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Mary

@marty82.bsky.social
276 followers 417 following 2.4K posts

I used to do lots of things, now I mostly attempt to keep small boys in one piece and get bossed around by a tiny cat.

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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 20h
Aged Aunt's appointment was cancelled so in the spirit of having nothing else scheduled herself and my mother are touring the town to beep all the pickets.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 23h
Ours is "A thimble of tea and a crumb of a cracker!" whenever someone is being a martyr, passed down the generations courtesy of my maternal great-grandmother driving everyone to distraction in her later years by 'not wanting to be a burden'.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 23h
Middle's clothes are touching him and he doesn't like it. Small has to go to school and he doesn't like it. I'm awake and I have regrets.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
We got one for Eldest, as lack of peripheral vision and ADHD make being around her with knives and adventure for everyone. I'm fairly sure if it hasn't saved her fingers some it has at least prevented her accidentally stabbing her young man.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
"I've a soft spot for him. A soft spot in the Bog of Allen"
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
1939. Events, dear boy, etc...
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Prime 'named after granny/great-granny" age.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Apparently Middle is a delight and wonderful and will be Just Fine when teacher goes on mat leave. Mr M may not be quite so fine but she thinks it will be a good experience for him and he should never have let them know he hates the 6/7 thing so it's his own fault.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Waiting for parent teacher meeting and one of the P2 teachers has just said "No, I'm not looking for your sock, you have to look for your own socks with your own eyes" and I really want to know how this child lost a sock over lunchtime.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Cat has forgiven me for taking her to the vet enough to come and cuddle with the laptop, but not enough to eat her food. So we have to go get her fancy food.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
He's kind of looked about the same for twenty-odd years. Leathery,
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
I'm just going to go inspect ours now. Because I am down ten pairs of school socks...
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
I did not think Ulster could achieve whole new levels of chaos at this age, but here we are.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I take it Police Scotland told the Chief Constable they need their officers back, then.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Discourse elsewhere of school trips reminding me of the time Mrs R lost her temper listening to us on the way to the Ulster American Folk Park and made us sing 'Living Next Door to Alice' properly, in tune and fully enunciating every word. That poor bus driver.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Some people like people about? I get it, I married a man who announces his intentions to go live in a bothy in the Mournes every time next door plug in the hoover...
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Ours definitely is. Our plumber answers the phone with "What did they do now?"
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It's a heritage area, if any of the attached land is still being farmed it's leased to a neighbour with modern kit that wouldn't fit in them, so they're never going to be used as barns again, but you might be able to fund the upkeep of the house from the rent/holiday let income.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It's going to have to be a labour of love for someone, possibly several generations of someones, but you can still see how lovely the house was!
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Sympathies, it's so rough when they're tiny and can't have the good asthma stuff yet. We had a time of it with middle one until they got him on montelukast at the end of P1, it made such a difference.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Oh poor Chomp! But it is so much easier on them now, one of the school friends had hers out, had a week off school and now is charging about like a madwoman again. Although she's seven so also got week being fed ice pops by the lunch ladies out of it before her mum caught on.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Thank you to the lady in Cherryvale with the fabulous trenchcoat, who provided the much needed kick in the ass to go and buy the new trenchcoat I've been dithering about for two year...
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
My great aunts died mad about the sale of a piece of land that took place before the Act of Union and which has been under a reservoir since 1915...
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Our children's hospital call it Taz mode. They like to send them home just before the wall climbing starts.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
A couple of times 2005 or so I was the only person who got off the last train at Caledonian Road and all of those times the staff locking up kindly but firmly insisted on walking me up to my hostel.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Ardmore Police Station in Newry.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It does drop you at the bit where the main road south used to run before the rest of the urban core happened.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Our System guy has the same conversation with everyone who has complained that the systems are not shiny: "Does it work?" "Yes?" "Does it meet access standards?" "Yes?" "Are you going to give me budget for a UX designer?"
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Does herding feral software developers count?
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Oof, good luck. A great many of ours have decided to commute instead of rent this year and the baseline unholy parking and public transport situation has descended into hellscape.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I'm not sure he's even thought it that far through. His boss definitely itley does consider him a weeding measure, if you can't survive the zany, you probably don't want to be in that particular field of development because the rest of them are worse.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Boys sent to school in long trousers for the first time this year. Countdown to the knees being out of them starts now.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Oh lord, the other half better not see this, he would be wearing six pairs into work to scare the interns. (also, congratulations on number 3!)
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
My seven year old is still absolutely outraged about the short story which is actually a multiple page build up to a sneeze joke.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
That's what DPER does. That's LITERALLY what it was set up to do.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I remember having to coordinate the NDAs for one of our PhD student's ML datasets back in 2014. We had to get everyone who read the thing to sign.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The thing with all the Jeffrey Archer coverage is that 1994 was when I finally ran out of reading material and had to start reading the newspapers. 1994 was a very confusing year to start paying attention to British political events, especially if you were 11.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Jesus, whose puppy did Munster kick over at the Irish times?
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Taking that advice, I shouldn't eat my entirely home-cooked lunch. I have gimbap and cutlets and brownies and all of them are/contain UPFs under her definition.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
When I took Middle up to the convent for a new baby visit Sister G (40-odd years of Early Years under her belt) gave him the cross of her rosary to gnaw to the absolute horror of my mother and Sister P. "For goodness sake, he hasn't got any teeth yet, he can't do any damage!"
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
So what we've established this week is that the Garvaghy now gets to hold a mini-Fleadh every September?
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Mine retired, annoyed mammy for a week, got bored and took over the school run and dog walking for next door while he persuaded her to let him start doing all those wee jobs they'd been putting off. Including redoing all the skirting, architraves and doors by himself.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Good Morning Ulster: Are you disappointed in the politicians? Richard Haas: No, I don't have high expectations.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Carefully not mentioning that the pizza for dinner is courtesy of Small's 4.30am rising, for fear he'll do it again.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
God, I remember school sending us out collecting for Childline when they were setting up the Belfast centre. I still have the giant green t-shirt somewhere.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My elder aunts and uncle lived in terror of Granny going out for the evening until they were teenagers because Granda would try to recreate the recipes he'd acquired on his pre-war travels with what you could find in the market in the 50s.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
You clearly haven't been to Castle Ward on their more experimental baking days.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
At least they're all the same length?
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Also they're incredibly sweet and the icing is rock hard. I ate one, and remembered why I never went looking for them again. They do not stand up as well as party rings. Kids love them though.
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Mary @marty82.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
They now make tiny ones in Hula Hoop size bags. They stock them in The Range and my kids' friends' Korean mum found them and innocently handed them out at the park one day then spent the next two hours being swamped with nostalgic Irish parents wanting to know where she got them.
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