Holidays, Humor

A Festive Rant

“Fireworks.”
…”Yes,” said Gregor, smiling eagerly.  [Everyone] around the table perked up at this.  An inherent cultural passion for things that went boom, perhaps.
– Louis McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campagin

Last year J. and I were on our honeymoon and watched fireworks from the top of the Stratosphere hotel, which meant we only saw tiny little puffballs of color blossoming far beneath us.  The year before that, I and others in Ireland celebrated by having our vote to go to Kilkenny overturned by our professor who wanted to see Glendelough.  And the two years I’ve been in the US previously, I spent the summers in Belgium working at NATO with my father and got to see nary an explosion.

And I love fireworks!

This year most of the surrounding area is doing it’s 4th celebration on the 3rd, and lots of the cities are strapped for cash (hurray, recession) so I probably won’t get to see any this year either.  Sigh.

However, ironically enough, J. and I didn’t get to celebrate our anniversary on Thursday (he went to a funeral, and I was dying at work prepping for our university’s own 4th party) and yesterday we went out to eat with his sister and parents.  So today we will be celebrating our lack of indpendence together!

Friends, Humor

Fabulous, Darling!

“I collect antique fountain pens, I’m quite adept at Japanese flower arranging- Ikibana- oh, and I was also the starting offensive tackle at Illinois…..Surprise!”
– Cameron, Modern Family

Though I find it mildly weird that both J. and Margot mentioned this to me on the same day…I can’t help but wonder how many problems in this world could have been avoided if we all had one of these:

Life

One Year Anniversary

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
– Socrates

A year ago I got married and it was quite a party! Although the year has flown by (seriously, a year) it hasn’t seemed like it at all.  That’s a whole round of holidays, a school year, and two birthdays between us.   I hope he hasn’t been turned into a philosopher yet, I sure haven’t!

I'm still awfully fond of him!
Humor, Office, Work

Apres, le Deluge

 “There will be a rain dance friday night, weather permitting.”
– George Carlin 

I have an extraordinary pair of shoes.  Not in the Christian Louboutain sense, or even the “By Jupiter, what on earth is she wearing on her feet?!” sense.  I mean truly out of this world, inexplicable, baffling-to-science bizarre. 

See? Charming. Or so I thought...

They were discovered at Target, sitting prettily on a shelf and on sale.  “Purple flats with a J. Crew like ruffle?” thought Small Dog to herself, “Sold!”  I happily tossed them into my basket and continued shopping, little knowing the fate that lay ahead of me. 

The first time I wore them, it started raining on the way to work and I had to make a mad dash for the office, carefully holding my trousers at my calves to minimize water damage.  They are suede-like and therefore absorbed at least a couple of deep puddles as I crossed the parking lot, and didn’t let a single drop of moisture escape.  I had the squishy, uncomfortable sensation of walking around in sopping moss all day long. 

Undeterred I wore them again a few days later and it started raining while I was at work and didn’t let up until late in the night.  Which meant that, due to running errands for the department and fetching the officers’ laundry, my feet were soaked for several hours before I got to go home. 

Mere coincidence, surely!  All the same, they were regulated to the back of my closet for a couple of weeks to be on the safe side.  But the next time I wore them I still came home looking like a drowned duck (and that time it managed to both rain and snow), so they were unceremoniously flung back into the closet to learn how to behave better towards their patient, shoe-loving mistress.

No prizes for guessing.
We all know what's coming next, right?

However, this morning in the scramble to get ready, the inevitable happened.  It was the day that I’d be assigning dozens of students their security gear for the 4th of July festivities and I knew better than to wear heels.  I could only find one half of the pair of flats I intended to wear and so, at a loss, I pulled them out again, gave them a quick talking to, and popped them on. The day passed without incident and scorching desert summer temperatures until late afternoon when the clouds rolled in (seemingly from nowhere!) and unleashed a torrent.  Lacking windows I hurried to Susie and Wise’s office to see for myself, just in time to see a river of rain come rushing down a walkway from the quad and a broken branch whiz by.  A boy was walking against the wind, which was so fierce that his umbrella  had wrapped around his head and shoulders, and nearly blew him off the sidewalk. 

Really. Don't.

