Dreamy Goodbye's

I like wondering about dreams. Dreams that you have when your sleeping that is. I’m not so into it that I have books on the topic, but I often wonder about the hidden messages and meanings behind some of the things I dream about. Which leads me into a dream I had Friday night.

I don’t remember the full dream sequence, just a portion. But in it I discovered my cat, Fintan, could speak. Initially it was just myself and himself in a room and we were playing. All of a sudden he turned to me and spoke in a deep man’ish voice. Obviously I was shocked but I tried not to overreact, just in case I scared him back into silence. But I needed to know I wasn’t mad and that I had in fact, just heard my kitty speak. So I leaned in carefully and said, “What did you say Fintan?” He repeated his sentence. I scooped him up and brought him into Husband’s office. I put him on the desk and said, “Husband, you need to hear this. Go ahead Fintan, tell him what you told me”. Fintan did nothing but check out his surrounding. Husband scooped him up, and I gently patted his head to show him I had his back and he was safe. Again, in a gentle and encouraging voice I said “Its ok Fintan, just tell him what you told me”. Fintan then turned to Husband and said, “Brigitte Foster has 5 pieces of furniture”

For all you non-athletic fans, Brigitte Foster is a 100m hurdler from Jamaica that Husband manages. I know her, but we’re not tight. We don’t e-mail or call or any of that stuff. We have pleasant conversations if we’re in the same space at the same time, but other than that I have no idea why she was on my mind and definitely no idea why my cat was talking about her and her furniture. Weird. Just plain weird and I’ve no idea what the meaning or hidden message is here. Other than the obvious. I’m slowly going crazy.

In other news, Silja’s 6-week stay with us is over. BoooooooHooooooooo. I dropped her at the airport a few hours ago and already I miss her. I miss coming into my kitchen and seeing spots of red all over my counter tops from her sloppy technique in smoothie making. As I was cleaning, I flirted with the idea of leaving 1 or 2 in her honor, just so I can re-live my agitation every morning. I will definitely miss her bright hair and her even brighter personality on the track as well as her constant concern about her tan lines.

Bye bye Silja. I don’t know if you’ll ever be back, but I will definitely be putting Iceland on my list of travel destinations. Keep up the hard training.

Ellis Island in the 21st Century

I got my Green Card 2 years ago, not long after myself and Husband tied the knot. But when you get your Green Card through marriage, its issued to you as “Conditional” for the first 2 years. After the 2 years you have to prove you are still married and re-apply to have the “Conditions” lifted. Right now I’m at the point where I am looking to have these “Conditions” lifted.

Now when I applied originally, among the many hoops US Immigration made me jump through, one was I had to go and get finger printed and mug shot. A letter arrived telling me where (Downtown) and when (12.00pm) to go and get these “Biometrics” done and cos I am a stickler for punctuality I arrived 15 minutes prior to my appointment. Well, come to realize when I got there, hundreds of other Green Card seekers from all corners of the globe were also told to be there at noon. I can’t tell you how pissed I was. For some reason I thought US Immigration ran something like corporate US, as in if you had an appointment at noon, then you would be seen at noon. But no, this was the complete opposite.

We waited in line just to sign in and have our purses searched. Then it was onwards to another line to show all our documents and I.D and complete a few more forms, before they finally issued us with a number and released us into the waiting area, where we sat and sat and sat, for hours, watching an over sized digital clock announce which lucky number was next. Honestly, it’s a very daunting and impersonal process. You know you are nothing but a number in a system of thousands and nobody cares who you are, where you’re from or why you’re here. They just want to get your prints and mug shot, stamp your form and move you on in the application process.

But anyway, now that I’m applying for my permanent Green Card I have yet again to do more finger printing and mug shooting. Which is frustrating. Seriously, can’t they just use what they have on file from 2 years ago?? I know I’ve probably aged a bit, but my fingerprints, I assure you, have not changed or aged in anyway. But because they have all the power in this situation, I keep my opinion to myself; otherwise I could end up in a small rowboat, in the middle of the Atlantic looking for directions to Ireland.

