Isn't It Funny?

 Isn't it funny how life unfolds? Forty years ago (!!!) when this video was released, I was in my early 20s, Bill and I were living in New Hampshire, we'd been married for 5 years, and MTV was a cool new thing. We would have seen this video back then, not paying much attention. Little did we know that a few decades later we'd be standing next to Bad Eddie (the boat that gets struck by lightning in the video) on 'our' local beach, living in the area where it was filmed, and looking at Mt Errigal as we walked to the library or the grocery store. I don't know what I thought my life would be like back then, and I've been surprised many times. I did know what I didn't want my life to be like and happily, I've been mostly successful in that regard. I wonder what will happen next.

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Nearing the End

 Here we are with just one day left in May. Last year, May seemed to be endless. Not so this year as it zipped right by. Now we're just a few weeks away from solstice, which is always a happy time for me as we start losing daylight after that. Just a few seconds at first, but we're far enough north that it picks up speed before too long. I always feel better after solstice, even though there's plenty more yucky summer to come. The fireweed should start blooming soon and I'll watch it bloom up the stem as we get closer and closer to autumn.

It's a bank holiday weekend here and the bar has a noise pollution event scheduled for tomorrow. Last weekend we had some pretty heavy rain off and on through the weekend, so the party people weren't outside and it was fairly quiet. This weekend will have the possibility of rain, but probably not enough to keep the drunk people inside. 

As I shove my ear plugs in, I'll remind myself that our time grows short and we're nearing the end of our time here. We go on Thursday to sign the lease and get the keys to the cottage. We'll most likely be going back and forth until the end of June, taking a little at a time. We've done three visits to three different charity shops over the past couple of weeks while we were doing other errands, making donations at each one. We'll be doing one more Donegal town library run on Tuesday to return the books we have checked out and while there we'll stop at the Animals in Need charity shop to drop off a few more things. I'm reading some books that I bought in previous charity shop visits with the intention to re-donate them. Yesterday I finished The Colony by Audrey Magee. I wasn't sure whether I'd like it, but for 20 cents it was worth a try and I loved it. It was definitely a happy surprise. The Animals in Need shop only wants novels, so I'm focusing on those. After Tuesday, our next library visit will be at our once and future local library, only a walk away.

I borrowed the e-audiobook of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens so I would be sure to have something I know I'll like on my mp3 player as we're going back and forth between old and new dwellings. I've read it before and adored it, so I know I won't be disappointed in the plot. It's over 32 hours long, so I won't run out of listening material. I'll be finishing an audiobook tonight and starting another one, which I may well finish before Thursday, so I wanted to have something long and enjoyable to listen to. And Pickwick Papers is funny, too, which will be just the thing when I'm tired and ready to relax. 

I'm trying to use up food from the freezer because one of the drawbacks of the cottage is the small under-counter refrigerator with a tiny freezer compartment instead of the large (for Ireland) fridge/freezer. When we've been there a while we'll decide if we want to get a small tabletop freezer or whether we can make do. I still find it amusing that when they have a huge fridge/freezer, often with an ice maker, they call it an American-style fridge/freezer. Appliances tend to be smaller here. 

So we're both looking forward to getting there. Still a way to go yet, but at least we'll be on our way soon! I hope your weekend is peaceful and pleasant.

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The Disrespected River

 I woke up to a beautiful grey sky this morning. Before long, I saw sprinkles on the skylight. It's cooler than it has been and I was able to close a window, which helps keep some of the noise out. All of this makes me enormously happy. The weekend is supposed to be a few degrees cooler still and we can expect heavy rain. We need the rain. It's been unusually warm for the time of year and day after day, week after week of bright blue sky. The risk of gorse fires has been high and the river on one side of us is running very low. Now all the garbage people throw into it is more visible. Bill saw one of the women who works at the bar cleaning up the area where the smokers hang out. She picked up a plastic cup and tossed it over the wall into the river. It probably got stuck in the greenery on the riverbank, but will make its way to the river eventually. The poor river is so disrespected. 

It's been quite a show over there in recent weeks. One evening, I was making tea and while I was waiting for the kettle, I was looking out the window. I did a double take then sputtered to Bill, 'Droopy is taking a piss over the wall!' Droopy--no idea what his actual name is--is the guy who runs the bar and lives above it. We call him Droopy because there is always a risk that his pants will end up around his ankles at any time. I've seen more of his rear end than I'd like, I can tell you that, and on this night, he was displaying the other side. I get it that sometimes nature calls at inconvenient moments and one must take the call, but was it really necessary to do this outside in view of Main St, near an entrance to a business where people are going to eat and drink? Presumably there are bathrooms inside and the guy's own apartment is just upstairs. The tourists have started arriving--can you imagine being a tourist and deciding to stop in there only to find some guy pissing into the river? Personally, I'd be turning around and going elsewhere. Then again, I live here and I'm turning around and going elsewhere. 

