Notes Of An Uninteresting Event

A job rotation I’ve been doing for the past few months is coming to an end this Friday. It’s been a total departure from what I had been doing for the previous fourteen years, and I’m really sad to be finishing up. The team has been so supportive, and it’s given me an opportunity to show the business what I am capable of, which is what I set out to do. I hope it will result in some upward movement, as I feel confident shouldering more responsibility.

I was standing outside Cypress Avenue on Caroline Street with my husband, brothers, and friend after our exit from a gig we had all attended when my friend commented on how nice it was that my brothers and I all liked the band we had seen. Adam, the brother, said to her that all the music he and our younger brother listen to had been influenced by me. He had mentioned this to me before and added how our mutual friend had brought up how, as teenagers, they would all listen to the music I discovered and how I epitomized the ‘cool older brother’. Back in those early days, I was into alt-rock and nu-metal, and we would sit through afternoons watching music videos on MTV2, Kerrang, and Scuzz in our parents' TV room. It felt really good to know that my brothers' and others' musical tastes were influenced by me in some way, and that I have continued to seek new music even today. We no longer hang out in our parents' tv room watching music videos, but whenever I see them, I share what I am listening to or post it on an Instagram story.

Today, I reminisced about the time I decided to get a tattoo following what I think was me realising that I’d wasted a lot of time procrastinating / doing fuck all. Looking back at it now, it was a sort of turning point.

It was around 2009, before ‘doomscrolling’ on Instagram or TikTok and before the word entered the lexicon, I would endlessly scroll through Tumblr, looking at anything from art and design to porn and photography. I lost a good chunk of my evenings and nights from that time through to 2013, a time which epitomizes ‘Peak Procrastination’ in my life.

Anyways, I’d spend excessive time online scrolling through photos of tattoo’s I really liked, super detailed snake skin designs, and full arm tattoos. I started to lean toward scripted tattoos, though, with some meaningful word or phrase. A guy I followed on Tumblr at the time had a really nice tattoo across his upper chest, just below his clavicle, and I liked how subtle it is (not on show on my arms or legs).

Around the same time that I was browsing for inspiration, I kept discovering some great new music, like I still do today. One band was a Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine side project called ‘One Day As A Lion’ that had emerged around 2009. Super funky sound, with amazing drum tracks and I was really into them for a few years up to that point. The band’s name coming from a quote by none other than Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” So, as a call to action, I thought it would be good for my tattoo to read “Live Every Day As A Lion.” I’m a Leo star sign, so at the time, it felt as if I was telling my subconscious that I didn’t want to be the way I was and that I needed to change, to be more like a lion.

Holy Cow, a tattoo place in Midleton that my brother had recommended, was where I got it done, and the rest is history. I got another tattoo a year later but none since, and I won’t rule out getting more in the future.

Last week, my husband and I went on holiday to Croatia for the first time, flying from Cork to Zadar. Our Croatian hairdresser had been recommending that we go, and upon disembarking the return flight plane last Monday into Cork Airport, we wished we had stayed longer. Zadar, a city on the coast, has a wonderful old quarter with narrow streets, Roman remnants, many churches, and the “Sea Organ,” where the waves flowing through compose a constantly changing melody. We traveled down the coast by car as far as the city of Split, the second-largest city in Croatia, and the amazing Plitvice Lakes National Park. All in all, it was a wonderful trip—very hot, but a place we’ll hopefully go back to in a few years.

A friend of mine recently got braces for his “gapped teeth,” and it got me thinking about my own experience with having correction done for my mal-positioned gnashers. I would’ve been put on a waiting list in primary school, as was the case for many receiving orthodontic treatment publicly back in the nineties. And when I eventually got my referral to the Cork Dental Hospital, located on the grounds of the then Cork Regional Hospital, I had just finished secondary school.

Due to overcrowding in my mouth, which caused my overlapping teeth, four molars had to be removed to accommodate the orthodontic appliance. In a follow-up session, I vividly remember sitting in the dentist’s chair, looking out at the car park opposite the entrance to the dental hospital, mouth held open with some sort of appliance, as the dentist applied adhesive to my crooked teeth and the bonding of the brackets. I can recall the feeling as the wire was being attached to each bracket, the metal taste in my mouth, and when all was complete, it being anchored on the four stainless steel molar bands wrapped around my four back teeth. The feeling of pressure on my teeth and the scratching of the inside of my cheek by the molar bands, using wax strips alleviated the latter but the former lasted for days / weeks afterward.

