Ali Blah Blah

Bouncing Back

2012-01-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

Hello! Happy New Year!

Let's pretend it's not been an entire month since my last post, and I'll try and create a bit of momentum here.

Christmas was a blur. My parents were in town and were endlessly entertained (and vice versa) by Anna and Lucy, leaving LK and I with some rare time on our hands to unwind, and actually leave the house by ourselves...

Sadly not all of our Christmas plans came to fruition. I had been planning for weeks to have the girls' big 'Santa present' be a trampoline in the garden. I couldn't wait for the big reveal on Christmas morning, have them look out the window - *wow* Santa left us a chuffing trampoline!!!

For the last four years we've had a plastic Craigslist play structure in our yard. It provided hours of entertainment, the perfect sized slide for small girls, and the perfect wash-clean surface for many coats of poster paint and glitter. LK had done a great job at wood chipping the base for a soft landing - and we learned the hard way that all wood chips are not created equal and 'redwood' chips, are lethally splintery - leaving tiny hands and feet bristling with tiny wooden hairs as fine as fiber glass. So we told them to wear shoes and quit moaning, because that's how we roll. We said, it would get less ouchy after it rained. Which it didn't, (rain or get less ouchy).

In order to secret Santa a trampoline in to our yard though, I needed to make the play structure disappear. How was I going to make that happen a couple of weeks before Christmas without the girls getting suspicious? In the end I decided on quasi honesty. I told Anna that I'd spoken to a woman who'd asked if she could buy our play structure for her little baby who was turning one.

Anna didn't bat an eyelid.

"Sure" she said "do I get a quarter of the money."

That child has lived in Santa Barbara too long.

So we sold the play structure for $75 to a very sweet Grandma who'd driven an astonishing number of miles to get it. Pretty sweet considering we'd bought it for $75 four years prior.

The scene was set - we had the location, we just needed the trampoline. Sadly though, picking a trampoline is no easy task. LK took it pretty seriously and did not get the cheapest one to pop up on Amazon. What a good Dad. We even had some pretty long discussions about whether a trampoline was a smart present. The words 'spiral fracture', 'large medical deductible' and 'who the fuck do you think is going to put it together in the dark on Christmas Eve - elves????' came up several times in conversation.

Christmas morning was a little thin - even Anna remarked 'Santa's been, but he's brought a lot less than last year' but that was soon forgotten when she unwrapped the Wii that LK had given them, and soon she was bopping away to Let's Dance, her recession Christmas turning in to a merry one.

We eventually did decide that the pros of a trampoline outweighed the cons. And LK agreed to put it together if plied with sufficient beer and some fucking elves (see below)

In the meantime we had Lucy's 3rd birthday party (more on that later, perhaps......) and sadly her best friend wasn't able to make the party due to a recent trampoline accident. Thanks fate!!! All parents weighed in on trampoline pros and cons "I know a pediatrician who has one!", "I know this kid who jumped off the roof on to his and broke his......" etc. By far the most constructive comment, and the one I'm hoping is accurate is the person who said "kids always hurt themselves on trampolines - but it's always the kids who don't have a trampoline who hurt themselves when bouncing on a friends'. And you know what, that seems to be true.

Except that won't stop their parents suing us - but then, go ahead. 25% of 0 is still 0 after all.

One week later and no injuries so far to report. Anna said "trampolines are so much fun, but they are exhausting...." and Lucy said "I want to marry it".

All I can add is that it's been a long time since I've bounced on a trampoline and my remembered 8 year old moves on the Rossett Sports Centre trampoline are not appropriate on the knees 30 years later. Oi vey.

.......This post is dedictated to my good friend Sophie who found out the Easter Bunny wasn't real after reading my blog, and thus found out her parents were Santa and the tooth fairy too. *Whoops*

Literally

2011-12-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas seems to arrive faster every year. One second it's Halloween, the next you're scrambling for the international mailing deadline.

I explained to Lucy that when every door on her advent calendar was opened, it would be Christmas Day.

So she opened every door on her calendar.

Q.E.D.

P.S. - Thank you to Michaela for probably the nicest blog comment of all time on that last post. *Humbled*

Halloween

2011-11-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

I was really hoping to do this Halloween on a budget. Not least because the girls' dress-up box is literally overflowing with taffetas and sparkles. It is Disney Princess-a-palooza, and I find it not a little entertaining that it's Lance's old toy box that now stores this raging river of pinks, purples, sequins and silks. Ha ha ha - nothing says he failed to produce that Y chromosome more than his childhood being annexed by the princess posse.

In the run-up to Halloween Anna had seen a 'Barbie A Fairy Secret' costume in one of the many junk mail catalogs that cross our path. I flat out refused to buy it because a) we already have 17 lookey-likey dresses and b) that would mean I'd have to buy something for Lucy too, and c) that's $34.99 that Chase bank were really hoping would go to them instead.

I was hoping she'd just forget about it, but when the lady at Girls Inc asked what she was going to be for Halloween Anna screamed 'I'm going to be Barbie A Fairy Secret and it's going to be SPECTACULAR!!'.

Groan.

I had to think fast.

Anna loves princesses and animals. She has been some variation of a princess for the last six Halloweens. It was time to embrace her animal side. Rather than cobble together a unicorn costume, I went with the path of least resistance. For some reason she has accumulated rather a lot of leopard-print clothes. She has a small leopard camisole and some leggings/pyjama bottoms. All I had to do was sew (badly) a long tail, use my entire eyeliner on a nose and whiskers, and jerry-rig some black ears.

Oh boy did she get in to character.

I can't get over this soft-porn pose she struck when I suggested a photo outside with her sister. The bent wrist kills me. She loved this costume, and it being California all we had to do was add a t-shirt under the Cami for her evening trick or treating.

The costume did go a little awry for Girls Inc. Halloween happened to fall on a school holiday for Anna, so she was at Girls Inc all day. Her Dad was in charge of the costume. Apparently he ran out of time when it came to adding the whiskers/nose so by the time I picked her up her hair had escaped her pony tail, she had no face make-up, she was missing an ear and she actually looked more like Rod Stewart after a hard night in Glasgow than a leopard. Not that she cared a bit!

On the night of trick or treating itself (3 Halloween parties later....) Lucy had opted for a blue 'Cinderella' costume. Here she is channeling her inner 16 year old and giving me the 'evils'.

Photo courtesy of Jen - our host for the evening.

They had a brilliant time. Despite us losing Anna in the crush of trick-or-treaters in the biggest Halloween neighbourhood in the town. Three minutes of blind panic where both Lance and I were going 'I thought she was with you' and scanning for a leopard needle in a Halloween haystack. Fortunately she materialized a few minutes later and I got my heart rate back down from hummingbird pace.

It was a great Halloween.

Technical Difficulties

2011-11-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

This is the side of my desk at work. It explains a lot. It also seems to indicate our cleaners aren't getting in to every corner. I'm in the middle of making my job more efficient, so it's taking many hours, dual operating systems and is proving to be *quite a lot of work*. My friend just logged my blood pressure at 140/100. I think the Luddites had a point.

Please don't give up on me! I will be back. I have tooth fairy stories for you, dodgy Halloween pictures that will make Anna die of embarrassment in later years. Parent blogging gold - you'll just have to bear with me and pretend not to notice that I'm giving you Thanksgiving posts in February.

The F Word

2011-10-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Anna: "At school on Friday my friend Robert used the S-Word!!"

Me: Really?

Anna: "Yes, and to a new girl too. Her name is Lola and Robert said the S-word to her."

Me: "Wait, what is the S-word? Is it stupid?" Thinking, please be stupid and not shit.

Anna: "It's Shut-Up"

Me: feigning horror, "Wow, that's terrible. Poor Lola."

Anna: "I know. Robert is not nice. The S-word is not as bad as the F-word though. Robert says he knows the F-word. But I don't know the F-word. I think I could probably guess though."

Me: Thinking back to every harried morning commute over the last few weeks, every muttered expletive.... "Ummm"

Anna: I think it's "Forget - You!"

Me: Fuck that was close.

Mmmm, Yellow

2011-10-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Do you take vitamin supplements? Do you give your kids vitamin pills? I'm not judging, really I'm not that kind of person. I'm just curious.

Until fairly recently I was one of those people who thought you should get all the vitamins you need from the food you eat. We have quite a varied diet, and the year-round fruit and vegetable options available to us here in California mean you can't open your mouth without ingesting vitamins and minerals. Really, we had no excuses. Plus, there was this recent Finnish study that concluded taking supplements actually shortened the life span of otherwise healthy 60 year old women.

We'd never considered supplements before, but then came Lucy.

Why eat spinach when there's cake?

Lucy will only eat food if it's yellow - and quite frankly not much of that either.

Anna on the other hand has always been a good eater. Her first babysitter described her as a 'garbage-disposal'. How sweet. Her current favourite food items are dried seaweed, calamari (the more legs the better) and miso soup.

Despite her limited diet, Lucy is chuffing ginormous, a beautiful long-limbed Amazon of a two-year old. In fact she is often mistaken for a petulant 3-4 yr old when she's actually still in the throes of the terrible twos. Quite what out of her diet of chocolate milk and chicken nuggets is making her shoot up is unclear. Many evenings I'll try to recollect what she's eaten, only to come up with; popcorn, goldfish, chocolate milk and popcorn.

Maybe it's the daily stretching:

Hang in there baby.

I realize that I am supposed to be in charge here. I used to be a smug parent, of the opinion that if you just present them with a variety of wholesome food options they will eventually be eclectic eaters.

Ha! Ha ha hahahahaha.

No I not! Says Lucy. I can't yike this! It's a battle of wills, and she can out-stubborn me any day. She eats when she wants to eat, and what she wants to eat. I honestly don't have the time to sit down with her for an hour each night cajoling her to eat every broccoli floret. Yet, I'm still fighting the good fight, and thanks to Anna, Lucy now eats dried seaweed - but only because she can't bear to see her sister enjoying something without wanting to quash that joy by at least 50%. But, because I'm genuinely concerned that she's not getting a good nutritional range I've started feeding then gummy vitamins. And now I'm eating them too.

I was always worried that gummy vitamins would be confused with candy, and I'd come downstairs one morning to find them gorging themselves on Vitamin C and Zinc. The container does come with a child-safe lid though, and the girls do seem to be aware that they can only have one dose a day. Me too - because I've found that unlike the horse pills masquerading as 'Women's Multivitamins'. I can actually stomach these gummy vitamins without waves of nausea hitting minutes later due to the iron. Plus, these little gummy bears contain the B vitamins that may decrease the frequency or intensity of my migraines. It's probably too early to say, and the trouble with migraines is that everything can be a culprit, but I think they may be helping. And as long I feed Lucy the red bears that means her nutritional rainbow has been increased by 100%, and that is one less daily battle to fight.

Words of Wisdom

2011-10-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

I've never had the best of luck with my teeth, but then I'm British. QED.

About eight years ago my American dentist persuaded me that I would have to have my wisdom teeth out. The bottom two were impacted, but he warned me that should I ever get punched in the jaw, or something similar, I may run in to trouble. As I run a busy medical practice, I took this advice pretty seriously, you never know when a walking stick-wielding octogenarian is going to object to their bill and clock you one. Then the dentist said the top two had to come out because there were no teeth opposing them, and that could lead to problems.

Problems like me having to shell out large sums of money to have perfectly good teeth removed.

Like a lot of my English counterparts I only consider oral surgery if there is a medical need. I don't see the point in messing around with scalpels and anaethestic for cosmetic reasons. LK was golfing with a British dentist on our last trip home, and he must have said something like "British dentist = oxymoron, no?" when he was treated to a gently mocking American dentistry joke: a busload of American tourists plummets off a cliff in England - the only way to identify the victims after the bus explodes on impact is by checking dental records. Except, they couldn't identify anyone because they all had the same teeth. I like that. I know there are some quite startling teeth out there in the UK, many a public figure is positively bristling with misshapen molars, but if they're not unhealthy why do they have to be considered unsightly? Why does everyone have to have the same terrifyingly uniform smile? Stepford Mouths abound in this country. I must have been out here too long because now when I flick through the pages of Hello magazine I do see some less than perfect teeth. They look out of place and I notice them, whereas I don't think I did before. I honestly don't think British people care as much. Same goes for eyebrows.

Anyway, off my soapbox and back to my wisdom teeth. On my first attempt I went in for surgery thinking I was to have all four out, and came round to find only the bottom two were missing. Apparently the surgeon had decided at the last minute that the top two were 'viable'. Perhaps the part where he had to break my lower jaw to extract the bottom two proved so time consuming he was in danger of missing his tee time?

Sadly for me each subsequent dentist I have seen has disagreed with his decision. The top two also had to come out. I would have to have another surgery. I put this off for several years with the cunning use of pregnancy - dentists prefer not to operate or x-ray pregnant women, but I couldn't keep sprogging up just to avoid the dentist. It was proving expensive.

In the end I could dodge the knife no longer, and I had my last two wisdom teeth out on Friday - and have yet to talk to a SINGLE person who has not experienced a dry socket. You think people would keep that kind of information to themselves when chatting to someone pre-surgery, but no, dry sockets abound. My father-in-law even saw fit to describe his in harrowing detail in the car on the way to the dentist.

So far I seem to be doing OK. I tried to be stoic, even when faced with a general anesthetic. I have a very early memory of being a small child and hearing someone talk about our family dentist - about how their Mum went in for surgery at his office, and when she got home she realized her knickers were on back to front. Oh, the scandal! Perhaps she'd put them on inside out herself - but, oh the horror, perhaps not!!! I know this is a pretty unlikely scenario, North Yorkshire dentist molests middle aged mother, but you never know. Dentists are a funny lot. My surgeon seemed like a very trustworthy family-man type, but even so, I wore some very tight jeans as a deterrent.

As for the recovery - bloody hell I never realized how much food I consume on a daily basis until faced with a liquid only diet. I am up to here with milkshakes and mashed potato. I long for a steak sandwich on crusty bread. On several occasions I have caught myself snatching pieces of food from the girls' plates, or a little something from the snack cupboard, only to have to return it in favour of something I can gum down to a paste. I live in terror of losing a piece of food in those giant cavernous holes that once housed teeth.

Good times.

P.S. The tooth fairy brought me 'four whole quarter dollars' reported by a squealing Anna the next morning. Hooray, that may be enough for another ice cream.

Sugar and Spice and Rogaine

2011-09-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

For once we have come up trumps when it comes to educational opportunities in this town. Just this once we've managed to be in the right place at the right time. We drive past at least three schools to go to Anna's current elementary school. Something that's not lost on me during my 90 minutes every day that I spend driving between our home, preschool, school and office. We drive that far because our local school is a 'failing school' and if it's failing in California you'd better believe it's no bueno.

But! Her granola, happy-clappy, love-in of an elementary school is in the neighbouring town's pick up zone when it comes to after school care - which means Girls Inc will pick her up from school and take her to their brand new state of the art facility, that *could we be so lucky* is just down the road from Lucy's preschool.

I had no idea what Girls Inc was, except probably female in orientation. I was thinking Monsters Inc - only pink. It is an 'enrichment' program, somewhere kids go after school when their parents are still chasing the almighty dollar. Her program includes a theatre, a gym, a garden, a computer room, a professional teaching kitchen, a ballet studio, a tap studio, really - somebody stop me. They feed them snack (kid approved - Anna had a blueberry Joker smile when I picked her up after her first day), let them loose in either the playground or the library (when Anna saw this brand new library you could literally see her heart stop beating....), and then they pick a class - a different class every afternoon. So far Anna is going twice a week and is doing 'Sea Science' and 'Tap'.

She loves her Sea Science teacher. On the first day they learned about ecosystems and her teacher cornered me at pick-up to say "she's quite an adept learner isn't she" and I just smiled, knowing full well I had an evening of regurgitated tundra ahead of me.

Last week they were to take a field trip to the beach. Every child who was going on the trip had to have a Girls Inc T-shirt. Anna was admiring hers in the car on the way home. The Girls Inc motto is emblazoned on the back...

"Girls Inc" read Anna "Inspiring Girls to Be Strong, Smart and Bald"
"Don't you mean, BOLD - as in confident" I said to the rearview mirror
"Nope, I'm pretty sure it means hairless" was the reply.

Genius.

Potty Training By Costco

2011-09-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Potty training Lucy was always going to be interesting, mostly because she is just so. damn. stubborn. It was obvious right from the start that 'training' was out the window, that it would have to be her idea. For weeks she would hide behind the couch, red faced, and teary eyed, doing her business. We would gently ask if she wouldn't rather put that poop in the toilet "NO I NOT!", "DON'T SEE ME", "I NEED SOME SPACE" would be her favourite screams.

We hit mid-summer, and she passed the two and half year mark. I placed that last pack of 256 diapers in my Costco trolley - and then hit on a genius idea. In full view of the girls, I grabbed a giant pack of Otter Pop popsicles.

Game on.

Lucy was stubbornly going at her own pace when it came to potty training, but bribery can work wonders, especially when an older sister is thrown in to the mix. We had a deal - for every time Lucy used the toilet they could BOTH have a popsicle. Even in this bizarrely grey and foggy faux-summer, a popsicle made for some pretty hard currency.

Yes, it did mean that on many a morning they had popsicles for breakfast - and no, when only the green ones were left it did not mean they could 'trade up' for an ice-cream. I'll tell you what though, it worked like a charm. In the space of one week we went from nappies to knickers. No accidents. We may have flirted with early onset juvenile diabetes with a 6 popsicle a day diet - but amazingly while she kept using the toilet, the requests for popsicles dwindled. I think she was just so chuffed with herself for being a big girl, and so happy to be wearing new knickers courtesy of her Nani.

It's not easy taking a fledgling knicker-wearer out in public. Most overused phrase of August was definitely 'do you need to go potty', at five minute intervals. We had a close call the other night when she cried out 'I need to go pee-pee' at about 3am. I raced her to the toilet, only to realize she'd been sleep-talking, something that became apparent when she quickly woke up as her naked arse hit the cold toilet seat. I put an emergency nappy on her and took her back to bed - it was dry in the morning so it must have been a false alarm - much like when she yelled "I need some scissors" in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Of course, there is an exception to every rule. Just as I was patting myself on the back knowing that we were now a diaper-less family, I found her Achilles heel. She may be stubborn, she may have mastered bladder control in the space of a few days - but she is no match for the wet foot reflex. Twice this past weekend we were at the beach, and there she was splashing her feet in the cold ocean, when bingo - the flood gates opened. Fortunately it's the beach that's getting a good fertilizing and not my couch, and no-one except immediate family noticed the awkward open-legged gait and wet stream coursing down her shorts.

I will just have to remember not to swim too close to her when we first get in the pool.

Hello, My Name Is....

2011-09-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

Not really a reference to the fact that I've been away from the blog for a month, more a hint as to why.

I could claim some tenuous french heritage and say that the month of August was just a holiday (my Nanna was born in France after all), but really, do the French still take a month off in the summer? Is that a bit like Americans assuming I stop everything to have a cup of tea and a crustless sandwich at 4pm? Chance would be a fine thing.

No, in actuality the American summer holiday kicked my arse. It was ten long weeks of patching together childcare and balancing very welcome guests. Lucy was mostly in her preschool over the summer, but Anna was thrown to the wolves in what the Americans like to call 'summer camps'.

I have a personal theory that summer camps are a training ground for the American psyche. Each year the local papers comes out with the list of camps available in town for the summer (well over a hundred) and you pick and choose like ordering from a very eclectic menu. Anna could have done theatre, surf camp, Spanish camp, Mandarin camp, Mandolin camp (OK maybe that's a stretch), but of course she mostly did tennis and swimming because in our household that is free. These camps vary in cost and popularity - there is a definite pecking order and the good ones fill up fast. Savvy Moms organize their broods into the same camps as friends to help with pick-up and drop-off, and also to help with camp cold-turkey. This is what I think is a trial of fire in terms of character building. Every week a different camp, every week a different set of kids to meet, introduce yourself to, bond with. For a shy child it can be brutal. I am constantly amazed how Anna has changed from a timid and clingy two year old to a six year old prepared to march in to a room of strangers and just get on with things. I would still find that draining. Perhaps it crushes more delicate flowers, but it has definitely given Anna a teflon self-confidence that I hadn't seen coming.

She has some great camp stories; came back muddy and wet from 'Natural History Museum camp' where they searched for pollywogs (tadpoles) in the creek, studied hissing cockroaches and made dodgy scientific crafts that are now littering her bedroom floor.

The best quote was about tennis camp though. Anna, tired, streaky and pink with sunscreen and sunburn - eyes red with chlorine and hair matted with a dozen swimming pool dunks - sighed and said "Momma, I don't fall in love often - but when I do, it's only with very special boys. I've only fallen in love three times this whole summer!"

You can't teach that.

Potty Training Can Be Painful

2011-07-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

I can't believe we're back at this. I remember, all too vividly what it was like when we were potty training Anna. Going from place to place with that tiny little diaper-less bottom, like a grenade with the pin pulled.

