Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Too Big For My Little Girl by Riley Rourke Mary, the lovely girl from Donegal who got too big for her boots. THE DEMONISATION OF MARY: Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan has gone from being the lovely girl from Donegal to someone who is now telling them what to do in Fianna Fail. Photo: Martin Nolan. Facebook Twitter Email. May 03 2009 04:45 AM. Facebook Twitter Email. There is something a little troubling about the ongoing demonisation of Mary Coughlan, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, latterly singled out by just about everybody as the worst thing ever, or at least since the unsliced pan. F or the purpose of this article I shall refer to her as "Mary", lovely girl from Donegal, mother-of-two, 44 this month, who has, apparently, lost a bit of weight, who dresses quite stylishly, of course; but, dear oh dear, the mouth on her; she could take paint off a gate. Charles Haughey, in his day, could make a grown man blanch with his effing and blinding. Yet nobody held it against him. In fact, he was kind of admired for it, certainly by the sycophant types he liked to surround himself with. Then there was Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Secretary, who could melt a cast iron gate with her carry on. Everyone loved Mo, of course, the old sweetheart, particularly the Shinners, babe. But us men, we couldn't sexualise her, in our innate way, when we came to know her on this island. Mary is a different kettle of fish. She is our lovely girl. But her earthy manner, her -- dare I say it -- her "manly" way of self-expression is no longer as endearing, but has, all of a sudden, become "inappropriate", and "undignified", no less, for the office she holds. I am wondering why. It was allowed when, as Agriculture Minister, she was mucking about, in fetching wellies, with rugged farmers at the ploughing championships in Carlow. But with a bunch of Arabs in Abu Dhabi, who like to objectify their women in burka and veil, well then, in those circumstances, it is just not right, is it? Or with George W-loving, neocon, Mike, sorry, Michael Dell, it is downright rude, right? Which must be why he decided to pull out of Limerick, spur of the moment, like. The unedifying whispering campaign against Mary began shortly after Brian Cowen, in his enlightened way, had the temerity to appoint her Minister for Enterprise, unfortunately at a time when enterprise was about to become a rigor mortis-stiffened corpse, and as Tanaiste, his number two, a young woman now technically the second most important politician in the State. I suspect, therefore, that deep in psyche of all of this, the demonisation of Mary, it is not that she has become a bad Minister overnight, which she hasn't, but that it is felt she may have gotten too big for her Wellington boots; that she may have moved on -- without permission -- from being the lovely girl from Donegal to somebody who is now telling them what to do in Fianna Fail. There is more to it than that, of course. She is not be the best Enterprise Minister ever. Neither is she the worst. How does it come about that these things are decided? It must emanate from somewhere -- I may have had a hand in it myself -- is taken as read, and is then passed into fact by people like John McGuinness, the former junior minister who likes to think he knows everything about enterprise just because he ran a small business in Kilkenny for a while. In the mix of it all is what I have crudely tried to suggest at the beginning of this article: that is, old fashioned sexism of the unreconstructed kind. Mary Coughlan became a TD at 21, when her father and uncle died in quick succession. Before that she was briefly a social worker, a caring profession, a womanly profession. She might as well have been a nurse in the eyes of thick-necked TDs when first she landed in Leinster House. The year was 1987. Imagine that. You go to the Ursuline Convent in Sligo, as a boarder, that is, away from home, your parents, siblings, and then onto UCD to take a degree in social science. Perhaps it would have been better had she studied the law, or even became a teacher, like a lot of them in the Dail. But Mary wanted to be a social worker. There is something good in that. She was hardly out of college when her father Cathal, a TD of three years, died after a short illness, he having succeeded his brother Clem, who had been killed in a pretty horrific traffic accident in 1983. That, those deaths in such a short period of time, is a lot for any young person to deal with. So Mary is landed in Dail Eireann aged 21 and nine months. I remember when I was 21 and nine months-- a boy in an adult world, pretending to be something I was not, all grown up and knowledgeable, but as wet behind the ears as you might expect, my palms sweating in the company of elders from the outside world, hoping they would not notice my gaucheness. That is how one see oneself, and how she probably saw herself as a young TD in Haughey's parliamentary party. So she developed, by necessity, social skills in match her circumstance, to get by in the world into which she was thrown. She did it by becoming one of the lads, drinking and laughing and cursing with the best, or worst, of them, to the point, almost unnoticed, that it actually became a way of life for