travel lightly, margaret. (a.k.a. the case of the mistaken email identity)

Checked my inbox today and found this:

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for booking with Iarnród Éireann.

YOUR RESERVATION NUMBER (PRN) IS 2781088

You have chosen to collect your tickets at Limerick station. Please ensure that you have your reservation number (PRN) with you. This email is not a ticket. Please ensure that you have enough time to collect your ticket. For booking office opening hours please click here.

Please do not respond to this email. For any reservations queries please contact reservations@irishrail.ie

For any other queries please email info@irishrail.ie or call 1850 366 222 between the hours of 08.30 – 18.00 (Monday – Friday) and 09.30 – 18.00 (Saturday and Sunday).

The details of your booking are;
Outward Journey: 22 Dec 2008
Departing: Limerick 12:35
Arriving: Dublin Heuston 15:00

Total Price: €15.00

PASSENGER(S) TRAVELLING:

Passenger Name: costello margaret
Limerick to Dublin Heuston B50 Standard

***Please take your seat 20 minutes in advance of departure.***

First thought: OH, NO! Poor Margaret!

Second thought: Iarnród Éireann! Where the fawk is that? Lothlorien?

Hmm, destination says Dublin Hueston. Ireland, I guess.

Wikipedia sez:

It’s the Dublin train station. Nice.

Poor Margaret indeed. Just who is she and where is she from and why is she going to Dublin? Ay, so many questions. Does she want to get away from it all and rent a little cottage where she can just watch the snow fall down from her window (a la Cameron Diaz in The Holiday)? Is she coming home to a dashing Irish gent (I’m thinking Colin Farrell circa his Phone Booth era) who is waiting for her? Or is she a stressed out, freckle-faced college kid who can’t wait to sleep in her own bed for the first time in months?

I told Jeline –who happened to be online–( “We’re reading magazines in bed while its raining outside” Oh Jeline. Precious as always.)

me: i wonder who she is

5:44 PM :-/ poor margaret

off to see the folks at xmas i guess

i can just imagine her saying, “off to see me mam and da”

5:45 PM Anjeline: and wondring where her reservation number’s gone off to! wwa

*wawa

me:

how will i give this to her!

I closed my eyes and said silently:

Google image search

(and the powers that be),

help me solve this mystery.

So, clickiticlack went my keyboard, and tadah!, there they were, the possible Margarets.

And they were totally unlike my own unimaginative conjectures:

Candidate # 1

“An experienced trial lawyer and licensed psychologist”, the page says.

“Margaret Costello’s itinerary has taken her to the Hague and Paris, and has delivered immigrants seeking legal counsel to her practice in Detroit.”, another article says.

Wow. Ang bongga naman ni Margaret the Litigator. Idol. I wonder what you would be doing in Dublin, though. Apparently she also has “Extensive experience in ski area defense on behalf of owners and operators of ski areas.”

Perhaps there’s a ski lodge that needs defending in Dublin?

Candidate # 2

“Margaret is our visiting RCVS and European specialist in ultrasound. She is one of the very top ultrasound veterinary surgeons in the country”. (Hmmmm. She’s from Europe. This might be her, kids.)

Uy. The link said Mags. They call you Mags, too? Wuzzup sister, apir! And you’re a vet, so you clearly have a soft spot for animals. And your scrubs are so crazy looking. They remind me of my childhood masterpieces in MAPE class (I used to get all the pastel colors in the box, melt them down and make my own Jackson Pollock inspired pieces out of crayon drippings.

Ha! Jackson Pollock my foot. Teacher Laura probably wanted to throttle me for melting all of her crayons.

{Waitaminute…They allowed first graders to melt crayons, so that means it was okay for us to play with fire? Hmmm, I don’t know. Seems kind of irresponsible, Teacher Laura. Tsk, tsk.})

I digress. Aww EuroMags with the crazy scrubs. We would hit it off, I’m sure.

Candidate # 3

(She’s the one in black, second from the left.)

