Washington DC

The first time I went to DC was with Kyle, 15 years ago, on a road trip that would eventually take us to New York's JFK airport, with me going back to England after 3 months of working here to see if I liked it. (Otherwise known as "will you drop everything you know and move 4,000 miles from home for the man you love?") It was August, it was terribly hot, and we stayed on the floor of a friends dorm room at Georgetown, and it was my first introduction to "dry campuses". I was shocked, well actually I was horrifed. But, I fell in love with the capital. I remember tearing up at Arlington where JFK is buried and being deeply moved by the respect paid at the tomb of the unknown soilder.
The second time I went to DC was the spring of 2000....I think. My brother came over from England and we took a trip together. Poor guy had to hold my hand on the plane when we hit tubulence (something he hadn't done since I was about 2 and he was 7!)
We walked and walked all over the city. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom at the Jefferson memorial and we ate dinner outside in a little Italian resturant in Georgetown.
Now I went back with my husband and my three young boys. The big boys just wanted to get to the air and space museum and the swimming pool at the hotel (and not necessarily in that order). We took them to the White House and we all (well, Kyle and I) were yet again in awe of it, and a little choked up knowing that America voted in their first African American President. As Kyle kept saying, its a much nicer place knowing there's a democrat inside!
DC is an impressive city. The architecture is beautiful, it's not crowded and claustrophobic like London can be, and it holds so much history that you can't help but feel a connection to this wonderful, but at times strange and conflicted country.

Blogging...

I worked out how to put a photo on my blog and how to change the colour of my text. Very exciting. It was spurred on by going to look at my sister-in-law's blog. She is a very fabulous English professor in Norway, and has written a book on blogging, which has been published in Korean. Korean!!!
So I was checking out her blog today (which she is taking a break from, cause she and my brother-in-law just had another baby - hurrah!), and I realize that there are all these things you can do on a blog, and all these questions start flooding into my brain. (What a surprise.) Again, (see yesterday) this is where that whole international family thing pisses me off, because I have a number of questions for Jill that I just wish I could ask her over a nice cup of tea and some biscuits. (Jill is Australian by birth and I keep wondering if that Aussie/Limey connection is the reason why I feel she understands me SO well! I love it when she comes to visit. Jill just makes sense to me.) I absolutely need to look at more blogs. In all my spare time....Oh and I need to order Jill's book from Amazon. Although, it would only be added to all the books I received for my birthday and some that I still need to read from Christmas (Jill's husband, Scott always sends me cool books, since he is an English professor also. He read philosophy in college - in England when you read a subject at university it means you are graduating in that subject, does it mean that here too? - Well, I used to pretend I knew what the fuck Scott was talking about, since I read philosophy too. As did Ricky Gervais. Weird.) So now I have this amazing pile of books that include - Jane Austen (my own purchase), Henry James (thanks Kyle!), two Temple Grandin books, two parenting books (eekk) Wolfe Hall, and the new one by the chippe who wrote The Namesake. But hey, if it's a book written by your sister-in-law, I think it would be placed right on the top of that pile.
Do you ever feel like you will just never read everything you want to read in your lifetime? And that doesn't even include all the New Yorker articles that come every week and I never even get near. Sigh....