Now it's Lucy's turn. Quite frankly, I think Lucy's diaper is the only thing keeping her trousers up these days. She has the bum and legs of a heroin addict, even her leggings flap in the breeze. But she's hit two and half, she's dry overnight, she hides when she poops. She's ready. Except she doesn't believe she is. When her eyes are teary with the strain, when her eyebrows are pink and she shuffles off for some 'pivacy' we ask her if she wouldn't rather use the toilet. "No I NOT!" She yells. We've tried bribery. "No! Go way!" she yells. We bought some very fetching tiny Dora knickers - also a failure, but for different reasons:

Anna (age 6): "Dad, why did you give me Lucy's Dora knickers to wear to school today. They are WAY too small and really uncomfortable".
LK: "Wait, Lucy has knickers now too? How am I supposed to know that?"
Me: "Anna, why on earth did you still put them on (and how?!)"
Anna: "Errr"

Potty training - it's hard on the entire family.

Independence Spirit

2011-07-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

My 15th Independence Day was my first as an American, and also the first experience of July 4th for my Mum and Dad. Reason enough to celebrate. We decked the girls out in matching red, white and blue outfits courtesy of their American Nani, then we fed them ice creams so that their regalia quickly became red, white and dairy. My daughters are anarchists, after all.

Then we headed downtown to witness a most peculiar July 4th parade. Santa Barbara has lots of parades, the most notable being, Solstice (everyone gets their hippy on and struts State Street in ski boots, body paint and pasties), and Fiesta (which is Spanish, you understand, not Mexican - Good God No). The July 4th parade had no real cohesion and it was all a bit odd really. There was a youth band from Oxnard, the mayor in a t-shirt on a golf cart, a collection of Corvettes, Girls Inc in matching t-shirts, a local autobody and detail shop throwing candy, and three or four civil war buffs firing real muskets. Damn those things were loud. A battlefield must have been a nightmare place for a migraine sufferer. Seemed like a great excuse to nip in to the new H&M while the crowds were lining the streets.

The highlight of July 4th is of course, fireworks. Fireworks are a little like dolphins - it's always a bit of a thrill to see them. We are lucky enough to be able to see the harbor fireworks from our bedroom window. Which is nice, as we don't have to go down to the beachfront and deal with the g~~ang stabbings~~ crowds.

One of my favourite photos of Anna was just after her first birthday, wrapped in a post-bath towel, watching the July 4th fireworks:

You can see her thinking - what the chuff??

I wanted to get the same shot of the girls this year. We had all the lights off, so I just pointed the camera and prayed. They were certainly enjoying themselves, there were 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and "I think I shall call that one the gumball machine" from Anna, and "my favourite fireworks is red" from Lucy.

This is the photo I took:

Anarchy is in her blood.

Princely Polo

2011-07-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

The other day one of our elderly patients asked if I would be seeing the Royals come to the Polo Club. "It's the social event of the season" she added. She obviously hasn't heard of our 'build your own taco' nights.

California was all of a twitter about the Royal visit - although it was clearly a steep learning curve, with our local TV station announcing that the 'Dutch and Duchess of Cambridge' would be flying in.

We weren't about to be paying $400 for a ticket in the cheap seats just to see Prince William and Catherine. We considered $4,000 a ticket (lunch included) to be a little steep also, even if the lunch was to be catered by Giada de Laurentiis. However, we do have a lot of kind and generous friends, who happen to live right on the doorstep of the action.

The 'cheap seats' were on the left of the field, the VIP seats were on the right. One of our friends who had bought a ticket for the cheap seats commented that it was like 'The Old South' in terms of segregation - except with free-flowing champagne and canapés. I think she may need to re-visit that period of American history for another look.

That is Prince William in the #4 jersey balanced over my right shoulder. I am wearing clothes, honest - no-one wants to see this Momma streaking. In fact I'm sporting a very tasteful $30 H&M Maxi dress courtesy of my Mum, and some rather fetching gladiator sandals I got at a garage sale. Nothing but the best for Wills & Kate!

Stick with me, the photos get better.

I've watched a fair few polo games over the years, courtesy of LK's job. It's a pretty exhilarating sport. Having ponies thundering past chasing a rock-hard polo ball is quite an experience - and one I decided that a wandering 6 yr old and a rambunctious 2 yr old could probably defer. I didn't want to cause a diplomatic incident after all.

Prince William scored quite a few goals - as the other players seemed to magically part like the Red Sea whenever he approached the goal posts - or so it seemed to me. He was really chatty and smiley though - and responded with a grin and a wave at me bouncing around like a nut job waving my British flags....

Sadly we missed seeing much of Kate. Apparently she had been seen hanging out with Will and the ponies prior to the game, but at that point we were still hiking our way in to the polo grounds because we weren't allowed to drive in. Sadly we were too far away to see her presenting Will with the winner's trophy, but - just when we thought all was lost, they drove right by in a swanky black Audi on their way to the helicopter. The windows were all blacked out at the back of the car, but as they drove by, Kate rolled down her window and they both gave us a wave - Will is even leaning over to wave. That's a class act if you ask me, and my squeak of joy probably had dogs howling in San Francisco.

It was a great day.

Flagging

2011-07-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

I always feel that if I haven't posted for a couple of weeks I should follow it up with something worthwhile.

Sorry, that won't be happening. I have a sliver of time in which to get my thoughts down, so this will have to do.

I will admit that I've been toying with the idea of wrapping up AliBlahBlah. Five years is a long time. My life is getting crazy, my migraines are caused by stress, they are happening with increasing, debilitating frequency, and I'm really having to try to cut back on my to do list. Plus there is a lot going on right now that I'm not sure I can write about, and will definitely struggle to put a positive spin on.

On the other hand, I agree that you are not done with blogging as long as you are still composing posts in your head, and that's still going on, so I'm at a crossroads. Plus, William and Kate are coming HERE! next weekend, and not only that, they will be hanging out at my husband's place of work and we may have wangled ourselves a psuedo invite - and how can an Expat blogger pass up that juicy morsel?

In the meantime, on this 4th of July weekend, my first as a bone fide Amercun, I bring you an odd difference between the two countries. Flag-worship.

We were at a party recently with a giant Amercun flag waving in the breeze. Tis the season after all. Lucy is a tomboy in every sense of the word, and her new game is called 'ka-cha!' which is basically her running around karate-chopping thin air and making elaborately fierce poses. We need to teach her to yell "bow to your sensei!!" then the entertainment would be complete.

This is what happened: Lucy was running around ka-cha!ing and - maybe on purpose, maybe by accident - she 'ka-cha'd' the Stars and Stripes (which was hanging a bold 10 inches from the ground).

All hell let loose.

She was reprimanded by EVERY American present - except me. They were kind but firm, the American flag was sacrosanct, and had to be treated with respect, it represented the country and all who sailed in her. Meanwhile I'm thinking 'are you kidding me, she's two, please hold the civics lesson until she can use a toilet unassisted.'

I don't think there is anything in the British non-constitution that is held so reverently. The monarchy, the flag (of which there are many), even tea - they are all treated with a healthy disrespect. While these things are taken seriously, they are not followed zealously or overtly. The reaction to Lucy hong-kong-phoeeying the flag was really surprising to me - even after 15 years of living here. LK took both girls to one side and gave them a talking to. He later told me he was brought up to believe that if the flag accidentally touched the ground it would have to be burnt. Really? Even he would not be nudged on the position that Lucy needed to be told, in no uncertain terms, that what she had done was wrong.

Wow.

After having gone through my Naturalization, and all it entailed, I do know why the flag is important to the concept of Nationhood. It stands for the country in more of a way than a head of State can. It represents the country, the unification of the separate States. We The People etc etc. Except this is also a country that prides itself on 'question authority' (you see it on every other bumper sticker shouting at you from the freeway). Maybe that's just California - but again, maybe that's why I'm surprised.

I think I still have some Naturalizing to do.

Every Cloud Has A Purple Lining

2011-06-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

We're completely socked in by our traditional 'june gloom' right now. Fog so thick that Anna walked outside this morning and said "Mom! It's dribbling!" which I assume is Californian for 'drizzling'. Not a word she gets to use with much frequency.

From a practical standpoint, it's an absolute bugger to dress for this weather, because you're never entirely sure when the fog will burn off. Some days (as in the last few weeks) it has clung resolutely all day. On other days it lifts as early as mid morning, and then you're left at work sweltering through 80º in your light woollens. My advice: scarves and cardigans, sounds deathly British, but really they are truly sensible when it comes to the gloom.

What's funny is that when the skies turn leaden, the trees turn purple. Santa Barbara is full of jacaranda trees, and as soon as the first May Grey or June Gloom hits, they start to bloom. They are fabulously beautiful, seemingly giving up leaves entirely for huge bright purple blossoms:

It's as if Mother Nature is throwing us a bone, trying to prove that summer is out there somewhere.

My Do'ed It!

2011-06-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

The other morning at Lucy's preschool the little ones were all called in from the garden for morning group. 'Circle time' is the official start of the day. I imagine the children were finding a spot on the floor and sitting cross-legged when the teacher looked around and said "where's Lucy K?"

Good question.

An even better answer came from C. a sweet boy of 4, who said "oh, she's stuck up a tree."

You might think that I'd be worried about this kind of preschool, or even about why C. didn't bother mentioning it until he was asked. I'm not though, because Lucy's preschool is absolutely brilliant. You can't really complain about your 2 year old being stuck up a tree in a huge garden dotted with peach trees, apricot trees, tangerine trees (wow, they're good), a gnarled but incredibly productive avocado tree, and a passion-fruit tunnel. Really, it's a paradise on earth. The kids are encouraged to pick their own fruit, and Lucy has almost inevitably developed a thing for climbing trees.

It was no surprise to anyone that she was up there (a whopping foot and a half off the ground). When I picked her up that very afternoon - she was stuck in an orange tree. Heavy with oranges, and the flowers of the next crop already starting - there sat Lucy K.

"I stuck!" She wailed.

"Watch this", said J., her teacher, with a wry smile on his face. He walks over and delicately extricates her from the branches, and as soon as her feet touch the ground she sprints across the lawn and starts scaling a peach tree. I walk over to her and she beams "my do'ed it!", and then "I stuck!".

"All day" her teacher replied.

Lucy K loves to climb trees.

It's My Party

2011-05-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

I always get a little anxious when it's time to plan the girls' birthdays. Treading that fine line between what they want and what we can manage. Anna's 6th birthday is the perfect example. She wanted a massive party, at a park, with everyone from her preschool to be invited. Except she also goes to Kindergarten, but she didn't want to invite any of her Kindergarten classmates. I suppose she's known her preschool buddies longer, but for a start, that was odd. Also, several key players that she wanted to invite had already had their birthdays earlier in the year without Anna. I think she's happily oblivious to this, but I'm not. I hurt for her. Then we had an issue with her wanting two key guests, her best friends, but they both had conflicts on the weekends either side of her birthday. It was turning in to a logistical nightmare, and I was starting to hyperventilate.

We ended up compromising, and thought small and early. We bumped her party up by a week so everyone could come. We invited three of her closest hang-out friends. We're doing a sleepover tonight and they are currently having mani-pedis at a local salon for the bargain price of $13 a child. That's in my price range (although, being the anxious sort I'm now wondering if $13 in Korean-American is actually $30....).

Meanwhile I am busy crafting another fabulously bad homemade cake (why do they never come out of the pan in one piece for me??!!), decorating the house and enjoying some quiet while Lucy naps. We have pizza, games, and a movie for tonight's entertainment. After their manicure/pedicures, LK is taking them to the Polo Club to see the horses and have 'tea' on the main veranda. A packed program - hopefully they all crash out by 10pm!!

I think Anna is happy with her economy-sized party. I suspect the main reason she wanted an Annapalooza party was to score huge numbers of presents. I think she'll have much more fun having girl time with her best friends. It's hard when they get older and they spend all year crafting the perfect party in their head. After we hijacked her giant park-party she wasn't going to leave anything to chance, so when I said I'd be making her cake this afternoon - she went so far as to dash off a quick drawing, so I could bake one to her specifications.

In case it's not perfectly clear, she wanted blue icing, strawberries around the edge, and the black blob 'represents something amazing in the middle'. *Sigh*

This is what I came up with. It's uncanny isn't it?? If uncanny means a culinary horror.

I really hope I don't have to eat any.

Sweet Dreams

2011-05-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

A hundred thousand years ago, when I first moved to Santa Barbara, I had an Italian boyfriend. He taught me many things. I'm sure you're thinking, lucky girl, but honestly what I remember most is that he always presented me with a bunch of flowers when he picked me up for a date. First of all - how lovely is that? Well played Italy. He said I should put them by the side of my bed, that his Grandma swore that the scent of sweet flowers would bring sweet dreams.

What a line.

A few days later I met LK at a party and it was ciao fiori, hello surfer boy.

I remember that one day he bought me a bunch of the most beautiful, fragrant sweetpeas from the Farmers Market. I loved the idea that he'd been thinking of our date when he was shopping that morning. He was probably thinking, I'll tell her that line of my Grandmas and that will get us talking about bed.

Anyhow, that was a lifetime ago, yet I can't help but love sweetpeas, and when I saw them at the Farmers Market this morning, I couldn't resist. They are a bunch of summer, last almost as long as a fling with an Italian, and three bunches for $5 buys you a lot of sweet dreams....

With Age Comes Wisdom

2011-05-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

"Now that I am going to be six I am thinking I could be married and I think I should marry Oliver. Not because we play and have fun together but because he is taller than me, because he is already six, and because he is handsome, and well, beautiful."

I'm thinking many marriages have been built on less.

While I Wasn't Sleeping

2011-05-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Migraines are such a waste of time.

I have lost one day out of each of the last couple of weekends, which considering I have three days weekends won't make you feel too sorry for me. I woke up feeling so thoroughly rotten on Friday that I had couldn't drag myself out of bed and take Anna to school. That sounds dramatic in a Victorian woman-with-the-vapours kind of way, but the nausea and the pulsing headache were far worse than any self-inflicted student hangover I've ever experienced.

Not being able to get out of bed and look after the girls was a first (LK had left obscenely early due to our urgent need. to. make. money). Anna was obviously thrilled with the idea of missing class as I croaked and slow-breathed my way through the call to her school. As I gripped the sides of the bed, trying through a combination of measured breathing and mind control to not throw up my migraine medication, she bounced on my right chirruping, "I get to be Absinthe! I get to be Absinthe!"

Anna was my little Florence Nightingale. She took care of Lucy by putting 'Shaun the Sheep' on repeat downtairs, and she fed her a banana and cereal. Later, she crept up to the side of our bed, kissed me on my forehead and asked if I would like a glass of water.

As the pain gradually subsided, followed non-too-swiftly by the nausea, I started to wonder what the house would look like. We've safety-proofed as much as possible, and Anna is very conscious of her sister's welfare (she's a dyed-in-the-wool snitch). But, a soon-to-be-6 year old is not the best judge of whether a 2 year olds 'play' is 'appropriate'.

I got off very lightly. In the space of a morning almost every toy was unpacked and strewn about, cereal had run amok, and Lucy had been 'artistic' with the toothpaste:

I was very lucky. We were all very lucky - at least I think we were, after all there may still be as yet undiscovered surprises, like the blue crayon in the dishwasher that I only discovered after the full wash cycle, and even then I spent a moment thinking, wait, when did we get willow pattern?

As if to prove the size of the bullet that was dodged, the very next afternoon we were sitting as a family watching Harry Potter. Lucy was hidden between the wall and the armchair - her favourite hiding 'nook'. All was peaceful, all was quiet.

Too quiet.

The first I knew of it Lance was yelling 'Lucy, oh goddammit!'. An ENTIRE brand new bottle of zinc oxide factor 50 sunscreen spread liberally all over her, the armchair, the curtains and the carpet. We need not worry about our upholstery ever getting sun-damanged as that shit is never coming off.

And just to prove that I can laugh about it all, now, I am borrowing this from BrambleScat, I liked her post about migraines as I'm sure you will too, and I had to laugh at the 'footballers migraine':

I'm sure lots of Blackpool supporters experienced exactly the same thing just this morning.

A is for Alligator

2011-05-10T17:53:00.001-07:00

When a five year old announces they want to write their own encyclopedia, your first reaction is probably to ask them if they've been outside too long in the sun, or if they're absolutely sure they know what an encyclopedia is. This was Anna though, and when it comes to academics, the girl means business.

She wanted to write an Animal Encyclopedia - a page for each letter, and three animals to a page. I did not expect us to get much past E is for Elephant, but here we are at V and we are rapidly approaching the 'Zooble purchase' (don't ask) which I had promised for a completed project.

I think the inspiration was a lovely book bought for Anna by my friend Jen called 'My Very Own Name' where her name is spelled out by animals who each bring along a letter. She loves that book.

She has had a lot of fun with this project, and Lord knows she is getting more out of it than she is at school. For each letter we google pictures of animals, and she suggests a sentence describing the creature. Each sentence is completely her own thoughts - and I have some favourites such as 'An alligator can sneak up on you' and 'Dogs have wet noses'. Some letters have been challenging. 'I' was a toughie, and we resorted to googling 'animals beginning with i' which is how we came to be sitting there wondering what to write about an ice fish (answer - 'an icefish is very hard to find').

We had the same trouble this weekend with 'v'. Vulture was an obvious pick, vole was considered but rejected, Anna usually picks fierce over fluffy, velociraptor was discounted because it's extinct, then we saw 'vixen'. Perfect.

So there I was, my five year old perched on my lap, while I googled 'vixen photos'.

Duh.

"Oh shit" I said as 100 variations of Madame Spankalot appeared on our screen.

"Silly computer" Anna said "we said vixen and it thought we said rock star!"

Mothers Day Present

2011-05-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

I went in to Mothers Day with the intention of bleeding it dry - of cramming three uncelebrated years into one. Not quite the spirit of the occasion I'm sure you'll agree.

I had a lovely day which set me straight. A bunch of pink tea roses from my love - a bouquet that he'd been offered a hefty sum for the night before when leaving a tennis game and a fellow player realized he was Mothers Day gift-less! I had hand drawn hummingbirds from Anna, cryptic squiggles from Lucy, and a necklace spirited up from Anna that I think I need to thank Mooks for.

On Sunday morning we set off down the road to the beach, and I luxuriated in the feel of soft warm sand beneath my bare feet. A cruise ship had arrived, so big it dominated the horizon. Like the moon it followed us all over town. It was an added blessing to know that we were having a Sunday morning coffee stroll on our secret beach, and 1,000 people had paid for the privilege of Mothers Day in our town.

These were all lovely things - but a lesson learned was truly my favourite Mothers Day gift:

Anna finally conquered the monkey bars at the playground!

A lot of things have come easily to my oldest daughter; she has been an effortless reader, a sponge for information, a freakishly gifted retainer of facts - but she is not a natural athlete. Unfortunately she takes after me in this regard. She even found crawling a challenge and opted to move straight to walking. Perhaps that's why the left-right left-right motion on the monkey bars proved such a challenge. She hated not being able to do it, going from frustration, to defeat, to defiance "I do not like monkey bars, I do not need to do monkey bars!'. I felt for her - I don't think I ever made it up the rope climb at school.

On Saturday, with tongue stuck resolutely out, she swung from one end to the other. I don't know what persuaded her to give it a go - maybe because the playground was deserted except for us. She reached the end, and gave a grin that said she'd just about conquered the world. It was the greatest feeling - for both of us. It sounds absurd to say this about a five-year old, but this has been years in coming. I was just so chuffing proud of her. Best Mothers Day present ever. I have it all on video, and would post it here, except she's wearing a very short skirt, there is a lot of flailing, and well, knickers. It might ruin the majesty of the moment.

Mother Load

2011-05-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to organize my own Mothers Day this year.

I am two for five when it comes to Mothers Days. Two years ago we were evacuated due to the Jesusita WildFire, which meant the breakfast in bed, card, bunch of flowers routine was cancelled as we spent the day driving back to our smoked out house and trying to reassemble our lives. Twice I've been in the UK during American Mothers Days, and despite heavy hints to the contrary, LK does not consider a Mothers Day to exist outside its country of origin. I will admit it is hard to remember a day without the media tapping you on the shoulder and dragging your guilt-ridden carcass to the shops. Last year LK played golf with my brother on Mothers Day. But - don't feel too sorry for me, I did remember to send my Mum a card and a gift this year, but completely forget to honour the day with a Mothers Day phone call. We chatted by Skype, but I completely blanked that it was Mothering Sunday the day of.

This year, I think I'm going to put myself in charge. I've had six years of partial sleep and vomit, nosedrip, food and poop on my clothes. I have paid my dues, I am pencilling in a Mothers Day. I am sure LK will remember this year, but I'm not sure what that will entail. Case in point, he called me last week at work to say he would be coming to pick me up from the office, he was bringing the girls, and he had a treat for me. Not a surprise, you understand, a treat. I've been putting in some long hours at work this year, and it had been a very trying day. I was ready for a treat. I wondered what it could be - dinner, a movie?

