Smoky Jokey

My mother has been subsisting as a smoker for the majority of her life with her fixation currently reaching twenty slugs a day. Over the years I have come to learn that living with a cigarette enthusiast does have its perks. Obviously I do not condone smoking and would prefer if my mother was nicotine free but over time I have began to accept, tolerate and respect her habits. Now I'm in a position to poke fun and humour out the given situation and I have gathered a list of 'advantages' a smoking parents includes.

1. You can customarily contain her tantrums and outbursts (this blog-post is delivering the nicest impression of my poor, good-natured 'máthair') so instead of enduring a fifteen minute lecture on the worthlessness of squandering your entire adolescence on the internet you may substitute her rage for a cigarette.

2. A smoking parent redetermines your own hostility for the harmful fixation, I'm confident that I will never follow suit (apart from the odd social drunken haze).

3. Our home is Ireland's prime lost and found capital (literally we have to hand wash socks as every pair we hurl into the washing machine exits the device all lonesome). Consequently if you accidentally part ways with something a doomed treasure hunt is activated for days to no victory. However if you seek to find a lighter for perchance lighting the open-fire or candles then you will forever more discover one lodged in the dining room, our mother's smoking confines.

4. Our smoke alarm is resilient to fumes as our lovable matriarch's smoking has pre-empted its sensitivity. Therefore our three o'clock late night fast-food binges that finish up burnt and fresh air polluting don't result in the awakening of the entire clan meaning we're safe and caught free for now.

5. Socialising on Saturday nights in trendy Ireland typically requires you to worm into the dark, poisonous smoking area of a run-down nightclub/pub. But this doesn't bother us as it isn't too different to home. Especially considering your childhood virtually consisted of the required training to become a fire-fighter in New York city.
As a child we continually pretended sweets like these were cigarettes. 

Knock, Knock

Being a man of many talents has left me with an army of different careers to slog at. Door to door sales is something I unintentionally found myself emerged in. The life of this breed of enterpriser is a strange one as refreshingly every single working day is diverse and you find yourself encountering every sort of character. My trading path has alternated throughout these lingering months from auctioning cheaper electricity to enticing thirty day free trials of water filters. Revel in these random events that have occurred in my new found profession.

1. Like all jobs there is both good days and bad days but in the land of direct marketing it is all a lot more intense. One day in late March I was convinced I was going to quit as the entire week was manifesting dreadfully. My attitude couldn't dip any lower when I met easily the nicest family in the world (take that The Brady Bunch) who were adamant that the deal couldn't be finalised until I sat down and joined them for dinner. Parked there in the midst of this random family receiving the biggest serving of shepherd's pie at the table was a surreal moment, especially considering some child lost out on a decent sized portion due to my presence.

2. This job drives you to despise all dogs discharged onto this planet. They grunt viciously at you, they flee the scene with your clipboard and in most cases they chase you. The weirdest encounter I've experienced with one of these vile canines was when I was waddling along this shadowy, somber driveway in Ennis, county Clare. Suddenly I could hear this heavy breathing, I turned around to discover this rottweiler was anchored behind me. The strange thing was that 'it' didn't growl or pounce, it just stood there glaring evilly at me. Eye contact remained consistent whilst I slowly backed out of the property.

3. You get handed many things in this job. I've been allocated more pens, endless mugs of tea, bad attitudes than an episode of 'Loose Women'. However the most bizarre thing I've been presented with was a newborn baby. It was in this clotted farmhouse up in north Mayo, the mother left me with the infant whilst she went to fetch her husband down the farm.

4. One thermal, sweaty, sizzling summer day in Galway city I was lurking through the upmarket estates in high-spirits, equipped with courageous hopes of a rewarding day. Throughout the evening I was trailed by a 'Mr. Whippy' ice-cream van (accompanied by that disturbing recognisable jingle). It was degrading to knock on doors, constantly resulting in no answers yet once the ice-cream van cruised past the entire house occupants burst out of their homes for some ice-creamy goodness.

5. You know that scene in 'The IT Crowd' where the characters engage in a street-countdown battle? Well something similarly horrific than that occurred for me when I was greeted by 'Save the Whales' canvassers who encircled me (guided with their 'gangster' persona) lecturing me on how necessary it was that my colleagues and I avoided the given territory, their 'turf'.

Beware! We're coming to an area close to you to activate our brainwashing.

The Inner Hoarder

I share my bedroom at home with my younger brother and although it's fairly competent in size I have found lately that our confines are inhumanly downsizing in space. A further investigation dismissed the suggestion that this recent stint of ice-cream season had caused us to inflate dramatically, meaning we for once weren't the problem. The conclusion of our little crisis was a strange one. I pride myself on being a clean, orderly person but in some regards I am significantly cluttered. I accumulate a lot of junk, with an excessive collection of random components dispensed throughout my bedroom. I have an inability to discard with particular items, thus denoting I am a hoarder. Take pleasure in reviewing my scrap that went a little too far.

1. Clothes: My entire wardrobe is one cramped wreckage fixed in the uninhabitable corner of my quarter. The population of Narnia would have entirely suffocated at this stage from the amount of rags jammed in the closet, out of my way. From my old childish 'Cúl Camp' jerseys to my once mortal denim jacket everything is by some means valuable to be. It's getting worse in the last few years, if I bought an item of clothing I will not be physically able to chuck it. Hand-me-downs for the brother are the way forward.

2. Holiday Rummage: Every vacation I've ever trekked on has left some form of madness in my bedroom. Foreign bus tickets, plane boarding passes, theme-park flyers and tokens all provide me with treasured insights down emotional memory lane (both good and bad) which I'll continue to hoard, I mean cherish.

3. Birthday Cards: If you scrawled me a greeting card in the last six years then congratulations you have a place reserved in the second drawer of my side-locker. I probably should have thrown out these bad boys but the thought of the local bin-men reading through Aunty Maggie's old testimonials sends one too many shivers down my spine. 

4. School Supplies: The majority of people barely have their pen left down after their final leaving cert exam and they have the school uniform burnt, their school books scrapped and anything half-associated with the public building deporting on the first boat to Albania. However this perky turkey cannot dump those ancient school tests, journals, yearbooks and more that each provide me with hours of entertainment and nostalgia as Ireland's spottiest teenager.

5. Seasoned Toenails: Considering I only carve my toenails once a year the collection isn't that substantial. I preserve them in an old jam jar, commonly using them as toothpicks (joking, a fifth point proved difficult).
This gentleman does one better than me by succeeding in closing the door.



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