For a few years, Kyle's family lived next door to an English family. They had one son, and many English relatives that subsequently came to spend holidays with my in-laws. When I met Kyle, the English family had already settled back in England, but they were the first of Kyle's 'family' that I was introduced to. (A very big deal at the time. I think I passed...)
They travelled to our wedding, and were a welcome addition to the big American family that I had married into. One of their sisters, who I had heard stories of (mainly that she was a kick-ass business women, that she had a cottage in Ireland that Kyle stayed at when he travelled the UK, and that she was a force to be reckoned with. Oh and that she let Kyle drive a stick shift in England...something he has never done since. And we never want him to do again), sent us two Royal Worcester cake knives. They had white china handles with dainty hand painted red cherries and I remember being touched that someone I had never met sent us something so beautiful and so English.
So, the Royal Worcester knives came out for birthdays to cut cakes that either I lovingly made or came in a box. They also came out when we have friends or family over for those rare times when we make dinner for our loved ones. Jamie Oliver's lemon and lime tart, Ina Garten's apple pie, and for my dear friend's bridal shower, the Cooks Illustrated Strawberry Cream Cake (a stupendous 4 layer sponge cake sandwiched with cream whipped with vanilla and cream cheese, and a oozy layer of strawberries cooked down with sugar and kirsch). All of these deserved being cut with something special...something English.
Two weeks ago we heard that our friend had incurable cancer and she passed away yesterday morning. Being 4,000 miles away is odd for so many reasons, but in this circumstance, it just clouds any ability to grasp reality. When we last saw our friend, we were in Norway for my brother-in-law's wedding. While being delayed at the Bergen airport for 4 hours, our friend entertained our then two young boys. She was amazing with them, despite never having had her own children.
So yesterday I honoured her in the only way I could think of, alone in the house with my three boys, and a homemade Julia Child quiche. I cut the quiche with the cherry painted Royal Worcester knives.

I think I may have been put off of blogging. My previous post, with a reference to parental depression didn't go down so well. (I'm sorry Dad.) This week has been strange and I don't know where to begin.

JP on Monday night, at around 4:35pm, announces he has a bad earache (when asked where the pain was on that universal pain scale - he told me "7"), so when Kyle got home, he took JP to the immediate care center for the next 3 hours....diagnosis? Double ear infection. Who knew?

Meanwhile, Charlie is home today with a belly ache and sore throat. Doctors appointment in an hour. Could it be the strep that has swept through his kindergarten class? (Oh brother....)

Both boys were supposed to have their first T-ball practice at 4:45pm. I guess we are skipping that this week. Oh, and also at 4:45pm, JP has his try out for the school variety show. His act? Hula hooping for 2 minutes while eating chips. I am terrified that he will get a big fat rejection because it is not a form of acting, singing, or dancing. I wouldn't have thought this until I read the permission slip that had a section for indicating your child's voice coach, acting company, or dancing troupe. This is my Little Miss Sunshine moment.

There's a wealth of other minor upsets that just make me want to be a kid again. (Except I don't really, since I was plagued with all kinds of anxiety that made that carefree childhood kind of absent.) Today, I just don't feel like taking care of anyone. (Enter Mothering Guilt.) I want to spend the day at a spa, reading a book, sipping champagne. (Double Mothering Guilt.) You know, I don't even need the spa. Or the book and champagne. I don't know what would do it....that's half my problem; the not knowing drives me nuts, because then I can't just get up and change something. (Anyone who knows me well, knows that I change my furniture around ALL the time. It's a therapeutic thing and it makes me feel like I am taking life by the horns, and switching it up to attempt to make something better. Even if it is just that the sofa drives me nuts up against a wall or visually the desk at an angle would work much better.)

Anyway. When I figure out what would get rid of that blah feeling, my kids will have all gone away to college, and I'll be left with empty-nest syndrome. Great.

Jack of all trades...

So, I kind of suck at technology. I have been attempting to change some little things on this blog spot, but to no avail. Actually my technological abilities reflect most other abilities in my life. I can wing a lot of things and I have dabbled in a number of activities, but I never actually excel at any of them. My brother likes to call it, "jack of all trades, master of none". Perfect. Sometimes I sit around (well, actually when I am supposed to be concentrating on being a perfect stay at home mum) and I wonder what it would have been like if I had stuck at any of those 'trades'.
For example, when I was about 10, I started to learn to play the violin. I had this wonderful teacher called Mrs. Henstridge. She had silky, black hair (exactly the opposite of my frizzy, curly, hair), and she was patient and kind beyond belief. I discovered that I wasn't half bad at music, and after a year or two, I auditioned at a music school and obtained a place. (Sounds promising.) Except... classes met on Saturday, from 9-1pm. (Saturday??!!) And, I had to be there extra early at 8:30 to fit my personal violin lesson in with a grouchy old lady who was the polar opposite of my gentle Mrs. Hendstridge. Moreover, I had to car pool home with some of my friends, which made me nervous becasue I was terrified that I would have a panic attack. Which leads onto the icing on the cake; I had started to regularly suffer from panic attacks. End of Rachel's musical career. Never mind the fact that they told my parents I had promise. Never mind the fact that I was asked to join a youth orchestra. I couldn't even make it through my individual violin lesson without breaking out into a sweat, shaking and feeling like I was going to throw-up. (For those of you that know me well know that puking is my worst fear.) After much deliberation (of about a week) we decided it was best to drop out. The director of the music school, a kind, elderly gentlemen, told my parents that I would only come to despise music if I carried on at that point. Wise man. 'Cause I love music, and I keep telling myself that one of the things I have to do before I die, is to learn the piano. (We also have to move house before that pipe dream is possible.)

