As of September 30 (but I just got the certificate today), I am IRISH. I have dual citizenship. I can get a passport, vote, and properly bitch about this country because I BELONG here :-).
It’s amazing. You never think about getting citizenship in another country, at least I didn’t. It’s really a wild feeling.
Up in Dublin today, I was hunting around for a place to sit down and read my mail while eating lunch. Could’ve gone with the Subway Internet Cafe (yup, Subway made it to Ireland). But I thought I’d try lunch at the Clarence Hotel since E’s parents ate there and liked it, if I remember correctly. I’d seen it in a list of wireless hotspots in Dublin. The fabled U2-Bono-TheEdge hotel seen in their Beautiful Day video is reportedly an attraction for tourists and fellow stars. I can certainly say that the fellow at the reception desk was really nice and works hard to help you, particularly when the bartender tells you there’s no wireless Internet access but reception says there is. heh. Not free, of course, for 1 hour: 6 pounds sterling aka 8.55 Euro aka $11.38 US. After lunch he appeared in the bar to check that I’d successfully connected, and asked again who had told me they didn’t have access so he could make sure they knew the right answer. He’s good at his job.
For lunch, you have an assortment of traditional pub grub and then a Daily Dish—for Monday, an Irish Stew with Guinness bread. Stew was okay, but not amazing. Kinda bland flavor, though I’d love the bread recipe. The bar had maybe two other tables with anyone at them. I didn’t look in the restaurant, since I knew I was already splurging for lunch and it’d be ridiculous to consider what a restaurant meal here probably costs.
With an empty bar, I’m not sure why my equally empty pint glass has been left without intervention (regardless of whether or not I would drink any more having finished my lunch). Maybe they’ve been yelled at by customers with laptops enough that they don’t dare interrupt?
Anyway, all together a decent enough lunch but nothing to write (much) in your blog about. One review came up with a fun play on words: Where the Sheets Have No Stains.
Even though he falls asleep in his own bed, just about every night our 3 year-old wakes up somewhere between 10pm and 1am to come into our bedroom, climb over me, and snuggle down between us. Many a morning we’d wake up to find him there, neither E nor I with any memory of his arrival.
As comforting as it is to feel his warm little body cuddling up to us, I think he’s forcing us to come up with a strategy to make him opt for his own bed more often. The last few nights a combination of accelerated feet swinging out of nowhere, “Dad I wanna go downstairs,” and head-butts have made us get little sleep. It’s as if he were 6 months old again. If he slept through the night in a civil manner, he’d be more than welcome. But our kidneys and heads can’t take much more of the abuse.
Last night I think we can count perhaps 3 hours of real sleep. I’m up at 6 today while E sleeps in, and this afternoon I expect I’ll crash for a couple of hours to be in even close to a decent mood for the evening.
There’s plenty about a young P that we’ll miss in a few years, seriously regretting not keeping a more active journal of his funny quirks, new discoveries, and happy moments. We’ll lament our poor memories, knowing for any one tidbit we kept we let a dozen disappear forever. Yet somehow I suspect this random sleep deprivation isn’t going to be as quickly forgotten. 🙂
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