From the Inside, Looking Out This Time

in the labyrinth at chatsworth house
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

The days are counted. The boxes are being filled...okay, really, they're being mentally filled and the clothes are being mentally sorted and so forth and so on. My first expat experience is coming to an end very very soon, and a month from today I will be watching the Eurovision finals and thinking about my impending flight back to the US.

I'm happy about the move. I want to get back to my career and my life in the US. I want to be closer to my family. I want to start making up for the missed time in my now two year old niece's life. I want to get back to me, and be the person that my husband fell in love with and married. I don't think she's been around in a long time.

That said, there is a large part of me that doesn't want to leave. I don't like change, but then who does. I feel like I'm giving up, but I'm really not I suppose. I gave living in Keighley a go, and while there have been some lovely bits it just wasn't the right fit.

Will I ever find the right fit? I don't know. I'm going back to be a freelancer rather than a staff interpreter. I'm going back to be Joy's Auntsy, rather than just Susan's sister. I'm going back to be a member of the Hounds of East Fairhaven, rather than the director. In a lot of ways, I'm going back to just blend in rather than be in charge and stand out...and that's pretty fabulous I think.

The photo above is from my first ever foray into the United Kingdom, back in 1995 when I lived in Scunthorpe for six weeks. I remember leaving at the end, not knowing if I'd ever be back to this tiny island, but being thrilled beyond belief to be going back to my life. This time I don't have a "my life" to go back to, exactly, but I'm thrilled beyond belief to be going home and to have the opportunity to show my husband what real life in America is like.

Soon and very soon. How odd it will be to look back at the UK and not belong here anymore. Maybe this time I'll find out where I really do belong.

Because I am insane...

Yep, I'm stuck in to another one. This time it's an adaptation of the first two books in the Proud Racer series. I'm not sure I'll finish it, but at least I've started, right?

March, Interrupted

First stop in Philly...
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

It's been a month today since I headed east to North Carolina for Sandy Paws and a short visit with my friends and family. In the four weeks that followed that day, I ate at Chick Fil A (admittedly the thing I miss most about living in the US not including people) about twenty seven times. I traveled from Greensboro, NC to Jekyll Island, GA, to Jacksonville, FL to Greensboro again to Athens, GA to Cleveland, GA and finally to Atlanta, GA. I saw my parents for two and a half days. I saw my sister and the most perfect niece on the planet for two and a half hours.

I flew back to the UK and threw myself back into work at the Bookshop as well as into looking online for work in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. I stayed up to watch Comic Relief on Red Nose Day. I ate at Nando's (the thing I will miss most about living in the UK other than home delivery of groceries and people). I started the countdown for the next in J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood novels. I started a new blog to showcase the photos I've been taking in various and sundry retail establishments around the UK since I've been here.

And I'm looking forward to April...to hopefully finding a job in the US, to hopefully selling our house here so we can move as soon as Simon gets his visa sorted, and to starting Script Frenzy, the screenplay version of NaNoWriMo from last November.

Fingers are crossed and big things are coming. I just need some patience...and a Chik Fil A sandwich wouldn't hurt.

Time Flies...am I having fun?

Lighthouse Ladies
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

Two weeks ago today I was right there in that photo. I was visiting the St. Augustine Lighthouse with my best friend, Leah (in the pink) and our Canadian "sistahs," Janet (next to me) and Vicky. I had sore ribs from laughing until I cried repeatedly. I had wobbly knees because Janet and I walked to the tippy top of the lighthouse (200+ steps!) on a quest to see a ghost. I was happy and relaxed.

Now? Not so much. Happy to be back with Simon, definitely. Happy to have my OWN greyhound to cuddle rather than borrowing one of the ones in the picture, absolutely. Happy to have my Little Man Mills burrowing in my hair and purring like a freight train, well, yeah, mostly. But happy to be back here in the UK? Notsomuch. Happy to be back in limbo, with no job prospects, no house-sale prospects, and a job that I'm definitely not suited for at all? Nope.

