Back. Home?

We're back. Back to DSL. Hoorah to an internet connection that doesn't give up every time the phone rings. LK types with two fingers and you should trust me when I say he wasn't too happy to spend forty-five minutes morse-coding out a message to J. and Skeletor only to have it zapped by a phone call from someone concerned with my Mum's bowels. The poor boy had to have fifteen pints of Landlord at the Black Swan (aka The Mucky Duck) to recuperate.

Am I glad to be back? Hard to say. As usual I really ache with missing family and England. My heart and insides feel like they've been beaten with a mallet. Although it's true that that pain could be down to the two packets of pork scratchings, pickled onion monster munch and the huge bag of treacle toffee I had before going to bed. Who can say?

Most of the reason I'm not so keen on being back, and the reason why I'm blogging jet-lagged and mopey at 3am, is the huge amount of *stuff* we have to deal with now we're back. This trip was of such monumental length that it allowed me to put off thinking about a lot of crap until we got back.

On a positive note though, I am really glad to be back in a country that has toilet-seat protectors in public bathrooms. Uncannily happy.

As promised, here are some photos:-













Me trying to order three wheels of goat-bollock cheese in the fromagerie.
















Caught in the reflection in the shop window. This apparently is what I look like when I speak French.

Magnifique.


















Vite. Takez-vouz le picture. It's going to pleut any minute.
















The view from our not-too-shabby apartment.

Parlez-Vous Franglais?

Ah Paree, how you render me speechless. Literally.

I took French for years, years. From my first french class aged 11 when my Mum asked me what I'd learnt, 'something about apples' I replied loftily, to which she added 'that'll be je m'appelle then won't it', to AS-level french, taking business notes and being all poncey and reading Le Petit Prince. Who me - poncey? As soon as we got off the plane I realised that I was about as useful as a french poodle to LK and Anna. I could say 'j'ai quinze ans et j'habite en Harrogate', and 'regardes les jolies fleures', but that wasn't going to get me via some sort of public transport into the centre of Paris now was it? And how exactly do you say to the lady at the information desk that you'd forgotten to bring a car seat and was it legal to just hold a child in the back of the taxi? (it is, fortunately). LK was rolling his eyes at me going 'this would have been soo much easier if we'd gone to Barcelona because I not only profess to speak the language, I actually do....'. We made it though, and gradually my ear if not my voice came back. Bloody good job too, because the reason we were going to Paris was not just the £9 flights from Leeds Bradford.

£9, that's right, $18.

So ludicrous a fare it deserves it's own paragraph. Thankyou Jet2. No, LK has a friend who just happens to have a pad in Paris. In the Mayfair of Paris, looking out over Parc Monceau and the Arc de Triomphe. A pad that just happened to be empty. Sacre bleu!

We turned up and the concierge very kindly let us in, and handed us the sheaf of keys, and then proceeded in tres rapide French to explain the intricate use of the keys, and the buzzer system, and the elevateur anciente (a blog in itself) meanwhile I'm smiling like a nodding dog and my brain is grabbing every third word in ten and latching on to them like they're going to save me from drowning.

Concierge 'blah blah blah blah la porte blah blah blah ferme blah blah'

Me 'oo, I think he said door there. Yes I'm pretty sure of that one, door.'

Concierge 'blah blah, gesticulate wildly, blah blah absolument ferme'

Me 'crikey, this sounds like I should at least be taking some of this in. Why don't I just say 'lentement', come on, you know the word, just say it, 'lentement', it's easy, you know the word.'

Concierge 'blah blah il y'a beurre et du lait dans le frigo parce que.....blah blah'

Me - oh great, I know there's butter and milk in the fridge because today's a public holiday, but crap, what was that stuff about the keys. Ummm, 'repetez-vous' is that right, just say it you repressed English idiot. Say it!

Concierge 'alors, d'accord, a tout alors'

Me 'merci beaucoup monsieur' suddenly fluent when it no longer matters.


LK looks at me with a 'well sunshine?' you'd better not just have been merci-ing the poor man to death, and I give him a stern don't mess with me look and just to prove I know exactly what I've just appeared to be listening to, I tell him to look in the fridge for some milk and butter, a-ha, just you look Monsieur Americain! And here, while you're at it, you take the keys, I'm having a bath.

I don't think LK fell for the 'hmm this key does not appear to be working quite how the concierge explained it would' line later that day, but we did manage to get back in the apartment later. Thank the Lord. Photos this weekend I promise.

We had a wonderful time, lots of things to write about, and as usual no time.

I will leave you with a superb quote from my friend F. He's a frenchman married to my best friend S. I told him we'd be going to Paris, and did he have any advice? He said, tell them that you're fifteen years old and come from Harrogate, and be sure to comment on how jolies their fleurs are (no, not really). He actually said 'just be nice'. Just be nice, I thought. Huh, how strange. What he didn't say, and maybe I should have read between the lines, was 'be nice because they might not be.'

Please release me, let me go..

Mum is home! Tucked up in bed mostly but definitely on the mend. Thankyou everyone for all the lovely e-mails and thoughts. We can now fly to Paris tomorrow in a happier frame of mind and get throroughly drunk on Pernod in peace.

I have so much to blog about, and I have been jonesing to write, really missing the catharsis of this blog, which sort of surprised me. Obviously no chuffing babysitting in which to do it though - pull your finger out Mum!

We managed to meet up Brief Encounter-style at Leeds Station with the fabulous internationally famous Ms. T who gave me a letter she unearthed that was written by me three days after I met LK all those years ago; ramblings and musings about the culture shock of being in the States for the first time, things I've already forgotten about, and yes I do mention LK. I'll definitely be writing about that - undecided about how much censorship there needs to be.

Everything on this trip seems to be compounding the 'what if' factor - what if I'd never taken that brief trip to California in '96? What if I'd never gone to that party and met LK? What if I'd put up more of a fight and he'd moved here? I feel so aware of a life I could have had, a weird parallel existence that I catch ghost-like glimpses of here and there. It needs to be made absolutely clear that I do not for one minute regret LK or Anna, but damn it, I've lived in California for too long now to not think that I can have it all!!!

I already have photos galore to sort through when I get home (be warned.....). The evenings here are long and beautiful and I've been trying to capture it all.
The evening light doesn't disappear until well after nine, close to ten really. We've been walking across the fields, the hawthorn flowering in the hedgerows, meadows full of buttercups, cowslips and giant rambunctious lambs. Everything is
green on green and so soft and bucolic and beautiful, until a fighter jet screams overhead from RAF Linton, so close to the ground that you can see the pilot, the sound thundering across the countryside long after the plane has disappeared. A definite reminder that we are a country at war.

I commented to my Dad the other evening when we were stopped at a stile between fields 'when it stops raining this is the most beautiful country in the world' and he said 'ah but it doesn't though does it?'

Beryl the Tea Lady

First of all, whatever Mum and Dad are paying for their internet connection, they're being overcharged. It's allegedly broadband, but it's as temperamental as the British sun. Now you see it now you don't.

Mum is still making the most of her taxes by staying in hospital, with an as-yet undefined diagnosis. Apparently it's looking like it's not appendicitis, but they haven't exactly ruled that out either.

