Thanksgiving

This will be brief because I'm so full that I need to go lay down...

We had a great afternoon. The spread included turkey, little sausages, cornbread dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, peas, Elizabeth's green bean casserole, Sarah's salad with creamy dressing, Elizabeth's pumpkin pies and my pecan pies plus ice cream sundaes for the children. We managed to get all fourteen people around our new table and I'm thinking that if we do a children's table next year we could easily accomodate twenty or more.

It was a new experience having three Americans in the house. We talked a lot about growing up in the South and I got out my senior yearbook and we laughed over the hairstyles and fashions. Eric and I compared notes on living in Austin and going to UT, the classes we took, where we lived, where we went for pancakes at 3am. After everyone left Jason and I tidied up then I made some Kraft Mac & Cheese for the children to round off our American day and we all stuffed ourselves with leftovers. Now I'm going to joyfully slip into a turkey induced coma while planning my menu for next year. Definitely more cornbread dressing next time.

From Elizabeth

I'm hoping this will relieve some of my pre-Thanksgiving stress... New pecan pie recipe and it just doesn't seem to be working and Tobes just pooed on the bathroom rug (don't ask).



1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Paper. If I have time I really enjoy wrapping the presents.

2. Real tree or Artificial? I prefer artificial, Jason likes real. This year we're getting a fake one because we have Indy and it's going to be a nightmare anyway. Don't need needles all over the place too.

3. When do you put up the tree? Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving but I think we'll wait until next weekend this year.

4. When do you take the tree down? Isn't it bad luck to leave it up until New Year... or maybe it's Twelfth Night. We take it down pretty quickly.

5. Do you like eggnog? I do but it's been a very long time since I had any.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Hmm, probably my Huffy Pink Thunder bike.

7. Hardest person to buy for? Jason

8. Easiest person to buy for? The children

9. Do you have a nativity scene? No, we don't.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? A mix. I tend to email but send cards to my aunts and uncles who don't use email.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Best not say in case they read this!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Love Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and of course It's a Wonderful Life and White Christmas

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? October or November

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Of course

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? I love the whole meal and eat my bodyweight in Ferrero Rocher and Matchmakers leading up to the big day.

16. Lights on the tree? White

17. Favorite Christmas song? Nat King Cole singing Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? Stay at home. We talk about going to the States one year but I know I would miss all of our traditions here. I need to get Mom and Dad to come here.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Of course

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Angel

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? One on Christmas Eve and the rest on Christmas morning. Santa comes in the night and we open those about 4am and then open the ones to and frome each other before or after lunch.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? The crowds and my inability to be in two countries at once.

23. What theme or color are you using? We don't really have a theme though I generally stick to red and white.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? I usually do the same meal every year - turkey, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, brussels sprouts, red cabbage, gravy and cranberry sauce. Then on Boxing Day it's bubble & squeak with the leftovers.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Jason asked me yesterday and I haven't really thought about it. Maybe that Hermes scarf I've wanted for years. Or just a happy peaceful time with my family is enough.

Recession? What recession?

I thought everyone was supposed to be broke? Why then was there a line at the mall on a Wednesday morning? Rosie and I trooped off to Bluewater today and it was heaving. Unpleasantly busy. And it's not even December yet!

In preparation for Thanksgiving and Christmas I had to get some new dishes and cutlery. Embarrassingly, considering we're catching up on 40, we didn't have enough of either to handle the big meals this year. I decided it was time to be all grown up and get proper bone china so off to the shops we went. When I was little we had a set of cutlery that Dad brought back from Japan. It was a kind of brushed stainless steel and very strong. I remember it was the preferred spoon for scooping out ice cream because they would never bend. I loved that cutlery and managed to find something similiar today. Of course, once I got started I had to have some nice serving spoons and other bits and pieces including the teeniest, tiniest little spoon that's used for English mustard. It really was necessary.

Then it was off to another shop to get some winter clothes for the children. Our drop in temperature seems to have coincided with growth spurts for both of them. Hat and gloves for Rosie. Warm slippers and long sleeve tops for both of them. Then lunch.

Once you start spending it gets easier and easier so when we got home I called the dealer about a new car. Mine is on its last legs and we'd really like to replace it before I leave for NY on the 12th. Jason is taking the children up to Skegness to see his parents while I'm away and it would be nice for them to go in a reliable car. We never buy new cars, except for Jason's mid-life folly with the Mini, but the dealer has three cars that fit my spec. I've decided to get another Renault Scenic which will be my third. This time I'm getting the 7-seater though. It's just getting to the point where those extra seats would come in handy from time to time. Jenny and I have been talking about going away with all of the children one halfterm and this way we can all go in one car. See, it's not extravagance. It just makes sense.