Regular visits to adjust the braces occurred for about eighteen months or so until they were removed just before I moved to Saudi Arabia for a year. A new mold was taken to create a retainer that I used at night for an additional year to ensure my teeth stayed in their new position. All in all, it took about three years for my teeth to get realigned, staying where they are to this day, and I enjoyed listening to my friend talk about his experience. By all accounts, not much has changed in the twenty-plus years since I had mine.

Back in the early nineties, in the estate where I grew up, three people had cancer at the same time over a period of about two years. It was a tragic time because one of my friend’s younger sister passed away, as well as an older neighbour who left behind his wife and three young kids. I was young when it happened, but my parents have recently spoken about how it shook everyone in the estate because they feared it might have been related to where we all lived. I vividly remember being in the local church for the young girl’s funeral, where her primary school friends sang Joan Osborne’s ‘One of Us.’

… What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Tryin' to make his way home?

Since those tragic events over thirty years ago, unfortunately, cancer has come to affect those close to me. My mother received a diagnosis this past February, and although she’s responded incredibly well to her treatment, we all have a collective superstition that bad things come in threes. So, waiting for a second and third bad thing to happen, the news that cousin, who is only in their early thirties, was diagnosed with a brain tumour hit us hard. Finding a malignant frontal lobe tumour following a seizure she had, meant her doctors quickly removing the cancer but she has a long road of treatment ahead. Then to cap off the phase that bad things come in threes, only yesterday, I found out that a dear colleague of mine from work has a brain tumour and the outlook isn’t good.

At the time we found out about my Mum, I exclaimed to her and the rest of my family - Fuck cancer!

I want to shout it our as loud as I can :(

In the living room of a childhood friend’s home hung a framed aerial photo of their house taken from a plane. Their detached house stood alone on a large plot, separate from the rest of the semi-detached houses in our estate. Since the parents owned their own business, they had disposable cash to splurge on getting the image from such a height. Fast forward thirty years, and small battery-powered quadcopters with high-resolution digital cameras can create stunning aerial imagery, making a framed photo of your own house within reach of the average family. Note to self: frame the aerial photo of our house.

At 5 p.m. on Friday evening, as I was just leaving work, Kate from the solicitor’s office rang to say the sale had closed on the house we’d waited seven months for and that we were the new owners. I was jubilant and rang my husband to tell himself the good news, and that we were going to pick up the keys right away.

Opening the door for the first time was a curious experience because we’d spent most weekends over the last few months parked in the park across the river from the house and walking around the area. It was ours now, and the enormity of what we needed to do began to well up inside me. But it’s where our kids will grow up, when we have them, and where our families will visit for special occasions or anytime. Keeping an eye on that is going to help me get through and not be overwhelmed. One step at a time.

Watching Top Gun: Maverick a few weeks ago, there was a line of dialogue that Tom Cruise’s character uttered to himself in the cockpit of his plane during an amazing final scene toward the end of the movie, in reference to another lead character, he says, “Don’t think. Just do.” The character he was referring to had previously been paralysed by fear and unable to take action, but in this penultimate scene, he overcame his mental obstacle and triumphed. This got me thinking about my own fear. Around the time of the COVID lockdowns, I contemplated procrastination and whether my overthinking in my early adult years had inhibited my love life, social life, and professional life up until I met my husband. His support has helped me reframe my world, priorities, and sense of self to the point where I now say I’m a recovering procrastinator or that I’m able to better control it. I’ve read articles that outline how procrastination is a person’s way of protecting their precarious self-esteem, which I did, or that living in clutter is a sign, which I also did (photo from 2003), to humorously ‘Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow.’ It’s also been linked to depression, which is something I’d never considered or fully know much about, but I’ll be digging into it. For years, I didn’t see any problem, but for an outside observer, it looked obvious. Now that I’ve been shown the mirror, I want to get better and be better for this next chapter in my life that I’m entering. Don’t think. Just ask for help.

