Back from a walk through the fields with the pup, we paused to talk to one of our neighbors. As I said goodbye and turned to let the pup through the back gate, Boo looked at me impatiently and exclaimed (in the Welsh accent that he has developed over the past 14 months): “C’mon mom, would you stop putting on that American accent already!!!” Sheesh.

Last week, a little old man told me my puppy looked like “a zebra gone wrong”. Last month, someone coming to my door asked me when I was expecting. (Trust me, I’m not.) When Boo was 3 months old, a checker at the local supermarket said he looked “just like a troll doll”. A friend of mine was recently told “You look much nicer with your hair blowdried.” (A backhanded compliment if I ever heard one.) What is it with people and thoughtless comments? Around my house, we refer to it as “not having a filter”. I mean, I’m a big believer in freedom of speech and all that, but…

Rag Doll Dance from Jenn Belden on Vimeo.

Yesterday, I rejoined Weight Watchers. Its been about a year and a half since I’ve been to a meeting – I couldn’t seem to find a meeting time here that I could actually make it to on a regular basis – and, well, I thought I could do it on my own. The reality: I’m not doing so well on my own here.  When we first moved here, I met the lovely sausage roll, and it proved to be my undoing (of all the weight I had lost pre-move).  When I saw the fat/calorie content (and nearly had a coronary), I was able to back away from the sausage rolls.…

Monday snuck up on me again like the school bully with a snowball…all of a sudden, its in my face, and I’m left wondering “where the hell did it come from?” Anywho. As I’m fighting a 3-day headache, I’m giving up on my attempts at a coherent post and just giving you a mishmash of stuff that’s going on here and in my head: I’m loving www.bluntcard.com.  You’ve got to love any card that contains the phrase “Holy shit balls!” We FINALLY went out and bought a Christmas tree. This year’s is a little Charlie Brown-ish (we didn’t bother tying it to the top of my car, we just shoved…

This morning, I found my daughter at the breakfast table, talking to her spoon. Her SPOON. Excruciating. This is the word that best describes trying to get my darling, lovely, imaginative daughter out the door in the morning. Don’t get me wrong. I love her imagination, her creativity, her penchant for singing to herself in her off-key voice. I would also LOVE to see her eat her breakfast in LESS than 45 minutes. She is a dreamer. She eats, she might chat a bit, she dallies. I leave the table to rinse my dishes so that she can focus on her cereal. I turn around, and she is lost in…

It’s cold outside. It’s cold inside. When I started my car yesterday, I discovered the glass was completely frosted over on the inside. I distinctly remember my husband enticing me with this move because, as he put it “The average temperature in winter is 40”. I guess I missed out on the “average” bit of that statement; it should follow that we will have some pretty damn warm days here in late winter, if that average is going to hold out. For my American friends, where I am living experienced its earliest snow in 17 years. Last year we saw the most snow they’ve seen in 30 years. How bad…

On the playground recently (not today, today it looked like the Arctic tundra out there), in discussing who actually had the coldest house, one of the mums looked at me and said: “Part of being British is being generally uncomfortable.” I can understand this. Electricity is far more expensive here than at home, so it pains me to turn on the heat during the day. It pains me to run the little space heater, too. I find myself yelling “Close the door, do you live in a barn?” – or something about not wanting to heat the outdoors – when the kids leave the back door open. Our house, lovely…