The Eye of the Beholder

Me: That's it. I'm sick of big boobs. I want my body back. I'm tired of trying on clothes and either looking like a hooker or a matron.

LK: Go for hooker!

The Tailings

Lucy is approaching 6 months old and I am a husk.

The other day LK described it perfectly. He said 'you've been strip-mined'. I've got a beast of a beautiful blonde, rosy-cheeked daughter and I've been left with the tailings. I'm not really complaining, although quite frankly no-one really prepares you for the post-partum period. How many people prior to having children know about your hair falling out a few months after delivery? I have long hair and *oh Lord* our shower is starting to look like a College dorm room. The hair! It's taking over the house. Gossamer strands glinting accusingly from every surface. I am not looking forward to returning to my pre-pregnancy eight strands of limp blonde hair. It has been quite refreshing to have a ponytail wider than my middle finger. Then there's that awful growing back in stage where you have spiky re-growth protruding from your temples like antannae. Good times.

I'm still nursing the beast. I've no idea how she has managed to attain such a size (97th percentile for height) while I'm still exclusively nursing yet still managing to carry around some pregnancy bulge. Looking at the size of her you'd think I'd be down to 100lbs by now. Except while I'm obviously losing weight by breast-feeding I seem to be more than making up for it with my voracious appetite. Lucy woke me up at 5am to feed and for the last hour all I've been thinking about is a full English breakfast. Cereal be damned. I'm talking bacon, sausages, eggs cooked in bacon fat, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans and fried eggy bread on the side. Hmm. No wonder Lucy looks like she's just eaten all the other babies in the nursery.

We are flying back home for a visit in a couple of weeks and I am not looking forward to presenting my work-in-progress physique. I shall just have to wear a selection of outlandish scarves that draw the eye away from the post-partum carnage. Not sure if that'll be quite so effective in the swimming pool but we shall see. I will admit that I went to the Old Navy $5 swim sale yesterday in an attempt to find a bikini to winch in these giant mammaries. That 10 minutes with two small children, a brightly lit changing room and cheap garish fabrics will require a lifetime of therapy. Damn you self-esteem. Honestly though, what was I thinking? Must have been a low blood-sugar moment, or subconcious self-hatred. Needless to say I did not buy anything - and the moment when Anna announced to the entire fitting room that 'your boobies are too squashed Mommy' was a particular favourite.

Must go. Lucy has just been sick on my hair.

My life is great.

I Made My Bed

My oldest friend V. is getting married today. On Concord, which has to be one of the coolest things ever, unless you are her exceptionally tall husband-to-be who will not doubt spend the entire ceremony with knees bent and a slight stoop. Something he will be more than happy to do to marry V. I'm sure.

Once again I can't be there. We have been friends for over 30 years:











I haven't lost that constipated expression either - that's V. and I in the foreground. I'm the one making an albino look tanned.

It goes without saying that one of the most difficult things about living thousands of miles away from home is having to pick and choose what you go back for. I have missed weddings, funerals, and all-important Saturday morning shopping with my Mum. I suppose ideally I would be living the American Dream, earning enough money to jet back and forth as and when I choose. It hasn't quite panned out that way. I missed V's first wedding because of immigration issues. Now I'm missing this one because we are skint, - busy financing our money pit and two small, incredibly expensive children. As I said, I made my bed.

I can't complain too much, thanks to air-miles we are all flying back in a month for my cousin's wedding and for my parents 40th wedding anniversary. That'll be the last trip home for a while though unless I can persuade LK to part with a kidney. Still, V. came up with a genius plan. She had S. will renew their vows for their 10th anniversary, like we did, in Vegas, and we'll join them then. Please click on the ads on the right had side of this blog to make sure I can finance that trip. I figure $10 a year in ad revenue over the next 10 years could buy us a room off-strip somewhere!!

and finally, on a lighter note, I bring you:

Blue Steel:

Four!

I'm starting to appreciate why this is yelled as a warning in golf.

I'd heard of the terrible twos, Anna sailed right through those. No tantrums, no frustration, the toughest part was separation anxiety. Then people told me that 'three was the new two' and yes, burgeoning self-awareness did bring on more attitude, and that coupled with my pregnancy made for a wearying combination.

Four though. Oy.

I'm not sure how much of this is coloured by the addition of a new sibling, but this new found independence has brought with it a real personality change. I'm all for self-confidence, but I will draw the line at being called a 'brat' by my own spawn when I shut her down on three bedtime stories. "Mumma, you're a brat". No 'Goodnight Moon' for you young lady!

Granted, her outbursts are still heavily influenced by her excellent school - there's no "I hate you" (not yet); thwarted requests for a chocolate milk are often met with an achingly childlike "then I will not be your friend". But please, chocolate milk at 9pm, what kind of a hold-out demand is that? Who are you? France?