her. She was accepted as such by middle-aged male TDs, uncomfortable with an attractive young woman in their midst. If Mary made a mistake, and who could blame her if she did, it was that in her callowness, she allowed herself be pigeon-holed like this, the lovely girl from Donegal who, at just 26, married a garda. She developed other armoury too, of course, among which is a peerless ability to charm. The first time I met her, in Leinster House, she re- arranged the lapel of my jacket. She does that kind of thing with everybody, or most people. She charms. And there she stands, a lethal combination of masculinity, feminity, and intellectual smarts; social skills honed to get by, more than that, to succeed in the bullshit macho world of politics. Mary went that route, because that was the only route she saw open to her. Now take Lucinda Creighton, for example. I like Lucinda too. She is young, attractive, from Mayo. She also has the smarts. Lucinda was that little bit older than Mary when she was first elected, more worldly wise. So she didn't didn't feel the need to go the Mary route. As a result, Lucinda is somehow deemed to be an ambitious bitch, who would walk all over everybody to get to wherever it is she is going. The truth is, she is anything but those things. When Enda Kenny upset her recently she had to leave the room lest somebody saw her cry. But she has been pigeon-holed as ruthless, mostly by men, but also by women, because she will not play the game by their rules. In Leinster House, when they can't be ignored any longer, taoisigh tend to appoint such women to the "caring" ministries, eduction, social welfare, health. There is Mary O'Rourke, who has perhaps best negotiated the shark-infested waters of sexist politics, but who is often, frequently disparagingly, referred to as "Mammy"; there is Gemma Hussey, whose upset was a source of great amusement when she was "tongued" by some drunken yob male teacher a decade or two ago; there is Mary Harney, lampooned as a chocaholic, patronisingly congratulated when "at last" she wed; there is Liz O'Donnell, the sex kitten who looked out for the black babies, bless her; there is Mary Hanafin, styled a school marm because of the way she looks and talks. Mary Coughlan started out in social welfare too. Then Bertie put her into Agriculture, the first female Minister for Agriculture in the history of the State. And she was a good Minister for Agriculture, as she was a good Minister for Social Welfare. And she hasn't become a bad minister overnight. She is, however, presented as somebody out of her depth, which she may be. She is presented that way by journalists, most of whom would have a panic attack if asked to sit behind a minister's desk for a day; and by the Opposition, quite waspishly by Joan Burton of Labour, the slightly irritating, monotone accountant who -- shock, horror -- accused Mary of being unable to read exchequer figures, something which, in my book, is actually to Mary's credit; and also by Leo Varadkar, her opposite number in Fine Gael, who was quite pleased with himself when he dubbed her "Sarah Palin", the Alaskan Governor who is said to be "gaffe prone", whom the media love to hate, but who could very well end up the next President of the United States when Obama finishes up. Truth is, Sarah Palin is one of the most interesting phenomenon around. In Irish politics, so too is Mary Coughlan. Or she is becoming so. I think John McGuinness's criticism of her was unfair, if not entirely groundless. She may well not be equipped to deal with what he called the "complex" issues of business and enterprise. If she is not, then neither is anybody in the Cabinet, which has collective responsibility to help business survive and thrive in this new dispensation. I think, perhaps, McGuinness's target was more accurately the Civil Service, they not being equipped either, he said. But Mary Coughlan, no longer the lovely girl, now more her own woman, certainly still has a role to play in Government, as both a minister and Tanaiste. It may not be as Minister for Enterprise, it will certainly never be as Minister for Foreign Affairs, but it will be important and high-powered and we will all come to love her again, probably in a few years time, by which time we will have monitored closely just how well the likes of Joan Burton and Leo Varadkar are up to the job. Too Big For My Little Girl by Riley Rourke. Oops! We're sorry, but your browser is no longer supported by Smashwords. Try upgrading your browser to a new version for a better experience on Smashwords and other sites, and improved security. Home About How to Publish on Smashwords FAQ Sign Up Filtering. About Publish Join Sign In. Home Classic Interface Site Updates Blog Upload an eBook How to Publish with Smashwords Smart Author Podcast FAQ. Display preferences: Use the options below to adjust the size, style and colors, and click 'Apply' below. Too Big For My Little Girl. Virgin Daughter Breeding Sex. By Riley Rourke. Copyright 2013, Riley Rourke. Smashwords Edition, License Notes. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Too Big For My Little Girl. “ I Don’t know how you do it.” I froze in the hall outside Stephanie’s room. My step-daughter was home from her first semester of college and had been in there for most of the week talking to her friends on the computer. This time though, she had the volume up a lot louder than usual. “What are you talking about, Dena? Do what?” Her voice was sweet, just like the rest of her. I married Steph’s mom about six years ago, and at the time it was great. Cookie Consent and Choices. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details. You may click on “ Your Choices ” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “ Agree and Continue ” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. I was six when a man first touched me. I didn't speak up until I was an adult. T here’s a reason why, when a woman whispers her story of sexual abuse, when she writes about it, when she Tweets about it or carries a mattress around on her back, calls the police or a rape crisis line, I believe her. The reason is because it happened to me. And you didn’t know, because I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. Uncle “Doug” was an old friend of my parents; he visited our family often and occasionally joined us for holidays. One evening, when I was six, he offered to babysit me and my older sister at his house. Before bedtime, Uncle Doug told us both a bedtime story about a werewolf who howled at the moon in the bitter cold of winter on top of a snowy hill, just like the hill outside the window over the sink in Uncle Doug’s kitchen. He could do these pitch-perfect character voices, and in that way, he was charismatic and appealing to children. The werewolf would howl, he said, his thirst for the blood of children relentless, until one night he came charging through a window of a house trying to catch the little girl inside. The broken glass pierced his throat, and then he was dead, his head hanging over the sill, blood dripping down the wall to the floor. And then my sister went to bed, and I sat in his small, dimly lit kitchen, on his lap, as he nuzzled my hair and then my ear and neck, and squeezed me hard and soft at the same time. I remember staring fixedly at the window in his kitchen, into the dark snowy night, through a pane of cold glass, the moon casting shadows, a dark tree, listening for the howl of the werewolf, trying not to pay attention to what was actually happening. What was actually happening is that he was kissing me, whispering in my ear things I didn’t understand, and rubbing the tops of my 6-year-old thighs, right where my underwear started, while I sat on his lap. Afterwards, he took to calling me his “wifey” and signed notes to me: “Love, your hubby”. There was never another physical encounter like the one at his house, but when he visited ours, he would request “private” viewings of me practicing my ballet and leer at me longingly in my leotard and tights; he looked for any opportunity to touch me – my hand, my shoulder, the small of my back. After a couple of years, when I started to understand how inappropriate his behavior was, I refused to have anything to do with him. I never told my parents anything. My only act of acknowledgement that he did something bad was when I crossed out with a ballpoint pen the “Love, your hubby” at the bottom of a poem he had written in my autograph book when I was eight or nine. The poem: “Tulips in the garden, tulips in the park/But the best place for tulips, is tulips in the dark”. Uncle Doug did not hurt me physically, but he laid the groundwork for who and what I would become with men throughout my adolescence and into my early adulthood – a wreckage of fondled girlhood looking out a dark window whenever a man was on top of me. His adult hand edging up my six-year-old thigh made it seem natural to me when much older men showed interest or pursued me as a teenager. Or perfectly normal for me to try to seduce a 35-year-old when I was 15. I never felt like a victim – and I might even still argue that I wasn’t victimized enough to claim that label, and instead call myself a product of a premature sexual experience. But for years, every time a man touched me – especially if he was older, even if I pursued him and told myself and him that it was ok – I’d catch myself looking through a non-existent dark window waiting for it to be over. Relationships came and went but never lasted, and I thought both that didn’t have anything to tell, and no one to tell it to. Eventually, I told someone: after about eight months of dating my now-husband, who was curious and emotionally invested in “us” in a way I’d never experienced, I proudly called myself promiscuous. He looked at me with compassion and confusion and said, “Really?”. I confessed: “Not promiscuous in the way you would think.” And then I told him the truth. And then I told someone else. And someone else after that. I chose to narrate my own story, rather than let the one Doug told persist any longer in my own mind. Doug, like most abusers, relied on me not telling. They all rely on us not telling – to save their reputations, avoid consequences, and keep on abusing. Those of us who do tell, who let go of the shame we know we’re supposed to feel, are in such a minority that it enables the rest of you to disbelieve both those that tell and the existence of those who can’t yet. It’s hard for you to imagine being in a group of five women and knowing that one was sexually assaulted. It’s hard for me to believe that we can just go unheard – our experiences unknown – without consequence. But all of that is why