If you are the traveling Margaret, then good for you. You look like you need a vacation, Lola Margie. And travel with your friend with the bright blue suit, okay? You know, that saucy dame wearing the white hat with the red flower. She seems fun. You should get drunk together. (and I ain’t talking about no cooking sherry–fill your flasks with the good stuff. )

Candidate # 4

Tipperary athletes: Cross Country 1966 L-R Margaret Costello Moycarkey 3rd, Ann Ryan Moycarkey 1st & Kathleen Bowe Coolcroo 2nd

Tipperary! That’s in Ireland for sure. (Whoa, hello sudden random memory: Dad singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary” while shaving.) Oh, and you’re a cross country runner, 1966 Amazona Margaret. How hardcore is that. You’re like, the daughter Margaret that Michael Costello never had (Yo dad, I wasn’t much of a runner, but i tried, i swear to god i did. Even during the bleakest midwest winter, when you hauled all of us for a “nice jog in the brisk weather” I trailed behind you, okay? For 15 minutes. Then I walked back home and proceeded to sleep for 5 more hours).

Candidate # 5

“Margaret Costello-Manchester. This is the public search listing for Margaret Costello”

Wow. I don’t know anything about you but I know I want to look like you when I’m old, Manchester Margaret! At may fezbook page ka. And hmmm, all your friends are in their late teens or early twenties so I’m guessing you’re a college professor.

But yeah, you’re radiant & sexay in a Helen Mirren kind of way-you look serene and happy and you’re undaunted by that tank top. And what’s that? Oh yeah, wow, I do believe that’s a leopard print tank top. Reowrrr.

Candidate #6

Kathy Leone and Margaret Costello

From NY social diary: Hermes in Palm Beach marked its 30-year anniversary on that little diamond of an island in the sun with a reception for 350 at its Worth Avenue store.The party was hosted by Robert Chavez, president and CEO of Hermes USA, and Sharlene Nichols, managing director of the Palm Beach branch. Also present was Xavier Guerrand-Hermes.

Palm Beach! Hermes! Talk about different worlds. Socialite Margaret, you’re pretty. Granted, I don’t think we would have much in common, but I gotta say you look good in a tube dress. And somehow I don’t think you want to spend your holiday in dreary Dublin. You look like a Saint-Tropez kind of girl.

Who knows, though.

Candidate #7

Margaret the Sleeping Beauty Fairy. Hmmm. You look like you were maybe 6 or 7  here, in 1984?

Oh and you were a smurf in 1985.

(2nd Row): Eleanor Duggan, Rosanna Clabby, Anna Fergus, Margaret Costello, Clare Barrett, Sandra Booth, Rhoda Myles, Grace O’Malley, Karen O’Malley, Sinéad Carr, Michelle Power.

Hmmm. Names sound suspiciously Irish.

Oh and there you are again, in Cinderella this time:

Galway. Shit, that’s also in Ireland. It’s you, isn’t it! What if you’re, like, this famous prima ballerina by now and you’re coming home to give a benefit performance for your town? I just know it, you’re going to be The Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker or something. Oh no. They’re probably all anxiously waiting for your glorious homecoming.

Sugarplum fairy prima ballerina Margaret! If this is you, I’m sending you my superpsychic vibes to google the words “ MARGARET COSTELLO LOST RESERVATION NUMBER WTF Iarnród Éireann! ” coz when you do that you’ll miraculously be guided to this site and then you’ll read this and you’ll be like, “Oh, bollocks! That’s my reservation number” and then you can log into your account and get your ticket and then you’ll be on your way home and you’ll dance beautifully at the concert and they’ll all be laughing and applauding and asking for an encore.

Although. Google maps does say that the distance from Dublin to Galway is 213 km – about 2 hours 46 mins. So why would you take a train from Limerick to Dublin when you could take the train from Limerick to Galway (which will, incidentally, take only 1 hour, 30 mins)?

Doesn’t make sense. Too bad, though. I liked that story.

The last Margaret google showed me:

Hmmm.

I wonder what kind of mother she was.

(ang bigaaaaaat.)

