I'm Dreaming of a Canary Christmas

"The sun is shining
The grass is green
The orange and palm trees sway."

I had those first few lines of "White Christmas" in my head every time we walked past a palm tree decorated with Christmas lights. We have just returned from 10 days in paradise, and though it's mild here in England, I'm missing the sun and warm breezes from Tenerife.

Before we left, we opened presents from my side of the family (for that was all that had arrived yet). A tangential story: when Lena turned 3, we secretly bought for her a Radio Flyer tricycle, and had set it up at the park at which she was going to have her birthday party, festooned with balloons. When we arrived at the park, Lena jumped out of the car, ran up to the bike and shouted enthusiastically, "Balloons!" This year, my father had given the girls convertible pants (the kind with zip off legs to become shorts), and when Livia opened her box, she erupted with glee and shouted, "I got a whistle!" Which was attached to the pants. Livia then went on to wear those pants in some form every day that we were in Tenerife. They also scored MP3 players from my mom, My Little Ponies from Dana, and stylish designer bags from me to hold everything (whistles became zipper fobs). Then we tidied the house and headed for Birmingham. An uneventful 4-hour flight over the Atlantic (which we She-Wolfers hadn't seen in years) put us at the tiny airport that evening where we found the weather a balmy 20°C which caused us to giggle all through dinner.

Monday was also sunny and warm, and we staked out some lounge chairs by the pool and just let the girls play. That was why we came. Livia did water aerobics with the old ladies, and Ariel and I marveled about the concept of sunbathing topless. Boobs are nothing special in Europe. We see them on TV all the time. After the 2004 Superbowl halftime show uproar (Nipplegate), the English were baffled what all the fuss about it, saying things like, "That's not football!" Also they couldn't understand why people would be appalled about an almost completely covered nipple. There's a makeover show here called, "How to look good naked," and no, not a single person on the show looks good naked, before or after. But at the commercial breaks they talk to assorted real (and by "real," I mean "real ugly") British women about fashion and self-image, et cetera, and they are all topless and shameless and in dire need of clothing. In Europe, they're just boobs. There are no topless beaches; there are just beaches. Same goes for pools. So we spent the first sunny day getting adjusted to seeing women topless. And not good-looking women. The attractive women wore cute bikinis. There was one poor lady who we first mistook for a man because her breasts had gone so southward that when she reclined, they disappeared completely into her armpits (and she was built in body and face like a trucker). And then there were the men in Speedos. Big men with big man-boob (moobs). The pool area was an androgynous sea of tiny little swimsuit bottoms and big boobs.

We grew accustomed to the frontal nudity, but we never could quite get over the dinner fashion of many of the women which we called, "Hookers on Holiday." Most of the guests ate dinner at the hotel which was a large dining room with a extensive buffet of hot and cold foods. It wasn't a restaurant for which people from off the street might come and make a reservation. We dressed evening casually. There's nothing like seeing a woman self-serving veggies over by the sneezeguard while wearing a black bustier, micro-mini, and 6-inch heels. Maybe she was grabbing a quick bite to eat before she went off to put that outfit to work. I don't know.

View Larger Map The next day we woke to find it partly cloudy and decided this was perfect weather to explore the island and visit an animal-themed park -- overcast but dry. So we rented a car for three days, and off we went to the other side of the island. Geography lesson: Tenerife is the island on which we stayed that is part of the archipelago of the Canary Islands. It is formed by the eruption of a few volcanoes, namely El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain as the Canaries are still part of Spain (like Hawaii is part of the US). El Teide is still an active volcano though she hasn't erupted in a few years. We stayed in Playa de las Americas on the south side of the island. Back to our story. We had to drive northeast up the coast because earthquakes had wiped out the roads to the west. We should have taken this as a sign. But we continued on, through the dust, rocks, and cacti that are so characteristic of the south of the island. Then we got to Santa Cruz, the capital and far eastern point of our trip and curved onto the north of Tenerife, which I would swear was a different island altogether if we could have seen past the fog and driving rain. (Driving rain sounds like it would be good to drive in.) When we arrived at Loro Parque (Parrot Park), our destination, the rain had diminished a bit, but not enough to get out of the car and pay money to stand in it. So we drove on to Icod de los Vinos, the former capital of Tenerife. "Former" because in the 1700's it was eaten by a bit of lava flow. The town is still there but people just cleaned up and built around the lava, so there was no Pompeii-coolness about Icod and the rain increased. At this point we were 25 miles from our hotel, but we had to turn around and drive the long way around, 75 miles the other way. In the first 10 miles of this return journey, we encountered two rock slides that impeded traffic, one of which we swerved around, the other blocked all traffic until the rock slide maintenance authorities could get in and clean up the mess. When we finally made the turn to the south side of the island, the weather cleared again, and we declared the day a glorious adventure (it was too early in the trip to declare it a bust).