What I was not expecting was to walk up to the car and to be handed a gym bag with running trousers, t-shirt (absurdly tight), jog bra and shoes. We were going running! Surprise!

I ended up having a great time - this was part of our run route after all:

But that is why I'm definitely going to reign in the surprises this Sunday and organize some treats of my own.

Breathe

2011-05-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

A huge sigh of relief that it's over. I'm sure you're thinking I'm referring to the wedding, but actually no - and how could I be over Will and Kate when there's still gems like this to entertain us:

No, the reason I'm breathing easier is because April is finally over - otherwise known in this family as eventapalooza. In the space of thirty days we have 4 birthdays and 2 Mothers Days (one American, one British, so two separate Sundays). We both come from fairly small families, so this is quite a significant cluster. The same happens in September, which I am bracing for. We are a family of Virgos and Tauruses - make of that what you will. Good job Anna and Lucy were born outside the vortex and shook things up a bit. Well done me.

Anyway, presents have been bought, cards selected (or arm-twisted into creation by my two serf-lets), things have been wrapped, addressed and sent winging around the globe. Isn't it interesting how little time it takes in a marriage for it to go from; "what do you think my Mom would like for her birthday" to "what did we get my Mom for her birthday" to "did you remember my Mom's birthday?" Interesting, but I'm sounding a tad waspish and victimy, so I'll swiftly move on.

To the topic of me getting a surprise present - a Versatile blogging award from the lovely radmegan, who actually wrote something so nice about my blog I blushed, under my perma-Cal tan. Not a bad way to start a week. Here it is in all its glory:

The rules of the game are that I have to share seven things about myself, which crikey moses sounds like an awful lot even for such a self-obsessed blogger as me. Then I have to refer back to my bloggee award benefactress, done, and finally link to seven other blogs I like. Yikes, nap time! OK, so brace yourself for seven random things:

I only give presents that I'd like to receive myself, and I usually put far too much thought into the process. Seriously people it's that easy - you can always just send my gifts right back to me and I'd be thrilled. It HAS happened. Unbelievable but true.
I have never dyed my hair but I'm getting vain and depressed at how dark it's become post Lucy (oh, Lucy, it's a good job you're cute because you have RUINED me) - anyhoo, I am now resorting to lemoning my hair whenever I go out and exercise.
It's a really bad idea to sweat with lemon in your hair because it drips in to your eyes and stings like a mofo.
I have been blogging for nearly five years, and have almost stopped numerous times, but YOU have always lifted me up, cheered me up and made me carry on. So thankyou. I would already have forgotten most of the mindlessly charming and silly things the girls have done if it wasn't for this blog and the people who read it.
I am not a little pissed off that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown weren't invited to the Royal Wedding. If the Royals are supposed to be staunchly apolitical whilst helping themselves to a big chunk from the taxpayer then they need to behave apolitically.
I cannot say 'meditate' without thinking I might accidentally say 'masturbate' so that rules out Buddhism for me.
I can do an Australian accent but not an American accent and I have no idea why.

Now I need to enjoy myself and surf the web to find 7 bloggers to refer too. Feel free to volunteer yourselves otherwise I will pick my usual suspects on the right hand side of this blog WHO ARE ALL BRILLIANT.

Royal Wedding Tea Party

2011-04-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Do you know how hard it is to persuade an American to eat a biscuit called a 'digestive'? It was much easier to hand out the champagne.

On the way to school on Friday morning a tiara-bedecked Anna asked 'but why is this important?' - which to be fair was a good question. So I explained to her that she is half British, and that her future King had got married that morning. I told her that Britain was one of the oldest monarchys in the world, and contained the most famous Kings and Queens of history. I said that this was a day to be proud to be British - even half British - to be proud of our heritage. We talked about her being a quarter Danish, a little bit German, a little bit Irish, and half British, but mostly American.

She thought about it for a while and then said 'people can have a lot of halves, can't they?'.

Yes, that is a telephone-box cake stand.

And just to remain truly humble to the occasion I will admit that this was the first time I realized that the Queen doesn't sing our National Anthem, 'God Save The Queen'. When they were panning across the congregation in Westminster Abbey, there she was tight-lipped and silent. 'Wow, she's not singing' I said. To which LK replied 'well, duh'.

Glowing With Health

2011-04-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

The earthquake in Japan had quite a few people on the West Coast of America worried. Not just for the tsunami that caused quite a savage ripple in the Santa Barbara harbour. A couple of days after the disaster struck, I was in a meeting put on by the local medical society. The nurse giving the talk spent a good fifteen minutes creating a maelstrom of panic about the radioactive cloud headed our way.

Apparently she'd already sent her husband to Costco. With a list.

There were worried glances. One of the less mentally agile in the room asked if we would be able to see the cloud coming. It was going to make landfall in a matter of hours. There was talk of iodine tablets, of stocking up with supplies for the five days we would all be quarantined inside our buildings. People asked if we should eat the vegetables in our gardens or drink out of the tap. Everybody does so enjoy a brief flutter of panic.

Bearing in mind this was IF the reactor blew and IF it came our way.

That's when I thought - hang on a minute. The Fukushima reactor is thousands of miles away from California. Thousands more miles than Chernobyl was to the north of England.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown. Twenty-five years ago this week a huge radioactive cloud drifted across the north of England, and we, well for as much as I can remember, we were told not to play outside in the rain. I think for a year we were advised not to eat local lamb as they had stayed outside in the rain - but that was pretty much it. I know for a fact that we ate the fruit and veg growing in our garden. We drank water straight from the local reservoir. Did we just panic less, or was there nothing we could do?

I am surprised there wasn't much mention of Chernobyl when Fukushima was threatening to melt down. I was even more surprised when my assistant at work hadn't even heard of Chernobyl.

God I feel old. And radioactive. Does that make me invincible? Like irradiated food, will I fail to go bad? I'm sure we all just got a dose equivalent to an x-ray or a half hour mobile phone call.

I am not discounting the threat of a nuclear meltdown. Not at all. There is a nuclear power plant about two hours drive away - Diablo Canyon - that is both on the coast, thus in a tsunami-risk area, and it's on a fault line. That is something to worry about. It was just interesting to be in a room full of panicking people and to find out that I'd actually gone through their def com delta moment before, without even realizing it.

Where Does The Easter Bunny Come From?

2011-04-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

For two countries with very similar traditions, Easter is a remarkably dissimilar holiday. Growing up in the UK, Easter always meant:

Hollow chocolate eggs filled with sweets
Hot cross buns
Daffodils
Big family get-together/dinner
3 weeks off school, Friday/Mon off for the grown-ups

Over in the US, the key Easter themes seem to be:

Easter egg hunts
Dying Easter eggs
Easter baskets
The Easter Bunny
'Peeps' (check out this link to Radmegan and her awesome needle felted peeps - it will also help all you Brits who are wondering what they chuff 'peeps' are, if not a group of Facebook friends....)
No chuffing time off work at all.

.......I'm sure many of you have noticed that religion is missing from both of my lists - because we are essentially an agnostic family. Quite frankly, in both countries, chocolate appearing magically on Easter Sunday is pretty much a religious experience in itself. I'm not sure that John Lennon was fair in saying The Beatles were bigger than Jesus - but I'm sure chocolate is a pretty solid contender.

A lot of people are surprised to learn that the Easter Bunny, and the concept of hiding eggs is not native to the UK. I'm honestly not sure if England is still Easter Egg hunt free - I've been gone for 15 years after all - and somehow I think it's started to be adopted, in the same way that Halloween has become a much bigger deal.

My first Easter Egg hunt was age 26 in Santa Barbara - and I took no prisoners. I do think it's a brilliant and fun tradition, although Anna admitted only tonight that she was a little confused about why a rabbit would leave eggs - after all, mammals have live young don't they?

She wanted to leave carrots out for the Easter Bunny, in the same way we leave mince pies for Father Christmas. The myth was starting to multiply. We did do a small hunt around our barrio backyard this morning, but the Easter Bunny also left more substantial gifts in the form of a much-longed for Easter Lily for Anna and a bumble-bee balloon for Lucy. We did not try to link Easter and its associated fertility rituals with the giant bumble-bee balloon. It's just something we knew would make her really happy. And it did, briefly, until it came loose from its ribbon and drifted skywards.

Is there anything sadder than a two year old watching a balloon gradually float away? They take a heartbreaking amount of time to disappear from view too. She was still pointing and imploring us to 'go get it' when it was a pinprick speck dancing a waltz with a SouthWest Airlines 747.

A couple of days before Easter, we'd dyed eggs at our friends house - 120 eggs painted every colour of the rainbow:

Jen chose the standard inorganic dyes on the right, but dabbled with organic homemade dyes on the left, she used coffee, beets, blueberries and turmeric - boiled up with white vinegar. They all held up surprisingly well, although they took longer to work than the shop-bought dyes, and took a lot more prep and washing up (something I would imagine - as not being a true friend, I managed to bugger off home long before the pans hit the sink.....)

Then, yesterday Anna went to another friend's house and dyed eggs, had an Easter Egg hunt, and made a huge Easter Bunny cake.

It has been Easterpalooza round here, but a lot of fun - that is until the chocolate crash hits at 10am - as evidenced by this downed princess....a princess without a bumble-bee balloon.

Oh Easter Bunny, you fickle friend.

How To Celebrate A Royal Wedding

2011-04-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

I was a little bit older than Anna is now when Charles and Di got married. I still have the mug:

I like to give it to blokes when they have a cup of coffee at our house, and watch them squirm.

I wish we could be in England for the Royal Wedding. I'm not a huge royalist by any means, after all, the funeral of Princess Diana created a national day of mourning out of my wedding day. I do like a good excuse for a party though, and living in California makes me feel a little like Fergie - everyone expects me to be involved in some way, but my invitation's been lost in the mail.

I will not be getting up at 3am to watch the wedding, and we will not be having a street party to celebrate. After all, the last memorable thing that happened in our neighbourhood was a car being stolen. It was recovered on the West Side of town with an assassinated gang member in it.

The good news is we've found your car.....

Still, the girls are harf English, (although Anna admits to being 'mostly' American) and I want them to acknowledge the enormity of the day. Whatever camp you fall in, you have to admit it's a what-were-you-doing-on-the-day kind of event.

We had a street party when Charles and Di got married. I remember treasure hunts, bunting, girls dressed as princesses and my Mum being very cross that our black and white TV did absolutely nothing for the fabulous dresses and hats on display at St. Pauls.

Instead of throwing in the towel and calling it a normal Friday, I've decided to hold a Royal Wedding Tea Party. In the non-Sarah Palin sense. Girls in princess dresses and plastic tiaras, Mums with cups of tea or champagne. I've splashed out on Union Jack bunting and good old English cake and biscuits:

I'm also going to have another stab at making flapjack - and this time I'm going to line the tin so it doesn't have to be chiseled out and eaten oat by oat.

Royal Wedding fervour is just starting to ramp up over here. We have been relatively immune up until now. I think things may have got a little out of hand in the UK - considering this story from Huffington Post: Apparently Waity Katie's image was found Allah-like on a jelly bean....

My guests will just have to make do with a jammie dodger.

Emergency Entertaining

2011-04-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

Last night Anna came home and said that tomorrow her school were going to be spending the day at a campground - that much was known - and that I was signed up to bring a salad.

I've had to grow pretty adept at this kind of last minute catering, and I bring you my #1 crowd-pleasing, ready in 2 minutes salad/appetizer/potluck dish. Shamelessly cobbled from Sunset Magazine it is so easy that a culinary clown such as myself can shine. I always keep mini mozzarella balls (Ciliegine) in my fridge - they last for ever and are rarely the victim of a midnight snack cull from my husband. Baby tomatoes are also a staple in this household, being one of the few psuedo-vegetables my girls will eat. They are a no-prep lunchbox godsend. The rest is simple, assemble with a sliver of basil in between, dress (optional) with a wave of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and 'Herbes de Provence' to really push the boat out.

The only hard thing is to go shopping for the little wooden skewers - called cocktail sticks in the UK. Just you try asking for 'cocktail sticks' in your average Ralphs or Vons and you will be trawling the alcoholic beverage aisle in vain. In the US they are called 'party picks' which is much more prohibition-friendly and they are in the paper plate aisle.

Could I have made this any easier for you??! Do you want me to hold your hand?

Amazingly, these colourful, quasi-healthy snacks are a bone of contention with LK. Because LK does not like tomatoes, and bridles every time we turn up to a hastily-convened picnic or event with said snack. He wants to know why my signature dish excludes him so entirely. To which - I mean come on - I have to reply, when he is ready to whip up a strawberry walnut salad with goddess dressing on the fly, or a health-conscious, child-friendly appetizer that is not goldfish, then he's more than welcome. I mean seriously - when was the last time you attended a 'potluck' event at a school and a bloke had provided more than 10 hot dogs and some lighter fluid?

Tomato-basil-mozzarella skewers. Your new summer dish. Guaranteed to charm your friends and irritate your loved ones. It doesn't get better than that.

Do you have any last-minute crowd-pleasers you'd like to share? I would give you complete credit of course. If you happened to be at the same party as me.

Public Service Announcement

2011-04-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

If this helps just one person out there - then my job is done.

I work with health insurance companies every day. I have learned that while I would like to believe that healthcare is a right rather than a privilege, I do understand the layers of argument beneath that. People will always want choice and the idea that they can spend a little more and get a little extra. Especially in this country. Everyone thinks that if they just work a little harder they can create a better life for their family. People blithely underestimate the chances that a medical condition will swoop in and take everything. I can understand that, I buy lottery tickets, I'm even looking at a private school for Anna (more on that later). I've lived here long enough to understand the entrenched desire for a free market, nobody wants to feel dictated to, everyone wants to feel like they're making an informed choice (even though OMG you have no idea how many times I hear people crying 'but I thought we were covered!!').

This is not a political blog, so I need to veer back on topic.

What I need to tell you: one thing I have learned that a staggering number of people do not know, is that if you have PPO insurance and are seen in a hospital and you are treated by a non-PPO doctor you do not have to accept out of network reimbursement as your final answer.

It happens every day at our medical practice. People are rushed to hospital, treated by the on-call specialist, who just so happens to not be covered by their insurance, and they get a huge bill as a result. You can appeal this. It's very easy. You call the number on the back of your insurance card and tell your insurance company that while sedated in the ER, or semi-conscious on the ward upstairs, you were not selecting the physicians who were treating you. They were assigned to your case. The fact that there was no cardiologist, nephrologist, or other ologist on call who was contracted with your insurance company at your moment of need is not your problem. Your insurance needs to reprocess the claim as if the physician in question was contracted. They are not going to volunteer to do this, and the doctor sending you the bill will probably not either. If you make this call they have to reimburse as if the physician was part of their PPO. The doctors get paid what is rightfully theirs, and you have less out of pocket. These are your rights and your insurance company is sure as hell not going to inform you of this.

If this has happened to you, then this one phone call could save you a lot of money.

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

2011-04-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

But if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.

Did you know that a family with two daughters is most likely to be happy?

Well, I'm sure you do know that, because I'm never able to blog when I want to, and my friend Susie shared this gem with me days and days ago and the article has been all over the media since then, but still, interesting, no?

Before kids I would have said the ideal two child family would have gone:

Boy, Girl
Girl, Boy
Boy, Boy
Girl, Girl

My rationale would have been that everyone wants a son, one of each is preferable to two of the same and hence the order.

Apparently that's not the case. The UK parenting website bounty.com examined over 2,000 families to find out what the 'ideal' combination of children would be - and their results are:

‘BEST’ TO ‘WORST’ COMBINATIONS OF CHILDREN:

1. Two girls

2. One boy and one girl

3. Two boys

4. Three girls

5. Three boys

6. Four boys

7. Two girls and one boy

8. Two boys and one girl

9. Three boys and one girl

10. Three girls and one boy

11. Two boys and two girls

12. Four girls

Singletons were not included in the study because, I suppose, it was about 'child combinations' but I think it's an odd omission. Plus I think there's the hugely important factor of age differences that is ignored - but having said that, I do agree that having two little girls is proving to be a very successful combination in the K household, and for most of the reasons cited in the study:

BENEFITS OF HAVING TWO GIRLS:

1. Rarely noisy

2. Help around the house

3. Very few fights and arguments

4. Quite easy to reason with

5. Play together nicely

6. Rarely ignore each other

7. They confide in you

8. Very well behaved

9. Rarely try to wind each other up

10. Really like each other

All this seems to ring true for us. They do both play quietly and volunteer around the house (often making the situation much worse as a result....). They don't squabble too much, and Anna is quite easy to reason with looks pointedly at two-year-old daughter.

Is this going to continue? To an extent I hope so. I doubt one will want to go to a monster truck rally and the other a princess pageant - I think they are more likely to have shared interests growing up - so I don't see much fighting in that arena - but hello, what about 10 years time?? What about two teenage girls with rollercoastering hormones growing up in a financially impoverished household in a conspicuous consumption-obsessed town? Plus, does LK think two girls are fab when they both yell 'NO YAKERS DADA' (no Lakers dada) every time he touches the remote control??!

I know he wouldn't trade his girls for anything, and I suppose the bottom line for me is that once a child is born, he or she stops being a gender and starts being a person, an irreplaceable part of your heart.

But girls call you, and remember your birthday, and stop you dressing like a twenty years out of date nut-job when you're in your 50s.

There, I said it.

When Going Green Turns You Red

2011-04-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

There was a pretty self-congratulatory column in one of our local papers the other day, about how fabulously progressive Santa Barbara was in the realm of 'saving the planet'. I do agree that in a lot of ways, California is on the cutting edge of environmental consciousness - we have solar panels, electric vehicles, drough-tolerant gardens and green waste collection. But, California is still fighting the American 'bigger is better' battle. While it's true you would have a hard job to pick out your Prius amongst the dozens of other Prii (?) in a multi-storey carpark here, I wouldn't go so far as to call us the greenest of the green. People drive everywhere, and cars still have appalling mpgs. Nobody uses a washing line to dry their clothes - despite sunshine on tap. Food comes in vast over-packaged quantities. There is still a lot to be done.

What is definitely good, is the greening of our children. Local schools are working very hard to instill in our kids the need to re-use, re-purpose, and grow-your-own. The trash cans at Anna's school say 'recycling' or 'landfill' - that definitely makes you think twice. Anna's class were apparently having a discussion about how to 'save the planet' during group time the other morning. The big topic was water conservation - turning the tap off when you clean your teeth, etc. Apparently Anna had quite a novel suggestion - she was delighted to inform the group that her household was already very water conscious - because to save water, she and Lucy bath together, and Momma and Dadda shower together.

Ahem.

Suddenly Summer Staycation

2011-04-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

Because we ~~were really stupid~~ didn't know any better, we had children far away from the helping hands of most of our relatives. Last week, being Spring Break, we had to patch together childcare using bribery, and thin on the ground vacation days.

Don't ask me what we're going to do for the THREE MONTH American summer holiday or I'll have to start breathing in to a brown paper bag.

I ended up taking Wed - Fri off, and struck it lucky. Michelloui from American Resident just asked what your favourite thing is about the town in which you live, and this is mine: I have many issues with Santa Barbara, but I have to admit, it is a great town for an impromptu vacation. You can have the most miserable work day on record, and within minutes be down at the beach, feet in the sand, sipping a beer. We couldn't find anyone to watch the girls - so I had vacation thrust upon me - and I made the most of it. There was a precipitation ceasefire and three days in a row of weather in the upper 80s - it was glorious.

This is the pool where we are lucky enough to have free access - this picture was taken at noon during Spring Break - and as you can see, it's completely deserted:

We invited friends to come and share our good fortune, and when they weren't available, I used the cunning diversion of colourful pieces of floating plastic crap.

Lucy did not budge from that spot for hours.

Going to the pool is becoming a pleasure. We're so nearly there. For the past five years it has involved mountains of swim nappies, floaties, spare clothes, many towels - all for a five minute dip with both children clinging like limpets before they turned blue. Now Anna can 'swim' - she doggie paddles like she's about to drown, and Lucy bobs around wearing armbands and a perma-smile. I reckon I am about two years away from being able to sit by the side of the pool with my nose in a good book. My kids may appear to be self-sufficient in the pool, but Anna is flirting with drowning with every puppy-paddle, and Lucy is just one deflated armband away from complete submersion.

Still, I got to float around in this beautiful outdoor pool every day, thinking about David Hockney and how we're both a long way from the North of England - and I tried not to dwell on the fact that my body was not at all prepared for a bikini in March.

We also played tennis,

Drank smoothies,

Ate some rather shi-shi frozen yogurt,

Shopped for gingerbread men, and played on playgrounds.

