schools out for summer

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Alice Cooper, education, entertainment, miscellaneous, music, random, school, Schools out for summer, summer, summer holidays, The Muppets

For me today is the last day of term, so school is out for summer. And I have to admit I do feel a little like my school-girl self, all excited about what the long (hopefully a  few hot) days of summer hold in store for me.

However while today may be my last day of educating I still have a whole pile of corrections, gradings and paperwork left to fill in, out and type up. But once that’s done I’ll have lots of time to play.

Of course not teaching means not earning, but I have been frugal over the winter and, like a reverse squirrel, have collected my spoils and stored them away for hard times.

So for now I will do my little “schools out for Summer” dance, boogie along with Alice Cooper and the Muppets and hope that nothing goes wrong today.

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contemplating companionship

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friends, friendship, love, miscellaneous, quotes, random, relationships, thoughts

On the search for a hot cup of coffee and distraction from my teaching duties I found myself in a busy coffee-shop. As I sat with a mug of cappuccino and the Irish Times in in bubble away from the world, something caught my eye and distracted me.

A stressed looking mum and two little girls had entered the shop. Laden down with bags and obviously needing a break just as much as I did, the mother ushered the two girl into a booth. The six or seven-year-olds were having a great time, giggling, heads close together, one brown one blond, pink sparkly nail-polish flashing as they excitedly moved their hands. And as I watched the display of friendship I couldn’t help but overhear the mum give out : “If you don’t calm down there’ll be no sleepover tonight!”

This shocking statement sent the two girls into a flurry of promises and pleading. However it’d didn’t escape me that they also held hands, grabbing on to one another in an attempt to stop the forced separation.

As I watched the little scene unfold before me I couldn’t help but wonder about friendship, and why it is so important. Why do we hold on to some and others flit in and out of our lives, how do we even pick them?

I have some very good friends, some I have know for years others not so long. But I have also had friends that were really important, close, for a  time but who then have disappeared from my life. No fights, no arguments, just life drifting us apart.

With Facebook poking, liking and reminding us of all the people we know, or knew,  it’s sometimes seems friendship has lost it’s value. We have hundreds of people waiting to answer our questions online, only a few finger clicks away. But the time you actually spend with someone, heads close, thoughts shared, secrets whispered has become more rare in our hectic day-to-day lives.

What makes a friendship work and last  seems to be a bit of a mystery, Greek philosophers and even Freud have written essays and letters on the topic. It seems to be a combination of proximity, time, commonality and differences, a mix of experiences and affection all stirred up into one big friendship cocktail.

Luckily for me this week is filled with three such cocktails, catch-ups over coffee and chat, sparkling moments in an otherwise busy, slightly frantic week.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same

growing-up

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clidren, growing-up, miscellaneous, quotes, random, thoughts

As a little girl I remember thinking twenty was old and in my Cindy make-believe world my dolls would all be married with children, living a fully grown up life. Later in my teens I’d look at the mid-twenty-year-olds and think how exciting their lives where,living away from home, studying, traveling and ever changing boyfriends. In my early twenties I’d be in awe of the thirty-year-olds and wonder in awe about their lives filled with houses, kids and spouses.

Looking upward at people older than me I always though how grown-up, adult they were and always thoughts that one day I too would grow up and be an adult.  But somehow that didn’t just “happen”, well it hasn’t yet anyway.

I still skip and dance around my home, I still giggle over immature jokes and oddities, I still believe in miracles and the unexpected. I get excited about Christmas and squeal with enthusiasm over gifts (both given and received), can’t contain myself when I find a promise of an adventure. I love reading fairy-tales and hope to find my prince one day. And  I still catch myself thinking about what I want to do “when I grow up”, wondering what I’ll do when I am an adult, dreaming about far-away future.

The odd thing is I am turning forty (yes 40) this year, a fully respectable and adult age. But I don’t feel much different from when I was six, fifteen, twenty or thirty, maybe a little wiser (only marginally) and definitely a lot heavier, but otherwise I am still me, curly hair and all. I do have a few more wrinkles around my eyes and have  a few white hairs sprouting amongst my dark locks, but I am still undeniably me.

