Going Stateside for the

I MET up with my first-cousin this week, if she is my Mum's cousin, she is my first cousin isn't she? She moved to the States decades ago and I last saw her 15 years ago when the Young Wan was only six months old.

We only had an hour or so before herself and posse, her husband (ehm my eh first cousin's husband) Big Ron and their friends had to go back to their hotel for a good night's sleep before their 7am flight the next morning.

My uncle Ron, that's much easier and appropriate to say, had a scene in a movie which made it into a top-whatever list of worst movies ever made. I remember that since I first met him when I was seven and went to the States for the first time with my Mum and Nanny.

Oh my god, such excitement that was, from when we realised in Dublin Airport that the passengers they were calling for the flight was actually us and we missed it to being put up in an airport near the hotel which still makes me smile when we pass.

In the hotel I remember we had two rooms next to each other with a balcony running along all the rooms. I remember my Mum saying it would be a laugh, or something like that maybe it was just 'walk along the balcony and see if your Nanny is up', and I went out to her room window and nearly scared the living daylights out of her looking in her window as she pulled up her tights.

I laughed myself hysterical until tears ran down my cheeks.

Being away with my Mum for three whole weeks was amazing. In the hotel at breakfast she took my spoon and moved the cereal (am I so sad I remember they were rice crispys) that was up and around the bowl back into the milk. That was wonderful.

I remember my first-cousin/Aunt Sally picking us up at the airport with a freezer box full of ice and cans of coke and driving to their home, which in Irish terms was bloody amazing. They had a deck and what they called a pond but was really a small lake out the back.

The lake had turtles and catfish in it, the turtles ranging in size from small ones to one massive one I would see swimming underneath the surface every now and again. The house also had a wood beside it and one day I got lost in it. When I was in Turkey I saw a photograph my Mum has taken that day of me rubbing my eyes after crying, having been lost never to be found again, beside the wood. It is funny because I remember being a bit 'I'm traumatised here and you are taking pics!

Mm slightly ironic now but sure.

I went to school when I was there too but the rest is a story for another day, I just let myself wander there, sorry about that.