Mrs Ryan is an advance planner and she has never been able to understand why people might need convenience stores and late night shopping. In her kitchen cupboard there are four tins of baked beans, in a line going from the front to the back, and four packets of chicken soup, and four instant coffees, and on another shelf four detergents, four pot scrubbers and four packs of cling film. You have four of everything and replace them from the back each time you use one - that way you never run out. She thought everyone's kitchen was like that.
She is a compulsive planner and she has been on countdown to the millennium for several months already. She is amazed that so few of her neighbours have made any plans at all.
Mrs Ryan is 64 and thinks it's wonderful to be in her prime for the dawn of what is not only a new century but the celebration of it. It's the thought of another 1,000 years coming at us and Mrs Ryan and her whole family will be there to greet it, together.
The planning has been mighty for a family gathering. And that's the problem. Mr and Mrs Ryan's four children live in different places: a son in the US, a daughter in Canada, a son in London and a daughter down the road from her in Dublin. They are all married with families of their own and they all have vague and entirely different plans to see in the 21st century. None had included coming back to their parents' home at all.
They have all come home on vacations from time to time, and they do keep regularly in touch, but it has come as a shock to hear that their mother is on speed about the whole business and is booking them into places to stay, and sending out sample menus for the various meals that will be eaten. Checking some 490 days in advance if any of the grandchildren are vegetarian or have a thing about fish. She should have been stopped at the outset, they say, when it was around 600 days down the line. They should have been firm and said no way were they all going to come to Dublin in the middle of winter and camp out in neighbours' homes in order to eat three days of meals in a small dining room that would have to accommodate them by two separate sittings. It was preposterous.
And they assumed that as a notion it would die down, but it has gathered momentum and it is now like a runaway train.
The son in New York has children who want to be in Times Square that night and his parents-in-law were planning to come and stay.
The daughter in Canada has a daughter who is into skating and there will be big Ice Extravaganza at that time, it would break the child's heart to miss it.
The son in London lives near the Millennium Dome, it's the first time in his life that he has ever been in the right place at the right time, he doesn't want to abandon his post and bring his wife and son to stay with people he doesn't like because they live round the corner from his parents.
The daughter who lives in Dublin will, by the millennium, be officially separated, probably divorced from the husband who only calls in at home rarely. Not that Mrs Ryan have been told the whole details here. That daughter has little wish to play happy families on the last day of the century.
So what do they do?
Talking to father is no use.
"Now don't upset your mother," is his only line. "She doesn't ask much and it will give her such pleasure to get everything ready for you." They try to phone him when she's out but she's never out; she'll come in on the call and ask if everyone is on low-fat spread instead of butter.
They phone each other. There's a different and more futile solution every couple of days. They'll all chip in to pay the parents' fare to New York or Canada or London, but flying unsettles her ears and anyway they wouldn't all be together which is what is needed at a time like this.
They try to suggest that a big gathering some summer for a 70th birthday or a golden wedding anniversary might be more appropriate, but Mrs Ryan won't hear if it. That's all ages away, she says, and of course we'll do that too, but the end of the century is really special.
They tell each other that it might be part of a depression, a heavy realisation of how empty the nest is, of how little she shares with her well-meaning but taciturn husband. But that still doesn't provide them with any solution. If one is courageous and up-front and opts out. . . then it's a huge crisis. Everyone suffers because those who didn't have the courage to refuse will resent the one who did. But if they all opt out, they are destroying her hopes and dreams. They are not willing to do that. She worked hard for them and gloried in their success.
With very day that passes, it's becoming more difficult. And they know this. Nobody has lost a temper yet, though it's touch and go with the daughter in Dublin, the one with the dicey marriage. She has actually seen the table seating plans, the recipe books, the build-up of linen - every month new table napkins are added. The big diary is open in the kitchen with plans for the Friday of a lifetime, which is under 500 days away.