Finally back!

We were offline for over a week and all because of a slightly loose cable. The tech guy came in, looked at the system, turned a little knob about half a turn and everything was up and running again. I felt so silly.

Anyway, it's great to be back online though it was nice in a way to be a bit disconnected. I think my bum is slightly less pancake shaped after a week of not sitting here sorting things out and instead having to actually go out and do things like buy groceries. Something to remember.

Since we went offline winter has well and truly arrived. We even woke up Sunday morning to snow! It was falling pretty hard but didn't stick around for long. Long enough to make a few snowballs though. Long enough for Jason and Toby to throw said snowballs at me and Rosie who were standing at the bedroom window. Only one of them made it inside the house.

At the moment we're getting ready for Thanksgiving which we'll be celebrating on Sunday here. It's not a holiday in England but we're having friends over for the traditional feast. I've been collecting the ingredients over the last few months like cornbread mix and Libby's pumpkin. Elizabeth is making the green bean casserole. We're obviously going totally Southern! I'm getting craft stuff together so the children can make hand turkeys and Native American head dresses (still called Indians here). We'll have fourteen all together - 7 adults and 7 children. Can't wait!

Marginally better

Rosie seems a bit better today. She's still coughing like a lifelong smoker and running a fever but the rash is starting to fade and she seems happier in herself. At least now she has the energy to bark orders at me from the sofa. "More Smarties!" "Where's my juice!" "What's that smell?!"

One very unfortunate side effect of the IV antibiotics that Rosie had over the weekend is raging diarrhea. It's her first bout of diarrhea since we got rid of the nappies and the first time it happened Rosie shouted from the bathroom "Mommy, brown water is coming out of my BOTTOM!" The poor thing has it so bad that I had to dig out an old pack of Pull-Ups for her. She ruined two pairs of pants and a pair of PJs (I'm sorry but I'm not the kind of mom who washes diarrhea out, it goes in the bin) and since she's sleeping in our bed while she's ill I started to fear for our bedding.

The rash has faded to a mottled purple colour. Annelouise has assured me that this is a good sign because it means that the rash isn't getting fresh blood. It does make her arms look an awful lot like a corpse but I'm trying not to think about that. She's happier overall and seems to have more energy though everytime she gets a bit excited it kicks off a coughing fit.

I've cleared the calendar for the next few days and we're sitting at home pottering around. I've managed to do some mending that's been waiting for weeks and I'm slowly catching up on the laundry. In a way, it's nice to just be here for a change. I was supposed to be taking the minutes of a PTA meeting tonight but with Jason away it just wasn't possible. Philippa was all set to babysit but I hate to think of Joe catching whatever it is that Rosie has. Oh well, an early night for all of us tonight.

Bad weekend

Yesterday morning, after a rough night with Rosie, we woke up to find that the rash on her arms had turned into a blood rash. The kind that fails the 'glass test'. The kind that is a symptom of meningitis. We phoned the weekend doctor and they came to the house. Yes, apparently house calls still happen here. The doctor took one look at Rosie and told us to get her straight to the emergency room.

Jason and Toby had gone out to get coffee but luckily they took Jason's car so mine was still parked out front. The doctor was going to call an ambulance if I couldn't get her to A&E immediately. The doc rang the hospital to tell them we were coming, wrote a note for me so we would be seen urgently and Rosie and I set off.

They soon ruled out meningitis but they did put a shunt on the back of her hand and gave her antibiotics through an IV. We were there all day and in the end they said they thought it was an allergic reaction but it might be something viral. They wrapped up her arm and sent us home with the shunt and told us to come back today.

We had another rough night with lots of fever and coughing and went back to the hospital. They looked at Rosie again and the rash looks less angry today. They gave her some more antibiotics through the shunt then removed it. Rosie threw up during the removal so they kept us a bit longer to watch her. Her fever was going up again so they gave her some ibuprofen and after ten minutes sent us home.

Now we're back in the care of our GP, none the wiser about what's actually causing Rosie to be ill. I asked about allergy scratch testing but they said that NHS doesn't do that except in severe cases. This is one of those times when I would like to punch the NHS in the face. My baby has a horrible itchy blood rash that was mistaken for meningitis. If that's not severe then what is?!

I did ask if we could have the testing done privately and they said yes but we would need to be referred by our GP. We're going to have to do that. We need to find out what's making Rosie ill and soon. We also need to know if it's Indy or not. At the moment a dark cloud is hanging over Indy and I can already tell that Jason is seeing him in a more negative light. If the poor cat is innocent then he needs to be cleared.

