things i love

i love these letters at disneyland (minus the asshole piece of candy corn A which i am still pissed at) did you know you can spell both our first names with the letters in California... uhuh! you cant spell our last name (without photoshop) but that's incidental :)


my perfect cape cod necklace


i love big cuddly kittycats


my knifty knitter :)


sam's birthday... it's always sunny and beautiful and he is always tanned and gorgeous as can be. this year we went to knotts berry farm and he LOOOOOVED it!


capturing father/son moments

a english woman in new york

so it's 17 years to the day since my first trip to the united states of america. thinking back, these were the things that stood out as dramatically different on that very first day of american life:

firstly... the insane 1-94 form! you had to use black ink ONLY and stay within the lines never going outside the lines (a big deal on a turbulent flight) and you were expected to know whether you were British or English (I still am not sure which answer is right...) or from the UK or GB or United Kingdom... no mistakes or you had to start over....

oh yeah, next thing.... American immigration officers do NOT have a good sense of humor ;)

public toilets are weird here! you can totally see the person inside from the line if you move your head left to right and squint.... and they are made by "hiny hiders" even though they don't hide your hiny at all :(

next observation: there are a LOT of commercials on american TV. like the opening titles roll and go straight to commercials?? no 10 minutes build-up to need to pee or get thirsty...? then 2 minutes of show and more commercials. and MORE. and the same commercial twice in the same break... thank you DVR inventor for saving me!!!

umm... mailboxes look like trashcans.... sooooo sorry for the early confusion USPS :)

when americans say something is supersized they mean it.... holy crap do they mean it....

oh and all american chocolate tastes like ex-lax..... but i kinda like it :)

something's got a hold on me

today i plan to conquer my new arch enemy, sugar cookie dough. in the warm light of morning, when covered with purple icing and kaleidoscopic sugar crystals, last night's casualties don't look THAT bad... but still, they must kick Gelson's cookies' asses or i will feel like a total failure

i watched dr phil last night. and i cannot remember for the life of me what it was about, but it was riveting enough to watch with a really stiff neck and a migraine while learning the first 5 moves for my most excellent 12 days of Christmas dance routine.

overnight babysitting tomorrow....aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! no discussions about allosauruses fighting velocoraptors (which i will forever more call "otteraptors" too...) and baby stegosauruses stuck in mud. we are so driving along PCH listening to Istanbul (not Constantinople) on permanent repeat ;)

my fringe("bangs") is/are almost long enough for ahem, "bangtail". that word. it cracks me up/makes me BLUSH/dry heave

i have a seriously deep sense of guilt over the suicide of Billy MacKenzie... sure we shared the same last name but we weren't related, he's scottish 'mackenzie', i'm irish 'mckenzie'... so what...? when i listen to his voice and know he overdosed in his Dad's POTTING SHED, i feel insanely guilty and horrible for moving away and not finding him in between the baby bio and slug pellets....

wednesday night fever

ok. what the heck. i mean, honestly, they're just SUGAR COOKIES for school. how hard can it possibly be? some people make them look like turkeys and schoolbuses - i just want to scrape the damned dough off the counter in one piece and dump it on a cookie sheet without the spooky cat losing his legs or tail... i know it's 91 degrees in the shade but i stuck it in the freezer for one hour and didn't touch it with anything but metal things. not being able to make sugar cookies takes 50 points off your good mom fico score, you know :(

i am determined to perfectly execute the 12 Days of Christmas Rockette dance THIS WINTER, so i am walking more and more and more and more. today like a genius i forgot my watch and am so deathly afraid of being late for school, i walked the last 3 miles in like 7 minutes flat, in 91 degree heat, while killing Jason off and countless screaming argonauts...

i got my sample ballot today!! it has my name on the back everything! but.... it's so long and tedious. and i am already confused by page one, vote for governor :)
Thomas A Edison
Albert Einstein
Helen Keller
Florence Nightingale (this has already been checked!)
Booker T Washington

so many questions.... yes on 2, no on 8, yes on L...in England you just get one question to answer because they know the average joe (sixpack/plumber) is not that smart.

