-H.

PS-did anyone watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics and, after thinking What the fuck is up with the all virgin bride business, think-So many clowns here and yet no one is trying to kill them all?

PPS-my new blog design is the big change that I promised! Many thanks to the very talented Taughnee from Endeavor Creative. My new blog design was an early birthday gift from the lovely Statia and I absolutely love it. If you're thinking of a new design Taughnee and Endevaor Creative are the ones you want, not least because the woman has a sense of humor that can recall the Dukes of Hazard lyrics, and that has to be respected.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:47 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 125 words, total size 1 kb.

Last night I went for a few drinks with some neighbors, and when I came back the house was cold.

Very cold.

A pissed-off Angus looked at me wryly and confirmed that the heating was dead. The boiler is dead. Basically, with the exception of the fireplace and my hair dryer, that all possible sources of heating in the household are dead. This, as we enter the coldest week of the year so far and enjoy the snowfall. When you try to run hot water, the water heater sounds like Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, and the water comes out cold anyway. Angus called the letting agency and got the emergency number-the engineer has been out here today but doesn't think he'll have it fixed until later today (hopefully), as he needs some spare parts.

The house is so fucking cold that Anne Rice could use it as a mood setting for her next Goth vampire novel.

The fire is roaring away, I'm wearing enough clothing to look like the Michelin man, my nipples fell off somewhere upstairs and are now being used as cat toys, and we have to go to the gym to shower shortly, once our conference calls conclude.

Hot water is one of my trigger points. We all have one, it can be something big, it can be something small. Some people get wildly angry if they bang their head, others light up like a Roman Candle if they have to wait in a line. Some get wound up tight over the electricity bill, and others go postal if their clothes aren't spaced apart just so. For me, the single best reason to start a civil war is hot water. Bloodshed is acceptable if it means the difference between a lukewarm and a hot shower.

The house I lived in Sweden had a teeny-tiny hot water heater. There was enough hot water for one person's half shower, the other half of the shower and anyone to follow after that was fucked. I used to go wild with anger every single morning as I battled to shower as fast as humanly possible, soaping and shaving simultaneously and winding up with razor burn like shingles down half of my body.

My biggest requirement for the new house is this-there must be hot water a-plenty. I'm not sure Angus gets how wildly religious I am about the hot water. I like my showers HOT. I like my showers HOT and LONG, and if that means a higher electricity bill then that's a price I'm willing to pay. A hot shower that goes cold is like ripping off my fingernails-it makes me crazy. I don't have strong opinions about a lot of things, but I go off the meter on the hot water.

We've started gathering our kit for holiday-so far the list of things to bring is beginning to far outweigh our packing abilities. I can't believe it's three days away-we leave Monday lunchtime, and I cannot wait. I bought a nice floaty cover-up sundress for the Cook Island days, and we've been checking on the weather constantly for both Cook Islands and New Zealand. We have a day layover in Los Angeles on the way over (it just worked out that way with the flights), which we will spend at Disneyland. We are very, very excited about the whole holiday, and each and every day is booked with something to do, which feels very rewarding.

The work side of things is nearly done, as I'm pretty much planning on bunking off at lunchtime today. I'm nervous about taking time away in some aspects-every time I go away and come back, it's only to be catapult into the more fluffy version of hell. People drink out of the Drink Me bottle and become unrecognizable on my return, as I search for the White Rabbit and they try to find ways to take me to mock trial. The good news is, the job? She is not me, she is still not my life. The bad news is it is a big part of my life, and one I have to live with.

So I tear my attention away from fucked up heaters, from meeting calls and too many things to do in too little time. I don't think about the fact that the house is a mess, but we don't care as upon our return from holiday it's all getting packed up anyway and moved to the new place, where there is space enough for everything. I don't worry about how many books to bring (Angus is only taking one book. One! Who can survive two and a bit weeks on holiday with just one book?) I try to dial down the stress on the actual trip itself, the airports, the air time, the hassle. I don't dwell on things that hurt and things that ache, as soon there will be snorkeling, and that is my soothing balm for the soul (and I get to try out my new snorkel, called a 'dry snorkel' and equipped with a purge valve). Checking the weather seems to be depressing-everywhere we go it's hot just until the day we arrive, then suddenly it rains.

But that's ok. As long as there's hot water in all of the places we stay, I won't mind.

-H.

PS-there is hopefully a great big change coming this weekend....Fancy a guess?

PPS-I KNOW! I am refreshingly un-original lately and my posts have a boring suck factor so high they can be used to seduce wild animals into a state of calm. I am hoping that the holiday helps refresh the batteries. If not, well, there goes my career as a jingle writer.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:56 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment
Post contains 956 words, total size 5 kb.

So we've left it until very last minute, but Angus and I have been going to the gym everyday this past week (it's a bathing suit alert-in exactly 7 days I'll be in the South Pacific, staring down the business end of lycra and hoping to God that lycra is code for "corset-like swimming costume". I would like to know that I can pull on that swimsuit and then suddenly have the figure of Eva Longoria, but I have a feeling it doesn't work that way.) I'm sitting here in two layers of clothes in front of a roaring fire at 930 in the morning as it's currently snowing outside, so believe me-the warm South Pacific appeals in a very big way.

One week and I'll be in the Cook Islands'¦one week and I'll be in the Cook Islands'¦one week and I'll be in the Cook Islands and I cannot fucking wait.

The gym has become a place of real refuge to me, albeit the typical scene of a treadmill battle (I have started to enter in the machine that I am age 32, as...well...it's a month away and I need to face reality that 31 is kissing my ass goodbye. That, and I have to be honest about how much I weigh, since my relationship with a treadmill needs to be symbiotic, not a complete lie about the weight like I usually do). I have become one of those yuppies who has to have certain elements to their exercise-when on the treadmill, I have to have interesting TV, and this leads to an even more frightening revelation-I cannot run without TV. I'm not interested in running around the cricket green, I don't want to tour the neighboring fields'¦I want to run and I want to watch The Simpsons while I do it. If I'm left with the news, an in-depth analysis of the economy, or, say, curling, then I want to get off the treadmill and lift heavy things, ostensibly at people that I don't like. When I run, I want to be constantly entertained so I can forget the sheer misery of the actual activity of running. I want to be entertained, and I want 32 inch LCD screens to entertain me.

I am a product of the Nike generation and I have no problem with that.

We've started up at the gym daily as it's nice to feel that we've been virtuous and worked off our daily caloric intake. I can't say as we've lost a lot of weight, but I am feeling better and fall asleep in an instant, sleeping-tablet free. It's nice to sleep, and even nicer sleeping with aching thigh muscles as I am aware that I am working the legs even more than usual. I work on my upper arms and back as I'm beginning to have serious paranoia about back fat-what happens if I get the dripping kind of back fat, the kind that looks like bat wings? Then what? My god, what a nightmare. Batman Back Fat. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and naturally float back down to earth with the aid of far too much toast lodged under the skin of my rhomboids.

I have still been enjoying yoga three times a week-Hatha yoga twice a week and ashtanga yoga once a week. It doesn't make me look like Madonna and never will, but I am even amazing myself.

It's been nearly a year since I started yoga lessons and I can't believe the pretzel-like contortions that I can get myself into. I'm not full of myself here, the truth is there's precious little in life that I think I am actually any good at, but yoga is one of those things. It helps to have too-long pony-like legs, which up until yoga has meant I have had a lifetime of tripping over my own shadow. At last now I can do the things that many can't-I can sit in the lotus position and have my knees flat on the floor. I can the splits in both directions. I can wrap one leg around each other and stand in the Eagle. I can do twists, turns, and balance postures.

I love it so much that I can't believe I didn't get into yoga years ago.

Reena continues to be a pain in the neck. She drives me crazy in ashtanga yoga, where we have to practice something called ujjayi breathing, where you close your throat a bit and sound as though you've been enjoying about 10 packs a day since you were 4 years old. Most of us just sound like we have a healthy case of black lung, but Reena! Oh, Reena has to sound like a truck convoy making their way down the road. A Sleestack has nothing on her as she gasps and gutters her way through the class. She's injured one of her knees in her kung fu class (she does all the yoga classes, Hatha, ashtanga, and even takes qi gong and now kung fu classes. She told us she tried to do a spinning kick and wound up blowing her knee out, to which I think: Maybe you shouldn't have tried the spinning kick on day 3 of a new career in kung fu class irritation, yes? With each posture that we do, she makes it clear that she has to be careful of her knee.

Instructor: Now we'll try the reverse triangle'¦
Reena: That's really hard on my knee! I'm going to have to try it, though!

Instructor: Our next posture is the Warrior 2.
Reena: Oh my God, you want to torture me, don't you! That hurts terribly!

Instructor: I hope you've all been working on your handstands, as we have to practice the jump-throughs today.
Reena: Nope, my knee just won't do it. I'll sit here and breathe in ujjayi breathing, you know, where I sound like I'm channeling a bottle of shaving cream?

We got it, Reena. The knee is sore. Maybe we can get someone to kiss it and make it better, but until then just suck it up and keep going. Or better yet-if you have a bad knee and need laparascopic surgery, maybe being in a yoga class isn't a good idea, huh? Just a thought, I mean-I'm not a doctor, I just play one on TV, but since I myself have bad knees and can imagine the pain of making them contort into strange positions (I badly injured one of them in a bicycle accident when I was a kid, and then I had such a hostile growth spurt that my kneecaps couldn't keep up, so they are more or less separated from my legs as the tendons are in bad shape. It's pretty cool, I can move my kneecap around my leg and gross people out. That, and I can pop out my shoulder joints. Childhood humor of "What's grosser than gross?" has nothing on me.)

The instructor told me that I am the most advanced in the classes, and like a 9 year-old being awarded a gold star for best attendance it gave me a high that lasted for days. Again, I'm not good at much, but one year after starting being told I am the most advanced? Yeah. That felt great. And the truth is, I don't feel like quitting and I don't feel like it takes over my life-I wouldn't mind learning more about yoga and maybe someday I can get teacher's accreditation (so when that inevitable nervous breakdown finally strikes I can really close the loop on the whole "crunchy-granola-organic-fruit-loop" lifestyle I am very nearly leading already, and as I sit there a bit twitchy and tweaky before a classroom, I can take comfort in the fact that although my stomach lining went AWOL long ago at least I can put my feet behind my head.) That said, Reena is taking off of class for an entire month in the summer as she's going to do yoga teacher accreditation, which doesn't bode well for the rest of us-she already likes to tell us all what we're doing wrong and how to do it better, which is going to grind down on my very last fucking nerve pretty soon.

Each time I am able to do a new position, I feel great. I tell Angus about it but he's not really interested, so I re-live it in my head. There's something about being Gumby-like that makes me feel really good. Sometimes we practice what the instructor calls "Happy yoga", as she does a sequence of postures designed to make the hips more relaxed and more open. On these days she sings: "Happy hips are loose hips!", to which I always think: If only I had a nickel for every time I've heard that one'¦

On Sunday we spent a lot of time doing positions that we don't usually do, and one of them involved sitting down, spreading your legs as far apart as possible (nearly in the splits), and then bending down from the waist. In this posture I have never been able to get very far down. The point is to, legs spread as wide as possible, bend from the hips and get your chest and arms flat on the floor. I was halfway down when the instructor walked behind us, trying to urge our hips and backs to push us go further down. The women started going forward a few inches as she gently guided pressure on our lower backs. When she came up to me, she pressed on a spot of my lower back and WHAM! My chest hit my mat and my forehead hit the floor, my legs nearly in side-to-side splits. I did it. I was doing the posture.

The instructor chuckled. "Your bad back isn't strong enough to push you down, but you're flexible enough to do this."

I couldn't believe it. The rest of the class she would come down and adjust all of us, and each time with guidance from her I was able to do almost all of the postures completely. I couldn't believe it, I felt like gold.

I looked up once and saw Reena looking at me, her knee brace having migrated from her knee and bunched up around her upper thigh, her face a picture of annoyance.

It's all worth it baby.

Here's to karma.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:51 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 1746 words, total size 9 kb.

UTI time aside, sometimes I have been waking up feeling this enormous sense of light and possibility (the UTI time was pockmarked by extreme irritability, to the extent that I made 'snarky' look like something for kindergarteners. Luckily my mouth-brain connection is largely disconnected (except under times of alcohol duress) and thus my snarkiness went hidden.) On Tuesday I woke up with a bit of a hangover-y feeling, a side effect I'm getting from the antibiotics, but underneath that was an enormous sense of happiness.

I don't know why it was.

But it was there, and it was enough for me.

We went to the gym to workout (we've left it a bit last minute, but both Angus and I have stepped up our exercise routines, so we're going almost daily and I'm doing more than just yoga three times a week.) While tripping along on the treadmill, I look out the window and see a small shower of snowflakes making their way down, coating everything with a Teflon layer of white. The news bleated on all the channels, and I watched articles about Wembley Stadium, bird flu, and China's fattest cat (which eats 6 pounds of pork a day. I can't even visualize what 6 pounds of pork looks like, let alone as a daily supplement.)

And I feel good.

I'm hating the exercise, but I feel good.

I head to the train station, as it's a London therapy day. In the afternoon I'm meeting my Aussie friend for lunch, and then I have a meeting with a senior manager at 5. Dressed down in jeans and bearing an 'I'm going on holiday soon' attitude, I plug the iPod in and, nursing a cup of train station coffee, I play Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto on top volume.

And I'm smiling.

I'm feeling those nagging, tingling, oh-my-God-I-want-toast PMS early warning symbols, but I feel good. We have three different to-do lists as we start planning our move from our current rental into our new house (among the list-to rip out all of the goddamn carpet in the new house, especially the carpet in the bathroom. It's an unique English curiosity that the majority of bathrooms are carpeted. Carpeted bathrooms-does it get much more squicky than that? Can you imagine a carpeted bathroom in a germ-a-phobe's house? Nope, not interested either.) but I don't feel stressed'¦I feel excited. We're been scouring reclamation yards for things for the new house, and have spotted a vintage church pew that we're going to put in the hallway. I've been thinking about paint colors for my study, the study where I'll have the frog desk lamp (Valentine's gift from the boy from my new favorite store Octopus), my Family Guy and Rosie the Riveter action figures, and more toys than you can imagine.

It feels so good.

On top of that there are a million things to do-when we return my passport needs more pages added, as it's already full. Work is ramping up to get crazy again, just when it has gotten calm. Best of all, we get to find a dog that wants to be part of the family.

We'd had a family dinner on Sunday with Angus' whole family in East Grinstead. It was a good time, they'd served up an enormous curry lunch, and I found that I am being treated like-and, in fact, feel like-I'm a part of the family. Nieces come and go off my lap, my handbag is more exciting than Mary Poppins', and it's all very easy-going, to the point where Angus' mum and stepfather just gave me three antique camera (two of them pre-war and one from the 1950's) that they had-they didn't want them anymore, did I want them? (Umm...YES, YES I WANT THEM.)

Before we went there, we stopped at the RSPCA in Godstone again. Once more, I'm thrilled that about half of the dogs have found homes. We walked through the hallways to check out all the babies (with me trying to pet each and every one of them), and Angus felt partial with a liver-spotted Dalmatian. Myself, I'm not so keen on Dalmatians, so I kept walking. There, in one of the cages further down, was a black dog whose legs were absolutely covered in mud. He (I think it was a he, I didn't ask him as it seemed intrusive, and his card on the cage with his details was missing) was a large and rather shaggy dog with bright brown eyes. He looked up at me and I knelt down beside his cage, where he then whimpered and put his head to the wire. I reached my fingers in (a no-no) and scratched him, and he kept turning his head to allow better access.

I love him.

In my heart, it's a race between him and Reggie, although at least Reggie is in a no-kill shelter (albeit, he's still in a shelter). There's still Battersea to visit as well, as we really want a dog that has grim prospects to have a home with us, because we all deserve a second chance. But the shaggy black dog's details were missing, so I have no idea if cat is his favorite meal, if he's already taken, if he's aggressive with children'¦I'm hoping Angus will take us back there this Saturday. I really want to see this dog again.

At night when I dream there are dogs amongst the Kafka.

And again, I feel hopeful.

Life is maybe far from perfect-the utter divide between me and my family wages on, with no resolution nor any indication that either side is interested in reconciliation any time soon. But I am growing my own family, composed of friends that I love and care about, and maybe that's what family is about. Fertility issues are still at the fore, which is a topic for my other site. I have to deal with the US Embassy for my passport and that's usually not a good thing. My therapist tells me that we are reaching the first of the hard parts of my therapy, which doesn't sound like a walk in the park and I am struggling with some things inside of myself and in life in general. Starbucks has stopped offering the gingerbread latte (those fucks). I am severely stressed about getting to the airports early on all of our various flights for our holiday, and am also pretty stressed about the long flights when we fly back home (about 30 hours worth of flights). I also want the kids to have a great time, and we have booked the holiday solid with various activities-swimming with dolphins, swimming with seals, scuba lessons, two days stay at a working New Zealand farm.

I wonder if life can be like this, a scraping of that you keep under the fingernail, a sight that has the texture of roses that you try to keep in your peripheral vision. Sometimes, I feel like my emotions are newborn, and it takes all I have to figure out what's inside of me and what it all means. In the grand scheme of living inside my skin, I am nearly 32 years old but I still feel every single day that there is something new to hold on to, something I have to learn, somewhere I am trying to be. And through it all, if I can keep the things in the left and right of my vision, if I can remember the sycamore leaves, the feel of wire and dog fur, the scent of marshmallow body lotion, then maybe I'll get to where I need to be. I'm not remotely close to the finish line, but at least I am in the race.

But I am feeling'¦positive.

It's the strangest feeling.

I wish I could bottle it, and dab it behind my ears from time to time.

-H.