One of my first jobs was working as a porter in the Cork Regional Hospital, helped by my mum, who worked on the switchboard, or “Switch,” and knew the head porter at the time. I remember starting during weekends in November or December 1999 whilst I attended college on the weekdays, but revenue records show that I officially started on the 2nd of February, 2000. Anyway, with zero training, I would ‘special’ people primarily in the GF unit (a ward for those experiencing brain injuries) or other wards of the hospital, which involved staying with patients all night so they wouldn’t move from their beds, etc. Oftentimes, it involved restraining them, and being 18 at the time, I had no idea what I was doing and regularly relied on the trained nursing staff on the ward. One person I sat with from 8 PM to 8 AM was Danny Walsh, who had been in a car crash in Cork back in 1999 when he was 16. He suffered severe head injuries, from which he has not recovered, and for those who are from Cork, today you’d see him around the city. I eventually transferred to work in the Accident and Emergency Department on the 9:30 PM to 2:30 AM shift on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays before I finished in the hospital. It was an experience I will always remember for both good and bad reasons (e.g., being present in Resus, seeing seriously injured people, and dead bodies at a young age).

When I was visiting a friend in the hospital recently, I came across one of the trolleys from the A&E department. It used to be my job to push, direct, and manhandle these trolleys with patients of all shapes and sizes, and clean them every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when I worked there. I remember being able to get patients quickly to the X-ray department, if we were super busy, by almost using the trolley as a scooter (one foot pushing while my other foot was standing on the frame). There’s a foot lever on each wheel to lock the two front or back wheels in place, so I’d lock the wheels at the front so I could drift into and out of corners. They were heavy, so the pop-up handles were handy when a patient was on board. All that weight was in the base, so it lowered the center of gravity, and because they were narrow, there was no risk of toppling over. Seeing that trolley reminded me of how fun it was working there, the people I met, and with the department being un-recognisable today after undergoing renovations over the past 25 years, it was nice to reminisce.

Last week, a work trip took me to San Francisco, and for the first time, I experienced the 11 hour flight in business class. Spoiler, it was underwhelming to say the least. While in California, I worked, enjoyed the sun on my day off, got to try an ‘In-N-Out’ burger, and walked around our head office in stunned silence.

On the evening I’d flown in I got a burger from the 75-year-old Californian fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger, that a colleague of mine had hyped up so much before boarding our flight from DUB to SFO, meant that I was expecting great things. I sampled the regular burger with fries from their eatery on Newhall Drive in San Jose. The burger was okay, and only because we’re so spoiled for great food, great burgers here in Cork. Instead, it reminded me of those burgers you’d get from a van at a GAA match or gig that just hits because you’ve drunk alcohol and need to line your stomach. The establishment itself, on the other hand, was proper Americana, with young people in paper hats and white polo shirts making hundreds of meals and shouting out completed orders over a tannoy to the awaiting public, ‘Order 95 please!’. It was a good experience, but I’d choose Bunsen, MK Burger, or Dacent Munch over the Californian chain.

San Francisco, on the Saturday was lovely and the beautiful California sun was very welcome on my very pale (factor 50 covered) Irish skin. The harbour, the Bay Bridge, the city skyline, the streets, the hills, Chinatown, and the Apple Store Union Square were all a treat. The famous fog had rolled in on Saturday morning that I took the Caltrain from San Jose, obscuring the view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, making me miss a photo opportunity. I was not dismayed though because the walk through Chinatown with its vibrant colours and people was a feast for my iPhone’s camera. I headed through the Stockton Street Tunnel to the Apple Store, where I got to experience the architectural marvel with its 12.8-meter sliding glass doors that opened the entire store to Union Square, and there were a few Vision Pros on display too, my first time seeing them.

