An American in Wales
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The Escape Artist
Yesterday morning, Macy made another break through the hedge into the adjoining field to chase a few sheep. Not good. It is beyond frustrating, to be honest, and very scary. I certainly don’t want to find myself in the position of collecting a very dead young dog after having been (quite within his rights) shot by the farmer. It’s even more frustrating when I see dogs – a springer spaniel in the mix, who has to be as happy to chase birds as any spaniel – lying quietly in the grass, mere yards away from a falconry display. Where the birds are TIED DOWN. This is not my dog. My…
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Big Fun at the “Big Skill 2011”
Yesterday we spent the day outside Brecon at The Big Skill Rural Craft Festival. It was definitely a different kind of festival for us – and we had an amazing time. The idea behind the festival is “to promote the rural crafts and skills that surround our beautiful countryside”. There truly was a really wide range of activities to try your hand at: stitching a saddle, weaving a willow basket, fly fishing (which Boo surprised the Hubs with – both that he wanted to try it, and that he was actually better than his daddy at it). I’ll be honest – I missed out on a lot of activities simply…
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Silent Sunday
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Disappointed…Again
Today was not the best of days. (I wonder how many posts I actually start like that……) F Where was I? Oh, me. For someone that has less innate parental talent than even I anticipated, today went pretty badly. Oh, sure, I didn’t initiate the trouble, precisely – the kidlings handled that all on their own. They faught. They squabbled. There was a lot of screaming and scratching involved. At times, it was not unlike the snarling, scrabbling fight scenes in “Fantastic Mr. Fox”…. Yup, it was that bad. But in the end, it was the screaming at each other that got to me. I’d done time outs. I’d separated…
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If it Makes Me Hip, Does My Hybrid Makes My Butt Look Big?
As someone who never learned to drive a manual transmission*, driving an automatic car in the UK could be a costly undertaking, what with petrol (that’s gasoline to my American peeps) running about £3.60 a litre. That’s right, a litre. (You do the math, my whiny American friends – that works out to roughly (mumbling)…3.69 litres to the gallon times 1.34 a liter…so £4.95…(mumbles)….but that’s pounds…so…about… $8.05 a gallon.) A GALLON, people. However, it really wasn’t enough to motivate me to learn to drive a stick-shift. It’s the whole shifting-with-the-other-hand thing while clutching with the same (left) foot. A Right brain/left brain issue. Whatever, I can’t do it. So I drive…
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Dear So and So: The Late (Saturday) Travel Edition
As I started to write this post, I realized that I was really racking up a list of grievances I had against my fellow travelers (and miscellaneous people I met) on my last two holidays, and that, really, I didn’t want to rant to you about this crap. I want to rant to them. But I can’t, not really, since most of them were strangers. Then I realized that they would make perfect “Dear So and So” posts. Only, see, Kat does her “Dear So and So” on Fridays. And it’s now Saturday. But then I realized that it is still Friday in parts of the US. So sue me.…
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There’s No Place Like Home….
Having just returned from a trip back to the States (driving the Hubs crazy when I say “go home”, I’m sure, because my hometown isn’t really home – Hay is home….or is it Barrington?) I logged on to WordPress and was floored by how long it has been since I have posted. I think it must be a sign of a good trip when I can actually disconnect from all things social media. I haven’t much been on Twitter or Facebook (of course, not being able to use my iPhone internationally does play a major roll, as well) and obviously, I’ve been lax about posting here. It has become a…
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Phoning Home
I had a laugh, really, even as I picked today’s topic for my post for Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop. It’s actually not hard to recall “who I last spoke to on the phone for 30 minutes” – it could only be my mom. And not just because she is my mom. Mostly because I don’t think ANYONE here actually uses their phone to call people, unless it is for business- it seems like everyone here texts. (Which I do now, constantly, and never did when I was in the US – thinking that it was for teenagers….) Ok, so that is an exaggeration, but that is how it feels to…
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I Didn’t Run The Mum’s Race at Sports Day (And I’m Proud of It.)
I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone who knew me in grade school – or high school – that I am not an athlete. I am a bookworm. I can read lightning fast. But run the 50-yard dash? Forgetaboudit. The only time I run willingly is if I’m caught in the rain. Or if a beast is chasing me. I’m slow. My husband says I run flat footed. I have no hand-eye coordination (to such an extent that a few beers typically improved my aim when playing a game of darts.) I am NOT competitive. Which is why I chose to NOT run in the Mother’s…
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Summer Fete Loot and A Lesson Learned
It’s nice to discover that some of the concepts that you drill via consistent harping instill in your children stick. In the course of our recent move, the playroom underwent a serious purge (the extent of which still has not been realized by my kids. Yes, I AM that mean). The amount of toys they had was ridiculous (a point driven home when a delivery person looked into my playroom and asked if I was a child minder.) Embarrassing. The bottom line delivered to my children was that there was so many toys that there would be NO room for anything new from Santa come Christmas time. They did well…