PS-how could the Olympic coach cut Cammie Granato? Is he MAD? Good luck to the USA hockey team, I'll love you always, and if anyone can explain both A) the attraction and B) the rules in how to play curling'¦nah, never mind, don't bother. It's not very interesting and anyway the UK curling team is out of the running (they also were very horsey-faced, whereas the American women's curling team? Jesus H. they were cute cheerleader types.)

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:31 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1399 words, total size 8 kb.

1 I don't understand most of curling either. Yet, every damn time it comes on, I find myself watching, occasionally yelling "Broom! Broom, damn it!" for the sheer fun of it.

Posted by: Z. Hendirez at February 22, 2006 09:45 AM (qkHVe)

2 could you maybe have 2 dogs? since you have a big yard? then you wouldnt have to choose between them, and they could keep each other company during the long hours that you're gone, since you both work so much.. just a thought.

Posted by: woof at February 22, 2006 04:25 PM (4dWnl)

3 Broom broom... so that's what they're yelling! I admit, I completely don't understand the attraction, but I am sucked in every time its on. I've found that I can only watch the women's curling though because all the men I saw looked like they belonged playing the villians in 24 or something. Creepy.

Posted by: Erin at February 22, 2006 04:26 PM (zw8QA)

4 Wow, it's really quiet in here today. It's been labelled a Suck Post Day in our house.

Posted by: Helen at February 22, 2006 05:27 PM (9aqMI)

5 There are no posts that are suck posts in my eyes.

Posted by: Paul at February 22, 2006 05:41 PM (wypb3)

6 My inlaws have lavender carpet in the bathroom, apparently the tiles under are wonky...but they're black mold near bit that's near the shower...I keep my mouth shut. PS thanks for the Flickr comment.

Posted by: Juls at February 22, 2006 07:40 PM (f5DPf)

7 I am jealous of your "new" cameras. Is one of them a Leica? If so I am reeeeally jealous. Curling fricken cracks me up. The sweepers are hilarious. The only thing that would make it funnier was if they added some squeeky clean sound effects when the start sweeping. er eee er eee...

Posted by: Lee at February 22, 2006 07:54 PM (PYZOC)

8 I find it amusing that here in the US, during the day your choices are curling or hockey, day in and day out. Everything else is saved and doled out piecemeal in primetime. I hate NBC. But I am enjoying having the Russia/Canada men's game on while I'm working at home and having some yummy palak paneer (out of a box!) Oh, and try the Cinnamon Dolce at Whorebucks. I like it almost as much as the gingerbread.

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 22, 2006 09:16 PM (jOkK0)

9 Starbucks has stopped offering the gingerbread latte (those fucks). I swear, the only thing worse than a Crackberry addiction is a Smackbucks one.

Posted by: Jim at February 22, 2006 10:07 PM (tyQ8y)

10 yay for east grinstead! its my home town, famous for... well... nothing. but now famous for angus' family! glad you're feeling better. UTIs suck.

Posted by: Anna at February 22, 2006 11:53 PM (/whzV)

11 Helen! I couldn't comment the last several times I was here! Kept getting some error screen... swears to self Anywho, I LOVE LOVE LOVE your new house! OMFG! So envious; do you know the size of our "garden" here at our house is the size of a friggin' CORNFLAKE!?!? yeah...think about it. What wonderful times you'll have in your beautiful garden! :-) And sorry about the UTI. So very glad you are better. So relieved that so many dogs found home; double Yay! And more Yays on the dancing and the woodworking. And feeling positive is a *good* thing. Yes, yes it is! :-) Can't understand the curling at all either, sorry to say. But the snowboarding downhill was awesome! :-)

Posted by: Amber at February 23, 2006 12:39 AM (zQE5D)

12 Hey Helen.. Sent you a copy of the recipe for that latte you like

Posted by: Larry at February 23, 2006 01:33 AM (heMHk)

13 Those US Curling girls are from my hometown - as was the men's curling team. With all of that working with me you'd think I'd know SOMETHING about curling (since apparently I'm from the hotbed of American curling) but I don't. How will I ever walk through town without everyone knowing my shame?!

Posted by: Michele at February 27, 2006 04:12 AM (Nd4ll)

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She's not the only one trying to enrich her life. It was Angus' suggestion, and I agreed to it partly because he suggested it (the aim to please is never very far away in a BPD Asian-descent) and partly because I have never done this kind of thing) that we take not only the ballroom dancing, but another course on Tuesdays as well.

This is actually pretty cool in my books-I am the kind of heinous loser that, provided I am interested in the subject, I can go to school forever. I love being in classes and learning new things, as long as they don't include things like Pythagoras Theorems, Occam's Razor, and periodic charts. If the classes are in, say, crunchy granola subjects, literature, or languages, then sign me up (I wanted to take a course in Arabic, but Angus voted that one down. He says he's too old to be learning languages.)

So Arabic lessons aside, we poured through the catalog and Angus decided to choose one for us, which I had no problem with-as far as I am concerned, if I haven't taken this kind of class then I'm interested. So we signed up, and every other Tuesday we go to a local high school, where we once again enjoy a hands-on class.

Woodworking.

Seriously.

The very basis of woodworking (also called cabinet making) is that you don't use screws and nails to connect the wood in furniture, you use intricate carvings to get them to hold. Ironically, some of these joints actually hold better than just screwing the pieces of wood together, which is what we would do.

Our class is run by a professional cabinet maker named Toby. He retired some years ago and is of the old school of woodworking-Toby started as an apprentice in woodworking when he was 14, and has done it ever since. His tools are worn and he knows one million shortcuts. He's a perfectionist, and the quickest way to wind him up is to ask if you can use the chisel as a screwdriver. The only time he uses screws are to install hinges on to doors-he can make up to three doors a day, and that may sound like nothing, but bear in mind that he does all of the sides and joints by hand, and all are done by woodworking joints.

I had never had any exposure to woodworking before, ever. And the first day of class, it was painfully obvious that not only had I never done any joinery work outside of sexual gymnastics, but I hadn't heard of the majority of the tools, either. What the fuck was a dowel? I know a mitre gauge must gauge mitres, but then what the hell is a mitre? I was handed a massive toolbox, and the only things I recognized were the hammer, the protractor, and the saw. The rest of it was a mystery.

This class has been going on for many years, and has the same people coming every year. Basically, once your learn the basics you go through a series of self-imposed projects. But if you have people that have been doing the same class for many years, so you'll have cliques, but sadly not the kind with Sarah Jessica Parker in them, more like the kind filled with people who would need more lubing to have sex than the nearest Boots would carry.

One woman in the class has been doing said projects for nearly 10 years now. Her house must be so full of joinery shit that an earthquake wouldn't blow that house down. She is the bossy, fussy know-it-all of the class, the kind of woman that you just know likes to drown kittens in her spare time.

One guy in the class has a load of beautiful old wood he is using to make a bench out of. We asked him where he got the wood from, and he told us they're his old windows. He ripped out his beautiful old vintage sash windows for modern UPVC windows. I wanted to shake him for his idiocy, but then I thought maybe I should just smack him upside the head and steal his wood.

There is a woman who would represent the Hollywood stereotype of the tough-as-nails lesbian, one I want to take to the side and say that the haircut? It's a little severe, is that the look she's going for? Well, I would say that, but she can seriously kick my ass and I don't mean that in an "I cater to butch sterotypes" kind of way-I mean she's a good 6 inches and 30 pounds on me and looks like she can benchpress our collective weights without breaking a sweat.

There are a few of the doddering variety, and one sweet elderly woman that likes to spend her entire time bringing in odd hunks of wood and spending the class time sanding the shit out of them with the lathe. This is what she does. It amuses me, I have no idea what she's going to do with all those concave objects.

Together the clique occupy the main tables and spend their time talking about politics, and as they're all Tories with a xenophobic bent, it often winds me up. We all try to drown them out, and secretly hope that as we get older, we won't get bitter either.

We learnt the basics-namely that in fine carpentry there are two main types of joints that are used, one called dovetail and one called mortise and tenon. And unlike these web page links, Toby has none of that machinery joiner work. All of the joints are made by hand and with hand-held tools. Wood is cut with a saw in the hand. Chisels are used to carve out holes for the joints. Estimations are done on the wood as there's no machine to measure things out for us.

The chisel has become my good friend.

Angus and I joined at the same time as three other newbies, and the five of us share a table and a laugh every Tuesday. We learnt how to make dovetail joints, which is the main one that Angus uses as he's making a hanging cabinet. Stupid Helen decided to make a small table, which I will then paint and smash up some tiles to attach to the top in a mosaic pattern. To make a square table I'll have to make 8 mortise and tenon joints, and those are real bastards.

Surprisingly, I love the class. I'm having a great time working with my hands, doing something that I would never, ever have done ever. We enjoy the class immensely, actually. The class is often chaos-the old dear on the lathe is a wee bit unreliable, and more than once an object she's latheing the fuck out of has come loose on the lathe and been winged across the room. The last class the wood flew off and smashed a clock on the wall, to the adrenaline rush then laugh of the rest of the class.

We're already planning what we want to take in the courses next. The lead class we want to do together is come kind of cookery class, and I want to take a pottery class while he wants a photography class, so we may take separate classes on the same night.

Sometimes, it's fun being a grown-up back in school.

I can't wait until my wobbly table is in our new house...

And for proof, I offer you dodgy camera phone pics.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:54 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 Last I heard a mitre is what a bishop wears on his (or her) head ... not too sure why you'd need to gauge it though. Maybe to ensure it fits properly?

Posted by: Rob at February 21, 2006 10:44 AM (jf7Lt)

2 Helen, I am SO impressed. I'd love to take classes like that, and wood has always held a fascination for me. As a child I loved pounding nails into it (and did so in the back porch floor, much to the consternation of my parents). Be sure to post photos of the cabinet and table when they are done.

Posted by: kenju at February 21, 2006 12:33 PM (2+7OT)

3 I've always wanted to try woodworking, but I have a vision of watching my fingers fall to the floor as I make that one mistake on the bandsaw. Waiting for virtual woodshop to come out on Mac X.

Posted by: Mark at February 21, 2006 02:53 PM (pB23+)

4 That's awesome, I've always wanted to learn how to woodwork.

Posted by: Kestrel at February 21, 2006 03:38 PM (oSWl1)

5 I totally had an image of Anthony Michael Hall talking about his elephant lamp and how when he pulled the trunk the light wouldn't go on the entire time I read this post. Until I got to the pictures, and remembered that you are so much cuter than AMH. Go you for tackling a table as your first project!

Posted by: amy t. at February 21, 2006 03:45 PM (zPssd)

6 Hee hee - those camera phone pics of you intensely sawing are so cute!

Posted by: Lee at February 21, 2006 08:47 PM (PYZOC)

7 He ripped out his beautiful old vintage sash windows for modern UPVC windows. I think it was about here that I began sobbing uncontrollably. But that's okay! The old biddy on the lathe cheered me right up again. By the time this class is over you'll be great at ducking flying woodworks, I imagine. Very jealous of how fierce you look in the pictures. It is impossible to look fierce while butchering a short presentation in a foreign language in front of a class of bored twentysomethings. That's what I learned this week.

Posted by: ilyka at February 21, 2006 10:03 PM (NZRFC)

8 Yay woodworking! Especially old-fashioned woodworking. Bravo and Brava!!! I've sent you an email.

Posted by: Ted at February 22, 2006 12:01 AM (+OVgL)

9 I took a wood-working class in junior high. I sliced my finger on the bandsaw and I have pretty much stayed away from saws ever since. Not so much out of fear, but out of respect for the fact that I am, simply, just a complete dork who cannot operate dangerous machinery. I admire you, Helen. And you look absolutely adorable with that saw.

Posted by: Dana at February 22, 2006 03:27 AM (euBkS)

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"Did you pee?" Angus asked.

"I did," I reply.

"Was it good?" he asks.

"It was," I reply.

It's not that we are an uber-close couple that share all of our intimate moments with each other, be they emotional or physical. We don't normally feel the need to impart information on our urinary habits to each other, it's one of those things that, like wet farting, can often be the killer of romance.

But this past weekend my urination has been put on a bulletin board in our household, as I was pretty ill last week. Last Tuesday, after returning from Ireland, I trekked to London to see my therapist. Halfway there and I felt really, really nauseous. I visited my nice therapist and then needed to run some errands, but I simply gave up and returned home-I felt too ill. I rode the world's longest train ride home-not speaking to anyone as I wasn't sure that it would be sound that came out of my mouth should I open it-and once I tumbled through the door I went up the stairs an threw my guts up. When that concluded, I put on my pajamas, Angus piled on three duvets over me, and I shaked and shivered my way through the day.

Happy Valentine's Day, baby!

I stayed in bed most of the day and night, getting up to puke and shake from fever from time to time.

It continued on Wednesday, as did the fever too (or else there really ARE miniature horses running on a grid line throughout our bedroom. I haven't vacuumed for a few days, it's entirely possible that miniature equestrian geometrics are occurring in there.) I started getting a bit better on Thursday-I could hold food down, and by Friday I was feeling better.

But strangely, on Friday I didn't pee.

Not once.

Even after coffee, a bottle of water, and some juice. I chalked it up to being dehydrated from the flu (a vomit for you, a vomit for me), but Friday evening things got weird. I suddenly had to pee, and I had to pee really, really badly. So badly I thoughy I might just wreck the romance and leave a nice puddle on the couch. Only when I got to the toilet, nothing happened.

So became the routine. I would race to the bathroom, sure the bladder was full, and nada. Nothing. In fact, the nada droplets were pretty painful. The doctor's office was closed and there are no Doc in the Boxes here, it would have to wait until Monday.

And then I started passing blood, and seeing as my period is two weeks away, I knew I had a problem. I looked online and realized that what I had wasn't the flu but the fun-filled delight known as a urinary tract infection (UTI)-it wasn't a hypochondriac moment, I had every single symptom and I remembered what it felt like to have a UTI.

I've had two previous UTIs in my life. Once was when I was a little girl, and the other was 8 years ago. Only 8 years ago it went from a UTI to a kidney infection with lightening speed, and I had a fever and a temperature so high I went into seizures in the ER, thereby getting me a Welcome to Our Hospital pass for three days. UTIs are not something I muck around with. Not to mention that we leave for our holiday in 7 days (7 DAYS! ) and we're on the downhill slope to fertility treatment, and my body, she will be like a temple. When I started passing bloody bits in the few drops of pee I could coax out Friday night, I knew I really had a problem that couldn't wait.

So we called to have a house call from the local doctor service. And, on the one hand, it kinda' cracked me up-house calls are so old-fashioned, so 1930's. I have never in my life had a house call, it feels very "toddler with the mumps" to me. But on the other hand it wasn't funny at all-I knew I couldn't wait until Monday, what with the bloody bits and the desperate need to pee, despite the inability to.

The doctor finally made it around 3 am. A tired Angus and I waited up as she too diagnosed a UTI. She felt my stomach (and I swore I was going to wet the couch then and there and I wouldn't have felt any embarrassment at all, I would have only felt sweet orgasmic-like relief). She handed me some antibiotics and a prescription to get the rest of the pills the next day. She was very kind, very thorough, and didn't wince at the urine sample I provided her (seriously, some things in life are pretty fucking gross-Madonna's faux English-plummy accent, pus, Sandra Bernhardt's face, pooping in public...This urine sample kicked all of their cumulative asses.) As she was leaving, she told me that I didn't have to complete the antibiotics, that I could stop when the symptoms subsided as they are very strong antibiotics and my infection should clear up quickly.

"Isn't that against normal advice?" Angus asked. "Shouldn't she take the whole set of antibiotics?"

"Oh no," assured the doctor. "You can keep them for a rainy day."

Great! What a fabulous idea! So, like, one day when Angus and I are sitting around all bored, and he looks up from the TV Guide and says, "Gee, Helen. Nothing's on TV. What should we do instead?" I can reply, "I know! Let's go pop some antibiotics!"

Antibiotics are being taken with religious reverence, and the peeing is nearly back on track. Blood gone. Bloody bits (ew) gone. Pain in peeing mostly gone. Back pain gone. It's all good.

I hadn't realized the emotional and spiritual connection I have to peeing. When you have a teeny little bladder like I do and have to pee all the time, it's a real nuisance. When you can't do it, it's HELL. I will never take my Charmin for granted again. Thank you, little pink bladder. Thank you. And PS-thanks for fucking up my Valentine's Day.

-H.

PS-Did I mention that our two and a half week holiday starts one week from today? I wasn't sure if I did or not. Just checking.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 01:30 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 Looks like we both had very romantic Valentine's Day. I spent mine in the hospital with a piece of pork lodged in my esophagus. Thankfully I am no longer drooling like a fool and I am delighted that you are now able to pee pain-free.

Posted by: Marie at February 20, 2006 02:50 PM (PQxWr)

2 Eek! That sucks! Glad you're feeling better. I've had 2 UTI's, but neither gave me fever or vomit (knock on wood)..either way, I wouldn't wish that on anyone!

Posted by: Erin at February 20, 2006 03:56 PM (zw8QA)

3 never had a UTI but that sounds like no fun. I am glad you are on the mend and I HOPE HOPE HOPE all goes well. Cause it is t-7 and counting

Posted by: stinkerbell at February 20, 2006 04:04 PM (QcMkT)

4 Delurking to say, UTI's suck, and with alll due respect to your Doc, take all the antibiotic, because those little e coli germs are more resilient than most, and if you leave any of them, that crap will come right back.

Posted by: aw at February 20, 2006 05:05 PM (GjQkX)

5 Will actually stop lurking and post... Actually, UTI often come after wild lovemaking! I personally don't go in for antibiotics but I have a tried and true cure...cranberry juice. Seriously, it has worked for years. The good doc actually is right about the antibiotics, that was old thinking to finish everything, but now they know that the more antibiotics you take the more good bacteria in your body is killed (think recurring UTI and maybe with a yeast infection thrown in...yuk!) I would definitely stop them as soon as you feel better. PS your house is lovely...but God! UK real estate is "dear" as they say here...

