Ireland feels strangely like home (a book)

Late last year, I went to Ireland for the first time. I was lucky enough to spend eight days there, touring a handful of counties with family. (My sister and I are married to brothers -- long story -- so it was me and my sister, and our husbands, who are also brothers.) Starting in Dublin for a couple days, we took a driving tour and spent a couple days in counties Roscommon, Galway and Kerry (Killarney) before heading back to Dublin to fly home.

Dublin

Our first night in Dublin we took a really early morning walkabout,
suffering from jet lag as we were. We passed by this creepy old church
on our way up the hill to Killiney Hill Park, which boasted of
the best sunrise views.

Killiney Hill Park did not disappoint, with beautiful views
overlooking parts of Dublin

On the other side of the jut were some seriously moody clouds

Then, we hopped in the car and took off for Roscommon County,
and I saw surprisingly little of the countryside...
Ireland really likes to wall off its highways and roads, as shown here,
presumably so the citizens don't have to see ugly cars
tearing through their beautiful pastoral views. :) 

 Roscommon 

We arrived at the Kilronan Castle.
I'll admit it, I totally geeked out and took all the touristy-type
pictures. I even realized I'm a tiny bit of a foodie underneath
it all. I just had to have access to afternoon tea every day.

Please?

Here's a few photos taken during a walk around the grounds
of Kilronan Castle, when I wasn't inside ordering
afternoon tea and chortling over it like a
crazy person.

This was an old entrance into the castle from
the Ha Ha (there are what looked like
horse stalls to the right). I assume this is where
the carriages pulled up and dropped off guests.

Secret passageway?!

Everywhere in Ireland you find roads and walkways
bordered by these walls. Most are extremely old, as
illustrated by this tree's roots burrowing into it.

Afternoon tea at Kilronan Castle.

While the scones were always my favorite part
of afternoon tea, the artistry of all the different
components always induced me to eat.way.too.much.
Every time.

Downstairs bar in Kilronan Castle (a few others
trickled in over the night, but we mostly had it
to ourselves)

This was my first chance to visit Ireland, though my sister and I grew up on stories of our mixed Ireland and Scotland ancestry. Nonetheless, my sister and I were both really taken aback at how comfortable we felt in Ireland, how much we felt like we "fit right in". Of course, the Irish are very welcoming and friendly, without a doubt, so even my mixed husband felt comfortable (which is often not the case in America, from which we hail). But mannerisms, vocal tones and volumes, driving style... such things I wouldn't have expected to be passed along through DNA, half a world away. According to our husbands, though, my sister and I don't fall far from the Irish tree... which was the source of a lot of teasing as we hurtled nilly-willow through the country on those narrow, walled-in roads.

Galway 

In Galway, we stayed at the comparatively modern
G hotel. The cupcakes looked a lot yummier
than they were, but that's probably what I get for
trying to eat every sugary thing I stumbled across.

It was Halloween, and the afternoon tea I ordered
at the G hotel reflected how seriously the Irish
take this important holiday. 

It broke my heart walking away from
this spooky display half-eaten, even with four people.
But doing anything else would have had
serious consequences. (Like, the plane wouldn't
have been able to take off...)

Exploring "old town" in Galway... This tiny corner
pub was my absolute favorite. I took a picture
so I would always remember.

It was a little cramped :) 

Cliffs of Moher

We spent one of our days in Galway driving over to and exploring the Cliffs of Moher. My sister and husband are not fans of heights, so it was fun to be able to turn the teasing elsewhere for one day. Below are a few photos from the trip to the Cliffs.

It was like driving in another century

According to Google, this was Dunguaire Castle that we
happened to drive past. We pulled over for a quick exploration,
but it was closed up. (Probably due to obnoxious tourists.)

When there was a hill to climb, you can expect some
seriously intense switchbacks. 

We pulled over to enjoy the view halfway up this hill, and my
husband played his new Irish whistle for the cows. 

And finally, once we were at the actual Cliffs I was too busy to take many photos...

The Cliffs were magnificent.

