Battles

I know I said I was done posting to this blog, but wasn't prepared for the reaction. A few gracious responses, to be sure, but some real disappointment was voiced. I'm not alone! It doesn't take much encouragement for me to post a little bonus for you all.

There was one minor item from the Great Wall of Planning that had just had to wait until we got home. For months, every time we crested the hill at the turnoff to Valleymount from Glendalough, we noted a little brown directional sign sending us to "Braveheart Drive." When I asked one of my knitting group about it, she regaled me with tales of how she and her husband dabble in playing extras, and yes, Mel Gibson's Scottish epic was partly filmed in the meadows in the Curragh. Indeed, when we visited Trim Castle we were shown the window through which the prince's lover was thrown in the film, and were told the Princess of Wales walks through the cloister at Bective Abbey. So we decided it would be fitting and fun to watch it, and a note was affixed to the wall. Ah, but the demons of time and vagaries of the Blessington Library's reserve system meant that we just never seemed to get to it during our time in Ireland. We decided it would have to wait until we got home.

But when we returned in August, we were distracted by unpacking, then repairing, then getting back into the swing of things. At some point, we found a video tape of Braveheart borrowed far too many years ago, and decided to watch it. Unfortunately for us, our video setup provided neither image nor sound: clearly something had been unplugged in our absence, and we would have to deal with it another day. I placed a hold on a DVD of the movie at the library.

I turned my attention to the Tulfarris book: Upon our return from New York at the end of October, there was a package waiting on the doorstep: the proof. Standing in the front hall, we all mobbed the book, and turned the pages together; about 20 pages in, Alfred voiced what we were all thinking: it looks dark. Discouraged, I engaged in a not always cordial back-and-forth with the printer, which resulted in my pulling the book from sale and correcting the brightness of many images. It may seem obvious, but digital images on your computer screen are much lighter than those printed on the page. I needed to learn how to use photo editing software and lighten up some images and correct white balance on wintery scenes. The results were definitely worth it, and we're very happy with the book.

Like William Wallace, Gibson's character, we fought two decisive battles this past week and won: the movie arrived at our branch library, and we scheduled the viewing for Saturday evening. We had to start early--it's long! And the movie is decidedly more gory than our book.

And Friday night before I went to bed, I uploaded the corrected book to the server. The link to the book has changed. But as an appeasement, there is a new, better discount code valid through November 24, 2009: enter BLURBHOLIDAY at checkout for a 20% discount and free ground shipping on any order of up to 5 books. It's a great deal, but expires soon!

UPDATE: An observant good friend has discovered that this code is apparently only valid for books you have authored yourself. I wish Blurb had mentioned this when they sent me the code, since in the past they have been shareable. My apologies!

Unpacking

It has been two months since we returned home. After an initial spurt of putting the groundwork of our lives back together, we have begun adding the layers of complexity--cello lessons, orchestra--back in. Unpacking started predictably slowly, as we took things out and either put them back where they used to live, or found a space for new items amidst the old.

One little boy immediately dug into the boxes of trains, and had three layouts running concurrently within 24 hours. The other petted the cat until her fur was all shiny, and got to work locating an explorer post at a fire station. We got a bit sidetracked with some DIY, as we were one closet short due to the spectacular failure of the front hall closet system (think winter coats and board games and puzzles). A new closet system was in order so we could move said winter coats from our bedrooms, making room for our clothes.

Before we knew it, we had barreled headlong into the school year, with book lists and back-to-school gatherings. Alfred arrived home, pulling three more overweight suitcases behind him. There were a couple of things that I had not brought with that I had asked him to tuck in, and he brought with a few other surprises. After four long weeks of unpacking, we finally piled the suitcases back in the garage, to let them gather dust, knowing that we didn't need to go anywhere--for a while, at least.

Which explains the new knife in my knife block and the Renault keychain for my car keys, and the pile of yummy sweaters on my shelves. A few items (including the fleece) will arrive via slow boat sometime next month, and we're looking forward to the early Christmas that will be. But there is one thing that I neither brought with nor left behind that I wasn't sure what to do with.

Though void of any physical presence, it had been a weighty part of my everyday in Tulfarris, as much a part of my day as rustling up some supper and traipsing through muddy fields. I'm talking about this blog.

My morning walks around the lake, with the crunch of the gravel under my wellies, cleared my head and awakened the Wicklow muse. But those walks and the hills are gone from my life, and even though I did finally get the pumpathon pictures up, and wrote a few tidbits, one morning I found the muse, like sand slipping through my fingers, was gone altogether. I felt lost.

It appears that others are having trouble letting it go of it as well: Traffic reports tell me that folks are still reading the blog. A few notes from friends and family wanted to know if I would keep writing? They wanted more!

