Author Archives: Maria Rushe - Blogger and Writer

“Mam-Me Time” at The Silver Tassie Hotel & Seascape Spa – Review

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The Silver Tassie Hotel has been a family favourite with my parents since I was a child. We’ve have many family events and two family weddings there. The Him and I have stayed many times and always delight in being invited to weddings or functions in their ballroom.

Once upon a time, this Mammy spent summers pulling pints behind the bar there too. Rightfully, The Silver Tassie is known as one of the gems of Donegal; a family run affair which can easily combines chic, country coziness with contemporary glitz and class.

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So when they invited my Mum and I to celebrate International Women’s Day with them at their Seascape Spa , followed by Afternoon Tea in their Conservatory, we were only delighted to say yes.

We had some of their Spring Treatments in the spa and then had an Amazing Afternoon Tea It was much needed after a few very busy weeks and we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon.

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The current Spring Specials

We arrived to the spa to a friendly and efficient welcome, where we filled out the usual forms and were shown to our changing room. Mum headed off with her therapist, Martina, for the Perfect Retreat which by all accounts, was exactly what it said on the tin. She said that the Indian Head Massage was the best she’d ever had.

Lovely Heavy Robes
Only Half of my Treatment Room

Alison took me for my treatment which was the Voya Mindul Touch package. I’ve had many massages in my time; some good, some that left me needing physio afterwards. But this was wonderful. The hot stone massage was incredible. My neck and back were in bits when I went in. By the time Alison was finished working her magic, my back felt like warm butter.

The Treatment Rooms are Gorgeous
I don’t usually take my phone to the bath…

I then stepped into the Seaweed Bath. I’ve had this in Seascape before and every time I sink down into the water, I ask myself why I don’t do it more often. I love the slimy feeling of the seaweed on my skin. I love the smell. I love the exfoliation of some of the weed and I love how silky my skin feels afterwards.

We were then shown to the relaxation room which had a selection of teas and fruit. A little bowl of sorbet was a lovely touch and very welcomed after the treatments.

The Relaxation Room
Sorbet

The Seascape has it right on so many levels. It’s a boutique spa, intimate and calm. The decor is classy and subtle and the smells are a sensory treat throughout. They offer special packages throughout the year and can adapt many treatments for pregnant ladies. The therapists also specialise in treatments for people who are fighting, or have fought, cancer.

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Proper Bum Coverers!

Can I also say that they also have proper disposable Ninkernankers! Not the teeny tiny cheesegrater/dentalfloss type that are virtually invisible and therefore quite pointless. Proper comortable disposable pants, for all bum sizes. Very important.

What Mum and I both agreed on is that the spa is accessible to everyone. It’s one of the few spas where you don’t have to wear a swimsuit and can keep your robe on at all times, and so is perfect for women who perhaps don’t love the prospect of parading about in a swimsuit or bikini. The Seascape is dignified and subtle for anyone.

Yes, I know this isn’t an issue for all women, but there are many who say no to spa trips with friends simply because of the fear of having to get undressed or be semi-naked. If that is something that you can empathise with, try the Seascape. And bring your friends.

I love this space…
Beautiful

After our treatments, we went into the conservatory of the hotel where we were served a beautiful afternoon tea. There may have been enough food for 4 people, but Mum and I managed! The conservatory is spacious and elegant and the table setting was stunning.

Three trays of treats awaited. The bottom tray had open sandwiches; one with goat’s cheese and chutney, one with smoked chicken and one with smoked salmon and prawn. Divine.

Fresh, warm scones with jam and cream sat on the second tray, and the top tray had a selection of fruit, chocolates, profiteroles and sweet bites. The tea was served in a huge pot, perfect for Mammy Bear, and the coffee was so good, I asked for a second pot!

Open Sandwiches
Warm Scones
Fancies

It really was a lovely experience and it’s right outside Letterkenny. We could actually see our houses across the Swilly while we ate our tea.

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Pinky Out

The Spring Specials are available all month and afternoon tea can be booked at reception on 0749125619.