Posted by: rosy at February 20, 2006 06:00 PM (PIx2C)

6 Yeah, I just had my first kidney infection this month. I was out of work for 10 work days. Mainly because I'm an idiot and self-diagnosed the flu - severe headaches, high temp, diarrhea, what else could it be? Duh! Next time I'll go to the doctor the first or second day instead of the eighth! I have ordered a huge supply of cranberry pills, since the doc says I probably had a low symptomatic UTI that moved to the kidneys. But, best of all, she ordered every test known to man before she figured out that I wasn't married to someone in the military - you know, that free medical care, I have to pay for it as a lowly civilian DoD employee. And I was too sick to protest when she insisted on a gonorrhea, chlymidia and Hep C test as well as all the others because my husband had just gotten back from deployment. (Ergo, they're all cheating bastards, we just are too dumb to believe it.) Yep, over 80 dollars worth of tests to prove my man didn't bring back a special gift for me from the desert. Best of luck with your fertility treatment.

Posted by: Oda Mae at February 20, 2006 06:21 PM (lQZBf)

7 with the puking and everything, it sounds more like a kidney infection than it does a UTI, but I'm not a doctor, so I guess she oughta know. I had a killer kidney infection a couple of months ago. it started with vomiting, then diarrhea, then the painful urination and horrid back ache. when I did the pee sample at the docs, I had blood in mine too. yuck. I'd never had a kidney infection before and I never want one again. it was most unpleasant.

Posted by: girl at February 20, 2006 09:09 PM (HQuHV)

8 I feel your pain. Dear god do I hate UTIs. I used to get them a lot more frequently than I do now until someone gave me the advice to pee right after sex. Every single time. It is almost a joke with my boyfriend and I now, but I swear by it! (Sorry for the TMI commentary lol).

Posted by: Lee at February 20, 2006 11:11 PM (PYZOC)

9 i also have to jump in and post. i am by no means a docor, but i do have a masters in microbiology, and it is in no way an old school of thought that you should take all of your antibiotics. while it is true that if you continue after you feel better you will kill bateria that normally live in your body, these guys were probably killed in the first 2 days of antibiotics and this can be remedied by eating yogurt. it is also true though that if you stop when you feel better, chances are all the UTI bacteria arent dead, and those that remain are going to be much more resistant to antibiotics...but like i said, im not a doctor.

Posted by: sarah at February 21, 2006 12:04 AM (A/RmO)

10 I, too, had the pleasure of experiencing a kidney infection once, and it was pure HELL. So glad to hear that you're on the mend.

Posted by: Ornery at February 21, 2006 04:26 AM (2KXgQ)

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I've been a bit quiet about The Blackberries, our hopefully beautiful and lovely house-to-be, as there simply hasn't been any progress. After finally selling that enormous elephant on our backs known as Angus' former marital home in Brighton (the town to which I called Ovaltine but which is actually called Ovingdean) in December, we agreed a price on The Blackberries and have just been waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

In England, if you agree to sell your home you're not duty bound until you send over the deposit, which is typically 5% of the selling price in cash. Once you do that, it's no return unless you don't mind giving up that 5% as well as a good chunk of money you'll have to pay in liquidated damages. Not really tempting, seeing as how we are investing over £500,000.

Just saying that makes me want to vomit. £500,000. £500,000. Oh my God, I can't believe how much money that is. I tried to think of what you can get for £500,000 and all I came up with is: A house. This is the cost of the house plus an extension we are planning on building. We haven't even moved in to a space three times the one we have now and we're already planning on expanding and updating it.

The house buying has been held up by the nice woman living in it needing to find a house of her own. We've met her a few times-she's direct, forthcoming. She tells you where things stand and doesn't mind uncorking the bottle at noon. She's widowed as her partner died not long ago and has no children of her own, but instead is an animal lover, she lost two of her dogs and one of her cats this past year. She's relatively alone.

(I worry that's my future, too. But when she calls to discuss house issues, she can never discuss things with me, she always asks for Angus as I think she is only comfortable talking to the man of the house, which is perhaps where our futures divide.)

She did find a house, but her purchase of it has taken forever. The biggest issue was the seller of that house is an international banker, a job which I have come to learn is synonymous for "supercilious tosspot ass monkey". Mr. International Banker is very busy and important, often travelling to the continent for business, and was thus apparently too busy to sign the house contract, even going skiing instead of taking care of business (to which I wanted to fly to the Alps brandishing a pair of skis like a set of numchucks, screaming: Where are you, Tosspot? Do you know how many dreams you are affecting right now? Do you? Come here, ass chump, and I'll show you what happens when you piss off a woman fighting a Lush addiction!)

But yesterday, in the middle of the day and with us tooling around in our houseclothes (aka "pajamas"), Angus got a phone call. Mr. Tosspot banker has indeed signed his documents, and he and the woman we are buying the house from have exchanged contracts. Our solicitor was called and told that their deal was done and we can proceed with ours. So with the click of a button, he released the cash that we saved last year as in one fell swoop it was agreed-the house was ours.

It's ours.

We move in March 24.

The champagne is being uncorked at our house tonight.

Without further ado, I present the house that we will now be living in for many years (pictures also on Flickr)....

This is the back of the house....

This is the living room, with the beautiful original windows and fireplace.

And this is the garden, where a dog of our own will lie in the grass, joined from time to time by my girls, Maggie and Mumin and by Angus and myself.

I'm going to spend a lot of time dreaming and hoping in that garden.

The keys to the house of our dreams are finally within sight.

-H.

PS-I've got a pretty interesting blogad running on the sidebar. Feel free to give it a click! (*cough*pimping*cough).

PPS-Jim, you are a darling for sending this book. Thank you so much.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:36 AM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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So Angus and I decided to try to do more fun, exciting interesting things as a couple and try to work on personal improvements at the same time (because my being able to recite lines from Buffy the Vampire Slayer just doesn't impress him, and I apparently seem underwhelmed at his ability to spot a 256kv line at 20 paces). Because romance isn't all about champagne and Lush-filled bubble baths (or so say the fuckers at American Express and backed up by my current intolerance of the good old-fashioned hangover). Romance is about doing things together as a long-established couple, particularly things that will show off your shortcomings in front of the other person, kind of a "Hey-I may give a mean blow job, but I also have gone up a bra size, you've seen me vomit, AND I'd like to expose you to the list of talents I don't actually have."

Hallmark has nothing on me.

Thus we signed up for two courses. You know. Like lovers do (Annie Lennox should have seen this coming, really. It's not really about walking in the open breeze or diving into each other's oceans. It's about continuing education and the overflowing laundry basket, both of which can be addressed with aplomb and without the need to dye one's hair stop-light red.) We decided to sign-up for two very different things to learn about.

The first is a course that we take every Monday evening, held (embarassingly) in the cafeteria of a local elementary school (is it my imagination or have school lunches gotten better over the years? Seriously. I think they are, and I don't mean this in a "I walked uphill both ways in the snow" kind of way). Surprisingly, it was Angus' suggestion and he who did the research to get us on to the course. And because of the surge of popularity due to Strictly Come Dancing, the course was full and so we were put on to an alternate course.

That's right.

One of the courses we're taking is Ballroom and Latin Dancing.

We are in with about 20 other couples, most of whom are older (not really a problem with that, although I do feel the need to brush up on my CPR skills). There is one couple composed of two women, one of whom has clearly coerced her friend into taking the class with her (I know this as the coerced friend has made it clear that when they dance she gets to be the girl partner. Always. And if I were the coerced one that's what I would insist on, too.) When we signed up the elderly couple teaching the course asked us if we were the couple who had signed up in order to learn to waltz for our wedding. After I'd pried Angus down from the ceiling I smiled kindly and confirmed to her that no, we weren't said couple.

And so it started.

The couple who teach the class are an elderly couple that used to compete professionally in ballroom and latin dancing, and now want to continue dancing and so teach it in their retirement. They are very cute and very short, both with pale blue rheumy eyes and the most tragic choices in waltz music. He stands with stiff shoulders a la Frankenstein and every time he watches us Angus freaks out and we misstep. She is a cute chatterbox who, if she corrects you, you're in for a good five minute conversation.

We show up every week, both of us dressed in jeans and me in ballet flats. Every week we work on the previous steps we were taught and add on a twist. Every week we spend an hour stepping and twirling.

And every week we are terrible at it.

Really, really awful.

Luckily, the two women couple are actually the worst in the class. We take comfort that although we suck, we're not the poster children for suck. We secretly worry that they'll drop the class as if they do, we'll then be the worst ones in the class. If they do that then we're screwed as unfortunately, they do not offer a remedial dance class, a waltzing for dummies.

We are both long-legged and so can't help but take too-big steps, so that we have hurtled halfway across the dance floor within half a waltz step. Angus is a very geometric kind of guy and likes to think of thinks in patterns, to try to find the lines and visualize the path in his head. This means if something doesn't compute, he spends ages trying to figure it out. For me, I am utterly hopeless at anything involving any coordination other than hand-eye (thank you Mario Brothers). I was always the one getting it wrong in step aerobics, I couldn't tap dance my way out of a paper bag, and the idea of walking into a crystal shop is so hauntingly dangerous to my insurance premiums that it sends shudders of horror down my spine.

In the first class we learnt the waltz steps. I felt like Frenchy, as my dance partner Angus waltzed me around the dance floor with his eyes closed and counting 1-2-3, 1-2-3, back-2-3- (and I wasn't even dressed like a banana). We spent an hour and a half trying to figure out where to put our feet and giggling like poodle-skirted teenagers.

We had just about gotten the waltz step down when they added a turn. Then they added another one. It's as though we're following a cockney conversation-we're always two steps behind trying to figure out what the hell is going on, meanwhile the rest of the twirling couples are swirling around the dance floor. We've become the couple that others try to avoid being around, as typically we crash around the place and get our steps all wrong. Whenever the instructor pair gather us in a circle to teach us a new step, they stand facing us and always look at us when announcing "This next step may cause some trouble."

Of course it will. It involves feet and moving. We're naturally going to be completely lost.

And that's just the waltz steps. Don't even get me started on the cha cha, which has declared Angus as its mortal enemy and seeks to break him.

The truth is, we generally have a great time, although this past Monday we were beginning to feel pretty dejected as we are so utterly ass at this dancing stuff, that even though you have a riot doing it over time it wears your ego down to be just that rubbish at something. We decide to persevere, because we enjoy the hell out of each other, even if we weren't getting a whole lot from the class. Or at least, we weren't until this past Monday.

We were typically lost and unable to figure out what to do. We were also typically in fits of giggles and laughter as we screwed up every single step and turn imaginable. We weren't the only ones who were lost-another couple got into a huge domestic, and as the woman stormed out the man burst into tears (we watched this in fascination. We like a little drama with our waltzing). As the male dance instructor came up behind Angus, I saw him hold his forehead in his hands and sigh dramatically. This sent me into renewed fits of laughter.

"Why are you making it so hard?" the instructor demanded.

"Because it IS hard!" Angus laughed.

"Why don't you show me the step again, your way?" the instructor asked, exasperated.

Angus gathered me up in his arms, shifted his weight, and looked over his shoulder. "Um....ok, which way is my way again?"

The instructor looked like he wanted to weep. "You're over-complicating it," he said woefully. He showed us the step, complete with the turning. We followed the step.

And we did it right.

Then we did it again.

And again.

In no time, we were waltzing around the room, albeit in half the time that the others were as we're still taking steps that would make the Jolly Green Giant envious. We grinned. I felt like snogging Angus to death, and ironically he told me after class that he just wanted to kiss me, too. We may have been about as graceful as Judy Garland on Valium, we had as much style as Roseanne Barr in Ice Capades, but we didn't give a fuck. We had the dance steps down, and we're so dangerous on the dance floor that no one there would dare give us a hard time. We swirled and twirled and got it right.

Then they decided to teach us the quick step and we had to go home for the day.

We know when to stop while we're ahead.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:53 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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It's true. Angus is having an affair. My needs are being neglected as he lovingly puts his new mistress to bed, as he carefully cleans and croons to her, as he reads books to her and pushes all the right buttons. I have been lowered in the order of his affections.

It's my own damn fault, really.

I bought his mistress for him as a combination Valentine's/birthday present.

And so it was that on the middle of a huge sleigh bed in the gorgeous Irish town of Kinsale that Angus unwrapped his new mistress, breathless and incredulous, and went right to work neglecting me in favor of the Nikon D50, the two lenses, and the Crumpler Bag that his down-prioritized girlfriend had provided him with.

The D50 was bought on recommendations from the web, and with a lot of help from the San Francisco Treats and through much conversation about lenses in which they even used 'lenses for dummies' terms that still didn't compute, in the end I had the right camera and ebay and I had found the right lenses for the boy.

And the pictures he took are amazing.

It was worth every penny (and it is penny measurements as I bought it in the States and it's a damn good thing I did, too, as camera equipment is fucking expensive over here). He wasn't without the camera for the rest of the weekend but in truth, I love that he loves his new girlfriend so much. I'm all about the bigamy. That, and I am now left to play with the other camera on my own for the most part.

We left on the train for Southampton Airport Friday lunchtime. Southampton isn't very far away, and it's a poky little terminal that serves poxy little planes who jaunt to Scotland, Ireland, and other parts of England. While our mood wasn't great at the time it did start to pick up as we huddled onto the little propeller plane, and as we unwrapped homemade sandwiches and opened an airline-sized bottle of wine, things got nearly back to normal.

When we landed it was into an equally tiny terminal at Cork. We grabbed our bags and made our way to the rental car company, who awarded us with a dreadful Hyundai so slow that, as Angus put it, 'it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding'. For some reason the windshield wipers and the turn signal/brights indicators were on the wrong side of the steering wheel, so for the rest of the holiday Angus would constantly be flicking on the windshield wipers whenever he tried to signal he was turning left. I cracked up every single time, but then I'm cruel like that.

We drove to Kinsale, a tiny fishing village on the southern Cork coast. I'd been to Kinsale before and utterly loved the place but this was Angus' first time to what is quite possibly the symbolic Irish coastside village. We settled into our B&B, which was a horrible-looking 1980's building on the outside, but inside the bedrooms were fantastic, with great style and loads of comfort.

Ireland has enjoyed a booming economy for the past few years. It's what they call here 'The Celtic Tiger', as software companies, call centers, and other tech industries settle into Ireland. This has meant a renewed economy is revitalizing the counry and pumping loads of Euros into the infrastructure. It has also meant big changes on the housing front-no longer are the little tumbling crooked Irish farm cottages so prevalent, now it's all about the new builds, houses that look like they are whole-heartedly embracing the 1980's style ranch house. It's sad, as the older homes are being abandoned and left to ruin in favor of the newer homes, while at the same time it just seems to be a part of Ireland. You turn one corner and see a tumbling 300-year old croft cottage and turn another corner and see a load of new built homes, all with gray putty-colored exteriors (I wondered about that for ages, until Angus explained to me that it was primer. In Ireland, nearly everyone paints the exterior of their homes-and the fence to match-a bright cheerful color. Sometimes it looks amazing and cheerful.)

Sometimes, it's just blinding.

You turn another corner and see abandoned castles and forts from the 13th century. Abbeys from the 14th century. All of them tumbling and crumbling and each one of them I want to own and make them mine and not paint them bright oragne (I will love them and squeeze them and I will call them George.)

That night we spent drinking champagne and relaxing. We had a good time opening some of our gifts-his camera and for me he bought beautiful and lovely lingerie. We walked around the village and picked up a few things-I bought a gorgeous crystal candlestick that I will love forever, and of which will always remind me of our Irish Valentine's Day. We had dinner in a nearby pub, where I saw a modern Guinness ad campaign I decided Ms Pants had to have and so tore it off the wall, stuffed it down my trousers and smuggled it out (there were many of the ads all over the pub, so I don't feel too much like a criminal).

Then we went back to our room and made up.

Twice.

And we fell right asleep and slept all night, a rarity for the both of us.

The next day we made our way around the coastline. It was a beautiful day and we traipsed up mountains to admire the locals (whom I should add are all spray painted on their wool so that the farmers can all just release them into grazing land and then determine whom owns which sheep at a later date. To which I want to ask-how the hell do they get the spray paint out of all that wool?)-

-and around coastlines to pick up driftwood to bring home and dip our fingers in the salty Irish Sea.

We spent a lot of time on windy mountain hilltops, where sudden waterfalls appear and where you get the impression that you can actually find a space where humans have never walked on in history. We stopped at one of the waterfalls and filled up an empty water bottle of the water-it was crystal clear and tasted like cold, perfect water (although with our luck, a dead sheep was lying upstream and we now have some kind of strange disease that not even Dr. House will be able to diagnose).

Angus bought us some chips from a fish and chip shop, and we went two shops down where he also bought me de shiny shiny, which I adore whole-heartedly.

We drove nearly to Tipperary (and I can tell you, it is indeed a long, long way to Tipperary) and settled into our B&B for the evening, a fantastic 250 year-old farmhouse that had been in the family for 8 generations. We tried to find diddly-diddly music but failed, and so settled for a few pints in a local pub (he had Guinness, I had Murphy's. Go ahead with the hate mail if you want, but the truth is, I just don't like Guinness. Really. And I've tried to like it, believe me.)

We went back to the room and slept on one of the most comfortable beds ever, and once again we fell right to sleep and slept the entire night, waking up relatively late for us. We had a morning round of loving, a massive breakfast then decided to drive around again. We drove through the southeast of Ireland, through mountains, around coasts. We laughed and talked and took pictures of sheep. We drove through one area that was Irish-speaking only (Gaelic is like Scandinavian lanaguages-except Finnish-in that while it's one 'mother language', there are many variants. Irish Gaelic can generally understand Scottish Gaelic, the Welsh Gaelic, and Cornish, but they are very different. So the Gaelic variant in Ireland is called Irish, in Wales it's called Welsh, in Cornwall it's called Cornish (but I think it might be a dead language, so sadly maybe it's not called anything anymore). Confusing and a long explanation, but Gaelic in Ireland is called Irish.)