I had such a good time. Let me just say, looking after two small girls all day may sometimes be harder than working full time, but being a stay at home Mum beats trying to juggle being a full time Mum and a full time employee any day of the week. It was so nice to not be rushing everywhere, not to have to race across town at 5:15pm from a long day of work to pick up two overtired and over-hungry girls from school. We had a ball.

Now - how do I conjure up a three month summer fakecation?

Zero Tolerance

2011-04-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this. Since Lucy was born I have developed an increasing intolerance to alcohol, to the extent that one drink these days will give me a hangover of collegiate proportions. It's not fun. Particularly because I really enjoy a glass of wine with a meal, or a ridiculously overpriced cocktail at any restaurant in this shi-shi town. To say I was reluctant to believe I was becoming intolerant to my evening glass of wine, is an understatement. I wanted so badly to believe that it was maybe just red wine, just sulphites, or stress, a waning moon, pixies, anything other than that one glass of something to unwind with at the end of the day.

It turns out that it wasn't hangovers I was dealing with. It was migraines. When Lucy was six months old I went back on the pill - except I couldn't remember what pill I'd been on in the four years post-Anna, so they tried me on a low dose hormonal thing. I spent the next two months with pounding headaches, pain like an iron stake behind my right eye, and vomiting every morning. Not ideal, so I changed over to a different brand which left me with the same migraines and vomiting, plus the hormones of a banshee. Without going in to details I will say that feeling emotionally precarious, having noise-sensitivity due to migraines, and living with two small children and running a busy medical practice - not a great lifestyle.

I know very well that there's medicines you can take, for both prevention and relief, but I've been reluctant to go that route. I think it's because I see so many patients with horrific, intractable migraines, that I've been unwilling to admit that I may have that future ahead of me. Unfortunately I do have to take migraine pills in order to just function on some days. The few I've tried generally just turn down the volume of the pain, do nothing for the nausea, or leave me a jittery mess with the parenting tolerance of a Victorian governess.

To cut a long story short I stopped the pill, and I stopped drinking. I officially gave up for Lent, in support of LK who also gave up booze for Lent. It wasn't such a stretch for me, obviously, as I'd all but given it up anyway. I do feel better, but not miraculously so. I still get migraines, but they are not as frequent. Sadly, it seems that all alcohol is a guaranteed trigger, and because I don't like what's out there to treat migraines, I want to try everything in my powers to try and avoid them - and that's why I've been looking at what causes them, just in case it's not just alcohol, or not alcohol at all. Briefly, migraine triggers can be:

Sleep disturbance (I'm looking at you Lucy)
Stress (ha!)
Alcohol *sigh*
Chocolate/sugar
Caffeine
Aged cheeses
Processed meats
Salt (increased blood pressure)
MSG
Having any kind of fun AT ALL

To eliminate all that from my lifestyle reminds me of a 'Wellness' seminar I went to a few years ago. The speaker stood up and gave a run-down of the things you need to do in order to live a long life: go to bed at 9pm, wake at 6am, run, eat steamed fish, fresh vegetables, yoga, no stimulants, no alcohol, etc etc. He concluded by saying that this would not guarantee that you would live til you were a 100 - it would just feel like that.

Exactly.

I've spoken to my doctors - and the good news is (!) - roll on menopause, it seems this too shall pass, and I will be merry again. In the meantime I feel like I've been launched in to premature middle age. It's not that you have to drink to have a good time, it's just that not drinking is such a statement. No, I'm not pregnant. No, I don't mind if you drink, please go ahead. It's ridiculous that it's such a conflict. Maybe our culture out here is too booze-centric. We do live in wine country after all. I know I should be grateful that I have identified a trigger that, when avoided, cuts my migraines in half. Plenty of people live with this pain day in, day out. I just wish it was cheese, or processed meats, or even chocolate that I was sensitive too. Yes, I'd even give up chocolate for a glass of wine at the end of the day.

Who's In Charge Here?

2011-03-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Lucy and I are both feeling a bit under the weather. Just a cold, but miserable nonetheless. She started it, and I knew I was in big trouble when she gave my nose a big slobbery lick on Saturday. Lo and behold, a massive head cold followed by intense sinus pressure and a tidal wave of snot. Lovely. This is Luce enduring Costco this morning:

Why were we at Costco? Well, that's a bit of a long story. As I said, we're both getting over pretty miserable colds, but I'd already committed to having Anna's friend Sofie over for a playdate in the afternoon.

Anna's best friend Sofie has a brand new baby brother. To help out, we've been having Sofie over for a playdate every Friday afternoon so that Sofie's Mum can have some precious bonding time with her new bundle of screams, poop and vomit.

To the uninitiated, playdates sound like extra work, but it turns out that more children in your house actually means less work. It sounds completely counterintuitive, but it's an absolute fact. They entertain themselves, Lucy naps, and you're left throwing snacks at them occasionally and intervening when someone (Anna) won't let someone else (Sofie) be anything other than the prince. I wish someone had told me this years ago.

Back to Costco. I wasn't worried about Sofie catching our cold. We've both had it for a week now, so we're very likely no longer contagious, and they really haven't been anywhere near me, except to grab some goldfish and baby carrots. What I was worried about was it being sod's law they would have a massive bust up and I would be left playing entertainer whilst feeling like death warmed up. I decided to play it safe and go and buy Tangled on DVD - just in case the BFFs turned WTFs.

Lucy is ~~fairly~~ impossibly headstrong, so you can imagine what she's like with a cold. We had literally taken two steps out of the front door when she started crying about the sand! in my shoes! I can't possibly walk! because of the sand! the sand! THE SAND! THE SAND! MY SHOES! MY SHOES!! You get the idea.

Oh the agonies. I bundled her in to her car seat, did a quick swab down with a baby wipe and she finally calmed down.

Let me tell you - no-one was more surprised than me, when 10 minutes later and about to get on the freeway, she suddenly appeared behind my right ear, crying "Pee Bo!!".

I hadn't buckled her in. She was thrilled.

A quick pit stop, and all was righted. We carried on to Costco, where they didn't have Tangled - because it's not out yet - ha ha ha bloody ha. And so I decided to give up and go home for a cup of tea.

--Updated to add: the playdate went swimmingly, the girls played mermaid princesses outside in the puddles (novelty!!!!), Lucy napped upstairs, and I wrote this masterpiece.

English? British? Explained

2011-03-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

I'm following on from a discussion started by Calif Lorna on her blog - where she pleads with the US Postal Service to recognize that Wales is not actually in England. I sympathized with her pain, as the same thing happened to me quite recently - and I thought I'd share the tutorial.

I was filling out paperwork for my US citizenship process last year - I handed my form over and watched in amazement when the INS agent crossed out my stated citizenship 'British', and with a measured look and a flourish, replaced it with 'English'.

I've been here for 15 years so I know enough about INS agents to just suffer in silence - but she was wrong. I have a British passport. I am British. It just so happens that I am also English, but I don't have an English passport. Also, she had no idea where in the British Isles I was actually from, so to just replace British with English was pretty bad. I might have been a disgruntled Scotsman armed with a live haggis after all.

Incidentally - I also now have an American passport, but in scanning my photo they have both managed to turn me yellow and broken my nose, so I think I look better as a Brit quite frankly.

Back to the story. Some of you won't understand what we're getting in such a flap about. Some of you will be muttering 'semantics' or clicking further down my blog hoping to find the 'boobs in Utah' you had googled for. A lot of you will be thinking that saying 'how was London?' is a good blanket question for anyone from that side of the pond.

If you're American I'm not saying you ought to know what constitutes the UK, and why that differs from Great Britain - you after all have 50 States to keep track of, and that's usually all the geography you need entertain yourself with. But maybe you've wondered. Why did that charming man with the thick Glaswegian accent get all shirty when you introduced him as English? Why do people care?

This video found by my good friend Rod goes a long way in explaining it all - and fast. He wondered if I knew the real differences - and I felt duty bound to remind him that I have a Masters Degree in Geography, so yes, I did know it, but that's also why I just work in a medical office *ahem*.

Get ready for Venn diagrams.

Som Calif Lorna may be at odds with the USPS, but i have to say that the good old British Mail just came up trumps by delivering a card to me from Scotland that had a 2nd class stamp on it. No air mail denial, no 'returned for insufficient postage', just a curt note on the back that 'due to incorrect postage this piece of item was diverted to an alternative service'. It arrived 4 months late, and I can now stop chuntering that my cousin never thanked me for his wedding kettle (no expense spared), but still, Scotland to California on a 2nd class stamp. That's service.

Wet Weekend

2011-03-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of Lucy fishing in a creek, taken a few weeks ago at a birthday party. In an inspired piece of birthday party organization, my friend Jen had given each kid a garden cane fishing rod and gummi worms to tie on the end. They were entranced.

Here is that same creek on Sunday morning during the 10 inches of rain we received in 24 hours:

It was a torrent - hard to capture the speed and the violence of the water with a still shot. We didn't even dare let the girls out of the car in case they (Lucy) decided to get too close. It gives you a healthy dose of respect for mother nature when you can hear boulders bouncing down the creek bed.

I feel sorry for any tourists who'd booked a quick getaway in sunny Santa Barbara this weekend.

Still, as the eternal optimist - (and this is despite another leak developing in one of our tenant's ceilings...), there are advantages to stormy weather. It's not very often you get to cuddle up on the couch with a steaming mug of Aztec Chili Hot Chocolate imported from Hotel Chocolat. I bought this on a whim during our last visit to the UK. Damn you sterling and your deceptively low prices!! It sounded really good in the shop, as an icy May wind blew right through my thin Californian 'jacket'. Then we got back home to Santa Barbara, to the year round 72ºC sunny skies and the chocolate languished in the back of the cupboard.

Bring it on Pacific storms - we're ready for you!

Be Happy!

2011-03-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

My Nanna has broken her arm.

Those of you in the States will be looking at that photo and thinking - wait, the third of what? What month comes after the 12th? I'm sorry to say it's starting to look a little strange to me too.

Back to Nanna. She is hurtling towards 91, and managed to break her arm out for a walk with a neighbour. I guarantee she walks more on a daily basis than most of the people I know. When my Mum and Dad went to visit her, on 13/3, she was up a step ladder with her arm in a cast. She couldn't operate the kettle one-handed, so she'd brewed up using a saucepan.

Nanna is completely brilliant, I would love to have half her energy. I think about being in my 90s and wonder if I'll ever make it through my 30s (I'm looking at you Lucy).

I wanted to let her know we were thinking of her so I asked Anna if she would make a card. I will fully admit that I am using Anna as unpaid child labour when it comes to greetings cards. She was all for it age 3, still quite keen age 4, but now she is starting to chafe at the shackles a bit after a particularly birthday-strewn September. She was happy to do this one though. "A get well soon card" she smiled. That was all I had to say, because now that she knows how to spell (more on that later) she needs. no. further. instruction. puhlease Mom!!

GAT WILL SOON!! The card cried, accompanied by a blue crayon drawing of a hibiscus.

Inside there was a happy face, and a sad face. "I AM HAPPY!" it read "YOU AER SAD!" then on the back "BE HAPPY!" (or else). For some reason Anna has learned to write only in capitals. Having mastered this, she really has no need of the smaller letters, so in the style of email, everything she writes is a shout. I really wish I'd taken a photo of the card before posting it, because underneath the happy/sad faces was a box that said 'feelings' except it said 'felngs'. Anna's school is heavily in to emoting these days. Describe how you feel! Happy is good! Sad is good too! *Sigh*

I'm not sure what a 90 year old will make of the ray of California feelings heading her way, but I'm sure it will help her GAT WILL SOON!

Tsunani Hits Santa Barbara Harbor

2011-03-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

When you live in an earthquake prone area and wake up to the news that somewhere else has just experienced a massive earthquake and tsunami, your heart goes out to the people involved. I know we're sitting on a ticking time bomb here in Santa Babrara.

When you watch the news and hear that a tsunami may be on the way, that it's coming from directly West and you will not be sheltered by the Channel Islands as with previous tsunamis, then more than a little frisson of fear accompanies your morning coffee. We do not live far from the ocean. It's actually just down the road - I'm sure a realtor would expound our 'peek of the ocean' if we were ever in a position to sell.

Historically, allegedly, a tsunami did once reach as far as our building, back in the 1820s, when records were more than a little sketchy. Not that our building was there then. Not this fine piece of 1970s stucco. Still, ocean front property would certainly be nothing to be sniffed at. In all honesty though we weren't too worried.

Then someone sent me a link of the tsunami rolling in to our harbour and even though it pales in comparison with what happened in Japan, or even further up the California coast, it does show that it's a small world when it comes to earthquakes....The movie shows a whirlpool forming and a 'bait shack' being dragged out to sea. I love the close up of the 'closed' sign on it!

Enjoy, and please ignore the colourful language - I think it's probably warranted!

If You Could Hear Me Think

2011-03-11T16:09:00.000-08:00

I call this photo 'even Yasser Arafat was cute as a kid'. I can't remember why she was wearing a tea towel on the beach, but I'm thinking of starting to accessorize with one in the future.

This weekend an old friend from high school came in for a flying visit. Our paths have diverged somewhat since the 5th form A stream, and now he is a partner of his law firm and I - well, anyway we went to the beach so I could show him all the sunny weather we have here.

Here he is doing a passable impression of the Rio de Janeiro Jesus, with a perfect California sunset as a backdrop. At least hipstamatic is making my life appear more interesting.

On the way back we indulged in a little car game called 'I'm thinking of an animal'. Pete doesn't have any kids, and I'm sure by the time we completed the 10 minute drive back to the house he was all the more thankful for it. Anna has devised this animal game, whereby she gives three clues and we have to guess the creature she is thinking of. This was slightly easier when she was 3. Now that she's a whopping 5 and a haf, and a devotee of the natural history museum things have got a little out of hand. Her animals were: a jesus lizard, an albino possum and a ring-tailed lemur. None of them easy to guess after only three clues. If you think that's bad you should be there when she has us guess that she's thinking of an Allosaurus.

There was a (very) brief pause in the animal guess game, and then we heard:

"I finkin animal"

The car went silent.

Lucy had just announced her presence. She coulda been a contender. Anna exhorted her for more...

"I finkin animal" continued Lucy, delighted to have everyone hanging on her every word.

"Give us a clue Luce!" squealed Anna.

"Iss hippo wiff stripes" said Lucy.

And you thought a jesus lizard was hard to guess.

Pancake Day - Old School

2011-03-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

I love this hipstamatic app on my iphone for taking moody, old school, Delia-iscious photos, but it makes my kitchen look like it needs a good scrub.

It does need a good scrub.

Science, Explained

2011-03-07T17:20:00.003-08:00

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Anna's science project. Anna's complete failure of a science project. You all had brilliant comments, including the one that said that just because the result didn't prove our hypothesis, that didn't mean it was wrong - which is obviously completely true.

The reason I'm mentioning it again, is Anna had the most brilliant response to her white flowers failing to turn blue or red when placed in food dye coloured water. She'd obviously been thinking about it, and while I was explaining to friends about t~~he experiment that was ruined because her mother chose the wrong kind of flowers~~ the disproved hypothesis, Anna turned to us and said:

"Really, if you think about it, the white flowers should not have turned colours just because the water was coloured. Because if that was true, then flowers would turn clear when put in clear water".

Q.E.D.

You can't argue with that.

Santa Barbara's Got Talent

2011-03-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

This town is full of amazing talent. People want to live here pretty badly (and, oh boy, are we doing it badly.....). What this means is that jobs are hard to come by and everyone tends to be absurdly overqualified. The person bringing cupcakes to the Kindergarten bake sale probably used to handle catering for Paramount Studios. The volunteer Mom who is handling the class website is likely to have been Head of Product Development for Citrix. It's alternately inspiring or depressing, depending on your mood and insecurities.

Today I have decided to see it as inspiring, and I'm choosing to celebrate some friends who are doing amazing things in their chosen field.

Firstly, my ex-next door neighbour, and the reason I started blogging; Eden Kennedy of www.fussy.org. Eden has co-authored a fabulous book with her friend Alice Bradley, and its launch was last Monday....

Let's Panic About Babies is a spoof parenting book, and Lord knows the world needs a little tongue in cheek when it comes to the thou shallts of Mom advice. I think you should buy it for every new Mum you know (I have). It's a breath of fresh air and will leave you rolling on the floor with laughter - which won't be comfortable if you're 9 months pregnant or have just had an episiotomy.

It's available at every fabulous book store you can think of - which in Santa Barbara basically means Chaucers as both Barnes and Noble and Borders have closed within weeks of each other. Talking of Chaucers, Eden will be doing a book signing there on St. Patricks Day for those who live in the 'hood.

I think you should go. I think you have a lot to learn.

Secondly, our good friends Scott and Jen have been working really hard on Cesarina Wines in the Santa Rita Hills - the #1 Pinot area in Santa Barbara County. Last year was a bad year for many of us, but one of the truly bright spots was a weekend spent up in the valley helping our friends 'train the vines'.

Don't you love my fabulous purple washing up gloves?

Training the vines involves weaving the straggling tendrils up through the wire fencing so they don't trail on the ground as a snarled mess. For me, an early misty morning in the fields, neatening rows of vines, seeing my work create beautiful even rows - was complete bliss. Especially when we happened on unexpected delights like this:

The girls played in the vines, chasing each other between the rows - fun until Anna went missing and we heard the howl of coyotes in the distance - but obviously all was well, she just couldn't raise her 'vine fairy' voice loud enough for us to hear her....

The product of all their hard work is Cesarina Wines. In particular, their Pinot is absolutely out of this world - fruity and mellow with top notes of purple washing up gloves. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have purchased a barrel of the Chardonnay. If you get a chance, please buy a bottle to see for yourselves and amaze your friends with your savvy underground wine knowledge. Check out www.Cesarinawines.com to see local stores where it can be bought by the bottle or by the glass.

There's love in every bottle!

Last but certainly not least, there's my friend Raph at Timberline - www.timberlinesurf.com making handcrafted custom wooden surfboards:

Absolutely beautiful works of art - and they surf great too - although I'll have to take Raph's word on that as the closest I've ever come to surfing is with a keyboard and a mouse. Don't you think one of these would look very tasteful hanging on your living room wall? Just think how cool people would imagine you to be.

OK, probably not appropriate if you're knee-deep in snow in the American MidWest right now, but perhaps there's a latent surfer in all of us, or at least an appreciator of fine craftsmanship.

Hope you enjoyed the little tour of my talented friends. Not that running a busy medical practice isn't a talent of course, but these people do make it seem a trifle dull....

A Rose By Any Other Name

2011-02-26T15:04:00.000-08:00

I don't think my parents fully considered the advent of wireless technology when they named me. I mean, why would they? In the 1970s people still walked to the television to change the channels. Imagine that.

I like my name I really do. It's versatile, recognizable, yet not ridiculously common. Alison, Ali, Al, Als - I have friends and relations who use every variation. Butt - I am also the recipient of every person's inadvertant butt-dial, because I'm usually at the top of the alphabetized contacts list.

I get messages from LK's butt all the time.

I listen to him driving home from work. I never listen for long, because I don't like Led Zeppelin as much as he does, and I'm also worried I'm going to overhear something incriminating.

It must be hell to be called Abigail or Aaron - you'd be the go-to for everyone's accidental arse-dialing.

Usually it's just people going quietly about their business, having accidentally sat on their phones, nothing exciting to eavesdrop on. There is one number though - one unidentified number - who accidentally calls me every 2 weeks or so and spews abuse. Not to me, he never seems to realize he's called me. He's always pissed off at everything. His arse must get twitchy when he's cross, because that's when he seems to call. "You're f&*Ckin disrespecting me" is a common refrain. Vitriol pours, his respect is paramount. In a pseudo Agatha Christie way I wonder if you can report spousal abuse through a mis-dial. I'm not entirely sure why he has my number. I don't have him as a contact. I think he may be a *thankfully* ex-tenant we inherited when we got the property. I thought about sending him a text telling his arse to stop f&$%in disrespecting me but I don't want the fight. I'm just hoping he loses his phone.

On a lighter note, texting is much more civilized. How nice not to have to engage or make small-talk when you don't want to. Lucy has sent a couple of accidental texts to my friends when she's been playing with my phone, but they usually realize that it's not a cryptic cry for help when I message 'fzzvnynghhhh////'. Unless Apple predictive text gets a hold of it, and then you're really in trouble. If you have five minutes, check out this website: www.damnyouautocorrect.com for what happens when good text goes bad. Here's a little taster:

Thanks to Caroline for the heads up about this site. Who couldn't welcome a little blowgun humour to lighten a day?

Shot Through The Heart

2011-02-20T20:12:00.000-08:00

"Mom, what's the name of that baby that shoots people?" asks Anna.

I am well versed in the bizarre, the confused, the inane segues that tumble out of her mouth, but this one had me stumped. Chucky? Some kid from Texas??

The answer was, of course, Cupid.

After we'd cleared that up, she said "he shoots you through the heart - but it doesn't hurt."

