My secret dream: Backhoe Operator

I was very much nose-to-the-grindstone last week at work (and now resemble Voldemort*), so not a lot to update.

We're still waiting on the car to arrive. We had a bit of an ONO moment when we realized that I ordered a manual shift. No big deal, we both know how to drive manual. Right?

I didn't consider that the wacky right-side drive cars here means that you shift with your left hand. So we will soon be shifter-ambidextrous.

Naturally, that lead me to think of different situations where being able to shift with either hand would be.. uh, handy. That illustrious list started and ended with one occupation: Operator of Earth Moving Machinery.

I haven't yet told Elaine of my plans to quit my job at the bank to pursue my dream of digging really big holes.


*Not really, Voldemort looks like a snake and I look more like a skink.

Who doesn't know HTML? That's right! Us!

Click on the horrendously large link below to visit our snapfish photo album for lots of picturey goodness.

Eventually (no, not really) I will learn how to replace the horrendously large link with some much shorter and more descriptive text. Eventually.


Phillips-in-Notts Album

Edit: Our vast network of techno-spies comes to the rescue (thanks fritty)!

Good News: No pictures for this post!

We've seen a fox in our back yard.

Foxes in your yard aren't precisely commonplace in the US, so I didn't immediately realize what I was looking at.

There is a park in Richmond that has foxes in a pen. You can stand above the pen and stare down into its weedy recesses, hoping to spy one. Then, finally, you notice a patch of gray among the green. The fox! You stand and stare some more, feeling strangely peaceful.

Then you realize that you've been staring at a piece of wood for 20 minutes.

The fox in our yard here was much larger than the US variety. Not quite "Dear God, it's going to carry away the children" big, but certainly bigger. So I figured that I was probably hallucinating.
The fox didn't sprout wings, or stand up on its hind legs and do a shuffle step so I realized it was a real fox and pointed it out to the rest of the family. This led to all sorts of stimulating conversation which mostly went like this:

Quentin: "Ooooh! A fox! Did you see the fox, Dad?"

Me: "Yes, Quentin. In fact, I told you it was there."

Elaine: "How cool. I can't believe there is a fox in the garden."

Mallory: "SWIPER, NO SWIPING! I'M NOT SCARED OF THE BOX"

Me: "I can't believe there is a fox in the garden"

Quentin: "Did you see the fox, Mom?"

etc.

This morning as I headed off to work I realized that I had stepped in what I assumed was dog poop.

Then I realized what it had to be: fox poop. Cool. Fox poop.

More pictures. Who do my children take after?

Niki emailed these pictures to me recently. Thanks, Niki! They're awesome!

What time does General Hospital come on, Grandma Nana?

I heard Mallory "calling" Grandma Nana today. We just got our landline hooked up. I'm sure she was calling Bangladesh.

Friends we miss...

We miss our neighbors the Hancocks so much! Despite having sold our house, they will always be our neighbors. We were so lucky to have been next door to them! When I was pregnant with Mallory, they watched Quentin so I could rest. They supported us during Mallory's homebirth, and took all of us under their wing whenever we needed something. Niki used to take care of Mallory two mornings a week. She used to take Quentin to church every Wednesday night with she and Ayana. She mowed our lawn after we moved to England, and even cleaned out my stinky refrigerator! She is so full of love! I'm sad that we are far away from the Hancocks, but they're in our hearts.

Bless you, Hancock family! We love you!

Getting settled in the new house...

Here's what happens when you leave your toddler alone with art supplies for more than 20 minutes!

Or this:

But she's a happy girl, despite the long face in the above photo!

Disaster Strikes!

We're in the new house and getting settled in, but the DVD player we bought won't play our American DVDs.

Elaine has the kids penned in the kitchen and is throwing them bits of raw meat to keep them calm until I can work out a solution.

We only hope that I can figure it out before they chew through the rebar barricade.

We've finally moved. Well, sort of. We're doing it in shifts. We've managed to almost triple the stuff we have in the month that we've been here. It will take a couple of cab trips to get it all there. And there's not TV yet, so naturally we can't live there yet.

Katie helped us acquire some nice furniture cheap, and some not-so-nice furniture that she probably paid too much for.

The house is in the busy town southeast of Nottingham called West Bridgford. We can walk to lots of things- playground, public indoor pool. Town centre is a 20 min walk, probably. We're on a busy road, but a hedge lines our yard completely, and we have a driveway gate, so we can be completely separate from the traffic. (Very safe for kids). The backyard is also entirely enclosed by a large hedge. The English really like their hedges. We'll probably never see our neighbors. There's no such thing around here as curbside appeall- it's all big hedges.