Funny how things can change SO much in the course of two short weeks. Funny how I can go from being so sure of what I'm doing and when to being completely on my ear with one mention of an unrelentingly tight state government budget. Funny how I am back to not knowing where I really belong, as well as not knowing where I really WANT to belong. Parts of the UK look really good when the job I'd counted on in the US fizzles. Parts of the US look really good when I have to pretend that I'm good at retail sales. It's a mess, really.

To my Sistahs, love you to bits. Wish we were still there. I could do with a good FB LAN party and some bad sangria...because that's how you treat a princess. For now, though, back to house tidy avoidance...before even more time has flown.

First Week Done and Dusted

Hello from the Blustery Boardwalk!
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

So I'm sitting in a hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida, and I don't know if I've ever been this tired. Sandy Paws 2011 is over, and we have moved on to the Follow That Hound After Party portion of the holiday. Tomorrow morning some of our folks are headed to the track to tour the kennel, and I will be here, playing dog-nanny to six greyhounds.

Six greyhounds that aren't my own, mind you. Six greyhounds that aren't my Daisy, more importantly. I think if we were to end up in the UK for another year, I would skip this annual event because it's just too hard to be here without her.

Anyway, moving on...Leah and I were discussing Sandy Paws 2011, and I think that part of why I'm so tired is that every year Sandy Paws barrels along at a frantic pace for me. It's the same basic formula as other greyhound events, really. You have a schedule of seminars and other activities focused on living with retired racing/AKC greyhounds. You have social events. You have vendors. You have auctions and raffles. But somehow, Sandy Paws always seems to zip past with me hanging on for dear life. When you've come 4,000 miles for an event, zipping is not a good thing.

The photo above is pretty representative of my vacation so far. There's a wind whipping all around me in that picture, and I feel like there's a metaphorical wind whipping up as well. People are tired. Tempers are short. I love seeing my friends and getting to spend a week with my best friend is just awesome. But the stress? The drama? Yeah, y'all can just keep that part.

American Vacation, Part One

Exit sign, KWVR Station
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

So here I am in what Liz refers to as The Homeland. I don't really know for sure how long I've been here or what day it is. What I do know, and this may also be the jet lag talking, is that I'm not sure how much I belong here any more.

Please don't read that as "I miss my life in the UK." Nothing could be further from the truth. It also shouldn't be mistaken for "I am nothing when I am without Simon, and since he is in the UK I am therefore nothing." That certainly isn't it either.

The real "it" is that I don't know where I belong. I don't want to be in the UK or the US. I don't want to be anywhere, not in an I Want To Off Myself sort of way but in an I Don't Feel At Ease Anywhere Anymore way.

The first time we came back for a visit, it was marvelous. I was back in my comfort zone. I didn't want to leave and go back to the scary and lonesome UK. The second time it was a little weird. I was starting to look for English food in the American grocery store and was frustrated at things that were "just so flipping different." Yet still, it was then and is now where I want to be...the problem, if you will, is the where within the where.

My old job most likely will not be waiting for me when I return. We may not be able to afford our perfect house b/c I have to freelance and pay for my own insurance (as well as coverage for Simon). It won't be easy, but I never thought I would look at it and think, "Do I really want to do this?"

Well, yes, of course I do. I'm just feeling a bit out of place this trip. Out of step with everyone else. Hours are flying past and my vacation will soon be over and I'm not sure that I will even know that it had started. I'll be staring down that departure gate at Hartsfield again with tears in my eyes. But do I want to stay here? I don't know, to be honest. I just don't know.

For now, though, I'm helping out for a friend of mine that became unexpectedly ill right before I got here. I'm navigating the mine field of friendly surprises and unexpected challenges. And I'm missing Simon and Daisy and Mills.

Is this really a holiday? More on that later, when I've slept a bit.

Different.

loners.
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

I should really be asleep.

Today I've been thinking a lot about being different. Where I come from, that's a condition devoutly to be wished, a prized and sought after THING TO BE. The rat race, the lemmings on the cliff, the sheep bounding over the same fence one after another have got nothing on that one individual that stands out from the crowd.

Me? I hate standing out. Seriously. HATE.IT. I think that's why I went into interpreting as a profession, perhaps on a subconscious level anyway. I like blending into the background. Hmm, maybe that's why the acting-centric drama major I tried so hard to fit into in college became a backstage-crew-centric minor by the time I graduated.

