ideas for cheap stuff

Everyone’s favourite question at the moment is, “How does it feel being back?”, and to varying degrees my answer should be, “What d’ya mean I’m back?!” Its kinda like I felt when I realised I was free-falling from 9000 feet with a man a parachute strapped to my back, its wonderful and surreal and not a little bit scary. Being home still hasn’t really sunk in but it sure is getting there! Since being back I’ve caught up with some people, entirely missed others, through no particular fault of my own, and have been generally getting a feel of the place again. On the day I came home my brother, Joseph (aka Nacker), collected me with his wife Diana and their dote of a child Zoe, who is an entirely different god-daughter to the one I left behind. Then they brought me home to my house where Lids, Dee and Laura fed me an Irish fry till my heart near stopped beating. Then there was a wee performance of Zombie that the girls had prepared and I was left alone in my house to rest, which was a bit difficult to do the first few days, but I’ve got it down now. My favourite thing of all the heads that turned up the first few days were the hugs and top of that list is Laura who randomly manhandled me at various intervals over the course of Thursday day and night. Love the hugs girlie! Plus catching up with my darling brothers, the aforementioned Joseph and then there’s bear-hug Derek. Really ya ever get a hug off this guy it’ll near kill ya. Then of course there’s the laughs with Lids and Dee, my better two-thirds. There’s all the other wonderful souls who’ve come to cheer me up and get me back on the Irish life track, but I’m not going to list everyoe, sorry! Anyway, the hardest thing about coming home was the empty house, I had lots of offers to stay elsewhere but in true O’Reilly style I decided to face it all at once. My Pops was still off in Thailand, he’s since returned and regaled me with stories of his shennanigans that I won’t filth up our website with, and my mam was everywhere but not there. It was a tough one alright, but I’ve been down to her grave a few times now and its a beautiful headstone that my Pops put up. I’ll put up a photo of it cos its so nice. That is once I get around to putting up any photos. The best thing about being home is the silence of bed-time, a place to put your clothes (in my case the floor as I’m sure my Pops will tell everyone), getting to practice my cheers in many languages since Ireland’s all multi-cultural now, my family, seeing how my nieces and nephews have grown, my friends and how all their lives are same same but different and how everyone seems generally happier. All the people I know and love here at home have their trials and tribulations but everyone seems to know themselves more, know what they want and don’t want, and hopefully that’s what I’ve got in me now. I will do an in-depth meditation/rant on how much I’ve seen and how its made me feel but that’s not the purpose of his post. So for now I’m gonna continue to take it easy till after my birthday, which everyone will get their invite to, on recycled paper of course cos I’ve gone green, and till after my sister goes home and then I’ll be acting on this love of life that I’ve got. Its time to move on to greater and better things, don’t ya agree?