A new job and a new recipe

I decided this week to become a Creative Memories consultant. The prospect of getting my scrapbooking supplies at cost won over fears of being perceived as a slimy sales person with a too-bubbly persona. So I signed my consultant agreement, handed over my 95 pounds sterling, and am waiting for my box of goodies (including the exclusive Daisy album) to arrive in the post. I went to a training meeting on Tuesday night to get an idea of what I was signing up for, and I was more than a little amazed to see British women HUGGING each other, and squealing with delight when greeting each other. I thought those sorority-girl greetings were only for American women, but apparently it is a Creative Memories phenomenon. Though I shuddered at the thought of going to workshops and being around such girliness whilst in the States, having been here for two years living amongst stoic protectors of personal space, I really enjoyed the unchecked expressions of delight these women showed to their friends, even if they were a little cheesy.

In other news, I made rhubarb crumble ice cream last night. I actually started early in the morning and burnt the first batch of crumble. Then I made another batch while the girls were napping. Then I mixed the cream and rhubarb at about 7:00 and did the first churning at 10:00. Had I read the recipe correctly I would have waited to mix it until this morning, but as it was I had to set my alarm for midnight to churn and fold in the crumble. We'll be having it for dessert tonight. Yum.

Totally Organic

I've started ordering these organic vegetable and fruit boxes that are delivered to my door each Thursday. I did this mostly to save wear and tear on my stroller, which was being loaded up well beyond its recommended weight limit each week at the grocery store, but also to challenge myself to eat more "good for you" stuff, and because "organic" is becoming such a catch-word out here that I thought I better join in and keep up my street cred. We've only had two so far, but I don't think I'll ever look back. How did we get to the point as a society that we thought the stuff sold in supermarkets was good? I didn't even realize how awful the stuff I was eating tasted until I dug into this heavenly spread. Carrots that are so sweet and crunchy I will eat them straight from the bag without ranch dressing, apples that aren't shiny and are sweet and juicy, oranges that are succulent, potatoes that have the most amazing flavor. I didn't even know potatoes had flavor before I tried one of these! And I'm also being introduced to new and exciting vegetables that I've never heard of before, such as kohl rabi. Raise your hand if you know what that is! And watercress (I knew what it was, but the challenge is what do I do with a huge bag full?) And gooseberries. It's all very exciting. I've also started getting the organic eggs, which are so full of flavor and have the most beautiful yellow yolks, and organic yogurt, which is creamy and delicious. I'm such a foody, I can't believe I didn't jump on the organic bandwagon before. Flavor, flavor, flavor. I really can taste the difference, and I somehow feel healthier just having the stuff in my house. So now I'm trying to find other things that are organic. I picked up organic baked beans yesterday, and I want to try some organic chickens. We'll see how my wallet copes.

Avoiding

I should be downstairs preparing the biblestudy for tomorrow's women's group that I am leading. But instead I'm up here checking my e-mail, checking Mike's blog to see what's up with my favorite twins, checking Matt and Dawn's blog, and now writing on my own. Doing the biblestudy will be life-giving. We're going through the gospel of Mark and I'm learning a lot. I feel like I'm starving a bit because we were on holiday last week and I didn't open my Bible once. But for me spending time with God is like exercise. When it's done I feel so alive and refreshed, but beforehand I can think of a million other things that would be easier. And when I don't do it for a few days it's a lot harder to get going again. As a follower of Jesus I know that communication with him is key to living the life I want to live. Just like I know that if I eat several bars of chocolate in a day I'm going to gain weight and feel sluggish. But I often avoid the former and do the latter. What a mess I'm in. This flesh is getting me down.

Spontaneity with Children

It was Friday afternoon. The weather had been fabulous for the last couple of weeks, and I was itching to go to the beach. Bedford is as far from the ocean as it is possible to get on the British Isles, a point of great disappointment for this beach lover. Tim came home from work at around 4:30, and I said, "What do you say we pack up the kids and drive to Wales for the weekend." To my surprise and delight he responded with an "okay" and at 8:22 we were in the car on our way. Less than four hours to get a family of four out the door for a 5-day trip--not bad. We had a fantastic day at the beach on Saturday. It's been cold and rainy every since, but it's so nice to know that my ability to be fun and spontaneous didn't go away when my second child arrived.