speaking of props and stuff, i cannot even fake eye contact with neighbors that are so strong minded they put out a SIGN stating the opposite views to mine. they'd better NEVER need an egg or sugar... that's all i'm sayin'....

so now my mind is consumed with who else in England is dead. i had to feverishly look up Nicholas Andrew Argyll Campbell. luckily the former host of UK's Wheel of Fortune 1988-1996 is still alive and well(he quit when i left the UK... bless his heart!!)

wednesday things

last night i made little Obama t-shirts and cookies for my boys (we made the sugar cookies from scratch not from a roll:) Danny calls him Bobama and Sam wrote a school paper last month on what he wishes for and he wished for Obama to fix the country :)

anyway.... whenever i have a wave of energy i totally stress that it's one of those bipolar manic 5 minutes. but then i get all tired again and it goes away (ha!)

Aaron told me in bed that on wikipedia people sometimes make stuff up. grrr! so my first port of call this morning was to check if John Peel is really dead. looked at BBC (they don't make stuff up) and he is. sigh. it will be the FOUR YEAR anniversary on friday.... which incidentally will the 17th anniversary of my very first trip to the USA!

i am giving my beloved, much-pored-over, raggedy US citizenshipship study flash cards to my Canadian neighbor to cram for her exam today. i dont know if it will help but i turned over the questions on my exam... hope she gets the same test as me:)

i neeeeed a relaxing weekend away so badly. a break somewhere comfortable and zen with no kids whatsoever or distractions or noise. my lunchtime project for the day...

the park




mercy dash to target for "sparkles" ie halloween sprinkles... that's his peace sign btw :)


we dropped the letter A. not our lucky letter this week :)

labeled with love

so, gas was $3.12 this morning - i distinctly ( painfully) remember paying $5.49 in july... but now, let's see, it's 3 weeks til the election.... it's back to 'normal'* (*new normal - it was $0.89 cents in Clinton's golden days:)

oh my god i totally forgot to pay the MORTGAGE this month! i remembered in bed at 11:13pm and spent the night stressing that we would wake up and find ourselves turfed out on the sidewalk. it's paid now (and no late fee! that's another $100 towards the cape cod kitty!)

i might as well have emigrated to another planet. i had no clue John Peel was dead. and Billy Mackenzie from the Associates too... who i am sure no-one here has ever heard of. i feel strangely guilty for leaving my homeland and not checking the obituaries for the past 12 years...

but, great news - after looking for an entire year, i found the 12 gays of christmas song for my tree-trimming playlist!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSedhEoutP0
(i am sooo not kidding when i say at 32K of those views have been me...)


the 80s homesick blues playlist:
true faith - new order
kiss me - stephen tin tin duffy
labeled with love - squeeze
party fears two - associates (billy is DEAD.... and has been for 11 years???)
love action - human league

21 random things

at any one time i have at least 10 yoplait 'boston cream pie' yogurts in my fridge. i can't eat it if it's been out of the fridge for over 10 minutes

'running to stand still' by u2 has always been the story of my life... but it's ok because i love the joshua tree

i can tell fortunes with ice and diet coke

in my farrest fetched fantasy, nate berkus and george michael get married and move in next door and we watch desperate housewives together every monday morning.

i don't like anything mac (except easy mac :)

Danny was named after Daniel by Elton John

my ears are super sensitive and i can't so much as take a step with earrings in

anything but instant coffee makes me nauseous. and one cup is my limit daily

the first concert i ever went to was Duran Duran in Birmingham in 1982

i have a dozen favorite perfumes at any one time. each perfume represents a perfect time/place.

