10 little things I miss

My world is upside down. For all of you who don’t know because you never read the header of my blog, I live in Ireland for most of the year. For the past week, I have been back in the USA getting my fix of my own culture, my own family and my American friends for a while. I try to make it back at least twice a year. I would love to fix it so I did 3 months here/9 months there or 4 months here/8 months there – some such split just because I miss my family and friends more than I thought I would, not because I am tiring of Ireland, because I am not.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the little things that I missed about being here, and I mean the little, incidental things that you don’t take into consideration until you don’t have them. Here is what came to mind:

Big Cokes vs. Little Cokes

Picture this – you sit down to a big, juicy cheeseburger with fries and a coke the size of a thimble. What is wrong with this picture? And they don’t get it! American diner type restaurants are very popular in Ireland but they ruin the illusion when they give me a teacup with some warm coke…which brings me to my next point…

Ice in everything

I like ice! I don’t care if the temperature doesn’t rise above 60 degrees! All the better to store the ice, my dears. Cut the crap and put ice in my big, bucket sized coke. And give me free refills so I don’t feel like I am getting screwed by having my big, behemoth cup being filled 2/3 up with ice. For more on this subject, read up on how Ireland has not adopted the concept of Free Refills. This coffee blog is a good segway to my next point…


Dunkin Donuts

Maybe I can white knuckle it and live without my large hazelnut with skim milk no sugar in the morning. Perhaps I can exist without that cheery red and orange logo staring out from the 10,000 napkins I have taken just in case I spill my 2 gallons of coffee all over my car in the morning. Conceivably, I can live my life without hearing another guy from Brighton say “give me a regulah and a crullah” to a woman just off the boat from Bombay who is just learning the English for “coffee”, but to ask me to explain one more time to one more coffee jockey in Ireland how to make iced coffee and to endure the look on their faces as they hand it to me (sometimes I think they are going to take a picture of the iced coffee and me to show to their friends), is asking to much of this woman. Please Dunkin, try the Dublin market again (it failed 10 years ago) Ireland has grown as a nation!

Just as an aside, Starbucks just came to Ireland. There are only 3 or something in the whole country. I love that about Ireland actually.

Driving on the right side of the road

Just because. Its better. I feel like I am in a go-cart driving in Ireland with the wheel somewhere towards the middle. Right side steering wheels add to the “clown car” feeling of the driving experience along with the fact that minis look normal and smart cars may at any point pull up next to you. I expect to see Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in one with their bare feet sticking out the bottom.

I am all for saving the planet but this it ridiculous.




Squirrels

Since we were on the subject of driving, I have found I have to be extra diligent driving because of the wild life that I used to take for granted here in the US. Squirrels are only in parks in Ireland, basically because the whole place was deforested by the English (there is my political dig for the day and the only place where I am going to address politics). I love watching the squirrels that are outside my mother’s house. I love that we have to cover the trash to keep out the racoons. I love the possums. Horses, sheep and cows outside my door are good too but I wish I had the squirrels as well.

Buffalo Wings

Here is a shout out to anyone living outside of the US who can tell me where to get good buffalo wings. I am fairly certain they do not exist anywhere beyond these shores. I told this to someone in Ireland who then swore up and down that Elephant and Castle (a restaurant in the Temple Bar) was famous for their wings and they were the best in Ireland. Well, maybe so but they still sucked. I will mail anyone $5 in cold hard USD if they can give me a place, in any country in the EU, that is up to my standard. For definition of my standard, here is a link to Archie Moore’s in New Haven. The wings there rock hard.


Portion Sizes and Doggie Bags

Yeah, Americans are fat. Yeah, Americans are gluttonous and wasteful. Whatever. I like food and I need portions bigger than the size of a quarter. I also like to be able to take home the extra so I don’t have to cook for another 3 days. I also have a dog, Fergus, who would like to know where I have been and what I have been doing. When he asks, “What did you order?” I would like to have samples. Believe me, I pay the same amount in Ireland for ¼ the food so step it up guys!

All singing, all dancing grocery stores

Akin to portion sizes has to be the size of our grocery stores. I need 13,324 types of breakfast cereal to make me feel whole! You ain’t living if you can’t pick up a six pack of beer and buy lawn furniture in the same aisle at your shop around the corner. I come back to my local Stop&Shop to see fruit that I think only grows on one acre of land in the darkest corner of the rainforest. Did you know they sell naturally occurring purple and orange cauliflower?!? I sure didn’t but I do now and I need 3 colors of cauliflower in my life!

Let’s talk about watermelon since there has been some discussion around it as of late. I need to eat watermelon (and drink iced coffee) everyday that I am here. Why? Because I can get 1/8th of a crappy watermelon in Ireland that looks and tastes more like a cucumber for the equivalent of $5.60. I can get a whole, glorious, pregnant melon which is as red as a tomato for the same or less here. Bring it on! Too bad about the seeds though. If kids today only eat seedless melon, how do they have spitting contests?

Decent TV graphics and effects

Banners flying into the screen and spinning. Rotating time clocks on the news and text bars scrolling on the bottom telling me things that are not important enough to say but usually more interesting than the actual news. Talking heads powdered and puffed to perfection. Night cams and live satellite hook ups in caves and stuff. It beats some stiff shuffling papers on a desk and is so much more distracting! I don’t know where to look first!

Humidity/Snow/Leaves

I miss all the change of season. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad I don’t have to live through extended harsh winters and oppressive summer heat but the marked movement of time within nature does add something to life. I guess it makes you feel human but it also reminds you that you are getting older. In Ireland, there is a myth about Tir na Og which means the “Land of Youth”. It is easy to see how the Irish conceived of such a place. Ireland is in perpetual spring. It is always in growth, always in bloom, always in youth. It is lovely and Eden-like and it never seems quite real. I suppose that is why people fall in love with it. I did but sometimes a does of reality in the splendour of dying leaves that look like they are on fire or this humid, swampy, lovely weather that we are having, is needed for some perspective.

Ok, that is me for now. I have so much catch up blog reading to do. I am looking forward to it. Too bad I can’t do it in bed or on the can!