Most of the time I love NHS but it's times like this that they drive me crazy. They've ruled out that Rosie isn't dying but they haven't worked out what's making her ill and they haven't made her better. Managing the rash is as far as they seem prepared to go and the rest is left to us to ascertain through trial and error. That is shocking to me.

What's been going on

Life has been bumping along since I last wrote. The good news is that I finally found my camera cables. They were in a basket on the shelf in the bathroom of course. Isn't that where everyone keeps their camera cables? I think we'll be living with the repercussions of the bad packing and moving company we used for months to come.

The latest project is the stair runner. I'm getting two quotes and visited two big chain carpet dealers. The big dealers don't carry what we want which is the stripey carpet in the image so we're going to have to go with the department store or local business and sell one of the children to pay for it. Or maybe I can sell a kidney instead. I've gotten pretty attached to the children.

But, speaking of family, I'm afraid that Rosie is allergic to the cat! She's come out in a terrible eczema rash. It started on her hands and has worked its way up her arms and now she has it on her stomach and thighs too. The doctor prescribed a steroid cream which has helped with the itching and inflammation (so we're all getting a little more sleep) but it's not getting rid of it. I'm putting a special emollient on a dozen times a day and trying to work out what else might be causing it. It could be anything, the new upholstery, the floor varnish, something she's eating. She's off dairy again because she has a history of cow's milk allergy anyway. She hasn't had any (or at least much) milk this week but the rash continues to progress. Poor Indy. And poor Toby and Rosie if we have to give him away. They'll be heartbroken.

The next step is to remove Indy from the house for a few days and see if the rash gets better then bring him back and see if it gets worse. I've been looking into it today and I need to buy a special HEPA vaccuum cleaner too which can remove cat dander from the surfaces. Goodness, just when I thought Rosie's allergies were all under control.

I've also been busy with my PTA work. We've got loads of Christmas fundraising events coming up including a Christmas Fair and Raffle (Jason is going to play Santa again), carol singing and the panto. We're also making plans for the school's 175th anniversary celebrations next year and a leaving party for the Headmistress who's retiring in the spring. So much to do.

I'm also in the process of buying a new car. The Renault I've been driving for the last three years is starting to fall apart and it's time to replace it. A few days ago we had a big rain and the passenger footwell flooded! This is after having the keyhole in the trunk knocked out a few months ago and having trouble starting it since the summer. I'm planning to get the same again, which will be my third Renault Scenic, but we're going to get the 7-seater model this time. I just have to find the time to sort it out.

With so much going on I've felt a little overwhelmed... well, to be honest I've felt like I was losing my mind at times. Jason very kindly suggested I get away for a few days and booked flights and a hotel so I can go see Nikki in New York next month! I'm really excited and just having something to look forward to has made everything else easier to deal with. Now I can't wait to see Nik and do a little Christmas shopping.

House pics

These were taken a few weeks ago so the place is a bit organised though no more tidy now. In the photo of the kitchen you can see why we plan to rip it all out and start again next year. There was a wall between the kitchen and dining room when we bought the house but we had it removed to make the house more open plan or what they call here 'American style'.

Bleary-eyed but happy

I ended up sleeping about three hours last night. I tried to go to bed with the children at 7.00pm in order to get up around 2am and check the election results but I couldn't get to sleep. In the end I sat up, watched crap TV, played with our amazing farting cat and painted my nails until the fun began at 11.00pm here. I called Nikki and Kellie and then settled in for a long night.

At about 1.30am Toby woke up and came downstairs. I decided to let him stay up for a bit and watch history being made. I tried to explain what it all meant and I think he took some of it in. At 2am we went up to bed optimistic.

Rosie woke up at 4.30am scratching her rash. She's come out in what looks like eczema on her hands and forearms. The doctor thinks it's an allergic reaction to something and I'm trying to work out what it is she's touching. Poor little thing. It doesn't bother her except for the night time itching. I got up and put cream on her hands then went downstairs to check the results. A few minutes later I was crying ecstatic tears on the keyboard.

I turned on the TV just in time to see the speeches and cried again. I thought Obama was so eloquent and honest. He said there was a lot of hard work and sacrifice ahead and he didn't sugarcoat it but he also made me feel proud to be an American again.