My husband and sister couldn't stay far enough from
the edge as we climbed up to the clifftop.
Eventually, we came across this sign and they
just couldn't contain themselves any longer.

Once the wall between us and the edge of the cliff ended and I wanted to keep going, I had a ugly rebellion on my hands. Being dragged away from "certain death", I was gifted with the chance to drive us back to Galway, like candy dangled in front of a baby to distract them. "Driving while in Ireland" should be classified in some subcategory of thrill-seeking sports. Any one of the following things could be intimidating to a driver, but throw them all together and I'm surprised I could pry my aching hands off the steering wheel when I finally pulled into the hotel parking lot that night:

Cows grazing on the narrow strips
between the switchback road heading
up the hill... Think about their cute,
bovine eyes and don't take your eyes
off that road!

1. Crazy high speed limits on a strange route
2. Driving on the wrong side of the road with road signs you don't recognize (American, remember?)
3. Narrow roads enforced by ancient walls on both sides of the road, with ancient trees growing out of them and encroaching into the road
4. Switchbacks (with cows)

It was a thrill I'll always remember. And even better, we had comprehensive insurance coverage on our rental car. Regardless, any missing paint from said encroaching tree branches are totally not my fault. Ancient trees should know better, they've seen humanity at its worst.

Kerry 

We only had one night in Kerry, but we toured the beautiful town of Killarney before we had to hop in the car for a long drive back toward Dublin.

We walked to this glade not far from our hotel (before afternoon tea)

Walking through certain parts of Killarney was a transportive experience.

And of course, even though it makes me feel
bloated, I had to have at least one delicious Guinness. 

Tipperary (unofficial stop)

On the long drive back toward Dublin, we stopped for some coffee and expected adventure at Tipperary. 

As we walked the streets of Tipperary in search
caffeine, we stumbled across Cahir Castle.

Cahir Castle has an interesting history

Maybe 15 minutes later, as we finally located our caffeine fix,
the sky abruptly clouded over

Thirty seconds later, double rainbow wow aside,
it was looking rather ominous... 

As we started walking back toward our car, the sky with the funny double rainbow suddenly opened up and began pouring down the fattest raindrops I've ever experienced. As someone who's lived in Los Angeles and Seattle, I thought I knew rain like no-ones business. Turns out Seattle rain is a joke. We were instantly drenched all the way through, freezing, so we gripped our coffees tight and ran. We drove the rest of the way to the Dublin airport steaming slightly as we slowly dried out under the care of our rental car's heating vents, on blast. Brrrrrrr!

Ireland wins. In so many ways.

new frontiers

Pretty neat

It has been fairly calm, snow-wise, here in Seattle during the winter of 2011.  With one notable exception, we had just a few short snowfalls that resulted in less-than-impressive coverage, as pictured here.  A month or more ago, walking the half-mile home to the new house after spending a day cleaning the old one we'd just vacated, John took this picture because he thought the blue shadow was pretty neat.

But this post is about the notable exception. 

~ * ~

Late February, I had to travel from Seattle to Portland, Oregon for a big meeting at a client.  Having flown from Seattle to Portland previously, my -0- positive memories about this experience, coupled with the newly minted threat of TSA jokes, cemented my belief that the 3 hours it would take to drive it had to be a better choice.  After all, it would take just as long to fly down as to drive it, if you take into account the time wasted at the airport, the unpleasant experience of rising to altitude only to spend 5 minutes there prior to the nausea-inducing decline, followed by another airport...  Driving was the clear choice for this seasoned, corporate traveler.

Of course, it happened that we were supposed to get the snowstorm of the year -- of several years -- the night I drove down. 

This is a dramatization based on true events, captured by real people
that are not me, and are not actors.  Please do not sue me.

Just so it's out there, not going was not an option.  I'm not suicidal, just... employment during recessions is a good thing. 

