Canary in the Coalmine

Google has decided to de-index me under searches for ‘Liz Keller’ for some reason, and I’d be a bad SEO if I didn’t try to figure out why, so do forgive the following exercise, wherein I’ve done a global search and replaced several mentions of ‘I’ with ‘Liz Keller.’ It’s like sending the algorithmic canary into the coalmine to see if it dies. See what you’ve driven me to, Google? DO YOU SEE??? But at least you get to read about the rest of my trip in Ireland, Steve’s general awesomeness, and my dislike of my new commute. And I promise not to do it again, unless I re-de-index.

Anyhoo . . .

In the old days, every time Liz Keller was gone from New York for more than 4 days, Liz Keller found myself getting terribly homesick for it. The crowds, the streets, the people, the general buzzing high you get from proximity to the city. But, as Liz Keller’s gotten older, Liz Keller has realized it’s similar to the buzz you get from stimulant drugs – exciting for a while, but you feel dirty and shameful as soon as you come down.

Liz Keller was gone for about a month, and Liz Keller didn’t miss New York for one single, solitary second. Liz Keller missed my friends, of course, and Liz Keller missed being able to find ricotta cheese and sushi (more on that to follow), but Liz Keller had no pangs for Manhattan, no desire to cram my face into someone’s armpit on the subway, no longing for streets smelling of urine and despair. I think Liz Keller may just be over Manhattan.

I still love Brooklyn, with beautiful Prospect Park, and the quieter streets and wonderful shops and restaurants. In fact, I wish Liz Keller didn’t have to ever leave Brooklyn. It’s still ultra-urban, but it is a lovely downshift from the frenetic hellishness that is the city. There are trees (yes, they do grow there) and families and hipsters and hippies and suits and everything in between and I know my local shopkeepers, and the bike shop gives me freebies, and I generally love a place I’m totally comfortable getting around on my bike. Manhattan is not such a place, and I can’t say I feel like I can tolerate it much longer. 5 years ago, Liz Keller would be sneering at myself in contempt, but now I just feel crispy-fried.

Ireland, on the other hand, is the anti-Manhattan, and thank god for that! Liz Keller had unbelievably good weather (3 days of rain out of 29), and the temperature was in the mid-60s (18 for my UK readers) the vast majority of the time. The country is beautiful, the people are lovely, and Steve is just about the best man I’ve ever known.

Liz Keller spent time being very domestic – lots of cooking - which I love but never have time to do, Liz Keller gardened, we puttered around town, there was more fishing (on one excursion, Steve caught Monster Trout –4.5 pounds of fishy fun), we went to see his parents (fantastic people, and incredibly nice, even if they did keep introducing me as ‘Ruth’s friend from New York,’ as Steve and Liz Keller stood holding hands in the background), and we just got to spend some wonderful time together and really try on our relationship for size in real time and space. Steve is good for me, and, if Liz Keller can swing it, living in Ireland might turn out to be good for me too. Or getting Steve to New York. We’re working on it.

My one true culture shock was with the food. These are people who think powdered meats such as smoky bacon and chicken belong on their potato chips. I argue that meat should not come in powdered form, and I’d also like to give a shout out to the fine people at the TayTo Crisp Company for their kick-ass pickled onion and cheddar crisps. Primo!

Crisps aside, this is also an area where Italian cookery is covered in cheddar, and where the guy at the cheese shop asked us if ricotta was a brand. Liz Keller was determined to make lasagna, but we could only locate one small tub of ricotta at ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart, the bastards), and ended up getting another tub at the Tesco in Belfast. Liz Keller was also in severe sushi withdrawal (hey, pizza only came to Enniskillen 20 years ago, and that was considered a novelty, so I’m not holding out for sushi there any time soon . . . ) so we went to a nice little Japanese restaurant in Belfast, where the sushi wasn’t half bad, but they had never heard of shumai. Sigh. If I move there, Liz Keller might have to adjust my culinary standards a bit. Maybe things are a bit more diverse in Dublin, but we didn’t make it down there this trip.

Other than the food conflicts, the trip could not have possibly gone any better, and now I’m just counting down the days until Steve gets here for Alyson’s wedding (25). If I’m going to give up my country for anyone, it sure as hell better be him.