The following day had real and unquestionable rain there at our hotel, so we spent the morning teaching the girls how to play the card game Duck (AKA "Oh, Hell," "Pshaw," and "Screw you.") After lunch, everything cleared to the most magnificent weather and we still had a car, but instead we played 18 holes of mini-golf which I would have won if Math Man hadn't been cheating with the scorecards.

Last day with the car was clear skies, and we drove to El Teide. We went from palm-lined beach to desert to pine forest to lunar landscape to snowy mountain. It was surreal. The final ascent of the peak is by cable car, but when we arrived, it was closed due to ice. Of course. The girls had a snowball fight, and we drove down the other side of the mountain, back to Puerto de la Cruz to try to go to Loro Parque again. The moment that we were officially on the north side of the mountain, we encountered fog and rain, and had to go down that winding road through the cloud-bank. It was then that we saw how verdant the north side of Tenerife is, and when we got to the Park, the rain had subsided. The park was magnificent. Mostly it was a zoo with lots of animal shows. We came to the conclusion that the animals there are paid to pose. Each creature was perfectly situated for photo opportunities. Livia adored the dolphin show (which I thought was the best), Lena loved the orca show as she loves all aquatic predators, and Ariel favoured the sea lion show. The girls finished all of their mad-money on softies and we braced ourselves for the grueling drive back which would have gone a lot better if 5 miles from the hotel, Livia didn't suddenly burst in hysterics that she lad left her bag -- the groovy pink camouflage bag I had made for her which contained nearly every one of her beloved Christmas presents. It nearly ruined an otherwise great day.

Ariel called the park the following day on the off-chance that they had found it, though we promised Livia that we wouldn't drive all the way back to get it, and even if they had it, there was no guarantee that it would still have her stuff in it. Turns out that it was sitting in lost-and-found and that the park personnel were due to come to our very hotel to drop off promotional material, was Monday too late? Not at all. Monday morning when it was supposed to be there, it wasn't and my heart fell, but Livia kept the faith. After dinner, it was waiting for her at reception with everything still inside (including the whistle).

Friday I awoke with a head-cold, and after the Loro Parque adventure, we needed an off-day by the pool and at Magic Park. We picked this hotel specifically for the Magic Park. From 11:00 to 4:00, we could go and drop off the girls at an inside playland where entertainers made balloon animals for them or let them watch movies or draw or just lounge in the ball crawl. Every night was a mini-disco for the kids (but we had to stay for that, and only did it one night). The next day was the one I was most excited about.

My children have never been to a waterpark before, and Ariel and I love waterparks. I'm not a strong swimmer, but waterparks aren't about swimming. I bought a decongestant from the farmacia, but the real medicine was the park itself. In the Canaries, pools (and waterparks) don't use chlorinated water. Water is at a premium on an island, so instead they just use sea water, filter and treat it, but not desalinate it. So the swimming water is clear and clean, but just as salty as the Atlantic from which is was born. After a few good face-plants at the end of the waterslides, my sinuses were completely irrigated. Livia and I each were mildly sunburnt -- the only casualties of the whole trip. The next day we lounged again and taught the girls how to play Spades. Lena showed a need to work on her bidding as she would enthusiastically declared she would take 6 or more tricks, even if she had no Spades or face cards. Despite this, the girls both show a lot of promise with cards, and Ariel and I are tickled to finally have people with which to play.