So maybe this growing-up business is all just a big conspiracy, something that doesn’t really exist. We age but don’t really change, we learn how to behave and what is expected, but we flip the switch once we are alone. As country singer Bryan White so aptly but it”

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public

me at two-and-a-half, waiting to be all grown-up

d-day of words

Tags

drugs, miscellaneous, random, thoughts, words, writing

As I sat on the bus the other day I watched as a doddering old gentleman boarded and made his way painfully slowly to a seat.  A stop later a gentleman of similar age got on and as he strode with long steps and in a neatly pressed trench-coat down the aisle, his grey hair slicked backed and shining in the sun the word that came to mind was ‘dapper’.

As I watched them, demurely peaking from behind my book, I couldn’t help but wonder about how a single word can change an image in our heads. If a place is  ‘dusky’ or ‘dusty’ may not only affect my hay-fever but the time I had there. If a date is ‘dreamy’ or ‘dreary’ changes not only the outcome but the story I tell about it. If a  person is described as ‘deviant’ or ‘devote’ will decide how I approach them when being introduced. Being called ‘darling’ or ‘dreadful’ may affect how I see myself and present who I am afterwards.

Words and their meaning create a filter through which we see the world and the people within it. But even though words are so powerful, very often we don’t take the time to consider which one we choose, we forget that we have thousands at our disposal. In the full Oxford English Dictionary there are more than 175,000 words, most we use, some we don’t and many have more than just one meaning. Interestingly enough while only a seventh of these words are verbs, a quarter are adjectives, this shows that we tend to describe more than we do.

As I debated  and deliberated over words and what they mean and I decided to indulge, deviate from the words I always use and consider using ones that lie dormant in my vocabulary.  As  Rudyard Kipling so eloquently said:

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind

 

art-icipation

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architecture, art, arts, crafting, creat, creativity, literature, Pablo Picasso, Picasso, quotes, random, thoughts

Tomorrow I am going to grab my pad and pencils and brave the word of art. I am going to create, if good bad or absolutely ugly is yet to be seen. But I am still excited, an art-icipation flowing through my veins, hopefully getting those proverbial creative juices flowing.

So as I sharpen my pencils and dust off my sketch-book, I can’t help but wonder about what role art plays in our lives, not just for those who make, but for those who take as well.

Art seems to be what is left, when all else is gone, and it doesn’t matter if it’s words, images, sounds, crafts or architecture. The Colosseum in Rome or the Pyramids in Cairo, the pots left over from Pompeii or Faberge’s golden eggs, melodies composed by  Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Bach, sonnets and stories written by Shakespeare, Wilde and Austen, are all mementos from the past, yet they still find a home in our world of today.

I read somewhere that many see creativity as the source of meaning in our lives. This doesn’t mean that if you are not creative you have no meaning, but when we create, we experience a surge of energy, a sense of purpose, fulfillment and contentment when we achieve what we set out to do. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s crafting with the family, knitting a sock or painting a masterpiece.

Art is what separates us from monkeys, the way we use language to tell a tale, how we combine colour and fabrics, how we decorate our homes, own things we love but have no purpose other than just being beautiful. We value  the result of an individuals creativity, a four-year-olds painting holding pride of place on the fridge, a crooked vase holding a bouquet of flowers reminding of a ten-year-olds attempt at pottery, photographs decorating our homes taken for their beauty or the memories they hold, music a constant friend (or foe) to our ears, films and plays while away our hours,  gallerys, museums, monuments are places we visit, talk about and remember.

We may not always realise it, but we are surrounded by art, in one form of the other, our world filled with the results of creative thought. And it is what makes the trudge of every day life bearable, cushioning us from reality and showing us the true beauty of living. As the master Pablo Picasso said so well:

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life of our souls

holiday dreaming

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atlas mountains, holiday, miscellaneous, photos, random, travel

After my convalescing weekend I have been playing catchup with myself today. Sadly I seem to be running on the spot. So as I look out at the gray skies I dream of holidays and since I can’t go away now I can only let my memories  take over and dream of past trips.

Chateu Raysse in France a magical week in the Dordogne

Or a trip down the Nile on the Stephanie, lots of temples and markets along the way

A hike high up into the Atlas mountains

A week in Finland

rejuvenating shower

Tags

miscellaneous, Mitzi Gaynor, music, musicals, random, shower, South Pacific, thoughts

After two and a half days of lounging around in my pj’s, only moving from bed to sofa to lazy chair in front of the fire and back I’ve had enough of this cold. So at 2pm I decided to stop being sick and took a shower.