My sister has always been a shining star to my wallflower, and as I'm older and wiser and all that now I know I'm okay with that. I prefer it, to be honest. I know, blogging is a bit egotistical, but I think of it as writing practice more than anything else. We grew up moving around a lot due to my dad's work, and as a result I spent a lot of very uncomfortable and anxious times being "the new kid" who is most definitely "not from around here" and therefore is "different." Not good times. Whereas my sister could (and still can) just roll with it, I backed myself into a safe corner and stayed there, for the most part.

So, back to the topic at hand. I had an incident today at the store that brought home again how I hate being different. If I had a penny for every time a customer in the store asked me where I'm from or made a comment about my accent I'd be rich by now. Rich. Today, though, one customer went a bit too far and, after touching me to get my attention (me no likey outside of Deaf Culture and close friends), apparently ran from the store, all up in a tizzy because he'd met a "real American downstairs in non-fiction!"

Non-fiction...because really, who could make this stuff up?

I remember thinking how I just wished for once I could speak to someone here and no one would know I was anything more than Nancy who works in a bookshop. I am tired of being different. I am tired of being the fish out of water, of being the one "not from around here." I think sometimes that expats mistakenly feel that we aren't allowed that indulgence, that our job is to acclimate and blend and become acquainted and all those other things that come with moving to a foreign country.

Well, to use the language of my "current" people, bollocks to that. I am who I am, and whether I'm a lifer expat or just here for two years, no matter if I'm on a student visa or just gotten my UK citizenship and snazzy maroon passport, I'm still me and me isn't British and isn't ever going to be. Bad attitude? Maybe, but on days like today it's all I've got. Allowed the pity-party or not, it's here. I'm different from almost everyone around me. I don't have close English friends here like I do at home. Home still = America in my mind and my vocabulary.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sleep now because I've got to go far far away tomorrow to get back to who I really am via an interpreting gig down south. Tomorrow I can be with other displaced Americans before I have to go back to being on display at work in the bookshop.

One last thing: If you can spare a good thought or prayer or whatever it is you do for the people of Christchurch, NZ, please do. The one close friend I do have here in Keighley is a Kiwi expat and I can't imagine how it feels to watch an earthquake of that magnitude cause such devastation back home and be so far away.

Just...stop. Full Stop.

Good Morning from Haworth!
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

Here's what you've missed since the last episode of This Is My Life At The Lettuce:

1. I am still employed at The Bookshop. I have a vacation coming up. I am not 100% sure how many hours I have in my leave time total. I want desperately for my last day there to be the Friday before I leave for my vacation, but that is apparently not to be.

2. The Bookshop is in a bit of a state. Recent events (as well as not so recent events) have led to a workplace climate that bounces between giddy euphoria and utter despair, in a workplace that as of late strongly resembles a mix of high school angst and childish backbiting. It physically and mentally wears me out to even consider getting up on time for work these days, so you can imagine how much fun I am on the shop floor.

3. I have now seen an amateur panto in person, complete with metal chairs (which after three hours of constant sitting in start to resemble concrete blocks) and butter flavoured "clotted cream ice cream" at the intermission. I'm still scratching my head over the casting of a woman as the main hero, Colin/Prince Valiant as well as the use of a modified version of the theme from "Friends" as sung by the aforemetioned Prince-ss and the "Gypsies of the Wood." It certainly was different from the Children's Theatre production of the the same fairy tale we did at YHC back in the day.

4. I am experiencing weird memory losses...not the "Holy Moly, who are you and why are you in my house" kind of memory loss, a la Days of Our Lives, but the "I am positive I locked the house though we came home to find the door open" and "I have no memory of putting my phone in my pocket but it has now vanished from existance and must surely have fallen out of said pocket in the taxi" kind of memory loss. It's stress, I'm sure, but it's also fairly annoying and has hit at irritating times, such as the loss of my blackberry on Saturday or my sudden inability to perform basic tasks at work that I've done thousands of times. Seriously. I will stare at the computer for several minutes trying to figure out how to print out a report that I've done loads of before.