Christmas eve, we played another course of miniputt, and I let Ariel win this time. Right. Livia lost her shark tooth, the baby tooth that never came out because the adult tooth grew in right behind it just like a shark's teeth do. She wrote a note to Santa asking if he would pass it along to the tooth fairy. That night, Santa came and left presents (and a Euro for Livia) and because I had obviously been naughty and hadn't been punished enough by having a skull-crushing head cold, Santa left for me the stomach plague. Ariel took the girls out to explore while I watched "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in Spanish and stayed close to the bathroom. While they were out, Ariel had a fun experience. A few days earlier, we had warned the girls not to get in the habit of running ahead out on the sidewalk because we're soon moving to Mexico City which has a reputation of kidnappings. Well, on Christmas day, while out on a busy street, Livia skipped ahead and Lena called out to her, "Livia, don't run ahead; there might be Mexicans!"

On the way home, Ariel stopped by the farmacia to buy me the best Christmas present ever -- anti-nausea medication. At least that's what the pharmacist said it was for based on however Ariel described it in Spanish. I went ahead and took one immediately, and then I let Ariel translate the indications (which were in Spanish) for me. Whatever nausea the tablet might have cured was negated by the feeling of dread as he read me the potential side effects, "Discontinue use if you show signs of anaphylatic shock, sepsis, or eruption." I don't even want to know what "eruption" means. But it didn't kill me, so I let my family take me down to the pool where I sat in the sun for some Vitamin-D therapy and I even made it to dinner where despite the huge Christmas spread, I could only stomach a piece of veal, some carrots, and a few Jordan almonds. Lena and Livia were told that they could eat as many desserts as they wanted, and I think that in addition to ice cream and little pies, they each had two slices of Yule Log. They were thoroughly stuffed with sweeties.

Our day of departure, we had a evening flight, so we went to the Jungle Park. This park had an emphasis on raptors, and during the raptor show, Lena was chosen to wear the gauntlet and a big black bird landed on her arm. It was a hoot. After the show, the trainers had the task of gathering the birds back into their cages or their perches. We spied one fellow trying to coax a large owl out of a tree, and the bird would call down to him (in owl-speak), "Yeah, right." When we left a few hours later, there were still falcons and eagles seen flying overhead with their tethers dangling down (that sounds dirty). The animal enclosures were rather low-tech with a height of seven feet of glass between us and the animals, and then fencing above that which was open enough for you to stick a hand through. At the jaguar enclosure, the first four feet of the seven foot wall of glass was artificial rocks, so technically, you could climb on the rocks and reach into the enclosure. They had signs up recommending that people not hold their children up to the fence where the cats could reach them. But the real deterrent was the jaguars themselves. One was really antsy and as you stood there, he would run at you and attack the glass. Even knowing the glass is there, it's still pretty scary to see an angry jaguar charge you and get within a few inches. He did this a few times, but always seemed to know when I was taking video of him and would only pace, and though it was scary and funny, you'll just have to imagine it yourself.

This was a red-letter trip -- we didn't visit anything even remotely historic and I didn't take anyone on a forced march. We are now safe and home. Happy to have gone and happy to be home.
Feliz Navidad

Bob Dylan is a Cylon

Tomorrow we leave cold, damp England for warm, volcanic Tenerife. As a result, all of the bloggy bits that I have rolling around in my head need to be expunged before we go.

In chronological order, Lena had a doctor's visit at the US Embassy, so we left early on the bus and had a lovely date at the British museum at Lena's request. She was studying the ancient Greeks and wanted to see some Greek stuff. Oh, how the British Museum obliged her!

Next was Bonfire Night. The girls and I went to see the fireworks at their school. It was such a lovely get-together as the kids ran around in the mild night air, while the grownup stood on the hill drinking hot mulled wine and soup (I had brought cocoa) watching the show. I marveled how we really don't have anything quite like Guy Fawkes Night in the States with all of the kids working so hard to prepare for it (each Year made a Guy for the Bonfire), but then the fireworks ended and we all walked to the base of the hill to see the youngest Form 1 student light the fire (which was Lena last year), and it suddenly became clear that we would NEVER have anything like this in America. Piled atop a significant collection of branches and lumber, soaked in gasoline were 9 Guys, dressed like dads (as they were built from pillaged clothing). Then they set fire to the bodies, and all the children cheered. It was really disturbing. But on the other hand, on the way home, there was one hill we crested where we could see the night landscape dotted with village bonfires, including our own in Crowfield. The girls watched our neighbors shoot fireworks from the house before bed and Livia's birthday.

