frankly, conflicted!
i am not a country mouse. and even though my tax bill tells me i live in a town, to me pennington does not qualify: towns have throngs of people, pavements and museums, branches of crate and barrel and restaurants and delis who deliver, rain or shine. pennington - none of the above, therefore not a town. it’s country. but, i have to say, today is just gorgeous: bue skies and sunny weather. and i’m loving my country life. i drank my smoothie on our deck and turned my face to the sun. we have more trees in out garden than i can count. deer stroll through our property and my son loves to talk to them. the only sound is the wind in the trees and bird song. no trash carts, no shouting, no car horns. just the breeze. country - you’re not so bad.
less scared of doggies
scared loving being with huge docile dogs
going up the apples and pears
it is a truth universally acknowledged that there is nothing as exciting in life as an unexpected journey. make that an unexpected journey to england and you’d better get cracking on your will because you are about to experience as good as life gets. i left england a decade ago - tony blair was in power, lenny kravitz was number 1 and we were all convinced that britain would fall apart when Y2K struck because no-one could be bothered to fix it. that’s officially an eon. and call me a global villager, but it’s been hard to stay in touch culturally with the mother country in the intervening years. of course i read the grauniad online, watch fox soccer (soccer, for godssakes) network and slather heinz salad cream on everything but i’ve also made the idiomatic switch from pavement to sidewalk, brilliant to cool, and blimey to oy! so i am, to all intents and purposes, an american. if it walks like one, talks like one, and pays taxes like one, that’s what it is. so i’m as excited as a tourist to be going home. here’s what’s top of my list of things to eat and do:
1. eat a marks and spencer pork pie, and prawn cocktail sandwich. there’s a mini M&S at heathrow terminal 4. don’t stand in my way as i head for it fresh off the plane or i will mow you down.
2. trip to top shop. it’s all fashionable again, just like in 1983. let’s see if my american-sized arse can squeeze into a british-sized pair of jeans.
3. promenade around the tate modern. is that huge louise bourgeoise spider still there?
4. watch a foreign-langauge movie. i get the odd daniel auteil/canal + effort here, but search moviefone for ”swedish langauge dramas pennington NJ’ and you come up short. give me a fix of lugubrious nordic action.
5. use an ATM, i mean, cash point, and not pay $50 in convenience fees.
i’m excited to be nipping home. the chillest rose and the best friends a girl could want are right there at the end of my night flight. i will close my eyes in a corner of a foreign field called newark and open them on a native runway that is forever england.
may 14 2010
isn’t that a kind of bird?
stepping off my train car (we call them carriages in england but you’re right, that IS a funny word!) tonight, i saw a sign warning of the dangers of rapid or careless EGRESS. stunned into silence. a sign on NJ Transit that uses the word EGRESS?
EGRESS went the way of the DODO
“you’re wonderfully verbose!”
peggy* a former colleague, paying me a compliment
* surname withheld
“learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all”
4%!
4% of babies born in the states now are asian. my kid is kinda asian.
4% of babies born in the states now are multiracial. my kid is kind multiracial.
i have just learned the term pan-sexual.
what are the chances that my kid is statistically pansexually, multiracially asian?
what will it be like when i have to help him with his homework???
my son is almost 5. it’s not that’s he terribly smart, it’s just that They don’t tell you that 5 year olds are actually ALL a pretty smart bunch.
mummy - why does the constellation of orion the hunter fight taurus the bull?
mummy, what is THAT for? (points at own nipple)
mummy, if plants need sun, water and love, why hasn’t someone just invented a machine that gives them sun and water and has paper hearts stuck on it to show the plants that we love them?
mummy, can we get a simple machine, like a pulley, so that i can carry my blankie up and down the stairs more easily?
mummy, i can’t go upstairs and get your glasses from your bedroom - i am dehydrated. And have vertigo.
what will it be like when he can actually button up his own jeans and wipe his own arse? OY
