As, I confess, our life here has been rather uneventful of late, I'm going to dip back into the not-so-distant past of that thrilling October holiday.
On the night before Halloween, Liesl and I carved a pumpkin which we had purchased at the grocery store in Athboy a few days previously. We discussed designs, and soon settled on scary. Liesl drew the design, and we both carved it out:
I had decided that, since canned pumpkin is apparently difficult to come by here, we would use our jack-o-lantern to make the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I also decided to make something for Halloween with the chunks of pumpkin that we'd carved out.
I awoke on Halloween, and was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I noticed a vague beeping sound. I figured it was something outside, a car alarm or something of the sort. But then I heard Liesl calling me loudly: "Steph! Steph!" I opened the bathroom door to the blaring sound of an alarm going off. It was clearly coming from inside our house. I'd noted before then that all of our fire alarms were hanging by wires, and so I had assumed that they didn't work. And honestly, a fire seems pretty improbably in such a wet, green place, with mostly stone buildings.
We went over to where the alarm seemed to be sounding from--outside my room--and I put my large headphones on, got a chair, and stood on it, trying to locate an off switch on the red plastic alarm. There didn't seem to be any way to turn it off; this one wasn't hanging from the ceiling, it was attached, but unscrewing it didn't do anything. We gave up and went outside to go down the street to our hosts' house, only to be greeted again by the deafening sound of an alarm. Apparently it wasn't just in our house, it was outside too. Liesl rode the bike and I walked briskly down the street. John had already heard about the alarm--there was a group of kids staying in the Big House--and I passed him in his van going down the road to deal with it.
We went into their house to get some movies, and we also acquired some tea lights from Robin, for our jack-o-lantern.
I could no longer hear the alarm when I was walking back home, though I had previously heard it all the way down the road at our hosts' house. Upon returning home we found out that some kid at the Big House had set off the alarm by spraying deodorant near it. Lovely. It was somewhat intentional--a "let's see if this sets off the alarm!" sort of situation, I can imagine.
I made pumpkin pancakes, which were delicious. (We have recently gotten into the seemingly unbreakable habit of eating pancakes pretty much every morning). We watched Sleepy Hallow (the one with Johnny Depp), and then made some sandwiches for a picnic which would take place at our next destination for the day.
This location was discovered by yours truly while I was going for a run the day before we left on our trip to the north. I had turned right out of our driveway and continued along that road for maybe twenty-five minutes when I came upon a sign denoting the town of Kilskyre. I was pleasantly surprised, having been unaware that there was a town this close, never having seen an advance sign for it.
I jogged into the town, stopping at the side of the road at a grave with a large headstone bearing a somber inscription, and at a sign saying that Kilskyre had an ancient ruin of a monastery. Cool, I'd actually found a potentially interesting place close to our home.
I continued running and what appeared on my field of vision next made my jaw drop into an open-mouthed smile. It was a tiny, grassy hill, off on the left behind some small buildings, and it was covered in gravestones. It was the graveyard of my dreams, so to speak, since I definitely don't dream of the day when I end up in a cemetery myself. But since very early on in the conception of this trip I had imagined and longed to see old graveyards in England (merely because that was the country that we planned on visiting that held the most appeal for me). I've always had a sort of thing for graveyards--out of personal interest or intrigue in the interest that others have in death, I'm not sure--but all of the ones that I'd been to in the US were relatively new, and not exactly what I was looking for. I'd been to an interesting cemetery in Guatemala, but the intrigue there lay in the fact that it was so aesthetically different from graveyards I'd seen, for it was not particularly old as far as I knew.
There was a large, austere and old-looking church up the road, right across the street from the cemetery. This church had its own graveyard. I walked into the churchyard and came upon a pointed wooden door bearing a plaque which commemorated the death of a young man that had fallen off of the church spire. I looked up, and sure enough, there was a huge spire, the tip of which was probably fifty feet above me. I walked around the churchyard cemetery--which was disappointingly new--then went up to the door of the old church.
It had been built in--gosh, now I forget--I think the 18th, or possibly the 19th century. The door I had approached, which seemed like the main door, was the slightest bit open, just resting against the door frame. I argued with myself for a minute about whether or not to go in--churches tend to be kind of creepy for me in general, being a devout atheist myself. But I often find European churches to be of extreme beauty, from a purely architectural and historical standpoint. But this was kind of a creepy town, it was silent, and there was almost nobody around. I also wasn't keen on going in and having to talk to anyone inside.
I had almost decided to leave, come back another time with Liesl and then go in, when I decided not to wimp out and to just go in. I opened the door, and walked into the entryway chamber, then pulled open to door to the main room. It was silent and eerie inside, and my eyes immediately took in two things: one, the tray of lit candles in the far corner near the altar, and two, the multiple manikins of Jesus and other religious figures. These made me start as I at first took them to be real people. I walked in a couple of steps and looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone in the room, but I thought it odd to leave lit candles in an unattended room with the front door open. Ten seconds was long enough, so I left.
I crossed the street with the intention of visiting the other graveyard. It looked like I would have to cross through someone's backyard to get there, and I was not about to do this without asking first. Conveniently, a man and a child were in the front yard of the house. I inquired haltingly, unsure of how to phrase my question, whether or not the graveyard was open to the public. I thought it could have been a family cemetery or something, I don't know. He said yes, he had two goats in there but they were friendly and I could go in.