Ariel was in Frankfurt for Livia's actual birthday, and so Livia requested that her celebrations be delayed until his return. Finally, we upgraded Livia from a tricycle to a two-wheeler, all in secret. I was all excited about the look on her face when she saw her new enormous bike, but she just looked at it and shrugged her shoulders (her favourite expression of nonchalance). Oh, well. She had also requested her typical birthday fare of chocolate cake with cherries (which I suppose is a Black Forest cake, but we don't call it that). Dana and I have been perfecting a chocolate cake recipe and I added Dana's Divine Chocolate Buttercream Icing and chopped maraschino cherries. It was divine.

Ariel and I finished watching Battlestar Galactica, and if you saw the end of the 3rd season, the title of this post would make perfect sense to you. With it's end (until the last season starts in February), Ariel and I are left with nothing much to do except travel to equatorial islands to spend Christmas. We'll be back December 27th, and I'll post lots of pictures of us sitting warm on the beach.

Dios se ríe de nosotros desde el cielo*

Funny story: our family is moving back to the US in 8 months. That isn't the funny part. We really enjoy it here in England and are already growing sad at our impending departure. Still not funny. To comfort ourselves, we talk about all the restaurants that only exist in the US that we can't wait to partake of. But the thing that we miss the most is Mexican food. There is no Mexican food in England. Our desire for Mexican food is so great, that if we were staying for an additional year, we have threatened to open a Mexican restaurant. We muse nostalgically for burritos grandes. Cue the funny part. We have just been assigned to a two-year tour in Mexico City. And in another bit of coincidence, last week, while we waited for the decision to be made of our future overseas, Ariel got word from good friends of ours that they were moving to Mexico City. When Ariel told me this, he declared, "Wouldn't it be neat if we got Mexico City?" "Yes, honey, but if we were in the business of picking jobs based on their proximity to good friends, we'd probably stay in Virginia." He agreed while I wondered if MC was even on our list of the 16 options. Turns out, it was.

So, we've accepted the post, and we will move across the border (MC is no where near the US/Mexico border) in the summer of `09. We will never long for Mexican food again. In 2010 when we're applying for our next post, I plan on emphatically voicing my love of dim sum and Hong Kong barbecue. Another bit of coincidence, just as England has no Mexican restaurants (worth eating at), MC has everything but Indian and Thai. This is funny because the quintessential English food is Indian. (My favourite fun fact: there are more Indian restaurants in London (city, population: 8 million) than there are in all of India (country, population: 1 billion)). So Ariel and I have made it our mission to stock up on Indian and Thai food. Our local Thai restaurant has started a really lovely Wednesday all-you-can-eat buffet, and we're going to try to hit that every week if we can.

I'm excited to go to Mexico, and frankly, I'm a little bit terrified. MC is the second largest city in the world. The Diplomatic Mission (embassy plus consulates) is the largest in the world. Ariel is a little daunted by the amount of work/responsibility he'll have, but we think it's a good trade from all of the travel he won't have. Currently I only see my husband on weekends. The girls will continue to attend private international school, and we'll all learn Spanish. The Spanish doesn't scare me. It's the Nahuatl (Aztec) that leaves me worried. I see those crazy words, and my brain shuts down. I have a similar reaction to Welsh.

So that's our big news. Of course, we don't leave for at least another 18 months, so just tuck this info in your head for a while. I promise not to bore you with details about Mexico until at least June 2009.

Ciao and adios.

*Translation: God laughs at us from heaven.

Blinded Me with Science

Anyone who knows me (hopefully those of you reading this post), knows that I like technology. I'm not obsessively in love with it, stalking it, sitting outside it's house at night with my high-powered binoculars. I have aging pop stars for that. No, I like to have a careful balance between the glittering eye-candy of novelty and my neurotic fear of change. I do not want an iPhone. In fact, my cell phone (this will blow your mind) only makes phone calls. Supposedly it will also visit specially-formatted Virgin Mobile websites for about £152 per minute. Anyway, this is not about my cell phone. This is about my computer.