We try and smuggle Anna in to see her every so often, but bringing a toddler in to an adult ward is never a good idea, particularly one who likes to touch and taste everything in sight. My Mum loves seeing her, but is terrified at the thought of her catching some horrid hospital super-bug, so she makes us smuggle her back out as fast as she came in. We keep Mum entertained with photos of Anna and anecdotes, but it's so bloody unfair that this is precisely what we've been doing for the last year when we've been thousands of miles apart.











Happy Birthday Mum!









Obviously our plans for this trip have changed somewhat, but at least we're over here. I can't imagine how I would have felt if all this was going on and I was stuck in California. I may yet find out, as it's unclear if she'll be 'released' by the time we fly home. I asked my Dad what he would have told me if I was still in the States, and he said 'oh we probably wouldn't have said anything'. Reassuring. Mind you, that would be hard to do now that she's been in hospital nearly a week, and had to spend her 60th birthday there too.

With all of this going on you can't help but draw parallels between the British and American healthcare systems. My Mum is in a ward with five other beds, and a blast-from-the-past tea-lady called Beryl wearing support tights up to her knees that reveal a jaunty three inches of pallid knee before the hem of her uniform. My Mum has a bed by the window, and free radio, but pay-by-the-day TV and phone (so far ignored). She couldn't get a 'scan' ultrasound/CT or MRI for several days as it was a bank holiday and they were seeing emergencies only. Her test results were similarly held up.

So far her hospital experience is more akin to Tenko than Grey's Anatomy. There are absolutely no good-looking nurses/doctors/orderlies (is it just me, but does everyone in North Yorkshire look like they'd be much more comfortable knee-deep in sheep dip?), but she is developing quite a strong bond with her other inmates - one distinct advantage of the ward-system as opposed to the isolation of a private room. I can imagine them trading cigarettes for a TV-viewing card and devising elaborate escape-plans involving orderly Keith Olrenshaw and his laundry cart.

I can't help but wonder, given the preoccupation with money and insurance in the US whether they would have been as happy to let her sit and stew for so long without a diagnosis and a 'plan'. Who knows. It may well be that she has something that's not easy to pinpoint, something that will require a battery of tests to define. My uncle who's a GP seems to think so.

At least at the end of this, whatever the outcome, she won't be ruined financially on top of everything else.

In the meantime - can anyone find me a babysitter? I'm supposed to be on holiday. Who's the real victim here?

Short and Sweet

Hello Blighty. I could wax lyrical about what it's like to be home after so long, what it's like to feel like a foreigner in your own country, but I'll save all that.

We arrived Friday morning and on Saturday my Mum was admitted to hospital. She'd had a 'gyppy tummy' and we knew things were serious when she wasn't well enough to pick us up at the airport. Turns out she'd been trying to treat an 'upset stomach' with bio-yogurts, an approach that apparently does little for you if you have acute appendicitis.

I'll keep you posted.

More hummingbird photos....

Now this, this is a better camera.

Thanks to LK for some far more successful photography of our resident hummingbird family.....

































....and you thought your one-bedroom in Santa Barbara was cramped.....


















If anyone knows anything about hummingbirds I'd love to know what type they are. From the very basic research I've done so far, I think it might be an Anna's hummingbird, which is fairly fitting.

Things that have made me laugh recently:-

You either laugh or you cry, so I've had to laugh recently at my huge health insurance rate hike, and the fact that we're flying to the UK in one week and LK still does not have his passport, yet despite these trying times, the following things have genuinely made me laugh out loud and need to be shared:

• Definitely this and this, there is clearly no point trawling the internet for good stuff when these two excellent writers are already hot on the trail.

• The fact that Anna likes to eat her hot dogs with peanut butter and her strawberries with ketchup. De-licious.

What?!

• My Mum, who always has a fairly random e-mail sign-off sentence, hitting her zenith with this particular gem; "I have been really busy digging over the soil in the greenhouse, although I had to rescue the resident frog first. I hope the mushroom compost doesn't upset it, it smells a bit pungent. Love Mum."

• And finally the fact that someone found my blog by googling 'should young boys get a perm an set', or my absolute favourite 'how to stop being a nagging wife'.

Homemade Surfboard

Check this out. Our friend R. had his surfboard stolen a few weeks ago, because contrary to popular opinion, surfers aren't all sunshine and rainbows they're more likely to be 'my waves, my beach, go home and we'll set fire to your car in the parking lot if you don't listen up, dude.' OK, I may be paraphrasing a tad.

R. was royally pissed off, but instead of pouting he decided to make his own surfboard. As you do.

How gorgeous is this?






















It's so gorgeous, Anna is just rocking out at the beauty of it all.

Snow in Santa Barbara?!

When I woke up yesterday morning there was snow on the mountains. It's April, in Southern California, and there's snow on the foothills. It's extraordinarily beautiful, as you can see by the photos below, which weren't taken today because I have a child now and stuff to do, and I can't just go prancing around taking pictures for you people, OK?





























Really though, what's going on with the weather? I don't pay fifteen billion dollars a year in property taxes to have this sort of caper when my Mum is repeatedly calling me to tell me how beautiful it is in North Yorkshire right now. 'Hotter than Tenerife' no less, which must have been the headline on Look North. I can see it now,'Scarborough; hotter than Tenerife, sunshine and chips, why fly south?'

Anyway I digress. I'm sure this is just a late storm, and normal 75º weather will resume shortly, and I'm damn sure that as soon as our plane hits the tarmac at Leeds Bradford Airport in a couple of weeks my delicate Californian daughter is going to be suffused in drizzle and look up at me in horror, her eyes searching mine going 'but why?'.

This could be climate change, but I'm fairly sure I heard someone mention we were having a 'La Nina' year, effectively the opposite of El Nino. Both of which I would love to tell you about, being as how I am a geography graduate and all, but I sort of, ahem, missed that lecture and had to resort to my friend S's lecture notes. I remember typing them up, reading 'El Nino, 50 Thousand Pacific Sea Birds Die! Possible sunspots?' and thinking, hang on a minute, that can't be right, sounds like Miss S dozed off for a few minutes this morning if you ask me, and really, what are the chances of this esoteric geography rubbish ever coming up? Now of course I'm living it. Another one of those sterling decisions I've made in my life, like choosing not to learn Spanish in the sixth form because we were not the type of family that took package holidays to the Canary Islands. Well done, AliBlahBlah, very perceptive.

I know, I know....

In my defence, my lack of posting can be explained by the fact that in the upcoming space of 10 days I have my husbands 40th, my MIL's 70th and my Mum's 60th birthdays. What the chuff? What cosmic alignment of financial fuckery is that?

Sleepwalking

I must be feeling a tad stressed lately.

First of all I start writing my usual harmless blog post about raising a child in a foreign country, only to have it dissolve into a tear-fest about raising a cuckoo (wtf?).

Now I'm apparently sleep-walking too.

I woke up last night at about midnight, presumably because I heard the sprinklers go off. I remember knowing it was the sprinklers, but part of my sleeping brain must have thought it was raining or something bizarre because I marched downstairs to where LK was comfortably drifting off in front of the TV, and hands on hips I asked him whether or not he'd brought the stuff in yet.

"Wrigs you're dreaming" he replied, popping another peanut butter cup into his mouth and casually tossing away the wrapper.