Then as time went on, and I dabbled in many other 'trades', I realised that I just didn't have the personality to be a concert violinist! I didn't have the drive, and I didn't have the energy to practice for hours and hours on end. But every time I hear some classical music, I am totally and completely drawn to the string part. And if there is a violin or cello solo, I just soar on the sweet, sweet sound. (And then I remember how when I played I was too lazy to even count the beats in my head....)

I didn't realize I could put a title in

I came upstairs to my laptop to try to stop the hyperventilating that was about to occur in the basement. I have spent the last hour or so trying to figure out where to put the 50 or so board games that Kyler keeps tearing apart, working out where all the tiny pieces of Lego's go, and puzzling on why we have so much shit. (This is not the hyperventilating part.) Then I innocently go into the storage part to try to figure out whether I can put the overflow toys in with the already HUGE area of overflow toys. (This is the hyperventilating part.) I want to cry.
Our storage part of the basement is of medium size with shelves all around the periphery, all groaning with an excess of things such as dinner plates, Christmas china, candles, photo albums, and general "who knows where the fuck it should go' type of material possessions. Then, in one corner is our beautiful wooden crib, made for our babies by Kyle's Aunt. (It is stuffed to the brim with coats, snow pants, and who knows where the fuck it should go type of possessions.) Behind this are numerous plastic tubs that will be hanging out on the planet for the next 5,00 years, despite all the precious contents (maternity clothes, baby memorabilia, and summer/winter clothes have long deteriorated.) Then...in the opposite corner, that turned into a 1/4 of the basement floor space, which now encroaches on the walking floor space are....toys. You name it, we have it. But I am too sentimental to purge the three rocking type horses that were given to us when our older boys were babies. (Three???!!!) And I can't donate the Huge box of Thomas trains, just in case the baby grows up to be a train fanatic. (Everything else has a similar sob story attached to it.)
Suffice to say it's ugly. So, on this snowy March afternoon (we are right back to the March's I know so well here), I guess I have to re-organize for the 1,000th time. Because you never know when any of it and all of it will be needed or desired once more.

Oh, and I didn't realize you could title your blogs until I read a fancy New York Times one. Sweet.

Recently I got to thinking about energy. Well, energy and death actually. I remember the one thing I actually learnt in physics in school, back in ole' Limeyland, was that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be converted. Now, I don't know if I even am remembering that little energetic tidbit correctly. But, it got me thinking about death. I grew up with parents who were involved in the charismatic renewal in the '60's. We bounced around churches in the '70's and '80's, always coming back to the Church of England (Thank you very much Henry VIII.) My Mum is very spiritual and really laid the foundation for my religious beliefs. I converted to Catholicism when my first son was baptized, and yet....like everyone else I am sure, I can't get my head around the hereafter. I mean, it seems terrible to think all this, all this life and love and complication and pain and wonder can't just be for shit. Right? Yet, how on earth can there be this big old, white bearded guy in the sky, with a toga and brown sandals, welcoming us to some Elysium after we go belly up.
Enter my energy epiphany! I got to thinking - some smart arse has probably already thought of this...I never was very original - and I wondered if the little energy tidbit actually applies to human beings! I thought about it in a very child-like way (the way I think about most things) and I worked out that if our bodies run on energy, acquired from elsewhere (food, water etc), and our brains have electrical impulses (don't know where the heck those babies come from...possible flaw in the plan?) then, it can't be destroyed. Can it? Maybe there is some conversion of all our energy so that when we die, according to the energy law it all has to go somewhere else. (And I really hope it doesn't just mean back to the earth in a nice, green, decomposition, kinda of way.) I must note here, that when I told my husband, in glee thinking I had worked out one of the biggest questions the human race has pondered upon...he didn;t seem quite so excited as I did?!
The one thing I haven't worked out is a mind/body dilemma. By that I mean, does our spirit and everything that is the essence of us, run on the energy that our body uses? If not then none of this matters, 'cause where the physical energy goes, doesn't matter a whit if the spirit is not going along for the ride.
My musing for the day. Any thoughts? Anyone?