5. Did I mention I lost my blackberry? Yeah, that was a hot mess of fun wrapped in a rainbow. We were heading for the panto and the radio in the taxi was playing the Beastie Boys. I reached for my phone to comment about that on Twitter...as you do, of course...and it wasn't in my pocket. I remembered Simon bringing it downstairs and putting it on the sofa and thought...well, there was some swearing there, I won't lie to you..."I've left it at home...I'm going to Prime Twitter Material in the Form of a Panto and I've left my phone at home." I think there was a bit more swearing. We got home and went directly to the sofa. No BB. We got a flashlight and checked the front stoop, the road, and under the cars parked on the street in front of our house. No BB. Simon rang the taxi company. No BB.

Just wanted to add here that we were NEVER EVER suggesting that the taxi driver took my phone. NOT.AT.ALL. The other driver from the same company who spent our ride up from the supermarket telling us that his colleague doesn't steal and then charged us more than normal for the journey can take a walk.

6. I have made a fantastic wonderful awesome friend here (that I will miss when I move) who lent me the BB that she's just upgraded from until we can get something sorted for me. I hope that she and her OH will come visit us in America because I need to keep being surrounded by such awesomeness...plus she's a fellow supporter of angled parking. (Parallel parking fans...well, there might be more swearing so I'll leave it.) Kia Ora, Sue!

Well, so Catch Up turned into An Entire Post. Huh. I would really like for just a few hours to have everything just STOP, but it won't. The house is not going to get itself ready to be sold, our immigration paperwork isn't going to do itself nor will it post itself, and I refuse to continue to be the reason why our collective feet are dragging. I'll get my full stop soon...on a plane home for two glorious weeks.

Strange Days...Well, One Strange Day Anyway...

Apparently that's not what they're for either
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

So Simon and I headed to Sainsbury's last night to do our weekly shop, right? Nothing out of the ordinary there, really. We got the trolley, got the items on the list, got tired of being there and got ready to leave.

"Don't forget toilet roll and kitchen roll," he says. We head to that aisle. I head for the kitchen roll first. A grape hits me soundly in the side of the head.

Yep, that's what I said. A Grape. Hit Me. Soundly. In.The.Head. I don't know who threw it, but the sucker hit my head so hard it split before bouncing off the ground in front of us.

On the plus side, Sainsbury's is living up to their promise to stock fresh produce. On the minus side, that grape was so fresh it was almost under-ripe and it left a sore spot on my head just above my right ear.

We recovered from the anonymous grape assault and made our way to the tills. Very nice young man who is ringing up our groceries drops both the two liter diet cokes over the side and onto the floor. I literally saw them falling in slow motion. Nice young man apologises. I scoop those up, hand them to him, and run back to fetch two more that aren't shaken nor stirred.

On the way back, I decided to further fetch the offending fruit that, in my dazed post-assault stupor, I had left on the kitchen roll shelf. Two diet cokes and a grape in my arms, I turn up back at the till...and proceed to drop one of the diet cokes.

By now Very Nice Young Man is grinning like a fool until I hand him the grape and explain how it came from the skies to rap me on the side of my noggin and could he please throw it away? He graciously took it, apologising, as we gathered our groceries and headed for the exit.

I wonder why Simon was in a slight hurry to get out of the store?

Thus far into Twenty Elebben...

Octo-Rasta
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

(Don't worry, I know that it's Two Thousand Eleven or Twenty Eleven or if you're Irish, Two Tow-sand Eleven. I just use attach the made-up word Elebben to any number in an effort to stop using the previously over-used word gazillion or, even worse umpteenagazillion, both of which I've used forty-elebben times a day. See? Much better.)

(Disclaimer the Second: This will not be a post about New Year's resolutions. The only one I've made this year is not to make them.)

Why the OctoRasta photo you ask? Because it makes me smile. It makes me remember a time when I thought my life was complicated, but it really, REALLY wasn't. It reminds me of the most perfect doggie-love I've ever known, my Monkey Man, my Hunky.

And hey, the fact that it matches one of the Lettuce's theme colours doesn't hurt, either.

