So I like it up here in Cavan. It’s lovely and quiet (apart from our new baby cows which are currently mooing the place down - pics soon), the people are lovely and the scenery is spectacular. But oh, the driving. I seem to spend my life in the car. Firstly, there’s not really any supermarkets near here, well, unless you count a very teeny EuroSpar that in no way caters for my ridiculous and diverse taste in ingredients, so I face nearly an hour’s drive to get down to my nearest Tesco. To be fair, I could drive up to the SuperValu in Cavan town in 45 minutes, but I figure 15 more minutes for twice the size of shop is a small price to pay. Every so often I go mad and drive to my nearest Dunnes which is kind of like food shopping in Marks and Spencer (bliss!), but I don’t do that too often as a) Hubby goes a funny colour when he sees the bill and b) my freezer stuff is defrosted by the time I get home. Oh, and by the way, when you live here it’s ‘up to Dublin’ even though geographically it’s south, and then if you’re in Dublin and you’re driving home, you’re going ‘down the country’. I’m getting used to it. So just to give you an example, here was yesterday’s tally:

1. Drive boys to school: 30 minutes
2. Drive home again: 30 minutes
3. Drive down to Ashbourne to walk round the lovely shops and visit aforementioned Dunnes: 60 minutes (plus 10 minutes stuck in roadworks on N2 - narrowly avoiding the urge to leap out and berate the little man that holds that STOP/GO sign for unfair twiddling of his sign in favour of the other side)
4. Drive back up (or should that be down?) to collect boys: 60 minutes
5. Drive home: 30 minutes
6. Drive back to school an hour later to pick #1 up from after-school activity: 30 minutes
7. Drive home: 30 minutes

Okay, I suppose it was exceptional with the shopping and the after school thing, and I really should have gone straight out shopping after dropping the boys off (duh) but still, even my meagre maths skills make that nearly 5 hours in the car. 5 HOURS! And some people actually commute from here to Dublin every day. Can you imagine? They must be frazzled.

Still, in my continual quest for the bright side, here are a few reasons why it’s not the end of the world:

1. If I’m in the car I’m not having to do housework and boring stuff like that
2. I get to listen to the music that I like, as loud as I like and sing along too (I’m currently spending quality time with Enrique Inglesias - no honestly, it’s a good album)
3. Bertie likes doing the school run and it keeps him from getting fixated in a very unhealthy way on the baby cows (and drooling on my windowsill too).
4. When stuck in traffic I get to file my nails, have random text conversations with J, put hand cream on, look in the mirror and all the other stuff that drives Hubby bonkers.
5. I can drive merrily along in 4th gear without Hubby huffing and puffing next to me and tapping the gear stick officiously.

There you have it then. Driving: not a complete waste of time.

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