I have noted to Ariel that as we begin to think about our next overseas tour, I will devotedly go wherever he goes, his people will be my people, his childen will be my children (from here on out) -- anywhere. There can be cannibals or poisonous marsupials or clowns, yet I will go. Our home could be a hut with no plumbing or air conditioner or hired help, and yet I would live there. However, there has to be <dramatic pause> Internet. So we recently switched ISPs (insidious sales people) to one that actually allowed us to access <dramatic pause> Internet. The company we had initially gone with started out fantastic. Cheap and fast. (The same way I like my women -- no, wait...) Then we started to have little problems. Certain US websites started timing out, and we blamed the websites, thinking they were Anglophobes who didn't realize that we are secretly Americans who have infilitrated this country to crush it under our heel for its insolence. (At least, that's what I told these sites on the phone with their customer service reps in the hopes of currying their favour). Then finally, we could no longer access iTunes, and when I went to iTunes' forum to see who else had complained about iTunes' new anti-Britain stance, I realized that, indeed, everyone who couldn't access the store was in fact in Britain! But coincidentally, we were also all using the same ISP (insipid snotty poddle). It turns out that the ISP (inspiring senior prom) is so very popular because it provides unlimited bandwidth to its customers, and it acheives this by restricting the sites its customers can visit to those that require virtually no bandwidth. This is similar to a restaurant offering a really reasonable price for an all-you-can eat buffet, but when you get inside you realize that the buffet consists of only unlimited beer nuts and popcorn. When you ask for a refund, the waitress shrugs unhelpfully and asks if you'd like a warm tap water to drink. Free refills!

When I searched Internet for a contact number for these dreadful people, Google directed me to al Qaeda. Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly al Qaeda's website, but a site for UK-living Muslims, and we Americans are taught from an early aged that when you see Arabic, there are terrorists involved. However, my assessment wasn't too far off, as there were a number of people on this sites calling for a jihad against the Great Satan -- Tiscali (our ISP (icy silent planet)). I wished them the best.

So we switched. At almost the exact same time, Ariel and I each bought new computers, so we only had good Internet for a few weeks until we began using Vista at which point all hell broke loose. I mean this literally as Vista is proof that Bill Gates is Satan, and someone has let him loose again. Vista is one of those glittering eye-candy things I wrote of earlier. It is beautiful, great and spacious, and is basically just like Windows XP except that nothing works. Some of you (especially you Mac-using liberals) are commenting to yourselves that Windows XP never worked. This is true. I refer you back to the Bill Gates statement.

My new computer is a tablet just like my old one (except that it works), and part of its magic is that I can write, click, draw on the screen with a stylus. The joy of Vista is that it is in a blood feud with the Wacom tablet drivers (which are tiny fairies that drive around inside the computer (Tron-style) making it work). Every so often Vista manages to kills one of the Wacom cousins, and the stylus fails. This leaves me with a stylus that works only as a prop, and I'm reduced to navigating with the touchpad which smells faintly of sulfer and brimstone. (I'm certain that Gates is involved in its invention).

My point? I don't have one. Enjoy!

Author's Note: As I wrote this, I decided that anyone who didn't know what an ISP is (Internet service provider) wouldn't enjoy the post at all, even (especially?) if I explained it. I also still get a particular thrill out of dropping the article before "Internet" in this post.

Guests of the World

The #1 rule of blogging (so I've read) is: keep it short. Of course, my philosophy is that if it's short, it's probably not worth mentioning all by itself. I don't like to write unless I have something to say. Unless I don't. You understand. So I build up a lot of things until it's time to write. Except that I don't like to write about things out of order. So I've been putting off writing.

Until today!

We are guest-free until probably April or May after 6 weeks of guests in September and October (three different sets). As I've already written about the other two, it leaves me to mention the final set, Ariel's Aunt Anita and Uncle Jim. We were only a stopover in the midst of their whirlwind adventure across Europe and the Atlantic. They began on the mainland visiting four countries, then us for four days, then London, then they posted themselves to the colonies on the RMS Queen Mary II. (RMS stands for "Royal Mail Ship," and it actually carries mail back and forth between our two countries.) Their trip wasn't over then as after they arrived in NYC, they continued to play tourist in the Big Apple before finally getting back to Chicago.