I went to bed at 5.45am tired but happy. Jason called about five minutes later. He was in California talking politics and watching it all happen. We said good night and just as I dozed off Rosie wet the bed. The children like to sleep with me when Jason is away so Rosie actually wet MY bed. Oh joy. I had to carry a sleeping Toby to his room so I could strip and clean the bed. Then I cleaned up Rosie, made the bed again, transferred Tobes back to our room (he would not be happy if he woke up in his room while Rosie was in bed with me) and got us all settled back in by 6.15am. The alarm went off at 7.00am and the first thing Toby said was "Did Obama win, Mommy?"

Everyone I talked to today... the mums at school, the usual crowd at Costa, the nannies in Rosie's music class... everyone was jubilant and for the first time in a long time I felt really proud to be American.

I was not paid for this advertisement...

If you live in the UK and grocery shop online you have got to check out mysupermarket.co.uk. I usually shop at Tesco but I've been thinking about swithcing to Ocado because they have shorter delivery slots. Tesco gives you a two hour slot but it's actually a challenge for me to find two hours at home when we're awake and not trying to get out the door.

Mysupermarket takes your order and compares it across online shops to show you the cheapest option. They even show you ways to save money within each store AND calculate the number of calories in your shop and show your lower calorie alternatives. Fantastic!

I ended up sticking with Tesco this time because Ocado was almost twenty pounds more expensive! Tesco even beat Asda, which is owned by Walmart. It'll be interesting to see how it works for things like the big Christmas shop.

OK people, get out there and VOTE

I sent in my absentee ballot a few weeks ago. No surprises about who I voted for. I'm so jealous that Jason is in the States tonight and will be there to watch it all unfold.

Rosie and I went to Costa this morning and while she played with her paperdolls I was able to read some editorials about the election. I was almost in tears with the excitement and emotion of it all. Marion came in (she's English but lived in the States for 20 years and has citizenship) and we talked politics. We both agreed that it would be nice to feel proud of America again and it's amazing to actually be optimistic at all. The last eight years have been a dark time.

My plan is to stay up as late as I can and see at least some of the first results come in. I went by our village grocery store this morning. They stock a few American products for the expats in Blackheath. I got some Reese's Pieces, some Oreos and some Kraft Mac & Cheese to make the evening authentic. One of the papers actually ran a recipe section for anyone having election parties. Their list of American foods included BBQ chicken and pecan pie!

Getting back to normal

Today is the last day of Toby's half-term. St Margaret's took an extra day for teacher training and I'm so glad they did. I really needed today to recuperate before getting back into our routine. We've been so busy the last few days.

Jason took Thursday and Friday off work. On Thursday we went to the Body Works exhibition. It was extraordinary. Highly educational and only slightly revolting. All of the pieces are real people who donated their bodies to the 'artist'. The exhibition focused on aging and progressed from conception to old age. There were preserved fetuses (fetii?) from 4 weeks after conception all the way through to birth. There was even a pregnant woman with a wedge cut out of her stomach to show how the baby fit inside her. I couldn't help but wonder how all of the babies had died and especially how the pregnant woman died. They don't put any of that information out there because they want for the focus to be on the educational element rather than the personal tragedies. Still, you can't help but wonder.

The children were fine with it all though some of it was a little creepy. They had one guy who had all of his skin removed but was holding it over his arm like a suit jacket. That verged into Silence of the Lambs freakshow territory but mostly it was just very informative.

Friday was, of course, Halloween. The children were invited to three different parties and managed to go to two of them. One was held in our local park Manor House Gardens. It's a gated park and is locked up at dusk every evening so it was a real treat just to be there after dark. They had all of the traditional things like apple bobbing and a scary story told by a wizard in a tent in the middle of the parkland. We met some of the children's friends and families there and had a brilliant time.

Saturday was Rosie's party and it went very well. It seemed much more calm than Toby's parties but everyone said that's just the difference between boys and girls. Rosie did have some boy friends there but it was mostly little girls in various types of costumes involving pink. Rosie was dressed as Stephanie from Lazytown of course. Toby went as young Indiana Jones, which is basically Indiana Jones without a hat. We also had a pirate, quite a few fairies, a cowgirl, a gypsy, a ballerina, a vampire and two Power Rangers.

Jenny & Kieran came down for the party with their children and spent the night. I pulled out Toby's trundle bed, pushed Rosie's up next to it and put a king size sheet across it so the four children had a 9ft wide bed to sleep in together. Jason and Kieran went off to the pub to watch football and Jenny and I fielded children back to bed when they came down to tell on each other. "Rosie and Kate are jumping up and down!" "Jack and Toby are play fighting and I can't sleep!" Once they finally all passed out and the guys came back we ordered a curry and the guys watched Match of the Day while Jenny and I looked at magazines, trashed the celebs and made plans for a spa day. A typical Saturday night when the four of us get together.

