White Horses

Hello! Just when I was getting proud of myself for writing so regularly, I go and skip two days. Woops. Well, in all fairness, they were pretty fair days to skip - I didn't do much. Yesterday I stayed in my room, pretty much all day long, sitting here on the floor so that I can look out over the bay, writing. This is my writing position - I sat, like I'm sitting now, on the floor and leaned against my bed, with my elbow on my knee and the laptop on the nightstand. I switch elbows or knees every once in a while, to throw a little variation in (also to switch which side is holding my weight...), but that's pretty much how I'm positioned most of the time now. The view from here isn't as spectacular as it is from the dining room or the sitting room, but I can still see a good bit of the bay, and the sky is fascinating to watch. Yesterday, especially - you know how the Irish say they get all four seasons in a day? So far it's just been a funny sort of overstatement that could be mildly true on most days. Yesterday it was an absolute fact. We had sun, clouds, lashing rain, drizzling rain, hail, and SNOW - all interchangeably coming every ten minutes or so. Sadly the snow melted as soon as it touched ground - but it was crazy to look out, three or four times, and see that the sky was white with snowflakes. The bay, too, which is usually so calm, was turbulent and there were white-tipped waves splashing up onto the shore. The Irish call white caps "White Horses", which I think is great. Today was still a bit breezy, and every time I looked out I imagined that I could see white horses on the water, galloping away from me.

I guess living with an Irish family is rubbing off on me... I just wrote about the weather for a paragraph.

Ray and Carole went out to see a movie on Monday night, as I said, so I watched the boys in the evening. We continued our game of Monopoly and didn't finish even then - so it's still looming over us, waiting to bankrupt me and Mark at any moment. I hear Aaron has only lost one game in his whole life. I always hated Monopoly and games of that sort, because I've NEVER managed to find the secret to success in them. I think you just have to love money enough to figure out a way to keep it, and apparently the love is just not in me. I do like my little figurine, the top hat, though. Maybe that's my problem... I'm more interested in small silver items than plastic houses and colored paper. Anyway, after the game I said goodnight to Aaron and tucked Mark in again, and read him a Bible story. Apparently he forgot to bring Giraffe (his stuffed giraffe that he sleeps with every night) with him from Dublin, so he now sleeps with a surrogate Giraffe - a long-necked dinosaur. He seems not to mind so much now.

Yesterday, as I said, was spent writing. Although I did go out for awhile after dinner... a tractor-full of chopped logs came on Monday night, and we had to move them up to the patio above the garage. So last night after dinner, the five of us went outside and worked for awhile. Carole and Aaron stayed at the top and neatly stacked the logs they received up there, Mark and I were stationed at the bottom of the stairs where we threw the logs into the wheelbarrow, and Ray carted the wheelbarrow up and down the stairs with each "shipment". We only worked for about 40 minutes, but we got a lot done. Ray, Carole and I finished it up tonight - Carole remarked afterward that there must have been fewer logs this year, because it seemed to go much more quickly. Ray nodded to me and said, "I think Laura was the difference." And I must admit I beamed smugly for a few minutes.

Today after lunch, Carole dropped me off in Letterkenny, which is apparently Donegal's "big town". hahahaha. I don't laugh to make fun of it or anything - I really enjoyed spending the afternoon there. But with a title like "Donegal's big town", I guess I was expecting something a bit... well, bigger. To be fair, I only walked Main Street, but Carole drove me around to see the rest and I've seen quarters of Ventura that span more ground. (Probably shopping centers that span more ground...) Anyway, I actually enjoyed the fact that it was quainter than I'd expected - it made it much more interesting. She dropped me off at a Tesco shopping center (Europe's Costco), and I spent quite a while looking into all the shops around Tesco, and I probably spent about an hour in Tesco itself. I've volunteered to make dinner on Friday night, y'see, so I did quite a bit of grocery shopping while I was there. And for some reason it was really exciting to me! (Does this mean I'm growing up?) Really, I felt like such a grown-up little domestic, walking around the aisles, comparing prices, checking out ingredients for the white sauces, looking for what flavors would go together best and such. Also, I bought chocolate and some chips to sate my late-night hunger crises. That was a little less grown-up of me, I guess... ah well. Can't be helped. Sometimes you just have to have some chocolate.

Suddenly I had about 45 minutes before I'd agreed to meet Carole back at Tesco, and I hadn't even LEFT it yet. So I took a very quick walk up to Main Street and walked about halfway through it. I went into a very few shops, saw some nice things. I'm well on my way to having nearly enough souvenirs to bring back to family members, but I've still got a few to go. I've agreed (with myself) not to buy things just for the sake of HAVING something to bring back, though, so it's taking some time. Towards the top of the hill I saw a small street that led up to a roman catholic cathedral, so I followed the path and ran up to see it. By then I had about five minutes to get back, so I booked it across town and met Carole promptly at 4:45. We picked up the boys from her sisters house, plus one (their cousin Lee, who, when I introduced myself, declared, "What a cool American accent!" and hasn't stopped asking me questions about America since). We had dinner, finished the logs, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

Tomorrow I'll either go into the small town down the road and get a few more groceries for Friday's dinner (chicken breasts, garlic bread and broccoli - I've already got the spaghetti and carbonara sauce), or else just walk further down the bay. I don't think I mentioned this, but on Monday afternoon that's what I did - for almost an hour I walked along the "beach". Turns out there IS a path, of sorts, that goes at least part way around the bay... you just kind of have to walk around peoples fences, but I guess they're okay with that. So long as you don't steal any sheep that you pass along the way. But I didn't go far on Monday, because I didn't know it was okay to go past fences... so tomorrow should carry me further, one way or another.

OH! Guess what? We're going to the Giant's Causeway on Saturday! Talk about a good way to spend a birthday. :)

How is it already 9:30? Honestly, I don't know where my days are going. I think it's time for more chocolate. S'long, folks. :)