Mother's Day in March

It is after midnight so it is officially Mother's Day here in the UK.   Across the pond we celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, but here it is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent.  It just so happens that this year it is today, Sunday March 10th.  So, while I am not officially bound to celebrate Mother's Day today I think I shall anyway.  My mother is simply that great.  She deserves two whole days, not just one.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers here who are celebrating officially and Happy Mother's Day to you Mom.  It seems that it is tradition to give your mother daffodils here in the UK, a fact which has been made difficult this year with the cold weather causing a shortage of the cheery yellow flowers.  And, well, it's a bit hard for me to give flowers to you anyway.  So, what I will do is amass some pictures of flowers for you.  This will be my way of saying extra thank you to you today.

Here are some British Daffodils for you.  Some from Grassington and some from Roundhay Park.

 

 

Now that I have given you these daffodils I have realized that flowers from England are not enough.  I need to travel the world to select the best and brightest flowers for your bouquet.  

Some of them I got to share with you in person, like these from Berkeley.

 Some flowers I had to travel further afield to find.  I had to go to Rome to find these for you.

Then I realized I was lacking some yellow flowers since those are your favorite. So I went to Geneva to get you some yellow tulips.

While I was there I picked up an iris for you because I think they are pretty and I wanted you to have one.

I then came home for a rest and found these yellow flowers amongst the ruins of Whitby Abbey.

The drive home from Whitby Abbey brought us along Robin Hood's Bay and I stopped to pick you these pretty purple wildflowers.  I think the view made them smell sweeter.

  Back in Leeds I picked these for you on campus and out in my favorite thinking place.

In Hebden Bridge I made sure roses grew on a trellis for you, lavender graced your windowsill and yellow flowers bloomed by your gate.

Then I went to Italy all the way out to Hadrian's Villa to pick you some lovely red poppies to give you a bit more colour variety.  

These yellow wildflowers next to the ancient ruined frescoes were too lovely to leave behind.  So I brought those home for you too.  After all it was you who taught me to see beauty in the tiny forgotten things.

While I was in the area I stopped over by Villa D'Este to get a few blooms for you.  They suited you too, happy and cheerful.  The sort of flowers that just remind me of you.

Speaking of tiny overlooked yet beautiful things, these poppies in Pompeii couldn't be appreciated better by anybody else.

Nor could the beauty of a vivid dragonfly against an orange flower.

 

And very few people would stop to admire the red hibiscus flowers that dropped red petals on red tiles next to this red bench in the heart of Benalmadena, Spain.  But I know you would.

Finally I made one last stop.  I went to Paris to find you the last most necessary flowers.  I needed to find you some lilacs and I did find them in this garden.

While I was there I also found yellow flowers dripping with rain, so delicate and lovely...

 and a glass flower.  I brought them along too because I know how strong you are and sometimes I forget that you are also fragile.  I didn't want to forget so I added them to my bouquet for you. 

 

I know I haven't always been nearby and we haven't always been able to share all our adventures together.  But I want you to know that you have always been close to my heart.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.  I love you.

xxx

Worst View in the World?

Now typically I like to talk about the pretty things when I write.  I'd much rather think on the brighter side than dwell on the darker side of things.  But, every so often, a girl simply must admit to the stark realities of life.  One of those unavoidable realities, an unpleasantly true fact, is that I have one of the ugliest views in the world.

You see I live in Leeds, not the prettiest city in the world.  Sorry Leeds, you must remember that I first met you just after the bin collectors' strike, so the bar for ugly sites has been set rather high.  That being the case, what is it that makes my view so terrible?  Well, for a start I look out at an alley full of rubbish bins.

Ok, you may be thinking to yourself, rubbish bins?  Everybody has to look at rubbish bins.  There is nothing unusually ugly about that.

AND the neighbor children play football in the alley and frequently knock over the bins, strewing their contents about the alley.

Hmm, ok, maybe slightly worse.

AND there is a construction project going on across the way.

