In which our author gets all self-righteous. Bear with me on this one….

Right. Christmas is good, but if you are like me (and God help ya if you are), sitting down to a huge celebration of the season only really happens if I feel I”ve earned it. So what I have here are a list of small good deeds that I can do between here and Christmas Day that will make life easier for those around me just a tiny, tiny bit.

1. Give someone a complement. Not everyone will believe you, but you will be making their nicer none the less and that is a good thing. For example, next time someone hands you your change, give them or their place of work a complement. It will go a little way to making a harassed person feel more appreciated..
2. Write and send a letter to someone. A hand written letter is ideal, but an email to someone you haven”t spoken to in a long time is nice too. Letting someone you know that you”re thinking of them (in a non-stalkery, I”m-watching-from-the-bushes-type-way) is a kindness few of us take the time to do these days.
3. Make a donation to a small charity. Yes, I said I would be getting righteous here, and this one of them. You don”t have to even leave your desk, try www.lightupalife.com for donations you can make straight away. You could make a €1.00 donation if you want. Gwan gwan gwan!
4. Shop in a local shop. The small retailer, grocer and shop could do with the custom. Make a small detour and give them your custom. All the larger shops can cope with just one person less, but a few more people can really make a difference.
5. A gift to your bus driver. Or Postperson, or coffee lady, or whoever. That person who you see almost every day and who is going about their business. Give them some small thank you (Roses box or something) that says you notice their hard work and appreciate it. It only takes a moment.
6. Call on a neighbour. Call on someone who you haven”t taken the time to speak to for a while. This one I will admit I find difficult, I always imagine online casino free bonus that they don”t want to hear from me. But give them five minutes of your time, you have nothing to lose.
7. Pay for someone else. If you take the bus, train etc regularly, pay the fare of the person coming after you. It”s just a couple of euro but it is a very nice thing to do.
8. Buy a homeless person some food. A mug of coffee and some food is a huge gesture of support to someone who spends his or her time being ignored.
9. Give blood. Most of you won”t do this as a whim, it can seem like a huge deal. But it takes half an hour and makes a huge difference. Plus you get cake afterwards. Cakeeeee!

Right, so that”s nine. If people did just one of these, think of the difference that would make to the world.  What I would love is not if this post went viral, but if the idea did. Think of it, try to do one small good deed a day. I bet you could. I really bet you could, without any thought. Gwan. Gwan gwan gwan!

Oh yeah. That”s my house.

I keep getting bothered these days by the nature of Time, or more exactly, the nature of Now. Here is Now, as in this moment is the present apex of the liner passage of events we call current. However, go back five years and that was now. Go back twenty and there it was again. Our parents were once the generation of Now.

‘How abut ye?’

So were their parents, and theirs before them.

The Then of Now is a Was….

So Now isn’t fixed. Instead, it seems to be completely flexible and movable, despite the assurance we have that we are the Now, we are the current understanding of the universe.  We’re like insects on the surface of a river, floating downstream, surprised that the world changes around us when  the stuff under our feet remains (to us) the same.

Yeeehaaaa!!!!

So there is clearly a huge something of life we’re missing, some element of our perception completely unaware of a huge force in the Universe. We’re missing a huge something here. Or now.

Oh, why is my humble brain bothered with such things? I’m never going to be able to do anything about it, it is beyond me and my upright ape ability. Arragh here! Good night.

Today we had a cookie exchange at work so I set myself to make some of my biscuits. I made the dough Sunday, and left it in the fridge overnight to chill, with the hazelnuts and chocolate ready to go;

Biscuit dough from the fridge

Trays with parchment paper ready to for the dough

Now out of the oven!

The final results!

Seeing as I’m on a very strict diet for the foreseeable future, taking part in a cookie exchange might be considered a bad idea. But it was totally worth it….

I’ve gotten a bad review on Amazon. A really really bad review. Here it is;

“This is NOT a finished book, but a collection of ideas that someone intended to use in the writing of a book. Initially, I thought it was written by a young person, or someone whose native language was much different from English, with the bizarre use of language, grammar and punctuation, but now I know that it’s not a book at all. There are odd half-finished scenes, action jumps from place to place incoherently, when I started reading I kept going back to see if somehow I had missed some reference or connection…pointlessly, there is no connection between sentence, paragraph, or chapter.
I guarantee you, if you make the mistake of purchasing this book, not only will you lose your money in a most egregious way, you will, as I have, lost your most precious asset, your time.
I almost didn’t write this review, as I feel that any writer who would be satisfied with this…whatever it is, must surely be severely compromised in some way, but I had read a review that said it was a great read and felt I should write a review that will help potential readers to make a better decision.”

Wow. Goodness. I’ve sat and been quite taken aback by the strength of feeling attached to this, which surprises me. I would have expected indifference, but the anger of this is really quite something.

So what can one say?  Writers of much more skill and fame than I have received scathing reviews, and in fact the more successful a writer is the more eagerness is there to show how awful their work is. So I suppose this is just to be expected. This is par for the course.

From Cellar Door Pictures.

Running when you’re fat is an exercise in hope. You have to do it to get fitter, but you look terrible. One day I will feel like this when I run:

For the moment, however, I look like this:

Still, I loved being out there again. Wonderful feeling to move with speed again, I felt lucky.  The problem is in my head. I think that as I am not photogenic, that I am unpleasing to look at when I exercise, that I should hide away, should refrain from this side of life. Why? Who on earth would be offended by this? I know that society insists in a variety of ways that women must be decorative and that they fail if they don’t. It seems to be one of those times when I police myself and censor myself rather than any specific real concern.