When I relayed this via Skype to my Mum and Dad, they laughed, and then my Dad said:

"well, not at first".

What?!

2011-02-18T12:44:00.001-08:00

Our computer died, that's what.

It had been struggling to keep up for about a year now. A year of us going 'la, la, la not listening!' because there were other more pressing concerns, like food, shelter and princess clothes. Still, the fact that our entire library of photos was stored on a hard drive that was sending out routine warning messages was a bit alarming. Our 'start-up disk' was nearly full, which sounds dire even if you don't know where to look for a start-up disk.

I deleted some of Lance's arty photos.

This created the barest flicker of improvement. We soldiered on for a few more months but the warning messages became more insistent, the proclamations more dire. Our 10 year old G5 was beginning to rev like a classic car. It would lie dormant for hours and then make churning data crunching noises at 3am. It was obviously finding some of our content hard to stomach.

I deleted photos of Lance's side of the family. ** For those of his family members reading this blog. Not you. Never! Duh!

It was no good, the end was clearly nigh. I invested in a back-up hard drive. It dutifully copied all our excel files (all seven of them), it manfully ploughed through our .docs. It turned to our jpegs, our vast back catalog of Anna and Lucy baby pictures, and threw in the towel. I think there may be 16,000 images and quite frankly who knows if they were on the back-up hard drive or not. I could never say for sure, and tried not to think of that movie of Anna's first steps being fried in to oblivion. I thought I'd backed it all up - but 16,000 images - can any hard drive the size of a pack of cards capture all that saccharine cuteness?

The final death throe came courtesy of MyLittlePony.com - I kid you not. Every time we booted up our printer it would spit out 15 copies of Rainbow Dash before that critical lease document. Obviously an Apple has it's limits. One morning it refused to boot up. Our computer was in a coma. It took us about three days to admit defeat, three days of us hoping we could surprise it in to action, of pleading our financial straights to a dead machine. My blog was hanging by a thread. 3, maybe 4 people around the world started casting around for something else to fill that 5 minutes of a Tuesday morning.

Fortunately we have an Apple store in this swanky gelt-hole of a town. We hightailed it there and asked for the smallest Cox's Orange Pippin of an Apple. They sold us a Mini, liberated and transferred all our files (yay!) and then told us our screen was most likely too old to connect.

*Sigh*

So now we have an iMac, and a *free* printer that they threw in for our troubles.

I resolve to post a lot more frequently, two maybe three times a month (!) so the google ads on my sidebar (please click!) will make it all worthwhile....

In the meantime, if any of you have any photo storing suggestions - I'm all ears.

Really Bad Science Projects - For Kids

2011-02-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

Anna is equal parts princess and mad scientist. Her school's Science Day was fast approaching and we had to think of an experiment for her to present to her classmates. She had to come up with a hypothesis, and then produce a poster board of her expectations and findings. Is it just me, or does there seem to be a greater expectation of parent involvement in the States? Maybe things have changed in the UK, but I know that when I was growing up I didn't have to 'present my findings', do homework, or even do show and tell. Sometimes I wonder who is really going through Kindergarten.

Back to Anna the Scientist. My Mum and Dad recently bought Anna a National Trust 'bug hunting kit' - perfect for a junior entomologist, but on reflection, not quite so perfect for California even though she absolutely loves it. For a start, we have to use it under heavy supervision, as there's more than just lowly Mr. Woodlouse scuttling around in our back yard. A few months ago I spotted a giant black widow spider having a casual stroll towards our laundry room. Then, when Anna did manage to collect a fierce but harmless looking centipede, she accidentally left him in full sun in her magnifying tube - a tube that now has a perfect blackened centipede shape seared into its base.

We were casting around for something to display, something age-appropriate that didn't involve death or maiming to either us or a poor harmless creature. We were greatly helped in our quest for the perfect 5-year old science experiment by this book from my brother and sister-in-law.

Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do (Usborne Activities)

Anna obviously wants to do ALL the experiments, *right now*, but the one she picked for the Science Fair had the perfect combination of 5-year old girl science, and dramatic show-and-tell effect. 'Magic Flowers', or basically - when you add food dye to the water of white flowers, they will change colour.

We documented the full scientific process, LK decided they should dress appropriately:

Anna wrote 'Magic Flowers' in giant coloured letters, and carefully copied out her 'hypothesis'. It was going to be genius.

Except, when we all woke up the next morning, the flowers were still pristine and snowy white. Epic fail. We considered dunking them in the dye so Anna had at least something to show. In the end we decided that would be cheating, even though when LK arrived at Anna's school and saw 5 year olds introducing Powerbook presentations on how they split they atom at home using some safety scissors and sticky back plastic he was a tad pissed off. Or rather, he thought 'shit, my wife is going to kill me'.

He later said that he was proud that Anna's project was all her own work. So what if the flowers we'd used had failed to suck up any water. I must have accidentally bought dead or irradiated flowers - who knows. He said that the kids all had a wonderful time, and had some brilliant ideas to showcase. Like the kid standing next to Anna whose hypothesis was 'does a nail rust faster in water, salty water or air?'. I said that sounded like a great idea. He said yes, if you don't use galvanized nails that is. Anna, with her pristine white flowers was standing next to a boy with pristine unrusted nails. Perfect.

Every Picture Tells A Story

2011-01-31T21:00:00.000-08:00

Every picture tells a story.

You see two sisters, fast asleep, holding hands. A photo to treasure through the no-doubt hormone-strewn years ahead.

I see photographic evidence of an entire months worth of sleep deprivation.

We have had house guests for six weeks.

When you put it like that, it sounds like I should be chewing Prozac like M&Ms, but it's not been that bad. Until Anna had a nightmare that is.

Anna had given up her bedroom for my Mum and Dad. They stayed over Christmas, and then a few days in to January, LK's Mom arrived, escaping the snow-covered north. Anna was more than happy to give up her room in exchange for the attention of people who genuinely wanted to play with her. We had Lucy in bed with us, and Anna was sleeping in Lucy's toddler bed. All was well with the world.

Then around midnight one evening, Anna came stumbling in crying, having had a nightmare in Lucy's bed. To her, the nightmare was entirely situational. If she went back to sleeping in Lucy's bed, the nightmare would return, so she didn't want to go back there. We tried the tactic of leaving the light slightly on, flipping her pillow over to 'squash' the nightmare, everything, but nothing worked. She only wanted to sleep with us. In our Queen-sized bed, with her two year-old sister.

We've tried popping her back in Lucy's bed once she falls asleep with, but she always wakes up crying and climbs in with us. The nightmares seem to be new too. Maybe they're because she's feeling displaced, having 'lost' her room for a few weeks, or maybe, sadly, she's inherited LK's tendency to nightmares. I hope not. She's even started asking to hold my hair again - her toddler 'comfort blanket'. It's as if she's lost the ability to self-soothe.

As it is, we're all squashed together like chuffing sardines, all waking up at the slightest moan, cry, rustle, or fart. There just isn't the real estate for us all to sleep comfortably, it's like trying to fall asleep holding a yoga pose.

It has been a nightmare. I am so tired, I think I'm re-experiencing the newborn stage all over again. The other night Lucy was crying out in her sleep 'boobie, boobie' and I was so exhausted, and so reluctant to wake up that I just fished around for her hand and put it on my boob to stop her crying.

And then I realized it was actually Anna's hand I'd grabbed. Anna who was fast asleep, thankfully.

I really hope this stops when Anna gets her room back.

You Go, Diego!

2011-01-29T17:24:00.001-08:00

Have you ever fed an elephant?

Last week the girls and I got the chance to do just that - courtesy of my friend Chilly. It was an eleventh hour opportunity, but I managed to beg some time off work. After all, you don't pass up the chance to pet a pachyderm.

When I was growing up there was a tiny zoo in the even tinier town next to us. Knaresborough Zoo did not stay around very long, it was closed down when I was in my teens due to budget and permitting issues. I think it was woefully underfunded, more of a personal collection of animals than a zoo, and the more I remember it, the more it would have provided much fodder for the likes of 'When Animals Attack', but I didn't notice any of that as a child. What I do vividly remember was getting to touch a Burmese python on one of my trips, so when Chilly mentioned we'd get a free behind the scenes tour of the Santa Barbara Zoo, complete with elephant feeding, Channel Island fox petting and toad prodding I was all for it.

We go to the zoo a lot thanks to a Christmas gift from my Mum and Dad, but we usually try and stop Lucy from touching the animals. This was going to be fun.

Our first stop was backstage at the 'Eww' exhibit. All the creepy-crawlies and things with more legs than my car has goldfish crackers. The first animal we saw was a massive blob of a toad. Lucy piped up "I touch it!!" and the zookeeper said yes. I don't think Lucy was expecting this, because she gave a slight pause and then said "Anna touch it?!" To which Anna said not bloody likely, you touch it, so Lucy backed down and said 'I dwan noo'.

I think we may have just cured Lucy of the 'I touch its'.

While we were walking to the next 'encounter' (Channel Island Fox petting - quite how they got it into that harness we never asked), the zookeeper was describing the passing exhibits and asking questions. She asked if anyone knew the difference between an ape and a monkey. I was thinking the spelling, but we were all drawing a blank when Anna piped up "monkeys have tails and apes don't."

Obviously I need to be watching more Go Diego Go, because she was quite right, and we were all a bit flabbergasted. The Tiger Mom in me roared with approval, until the zoo tour guide said it happens all the time - it's always the under 6's who know the difference between a kinkajou and a koala - because they lap that stuff up (and watch 6 hours of TV a day - it went unsaid, but we all knew it).

The Tigger Mom in me was restored.

Like Pigs in Shit

2011-01-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

At first I thought I'd left the soap in the bath.

When I was little my Nanna showed us how to blow giant bubbles using Imperial Leather soap and our bare hands. I've shown the girls how to do it and naturally they are fascinated. So much so that I have to keep an eye on the soap otherwise one bar will disappear in a single bathtime and they will be sitting in a milky puddle going 'what?'

Now that the girls are older I no longer have to hover like a hawk during their bath, instead I just pop in to mediate disputes and administer the shampoo. I'm never too far away of course, always keeping a ready ear out for when the laughing turns to screaming, when the floor splashing turns to a deluge, or when sisterly affection naturally turns into the infliction of pain.

I checked in on them, even though there were no signs of distress. There was the constant stream of princess role-play monologue from Anna, with occasional shouts of annoyance directed at Lucy - so I knew they were both alive. In fact, they were playing happily - the only disconcerting thing was the soup-like consistency of the water.

I asked Anna if she'd left the soap in the bath.

"Nope"

I asked if she'd been using the bath crayons.

"Nope" she said, "but I think Lucy might have pooped"

Turns out that is exactly what had happened - and yet there they both were, completely unfazed.

WTF?!

Obviously the bath rapidly became a shower in the other bathroom while I hazmated the scene like something out of Sunshine Cleaning.

I won't be taking any relaxing soaks in there for a while.

This never happened with Anna, but then again she was always a morning pooper. Like clockwork I would get her ready in the morning, drive her over to the nanny-sharing house and bingo, she would take a massive crap en route meaning I always delivered a lot more than my child at drop-off. That didn't exactly make either of us popular.

Lucy on the other hand is a night-time pooper. Her daycare people think she's constipated, her nighttime babysitters think she's the devil incarnate as she unfailingly unloads right before bedtime. Usually right after you've wrestled her in to her footed pyjamas.

We were talking about this recently, and Anna must have overheard - because when my parents were visiting at Christmas she said, quite out of the blue "I am a morning pooper, Lucy is a nighttime pooper, but Dada is a morning pooper and a nightime farter".

Children are such a blessing.

Short Shrift

2011-01-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

For Anna's second birthday we had a party at the carousel. We invited all our friends with their children, I made sandwiches and a cake, and the kids went on the carousel til they were nauseous.

For Lucy's second we just went to the carousel.

No party, no fanfare, just a fun day out, but I have to admit I feel terrible. My second child, my recession child, is getting short shrift.

We had planned to go to Disneyland in lieu of a party. I'd taken the day off work, but it's just so ridiculously expensive, and after canvassing a lot of people we decided that taking a 2 year old would just be unfair as there would be so many rides she couldn't go on unless she was wearing platform shoes and a tall hat.

It was too late for a party, and quite frankly, Santa Barbara can get a bit mental when it comes to birthday parties. Pony rides, elaborate gift bags, hand-crafted and personalized cupcakes etc. and we were never going to go that route, but I'm starting to wonder whether she'll look back at our family photo archives and go - ahem, where are my 2nd birthday photos? I may have to photoshop her on to a Shetland pony.

To be fair, I think she had a wonderful day. We took a boat ride across the harbour, and the captain played her a birthday song. We had ice-cream on the wharf and went on the carousel. It was definitely a fun day, a family day, but not really special.

I tried making it a bit more birthday-ish and whipped up one of my patented disaster cakes. I outdid myself, even with my history. The bottom half would only deign to leave the cake pan in one-inch crumbs, so I used frosting to patch it together in to a cake-like shape and hid it all with the top layer and more icing. Plus Lucy had asked for 'bue' icing, but like a moron I forgot that creamy coloured frosting mixed with blue food dye actually turns blueish-green. A Cambridge blue, a Tiffany blue, if you're being generous. A bad bridesmaid dress aqua in all honesty. There are no pictures.

It was never going to be pretty having a birthday only two weeks after Christmas, and everyone always warns you that you don't try as hard for your second child. I knew they were right, I just didn't realize it would hit so hard so soon. Of course Lucy couldn't care less. She doesn't know that that bike she got was actually Anna's hand-me-down from the attic.

I did have the forethought to remove the 'Anna' sticker from the front of it the night before though.

She doesn't look too hard done by does she?

Swimming With The Fishes

2011-01-14T17:15:00.000-08:00

A rare night out on the town in one of the tourist trap restaurants on the seafront. I was gazing at a huge cylinder of tropical fish, remembering how wonderful it was to snorkel in an ocean like bathwater, feeling the sun on my back whilst swimming face down following fish. Drifting with the tide, lulled by the ocean, perfect, relaxing, bliss.

Me: We need to go back to Hawaii.
LK: How long have we been married?
Me: Almost 15 years.
LK: Well, that's almost 15 years of me not going to Hawaii as often as I want.
Me: ---
LK: I'm just saying, circumstances, you know.
Me: --
LK: I'm not calling you a circumstance.

Sucey

2011-01-07T09:06:00.001-08:00

Lucy is turning two, and let me start by clarifying that I really do love her despite everything that is to follow.

I grew up with the nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl who had a little curl,
right in the middle of her forehead,
and when she was good, she was very, very good,
and when she was bad she was horrid.

That could have been written for Lucy.

Here she is being Lucy the Good:

and here she is being Lucifer:

I swear she just woke up looking like that. Horns and all.

She is not a morning person.

When she's good, she's smiley, impish, and helpful. You can't help but love her, she is the quintessential winsome toddler. She will gaze with real concern at any of your scars and suggest you need a band-aid. She will always help you wash up and 'clean'.

She loves to sing, and she can really bust a move on the dance floor. She is always exhorting people to dance if she hears any music at all. Even a theme tune or a commercial jingle will see her strutting her stuff in front of the TV. She is desperate to join Anna's ballet class. When we drop Anna off Lucy will scream with frustration and rage (always fun). Quite why Lucy is not allowed to join in until age 3 *sigh* is beyond me, since all Anna seems to have learned at her present ballet class is a rather fetching sideways gallop. On one occasion towards the end of last year Luce and I arrived a little early to pick Anna up. We caught the end of some truly spectacular group sideways galloping, and then each girl was given a handkerchief to 'free dance' with. Lucy was already squirming and howling at this point, but before I could run away, the teacher handed Lucy a scarf and suggested she join in for the last dance. She was beside herself, tear-streaked and snot-nosed she out-balleted them all, twirling and prancing her little diapered butt off.

She got her way, and was happy. And that's Lucy in a nutshell really. Strong sense of self, willful, driven, however you want to put it, she is stubborn as hell and it's not pretty when life doesn't capitulate - as it very often doesn't when you're two and want chocolate for breakfast.

She has comical tantrums, looking at us in disbelief when we veto scaling the cupboards for treats. She will scream with rage, race off to a suitable piece of open floorspace, and then throw herself theatrically down. That's when you've got off lightly. Usually she chooses to grind you down by repeating the same phrase over and over and over and over, hoping to wear you down by attrition. It's annoying enough when you know the thing she's after (tandy = candy), but it's really hard when she starts yelling Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! at you at 7:06am.

Turns out that Dammit = Gromit from Wallace and Gromit, and she would quite like to see that movie now, if you would be so kind.

She is quite a talker, stringing sentences together a lot faster than her sister ever did. Unlike Anna though, her vocabulary is not quite so extensive, and she finds it hard to pronounce words. She can't say a hard 'c' or 'k' sound, so wake up becomes 'wape up' and ice cream is ice peam.

She's doing the same inverse grammar thing that Anna did, so if she offers 'I hold you' or 'I read it', she's not volunteering, that's merely what she would like you to say to her. So woe betide the person who sits waiting for Lucy to read them Dora as that book will come flying at you in rage when you fail to start reading.

Her favourite book has been a Dora Halloween lift-the-flap for quite a while, although she's intrigued by all pop-ups and lift-the-flap books. The Dora Halloween book is packed full of hidden ghosts, so I think she naturally expects to find them in real life too. It's quite disconcerting when you walk into an empty room and Lucy turns to you to say 'ghost' in a knowing kind of way.

Or maybe she's like that boy in the Sixth Sense.

I really hope not. I can't imagine why anyone would want to haunt this 1978 stuccoed gem.

Lucy is a natural athlete. LK is quietly hopeful for another tennis star in the family. She has an arm like an outfielder, and the hand-eye coordination of a champion whack-a-moler. She is obsessed with balls, not a nice thing to say about your daughter, but it's true. She is also loves playing 'tennis' with a balloon, she could do that for hours. Want to come over and play? Please? My arm's getting tired. She is a tomboy, a runner, a climber, a sports fan.

She doesn't care what you think. We used to be able to stop Anna in her tracks with just the slightest stern tone. Lucy doesn't pick up on that, mainly because she's already a speck in the distance. She is fast. She is a woman on a mission. When she's become one with the curvature of the horizon, she may look back to see if she can still see you. If she catches you watching her, she'll take off running again. Oh how fun.

I know what you're thinking. 13-18yrs of age are going to be just a dream aren't they? Despite everything though, I love Lucy.

Life's a Beach

2011-01-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I know I won't be the only one glad to see the back of 2010.

At this point I usually do a little round-up of the past year, but, having just spent a few days revisiting it all, I don't think I'll make you suffer through it. Last year in brief reads like a whiny collection of disasters. I sound bitter and frustrated, and however cathartic it is to write things like 'f&*$ you Santa Barbara' it doesn't really make good reading.

Instead I will take the advice of a friend of mine and celebrate the fact that against all odds, we're still here. What are the chances.

It's got to get better, right?

Well, actually no, but 2011 will definitely be a turning-point. It's going to be interesting.

The girls on the other hand are a constant source of amusement. As my Mum said "well, that was a bit of an adventure". She was describing a walk on the beach. We set off for a lovely New Years Eve walk, the double stroller piled high with pillow pets, blankets, snacks, drinks etc. We didn't look so much like a family out for an afternoon, more like we were fleeing an insurrection. If you have any knowledge of spending time with under 5s though, you'll know how critical that stuff is. Here is a picture of Lucy when we got down the 7,200 steps to the beach:

Being Lucy, having arrived at the beach, she wanted to go back up the stairs. She is a bit of a contrarion that girl. After successfully persuading her on the delights of a really low tide, she raced into a tidepool. Fully clothed.

Here she is minus her sodden shoes and tights. And Anna's outfit? Her dress sense is on a strictly don't ask don't tell basis these days.

She looks like Frank Sinatra in the 1940s with her skirt pulled up to her nipples.

Anyhoo. So Lucy got wet feet, but, undeterred she then raced headlong into yet another, even deeper tidepool, discovered that forward momentum causes problems when your feet are going slower than your head, and promptly swan-dived.

I don't know what it is about Lucy and complete submersion in 3 inches of water. She is obviously intent on mastering it.

Fortunately we had packed for such things, ish, and within minutes she was stripped and bundled in blankets and my Dad's sweatshirt:

Apparently feeling like her sister was getting too much attention, Anna was soon center stage. Do you notice that unicorn she's clutching in her hand?

Well, moments after we'd got Lucy bundled up, a rather hyper dalmation mix made a bee-line for Anna, grabbed 'Mystic' from her hand and made off down the beach with it.

The fact that we were traveling with two unicorns (Mystic and a unicorn pillow pet) may give you some idea of how much Anna loves unicorns. She will not be parted from them. Unless of course she is parted with them, and then her eyes get as wide as saucers and you can literally see her heart stop beating.

It was a mad few minutes of chasing that bloody dog up and down the beach while his owner (who had ski poles??) tried to get him to obey commands. With about as much success as I have with Lucy.