And don’t forget that it’s Mother’s Day on Sunday 31st. This would be the perfect treat for you, or for the special lady in your life.

As stated, we were invited guests of the Silver Tassie Hotel, however as always, my review is my own. I was under no obligation to write it and my account of our experience is honest.

Does my Face Look Bovered?

Posted in Being Me by

Does my face look Bovered?
Grab a cuppa! Reality check a comin!

Have you ever felt like you’ve let your kids down or made a mess of things?

Have you ever felt like a failure because you didn’t reach your own expectations of how things should be?

Like when you’ve had the morning from Hell and then you spend the day feeling guilty that your kids will be upset all day?

Or a part of a birthday gift didn’t arrive on time and you worry that it’ll ruin the whole surprise?

Or you find something after Christmas which you meant to use or do and now you feel like you’ve messed up?

Or you spend the whole of the weekend cleaning and doing housework and are sure that you are ruining their lives because they’ve had to entertain themselves all weekend?

Or you don’t think to book a magician for her First Communion and then it’s too late?

Or you’ve had to work late and feel like you are not giving enough attention to your kids?

Or you’ve not been able to organise (or afford) the cake you wanted to get your 3 year old?

Or you’ve told your 8 year old they can invite 4 friends to their birthday party, but Jacinta up the road has the whole class at little Vincentula’s?

I could go on and on…and on…and on… and on…

We set ourselves so many standards and expectations around our children’s experiences. We feel like a failure if their experiences are not what we intended them to be… But when things do not go to plan, do they look “bovered?”

Nope. The only one whose face looks “bovered”, is Mammy.

I’m currently reading Becoming by Michelle Obama. It’s an incredible memoir. Everyone really should read it.

One of the memories she describes has stood strong in my head since I read it. It’s about her daughter’s tenth birthday. She describes how it fell just weeks before the Presidential Election, when they were in the midst of the campaign trail, constantly surrounded by a management team and journalists and Secret Service.

She remembers they had to use the 4th of July carnival they had to attend to ‘celebrate’ their daughter’s birthday; How they spent the day passing disappointed glances at each other; How they longed for the day to be over so that they could get an hour on their own with their daughter that evening; How they both felt like failures because they couldn’t take a day off work.

The guilt that they both felt that day was immense. And even when they did get to the hotel, their “private” party still had about 20 of their team present.

Michelle talks about the plain hotel function space, the “store bought” cake, the gifts that one of the team had had to go to buy as she was unable to go to a store alone… and she spoke of the desultory disappointment she felt in herself.

She spoke about the shame she felt that her daughter’s birthday was spent working, dragging her along and not at home with her friends. And she describes the guilt she and her husband felt in a way that every parent can understand.

I felt her pain as I read. I’ve just returned from a 4 day work trip. I had the worst dose of Mammy Guilt before I left and while I was there. I felt that my girls were being passed from Granny to Daddy to school, and that I was the worst Mum in the world for not being close at hand for a few days.

But when I returned, I realised something. My perspective to the trip was so incredibly different to theirs.

While I was teary eyed about leaving them on what happened to be my Birthday, they saw only that they were getting to go play with their cousins.

While I worried that they’d miss me, they saw time alone with Daddy where Mammy wasn’t there to interfere!

Where I felt the guilt of sending them to my Mum’s house again, they saw the utter, imcomparable joy of getting a Sleepover in GannyGanda’s where they’d get pancakes for breakfast and 37 stories at bedtime.

Where I felt that I’d need to make it up to them when I finally got home, they only saw their Mammy, who was home safe with them.

The hugs were brief but tight, and after 5 minutes of showing me EVERYTHING they had made or done since I left, Mini-Me looked into my eyes and announced that they’d had a lovely time and asked when I could go away again… Cheers Babe.

Just like Michelle Obama’s daughter bounced over to her parents on that birthday and hugged them tight announcing “This has been the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!”, My two girls saw things in a very different way.

Because that is what kids do.

And as parents we need to remember that. Most of the things that we worry about, would NEVER be considered or noticed by our kids.