Moving this weekend

We're moving into our new house this weekend, as planned.

Of course, the house is not the one we expected to move into. Apparently the landlord was using our lease agreement to bid up the price on their current tenants. So even though he/she "agreed" to lease the house to us, they never really intended to do so.

We found this out on Tuesday, which meant we had three days to find a new house. A quick glance at the listings indicated approximately nothing available for a family of four.

Fortunately, we had the assistance of one Katie Aungles, who knew someone who was selling their house, talked them into renting it to us instead, and then found us an entire house worth of furniture for 4000 pounds. Which will be delivered on Saturday. Needless to say, Katie is way up on my list of favorite people right now.

If you're keeping track at home:

1) Guitar stolen at Heathrow/Dulles? Check!
2) Relocation consultant fails to arrange for transportation from London to Nottingham? Check!
3) Relocation consultant fails to inform temporary housing that we're coming? Check!
4) Relocation consultant fails to arrange for a bank in the UK? Check!
5) Payroll deducts my cost-of-living increase from my salary instead of adding it? Check!
6) Landlord rents house out from under us? Check!

On the bright side, I got a truly excellent haircut today, so at least I have that going for me.

Yes, that's really the statue.

Really!

What To Do in Hucknall When You're Dead

Apparently, play Bingo.

Or go to the cinema.

But I get ahead of myself; last weekend we decided we'd take the tram out of town to visit Hucknall.

Hucknall?

Yes, Hucknall. The ancestral home of Lord Byron (really) and his daughter Ada (who is famous for computer languages. Seriously)

So! We grab the kids, head down to the merchant square and hop on the tram.

Hucknall is about 10 miles north of the Notts city center. We figure that means a 15-20 minute tram ride.

35 minutes later we pull into Hucknall. I would elaborate on the picturesque countryside and towns we passed on the way, except there were none. The areas we passed looked more like Teaneck or Yonkers than Stratford-on-Avon.

The first thing you see after leaving the tram station is a 20 foot tall statue of a shirtless coal miner. I know what you're thinking... I LOVE THIS TOWN!

We walk down the main drag in Hucknall and soon see the reverence with which they regard Lord Byron. This is of course embodied by the Byron Bingo and Cinema building. Again, I know what you're thinking... what could better embody the spirit of a romantic poet than a bingo parlor in a coal mining town?

Unperturbed, we continue to the church where Byron is buried. The church is 16th century, and I'm eager to see the architecture and stained glass.

Of course, the church is open for tours... for two hours per week. In an astonishing coincidence, we are not there for those two hours.

Disappointed, we decide to get some food. We pile into a local pub and wait. And wait.

It occurs to us that we don't know how to order food at a pub. We can't tell the "waiters" from the patrons. So I go to the bar to ask. The bartender tells me (partially resorting to charades due to his accent) that they actually aren't serving food today.

Of course not! Clearly the menus on every table were there to describe the food that you might get another time. Today we feast on companionship and warm beer!

We leave, companionship and warm beer being what we had for breakfast (kidding). We spy a grocery store and spend our strange british coins on some snacks and take the long ride home.

I never really liked Byron anyway.

Health Care, elaborated

Emil here!

First, a health update:

As Elaine mentioned, Mallory and I both went to the"Travel Doc" and are on the road to recovery. Feel loads better already.

There are a few things to note about healthcare here:

1) You generally apply to the National Health Service for a General Practitioner, who will do just about everything for you and your family. Pediatric needs? GP. Allergist? GP. Orthopedist? GP. The backlog for specialists is over a year.

2) If you don't have a GP yet (like us) you go to a private practice. This is absurdly expensive: My 10 minutes with the doctor cost $420. Not counting the prescriptions. But it does count the prescription fee. And the look-in-my-throat fee. And the breathe-in-this-tube fee. And the listen-to-you-breathe fee. And the pay me scads of cash fee.

Sadly, I only made up the last one.

3) The receptionists were clearly a high-powered superspy team. I wish I had the foresight to take a picture, but it's probably for the best. They undoubtedly would have been forced to kill me.

There were two: a stylish young blonde girl and her counterpart, a tall lanky guy with a Ben Wallace afro and a smart black suit. I'm used to the medical staff wearing Elmo scrubs and generic reeboks. The suit probably cost more than my car. Or it would if I had a car.