The Weather in Wales

We've been in Wales since Friday night, and I only packed summer clothes for us, since it's June, and the temperature's been in the 80's for the last two weeks. I forgot that this is the UK, where the weather is never certain from one minute to the next, so when going on a weekend trip it's prudent to bring clothes for all seasons. Saturday we spent a gorgeous day at the beach. Sunday we went back to the beach, and I immediately took off for a run, which was fabulous, but I came back to find my husband and girls shivering with cold and none too happy about it. We drove home and have spent the last couple of days indoors since it's been rainy and in the high 50's/low 60's. Addien has had to wear her pajamas since that's the only long sleeves I brought for her. I didn't bring many toys for Cerys, since I assumed we'd be outside most of the time, so she's been watching too much tv and driving me a little crazy. The in-laws' house where we are staying (mam and dad are away for the week and kindly let us use their house) is not quite child-proof, and our days have been filled with "Cerys, honey, don't touch that. Cerys, put that down. Cerys, that's Nanny's. Cerys, get down from there." Poor girl. Of course, the only thing that has actually broken was broken by me, not Cerys. The clutziness that is Greta continues. Anyway, back to the weather...I don't know if I'll ever get used to there not being real seasons here. Summer is not necessarily warm, and winter is rarely very cold. The "rainy season" lasts from October until June. We are experiencing a "drought" which means it's only raining about twice a week this summer. California is looking better and better.

The World Cup

The World Cup in England is a very different experience to the World Cup in America. In America, soccer is almost an underground sport, and only the elite few are interested. Cool people like Tim Sparks set their alarms for 3:30 in the morning to go to the one pub in the area who is playing the game and charging a cover. Here every single store has England team paraphernalia displayed, and the pubs all show the games live. People roam the streets wearing England shirts and waving England flags, and people honk their horns when England wins. The excitement is kind of infectious. Just don't make the mistake of calling it "soccer". It's football, got it?

So, yesterday I was invited to some friends' pad for a 5:00 kick-off. We were going to eat tacos and watch the match (not a game, a match!) But I have two kids, and they have two kids, and Abi brought Owen, so there were 5 under-4's competing with the football. And dinner still needed to be made. I spent the first half in the kitchen grating cheese, cutting tomatoes, telling Cerys not to throw sand at her friends and trying to figure out why Addien decided it would be a good time to start preferring mommy to anyone else. Half time came and we served up. I spent the first 20 minutes of the second half trying to get Cerys to sit still long enough to eat, trying to figure out what to feed Addien since the tacos were too spicy for her liking, and trying to get a taco for myself. When I finally sat down with about 20 minutes to go, no one had scored, so I didn't feel like I'd missed too much. I watched for a few minutes with Addien in my lap and then realized that she was chewing on something she shouldn't be and looked to get it out. During that 5-seconds, Crouch scored the first goal of the match. Nice. I got to see it on replay. Mike was sure they would score again, so I settled in to watch again. I watched, was impressed with the fancy footwork, and then Leyton, the 3-year-old of the group, came and asked me a question. I don't remember what he asked, but in that 5 seconds that I made eye-contact with him the second goal was scored by England.

Apparently watching football and being a mom are not compatible activities.

I fell down

I got up to run this morning at 6:00. 6:05, actually, since I pressed snooze once. I was out the door at 6:30 and met my friend Sarah in the park for a lap before heading back home. (Cue Chariots of Fire theme music) I had run further and faster than I'd done before, and after the 30-minute mark I was feeling like I could go on for miles. But then (cue vinyl record screeching to a halt sound effect) I hit a grate and my right knee and both forearms hit the pavement and skid. Ouch. My runner's high was thwarted by the clutziness that is Greta, and I hobbled home licking my wounded pride and muttering profanities in my head while waving my hands in the air to try to stop the incessant burning caused by the roadburn.