We finally did get Mystic back, at which point Lucy decided she'd had enough of wanting to be cozy in the stroller, that was much too restrictive, especially when everyone looked to be having so much fun chasing that doggy. She decided she'd much rather brave the 50º and dropping ocean breeze in only a diaper. So this happened.

Well, that was an adventure!!

Christmas In Quotes

2010-12-27T16:03:00.000-08:00

The first two quotes come from my Mum, who is a mine of blogability. We were shopping for a gift for Anna. I gave her Anna's wish list and we headed to the toy shop. I pointed to the ridiculously overpriced plastic pegasus, the object of Anna's longing. "Well, I just don't think there's anything practical about a pegasus" said my Mum, shaking her head. Instead, Anna got a new back-pack, with horses on it. Much more useful. (Anna loves it by the way, and it means one less plastic horse for me to tread on at night).

Second quote, more of an anecdote really, from my Mum. She was reminiscing to Anna and Lucy about the Christmas stockings she and her sisters got when they were growing up. "We always had nuts and oranges in ours. Of course, after we'd opened our stockings, we had to put everything back on the fruit bowl."

Thirdly, do you know what a pillow pet is? If not - lucky you, your brain has not been colonized by a frenzy of under-5s marketing. Pillow pets are horrifically plush animals that unfold to form a pillow. They come in a variety of anthropomorphic shapes; ladybug (with giant smiley face), puppy, bumble bee (again with the smiley face), and of course, unicorn. Santa delivered Anna a unicorn pillow pet and Lucy a ladybug. Upon opening hers, Anna squealed, hugged her sister and cried "Oh Lucy, all our dreams have come true." I have to admit I teared up. My Mum laughed.

The next quote comes from LK. I cooked a full British Christmas dinner; turkey, bacon, sprouts, roast potatoes, Christmas pud - you name it. Our family has a tradition of cooking sausages around the turkey, you basically leave them there to cook in the turkey fat and they become gorgeously crispy calorie-bombs. LK devoured them and declared 'I'm not sure you can still call them sausages, but man, these meat croutons are awesome'.

And finally, after opening two presents, Lucy curled up contentedly with her giant smiley face ladybug and said she'd had enough of opening presents. She'd got what she wanted, thus the joy of more surprises could not possibly outweigh the effort of opening more packages. She can be a peculiar one. Anna was more than happy to step in to the breach, offering to open all of Lucy's remaining parcels, and oh my God did Lucy ever pep up again when she saw this:

Look who joined the party. Bobot and Doll found themselves a lady-friend, Jessie the cowgirl from Toy Story. Lucy was beside herself.

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-24T14:52:00.001-08:00

The seemingly impossible Christmas photo with both girls smiling and (almost) looking at the camera was achieved with a bribe of ice-cream. If only the same could be done with a mortgage company ;)

From the bottom of my heart, thankyou for reading - your comments have got me through a tough year and they are much appreciated. Wishing you all a brilliant 2011.

Rising Damp

2010-12-21T16:34:00.001-08:00

It's called the Pineapple Express when the jet stream funnels all the tropical moisture from Hawaii straight to the California coast. What is feels like is 5 days and counting of non-stop rain. Contrary to popular belief, it does not rain like this in England. You can have five days of rain, but there are usually brief sunny spells, or a pause for some gloomy but dry intervals. This feels like a monsoon, as if someone turned on a tap and left the room. California is not prepared, evidenced as much by the truly eclectic rain-gear people are wearing as much as the mudslides and overflowing creeks. It bears repeating California - Uggs are NOT rainboots. Our office waiting room smells like wet sheep.

The girls are loving it, puddles, umbrellas and wellies are a real novelty. For my parents - not so much. They are resigned to the weather, saying with their customary cheeriness 'well at least it's not cold and wet'. It takes a lot to say that when you spend enormous sums to leave England for 'sunny' California. I feel bad for them, that their lounging by the outdoor pool and their beach walks are traded in for jigsaws and colouring, I feel like I've got them over here on false pretenses - I always feel bad when California under-performs weather-wise.

Still, they are enjoying the girls and O.M.G. Anna and Lucy are lapping up all the attention. They are like organ grinder monkeys, pirouetting and chirruping at the slightest glance their way. Lucy is managing to let the facade drop occasionally, and my Mum and Dad have been privy to one or two of her 'Lucifer' moments when, for example, she got a Christmas ornament in her advent calendar and not a chocolate and she threw the offending bauble at the tree and then thew herself down on the floor (where we left her).

I don't know where she gets it from, she is such a 'Little Miss'. Hilarious.

By the way, for those of you starved of a little Christmas spirit this year, borrow a 5-year old. Anna is in a frenzy of excitement; no surface remains undecorated, no Christmas movie un-watched, no carol remains unsung. She is a paper chain factory. A one-woman Christmas pep-rally. If I wasn't all amped up on spiced apple cider I would be exhausted.

I think it's going to be a good Christmas.

It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Xmas....

2010-12-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

My parents have just flown in for Christmas, so of course our perfect weather has been replaced by a solid week of rain:

For those of you who are neck-deep in the snowy North I apologize, but really, rain? California, you didn't have to make them feel quite so at home.

In the meantime, while I revel in some unheard of babysitting and free time, here are some photos of the girls that didn't quite make it in to the Christmas album. Sand-throwing must be the Santa Barbara equivalent of a snowball fight....

Faith Healer

2010-12-15T15:45:00.000-08:00

Overheard in a medical practice waiting room as a doctor is walking his patient out:

Doctor: "It is very important to get out of the house and stay social, even if it's just going to the shops. It doesn't have to be an organized activity, although those do often have the highest cognitive benefit."

Elderly Patient: "Well, I'm a very Christian woman, doctor, the Lord is my guide and if he feels I should do something then he tells me. He directs my life, I'm just along for the ride"

Doctor: "In that case I think you're going to be easier to treat than I'd thought!"

Spread

2010-12-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

Tonight we're going to a very swanky Christmas party at LK's work. I haven't been for five years, mostly because we can never find a babysitter at this time of year, and even if we can, I've either been massively pregnant or one of the girls has been sick.

Needless to say, this hasn't been a year of champagne-swilling glad-ragging for us, so my collection of appropriate evening wear has dwindled. When I was in College I had several go-to outfits, the strappy black, the short cream, the lacy black, the deep green velvet with the eye-popping split. Those were the days.

Now I have work clothes, sweat pants and pajamas, and quite frankly it's hard to tell them apart sometimes.

I stupidly left things to the last minute believing I had two dresses in my arsenal. There was no way I was going to be spending money on a new outfit when both our computer and our car are in a race for catastrophic failure so I dusted off the two contenders lingering at the back of Lucy's wardrobe. Literally dusted them off. First, a fitted, beaded number which is sexy in a kind of Washington DC fundraiser kind of way (think Ann Taylor stuffed shirt) and secondly a floaty tiered black skirt with camisole top first worn for my SECOND wedding anniversary (we're on #13 now).

What has happened to my life????!!! What has happened to sexy? To flirty? To clothes that have to be dry-cleaned??

I tried them on.

OMG.

Firstly let me say I know I've had two children in the last five years, and that there have been a few alterations to my general geography (think urban sprawl), but I put on the slinky beaded number believing all would be well and was confronted with a black pudding bursting out of its casing. I had chicken cutlets between my arms and my boobs. Every time I breathed in I was risking a rupture or a sequin hurtling across the room.

Anna gasped and said "Oh Momma can you wear that when you pick me up from school?".

I went to plan B. This was my bull-pen pitcher, my cast-iron guarantee of a safety net. You see, the last time I wore it, was at the same Christmas party six years ago - and I doubt anyone in the crowd we will be hanging out with tonight has even stayed married that long and so that's a guarantee no-one will recognize it, but more importantly, the last time I wore it I was nearly 16 weeks pregnant.

I'll spare you the details but suffice to say it doesn't fit. Not even close. Too much Ali, too little Blah Blah.

Mortified.

My wardrobe for tonight's affair now consists of a pair of newly purchased tights (I splashed out) and a skirt with an elasticated waist. No top.

I'm sure LK will be thrilled.

Awake, My Doves!

2010-11-30T16:30:00.000-08:00

Some parents have a problem with their kids waking them up at the crack of dawn. These are usually the kind of disciplined parents who do not have their 2 year old watching Jon Stewart with them at 11pm.

Because of our night-owls (lazy parenting) we have issues getting our two up in the morning. Especially when it's cold, and by cold I mean slap a scarf over that long-sleeve t-shirt you Californians and try and remember which drawer you keep your socks in!

In the past I have used all sorts of cheap tricks to get Anna to wake up in time for school, "Oh look! Three baby guinea pigs!" being a particular favourite. That will definitely grab her attention, but she won't be a happy camper when you try and explain the guinea pigs 'just disappeared.'

LK reported a particularly hard morning today. I'd woken the girls, dressed them, fed them breakfast, made their lunches, he just had to get them out of the door, but apparently "it would be easier to paint the toenails of a wolverine than put shoes on Lucy when she doesn't want them." I thought that captured things perfectly.

In December we have a reprieve though (and not just from NaBloPoMo - thanks for your support Spanna it made my day!). In December we have Advent Calendars!! Anna will leap out of bed at the promise of a tiny chocolate and a new Christmas ornament. OK, so it only accomplishes getting them out of bed, and does nothing for hair-brushing, dressing, breakfasting or for-gods-sake-stop-talking, but it's a help.

Warning advent calendar 'guaranteed get your child out of bed early' program may have an adverse effect on weekends.

Hooray! NaBloPoMo is done!!

Comfort Measures

2010-11-29T15:59:00.000-08:00

Lucy is a boob-hound. She is obsessed with boobs. If you hold her, or sit next to her it only takes a second for her hand to start snaking under your shirt to find your nipple. It's like hanging out with a fourteen year old boy. It happens so frequently that I don't even notice it these days, only registering a social gaffe when I see the person I'm talking to make the 'oh my God her child has her hand down her blouse and she's not even batting an eyelid' face. It's rather like having a dog that's not allowed on the couch. You swear you say no, but ten minutes later you realize you're not only sharing your seat with a dog, you're stroking it too.

The funny thing is it's not just my boobs she's after. She prefers mine, who wouldn't, but anyone's will do. And I mean anyone. We had to forewarn her current preschool, because a hand rooting around inside your bra can be quite a shock however small and innocent its owner. Then there's the fact that she will quite happily grab LK's nipple or even Anna's. Now that's funny. There they both are, a five year old and a two year old watching TV and Lucy has her hand on Anna's chest.

Obviously it's a comfort thing, and I fully expect it to disappear well before she heads off to college, it's just hysterical that she clearly doesn't know why she's fascinated with the boob.

I can't believe I'm writing all this stuff down as if it's completely normal. I think that sums parenthood up in a nutshell.

Home Sweet Home

2010-11-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

We spent the majority of this weekend scrambling to fix up one of our rentals. For a holiday devoted to hearth and home, we spent a depressing amount of time at Home Improvement Centers, closing out Bed Bath & Beyond, and OSH. It's a painful time of year to be shopping for curtains for somebody else's apartment. Sorry Anna we won't be going to the Nutcracker this year, but check out these draperies - only $24.99 a panel!

We had some tenants moving out this weekend, and then, 'oh no, we're not, we decided to stay' but then, 'we can't find a 3rd roommate so we probably are leaving after all'. Do you want to know how much fun it is to find tenants on Thanksgiving weekend? Not that much fun. The upshot was, they're staying, but we agreed to spruce the place up a bit so they could attract decent roommates.

I love watching home makeover shows, but when your budget consists of pixie dust and fairy wings it's pretty depressing. It's also interesting how I consider the most cost-effective improvement to be switching out broken blinds in favour of curtains and LK thinks new outlet covers will really attract the eye. We're both ignoring the salmon pink floor tile in the entry way.

I sighed to my friend Jen, at a brief reprieve at a 6 years old's birthday party. "I mean seriously, curtains will make it look a lot less like a crack house."

"What, and more like a crack home?" She replied.

Precisely.

Tis The Season

2010-11-27T05:13:00.001-08:00

This has been without doubt the worst year of my life, and it looks like it's going to go out with a bang.

I didn't realize it was possible to live at this level of hyper-anxiety permanently. I wish I could switch off, I wish I could pop a pill, but I refuse to medicate something that is entirely rational, understandable and situational. Instead I am just going to attempt to stop worrying. In essence I am going to take a month off from caring. I am going to let someone else figure out how we're going to get out of this one, or not, we'll just see what happens.

It's not my problem. I am giving up for a month. I am reclaiming my life and my peace of mind.

Maybe I'm broken, maybe I'm free.

Fuck it.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

2010-11-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

Well, a picture is definitely worth a thousand words when you're getting towards the end of NaBloPoMo and running out of steam.

Here's Lucy sleeping whilst sitting up. Practicing for College lectures.

Thanks Jen!

The Origin of Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to embrace my new culture, I asked Anna what Thanksgiving was all about.

"Well Momma, it actually began in England"

Really? I thought - this is going to be good.

"Well, they had a new King but he was bad and wouldn't let them have their own rules so the pilgrims" - pause for enormity of knowledge of new word to sink in - "they decided to find America. A lot of them got sick on the boat and only a few people made it. When they got here they wrote on a rock, so that they would know how to get back to their King, except they probably didn't want to because he was not good. Anyway they didn't know how to plant and they had no houses so they asked the Indians who got here a bit before them." Exhausted sigh. "Can I watch Dinosaur Train now?"

Me: "But why do we have Thanksgiving Dinner?"

Anna: "I don't know. That was just the First Thanksgiving but it has nothing to do with our Thanksgiving".

Or, we can listen to the Eddie Izzard version, which is definitely my preferred Thanksgiving story:

The Games We Play

2010-11-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Now that Anna has reached the grand old age of nearly five and a half, games are becoming more sophisticated. Nothing will spur on a parent more to organize a playdate than having to role-play "I am the Queen of China and you are a villager who comes to give me gifts. No, you're doing it wrong, bow first, then give me the gift, and wear a costume Momma where is your costume?! No! I wear the crown! Lucy can be a tiger. No! She's doing it wrong, Momma, take her out of here, and Momma you need to try that again." She catches my wounded expression. "Well, it was quite good Momma, but I really know you can do better!".

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I don't know where she gets the bossiness, really I don't.

Some of the old favourites are still going strong. Hide and seek is a big hit in this house, or 'hide and go seek' if you're American. Actually 'go seek' would have been a better descriptor for the last couple of years, because Anna's favourite hide-out would be on the bed, not even under the covers. Hiding in plain sight - my little philosopher. Then of course there's Lucy, who beingalmost two, merely covers her eyes and 'disappears' while asking 'Where Sucey?'. It's a barrel of laughs round our house.

We all have our favourite hiding spots. On our property there are two trees in the front yard. Anna loves playing hide and seek between these two trees. Oh the suspense! Which tree! The giggling usually gives it away. I always hide behind the curtains - a fact that was duly noted and repeated at every turn. "Coming ready or not!" I would cry and there would be an excited scream of "look behind the curtains!!!!". Anna Frank she is not.

She is getting much better at hiding now, but will occasionally slip up, case in point last night when she said "Momma, let's play hide and seek. I'm really good at it now that the trampoline is out."

Hmm.

A Toy Story Too

2010-11-23T18:13:00.001-08:00

Following on from the last post, ‘Doll’ and ‘Bobot’ are ‘Woody’ and ‘Buzz Lightyear’ from Toy Story, and Lucy adores them.

They belonged to our friends Sophie and Kate. Lucy has inherited them. I like to think it’s because, as in the movie, they had moved on from such childish things, and Lucy was the glad recipient. Although I have a feeling Lucy may have strong-armed them away. They are completely and unconditionally loved. They go everywhere with her. Anna was never so attached to toys, so this is new territory for me. “Bobot?” Lucy will cry in the middle of the night “Bobot, are you?” if he’s not within arms reach.

It will break my heart when she finally moves on from these two. I can’t imagine I will find a home for two such scruffy characters, they are literally being loved to death and have already been the recipients of emergency surgery. If you look closely, Bobot still needs a little patching, but having watched Toy Story (a mere three million times), what can I do? What do you do with Buzz and Woody when they're surplus to requirements? You can't garage sale them, you can't donate them to a kids school in case they end up in the dreaded toddler room, you can't keep them in the attic til your kids have kids of their own. That movie has made it clear that you have to find another good home. I may consider a third child just to carry on the franchise.

Toy Story has a lot to answer for.

A Toy Story

2010-11-22T17:57:00.001-08:00

If any photo summed up my youngest daughter it would be this one:

I love the way, she's going, 'what?'

She is a bit of a kleptomaniac. Perhaps it comes from being a somewhat neglected second child, and that means clinging with absolute desperation to what is exclusively hers. She is obsessed with this ladybird/ladybug swim ring (apologies, I have dualing nationalities). If she sees it, she has to wear it. “Swimming?” she will ask at 8:57pm, as if that’s the most natural thing in the world. “Sucey go swimming?” she says as I try to get everyone out of the door for school. She likes to be prepared. Imagine the horror of being caught at a pool without ladybird.

I used to be one of those childless eye-rollers, the ones who would think, what sap of an adult is letting their toddler wear a flotation device in Trader Joes? Who is the adult in this situation? Who is in control?

The truth is, you pick your battles. She has an iron will, and this lady’s not for turning. Which is why Lucy was wearing a ladybird ring, and clutching ‘Doll’ and ‘Bobot’ as we did some last minute pre-book club grocery shopping. It was a tight fit in that shopping trolley. I joked that she was expecting a flash flood, it was forecast for rain after all. The cashier gave me a look that read ‘lady, get a grip’.

Maybe I forgot to mention that Lucy was also brandishing a toothbrush.

Dramatic Chipmunk

2010-11-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

LK went to High School with the guy who put this together. After all the recent Citizenship stuff I thought it was about time for a little light relief.

Mrs Foster - I think of you every time I see this. I don't know why.

Enjoy.

Welcome To America

2010-11-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

My Citizenship Oath Ceremony was very special, an intimate and private moment, just me and 3,000 of my closest friends in an event hall at the Pomona Fairplex:

That's 3,000 applicants who'd all brought their families to share in their special day. Everybody's letter said 'Pomona Fairplex, Building 4, 8am'.

10,000 people all trying to be in one building at 8am on the nose. Of course, no-one realized quite how big the event was, so when you're stuck in traffic trying to get in to the Fairplex, and you're already twenty minutes late for your really important legal proceeding, and you're not sure if you're in the correct queue or accidentally in line for a Monster Truck Rally, you can get a tad anxious.

Did I mention that one of the main reasons I became a citizen was so that I would NEVER have to deal with the INS again?

I obviously wasn't the only one dealing badly with the stress of it all - as we filed like cattle in to the warehouse, Anna pointed out a big lake of 'barf' on the tarmac. Nice. At the entrance to the building we were separated and I waved goodbye to my family. So much for having the girls learn about the Citizenship process. We hadn't planned for that, so I had the spare diapers in my handbag and throughout the next 2 hours LK sent me texts like 'how much longer???' or 'situation critical, she's going to blow!'

We waited an age for everyone to file in - in the meantime we were encouraged to fill out our voter registration paperwork - but, and they repeated this several times 'please do not sign it as you are not citizens yet'.

Pedants.

The proceedings finally kicked off 75 minutes late, and we all stood up to swear our oath. Except, given the logistics of everything, it's very hard to hear someone addressing 10,000 people, so I *may* have failed to speak every line, and I *may* have failed to renounce any allegiance to any foreign prince or potentate. Quite frankly, uttering an oath like that only days after Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton should be unconstitutional. I know where my allegiances truly lie.

Then the Judge gave his own inspirational story of his family's journey to America, and he congratulated us on making a great decision for ourselves and for our families, and said "Isn't America the best country in the world! Isn't it? Let's see those flags - wave those flags!".

This was a Citizenship ceremony, so a little jingoism could be expected. But then....

We were given a recorded video address by Barack Obama, which was great, appropriate, and humbling. He addressed us as 'my fellow Americans' and spoke of the privileges and responsibilities of being a citizen. This was what I was expecting.

What I wasn't anticipating was the music video of 'Proud To Be An American' by Lee Greenwood. As my friend Mooks later said, maybe a short film by Ken Burns, something a little classier? But no, country music, tacky patriotism by Disney. Urgh.

I don't know what I was really expecting from the ceremony. Something a little less industrial, definitely. I don't know why they don't do it on a smaller, more civic level. I know they used to. Perhaps the numbers are too large, the costs too enormous. It certainly was a little overwhelming.

As for me, I didn't think I would feel any different. My friend Jen put it perfectly, it's like marrying a bloke you've been living with for fifteen years, I didn't really expect it to change anything (except I'm waiting for the jury duty summons - any day now....). My friends helped me celebrate; an apple pie, a sweet Obama '08 t-shirt, champagne, and this:

In the end I was surprised though. We drove back up the coast, past a perfect Malibu sunset and it suddenly hit me that I'm American now. I had my Ken Burns moment. This land is my land. I'm not any less British, but I belong here now too. (and lets not dwell on how much debt I've just inherited....)

