Wry Vita - Marion Ryan's personal blog - blog designer, business coach, lawyer of attraction and good-enough mum

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

Have you ever started a project or business with great gusto, motivation and hope - only to realise that you'd completely misjudged the situation, your plan went belly-up and the best thing to do was to retreat back into your hole, hoping no-one would remember to ask you about that great success you'd been boasting about - rather prematurely as it turned out?

In Ireland, hurling is our national game.  And Tipperary, where I lay my hat, is called 'the home of hurling'.  No matter that I understand only the barest basics of the sport, what I can tell you is that it's fast, exciting and packed with adrenalin, commitment, focus and at least thirty pairs of strong hairy legs.

The game lasts 70 minutes.  Kind of.  Depends whether the ref remembers to look at his watch.  And on the score too of course.  Because if there's a chance...

Fun and Laughter on the Ski Slopes

I'm just back from a few days skiing and oh what fun I've had.

No, not because of the naked German men who hang out their 'wares' in the hotel spa nor because my prowess on the slopes has noticeably increased.  So what was it made this holiday so delightful?

For a start, I think it is particularly delicious to be a mum who has managed to bequeath five days of packed lunches, grumpy wake-up calls, fruitless sock searches and twice-daily school runs to hapless husbands who phone each other, unsure about their ability to survive so long without the respite of a few nocturnal pints.

And even though between us, we've hidden tiny gifts under pillows, left words of maternal encouragement pinned to kitchen corkboards, cooked chickens, frozen casseroles and stuffed wardrobes full of clean clothes, still - like the pain of childbirth - we have already forgotten our blood, sweat and offspring by the time we hit the N8 and the road to Dublin Airport.

To the Brave and Faithful, Nothing is Impossible

I'll start with a confession. 

What I know about the Rugby Union Heineken Cup, the final of which takes place tomorrow between Munster (Ireland) and Biarritz (France) at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, could be written on the back of a match ticket with enough room left over to write my Amazon Wish List.

The event would probably have floated right over my head were it not for Jake telling me the other day that "Friday is 'Red Day' and we all have to go to school wearing red clothes." 

Normally he gives me this sort of Important Information with ten minutes warning so getting three days notice was exhilarating and meant he got to go to school not just in red t-shirt and hoodie but clean red t-shirt and hoodie.

But amazing as that is, I want to talk about something of even more universal interest than the trials of being Jake's mother.

Only When I Laugh

Well, I'm back from my skiing trip - safe and almost sound.  No broken bones but lots of sore muscles, bruised ribs and a sore head - not from the gluwein but from an impromptu backward flip on the ice skating rink.

Despite a few aches and pains, what this holiday served up in abundance, apart from snow, was laughter.

Let There Be Snow

I was going to blog tonight about the 10% of the workforce who changed jobs last year in Ireland (though I imagine that percentage translates to the UK as well) and their reasons for doing so.  It's so not about the money.

But instead I've been loitering with intent on the world wide web, looking up the snow reports for Walchsee ("perfect powder snow" - but they would say that, wouldn't they?), checking out the latest ski goggles and wondering if there is any hotel apartment more perfectly situated than one above an Austrian Konditorei...