John, worried that I might get stuck somewhere alone along the highway, thought it would be a good idea to send Mae, our just-turned-16-year-old daughter, along for the ride.  Perhaps he thought it would be good if I had someone to eat if we got stuck on the side of the highway long enough.  Or vise versa.  Regardless, it was the first road trip Mae and I had ever had alone together, and it sounded kind of fun, so we filled the rental car with Monster energy drink, artery-clogging pastries and nuts (all guaranteed to taste better than skinny teenagers or juicy and tender mothers), and took off.  We listened to some music, had some mother-daughter chats, endured a white-knuckled 10 minutes worth of driving snow in our face, and then coasted in the clear to our hotel in Portland.

I worked late into the night at the hotel, preparing for the meeting the next day while Mae lounged around, watching TV and consuming 250 calories after 725 calories. A typical night. And in the morning, when I realized that the noon hotel check-out would not allow me to leave my teenager wallowing around in her PJed glory while I attended my full day meeting, I had a small melt-down, eventually found her a mall to amuse herself at, and toddled off to work.

As things would have it, Buddha, God and probably a fairy, too, were playing with us. It might have just been the weathermen, but let's be real; when have they ever gotten it right?  I heard it all day long, from every stressed business woman and man I ran into; the big storm, the real storm, the perfect storm, was coming tonight. Not last night.... tonight.  And a new, young co-worker of mine, who had chosen (badly, may I say?) to fly down from Seattle to attend the meeting, apparently decided she didn't want to fly back in the perfect storm, and begged a ride home from me in my wittle bitty rental. 

With my teenage daughter. Who hasn't found a single corporate person that she couldn't shock.

"Hahahahahaha... sure, that'd be fine! Hahahahahaha."  <-- nervous laughter

At 5:15 pm, my co-worker (let's call her Neo) and I drove over to pick Mae up from the mall on our way out of town, stopping only long enough to grab some Venti coffees and energy drinks from the corner Starbucks. I was a little preoccupied with thoughts of Mae saying something really shocking in front of Neo that I wouldn't be able to live down at work (because let's face it, teenagers can always come up with something shocking, and Mae x3) while trying to respond appropriately to Neo's chatter during the first forty-five minutes.  I had developed a new respect for her ability to talk non-stop for those 45 minutes, with barely a pause to sip from her coffee, when she switched momentarily to her cell, releasing me from the polite bondage of corporate connectivity. My respect grew to a fearful awe when it passed the hour and fifteen minute+ mark.  I re-visited the wisdom of actually allowing her to consume energy drinks, and realized that living with the intensely introverted John had mutated me into something of an introvert myself, and if I was really going to be trapped into this car for another two hours, I just might...  at which point I was gratefully distracted by an incoming blizzard. 

It started out much like last night, but quickly went from bad to worse. I couldn't take any pictures because 1.) my cell phone was out of battery, and 2.) I was driving and legitimately afraid to take my hands off the steering wheel, and 3.) Mae's cell was on its laaaaaast itty bitty legs, thanks to her bout at the mall, and I had sternly warned her to keep it off so that when we ran off the road we could call 911, and 4.) Neo was busy wasting her cell battery freaking out to someone about how scary this all was so that when we finally ran off the road, we would only have Mae's itty bitty battery on which to call 911.  However, I have endeavored to steal the following photos as a representation, to attempt to describe the experience for you. Bear with me.

Imagine this:

Lonely road (called I5 north, sure, but it's lonely when you can't see anything on the sides!)

Only it's dark!:

Like this

And it's blizzarding like crazy, so you can barely see a thing, and have to drive 2 miles an hour in a straight line behind the car right in front of you, so you don't accidentally drive right off the road:

Like this, only dark! With driving snow!

Until the crazy truck-drivers who think they are God drive up around you, going a psycho 30-miles an hour and sometimes failing, and you curse and laugh at them. And eventually you realize that there is a huge mass of semis all around you, everywhere, taking over the road and going nowhere. And then you look in your rear view mirror, and watch this big Ford truck, right behind you, just start sliiiiiiiiiding... sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiding sideways, into another car.  And then you slam on the brakes because you were so fascinated with the slow slide of doom in your rear view mirror that you almost managed to run into the car in front of you, going 2 miles an hour. And you sliiiiiiiiiide just a bit, but at 2 miles an hour, you were one of the luckiest bastards on the road, and not only do you not hit the car in front of you, but you also manage to get moving again, which is a goddamn miracle.