Well that just made me even more upset. The indifference. The litter!

"So you haven't done anything, even after I told you..."

"Wrigs, you're dreaming, go back to bed. What stuff?"

And that's when it hit me. I couldn't think of the stuff. The stuff that had me marching angrily down there in the first place. I had been dreaming. Bugger. Retreat. Retreat.


I was thinking about this whilst at work this morning. Thinking that I'd been sleepwalking, which is fortunately fairly unusual for me, and also thinking that LK could have been a little nicer to me thank you very much. He didn't rush to my aid, worriedly saying 'you're dreaming love, here come back to bed and don't fret', he didn't even seem mildly amused. In fact he seemed quite irritated by my sleepwalking interrupting his telly-watching. Well ex-c-use me!

Then a little later it also occurred to me how it must have felt to him, to finally be getting a bit of peace and quiet from his household of women, only to be told off by an incomprehensible somnambulist for a complete load of bollocks. Nice! I'm even mean to him when I'm asleep. Subconsciously I know he did it, whatever it is, and really does it matter? He's to blame!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Funny story about sprinklers for all of you reading this who won't have to wait until November for the first sniff of rain; when my Mum and Dad first stayed with us in California they were convinced it rained for ten minutes at 2am on the dot every morning. No joke.

Squatters!

Actually this post should be called 'why I need a better camera', but guess who I found staring back at me from my bathroom window?

A hummingbird nest. Sometimes California's hard to hate.





















Trust me, there is a hummingbird on a nest in this picture. Although if you stare at it too long you might also see a dinosaur, a waffle-iron and the Shroud of Turin.....

Parenting Across the Pond

I was on the phone with my Mum the other day when it came up that she didn't know what an owie was. At that moment I realized that while I consider myself a Mum rather than a Mom (oh the horror), I am an American parent.

I kid myself by telling Anna to say ladybird instead of ladybug, zebra instead of zeebra, but in reality I am learning to be a parent in a foreign country, and the parenting vernacular I'm picking up is purely Californian. Obviously a lot of how you parent comes from what you already know, and how you were brought up, but I'm realizing a lot of it also comes from observation, picking up phrases and actions you see being used by the parents around you. As such, I've started saying 'owie' and 'good job' (bleurgh) and 'time out' without really knowing or remembering what the English equivalent is. Although I do have a sneaking suspicion that the British equivalent for 'owie' is 'walk it off'.

If I was an English parent I would say 'you've been very naughty' instead of 'honey can we talk about why you felt the need to express your anger with permanent marker '. I would say 'I'm really cross' instead of 'I'm really mad'. I do say 'you make me mad', but I mean it in the English sense which is 'you're driving me round the bend, I'm up to here with chuffing Melmo'. I feel stupidly panicked that I can't recall how to parent in English. We're going home for a visit in a few weeks and I'm going to have to stop myself from obsessively listening in on English parents talking to their children, trying to absorb their figures of speech so that I can fake it when I get back to the States.

You don't lose your accent or your pronunciation when you're an ex-pat, you lose your words, your phrases, your idioms. I hear things on BBC America and think 'wait a minute, I used to say that, what have I replaced it with and why don't I say it anymore?'. I now start most of my sentences with 'so' whereas I used to end them all with 'right', I fall short of saying 'so he was all, and I was all' but I'm sure it's just another five years away. I'm writing a book about an English girl who travels to America and I'm finding it hard to give her an English 'voice'.

Anna will have playdates, she will go to pre-school and kindergarten not nursery and primary school. She will eat 'string cheese' and 'PB&Js' instead of prawn cocktail crisps and cheese and pickle sandwiches, she will have 'recess' and 'extra credit' and then later will have to decide how to deal with 'cheerleading', 'homecoming', or 'sororities', all of which turn me cold. The American Revolution will mean more to her than just imperial overstretch. The idea that Anna is going to grow up with a foreign accent, in a foreign culture is stupidly terrifying, as if she's not going to be my daughter. It's almost like I'm sitting on a giant cuckoo's egg, one that's eventually going to hatch and say 'dude, we have like, totally nothing in common, and I like can't even unnerstand you, and can you like, not talk anymore OK?'.

It hurts and it's stupid. I see the future and I feel like I'm already losing my connection to her when we've only just started.

Walk it off Mrs. K!

Car Shopping for the Mainstream

We spent most of last weekend car shopping, because our Fix Or Repair Daily was having it's guts checked in the garage. Again.

Clearly we look like we don't have two pennies to rub together (true) because we didn't get the hard sell once. We're looking for a used Toyota Highlander, leather, for about $40. Strangely we didn't find one. We did see lots and lots of Highlanders though. In fact, parental note, do not put your squirming toddler down in a dealership crammed with tightly-packed SUVs because very soon you'll realize that you can hear her, you just can't see her, and how the chuff do you find a two-foot-high two-year-old in a maze of cars? Don't yell 'Anna, chocolate' because then she'll think, 'hey great, chocolate, ermmm, where the chuff are my parents, *small panicked breath* 'Momma Momma' (escalating in panic), 'where's my chocolate' *panicked wail*. Do get on your hands and knees amongst the oil-stains in those white jeans that you thought would make you look like a wealthy potential customer, and try and spot the tiny striped leggings zig-zagging haphazardly through the tires. Then lie there and guide your husband with armed-forces precision directions like 'she's by the beige car, to the left of the champagne car heading towards the off-white car’. Good times.

Interesting aside (no, really). I used to work for a production company and we handled voice-overs for Toyota ads. I know, you're gripping the edge of your seats aren't you....., well you should know that it's just about impossible to get a Southern California voice-over to not say 'Tayoda' instead of Toyota. Try it you surfer-dudes you. You'll say it right the first time, but the third time it comes up, Tayoda I guarantee it. We had to write it out phonetically on a piece of paper and wave it in front of them.

Toyota also listed their Camry-buyers in their in-house memos as 'vanilla'. Nice. I'm sure Highlanders are listed as 'mainstream choice for dull suburbanites fighting the mini-van image'. Sold!

We didn’t buy anything because:

1. We don’t have any money
2. LK entered every dealership saying ‘we’re just looking, not buying, I’m not going to be rushed in to this’ - because we have one car in the shop, he’s biking to work and the other two-door twenty year old car has a multitude of warning lights flashing and we’re just fine for transportation please, we’re here to look not touch thankyou very much, we’re just fine putting a 25lb toddler in a car seat with no rear doors thankyou Mr. Chiropractor.
3. None of the ‘green-tag, 0% financing, $1500 cash back, special reduction zone, this weekend only sales seemed to apply to us. Farging bastages.
4. The Found On Road Dead only cost a few hundred to fix not a few thousand so lets just keep it til it gets really interesting. Russian roulette anyone? Sounds like fun.
   

I’d like a new car though. I’ll be working LK with my wily wiles so I suppose you'll be seeing me in that 1990 Honda Accord for many years to come.....

