This is the strangest life I've ever known.

Today I hallucinated that there were 2 boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in my kitchen.

They were waiting for me, and I had branded them mine with a sharpie already the day before. I just couldn’t remember where they were. At about 1pm, when I should have been studying for a psychology final for Trinity, I was crawling on my kitchen counters looking for a non-existent box of artificial coloring and bleached noodles.

It was at this point that I started considering that I may have a hinge loose. Or a marble rolling around a bit. But either way, I had 6 slices of bread today. And that helped matters.

It’s gotten harder to keep up on my bread reflections. Ever since Easter, I have systematically returned to a blessed and simple life of bread. My days are effortless, and without a care. It’s almost like the bread hiatus never occurred. And going to Paris didn’t help my motivation.

It was my dream and Mecca for countless years. The city of light. And accordions. And smelly metros and people. What happens when you get your dream?

You find yourself standing in front of James Douglas Morrison’s gravesite. Except when you envisioned it, you were alone and free to sit idly by and ponder his music and sexual appeal all to your peaceful self. I stood in front of his ‘gently loved’ gravesite, with a few dozen other tourists in Pere Lachaise as cigarettes were thrown and middle-aged women speaking French asked me who the dead guy was.

I can’t cry, because then they’ll think I’m crazy.

I can’t yell at them, because they won’t understand my American gibberish anyhow. And I will prove their suspicions correct that I am, in fact, crazy.

I said, He was a Poet. They don’t understand.

So I just looked on. I considered hopping the gate to hump his headstone, but I know for a fact that has been happening for 40 years, and I’m not about to start copying 3 generations of groupies.

I realized there was still half a loaf of bread in my shoulder bag. As I strolled away, stronger and wiser than before, I nibbled at the French baguette. It was one of the only things that morning that lived up to the hype.

Sometimes, dreams aren’t as good as reality.

But I guess, maybe, that’s when you find a new dream.

After Paris, my travels (and a volcano in Iceland), stranded me and Allison in Geneva, Switzerland. But that’s another story.

I found my new dream.

Christianity, allergies, love, and other inconvenient things.

I was told, “Spring happened last night.”

To the untrained eye, there wouldn’t be a noticeable difference. Luckily, after over 3 months in this kooky, backwards city, I have started to catch on.

For example, the typical wardrobe of Dublin girls includes a see-thru shirt, a few over-sized and tattered accessories, and near to non-existent skirts. Today, I have passed by many a lasses that all together forgot their pants. But that’s alright; no one seems to be complaining.

In addition to the wardrobe changes, the St Stephen’s Green park etiquette has shifted. As I lay here in the grass with the Irish sun breathing down my back and a hanky in my hand to blow my allergy-stricken nose on, I notice the numerous couples that have settled around me. Most containing older men and younger women, few consisting of acceptable conversation topics for 2 pm near a playground, and all comprised of a massive amount of public affection.

There is something in the air. And it’s making me sneeze.

I blame the dubiousness of my recent decisions on the recent turn in weather here in the Fair City. Today is Sunday, and I am thinking about all my last Sundays since February. Today is Sunday and I am so happy I am not a catholic.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a magical Easter experience. I did. I just choose to take matters into my own hands 2 days before.

Maybe you thought I had found contentness and virtue in my lent journey. Perhaps I lead on that my determination and self-will was truly growing and proving me to be a worthy individual.

Maybe you should have looked harder.

I have learned many things on this long and strange trip:

1. Chips after Guinness isn’t worth it. You’re only going to regret it the next morning.
2. There are few substitutions for good Focaccia bread, and there are few things I wouldn’t do for one.
3. It’s not a good thing to find yourself in a hole-in-the-wall deli in Dun Laoghaire, being served undercooked eggs and ham chunks after a questionable night, unable to make eye contact across the grease stained table. But sometimes they are cutting fresh bread for toast. And sometimes, that’s exactly where you should be.

For these few reasons briefly stated above, I chose to forfeit my bread lent 2 days before Easter. Yeah. And you know what? It’s okay. Once you know what you want, you know what you want I suppose.

On Easter morning my apartment woke up and dressed in our finest to walk down Haddington Rd to St. Mary’s Church for mass. Yes, we were clueless. No, we were not all-together sober. But we were there, and we sang.

The first piece of bread I had on Easter was from the priest, I’d never had it before. I’ll probably never have it again, either. But that’s okay. That’s what this city has shown me. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. It’s a field or a sculpture or a man or a croissant that I have never encountered, that I never will again.

Once you know what you want, every moment is fleeting. And every fleeting moment is worth it.

Day 41

I saw something yesterday and I feel compelled to write about it.

It was something many people would have disregarded, but being the over-analytical and baby-crazed person that I am, it hit me. Literally. The kid wacked me with her 3 foot French baguette as she ran to catch up with her Pa. I’ll explain.

When you have an hourly countdown going on in your head for when you will be able to enjoy something next, life becomes a reflective and provocative thing. In my head. I’m thinking all day long about bread. It’s all encompassing. Did you know that if you search “Bread” on thesaurus.com, the first definition for it is “daily food”? Ironic.

But back to the grocery store and the mean little kid. I was shopping for dinner. It was decided we would make chicken, again.

And I don’t know how this happened, but I was once an American girl who hated beer, refused meat, and overdosed on bread daily. I have become an Irish squatter who grills her own chicken fillets, and has replaced her nightly dinner roll with a Guinness nightcap.

But again, back to the grocery store. I was wandering around with chicken in one hand, stack of oaties in the other, and I see this cute little girl standing in the middle of the aisle with her back to me. Sporting ringlets and big rubber boots, she was uncoordinatedly following behind her (assumed to be) dad. I went about my shopping (definitely not oodling over the cutest little Irish offspring I’d ever seen), when she turned around abruptly and I saw that she had a baguette the size of a Subway sub clenched in her dinky little hands. Man, she was a sight. Slobber rolling down the torn-open packaging that I could only hope she wasn’t swallowing in her fervor. She looked at me, ripped off another bite of her tightly held prize, then spun and ran away.

Did she know? Did she do that on purpose because she knew I couldn’t be doing that? Even if this whole lent thing was over? Let’s be real. Me slobbering on a stick of bread in the frozen foods aisle wouldn’t emit the same reaction from passerby’s as the toddler in polka dots.

I tried to put it out of my mind.

As I neared the queue to pay, I saw her again in front of me. She had probably devoured at least a third of it by then. Her father, after paying for actual baby mush and suitable forms of food for teething infants, took the bread from her so the the unlucky cashier could scan it. And in that instant, that girl must have had all the sadness in the world come out of her eyes. Tears ensued. Quickly realizing the mistake he had made, Dad gave the bread back to the girl, who snatched it and started off without him.

And I stood there, and thought to myself. This girl and I are not that far off each other. Sure, we are citizens of different countries, and I have about 4 feet in height on her, but on the inside, we’re exactly the same. That would be me, without cognitive awareness or acceptable social behavior skills. That girl is going to grow up, and maybe she will become the next Irish Taoiseach. Or maybe she’ll be a street performer on Grafton St. Either way, she’s going to do great things, I can tell. With a passion like that, why not?

A few days ago, a Dubliner told me that “Aran” is Irish for “bread”. It’s a dreadful language, Gaelic. Independent/dependent forms of verbs, some short vowels are lengthened while others are diphthongized… terrible.

I love it.