Neo, of course, has not stopped talking yet. And she has something really freaked out, but tempered by inbred corporate politeness, to say about that near miss. I blocked it out.

After a short while, it looks like this, only many, many more semis, a lot darker, a little less snow on the road and a lot more snow coming down, faster than you can imagine:

Freaky, huh?!

Then all the coffee and energy drinks Mae just inhaled hit, and she interrupts Neo's monologue to beg me to pull over so she can pee. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (I say.) I am very, very sorry to say this, but if I pull over, if I stop, we will never get started again! We are going 2 miles an hour, and if I go 3 miles an hour we'll slide off the road, and if I go 1 mile an hour, I'll either be ruthlessly run over by the truck going 2 miles an hour behind us, or we'll stall, and never get moving again. We'll have to eat whoever dies first to survive until the end of this apocalypse. There are no exits for another hour, at this pace, and even if we were right next to one, I couldn't possibly drive this American-made, generic rental car with no snow chains down the ramp without, again, getting stuck! 

So I'll just piss in this bottle, then (she says.)

WHAM.  There it is, the first shocker. Sadly, she's dead serious so I can't even laugh it off like she's joking.  That's okay, I just have to work with Neo every day, no biggie. I sternly declare her dead if she pisses in the bottle.

Then I'll just roll down the window and pee. No one can see anything! I really have to peeeeeeee!!

oh
my
gawd

If my sister was sitting beside me, this would be funny. In fact, I would be rolling on the ground laughing. But it's not my sister.

Like, just, stick your ass out the window and pee?!!

Yes!

I sternly declare her dead if she touches the window control. More nervous laughter is called for. Ha Ha Ha, those teenagers, where do they get it? (Will she think Mae learned that from me, that I modeled sticking my ass out of a moving car, mooning the freeway and peeing out of a moving car?)

At this point, we've approached the two-hour mark on our supposedly three-hour trip home, and the GPS says we have two more hours ahead of us. At 2 miles an hour, I think it's lying, and even Neo is faltering between breaths.  I finally confess that, since Mae and my cell phones are basically dead, and considering that jack-knifing semi right in front of us, maybe she should conserve her cell phone battery, to save me the ignominy of having to eat her.  She looked horrified, but geez, it's not like I drove off merrily into a blizzard without a working cell phone on purpose.

A little bit like this, only with a LOT more snow,
and no side rails  >.<

Speaking of that jack-knifing semi, it was the most hair-raising moment of the evening.  It was right in front of us when it went into its slow-motion, cringe-inducing kink, twisting sideways across all four lanes of the freeway. The only way around that truck was edging off the road, into the morass of tall, pristine snow climbing higher as we watched. But if I didn't get us around that truck, we would be stuck there on the road all night. Literally, all night, because there was no help coming... stuck in the car, because it was a blizzard out there and too cold to get out... and who knew how long until we were rescued, since we'd already passed dozens of cars and semis run off the road... No. No matter what, I couldn't let that happen. I was a desparate woman. 

Without a pause, I aimed for the side of the freeway, into all that snow.  There were no tire tracks in which to safely follow, and it was not a quick, smooth or pretty trip. I barely scrapped passed the front bumper of the semi, and Neo squealed. Mae... well, it's hard to impress a teenager.

Anyway, I did it. I got us around the semi, blazing the way for all cars stuck behind me, and was now forging a new trail.  There with no other cars ahead of us. It was eerie, and freaky. I was not impressed, especially when another truck driver went flying past at 15 miles an hour, taking everyone's lives into their stupid hands! Craziness, I tell you.

It went on for a long time like that. I eventually made it up to 5, 10 and then finished out the blizzard at around 30 miles an hour.  It was a wild ride... a five hour, wild ride.  Mae finally got her bathroom, two hours after her threat to bare her ass to the snow faeries.  And by then, I too was deeply regretting my two energy drinks. 

