http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1130841/risks_of_mobile_phones_to_children_are_being_downplayed.html

Hundreds of reactions – indignation, praise, anger, appreciation, dismissiveness – have quickly surfaced, which is normal when something close to one’s heart is messed with.

But what the comments (from what I read, which was several dozen) miss is a simple fact: Lululemon is a company, therefore its existence is about profitiability. It makes amazing clothes, but its marketing is right up there too. Its ethics are above par, but it is still a COMPANY. It’s up to individuals to vote with their wallets, and as yogis, to practice tolerance. If Lululemon wants to make a statement, they’re allowed. If they alienate their customers, it SHOULD show in their bottom line. (But will it??) The wonders of capitalism.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Lululemon on the brilliant marketing coup of creating controversy. See, I’ve even written a blog about it!

I used to live in a big flat with a live-in maid/nanny and a husband in the private equity sector in Asia. Then we moved to rural Ireland for a change of lifestyle. But my life didn’t look like those lovely home magazine portrayals of people carefree in a poppy field in their Hunter boots. My life was suddenly dirty, messy, hard work; isolated and friendless, at first; with vacuum cleaners as a daily reminder of the humiliating plunge from ‘well off’ to ‘can’t afford’;  and so terrifyingly uncertain. Our income level crashed (this is long before the current global recession, so at least I’m used to cutting back – I was in my own recession throughout the Celtic Tiger!). My life seemed in ruins. And I was pregnant.

It’s easier to see all the goodness in retrospect, though. My life is good, notwithstanding the fact that I still have to vacuum my own place. That may sound horrifically snobby to anyone who never had a live-in maid, but it’s just what I had become used to – a measure of our success in life, and I couldn’t help taking it personally when it was no longer an option.

So I thought it was time to call this blog what it’s really about: change. Situations that demand new thinking, or else become chronically unhappy.

Thanks for reading!

The deplorable fact is, I have nothing really to be dreary about. Simply a lack of support in an event I’m trying to organise. The simple feeling of having no support is a downer. I think of how a Jim Carrey character in a movie might react – diving head first into the project no matter how little support he gets, staying cheery no matter how few people turn up, and winning in the end because the one most important person does (you know, the usual romantic happy ending).

Over the next few weeks I’ll go to a few Christmas type fairs and wonder how come “they” (the multitude of hard working people who seem to find support to make things happen) pull off a successful fair / boogie night / drinks party.

I cheer myself with the fact that, though in one event I feel unsupported, in life I am: my best friend/ husband is always there with the latest Ugly Betty download or the next Sherlock Holmes episode, to be enjoyed over a glass of wine and/or ouzo.

I was a student who scored excellent grades. Not top of the class, but in the top few. Honors in some subjects. Took the hard courses at college – science, including calculus, biology, organic chemistry, physics. I passed it all, but my preferred subjects were logic, philosophy seminar, English lit and Spanish.

I think university is where it unravelled a bit. Should I study law? Am I really that good? Not sure. Journalism? Cigar-chomping scowling men sprung to mind. Business? I can’t do business – my dad’s a teacher, my mom’s a stay-at-home mother. “Business” to me was to huge to comprehend. Small time stuff like selling cupcakes smacked of kids-selling-lemonade silliness, even though I was fully aware of hugely successful companies like Mrs Fields’ Cookies. The careers counsellor wasn’t worth his salt. I chose the catch-all, go-nowhere Liberal Arts Degree.

I wanted to travel, so I saved up after university and went to Hong Kong. You needed savvy more than the right degree back then, and I landed a job with one of the top investment banks on the planet (and yes, it still exists!). It was all admin jobs, including some event management and then human resources. It’s a man’s world for sure, and I often found that frustrating, but it was fun, too. MY job. MY life.

Fast forward to marriage and two toddlers and there’s me, crying my eyes out in the taxi on the way home, late again (at the office til 7pm- about 11 hours a day). Par for the course in an investment bank, but suddenly seeming really not worth it given that I was missing out on my babies’ lives. Not living near family meant having a Filipino amah – wonderful gentle woman, whom I tortured with my lack of trust. Or, to be more honest, my acute jealousy that she was spending all day wtih MY beautiful bright-eyed baby daughter, which I disguised as lack of trust and grilled her every day and made her write down stupid amounts of detail and practically quarantined my baby from her once I was home. Double the agony when the second beautiful bright-eyed daughter made her entrance.

I admire Miriam O’Callaghan a lot, a really really lot. Intellectually rigorous, high-profile public figure, with her China-doll looks and her enormous family. (Eat your heart out, McWilliams, and I saw your public apology on The Panel last night. Oscar quality!) But I see, too, that there are some who are simply cut out for it and some who are not. And circumstances play a role too – Miriam’s near family and an old and trusted nanny, I was not – but if I’d had the same drive as Miriam and thousands of other women, I could still be earning in excess of $100,000 by now, even as a human resources peon, and that would be before profit-sharing and bonus.

