NS May 30th, 2007

I’m back now. Had a fantastic time in Chicago and enjoyed visiting my sis and parents. The weather was good aside from a day or two of rain and the temperature varied from 72-89 degrees. Not too hot, not too cold. Perfect. I got to see extended family members and many friends, including my two oldest friends from Hicksville, both of whom are pregnant and due within two weeks of each other. Isn’t that so precious that you want to puke? I know I did a little.

I ate all of the food on my Clogged Artery Checklist: Chicago pizza, a hotdog, sushi, American-style Chinese, steak, Mexican x2, vanilla bean cheesecake, fresh chips and salsa, 3 jars of Claussen mini dill pickles, peanut butter, Lucky Charms, Honey Ohs, Pop Tarts, Garden Herb Triscuits, E.L. Fudge cookies, a Cobb salad, a huge, juicy cheeseburger, french toast, hash browns, buffalo wings x2, margaritas and cosmopolitans galore, Sam Adams Summer Ale, Oberon Ale and Blue Moon. It was bliss but I gained back two of the four pounds I had lost before I left. The gym and I will become the bestest of friends next week, that’s for sure. It was worth it though.

I have to say a huge thank you to my sister for suggesting this trip and making it happen. She planted the idea in my head, helped me organise it, and spent time and money getting all the things we needed for a fun, successful trip. She was a fantastic hostess and a huge help with The Noble Child, getting up before the crack of dawn (literally) with me because TNC never quite adjusted to Chicago time, entertaining her while I had some down time and just vegged out with the laptop or a magazine and was a badass bartender, as usual. It was the best trip I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.

The return flight was much better than the outgoing. I got upgraded to Premium Economy so had extra room for stretching out legs and juggling my bags around as I pulled toys, food, magazines, water and medicine out at regular intervals. No baby haters made an appearance and instead, I hit the flying-with-baby jackpot and sat next to a kindly old grandmother who adored TNC and jumped right into helping with her as if she were one of her own. Luckily, TNC fell asleep an hour after takeoff and didn’t wake up again until a half hour before we landed, minus one disturbance for a nappy change and a feed. I was actually able to go to the bathroom by myself (you try peeing in a tiny airplane bathroom while holding a 13 month old — it’s not easy), eat two meals, read a magazine and watch a movie. The travel gods were smiling on me that day. It’s about time.

I returned yesterday to a typical May day in England — cold and rainy. Seriously, I had to put the heat on when we got home and put two sweaters on. How depressing. Especially since I’ve spent the past two weeks wearing sleeveless tops, sandals and skirts or capri pants. Also, I’m missing soft water and tumble dryers already. I’m pretty fed up with hard, crunchy towels AND hair. One of my first purchases in our new home (whenever we find one) will be a water softener. If you can recommend one, please let me know. And any tips for having non-crunchy line-dried towels would be much appreciated as well.

I woke up with a massive migraine this morning, one of only a handful I’ve had in my entire life. It was debilitating, truly. Within ten minutes of waking up, it had gone from a dull ache to a flat-on-the-floor-feeling-sick-and-seeing-stars kind of throbbing that makes one wish for a speedy death via strangulation or a gunshot to the temple. I shut the blinds, turned off the lights, somehow managed to feed and change TNC and then sat her in front of a Baby Einstein video while I lay on the couch and made frantic SOS phone calls to my best friend and mother-in-law. The latter got back to me first so she came over and helped with the sproglet while I went back to bed and slept off the worst of it. I don’t know what caused it but I hope to never piss off the Headache Gods ever again because when they send you a migraine, it means you have done something to piss them off royally.

I spent the rest of the day doing typical ‘just got back from vacation’ stuff like unpack, do lots of laundry, make phone calls and answer emails, clean, get some food in, and upload pictures from my camera. The majority of the pictures from Chicago were taken on Andrea’s camera so as soon as she gets them to me, I will link to them here and/or update my Flickr badge.

Until then, I leave you with two pictures that prove, unequivocably, that my child bears a strong resemblance to Rod Stewart in the hair department

• Photos , Travel
• Comments(3)

NS May 24th, 2007

Watched the season 3 finale of Lost last night, over at a friend’s house with a few other women. We guzzled wine and ate pizza, squealing at every plot twist, crying at the sad parts and cheering for our favorite characters. I know Lost is not everyone’s cup of tea but I fucking love this show. Love it. I think it’s genius. It’s got me hooked, that’s for sure. The writers must’ve been professional drug dealers in a previous life, they are so good at keeping people addicted.