There is nascent moodiness and petulance where there was none before. We have foot stamping, arm folding and inanimate object kicking. It's hard not to laugh at the depth of her displeasure. She's like a tiny Queen Victoria, only a mini-monarch that says 'hey guys this is not cool' instead of 'we are not amused'. I appreciate she's just testing her boundaries, but how long is it going to take her to realize there are no boundaries, no ever-changing front line, just a firmly entrenched wall of 'what we say goes young lady'. Until she starts paying rent of course.

Is this just a precursor for pre-teen hormones? Is she learning this from other kids or is it part of being four? It's not a big concern. It just feels like the sunshine has disappeared for a bit. When I mentioned it to her teacher she said, at least she feels confident enough these days to voice her opinions, even if it is displeasure. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I'm still British enough to think, bring back 'meek' - all is forgiven.

Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

Anna is getting proficient at the computer. That's right, she's just turned four and in China that means she is about four years behind with her technology skills, so we thought what the hey. Actually, 'we' (me) thought Mummy needs five minutes peace and quiet because she has all the thankyou notes of the world to write and is beginning to forget if the talking Sleeping Beauty was from Braden, Jayden or Hayden.

We chose Noggin.com, heavily supervised. It has lovely little games that teach basic mouse skills like planting seeds in a virtual garden and HRH perches her tiny little bottom on our computer chair and concentrates with heart-warming intensity. I say heavily supervised, but you and I live in the real world right? At first we sit there through all the games. The mind-numbing 'build your own flower' the high-pitched Dora voice penetrating your skull until after a while you can't take the electronic accolades of 'good job!' or 'you're doing great' or 'what a team' any more and you skulk off for a cup of tea.

That's where it gets a little dodgy.

She is not exactly slow on the uptake, so pretty soon she learned to type in www.noggin.com and has even learned to enter the word in google. I am happy for her to be plugging away at age-appropriate preschooler computer games; saving baby eagles, planting gardens and building robots. I am even happy that her burgeoning knowledge might help me in the near future, I can see myself asking her whether I should upgrade to Leopard and what's the best way to compact my AVI files, BUT, check out this conversation and see why I'm going to be putting some protection software on our computer interfrastically:

Anna: I love noggin.com. You would probably love www.flowers.com and Dada would probably love www.lakers.com

Me: That's right, well done! (foolish! didn't see this one coming!)

Anna: I think Lucy would probably like www.boobs.com

Me: Bye-bye computer.


I'm pretty sure her father already has it bookmarked....

The Looper

Last week Lucy started sleeping through the night.

By which I mean she would sleep until about 4:30am, which is a stretch of nearly eight and half hours and any mother of an infant will gladly call that sleeping through. I of course have now been programmed to wake up at 2am for the last five months, so for the entire week I was waking up between 2am and 3am thinking 'any minute now, any minute now'. Still, she was sleeping well and my heart was happy; angels sang and I started to plan my future sans sleep deprivation.

That was last week.

This week she has inexplicably reverted to her old, trusty sleep schedule of waking at 12am, 2:30am and 5am. I feel like I've discovered the formula for cold fusion and now can't remember where I wrote it down.

I know babies are capricious little F@c!%s, but how? why? I can't stop wondering what was working and now isn't. Was it the perfect combination of humidifier, fleecy sleep-suit and and old pheromoney t-shirt of mine? Or 8pm bottle of breastmilk, fleecy sleep-suit, and fresh air during the day? Gah! After trying a bajillion combinations of the above for the last 5 months I can safely say I have no idea what works and what doesn't, and I was happily ready to believe she had just outgrown the need for boobing in the wee hours. I am beyond disappointed. I know that at some point before college she is probably going to start sleeping all night but I was rather hopeful it would be before I had died of exhaustion....

On a more cheerful note, the reason I haven't left her in a Moses basket down by the river is a) this is Southern California and we don't got none and b) 5 months despite the lack of sleep is such a perfect baby age. They are beautiful and constantly delighted to see you. They smell good, and are small and lovable without the old-man scrawniness of a newborn. Perfect baby-trap age. I'm thinking of having at least a dozen more. *Wow* I really need some sleep.

And finally, The Looper. I've written about nicknames before and it appears we have finally found one that has stuck for Lucy. My second daughter is clearly an athlete like her father. She just turned 5 months old and she is practically crawling. She throws herself around a room with such determination that if you turn your back for 5 seconds (OK, maybe twenty minutes, I never said I was a good parent...) she has maneouvered herself into the fireplace and is chewing on an ornamental log. She is already able to scooch both legs underneath her in a pre-crawl motion and then propel herself violently forward in pursuit of that elusive Barbie shoe of chokeable death. So why Looper? Fans of Caddyshack may have already picked this up, but there is a scene where Bill Murray is terrorizing a young caddy with a pitchfork while regaling him with a story of when he caddied for the Dalai Lama. He jabs the pitchfork at the caddy's neck and says "I was a Looper, you know, a caddy, a jock". OK, I'll admit it's a little obscure but it fits her to perfection. That girl is a jock. Watch out world.

