Right, so what's happened around here since the new year rang in just over a week ago? I've worked at The Bookshop. I've cuddled with the Daisy Mae, the Mills, and Hubs, sometimes all at the same time. Events have occurred in the US that once again make people that I am in contact with here think I was born in the wild, wild west. Newcastle United has been knocked out of the FA cup by Stevenage. And we are only remotely closer to beginning our repatting journey.

I am LOVING my Kindle. Haters and those bent on shaming me into admitting that I'd really have liked a Sony eReader/iPad/Nook/etc etc can tell me walking, as my colleague Patrick says. For me and my situation, the Kindle has been the perfect fit, and I will freely admit that for the first weekend I had the thing I carried it everywhere I went. Well, inside the house anyway...I don't have a case for it yet so it tends to stay home these days.

I've read two books so far this year. Well, technically just one, I finished the other one. Feel free to head over to the library section of the Lettuce, Well Read, to see what I'm reading and what I've thought about what I've read if you're so inclined. I've entered the Goodreads.com 2011 Reading Challenge, but I think I set my target of 100 books too low. We'll see.

The sinus infection/cold/pre-flu/nastiness that I had over the weekend has finally abated, I think. Yesterday morning I stayed home from work because it felt like a chipmunk was madly trying to burrow it's way out of my sinuses through my face, and every time I stood up too fast I got dizzy. Much better today, so back to The Bookshop tomorrow I go.

I think that's all the news thus far. I'm still counting on being able to come to the States at the beginning of March for Sandy Paws and that very soon after that I will come to the States to STAY. As in FOR GOOD or at least FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE. Stay tuned.

(HEY! I got through an entire blog post without a single mention of hate rhetoric, gun sight crosshairs on maps, Arizona, or Sarah Palin! Aw crap...never mind.)

Happy New Year from London, England!

Do yourself a favor and turn the sound off first, then put on some music you like. Why the BBC thinks the Radio 1 drivel is a good soundtrack for fireworks is beyond me. But it's a pretty, pretty light show...

2010 in Review...Lettuce Style

Contemplating.
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

I thought before I talk about what I'm going to do next year, I'd jump on the bandwagon in the blogosphere and recap the past year here at the lettuce. See how I'm contemplating, there in the picture (that was taken in January almost three years ago...)?

Other than Susan, Dave, and Joy visiting, I don't think anything happened in January. Well, there was nothing blog-worthy, I suppose, or maybe I just couldn't be arsed to write anything. (As if to prove my point, I didn't even blog about them being here until February!)

I did say in my last post of 2009 that I was planning to earn part of my living via my writing. How did that pan out? Stay tuned...

February was a short month, but it saw me heading back home for a holiday at the end of the month that included one of the best visits EVER with my best friend Leah as well as Sandy Paws, the best greyhound gathering all year. In addition, I just happened to be within an hour's drive of Athens, Georgia, when ,See What I'm Saying screened at the University of Georgia. Marvelous, life-changing, fabulous movie, that. Go see it if you can.

March started with me still in the US, but I was soon back home in the UK and back to work at the bookstore. I'm assuming that something along the lines of a run on anti-American/anti-gay/anti-anythingbutChristian/etc. comments must have cropped up during that month, as my only post during the month has a kind of "I've had enough and I need to remind people who I am and what I stand for" sort of flair.

April started out to be rough. I'd been here a year, Jeany would have been 13 years old, would have been with me 11 years, and had been gone for a year. Susan had a birthday and I was reminded that I'd made it through 12 whole months of living abroad and no one had died or gone insane. Life turned out to be better than I'd expected in April.

May brought us Mills's birthday...big number 12! That was the only post that month, most likely because I was trying to not think about the fact that my precious little man was twelve and that I was twelve years older than I'd been when he was sprung from the Spartanburg Animal Shelter. Somewhere during the month a new government was elected here in the UK, and things have gone downhill fast ever since. The end of May marked the lost of my Hunky a year prior, but we chose to remember him fondly as we took a day trip to a place that he would have loved...York.