Still…..

He’s asleep, and the hubby isn’t home for at least an hour. Time enough to have a literary affair?

The problem is, I have no idea how long my little boy will sleep for. And I am somewhat tired after my eight hour day plus commute. So having a go at writing isn’t appealing.

Actually, I’m lying. I just don’t think I can do it. I have two major themes to incorporate into the text. Changing a draft seems like getting a marching band to suddenly change the order of progression while it is still moving. I am not sure how.  Can’t I just surf Twitter instead?

Will we ever get wise? Our processing of information, does it ever improve? Can we see more or ever get better with regard to our perceptions? Science would say no. Our synapses deteriorate over time and use. Old pathways degenerate and new ones don”t come about. Minds become static, fail and fall away.

So how come we still dare hope for change? Why are we so foolish as to imagine that we can change, either personally or as a society? We run through the same routine day in and day out, but do we learn anything? Do we see anything? Do we break out of the chains that bind us?

Every single time I”ve grown as a person, it has been through a painful experience. Learning new perceptions always comes from old ones being pulled painfully away. I will cling to pokie slots my childish nature until the last possible moment and will look back on earlier times with nostalgia, regret. The same goes with a society; it will cling to a childish belief until it has to, must, move on to a more adult view, especially if it is formed from false first principles.

Ireland, you”ve killed again. This time a woman who took two days to die as priority was given to the contents of her womb. A sad, stupid sullied death born about from an infection in our blood, our minds and our sad, worthless history. I”m old and going gray and I have no faith in you any more, but you still manage to sadden me with your pointless behaviour. So much for you and your lauded principles.

Ah here. Here”s a pretty tune to take our minds off this.   Night all.

I have written a novella while on maternity leave, as regular readers will know. I’m supposed to be editing it at the fallow periods like lunchtime and bus trips, but the fact is I tend to use those periods to stare blankly into space. (“What’s your favorite humming noise? Mine is buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”)

I’ve managed to do some this lunch time, however. Seeing the ideas I have begin to form on the page is a pleasure, a real pleasure that comes from the center of the brain. But its taken a long time to get the will to do that, as I have been avoiding it. Too hard and no fun! But when I am there, and I can objectively survey the work I have done, I can reject the childish notions I’ve put down on the page and instead show a mature version that thinks of those who will be reading this. Remember, no one wants to read your work. No one wants to work through a difficult obscure prose style or a character that holds no water it is so weak. Your work should persuade your reader to keep reading, to see it and to be greedy for it.  That’s why writing is when you get to do whatever you want. Editing is when you reflect the world outside your mind and do what it wants.

Writing is Childhood. Editing is Maturity. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go stare into space. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………………

He”s asleep. I might get a chance to have a look at this blogging thing for a moment.

So, how am I? I feel hardy like a marine at times, in that I can cope with four hours sleep. Get me! I”m back at work, which is lovely in that I like where I work and the people I work with. It is also Dickensian in its brutality as I walk away from my child each morning and quietly sniffle at the bus stop. Not crying.

Work itself is strange to return to. I”m astonished that I have any brain power at all these days. Folks expect me to do things, and to remember things, and I”m just grateful that I can write things down I need to remember like my name, where I live, and that yes, those are my feet. Hmm. My predecessor who was in my role before me was brilliant and created a wonderful wave of efficiency that I am just surfing on at the moment. I find myself pushing myself to just keep going, to not stop, and that alone seems to be seeing things done.

Here comes winter. We”re looking forward to our first Christmas with best australian online casino him, and I”m insisting that Santa visits the house. My husband is an atheist and I abhor the Church, so we”re happy to have him have little or no religious education. However, I believe in the magic of the imagination. so I put my foot down on the Santa Claus issue. He”s coming to the house because, as Terry Pratchett put it, man needs to believe in the fantasies of childhood such as Santa, so that they will grow up and believe in the fantasies of Justice and Honour as adults.  Plus its fun. So we will be having Santa.

Go Obama. Was there any real choice? Fox is destroying Republician Conservative thought so well that Obama seemed the only grown up in the race. I was a huge fan of his in the “08 election, less so this time. But I still feel very glad he was elected again, he was the only person close to my own political views.

I”m going to vote in the Children Referendum. The daftness of the No vote has not served debate, I”m afraid.

Finally; dreams. I”m a person who has a huge emotional landscape when I dream (I”m sure we all do). I”ve just finished reading the Sandman comics, and have fallen in love with the Romance of it all. But my own dreams get better and better as I experience my own personal happiness.  I have a sense of impeding wonder that I can”t explain. Go figure….

A Pilargyrist is a lover of money; specifically, a lover of the precious metals that used to make up coins. They don’t like spending money, but instead like the possession of money for its own sake.

Not only do they have run of the mill greediness, which we can see around us in a love of material possessions, but they have a hatred of spending in of itself. Going far more than mere frugality, which these days is a virtue, they hate to see the figures in the bank balance go down for any reason.

I can understand this, to a point. Its nice to have your cake and eat it, too. But as I’ve gotten older, people rather than things have become the important priority in my life (after getting my principles wrong again and again, let me tell you). If I have money now, it is for spending so I and the people I love have experiences worth having. Don’t hold on to it folks; you can’t take it with you and it is later than you think.