Urban Life

The Bups and I went for a walk around the block today (like we do most days, to help her have a nice long nap) and I was feeling a little sorry for her for growing up in a city. Although we live in a fairly suburban part of Dublin, with gardens and trees and everything, from her view she mostly just sees the sidewalk, stone walls, and maybe iron gates. The thing that made me sad was that she can identify dog poo, litter, and cigarette butts (she says 'bleh', becuase we tell her they are yucky and she shouldn't touch them). But I suppose if we lived someplace else I would be telling her not to touch worms or poison ivy or something, and maybe we couldn't even go out for a walk without a nice, fairly dry sidewalk to walk on. And there are plenty of urban places that are a lot more yucky and dangerous than our neighborhood. She'll just grow up with the sound of car alarms sending her off to sleep instead of lovely crickets. But Dublin is worth it.

In Olympic news, there's no baby, which is not a surprise. What is mildly surprising is that the Irish channels aren't showing any Olympic coverage at all! But I suppose if there are no Irish athletes in it, RTE figures there's no point.

Because Bupsy has an Irish passport, I guess she would have a pretty good chance of making the Irish Olympic team. I'm going to take her out ice skating tomorrow! Except there are no ice rinks here (only at Christmas). Why do you think they're not in the Olympics?