You might remember that this summer I posted a tribute to my Aunt Missy. You might also recall that I referred to her as "The Best Aunt Ever." In the four days that J&A were here, Anita dropped this into the conversation no less than 3 times which left me to wonder if she coveted this title for herself. Let me take this opportunity to say that, yes, Anita, you are the Best Aunt Ever (Ariel never doubted it). This has led me to think that competition is a good thing, especially as Ariel and I have 9 aunts between us. So, yes, the title can be bought.

In a brilliant bit of planning, we took J&A to see the sights only on days when the weather was miserable. We stayed home on the beautiful days and played cards while complaining that the sun was too bright streaming through the windows. The first miserable day, we stormed Warwick castle. The weatherman claimed that the rain would clear by mid-morning. By noon it was clear -- clear that it was never going to stop raining. The day I took them to Oxford, the fog was so bad that I feared we would get to the top of St. Mary's and not be able to see any of the dreaming spires. Fortunately, the fog did clear significantly, and it made the climb worth it. Looking back on my pictures from the various visitors we've had, I noticed that we seemed to take everyone to the top of St. Mary's.



Hopefully I'll write more stuff soon. Enjoy!


Comments
EvilGM said,
16 November 2007
Chairman Mao was a pain in the butt to get up those stairs. I think he kept referring to the symbol of Western Dogma, but I’m a little rusty on my Mandarin.

All Creatures Great and Small

We have a cat. His name is Little Man, and he is a great but useless cat. He catches mice. Then he brings them to us. Sometimes he tosses them in the air and bats their little bodies around until the mouse falls under a piece of furniture where it remains until the stench brings us running to find it there. Or maybe even the mouse is still alive, and Little Man stalks it around the house until <ding!> it's nap-time! There goes the little mouse to a dark corner to hide while LM walks away. Normally, the girls and I would spot the mouse; we would catch it, and release it to the garden. But the mice have gotten out of control, and though running in terror along the baseboards is cute and pitiable, pooping behind my washing machine is not, and mouse poison had to be purchased. Check out this box. How do these mouse poison manufacturers expect to make any money? Why would I be willing to kill this adorable mouse on the front? If they really want me to buy it, they'd show the nasty nests these rodents build in your house along with the long list of inedible things that they have chewed through just to kill time (this list might include 3 schoolbags, a shin-pad (ate the rubber foam off of it), and a chenille rug). So we baited the house with cat-safe poison (in case Little Man ever broke with tradition and actually ate a mouse for once).

Before long I was sitting in the living room when I saw a little scamp dash out from behind the TV cabinet. Much hilarity ensued as we three female-folk put on our brave hunter-faces and then screamed every time the mouse made a sudden move. It was finally caught and I picked it up and tossed it out the back door. The next night my friend Cathy and her daughters were over, and I related this story, and she mocked me for being too soft to kill the mouse. Not 10 minutes passed before we all went into the kitchen and found that Little Man had brought in a live, unhurt tiny mouse that stood frozen in shock in the middle of the kitchen floor. We all hovered and remarked on how cute the little guy was and then I looked up and asked Cathy for her shoe.

Look of shock: "Why?!"

Me, very calmly, "I'm going to bash his little head in."

She went on to plead for the mouse's safe recovery, and as I had always intended, I set him on his way outside. There is no shame in kindness.

In addition to Little Man's great skill and gracious gifts (the mouse was still alive and unhurt because he gave it to me to play with), he also prowls the neighborhood with his buddy Halo and makes snarky comments at the other cats. Occasionally other cats come around, even a few have snuck in the cat door and eaten LM's food. There is one cat, a big brown tabby that I've often found sitting outside, that antagonizes LM to no end. Often I know the tabby is around because I can hear Little Man at the door hissing. One afternoon I walked into the kitchen to find LM sitting in the window making a horrible fuss about something outside. I looked, and sure enough, it was the tabby. The two cats were 15 feet apart and separated only by the window, so I opened the screenless window. Little Man turned and gave me a look that said, "What the freak are you doing, crazy woman!?! That cat could eat me whole!" My cowardly little kitty back up and allowed me to scare the tabby away.