And Irish? Yeah. It's a fucking confusing language that sounds like someone skidding on the carpet on their throats.

The last night we spent in another farmhouse in Killeigh. We had a fabulous feast in the town of Youghal (which is pronounced 'Yule', but which we hadn't known it was pronounced 'Yule' until after we'd already gotten so confused on how to pronounce it that we were just calling it 'Yogurt'.) We had a bottle of wine, some nooky, and then got some sleep, once again sleeping through the night and into the morning.

We packed up and visited Cork on Monday, buying some last minute goodies and, of course, some stinky Irish cheese. When we got to Cork the airport was so fog-bound that they loaded us and our luggage on a coach and bussed us to Kerry County Airport, two hours away, where we finally made our way home.

It was a fabulous holiday, a much-needed holiday, and as our next holiday looms less than two weeks away, I'm already looking forward to all the sleep we will get.

That, and I'm buying more KY.

-H.

PS-more photos will be uploaded onto Flickr, so if pics of others' holidays is what does it for you, then they'll be there.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:15 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 1609 words, total size 11 kb.

Am off to Ireland for a long weekend.

See you Tuesday.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:05 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 Happy travels!

Posted by: Jim at February 10, 2006 10:18 AM (oqu5j)

2 Oooh, Ireland..that's awesome. Take plenty o' pictures for us!

Posted by: Lindsay at February 10, 2006 01:32 PM (eo55L)

3 Enjoy!

Posted by: Lisa at February 10, 2006 02:35 PM (Gn9Ma)

4 Have a lovely weekend!

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 10, 2006 04:21 PM (uI/79)

5 I wanna go!!!!!! Have fun.

Posted by: sue at February 10, 2006 05:18 PM (WbfZD)

6 Wishing I were you...right about now. I have to go to laundry...LOL. Have a great time!!

Posted by: Dana at February 10, 2006 09:58 PM (euBkS)

7 Oh you lucky thing!

Posted by: Mary-Jo at February 10, 2006 10:58 PM (ifdYo)

8 Have a great weekend, seeya next week.

Posted by: Amanda at February 11, 2006 03:19 AM (L4Sch)

9 Waahhhhh!! I wish I could say, "I'm off to Ireland for the weekend." The best I can do is - "I'm off for the weekend." Period. Mumbling to myself as I go off to count my blessings.......

Posted by: suze at February 11, 2006 01:03 PM (k1Y5v)

10 Ahh, the Emerald Isle! I just went for the first time last year... it's spectacular! Enjoy the scenery, the hospitality, and the wonderful company of your boy!

Posted by: Liv at February 11, 2006 06:08 PM (AbDXn)

11 You're probably already there by now but I hope you're having a fabulous weekend hun. Mine is being spent with my boy, he paid me a suprise visit and made me cry in the club where he turned up. Yeh, alcohol and emotion is a bad combination! See you when you get back. AxXx

Posted by: Lemurgirl at February 11, 2006 10:34 PM (ZZQbd)

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I've been thinking a lot about a subject that is perhaps going to generate a great deal of hate mail, but seeing as though that's never stopped me before, here goes.

I have a pretty high squick factor, really. Not only am I besieged by the great poo phobia, but other things creep me out. Like dandruff. The aforementioned poo. Umbilical cord stumps (which will not only not get put in any album, but I'm calling a Hazmat team to come and remove the offensive object if I ever have a baby.)

And one thing that sends me running to the hills is breastfeeding.

When I was in university I took a feminist studies class (euphemistically titled 'Gender Studies in Comparative Societies'. A few optimistic lads signed up for it, perhaps optimistically thinking that the title translated into 'T&A' or 'Easy Pass' or something like that. We'd run them off by the second class.) I was good at that class, as it meant reading, writing, and directing highly controlled hatred, and no one excelled at hatred like I did.

I remember one day we were talking about the slavery that is the woman's role in the home. I had just reached for my kerosene and unhooked my bra when women started chiming in who were mothers at home. While they were mothers who were 'rediscovering themselves and their missions as women' '“ sorry, womyn- 'and re-defining '˜she'', they were also overwhelming in number if you compared the equation of angry bra-burners plus blatant lesbians. In other words, we were outnumbered.

They were the crunchy-granola muesli earth-loving Birkenstock-wearing kind of mothers, the kind who would have clothed their children in hemp if they could have done and named their children 'Rainbow' and 'Tikki Tavi' and the like while they celebrated their participation in the human race by dancing under the moonlight every other Tuesday night.

None of this bothered me in the slightest. What did bother me was their greatest single feature-they were all card-carrying members of La Leche. La Leche (which is Italian for 'milk') is about the creepiest thing in the world to me. A club for women who breastfeed. A CLUB.

And so there it is. Breastfeeding has about the highest possible squick factor to me. I would rather reach into my own ass and hand-deliver poop than whip out a boob and open the bar for business. With regards to myself, I view it almost like parasitism-a hungry thing latches on to a part of my body and takes nourishment from me. A hungry thing that I carted around for 9 months decides that's not enough, they need to steal fluid from my glands to be happy, the ungrateful cur. I know this 'hungry thing' is a baby, but something about breastfeeding is so incredibly creepy to me that I can't separate the two ideas. I have this vision of an infant, its gums chomping on my nipple for dear life, as I swing my boobs around in an arc and the infant doesn't let go, much like a horror movie only I am not running up the stairs to my doom in my vision. I know breastfeeding is about bonding, sharing from the mother to the child, etc, and that's part of what squicks me out, that sharing aspect. I do also understand that the mother's body has a number of antibodies, nutrients, and protection in the milk, that it's better for the baby, but then I am sure Harvard is better than the University of Surrey, and you can bet my kid isn't going to the former of the two if I have to pay for it.

Now I have absolutely no problem with other women that breastfeed. Honestly. I think that whatever you feel is best is the way you should go (unless you feel that filling the bottle with tequila slammers is the best bet, in which case we need to talk). If you choose to breastfeed, then rock on sister. I think it's great for you if it's what you want for you and your child. Despite the title of this post, I am not judging anyone and I also absolutely could care less if women breastfeed in public-I want to throttle those people who get on their moral high horse about a woman breastfeeding a baby. It's not like the woman is in the middle of creating porn, it's the mother's natural and human process of feeding. Breastfeeding in public doesn't seem to be a big deal here but I do know in the States people throw strops about it, in which case I think a little rabbit punching is in order. It was even less a problem in Sweden, but then again skinny dipping was de rigeur so let's all be ok with our love handles and be one with nature.

No, breastfeeding has absolutely never appealed to me, personally. There was a tv show on recently which showed mothers breastfeeding their kids (Warning! A childless woman is about to bestow her opinion on something with regards to children! Get your email open now and prepare to compose that poison pen email to me!) late in life. Like, LATE in life. One woman was still breastfeeding her children, who are now 11 and 9. The kids loved breastfeeding, as they admitted openly to the camera (that admission will haunt you the rest of your teenage years, kids) and hoped it would never end. They showed the mom breastfeeding to her 11 year old on the couch.

I couldn't feel my toes I thought it was so revolting. Babies? That's one thing. An 11 year-old? Yeah that's of foraging age. Should starvation set in, they can eat berries. If you are of berry picking age, then you shouldn't be breastfeeding (again in my humble childless opinion).

Angus and I would have had a huge argument about breastfeeding, I think, as he's of the crunchy muesli opinion that it's better for the kid to breastfeed, and I agree it probably is better for them. It's just something I absolutely could never have brought myself to do, and luckily I don't have to-the breast reduction 14 years ago rid me of the worry, as the plastic surgeon warned me that removing 7 pounds of boob would mean that I would not only lose breast fat, but I'd lose the mammary glands as well, and thus would never ever be able to breastfeed.

What? Not breastfeed? Not worry that I could get enormous chapped nipples? Not freak out when I started to leak onto my shirt as it was time to feed? Not have to use breast pumps when I had to go to work?

'Fine with me, Doc,' I cheerily replied with a huge smile. 'See you in the operating room!'

Again, wonderful that other women can and do breastfeed. But like piercing my clitoris, embracing 1960's clothing or getting a perm, it's just not for me.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:50 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment
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1 Thank god for you Helen. I did not breastfeed my two children, it just did not appeal to me at all. I have very large breast and have always been uncomfortable with them, and the idea of having to haul them out several times a day (and night) was the last thing I could bring myself to do. I was chastised by everyone from the store clerk who rang up my formula to doctors. But it is a choice, and like you said what is good for one woman and her baby is not necessarily good for the next. In the end, my babies were healtlhy (always in the top percentiles or their height/weight), between the two of them they had one ear infection to date, and are very healthy. The most important thing in the end is that a woman makes a choice that she is comfortable with, and that she cares for her child the best that she can.

Posted by: Teresa at February 09, 2006 01:34 PM (zf0DB)

2 My son never drank at the tap but I pumped for almost a year. For over 9 months he drank breast milk exclusively. It wasn't easy but I wasn't so much for breast milk as I was afraid of formula (and the cost of formula). Part of being a mother is sometimes doing what you think is best for your child, even if it's something you don't want to do because believe me, I really didn't want to pump and I definitely didn't want to BF- formula is so much easier. If I had another baby I doubt I could do all that pumping again.

Posted by: paula at February 09, 2006 01:40 PM (FlZPw)

3 You are a brave woman to express that opinion out loud. I think the La Leche SWAT team is assembling outside your door at this moment. Personally, I agree. It squicks me out too, but I plan to do it if I can. If I can't, or it's too icky for me, I'll have that can of similac on standby in the pantry. I will say that the breastfed babies of my friends are sick far less often than the formula fed ones. That's my only basis for deciding to do it if I can. My brother and I were not breastfed. BTW. as I read this post, there is an ad on the sidebar for Motherwear that shows a woman nursing. How appropos.

Posted by: donna at February 09, 2006 01:49 PM (UqSGm)

4 Helen - I, too, am skeeved out by breast feeding. I tend to be more OK with someone doing it for a few months when the baby is very small (supposed to be good for their immune system or something) BUT, anything over six months seems bizarre. My One Person (sister) did for almost 10 months with her first and I couldn't deal. I kept saying, "Isn't it time to wean him?" While it's OK for others, I don't know if I ever would...I just don't like the idea.

Posted by: Serena at February 09, 2006 02:23 PM (OX+n1)

5 Oh for fucks sake. I didn't think it was possible to love you more and here you've gone and done it again. (Leche is spanish for milk. Latte is Italian for milk.) Breast feeding is fine for some. But I happen to like the whole breastage-fondling thing and I can't handle someone who came OUT of me being the one to do that. Ew ew ew ew. Plus, dude. I love my tits. LOVE them! I'm not willing to go all pancake and deflated. Selfish? Sure. But I've got D+ tits and if I ever get pregnant I'm going to need a wheel barrow to cart them around. (I'm bigger now than my mother was with me and I was a month late.) I'd smother the kid in tit. And then I'd be left with deflated JJJ tits. Hanging to my ankles. I'd have Tankles (tm Amy). No. I drank soy. My hypothetical children will drink soy. Plus, that means that the bastard who knocked me up and didn't have to do anything for 9 months while I grew this little alien in my body can get up for 4am feedings while I sleep.

Posted by: Ms. Pants at February 09, 2006 03:06 PM (19wVo)

6 And I'm sorry, but if your child is old enough to say "breast feeding" then I think the actual act of it should be considered a form of abuse.

Posted by: Ms. Pants at February 09, 2006 03:07 PM (19wVo)

7 Helen, I felt the same way when i had my children(I have a 12 yr old and a 15 month old) I've never felt comfortable with the idea for myself but have no problem with anyone else doing it. I was kicked off of a Pagan email list for expressing my personal choice in much the same way you have here.A woman on that list mentioned that her daughter was beginning to use her as a pacifier and she was clearly unhappy about it. She was also worried she would be attacked for wanting to wean.I suggested that if the child no longer needed the breastmilk and the mother was unhappy she should be allowed to stop whenever she wanted. All of a sudden every woman on that list turned into breastfeeding nazis. We were attacked and accused of being bad mothers and not smart women for falling prey to the formula industry. It was ridiculous. My 12 yr old has been sick maybe 5 times in her life and never had an ear infection while my son gets sick every other day and the formula offered these days is much better than it was 10 yrs ago. I had a great doctor who told me even though he wished I'd consider bf that antibodies cross the placenta so that the child has help after it's born until its own immune system catches up. As for the bonding part of things I've watched breastfeeding friends labor and suffer over trying to get their baby to latch on.It's not easy and doesn't just happen. Babies are masters of reading body language and tuning into a mother's feelings.Why would I put my child through the feelings i would be having if i breastfed against my will just because someone says formula isn't good enough. I simply wouldn't. Good for you for saying what you feel and for knowing that when you get pregnant you will be facing some less than happy people over your decision.Some first time mothers are truly blindsided by it.

Posted by: Fawn at February 09, 2006 03:51 PM (/LEmS)

8 Is it weird that I've never even given this a moment's thought? I mean, I think about my future and kids and all, but the decision to breastfeed has never even crossed my mind. But I have to say, I'd really rather not have tankles until I'm old and more wrinkled than a prune.

Posted by: amy t. at February 09, 2006 03:53 PM (zPssd)

9 Thanks for the great laugh. I too, curl my toes with =ick= at the parasitic nature of breastfeeding. Without a doubt, mothers with infants should have the right to feed their INFANTS (not 11-yr-olds!!!) without the whole of society fainting away, but...for me...ew. Anyway; great laugh, thanks. Best wishes with the IVF, keep up the good work (I know it's hard), and congrats on the Big Win at Dream Job.

Posted by: LynD at February 09, 2006 04:27 PM (EUyu0)

10 11 years old??? oh dear god. i see a 'True Story of a Serial Killer's Childhood' in the making already. eeecchhhhhh.

Posted by: river at February 09, 2006 04:28 PM (4dWnl)

11 I'm so amused at the way you write about your college days, Helen, the "womyn" and all that. I was such an ardent feminist back then too, and I think the curriculum was more virulent back then than it is now. I remember the man-hating lesbians, and all the anger, and "we're not going to be slaves to men ANYMORE!" and I remember feeling torn between wanting to be a strong woman (who doesn't?), but being totally turned off by the sheer intensity. Damn, they hated men! Soooo glad I got away from all that. What a time! Anyway, I breastfed and I loved it. However, I was squicked at the whole idea of having something alive inside me at all before I got pregnant. Parasite indeed. Like a horror movie. But I changed and turned into Super Pregnant Mommy once I got pregnant and I just ate up all the info about bottle vs. breastfeeding. There is so much pressure to do exactly the right thing! Be exactly the Perfect Mother! Yeesh. Now my kids are grown, I'm older and I know women who are starting their families now and it's a HUGE issue; the baby won't take the breast or they're not giving enough milk and the poor moms cry and feel like a failure because they think they're bad moms if they can't breastfeed and have to give a bottle, or they're told they're horrible if they wean them too early, blah blah blah. Please, god, just chill out! Women have been having babies FOREVER! Breast milk, no breast milk, pacifiers, thumb, they cry, they don't. JEBUS! You think they go through all this in third world countries? I don't think so. Sometimes I think Western Civilization is trying to breed the ability to have babies right out of women with all this damn stress over how to do it "right"! Sorry for the mini-rant. And honest to god, if you get ANY hate mail from this post, I'm blowing up the whole damn internet, I swear. *grumbles*

Posted by: Amber at February 09, 2006 05:02 PM (zQE5D)

12 I think everyone's entitled to their own view - and as long as you're doing what you can to keep your child healthy and don't interfere with the desire of others to do what they can that's what's important. (Exceptions for tequila filled bottles and the like.) But - I'd think that your surgery will offer you an easy out if faced with adamant breastfeeding advocates. If you don't feel like getting into it all, that is.

Posted by: martha at February 09, 2006 05:04 PM (M7fGT)

13 I'm not terribly fond of La Leche because of all of the grief I got after having Elizabeth. She was born with only one kidney, and we had problems from the get-go getting her and I on the same page when it came to breastfeeding. I was so concerned about her eating enough to make sure that one kidney was good that I just gave up and let her have formula. I ended up getting blasted by the "lacation consultant" in the hospital, and all of the acqaintences that were members of La Leche also dug into me. I don't think that I did my child any damage by not breastfeeding her. She's ahead for most of her age in smarts, and she's completely fine physically (other than the kidney, of course).

Posted by: amber at February 09, 2006 05:40 PM (1augU)

14 I have a cousin that was still breastfeeding her son when he was five. FIVE YEARS OLD! That completely turned me off of breastfeeding my children.

Posted by: Lindsay at February 09, 2006 05:47 PM (KMJ0B)

15 Oooo, first guy to comment on this post it seems. Doesn't it all boil down to doing the best we can for our kids? When it's my turn to feed the wee one, I ask my wife whether she wants to breastfeed, bottle, or formula feed. After a bad day (no naps, usually) it's agonizing for me to watch her get defensive about her ability to provide breast milk for our son. She wants to keep breastfeeding occassionally just because it's handy in those emergency situations when formula isn't handy, but she's switched to pumping as much as she's comfortable with and then we supplement the rest of his appetite with formula. In my opinion, all my son needs to do is get to 18 with his major organs/limbs intact. The rest can be sorted out with therapy as long as my wife and I try our best to provide a caring, nurturing family environment for him to grow up in. I was fed exclusively formula, and I turned out okay (nothing that can't be managed by pharmaceuticals and clean living). I don't remember what was in the bottle when I was fed those many years ago. What I will never forget was the divorce and the lectures and yelling and screaming that only ended after I moved away to college. Let's all just find the balance among all the important bits. The rest will sort itself out. ps If doctors in organic granola Berkeley, CA think La Leche League is scary, I'm scared.