Now there is something intrinsically rejuvenating about a shower, it washes away all the old allowing the new to shine through. So I stood and let the hot water envelope my body, scrubbed, shaved and exfoliated, washed and conditioned my hair and stepped out of the shower feeling like a new person.

As I wrapped myself up in my bid blue dressing gown Ia song I hadn’t heard in years popped into my head. And as I toweled my hair and slathered copious amounts of cocoa butter lotion onto my body I started singing the old tune until I got stuck on the lyrics.

So here is the song for all of you enjoying a new beginning today, Mitzi Gaynor in South Pacific showing us all how rejuvenating a shower can be:

convalescing cold

Tags

cold, flu, George Bernard Shaw, health, miscellaneous, random, sick

When I woke up this morning my snotty nose had moved down and turned into a scratchy cough so I decided to finally give in to my cold and stay in bed for the day.

I called off all my appointments and have been convalescing on my sofa catching up on TV and staying warm. The only thing that I have been changing up is whether I make myself a boiling cup of tea or a hot mug of lemon and honey.

Until my nose is back to it’s normal size, shape and colour and I don’t sound like a chain smoker on a respirator I bid ye all farewell and will convalesce in style. With the words of George Bernard Shaw:

I enjoy the convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

 

 

magnetic letters

Tags

crafting, crafts, fun, magnets, miscellaneous, photos, random

A few years ago I went on a trip to Helsinki and in one of the many museums and galleries I visited I bought a set of magnets from a lovely crafter. She had taken old keyboards apart and stuck magnets on to the back of the letters. She had a whole selection of words and key combinations and I selected  the word “dream”.

Ever since then that one little word has been reminding me to dare to dream but it has also made me want to make my own “letter magnets”. So when a little while ago my keyboard broke I finally had the letters to work with , sadly it took me quite a while to source the magnets. Who knew that there seems to be some sort of shipping ban of magnets on Amazon.

On Thursday I stumbled upon a whole bag full in a little crafting store and I couldn’t contain my excitement. And yesterday I finally had a little bit of time to create. Now all I need to do is figure out how many words I can make out of one set of letters … after all I think letter magnets could be great gifts. If any of you have any ideas let me know

a pile of letters

self sticking magnets

clear out the back of the letters, mine had bits of glue and plastic stuck to them

stick a magnet on to the back

voila … magnetic letters

chocolate eggs and a snotty nose

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chocolate, chocolate egg, chocolate eggs, christian holiday, christianity, cocoa butter, cooking, Easter, easter eggs, eggs, food, holiday, miscellaneous, painted eggs, photography, photos, random, skype, snotty nose

I awoke this morning to a skype-session with my year-and-a-half year old chocolate covered nephew and a snotty nose. His parents had forced him to say thank you for the egg-shaped Irish treats I had sent him and we spend a few minutes stuffing our faces (him), blowing our noses (me) and singing “itsy bitsy spider” (both of us).

Since Easter is probably the most important christian holiday around it does always surprise me how few people really know what is celebrated. So instead of thinking about Jesus dying for or sins and then rising from the dead to save us all,  most people spend their time devouring one chocolate egg after another thanking the Easter Bunny.

It really is surprising that the reason eggs dominate Easter goes back to the fact that the church didn’t allow eggs to be eaten in the week (Holy Week) leading up to Easter Sunday. To not waste the eggs laid in Holy Week they were painted and given to the children on Easter Sunday as gifts.

The Victorians  (1820-1900) then came up with the idea of making satin covered cardboard eggs and filled them with little gifts. This idea prompted craftsmen to start making eggs out of porcelain and later silver and gold. The ultimate Easter Eggs of the 19th Century were of course Fabergé’s creations that he made for Tzar Alexanders wife Marie.

But trust the Germans and French to come up with a more edible idea. In the early 19th century they made the very first chocolate eggs. Sadly they were a little bitter and hard but over time, as chocolate became softer and easier to mould, they perfected the know commonly known hollow variety.

However it was Cadburys introduction of pure cocoa in 1966 , combined with the Dutch invention of a press that separated the cocoa butter from the bean (1982), that allowed the mass production of Easter Eggs as we know them today.

So whether the fox (some parts of southern Germany) , the cuckoo (Switzerland) or the Easter Bunny left you a chocolaty treat today maybe spend a minute thanking the industrial revolution for the chocolaty goodness melting in your mouth. And while you nibble, chew and smile say a grateful prayer, celebrating the true meaning of Easter.

Some hand painted eggs in my window