Well, again, you think to yourself that it can't be all that bad.

You may be right, the construction isn't so much the issue as the pace at which it is being completed.  It is halted every time it rains.  Hello!  We live in England!  It's ALWAYS raining!  So, I have the sneaking suspicion that the pile of rubbish and construction supplies will never actually disappear.

The bin collectors have just come and gone so it almost looks decent for the moment.

Ok, so it's not the best view in the world, but what makes it the worst?

I just love heaps of construction waste, don't you?

The real sign that it's the worst view in the world has nothing to do with the construction or rubbish.  The test for ugly views is far more random and simplistic.  You know how everything looks better when it snows?  Well, I am here to tell you that my view isn't even improved by a snow.  And if a healthy coating of beautiful white snow can't even make my view pretty then nothing can.

I've seen bins that look exciting and almost fun in the snow, with giant domes of snow crowning them and making them not only funny but also somehow attractive for once in their lives.  Normally ugly shapes are suddenly interesting and lovely with some snow.  I've seen car parks (or parking lots) that by any normal standard would be judged a blight, that were transformed into a beautiful scene by snow.  Snow is the ultimate beautifier, yes, I just made that word up, and if snow can't fix a view then it's hopeless.

My view therefore fails the snow beauty test.  My view is ugly.  No it's worse than that; it's heinous.  My view is quite possibly one of the worst views in the world.  It is certainly the worst view I've ever had.

So, I have decided to enter the Worst Window View Competition by Wooden Blinds Direct to see how my abhorrent view compares to others.  Maybe I will be surprised, realise my view isn't all that bad, and come away heartened by the fact that my view could be decidedly worse.  Or maybe I will win a Kindle Fire HD.  It is a competition I cannot actually lose.

I didn't think I'd ever have occasion to say this, but I am actually looking forward to seeing the worst views the world has to offer. 

The Importance of Art

Purple flower as found in one of Geneva's parks two Easters ago.

Art, true art, is possibly the most important thing in the world.  Cicero once defended it in a lengthy speech and while I am not a huge fan of Cicero I have to agree with him that art is important.  You see, I believe that no matter how bad things get, no matter how sad you are, no matter how hard it is to carry on carrying on, if you listen to a beautiful song, look at a beautiful picture and read a beautiful story a little piece of your soul will be restored.

I myself have been having a rough time the last few weeks and I have decided to combat this with art.  I go through pinterest and pin all the pretty things I find.  I marvel at nature and absorb the splendid colours and get lost in the beauty of places I long to visit.  It reminds me that there is more to see in this world and it inspires me to start planning to see it.

Looking at things like this calms me down.   And doesn't this just feel all peaceful?

Then I listen to some beautiful songs.  Some of them have no words, they just are.  They perfectly express how I feel and sometimes they bring tears to my eyes that I have been suppressing for too long.  Some of these songs have words and it reminds me that I am not alone.  Other people have felt my pain.  It makes me feel connected to the human race again, and just the smallest bit more alive.  Sadness is also part of life.

Then I read a beautiful story.  And like all good stories it transports me out of my world for just a moment.  It makes me feel different things and think about different problems.  It makes me curious about what comes next and it reminds that there is hope.  Even the saddest stories can have a good ending.  Life is not static.  Whatever it is that is bothering you now and dragging you down cannot last forever.  It too will pass.  Hold on for that brighter future.

Life without art would truly be a sad place.  For how else are we meant to express those inexpressible things, those deep inner feelings and thoughts, those terribly important and weighty truths of life?  Without art in the world I think I would be truly lost.

My bookshelf may actually define me

The other day I was strolling aimlessly along the streets, alleys and byways of the unfathomable internet when I came across a blog.  Gasp, how unusual.  Ok, perhaps not, but the post I found there did strike me as unusual.  It was a post about what your bookshelf says about you.  And that made me pause as I have always believed that a good poke around somebody's bookshelves can be highly instructive.