It was also time to go to the laundry to pick up the officers’ laundry.  The three of us watched in dismay as it got worse and worse while it got closer and closer to closing time.  Susie was a dear and said she’d help me as soon as we saw a break in the clouds and finally one came and we sprinted down the hall (much to the shock of a couple of officers who managed to dodge out of our way).  We threw bags of laundry over our shoulders, pushed past two sets of doors at a dead run, and were halfway across the parking lot when the skies reopened.  I managed to hit the unlock button on the key chain and yank open the van’s door and we both catapulted into its relative safety.  And then, because she was wearing a white skirt that had been soaked and didn’t want to make the situation worse by walking through an office entirely of men, we both climbed over the seats (without a lot of dignity) and headed off to the cleaner together.  By the time we got back the storm was over, though the city was littered with leaves and shattered branches. And I still had to go to dinner and do a presentation in dripping shoes, and shudder when Susie mentioned some sort of infection or other that she knew of that came from wet feet and was nastier than Athletes Foot. 

Anyone suffering from a particularly bad drought?  Because I have the perfect footwear for your next Rain Dance.

Family, Humor, Travel

Hither and Yon

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.”
– St. Augustine

Sorry for the hiatus, darlings, J. and I went on a roadtrip with parents, brother, sister, brother-in-law, and five assorted nieces and nephews and a partridge in a pear tree.  The purpose for this jaunt was to celebrate J.’s grandmother’s 90th birthday.

Let's not dwell on the grossness that is the unnamed Small Dog and focus rather on my nice husband and his awesome grandmother!

And she is well worth celebrating!  She was a nurse in WWII and was stationed in Wales, but made it all over the place, including France, Luxembourg, Ireland, and England.  She brought her uniforms for the kids to try on and dozens of books filled with pictures and memorabilia.  Apart from that she raised a large family by herself after her husband, a police officer, was killed in action.  And she is one of the happiest people I have ever met!  I’ve never seen her without a smile.  And she manages to make it to ever family function in spite of age, distance, or inconvenience.

In case you can't tell, that's a horse's, er, bum as it's grazing by the local salon.

Now, as to the vacation itself, it was a novelty.  My family hasn’t done much in the way of small trips.  We’ve either been living on a forsaken island in the Pacific that required a dozen hours flying to escape, or in Europe where if you drive an hour you’re in another country.  My parents just had a trip to Sicily (where they were waylaid by a volcano).  In the past few years we’ve gone to Australia, China, Italy, Austria, and my parents also got Thailand squeezed in there while J. and I visited England for Christmas.  Plus a rather lot of traipsing back and forth across the Atlantic.  But short roadtrips to and through towns with a population of less that 600 are foreign!

Atticus tries on his old high school jacket...and it fits!

One of the uncles made homemade root beer with dry ice that bubbled away like witches brew, another made cotton candy.  An aunt was in charge of the whole thing and sent everyone out on treasure hunts, got the entire clan to play dress up (and in some cases, Cross Dress, which in less capable hands is normally an awkward game…), and organized enough food for everyone.

Sidenote: people pronouncing this sort of sign "Yee old" anything drives me absolutely up the wall. It's an Anglo-Saxon character pronounced "th." Nerd rant over. You may be seated.

Which was good, because other than that almost every meal we ate was deep fried in some capacity and my internal workings have not yet recovered.  I mean, deep friend bread!  I thought that was just in the South…I was so wrong.  These foolish Americans actually call such things scones!  And while I remain adamant that scones are something of a more biscuit variety to be consumed with tea, eating something (anything) deep friend and slathered in honey butter is not something to turn one’s nose up at.

And finally, despite living here for years, I’ve not actually seen a lot of the American West.  Las Vegas, some parts of Colorado, fin. And while it will never convert me away from trees and lush grass…the mountains, rugged emptiness of it, and the oases of vibrant life are quite lovely!

We stopped to watch this go off a couple of times, and even ate dinner at a turn of the century hotel overlooking the site. It smelled of eggs and spattered the car with minerals, but isn't it fun?
Family, Friends, Home

To Paraphrase…

“I had to scrap and entire post about my future library because you beat me to the punch.”
“That just means you have good taste too!”
– C. and Vodka

The term “Someday House” entered my vocabulary at a very young age.  My family has had many houses as we’ve flitted from country to country and continent to continent, but my mother and father would often (usually in the middle of a Great Purge) get a far-off look in their eyes and say, “In our Someday House, we’ll have…”

The insides change, but for some reason, my SH's exterior is invariably Georgian. This particular house with a yard for dogs, kids, and croquet please!

