2am and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake, can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I've learned something today about the people around me, and by default, I learned even more about myself. Unsurprisingly, the source of my new found knowledge is where I have learned a number of difficult lessons--my big sister.

It's going to be okay. You are going to be okay, Rae. You just have to remember that. Until your heart stops beating--you'll be okay.

I have always dwelled on all of what I'm lacking in life--brains, a perfect body, common sense,.. (to name a few). I'm beginning to realize that this has led me to a much bigger problem--self-absorbency. To deal with this self-hatred, I tend to intentionally (or sometimes maybe subconciously..) harm myself or put myself in danger. It has come to be the only way I can deal with my faults. It feels good to punish myself because it is a way of showing proof fthat I know that I'm a bad person. This? Makes no sense, I realize. But I think if I'm being honest with myself, it is the ony real reason I can come up with.

As good as it feels to hate myself, Jazzy made me realize something: by hating myself, I'm hurting those I love the most. It doesn't matter that I don't care whether I'm happy. There are people in the world who care if I'm happy. And pretending does not take care of it. Not even kind of. Even naive people like my mother can see right through such acts.

Imagine if I kill myself being so reckless. How would that affect people? Honestly I don't know if Jaim could survive. Abby's accident will affect the rest of her life--it has irreversibly changed who she is. What if her only baby sister was gone forever? She would blame herself, I'm positive. It wouldn't be her fault, of course, but nonetheless. It would ruin her. I can't stand the thought of ruining my sister. I love her more than anything.

The moral of my story: my goal for now is to try not to be so hard on myself.

(a little background.. I received a wake up call to the tune that I am just simply a bad sister. I hate myself for it. Jaime cares so much about me, it's unreal. It's unlike any love I ever imagined. You would think that this realization of the greatest love I will probably ever know, would thrill me. But it hurt--no, it was excruciating. I could never love anyone the way Jaime loves everyone. And that, hurts. Let's just add it to the list of my inadequacies.)

Fuck. I'm supposed to be loving myself now aren't I.

But anyways.. I'm so glad she's mine.

oh. tequila.

Michael and Murphy

Ireland--day.. 9 and 10

Umm... We stayed in a gorgeous B&B in Kenmare.. we went to a pub one night where they played polka music and there was lots of dancing--by dancers all over the age of 65. It was fantastic. So this guy Michael asked me to dance (yes one of the seniors..) so fun! positively a highlight of the trip.. He even gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me that I was a good dancer (tahahha cutie)

The next day (our last) we went horse back riding through parts of the Ring of Kerry. My babe's name was Murphy =)

The End.

we're just two lost souls..

more Ireland...
Day 8

Today we packed up and made our way south towards the Cliffs of Moher. We happened to run into, finally!, a castle to tour. Dunguaire Castle. What to say about it.. very cool, lots of history.. I would have liked to seen it like.. not redone and fixed up. A little more raw. But we passed a million buildings like this and they were.. worse than untourable--no roof or floor or walls..

We kept a driving.Classic road sign. Classic.

Cliffs of Moher. Beautiful. gorgeous. You've seen them, I had seen them. No big deal.. though..they were so a big deal. Beautiful. GOrgeous.

We traveled farther and came upon a town that was just Crawling with people--they were all at the beach and surfing. Wait, where are we? For real.

Hotel in.. Ennis I think. At night we found a pub to hunker down in with really fun guys singing and guitarring and such. There were a group of ladies there who had run a marathon somewhere nearby that morning (holla) . And one of them was a singer and she sang a couple of songs with the band (ugh, such a beautiful voice..) and one of the guys was so in love with her (we decided..) So we were watching the interactions from the crowd, very cute.

Yea, they mostly sang really fun Irish songs with lyrics like:

Do you fuck on first dates?
Does your dad own a brewery?

But then they sang Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," and I can remember sitting there listening and not wanting to leave ever. Moreover, I wanted to find me an Irish boy to sing me this damn song. Don't hold your breath, it's not going to happen. On this trip leastways..

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl,

Year after year,

Running over the same old ground.

What have we found

The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

On the walk home, we found this large hand statue outside a church. I said I wanted to crawl in for a picture and some other American tourist hollered from across the street, "get in there, I was just in there last night!" tehe

and I lost my heart to a Galway girl..

Oh yea! I have a blog.

So, Ireland was like a month ago, but I'm still gonna quick hash out some events so I can not ever forget them. Where did I leave off? Ah yes, we had just settled down in Stranraer for the night.

Day 6

We get up to go to the ferry back to Ireland, and we miss it. Yes, it didn't leave until 9am. Yes, we were just blocks from the docks. Whatever, it's vacation =)

But, we get on the next one and just arrive in Belfast a few hours later than expected. We go to a mall and shop for a few hours.. lovely.

So it is about 6pm and we have no place to stay for the night.. so we drive all night down the west coast all the way to Galway (clear across the country)

and stayed at Jaim's. (hooray for not spending money!) Me and Jaime shared her twin bed. It reminded me of summer =)

Day 7

We drove over to Rossaveel and took a boat to the Aran Island of Inishmore. There we rented bicycles for the day and rode around the beautiful island. This was one of my favorite days--though a tad tourist-y, the island was so gorgeous, and the bikes were so much fun, and you could kind of try to stay away from the tourists by making your own route. I took half a memory card of pictures, but I'll try to just show my favorites =)

Then we returned to Galway and experienced a bit of the night life. To be honest, Galway wasn't really my style. Jaim says she loved it and never wanted to leave, so maybe you just needed to get used to it for longer. To me it seemed very crowded everywhere we went. We spent another night at Jaime's apartment.

there's nothing like you and I..