Cable TV

A weekend of Gray's Anatomy on the telly, homemade Maitinis and this:














I can't believe I've spent thirty-hmm years being terrified of cable. It just looks so complicated, and you needed 'equipment' too, a cable needle no less. I'm totally gobsmacked to find out it's so easy, OK, don't look too closely, because there are a couple of stitches out of whack, but please I can do this without taking my eyes off the telly, and that's what it's all about people. Surely one of the best things about knitting is that you're still technically doing something whilst watching the telly. You can convince yourself that you're not just a big couch potato, because you're 'getting stuff done'. Plus, you have your hands full, so you can't plough through an entire packet of crisps while you're doing it. Of course LK's idea of 'having your hands full' whilst watching the telly is a lot less productive.

It's starting to make me wonder what else is possible? What else have I dismissed out of hand as being too complicated that's actually a piece of cake? Windsurfing? Water skiing? Twins?

Enough!

I swear if I get another one of those e-mails about hypodermic needles found in a Macdonalds ball-pit, or a child dying from licking lead-based paint off the nursery walls I think I'll go chuffing mental.

You read them first thing in the morning, when the only thing you have in your stomach is coffee and a fervent desire to go back to bed, and they're always signed 'concerned' or 'just a heads up'. Aaarrggh. Leave me alone!!! It's hard enough to keep kids alive without worrying about all this other ridiculous crap. I know she could poke something metal in to that outlet and nuke herself, I know she shouldn't be running with that machete, or playing with that bottle of Anti-Freeze. It's hard enough just trying to keep them away from the genuinely lethal stuff. Lets just try and keep it within the realm of sanity alright? If she gets a brain parasite from playing in a sand-box that a raccoon has pooped in I will be beyond devastated, but I will not stop her playing in a sand-pit 'just-in-case'. I will not stop licking ATM envelopes because someone in Michigan allegedly died from a laced envelope. People in Michigan are looking for ways to die I tell you, I used to work with them!

Seethe.

So, how are you? Had your coffee yet? Had your dose of hate/fear e-mail? I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but as I've said before, I'm not exactly good at letting things go, and I'm a tad vulnerable first thing in the morning, and not a little insecure about my parenting skills in the first place.

Of course, if you've sent me anything recently regarding the risks of cosmic radiation in the under-5s or how your pre-schooler may already have lethal levels of mercury due to substandard play-dough, thankyou, I know it's out of genuine concern for her well-being. I'm working on it. Now get lost.

-----------------------------------------------------------

In other news, LK deserves husband of the year (or at least the week) for cycling fifteen miles to and from work sometimes multiple times a day because our car, the Stealth Creampuff, has conked out again. Head gasket, whatever. Sayonara Ford we're buying Japanese.

You have no idea how long it took me to look up how to spell sayonara. Sion? Cyon?

Rock On Grandma

Yesterday I was ID'd for buying a 12-pack of Heineken. The cashier must have thought I looked less than 21 because my shopping surely spoke of someone entrenched in middle age; toddler meals, organic yogurts and imported beer.

I may appear like a fresh-faced schoolgirl, but my soul burns with the fire of an eighty year-old grandma. Just look what I've managed to accomplish this month:

This:-
















and this:















The last one was even knitted for my own daughter, *gasp*, a full year after my last attempt.

Here she is, clearly delighted with the new addition to her wardrobe:-





That pose is right out of the
Sirdar catalogue I swear.
Don't mention the hair.
I know.












What marks me as a truly old codger at heart though is that I woke up on Sunday and the first thing I thought was not, hello, there's a large naked Dane in my bed (and yes, sadly still a toddler), no, I thought - hoorah, I get to have a stab at knitting cable!!

Oh yes, give me wool, a complicated pattern with instructions that the Enigma machine couldn't fathom and I'm in heaven. This is what I'm attempting next:-



















That's right, the 'in-at-the-deep-end cable-a-thon' courtesy of Debbie Bliss. I'm erring on the side of caution and knitting it for a 3-yr old. On second thoughts, looking at that 4-page pattern, maybe I should cast on a few more stitches and aim for a 12-year old. Whatever happens, I'm sure Anna's going to look just as lovely as this cute Asian boy.


Apologies to all those who don't share my passion for knitting (all of you), and apologies to those weirdos who got here by googling 'cute Asian boy'.

P.S. I love you

That last post was not intended as a direct advertisement for Typhoo Green Tea, though it is really good and you should try some. If it was, I would not have taken a photo of Green Tea in front of a green background.

Frickin' idiot, gosh.

Tea By 'Eck

How much do I love the internet? Just look at this:















My favourite tea, Typhoo Green Tea, ordered online and purchased for a song! I used to have my poor old Mum post it to me, but now I have 480 bags of my very own. Enough for months - or just less than a fortnight if my Mum and Dad come and visit.

The funny thing is, I was never a tea-drinker when I lived in England. Not much of a coffee drinker either. Coffee always smells so wonderful, and always tastes so disappointing, and I'm a weakling when it comes to caffeine too. Half a cup of coffee and I'm bouncing off the walls, and LK starts cleaning the kitchen fearing the worst.

I always used to joke that I was kicked out of the country for not drinking tea. I'm from Harrogate, home of 'Yorkshire Tea' and 'Taylors of Harrogate' and 'Betty's Cafe'. Everyone I grew up with would drink mug after mug of the stuff. If you're at home and you hear my Mum's car in the driveway it's a knee-jerk reaction to put the kettle on. Everyone knows that the massive electricity spike after the Royal Wedding in 1981 was caused by an entire nation switching their kettles on going 'Well, that's that, I'll brew up then'.

Then I had Anna, and Mum and Dad came over to help, and suddenly I was never without a cup of tea by my side. Now I can't do without it, and I'm thousands of miles away from a good source of tea-bags. You can buy Yorkshire Tea in Santa Barbara, but it's true, it's brewed for Yorkshire Water, and it tastes like old woolly socks out here. I've wondered if it's all psychological, whether it was indeed a latent taste for the stuff, or whether I'm subconciously drinking it as it reminds me of home. If that were the case though, I'd be watching the Cricket World Cup, but trust me, that'll never happen. Cricket truly is a reason to emigrate.

So let me know if you fancy a cuppa. I'll be mother.

California Dreaming

It is overcast and drizzly here today, I was right about the fog apparently. I don't think this is rain, I believe it's what they call 'heavy marine layer'. Whatever it is, it's making me think about home. That and the projected health insurance increase that's sitting on my desk at work. Socialised medicine certainly sounds appealing right now. I'm thinking about sending Anna back to the UK for her routine physicals, the plane fare might be cheaper than my premiums.

So, before this post becomes any more miserable, I'm going to think cheerful and list twenty things I'm looking forward to on our trip home to Blighty in May. In no particular order might I add..... just in case you think you fall below 'mushy peas' in my standings..... (it's highly likely you do though).

1. Chips and mushy peas. My dear old bro just moved next door to a killer fish and chip shop, so I'll be spending lots of time round there pretending to visit him. LK is not such a fan of fish and chips, but that's because I ridicule him about;

a) saying 'fission chips', and
b) for saying 'I'll have the toona' the first he time ever ordered at a chippy. You can take the boy out of California......

2. Taking Anna to the duck pond. You can't feed the ducks here. I'm sure they're all on the 'Zone' diet or at least something macrobiotic.

3. Going shopping with my Mum in York. Thinking all the prices are in dollars and are therefore half the price that I'm actually paying. Plus, I haven't been to an English shop in well over a year, so even Next might have something new in stock. Plus I can buy stuff at M&S and no-one in SB will be any the wiser.

