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Cookies!

Posted on May 28, 2008

Betty Crocker I luvre you! Since mov­ing to Eng­land I usu­ally make all my baked goods from scratch. The lack of an aisle ded­i­cated to all things Betty was a bit of a shock when I first arrived. They do have a cou­ple of pack­aged baked goods here but noth­ing that’s famil­iar. The other day I noticed a pack­age of BC choco­late chip cook­ies– WOO HOO!! Yes­ter­day Squidge and I tried it out.

As you can see a pretty suc­cess­ful foray into bak­ing cookies.

This after­noon we had some friends by for lunch and a bit of a play.  Squidge had a fantab­u­lous time!

Annie git yur gun

Posted on May 27, 2008

Just a quick rant about ter­ror­ists mak­ing life dif­fi­cult for the rest of us. I’m try­ing to trans­fer money to my BFF so that she can pay our Cape Cod beach rental. Yes I KNOW that I should have done this a while ago but pro­cras­ti­na­tion you is mah friend. So any­hoo Wendy needs to pay it by June. No probs I’ll just set up a pay­pal account for Wal and bingo done. Eeerm nope wait one darn sec­ond it couldn’t be that easy. It appears that Wal’s bank makes you jump through hoops before they’ll let you trans­fer money. You might be a ter­ror­ist after all. So you’re prob­a­bly think­ing just go to the bank and w/d the money, deposit the money into your account and then you can use your own pay­pal account. Yes on paper tin­ter­netz paper that sounds great except that Wal is in Italy all this week. So I’m going to have to wait until he gets back. Not the end of the world but still really incon­ve­nient. He can’t even trans­fer the money on-line to me because I’m not set up as a valid/authorized direct debit!! Yep thats right peo­ple if you want to trans­fer money and you use B Bank then you have to set up the per­son as a direct debit AND they make you wait a cou­ple of days before you can con­firm the per­son. You know just in case the ter­ror­ist changes his mind in the ‘cool­ing off’ period and decides not to trans­fer money.

Also peo­ple my diet is in seri­ous jeop­ardy! OOOH MEIN GOTT!! I had book­marked this blog, Fresh from the Oven, a while ago but hadn’t really spent any time drool­ing read­ing it. You have to check it out– ooh mah gawd this woman can cook-if her pho­tos are any­thing to go by.

It was a bank hol­i­day on Monday.

I broke out the bub­ble gun this week­end.  Squidge was only mildly inter­ested.  I on the other hand had a blast play­ing with it.

It was very windy and I was try­ing to get a photo of a bub­ble. A nice clear image of a bub­ble. Unfor­tu­nately most of my pho­tos looked like this.

Then I got this

I’m lov­ing this photo– a per­fect bub­ble w/ great bokeh. It has been very very windy and I should have waited but still innit purdy?

On Sat­ur­day we went to see some friends of Wal’s.  One of my most favorite peo­ple was there– HI BIFF!!  Squidge had a great time and the kids where great play­ing with her.  For some odd rea­son I didn’t pull out my cam­era so no pho­tos.  I think it was the fact that I was freez­ing my butt off.  It was sooo cold I could  barely move! Gots ta love the weather here.

Class, moo cards and SAHMommerings

Posted on May 24, 2008

the sys­tem of divid­ing soci­ety; caste.

a social stra­tum shar­ing basic eco­nomic, polit­i­cal, or cul­tural char­ac­ter­is­tics, and hav­ing the same social posi­tion: Arti­sans form a dis­tinct class in some societies.

As an Amer­i­can I feel I can be any­thing. With enough hard work, grit, assertive­ness and spunk I can do ANYTHING. That the only thing hold­ing me back is me.  As an Amer­i­can liv­ing in Eng­land I think I see the limi­ti­a­tions of class.  I am more aware of class than I have ever been in my entire life. I strug­gle with it and hate myself for think­ing about it. I won­der if it’s just some­thing you think about once you have kids. Would I have been as aware of it if I were rais­ing Squidge in the US? Wal feels that your accent gives away your class much more than if your par­ents were work­ing or mid­dle class. That the fact that I don’t have an accent that peo­ple can pigeon­hole works to my ben­e­fit. I think that is miss­ing the point. It’s Squidge that I worry about.  I want only the best for her. I want to pro­vide her with every oppor­tu­nity avail­able yet I can’t help think­ing that there are cer­tain oppor­tu­ni­ties that will never be open to her here in Eng­land. Is this also true in the US, are there class lim­i­ta­tion? Was it just not an issue for me because I chose to ignore it. Should I have paid more atten­tion in my soci­ol­ogy class??  Help me out here, tell me I’m just being silly and that I’m not turn­ing into Hyacinth Bucket!

I’ve had this bounc­ing around my head for a long time.  I’m strug­gling with get­ting it down out of my head so expect this post to be tweaked and edited.

Now back to the fluff you come here for.

Squidge min­utes after an after­noon nap.

play­ing around with photoshop

I ordered some moo cards this after­noon.  I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing how my pho­tos trans­late into post­cards.  I’m think­ing about sell­ing some.  Is that ego­tis­ti­cal of me?  Think­ing that some of my pho­tos are so good peo­ple would be will­ing to give me money for them?

Last week­end while chat­ting with a friend who is NOT a SAHM I was struck with these feel­ings of being com­pletely use­less.  She asked me what I have been up to and I couldn’t think of a damn thing.  Noth­ing.  Nada. Zip.  What have I been up to?  Hmm let me see I go gro­cery shop­ping a lot– cook­ing and bak­ing is a big part of my life.  I play and color with Squidge.  I ignore Squidge for large chunks of time as I try to read blogs and Flickr.  I go to the park and do laun­dry.  I attend tod­dler groups where I feel alone and iso­lated some­times.  I stand in co-ed chang­ing rooms feel­ing fat while remem­ber­ing that I didn’t shave my bikini area wait­ing for Squidges swim lessons to begin.  It’s what I do– week in and week out.  When con­fronted with the ques­tion I froze.

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