Ireland

Day 5

The next morning, we traveled to my favorite city of the trip: Edinburgh, UK. We first stumbled upon a little cemetery that we ended up spending at least an hour at. It was so serene. I had never realized how much I love cemeteries. There is so much history there and love and loss and.. I don't know, they are just really beautiful. I think the oldest gravestone we found was from the 18th century..

One of the first sights was Edinburgh Castle. Parts of it were built in 1093 (!), but was mostly noted for the conflicts it was involved in during the 14th through 18th centuries, as it is quite militaristic (cannons were shot while we were there!.. well fake ones clearly..) It was so cool. But, it was a tad expensive for the tour, plus we had our eyes on a different castle in the city to go visit, so we just scoured the area and went in just the very first part of Edinburgh Castle.

So we wandered some more and finally came upon the Holyrood Palace, official residence of the Queen Elizabeth II when she is in Scotland. The castle is open to the public year-round, except for one week at the beginning of the summer when the Queen is staying there.

We did not know this.

We could hear Scottish music (bagpipes and such) as we approached the castle, and when we entered the gates, we see this huge ceremony. And there is the Queen. The Queen of England. We saw. The Queen of England.

Unfortunately I didn't get grand pictures of her because people were always surrounding her. (I did crawl on the fortress barrier in order to try, but was yelled at by the guards. People rolled their eyes at the crazy American. All in a day's work.) But crazy, right? I mean, disappointing that we didn't get to tour the Palace, but I mean whatever. We saw the Queen. Of England.

Then we had dinner at another pub.. I had a delightful Irish coffee (Much better than Foldgers + Jack.. bleh.) I wrote down a cute quote on the wall that I plan on making a canvas of for my wall next year:

CARPE DIEM

Whilst we talk, time will have run

meanly on: therefore pluck the

fruits of today, heading not

the morrow. Horace 65-8 BC

Cute, yea? (Oh, and as for the photo, I snapped this one when I saw an old couple sneak off to an alley. And I'm in love with it. It is a perfect example of this adorable town.

So we went on our merry way. We had booked the b&b we had already stayed at in Stranraer because it was cute and we liked it and we had to be at the ferry early (like 9am I think..) So we started to make our way, but after quite a bit of traveling, we could see that we had quite a ways to go. So we stopped at a cute town with another lovely cemetery and another pub to get our much needed scotch fix. Turns out this pub was rather annoying because it housed a bunch of Americans for the duration of our drink (s). Ew.

So we're driving on crazy Scotish roads in the middle of the night and we very nearly run out of gas. It came down to not would we have to walk, but how far. Yikes. But we made it. I think they hide pockets of gas in their tanks Unlike in America. Sweet.

Beautiful. Gorgeous. Wish you were here.

Ireland

(ps. title of post: "Beautiful Gorgeous Wish you were here" is from what movie? Hints: must-see chick flick.. stars Meg Ryan)

Day 3

Ok, so we land in Ireland.

Since you know, apparently our luggage was already there somewhere, we go looking for it. "We don't have any missing luggage." they tell us. Hmm.. we check baggage claim (from our flight). There it is. It was on our flight. It was not already in Shannon. JFK lied to us because they didn't want to look for it. Fabulous. (that was my last whine-fest about our airline troubles I promise!)

So we are traveling in our hire (in Europe you do not rent cars, you hire them). The steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. We drive on the wrong side of the road. The stick (manual car) is handled via your left hand.

We hit two vehicles within the first hour. Not. Lying.

I say "we" because I feel bad blaming my brother because he was the only one of legal age (like 21 or somethigng..) to be driving said rental car (or skilled in handling the stick). --Legality aside, I did drive it for a grand total of 5 blocks just so I could say I did ;)

Anyways.. Those were our only two accidents for the whole trip, and they were both just busting up other people's side-rearview mirrors. No big deal.

Then we drive (through which I slept much of..) from the airport to Belfast. Oh yea Jaim met us at the airport in shannon.. Our ferry from Belfast, scheduled to leave at.. 8pm I think, gets cancelled due to "technical difficulties" (uhh.. sketch.) So we find a pub for supper, where I promptly order my first Guiness for the trip. Sadly, throughout our stay, throughout the drinks I ordered, I was not once carded. I had my 18-year-old ID all ready and everything, but they just don't care. I love Ireland.

Our re-scheduled ferry leaves 3-hours later--disappointing because it is now dark outside and we can no longer see our gorgeous surroundings.

Day 4

We finally reach Stranraer, UK at about 1am. Our b&b is aDORable. Sleep. Ahhh..

In the AM we get a full Scotish breakfast from our host (lies.. Luke gets the full breakfast, the girls grab some toast and coffee. Half-cooked piggie? I'll pass.)

We had planned to go up to Isle of Sky (like wayyy northern Scotland), but we had to reevaluate due to losing an entire day because of airplanes!! (whoops I was supposed to let that go..) So we make our way via the hire to Galloway Forest Park, a huge like "national park" by our standards.. Studying our travel books, we find a cute little hike that says will take about 2 hours. Ha. That's hilarious. I mean, none of us are monster hikers, but there is No way that hike could take 2 hours..we circled a lake! It took most of the day.. no big deal. It was beyond gorgeous. I took so. many. photos. And internet is shite out here in no-mans-land, so I'm not going to even try to upload many photos.. maybe a couple.

So.. exhaustion stole the rest of our night. Plus it took us many a stresses to find our b&b (I mean, not for me, because, as quickly became a general rule of thumb, I was sleeping).. Aaaand, I don't even remember what town that was in.. Whatever the case, the floor had red carpeting that reminded me of my childhood (scared? ;)) and the bathroom had mirrors on three walls (which did Not remind me of my childhood.) It was.. interesting.

Trivia Answer: French Kiss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6mb1wFPRhs

about 15 seconds in..