4. Curry and booze with my friends from school.

5. Proper adverts on the telly. I know everyone in the UK is probably sick to the back teeth of the latest KitKat advert or whatever, but dear God the 'commercials' over here are total and utter crap, and they're on more than the shows, and they slag off the competition outright, which doesn't seem very sportsmanlike if you ask me, AND they make you think about haemorrhoids whilst you're eating your tea in front of the telly.

6. Free babysitting (hi Mum!)

7. Weather! I know it sounds ludicrous, but actual weather. Brilliant (briefly).

8. Being thousands of miles away from our tenants, our mortgages, our childcare situation, our jobs, our condo conversion project.....

9. Seeing my entire extended family for my Mum's 60th birthday.

10. Going to Oasis and seeing the Lake District.

11. Woolie's pick-and-mix. American candy is rubbish, the chocolate tastes like it's been left unwrapped overnight and they don't have pick-and-mix. Philistines!

12. Watching British news and documentaries.

13. Going to Paris for the first time.

14. Being away from the bubble that is Santa Barbara for a few weeks.

15. Getting my accent back, however briefly.

16. Meat pies. Pickled onion monster munch. Salt and vinegar hula hoops. Poppadoms with mango chutney. Wensleydale cheese. Pork scratchings. Gin and tonics. Sweets. Bitter lemon. Dandelion & Burdock. Sausage rolls.

17. Going for walks; stiles, fresh air, clouds, wellies, someone saying 'just look at that view', getting lost, my Dad having to consult the map, finding pubs and tiny old churches with overgrown graveyards, wondering where the chuff we parked the car. Having Thornton's toffee half-way round, for energy.

18. Taking Anna to Harlow Carr gardens where she can run around and pick shadows to her hearts content. As long as nobody sees her.

19. Buying Anna lots of things that say 'I love Mummy' instead of 'I love Mommy'.

20. Not having to start all my conversations with 'no English actually. North Yorkshire. Near York. No not New York. Ha ha. Really, how was your trip to London. Oh, dear, no ice in your drink and it rained for 5 years solid. Gosh, sorry about that.' Ha bloody ha.


On the other hand, after that little I heart England love-fest,

Things I am not looking forward to:

1. Driving in the rain. Driving a 'stick' on the 'wrong side of the road'. Narrow roads. Having to overtake tractors. Paying for petrol. How dirty cars get.

2. Remembering to be quiet during the weather otherwise my Dad will give me one of his Paddington's hard stares because they don't have the 'weather channel' 24/7 with Doppler radar like we do.

3. OMG the flights. 3 stops (at least!) each way seemed like such a small price to pay for free air-miles tickets back when I booked the flights in October, but now it's March and I have a toddler, and someone please pass me a brown paper bag.

4. Going to Oasis and having to stand next to my brother's fiance while we're both wearing bikinis.

5. Teaching Anna about jet-lag.

6. Knowing we can't afford any of it.

7. Putting on 10lbs each week I'm home.

8. Being dressed circa 1997 which is when I emigrated, having to borrow my Mum's clothes.

9. Wondering what the chuff people are talking about when they mention mobiles, broadband, Shilpa Shetty, Big Brother etc etc. Realising I've missed 10 years of UK culture (maybe not such a bad thing!) but knowing that I've become an ex-patriot and that I don't belong there anymore just as I don't belong in California.

10. Knowing that I have to fly back to California. Knowing LK is going to get upset at how much I miss home.

Busted

My friend C. says that one of the best things about having a 4-yr old is that you get to find out exactly what the babysitter's been up to whilst you've been out, because as soon as you get home your little canary will sing til it's blue in the face.

Anna's not quite up to dishing the dirt yet - or so I thought.

One of the advantages we had early in our nanny-sharing arrangement was that the other Mum worked from home, and so our nanny always had to be on her toes with our two in case J. walked out of her office. Unsurprisingly the nanny started taking the girls on long rides in her car; they would go to the zoo, to the parks, to the beach, everyone was happy.

This afternoon I'd decided I was going to get my lardy food after all, so I headed to the local McDonalds Drive-Thru, because if you have a toddler nothing says welcome to America like not having to get out of the car to pick up your food. We're not big junk food eaters, McDonald's is mostly road-trip food for us, and we've certainly not encouraged Anna to be a happy meal fiend, so imagine my surprise as I'm pulling off the road towards the drive-thru - not even at the drive-thru, when a little voice from the back of the car starts parroting 'fies fies ambugger fies Anna fies peas'.

Quite. Apparently those tofu nuggets I'd been feeding her last night weren't quite cutting the mustard for my little canary.

Home Alone

LK has gallivanted off to Palm Springs with his gay lover, ostensibly to watch the Pacific Coast Open, leaving me quite literally holding the baby. This is the first time either one of us has been away from Anna for a night since she was born. I am not that impressed with the idea of being a single parent, I am chuffing knackered. She is finally asleep at 9pm (Anna is steadfastly ignoring last weekend's time change) and all I want to do is drink three glasses of wine back to back and join her.

I'd had all these plans to enjoy my time alone (well, almost alone), I was going to write, watch Casino Royale endlessly with my finger poised above the pause button, eat lots of lardy food that LK despises, sleep like a starfish and generally enjoy myself. Upon reflection, this is exactly the same kind of plan I had when I thought about possibly working from home after Anna was born. The kind of plan that does not involve having to look after Anna every second of every minute of every hour. What was I thinking? Where was all this magic free time supposed to come from? Looking after Anna is constant. CONSTANT. She is not the slightest bit interested in ogling Daniel Craig, apparently he is not a patch on Elmo, and the only lardy food I had chance to sneak was an errant chicken nugget of hers, and even that was a faux chicken tofu nugget.

Meanwhile, back in Palm Springs, LK has called to reassure me that all is well and that he has not fallen prey to his rich hosts proclivities, because, as he said on the phone 'you've no need to be worried, I defended you when they asked why I was still on my first marriage when I could get any person I wanted, I said, you haven't met her yet'. Hmm, I wonder how that came up in conversation. Time for that vat of wine I think.

Brokeback Marriage

There are many, many inappropriate things you could say whilst watching Brokeback Mountain with your husband, but surely one of the worst has to be;

"Wow, can you imagine if someone loved you like that"
"....?......."

Cor Wot a Scorcher

It's been in the 90s here in the last few days, which if you're in the UK means over 30ºC, because it seems that in the ten years since I left home everyone now refers to temperatures using Celsius only, and gives me a blank 'I no speak your Yankee language' stare if I even utter anything about Fahrenheit.

This was not always so, people. I swear I remember talking about temperatures being in the 'high 80s' when I were a lass, but then again, thinking back, I did grow up in North Yorkshire, and 'high 80s' and 'North Yorkshire' are not often mentioned in the same sentence unless it's to talk about population age.

So, yes, it's been warm - scorchio even. Anna's been wearing her shorts, breaking out those deliciously chubby toddler legs which seem to be getting leaner by the second. There's even been talk about starting up our ocean swimming next weekend, but you don't have to be a geographer to know that sudden warm weather coupled with a very cold ocean means we'll be knee-deep in fog in no time.