I think that's going to take a little getting used to, for both of us.

Living The Dream

2010-11-19T15:11:00.001-08:00

I am hosting Book Club in 3 hours. This is my kitchen.

3 hours, and counting....

** Updated to add: LK put the sink in, but didn't have time to attach it, so, no running water, but at least the place looked good. This is California after all, and as long as something looks the part, it doesn't actually have to have a function (like the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills). Apparently the pipe had just completely corroded through.

Reassuring.

You Don't Say

2010-11-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

I have so much I want to tell you about the Citizenship process, but I am facing a mountain of work a mile high, so I will tide you over with this gem:

Me: "This foggy morning makes it all seem really autumnal"

Anna: "What's 'autumnal'?"

Me: "Autumn-like, you know, fall."

Anna: "It's foll Momma, not fawl. *sigh*. I think you're forgetting you need to speak American now that youre a citizen."

Amercun

2010-11-17T18:40:00.001-08:00

Today I became an American.

I think this photo, with the 'hot dog on a stick' stand behind me sums the occasion up very nicely. Oh, and notice the bizarre shaft of sunlight that's hitting my certificate. Under God after all perhaps?

Gettin' Busy

2010-11-16T08:49:00.001-08:00

The date for my Oath Ceremony is fast approaching, and I've been forwarded a questionnaire to complete prior to the big day. In the THREE WEEKS since I had my naturalization interview they want to know if:

I've married, divorced or been widowed
Practiced polygamy
Received income from illegal gambling
Been a prostitute
Procured anyone else for prostitution
Been involved in any unlawful commercialized vice
Encouraged an alien to illegally enter the US
Trafficked drugs or marijuana (why are they separate?)
Joined the Communist Party
Been a habitual drunkard.

I'm starting to wonder about this country of yours (soon to be mine).

On the other hand my blog would be a damn sight more interesting if even half of those had occurred during NaBloPoMo.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood

2010-11-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

This weekend the weather was absolutely glorious. California glorious. When I first moved here and people would say 'wow, the weather's perfect today' I would look at them with blank incomprehension and think - the weather's always perfect. We haven't had sideways sleet, black ice, drizzle, icy showers or gale force winds in years, if ever.

Now that I've lived here long enough, I can discern an exceptional day from a bog-standard brilliant day. Like a sommelier of the weather, I can detect those top notes of sapphire blue skies, a faint whisper of wind, an ever so slight chill in the shade, soft golden sunlight making the winter flowers glow, and finally everything rounded out by a crisp, cool evening.

I took the girls for a walk up to the Mission. We stopped to chat with a neighbour at her rose-covered garden gate - her daughter goes to Anna's Kindergarten and they started planning a playdate for the next day. We strolled through parks, fed the ducks, bumped into an old friend who we have lost to 22 units of college this Semester. On our return the lady at the corner store was toasting the birth of her niece's baby and was giving out candy to all the children.

Perfect. This is why people move to Southern California.

Except (and you sort of knew this was coming didn't you?) this same neighbourhood was rocked by an horrific gang-beating that left our other corner store owner dead 3 weeks ago as he walked home from work. A couple of days later someone was brutally stabbed at 3:30 in the afternoon.

50 yards from our front door.

The first I knew of it was LK and Anna coming back from the movies (Legend of the Guardians - don't do it to yourself, even Anna hated it), they'd had trouble getting to the house because the street was all cordoned off with police tape. There were police cars and ambulances everywhere. There had been reports of a fight, screeching tires, there was blood all over the sidewalk and no sign of the victims. Police were advising everyone to stay indoors.

So of course everyone gathered on the corner to stare.

The police said it was gang related. Why else would the stab victims flee? Gang members never press charges, they have their own courts. They also said we would never see it in the paper or hear it on the news. It happens all the time, they said, except this is a tourist town, so it doesn't really happen, you see.

They were right, nothing was ever reported, no charges were ever filed.

There are two main gangs in Santa Barbara, the Eastsiders and the Westsiders. Original, no? We live on the Eastside. Two of the houses on the street that abuts ours are gang houses. People are coming and going at all hours, cars double-parked and idling, occasional parties that go on all night and erupt in to street fighting. You know, the usual.

Am I scared of living so close to it all? Well yes, obviously. Except to them we don't exist, we are no threat to them, we mean nothing to them. They are Hispanic, but then so are a lot of our really friendly neighbours, the difference is they've chosen to align themselves with a gang. We have not, so we don't exist. In all honesty I think living close to a busy road would be more of a threat to my family. The police said the same is true of pretty much every neighbourhood in this town.

Would I prefer to live across the road from sheep fields like where I grew up? Of course. Except you have to wear wellies all the time. That's not an option right now though, so we carry on here. And honestly, the burglary rate and car theft rate in the gentrified town where I grew up is much higher than here. You pick your poison.

Sometimes I'm scared, but mostly I walk past with my girls in the stroller on the way to get an ice-cream and I pretend that we live in 'Santa Barbara' instead of South Central LA.

Mostly Wordless Weekend: Part Two

2010-11-14T14:31:00.001-08:00

Courtesy of my friend Jen.

Mostly Wordless Weekend: Part One

2010-11-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Drinking wine last night around the fire pit. Yes I know it's November, that's why one of us is wearing a scarf.

Socks and a scarf would mean it was December.

And unseasonably cold.

Greetings!

2010-11-12T17:52:00.001-08:00

I have the hardest time finding half-decent greetings cards over here. I think I'm looking in the wrong places, because I know you people have a sense of humour - case in point the fact you all now think it's the Democrats who made a mess of the economy. Good one.

My sister-in-law sent me an absolute corker for my birthday:

See what I mean? How funny is that? Well, I mentioned the dearth of really good cards to my sister-in-law, and lo and behold, what do I get in the post from England yesterday? Cards!! Except the problem is I've already broadcast it live on the interweb, so I'll just have to find some techno phobe to send them to.

Thanks Lorna!!!

PS - If anyone has any suggestions for where to pick up really funny cards over here, so I can return the favour to Lorna with a decent birthday card, I'd really appreciate it, thanks!

Veterans Day

2010-11-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

Veterans Day is one of those fake holidays in the US. Fake because the only people who get to officially observe the holiday are Government workers and schools. The rest of us have to patch together childcare and carry on regardless. That's not to say the cause isn't worthwhile, not at all. Lance's Dad is a veteran, so what better way to reward his service than to make him look after his granddaughters for the morning?

Any longer than a morning and there would be casualties, likely on both sides.

"This is no way to treat a Veteran" he grumbled. But of course he loves it. He is a great childminder, he is ever so slightly hard of hearing, and that coupled with Anna's propensity to talk all the time is a great combination. Then there's Lucy. She's up for anyone who's prepared to sit with her and read a book and provide a decent lap to nap in.

The photo is a little grainy, because LK was using a zoom against a bright light - but this is what he found at lunchtime:

Anna playing quietly by herself upstairs, and the other two out for the count downstairs!

Spellcheck

2010-11-10T06:48:00.001-08:00

Anna is racing right along with this reading/writing malarkey. She's reading Harry Potter at night (heavily assisted) and she even suggested we play hangman - she would pick the word.

Can you guess what it is? The tension was high - only one letter left to guess, and my man was very nearly toast. N _ E M. Four letter word??

I will admit to playing a fair amount of iPhone scrabble (OK, I'm an addict), and this had me stumped.

Anna hates to see people lose. "If you choose a letter at the beginning of the alphabet you may be lucky!" she sang.

Huh?

She tried harder - perhaps she was being a little obscure? "Momma, if you pick an A you may get a happy ending!!"

Happy ending? This girl has been spending too much time with her father...

Yes, you've guessed it, this was the word:

Naem (name). The reason you don't play hangman with a 5-year old.

If Chickens Could Swear

2010-11-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

Overheard at Anna's school whilst waiting for the Kindergartener's (with minds like snow.....) to return from a field trip.

1st Grader: "Yeah, well I know a word that's worse than that"
Me, straining to hear
Other Ist Grader: "What?"
1st Grader: "FLUCK!"

I plan to be an early adopter.

Leaf Fishing

2010-11-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

You would think that two full days alone in a foreign city with two small children would be daunting, maybe even in a nightmare. It had occurred to me that entertaining them, even with the likes of the San Diego Zoo in my arsenal, would be challenging.

It was so much fun. For the record, spending time with my two tiny ladies is brilliant – they make the best dates. They are just so enthused about everything. I think we were all excited to finally leave Santa Barbara for a few days, but even I couldn’t muster that much excitement about row upon row of elephants. Not so Lucy, "wow" she would say, then "oh, wow" at the next one, then "elephant" with a serious nod, as if to say, ‘dude, what are the chances?’.

Yes, they had their moments, usually on LK’s watch I’m afraid. They did not sleep well. Lucy projectile vomited two out of the three nights, liberally spraying everything in her vicinity. Sorry Hampton Inn! We think it was because she wasn’t sure of her surroundings, didn’t want to fall asleep in a foreign bed, and so kept asking for a ‘bottle’ to seek comfort (much like her father). The fact that we gave her four bottles in the space of two hours may have explained things. She didn’t so much vomit as pop. Then Anna had violent earache on the second night. They’ve both had a cold, so we immediately thought, crap, ear infection. LK confessed he was worried about us finding an urgent care in a foreign city – I was more worried about the chances of them getting out of network billing right (slim). In the end after a night of tearful ‘ouchy’, *sob*, ‘ouchy’ she woke up right as rain. We think maybe it was pool water stuck in her ear, exacerbated by the remains of a cold. Whatever it was, thank god it disappeared as fast as it struck.

Aren’t you noticing a marked decrease in the scintillation factor since I’ve been posting every day??!

And of course, they may be great company, but usually your date on a fun trip to the zoo does not fling herself in to a fountain, necessitating a full strip-down, towel off with a sweatshirt, all the while screaming til they’re puce and stamping their feet at the sheer indignity of it all.

Guess what happened next?

That sort of thing comes with the territory, but the rest more than made up for it. On the second day we were heading for the Natural History Museum (free with our SB Natural History Museum membership). I parked in the Science Museum carpark, right underneath a sign saying ‘Kid City’. "Oh Momma" breathed Anna. "It’s just for kids, five and under. It’s a Kid City."

They had a blast, and I had the best time watching them. It’s true that nothing beats the feeling of making someone else happy. Which is why Anna ending up getting her face painted ($12) at Legoland, $1 extra for glitter – that’s right, a surcharge - your five year old is sitting there, and you’re supposed to say no to glitter? Shame on you Legoland.

Megalopolis

2010-11-07T16:47:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles to San Diego is a megalopolis, home to 22 million people. For two and a half hours you drive through non-stop urban sprawl, stucco, outlets, and six lanes of traffic. Every five minutes you drive past a McDonalds and a Starbucks, every ten minutes a Target, and every thirty minutes an Ikea. The scenery could be on continuous repeat, like the background in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but you'd never know. Unless you get stuck in traffic, and then you get to sit outside that Discount Sofa World for fifteen minutes, and really get a chance to consider its uniqueness.

I have a new weapon in my co-pilot arsenal though. www.sigalert.com. If you live and drive in Southern California you should definitely get to know it. It gives an instant colour-coded snapshot of the freeway traffic through LA, Orange County, San Diego. Instant flagged alerts of accidents, and visual confirmation of free-flowing alternate routes. Genius.

And that's all I have to say on our 3 hour drive back from Legoland. Well, that and this photo of Anna "I was not napping, I am 5, I do not nap" K.

Back to non-HTML posting tomorrow. Thank God!

Updated to add: we just drove past Anna's best friend, in six lanes of traffic, 120 miles from home. Apparently they recognized us by the British flag on the back of our car. I think the universe knows I'm posting about So Cal faceless anonymity and just gave me a giant cosmic 'you don't know nothing, beotch'.

San Diego Zoo

2010-11-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Posting to this blog using my phone is about as user-friendly as hand-illustrating every letter in a Gregorian manuscript, so......I bring you thoughts on the San Diego zoo, in brief.

Real life Pandas, surprisingly small
Stuffed pandas, unsurprisingly expensive but unconditionally ADORED by Lucy.
Who knew the world had so many monkeys.
How can you be 37 and never hear of a Takin?
Look at that thing, it's huge!
'Takin care of business' on continuous loop in brain
Nobody wants to look at fossils!
100 degrees in November. WTF.
That tiger looks pissed off.
Girls too excited/exciteable to nap.
Lucy fell in 2 inch deep fountain.
Sideways.
Total immersion
What are the chances?
Brilliant time had by all, even Lucy.
Especially Lucy.

Essentials

2010-11-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

Anna said now that she's five she should be able to pack her own suitcase. We are away from home for three days. She packed:

Two dresses
Two nighties
No knickers
No shoes
One tiara (large, Cinderella)
Two ponies, one unicorn
Multi-coloured heart stickers (for emergencies?
A bald-headed eagle
Assorted small plastic animals (to introduce to their friends at the San Diego zoo)
Small treasure box (for small treasures)
Tiny treasure box (for tiny treasures)

Getting Away

2010-11-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

Where do you go on holiday if you live in a world-class vacation destination? If the beach is on your doorstep, temperatures hover in the 80s in November, and you can't get a latte at your local Starbucks without tripping over Hollywood's finest? It would seem that Hawaii, Mexico or Tahoe for skiing is the answer for most Santa Barbarans, although quite frankly the real answer is nowhere. Have you see our house prices? If your property taxes alone are higher than the average American's annual take-home pay, then you'll be spending those five precious vacation days in your tiny home, eating freeze-dried noodles.

Apart from my happily childless friends I don't know of anyone who has been on vacation in the last few years - except to visit far-flung family members that is. Anna even said "when we have the next fire (read wildfire evacuation) can we go back to the Monterey Aquarium? That was fun." Poor child. Which is why we're all so excited to be getting out of town this weekend. LK has to attend a two day seminar for work, and the closest location just happens to be San Diego. I must be hard-up for a holiday when I will consider two days of theme parks alone with two small children a break. I'm excited though. I've never been to San Diego, I've never seen a panda, or a killer whale, or a non-Danish Legoland.

It goes without saying that we can't afford it, but the fates are clearly on our side, because just when I was fretting the cost of the weekend a check arrived from Google Ads from all you lovely people clicking the ads on this website. That and a coupon from my friend Chilly just may mean we can splash out on the San Diego zoo and a small plush panda. Good times.

It's NaBloPoMo so I'll be trying to post whilst down there, but I haven't worked out how to post photos from my phone yet, so you may have to wait till Monday for that photo of me pushing two screaming and over-stimulated children round the world's largest zoo...... I bet you can't wait.

What's Not To Love?

2010-11-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

I you ask any kid what they like most about Halloween, they will answer, candy. Getting to wear a costume may rank a distant second, but it seems 90% of the girls I see at our uniform-less California Kindergarten are wearing either a tutu, wings, a tiara or sparkly ruby slippers on a daily basis, so costume may actually be today's ready-to-wear.

Which makes it more than a little odd that Anna collected a big bag of sugary swag on Halloween night, poured her sister's stash in there too, and promptly forgot about it. We never took it home, and it has since been raided by two presumably now-diabetic dogs.

Anna hasn't mentioned it since.

Two full days, not a whisper. I'm the one craving Dots and Almond Joys, she doesn't appear to have noticed.

In fact, she said to me the other day...."Mom, you know why Halloween is so awesome? Because even if the Lakers are on, the Dads still have to spend time with their kids."

It appears that time with her Dad is better than candy. Or he spends far too much time watching the Lakers.

Only 79 regular season games to go!!

Separation of Church and Fête

2010-11-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

If you can’t recognize the characters behind these costumes, then lucky you for not having succumbed to the brainwashing of kids TV.

If you are able to put names with faces, then I commiserate with you my friend.

For Halloween the K family presented:

DJ Lance

His sidekick Foofah

Merliah (from Barbie A Mermaid Tale)

A very dull witch who bought costumes for everyone but herself and seemed to forget that she looks like crap in head to toe black.

I love Halloween over here, and Halloween with two small children is just brilliant fun, and yes I can still say that after cutting out over 100 cardboard bats at Anna’s school on Friday.

Anna shot out of bed on Sunday morning at the prospect of trick-or-treating. She was skipping and pirouetting with anticipation all day, which became a little annoying after, oh, ten minutes.

Unfortunately there is just no way that we could consider trick-of-treating in our neighbourhood as we live in more of a downtown gangland stab-zone rather than a suburban family idyll, (if you think I’m joking because I live in Santa Barbara, stay tuned for future posts about my neighbourhood, and its recent stabbings. Yes, plural.).

Fortunately we have friends in happy nappy valley, and they do still talk to us after being Lucy’s second family for nearly a year and a half - and they also have a fantastic annual Halloween party. Lucy (aka Foofah) broke all our hearts by giving Jen a ten minute clavicle-burrowing hug upon seeing her again – leaving us in no doubt as to which family she actually prefers (the
family with the trampoline).

We were just peeling Lucy from Jen and Anna from the ceiling, ready to venture out in to the melee, when Jen’s daughter returned with a sack of candy and a note that ‘some guy’ had given her in lieu of candy.

Do you want to know what the note said?

It was a printed missive inviting her and her family to come and worship at the local Lutheran church on Sundays where they have sermons aimed at children, songs, crafts, and then coffee and fellowship afterwards!

WTF.

Separation of Church and Fête.

I understand that Halloween flies directly against many religious beliefs with its celebration of paganism, and worse, NickJr. But if that’s your creed, let if be yours, don’t bring the fight to the children. The note was clearly intended to be read by kids. It’s a good job LK wasn’t on the receiving end of the leaflet as he is not exactly tolerant when it comes to vocal religious nuts, and the image of DJ Lance giving someone a beatdown on Halloween would have stuck in many a Kindergartener’s mind.

In the end we let it go. Besides, if the religious zealot really wanted to sway the minds of the children, they would have done so with a leaflet and candy. If only Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown had the presence of mind to do the same.

Happy November!

2010-11-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

Do you like my beautiful autumnal photo??

Yes, that's right, the clues are in the photo......you can tell the seasons in Southern California by the fact that:

a) There is no lifeguard on duty

b) Lucy is wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt

c) Her shirt references Halloween

How else can you tell it's November?

By the fact that I've signed up for NaBloPoMo. Get ready for a post a day.

Yes that does mean there'll be a lot of photos masquerading as content.....

It's a hard life, but someone's got to write about it.

Naturalization: Part Two - The Revenge

2010-10-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

When you apply for citizenship they hand you a booklet and an audio CD of the 100 civics questions they will fire at you during your upcoming interview. Having not taken an exam in approximately 15 years I was rather excited about this. Mostly because I am a nerd and used to be rather good at exams. I'll also admit that I was 'quietly confident' about passing the written and spoken English portion of the citizenship test. English, why it's practically my mother tongue. Perhaps you wouldn't know that from my grammar or spelling, but in my head I'm brilliant.

Anna and Lucy suffered through weeks of listening to the Citizenship Test CD in my car and now scream 'No! Not Nancy Pelosi' whenever I grab my car keys. I know you're dying to know what the 100 questions are, so here's a link, but if you're too lazy I'll write the 10 questions I was given at the end of this post - feel free to knock yourself out - but I want an honest marks out of ten in the comments section afterwards please.

I actually really enjoyed learning about that 'Congress' thing you have, the 'Constitution' and the brilliant idea of 'Checks and Balances', vetoes, separation of powers etc. A written Constitution - what a concept. The more I read, the more I realized that being allowed to be considered a naturalized citizen is an honour, nay, an honor.

So when the INS interviewer called my name I leaped up and put away my 'Best Short Stories of 2010' - see, everyone, I read English for fun, for a laugh, a ha ha ha (poor Peter Sarstedt reference). I clutched my binder of critical paperwork and followed him behind the magic door. The night before I'd assembled my 'very important paperwork' binder because people in chat rooms had suggested that if you look like you're armed with all the relevant info they won't ask for any of it (true). As I collected bank statements and tax returns I came to the section about 'proof of marital union'.

I asked LK how I was supposed to prove marital union.

"You are a moron" he answered.

"Yes, but how do I prove that I'm your moron?"

"Erm, maybe our children???!! Our children who I am starting to believe are much smarter than you?!"

Good point.

My INS officer led me deep into the bureaucratic corridors of the INS - full of small cubicles, family pictures, and people trying to look American and remember who signed the Declaration of Independence.