So, I stopped my aimless wandering about on the internet to read the post by Mayfair Mum.  As it turns out this post was part of a blog hop where several other bloggers also wrote about the content of their bookshelves and what it said about them. 

Over the past several days I have kept returning to this idea.  What do my books say about me?  Interestingly enough, I have come to the conclusion that they say a lot more about me than I had ever realized.

For a start I have been trying very hard to drastically limit the amount of books I accumulate.  I am not sure how long I will be living here in this house and if I'm perfectly honest in this country.  My life is all a bit vague in the plans area and I certainly feel the transience keenly.  So I have been limiting my book buying habits partly out of a sense of impermanence and the desire to not move them all about, and partly out of a sense of stubborn duty to hold myself to a strict book buying budget.

Minus the copy of Boccaccio's Decameron that I keep for flying (short stories are best for travel I think), these are all the books I have with me at the moment.  Not many at all, but still more than I'd like to move about.

If I didn't impose this budget and limit on myself I'd probably be drowning in books by now.  You see, I grew up in a household full of books.  My mother reads, and my father, well, he devours books.  He is constantly reading.  Reading was only interrupted by noisy children (I was one of them) and napping (he insisted he was checking for light leaks).  The rate of massive book consumption that ensued filled our house with over 2,000 books.  How do I know this?  Because my brother and I counted one summer.  A completely daft project only exceeded in silliness by his idea to alphabetize all our books.  The madness.  Anyhooo.

That was several years ago and by now I am not sure how many more there are.  Books never leave our family house.  We simply, buy, build and improvise more bookshelves for them.  So, I feel the absence of piles of books rather keenly and the small number I have at the moment points to my feelings of transience and my stubborn will to be logical and not overly indulge one of my pastimes. 

On to the books themselves.  My reading habits seem to be thematic.  There are books about love, no, not romance novels, just books that fall into the chick lit genre.  Modern women dealing with issues of family, friends, career and of course the inevitable sub plot of romance.  Books like the Little Lady Agency by Hester Brown, and The Finishing Touches.

Next on my list of must reads.

I suppose I am typical in this regard and like to read stories where the romantic issues all get sorted out nicely in the end and the couple you know belongs together ends up together.  Plus it is refreshing to read stories with strong female characters that live in a modern world that necessitates the holding down of jobs.

Then I also tend to read books that have a touch of history in them.  Sometimes they are full-blown historical fiction.  Sometimes they are only loosely based on a former time.  Sometimes, like the Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato, they flick constantly between the Renaissance and modern times.

Excellent book, fascinatingly woven together.

I guess that just shows that I really do have an historian's soul.  I can't get enough of history, not even in my pleasure reading.

Moving Target by Elizabeth Lowell is the book that seems least related to my other reading choices.  It happens to be a bit about love and illuminated manuscripts, so it does fall into both my categories as well as being slightly suspenseful.

I read books that are aimed at young adults such as The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart.  Because there are days that I've had to think too hard about way too many adult things and I just want to sit back and revel in easy fun reads.  I read books that are serious and also true, like My Dancing White Horses by Alois Podhajsky.  It is his autobiography and the story of the Lipizzaner's and the Spanish Riding School in Vienna during WWII.

I do not have much in the way of fantasy on my shelf at the moment.  This may be due to the fact that I'm more selective about my fantasy books.  I don't like them simply because they are fantasy.  I do like dragons, but that does not excuse poor writing.  I like the idea of magic but I also like well developed characters. I'm just picky.  That's not to say that I don't enjoy them though.  Howl's Moving Castle is one of my favorite books.   

So, really I think my bookcases tells you where I am in life.  Despite my logical maneuverings to keep my book habit in check I still have a number of books hanging about.  I need them to escape.  And I escape by reading about strong women who get things together and find love and happy endings.  And I read about history.  Being a historian, I think everybody needs to escape the modern age every now and then.  