Fog always makes me laugh. Google that I dare you!

Many years ago when my fellow geographers and I were newly matriculated at up-your-own-arse-bridge we were all discussing our horrific entrance interviews thinking probably quite rightly, that if we were the ones picked then either,

a) Nobody else applied
b) We were the cream of the crop. Not bloody likely.

We each had our mortifying stories but the one that'll always stick with me was from C. To cut a very long story short, one of the questions he was asked was if he could think of any recent news stories that might be particularly pertinent to geographers. I can just visualize Dr. Blah asking the question and thinking 'don't say the rainforest, don't say the rainforest', but ha! no! C. had something much better up his sleeve. At that time a good answer would probably have been the fall of communism, something about the post-Soviet states, or even better, something based on Dr. Blah's highly esoteric and yawn-inspiring papers etc, but no, when asked of any important geographic phenomenon C. said.....

'there's been a lot of fog about'.

Needless to say I don't think any of us is doing anything remotely related to geography in our present careers. In fact the word 'career' might be stretching it a bit for most. And yes, for the record, I said 'rainforest'.

Down Town!

If nothing else ever marks me as a failure (form an orderly queue) it's that just as I was starting my blog, this blog post was written. If I'd have known, I'd have stopped right there. I bow to the blog queen.

Have you ever seen the film Twin Town? If not - rent it NOW, it's chuffing hilarious. They do a brilliant mockery of the song 'Downtown' by Petula Clark, showing downtown Swansea on a Friday night - but Whoopee, I think she takes the crown. Long live Crapham.

Another One Bites The Dust

An eerie lull settled over the K household yesterday afternoon as Anna started to feel better, but it was only a temporary ceasefire. Now LK is perched over the loo hanging on for dear life.
Basically just as Anna emerges from a sea of vomit - we knew she was feeling better by her repeated requests for Melmo or Thomas (the Tank Engine), LK starts throwing up.

Lots of fun.

At least LK knows to be sick in the toilet. After six days of Anna with the stomach flu our house smells like a student doss house. There is the unmistakeable waft of puke in the air - but where's it coming from? I've Febreezed the crap out of the place, and washed about fifteen loads of pukey towels, but still it lingers. This happened after my 18th birthday party too, until we found out that someone had been sick underneath my Mum's sewing machine (how?!). Unlike my 18th birthday party I have yet to find bottles of booze stashed in the shrubbery and I'm not left wondering how to get that 'Taboo' stain out of the upholstery.

I had to leave work early yesterday to look after my little vominatrix (LK did not start puking til the evening thank goodness). She seemed bright-ish so I took her down to the beach in the jogger, and I attempted to go for a run. Its been *a while* since I last went running, so it went something like this:-

Me - ooomph, crikey, ragged breathing, plod, plod, plod
Anna - barely discernable whimper
Me, stopping - what's that love, you want to get out? You want Mummy to stop running so you can get out?
Anna - WTF?

I ran about a mile and a half before I had to stop, and my legs are killing me today. At least I'm not vomiting though, although I'm understandably nervous about my chances. I'm like a newly pregnant woman, alert to the slightest signs of nausea, but so far so good. Hooray for me, I get to clean it all up!

Miniature Arse Kicker

In deference to her English heritage:-

Communication Failure

Anna's had the stomach flu before of course, and last time she gave it to us too, which resulted in a house of horror for two days when none of us could get down the stairs to the kitchen without puking. Good times.

The main difference this time is that she can communicate better, and that's what's so heartbreaking. We've had to limit her fluid intake, as it's one of the reasons she's throwing up so often. Apparently we have to trick her stomach in to thinking there's nothing there by giving her tiny sips every couple of hours. The poor thing is so thirsty she actually strung words together for the first time in her effort to communicate. She said 'Anna yaya pease' - Anna water please.

It seems the cruelest irony, that you spend the first year of their life desperate to get them to talk to you, with words or by sign language, and now that she's able to do both all we seem to say is 'I hear you but no'. It's so unfair. The other day - before the plague hit, she was trying to ask for a cookie. She said cookie repeatedly, until in a fit of desperation she started resorting to sign language too, as if to say 'damn it lady, why can't I get this through to you'. The same was true with the request for water last night. It was a massive milestone for her to be able to use more than one word at a time, and yet I still couldn't give her what she'd asked for. That's the killer.

So now, in a huge reversal from my usual sarcastic, irreverent self, because I'm feeling overly sentimental at that husk of a baby I have sleeping on the bed, here is a list of Anna pronunciations that I would hate to ever forget;

Ya-ya = Water
Shadow = Flower - WTF Anna?
Flamininmoe = Flamingo - good attempt
Ass = Raf - our friend, he's none too happy about this pronunciation
Melmo = Elmo
Show = Baby Einstein
Babbit = Rabbit
Bobot = Robot

Also, if you say 'I love you' she says 'you do?'.

Wow, that was a saccharine post even for me. Sorry everybody.

Photos of Better Times

Here are some photos of Anna playing on 'sandbar' in Santa Barbara, the break where LK learned to surf (who knew there was surf way back then?).




















We're knee-deep in vomit right now. Anna has finally passed out, a pale, limp, rag-doll, not even interested in 'Melmo'. While she sleeps I'm going to do fifteen billion loads of puke-stained laundry.

Keep your fingers crossed for us. I hope to God we don't get it too, although as she projectile-vomited all over my face and in to my horror-struck mouth last night, it's not looking good.

Pass The Asparagus Please

I was sitting in my office quietly not minding my own business when I overheard the following exchange in the waiting room:-

Elderly Gentleman - "Absolutely; without fail, he stopped what he was doing and had high tea at four in the afternoon. He still does."
Random Woman - "I've heard that. The whole country does it. It's so civilized and yet so peculiar at the same time.

Meanwhile, I'm just grinding my teeth, because this is just one of the many oft-repeated inaccuracies that I try and refute, but no, people absolutely know it's true. I often wonder how people marry this image of England as a land of bowler hats, the Queen and high tea with the Sex Pistols or even the Spice Girls. Please? Hugh Grant has a lot to answer for I tell you. Upon re-reading, it appears I'm saying 'high tea with the Sex Pistols' which is quite a thought. I wish I knew something about grammar.

Anyway, there I was musing about this and other common misconceptions I hear all the time, like; 'it's absolutely impossible to get ice in your drink in London', or 'I was in the UK for six months and it rained every single day', or 'the Brits hate asparagus' WTF? When it occurred to me that I was ruminating on this, whilst nursing my 4 o'clock cup of tea. No joke.

Someone's in denial here apparently.

Sunshine in February

OK, so it wasn't all high drama and intrigue round here this week. There was a bit of this too, which isn't bad for February. I do like to moan though.

Happy Pancake Day!

Or as LK said this morning, "Happy Pancake Guy Fawkes". I keep him around because he's pretty.

Here's some vintage footage of LK flipping pancakes (notice the intense concentration, requiring him to stick his tongue out).















Here's me, 5 months pregnant with Anna, showing off my years of honed pancake-flipping prowess (no tongue but a good amount of lower jaw).




By 'eck, look at the height on that pancake. Almost flirting with the ceiling.