Instead I’m at my cobwebbed old house, looking out at the rain, downing a coffee and feeling sorry for myself. By the end of the day I’ll find out a friend has a more serious problem than me, and I’ll be reminded of the people involved in the murders at Fort Hood yesterday and the victims of torture all around the world and the children starving (or just to poor to afford secondary education – that’s what my charity helps with), and bereaved parents, and car-accident victims, and the whole big world full of tragedy and pain and loss. In comparison my problems are so small. In comparison to Saoirse Ronan being tipped to be the youngest ever Oscar winner for Best Actress for her performance in The Lovely Bones, my problems are… a shade bigger.

Two items in the “give away” box were our little plastic mermaids, C-Blu (she has synthetic blue hair) and Shell (fluffy pink plastic-y hair – appropriate namesake of the global oil company). Their hair needed some attention, and after shampooing and conditioning each so that I could attempt to de-tangle, Shell looked positively pleased, though C-Blu was non-plussed.

In the process of fussing over them, I began to wonder if I should keep them… After all, there is sentimental attachment: my now 13 and 12 year old girls used to play every night in the bath with their lovely mermaids, and later my sons used them as victims, targets, hammers, etc. Plus, by the time the next generation comes along, plastic dolls with synthetic hair MIGHT be a thing of the past. We’ll be back to wooden dolls with wool hair and cotton dresses.

Keeping the auld things, of course, jars with the “clear out your closet and change your life” attitude. Am I hanging on to the wrong things for the wrong reasons? Am I burdening my karma by not “letting go”? The angst!

C-Blu and Shell are, meanwhile, doing what mermaids do best: lounging around admiring the view, from my dressing table instead of at the bottom of the toy basket. The only certainty at this point is that they won’t (intentionally) end up in a landfill.

*dusting technique from the show that is great for 5-year-olds: put an old pair of socks over your hands, moisten, and wipe off dusty surfaces! Satisfying results with white gym socks guaranteed!

True to predictions, the weather held for the day, a bit cloudy at times, but when you walk out your back door onto a white sandy beach a short, hot expanse from the clear lake waters, a few clouds don’t matter. The children swam for the whole day – my four along with their 3-year-old cousin, a darling bundle of curls and squeals of laughter and a backbone as strong as her mother’s. 

For supper, my lovely sister-in-law C had made a fabulous stew, the beef bones lurking at the bottom and filled with rich marrow. Expecting in October, C relished the marrow. I tried a bit and my youngest boy liked it, but we clearly weren’t the biggest fans!

By this point, the wind had picked up a bit and the waves beckoned again. Back to the water. My brother lit the bonfire and the shivering children would swim then huddle as close as possible to the heat source (as close as my Dad could bear, that is – there were cautions issued as towels swept a bit too close to the flames!). Once dark set in, out came the marshmallows – a rare treat for both families. The higer wind meant a bit of difficulty lighting fireworks – what a thrill.

Later, sleeping arrangements made (a tent large enough to accomodate me +4 small people, a room for Dad, etc) I settled the children. We’re not big into tents and camping, so this was the first time my 5-year-old experienced tent sleeping. “Mommy, can I ask you a question? Why did we come all the way here to sleep in a tent?” Part of the adventure, was my reply; and I realised that for all our travels and encounters with different cultures and languages, sleeping in a tent really brings home what it is to live in a completely different way. I’ll have to get a good tent for the family!

Once the children were settled, I had a real treasure – time to chat. It’s hard to get into a conversation if one or the other has to “go home”. Being able to totter out the back door into a tent meant 2 hours of uninterrupted, easy conversation. 

Another gem – the boys, usually up at 6 am or so, woke as usual but went back to sleep until past 9 a.m.! “It’s cosy in here,” commented the elder as he snuggled back into his sleeping bag and drifted off. That morning: more wind, more waves, more non-stop plunging into the raging shore. Lunch; stop at local dairy farm to buy mouth-watering cheeses; drive home (so easy when you have 2 drivers!). We had done so much in one overnight stay that it felt like we’d been there the better part of the week. “Yeah,” my brother said, “it does feel like you’ve been here for a long time…” Ah, the sweet sarcasm!

Go raibh mile math agut (that’s not a swear word… nor is it sarcastic…)

6 seconds: beauty salon and hairdresser. They’re the nearest neighbours - aren’t I lucky!

1 minute: bus stop that takes you to Old Quebec. The bus passes every 10 minutes and it takes about 15 minutes to find yourself in Place D’YOuville;

4 minutes (in various directions): public library; French high school; outdoor soccer pitch; City Hall;

5 minutes: Sylvie Bernier indoor pool (named after the Quebec Olympic multi-medalist); 2 lots of outdoor tennis courts; permanent fully equipped gymnastics hall (including uneven bars, trampoline, climbing ropes, balance beams, and floor space); outdoor children’s park (climbing frame, swings, etc);

6 minutes: double indoor ice skating arenas, and behind it, the Gaetan Boucher Olympic sized outdoor speed skating ring (named after, you guessed it, the Quebecer medalist…); 25-metre outdoor pool; Roland Beaudoin park, consisting of huge wading pool featuring a row of fountains rocketing upwards and an outdoor amphitheathre;

8 minutes: a vast triple shopping mall on 3 floors, everything from giant Toys R Us to Futureshop to any fashion retailers you can think of, plus offices, gym, restaurants & cafes, etc.

