And oh what a month it was

May 1st. I thought it would never get here. (And, technically, it hasn't yet, where I am. But I am post-dating this for Friday anyway, because I am such an optimist.)

That whole long list of arduous chores of April that I listed here a while back? Ticked off, one by one by one.

Talks given. (See above.) Pages planned. Stories moved. I have one more day of work--a short day, I'm thinking--and then I am free for eighteen days.  Fourteen of those days will be in Ireland, or traveling there and back, and the other four will be at home, resting up, working on Hack, renewing my acquaintance with those dogs. 

(And oh how I will miss those dogs.  The first time Doug and I went to Ireland, we had had Boscoe for only six weeks.  We bought a little ceramic border collie and put it on our dashboard as we drove all over Donegal and Mayo, to keep us from being too homesick for him.)

Today I will go to work, and then I'll go buy dried cherries, to combat jet lag, and do laundry, and start making sense of the piles that I have started all over the house: piles of passports, and camera batteries, and euro coins leftover from our last trip, and the currency adaptor, and journals and guide books and water bottles and rain gear and all kinds of small odd things I don't want to forget.

We will be staying at the Glendalough Hotel for the first week, except for one night: a wedding is planned there, and we were advised that we might want to sleep somewhere else that night, because Irish weddings are loud and lengthy.  So we'll move to a bed and breakfast for that night, and then move back to the Glendalough Hotel the next morning.

The bed and breakfast is on the other side of a stream, and apparently one gets there by hopping across on rocks. (With luggage? Apparently.) We were told that if it's been rainy and the water is high, to call the b&b "for advice."

Will they point us to the rope swing? I'm not sure, but I'm praying for a drought.