it’s so important for women, for abuse survivors, to tell our stories: because the more of us who do, the more we chip away at the ability to ignore or to choose not to believe. I believe – and I believe that you can choose to as well. Using leftover Spectrum QAL fabric to make a sensational cushion! Part 5. I’m so excited to finally show you my completed Spectrum Quilt-Along 2020 mini project. If you’ve been following along all week, you’ve seen all the instructions to make the 12 blocks in a 6″ finished size, as well as the instructions to set seven of the blocks to make a beautiful decorative cushion using Little Girl In A Blue Armchair from Anthology Fabrics. Refer to yesterday’s post for how I finished the design once I had selected and pieced Blocks 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. This cushion is now the master pillow on my bed and is just waiting to complement my bed runner! Let me show you how to quilt this beauty in just five simple steps. Spectrum QAL 2020 Special Mini Project. Step 1 Introducing the PFAFF Clear Stitch-in-Ditch Foot for IDT System. I’d heard about this foot and was looking for the right project to try it out. Until now, I’d been using either my regular quarter inch foot or my applique foot when quilting on my PFAFF creative icon. I was quickly convinced it was a good addition to my quilting accessories! The clear foot enabled me to have excellent visibility and, with a little practice, helped me achieve perfect stitch in the ditch quilting on my quilt. Positioning the guide along the seam really made the difference, and the red lines on the foot also helped me place the needle exactly where I needed it. Here’s a quick video demonstrating the Clear Stitch-in-Ditch Foot: Using the Clear Stitch-in-Ditch Foot, I set the blocks by quilting in the seams around the perimeter of each block. Doing so ensured they wouldn’t move or create a distortion when I embroidered the blocks. The project was a decorative cushion, so I wanted to use some of the embroideries that were available in the basic programs of my PFAFF creative icon. Step 2 Embroidering the center block. I wanted the center block to capture all the attention! So I used a 40wt variegated quilting thread that complemented the Little Girl In A Blue Armchair fabric, and I pulled out the embroidery equipment for my PFAFF creative icon, including my creative Grand Metal Hoop. Here’s a video showing you how I prepared for the quilting on the center block: Step 3 Embroidering the inner triangles. I also wanted to quilt the edge triangles using the same variegated thread, so I moved the quilt to embroider the inner triangles. I sandwiched the quilt with a 5″ excess of batting and backing all around, which enabled me to position the inner triangles in the middle of the hoop and still have enough fabric around the hoop to secure it using the magnets. I was able to use a square design, but embroidered only half of it. Here’s a video demonstrating how to use the Precise Positioning feature on the PFAFF creative icon to position the design, ensuring the embroidery is exactly where you want it: Step 4 Embroidering the corner triangles. There were a few challenges when it came to embroidering the corner triangles on the decorative cushion. The first challenge was the area that needed to be embroidered. It turns out the area and the design were too big for the Grand Metal Hoop, so I switched to the traditional 360 x 260 hoop that’s included in the embroidery kit of the PFAFF creative icon. The second challenge positioning the quilt inside the hoop without distorting it, so I could ensure the triangle would remain squared off. And finally, the design I wanted to embroider in the triangle wasn’t the correct size to match the area I wanted to cover. Although it was a triangle, I needed to alter the height and length. Here’s a video to show you how I edited the design to make it fit: Step 5 Embroidering the remaining blocks. A few years ago, I wrote a post – How the PFAFF creative icon helped me finish a UFO quilt. I quilted butterflies on that quilt, and recalled a butterfly block design I loved, but it didn’t fit the quilt I was finishing at the time. I realized it was now a perfect match for this decorative cushion project. For this to work elegantly, I changed my thread to a solid light blue quilting thread. The butterfly design is beautiful and low key… and it’s exactly what I needed since the other designs were bold enough to even out the pieced blocks. I went back to the creative Grand Metal Hoop and was able to position the quilt easily, and quickly embroidered the remaining blocks. Embroidering the last blocks in a solid color quilting thread. Once the machine embroidery was finished, I cut away the excess batting and backing and added fabric to turn the quilt into a cushion cover. I had some Fairfield Poly-Fil Premium Fiber Fill left over from my project, How to make a custom filler for the oversized Diamond Hexagon cushion, and was able to finish the cushion in no time. Fairfield Poly-Fil Premium Fiber Fill is the excellent choice of fill for making any size cushion form. I had some left over from another project in my May 2021 posts. Now this beautiful decorative cushion sits on my bed, and I can’t wait to show you how it complements my bed runner. Stay tuned for a big reveal post right here on Qs.