June wasn't hot, but it wasn't freezing anymore either which was quite nice. I'm going to include July here as well, because there was one event that absolutely stole focus for all of us for the entire month. I found a lump in one of my breasts. I survived having what turned out to be a cyst drained, as well as a needle-core biopsy (google that if you want to be scared out of your mind) that showed absolutely nothing. Mind you, I'd planned my funeral in the six weeks from finding the pitch invader to the results of the biopsy, and I've never been so glad to hear a doctor say he recommended that I not come back to him again.

In between June and July a former co-worker and friend of mine, Christine, came to visit for 10 days. Other than family, she's turning out to be the only visitor I've had from the states, and I very much enjoyed playing bumbling tour guide while she was here. Totally took my mind off the pitch invader, that's for sure!

August is the hottest month of the year, with temps soaring into the...wait for it...70s. Holy moly. Can you believe it? Tempers ran a bit hot during August, but I said then and I will continue to say that I am very proud of myself for sticking to my guns and asking for what I needed. I think that all involved have gotten past it...but to be honest, the most important people involved, me and Simon, have and all is well. He and I had a blast doing some exploring of West Yorkshire.

The heat didn't stay, as evidenced by this excerpt from a post in August: "We're now fully into the August Bank Holiday weekend and I was wearing a scarf to work this morning. A Scarf. In August. I'll leave you Southern Americans a moment to fan yourselves madly as that thought settles in."

September was full of planning for our American Future, publishing a volume including all my dog books, and politics all over the globe. Somehow I got drawn into all the "Tea Party" insanity back in the US and wrote what I think to be a very salient explanation of why I think those folks are just plain nutters.

October was pretty much nothing but a countdown to our trip to America at the end of the month. I was captivated momentarily by the rescue of 33 Chilean miners from a collapsed mine, and wish that the result had been the same when the mine collapsed in New Zealand.

Oh, there was the wearing of a witch's hat, stripey socks and an actual skirt to work one day just before we flew because it was almost Halloween. Moving on.

November=NaNoWriMo. I wrote 50,000 words worth of an EQ fan fiction novel during the month of November, and I have never felt so much like a real writer. I know some people look down their collective literary noses at NaNoWriMo but I feel like I really accomplished something awesome that month. I also recapped our visit to America, a fact that makes my winning at NaNoWriMo even more special...I didn't really start in earnest until after we got back on the 12th.

And here we are in December. It's been a rough month. It's the second Christmas in a row I've been away from my family, and this year Simon and I were here on our own because the rest of his family was up north and we just couldn't manage that without our own car. I think I've been the most homesick that I've been the whole year this month. I'm trying to channel it into resolve and determination to make the move back to America happen as soon as possible.

So to my resolution last year...earning money through my writing. While the blogs haven't brought in any money (only one of them possibly could) and NaNoWriMo produced a novel that I can't publish without asking for Sony's permission first, I have sold some of the Proud Racer compilations so I'm letting that count. I'm keeping the same resolution for next year and just going to build on it. There will be money made through writing...and even if there's not, there will be published work. There's a writer in me...she just needs to come up and get busy.

Happy New Year, see you guys in Twenty-Eleven.

Deep and crisp and...very uneven.

Seriously? Again with the camera?
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

So I'm sure that you've all been wondering how our Just the Two of Us Christmas went, haven't you? All five or so of you Lettuce Readers, your patience has paid off...see that photo there? That's pretty much how I've spent this Christmas.

I have not been ill. Wonder of wonders, I did not fall up or down any stairs and find myself bedridden as a result. The dog next to me in the photo is not ill. We have just been afflicted with, as they say here, "I Can't Be Arsed" as far as anything constructive goes. Simon and I have slept in every day since Saturday (we didn't make it to consciousness until well after 9am on Christmas morning) and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning every night since. Tomorrow will be a shock as we're both going into work...me because I have to and him because he needs to top up his flexi-time balance.

Christmas came and went, and was an extremely emotional day for me. I think the overwhelming Not Wanting To Be In England somehow collided with the equally mind-numbing This Might Be My Last Christmas while LIVING In The UK and they got tangled up in I Can't Afford To Give What I'd Like To Loved Ones. It wasn't pretty, but at least the episodes were brief.