Kids don’t dwell on the bad morning. They remember the kiss on the nose or the promise of “See you in a wee while!”

They don’t give a damn about the thing Mammy forgot to get, or that the cake is from a shop, or that the spuds get burnt, or that there are no crackers at Christmas. Kids are paying attention to a whole other set of things…

So ease up on yourself Mammy.

Are your kids loved? Are they safe? Are they fed?

Yeah? Well chances are, that even if YOU are feeling guilty or disappointed, or that you feel a failure about something, your kids don’t care.

They only see you.

And if you look closely at them, you’ll see that their face certainly does not look “bovered”.

Let’s Hear It For The Girls…Disney Princesses and All!

Posted in Being Me, Uncategorized by

Here’s to all the strong and powerful women on International Women’s Day…and EVERY DAY!

Kiera Knightly once broke t-interweb with her announcement that she had banned her three year old daughter from watching The Little Mermaid and Cinderella. She felt that they teach her daughter wrong and even misogynistic lessons; that you need to wait for a man to save you and that you must give up your voice for the man you want…

Kristen Bell has issues with Snow White because of how consent is conveyed in it.

Fair enough. Full valid opinions.

Who are we to judge? If these Mamas don’t want to let their kids watch these movies, that is absolutely 100% THEIR DECISION!

In fact, the portrayal of women in Disney is something I have discussed with my students many, many, many times, and while I agree that many of the traditional “princesses” are frustratingly meek and mild and oh so obedient to their hearts and menfolk, I also am aware that the stories are not the cause of inequality and misogyny in our modern society.

They are only stories; fairytales, make believe… it is HOW we read them that is important.

Yes you can say that Prince Whatshisface kissing Snow White while she was sleeping is wrong. Of course it is, but why do we hone in on that, rather than the previous 60 minutes where she was a servant and cleaner and feck knows what else, for seven little men?

(And does that not insult men, suggesting that seven of them together couldn’t function without a teenage girl to look after them?)

Yes, Cinderella needed magic and spells and fab shoes to get her prince. And ‘tut’ to her that she needed a man to save her, but such was the world, the IMAGINARY world, in which she lived.

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Shakespeare wrote some of the most incredibly females in history. Lady Macbeth calls upon evil spirits to “Unsex me here” because obviously she couldn’t be evil as she was a woman. (Any men getting offended here?)

And then he also wrote Ophelia, who is worse and more weak and frustrating that ANY Disney Princess in the world. Don’t start me on Ophelia…

Portia save the day when a crowd of men made a mess of everything… and then he went and ruined it all by having her marry her Prince Charming, after saving his ass. Bad Shakespeare…

Desdemona, Emilia and even the ‘strumpet’ Bianca fuel many a vehement debate in Othello… I’d argue that these three women are the only sources of strength in the text.

Shakespeare actually wrote women who were breaking the societal and cultural norm in the time in which he lived. Glass ceilings if you will…

But we don’t ban our teenagers from reading Shakespeare do we? In fact, we encourage it because we know that they can recognise the injustices and gender issues for themselves. Because we’ve given them those skills.

As for the Disney classics, remember that Cinderella and Snow White and The Little Mermaid were written in the early 1800s… of course their messages and social concepts are different to ours.

We however, get to choose how we read them.

And while there are valid arguments about the negative messages some of the classics send out, there are also plenty positives…and a few weird things, to pay attention to.

Cinderella was good and kind and she felt good in new, sparkly shoes.

She also spoke to mice and birds.

Snow White was happy that Prince Whatshisface kissed her. He saved her and she was quite thrilled. She wasn’t dragged off kicking and screaming to the castle to live happily ever after, was she?

The Little Mermaid was a defiant strong-willed rascal, who followed her heart. Her best friends were also a crab and a fish… so let’s differentiate reality from fairytale.

Our daughters are no fairytale princesses. They will not NEED to wait for a man to save them. They will be able to look after themselves. They will be self-sufficient and well able to provide for themselves, to follow their dreams, to be “anything they want to be”… but can we stop already with telling them that they DON’T need to be girly?