So this time I was ready. I knew what I was in for, so I plan ahead. My “appointment” was for 2pm, and knowing this was going to take hours, I cleared my day of any other commitments. I also planned to get there an hour early. I figured if I arrived about 1pm, then I would have a shot at getting out of there before rush hour traffic in the evening.
I also packed some snacks, a book and an ipod. Yes, today, I was ready for them.

But I knew something wasn’t right when I pulled into the parking lot and saw plenty of available parking. I even managed to get a spot close to the entrance. “Something’s not right” I told myself. Which is when I had a mini panic, “Shit, what if they close for lunch?” So much for my clever move, now I have to wait till 2pm anyway. I parked and went towards the entrance. The sign said they were “Open”, yet I’m not believing it cos there is no line. No United Colors of Benetton line. What is going on? A man in uniform approaches me as I come in the door. “What time is your appointment mam?” I tell him is 2pm but I came early cos I knew it would take hours, so I wanted to get a head start on the process. He just smiled, told me to go put my bag back in the car and then sign in. Put my bag back? But it has all my picnic stuff and my toys for amusement? Of course I didn’t argue. I just did what I was told. Again, they have all the power.

I come back, signed the forms, showed my documents and straightaway they take me over to fingerprint and mug shoot me. This is unbelieveable. I’m in and out in 15 minutes. They even make eye contact; smile and we exchange some friendly chitchat. Really personable. I leave confused and giddy. What the hell just happened? Was I at the right place? It should not have been that fast, smooth and painless. I’m in total shock. I guess someone finally decided to modernize the Ellis Island way of processing Immigrants and you know what. It’s working.

Its a Red Neck Birthday Y'all

Today Intern Gordy turned 24. Happy Birthday. Gordy’s been living in The South now for 2 months, so we decided to celebrate his big day in true Red Neck style. No more of his North Eastern ways. No mam. We cracked open the Beer, Cheetos and Pop Tarts. Built him a cake of nothing but Twinkies. Grilled up some burgers and fried up some chicken and let the party begin.

The pictures tell the full story.


Myslef & Silja tried to represnt the true Red Neck women. Rollers, wife-beater (the vest), big hoop earrings & lots & lots of make-up.









What a Hot Red Neck mess. Bra staps & everything.











Red Neck Ho No.1 models the Twinkie Birtday Cake.











Now we have Red Neck Ho No.2 with cake.











The Buffet.


















Look at that cake, yummy.









Birthday Boy is loving his Red Neck party.








Get a face full of that.

What a waste of a good Twinkie.

Kenny & Birthday Boy party hard.

Husband, me and Fintan. Look out for this family picture on our Christmas Card later this year.

Today I Learned...

Today I learned to call Silja a “Bitch” in her own language. The language of Icelandic. I don’t know what was up with her, but today on the track she was acting like a 4 year and it was a bit contagious for a while. Especially when we were trying to do our bounds and med-ball throws. For anyone out there who does any bounding or med-ball throwing in their spare time or is interested in pursuing such an activity, just be aware, it’s damn near impossible to laugh and bound or throw simultaneously. The result is just a couple of girls looking like a hot mess.

But we were definitely enjoying ourselves. Then it was time to get serious and do some sprinting. I was on the line focused and ready to smack out some fast 50m flys. At the exact second I took my first 2 steps, Silja decided it would be hilarious to starting shouting some random comments at me. I continue on down the track but my run was totally messed up. I'm laughing hard on the inside and now thanks to her, I have to add an extra sprint onto my session. And that’s when I used my new word “Tik” to tell Silja what I thought of her.