I suppose the real question is what does your bookcase say about you?  Join this interesting blog hop and let us know, or simply have a quick read of what some other people think their books say about them.

 

It's nearly H-Hour and I'm frazzled

A mere handful of hours away from the commencement of my operation, operation debug, found me head in hands slumped against a wall and soaked in tears.  I had hit a low point literally and emotionally.  I was painfully aware of the fact that I was only hours away from my own D-Day operation and the stress of the final preparations was almost too much to handle.  But it wasn't the stress that finally broke me.  So what was it that brought me to tears?  And what was this operation?

Two weeks ago on D-8 day (not long before Christmas) our sources informed us of a major problem.  Our defenses had been breached and the enemy had infiltrated our house.  The second story bedroom belonging to my housemate had bedbugs.  The week before we had been alerted to the potential threat of infiltration.  We investigated with caution and could not confirm or deny the breach.  That is when we brought in the expert.  The pesticide man arrived and with a few questions he set about looking into our problem.  Within a matter of minutes we had proof that our security had indeed been breached in a most serious manner.  The enemy had made great inroads deep into our territory and had established itself quietly while we were busy fighting other battles.  By the time we realized that we had a problem the enemy had already established a large enough presence to show itself boldly.

What to do next?  Since the bedbugs had surprise on their side we hardly knew what hit us and the initial days after the assault found us reeling in shock.  In order to minimize casualties my roommate pulled out of the area in order to regroup for the attack.  We knew we had to act fast to repel the invaders and regain our territory.  An emergency war council was called.  We needed to hit hard in order to win.  This was one operation that could not be done in half measures.  The list of preparations seemed endless but we set the D-Day operation for Thursday.  Every room needed to be cleaned from top to bottom.  The items all needed to be removed from drawers and shelves and sealed in plastic bags.  This way contamination was sealed in and when objects were cleaned and placed in fresh plastic bags contamination was sealed out.

Armed with garbage bags (or bin liners as they call them in this soggy land) and cleaning supplies I tackled room after room.  I began in the spare room and threw the odd left-over pillows into bags.  While I had lost my first housemate's help on the first day when she abandoned her room, leaving that front empty, I lost the help of the second housemate to a business trip.  To be fair to business, laziness and a native selfish air would have prevented him from being much help even in the event that he had stayed.  So, it was me and my army of trash bags that lept into the fray.  

In preparation for our D-Day operations I spent less time at the museum and more time in my house cleaning and prepping.  D-7 day passed with cleaning, then D-6 day did the same.  One by one the days flew faster and faster with the mountain of chores seeming to grow rather than dwindle.  I was a hurricane of preparation.  I packed things into bags, made sure pointy edges didn't tear through, tied everything securely and moved onto other items.  I labelled and taped and moved things everywhere.  I scrubbed the floors and the shelves and the drawers.  I emptied and cleaned everything.  I shredded countless old useless bank statements and took loads of rubbish out to the street, including bags of things other people had been too lazy to remove themselves.

So, the night before our D-Day operation was to be launched I was a swirling dervish of mad cleaning activity.  I was running low on supplies, energy and patience.  The enormous roles of trash bags had dwindled to a shockingly small amount left.  I was pushing around some furniture to get at the really hard to clean bits of floor in the narrow part of my room when I ran out of paper towels.  I realized I needed more towels to finish off my corner and that I was running low on time.  I lept to my feet and stood up hard underneath the low hanging eve in that section of my room.  The low slanted ceiling raced downwards to meet my head as I raced up to meet it with astonishing force.

The impact left me stunned and speechless for a few interminable moments, half crouched, half standing under the ceiling at the back of my room.  Then as the pain started to set in I put my hands gingerly to my head and literally sank down the wall.  The pain.  The stress.  The tiredness.  They were all overwhelming and I suddenly found myself in tears and unable to stop crying.  (And I'd already packed the tissues somewhere I couldn't find them.  Great!)  A few moments later I realized that there was nothing I could do but carry on.  Nobody could or would help me and it all needed to be done.  So I picked myself up and carried on.