I suppose I’m no Nancy Drew. The fact of the matter is that my mystery remains unresolved. There’s nothing left to do other than to write Iarnród Éireann. Defeated somewhat, I slowly typed this note, clickkkk. itttt. teeee. claccck.:

Hello—I believe you meant to give this to another Margaret Costello. I am currently in the United Statesand although I would love to travel Dublin, I’m afraid I never purchased a ticket from your company. Please check your information and send this to the correct email address. It would be a pity if she (the other Margaret who’s out there somewhere, sans her reservation number) missed her train because of this.

Happy holidays.

That’s it for now, I guess. Let’s hope for the best for our Margaret and her upcoming journey to Dublin.

P.S. Um. I don’t want to get too excited but I may have solved the mystery. Hello, why didn’t I think of googling the words Margaret + Costello + Limerick earlier?  Cross your fingers for me, people. I’m writing her a message right now.

–

Update: 23 December 2008.

From: IE Info IrishRail
To: Maggie Costello [mailto:margaret.costello@gmail.com]
Sent: Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 4:05 AM
Subject: RE: Irish Rail Seat Reservation Booking Information

Hi

If you want to book you can ring our reservation line on 01 7034070

Regards
–

Ha? Did you even read my letter? Regards ka diyan. As Sugarplumfairyprimaballerina Margaret would say, “Oh, bollocks.”

2 posts in one day

Because four years ago, on this very day I once wrote–

Today, on Halloween, I must make a confession: I am scared. There is a thought that encompasses all my irrational childish fears; a thought more frightening than Bluebeard with his ax, or the evil clown in the closet, or of flying cockroaches or of the evil rats that will bite off my toes when I’m asleep. I am afraid of the dark shadow that hangs over America. I am horrified that the person responsible for the paranoia and unfounded jingoism that festers in the hearts of some Americans, the person who has been the cause of so many senseless deaths, the person who has constantly (and unblinkingly!) justified a fabricated war is going to be reelected as the next President of the United States of America. Please. Say it ain’t so.

I don’t want to jinx this, but I feel hope( and yes, that Obamafied buzzword–change!) in the air today, on this Hallow’s eve.

I’m reminded every single day that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president.

But I can promise you this. I will always tell you what I think, and where I stand. I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.

I will listen to you when we disagree. And most importantly, I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.

From the Wall St. Journal–

Obama and the Runaway Train

The race, the case, a hope for grace.

by Peggy Noonan

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.

There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

This means nothing? This means a great deal.

Read the rest of the article here.

educating margaret

Let’s draw our neighborhoods, I say. Think about your house, and the people you love, and your neighbors, and what you like to do on weekends. Let’s draw that.  She considers this.

The silence is interminable. Ay, hindi bumebenta si Maggie. I hear Leo’s voice in my head—ikaw kase, masyadong tee-eytch! Bombard her with a litany of suggestions, why don’t you?

I yield, disappointingly (predictably), but I’m still trying to sound unflappable and teacherly:  Or whatever, you know. Whatever you want to draw.

No, s’okay. I wanna draw my house and my dad and my cat. Finally, an acquiescence.

So we’re coloring furiously now, Taleisha and I. I’m thinking to myself, God, I fucking love crayola.  I remember how mama once bought me that mammoth box of (120!) crayons and how I fell in love with the color names more than the colors themselves: cornflower blue and goldenrod and sea green and dandelion and burnt sienna. Although no, I didn’t like that last one, because I knew a girl named Sienna and I would always imagine her burned to a stake, just like Joan of Arc. Gross. So yeah, that would always be the only one intact in a box full of broken crayons.

I am now drawing the gayest house in the world, with a (royal!) purple roof and (canary) yellow walls and I’m filling in my door with a color called Razzle Dazzle Rose. Hmmm. I don’t remember that one.  I draw a girl–long hair, tired eyes. Apparently I always have tired eyes.– in a midnight blue dress reading a book under a tree with dead branches. I color the sun Indian red and marvel at the unabashedly racially charged, un-PC name choice: I don’t see Chinese yellow or African American black or Chicano Brown here (ahem! colors which are, by all means not representative of these ethnicities. Yes. Unlike Crayola, I will always feel the need to be PC).* By the time I’m drawing nests with robin eggs in between the branches of my sad tree I realize that little Miss Taleisha is staring at me.

