Holidays, Humor

Tis the Season!

“Hello, I’m very busy and important.”
– Love Actually

Happy Monday, my little partridges.  We flew from the East Coast back over the Mississippi and landed smack in 15 inches of snow.  Christmas is officially upon us (I refuse to accept that trees and decorations have been up since before the long Labor Day weekend, but now they are acceptable) and I won’t get another break until Christmas Eve.

And, darlings, I have things to do!

Small Dog is in the spirit

J. and I spent all of our fun money to go and visit my family over the break, and now it’s time to buckle down and shop for a couple dozen people.  Woof.  We ate all of our food before we headed out and now I have to start a regimen of snacks, food, and treats to last an entire month.  However, being starving newlyweds (yes, I am still using that title) I have an excellent reason to avoid the expense and time of decorating.  I have St. Nicholas Day, Elle’s birthday, and Fairy’s birthday, three Christmas parties (so far), rent and utilities due, all within the first 14 days of December.

Back at work, I have masses of laundry to run to cleaners, files to ship out to media and lawyers, and the winter season of car accident reports to prepare for.  Football is over, basketball is in full swing.  Oh, and about a million people need background checks run on them.

Additionally, we have the added stress of twiddling our thumbs.  J. has started submitted applications to grad schools, so now we get to “hurry up and wait” to hear from them.  I hate that game.

Family, Humor, Travel

The Way We Live Now

Brief sketches, as promised:

The town is one street long and almost all of the buildings look as if they were built in a previous century.

The children’s clothing store in town is called “Sugarbritches.”

Mail is delivered by Land Rover.

Half an hour away are some of the most gorgeous Georgian colonial era homes I’ve ever seen, each still with massive tracts of land attached.

One of our neighbors is named William Luck (not William, not Mr. Luck, he is always addressed by his full nomenclature) and he is utterly incomprehensible – my parents have to lip read to try and make out his conversation – but he’s welcome to hunt on our land whenever he wants.

The local barbeque joint is called Smokin’ Eddy’s, and apparently it’s to die for.

Strangely enough there is also a Portuguese resteraunt in town (who’da thunk it?).

Driving through the woods, is a surreal experience because, as Peregrine pointed out, it genuinely looks like someone with a chainsaw is going to leap out at you at any moment.

There is a hyperactive neighbor boy who is a pathological exaggerator (he has played in the NFL, trained with the marines, runs forty miles each morning before breakfast, and parachuted out of an airplane because teenage girls were chasing him in a lust hazed frenzy.  Etc.).

It takes three people nearly a whole day to clear our lawn of leaves.

It’s the most lovely place you’ve ever seen.

Family, Humor

Gone Country

“Anybody can be good in the country.”
– Oscar Wilde

J. and I are visiting the new family pile back East for the holiday.  In order to fully comprehend Small Dog’s family, you must understand our one vital characteristic: we are chameleons.

We have generally accepted this philosophy to avoid cultural whiplash.

We have had to be.  We have gone from a suburban Dutch commune just outside Brussels, to typhoon ravaged third world Pacific islands, and most places in between.  And we have generally taken to each of them like a duck to water learned, variously, to speak Dutch/French/German and go scuba diving and spear fishing with the best of them.  We can chop coconuts with machetes, hold our own at major social or political functions, and pack up and move to the other side of the world in weeks.  I was chucked into cotillion training and also went deer stalking with my dad (and have suffered the subsequent social multiple personality disorder more or less cheerfully).

But now, my family has (to use what I think must be the local term) “gone country.”

They have a gorgeous house and 40 acres of land in the backwoods of the Eastern US far away from anything.  The (I think I can be justified in calling it a) village is tiny, and much of it built in the previous century or so.  Spaced out along the country roads, sitting each on their individual plots of land, are colonial and Civil War era houses (sporadically punctuated with mobile homes and trailers).  But besides the pretty farms there is next to no development.

This place is loaded with character!  There are fantastic white, steepled churches built in the early 19th century and still in use, planted wherever there is a cluster of houses.  There a one or two large antebellum homes that have been turned into inns or B&Bs.  The people here are poor, but fabulously nice and friendly.  Life seems slower.  It probably is!  We’ve been traipsing around the world for the better part of thirty years, these people are born, raised, and die here.

It’s a completely foreign life to my parents.  My father, who has 40 acres of land to do with what he will, is as happy as a clam!  My dad was born in the wrong century, he was supposed to be a gentleman farmer only (as he said) then he couldn’t have had a chainsaw.  He has the opportunity to build his own estate from the ground up and is loving it.  He’s plating trees and shrubs, digging a pond, tramping through the river bottoms, chopping wood to giveaway to neighbors, and making messes to his heart’s content.