So yesterday morning came dark and early as it does, and I noted to myself that Little Man had come and gone many times in the night. I know every time he returns because the moment he gets back on the bed, he plops down onto me -- the only place he'll sleep on the whole bed. So the girls and I all met in our jammies out on the landing, and I asked, "How did everyone sleep last night?" Livia groaned, but Lena answered promptly, "Terribly! I had to listen to that cat meowing all night, and then I had to listen to Little Man outside my door hissing!" I took that to mean that Lena had had a trippy night of dreams, but as if on cue, LM appeared there on the landing hissing at something downstairs, and down below I could hear a cat meowing. I went down to find the big brown tabby sitting in my dining room. When he saw me, he dashed through the kitchen and out the cat door. It was most perplexing. I scolded my cowardly cat that wouldn't even defend his own home, but would instead just hiss and then run back to his mommy. But as the day progressed, the tabby appeared a few more times in the laundry room to eat, each time dashing out when he saw me. Finally at 5:00 when I came downstairs to go pick up the girls, I could hear the incessant meowing again. I snuck down, closed the kitchen door to hinder escape, and followed the sound into the living room. There was that tabby sitting on my couch like he owned the place, meowing for no good reason. He dashed into the hall, and when he realized he was trapped, he did let me pet him, so I found he had a good healthy coat and no obvious injuries that might cause him to meow without end. I left him locked in the hall and picked up the girls. This was a terrible mistake. No, the cat didn't tear up anything or crap or spray. The mistake was letting the girls meet the cat. They spent about 15 minutes petting the cat before I let him out, by which time they had named him (Meowy) and started collecting little outfits for him to wear to tea. I tried to explain to the girls that there are many reasons why we couldn't keep the cat including, 1. the cat meows all the time, 2. the cat is our cat's arch-enemy, 3. I'm only paying for one cat to go back to America, 4. the cat just won't be quiet, 5. he probably belongs to someone else, 6. as we have intentionally kept LM small in a bonsai fashion so he will later fit in the overhead compartment, this cat is too big and would die in the cargo hold, and 7. Yo, Tabby! Shut-up already!

When LM came in that evening for the night, I shut the cat door. About every 45 minutes, I would hear a horrible ruckus as Meowy would beat against the locked door trying to get in to eat. This continued all night. This morning when I opened the front door to see the kids off, there under the shrubs was the poor tabby, locked out of his new home. Then Little Man redeemed himself and ran the cat off. I haven't seen the tabby since.

Bam!

Finally, the post about Mom and Ross' visit.

First I should like to take a tangent and discuss things that make me feel old. When I was a kid and we learned about proper possessive nouns, the rule went that for names that ended in S, you still added apostrophe-s unless that person was extremely dead in which case you just added the apostrophe. The example given was the staff of long-dead Old Testament prophet Moses was "Moses' staff". I could remember this because I had a dog named Moses. His rawhide bone was "Moses's bone." Then my brother was born. And at some point in early high-school, the visit of Ross became "Ross' visit" instead of "Ross's visit" despite the utter coolness of three S's in a row. It normally seems that language change over hundreds of years, so does that make me hundreds of years old? Why, I remember when all of the continents were joined together.

So we had an interesting visit with my mother and brother. This was my mother's second visit and my brother's first, his plane ticket being a graduation gift from my mother for finishing university despite his best efforts to the contrary. Ariel screwed up many a good plan to tour about by going on a trip to Florence (the Italian one) right in the midst of their visit, leaving me to have to always get home in time to pick the girls up from school. But we managed.

The first day we took the great trek South, which swings us past Oxford and into the land of prehistoric man. We saw Silbury Hill and the stones of Avebury and Stonehenge as well as one of the white horses that early people carved into the chalk hills of Wiltshire. These sites attract a more tofu-eating deodorant-eschewing crowd than most, and in Avebury, Ross and I overheard the cashier in a New Age shop remark to a customer that this year had been a lean year for Crop Circles. This put my brother and me into a rather irreverent mood for the rest of the trip, including our bus journey to Salisbury.

