Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Hey look at two incredible things I did! My babies Sometimes it is hard to forget the incredible things which I have done. The sons, for a start are amazing. I could have done with daughters, but hey, the universe gave me sons and they are wonderful. I have always lived my life with the thought of death at the back of my head. Say if I died tomorrow, if today was a good day to die, would I die with no regrets? It seems a tallish order, but you know, it is a good way of making decisions. It feels very easy now, these days. When I was younger, I had LOADS of energy. I don't think I felt I had to PROVE anything, it was more like having the agency to do things with an unlimited amount of energy. If i wanted to do it, I would just reach out and do it. If i messed up, it didn't matter because you know what, i had a great time doing it anyway. I never really felt that learning from my mistakes was a good place to start when you contemplated failure. To me there is no such t...

Aurelia! She is now almost 11! Shabu shabu Ikura! The best part of Planet Earth's cast Missing the food in Singapore - it doesn't happen very often Morning in Ireland. I am eating a soup I made, well accidentally made. Everyone else in the house is asleep. I slept earlier and can't sleep again. Jac called and so I answered the call. I started cooking before I knew it. It is hard to believe that something like sushi might not be available in ten years time because of the pollution of the seas. At least people are beginning to do something about plastic.

To Dublin and back, Grounds Day, circus school and lots of house cleaning. Yep, a weekend and a half it was. I was sooooo tired that I fell asleep in the car after I dropped Ghin off at circus school. Then when we got back, I did the shopping for school, followed by cooking dinner. Honestly, I have NO IDEA how I coped when the boys were babies. Cos, it was almost certainly ten times more difficult. I really need to get my health act together. I am eating waaaaaay too much meat and not exercising enough. I lead an active enough life, but I just miss running so much. I don't know what to do. And the garden is a total mess. It is really quite depressing. HOWEVER, on the plus side, I am still feeling a deep happiness, not this mad silly highness, and I am at peace with many things. It is great being in your late 40s. You don't sweat the small stuff AT ALL. Staying in the present is EVERYTHING. Sometimes I do this too much actually. I swear I have the retention capacity of som...

I was looking through some old blog posts and in 2014 my parents were here and we spent New Year's together in Connemara. We went to this wonderful hotel in Cashel and there we saw in 2015. My parents are amazing. They have given me the foundation to be the person I am. I am so so grateful to them for everything they have done for me. And I am so grateful that I recognise this now. Today, as I was driving over the hills back home to cook dinner and just spend the evening with the boys, just before Ghin got to football, I told the boys how happy I was. There is something quite freeing about being able to be happy in yourself - not really relying on anyone else for your happiness. I mean of course the boys make me very happy, but you know - to be happy, to be present in the moment, in that instant. This is what baffles me about most people. How come they can't be happy for the moment? Why do they suck all the happiness out of the moment? Why is it that if they can't be happ...

I am enjoying the silence now. Everyone is asleep and I have just come awake. The fridge is humming and the lights buzz softly. Apart from that, there is nothing. The silence is here. Sitting beside me. After all the hubbub of a busy day in school, the silence is like a long cool drink after a walk through a hot and dusty street. Do I miss Singapore? Not really. I don't. I also miss it less and less every year when I go back because there is nothing which I remember there. You can only miss something if it is still there I think. Maybe not. But no, not really. Not Singapore itself. My family and friends. I miss them. My sons though, they are so funny. Recently we figured out that they were indeed mostly Singaporean, hard as it is to believe. Peter is half American and half Irish, which makes them a quarter of each. Therefore they are mostly Singaporean. 50%, to be exact. This is something of great pride to Ghin, and even Oisin. They wear their ethnicity so proudly and I think, if...

It has been a very quiet day here today. After the storm of yesterday which didn't really affect us too much. It was windy, yes, but we certainly were not as badly hit as the South. The boys and I just stayed home and did things on the computer. Having cleaned the house this weekend, I didn't have very much to do. At some stage I cooked dinner and we had dinner. I went to bed around 9, as did Ghin. I can't believe it is already almost 2 pm. Something else happened yesterday. The exposing of Harvey Weinstein and the culture of abuse for sexual favours has gone viral, as they say. People all over the internet have come out to say that they were sexually harassed into having sex for favours in return. I have never ever suffered this. No one, in my entire life, has ever told me, have sex with me, or your career will suffer. Never. What has happened has been low level pestering like when you go to a club, but it has never happened in work. I have always been very good friends ...

I did many adulty type things yesterday. I bought lightbulbs, new pillows, I got a new beside lamp, which of course, doesn't work because there seems to be a part missing off it...must speak to Kevin about it. What else? I recycled the glass which hadn't only been recycled twice since I stopped driving, which means, that's a lotta glass, I bought some new mugs, salt, olive oil, and toilet paper. I had a lot of time to sit on the sofa and surf between The Hobbit: The Five Armies and another film - take your pick - cos I change channels when there are ads. I have to admit, for the first time when I was alone, I felt really really lonely. I know I didn't have to feel lonely, cos I could have phoned friends, called down somewhere... whatever, but I did. I did feel really really lonely. I soooo missed the boys. I have no idea how Peter does this for most of summer. It is just awful. But the boys want to be in Singapore for as long as possible, so we all stay in Singapore f...