4) The decor at the doctor's office was this: leather couches and chairs carefully arranged around an art-piece coffee table. The walls were adorned with quite well done pop-art and expensive looking sconce lamps. A bit of a change from the wooden bench and eight-year old copies of Field & Stream at the doctor's back home.

Getting sick, windmill, teeth, and artwork

It finally happened. We got sick. Emil was terribly sick over the weekend with a cold virus/asthma. Mallory woke up Monday morning with a fever. We went to a nearby doctor and had a great experience. My Richmond doctor could learn a thing or two from this practice! She has pharyngitis. Emil's going later. So we're hunkered down in our apt. on a sunny afternoon. Oh well, at least Wimbledon's on for now...


The kids and I visited a windmill recently- Green's Mill- in nearby Sneaton. Great kid activity area- all science based learning for toddlers and young children. Ghetto-like playground next door. Of course my kids noticed it and wanted to play. Threatened rain the whole time. I get nervous when it's cloudy- we were stuck in a torrential downpour recently and Quentin and I got soaked. It was miserabile. Mallory's stroller has a plastic rain cover, so she was dry as a bone. We were cold, too; it was low 50s. It's also hard to tell what the weather is going to do, so I get anxious and don't like hanging out far from our apt. or the bus stop. Didn't stay long at windmill. Got soaked on way home, too.

My little guy is growing up!! Quentin lost is first tooth yesterday. He said there was something hard in his chicken. As I looked at him saying this, I noticed a space and some blood. Luckily, he hadn't swallowed the tooth!


Here's a shot of Quentin's artwork from last few weeks. This doesn't count his block-building and toilet-paper roll creations that don't stand the test of time. What a great way to spend the time!

Who knew?

We walk everywhere. I walk to and from work, which is about a 20 minute walk going there (downhill) and 30 back (uphill). It rains a lot.

I know this will come as a shock, but walking in the rain for over an hour a day in 55-60 degree weather WILL result in getting sick.

But I'm feeling much better!

Adventures at Wollaton Park

Some of you won't be surprised to hear about the absurd adventures I've had at Wollaton Park with my children. I told Emil at the end of my first visit that I was ironing out the kinks so that when we go as a family, I'll know all ins and outs.

• Wollaton is a huge deer park near Nottingham city centre. It's a 10 minute bus ride.

Here are the highlights of our visits:

• Locate bus stop after visiting tourist center to obtain bus info. Get on bus. Can't find where to put money. Feel really stupid.


• Bus driver turns and says something to us en route that I can't understand. Repeats himself three times, sounds louder and more irritated each time. I heard "you" and "passengers" in his diatribe.


• After bus driver gestures at stroller, I figure I should move it.


• See small sign that says Wollaton Park. I guess this is where we get off??


• Bus driver points to small driveway- yeah, go in that way.


• Notice the sign says "vehicle entrance only"....Hmmm... should we go in here anyway?


• Notice metal grate/bridge over dip in road and metal fence lining drive. Where do you walk?


• After quick thinking on my part...we decide to go over metal grate. Quentin has to scale bridge sideways while holding the metal fence. I gingerly pull stroller over each groove- just wide enough for almost entire stroller wheel to fit into. How lucky! This was the kind of grate that if your foot fell through, you'd break a bone easily. Ground was about 12" down. So I tell Quentin to hold on tight and don't fall through.


• We make it! Luckily no cars drove by at this time.


• Where do you guess the pedestrian entrance was? Well, we notice on the way out someone walking through a little black door next to the vehicle-jaws-of-death-entrance. Unmarked.


• And I actually panic at the bus stop thinking we won't know which one to take back...but think about it...yeah, it was a long day. I had some wine that afternoon.

Visit 2 is less exciting, especially since we knew where to go in and out...

• After noticing how difficult the stroller moves through grass- I mean lots of grass... and deer poop, I tell Quentin we have to use the sidewalk from now own. We start walking toward the exit closest to the bus stop. There are signs everywhere indicating to not approach the deer because it's calving season and they can be aggressive.


• Guess where about 50 deer were hanging out that day? Yeah, in the field right along the sidewalk. I mean close to the sidewalk, too!


• We start walking naturally, no big deal. But one kept staring at us! Quentin asks why the deer keeps staring at us. And these are not small deer- they're like freaking moose over here! I get spooked, so we turn and take this detour into the grass and circle back to our small unmarked exit door avoiding the herd.


• I turn around and notice some people walking casually up the sidewalk behind us, not a care in the world for those deer. I hope we gave them something funny to talk about!