Relief

I woke up this morning feeling so overwhelmed I really wanted to just stay in bed and hide under the covers for the rest of the day. There were several problems with that idea. First, it's like 80 degrees here and about 85 in the house, so getting under the covers was not an option. Second, I had two very cute little girls wanting to play with their mommy, making it seem quite selfish to just stay in bed all day. Third, I really needed to pee. So I got up and started the day. By 9:30 I was still feeling totally overwhelmed by the laundry, dishes, and tidying that needed to be done (yes, these are the things that overwhelm me), and the thought of going to playgroup was more than I could take. So I called my very good friend Abi who said she'd take Cerys so I could get some time to catch up. When I opened the door I realized the night had brought some cooler weather and so decided to postpone the housework and go for a run. And even though I still haven't done the stuff that overwhelmed me this morning, I feel much better. Thank you God for endorphines. And for Abi Sutcliffe.

Sean the pyro

Sean finally showed up for duty yesterday morning at 8:45. Forty-five minutes late, but at least he showed. When he didn't come Friday morning, Tim went and told him he had one last chance before we got the police involved. Sean apologized AGAIN for messing us around and explained that the reason he hadn't showed up yet is that he smokes weed and if he was at our house all day he wouldn't be able to do that. Are you kidding me?

So he came ready to work yesterday morning, and Tim started a fire in the back to help get rid of a bunch of wood that had been left by the previous owner of the house. Admittedly that was not the brightest move on Tim's part. Even less wise was to then leave Sean with a list of things to do and strict instructions to not add any more wood to the fire while we went out for a few hours. But hey, the Davieses are trusting folk.

Tim decided to ask a neighbor to check on the boy after about an hour, and Jon quickly called back to say "You better get back here." Sean had added ALL of the wood to the fire, and the flames were jumping several feet into the air, melting the plastic roof on our neighbor's shed and completely blackening the brick wall surrounding our garden. We discovered later that he had found an unopened bottle of lighter fluid and used about 90% of it to fan the flames.

Tim was more than a little annoyed when he returned. But in the end, perhaps it was a good thing because it meant that Sean was under careful supervision for the rest of the day, and he and Tim had some good chats about work, football, and fire. At the end of the day he said to Tim that he thought he was going to be really bored working for us but that he'd had a great time. Fancy that.

He showed up on his bike a few hours later and asked if he could borrow a pound that he'd pay back today. He already owes us £130, so what's another pound, eh? Cheeky monkey.

Sean Valjean

My street is filled with hooligans. Most weekends, especially during the summer, a group of teenagers is out in the street drinking, smoking, fighting, and yelling at the top of their lungs. And the party usually goes on until the sun comes up around 4:30 or so. Two weekends ago, the shenanigans culminated in a chair being thrown through the back windscreen of our Peugeot. Tim and our good friend and neighbor John were in the living room at about 12:30 when the heard the glass smash. The next two hours were filled with police and different eyewitness accounts, all of them saying the culprit was Sean, the neighborhood troublemaker who lives across the street. This is the kid who decided to saw through the telephone wires on Friday night last summer, leaving the entire street without phone lines for all of Saturday. None of these witnesses were willing to talk to the police, since they’re all in trouble with the law themselves. Great.

Tim and I talked it over, and since we actually like Sean and would like to see him make something of himself, and since we also know that he has no money so asking for the £130 for the windscreen would be futile, we decided to confront him and offer him the chance to fess up and work off his debt in our back yard for three days in exchange for us not pursuing legal action. Sean agreed, and after a stern lecture from me on getting his act together, we decided that he would show up for work at 9:00 Tuesday morning. I had in my mind grand visions of this being just the thing Sean needed to get his life turned around. Three days of hard labor under the watchful but loving eyes of Tim and Greta Davies would turn this troubled teen into a bright young man ready to realize his potential.