Posted by: Barnaby at February 09, 2006 06:35 PM (mTNES)

16 There really are some breast feeding nazi's out there. I'm sure your email box is overflowing by now. I found your post interesting to read. I must admit that the thought of something sucking nutrients from my breast skeevs me out a bit as well - not that I, like you, don't think it's a good thing for those who choose. I remember reading a story several years ago about a 9 year old that still breast fed. That is just WRONG. Wrong, wrong wrong!!!!

Posted by: Di at February 09, 2006 06:42 PM (KJE2B)

17 Again Helen, you make me happy that I'm not the only one who feels like that. I'm happy to have others do it, but yeccccch. Not me.

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 09, 2006 08:14 PM (/vgMZ)

18 OMG girl, you crack me up! I BF two out of three. I flip flopped with it. But 11 years old! Just ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! I looked over at my 10 year old son and got shivers when I read that. Ew, ew, ew! I think the next time he even asks me to poor him a cup of milk he is going to have to get it himself! EW.

Posted by: justme at February 09, 2006 08:56 PM (q53K/)

19 I tried to BF all three of mine, and they needed supplemental bottles after about 2 months. So I stopped then. Don't worry about it; if it isn't your cup of tea, so what?

Posted by: kenju at February 09, 2006 09:10 PM (2+7OT)

20 Perhaps you were a wet nurse in a previous life. In all seriousness, I've been a lurker for a while and never posted, but I did want to respond to this post. I don't mean for this to be hate mail, believe me. And let's just put aside the issues about pre-teens breastfeeding -- which I think we can all agree is wrong -- and the self-righteousness of some breastfeeding advocates -- which is plainly offensive. And let me also say that there are plenty of good and logical reasons to formula-feed. But all that being said, I am saddened and troubled by the feeling, that obviously is shared by many, that breastfeeding is icky or gross. I mean, how screwed up is our culture when one of the distinguishing traits of mammals -- lactation -- and for centuries, the only way to feed a newborn safely, is cause for revulsion? Lastly, I don't see how anyone who finds breastfeeding icky could possibly give birth vaginally. Now, *that* is gross. You actually poop in front of other people, including your spouse, who is in theory, supposed to want to have sex with you again at some point.

Posted by: Emily at February 09, 2006 09:30 PM (xWFCX)

21 I tried earlier to comment again but it got lost somewhere I was just going to mention an interesting idea that came up between me and a friend not long ago and sort of ties in with the comment Emily made. We were theorizing that maybe the reason some women don't like the idea of bf stems from the way we played as children. I know I for one have never given my daughter a doll and showed her how to breastfeed it. Kinda sounds funny to me to even say that. but the truth is no one I've ever known with kids has done that.Even the bf ones. I've also never seen a child play that way and I worked in childcare for years. I don't know but it's interesting

Posted by: Fawn at February 09, 2006 10:12 PM (/LEmS)

22 11. That is just wrong.

Posted by: Jess at February 09, 2006 11:28 PM (jiaJ/)

23 Thanks GOD I say that we live in an age wher ewomen have choices!!

Posted by: flikka at February 10, 2006 12:51 AM (puvdD)

24 Me again. Two in one week! I put my delurking habits to rest! Anyway...to each his one. We have options, that is the beauty of it all! Me personally, did not BF either. I was soooo afraid my son would get an attachment and then after my wimpy maternity leave of a mere 6 weeks , I would put him in total shock when I was not there to meet his hunger demands! Thankfully both of my boys (3 & 9) thrived on formula feeding and lots of love from us!

Posted by: Steff at February 10, 2006 01:20 AM (Ip3Mw)

25 I felt that way about being pregnant. I hated it. I felt like a foreign being had taken over my body and made it gross. I had no power over what occurred. Wet stuff came out of my vagina - ew, wet stuff came out of my nipples - ew....and I looked like a beached whale. Every pore of my body swelled up in pregnancy. I literally HATED it. I thought I would be a horrible mother because I wasn't really fond of children. Breatfeeding grossed me out, too. Then I had my daughter. At least my body was my own again. And I had no problems breastfeeding - nor did I mind it at all. It was always in private - I didn't like other people in the room, even my own mother. That added an embarrassing "ew" factor. I only breatfed for 9 months - after that, my daughter decided on her own she liked other beverages better. As it was, by 9 months, she was only breastfeeding once in a while - it got less and less after 4 months until it was done at 9 months. I never minded it. I don't know about you, but I did change my perceptions about a lot of things once I actually had my daughter in my arms. I adored her - she was special to me, and even though I'd never been a "baby" person, she made me one. Perhaps your feelings will change - perhaps not. But I understand about the "ew" factor. So many women I've spoken to enjoyed their pregnancy- I was absolutely horrified over the entire ordeal, including the delivery. Needless to say, I only had one child - I vowed I would NEVER do pregnancy again. But I found out I do like babies, especially my own......

Posted by: suze at February 10, 2006 01:35 AM (k1Y5v)

26 yeah, BF gives me the creeps a bit too, and when they get teeth, ouch! A friend of mine had to supplement BF with formula as her little guy needed more food. I was talking to another friend about it, and he got all self-righteous about it, saying that it wasn't necessary, a woman should be able to provide enough milk for her baby! I couldn't believe it, what a bastard. Mind you, he was one of those hippy types who was considering eating the placenta ... ewww

Posted by: Amanda at February 10, 2006 01:55 AM (L4Sch)

27 Emily and Flikka hit the nail on the head-I too wondered why we all didn't like the idea of breastfeeding, but it's clear that we are able to think that because we have more choice now than, say, women did 50 or 60 years ago. Maybe they felt squicky too, but couldn't do anything about the squick factor so they just sucked it up. And Emily the pooping while birthing? HUGE fear of mine. Huge. Am thinking if I do ever have children and it is a vaginal delivery, some brainwashing will be needed. Not just some brainwashing. Lots of brainwashing.

Posted by: Helen at February 10, 2006 09:09 AM (pYaFz)

28 I have to agree with the opinion that breast feeding is a great thing, it's just not something I liked doing. I tried with my first child and hated it, was always in a rotten mood, and got tired of sitting around topless watching my boobs leak. And it's no fun to have to rocks attached to my body. I did not breast feed my second child and was much happier. I know it's best for my baby, but my kids are not fat, are very smart...a big part of parenting is plain common sense and I've seen too many women rely on breast feeding as a "cure-all." Besides, after suffering the indignity of childbirth, who really wants to haul out the funbags all the time? Great post!

Posted by: GroovyVic at February 10, 2006 07:32 PM (UJdFD)

29 I've thought heaps about breast reduction surgery. Sometimes I want it, sometimes I don't. When I finally make up my mind to do it, that annoying little voice in my head chirps up "but then you can't breastfeed!". Sigh. Back to square one again. Story of my life.

Posted by: Mary-Jo at February 10, 2006 10:54 PM (ifdYo)

30 Maybe this is going to sound completely wrong, but if it does: this is not some sort of hate mail. I'm kind of surprised to read your viewpoint on this, I would have thought that you would embrace anything which has to do with children whole heartedly. On the other hand - it's definitely a clue that you're not obsessed, which is good. I did enjoy reading about your viewpoint, which made me stop and think, realizing I'd never thought about it that much. And after all, one is always entitled to her own opinion! That so didn't sound right. But I don't know how to say what I was thinking any better...

Posted by: Hannah at February 12, 2006 09:57 PM (ImQx2)

31 I have to say - you really can't beat the convenience of breastfeeding... What with hauling around all of the absolutely necessary stuff that babies need (diapers, baby wipes, extra clothes, more diapers, more extra clothes, sunscreen, a "blankie", spit-up cloth, car seat, ...), not having to worry about hauling around and mixing formula was really helpful. And if I'd had to do ANYTHING other than haul out a boob for those middle-of-the-night feedings, well, in my sleep deprived stupor who knows what I would have ended up feeding my daughter! That said, you just roll with it and do what ever you need to do! (but nursing at age 11?? ~ick ick ick~)

Posted by: Dawn at February 12, 2006 11:21 PM (gh9/z)

32 I was waiting in breathless fear for this comments section to be taken over by the LLL SWAT (haha). Breast-feeders have no problem whatsoever calling other mothers nasty horrible names. I had one woman tell me I should have strangled my kids rather than fed them formula. She was serious. If you think SAYING it will get you in trouble, just wait until you do it. The funny thing is, I think more women would breastfeed and breastfeed longer if the advocates were more accepting and tolerant of any other point of view.

Posted by: That Girl at February 13, 2006 01:57 PM (QzfsY)

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Sometimes I wish you could see what I see. Through my eyes, as though the look ahead was mine, perhaps with the dark rims of my glasses, perhaps with gratitude through the soft invisible lenses that cover my eyes. Walking around yesterday I found that sometimes I just don't know how to use words to describe things.

I ride the tube and stare in wonder at everyone around me. A tiny wizened Korean man sits next to me, two plastic grocery bags get parked at his feet. He pulls out his eyeglasses and places them over ears that sit beneath hair so white it's nearly blond. He smiles and bows half-politely to me, and then opens his Korean paper. I smile back and try to see what's in the bags, I try to imagine what he's making for dinner. A woman sits next to me in a heavy fur coat and too-pink lipstick and I curl my lip in distaste. I hate that her fur-encased arm drips on my side of the armrest, and I cough and make pointed looks at it but she's far too important to notice someone like me. I wish someone with more guts than I have would spray paint her jacket, I wish people would convince her the coat is wrong, I wish she wasn't sat next to me. A tall black man sits opposite me and his skin is the most beautiful rich mocha color I've ever seen. I stare at his forearm and marvel at the incredible color of it.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

I walk around a suburb in North London, sycamore leaves now dried up and gone. The traffic sounds are muffled and the wind blows through threadbare trees. The sound of my feet on the sidewalk is the loudest sound imaginable, the only sound imaginable. When I sit on that couch opposite him, his thoughts and opinions are given in a somber baritone. His laugh is a quiet one, a whisper. I hear the words I say and wish I wasn't so broken, I wish I wasn't so hard. When he talks to me sometimes his voice is full of an undercurrent of tenderness and kindness, and sometimes I have to turn my head away and try to handle it. I'm not used to tenderness and kindness. It can hurt too much to bear.

Sometimes I wish you could hear what I hear.

I go to the office and listen to my voice mails, try to read some of the now 1300 plus emails I have. With the exception of my Statia-mails, often I am exhausted just by the very content of the mails let alone the sheer number of them. I walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror, ignoring the work posters on the walls, the smell of work hand soap and work paper towels. I lean over the plastic-feeling countertop and soak up the fluorescent lights. I look into the mirror at the deep moons beneath my eyes. I have freckles splashed across my face, and they disappear into the dark folds of exhaustion. My cheekbones looks harsh, my eyes look lost, and in the space of a minute I have aged a hundred years.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

I go to lunch with my Australian friend, and she vents to me about her troubles as we walk down the lanes at Covent Garden. It's so relaxing to have a friend that I can listen to. I am not good at people, I lose people and they lose me, but it's so amazing to have someone to talk to, someone to talk to me. I am working on this, this ability to have friends, to keep friends. I am working on this and as lunch rolls on, I realize I have begun to enjoy this feeling of having people in my life.

Sometimes I wish you could feel what I feel.

I go to Starbucks and get a cup of café mocha to keep me company as I walk through Covent Garden again to head home. I never drink coffee my hot, I hold on to it until it's just hotter than room temperature. Then I swirl it around in my cup, making sure the skim milk has sifted all the way down and the chocolate all the way up. I move the cup to my lips and as the music from the street singers floats around my head and takes over my senses I drink the coffee silently and fully, allowing each sip to sit in my mouth for a second before swallowing.

Sometimes I wish you could taste what I taste.

I walk across Waterloo bridge and the wind ignites me with cold. The sun is lowering over the cloudy gray sky and Parliament and Big Ben light up my right hand side with gold. Across the bank bright blue fairy lights are strung around every tree and they make me feel lighter as I walk. Tourists stop and take photos from the bridge and I am reminded, every single time I walk across that bridge, how lucky I am to have that view. I never take it for granted and never will. I walk under the Waterloo Bridge, painted with the words to a poem across the walls. Remarkably the poem is never vandalized, and I read it every time I walk under it and marvel at the beauty of it.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

And when I come home, I open the door and take off my shoes. I pet my cats and I love my man and I can't believe I tripped and fell into this life. I worry I will fuck it up, I will lose it, and if I do I will miss it for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I wish you could see my life the way I do, but all I can rely on are my words that I put here, so that we both can pretend that you were here, too.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:34 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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On Friday I rode the train into London with Angus. Unusually, I had a late Friday appointment with my therapist, and then Angus and I had dinner and movie plans afterwards in the Big Smoke. We parted at Waterloo and I walked the winding hallways to the Jubilee Line. The halls and escalator smelled like granite, and I imagined putting my tongue to the groove for one moment, just to see what it tasted like.

The tube ride was long but easy, made easier by a Nintendo DS and an iPod. I'm a child of my generation, an early adopter, someone that likes the ability to be entertained and not have to be alone with whatever is inside my head. When I get to the neighborhood I walk along the darkening streets, underneath street lights that were just beginning to partake of an amber glow. One of the houses I pass has "2006" painted backwards on the inside of every window. Sometimes I think I need a reminder of what year I am in as well.

My therapy visit is easy and meaningful. There in the loft office I sit on the couch and continue to discuss some of the same subjects that I have picked up on during the last few weeks. His quiet countenance is soothing, something that I pick up on in my heart and let it circle around the lap a few times, a balm to a still relatively broken soul.

"Do you know what it's like to regret something so much that you just can't let yourself regret it, or else it will eat you up forever and ever?" I ask him.

"I do indeed," he says softly, and I know he's not lying to me, not trying some hippy Freudian mumbo-jumbo to try to relate. I know he has experienced how that feels. We talk further about family, the definition of family, how sometimes people you love become part of your family more than blood-relations do, and how I am working on it all inside the messy broth that is my head.

When I leave I walk through the silent and dark streets, of people coming home from work, of the smell of food wafting out of partially parked kitchen windows. I catch the tube back to Angus, changing at a throbbing London Bridge station full of people that long ago forgot what year they were in, and long ago forgot how to regret.

We have a nice meal at a nice restaurant. I indulge in eggs Fiorentine as my veggie diet has me craving protein. I buy an egg poacher to have more eggs at home. We have a bottle of wine and laugh, and I butter bread pieces for him to eat.

The movie theatre was next door, and so we get a glass of wine and tiptoe in when, woe to my wondering eyes should behold, but I see we have couches. Reclining couches! We get to enjoy the aroma of Memoirs of a Geisha while sitting on a couch together and drinking wine.

It's like a little slice of heaven.

And, of course, when the lights went out we quietly played with each other beneath our coats.

We missed the ending in order to catch our train (but having read the book, I knew what happened) and rode the train home, giggling and kissing as we waited, then reading our newspapers on the train as we sat across from 4 men in tuxedos, winding down for the evening.

Sunday we went to lunch with his family, a huge Sunday roast at a pub in his hometown. We laughed and talked and presented his mother with her 70th birthday present, a long weekend in Scotland. Angus' nieces beg to sit on my lap and go through my purse, and who am I to say no to them? They decorated themselves with my clear lip gloss, and they kept shuffling around in their little girl party dresses and sparkly plastic jewelry.

After the lunch Angus and I sneak off to the RSPCA in Godstone to say hello to the doggies. We are keeping an open mind and working hard to ensure we get the right dog, although I confess I check in with Dog's Trust often to see that Reggie is still there (he is). As we walked around I am happy to report that two-thirds of the dogs had already been adopted and were waiting to go to their new homes. As they looked out of their metal and concrete prisons with big eyes, I wished them luck and touched their noses through the bars.

The cats, sadly, were another matter.

As we toured through the cat section it was clear a lot of the beautiful babies would likely never find homes. Fully-grown, mature houscats with big green eyes, trembling in their little beds (the accommodation in the cat house was, actually, very good for the little ones). Some of the reasons that the cats had been abandoned saddened me-Owners passed away, owner went to prison, owner moved abroad and can't take cats. Some of them infuriated me-Owner says cat requires too much attention.

If I could find out who abandoned their cat for that reason I would hunt them down and beat them senseless.

A trio of cats looked lovingly out the window at me and my heart broke a thousand times for them. One rubbed its head against the glass, and both of us pretended that my finger on the clear surface was really on its ear. I know that I can't take home any more cats, I already have two and Jeff is allergic to cats anyway, I just wish I could find them someone who would love them as much as I love my girls.

Walking with Angus, I held his arm tightly as we looked at cats grouped together. "The cats that are in cages with other cats...they all come from the same homes. The owners just gave them all up." I shuddered and nearly cried, thinking about my girls. "Oh God, what if it were Maggie and Mumin? What would happen if something happened to us, who would take our girls? Who would know that Mumin likes to sleep under the covers and Maggie likes to drink out of the bathtub faucet?"

Something we'll have to think about, I guess. Just like parents need to know there is someone to take care of their children should anything happen, so too do I need to think about it as their mommy.

We head home, both heartened that most of the dogs have been re-homed and distressed about the cats. When we get home, Angus sees Maggie and Mumin, waiting eagerly for us on the couch. He scratches Maggie's ear. "We've been looking at your replacements," he teases. "You two don't do enough to earn your keep. You're useless," he says softly to her as she rolls over to allow him greater access to her soft stomach. He absolutely doesn't mean it, and anyway she doesn't believe it for a second. Her purr lights up the room and he smiles and I love my tiny family so much I could die. As Mumin follows me into the kitchen, I can't help but crush her to me and think that if it was ever my two girls in a pound like that, I would crumble.

