Seafood selection

Had a fun Bank Holiday Monday!  I started with a great swim where I felt like I could have swam forever.

Afterwards I took the dog to the vet to get his booster shots.  After waiting about 10 mins the dog started to get bored and annoyed that he had to wait.  He started making an annoying whining sound.  Everyone in the waiting room started looking at him and one lady even said that it sounded like he was talking to me!

After the vets we went in to the city.  I needed to pick up some Nespresso Capsules for the coffee machine in work.

When we came home I cooked a dinner of trout, sea bass and sweet potato.  I have to say, I think fish is overrated - by the time you pick through all the bones you have to wonder is it worth it.....

May Bank Holiday

It's the May Bank Holiday here in Ireland.  We walked to Lidl to buy the paper and eggs for breakfast.  Ciaran also bought pain au chocolat which were warm and straight from the oven!

I got some shrubs for our small front garden too.  I have a dead lavender plant that needed to be pulled out and replaced.  

After breakfast, Ciaran did work while I designed and ordered t-shirts that Amy and I plan to sell at an upcoming festival that is organised by our Uncle.  

Later that day we walked for an hour, up to Rathmines and the long way back to Ranelagh.  I bought sunflower seeds in the Rathmines hardware and planted them when we got home.  I hope they do grow.  Most things that I plant tend to not do so well but seemingly sunflowers are one of the easiest flowers to grow. We will see!!

Clever packaging - Cadbury's Egg and spoon

I love the packaging on these mousse filled chocolate eggs!

They come with two cute little plastic spoons for scooping out the mousse (available in chocolate and vanilla)

You can bite off the top at the indent!

Water in the ears!

Water in my ears after I swim!  What is with this???

Currently I am training for a 12 mile relay swim around the island of Key West in June.  The training is going great except for the water in ear condition that I am experiencing.

Having swam competitively through my childhood,  I don't seem to recall having this issue.  Now after I get out of the pool I can't hear anything and as I shake my head I can feel the water rolling around my ear drum.

The only way I can get it out is to bend forward and shake my head vigorously and then turn my head to the side and shake more.  Huge big drops then come out and land on the floor!

What is with it???!!  Very annoying!

Laura Geoghegan holistic Massage

Are you based in Galway?

A good friend of mine, living and working in Galway, is a very talented Holistic Masseuse.  I can personally vouch for her magic fingers - I was relaxed for weeks after getting a massage from her.

Laura does a range of holistic therapies including full body massage along with Reiki and Indian Head Massage. 

She has just started to begin marketing and promoting herself on Facebook and is looking to grow her business.  I'd love if you could give her support and click like!

And if you are ever in the Galway area of Ireland - do yourself a favour and book in a massage with Laura Geoghegan!!

Her contact details are on her Facebook page.

Oh and as well as being a great therapist Laura is also a swimming teacher too!!!  So if you want the kiddies to learn to swim - click here.

The Natural Bakery

The Natural Bakery is now open in Rathmines.  It seems that it has branches in both Donnybrook and Kilmainham.

The bakery has a stylish frontage and display cases full of nice treats.

There was some great novelty cakes in the window.

They do cakes, pastries and breads.

There is a huge selection of breads.  They all look great.

Ciaran got an Apple Danish.  Look at the size of them!!

Although you can sit in and have a coffee we took ours to takeaway.  Ciaran thought his Danish was nice but not as good as the Danish he used to get in Bretzel Bakery.

I got a cupcake.  It was a bit "meh".  There was not enough frosting and it was quite tasteless.

Next time we visit we will buy some bread as it all looked super!

"Love Dad" by Evan Hunter - My favourite book

A good few years ago, I first read "Love Dad" by Evan Hunter.  Since then I have considered it to be my all time favourite book.

Based around the relationship between a daughter and father through the 1960's it brilliantly describes how complex this relationship is.  It follows through their life and shows her gaining independence from her loving family and going through tumultous scenes to finally land where her father probably wanted her to be from the day she was born.

The above is what I consider the book to be about.  However a reviewer on the Good Reads website said it was about "the dissolution of a family by drugs and adultery" - funny how different readers can see different things in a book.  Yes there is drugs and adultery in the book but I would have not said they were the central theme to the book.

I love the 1960's and 1970's,  it's a time I would have loved to live in.  I enjoy reading about how people lived then and I love that people made serious stands for peace.  It is a decade when people power pushed for huge social change and achieved it!

I think this book captures the mood of this time extremely well - the father and daughter are quite possibly used as a contrast or a juxtaposition of the old and the new. The daughter is a baby boomer, she grew up with Woodstock and the Vietnam War.  To be born in this era and not be part of it would be unthinkable.  However, for her parents to be part of it was seen to be a rebellion - it went against all that they had believed in. The hard work that had gone in to achieving the status quo be generations before looked like it was being torn apart by this generation who engaged in free love, drugs and free thinking.  

For the parents, conformation was the only option (although the father griped about the triviality of suburbanity and ultimately moved on from this himself).  For the daughter non-conformation was the only option.  They were at an impasse so there was only one thing going to arise - a shattering of the family relationship.

Have you read this book?  I hope my account of it would make you want to read it.  Although out of print, it is available on Amazon (preowned).  

Check out this slating review when it was originally published!