Three Facts

1. There is a dog in this coffee shop. I am petting him. His owner informs me that his name is Hector. Animals here wear bandanas, follow their owners, and fetch newspapers. It's like the Disney Channel, but with Irish accents, and in real life.

2. Bananagrams came with me to Ireland, and it's, as of now, my most valuable piece of luggage.

Bananagrams, if you don't already know, is a game: merely a bunch of Scrabble tiles in a cloth case inexplicably shaped like a banana. The object of it is to form your portion of those tiles into a bunch of words intersecting other words, like a crossword puzzle. But for being a crazy simple game, it's given both Irish and American people a lot of (banana-shaped) pleasure lately.

I started forcing the children I teach English as a Second Language to to play it in class, but it's also gotten a lot of playtime at home -- one of my housemates has lately taken a shine to sitting down, pouring a cup of coffee, spreading the banana open, and then spending an hour frowning at the tiles, arranging them into a delicately-formed grid with a common, subliminal theme. Occasionally I or another housemate, Heather, help him. The first one we formed had, not unsurprisingly, the theme of "sex" ('QUEEF! BJ! HEAD!' and my invention, when we couldn't find any use for our x and multiple i's -- 'XIII'!).

The second one was both more useful and more adult, mature, and subtle. Our landlords have been rather ornery -- despite infrequent hot water and, occasionally, no water, they refused to reduce our ridiculously exorbitant rent even a little bit. I looked up from my reading to find Blair seated at the table, frowning at a puzzle that included 'DIEMURPHYSDIE', 'NOLAUNDRY', and 'WTFRENT'.

We considered leaving it up for when they walk unexpectedly into our house all the time, but then again they're old and so it might kill them.

3. The schoolteachers at St. Cronan's, where I teach, have a turn of phrase that is always slightly jarring when I hear it. As I mentioned before, I'm a terrible disciplinarian, so I usually witness mischief instead of solving it -- the other day, two boys were hitting each other with backpacks before the after-school program started, and I was shifting from foot to foot uneasily, watching them. All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Mrs. Lyons appeared, and thundered,

"WHAT ARE YOU MEANT TO BE DOING??"

The boys instantly ran to their chairs and sat down, chastened, but I stood, debating the merits of graduate school, of the Peace Corps, of any number of future possible careers. What AM I meant to be doing?...

Well, now, at least, it's dinner time, and I'm off to go roast some fish.