Just an ordinary weekend.

An ordinary weekend with my nuclear family, the family that I love.

I made a note of it, to tell my therapist when I see him today.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:37 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Being an American in England means that I am often subjected to light ribbing and teasing. This, because I have something obvious to tease about and the English? They have self-deprecating humor down pat. As Angus explained, everyone gets light ribbing from the friends and colleagues about something (Angus got it for the bright FCUK shirts I used to buy him. Apparently, with one yellow one I bought him, one his ex-colleagues used to scream when he walked in the room first thing in the morning wearing it, and would then put his sunglasses on asking where the cord for the blinds were. Jesus, man, it's not like he's bursting into flame or anything, it was just a yellow fucking shirt.) Being American is just an easy target.

For the most part people here aren't cruel, and this is a very good thing because if I wanted cruel, I could just ring one of my family members. I can only think of one instance where someone was outright cruel-it was just over a year ago and I have a hard time getting it out of mind sometimes, and a hard time forgiving and forgetting. Beyond that, although it gets a little wearying sometimes, I know that people aren't being openly hostile.

That doesn't mean that occasionally I don't run into someone so fucking stupid that I want to volunteer my sterilization services, lest they procreate without warning because as a former world-weary and bitter anthropologist, I sometimes believe that DARWINISM NEEDS A PUSH.

A few weeks ago we went to dinner with one of Angus' childhood chums, who is now an anchorman for one of the news stations. It's weird enough to go to dinner with someone your partner has known for almost 44 years (as a military brat, the furthest back my friends go is university, and even then we only send Christmas cards, we're not really "pour your heart out about infertility issues" kind of relationships, especially since in college we were all angry card-carrying feminists who felt the men in our life should be humbled to be allowed to spend any time in our I'll-decide-my-own-fucking-fate lives.) It's even weirder when Angus' mate asks if we can sit away from the windows, as he doesn't want to be gawked at.

This, from the man I have nicknamed "Baby Head" after seeing him on TV, as I think his head is extraordinarily large for his body.

Angus begged me not to call him that, to which I think: My people? We are kind and don't take the piss right away. I grew up using the words "Ma'am" and "Sir", of course I'm not going to fucking call him that. Not to his face, anyway.

We met up with them in the charming town of Winchester, which I have a lot of time for and like going there (mostly because it's cute and old, but also the shopping? She is great). We go to meet the man I'll call Baby Head (what? It's not like he reads this site or anything) and his girlfriend whose name I honestly can't remember so I'll call her Jojo.

'Cause that's funny.

Angus and I get there early and sit down to a bottle of wine. We are laughing and taking it easy, and he lets slip my Valentine's Day surprise-he's taking me away this coming weekend to Ireland for a long weekend. I made lots of shrieking girlie noises and big points were awarded for such a nice surprise. I'm sitting there in the amber glow of mushy love when Baby Head and Jojo show up.

Baby Head is exactly as he shows on TV, tall, strange haircut, big head, well-dressed. He looks older than Angus (I am pleased to say), but he's actually not unattractive (but not as cute as Angus, I am again pleased to say). Jojo is tiny. As in, maybe five foot two. She has shoulder-length blond hair and looks like she hasn't eaten since 1987. She's wearing one of those weird half-sweaters that knots under the boobs, the kind of thing that's supposed to show you have a rack. Now, I have a rack and a sweater like that would make it look like I was serving up my hooters a la carte, but Jojo? Crickets chirped as our glances surreptitiously tried to see what had come out of the primordial ooze that was a poor half-sweater.

We make our way into the main part of the restaurant and Angus and Baby Head sit on one side of the table, and Jojo and I sit on the other. The waitress brings a bread basket and Angus, Baby Head and I dig in, while Jojo's hand just lingers above it. Grab one! I silently plead to her. I'll get the nasal gastric tube, we can make this work! Use both hands and eat a piece, or if it's too heavy I'll feed you!

She doesn't heed my silent pleading, and her hands flutter away from the bread basket.

Angus and Baby Head are in good conversation about their hometown, their old mates, etc. Jojo turns to me.

"So are you a native of Whitney Houston?" she asks, eyeing my bread plate.

"No, I'm not. I'm actually originally from the States." I reply as I prepare the delicious bread.

"Really? You don't sound very American."

I pop a piece of the bread-the lucious, hot, olive bread-into my mouth and smile. "Well, I am." I reply after chewing and swallowing.

Jojo reaches across the table. "Baby Head! Helen's American!"

"Really?" he asks. "Whereabouts?"

I hate this part. "Guess." I smile back.

And thus commences my favorite game-when people start randomly picking states. Strangely, almost everytime I play this game someone asks if I'm from Idaho. Idaho? I mean, sure. I've driven through it and it's nice, but never have I actually met someone from Idaho. So why Idaho?

They get loads wrong until Jojo cuts in with, "Well, you can't be from the south because they sound really thick."

"I'm from the south," I reply wearily. Which I sort of am and sort of am not, but whatever.

The men go back to their man talk and Jojo's hands flit nevously around her newly-arrived appetizer, of which she eats about a third and then gives the rest to Baby Head. Jojo and I talk about the usual and I find out she's a teacher who just spent a year teaching in Spain, so from there on every other sentence that comes out of her mouth involves the word "Spain" as a plug-in to how exotic and exciting her life has been. I am informed a few times that I have "no idea" how amazing and difficult it is to live in a foreign-language speaking culture, she says. She's so right-I have no idea. After all, min tid i Sverige betyder ingenting.

She turns back me right after the main course arrives. She's ordered fettucine and I'd like to see how much of it actually gets past her lips. "I've never met a nice American," she says, stirring her fork around in her pasta plate. "They've all been absolutely dreadful."

I look at her and hear Patty Simcox in my head, poodle skirt and all: Oh I hope you're going to be at cheerleader tryouts! We'll have lots of fun and get to be lifelong friends!

"Really?" I say slowly. "That's terrible. Most of the Americans I know of and meet are very kind, genuine people."

She sniffs-seriously, she sniffs-and then almost takes a bit of a pasta noodle. "My friend Damen is married to an American woman. She came over to England ten years ago and then he married her to help her get a visa. They split years and years ago, and now he wants to get divorced but he can't find her!"

I shrug. "The courts provide for that. He just needs to get his ass in gear and file papers, after 5 years the marriage will be automatically dissolved."

"But isn't it disgusting? She used him to get a visa." She pushes a cream blob on her plate then turns to me. "Are you using Angus for a visa? Are you?"

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Why don't you just ask if I am silently funneling money out of his bank account into my own private Swiss account? Or if I have been preparing myself by slowly building up an immunity to Iocaine powder, so that I can poison both cups?

I smile tightly. "No, I'm not. I'm here on my own work visa. I'm not opposed to being here on a visa based on how I feel for him, though, and if we ever did decide to move to the States I would imagine he would feel the same."

She sniffs again. I want to buy her a Vick's nose inhaler. "Well, this woman was old. She was like mid-50's-" this is rich coming from a woman who's a stone's throw away from the big 5-0 herself-"and she was a fat ungrateful cow."

Well. Aren't we all. I look at Angus, who's enjoying his talk with his old friend Baby Head, and decide to take the high road, to silence the outraged voices in my head. I decide to not be as sarcastic and difficult as I always am-I will be kind and all-loving! I can do this! I cut off a piece of my pizza and I EAT IT, and then I turn to her. "We're not all bad. You've just had some bad exposure."

She looks at me. "All of the Americans I've met have been dreadful."

I think I can I think I can I think I can. Deep breath. "How many have you met?"

"Four," she replies.

"Hardly representative." I say with a smile. I try playing Zydeco music in my head to cheer me up.

"I knew three in Spain. They were teaching with me. They were absolutely dreadful, they didn't understand the need for a balanced curriculum."

Oh, I can't wait to hear this one. "Really? How's that?"

"Well, one of the girls was from Minnesota, and she didn't know her multiplications tables. She didn't know them at all. And she said in Minnesota they don't teach them."

I laugh. "What rubbish! Of course they teach the multiplication tables in schools in Minnesota. They teach them in all schools."

"She said they don't. And she didn't know the tables. Do you?"

Oh sure. 1x1=1. 1x2=2. Me x you=someone is going to have to emerge from this dinner situation alive and with their temper intact.

"And they didn't do P.E. in Minnesota either. She didn't do it there and she wouldn't do it in Spain."

This is whipping me. The Zydeco music is not working and my all-loving kind self is melting into a pool of inner sarcasm. "All schools have P.E. It's not so much to get us in shape as it is to scar and humiliate us for the rest of our lives, but we do have it. I think she was having you on."

Jojo shrugs. "And she couldn't spell. From what I've seen, all Americans can't spell. You're all dreadful at spelling, it was frankly embarrassing in front of the children."

Sure we can spell. C-U-N-T. See? I can spell. C-U-N-T. It's easy, now you try it.

"And she said that they don't teach sex education."

I shrug. "That might be true. It depends on the area, unfortunately. I myself am a huge proponent of teaching sex ed, and teaching all aspects of it, including contraception. But not all areas of the US are like that, so perhaps the area she was in didn't teach it."

She sighs. "I think that's terrible. The US has such a high teen birth rate."

Right. And the UK has Europe's highest teen birth rate, so where are we driving with that little suggestive tidbit, sugarplum?

Baby Head and Angus join in our conversation. "Did you have P.E. teachers teach you sex ed?" Angus laughs. "I did, it was painful."

Thank Christ for my boy, who I am going to shag the minute I get home. "I did!" I say brightly, hoping to fuck he'll stay in the conversation. "I was taught by a P.E. teacher, too, it was terribly awkward!"

Jojo pushes her dinner plate to Baby Head, who will be the recipient of a largely full and artfully arranged bowl of fettucine, as handed off by the Famine Girl. "I too had a P.E. teacher. They seperated the girls from the boys, and I remember being so shocked when they showed a picture of the penis, and of the penis going into the...the...whatever you call it."

C-U-N-T?

"The vagina?" I ask, my mouth betraying my brain.

"That's the one." Jojo says with a relieved air of certainty. I can see why she needed my help with that one. She was definitely of the crusty fanny category, I imagine the last time a light shined between her legs it involved the words "pap" and "smear".

Dinner ends and I am so grateful. Angus and I walk to the train station and he tells me of the nice talk he had with Baby Head. I tell him of the painful conversation I had with Jojo, and we come to the same conclusion-she's just a bit ignorant and naive, she hasn't been out in the world enough to see that either she needs to grow a sense of humor, or she needs to re-shape her opinion of Americans.

The C-U-N-T.

-H.

UPDATED-sorry, comments were somehow closed for that post when it got published. I've re-opened them. Sorry!

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:53 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 2292 words, total size 13 kb.

1 I admire you and compliment you on your control. I'm not at all sure I would have been that strong.

Posted by: RP at February 06, 2006 03:55 PM (LlPKh)

2 Hun er en jaevla fitte tryne og kan reise til helvete me kuken ret i raeva din. Heh. I told her. Stupid fanny faced whore. As I told you, you showed far more restraint than I ever would have. I would have tried to smother her in her pasta whilst asking why she was doing that to herself. Nubs, bubs, cheerio, tip top and a how's yer mum.

Posted by: Sir Henry at February 06, 2006 04:23 PM (ayZK4)

3 She'd have got on well with the Meester's old boss, seeing as how he thinks that London papers are written with the thought in mind that people have read them the day before.

Posted by: statia at February 06, 2006 04:37 PM (NsnoE)

4 She sounds like a real treat. It's funny to see the similarities between generalizing twats in the States who hate the French despite never having met any French, etc., and people like Jojo who do the same thing with Americans. Humperdink! Humperdink! Humperdink! Sorry, I couldn't resist. Iocane and all, you know.

Posted by: mac at February 06, 2006 05:21 PM (4sb5H)

5 Sounds as though she is sporting a well-placed American corn cob up her bum. Hope it chafes!

Posted by: Marie at February 06, 2006 05:41 PM (PQxWr)

6 gah, what a bitch! i would have had trouble restraining myself there. jeez louise.

Posted by: kat at February 06, 2006 06:53 PM (xJGrF)

7 Cheers to you sweets! for not only handling the situation well, but for making me laugh over it too! I'd have poured my drink on her. I swear. Either that or I would have started surreptitiously started throwing food at her, trying to get some in her mouth

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 06, 2006 07:30 PM (/vgMZ)

8 Kudos to you for not being snotty and spiteful right back, Helen. Although I would have paid good money to watch you offer her a bottle of Afrin nose spray, or ask her to spell vagina. Or tell her, "You know, all the women I've known that taught in Spain were dreadful women. Just pretentious twits who don't have a clue how to be gracious. They all had eating disorders too. Social X-Rays, I call them. Tsk tsk, you always want to shove a cheeseburger down their silly throats. Oh dear; where was it you said you taught again? Ohhh.... SORRY! NOT!

Posted by: Amber at February 06, 2006 08:16 PM (zQE5D)

9 Being a Minnesotan educated right here in the land of 10,000 lakes I can tell you the following: Yes we have sex ed. Starts as earl as 3rd grade and gets more embarrassing as you get older. We're a bunch of liberals - duh. Yes we have P.E. but due to tax cuts many music and athletic programs are being cut. However - I would say that this has only affected a small percentage of schools - and only in the last few years. Math is actually taught here in the cold ass north. Even multiplication tables - I know it seems crazy - we even have our own big giant companies with people from MN working there to prove it (3M and Medtronic). English and spelling - although you wouldn't know it from my website - spelling is also taught in this frozen tundra that I live in. Tell JoJo to come on over for a visit - I wanna see her skinny butt freeze while ice fishing.

Posted by: Suzanne at February 06, 2006 08:34 PM (GhfSh)

10 Damn you Helen! I'm trying to eat dinner here! Don't you know how awful it is to have chicken and rice go up your nose or to clean it off your computer screen from laughing too hard while your mouth is full? Sounds like this poor lass is in desperate need of multiple screaming orgasms. How 'bout loaning her your toy? Better yet, jam it in her mouth next time so she'll shut the F-U-C-K up.

Posted by: diamond dave at February 06, 2006 10:14 PM (g1qn0)

11 Yeah, I've had an encounter or two like that in England, and I'm hardly the "obnoxious stupid" types that were used as examples. Which always makes me want to ask, "So, what you're saying is you think I'm just like the TWO you've met, as are all Americans?" I mean, how we can all be the same, being one of the biggest, most diverse - and, apparently - one of the more tolerant places in the world? I mean, where I come from, I'd have my ass kicked if I started stereotyping people from other countries as being wholly one way or the other. I think, actually, we call that bigoted, or elitist, or something-ist, or somesuch. Anyway, I'm on my way over there in March, and I sure hope if it happens again, I can exhibit your grace. (And maybe even buy you and Angus lunch!)

Posted by: liv at February 07, 2006 12:24 AM (gMPYf)

12 Sir Henry has the right idea. You should have continued the conversation in Swedish.

Posted by: B. Durbin at February 07, 2006 06:47 AM (tie24)

13 Ditto everything Suzanne said. I may be slightly biased as I too was born, raised, and still reside in the frozen state of Minnesota. As a bonus we also know all about sex education and I can name all the parts not only correctly but also many popular slang names.

Posted by: cursingmama at February 07, 2006 04:09 PM (PoQfr)

14 Here in Minnesota we like to practice our multiplcation tables WHILE having sex. You coud also argue that sex is good physical education as well. So now, thanks to JoJo (which reminds me of some stupid children's claytype cartoon show JoJo's Circus), all of those days of awkwardly trying to cover up my very developed self during swimming class were all just in my head. Oh, and the sex education started in 4th grade for me ... with scary unibrowed science teacher. They were convinced by 6th grade that watching a woman give birth every year during health class would scare us all silly. Didn't work! But the other lovlies from this frozen hell put it much better than I did ... and much faster as well (my internet addiction has had to take a backseat dammit). I am proud that you didn't rip her a new one right then and there. I don't think I could've had as much restraint if I were in the same situation. Maybe it's the lack of carbs that have affected her brain ... and those who aren't really that awful suddenly seem so.

Posted by: Michele at February 07, 2006 11:06 PM (iTYOZ)

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Admittedly we are not normal, average TV watchers. While I do like my fill of Desperate Housewives and Lost, I also like old 80's English shows like House of Elliot, in which I can pretend I could have had a chance as a proper lady in 1920's London (when the truth is, I think in a past life I was a gin whore who sold her body for bathtub gin and the precursor to the modern fish stick. This would explain why I don't like gin straight up and fish sticks anymore. Karma, people. Karma.)

But we are also of the documentary world in this house, too. While it's always important to know how the Marshall Plan actually works, we also learn such nuggets as how maple syrup is made (to which I think-seriously, do I care how it's made? Doesn't it just come in a bottle from the Canadian wilderness? If that's enough for Aunt Jemima, shouldn't it be enough for us?) And at any given hour, I swear to God, there's a program about WWII on, no matter what time of day it is. I think that WWII is just as important as the next person, but come on, England. It might be time to begin to move on now.

Monday night I tread into the living room and settle in next to Angus, who is watching the TV with a look of horror on his face, the kind of fascinated horror that you only see when someone watches midget porn/sees someone wearing parachute pants in public/sees a drunken reveller eat a kebab/observes a live vivisection while eating chili cheese nachos. I look up at the TV and see, in giant plasma 32 inch glory, a penis staring me right back in the face.

Ah, good old channel 4. There to help me get over the fact that boobs aren't even allowed to be shown on American TV before 10, you come racing in with dicks the size of dinner plates on the TV show The Perfect Penis.

And, much like watching elf porn, I sit down with Angus and stare in slack-jawed horror.

