Check-In-Tuesday: Always Money In The Strawberry Stand

I'm back from holiday! It was lovely, I needed a break and I definitely got it. I wouldn't say I did no writing, I scribbled down some thoughts as they came to me and thought about my plans for certain story lines, but that was the height of it.

I had planned to bring my netbook with me but, me being me, I left it at home. I thought it was in the car, but it wasn't in the car when I arrived at the holiday house. I had a mini panic attack, when I went to the Freakerton city limits and worried that I may have left it in my driveway where it would get stolen by my friendly yet opportunistic neighbour boys. I once lost my iPhone in the snow, me and electronics do not have the best relationship. However, when I got home I found the bag was in the kitchen, so all was well. I'm now behind in finishing a crit of my friend's MS and was unable to send my MS to my crit group, but I'll catch up.

So, now that I'm back and refreshed I'll do my round-up.

Words written: 3,000 (all on Monday, I didn't write for the week I was on holiday).

Rejections: 3 (Still not too upset. For the moment anyway. I'm sure I'll start wringing my hands and wailing any time now)

Agent requests: 1 partial request. Yay!

Current favourite book: I read lots of books on holiday, but Divergent stood out for me. It's nice when a book lives up to the hype (As factions go I think I'm Amity or Erudite. Whatever else, I'm not Dauntless. I'm afraid of my own shadow, banjos, wrists and my friendly yet opportunistic neighbour boys).

High point of the week: Wexford is the strawberry capital of Ireland. Well, at the very least it grows a lot of them and there's lots of stand along the roads where you can pull in and buy some. My husband and I recently discovered the joys of Arrested Development, so imagine our delight when we found a stand shaped like a strawberry! It's not a banana stand (there's always money in the banana stand, after all) but it's fairly cool nonetheless.

Low point of the week: Thinking that I'd lost my netbook. Panic was not helped by the fact I couldn't remember if I'd backed-up my work.

How about everyone else? How is your writing going?

I'm on holiday!

People who don't read my blog often, may not be aware that I'm currently on holiday. I may have spent most of last week blogging about it, and boring you all senseless, but now I should finally be very close to the picture you see on your right. Yep, that's County Wexford.

I'm scheduling this blog post, because if I do so much as attempt to boot up my net book my husband may wrestle me to the ground (and not in the good way) and throw it over the cliff. And, you know, he may file for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour: i.e. not being able to take a holiday without writing.

Husband once wanted to buy an electric banjo.
Thankfully I persuaded  him otherwise.

 But, as it so happens, he may not be the only one pondering divorce. I was lucky enough to meet my soul mate at nineteen. He is a fabulous person, and we have a huge amount in common. However, when I daydreamed about finding the perfect man, I didn't imagine certain things that came as part of the package. I didn't see myself marrying someone who left cupboard doors open, and who likes to take random pieces of bric-a-brac out of his pockets at the end of the day and leave them on the kitchen table. And I certainly didn't see myself marrying someone who loved country music.

Yep. We have completely different musical tastes. I like musical scores, and pop, he likes a certain type of country music. While a proper holiday soundtrack for me would involve Rihanna, Beyonce, Michael Jackson and Fergie playing at full blast with me shrieking the lyrics tunelessly and flailing my limbs in wild, holiday-induced abandon, he will want to listen to depressing funeral dirge type music that bemoans the fate of humanity at length over the twang of a banjo. Our differing musical tastes only tend to come to a head on car journeys, when we're forced to share a stereo for a protracted amount of time. It will be interesting to see who prevails.

*I have no intention of divorcing my husband.*

*I'm sorry for any fans of depressing country music that may have been inadvertently offended by my post. On the bright side, at least y'all have more credibility than my pop-loving soul*

*Blog posts are scheduled, so I'll reply to any comments when I get back*

So the rain has finally stopped...

So the rain has finally stopped. Despite the past two weeks displaying the type of weather usually seen in mid-October, Ireland seems to have finally remembered that is actually technically summertime. Yesterday and today  have seen sun, blue skies and zero precipitation. For an island with a climate that is enticingly summed up as  'mild, moist and changeable with abundant rainfall and a lack of temperature extremes' this is pretty much as good as it gets. 


Hopefully it will last, because myself and the husband are going on holiday on Saturday to Wexford with my family. I have six brothers and sisters ranging from one year old to fourteen, so being cooped up indoors will not be good times. Last time my I went on holidays with my family, we ended up spending most of the holiday in matching navy rain jackets like a water-proof version of the Waltons, and had our traditional holiday ice-cream huddled in a doorway sheltering from the wind. This was on the west coast, where the weather tends to be more extreme. Hopefully Wexford, in the so-called 'Sunny South-East' will be a little bit more hospitable. How can you have a sunny south east coast on an island that has 'abundant rainfall and a lack of temperature extremes' you ask? Well, everything's relative.


Honestly, I'm really looking forward to it. The past year as been really tough, for a number of reasons, and it will be nice to get away from it all. If this will in fact be possible. I'm bringing my netbook with me, I'm worried about leaving it in the house while I'm away, and it may prove difficult to avoid writing something...


What about all of you? Do you find it hard to clock off on holiday?


On a side note, I'm up to 103 followers! Woot! I appreciate each and every follow, thank s so much :)