Escape To The Emerald Isle

When some people get dumped, they eat lots of ice-cream, drink lots of wine, and girl gab with friends for hours on end... I myself do all of these things but only after fleeing to a foreign country. A constant character in my worldwide antics, Dancer Friend living over in Limerick asked me if I fancied a few days away. Since I had found myself with a weekend completely open to new opportunity, I took her up on her offer. I booked a flight to Dublin, packed my bags, and headed off to an island on which I always find magical rejuvenation. 

It was to be a low-key weekend chilling out in Limerick and enjoying some local fun. Dancer Friend's mother (whom I have known my entire life as well but not seen in a good decade) landed just a day or two before me, so it was a trio of ladies romping about. We spent the afternoon shopping around town, myself spending way too much money at my personal mecca, Penney's. Dancer Friend then had to go to, well, dance for a few hours so we were left to a bonding session ten years overdue. It was actually incredibly interesting to become reacquainted with a good friend's mother now that I am an adult. While there are still so many things about each other that remain the same, the dynamic of two adults catching up and sharing information over a bottle of wine borders on the twilight zone, though a jovial one. Eventually, our common link reappeared and, along with her roommate, we galavanted off to a lovely dinner and drinks.

The next day had a much stricter agenda. As always, we spent our Saturday morning meandering around the famous Milk Market. This is probably something I should do every weekend in Paris since there is no lack of open air bazaars in my fair city. Somehow, it never seems to have the same appeal, possibly due to the accent. We then ventured off for my first ever bus tour around Limerick. Bus tours have their advantages and disadvantages. You can see a lot in a short time and get some historical commentary to boot, but you cannot stop and take pictures whenever you want and as the weather in the British Isles is notoriously fickle, we absolutely got rained on for a spell. 

It was then time to accompany Dancer Friend to Shannon airport, where she was scheduled to pick up a rental car for herself and her mother to go road tripping the following week. What was meant to be an hour or so task ended up turning into three hours. Europeans just don't generally have the same sense of urgency as crazy Americans do, and for whatever reason the three parties in front of us all took one million years to collect their cars. Side note: The three or four other car rental companies next to us were literally EMPTY.

By the time we got back to the apartment, we showered, cooked dinner, drank a little wine and only had enough time and energy for a quick drink out on the town. Dancer Friend and I flew solo (flew duet?) on this one, leaving Mother Dancer Friend at home. It was my time to catch up with my dear friend, vent a little about recent events, and blow those damn emotional cobwebs away. 

The next morning our little trio shared a home cooked breakfast before heading off on our separate ways. A bus, an airport, a quick flight later, and I found myself back in Paris at last. Along the way, I had the good luck to see one of the most brilliant sunsets I have ever witnessed in the sky. Despite my anxiety about flying and despite any lingering nostalgic melancholy, absolutely nothing beats a stunning sunset above the clouds. 

The final of the European Football Championship took place that night, and even though France lost in the end, it ended up taking me triple the amount of time to get home and I can't say my recent affinity for sports was able to withstand the trauma. Regardless, I think the fact that I went to Ireland one week after the beginning of my recent relationship and then again one week after the end was the cosmic cleanse I needed to go from murky rock to shiny sparkly gemstone.

And It Doesn't Include A Post-it!

The dating game is one of those treacherous pursuits of risk that tend to leave us all the product of Medusa's stare. We fight, we conquer, we fight, we lose, we ultimately find our innards made of stone. Or at least we hope we do, because being a female with a real human heart, for lack of a better word, blows. I'll be quite honest with you. I am an emotional lady who prizes love above all, harbors romantic notions of magical mystery, and still to this day thinks that some guy somewhere will honestly believe I am a Unicorn. 

Sadly, for most of us, such declarations are considered a massive faux pas. Even at the ripe old age of 35, we must flirt, act coy, circumvent emotion, and hope like hell that no one tunes into the fact that we actually care. I, for one, have always refused to abide by such rules. You love out loud or you just don't love at all. But after heartaches and heart breaks, that stoney exterior makes its way into our core no matter what we do. It will not triumph. We shall prevail. But we balance on the edge of hope and distrust as if our life depended on it.

I was dating a guy for the past five months. It was great because I thought he was sweet and kind and cared about me and my feelings. There were things I wasn't sure of in the long-run, particularly because when you wait for the right fit for so long, you can't help but seek out the top of the line. On the other hand, the older you get, the more willing you are to compromise and make excuses and think, you know what? A truly good guy is far superior to a paradigm of perfection. 