Yes, of course our daughters can be pilots. Of course they can be engineers. By all means encourage our daughters to believe that they can achieve anything they dream of and work for, but why do we need to tell them that being girly or wearing pink or dreaming of being a movie star are signs of weakness?

What the feck is wrong with wanting to be a movie star? Are Meghan Markle or KatyBaby failures because they found their Princes? I’m not a fan of the Royals in general, but what I see are two strong, determined women who have given up a hell of a lot for the man they love. (I wrote this 2 years ago…this example packs a much bigger punch right now.)

My daughters love dresses. They love sparkles. They love makeup and dressing up and singing and being all round princesses. They also love superheros, dressing up as Hulk, football and Pokemon and they play ninjas and wrestle.

There is no “That is for girls” or “That is for boys” in our house.

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Because that is not how to teach our children equality.

I like football. I like MMA. I swear more than a lady should. I can hold my own when I train alongside the menfolk in our gymand I prefer Marvel movies to Chickflicks. In my work and projects, I take no prisoners and do not see any man as better than me.

And yet, I love to do all things “girly” too. and I love to dress up and I like sparkly shoes.

Does that make me less?

Does the fact that I like pink and glitter and girly stuff make me weak?

Because it seems to me that we’ve gone beyond telling girls they can be anything, we’ve gotten to the point that being girly is snubbed and scoffed at and actually looked down upon.

Well not on my watch.

I dress up and get my girly on, for me. Not for my Him or for anyone else. For me.

Because I am comfortable with who I am. And let me tell you, there is NO ONE who has watched as many Disney movies in their childhood (and still), as Me!

And my daughters will do what they want, how they want, Prince Charming or no Prince Charming, but they certainly will not be banned from watching Disney Movies, because all they see is a mermaid who sings songs and fights evil octopus monsters.

It’s a movie.

If you want your daughters to grow up strong and independent, teach them to be strong and independent…point out how old fashioned some of those Princesses are. (not all of them, for the newer ones are WICKED! Merida, Mulan, Ana anyone?)

And teach them that to be feminist does not mean hater of men. It means equality for all. It means being able to stand up for themselves and to be a strong and independent woman, who can change the world and kick ass…whether in trousers and flats or in a skirt and glittery heels.

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Wear the pink, wear the glitter, wear the lipstick. Or don’t if you don’t want to …

But be yourself and be strong and don’t let others tell you that you’re wrong.

And then you might just live happily ever after.

Happy #Internationalwomensday

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The World Book Day Fear

Posted in Being Mammy, Uncategorized by

As Mothers, we experience many, many, many fears…

Fear during pregnancy.

Fear of birth.

Fear every day…

But once a year, in early March, for many of us, there is a special fear.

It’s the fear of realising that it’s World Book Day…and you’ve sent your children off to school in NORMAL clothes.

This morning, I managed to get the girls out to school with unusual calm and minimal drama.  I dropped them at pre-school and to the bus, and tottered on my merry, knackered way on to my other job-job.

I parked the car and reached for my phone to have a quick peek at my messages before going into the building.  I hit the Insta icon, and speed scrolled absent mindedly… and then I saw them.

ALL of them…

All of the eleventy squillion images of kids I know and don’t know, dressed in all sorts of book characters, from Mr Twit to Mary-of-the-Poppins.

“FAAAAAAAACK!” I shout at my phone.

“FAAAACKIITTY FUCK FUCK!”

I scramble through my brain for faint memories of an unread message from the school about dressing up. Nope.

I try to remember if I saw a conversation about costumes on the parenty ‘Wattsup’ group…  I really can’t.

I then have the tummy wrenching realisation that as a “Working-at-a-job-job Mum” who has just returned from a 4 day work trip 8734 miles away, that maybe, just MAYBE I have simply fucked up and MISSED something.

The Fear is real.

And the Mammy guilt that is already strong this week has multiplied ten fold.