My mother turned 50 this year. She didn't take it nearly as poorly as we had hoped, but we still tried to find ways to remind her that half a century had passed since her birth. On the trip to Salisbury, she picked up a brochure about Salisbury and was reading it without her glasses. I should note here that Mom didn't start wearing glasses to combat the effects of old age, unless she's been old since she was a child. So in this case, it wasn't some sort of vanity that caused her to squint at the page, but just run-of-the-mill laziness. Anyhow, she was reading about the Cathedral when she looked up and said matter-of-factly, "In England, they call Holy Communion 'bam.'" Now I will be the first to admit that I have never attended any type of religious service here in England other than our LDS services, so everything I know is secondhand. And I will also readily admit that I am not always on top of other churches' lingo, but "bam" sounded so foreign and well, wrong to me that I had to question her sources. She pointed out on the pamphlet under the Services Schedule where she learned this and I saw:

8am (Holy Communion)

Ross and I laughed and laughed (remember, we were still punch drunk from the Crop Circles). For the rest of the trip, whenever my mother had a "Senior Moment," Ross and I would yell, "Bam!" like Emeril Lagasse.


Our next big trip was for Ross who had said he wanted to hike. I took everybody to the Peak District, and though I knew there was no way that I'd get Mom to climb Kinder Scout (the highest Peak), we could make a good effort. Plus, the trail began (and thus ended) at a pub, so I knew all would end well. This was good, because it drizzled the whole time. Ross abused sheep on the way up, and all was going pretty well until Jacob's Ladder came into sight. This was to be our destination, but when Mom saw it, she began to have second thoughts. You see, there are no peaks in the pointy sense in the Peak District, and so technically Kinder Scout is the highest point of a boggy moorland on top of a very high plateau, and to get to the top of the plateau you have to climb Jacob's Ladder. Jacob's Ladder from a distance looks like an 150 metre tall stone waterfall. It goes almost straight up from the valley floor to the plateau. It's a lot like Jack (of beanstalk fame) climbing up the giant table leg. Mom balked at this, plus, her camera batteries were all exhausted, and if Mom can't take a picture of something, there's no use going there. Ross on the other hand had spotted a large stone outcropping at the top and he was determined to conquer Jacob's Ladder (his first name is Jacob) and pee on the rock outcropping (because he is part Labrador Retriever). Mom went back and Ross and I scurried up (Ross scurried, and I panted and rest frequently). We met a man who was coming down, and when asked how was the view, he replied bitterly, "Terrible." Actually, the view was great if you don't mind being in the cloud layer. You'll notice only a very vague silhouette of Ross on the stone outcropping (marked forevermore with his scent). We made great time back to the pub, The Old Nag's Head, where Mom was sitting warm and dry. It was here that Ross had an ale called "Well-Hung Ale" with a picture of a bull which was, um, well-hung. Duh. He claimed it was also pretty tasty too.

There were also touristy things to do closer to home, and finally we went to London. Ross actually requested the Tower Bridge and maybe an art museum so we went and made fun of the art at the Tate Modern (we also saw a lot of things we each liked), took the Tower Bridge Tour (good value in London at £6 per person), and enjoyed exceptional weather.

Lena returned from her annual school trip to the Devon coast where she had a spectacular time despite being cold and wet for the whole week. While there, she lost a tooth, and the tooth fairy found her there. This was interesting as she had lost a tooth a month earlier, and it took the tooth fairy 3 days to get it together and pay her for the thing. One of Lena's friends (who was sleeping over the night that the earlier tooth fell out) had been making disparaging comments about the tooth fairy not being real and the such, which we assumed was why the tooth fairy took so long to show up, having to make certain that Anabel the Unbeliever wasn't there. But Lena (and Anabel) returned home from the trip with her testimony of the tooth fairy reaffirmed as neither Ariel nor I knew that Lena had lost a tooth and therefore could not have been sneaking money under her pillow. Livia is about to turn 7 and she has been terribly discouraged that all of her friends have been losing their teeth, but she didn't even have any that were loose. Then out of the blue, she came home with a tooth in her pocket and a hole in her mouth. I'm fairly certain that she paid one of the boys in her class to knock out the tooth. The funny part is that when I saw it, I melodramatically declared that, "You are a woman now!" and she's taken this to heart. Whenever we deny her anything, she responds that she's a grownup now that she's lost a tooth.

I think that I've finally grown discouraged with the clunkiness of this blog software and in the near future I'm going to switch to something much lighter. If I can, I will continue to host here, but if I have to send you to an account hosted on Blogger, so be it. Ciao.