.....and finally, here's today's effort. Not bad if I do say so myself. It would almost make you hungry if you hadn't just eaten ten of the damn things, making me look substantially more pregnant than I was in the above photo.














Those aren't miniature lemons by the way, they're home-grown key limes courtesy of my father-in-law. Because the fake lemon juice I had in my fridge expired Nov '05.

A fact we discovered on pancake number three.

Monday Monday, Can't Trust That Day

LK looks after Anna on Mondays. This photo epitomizes why it is his favourite day of the week, and no doubt Anna's too.

And The Winner Is.......

No-one, although we did have a couple of 4 out of 5s (itsgrimupnorth and chilly/redfox combo). Better luck next time.

I'm publishing this now before somebody gets it right through sheer bloody-minded persistence (love you guys), and besides I need the Borders gift certificate for book club. I'm that cheap.

So, here you go.......close but no cigar.

1. I have had poetry published. TRUE
I wrote a poem once when I was bored at the end of a German test. I thought it was rubbish. It was rubbish. My friend V. secretly sent it in to the Yorkshire Post where they published it. That says a lot more about the loyalty of my friend V. than it does about the number of poetry submissions to the Yorkshire Post. Yes I do still have a clipping of the poem, and no I'm not going to reproduce it here because I can't remember anything other than the fact that it was about poppies *it's that awful* and the original newspaper clipping is over five thousand miles away in my parents house. Thank God.

Why no-one thought this was false is beyond me.

2. I am a natural blonde, no highlights nothing. TRUE
My hair was white until I was about 14, and now it's more of a yellow blonde, with the addition of wisps of grey courtesy of Anna's formative years and our mortgage-s. I've never done anything other than cut it, and only then about twice a year. I hate going to the hairdressers, which is a good job really as we can't afford it.

3. I break out in a rash drinking tequila. TRUE
It takes a lot of tequila to do this, but I do get a pinprick rash all over my face after about three margaritas which doesn't disappear for a couple of days. It has never stopped me drinking tequila to excess, although I often wish it would.

4. I briefly had a pet lamb, Willie. - FALSE
I can't believe no-one plumped for this one. Honestly people, just because I grew up in North Yorkshire, land of 'All Creatures Great and Small' does not mean that we all have pet sheep.

5. I hold grudges for years. TRUE
Definitely one of my least attractive personality traits, and one that's a constant battle for me. Was it Confucius, and I may be paraphrasing a tad here, who said holding a grudge is only hurtful to the holder? Well, whatever, it's true. I nurse grudges like nobody's business. Do you recall Mr. Darcy's famous line 'my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever?'. Amateur. Part-timer. Of course, if you call me on it, you're dead to me.

6. I have never shoplifted. TRUE
What the chuff everyone - why did you all, including my dear old bro think I was, in his words a 'tea leaf' (thief). This one cracked me up. I can't lie to save my life, I'm about the only 33 year old left that still blushes. I could never shoplift and get away with it. Maybe I should try. You only need to take a look at this list of 'quirky' facts about me to realise I might need to get out a bit more.

7. I have never had a filling. FALSE
I have truly truly awful crap teeth. Fortunately my mouth-o-metal is now all whitened out, but they're still fillings, just posher ones. It's not me I swear. I am convinced that one day they will discover that good dental hygiene is only half the battle and that there is some malicious bacteria that only attacks some people. There is simply no logic to the fact that I have financed my Dentist's porsche while my brother still has all his teeth.

I do love me some candy though. Mmm.

8. I got married at 23. TRUE
It seems bloody young now (I was four days away from being 24, but still whoop-de-doo, 24 isn't exactly a pensioner). I think marriage and emigrating seemed like a better idea than getting a job in The City. Ha bloody ha.

9. I have loudly farted on a first date. TRUE
I couldn't even say fart without blushing for the longest time, and this would have devastated me, except I was drunk. He was my first love, and looking back he probably just thought 'thank Christ this stuck up cow is finally starting to relax'. Oh how we laughed.

10. I can knit but I can't crochet. TRUE
The only thing I could possibly ever use a crochet hook for would be to get a pea out of a toddler's nose.

11. I have a green thumb. FALSE
My Mum did botany at University and can grow grapes and asparagus in the frozen tundra of North Yorkshire. I on the other hand.......



















and apparently I'm no great shakes as a photographer either.

12. I have never broken a bone. FALSE





As one of our docs said 'let me put it this way, even our medical records clerk could read this x-ray', or as my friend R. said to the rest of her medical practice upon pulling this up 'holy fucking shit - you gotta see this you guys'.

and yes, I think that is my boob on the left.







13. I have testified in court. TRUE
I was eight months pregnant. The defence attorney didn't even bother cross-examining me. Thank God otherwise I would have lost bladder control for sure. My friend won her case.

14. I was too scared to pump my own gas for years. TRUE
Obviously I'm not the most practically-minded person, but this was a real embarrassment to me for years. I can't believe everyone thought it was was true. You bastards.

15. I lost my virginity at 15. FALSE
Or rather, as my brother put it 'lost my virginity at 15 my arse.'
Actually it should read 'lost my viriginity at 15 by arse.'
No, that's not true either.

16. I graduated from Cambridge. TRUE
This is becoming more laughable by the year. I work in a doctor's office. A couple of years ago an English drug rep popped her head in my office and said 'I hear you went to Cambridge why do you work in a doctor's office?'. She went to Hull. It's a good question though, but ten years on I can say it was a smarter career decision than going to work for Arthur Anderson like the rest of my cohorts; although we are skint.

17. I have an assistant who is terrified of me. TRUE
Oh my God, terrified of me. It's almost laughable, except she really does shake when I correct her work. Being afraid of me is like being afraid of vanilla pudding (in so many ways), or so I thought, because when I told LK this he said 'really'. Not 'really? no fucking way how hilarious' just 'really / possible'. Maybe I should ease off on the coffee first thing.

18. I have been proposed to on a first date. TRUE
By LK. He made me a ring out of a Budweiser label. It fell off in the shower the next morning. We were both joking (he when he proposed, me when I accepted). Not so funny now though is it.

19. I have over 10lbs of candy in my office. TRUE
I would take a picture, but for once I'm not at work.

It is obscene how much candy gets consumed in a doctors waiting room. Blue and green Jolly Ranchers are always left in the bottom of the bowl, closely followed by Werthers. Riesens are unfeasibly popular considering that most of our patients lack both youth and tooth.

20. I inhale but I don't swallow. TRUE
No comment.

If you thought you were lazy....

Item #5 of this list made me laugh out loud, which is never a good thing if you're at your desk pretending to work accounts.

I wonder if it's true that running your dishwasher uses less water than washing dishes in the sink? I bloody hope so. Our water bill is nearly $400 a month because of the apartments. I cringe every time I hear next door start the shower (we can hear the pipes). I feel like the father of a teenage lad when I say to LK - 'I mean seriously, who takes a thirty minute shower? What are they doing in there?'.

'Shagging?' he answers hopefully.

The Luck of the English

I bought a lottery ticket last Friday, and no, I'm not writing this on my way to the Seychelles. I was planning to keep Mum about my win anyway, just buy a few nice things, set the family up with some play money and breath a huge financial sigh of relief.