The show is scientific, a study on penis size and on the male attitude towards the penis. That said, I think I was flashed by about a hundred penises, all of them different sizes and all but one of them circumcised (yes, this show was filmed in the States). In one scene there was a Russian doctor doing surgery on a hermaphrodite. He said to the camera that the man had type "XX" and was therefore a male (to which I shouted at the TV: Um, no! XX is female, XY is male! but to no avail-he went ahead with the surgery anyway. No one listens anymore.) So he chopped off his patient's little nubbin (it looked surprisingly easy to do) and sewed it to the patient's wrist (yes, you read that correctly) for a blood supply while he worked on making the little nubbin a little something.

The ick factor was huge. My clitoris climbed up into my body and whimpered pitifully, begging me to tell it when this scene was over.

Another story was of a gay man in San Francisco whose dream it was to have the world's greatest circumference in testicle size. Seriously. He was so keen on it that he had many, many injections of silicone into his sac to make them huge. They showed the man walking down a long corridor and it looked like he was packing something other than heat in the crotch of his trousers (I sat there thinking that I know a good therapist that guy should talk to). They asked him if he'd show the camera his private version of happy and his face lit up like it was Christmas and he was being visited by Silicone Claus-he dropped trou and exposed a mass of flesh the size and shape of a bowling ball. He gleefully explained that the penis and testicles were no longer sexually functioning and he had to squat over toilets as they dragged into the water, but it was all worth it just to be able to say his sac was larger than anyone else's in the world's, including Merrick's.

To me (and, I think, 90% of the ladies out there), if he's huge it's a bit of a put-off. Our cervixes are not there to be drilled, the man need not look for the new Alaskan pipeline. There is the man saying that "More than a handful is a waste", well, the same can be applied to both sexes. I remember unleashing the trouser snake of a guy I was dating in university. When that thing popped out of his tighty-whities I looked at it in horror. I had been planning on providing him with a little oral pleasure, only I was pretty sure that the last strep throat culture I had was negative, I didn't need a repeat of it. I looked up at the guy. "I'm not going anywhere near that thing," I croaked. He begged me. I gave in and gave it the old college try and wound up accidentally leaving wagon trail grooves on the side of his dick with my back molars.

A painful lesson to both parties, really, though I suspect the pain was slightly greater on his end.

In general, women are not interested in having men be the stand-in for King Kong. If the guy is the size of Bic pen cap when fully erect, perhaps there is a need for being careful and diplomatic. Then, maybe, we'll have to provide a bit of encouragement. There is a world of truth in the adage "it's how you use it", as well as how men cultivate their, um, other talents. If, for example, a guy can use his tongue to lick out the inside of a carton of Yoplait then party's on, babe.

These men having the surgery done, what are they hoping to hear? Bet your girlfriend likes that you've gone bigger, huh? Is that what they hope to hear? Because when I had my breasts reduced many years ago do you know how many times I heard from a man: Oh my God! You didn't! What did you boyfriend say? Did he let you do that?

If he's not carrying my rack around on his pecs, then I don't think his opinion was needed. And as for if he let me? If he let me? Imagine my reaction, and here's a hint-I was more outraged than when they changed the recipe for Trix cereal.

While overall women don't have any interest in men having the girth of a Coke Can (not all of us like the feeling of having sex with a Bratwurst. I'm just saying. Plus it makes it hell to put tampons in if we're all stretched out), I don't imagine men really want us running around looking like Jordan or Pamela Anderson either. Just because many men like looking in wonder at silicone 36-EEE boobs, I would bet that if men lived with them every night in the bed next to them, they'd get a little tired of it. Eventually we all will need to put these myths to rest, the perfect Hollywood stereotype that we have of the perfect person isn't what we want in our real lives

An example of this is the admin for our project ran into Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie a week ago in a museum in London. In her early 20's "Ohmigod!" squealy voice, she said she was star-struck and tongue-tied and couldn't believe she was standing next to them. Then her brow furrowed and she said she was actually disappointed-Angelina was wearing a shapeless pregnancy-hiding shift but that she was "very scrawny". And she also said that Brad Pitt was maybe 5 foot 8, and that was with "tall shoes". So our Hollywood heroes? A measure of publicity goes a long way.

Long schlongs are supposed to be a sign of virility but as a chick going through fertility treatment, from my perspective the only thing that will prove virility is a white-coated man in a lab looking into a love cup and counting up the swimmers. That, or if (like a guy I work with) you have 6 kids. 6 kids. Yeah. He's virile (or else his mailman is, as his wife finds out once he leaves for work in the morning). A jungle vine busting the fly does not mean that you have the propensity to re-stock the human race. It's also not necessarily a sign that you are the Big Man on the Block, even if you're the Big Man in the Balls. Testosterone, for example, is higher in men that are bald. So if women are allegedly worshipping the men who drip testosterone from their pores, we'd be more likely to go for a guy with a sunroof as opposed to the Adonis with curls into his late 40's (beside, curls are so Magnum PI. Gauche).

If the guy's average, chances are that suits 90% of women. If men like average boobs, chances are we women suit 90% of them. So how about the men dial down the dick extensions and we women'll put the silicone blobs down, yes?

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:52 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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1 Yes!

Posted by: Di at February 03, 2006 11:35 AM (KJE2B)

2 Well said Helen, well said.

Posted by: Teresa at February 03, 2006 01:55 PM (zf0DB)

3 Now if we could just get this message out to more people... I swear, this hits the nail right on the head. Well said as usual, Helen, well said...

Posted by: sue at February 03, 2006 02:22 PM (WbfZD)

4 Amen!

Posted by: That Girl at February 03, 2006 02:35 PM (QzfsY)

5 Yes please. Tough my wifes "milkbar" looks better everyday ;-)...

Posted by: Miguel at February 03, 2006 02:50 PM (1VWjY)

6 YES! YES! YES! "The ick factor was huge. My clitoris climbed up into my body and whimpered pitifully, begging me to tell it when this scene was over" Boy, did I ever laugh at that line!!

Posted by: kenju at February 03, 2006 03:03 PM (2+7OT)

7 You hit the nail right on the head, girl! I haven't laughed like this in quite some time...

Posted by: Lisa at February 03, 2006 03:54 PM (4segi)

8 Okay, intervention time. Angus isn't allowed to choose the channel on the TV anymore.

Posted by: Lindsay at February 03, 2006 04:14 PM (pYXRq)

9 LMAO! You said it, and succinctly.

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 03, 2006 06:52 PM (uI/79)

10 Well said!

Posted by: tommy at February 03, 2006 07:46 PM (EhwJT)

11 Precisely! Could never have said it better myself.

Posted by: Lisa at February 03, 2006 09:08 PM (5vmEt)

12 Wow. Just a couple of hours ago Dan sent me the URL that goes to a page of pictures where guys do that to their naughty bits. It's, it's...I don't know the word for what it is. Oh wait, here it is: CRAZY!

Posted by: Amber at February 03, 2006 09:31 PM (zQE5D)

13 Aha! I KNEW most chicks would rather not deal with anacondas! I've had this same discussion with many guys, some of them incredibly stupid. I've thought what it'd be like to be monstrously large and decided it isn't worth it. Too many women running away screaming, can't get full penetration (unless she's got a box the size of a beer mug), and I prefer things that tuck away nice and neatly when not in use. Plus they make too large and tempting a target if you royally piss off a woman and she decides to rack you. Oops, maybe that was a little TMI. I'll just say that my wife has no complaints.

Posted by: diamond dave at February 03, 2006 09:54 PM (0gB9X)

14 Oh my god, I too, totally got sucked (maybe the wrong term here) into watching the penis - documentary? - the other night. My boyfriend walked in at the silicon lump uber package scene and almost lost his dinner. I believe his exact words were, "My eyes, my eyes!!! Oh the humanity!!". Um yeah and the next night on Channel 4 was "Extraordinary Breastfeeding". A little somethin' for the fellas so they don't feel left out? lol. Is it sweeps week or something?

Posted by: Lee at February 04, 2006 04:00 PM (fu97t)

15 I met a girl in college who was slouching a bit, so I told her she should stand up straight, it might help her back. She replied that she was working on it, but she'd had breast-reduction surgery just a few months prior and hadn't quite gotten used to the new balance. (She was still moderately large.) When she got married a few years later her posture was great. And she was so pretty! And now, for some reason, I'm remembering the sex ed teacher in my (Catholic!) high school, who simply said "Sex is not soccer. You are allowed to use your hands."

Posted by: B. Durbin at February 04, 2006 08:47 PM (tie24)

16 Spot on as usual! And funny to boot!

Posted by: B at February 05, 2006 12:05 PM (EolI8)

17 I thought you liked bratwurst?? Heh.

Posted by: statia at February 06, 2006 05:29 AM (56gUM)

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OK, yesterday?

Yeah. Much happened.

So I trek to my Weakest Link audition, which is held in a hotel not far from a BBC studio in West London. Hotel not in good neighborhood. Helen fears bad neighborhood. Helen also froze her left breast off walking from tube to hotel (not that left breast was flapping lexposed in Arctic-like wind or anything).

I walk into the hotel and seat in the waiting area, with about 8 others that couldn't be more representative of Weakest Link contestants if we tried. We sat around chatting, and then were called in as a group to audition. It went like this: we had to talk about ourselves for one full minute without stopping (a piece of cake for me. I can take a run-on sentence and make it a ten minute-long monologue about tampons, no problem. A minute on myself? Just open mouth, disconnect brain, and BINGO!) Then we had to take a general knowledge quize of 30 questions in 3 minutes. This was also no problem, and I answered them all within 90 seconds (it helps to be a speed reader. But I know I got at least one wrong because I had NO IDEA which English presenter uses the words "cheap as chips".)

Then we had a fake round of the game, and it wasn't easy. It's not easy, and it's only in a hotel conference room with 8 strangers-I can't imagine what it's like in the studio! Suffice to say I did get one wrong ("Open Sesame" comes from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I had blanked on that one and said 1001 Nights. Fuck.) But almost all of us got one wrong, I wasn't the Weakest Link, I banked, and no one tried to vote me off. So there.

Then we had to do an on-camera interview for 5 minutes. We talked about various subjects and one of the producers says to me: You're very articulate. To which my mind immediately screams: You mean for an American? But I do not say this, instead I tamper my defensive reflex down and simply say thank you.

If I actually said all the things that my mind screams, I wouldn't have any friends.

Then it's over. Me with my fancy updo finish up. I'm told I did very well, so I am honestly hopeful that I do hear from them approving me for the show. It would be nerve-wracking but fun.

I ring Angus to tell him all about it. I then ring Peter, my friend and fellow project manager for our Gerbil project. He's getting ready in his hotel, which turns out is only 500 yards away from the museum. I hesitantly ask if I can use his bathroom to get ready in, as otherwise I am stripping down and putting on the formal wear in the bathroom at the audition. He says absolutely and I make my way over (note-I have met his wife and he's met Angus a number of times. There was absolutely nothing that would have gone on between us, we're just mates).

I change in his teeny-tiny bathroom, then come up and finish the makeup and jewelry. He cracks open the minibar and we drink a half-bottle of white wine in the two chipped white coffee mugs and watch an episode of The Simpsons before we go (it was the one where Lisa tries to dress up and be someone else in order to win a beauty pageant. I know that feeling).

Then we went to the Museum of Natural History.

And I honestly had done a coin toss and honestly wore the dress the coin told me to wear (I am susecptible like that.) I wore Dress B.

And I felt BEAUTIFUL.

And I'm also pleased I wore Dress B as it fit in largely with what the few other women were wearing. Since the work I am in is largely technology driven, the women? We are few and far between. My jewelry was 1920's London vintage, a sparkly necklace, bracelet, and earrings.

The evening was amazing. Holding a dinner in amongst the fossils was a perfect venue. Champagne flowed, people talked and laughed, and I spent time with my team, Peter, my manager Jeff, and our senior manager Dan. We sat at our table next to an enormous dinosaur skeleton, with one whole wall lit up to look like stars at night.

Dinner proceeded. I actually had a good time there with my team, and with others on the table on other projects also in competitions. Our category-the "main event", the Dream Job version of the Best Picture Oscar, was dead last in the running order of the evening. Appetizers came from waiters in crisp white jackets, orchestrated by a maitre d' per table who wore an earpiece in his ear, conducting his symphony of staff with exact precision. Peter and I switched to water early on in the evening as all the champagne was going to our heads.

Appetizers turned to dinner. I played with the rose petals nervously in the middle of the table. Other awards were handed out as dinner turned to dessert (which I didn't eat). More awards pass and I play with the sparkly stars strewn around our table. Dessert turns to coffee, then it's our category, the last category of the evening.

The Knighted Chap walks onstage, as he will be the presenter of this award. I've met the Knighted Chap three times prior to this, only it still makes me nervous being around him (Hi Knighted Chap. I grew up in military housing and bought my entire formal attire I am wearing this evening for £43. You have a security detail, bodyguards, and three palatial homes. How you doing?) He goes on the stage and announces the three finalists of Dream Job's highest prize. It was the most hotly competitive category with many entries. The Knighted Chap looks up and says that it's his special honor to present this award to a team he believes earned it and worked so hard.

And then he says my name.

We won.

WE WON!!!!!

Shaking and grinning so hard my head nearly popped open, I grab Peter and Jeff's hands and drag them to the stage, with Dan finishing off the group. I go on stage and receive a handshake and a kiss from the Knighted Chap, and then I grab Peter and give him a bear hug. I grab Jeff and Dan as well as we have a team hug, and I even grab the Knighted Chap in a fit of exuberance and make him join the all-American hugging session too.

There is a webcast on Dream Job's site that shows us hugging and then shows me grabbing Knighted Chap rather exuberantly.

We won.

Fucking hell, we won.

We sit back down.

We've received a plaque, which will go into the new lab we've just built in London for the work we do.

(I was requested to show a plaque-holding photo, and I aim to please. But I've cut out the name of Dream Job and my colleagues posing with me to protect them and myself!)

We won a gold medal made from a London jewelers with our name, the award, and the date on it.

And we won £1000 in shopping vouchers each.

The CEO called me as I was in the cab home to congratulate the project and tell me he was so proud.

It was a lovely evening.

-H

PS-I'm glad I picked the blue dress. There's a May Ball coming up, and I know just the dress to wear to it (*cough*Dress A*cough).

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:39 AM | Comments (49) | Add Comment
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1 yes yes yes yes!!!! We all knew you would win darlin because you totally deserved it! And you made the right choice of dress. You're bloody gorgeous! Sexy, sophisticated, and not at all prom-queen-esque Congrats babe. Here's to your award AND your fab dress! AxXx

Posted by: Lemurgirl at February 02, 2006 11:03 AM (kZzM5)

2 congratulations gorgeous... I feel so smilie. you won and I picked the right dress and you look divine in it... HEHE Bises!

Posted by: stinkerbell at February 02, 2006 11:14 AM (QcMkT)

3 CONGRATULATIONS! And the dress looks great. Nice to know you have Dress A waiting in the wings as well!

Posted by: jac at February 02, 2006 12:06 PM (Hi9nn)

4 Awesome! (I feel like I should follow that with a surferish duuuuuuuude!) You're getting the recognition for the hard work you and your team have put in. Even if your manager can't see past himself to recognize it, the higher-ups sure do. I love the dress your coin toss chose and the jewelry is gorgeous.

Posted by: selzach at February 02, 2006 12:56 PM (G9MYN)

5 Well done you!!! And not at all allsort-esque ;-)

Posted by: Rob at February 02, 2006 01:18 PM (wZqoJ)

6 Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy for you!

Posted by: amber at February 02, 2006 01:22 PM (VZEhb)

7 Woohoo! Congratulations! I'm so very happy for you and your team. You've all worked so hard to get your gerbils boosting off that it's good to see you being recognized for the blood, sweat, and tears you've poured into the job.

Posted by: Myles at February 02, 2006 01:26 PM (m/+Gw)

8 Wow. First off, you look stunning-honestly, just gorgeous. Everything about you, but especially the smile-it says it all. Congrats on the audition, and super-congrats on the award. Lord knows you fucking deserve it! It is wonderful to see you so happy. THe best part? Another ball in May-you get to wear both dresses!!! ;-)

Posted by: Teresa at February 02, 2006 01:28 PM (zf0DB)

9 Well done, Helen! Nightmare boss be damned, you pulled it off and looked fabulous to boot!

Posted by: Teri at February 02, 2006 01:33 PM (K7jOL)

10 Wow! You look fabulous! And super big congratulations on winning the prize. And as for "Cheap as Chips" - David Dickinson from Bargain Hunt. (I think)

Posted by: Orodemniades at February 02, 2006 01:40 PM (Bd74n)

11 .. wow!... good for you and your team!..

Posted by: Eric at February 02, 2006 01:44 PM (r5XsL)

12 Aww...Helen! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! You and the Dream Team deserved that award. You look so happy in those pictures, do you see that? I chose dress A but I have to admit, you do look stunning in B. I hope Angus feels stunning under it! *wink

Posted by: Lindsay at February 02, 2006 01:48 PM (icxd8)

13 It didn't matter what dress you wore...that genuine, gigantic smile you have on in the photo where you're holding the award? Sheer beauty. You're amazing. Congratulations! Now take Angus out to celebrate, just the two of you...

Posted by: Serena at February 02, 2006 02:04 PM (ToHm9)

14 Wonderful. Dress was great, glad was appropriate. Congratulations on the award.

Posted by: Foggy at February 02, 2006 02:22 PM (Ah2V/)

15 That's fabulous! I'm thrilled for you!

Posted by: RP at February 02, 2006 02:25 PM (LlPKh)

16 Outstanding!! I'm so happy for you and your team! Wonderful choice of dress, as well. And congratulations on the audition's having gone so well!

