“What news from the Waffle Christmas?” I hear you ask anxiously. You have been consulting this website daily in hopes of an update. And, then again, perhaps not.
Well, Michael spent Christmas morning in tears as he got nothing he liked from Santa. He went to a lot of trouble to write a list including items such as a “sleep bomb” and a “spy plane” and, of course, “an x-box” but he didn’t get any of them. Great was his wrath. Alas. On the plus side, his brother and sister were quite pleased with their gifts.
On St. Stephen’s Day, we went orienteering in the Dublin mountains. This turned out to be a poor choice for reasons which are, I think, abundantly clear from the photographs below.
On the 27th we went to Cork where the boys got an X-box. We didn’t see them for the remainder of our time in Cork as they spent it on the couch wielding virtual light sabres.
We returned to Dublin on December 30 with the two boys and the x-box. Herself stayed in Cork for a couple of days bonding with her Cork relatives.
I went into the office on December 31 and the place was like a morgue. I cannot believe how much work I got done. I was delighted with myself. Mr. Waffle said that I was on a bureaucratic high when he dragged me out at 6.15. Very kind friends had a new year’s eve dinner party where we stayed until nearly 4 in the morning (and we were the first to leave). Mr. Waffle drove to his parents’ house to collect the two boys in the morning and I was able to sleep in. I still had to go to bed at 9 the next two nights. I am, frankly, not as resilient as I once was.
As a reward for reading this far, may I refer you to a rather more entertaining tale of Christmas celebrations from a monastery? The whole world is on the internet, really.
Have you any good new year resolutions? I have none. I feel that I can never successfully top my January 2011 resolution so have given up. That’s the spirit, I think you’ll agree.
My resolution is the same this year as for every one of the last, say, ten years, which is finally to learn time management – by which I mean to learn to be on time. I once went on a time-management course (possibly at the recommendation of my boss) and realised immediately I was on the wrong course when we were all asked to draw a pie chart splitting up our week into its main uses of time and we had to include a segment on ‘me time’. My me time was about a third of the week; everyone else’s was around 1%. We then spent the rest of the course learning how to award ourselves more me time, whereas I just wanted to know how not to miss my bus every morning and to remember to take my sandwiches. It was in-house training, so even it it had been on (my) topic the lessons would surely have been limited. Of course, the more I remake this resolution the more I’m aware I’ll never achieve it.
Happy New Year!
Well, these things are cyclical. I’m at the point in the cycle where I think resolutions are overrated and a waste of time (translation: I haven’t kept my resolutions the last couple of years, so instead of berating myself I blame the concept of resolutions, see?), so I haven’t made any and don’t intend to. Hopefully my attitude will improve by next year. Feel free to join me in being a curmudgeon for this year, though.
Happy New Year, by the way! (No subtext of bah humbug, promise.)
Oh Praxis, this is very funny. Resolve to come to Dublin in 2013. Much better than trying to manage time.
Thank you MT, same to you.
Kara, we are not curmudgeonly, we are just mature and have grown to accept our abilities and limitations etc. etc. Happy new year!
Last year I resolved to make bread, which proved an excellent resolution and fun to keep, but this year I am resolving for the umpteenth time to get back to regular running, and I fear it is doomed from the start. I’ll probably be joining the curmudgeon/mature group in February.
We will see you in February, Dot, or maybe next January with a new love of running?