Mum is unused to the inconvenience of not living close to anything, but she loves her house and the area.  My siblings are still making up their minds, they went from being considered very clever in their schools in the UK to towering geniuses in the county school here, and sundry other changes that sort of throw them off.  The dog loves it.  She chases squirrels and digs after moles to her heart’s content.

Next time, a few character sketches from the area.

Family, Home, Humor, Travel

Real Live Grownup

“My outer child is holding my inner adult hostage.”
– Unknown

I have this problem.  Going home to see family.  Desperate for my family to think of me as a Real Live Grownup, before every visit I agonize over what to wear, debate whether or not I should get a more mature looking haircut to make me look older, and lecture myself very firmly to avoid bratty behavior, and so forth.

"Where's C.?" "Drat! We must have left her in Calais! Should we go back?" "Nah. We'll see her at Christmas."

See, a couple of weeks after I turned 18, my parents shot off to Belgium leaving me with my grandparents to fend largely for myself.  I got myself off to university in the States and all settled in needing only rides to and from airports.  I didn’t see my family for six months until Christmas.  And then not again until I went home to work for the summer.  Ditto the next year.  My junior year I stayed in the States for most of the summer except for a two week holiday home to England and didn’t go home for Christmas at all.

My point?  Lots of people, like J., leave near enough to their families that they grow up (fully) with them.  All the major milestones are covered and both child and parents can transition through the chrysalis stage and watch the child-butterfly emerge into adulthood pretty seamlessly.  (This is in ideal circumstances, I know it’s not as easy for everyone, but bear with me).

Alternatively, I go bumbling along more or less on my own gumption for huge stretches of time, growing up and developing into an adult, but largely out of view from my parents.  Then, when I do finally get to see them, I’ve none of the requisite adult child skills or abilities to interact maturely with them.  I slip into bad habits from six years ago, ones that (I could have sworn) I’d outgrown.

The real irony is that my parents do think of me as a Real Live Grownup, this inadequacy I feel is strictly in my head.  My parents are fantastic, they’ve never treated as if I were younger, stupider, or less capable than I am.  The problem is me.  When I go home, I’m seized with the desire to wrestle with my siblings, pout when I don’t get my way, and roll my eyes at individual family members.  An exact copy of me as a snotty 17 year old.  Because I literally don’t know how to act 24 around them.  It’s disgraceful.

I imagine there is some disconnect for them as well.  After all, in one year I graduated, got a job, and got engaged, and planned a wedding completely apart from them.  They were great sports about it all, but I wonder if they ever feel like they’re scrambling to catch up on me too?

Note: not six and eight anymore.

It’s getting better, but I’m really still an idiot in a lot of ways.  See, this disproportionate view of development goes in the opposite direction as well.  When I moved out, my sister was six, she’s now 13.  Gio is a freshman at university right now, both he and Buddy are several feet taller than me and eat acres of food just to keep alive.  When I moved out, my father was still in the midst of a nice, international career, my mum was mostly still raising kids.  Now Dad is retired and Mum is teaching Western Civilization at university.

Where my family is concerned, I will probably never be a Real Live Grownup.  The sense of constant vertigo is too strong.  In my head, my brothers are still shorter than me, my sister is practically an infant, and my parents are at very different places in their lives.  Coming home and looking two feet up into Buddy’s eyes or sharing clothes with my sister or visiting a new house (usually in a completely new country) is just too much to keep up with.

It’s just as well.  Being a kid in my family isn’t too bad!

Drama, Humor, Office, Work

Dating Advice
Your girlfriend, huh? Funny. She said otherwise.

Our department has quite the accumulated dating history and insight.  Between the roller coaster romances of our student employees and the dozens of people we caution, cite, and arrest for stalking, we are connoisseurs of crazy love.  Here’s some wisdom gleaned in the last two weeks.

(Discussing when to make a move to hold a girl’s hand)
Bebe: You just have to feel her vibe.  If she wants you to hold her hand or kiss you, she’ll let you know.
Stuckford: Her vibe, huh?
Bebe: Yeah.  Feel her vibe.
C.: Just, ah, don’t feel anything else!

(Know the correct name for foreign foods you intend to order.  For example, when desiring polenta do not say…)
Random girl one of our officers went out with: I like Italian food.  I’ll have the placenta.