A bit of investigating options led me to a book: a combination of the best writings and favorite pictures. With the boys back in school, I turned to pasting and cutting, flowing and trimming the blog to fit into physical pages. And so, while the Pacific Northwest rains darkened this morning's skies, I uploaded a beautiful book, full of shadows and light on green fields dotted with white sheep.

We figure that we'll send a couple of copies to our parental units for Christmas, and let others decide if they'd like a copy of their own. You'll find a banner to click on at the top of the page (or you can click here): To help sway your decision, use the code united at checkout for a $5 discount, and the publisher will donate $5 to United Way of King County. Feel free to give the code out or reuse it as much as you'd like.

With this post, I plan to reluctantly tuck this blog into bed, and let it rest. I do want to thank you all for sharing in our adventure. I will resume my occasional posts on tradition and sustainability in my original blog, The Full Irish. I hope you'll join me there!

UPDATE on 16 November 2009: After getting the bugs out of the production process, the link to the book has changed. Also, please note that there is a new, better discount code valid through November 24, 2009: enter BLURBHOLIDAY at checkout for a 20% discount and free ground shipping on any order of up to 5 books. It's a great deal, but expires soon!

Last Saturday

Saturday morning dawned clear and bright, an ever-so-gentle breeze whispering the trees. From where I lie and first crack open my eyes, I see the top of a beech tree, all green and leafy except for one craggy naked branch that reaches up. As I contemplate that this green is a green unlike every other, a lone crow alights, cawing with its entire body. It's become a running joke that this is where I need to get up. But I know that this is a rare commodity, and I don't need to get up early, so I instead cuddle against my warm bed partner.

The day was spread out before us. We had an invitiation from the neighbors to grill and chat in the evening until the wee hours (or later), to enjoy the craic one last time. I had purposely worked hard during the week to get things to a place where I could have a peaceful weekend to enjoy Ireland and my family; for I leave my husband to finish up here, and when he joins us again, we will be in school mode, not to mention the fact that there will be no megaliths to pursue.

We had one bead for the weekend: Heritage Week, an annual celebration of Irish heritage and patrimony (now, there's a word we don't use in the US of A!). The kickoff celebration was in the beautiful town of Kilkenny, on the castle grounds. It was an easy itinerary, and we realized we could find it without a map. Which is good, because the map doesn't have the shiny new motorway on it.

We woke the sore-armed teen (more on his tree-climbing adventures later) and piled into the people mover (still for sale--interested?). The town was abuzz, both because of the festival, but also because of the upcoming hurling game. Yellow and black flags, banners, shirts, scarves, pajamas everywhere. There was even an inflatable Kilkenny Cat on a rooftop, complete with hurley.

We both have fond memories of this town, having visited it as a young family 12 years ago, and Alfred a dozen years before that. In fact, he had bought a hat there that has become a favorite, and he wanted to duck into the shop where they were made. How sad to find that Frank Wall hats are no longer made anymore, but how lovely that his son, Michael, a spry white-haired gentleman, still runs the shop. We emerged with a few calendar cards for Kilkenny supporters. "Up Kilkenny!" they cry, and Americans should not be shocked; it translates roughly as "Go, Kilkenny!" (And it's really funny to hear the call when County Down plays: "Up Down!")

As we approached the castle, we could hear the music, and sure enough, a marching band was warming up the crowd, next to the medieval re-enacters and stonemasons. We grabbed some delicous food: falafel and dolmas, sausage roll and goat cheese and spinach pie, and a punnet of raspberries to fortify us for merrymaking.

We watched stonemasons cutting and piecing a wall like a giant, heavy jigsaw puzzle; butter churning, a drumming workshop with Brazilian bells and Irish bodrans. The castle was open for self-guided tours, and we meandered our way through the relatively modern splendor and enjoying the spectacular views of the river and town.

The day slipped away pleasantly enough, and as clouds gathered, we headed back up the main street, window-shopping (we had a gift card from Christmas that we had forgotten about), and zipped back up the Isle to our little village, where tents and umbrellas had been erected around the bonfire to protect us from the imminent precipitation.

A quick check of email revealed a shuffling of automobiles on the other Island, as friends help reassemble our lives Stateside. A few quick calls, and we have arranged our airport transport and greeting committee as well as a date for the cat to get some intense love from my brother.

Steak burgers with roquefort and avocado, cider and prosecco, great talk and laughter. One by one people peeled off to head to bed, and all to soon, I realized that the sky was light.

The day dawned wild and windy, Wicklow at it's most wild and envigorating. The neighbors are sure that I won't miss the weather, but I'm not sure, as I listen to the wind creep in and whistle around the doors while all hands put the yard back in order. We'll head two doors down and watch Cork against Tyrone in the Gaelic football semifinal this afternoon, pack the bags the rest of the way, and print out our boarding passes.

