Eating Crow: Of Revelry, Rain, and Radiators

So the weather is not the reason people come to Ireland. It rains here...a lot. Enough said. Pictures are worth a thousand words so here are some shots of the weather out the front of our house. Please note the "gorgeous" faux colonial pillars are not my idea of clever decoration; they came with the house...don't judge me.

On a drier note this little blog of mine has just gone over 1000 hits. I'm so popular! The numbers are probably skewed a little by my mom or other relatives checking the page every 10 seconds for new photos of their favourite golden haired toddler but I'll pretend it's about my snappy writing.

Will and I had a Hallowe'en party with our play group on Wednesday- he went as a tiger and I went as an over-tired, sarcastic, coffee addicted stay at home mom. So did all the other moms and a few of the dads. Copycats. Will was mortified that I dragged him into public with his tiger pj's on and didn't even want to get out of his stroller. After much bargaining, and once the sugar from the treats he munched kicked in, Will realised that being a tiger wasn't so bad after all. He thoroughly enjoyed pushing his little black balloon around in the doll's pram and judging everyone's costume. He loved the little girl dressed as Peppa Pig and went right up to her with a "Hi" and an "Oink".

Today we didn't get up to much as we had tradesmen over (for the 3rd time) to try to get this boiler system resuscitated. Today some brawny blokes came by to remove all the radiators from the walls (horrible, horrible dust behind them!) and flush the gunk out of them. They usually use this special machine to pump cleaner through the whole system but the plumbing in this house is crap (pun-tastic) and had they used the machine the pipes would have burst under the pressure. So instead of completely redoing the plumbing in the house our landlord opted for this much cheaper solution. Being a homeowner myself I can commiserate on the cost of an epic reno but we've never really been ones to put things off if they need doing. Anyways, the boiler still needs replacing but at least the rads are now full of hot water instead of warm rust.

The fellas that came by were very nice (like everyone else that I've met here) and were quick to ask all the important questions that we've become accustomed to: "Why did you move to Ireland?", "How long have you been here for?", "What kind of dog is that?" etc. They agreed that the house needs a little TLC but assured me that most of the houses in Ireland are in the same state, modern or not. One of the guys bought a newly built house in 2006 and it already needs repairs. Wowza. I'm grateful for the quality of our 1946 Fir house in Victoria as it is in much better shape than all the houses I've seen here so far. It's nice to know that it is waiting for us at home whenever this adventure ends.