The weather is almost how I remember March in England when I was a child. Cold in the morning, but by lunchtime, a glorious soft breeze and warm sunshine envelops you as you step outside. I have a crocus or two out in the back garden. The rabbits, which seem to plague this town, have not got to them yet. Maybe this year they won't! The birds sing in choruses it seems. It is, after a long winter, heaven. (But of course, they are forecasting snow this weekend....oh well. The break was glorious while it lasted.)

Springtime is one of the hardest things for me to deal with here. England's Springs are stuff of legend. I fell in love with my husband in Spring. On a walk around the lake at the university we both attended, he picked me a single daffodil. I kept it, dried and kind of shriveled for years.
The first birthday I spent here in 1997, it snowed on my birthday. Which, I thought was amazing (the southeast of England was deprived on any snowy weather when i was little, and I dreamt of snow every winter...only to have to be content with rain.) However, I realized as the years went on, that snow on March 15th is depressing. What was I thinking that first year?! I clearly had no idea what I had got myself into! Never mind all the other cultural differences and subtle conversational nuances, never mind the subequent years of not being able to order Water in a fast food restaurant without the staff looking at me like I was from Mars (not from the country that first populated this country!) or on occasion telling me that we don't have that. That being Water. No, I was just naive enough top think that the weather god's had planned a cold, snowy March for me that year, just because they wanted to fulfill my childhood wish.
So, 13 years later I got the mid-march English type weather that I long for every year. (Does this mean I have to wait another 13 to see it again?)

I think, after my 36th birthday, that I am having an early midlife crisis. First, let me, in a nutshell, sum up my life -
I moved here from England to marry my college boyfriend, (we had a long distance relationship for 21/2 years - great love story, but for another day). I did not cope very well with giving up my English life. (actually, I didn't really have a life yet...I was only 22, just graduated college with a degree in philosophy and politics, and what can you do with that?!)
I fell into teaching. After being adamant for years that I would only ever teach high schoolers, I ended up with preschoolers. Two and three year olds to be exact. But.... I LOVED it. And I think I was good at it! Anyway. So now I have three boys, a house, a husband who is a lawyer, a masters in early childhood education that is 3/4 finished and I am having a mid-life crisis.
I also concerned that the title of the blog is misleading. Maybe it should be "musings on MY life." Although narcissism is not what I predominately thought of when I thought about creating a blog, I am worried that is exactly what the genre of this blog may be!
The good thing is, I actually don't think anyone will read this. So how narcissistic can it be? Can narcissism only exist when there are other people to witness it?
So, that I suppose is my musing today. Let's just leave the possible mid-life crisis for another time....

It's my 36th birthday today. Forty is looming. It feels like, for women at least, that it is pretty much downhill from now. I mean, no one comments on Richard Gere's crowfeet or whether George Clooney gained a couple of pounds. (Well, maybe.) It is just seen as the boys getting better looking, more distinguished etc, etc. Women however, get a given a much harder time. No news to any of us. I think my thoughts will get clearer, I may know who I am more than I did in my 20's, I may be able to finish my Masters while taking care of three young boys, but while time marches across my face and my body....all I can think about is how time is leaving a train wreck in it's wake.

My musing for today, is whether this is a culturally imposed set of standards. (I think I already know the answer.)