A Someday House is more than a Dream House.  The latter you just wish for, the former you actively plan for and will absolutely achieve one day.

The first time I used the phrase, “In our Someday House-” to J. he was completely baffled.  These days I can smugly note that it’s part of the Small Dog Family common vernacular.  We are slowly building our Someday House in our head together (awww…) and it’s shaping up to be a rather nice one, though I say so myself.

I was talking with Sav and Vodka the other day about future homes, and let the phrase “Someday House” slip.  I felt a bit silly saying it to Outsiders, but it turns out they both loved it!  We then had a long in depth conversation about our Someday Houses, and I was planning on blogging about my desire for a library…when Vodka did it first!

Go check it out, she said everything I was thinking, only better!

Family, Friends, Humor, Travel

Everything Must Go

“To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
– Albert Einstein

Small Dog is not coping well.

Venice, leaving in just a week (cue fits of rage and denial), is in the process of packing up and getting rid of things. It’s stressful.  I have personally benefited in the form of several pairs of pants which she wanted to get rid of…which does nothing to lessen the approaching pain.

My family, hopping the world as we did, got really good at moving.  The formula is very simple: keep the necessities and get rid of half of your personal belongings each time you pack up.  To explain: books stay, your old T-shirts acquired from work, community events, and concerts must go.

The funny bit about moving is when you are going through your things and sorting your treasures from the expendables.  You will inevitably come to the realization that half of the clothes in your closet haven’t been worn in months, a third of your shoes have ragged heels, give you blisters, or are too ludicrously high/colored/pinching to be kept, and you have a wealth of old garbage (shopping bags, boxes, receipts, hair pins, loose change) taking up an inexplicable amount of space.

And thus, The Great Purge.  You sit down in the piles of the stuff you had utterly forgotten you owned and have a candid talk with yourself (which can border on the schizophrenic to outside observers).  The end result of which is that several large garbage bags are stuffed with the things you don’t use, don’t want, or can admit you don’t need.  These items are either claimed by friends, donated, or unceremoniously chucked.  The remaining items are lovingly horded because, after all, you have carefully and considerately come to the conclusion that you absolutely need them.

"What do you mean, Kyrgyzstan? I said Kazakhstan, you fool!"

And a few years later when NATO, the UN, James Bond’s M., etc. tell you that you’re off to Zanzibar, Tokyo, or Belgium, you go through the same harrowing, soul wracking process all over again.  And invariably, all of the things you saved previously will be looked over with disdain (“Why on earth did I keep this?”), and end up in a garbage bag by the front door.

And, depending on the country you’re off to, a good portion of your household belongings will have to go as well.  All of your electronics, for example, because for some reason the world cannot get it together on matching plugs to outlets, much less voltages.  In our area of Suffolk, the building codes demand four houses per quarter acre, an unthinkable thing for the US, which meant that when Dad left NATO and Brussels, a good portion of the house went into storage in Switzerland, or something.

Soon the things we’ve left in small hordes all over the world will converge on our new US doorstep.  Mum, already thinking of decorating, will have boxes, bins, and whole trucks of tables, chairs, bookshelves, books, antiques, artwork, and knick knacks to contend with.  I’m willing to bet the entire family will be surprised to see what turns up.  I certainly don’t remember half of it.

People don’t need nearly as much as they think they do.

Dork, Fabulous, Fashion, Humor

Top. Hat.

“Wearing a hat is like having a baby or a puppy; everyone stops to coo and talk about it.”
– Louise Green

And if I could, I'd be there right now, wearing this. Eliza Doolittle in the 21st century! A bit tame, but oh so pretty!

Not that anyone cares this side of the Atlantic, but the Royal Ascot is a big deal and it’s going on now en Angleterre.  And the hats are as weird, fabulous, odd, chic, and grotesque as ever.