Leaving a message for Ma, in cyberspace. I am fine. The boys are in England on a kendo tournament and I am alone at home. I will be doing lots of housework and getting things like more keys cut for Oisin and duplicates for myself. I will be recycling, tidying up and also going for a long walk. The car is doing very fine. It is quiet here. We are all good. I can't use the iPad because Ghin has taken the wire to England to him. So i can't charge the one I have at home. But I might buy a new on because for some reason the other iPad charger has gone missing. Very likely one of us charged the iPad somewhere and left it behind. We also need a new charge wire. The ones we have are too short. This means probably a trip to Tescos. Although Ghin has said he wishes there was a Sim Lim Tower in Singapore. The weather has been very good. Rainy sometimes, but never cold. Last night I went out with Emma and Ruth to see a concert - it was the Firebird by Stravinsky. It was very very good....

After almost six months of the drama with my licence, it is now over. I am now able to drive. Not being able to drive made me realise how utterly crap and expensive public transport is in Northern Ireland. It is ok if I want to do something relatively simple - and not even that really. But say if you want to get from This Side of Belfast to Holywood, it is nigh impossible. There is no service across the Ards Peninsula. There is also no internal bus service in Holywood. Holywood, an otherwise perfect place. Anyhow, the saga of the licence is over. It is also interesting how many people have had similar experiences with bureaucracy. Why is that? How come getting anything done with a functionary at the end of the line - or indeed in control of the line - is so fucking difficult? When I start my tale of woe, the listener will inevitably join in with a similar, if not worse tale of desperation and misery. It will always involve multiple trips and times and contacts with the authorities in...

It is weird the way you don't really see what you look like You ever see yourself reversed, through the looking glass, as it were Yesterday, I was doing what I do everyday - teaching and looking after the boys, which includes cooking and cleaning, etc... and then I thought about how I loved them - I mean the way in which I loved them. I didn't get any fulfillment from them loving me back - but fulfillment from the loving of them. Which is very different from the way I have loved my partners. From them, I sort of had a parent child relationship - I sort of looked for them the love which I expected from my parents. So the love had to come from them and if it didn't, then I would read it that they no longer loved me. Is that unreasonable? So I thought, I love Zen, the cat and the boys, not because they show affection for me, but because they deserve that kind of love. And from our partners we don't in general expect this kind of love. We expect the giving and receivi...

I spent a really wonderful weekend with the boys. We hung out a bit, we talked. I cooked here and there and I cleaned the house and did loads of laundry. Then I promised myself that I would write every morning and go for a run at 6 am every day too. These things are important, to keep myself rooted here. To start once again. Yesterday when I blogged, it felt very good. Very good. I am starting to write again. I am starting from a different place though. Where it was first full of nerves and demands, now when I write, it is different. It is from a place of confidence. I know who I am and I know what I write. I am starting to work on something - it has to do with my love of mythology and much of what I have studied over the past few years on esoteric knowledge. I am currently reading "The Flaming Door" - it is about the mission of the Celtic Folk Soul and encompasses much of Celtic mythology and the role it has played in the development of human consciousness. It i...

See that shirt I am wearing? I bought it in in Ralph Lauren in 1989.Still have it. Matched my hair. Time for a BATH!!!! Sooooo.... i hoovered the house. OH MY GOD!!!! Why did I take such a long time to do it? I had bascially been putting it off until today for about five weeks and now I have done it. I then coloured my hair, did housework and then proceeded to fall asleep. What a great sleep that was. FFS. Then I got up, cleaned somemore and then went for walk to buy groceries with Ghin. It was rather lovely. The weather was cool and pleasantly so and we chatted on the way there. Oisin had just come home from a party in Helen's Bay. He had gone out yesterday and I said, please don't drink too much and he said, ok. What is the limit. I said, I trust you. Decide what is good for yourself. And so he came home and said, he had drunk nothing. I have done my classroom planning and now I am ready for having a hot bath and then for bed. Early bed. I have decided that I CAN ...

It is almost mid October - where does it all go to? My driving licence finally arrived. It has been a painful and annoying lesson about dealing with bureaucracy. The final step will be to get the licence to the courts and the points put on it, and finally insuring myself. Then it the entire saga will be resolved. It was interesting that yesterday I accidentally run into Ghin's ex-teacher who I met when I was stopped by the police. When I get home later, I find that the licence was on my doorstep. It was like perfect coincidence. Like some kind of story had come to an end. I took the bus with Ghin yesterday. It is always very chilled when we take the bus. There is ample time for talking and chatting and sharing the world around us. The small conversations we have about everything under the sun. These are precious moments, and there is a part of me, which steps outside to say, this is wonderful. As the days become darker and the nights drawn in, there is a sense of comfort too....

Life is currently harrying us from one weekend to the next. I looked at the last entry and it was during last weekend. Well, last Friday, and before I have known it, it is now this Friday. In between that there has been many many lessons taught, people spoken to, people seen to, life to be learned and people loved. There have been tears split, and tragedies... I love the way in the classroom, we are learning about the origins of words. Today we started with a few new Latin words. Wrath we have learned through the Aenead - irae. And today we learned about Lucius Tarquinius Superbus - superb meaning arrogant and proud. Then we did geometry - the square and we will next week start with ratio and percentage and learn how to expand a design using ratio. It just makes sense you know. And today when I stopped the story of Tarq Superbus and how Brutus takes over, I had to save the rest of the story for tomorrow. When I stopped, the class went, that was INTERESTING. Please, don't stop. ...