Once in Seattle, it was clear except -- of course -- for rain.  At approximately 11 pm, we dropped Neo off at her car and Mae climbed into the front seat. When I looked over at her, her eyes got really wide, and her hand raised, flapping in the universal sign for talking. We both burst into laughter. Neo had managed to find something to talk about for 5 hours straight. It's a gift, and we had never seen the like. We were tired, and in shock.  Since I had to work again the next morning, I pointed my trusty little rental car toward home, with a sigh.

Mother-daughter bonding... everyone need not apply.

my cat's cuter than yours

 Koomyn was always an excessively trusting cat.  As an adult, as illustrated in my previous post, he was always happy to roll over and bare his tummy, either for children playing Doctor, or to writhe around in happiness between Johnny's feet while John talked sweet-nothings, or even to cuddle with Bijou the guinea pig. But all of this was prefaced by Koomyn, the kitten, who would fall asleep in fast-forward the instant John would cup his tininess upside-down in his hands.  Koomyn would just relax-relax-relax until he was a snoring, limp wet noodle of cuteness in John's hands. The process took about 30 seconds.

With John's hands full, the only thing left with which to pet kitty was his nose.  Mmmm, smell-of-kitty.

Here's the Cheshire angle, illustrating his extreme limpness (look at those feet!), and the happiest sleeping face I've ever witnessed

From there it's only a short trip to John's chest for an evening nap

 Yes, John's shirt is inside-out.  Don't get me started.

I finally scanned these photos to a digital format, and had to share.  The last two have been on Koomyn's altar for the last two years, or taped up on my daughter's walls, and I was beginning to fear for their survival.  A 15-year-old with a flagrant, broad-strokes kind of artistic expression, doesn't always take into account this mother's extreme sentimentality and propensity to rage when items-of-sentimental-value are painted/drawn on/cut up/bent/or otherwise destroyed.  Being proactive seemed the mature thing to do.

rout of the cat

To continue chronicling the beautiful-and-sometimes-startling relationship between Koomyn the cat and Bijou the guinea pig, I am providing for your pleasure a sequence of pictures that I took some 5 or 6 years ago, right after we moved to CA.  We had just driven nearly two full days south from WA state to Los Angeles, CA, bringing one very dazed and confused cat and one supremely indifferent guinea pig into the home of Jenni, my sister-in-law.  Koomyn had kept up a low, moaning mrrow the first day in the car, but gave into miserable silence by the second. As soon as we arrived, we pulled both free of their travel cages to eat and wander around Jenni's apartment. 

A little grass, a little newspaper, a little freedom... just gotta keep an eye on the black little puff-ball nosing around

Bijou waddles right up to Koomyn, with the dead-to-straight stare.  I could see Koomyn was a little off his game, by his ears and twitching tail.

Woah, Bijou goosed Koomyn! They both jumped a good foot in the air.  (Anyone who has had a guinea pig knows that they can jump like champions when started.)  Seriously disturbed now, Koomyn keeps a strict eye on the waddling puff-ball of territorial mischief.

Hey, now... When he started circling around, I realized the puff-ball is simply fucking with the cat!

Suddenly, it's too much for a cat to take.  Seriously, the indignity.

For a moment, puff-ball quivers with triumphant happiness in his cave

Until he gets lonely, and ventures out to find adventure once more... Where, oh where, did that beautiful black cat go?  Oh?!  Do I see...?

Is that... a tail, mayhap...?

YES! That's a tail! Attached to eyes with your death shining within them...!

I was laughing too hard to capture Bijou as he waddled up to the fuming, cowering Koomyn, and goosed him once more.  But in a flash, the poor baby was sitting demurely at my feet, peering up at me with pleading eyes (which my flash promptly closed.)

"Momma!"

At that point, cuddles were definitely in order for my traumatized little kitty. Little did he know that the territorial little puff-ball now considered Koomyn part of his territory, and--indeed, in fact--Koomyn's nipples, even. But that's a different story.