On Sunday morning Jason had to leave for California. Jen, Kieran and I took the kids over to the park for a while then ran back just as it started to rain. I made my famous ham in Coca Cola and we had a nice lunch before they left that afternoon. Since then the kids and I have been hanging out, playing with Rosie's birthday presents and talking about Guy Fawke's Night which is 5 November. Then it's Thanksgiving... and then Christmas!

[NOTE: Don't I look frighteningly like Mom in that photo?!]

I wish I had written this...

Excerpted from India Knight's article on being thrifty in the Sunday Times today. I especially love the last two paragraphs. I could've written the words myself, especially the bit about sniffing the babies' heads:

I believe that part of the reason so many of us feel obscurely dissatisfied in some way is to do with our strange, deluded (and very unthrifty) expectations. I also believe that these are a direct consequence of two things: a) celebrity culture, in which everyone always seems beautiful, rich, happy and fulfilled, and we, by comparison, seem plain, poor, beset with small miseries and chronically unfulfilled/frustrated; and b) the sneaky influence, and legacy, of all those thousands of self-help books, which have now been around for a couple of decades, and which all contain the same message: you’re super-special and deserve everything, and if you’re not getting it, it’s because you’re a victim.

Point a) is easily dismissed: it’s called PR and I sincerely hope that the lovely readers of this publication have enough gumption to see the smoke and mirrors for what they are. (It’s also called airbrushing, and sometimes eating disorder, and often drug habit.)

Point b) is more prevalent and more damaging. You don’t even have to have read the self-help books for their message to have trickled through, as though by osmosis. We’re all fluent in psychobabble and we all love to emote — both of which aptitudes would have our grandparents spinning in their graves. We seem to have lost any idea of the merits of self-control or even piping down occasionally.

This isn’t (quite) a plea for all of our human transactions to have a tragically repressed Brief Encounter vibe about them. But it is a plea for a return to a stiffening of upper lips. We’re all damaged to some extent, and we all carry around our emotional burdens. They’re not that interesting. I liked it better when the answer to “How are you?” was inevitably “Fine, thank you”, even if the person in question only had moments to live. Instead, what you now often get in response to your polite inquiry is a detailed catalogue of grievances and perceived injuries. But being free with personal information in this way doesn’t make you an “open” or “emotionally in tune” person. It just makes you sound really needy, like you’re the only thing that matters.

Going on and on about yourself, or about a thing that has happened to you, is incredibly bad manners — it makes any conversational exchange about you and you only. I wish people would desist — not just because it would make me happy, but because I genuinely think it would make them happier too. If you are what you eat, you are also what you think, and if what you think out loud is relentlessly self-centred and negative, it kind of follows that you’re unlikely to be especially chipper.

What you need to do with a bad thing is get over it. Your boyfriend has dumped you: it’s very sad, but there you go. It doesn’t get any less sad if you discuss it solidly for three weeks (or three months) and turn every single conversation round to the subject of your deep and unique unhappiness. Be adult: shoulder your burden, process it and move on. We’d all like to marry incredibly studly millionaires with PhDs and well-developed social consciences, but I suspect they’re probably a bit thin on the ground. We’d all like to be promoted into the stratosphere, but it’s unlikely to happen if we insist on leaving at 5.30pm on the dot and are intent on our “right” to every single holiday. And anyway, sometimes what you have under your nose is exactly right for you, even if it (or he) doesn’t quite match the fantasy version.

It seems to me that too many of us believe so much in fantasies that we waste all the goodness of what is real and tangible. Appreciate what you’ve got, even the really small things. For me, those are often domestic. Everyday happiness, as opposed to one-off great bursts of pure ecstasy, is intricately tied in with tiny everyday events: the jaunty-looking teapot that pours without dribbling, the children’s bath time, an especially good book. These things aren’t sexy or envy-making, but they are the fabric of all our days. Concentrating on them, and on all the small joys they provide, can be intensely fulfilling. Moaning because you can’t afford a £300 pair of shoes is not. Neither is moaning tout court.

Be happy. We are all blessed, in thousands of different ways. So we’re not a size 6, cavorting on a yacht with George Clooney. So what? I’d rather be sniffing my babies’ heads. There is enormous beauty in everyday life, and it doesn’t cost any money to look at it and feel glad to be alive.

This is painful. How could she not know the name of the Prime Minister of Canada?? You can tell that she's just flattered to be speaking to "Sarkozy", knows nothing about his politics and probably got all of her info from OK Magazine. Scary.