'How are your manholes?'

Last weekend we visited our friends, and over a takeaway we discussed our respective houses. They’re self-building a new house onto an old family-owned cottage, and we were giving them an update on ours. I recalled a conversation I’d had with my dad shortly after we bought our place, when he’d asked about its condition and the sewers:

“How are your manholes?”

They were already laughing before I told them my reply to his innocent question.

“I beg your pardon, but that’s a very personal question!”

They kept laughing, and I admitted I share the same sense of humor as my dad though he clearly hadn’t thought before asking his gay son and his husband that particular question!

Anyways, our friends live in Leitrim, but we visited Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, first and hiked Cuilcagh, the ‘Stairway to Heaven’, outside Enniskillen. We like to do something special on our wedding anniversary. Although we both felt a bit unfit, the weather was clear and the views were incredible. We then went underground to the Marble Arch Caves, which were close by, and I absolutely loved the experience. The stalactites and stalagmites, the different rock formations, and the flowstone were really cool. It was a really lovely way to spend time with my husband.

We then popped over the border to visit our friends and their four kids, who always love seeing us. They gave us a tour of the site and shared all their plans while the kids ran around in the waterlogged foundations. We gave them an update on our house since they’d last visited a year ago: we’d laid the downstairs floors, finished the upstairs bedrooms, and completed two of the bathrooms (though our en suite still needs work, which we’re planning to tackle towards the end of the year). We also told them how we’d painted the exterior and harvested our first vegetables from the garden.

It was lovely catching up when life gets so busy, spending quality time chatting about family, home, and the future.