I've Lost the Plot

It's Sunday afternoon and hubby is yet again sleeping off a night shift. I'd like to take the kids swimming or something to give him some peace and quiet but it's pissing rain and the wind is howling as it blasts between the houses. Not great weather to wait for a Dublin bus in.

It's times like these that I want to buy a car. There are several reasons why we haven't done so, all of which come down to money. It's not that we can't afford a car. It's that we can't afford a car and the oodles of travelling that we promised ourselves we'd do while we're on this side of the pond.

In the first two years we were here, we did get around quite a bit. We went to the west coast of Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and I went to Portugal. Last year, we went to the south of Ireland and then hubby's mom got married so we spent the rest of our vacation time and money on our trip to Canada. Somehow that trip seems to have shifted something in our collective psyche. It's as if, suddenly, we've decided that we live here now. That this is home. And everyone knows that once you settle, your life less ordinary becomes a lot more... well, ordinary.

This year, for example, we are going to a family wedding in Wales in July which hubby wants to extend into a two week vacation. Again with the family weddings. It's not that I don't love hubby's family, they are a wonderful bunch of people. It's just that we could (and would) be going to this wedding had we not come to Ireland. Therefore, I can't figure out why I'm here, living in a rented house with nothing to call my own (except of course, my tv licence), if I'm going to travel exactly as I did when I was at home in Canada where I had a great job, a house and two cars.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put my raincoat on and trudge across the village to the grocery store and get something to cook for dinner.