Over by the paper towels I found a lint roller.  I picked it up to put it away and found that it had no cover and was too sticky to just pack away as is.  Absentmindedly I rolled it back and forth on the edge of the dresser top thinking what to do with it.  It stuck to the dresser and picked up a bit of dust.  Suddenly I had an idea, a wonderful, terrible idea.  I decided to use the lint roller to pick up the dust and dirt in my room.  It wouldn't just push the dust around and leave it in the air.  Everything would stick onto the lint roller and go directly into the bin.  No mess, no fuss, no problem.  At my lowest point I had stumbled onto a bit of an epiphany.

Slowly, with bin liners, cleaning supplies and lint rollers in hand I eliminated all the dust and dirt and bagged all of my possessions.  Clothes, offices supplies and Christmas gifts alike all went into bags.  At six in the morning I was nearly done.  I took a quick nap and then got up to take the last of the trash out and do the final touches.  H-hour was scheduled for 9am.  Just after 9am the pesticide man arrived.  I called a taxi and left him to begin the barrage on the bugs.  It was H-hour and the time for the reckoning.  I left my house feeling a bit like the Grinch who stole Christmas.  I had bagged up everything and was ready to ruin their Christmas as they had tried to ruin mine.

I was ready to be done with the whole thing.  At least I learned the power of a lint roller in cleaning shelves and other dusty surfaces, but nonetheless... Bah-humbug and good riddance!

On a scale of 1 to 10 I'm an Um...

True insanity cannot be measured.  On the light side of things a one is mild insanity.  Then there is intense insanity.  And then there is, well, me, at whatever strange alternate level of insanity it is that I seem to exist in.  I am more of the "Um... okaaaay" type of insanity and I've had another one of those days.

You know how some days you are just too tired to care?  You stayed up late you woke up early?  Your reaction to sunshine and the alarm was not the typical sleepy groan but more of the melodramatic face-plant into the pillow?  Do you know what I'm talking about?  Well, I had one of those days today.  I was not tired enough to be grumpy, just tired enough to make absolutely no sense.

Photo Source: Pinterest

At work I was meant to be updating my client's social media profiles.  I barely know how to update my own.  What makes you think I'm qualified to update a financial client's profiles?  I had to research how to effectively use hashtags on twitter for businesses.  Yes, I do actually have a twitter account but I'm not really sure what to do with it.  I certainly don't know how it's used for business.  And Delicious.  What is the point of that site?  Is it really a directory of links or is it really like twitter?  Do people actually look at your Delicious account or is it more meant as a list for you?  Why is it called Delicious?  There is nothing tasty about it.  I just don't understand. I know nothing about technology and social media.  I really am the world's worst online marketing employee. 

A day of staring at the screen trying to decide if articles were interesting enough to catch attention, but not so interesting as to offend my financial client, sent me further into my strange mood.  Suddenly I was staring at the weirdest abbreviations and I couldn't keep my mind from wandering.  I muttered "SM?" to my computer.  My colleague looked up with a cocked eyebrow and asked "did you say S&M?"  Social media does not abbreviate well it would seem.  We were both tired and this was much funnier than it should have been.  We decided that after a day of work I would clearly be an expert in S&M and loans for my finance client.

Not long after lunch our big boss arrived with two teenage girls and starting filming the boot of his car in the parking lot below.  Well, at least that was what we heard.  There was apparently too much fast driving and some sort of flipping involved as well.  We came up with kidnapping theories and somewhere along the line nearly invented an office rumour that he had two families and was trying to keep them from knowing about each other and this somehow involved a blackmail video filmed from the office of a car boot.  We are still working on it.  We may or may not send round an email on Monday asking the burning question of what on earth they were actually doing.