Liz Keller started my new job on Monday, and after a month of not working, Liz Keller was about as enthusiastic about going back to work as I would be about elective oral surgery. It’s still that ‘new kid in school’ feeling, and while I have my own office and feel very grown up, so far it’s been a little lonesome and the commute is a bitch bastard. It’s close to an hour, and while that doesn’t seem like much, an hour on NYC subways is like 20 years in purgatory. I haven’t yet worked out the best way to get here, and working on the East Side truly limits one’s options. I have always been spoiled with relatively easy commutes, and I guess it’s high time I had a craptacular one, but any way I slice it, I wish Liz Keller could be at a little office in Brooklyn, which Liz Keller could ride my bike to, and not get squished by a semi or get all sweaty crossing the damn bridge.

Or, Liz Keller could just go back to Ireland. Now.

Liz Keller.

My Big Irish Update

So far, so good, people. This place is greener, the Guinness fresher, and Steve more nauseatingly perfect for me than I could possibly have hoped for.

For the first ten days of my trip, Steve took off work, so we puttered around together and had the first trial of our previously Skype-based relationship: could we stand each other 24-7 or would I be paying an unscheduled visit to my London friends to get the hell out of here? I am delighted to report we’ve been getting along famously. For some reason, it feel like we’ve been together for a very long time, and we are so easy and comfortable with each other. I could bust out my New York hard-core makeup and clothes, but he seems to like me just fine with splotchy skin, old jeans, and curly air-dried hair.

Steve lives not far from Lough Erne, which is this giant massive lake with a crap ton of fish in it. Steve, his friend John, and John’s son James have taken me fishing twice, and both times I’ve caught brown trout!

Let me be the first to tell you, the actual catching of the fish requires no skill at all. The tying of the hooks on the rods, and driving the boat around to where the fish are, and sitting on a wooden seat in chilly misty rain for hours on end is where the skill set comes in. The hauling in of a hapless fish is this crazy adrenaline rush. The second time we were out, this 1.5 pound monster managed to hook itself on my line, and reeling it in was like hauling in a bloody bus. One dispatches the fish by thwacking its head on the side of the boat’s seats, and so far, I have left this delicate duty to Steve. I can catch the things, sure, but clubbing them to their death is something else entirely. The first fish I caught was a Terminator Fish, and refused to die. When it finally did, after repeated beatings by Steve and young James (who got his chocolate Easter egg snack covered in droplets of fish blood in the process) I had to grip its sad little corpse in my hands while Steve took a picture of it (note James’s ‘hark at the stupid American’ smirk in the background.) Fishing is not for the squeamish.

Steve lives in Ballinamallard, which is right on the border of Northern Ireland and the South. As soon as you cross over, all the signs are in Gaelic, and the currency switches from the pound to the Euro. My wallet is now filled with equally pointless money, and I’ve handed shopkeepers the wrong weird coin too many times to count. They just kind of roll their eyes, acknowledge my accent, and move on.

We drove down to the South near Kilkenny for a few days to visit Steve’s uncle Robin and his girlfriend Avril who are fixing up a house to be a B & B. Avril and her kids are horsey people, so Avril arranged for us to go on a ride. Steve is decidedly not a horsey person, and I haven’t ridden in years, but I got to do some jumping, and Steve gained about a million points in my book for being a great sport about the whole thing.

Things I have driven, the speed at which they were driven, and why it matters: A horse, at a canter, because I love horses and riding and it was a special treat. Steve’s speedboat, at 40 miles per hour, because I was scared shitless of driving into a rock or something but it was really fun, and because the boy has way more faith in me than he should. Steve’s car, at 15 miles per hour in a parking lot, because driving a diesel stick shift is totally different than driving an unleaded one, and because having the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car is a lovely spatial challenge for a girl who nearly failed Geometry.

Wrong side of the road driving and roundabouts are certainly something to think about. A friend of Steve’s has lent me her bike, so I’ve been venturing out on little excursions. I need to keep telling myself which side of the road I need to be on, and when I hit a roundabout, to take deep breaths, not panic, and hope to god no one hits me as I noodle my way through it.

Enniskillen, the largest nearby town, is about 7 miles away. I was a little freaked out when we first hit Ballinamallard, Steve’s town, since it’s one main street with a post office, a grocery, two bars, and mostly just farmland after that. But Enniskillen is pretty cosmopolitan, with good shopping, cute little shops and boutiques, and apparent stuff to do. It’s not exactly Times Square on a Friday night, but I’m not in Summerteethville either.

So, that’s it from here, for now. I have to go make sure Terminator Fish has defrosted, as I’m making him for dinner.