No Mistletoe, Just Wine

Apologies for my absence. It's been a busy run-up to Christmas this year. Buying and sending presents, cleaning, shopping, prepping food, filling the freezer and all that goes with it. Oh, and the little thing called work, as well. With Mr S being gone over to the neighbouring island, I was kept busy on my days off getting everything ready.

Work got wrapped up nicely last Sunday and we headed off to Galway to our Christmas party. It was a successful night all round. Lots of happy smiles, plenty of good food and more than enough wine and other beverages. Having said that, my decision to wear magic knickers under my party dress (eBay purchase, for 15 euro) somewhat hampered my ability to enjoy the food to my stomach's full capacity. The famous knickers were bought in Penneys and I really wonder why would you spend any more than the €6.50 I did on them? I mean, I've seen them go for well over €30 in some shops, but these ones worked a treat and even after a wash and a spin in the tumble dryer they seem to be holding onto the magic just fine. I'll report back after the next time I decide to suck everything in and not eat for a night.

We had time to do some shopping on Monday after the party, I got a lovely coat in a¦wear (that I can't seem to find online to show you), cream tweed with a faux fur collar, €37.50 down from €80. A colleague got a coat in Oasis for €62 down from €125 (website says original price was €95, I wonder what that is all about?), apparently now is the time to shop for a nice, comfy coat.

Then, Tuesday night, it finally happened. Mr S came home!! Those were the longest five weeks of my life!But he's home now and we're both on holiday! I'm not going back to work until next Tuesday, Mr S will potter about at the hotel doing a few bits and pieces there but not until after Christmas.

I spent all day yesterday baking. I need to have my Finnish Christmas treats, and Mr S is more than happy to go along with that, to be honest I think he'd be equally happy with a pizza on Christmas day than a massive feast. Anyhoo, I made the traditional little star pastries (puff pastry with plum marmalade), gingerbread biscuits, mince beef and rice pasties and mince pies with a twist. The twist being that we don't really eat raisins, so I made the mincemeat filling using fresh and dried cranberries, apple and liberal amounts of port and brown sugar.

Everything is ready. The tree is up, decorations dotted around the house. Presents wrapped and under the tree, cards posted and received. There's food and wine in the house, all is peaceful and quiet. Let Christmas come!

To all of you and yours, a very happy, peaceful Christmas!

Keep It Local II

A couple of month ago I posted about the appalling lack of customer service I experienced while doing my shopping in two shops in the nearby town. If you want to refresh your memory, the post is here. I told you how I had emailed both shops and was waiting on response. They both did.

Shop A apologised profusely, gave me the whole "this shouldn't happen" and apologised again. What baffled me the most was the statement that this issue had been brought to their attention before and that they were "putting measures into place to deal with it". So I wasn't the only one to find myself leaving the shop feeling as if I was an inconvenience to their staff. I was surprised that they admitted to there having been more than one complaint about their staff. Surprised, but at the same time a little bit glad.

Shop B gave me the standard apology letter, assuring me this wouldn't happen again and wished I would continue to shop with them and that all their staff was trained to a high standard in order to provide excellent customer service. They told me that should I go back to their shop I would find my shopping experience only delightful.

After driving to the further away town once a week for my shopping for a month or so, I decided to give my local town another chance. Mainly because I needed to go to the bank and the beauty salon and didn't fancy driving to the other town for my food shop after my lovely, relaxing massage. So in I ventured to shop A.

Full of Christmas cheer and sweets, christmas puddings and fairy lights. The shop was, not me. Maybe the Christmas cheer had infected the staff as well, but I did think I was seeing an awful lot of smiles around. And the service was excellent. Had a nice chat with the man at the till, smiles all around and a big "Thank You" at the end. I spotted the woman who had served me the last time and prompted me to email the shop. She was serving another customer at the express counter and she was smiling! 

Shop B was an equally positive experience. No pushing of the shopping into the trolley to get customers out of the way; no broken bags of cat litter; no rush and no hurry. There was an item that they used to stock, but I was unable to find it this time. I was told they had stopped stocking it because of low sales in this branch but would be able to get it in for me from another branch if I wanted to do so. And all this done without sighing or rolling of the eyes.

After these to experiences I decided to bring my pennies back to my local town. I also emailed both shops to let them know I had seen a marked improvement in their level of customer service and that they had succeeded in convincing me they were indeed dedicated to improving their services. I feel that if I took the time to complain about bad customer service, I should take equal amount of time to thank them for good customer service. And seeing as I didn't name and shame these shops in my first post, I shall leave them anonymous in this one, too.