But sometimes things going amiss can't be helped. Little red flags appear and shifts take place and text messages go unanswered. Because we live in an age of technology when communication that was already hard to unravel, is now impossibly buried in a torrent of media. We all hope that small glimmers of light will allow our silly humans souls to grow and mature and compete against the rage of the machine. I suspect it is truly possible when we take a moment to breath a little oxygen. But more often than not, we forget to inhale because we are staring at our phones instead of into each other's eyes.

On occasion I pull a little SATC action. I am a single gal in my 30s, living in a fabulous city with fabulous friends and a fabulous life. So when my date the other night was canceled via a text message breakup, I couldn't help but channel Carrie Bradshaw. I sincerely hope that we never come to a point in our evolution when technology one hundred percent prevents our interaction. A la the film Wall-E, I cannot wish for an existence in which we stare at computer screens without really feeling, either physically or emotionally. Synthetic anything is the worst, and even more so when it comes to the ways of the heart. 

As Carrie once said, "There is a good way to break up with someone, and it doesn't include a Post-It!" Or in my case, a text message. Take heed, my fellow soul-lovers. I am no paragon. I forget, I ignore, I may even abuse or insult. I distrust and I hold back and I make mistakes. But I also love and I try and I sure as hell feel. So allow yourselves to grow, to listen, and to love: Out loud and to each other. That is what separates us from the machine.

Bubble Bubble Toil And Trouble

For the past couple of years, I have fancied myself a runner, partly because running is cheap and partly because there are so many ridiculous events to partake in. I've done the Color Run twice, I did my first 10k dressed in a Santa Claus costume, and I plan on "running" a wine marathon dressed as a fairy tale or legend in September. So when I heard about the so-called Bubble Run taking place north of Paris there was little doubt I would have to attend.

Exposition... It was apparently the first time this event would be happening in my fair city. It was to be a 5k, with various stops and an abundance of bubbles. From the pictures on line, it looked a bit like a Winter Wonderland but since it was taking place in mid-June I hoped for better weather (not that we have had much of a summer so far!). The fact that it was its premier commencement, however, was made painfully obvious when I went to pick up my bib and those of the others in my group. Though I arrived 15 minutes early on a Friday afternoon on the very first day of registration, there was a line out the door already waiting. If this had been the Color Run, there should have been no cause for concern. But since they ultimately had only two people processing participants, most of which had numerous bibs to pick up, it ended up taking over an hour to get our swag. Fortunately, I had recruited various friends and the motley crew we finally got together turned into a truly fun group to run with.

We all took the RER and met at a park north of Paris on the day in question. I had never been to this area of the banlieue, but I was very impressed with the greenery we walked by. At first glance, the staging area seemed sort of disorganized but we finally made our way in without a problem. Most of my friends checked their bags in the designated area (foreshadowing!) but I had done other runs and knew it was safer to keep my small bag on hand. The only downside of this plan was that it absolutely impeded my pace, since the backpack kept whacking me on the back as I jogged along.

After a tour of the cascading bubbles shooting out of various founts, we were finally ready to begin. Now, as I stated previously, the park was really adorable, filled with trees and greenery galore. The facts that I had gone out drinking the night before and my allergies have been on par with the plague the past few months, however, definitely took their toll. Despite our sporadic pauses to run through avalanches of foam, I was not having an easy time of it. At one point I had to stop and use my inhaler and I definitely needed to walk far more than normal. I was also highly misled because I kept expecting some bubbly phenomenon to occur every kilometer when in reality it was definitely not the case.

Still, by the end of the route I was happy I had come. We wafted through an ocean of bubbles as foam rained down from above. Very soapy, very wet, but also very fun. When we had finally had our fill of froth, we rounded up and got in line to collect our checked bags. 

Climax! We waited in line for....EVER. The mind-boggling disorganization mystifies me to this very day. They had apparently collected bags so quickly and thrown them into shelves of each one THOUSAND that they were complete mayhem to retrieve. Two of our group, good samaritans that they were, made their way to the front of a massively haphazard line as the real rain began to fall. The other two shared my tiny umbrella in the distance as we waited... and waited... and waited. At long last, our friends began calling and texting because they were able to regain their own bags but the other two were MIA. In the end, they had to climb into the storage area themselves and found that one bag was placed in the completely wrong group of numbers and was impossible to distinguish without the eye of the owner.

Denouement... As the clouds disappeared, we sauntered out of the park, soggy and definitively worse for wear. It took us three attempts to find a restaurant that could seat us at which point we were finally able to sit, have a cocktail, and fill our ravenous tummies. Final critique? It was a worthy venture filled with promise, but whoa pony those witches gotta get their sh@#$t together.