For any UK readers who haven’t seen the finale yet because tv shows always run behind the American seasons, learn how to use technology already and download it. You can even watch it on abc.com.

Read this site and this one if you want to learn about all the possible theories, character devolvement and plot predictions. It boggles the mind that the majority of these people have jobs and lives that do not include getting paid to think about Lost. Bless ‘em for their obsession though, it saves me the trouble.

• Banal Breakdown
• Comments(1)

NS May 24th, 2007

It’s official. The Noble Child is walking. She’ll be smoking and getting acne before I know it.

• Antics of The Noble Child
• Comments(4)

NS May 16th, 2007

The Noble Child and I arrived in Chicago on Monday evening. When I finally staggered through the doors where the crowds of eager greeters stood waving and grinning like maniacs, I had mascara under my eyes, disheveled hair and only one shoe on. I pushed a cart with a wonky wheel, making turns nearly impossible, loaded high with 4 bags and the shoe not being worn. Around my neck was a nylon document holder with five passports for me and a 1 year-old (don’t ask) and a note from my husband confirming that I was not kidnapping our daughter, transporting her back to my homeland with the devious intent to get her hooked on Baby Gap and Happy Meals and take her away from her birthright of steak-and-kidney pies and warm beer.

For once, I hadn’t been questioned by an Immigration Official on why I moved to England in the first place and grilled on whether I had any plans to move back to the USA. Not wanting to arouse any suspicion, I made sure to say “Well golly gee, am I glad to be back on the soil of the greatest country in God’s blessed green earth,” and bitched about the price of gas for my Suburban Assault Vehicle. I sailed through with no hassle.

TNC was in a sling on my hip, bouncing up and down as the differential in heights between my shoeless foot and my shod one caused my gait to resemble a drunk on stilts. It was quarter past one in London and I’d had not a wink of sleep on the plane. I was so dehydrated that my lips were flaking and my tongue felt like a sand dune. A soldier who’d stormed the beach at Normandy would’ve gotten little sympathy from me at that moment.

The flight had gone worse than expected, with Amelia either bouncing off the walls wanting to get down and explore everything, or wanting to sleep but not being able to get comfortable enough to do so. After five hours, many tears (from both of us), one hissy fit (mine) and a big dose of sleepy-time medicine later, she finally fell asleep in my arms. I immediately pressed the call button for the flight attendant and asked, in a monotone voice and with eyes glazed over, almost in a catatonic state, for a bottle of red wine and a headset. She brought both and placed the earphones on my head for me but left the wine unopened, a plastic cup dangling upside down on the neck. I tossed the cup aside and got to work unscrewing the top with my teeth (I only had use of one arm, the other acting as a baby hammock), spit it out on the floor at my feet and began guzzling my medicine. Thank god for Calpol and cabernet.

I had already seen three out of the five movies on offer so watched the craptastic film Freedom Writers. If you have more than three brain cells and have seen Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer, there is no need to be sucked into this cinematic black hole. The stories are practically identical — color-blind, whitebread teacher with a heart of gold and string of pearls gets a job at an inner city school to make herself feel better about living in a McMansion and having a husband who performs boob jobs for a living. The kids are all gangstas and crack whores who have been hardened to life in the hood but also have hearts of gold underneath their tattooes and tube tops. They refuse to sit still and read Shakespeare but after one of them dies in a hail of gunfire or gets shipped off to juvie, they decide that The Taming Of The Shrew is actually a’ight and that Willsy was a happenin’ dude. Happy scenes of the kids studying and dancing to rap music ensue. Something then threatens the teacher’s position at the school and the students get mad. They all cry and/or get mad and fight for her. The teacher almost loses her job and her personal life goes into disarray, her whitebread relatives encouraging her to leave these hooligans behind and go back to teaching advanced calculus at the Catholic school. Just when you think it’s all over, the mean principal relents and everything goes back to normal, minus the kid who died or the girl who got knocked up and dropped out. They all go on to become Ph.Ds and the teacher is awarded a medal for bravery in the ghetto. My catatonic state, which, when the film startedwas in the early stages, reached Stage-IV, you’re-not-coming-out-of-this-alive proportions. The only thing keeping my brain ticking was contemplating stuffing my blanket over the head of the asshole across the aisle from me, suffocating him and his smugness.