No one wears hats over here.  And don’t try to sell me on the Kentucky Derby, it’s peanuts compared to the towering plumes, wires, and (apparently this year) legos of Ascot.  When Mum and I were talking about my then-pending nuptials, I briefly entertained the idea of getting married in England, so that we could have our reception at The Swan in Lavenham, and so that the ladies could all wear hats!  Luckily common sense prevailed, J.’s family, which is several times larger than mine, are all here.  And the mass exodus to Suffolk would have cost a fortune.  Almost as much as a hat for Ascot!

Go here or here to check out Tom and Lorenzo’s breakdown of the headgear.  And here’s one to whet your appetite for the goodies to come:

Yes. That is Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls in a pink hat. You may retrieve your collective jaws from the floor.

For more horsey fun, check out the Australians going nuts for racing fashion, T&L may think the Brits are wacky, but they have nothing on the Aussies!

Photo from wireimage.com, care of Tom and Lorenzo.
My dream hat photo from Louise Green Millinery.

History, Humor, Movies

For My Future Spawn: Conscience

“Oh, confound all this.  I’m not a scholar, I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not but dammit, Thomas, look at these names!  Why can’t you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship?”
“And when we die and you are sent to Heaven for doing your conscience and I am sent to Hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”
– A Man for All Seasons

Truth is that while fairy tales (not of the gruesome original variety, the Disney-fied kind) like to depict people getting rewarded for sticking to their principles, quite often the blessing one gets for standing by one’s standards, ideals, and beliefs is a public flogging, or worse.  And the measure of our character is whether we will endure the blacklisting, loss of status, loss of friends, back-against-the-wall-ness of it all with dignity and come out with our convictions still in place.

And so! A Man for All Seasons is required viewing.  Paul Scofield gives a a subtle but brilliant performance of a man who managed to be both conflicted and steady and who ultimately decides to stand by his faith, but more importantly his conscience.  The movie could easily have been a trite morality play, but it isn’t.  It’s as complex as the idea of conscience and morality itself.

The story is set during one of the most tumultuous centuries for faith and conflict in Western history and England.  Henry VIII has thrown over Katherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn, and the Catholic Church for one of his own making.  None of which sits right Sir Thomas More (Scofield) who, quietly but firmly, says he cannot change his religious beliefs to suit even a king, cannot change his legal opinion to flout the law, and will not go against his conscience even to save his life.

I do not mistake this film for history.   The historical Thomas More was a Catholic zealot who saw six “heretics” burned to death under his administration as Lord Chancellor, but he was also a humanist who thought women were just as academically capable as men and gave his daughters the same classical education as his sons.  I don’t mind the simplified, or rather focused, view of a certain part of his life, historical accuracy isn’t the point of this film.  A man having his friends, protectors, and even household turn against him, while he sticks to his moral guns is.

Ideals are seldom complex and people never are.  More defends bad laws made by men because the universal concept of Law gives protection, he encourages humility to an ambitious friend while being named Lord Chancellor, he insults another friend to keep him distant in order to protect him from the political fallout of being friends with a “traitor,” and argues for justice at his unfair and mock trial.

Moral of the story: decide what you hold dear, and defend it.  Even if it costs you.

Family, Friends, Humor, Life

Soundoff Part II

“Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.”
– Plautus

Remember this list?

Well, J. took the GMAT today and scored a 720 (way to go, love!), Venice is going to be interviewed by the local paper tomorrow for a petition she’s started, Lexie is engaged, Hennessy is getting married any second now, my brother Gio got an impressive scholarship to virtually any school in the US and he’ll be making a final decision about where to go by the end of the week, my father retired and has decided to move…to the States!  Which makes little sense to me, I’d have picked Tuscany, personally.  My mother, her Classics degree from Cambridge fresh under her belt, is in the US already going through an intense Latin program that should make her a nice candidate to teach Classical Studies Stateside.

Our family is already dreading moving.  Apparently, one of the highest accolades that the kids’ school gave itself this past year was getting in fewer fights than the year before.  And they chief form of entertainment was lighting fires in the school and then calling the bomb squad.  Interesting.  “We’re going to be the weirdos now.  Don’t tell them where you’re from, where you’ve lived, or what you’ve done,” is my father’s advice, “LIE.”  You know that when your pretty spectacular family, though I say so myself, is planning very hard to be inconspicuous that life is about get odd.

My whole family and I are going to be on the same continent for the first time in six years.  Permanently.  Bizarre!