Grey Skies

Today has been bloody miserable, weather-wise. At around noon I decided I wasn't going to leave the house at all, there's no point in getting soaked. I started the day with a winning breakfast of bacon and fried eggs. And liberal amounts of coffee, of course. The cats kept me company for all of half an hour before racing into the bedroom and taking up their assigned corners of the bed and went to sleep. Lucky kitties.

I got all my shopping done yesterday; more than I needed if I'm honest but I am actually buying bits ready for Christmas as well in an effort to spread the cost over a few weeks rather than doing a mad dash at the shops on Christmas week. I picked up a few bottles of wine over the last couple of weeks, seems like every shop is doing some sort of a promotion. I'm going to try this one out soon, mainly because it was so cheap I'm struggling to believe it can be in any way drinkable. Having said that, in Italy we enjoyed some really nice wines that cost at around €2per bottle. So there may be hope for this little Australian Shiraz.

It was also pointed out to me that the lizard in the label bears an uncanny resemblance to my tattoo:

As far as my anti-social experiment is going, all I can say is "So far, so good". I haven't started climbing the walls yet, I've not been reduced to tears watching the John Lewis Christmas ad nor have I been trying to converse with the cats. Yet. It's been a week and a bit and I must say I'm holding up remarkably well. That being said, I feel I must point out that I've spent precious little time at home, so maybe I haven't just yet realised that I am home alone. I even watched a scary movie by myself the other night, and didn't feel the need to sleep with our trusty baseball bat beside my bed.

This next thing is going to annoy some of you; I've started my Christmas shopping already. And for once, it's Mr. S's present that I got sorted first! He's so difficult to buy for, I'm usually picking his brain for weeks and weeks before an epiphany hits me as to what to get him. The epiphany-fairy must've been doing his rounds early this year, that's one present out of the way and dealt with. As for the rest, I know what I'm getting everyone else, so there's really no big panic. Now all I have to do is get off my arse, get down the shops and buy the bloody things. No panic at all.

The work Christmas party date and venue were announced the last day as well. Cue dress panic. I've had a quick look on asos.com and came to the conclusion that most of the dresses are ridiculously short! I don't like my legs all that much and parading them around in a teeny tiny dress in front of all my work mates isn't something I'm planning on doing no matter how much Morgan's Spiced Rum you pour down my throat. I do have a dress already that I haven't worn all that much at all that I could fall back on if all else fails. Still, the temptation to buy something new may prove too much to resist...

I'm off to fight the greyness outside with a nice big fire, some candles and some bad telly. And a drop of wine.

Best Laid Plans...

I should've known better than to plan a whole Christmas party outfit without as much as visiting a shop. I had it all planned, didn't I? The dress, the shoes, the accessories. And a cunning plan to hit the shops in carefully planned order to maximise my haul in record time. All of that went out the window when we got to the first scheduled stop, Marks & Spencer where I had planned to get the dress. The dress that I had drooled over and fantasised about for a number of days. Though titties to me, they didn't have it.

So there was very little point in going for the cute ankle boots to go with the non-existent dress. Plan B: drag myself and Teresa into every possible shop in Galway city trying to find a nice dress. And shoes. And accessories. Hi-Ho!

Tried on a  John Rocha dress at Debenhams, it was very unusual and could've been dressed up nicely with some purple tights and boots, but it was really more summery than christmassy. New Look had a nice black playsuit but it was way too short for me to enjoy the evening without being very conscious of my legs. While in New Look I had a quick peek at the shoes and quickly noticed the boots I had spotted online weren't there, either. So much for that part of my brilliant plan. Onwards and upwards!


Penneys came up trumps. Again. I found two dresses, coming to a grand total of €41. Two dresses. For €41! Brilliant. One is a dark blue embellished collared, ruffled, sleeveless dress. The other one is super-cute, wool blend, check pattern, A-line dress. Dorothy Perkins supplied boots to go with both. Unfortunately, after getting home I realised the grey ones aren't a pair. One is size 5 and another one is a size 6. I rang them today and they told me they were really sorry about the mistake and went to make sure they had the boot there for pick up. I explained to the very helpful Rebecca that I don't live just around the corner, that it is in fact over an hour's drive away for me to get there and to do so just to pick up a single boot seemed a bit too much. She was very understanding when I suggested that they could send out a courier to deliver the right boot in exchange for the one I got given by mistake. She told me she'd get back to me. She rang me back in about half an hour to ask me if it would be possible for me to pick the boot up from Oughterard (that's about half an hour away from where I live). One of her staff lives there and was offering to drop the boot off at the petrol station and arrange for me to drop mine off there for her to collect. Random but helpful. Courier would've been a feasible option had it not been a week before Christmas. They would've gotten out here sometime next week. When I'm in Finland.