Sore arms

It is a peculiarity of the Irish that men are often referred to by their nickname rather than their given name. My dear husband answers to "Alfie" on the football pitch (that's a soccer field), and Brian two doors down goes by "Gib."

And so it was that during a chat a few weeks back, Gib freshly cast and on crutches from tearing his Achilles tendon, that we learn that after working a myriad of jobs, he has found his passion in the treetops. With a regular contract to maintain forests under and around ESB power lines, he joyfully climbs trees for a living.

Which is why he was itching to get out of the cast for more than one reason. And as the summer progressed, it came to pass that he promised to drum up another harness and take Marcus up a beech tree across the lane.

This being Ireland, it took a while for it to come together, but it did so spectacularly: with sun shining, blue sky, puffy white clouds and a brisk breeze, the harness arrived, and Gib broke out a new rope. The two started with a relatively small tree close to the block of houses, perhaps only 60 feet tall or so.

Vaguely reminiscent of the REI climbing rock, a rope was fastened to a high branch (with the aid skyhooks), and a series of knots allowed the young lad to pull himself up. Not fast at first, and there was a great deal of hanging upside-down to start.

The entertainment value was apparent, as everyone on the block came out on the stoop and spent a fair time watching.

After half an hour of swinging around, Gib moved the rope farther up, and set a higher goal for Marcus. And left him to it.

At this point it became clear that this was a personal thing. Marcus didn't need anyone watching his every move. Indeed, as he went higher into the foliage, he nearly disappeared. No, this was flying solo, and though Gib was around, doing this and that (including swinging Danny on the other harness, for example), he wasn't actively paying him much mind. After an hour, a tired and hungry Marcus came down for lunch. But not before he'd made it to the top fork of that tree, above the roofline.

The weather took advantage of their lunch break to open up the heavens and soak things, and then the sun came out for their afternoon foray. They had chosen the beech across the car park, a lopsided old beech, for further scaling and branch walking, but the number of stinging nettles at its base made them rethink it, and they moved to a neighboring tree.

Unlike the first climb, Marcus rapidly disappeared into the dappled light of the branches, and except for his red hoodie, disappeared from view. Gib followed him up, and when they reached their goal, Gib asked him to step off into thin air, the rope holding him. Something magical happened: the boy, trusting the man, the tree, the rope, and himself, took the step.

In less than an hour, they were down on the earth again, quiet respect flowing between them. Rope burns on his hands, the boy sought first aid from his mother, but only briefly.

The cats of Tulfarris

Our very first picture of Tulfarris shows a black dog sniffing on the back patio. I didn't pay much mind to it at the time, it was a just a dog. And those few cats were just a few cats.

But they are as much part of the fabric of our lives as the hills and the neighbors. Linda, our next-door neighbor who dabbles in painting, is also known by the moniker The Cat Lady and the Biscuit Lady. For it is she who every day heads out to the car park with a big pot of kitty victuals and feeds the 19 strays. And it is she who always has a doggie biscuit for Gypsy, the black dog in our picture.

Gypsy theoretically "belongs" to Tommy and Tatiana, who live three doors down. She adopted them by showing up on their doorstep. It appears she was looking for smart people who enjoyed the outdoors, long walks, swimming and hiking. But she has also adopted each of us: Linda for biscuits and temporary digs when her people are out of town, our boys for tossing the squeaky ball and swims in the lake. She chases the stray cats, but delicately sniffs noses with Purdy, Linda's own spoiled beast. And it is not uncommon to find her sniffing around my ankles as I write, since I leave the door wide open on fine days such as this.

Linda also works with the local shelter to capture and have spayed the strays. Mostly calico, this is clearly a select gene pool, recently added to by an outsider Persian/tabby-blooded tomcat, from the looks of this last bunch of kittens. The new mother is just back from a spa treatment at the local vet, and will not be a mama ever again. Now Linda just needs to find homes for three adorable kittens.

Clean treads

I washed the Wicklow mud off my Wellies this afternoon. Grass still clung to them in places from the walk this morning that took me past the spot where we built snowmen (and a snow cat); a few small pebbles were wedged between the deep treads from the newly graveled village car park where once the bins overflowed. Once they had dried in the fleeting sun, I packed them with a few tubes of vegetable pâté from Mary's health food shop and nestled them in the suitcase next to the game of Monopoly we got as a present from the Easter Bunny and the box the boys constructed to protect Danny's paper lantern from the St. Michael's festival procession last fall. I have to squeeze a lot of memory into these suitcases.

