Je suis Irlandaise

I am off on holidays this weekend. Since I started working after college I have not taken 2 full weeks off and this time I will be away for 16 whole days! I am really looking forward to it. I am going to spend time in the French Alps with my beautiful nephew, my sister and brother in law, his parents and my parents. What a crew! I'll either go crazy in 3 days or stay forever! I'm finishing the vacation with a sojourn in Paris.
How I love Paris. I have been visiting Paris on and off through my whole life. My first time there I was 7 and I went with my parents. I refused to eat my hamburger because they didn't cook it enough! Then I went back as a dancer and gained entry to the performance of L'ecole de danse l'opera national de paris. The girls were so beautiful. I spent a summer there as a frustrated au pair when I was 18 and returned for a romantic getaway on my 22nd birthday. Paris has watched me grow up and I can't wait to show the city the woman I am now.

Happy Interlude

At Christmas this year we all sat around and talked about what 2006 would mean to us; what our hopes, expectations and fears would be for the coming year. I said that I just wanted to 'be' for a while. At that stage 2005 had brought so much turmoil and exertion on my behalf that I was tired. I wanted to sit back and take it easy, let it all sink in. Well that lasted all of 4 months and before you knew it I was back to making life changing decisions, over-analysing my life and my choices. So August 2006 finds me at the conclusion of another of these periods. I have spent the last 2 or 3 months pushing and probing to see what it is that really makes me tick; what gets me up in the morning and what would make an acceptable achievement for me in the next few months and years. The difference is that this time I have managed to reach a sort of calm acceptance and confidence in my choice that I don't remember feeling before. I am in a good place right now. I want to mark this event as something special. I want to remember in years to come that in August 2006 I was happy with who I am and where I am and where I'm going. Not that I'm complacent. I don't expect to stay here or to stop moving or seeking but just right now, for this interlude, I'm happy.

Adam

This is my beautiful nephew. How could you resist giving him anything he wanted!