Glorious Titian Mane

The title of this post comes from a comment from another mother at the school pick-up the other day. Since my hair is more auburn than red, I demurred that "titian" was a little inaccurate. But I'll take "Glorious" any day. Pictured is a Sunday shot that I made Ariel take when my hair worked out perfectly with no combing or further primping. I then promptly cut it.

In England, red-heads are called "Gingers" and there is actually a great deal of discrimination against Gingers in this country. I am also not really a ginger, but our chicken of the same name is.


Every Friday, Lena's class has Assembly. It's a lot like show-and-tell, but it's taken to the next level. It's a presentation with 10 minutes set aside for the assigned child, and last term when Lena's turn came up, she tried to convince me that it was okay to bring in a live animal for her Assembly -- the Thursday night before. This time, we had lots of notice, and I was able to talk to her teacher about the logistics. I brought the three girls (2 human and 1 avian) to school and sat in the back of the class as Lena made her presentation. It's nice to see the kids at school. The little hellions that have come over for sleepovers turn out to be well-mannered and pleasant people. The daughter that bounces off the walls and makes up crazy stories so ridiculous that she can't tell them for laughing so hard turns out to be focused and well-prepared. She stood confidently at the front holding Ginger securely but gently while she taught her classmates about the joys of having hens. She resisted the goofy questions, called on only the people who were raising their hands (even to the point of ignoring unruly friends), and generally proved that she knew her stuff. I was (and still am) terribly proud of her. My only regret is that I got so caught up in watching her that I forgot to take a picture.

Finally, despite a mild winter, we've been oppressed by Mother Nature on all sides here. In late February, we had an earthquake, epicentered in Lincolnshire (in the north). In true form, while everyone around us experienced it, we managed to sleep through it. It wasn't long before someone managed to trigger one of my favourite pet peeves: seeing anything catastrophic as a sign of the End of the World. Sure enough, Sunday morning, someone mentioned it and Matthew 24:7 (earthquakes in diverse places), and Ariel and I just had to smile since England has had earthquakes of similar magnitude about once every decade for the last couple of centuries. But the epicenters have been in diverse places around the island, so prophecy should not be discounted quite yet.
Ariel and I had a meeting at his office building on a glorious, sunny day and in the 15 minutes that we were inside, the clouds moved in and dumped a thick layer of sleet all over the place, then cleared away as if nothing had happened. This went on a few more times (stealthy sleeting) and at home, it fell straight down the chimney (where we have no flue) and knocked creosote all over the white carpet that's in our living room. This was actually better than the swallows that are building a nest at the top of the chimney which keep dropping their twigs and crap down into the living room (and once flew straight into the room, much to everyone's surprise).
We've had horrific flooding and winds so fierce that I had to go collect the compost bins which were being thrown against the house. The day was the kind you stay inside for, and I used the time to finish a cloud-study painting I was doing. The funny part is that you can tell how windy the day is because everything in the picture is slanted as if being blown from left to right. There's even more visual weight on the right as if it's all been pushed there by the force of the gales. Otherwise, it's trite, but I enjoyed how much reality influenced my little exercise.
But none of this weather has made me want to flee the country. Last Thursday, I was thankful that I had a friend over when I received a terrible call: our flight is booked for Heathrow to Dulles, July 28th. We're officially going home. Or leaving home. However you want to look at it. Even the cat is booked.