On the last day of my trip, a group of us went to the Apple Visitor Center in Cupertino to buy some merchandise. I went up to the viewing platform to see if I could catch a glimpse of the spaceship among the trees off North Tantau Avenue. It was well hidden, so I needed to take a close look. Our group was escorted by our hosts through the reception center into the lush gardens with the ring building at its center. I spent the 90 minutes we were allotted slowly circumnavigating along the outside walkway, and watching the giant sliding doors closing the cafe to the outside. I then went through to the center area to walk on the thick grass that felt like I was sinking into it, and toward a rainbow in the middle. It was truly an experience I will remember.

vsco.co/greentoth…

Listening to the Fontaines D.C. song “A Hero’s Death” the other day, and this line from the lyrics, “Tell your mother that you love her,” made me reflect on how infrequently, or even how rarely, I would say “I love you” to my mum. In that moment, while sitting at work, I couldn’t understand why I had not ended every call or visit over the years with those three words. That has been one of a million things on my mind after my mum had her first treatment last week, with two more sessions in the next few weeks, followed by surgery in the summer.

I have been calling her more frequently to see how she is feeling, visiting her at home, and now every time I make sure when I leave or hang up the phone, that I say “I love you” because I want her to know how much I do.

Tell your mother that you love her ❤️

There has not been a lot of movement in our surrogacy journey in the last six months. Although, since early March, we now have embryos and it was great to feel we were making progress. But it was short lived after we received the final count following the PGS or genetic testing we had done on them. My husband and I have needed to console each other, and on top of this, we have yet to find a surrogate to support us. Things feel like they are going nowhere, and it’s tiresome to stay positive whilst simultaneously trying to will the universe into giving us a break. I just wish the wind would pick up soon and take us away from this place.

My go-to confectioneries are a purple Snack, a package of BBQ Beef Hula Hoops, and a bottle of Tanora. I’d happily buy all if I’m passing a shop or purposefully pop to get them if the universe is throwing a few too many lemons my way. They have been my second, third, and fourth place comfort food, behind toast, since I was a teenager. From nibbling off the chocolate along the edge of a Snack, to popping a Hula Hoop on each finger or trying to chug a bottle of Tanora, only for it to come out my nose.

I have to say, I do love them and need the comfort more lately.

Mum ❤️

Last December marked the tenth year that I began posting on VSCO, a photo and video sharing website. It’s something I am extremely proud of and flicking through the six hundred plus photos I’ve posted I love seeing my progression as a photographer over the years. From getting a Hanimex 35KAF point and shoot camera before a trip to Boston with my grandparents in 1992, to buying a Leica M6 rangefinder recently as my film camera and using my iPhone everyday to take photos, I cannot wait to see what images I make in the years to come.

VSCO

Lately, I’ve enjoyed brewing filter coffee with a Hario V60 using beans from Imbibe, a roaster from Dublin that I love. The fruity and chocolaty tones are just wonderful in the morning, whether made at home or in the office. My go-to for years though had been an oat milk flat white from either my favorite coffee place Filter or from my Sage Bambino Plus espresso machine, a purchase made during lockdown. My journey with coffee, if you want to call it that, didn’t begin until my late twenties when I would drink caffè mochas, the chocolate helping mask the bitter and burnt taste, from places like Gloria Jeans, Insomnia, and Cork Coffee Roasters. As many coffee shops opened in Cork, and the various roasters popping up too over the years, there is an amazing coffee culture happening. The small coffee shops, local roasters, stalls at farmers markets, and horse boxes at the side of the road or at the beach are all at such a high quality and have enabled me to try so many different roasts. At least these days, there’s so much choice even my dad, who I will always remember cracking the paper seal on a fresh jar of Maxwell House on mornings before school to make his morning cup, has advanced to high-quality freshly ground filtered coffee.

I have not been taking photos much lately, partly due to the kids, the house, and the winter weather. Spending the darker evenings indoors in front of the fire with a Netflix show in the background, I came across the Voigtlander Nokton Classic MC 40mm f/1.4 lens for sale on MPB. I had been considering a change from the 35mm 7artisans f2 lens that I have on my M6, thinking I might want a 28mm lens because I watch a lot of street photographers on YouTube. However, I found that I prefer a tighter frame-line. Many of my shots taken on my iPhone use the 48mm equivalent lens, so I’m going to try the Voigtlander as it’s much more compact than the 7artisans lens. The weather is getting brighter as we head into spring and I’ll see how the images turn out when I get to try it.