. But he did expend an awful lot of energy just hating it and wishing very hard (and very vainly) to be invisible, and I did feel bad for him, to a point. When said point was reached, I'd go away and converse with an adult, and possibly charitably send his father to spell me in the cold room with the plate of congealing cocktail sausages where Monkey skulked in the narrow gap between the sofa and the radiator, hiding his shoes, for the entire duration of the party, as his cousins happily shrieked and played chasing all over somebody else's house. At least his father was able to locate the problem with the DVD player (needed to be plugged in) and start the Disney movie that had been acquired for the purpose.

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This from today:

I hope my children are nicer to me when I'm old than I am to my parents. I know it's a failing, but there's not much I can do about it. B does sterling work running interference, and having conversations where I'd just sit there grumpily like the teenager to which I have regressed (and I'm sick, okay, so don't bug me...), and politely turning down offers of food and explaining again where we're going and that we won't need lunch. I think we might need to work out something different next time, though. It's not getting any better, and while they've loved having Mabel in the house - and vice versa - Monkey has spent the entire two and a half weeks being "shy" and refusing to talk to his grandparents. Which was okay at first, but at this stage it's just plain rude, but there's nothing I can do but field their bemused questions about whether all boys go through this phase or if it's just American children (arrrgh), and remarking once again that I was never like that.

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I will be back with fun anecdotes and nice pictures when my sinuses feel better, I promise. I hope all your holiday times were lovely and just snowy enough. We had our first white Christmas this year, and we're quite over it, thank you. Mr Crosby has a lot to answer for.