Dressed for Distress

It seems to be that time of year again. Time for the Christmas Party. Ours is being very generously organised by our boss at one of his hotels, free of charge to all staff members. Pretty good deal considering so many companies have cancelled theirs. In fairness we had a very good season, so it seems only appropriate to treat everybody to a night out after all this years' hard work. And work hard we did, but it has been well worth it I must say. Let's see if I still feel the same way after Monday's monster do at my work but more on that later. Let's just say I have so many paper cuts, hay fever and other hamper-related injuries I think I need to take some time off just to recuperate before I start again.

Anyway, Christmas Party. And I have no idea why I've felt the need to capitalise Party, either. The usual panic has started to settle in. The Dress Issue. I have a vague idea what to wear, I've even found this lovely dress on Marks & Spencer website and was thinking of wearing that with black tights and grey ankle boots. The problem is that I don't know if they have that dress in the M&S in Galway, so I really don't want to get my hopes up too much. I had planned on going to Galway on a little shopping spree on Tuesday with Teresa, but the roads were still like an ice rink, we postponed it to next week. Another possible issue is that I will end up looking like a bag of spanners once I put the dress on. Has happened before, folks, just to let you know. Morto. I found the perfect pair of boots in the New Look website but once again, it's the UK website and I have no way of knowing for sure whether of not they stock them in Ireland before I actually get there. Please please please, get your asses into gear and get your Irish sites up and running, I have a credit card that is in need of abusing!!

So, ideally I would walk into the shops, pick up those items and they would look good, yes? Obviously the dress needs accessorising, I'm thinking sparkly black and silver; clutch, belt, and all the cheap jewelry Penneys has to offer! That is the plan and the ideal situation for me to find myself in. However, these things usually never go to plan so I need a plan B. Which I don't have. So the "bag of spanners" may well be the look I'm going for on the night. I suppose after a copious amount of Morgan's Spiced rum and coke (the drinking kind, not the snorting kind) I won't care what I look like. There's also going to be karaoke, I hear. Awesome.

There are a few people at work I haven't seen on a night out. I cannot wait to see our Finance Manager let her hair down. She recently told me she'd been to a christening and had had a good 20, maybe 25 bottles of beer on the night. She'd gone home, gotten to bed and felt the room spin faster and faster as she laid down on the bed, beside her snoring husband. She had quite unceremoniously leaned over the side of the bed, gotten sick on the floor and flopped back down thinking to herself "I'll clean that up tomorrow". She woke up the next morning to a particularly hideous hangover and a smell wafting up from beside her bed so bad, she nearly got sick again. The smell was in no way made any better by the fact that the house has under-floor heating. I'm gagging as I'm typing this.

This was just to illustrate the type of people we're gathering together into a secure hotel environment, plying them with free food and wine, and making them sing karaoke. My boss said she wants cameras and camera phones banned from the party. She didn't particularly like the photos I put up on Facebook last year. They weren't even that bad, if I'm truly honest. Majority of them was taken early on in the night when everyone was still in a relatively clear state of mind. At least my drunken singing and trying to talk Kevin the Barman into joining me was never caught on any type of a camera. Not even a CCTV. I checked.

All Things Cheesy

Having just realised my last few posts were me moaning about work, I have decided to steer clear of that subject for a while.

Had a flying start to the day today. Mr S had kindly switched off my alarm this morning, thinking I'd set it accidentally seeing as it is my day off. Too bad he'd forgotten I had a massage appointment at 11.30. Woke up at 10.30 and had a mad dash from the coffee machine to the shower to the wardrobe and into the car. I'm sure I looked a real state arriving at the salon. Not to worry, I felt so relaxed just getting under the towel and waiting for my trusty masseuse to arrive I think I fell asleep just a bit.

I baked a cheesecake yesterday because I promised a friend I would feed her today. She's not answering her phone which is either due loss of signal because of the stormy weather or another one of her electronic lifelines has died. Main problem now being the presence of cheesecake in my fridge. It's a whole cheesecake and I'm very very tempted to bury my face in it. In case my friend resurfaces at some stage I better leave her a slice. I also saw Mr S's lusty looks thrown in the direction of the cheesecake this morning, maybe best save him some, too. Although he very thoughtlessly ate all the Snickers ice cream from the freezer the last night, not to mention last week's Viennetta "incident". Maybe I'll just have the whole thing to myself, then.

I've booked flights to go to Finland for my cousin's wedding in July. I now face the eternal "what to wear" problem. Times like these I could easily turn an advocate for nude weddings, funerals and christenings. I have found some nice dresses online but I really need to try things on properly and for some reason the delivery times are anything up to 4weeks. I cannot possibly buy something, wait for a month to get it, try it on and then realise it doesn't suit me which leaves me with a wasted month out of my shopping time and the frustration of being back to square one after having thought I had everything sorted.