What.

That, she says, is just silly.

Why?

So that’s ‘spose to be you. And that’s ‘spose to be your house. She cocks her eyebrow upwards and purses her lips defiantly and her patent shoes are tapping on the linoleum. Clearly, this is a studied, well-rehearsed look, an amalgamated version of Raven Symone, Buttercup the Powerpuff girl and Amanda Bynes, the early years: The Skeptical Precocious Little Girl, as perfected by Taleisha.

Shit, she’s challenging me. Obviously, dili mauwat ang bata sa ako. Challenge her back! Shoulder-devil whispers in my ear.

Um, yeah. And why is that silly?

Because. She pauses and gives me this look, as if to say, Don’t bullshit me.

Because, she continues finally. You’re lying. No one has a house like that.

She points to my crimson sun, traces its elaborate curlicues and says, And the sun doesn’t look like that, all fancy and everything. And the sky isn’t that funny green color.

Well. In the first place, um. That isn’t green. It’s turquoise. (Great comeback, yes.)

T. pretends not to hear me and frowns. No fair, you told me we would draw our neighborhoods and I drew my house and I’m telling the truth but you’re not, that’s not the truth.

I look at her work and sure enough, there it is. A perfectly normal neighborhood: a red house with a white roof. A man in a green tie is cooking some hotdogs on a grill. There’s a girl in braids holding a black and white soccer ball and an ash-grey cat, with the words Sandy in parenthesis beside her. By all means, a truthful neighborhood. T. self-consciously snatches away her drawing, as if she is almost embarrassed by her colors that do not lie.

Five seconds become ten, ten seconds become fifty. Another endless silence with this sullen girl.

So. Do you know how to spell turquoise? (Why the F am I fixated on turquoise all of a sudden? Nice one, though!, Evil Jiminy Cricket laughs. There’s no way the little brat will be able to spell that. That’ll put her in her place. )

She’s glaring at me now. Still, she takes out a violet pencil from her High School musical pencil case and writes in fierce strokes: TURQUOYS.

I gush, I can’t help it. Wow, that was a very hard word, and okay, so you didn’t quite get it right…. but you spelled it with a Q and a U, which is correct! Most people think it’s spelled with a C or a K.

T. just blinks at me. Twice.

T-U-R-Q-U-O-I-S-E. I say. That’s how you spell it. When you combine O and I, you get an OY sound, right? But still, you almost got that one, Taleisha. That’s great.

She’s still glowering, and I swear to god I can hear her thoughts: Whoopdidoo girl, that’s awesome. Should I give myself a round of applause? Are you going to give me an “almost, but not quite excellent” gold star?

I sigh and stare at her pencil case. Zaquisha and Baby V and Ashley T and Corbin Bleu are all in their togas, in mid leap and they look so beautiful. So fucking young.  Haaaaay. Ugh why does this have to be difficult? Why can’t I be teaching at a school like that, where kids are gayer than gay and happy and just sing and dance? But here I am, next to an unimpressed 8 year old who is challenging the integrity of my artwork.

Okay, so my house doesn’t look like that, and the sky isn’t turquoise…most of the time. But I’m just pretending, Taleisha. Imagining, you know?

T is mumbling something.  I put my hand up to my ear, temporarily too tired to talk.

She repeats her statement slowly; she knows she is not talking to the sharpest knife in the drawer:

I , just, don’t, know, why, we ,alwaysalwaysalways, have, to, pretend.

*From Kuya Wiki: "Indian red" was renamed "chestnut" in 1999 due to concern that
some children thought the crayon color represented the skin color of Native Americans.[1]
According to the company, however, the name originally referred to a reddish-brown
pigment from India that is used in artists' oil paint. [1].

I guess our box had crayons from 1998? Whut. Ten year old crayons. Christ, the crayons
are older than Taleisha. This school needs more funding than I thought.