I took a seat and he asked me how the fires had been in Santa Barbara. Good question really, for establishing residency (and residual distrust and hatred of your current town). He asked me if I would ever bear arms for the US and I, perhaps misunderstanding, said I would be more than happy to bare arms, or bear alms, whatever was needed. He asked me if I had any money owing to the IRS, whether I'd ever been convicted of a crime? I answered no. He said 'not even a speeding ticket?' I said no, thinking of my 3mph drive down to LA. It is impossible to speed here. He asked if I'd had any traffic violations at all. I told him I'd had a parking ticket when I was in labour with my oldest daughter and hadn't been able to avoid the street sweepers. He seemed satisfied.

He then asked:

What's the name of the national anthem?

Who is our Governor?

If the Vice President and President are out of action who takes over?

Name one amendment to voting rights?

What ocean lies to the East of the US?

Who is in charge of the Executive Branch?

What is the state capital?

Why did the colonists leave the UK?

When was the Constitution written?

How many amendments to the Constitution are there?

and finally, he asked me to write 'California is the State with the most people', and I was very tempted to write 'California is the State with the moist people' but I didn't because I am cowed by authority.

He asked me again if I owed any taxes or had ever committed a crime. I was starting to doubt myself at this point. Library fines? Changing lanes without signaling?

But that was it. I made it, I passed. I high-tailed it off to Ikea to spend my money on Stüff like a true American.

Next stop the 'Swearing in Ceremony'. I bet you can't wait can you?

Answers:

Star-spangled banner
Arnold Schwarzeneggar (also accepted - The Governator)
Nancy Pelosi!!!
Any citizen over the age of 18 can vote
Atlantic
The President
Sacramento. Not LA! Don't say LA!
Because they were fools
1787
27

Naturalization: Part One

2010-10-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

The reason I went down to LA last week was to continue my application to become a naturalized American citizen.

It's a big decision, one that I'm doing for some of the right reasons and some of the wrong reasons.

It took me four years of lost paperwork, unsigned documents, expired fingerprints, transposed alien numbers, queues, tears and rage at the INS to get my Green Card. I was not anxious to repeat the experience, but permanent residency is only good for 10 years and mine expires in 2012. That seems a long way off - unless it took you 4 years to go through the process first time round.

I knew my decisions were; to renew my Green Card or become a citizen.

I asked my Swedish friend Brunhilde (made up name) which option she would suggest. I knew she'd recently become a US citizen after 30 years of permanent residence.

She wrote: .....'on the plus side, if you become a citizen you will finally be able to get that much sought-after job at the DMV, but it you've ever been a prostitute those dreams will be crushed'.

Something to think about.

In the end I decided on citizenship for the following reasons:

I literally could not face the green card rigmarole again.

I have lived here for 15 years and have been embraced by this country in a lot of ways. It was time to put up or shut up (plus I now use phrases like 'put up or shut up' - my brain has already been naturalized).

I want to vote. Case in point a letter from Santa Barbara's Elementary School District last week to inform us that 'the SB Elementary School District has failed to reach basic standards in English Language Arts and Math'. Enough said.

I discovered I did not have to give up my British citizenship (this one was huge).

Despite suggestions to the contrary, I have never had sex for money.

I can't say 'British citizenship' without saying 'British Shitizenship'.

Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness. Ha ha ha.

Finally, flexibility. I can live in the UK with dual citizenship, I cannot do that as a permanent resident.

I wrote a big fat check to the INS, collected my documents, filled out my N-400 (explaining that I have not been a drunk or a prostitute - I'm not kidding), and waited.

Within two weeks I had an appointment letter for my 'biometric evaluation'. Clearly they either do not have as many people to process as 10 years ago, or, more likely, they are far more keen for you to be a citizen than a permanent resident.

The next step was my interview, English language test and civics exam.

When I finally got in the building I joined a crowded room full of nervous looking people facing a wall. The only thing on the wall was a head-shaped hole covered by a metal grille. This was the INS I have come to know. I opened my book and prepared to wait. I was definitely surprised when my name was called only 15 minutes later. I approached the metal grille only to be told I was in the wrong room.

Ha! English language comprehension test failed. I had misread my appointment letter.

I raced across the building to another eerily similar room full of anxious looking people studying their booklet 'A Guide To Naturalization'. I placed my appointment letter on a pile of others in a box and settled in. It is a common misconception that you automatically become a citizen after marrying an American. It actually only entitles you to apply; first for permanent residency (a Green Card) and then, a minimum of 3-5 years later, for citizenship. There are countless forms, interviews, document-checking etc to be done. Make no mistake, anyone who has become a US citizen in recent years has worked hard and paid a lot of money to so.

Once every five minutes of so a harried-looking INS representative would enter the room - people would stop what they were doing and a hush would fall. The immigration official would then trip his or her way through someone's name and they would both disappear. We all had plenty of time to see all the officials come and go, and peg our hopes on getting one of the least surly.

Finally, my name was called, my number was up, and I disappeared in to the bowels of the INS.

You Can't Get There From Here

2010-10-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I had to drive to LA for an appointment. I do not love driving in heavy traffic, or on freeways with more lanes than the Duggars have children, but on paper this looked easy. I can see the 101 freeway from my house. 100 miles later, the 101 freeway goes straight past the Department of Justice building in downtown LA - my destination.

How hard could it be?

My appointment was at 10am. A couple of days before, I canvassed my friends as to what time I should leave Santa Barbara. The answers ranged from:

6:30am
7ish
why aren't you in the car already
yesterday

Turns out they were all correct. I left on the nose of 7am, and drove at the speed of light as far as Woodland Hills (North LA). It was a beautiful morning, dolphins played in the surf at the Rincon, and the Hollywood sign peeped out from behind the smog.

It then took me 1hr 45minutes to go the next 15 miles. Stressful at the best of times, but particularly so if you have a plane to catch, or in my case, an immigration interview.

In LA the traffic signs give you distances in minutes, not miles. I'm sure the same is true of many major cities, but where I grew up the major driving hazard was having to overtake a tractor on a narrow country lane. I am not equipped to deal with 6 lanes of traffic all going at 3 mph. Also, even though Anna could jog faster than the speed of traffic, you still have to have your wits about you. The 101 freeway becomes the 405 - and the two left hand lanes peel off to continue the 101. Something you become gradually aware of when the right hand lanes become impenetrably congested for 10 minutes, and it only dawns on you why (because everyone has been getting in lane 5 miles prior) when it's far too late. Good luck trying to ease your Honda Pilot in to that impenetrable wall of Hummers and Priuses!

The LA freeway system is like the London Underground. You have to know where you're going before you get on the thing, because the last thing you want is to be that person, or that car, fighting against traffic when you realize you're going the wrong way. I've been the victim of London's Circle Line on more than one occasion - I didn't realize trains went both East and West, and that you can also end up on a branch line sitting for 15 minutes at Aldgate East when you thought a circle meant one continuous loop.

The same is true of the LA freeway system, because yes, technically you can just get off at the next off-ramp, but then suddenly, because this is America, an off-ramp delivers you deep in to a neighbourhood, miles from anywhere, practically in some Cholo's back garden with no way back to civilization. You may be able to see the freeway, but there is no way in hell you'll ever be able to get back on it.

You can't get there from here.

So you just stay in your lane praying that the skyscrapers of downtown will suddenly emerge out of the sea of stucco around you, and that you haven't accidentally peeled off on to the 10 and are now hurtling (at 3mph) towards West Covina.

I kept calling LK, surreptitiously of course, because cell phone use is in fact illegal. I would say 'I'm at Topanga Canyon' or 'Sunset' or 'The LA school for Armenian Raffia Weavers' where am I? Am I close to downtown yet? And he would answer, 'fucked if I know, sounds like you're in LA, don't you have a map?'.

Why was I going to immigration to further my relationship with this man?!

I finessed the 101 to the 405 - the source of all the traffic, or so I thought - and was more than a little surprised to see the traffic signs indicating a further 55 minutes to downtown.

Must be a different downtown I thought.

Ha!

I finally made it, the thick smog obscuring the skyscrapers until they were right above me, meaning that I was practically there before I knew it. I cut across 17 lanes of traffic, missed my turn for Union Station (my intended parking) and instead pulled in to the closest multi-storey carpark I could find. Diving 5 stories in to an underground carpark is a little unnerving in an earthquake hotspot, but fortunately it was the least of my worries. I left my car in it's subterranean mausoleum and was three floors up in the elevator when it occurred to me I should probably have made a note where I left it. See, I'm just not an urban person.

I arrived at immigration 10 minutes before my allotted appointment time. I'll tell that story at a later date, but let me just say that the INS has not changed one bit. I was clutching my appointment letter which stated 'please do not arrive more than 30 minutes before your appointment as seating space is limited'. Of course they fail to tell you that you have to join a queue of literally hundreds, a 45 minute queue, just to get in the building.

So no, I don't love LA. But I do love my new Hemnes buffet from Ikea - a 2 hour cross-city side trip I took on my way home, because the LA freeway system? Once you've been through the immigration system - just not scary anymore.

Barbie World

2010-10-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

Barbies are taking over our household, with naked plastic limbs spilling out of cars and bedrooms. Anna is at a fever pitch of excitement today because *gasp* Barbie Fairytopia Legend of the Rainbow arrives tonight via Netflix. She won't say Barbie Fairytopia. It's always 'Barbie Fairytopia Magic of the Rainbow'. It's impossible not to laugh when she says 'tonight we get to watch Barbie Fairytopia Magic of the Rainbow'. Breath.

Thanks to Netflix we don't have to own these things, just borrow them. They get a lot of air-time, and while pretty nauseatingly pink and blonde, there is often a 'girls kick ass' message instead of the usual Disneyesque boy meets girl, which is good. Barbie 'Mermaidia' features a surfer girl, and an interview with Stephanie Gilmore - the #1 world ranked female surfer. That is something my Teeny Wahini can get excited about.

I can't believe I'm describing the finer points of Barbie movies, but such is my life. Anyhoo, they do get requested a lot, by both girls, and despite me concluding that they had a positive overall message, they seem to have a subversive underbelly. Case in point, Lucy's vocabulary:

No = Mo
Yes = Shesh
Bellybutton = Beyn
Please =Peez
Orange = Unge, not to be confused with,
Lunch = Untch

but,

Barbie = Barbie. Barbie! Peez TV Barbie!! Possibly the only world she has so far mastered.

This week at school Anna was the 'shining star'. Picked completely at random it basically means she gets to be 'interviewed' and her responses, along with favourite photos are put on the classroom noticeboard for all to admire.

Some sample questions:

I am proud of myself for?
Something you like about yourself?
What are you goals for the future?

Anna's responses:

My blue eyes
My golden hair
To be nice

Gah!!!

If she'd have said 'world peace' I would have fainted on the spot. LK told me off for 'coaching' her on her answers to produce a slightly more acceptable:

I stand by my editing. She was beginning to sound a bit like a barbie, and by that I mean Klaus Barbie. Those answers were one step away from 'I love being white and I believe Islam to be a cancer on the Western world'. I did coach a little in terms of 'perhaps you should say something you've been proud of achieving, instead of proud of being'. Much eye-rolling from LK, which is why the 'blue eyes' comment remains - but most of her class can't read, only the parents, and I did not want everyone to think we were the Ayrian supremacists of Kindergarten.

It should go without saying, but perhaps it doesn't - we are not rocking the 'Master Race' at home by the way. LK's Lederhosen are strictly for play.

As usual, I'm over-thinking things. What would you have done?

Earthquake Weather

2010-10-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

When I first moved here, far too long ago now, it didn't take me long to hear the phrase 'earthquake weather'. To say I was hyper sensitive to the issue of earthquakes is an understatement. I experienced my first 'shaker' my very first morning in California -as next door's washing machine vibrated through the wall.

My evil housemate told me that windy weather was often a sign of an earthquake to come. Yes, I know, I was a *tad* gullible. Mind you, she also told me that Kate Moss was so skinny she was practically 'emancipated', so I was on to her pretty fast in terms of her Wikipedian prophecies.I am technically a geography graduate, so the hardened scientist in me snorts at the idea of 'earthquake weather'. Real hardened scientists are reading this and snorting at the idea of a geography graduate being a scientist - and I will admit that I know far more about writing essays with the word 'polemic' in them than any hard science. Still, wind = changes in pressure, or my brother in the vicinity, it does not bring about tectonic shifts. Unless my brother's had a curry.

Despite this, people do insist on talking about earthquake weather, and we have had a truly bizarre week of weather. 110º last Monday, squally Bridlington in August overcastness today. People are muttering. None of them seem to agree on exactly what defines earthquake weather though. Some say wind. Some say freakishly hot weather. Some say we've had both in the space of a week and we are therefore DOOMED.

If you google it, the jury is certainly out. This article from the New Scientist seems to point towards a strange set of cloud formations bringing DOOM. Wikipedia says no! Snopes says no! I say we have a polemic on our hands people.

Have you heard of earthquake weather? Are you a believer? What do you believe?

Quite frankly I'm sure the good people at Oxbridge are going to confiscate my degree for even posting this. I do not believe in earthquake weather, but I do believe in animals going bonkers before a big quake. My money's on the squirrels.

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-03T17:43:00.001-07:00

This weekend we pretended to be Americans experiencing fall, instead of a week of 110º temperatures.

That's a terrible case of hemorrhoids you've got there Lucy.

Sisterly affection. Very, very briefly.

How long do I have to hold this smile?

Lucy fell in love with this one....

....and was none too happy when told it was too heavy to take home.

Good times.

Cindy Crawford I Am Not

2010-09-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally became a true Southern Californian. Did I decide to drive rather than walk to my mailbox? Wear flip-flops to work? Refuse to pronounce the letter 't' if buried in a word? No, the true mark of any So Cal resident is a dermatological facial wound.

I have had a 'minor procedure' to investigate a suspicious mole. I've had this mole for my entire life and only in the last few years has it become suspect. It is a birthmark on my right cheek that people somewhat generously called a 'beauty mark'. It turned lighter recently, and may have grown a little south but perhaps that's age more than anything. Well, that's what I was telling myself for the last 3 + years before I did anything about it. My doctor did not seem unduly concerned, but suggested we better be safe than sorry. Safe means results in a week and me rocking a weeping facial wound like it ain't no thang. Because that's what people do round here. You see them every day, feet in flip-flops, latte in hand, bandaid on face/shoulder/forearm.

Gauze, it's the new black.

When I woke up this morning my face looked like a war zone. I must have opened the wound in my sleep because the blood had seeped through the bandaid and down my face. Nothing says morning sex like a weeping facial contusion.

Of course the girls were all over it in a second.

"Oh Momma" whispered Anna. "Does it hurt? Can I see? Can I touch it?"

Lucy on the other hand was far more interested in the hows and whys.

"Happened?"
"It's nothing Lucy, Mumma just has an owie on her face."
"Happened?"
"It's nothing love, it doesn't hurt, but please don't stick your fingers right there"
"Happened?"
"Nothing, but maybe now's a good time to put sunscreen on you"
"Happened?"
"Lucy, we've been through this"
"Happened?"
"I feel like you're not listening to me"
"Happened?..
"LK, your baby. Bye!"

Needless to say I'm a little worried about taking the bandaid off. My girls will have a field day. I hope everything's fine. I hope I don't get a massive keloid scar the likes of which I'm sporting on my left shoulder. Apparently they don't generally appear on the face. I know I sound flippant, worrying about aesthetics when they are doing a biopsy, but it's the only thing I am allowing myself to be concerned with right now. The other stuff is unthinkable.

Still, if it truly is a dodgy mole it would be a great reason to move back to the cloud cover of dear old England. On the other hand it might just be cheaper to buy a sunhat.

Schooled

2010-09-26T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's one for you:

Last week I had Anna's Back To School Night. For those of you, like me, who are thinking, 'what the chuff is a Back to School Night?' it seems to be a parents evening where the teacher outlines what your children will be doing in the coming year, and then strong-arms you in to volunteering in the classroom.

We all sat in a circle on comically small chairs and Anna's teacher asked us to introduce ourselves, say who our child was, and then pick a word to best sum them up.

Growing up, my surname landed me right at the bottom of the alphabet, and there's nothing a teacher likes to do more than go round the class in reverse alphabetical order. Consequently I have learned to think on my feet. I was sitting to the teacher's left and got to go first.

"Well," I said, "My name is Ali blah blah, my daughter is Anna, and if I had to choose a word to describe her I would say 'verbal'."

Laughter, from the parents of girls.

"She's got an amazing way with words, she's a great communicator and reader, and basically manages to express herself very well".

"Ha!" says Anna's teacher, "if I had to pick a word I would say precocious".

"------"

Is it just me or is that a hugely double-edged sword? WTF? Is she saying smart or smart-arsed? People laughed, but I was thinking, really? When has being a precocious child ever been a good thing? Obviously I would prefer precocious to 'brain like a slug', but every other child was described by their parents as 'happy, helpful, creative' etc and she felt no need to interject.

What does it mean?

Alipalooza

2010-09-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

And to think I had lofty aspirations of posting every day in September.

It's been a busy start to the month, anniversary (13 - lucky for some!), quickly followed by my birthday. That was really poor planning on my part, having my anniversary so close to my birthday. I think in my deliriously loved-up pre-marital state I thought an anniversary near my birthday would mean an Alipalooza of celebrations instead of a 'buy-one-get-one-free' approach that seems to be closer to the truth. Lesson quickly learned when on my honeymoon my birthday present from LK was nothing. He hadn't planned that far you see. Which brings me to one of my favourite sayings, 'why is it always men who seize the day? Because women are already planning for a week next Thursday'. Exactly.

How times have changed. Not only is LK much more on the ball when it comes to at least a birthday card, I now have two very, very, eager little girls willing to plan my birthday within an inch of it's unicorn-themed life. Anna suggested I might enjoy a trip to Pinkberry, followed by the carousel, followed by the candy shop on the wharf, followed by Despicable Me followed by McDonalds. Actually, I must be a 5 year old at heart because that sounds pretty damn good.

What no-one planned for was the nasty flu that slammed in to me like a Category 5 hurricane. I woke up on my birthday in Anna's bed (voluntary quarantine), to streams of mucous and glorious sunshine in equal measure. It was approaching 9 o'clock, and as I'm the only one in the family with anything remotely resembling an internal clock or the wherewithal to set the alarm, I was the only one awake. Anna, Lucy and LK were all sleeping away the first hour of Anna's school day in our bed.

As an aside there was a famous incident in our family where my Mum and Dad did not tell my brother it was his birthday until after he got home from school that day - my Mum found it quite amusing that he was so excited for weeks before and then completely blanked the day of. A tad heartless, but it probably made the morning rush out the door a lot smoother. Not so last week, Anna was more than happy to eat cereal in the car, wear her pyjamas to school, but she would not hear of leaving the house until I (she) had unwrapped my presents. In for a penny in for a pound.

I got an iPhone from LK for my birthday, and he of course got one too, otherwise how would we communicate on different plans?? He is so selfless!! He had been sneaking away funds for months which makes me a little hopeful that maybe he's doing that very same thing for the mortgage, college funds, Hawaii trip etc, except I doubt it.

I am obsessed with my new phone, and really am very grateful to the man who made it all happen, who even cunningly stole my old phone so my new one came complete with all my old contacts. I had the same Neanderthal phone for nearly 10 years. It survived two toddlers, me dropping it every other day, and it even went through several batteries - mostly due to the saliva of small children. It was a bit like my old beat-up Honda, it wasn't pretty but it got the job done and I was never worried about damaging it or having it stolen, but now OMG, like WTF I am a texting fiend (iPhone suggests you mean friend?).

Coincidentally our book club tome this month was 'Super Sad True Love Story' by Gary Shteyngart. At first I hated it; so cynical, so male, so bloody depressing, but the more I fell in love with my iPhone - setting up Pandora radio, creating a Tap Zoo for Anna (OK, for me), the more I appreciated how funny and unsettlingly accurate he was about people's dependence on their 'Apparats'. I am an addict. I no longer wish to 'verbal' with anyone, if you're in the next room I will text rather than bother clearing my throat. This may change when I get my first phone bill, but in the meantime I hope to be Skyping my parents from beachside restaurants, taking fabulous candid photos of the girls, and also buying a cheetah for my Tap Zoo.

Hopefully this will mean I will spend more time posting photos of the girls to this blog, and less time checking facebook but it's not looking good so far is it?

Edited to add, hot off the press:

Anna: "Mom, when you die can I have your iPhone?"
Me: "Only if I die from natural causes."

Don't Say Cock

2010-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Nothing reinforces the fact that you live in a questionable neighborhood more than the bible bashers knocking on your door, eager for converts, not having any pamplets in English. I feel like Jesus (sorry Hay-sus) is profiling us. Sorry love, no habla your church.

We do have a lot of Hispanic neighbours, and consequently a lot of chickens in our 'hood. Sweeping generalization? Check out the lower Eastside and tell me how many chickens you can hear, oh and parakeets too. Strange. Anyway, I was off for a walk round the neighbourhood the other day and we disturbed a backyard menagerie, and the rooster (don't say cock! not in this country!) started rooster-a-doodle-dooing. Anna turns to me and says "wow, Momma, I guess he overslept."