What a shocker though, it didn't pan out.

I've never got more than one number out of six right anyway, so why do I do it? Why? Because it's almost worth it isn't it? That $3 (me, LK & Anna) for a few hours of what if. That kind of hope defies rational thought, you *know* it's never going to happen, but bloody hell, you've already spent that money a thousand times in your head haven't you.

It should be obvious to me that I'm not going to win, and not just because I did statistics at A-level and at College. If that doesn't teach you, nothing else will. No, the real reason I will never win the lottery is because I'm not a lucky person. Oh, I believe in that count-your-blessings kind of luck, the 'you've got your health' sort of thing, work hard and make your own luck. Of course I do. As they say in tennis, the more you practice the luckier you get, and I do honestly consider some of the things that have happened to me to be on the jammy side. But lucky? No.

I won a bottle of gin once in a raffle. I was ten.

My brother on the other hand is Mr. Four Leaf Clover. We once went to a raffle at his football club, and his name was pulled so many times they had to start giving the prizes to someone else. Or maybe that's just how I remember it.

Was there a point to this? I think so, although my brain is as usual addled by wine. I think the point is that although I didn't win *again* I knew what I'd do with the money if I had it, and that made me remember a very different life.

I think the most depressed I've ever been, (excluding opening our mortgage bills....) was when I'd just graduated from College, and I had no clue what to do in my life because, I was a fucking Geography graduate which is the epitome of directionless apathy. Anyway, in those days I was honestly at the point where I thought, if I won the lottery, what the fuck would I do? I had no career, no bloke, no-one to travel the world with, no goals, no ambitions, everyone I knew was starting pretentious jobs in 'The City', and I felt like I'd just run out of runway. I would have maybe splashed out on some new boots at Hobbs, but as for real ideas - nothing. There can be very little as pathetic or depressing as someone who can't think of what to do with a lottery windfall, but then maybe I was just a tad self-involved and introverted. Anyway, just a few weeks later I took a chance and moved thousands of miles to a country where I knew literally no-one, and now look. Or rather, now luck. It just goes to show. Our friend and ex-landlord likes to say it's always darkest before the dawn, (which I repeat as a mantra every time I check the mail), but it's true. Sometimes it takes not winning the lottery to make you realise, as it did me today, that things could be a lot worse.

I do need a new fucking car though.

*****************************************************************************

As for the competition - there've been some interesting guesses, and some abuse - thanks, itsgrimupnorth whoever you may be, and Redfox/Turtle Rocket, number 20? please, I'm ashamed of you.

I think I'm going to give it one more week. If you're feeling lucky of course.

Not So Mellow Lellow

Just to prove it's neither nature nor nurture, Anna is turning in to a positive wunderkind and is having what I believe is called a 'language explosion'. One of her favourite pastimes at present is to read license plates, and she's pretty good at it too, except whenever she sees the letter 'A' she says 'Anna'. Stupid girl.

She's also having a stab at colours, except she describes everything as being 'lellow'. We don't know what's going on here. Yellow has got to be one of the hardest colours for a baby to pronounce, being as how it's packed with 'l's, yet it's the one she's got down to a science. What about red or blue? Surely those are easier to say? Aquamarine isn't that much more of a stretch. Yet if I ask her if she wants to put her pyjamas on she says 'lellow?', and she always points out sunflowers, tennis balls (of which there are many in our household) and squash and then says 'lellow'. Cleary a genius right? We could certainly have people fooled, but unfortunately she describes everything that is colourful as 'lellow.

A tomato? Lellow.

Her tasteful lime green clogs? Lellow.













I've been trying to work out what her fascination is. She also says 'purple' and I suppose she is managing to channel some of her Dad's Laker's fervour by opting for those two colours. I had a different thought though. I mentioned to LK that I been thinking about it, and I'd come to the conclusion that yellow must be her favourite colour because she has a really cheery disposition and is like sunshine to me. At which point he went 'urrghhh' whilst rolling his eyes like he'd just been hit by a particularly bad waft of patchouli. Maybe not then.

Ronny Turiaf v. Aladdin's Genie

Is it just me, or do these two look exactly alike? - until he picks out that fro of course.
























I think I need to stop drinking so much during Lakers games.

Twenty Things You May Not Know About Me And Probably Couldn't Care Less Anyway:

It's Competition Time!! Is anyone else stuck for 'busy work' to while away their time on a work-day afternoon? Does anyone else need to look like they're typing furiously? Well, I am and I do, so here's a little quiz, with an honest to goodness prize for the winner, something like a Borders gift certificate of unspecified worth (*wow*), whatever my cunning mind thinks is appropriate in about a month's time. If and only if you are the first to correctly guess which five statements are in fact a load of bollocks, only one guess per person, form an orderly queue. Competition not open to LK, but it would be interesting to see if he knew.


1. I have had poetry published.
2. I am a natural blonde, no highlights nothing.
3. I break out in a rash drinking tequila.
4. I briefly had a pet lamb, Willie.
5. I hold grudges for years.
6. I have never shoplifted.
7. I have never had a filling.
8. I got married at 23.
9. I have loudly farted on a first date.
10. I can knit but I can't crochet.
11. I have a green thumb.
12. I have never broken a bone.
13. I have testified in court.
14. I was too scared to pump my own gas for years.
15. I lost my virginity at 15.
16. I graduated from Cambridge.
17. I have an assistant who is terrified of me.
18. I have been proposed to on a first date.
19. I have over 10lbs of candy in my office
20. I inhale but I don't swallow.

Apparently yes I am that bored and boring.

So Proud

Anna swore for the first time yesterday.

She's at that age where she repeats the last word of everything you utter, so you can have a lot of fun with her, making her say 'ho' and 'be-otch'. I did not intend for her to say 'fuck' but what can I say, I was in the Trader Joe's parking lot and if that doesn't make you swear then nothing will. Ever.

There are three Trader Joe's in Santa Barbara (technically two in SB, one in Goleta) and each one is a parking travesty. One Christmas Eve I was stuck in the Milpas TJ's for an aeon because my parking space was too valuable for someone to actually back-up and let me out. Fascinating no? Anyway, back to yesterday, I was already a tad stressed and in need of a large glass of wine because Anna now has the wingspan of a small pterodactyl and loves to throw things from the shelves in to the trolley or on the floor. Maybe that's how I ended up with that can of lychees.

I was turboing round the shelves trying to get the chuff out of there, buying minced ginger instead of minced garlic by mistake (mmmm that lasagne's going to taste gooood tonight - lasagne Thai style). So there I am trying to reverse out of the parking lot, and I didn't even realise I'd been swearing until Anna is parroting 'chuck' 'chuck' all the home. Not a bad way to start swearing really, especially as in the North of England (where my soul still resides) 'chuck' is a term of endearment. 'Ay up chuck' means 'hello love'.

Then my friend M. hinted at another more sinister possibility. What if Anna wasn't saying fuck? What if she truly was swearing and was repeating the last word of the scourge of every dinner party in SB - two buck chuck? Charles Shaw to those not in the know, a Trader Joes blended red wine that sells for $2 a bottle, hence the name two buck chuck. What if Anna was yearning for cheap booze? Not that implausible given her albeit brief upbringing in the K household.

I'll keep you posted.