Not long after that, it became clear that they were having wastewater issues once again. A few times over the past few months, a tanker sort of truck with hoses and things dangling everywhere has backed into the driveway, guys have jumped over the wall and peered and poked into an opening in the riverbank which provides access to the wastewater pipe. They've run the big hose there and turned on the water at high pressure. This time there were no professionals in sight, just handyman types who have been around doing various odd jobs. They poked. They prodded. They peered into the depths. They wiped their brows. They stood there. They poked, prodded, and peered some more. Then one guy donned a cloth mask, like those we used to wear during the pandemic. He pried up a manhole cover in the driveway, got on his knees, stuck his face very close to ground level, and with a small spade, began to shovel up mounds of white stuff--shovelful after shovelful. I was thinking that it would be a good idea for him to have more than a cloth mask on his face, but what do I know. The other guy stood on the riverbank and watched. They left for the day. The next day, they were back. They started digging a trench on the riverbank to expose the pipe. Then they got to the concrete cube that's part of the bridge. They had a jackhammer and some kind of saw to cut through the concrete. One guy wore goggles. The other had his cloth mask on again. Clouds of concrete dust were billowing into the air. We went out that day and when we returned, they were messing with the pipe. I shudder to think about the quality of the job they did. I'd expect wastewater leakage from the pipe, which is still exposed. I don't know about these kinds of jobs, but I do think that if it was me, I'd want professional people doing the work. Yes, these guys were probably cheaper, at least in the short term. But when there's more trouble, Droopy might wish he'd had a more professional job done. Or maybe he just doesn't care.

All I know is that it's depressing to watch people disrespecting the river the way they do. Smokers toss their butts over the wall, people throw trash into the river, and who knows what kind of wastewater is entering the ground and eventually the water. When we first came to Glenties, someone joked with us that we'd see salmon leaping out of the river. If there were salmon, I'm sure they'd be far too ill from human pollution to leap anywhere. It's sad.

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An Unexpected Turn of Events

 It's been a strange week and a half here. It all began last Tuesday. We were planning our usual trip to Donegal town to return and pick up books at the library. I had a heavy pile to carry back and I was all packed and ready to go when I checked the 'real time information' page to see what time the bus was expected. I tapped on the map and there was no bus icon on it. Back to the home page of the website. I scrolled down and saw that the service for that day and time had been cancelled due to an incident. That's all it said. So I unpacked my backpack and went back to the task I was engaged in before all that happened, which was a discussion about a property for rent. The letting agent sent me a video. We felt it was worth looking at, so I clicked around, found the bus times that would work to get us there and back, and made an appointment for Thursday. We'd be going through Letterkenny with a little over an hour between buses so we decided to take the opportunity to bring books and a couple other items to donate to the charity shop right by the bus stop. We each had a backpack full of books, so when we got there the charity shop was the first stop. Our bags now empty, we headed for the bookshelves. The backpacks did not stay empty for long, but at least we donated more books than we bought (on this day, at least).

Then we went outside, ate the sandwiches we'd brought, and waited for the bus that would take us to our destination. We hoped it would be on time because we were only going to have about half an hour in the village before we'd have to get back on the bus to Letterkenny. If we missed that one, we'd miss the last bus back home. There we were, eagerly looking at the roundabout to get a glimpse of the bus we were waiting for. It was 5 minutes late, then 10, then 15. The bus we rode into Letterkenny on was due to leave in 10 minutes by that point, so we started talking about what we should do. There was another bus to the village that was due at about the same time, but there was no sign of either of them. Twenty minutes late. The bus we rode in on appeared. We decided to get on it and go home. When it pulled away from the bus stop, one of the buses we could have taken was 30 minutes late and the other 25. Presumably, they showed up at some point, but given how late they were and with the potential for further delays along the way, we simply wouldn't have had any time to look at the place. 

On the bus home, I messaged the guy we were supposed to meet in two ways, but there was no response. I sent messages to friends who wanted to know how it went after we'd looked at the place. One of them was out of town, but replied immediately, saying that he was coming back that day and he'd drive us over the weekend or Monday. I was chatting with another friend. Still no reply from the letting agent. Then we were in the middle of nowhere and I lost my phone signal. When we got home, it was the same time we were supposed to be at the cottage starting to look around. I called. The letting agent was very nice and immediately asked me when I wanted to reschedule. I explained about our friend's offer. The letting agent chose the Monday and said to just give him a call to let him know what time. I worked it out with our friend later that day and confirmed with the letting agent on Friday morning.

On Monday, our friend came for pastries and coffee, but we left in plenty of time and were there early, as expected. I'd brought the heavy pile of library books I'd been unable to return the week before and dropped them off in the book drop at the library there. Then we went to look at the cottage. Letting agent had to rush off to do a slot on the local Irish language radio station about the insanely difficult rental market, so Bill and I stood in the front chatting with our friend for a while about the place and what we all thought of it. Then we came home. Later, I sent the letting agent a message saying we'd take it. 

