GRRR ARRGGGHHH

5 am wake up. NAY FUN, i can tell you that.

I got a Bus Eireann coach from the Drogheda Bus depot at 6.20am.

I arrived in town, Busaras, to be exact, at 740 or so.


The coach was comfy, if not crapped in the leg room department. I couldn't sleep or snooze because of the terrifying notion that i was actually moving involuntarily because of the pothole's, g-force of acceleration and breaking and general shoddiness of road based suspension. I was tossed around like a rag doll caught in a puppies milk-teeth(if they have milk-teeth). It was not a pleasant experience.

And my knee's, my poor knee's. Inch deep in the seat in front of me. Not enough room to splay myself with legs a-kimbo for comfort. The growing strain on my knee caps and other area's was uncomfortable to say the least.

And on-top of all that my arm rest wouldn't work! It would just flop back down, it wouldn't lock in place like a good little obedient chair feature. Even the seat belt worked eventually after excessive pulling, jerking, leaning to one side and fiddling about in a blind area with my hand squashed and reversed.



As you can tell i don't like buses. Or at least no longer, or not at 6am.

I used to get the 48A to school for most of my life, 2nd class all the way to 4th Year. I was as American's would call it, a "latch key kid". I would get the bus home, for a few years with my older sister, then on my own. For 3 years while still a kid i had an Au Pair in our suburban home so i wasn't coming home to nothing. But from 6th Class onto secondary school i was coming home to nothing, for like an hour...

But i loved the bus. I got a good nap and i was well used to it. It was reliable and there was other service's in the local area that also served town.


The 48A was invaluable though. But for several years it suffered because of the mass of development and road closure's and development in Dundrum. Oh the HORROR!

It would take 2 hours to get from Ballinteer to Ranelagh! 2 hours! It was awful.


Then i moved out to Louth. Trains, what a quaint idea.

5 years later and i think their the best thing since sliced bread, hell they pre-date sliced bread!

And now it's gone, for 3 months.


When i first started taking it it wasn't exactly the bee's knee's. It didn't run on the weekend's....

This was the 2005/06 upgrades to the track and station length. It was off putting to say the least.

But over the years the train has become my life. 2 hours everyday, sometimes more.

I know the network, relating to Dublin anyway, backwards, blindfolded, and spun in a centrifuge.

And now i don't have the train.

I have arrival time's for placement down to minute's!

I know exactly how my train and Luas interact and if i will be late or by the skin of my teeth.

Now i will be nothing but at least an hour late or even later.

There will have to be a solution, that solution might, just have to be, moving to Dublin.

The idea hasn't crossed my parents minds yet. After all i'm jobless, lazy, sponge-like dependant and basically a slob and a waste of space as it is.

But IF i get to the long awaited 3rd year of college commuting from Drogheda is an impossibility. There IS NO TRAIN LINK!!!!!!


I have no job. No job experience. No time for a job when i get to placement, and i am severely unwilling to work in care homes or any lower level health professional job, because it's menial, monotonous and requires levels of assertiveness and cleanliness that i could NEVER muster on purpose.


My solutions are vague to say the least. I need a job, not exactly easy. I need somewhere to live, even worse. I have place's i can "crash" when necessary, but i have no where to "live".

Delegation. Negotiation. Pleading. Or even more debt are the only way's i can alleviate this situation.

The idea insinuated by my parent's is that "I" have "no other choice" but to tell the hospital and Trinity that "i HAVE to be Late, and I HAVE to explain MY situation".

Frankly at this stage, my situation, is beyond excusable at this stage. The distance has been trying and exhausting for 5 years as it is, 3 of college being even worse.

My academic standing is poor to say the least. Not just from lack of interest but from lack of work and effort.

My assertiveness, a lack there of, in my nursing skills is appalling. I may be a caring person but i'm a bit of a headless chicken and pretty piss poor as a student. Arriving late every day would i NO way be excusable.

I got away with it in my second placement when i could ONLY get a lift with my mom at a later time and had to be a whole hour later for 2 or more weeks. The CNM's somehow accepted this.

On a side not they somehow liked me, or let me get away with that, when all 3 of the mature students were upstarts and troublemakers and were not liked by them. I was lucky that time...


I won't be lucky again. All my luck is needed in passing my exams.

Once i do that i CAN'T commute from Drogheda. It's a logistical impossibility that making it to Placement would even be viable.

Even if i were driving it would be impossible.

I need a solution. I don't know what it will be but i need one. Not something to add to my pile of distracted thoughts when i should be studying.....