Earlier in the flight (in fact, before he’d even sat down in his seat), this prick had come down the aisle with his frizzy-haired, fatass wife, taken one look at Amelia, who was standing happily on my lap, looking around and not making a sound, and said loudly “Oh, god. I’m allergic to kids.” He tried to find other seats and reported back to his fat wife that they were stuck next to the kid. Woe are fucking they. I told him I hoped he’d brought his epi pen, in case his allergy flared up. He adjusted his non-prescription ‘aren’t I intelligent and cool’ square glasses and pulled out a science fiction novel. He put on a huge pair of headphones and settled down to read the entire flight (Bastard. I wish I could read on planes; that’s a thing of the past). I named him Pig Man and wished testicular maladies on him and that his obviously childless self would end up in a state-run nursing home where a hunhbacked orderly with a penchant for defenseless and incontient old men preyed on those without any offspring to visit and watch over them.

At my worst moment, the breaking point when the child in my arms cried in tiredness and I in frustration, digging through my bags with one hand in the dark with the fully reclined seat in front of me inches from my face, I lost it a bit and tugged on my unzipped bag rather hard, sending toys flying. I was so pleased when a couple inadvertently hit Pig Man in the arm, waking him from his peacful, headphone-induced slumber. He handed them back to me as if doing me a great favor. I snatched them from his hand and growled a ‘thanks’ at him. I’m sure he was expecting an apology but he didn’t get one. He muttered something to Fat Wife and they rolled their eyes, happy that they weren’t pathetic enough to be caregivers to something dependent on them for survival. Then they looked at their picture of Fluffikins and used the Sky Phone to check with the in-house catsitter whether he’d gotten off to sleep okay and remind her of how much filet mignon to cook for the golden goblet atop the silk pillow bed Fluffikins slumbers upon. The fact that the irony is lost on them is astounding and almost comical.

After all of this flight fiasco, my decision to never fly alone with the sproglet again is confirmed. Never again, my friends, never again.

• I Bitch Therefore I Am , Parenting 101 , Travel
• Comments(6)

NS May 13th, 2007

I spent yesterday afternoon posing for a professional photographer. Commands to show teeth, laugh, be serious, sit up straight, stick my boobs out, lean on my elbow or swivel sideways were foreign to me, and uproarious. Every pose and every instruction made embarrassed tittering escape my lips. Jen, who was with me for this strange session, shared in the moments of hilarity. We fake posed with the best of them. I was just waiting for the Danish-born photographer to start shouting “Give me pouty! Sexy! You are an animal. Let me hear you rrrrrroar. Now laugh, damnit!” At one point, grins plastered on our faces and exchanging sarcastic remarks out of the corner of our motionless mouths, Jen quipped “I feel like we should be walking down a beach discussing that ‘not so fresh’ feeling.” After that, the beseeching was no longer necessary, the laughter was genuine.

All of this took place at an American diner in Soho, replete with shiny red barstools, chrome countertop, mini jukeboxes, black and white checkerboard floors and employees flipping burgers wearing those white, pointy, paper hats. I half expected the Fonz to walk through the door. I even got to sip on a real strawberry milkshake, fountain Coke and eat a Big Bubba burger and onion rings. Obviously, the whole ‘eating healthily’ thing was out the window for this occasion.

What was all of this for, you may be wondering? The photo is to go alongside an article Prima magazine are doing on female bloggers. They are profiling three women. For some reason, one of them happens to be me. I did a telephone interview back in early April and can hardly remember what I said. That, along with the cheesy photo that is sure to accompany it, has me sweating a bit. Will I sound like an idiot and look like one too? Has anyone in God’s green earth ever rambled on for so long as to make her interviewer desire nothing more than to stab herself in the eye repeatedly with a corn-on-the-cob holder thingy and then get to work on her ears with an olive fork? If so, I think I’d give them a run for their money.

The article comes out in a couple months. Keep your fingers crossed that yours truly isn’t featured on the pages of a national mag looking and/or sounding like a character from Deliverance.

• Career , Friends
• Comments(2)