Nobody Likes To Talk About The Bad Stuff

As all of you know, I made a guest appearance on the track 3 weeks ago and it went very well. So well that I have been talking with some of the people at Athletics Ireland (Irish Track & Field Federation) about making a mini come back. Yes, we (as in Ireland) are going to try and get a women’s 4 x 400m relay team qualified for the Olympics. And since I had a very encouraging first race back after 2 little years of retirement and 2 even little'er weeks of training, I said “Yes” to extending my guest appearance and running as part of the team to see if we can get ourselves qualified for Beijing.

So in a effort to get myself back in sprinting shape, Husband, who use to be my coach, and I sat down and put a together a training plan and I’ve been training hard to get my speed and power, which has been dormant for 2 years, back.

It’s been rough going I have to say. The step back into all the hard training has been intense and growling. I get my ass handed to me (means the same as “ass kicked”) on a weekly basis. I’m trying to get my muscle power; lactic tolerance and sprinting abilities back up to par. So that means plenty of sessions that have me pushing through my pain barriers and plenty more where I do the painful rolling on the track. It’s been quite the shock to the system; I have to, really, have to say.

But just to see where we’re at with our training plan, I decided to jump into another race.
And even though its not easy to share, cos no-one likes to talk about the bad stuff, so let me just cut to the chase. This one did not go well. It was slower than my first race. I was slightly pissed and frustrated. How could this happen? I had 2 weeks training before my first race and ran fast. I had another 3 weeks training before this one and ran slower. What the eff? An emergency call to Husband, who is in Doha, Qatar right now, to ask the “What the eff?” question was needed.

He quickly switched from Husband mode to Coach mode to help give me some perspective. Apparently my body is in an adaptation phase. It’s trying to get use to intense training and some muscle beat down again and as a result, it’s going to take a little step back, before it takes a great leap forward towards competition toughness. And since I need a good reason to keep the faith and power on, I believe him.

So there you go. I’ve shared the not so good news. Lets just hope it is in fact VERY temporary.

"I Need Help, But First Let Me Clean My House"

This past week, I discovered 2 BIG things about myself and though at first glance they may not appear to be related, they are.

First of all, I am absolutely terrible at asking for help. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve been like this all my life. It’s just taken me this long to admit and concede to it. Sure it has popped up repeatedly over the years, but I was excellent at denying its existence and had even convinced myself that it was a positive thing. In my mind I was of course more independent, self sufficient, grown up, in control and a compete force to be reckoned with because I could do everything myself. Asking for help was for weak people, or so it played out in my mind. And as a result I’ve always set myself goals and expectations of the highest standard. Which can lead to a nasty fall, if I ever fall short. A fall that may have been avoided and a goal or expectation that may have got met, if I had just reached out for some help. But no, for me things have to be at their most dramatic and I literally have to be in a very bad situation for me to do that little reach out.

Then there is my little avoidance game. Yes, when I find myself faced with a challenge that I know is going to be very tough or maybe even impossible, then I load up my day with other stuff. Stuff that in the moment I tell myself is way more urgent and needs my complete attention.

Lets take my website design challenge as an example. I will wake up in the morning and before I get out of bed, I do a metal assessment of what is on my agenda for the day. Then I’ll say something like, “this afternoon will be spent working on my website. Today is the day it will all click and I’ll be well on my way to getting it up and running” So with the best of intentions, I get up and get cracking on my day. As afternoon approaches, I start to get anxious. I know its coming close to the time I said I would knuckle down to some web building, but I’m not ready. This challenge is way over my head and I just know I’m in for an afternoon of torture. And rather then do the whole “ask for help” thing, cos least we forget, help is for weak people, I busy myself with other stuff. All of a sudden I will notice that the furniture needs a good polishing, so let me get that done, then I’ll do some web building. Oh but wait, the kitchen needs to be cleaned too, including the floor. Then of course there’s the bathrooms. And since I’m already into it, let me just vacuum all the floors upstairs.