Tuesday morning came with a note through our door saying he couldn’t make it because he had meetings all week with his parole officer. These meetings only lasted an hour or two in the middle of the day, but apparently he thought that was reason enough to not show up for duty. But he did pencil us in for all day Saturday and Sunday. Tim explained that we weren’t available Sunday and that he was okay to leave for his appointments in the middle of the day, so asked him to show up for work on Thursday. Sean agreed, but again on Thursday failed to turn up. Tim went and knocked on his door that afternoon and was told by his mother that Sean was ill in bed. I saw him Friday looking quite well and shouted over to ask if he was feeling better. Indeed he was. The sore throat that had kept him from leaving the house was miraculously fine on Friday. He assured me that he’d report for duty bright and early the next morning. But alas, no Sean. When Tim went to enquire that afternoon, Laura told him that Sean had been jumped the previous night. And sure enough, later that afternoon we saw Sean with a very bloodied nose and huge lump on his forehead. I didn’t bother to ask what he was doing out by himself at 12:30; just offered my sympathy and asked him to show up Tuesday instead. Tuesday brought another excuse—this time he was off to do neighborhood clean-up with other young parolees. This morning again brought a missed appointment because he was taken into the police station for questioning in a burglary. We’ve scheduled him for tomorrow morning. If he shows up I think I’ll fall over.

My hopes of transforming this boy are quickly waning, and I’m starting to wonder if we should have just let the police handle it. Apparently he’s never seen Les Miserables and doesn’t realize we’ve played the part of the bishop and he’s supposed to be Jean Valjean.

And so it begins

Right now my world consists of two little girls who are asleep but will be awake in a couple of hours, a sink full of dishes, a floor that needs to be mopped, a dinner that needs to be made, laundry that needs to be done, and groceries that need to be put away. My head is swimming with thoughts of things I'd like to do but probably won't manage to do today because my time seems to be sucked away by things like getting drinks of water, changing diapers, rescuing my 8-month old from sticking a week-old pea that she's discovered in one of the cracks of the floorboards into her mouth, telling my 2-year-old not to put the Lion King DVD into her mouth, putting stickers on her potty chart, etc. I often end the day and think "What did I actually do today?" And I don't often have a very satisfying answer. But actually, I'm okay with that. Because I'm trying as hard as I can to just be a really good mom and a really good wife and a really good neighbor and friend, and I'm asking God to help me to do those things, and I have faith that even though that's all I can manage right now I'm playing my part and somehow God's Kingdom is going to benefit.

Gettin' outta Dodge

I live in Dodge.

Actually, I live on Battison Street in Bedford, England, but my husband often says, "We've got to get out of Dodge" and sometimes I think he's right. We are often kept awake at night by neighbors having drunken brawls, the scent of marijuana often wafts through the street, and the sight of men peeing against the wall opposite my house often greets me when I open the door.

But more often than not, I think he's wrong. I love being near the center of town, and I love that I know my neighbors, even if they are hooligans. I love the diversity: I have Asian, Polish, British, Italian, and American neighbors. The boys down the street know that if they hit the ball over our fence 20 times in one day, I'll let them in to fetch it every time, and they bring me roses as a sign of their appreciation. The lady across the road knows that if she needs milk on a Saturday morning for her tea, she can come ask us. The old man who lives down the road asks in broken English, "You alright? Children alright? Husband alright?" every time he sees me. The men who run the shop down the road pinch my children's cheeks and give them lollypops when we go in. The lady who runs the other shop noticed that I've lost weight. The couple that runs the Chinese restaurant brought Addien a gift when she was born and brought Cerys their hand-me-down clothes. My friend Abi lives two doors down, and we are in and out of each other's houses almost every day. So, while I don't particularly love the grittiness, I don't know where else I could find community like I have here on Battison Street.

But the house is on the market because hubby really doesn’t think he can take it anymore. So far all our potential buyers seem to think more like my husband than like me though, and they don’t want to live in Dodge either.

My birthday dress

This is my birthday present from my husband. I feel like a very sexy lady when I wear it.