As I stood up and stretched my back (all that bending and back and forth between cases), the phone rang; Alfred's carpool was in Brittas, he'd be in town in a quarter hour and could I pick him up. I grabbed my keys, and left the boys to play soccer and football (Gaelic, of course) with our tree surgeon neighbor: this exercise is part of his rehabilitation from his ruptured Achilles tendon a month back. I nabbed a parking spot on Main Street in front of the same pizza place that provided the stack of pies for Danny's birthday party (they're on holiday until mid-September, so I shall miss saying goodbye to them), jogged over to Harvest Fare for passata and soya milk, and was going up the road two doors to the bookshop to pick up one last book: The Irish Companion, a lovely little tome full of trivia in no particular order. There is a spot in the suitcase reserved for it.

Husband in now in tow, we head home. As we pull into my usual parking space in Tulfarris, Alfred's phone does its little dance to get his attention. The mechanic is calling to let us know that he's finished the car. Had he only called fifteen minutes earlier, I could have slept in on Friday.

At the beginning of the week, I hatched a cunning plan: I could knock a couple hours off jet lag if we stayed to go to bed late and get up late. This plan met with approval from the teenager in my life and the young one likes any plan that involves jammies. Even my Darling Spouse was amenable, especially the bit anout late nights, since that gives us more time together (but only theoretically, as any parent of a teen can attest).

However, the car gods decided it was not to be. Alfred had been noticing a rumbly noise that changed frequency with the speed. Teenage boy said he should call Car Talk (from Ireland?), but his dad did the boring parent thing and took it to the mechanic. Toothless grin Tom diagnosed bad bearings, so in an uncanny twist of fate, at the same moment I was making an appointment to show his car, darling husband was making an appointment to get it fixed. Our buyer was copacetic with waiting a few days, especially if it meant we paid the mechanic to do the work, and so Alfred figured he would drive in, leave the car at the mechanic, and hitch a ride in with a local co-worker. He'd do the opposite in the evening, and we would get the car to the buyer later in the week.

However, plans don't seem to do well in this climate, and it turns out that it wasn't just the bearings. I wont bore you with the gory details, mostly because I don't know the fancy word for the round bit of metal that was sheared off, but it translated into making us a one car family until Tom could find the part and get it shipped to Ireland--for Clio came from Belfast, and is a sportier model than is sold here.

The good news is that Alfred could carpool, no problem; the bad news is that the carpool left from the monument tree in Blessington at 7:15. And I needed to drive him in. So much for my cunning plan.

This driving in at the same time has all the cachet of a regular commute, something I gave up so many years ago that it almost holds a certain charm. Seeing the same drivers on the road at the same time (and being passed by the same '97 Toyota from Baltyboys on the same straight stretch); then there's the power walker in the orange jacket, and of course the number 65 bus, which explains why all that traffic is converging in town at the same time.

Still, there are some advantages to commuting here, not the least of which are the breathtaking views as you cross the bridge: look to your left, there's Burgage Castle; to your right, there's mist in the hills. I could wax poetic about the hills: like a beautiful woman who dresses differently every day, but always turns heads. Even the Irish talk about this part of the country as one of the most beautiful, calling it the Garden of Ireland. We're wondering if the view is ever the same twice, and if we would ever tire of it, but, alas, one year is not long enough to answer those questions.

Sighing, I tucked my freshly washed wellies into my suitcase.

Baggage

We came to the Emerald Isle as a family, with eight suitcases, four backpacks and a violin. I had recently torn my hamstring, so was about as helpful as the baggage when it came to moving through the airport; all I could do was stand there and make like I was guarding the mountain of bags, when in fact all I could have done was yell very loudly.

We dug the mountain of empty bags out of the toe space under the eaves in our bedroom yesterday. Most still bear the numbers we gave them (quite arbitrarily, I note) to make it easier to inventory. We have aquired two more bags over the year (We were thinking we could take extra bags, even as the airlines brack down harder? We were thinking that more bags would improve our chances of them getting on the plane when we go through Heathrow?). Would that it were as easy as cramming everything in those bags and going back the way we came.

Ah, but rien n'est simple, or as my mother told my husband on our wedding day, "you'll never be bored!" For only three of us (the shortest) will be headed home Monday, mere days away, via Heathrow. The tall member will head out on the day we flew in--September 11 (flights are cheaper on that date. Still.) So we do need to leave a few items for him to live with. And then there are all the sundry household items that we didn't think we could live without. And indeed we can't: I'm still trying to figure out how to pack the sheets that are on our bed. Many of those will be rehomed in a car boot sale (people here don't have garages, so car boots are how these sorts of things are done); some will go to friends, more to charity, and a few boxes will hitch a ride with a fellow employee whose return date is a month later than ours. Sorting things into the correct piles makes my head hurt.

One dear reader commented that she appreciated me writing even while packing. Truth be told, I'm not packing if I'm writing. Ditto work. I've never been one for early packing, and this promises to be more of the same. Though if I'd like to play megaliths over the weekend (is there one we haven't seen yet?), then I'd better get cracking.

After this post.