I walked down a short drive to a gate, which I opened and closed behind me. I stood in a green field with two cows in it. I crossed the field and went up to the cemetery, which was surrounded by a short, stone wall. There was a sign right outside of it, which talked about some sort of research that was being done in the graveyard. It wasn't explained very well, but I gathered that the monastery was build around the 6th century by Saint Skyre, the female patron saint of the town I believe. The sign said that people had been buried at this sight since early Christian times. Whoa.
I opened the gate and was greeted by two white goats. They were cute, and friendly and didn't seem to mind my wandering around. I looked at the gravestones: the few that were legible were from the 1800s; most of them were so weathered that they didn't seem to have anything written on them at all. Many were leaning forward or sideways, and some were sinking into the earth.
The ruins of the monastery were covered with snakelike roots of large trees. Liesl, I knew, would love this. I'd already made up my mind to bring her here for Halloween.
And so I did. We walked into the town, and had a picnic on a bench in the churchyard, where Liesl soon discovered that I was by no means exaggerating when I'd told her that I was inept at peeling oranges without getting juice all over my hands.
We walked around the church cemetery and I showed her the plaque. We went inside the church. It really wasn't fair, because for some reason it was way less creepy this time, possibly because of the absence of lit candles. We hung out in there for a minute and then left to go to the other cemetery.
Liesl greatly enjoyed it, as I'd thought she would, particularly the root-covered stone ruins. We spent some time walking around the graveyard, which this time played host not only to the two goats--who enjoyed chewing on Liesl's belt--but to a flock of sheep. The sheep were cute, but they ran away every time we went near them.
We started back home soon to avoid walking the unlit streets in the dark. The time change happened a week earlier here than it did in California, and while we've realized that in only gets dark a little bit earlier here, it makes a bigger impression here than in San Diego. We're so removed from everything, from everyone, that the darkness is very imposing and unpleasant at such an early hour as 5:30 p.m.
Liesl lit a tea light and placed it in the jack-o-lantern, and we watched a somewhat scary movie called The Others. It was pretty good actually, and Liesl was less scared than she thought she'd be, not having been the horror movie fan that I am, though she now seems to enjoy them more. After that we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which of course is an amazing movie, and not only because it is applicable to both Halloween and Christmas. We ate some sweets and chocolate cake that I'd made too. And that was our Halloween.
Since then we have been up and down as usual.
I've been running a lot--I ran for an hour last week, my record--and Liesl started running again too. I was so sick of running on the road that I tried running around the property, which isn't that large in terms of where one can run, but it was so much nicer. So now we run through the forest everyday, which is easily my favorite place on this property and my favorite forest ever.
We've spent a lot of our time here watching things on Netflix, way too much time really. But I've found that we're both most happy when we are either very engaged in our surroundings here or when we are distracted from them. The "in-betweenness"or just hanging around in our house is terribly unpleasant. More than once I've felt myself on the brink of going totally insane. I finished a book I was reading in a particularly bad bout of early morning sleeplessness. I've painted a bit, and Liesl has spent hours making friendship bracelets. We had a lovely picnic on the lake in our canoes recently. The alarm went off randomly in our house again a few days ago, a different sounding alarm this time. It didn't last long. John said that our next door neighbor would check it out.
We have a very mysterious next door neighbor. What's mysterious is that we've lived here for a month and a half and we've never seen him. We've seen his car, we think, but that's it. I kind of forget he lives here mostly, if he really does live here.
Much of our time and thought lately has been focused on our trip to Dublin. We've spent so much time trying to find a couch surfing host to stay with, to no avail. We finally decided to just stay in a hostel and go for a shorter time. So here we are, finally in Dublin. More on this in the next post.
Interesting fact about Ireland: there's a population crisis here, but not the kind that most of the rest of the world is facing. There are too few people here. It's insane, it really is, with so many other places being so obviously overpopulated. But people have been leaving Ireland, Emma told us, ever since the potato famine. There are so many Irish immigrants in the US; it's rare to talk to someone that doesn't have some Irish heritage. I do. Liesl actually doesn't think she does though, funnily enough.
We went shopping one day in Navan, a larger nearby town, and we had a couple of hours so we walked around a bit. Both of us realized how happy it made us to be out in public, with other humans, that we decided to take more day trips to the local towns. We went to Trim on Friday, which was nice. It has quite a magnificent castle, and a river, both of which always bring joy to my heart. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera that day, so the pictures will have to wait until next time we visit Trim. Speaking of forgetting the camera, I forgot the battery somehow when we left for Dublin. So you will just have to imagine everything in my next post.
The weather here took a turn for the cold, we noticed as soon as we got back from the north. But it's been up and down since then. It's been raining some, which I love; I love running in the rain. It's also been sunny too; unfortunately San Diego weather seemed to have clung to us everywhere we've been on this trip. But it's often cool and gray here, which suits me. It's funny; Liesl and I are happiest on opposite days. I like it gray and dark and she likes it blue and bright.
Up next: Dublin!
Cheers,
Stephanie
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