This Friday marks the May Day celebrations in Finland. Before strictly speaking a communist holiday, the students of Finland have since adopted the day as their own. Parties usually kick off on 30th of April with plenty of white hats (you get one when you graduate from secondary school) teamed with some ridiculous outfits wandering around cities and towns en masse. Picnics, song, dance and plenty of drink all night long. As a nations, Finns don't do lunch as such. Apart from 1st of May that is. Many a May Day I have trekked to a friend's house or a restaurant or some other establishment serving food (and preferably alcoholic beverages) sporting my white hat and a hangover the size of Greenland just to take part in May Day Lunch. I miss that and can't quite understand how the Irish have missed out on an opportunity to get sloshed and then go and have a boozy lunch the day after. I should probably start a petition to declare May Day a national holiday in Ireland, too. That, and Midsummer.

I really miss Finnish booze holidays...

Comfort and Joy

Oh, my poor neglected blog. I'd be lying if I told you I've been busy doing things as I've done very little since my last post. Right now I'm halfway through a stretch of 6 days off and I am being decidedly lazy. And being lazy has never been easier.

First of all, the weather. It has been truly horrid over the last week or so. Gale force winds, horizontal rain teamed up with sub-zero temperatures don't exactly encourage me to venture out of the house. If I can hear the wind in the morning when I wake up, I find that an excuse enough to roll over and go back to sleep for a bit.

Second of all, Mr S is still away, so I have nobody to kick me out of bed. Or to come up with things to do. I am missing his presence, I really am but the fact that I can just arse about in PJs all day long doing nothing is really quite wonderful.

I don't think I could do this any other time of year, to be honest with you. It's something about the long dark nights that make me want to stock up on good books, red wine, bread and cheese and just ride it out until spring. The only thing stopping me from doing this is Christmas.

Yes, THAT C-word. I hate Christmas shopping. Really hate it. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I mean, who likes going into over crowded shops, which always have their air-conditioning set to "inferno" for some reason, so as you walk in from the cold air outside, you're met with a balmy heatwave. You end up taking off your hat, gloves, scarf and opening your coat, and filling your hands with your own clothes even before you've started shopping. The heat in the shops makes me very irritable and tired of the whole experience before it's even started. This really isn't helped by the hordes of stressed out fellow shopper, 70% or whom seem to have a cold or a flu judging by the amount of sneezing and coughing around me.

For a season entirely focused around joy and cheer, people are very very rude around Christmas. People out shopping bump into you, knock you in the back with their trolleys, push their way through you to get to the perfect Christmas present just out of arm's reach. All this done either accidentally or on purpose, never once have I heard an "I'm sorry" uttered not even over their shoulder on their way to plow through another unsuspecting victim.

So, this year I decided to avoid the shops at all cost. I shopped online instead. I bought all but two presents online, all of which are currently residing in our spare bedroom waiting to be wrapped and sent to family. The two presents I didn't get online however, were purchased the old-fashioned way. In a way of making up for such stress-free Christmas shopping experience so far, I headed out with my friend and her 4-month old baby boy.

I suddenly have new-found respect for all those harassed-looking mothers pushing prams and buggies around the shops around this time of year. I never realised how hard it was to do the simple things you normally do when you're out shopping by yourself. Take trying on clothes, for example. No fitting room is big enough for both you and the pram. How are you supposed to work that one out? Leave the door/curtain open so you can keep an eye on your little one while at the same time really defeating the purpose of using a fitting room at all. You might as well go and try the clothes on in the middle of the shop floor. Everyone is going to see your wobbly bits anyway.

It also seemed as if the shops were stocked up to the maximum capacity, thus making any space between the aisles/racks even narrower than usual. Getting through with a buggy required an impressive amount of maneuvering. It would've made any driving instructor swell up with pride, I'm sure.

And then there's the bathroom issue. If you need to go to the bathroom, what are you going to do with your baby? Leave him outside? All alone? In a world full of weirdos? I didn't think so. Seeing as all the cubicles are too small to take the baby with you, you end up using the wheelchair accessible bathroom. And to me, that seems like a completely acceptable option until I heard another friend of mine who had done just that tell me that on her coming out of the bathroom she was met by a very angry man in a wheelchair outside the bathroom telling her that "Having a baby is not a disability, it's a choice. You should be ashamed of yourself!" I don't know about you, but I thought that was a bit over the top.

In any case, I have all my Christmas presents bought in good time. With minimal stress. Until I remember someone I should've shopped for and never did. Thank god for internet!