I send a message to the parents group begging “Were the kids supposed to dress up today?”  followed by “By which I mean, please tell me that they kids WERE NOT supposed to dress up today!?”

Even as I type, I am trying to figure out how I can get her Harry Potter costume transported from the house to the school in the next 14 minutes.

I’m trying to gauge if I could get to Penneysbest at break time to buy a stripy jumper to make her Wally, or an oversized fluffy jacket to make her The Gruffallo.  Then I realise that the only Wally is me.

Just as I’m practising my “Sure you were Matilda Darling” speech for this evening,  one of the other Mammy angels replies with “No costumes!”

I swear to God, the relief left me dizzy.  I realised I was sweating like Mr Wormwood in a confessional box.  My breathing was faster than Hermione’s when someone broke a rule.  I was paler than Horrid Henry when, well… you get me yeah?

I had The World Book Day Costume Fear!

But, I fear that the only Wally on this World Book Day, was Mammy.

 

That Time When I Wasn’t in Charge

Posted in Being Me, Uncategorized by

Every mum has their own vivid memories of childbirth; some which bring little shivers of joy when we think of them; others which deserve to be put into a secret box and never brayed of tongue again.

For me, the arrival of my wee angel and the shock that she was not after all, a he, are obviously my favourite memories of the experience.  But there is one other moment that I often think of.  It makes me laugh out loud every time.

legs

I still feel a trickle of mortification creep onto my cheeks when I think of it.  Because, that moment, just before my little one arrived, was the moment when I finally had to admit to myself, that I was not in charge…of anything.

I had to have a c-section. I was ready and prepared.

Everything was calm and organized and exactly how I’d imagined it would be. (I grew up on a farm, so have witnessed dozens of MamaCows go through this procedure, so I was stupidly sure that I knew the basic concept of what would happen!) The doctors would perform surgery and Mini-Me would come out the sunroof, as opposed to out the door.

I’d never had surgery before, so of course I was nervous.  As I lay there, looking up at the bright spaceship lights on the ceiling, listening to the murmurs of the surgeons and anesthetist and nurses, aware of the beeping machines around me, I had a sudden recollection of the story of a woman who felt everything as the anesthetic hadn’t worked.

In my obviously, absolutely calm, reasonable and logical mind, I realized that this would OBVIOUSLY be what would happen to me.

I felt cold substance on my leg, which jerked me back from my reverie.

“1-10?”

“Sorry?”

“On a scale of 1-10, how cold is this?”

“Erm, 10”

Cripes, where the heck was my husband?

“1-10″

“Still 10″

Ok, so now my fears were becoming a reality.

“Now?”

“8, I suppose”

Who should I tell that the anesthetic isn’t working?

What if I needed some sort of horse tranquilizer to knock my nerve endings out of action. I need to get my husband in so he can sort this…Hang on!  Who owns those legs?!

Two huge, gleaming, white tree-trunk legs are floating in front of me, just above the blue divide that Mr. Surgeon has placed above my belly.  Two very strong women are holding one each and I’m suddenly aware that the legs are indeed, mine.  There’s a serious amount of maneuvering being done beyond the blue, but the top half of my torso is happily oblivious.

And so I began to laugh.  Not a subtle giggle of course. A proper crazy woman, high on a cocktail of all of the anesthetic and other drugs that I assumed weren’t going to work.

And hence, my poor husband re-entered the room, just in time for the arrival of the Boss, to find his wife laughing like a bloody hyena.

Of course, the laughing turned quickly to tears of joy and all was right with the world again very soon afterwards.

I’d had my first ever surgery.  I’d had my first baby.  And I’d learned for the first time, that even though I thought I was in charge of things, I really and truly wasn’t.

I genuinely believe it was one of those precious moments of clarity and insight, It taught me one of the most important lessons I need to be a Mammy.

You might think you’re in charge.  You can pretend you’re in charge.  You might even convince others that you are in charge, but really, we never know when someone’s going to take control of your big white legs.

And when they do, be glad that they’re there to take control… and don’t forget to laugh.

 

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