the song by rem 'at my most beautiful' plays like magic at the most randomly beautiful moments in my life... examples: at 3am in Norm's when we found out we were expecting Sam... at our perfect beach house... the second we arrived in cape cod. the words are even engraved on my iPod

i feel like the world cannot possibly fall off it's axis, when i have a full tank of gas

i have a sick obsession with saving paperclips from certain death. i will stop in the middle of a busy street to scoop one up and rescue it

when my longtime dream to sit right by Barry Manilow as he played piano came true, he touched my hand and i vomited for 18 hours nonstop

my earliest memory was losing my Mum in mittens pet shop and grabbing a man's hand by mistake and having a major screaming fit

i find it hard to fall asleep without watching a heinous crime story on TV

i get a rush of dopamine when i go into Costco, Supertarget and Superwalmart

i try to every single time i walk, but i just can't put one foot right on the same imaginary line as the previous foot

i get my best pictures with my XT and 50mm f/1.8 (and have the most fun shooting)

the worst concert i ever saw was the Rolling Stones

i love Bob Barker and can't watch The Price is Right without him :(

monday

went to the pumpkin patch with Danny. i tried, AS USUAL, to play it cool when he, AS USUAL, got lost inside my worst nightmare, the hay maze. am i the only one whose blood runs cold when my kids disappears inside that terrifying, panic-attack inducing thing...... they should ban them!! corn too! ALL of them!!

it's chili cheese dogs night. but it feels like it should be breakfast for dinner night. oh man, it's bending the rules wildly but it must be done!!!

speaking of which, today i did my insane 5 mile walk in less time than it's humanly possible to actually do it in. so i made an illicit, but essential according to my stopwatch, shortcut through the high school campus. oh.my.gawd. i have NEVER felt so old listening to the Tootsie theme song and carrying a 'i'm old enough to be your mother' breast cancer awareness pink water bottle.

you know you're hungry when you accidentally eat a piece of tissue and it tastes good enough to not spit out. must eat food soon.

my littlest asshole iPod has bitten the dust. i think this must be number 8 or 9, they just die in my hands. i was forced to take my HUGE nano on today's walk and gawd it is agony shuffling on that thing. no matter how many times i went to the next song it never ever found Love Action by Human League. grounds for being stamped into the ground i think....

my grateful things today:
cool breezes on perfect 73 degree walks with chris isaak whispering in my ear (shuffle found HIM 8 times in one hour, it plays it's own favorites i think)
crusty french bread
my hubbie taking the boys fishing in the afternoon
jo malone sweet lime and cedar (beware: excessive sniffing yourself makes you lightheaded, and people look at you like you're weird in alberton's self checkout)
my boys' devastatingly gorgeous eyes
george michael (always!)

today's random playlist:
'life's a gas' T. Rex
'dead souls' nine inch nails
'ring of fire' johnny cash
'sowing the seeds of love' tears for fears
'cornflake girl' tori amos (yes i'm blogging hungry today!)

a couple more from the party yesterday:
Sam spent H-O-U-R-S (and his hard earned pocket money) choosing a gift for his Grandma - he found something unique and perfect - a glass chicken ornament! Grandma took one look at the UNchicken shaped parcel and said immediately "is this a small hen??"

Sam couldn't believe it but apparently Grandma had dreamt about the chicken the night before :)




downtown disney

the birthday party!!

f****ing A

so i totally totally totally suck at telling stories and i use grammatically illegal amounts of '...'s and '()'s... but this is a story that just MUST be told for the sake of therapy and getting it out.....

(deep breath)

for Sam's birthday, i wanted to find a huge 8 to photograph him next to... i couldn't, so i used the target circle and stacked two pics on top of each other craftily in PS to make an 8. my mind immediately fast forwarded to the next birthday - Danny turning 4. hmm.... where on earth would i find a 4 having struggled SO HARD to make the 8 happen???? several sleepless nights later i had an idea - i would go to the huge California Adventure sign and take a picture of Danny by the A and then butcher the left side of the letter in PS to make it a 4. i was soooo proud of myself and scanned the disneyland website for a day when both parks opened at 10am so the entrance plaza would be super quiet. ha - today was THE day! both parks opened after 10am so off we set, cameras and lollipops in hand. hmm, we started to see signs for event parking... curioser and curioser... more and more cars... and people with huge signs heading in the same direction as us.... for the insanely busy CHOC sponsored 'walk in the park'... RATS!! the sign would be busy and i would be forced to clone ugly bokeh resulting in migraines and curved spine... but undeterred we pressed on and parked and pushed our way through thousands of people to get to the sign. only to find the A looking something like this:

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