Now, turning to the loot...we were all very lucky, including Daisy who got a small pink monkey that she has summarily ignored ever since. Mills received an orange and purple scratching pad that he hugs and rubs his head on before returning to the carpet to clean his claws.

We haven't gotten the snow that the BBC warned us we would, but instead had several hours of very loud, very heavy and very frozen rain last night. However, all is as it was before outside and cars are blaring their stereos as they cruise down our street today...or maybe that's the music in the SimCity game Simon got for Christmas. Hard to say.

So yeah, that's our Holiday Tale, full of food and bad telly and staying in bed...which is where I am now, as I write this, looking very much like the photo above only without the greyhound appendage. Next stop, New Year's Eve followed by our second wedding anniversary and THE ARRIVAL OF MY KINDLE.

What? I forgot to mention that I got a Kindle for Christmas, courtesy of my parents giving us money rather than sending us gifts through the unreliable and always delayed post? Oops. You can bet that will have its own blog post when it gets here. I might even give it a name.

Happy New Year, y'all. Stay tuned for a review of my NY resolutions from last year that might have come true...maybe a little, anyway.

T-4 and counting...sort of.

ornamental.
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

It's almost here, the big day that seemed so far away this time last year. We were getting ready to head to my sister-in-law's house for three days then. Or even further away the year before, when Simon and I were in the States for Christmas and there was a perfect little 20 day old bundle of Joy waiting to greet us in Atlanta.

This year, though, I'm thinking, again? It's already Christmas again? I'm not ready. I'm not festive. I just want it to be over and done. I had a burst of Christmas spirit yesterday, when Simon was wrapping our Dunne family presents to send up north tomorrow with Louise. Everyone is getting together up there this year, but because we don't drive and I have to work Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas Bank Holiday, we can't go. So it's going to be me and Simon (and our families via Skype, I hope?) on the big day.

I think part of me has already started looking forward to Christmas next year because it will really feel like Christmas to me...because I'll be back home. The lighting of the tree at Underground Atlanta. Hopefully going with Joy when she sees Santa and rides the Pink Pig. Sending Daisy off to have Christmas with her Auntie Leah and then going to my folks' place in the mountains for Christmas Eve/Day. It's funny how much of that I took for granted until I couldn't do it anymore, and how incredibly important that ritual has become in its own absence.

But for now, I'll look for presents to be delivered by the terribly lazy postman who never knocks. I'll tromp through the snow to the bus stop to get to work. I'll deal with the customers at work who seem to think it's open season on Americans just because there's a bit of extra stress involved in holiday shopping. I'll watch Simon eat mince pies, and enjoy brussel sprouts at Christmas dinner. I'll try my best to enjoy what will be my last Christmas in England for a year or so. And on Christmas morning I'll wake up with my family...Simon, Daisy, and Mills, and be so very thankful I have them.

Merry Christmas, y'all, from all of us here at the Lettuce.

Well, hello again, MONDAY.

Back in the U...K.
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

(Those of you that are familiar with Seinfeld, imagine that Monday=Newman.)

Oh, what a weekend. I spent most of Saturday not feeling well, but had a brilliant night out with Simon's oldest friends Saturday night. It's amazing how good conversation and laughter can make an absolutely disgusting curry taste better. (Seriously...that was the WORST chicken korma I've ever had, but I digress...) Cheers all around to Ben, Poom, Wesley and Suzanne for a marvelous time. Egg McMuffins all around!

Sunday we CLEANED the house in preparation for a visit from Simon's parents, which was just lovely even if all we had for a meal was pizza. I guess there is enough of my mother in me to want to be a proper hostess, even in a "dine in kitchen" that is only about 8'x8' all together. I'm going to miss being able to ask Simon to reach into the fridge and get more to drink, or grab another fork from the drawer without him having to get up from the table. Cheers to him, by the way, for doing the dirty work (I DON'T do bathrooms) while I mopped the kitchen.

Now it's Monday, and despite my best efforts there is nothing wrong enough with me that I can ring in sick. At least it's not snowing...yet. They're saying we're getting more of the white stuff on Thursday and I'm so not looking forward to that. Cheers, Nature, for giving me a break in the weather today and Wednesday, at least!