Posted by: Lisa at February 02, 2006 02:37 PM (5vmEt)

17 Yay Helen! WELL DONE to all of you. The dress? brilliant! I smiled hardest when i saw the picture of you by the skeleton mounted on the wall, i have stood there too taking pictures! Abs x

Posted by: abs at February 02, 2006 02:38 PM (Z5qG3)

18 Congratulations!! What an excellent evening for you. And, you looked stunning. Great choice with your dress.

Posted by: B at February 02, 2006 03:12 PM (TQHLW)

19 Congrats darlin'! You look so happy in the photos! I'm so glad all your hard work and stress was finally recognized. And all that shopping money? Excellent!

Posted by: amy t. at February 02, 2006 03:47 PM (zPssd)

20 #1: You look FABULOUS in that dress! Very posh! #2: Congratulations on the award! And the shopping vouchers.

Posted by: Lisa at February 02, 2006 04:03 PM (IVqzN)

21 Congratulations on a well deserved award! What a fantastic evening!

Posted by: Liv at February 02, 2006 04:10 PM (AbDXn)

22 I'm so glad you picked B!!!!!! You looked gorgeous and amazing and beautiful, and congrats on being super-intelligent and hard-working, as well. You rock, Helen. And not just because of your fabby dress and jewelry.

Posted by: trouble at February 02, 2006 04:12 PM (j2vfb)

23 How wonderful!! Congratulations, you deserve this 1000 times over!! You look lovely in the dress you chose, and the jewelry is absolutely perfect! So I think you should feel the best about your job. You are obviously appreciated! And in more ways than a warm fuzzy! : )

Posted by: Annette at February 02, 2006 04:14 PM (h/BkP)

24 Sweet jesus, what an evening! Congrats...all your hard work paid off. And you looked smashing in dress B.

Posted by: Marie at February 02, 2006 04:56 PM (PQxWr)

25 You should be so proud!! You deserve this so much! Isn't it nice when all that hard work has a payoff? Congrats, congrats, congrats to you and your team. YOU made it happen and should be so proud. It's nice when the higher-ups recognize it, too! Good for you, gf! btw - you look stunning in that dress. Perfect choice. Good luck with the Weakest Link and I'd say you're on a roll right now... things are looking up up up... keep it goin', hon...!!!

Posted by: sue at February 02, 2006 04:59 PM (WbfZD)

26 Congratulations! You look like you felt beautiful in the dress - which makes you look more beautiful. What an evening... I'm so thrilled for you. and did I miss something - is that an engagement ring you're wearing in some of the pictures? Or is it just a ring that happens to be on that finger?

Posted by: martha at February 02, 2006 05:14 PM (M7fGT)

27 WE should officially stop calling that dress B, because there is nothing B about it... except beautiful! You look absolutely stunning! I think we are about the same size, if I have an event would you ship it over to me? I love it. And the jewelry. Huge congratulations. I feel a little silly that I got teary eyed over this. I need to remind myself that I only "know" you in cyber world.

Posted by: SaraJane at February 02, 2006 05:31 PM (H5++6)

28 You look MAHvelous Dahling. Simply Mahvelous. Which is good since you won (I knew you would!) So happy for you!

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 02, 2006 05:58 PM (/vgMZ)

29 Congratulations! You looked great and it sounds like you had a Wonderful Eve.

Posted by: Manda at February 02, 2006 06:29 PM (838ff)

30 you looked great. congrats on winning the top prize and hearing YOUR name called out for your team, not the evil one. woohoo!

Posted by: becky at February 02, 2006 06:39 PM (jv5jW)

31 Fabulous! That made my day. I'm so happy for you!

Posted by: kitty at February 02, 2006 06:52 PM (cyfSY)

32 You look AMAZING. Truly beautiful. And FREAKING CONGRATS!!!!!! I'm proud like I actually know you! You sooo deserve it. And thanks for the trophy shot, I love those, and what an amazing smile you've got on!

Posted by: stephanie at February 02, 2006 07:45 PM (/Tod5)

33 You look FABULOUS. The dress, the jewelry, the hair...it was all perfect! CONGRATULATIONS!!

Posted by: Ornery at February 02, 2006 07:52 PM (2KXgQ)

34 YAAAY! Congratulations! You deserve it and you looked beautiful! B looked like the right way to go after all. Great taste in jewelry too! By the way, my brother was on The Weakest Link a few years ago. It was the one in the US though - the one with the meanie British woman. Anne something? He had a blast. Hope you get picked!

Posted by: Lee at February 02, 2006 07:58 PM (PYZOC)

35 HALLELUJAH! I'd like to say you won because you wore the dress I liked best - but I know it was because you guys were the best at the project! Congratulations! I'd loe to see what you buy with the reward.

Posted by: kenju at February 02, 2006 09:26 PM (2+7OT)

36 I forgot to say that you looked amazing and I love that color.

Posted by: kenju at February 02, 2006 09:27 PM (2+7OT)

37 Your smile alone lights up the room! MAZEL TOV! Congratulations and well done. And enjoy the shopping spree.

Posted by: Jocelyn at February 02, 2006 09:44 PM (jkRb/)

38 Fan-Fucking-Tastic!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!! No one deserves it more. And hot damn, but you looked good!

Posted by: Elizabeth at February 02, 2006 10:19 PM (ceeh7)

39 Huge congratulations! You look amazing! Enjoy basking in your win!

Posted by: sophie at February 02, 2006 10:21 PM (yZwDD)

40 Congrats on the award. It's always lovely when hard work and dedication are recognized. Plus, you look fabulous in that dress.

Posted by: Primal at February 02, 2006 10:33 PM (0Qeh3)

41 Congrats! YAY YOU! And the dress looked perfect, it did! Really thrilled for you. :-) :-) :-)

Posted by: Amber at February 03, 2006 12:22 AM (zQE5D)

42 congratulations, doll! you totally deserve it for all of the hard work you've been putting into your project!

Posted by: girl at February 03, 2006 12:40 AM (NDI2V)

43 I second what Elizabeth said!

Posted by: flikka at February 03, 2006 03:19 AM (puvdD)

44 Jolly good show, what what. Well done.

Posted by: Simon at February 03, 2006 05:18 AM (FUPxT)

45 WOOHOOO!!! I'm so glad for you and your team. From this side of the pond and the screen, it seems like you all earned it in spades. :-D

Posted by: tommy at February 03, 2006 06:22 AM (EhwJT)

46 Congratulations! That's wonderful!

Posted by: Trace at February 03, 2006 09:48 AM (XO1t+)

47 Congratulations! And you look just stunning in that dress! Glad you had a great time.

Posted by: justme at February 03, 2006 02:09 PM (I0ENd)

48 You look fanfuckingtastic. Stunning, even. CONGRATULATIONS, sweetie!! Couldn't happen to a nicer girl. :-) P.S. Okay, I wasn't going to say anything. But. Please don't judge American Idol on the basis of the preliminary loser shows. I don't even start watching until the final 12 are picked. Then? It's gets to be something really specail and amazine. Well, at least it has been in years past. And I don't even like TV. Warbling in my horrid offkey voice in a mutilation of Lennon: "Give AI a chance..." *snicker*

Posted by: Jennifer at February 04, 2006 08:27 PM (y4DOI)

49 You look positively stunning - and congratulations! Certainly well deserved.

Posted by: April at February 06, 2006 05:41 PM (MSB13)

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OK.

Am trying to breathe deep here but my nerves are all over the fucking place. For some reason, I'm even more stressed out than usual over this kind of event. I just don't do dress-up. I hate being noticed, I hate standing out. I also have to remember to call it a black tie event, because I keep calling it a fancy dress party but here in England that means I come to the event dressed like a donkey, and I'm really hoping to avoid that. Apparently black tie dress here in England also means that the lady is intended to wear a ball gown. A ball gown. What the fuck? I'm nearly 32, Cinderella has come and gone, the pumpkin has turned to mold, if any tulle comes near me I'm rabbit punching people.

One of the dresses makes me feel like I am a beautiful curvy sex god. I know I'm not, so pause before sending me the hate mail on how full of myself I am, but I can't help it-when I wear the dress, I feel hot. Hot, but exposed. The problem is it turns out none of my strapless bras can be worn without showing somehow, so if I choose that dress I'm going to have to ask one of the Weakest Link producers to help safety pin the bra strap under the dress, because the back of that dress is pretty low.

One of the dresses makes me feel like a fairy princess, wearing kit that I dreamt of as a kid. I feel like I'm wearing a beautiful color, a color I'm not used to wearing. I feel dainty and tiny and I never feel dainty and tiny. I'm the kind of the chick who pulls plows in fields. I'm not the kind that feels like you can scoop up and put in your pocket.

The voting has come out with 9 votes ahead on Dress A. I myself flip-flop on which dress to wear about every 30 seconds (That's it. End of story. I'm wearing Dress A. No wait. Dress B. No...um...hold on.)

I've got the jewelry picked out for both dresses-vintage 1920's necklace and earrings with B (plus the scarf), and vintage 1920's earrings for Dress A (no scarf, and no necklace. The dress speaks for itself.) It's strappy heels with both of them. It's scary pants and strapless bra for both. My hair appointment is in an hour and a half, where someone will be paid to try to pile the mound of hair I have on my head as the extent of my abilities goes to blow drying my hair.

Aren't I talented.

I'm hyper conscious of all the comments you left (and the post? It was a record number of comments. Lots of coming out of the lurk and I am so grateful for each and every input, thank you.) and I don't want to disappoint anyone on whatever choice I make (because I despair on disappointing people. I despair!). I now have new ways of looking at the dresses-not only do I need to be conscious of making sure I'm always standing up straight and sucking it in, but now I need to make sure I don't look like a bridesmaid/prom queen/mother of the bride/ham hock arm/drewby/liquorice all-sorts (that was a good one!)

It's three hours before I leave for my Weakest Link audition and then the black tie event, and I still can't decide.

Right.

So here it is.

I tried them both on again this morning. I still love them both and I hope to god I get the chance to wear them both at some event in the future.

I simply can't decide, so I'm flipping a coin. I will absolutely go with whatever the coin says. Heads it's Dress A, tails it's Dress B.

The coin goes up (when it comes down it hits me on the head). I grab it, flip it over onto my hand and...

And...

Wow.

Wish me luck.

-H.

PS-I saw this last night on the big screens in Waterloo with my team. At the time (and I don't mean to be a complete bitch) I thought: Good. No one was killed and now people will ban this sick and barbaric fucking sport. Then I read the mayor's follow-up comment: 'We need to take preventative measures to avoid that a situation of this nature happens again,' as they plan to reinforce the stadium, not ban bullfighting.

People never fucking learn.

UPDATE-the hair is now up. I was going for Gibson Girl but instead somehow wound up looking like the next actress to do Jane fucking Austen, as though I should be wearing an empire waist dress and moaning my piteous dowry. It was remedied and now I have a very simple up-do. I was going to go for big round curls piled on the top of my head but they said my hair was too long and heavy for it to last me all afternoon and into the evening, so a simple up-do it is.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:42 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
Post contains 856 words, total size 5 kb.

1 and ................ you rotter!!!!!! Have a wonderful time at the ball babe.

Posted by: Mia at February 01, 2006 11:23 AM (aPP6S)

2 I can't believe you just did that! Have a fun wonderful time with your boy!

Posted by: justme at February 01, 2006 11:50 AM (I0ENd)

3 Good luck! Have fun.

Posted by: Mary-Jo at February 01, 2006 12:06 PM (DKTIr)

4 I'll keep you in my thoughts today, and I do hope you'll let us know which one you decided on.

Posted by: amber at February 01, 2006 12:08 PM (O9vsl)

5 1. Ditch the shawl. You are not an old lady. remember you are a young, good looking vivacious lady. 2. You are a representative of your team. I don't know how much business is discussed at these events, but if it is, it is a golden oppurtunity to mention your team members (by name) and extol their virtues. It is not only about you. 3. Ditch the anti-establishment stuff. You are the establishment. learn to swim with the sharks. 4. get the guest list. try to figure out who you would like to talk to. find them and talk to them. or: try to find out who you will be talking to at the party, find out some personal information about them. This gives you something to ask them. ex: children (by name if possible) 5. Don't drink. If they ask say your on a diet. (nobody will notice you are not drinking) 6. Remember to eat the food with the correct silverware. 7. Enjoy, look at all the dresses, look at the surrounding, enjoy the music. Dance with Angus. (or find a good dancer) you can have a good time.

Posted by: iowaslovak at February 01, 2006 12:37 PM (U3sRl)

6 Good luck at the audition and have a great time tonight!

Posted by: donna at February 01, 2006 12:37 PM (tN5Gk)

7 You are SUCH a tease, Helen. Gee, a coin toss. *wink* You will be smashing. You're just not capable of being anything less. You're an outstanding, beautiful, and spirited woman. Trust me, heads will turn and a point will be made. I'll be thinking of you.

Posted by: Dana at February 01, 2006 12:49 PM (b7OKi)

8 Helen, please let us know which dress you wore. Have a wonderful time and good luck!

Posted by: kenju at February 01, 2006 12:56 PM (2+7OT)

9 Whatever you wear will be perfect. I am sure you look wonderful! Good luck and have a great time!

Posted by: Lee at February 01, 2006 01:15 PM (soEfB)

10 Iowa-I never said it was about me. In fact, I spend a great deal of time saying it's NOT about me. Some of my team will be there, too. So don't for a second think I have myself on some kind of silver platter or anything. This project's done well BECAUSE of a great team.

Posted by: Helen at February 01, 2006 01:34 PM (h4faM)

11 I'm so glad you said that to Iowa. When I read those points 1-7, I thought "sod that for a game of soldiers, just go and have a good time!" oh, and good luck at the audition - the beeb will think it's your lucky hairdo!

Posted by: Gill at February 01, 2006 02:13 PM (4tDGB)

12 You damn tease! Can't wait to see what you went with (and shawls are not just for old ladies-they are a fantastic accessory, but I know you know that), and the jewelry sounds beautiful. Good luck with the audition-though I really think luck has nothing to do with it at this point. ;-) And just because I did not say it yesterday: you look beautiful in both dresses, because you are a beautiful woman. Oh, and bullfighting sucks.

Posted by: Teresa at February 01, 2006 02:14 PM (zf0DB)

13 knock em dead, kid.

Posted by: becky at February 01, 2006 02:19 PM (jv5jW)

14 Sorry I missed the voting. Have a great time, and best of luck at the audition.

Posted by: Lisa at February 01, 2006 02:50 PM (5vmEt)

15 You might be stressed, but at least you're dressed. Okay, that was totally lame, but I simply couldn't resist. (Hopefully things will improve, because I'm starting the repatriation anti-depressants today.) You could've worn a garbage bag and you'd still be the most beautiful woman in the room.

Posted by: redsaid at February 01, 2006 02:52 PM (hSCXM)

16 By the time I'm reading this, you are on your way to the big dance... hope you are having a good time. I little bubbley is sure to help! We do require pictures, my dear!

Posted by: SaraJane at February 01, 2006 02:53 PM (H5++6)

17 Wow, Iowa, I didn't realize you thought she was completely socially inept. Way to give her explicit instructions on how to act at a party. Are you an ettiquette teacher? Because I didn't see her asking assvice from anyone on how to act.

Posted by: statia at February 01, 2006 03:45 PM (56gUM)

18 You eeeeeeeevil bitch! I say that with much love, but now I'm absolutely dying to know which dress won out. Hope you slam dunk (did I just say that) your audition today. Have a glorious night!

Posted by: amy t. at February 01, 2006 03:50 PM (zPssd)

19 Wow! As I type this, you are hopefully having a well deserved good time. Hope you take photos!

Posted by: Marie at February 01, 2006 04:14 PM (PQxWr)

20 I can't believe that I didn't say this yesterday but congratulations on a job well done! My only excuse is that I always get excited when there's something to vote on, lol. Anyway, you and your team deserve this..so whichever dress you decided on - I'm sure you look amazing. Have a good time and good luck at your audition!

Posted by: Lindsay at February 01, 2006 04:20 PM (Rj0Is)

21 Best of luck at the audition and have a great time at the party. You'll look beautiful whichever dress you decided to wear - you sadistic tease! - just relax and have fun.

Posted by: Jocelyn at February 01, 2006 04:21 PM (jkRb/)

22 Well, by now I'm certain you're there and I'm also certain you look fabulous. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you!

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 01, 2006 07:01 PM (/vgMZ)

23 Oh, and pictures. Must see pictures.

Posted by: caltechgirl at February 01, 2006 07:02 PM (/vgMZ)

24 best of luck, I expect to see Oscar-style photos of you looking incredible in... some dress, holding a little trophy! And kick butt at the audition!

Posted by: stephanie at February 01, 2006 08:14 PM (e3o0g)

25 You're not a beautiful, curvy sex god(dess)? Ask Angus for a second opinion.

Posted by: Sigivald at February 01, 2006 09:21 PM (4JnZM)

26 Hey, I don't care which you choose (they ARE both beautiful, my prom comment notwithstanding--and since when should you tailor your choices to my stupid fabric associations? Since NEVER, that's when!), 'slong as you post pictures afterward. I must see the hair and the jewelry! You have fabulous taste, Helen. Either one's going to be a showstopper. Don't you doubt it.

Posted by: ilyka at February 01, 2006 10:05 PM (gg29I)

27 Wow, someone really whipped out a truckload of assvice here. What would an assvice award look like, I wonder? [opens up MS Paint]

Posted by: ilyka at February 01, 2006 10:07 PM (gg29I)

28 holy crap! are you writing for NBC now? what's up with the cliffhanger? hope your evening goes well, and that you are able to relax and have fun too. (and i totally agree, bullfighting is dispicable. on the rare occasions that the bull manages to gore someone, I'm always rooting for the bull.)

Posted by: river at February 02, 2006 12:59 AM (IU7wl)

29 Bah!! I've been logging in all day (your night) to see if you updated after the event... Hope you had fun!!

Posted by: Flikka at February 02, 2006 04:28 AM (puvdD)

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