And finally, if you’re married, don’t ask out one of your co-workers!  Trust me, that news will travel
Michael: Yeah…the bishop’s going to have something to say about that.
C.: …And God. 
Daisy: Well, I hit him on the head with a book and said “Begone!”  It worked.

Books, Humor

For My Future Spawn: The Help

As a rule, you see, I’m not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James’s letter about Cousin Mabel’s peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle (‘Please read this carefully and send it on Jane’) the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It’s one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor – and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.
– P.G. Wodehouse

Believe it or not, I had never watched Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s laugh-out-loud worthy adaptation of Jeeves & Wooster until recently.  Shocking I know, and deeply upsetting since I love the P.G. Wodehouse short stories of the hapless Wooster and the loyal butler who routinely drags him out of the soup.  Luckily, I found the the whole series and have been joyfully devouring it (and struggling not to address friends with “What ho!” and say goodbye with “Toodle pip!”)

These stories are required reading for anyone who loves how really good humorous writing sounds.  “Fellows who know all about that sort of thing— detectives, and so on — will tell you that the most difficult thing in the world is to get rid of the body.”

What ho!

The characters are fantastic!  Bertie Wooster, who may not be brilliant but is always good intentioned.  Jeeves, a gentleman’s personal gentleman, who protects his master from ill-suited marriage minded maidens, sticky legal situations, or unpleasant social obligations.  And an assortment of pals who all have those unlikely nicknames of 1920-30’s Britain (Bingo, Gussie, and Biffy among others).

And the fearful Aunt Agatha!  Who is inevitably introduced as, “My Aunt Agatha who eats broken bottles and is strongly suspected of turning into a werewolf at the time of the full moon,” or “Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young…”  If I wasn’t so set on becoming a favorite aunt I’d love to end up the sort of dictatorial wealthy dowager who orders profligate nephews about without compunction.

I recommend staring with Carry on, Jeeves as it tells of how Jeeves came to be in Bertie’s service, but there are dozens of Jeeves and Wooster stories, as well as that hilarious adaptation for television.  I mean, come on.  Two words:

Stephen.  Fry.

Humor, Husband

Happy Birthday, J.!

“The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
– Lucille Ball

J. turned a whole quarter century old yesterday (geezer!). We celebrated with steak, cake, nieces, and nephews.   And for some reasons why he’s worth celebrating:

He understands that my friends and I can and will do crazy things. Routinely. And he’s always willing to come along for the ride.
He’s wonderfully reliable and still infinitely interesting.
He puts up with me. No easy task sometimes.

Happy birthday, love!

Life

Veterans/Remembrance Day

I am a daughter, granddaughter, sister, and friend of soldiers.
– C.

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Drama, Humor, Work

Drama, Drama, Drama

“But I feel…I don’t know…”
“Daisy.  Allow me to disabuse you of this social-moral qualm.  It is perfectly all right to not want to go out with a guy who seems to be universally disliked, who’s married and has a kid.”
“Ok!”
– Daisy and C.

Our department is a pit of intrigue and private vice.  Or, rather, it would be a pit of intrigue and private vice if we weren’t so poisonously good and had such marvelous senses of humor.

Almost a shame.  Almost.

Friends, Humor

A Rose By Any Other Name

“Because it is my name!  Because I cannot have another!”
– The Crucible

Let’s continue on the baby rant theme, shall we?  Or perhaps a variation of it…the names some people inflict on their children.  Unusual names are fine, I have one for heaven’s sake, but some names seem more cruel than anything else.  Here’s a few that have come across my desk in the past few weeks (J., please read this and admit that the nice English names I want to bestow on our children, though odd to an American ear, are far from the worst I could come up with):

Boys

Oral – why, by Jove?!
Hildebrande – named after what was no doubt an embarrassing uncle
Balthazar – are you a video game character?  No?  Bad choice
Stetson – are you a Mountie’s hat?  No?  Bad choice
Turk – is your last name Irish in any way?  If so (it was) bad choice
Jumber – baffling

Girls

Jaraka – an Anglo-American girl from somewhere in the midwest
Daxy – after, apparently, a Star Trek character
Camillo – wrong last letter
Moment – it only takes a moment…to make your child hate you forever

Just so we’re clear, lots of unusual names are quite nice – Janssen’s baby’s name is not common and it’s adorable.  Ditto on my godniece.  But let’s be clear just because your spawn’s name is unique, it does not follow that it’s in good taste.

PS – See J.?  My ideas are looking better and better, aren’t they?