Next Stop New York

Jenna, My Psychic

There are a million ways to avoid work when you're self-employed. Actually, with the Internet factored in, more like a billion.  In fact, the essential skill for self-employed work-at-home types is avoiding all those ways to avoid work.  But, alas, sometimes, you succumb.  

And so it is that I acquired a psychic.

It started out as a somewhat excusable diversion from writing, or polishing up the resume, or scouring job sites, or contacting contacts.  I was perusing the Washington Post online.  I can almost always rationalize reading the Washington Post online as a business-related activity.  Many of my clients are in Washington.  I need to keep up with what's happening.  I need to toss around the latest political news and gossip as though I've been attending every modish Georgetown soiree (not that I ever attended a Georgetown soiree when I actually lived in D.C.). 

Wandering off into the comics section is a bit less excusable.  The Washington Post, alone among serious newspapers, has three pages of comics. The tie between politics and comedy is too obvious to belabor. Still. Some of those comic strips are quite topical. Almost required reading for the true Washingtonian.

Clicking on the horoscopes is almost definitely a step too far.   

The Loneliness of the Lidl Checkout Line

Timing is everything at Lidl.  And timing is also completely random at Lidl.  While there never seems to be a crowd in the store (we're all solitary wanderers down those long, long aisles, with our big, big carts) you can find a line 15 carts deep when it's time to check out.  Or, no one.

Yesterday, it was no one.  Ha ha!  No waiting! These little triumphs of the day.  But seconds after I sailed my cart right up to the cash register, I realized I was in trouble.  I was on my own.  I had no unloading time.  I was under pressure.  That kind of unspoken social pressure to get your goods on the belt and checked out as fast as possible.  The race was on.

Fire on the Mountain

Spring or something like it, a respite, a surprise break in the windy winter greyness, opens up randomly in February, giving us still, sunny, maybe even warmish days.  Unexpected days. Suddenly you're aware of the birds (perhaps because you can actually hear them when the gales die down), and mud, and if there's not a tinge of green yet, there's a feeling of green.  You can relax, stretch, walk outside, breathe deeply. And immediately choke on a lungful of acrid smoke.  Because the mountain is on fire.  

Yes, it's that annual Kerry tradition, lighting the gorse every time the day is fine and the air is still, blanketing townlands (and last week the entire town of Dingle) under hazy smoke for hours, forcing closed windows and doors on the very days you want to fling them open, and threatening buildings and people as the fires inevitably go out of control.  Last year a friend had to leave her house with her family as a fire lit by one of her neighbors crept ever closer.  This year (and every year) a farmer was killed when the fire he lit went out of his control.

These fires are legal.  That is, they are legal until the 1st of March, and if they are under control.  It's hard to see how any of them are under control. And here in Kerry, they're lit well after the 1st of March.  They're lit anytime, really, if the wind is down and the day is fine.