We've been wanting to find another place to live for quite some time and have been actively looking for months. We were close to viewing a tiny apartment in a town that looked great, but the owner told Bill that some guy had contacted him and offered 'crazy money' so he was going to come look at it. Given the tight market, finding a place is difficult even with insanely high rents, so this opportunity came completely out of the blue. This is a letting agent that we've dealt with before and the cottage we'll be renting is in a village we've lived in before. The rent is not obscene for what it is, because it's in a rural area which isn't as desirable to most people as other places are. However, the bus service there is excellent and far better than what we have in our current town, so we'll be able to go places much more easily than we can now. There's a library, which is a big deal for us. A beach is just a few minutes walk away. It's a more scenic area. I love the cottage. There is no bar nearby and no obvious place for people to hang out and party. Our days of hearing bad covers of bad country western music performed by talent-free individuals at live noise pollution events is coming to an end. The very last straw was when someone--perhaps the Tidy Towns committee--placed benches on the bridge over the river. They wisely bolted them down. If they hadn't, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone tossed them off the bridge and into the river. These benches happen to be right under our window. I told Bill at the time, 'There's the new hangout/party spot. There are going to be even more drunks out there yelling, shrieking, laughing hysterically, and being obnoxious.' And so it is. Last weekend I was giving thanks for good friends who send ear plugs as I shoved them into my ears to try to get some sleep. The party went on until after 2 am.

So we've paid our security deposit for the cottage and given our notice here. I can't quite believe it--it's all so sudden. I'm grateful.

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Subjective

 Here we are, one week into May. My usual issues have arrived right on schedule, so many days aren't pleasant, but I know to expect the stuffy head, scratchy throat, brain fog, aches and pains at this time of year and prepare myself as best as I can. Thankfully, most days I've been able to read. I've also got a couple of library e-audiobooks downloaded and a fairly mindless crochet project on the go, so I can listen and stitch most nights. I've been crocheting for over four decades and I think I could do it in my sleep--and it helps with the ache in my hands. 

Last week, I had a pile of books to pick up at the library, one of which was a novel that both Bill and I were looking forward to reading.

I read about it in a bookish blog post several months ago and knew I wanted to read it. I sent the post to Bill and he wanted to read it. The library didn't have it and I wondered whether it was published here yet, since the blog post I read was written by a US based blogger. I kept checking and a few weeks ago, there it was in the list of new books. I placed my request and it arrived surprisingly quickly. Since I had a stack of other books to read, Bill went first with this one. He was immediately disappointed, but hoped it would pick up for him. It didn't. He grumbled about the book a little as he was reading and finally gave up at around the halfway point. I immediately took it, started reading, was hooked, and after a couple of hours was beyond halfway. By last night, I was deciding between going back to the book and finishing it or listening to some of my audiobook and crocheting. I chose the latter and finished this book early this afternoon. I loved it. 

The book is narrated by Nonie (Norah) who lives with her sister, Bix, her father, and assorted others who have created a community in New York's Museum of Natural History, in what they call The World as it Is, after climate change catastrophes. Nonie has a sixth sense about water and storms and keeps a logbook, excerpts of which are presented at the beginning of each section. These and her memories of stories her mother and others told her about The World as it Was give readers a sense of how the situation came to be what it is. As events unfold, it becomes necessary for Nonie, Bix, Father, and a family friend, Keller, to leave the home they've built in order to get out of the city and make their way to a farm jointly owned by Nonie's mother and aunt. Most of the book is about their journey, with memories filling in some of the backstory. 

This is my kind of book. People are thrust into new ways of life and have to figure things out. New societies and cultures are created. Lessons are learned. This is the kind of dystopian novel that I love. Perhaps this has something to do with my frequent puzzlement about people thinking that the way most of us in wealthy nations live will just go on and on, not being able to imagine anything else. In these novels, denial is no longer an option. At one point in the novel, Nonie's parents are telling her about a photograph of her mother on one of their last trips together before planes and cars were no longer in use. One of them commented that deep down they knew it would all end one day, but they tried to pretend otherwise. Bill said the book was too slow for his taste and that 'nothing happened.' After he set it aside, he found that many people who reviewed the book felt the same. I did not have that experience at all. I never felt things were moving too slowly plotwise. The pace felt quite appropriate, in fact. After all, in a world where electricity and motorized locomotion are no longer things, the pace of life will be slower. Also, the characters were dealing with new situations every day and trying to figure out new ways to do things. That doesn't happen at breakneck speed. As for nothing happening, I could not disagree more. Everything was happening. The ground they built their lives on was disappearing, both figuratively and literally. New communities were being built. People were dying. New people were being born. People tried to preserve knowledge as they could even as they were relying on old knowledge that previous generations had preserved for them. 

In any case, I thought the book was a page-turner and never felt like it got bogged down at all. I wanted to know what was going to happen. I was happy to immerse myself in both the plot and the writing. So there you have it. After waiting for months, Bill was very disappointed with this book while I thought it was definitely worth the wait!

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