This takes me right through the afternoon and by the end I’m like, “Oh dear, look, the day is almost over and I never got to do any work on my website. What a shame. But I’ll definitely get stuck into it tomorrow, I swear”. Don’t get me wrong, this little tactic of mine gives me no pleasure. In fact it just adds to my anxiety. Cos now I feel time is becoming the enemy and he is quickly backing me into a tiny corner and I can’t seem to move. Life becomes a pressure cooker.

But it’s not all bad news. There is a teeny, tiny light appearing in a tunnel that unfortunately is 29 years plus, long, but at least I can see it. Well, I think I can. My eyes are not so very good in the dark, but I’m sure I can make out something that resembles a light. Bottom line is I have ever so gently, in a voice that is more like a whisper right now, began to ask for help. I have also exposed my avoidance tactics, so I can now stop myself in my own tracks, when the urge to do everything but the task at hand presents itself again. This whole new approach has left me feeling a little vunerable and a lot umcomfortable, but at least I'm trying

How’s that for a “What I’ve Learned Monday”?

Tough Love

So for the past 2 years I have been studying to get my Life Coaching qualifications. What, some of you may ask, is Life Coaching? Well, it’s part psychology, part counseling and part therapy. Basically, without getting too complicated, the goal is to get people unstuck. To figure out what may have lead them into their present unhappy situation and what we can do to help move them out of the rut and more towards their goals and visions.

I’ve always had an interest in psychology. I love trying to figure people out, why they say the things they say, or act the way they act or even better, what are the things they are not saying?? But as my fellow Irish will testify to, the Leaving Cert points necessary to study psychology in Ireland, were well into the high 500’s. We’re talking A1’s in all Higher Level subjects. Realistically, that wasn’t on the cards for Shinks. But luckily here in the US, they never heard of a Leaving Cert or an A1. So once I made the decision to retire from track, I took the opportunity to study Life Coaching.

I finally graduated back in February, yeah me. And from there my plan has been to start my own practice, with a website being my first priority. Now that we are all living in a cyber world, once I start getting my name out there, I know the internet will be the first place people are going to go to find out more about me and Life Coaching in general. I mean that’s exactly what we all do now, in the absence of a direct www.address, we Google, Wikipedia or Yahoo anything and everything we are interested in.

That has been the goal, but I got stuck. Unfortunately my computer knowledge is basic, very basic and web design = serious challenge for me. So for the past few months I have been stressing, trying, reading, learning, hiding, avoiding, trying again, searching, plodding, quitting, trying again, avoiding, crying, yelling, frustrating, HTML’ing, Front Paging and all the “ing’s” you can think of to get a website designed and live. But to no avail. And honestly, I don’t have the $5000 to pay a professional to do it all for me.

But recently I’ve been avoiding the whole website thing completley. I’d become so overwhelmed by the task that I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to touch it. Clearly I am not an excellent web designer and honestly, I am not the type of girl that enjoys doing things I am not excellent at, or at the least have the potential to be excellent at. So I began operating under the illusion that somehow it was magically going to take care of itself. That I would wake up one day, turn on my laptop and there would be a fabulous and very professional website. But alas, this never happened. Time has been ticking away and still I am no closer to my website goal.

So the other day Husband decided to have an intervention. It was not pretty. He had to say and tell me things I didn’t want to hear, but needed to. He had to play the bad guy. As a couple its tough. There are times when you need to just be supportive, encouraging and offer a soft place to land. Then there are the times when you have to step up and give your partner a swift kick in the arse. Often in a situation, its hard to judge which is the best line to take. You don’t want the other person to feel ganged up on or attacked. You want them to know your intention is coming from the right place and that you are concerned and want more for them. And even though it was not fun to be on the receiving end, I knew it wasn’t easy for him either to say what needed to be said.

So now I am back on the website path. Trying and trying and trying. I have all my content written and I have designed the roughest looking, most amateur website you have ever seen. But hey, we have to start somewhere, right?? And as the saying goes, “nobody said it was going to be easy”. And this definitely is not. Its been soul destroying and draining. Maybe that’s a tad dramatic, but it’s definitely been a nightmare.