If you get into your car, in 15 minutes you can be at an uber-mall: it’s not worth describing, just visit the Galeries de la Capitale website! Suffice it to say that for C$1 you can ice skate on an Olympic sized rink in the summer.

There is an absolute glut of things to do. For C$200 we’ve equipped ourselves with 4 children’s bikes & 4 new helmets. For another C$ 60 I got a skateboard, all the protective gear, 4 junior tennis rackets & a few tennis balls. We bike to the pool, playing tennis on the way – there’s always an availabe court. On rainy days we head the other way to swim indoors and enjoy the water slide; or go skating. We were too late to sign the kids up for gymnastics this summer (we’re visiting for 6 weeks since we have a free place with my parents), but we gawked for over half an hour at the amazingly equipped gym, and the not surprisingly skilled gymnasts given the ratio of coaches to kids – about 1 to 4!!!! (as opposed to 1 to 15 or so in our Carlow gym!)

And that would be without the Festival D’Ete and the Quebec 400th Anniversary goings on in Old Quebec. On Friday I saw Akon and Wyclef Jean perform – and it was free (ok, actually it costs $30 to get a pass for the whole week, but I was given passes by my brother who was heading off to his cottage by the lake, and my sister whose friends were leaving after the first weekend). All summer there are activities for children. Mine spent a while making Egyptian masks and having their faces painted, for free of course, and when they needed to sit there was a constant stream of shows going on in the park, from the North Shore Celtics to the Armenian troupe, the day we were there.

Today it rained but we had things to do at the shopping centre. Wireless cafes, toys r us, sports shops, clean loos always within reasonable distance, drinking fountains, … weirdly, it’s those details that make the whole thing pleasant, not just striclty the incredible number of shops.

And with all this almost literally on our doorstep, what does my son say? “I miss our house. It’s not the same here. We don’t have as much room to play.” Wha?? I guess that’s the difference between urban and rural. Our home in the bogs of Carlow, with garden, fields, kilometres of river bank, country lanes to cycle around… it’s home sweet home, though I do try to remind my son that pebbled, potholed lanes won’t allow skate boarding. Carpe diem!

As for me, I’m planning a long car journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to visit other siblings. With the price of petrol I ought to sit still, but in Ireland, petrol cost around Euro131.99 and diesel 140.99 when I left a couple of weeks ago. Here the prices are about 25% cheaper.

I’m sure there are disadadvantages to living here, but I can’t think of them right now… wait, it’s coming… oh yeah, -30 all winter with snow from October to May! brrr.

It rains a lot in Ireland, of course; thus the emerald green of the island. But in Quebec the rain is different. It goes on and on and on, as unending as the whole of Canada, it seems. So we put on our outer wear knowing we’d be soaked through in a few minutes, and went off to the nearby soccer pitch.

I think we lasted 20 minutes. But it worked. On our return, Chinese Checkers, solitaire and Backgammon were the order of the moment. Now its’ lunch time – seems like it should be bedtime! I guess we’ll go to the indoor swimming pool this afternoon. HOw else do you get active 5 & 8 year old boys to “get it out of their system”?!

Anyhow, about the fake route to sun-kissed: It all sucks, don’t you think? Even Ascot recognises it – tongue in cheek, apparently (something on the BBC website mentions the jovial drawing attention to streaky tans). It’s ugly. I tried it. My knees looked dirty and a leg wax took it all off anyhow. So I decided in desperation (I wanted to show my lower legs in a skirt for my child’s first communion in mid-May; as it turned out, it was so cold I was in stockings anyhow) to go for the sun bed option.

The beauty salon in my nearby town was hopping. I thought it was the fake-proof solution. But soon I was able to recognise the sun-bed look (which just about 100% of the adult female population in this town is sporting this rainy season): a bit too brown even behind the ears. A suspiciously even and dark tone.

But that’s not what put me off: I began to notice on my own tummy and face what seem like pale “age spots”. I’m a bit freckled anyhow, but a brunette with no family history of skin cancer, so statistically not really high risk. But I didn’t like the look of these discolorations. I suspended my sun-bed sessions on sensible and cautious grounds. Wouldn’t it be a shame to be dead in a decade (age 50-ish), before my last child graduated from university? Before I figured out what it is I want to do with my life? (ha ha ha ha ha. Actually, and sadly, that’s not a joke…)

But sure, in the end, I want to be tanned, and if the real sun isn’t going to show itself, I’ll probably go back, pay the Euro 1 / minute, and use up my Euro 20 (that was the cheapest) bottle of “moisturising” coconut-stinky cream. (why doesn’t my own almond-oil/ grapeseed-oil/ jojoba-oil mix suffice? The beauty salon couldn’t really say, but it was imperative that I spend …. er, that is, that I protect my skin using THIS moisturizer…)

Ahh, summer.