As the day progressed work got more boring. When you start to read the phrase "pitch craft ideas to x person" as witch craft, and you giggle to yourself, you know you are reaching that stage of tired where everything is funny.  Next writing emails that proposed an article about loans, I asked the blogger if they would be interested in it and even this caused me to giggle inanely to myself.  Interested.  Loans.  Interest.  Hehehe.  Clearly I had not slept enough, I had been at work too long and I had really, truly, gone over the edge.  I was past the point of no return.  Returns... hahahaha.

I'm bored.  Are we done yet?  Photo Source: Flickr by Holster

We decided to count the seconds, not minutes until we were done with work.  This led to the realization that seconds seem so much shorter than minutes and even a great number of them somehow feels short.  But we went further, by the time we arrived in town on the bus at about 6pm there were roughly 2,009,000 seconds left until Christmas. 

We stopped in at Primark, a work friend and I, and found the clothes to be quite exotic.  We found zebra stripes in one row.  And then rounded a corner to find the rest of the zoo.  Every variety of great cat imaginable was there as well as owls, ducks, and dragonflies.  Dragonflies are there to support the ecosystem not necessarily as an attraction, but anyhooo.  We had fun trying on and making fun of everything we could get our hands on.  It's more fun this way.

Eventually we left for food at McDonald's and met some very interesting and slightly overly friendly guys.  They wanted to know how old we thought they were.  It became a big game.  They tried to guess our age and my friend tried to convince them she was 29 with two children.  They didn't believe her and were triumphant when she revealed that she is only 24.  Though they had a hard time believing that I was 26.  They also didn't believe that we worked at a marketing company.  True it has a funny name, but they suggested that we looked like we worked at Nando's instead.  I'm not sure that wasn't an insult.  Ah well.  It was funny to mess with them.

Eeyore wonders why and how it always snows only on him. Photo Source: Flickr by Nikoretro

On our way out and to the train station we started to see snow flakes.  Really large ones, all of a sudden and not in a flurry, just randomly.  It was suspicious.  Turns out it was only snowing on one street of the whole town.  I'm guessing it was a snow making machine and possible marketing ploy?  I don't know but it was odd and we weren't the only two who noticed.  Needless to say it was a strange day.  It was almost surreally funny and strange.  I mean, who has ever heard of it only snowing on one street?  Yeah, I'm going to have to investigate this tomorrow.

For now I'm going to sit indoors all snuggly with some hot chocolate and attempt to return to a state of semi normalcy, you know, mild insanity, and maybe even warm, cozy sleepiness. 

Serves Four? Think again.

Food in the UK is different.  They use less preservatives which is probably better for you but also means the food spoils faster.  They also sell foods we would almost never see in the US.

Sometimes food here perplexes me.  What, for instance, is a chicken teddy?

After reading the label I was assured that they were actually made of chicken, and were presumably breaded chicken nuggets.

They were just shaped like teddy bears.  Now, I understand the need to eat animal shaped foods.  Animal crackers, teddy grahams, and fish crackers are all staple snack foods from my childhood.  I've just never heard of teddy chickens.

Don't worry I ate them in the proper order.

Then there is dessert.  There is really nothing confusing about that, except, just maybe, how much of it you should eat.  A lot.  The answer is always a lot.

A glance at the packaging suggested the pie served four.  Huh.  Four.

I pre heated the oven carefully to gas mark 6.  Yes, I am so international, I can now pretend I understand British cooking measurements and appliances.  It's only taken me two years.

I put the pie in for the correct amount of time.  I used my phone as a timer.  Since I've discovered that my magic phone can do this less things have been burnt by my inattention.  I do love my phone.

The lovely golden delicious smelling pie came out of the oven on time and waited on the counter impatiently for me to eat it.

Serves four.  I cut the cinnamon apple pecan pie into six even slices, mostly because I like the way six slices looks better than four.

Then I unceremoniously put two in my bowl with a large portion of extra thick cream.  Mmm.  I'm not sharing.

Yep, more like serves one at a slightly slower rate than four. Only slightly mind.

I'm also pretty sure I know what I'm having for breakfast.