Don't be fooled by the apparent sleep-pose. That eye is half-open. She's watching and waiting....

Camping

This weekend a bunch of LK's high school friends (who all seem to live within a 1 mile radius of their former high school - God this town is weird) organized a mass camping trip. I of course declined their generous offer of a night under canvas in a rattlesnake infested camp ground with a 3 year old and an infant - because I am not insane.

Lucy and I deigned to visit for an hour or two and had a wonderful time watching the kids swimming in the river fishing for crawdads, while the adults sipped a margarita.

Now that, is camping.








































I left just as the reality of nothing but hotdogs for dinner was really starting to hit, and I headed back to civilization almost giddy with the idea of an evening alone with the remote control. How hard up do you have to be to consider an night with an infant a vacation?

Meanwhile LK and Anna braved a night in a borrowed tent with a blow-up mattress missing its plug.




That Garnet Hill duvet just screams 'roughing it in the wild' doesn't it?













Santa Barbara is a peculiar bubble. You only have to drive 30 miles north to be in complete wilderness. Full on camping territory, including a Ranger Station which always makes me think of pic-a-nic baskets. LK's friends more or less had the campsite to themselves, except for a couple of well-meaning I'm sure, 7th Day Adventists who distributed literature on the first night no doubt alarmed at the sheer quantity of tequila being unpacked from the assembled Winnebagos.

Poor old LK did not get to experience the campfire drunkenness. Apparently Anna, exhausted by an afternoon of 'swimming' in a knee-deep California 'river' pitched an exhausted tantrum, screamed for Mumma and demanded they both bed down for the night at 9pm. I feel a tad sorry for him, but not too much considering I know full well that if I had stayed the night, I would have been tent-bound by 8:30pm with two children while LK whooped it up with his cronies. Plus Lucy is not sleeping through the night, and I didn't fancy trying to boob her in the pitch black night while venomous things slithered and crawled around us.

I am not an experienced camper. As a child, the one and only time I spent a night in a tent was in the Guides, resulting in an anxiety attack and my thoroughly cross Mum having to come and collect me from a muddy field outside Ripon.

Camping in England means everything suffused in drizzle, firewood too soggy to light and cows tripping over your tent ropes at 5am. Camping in California is the polar opposite. It means punishing heat and dust, poisonous creatures, large wild animals with pointy teeth, grass too dessicated and prickly to sit on and campfires in designated fire pits only. Aren't I making it sound fun? I think it's a vacation if you're a child and you don't have to worry where the next hotdog is coming from, whether you remembered to pack the toilet roll, and you don't care that you've swum in, slept in and lived in the same pair of knickers for the last 48 hours. To me it seems like an awful lot of packing, cooking and washing.

Camping seems to be ingrained in the American psyche much more so than in England. Probably because there is genuine 'wild' here and not just that bit by the river off the A64 near Knaresborough. As far as I can tell, people take a lot of pleasure in moving the entire contents of their house in a massive camper van to somewhere with a nice view and then sitting in a deck chair by that vehicle for the weekend. British people will happily hike 15 to 20 miles in one day but have a desperate need to return to their couch for a cup of tea by nightfall. We are strange races.

It was beautiful to be able to drive across the mountains and see a side of California far removed from the manicured environs of Santa Barbara. It was wonderful to see all the kids splashing it up with their friends. Mrs S. as usual had the forethought to bring inflatables, glow-in-the-dark bracelets and alcohol. The real camping essentials. Our kettle corn was a pale rejoinder.



















I don't think the idea of doing it next year with an 18 month old is any more appealing somehow, but I know I would enjoy waking up to this view through the top of my tent:

One Small Step for Mankind, One Giant Leap for Anna

Anna is starting to show a real interest in learning to read. Helped by her new preschool she is constantly thinking about words, and in particular asking what letters they start with. Examples are, Luh, Luh, leave Mummy alone and O, O, Oh My God stop talking.

To encourage this, and to try and make up for a woeful lack of hands-on parenting in the last few months (thanks Lucy!) I have started doing treasure hunts around the house. Each clue is a piece of paper with a word on it, usually something simple that she can sound out phonetically, such as BALL (oh come on, who doesn't have a giant Pilates ball in their living room?!). This has proved to be so much more successful than just sitting together and helping her read a book. A treasure hunt has purpose, and more importantly, a reward of a few jelly beans at the end.

Ah, bribery, teacher of many a child.

After one of the hundred million treasure hunts I have been asked to devise over the last, morning (you think I jest), I told Anna it was quiet time, and that Mummy needed a rest (read: cocktail). Not realizing I had left her alone in our bed with a pen.

This could have been disastrous, not least for my lovely embroidered Pottery Barn duvet cover - one of the last vestiges of wealthier times. But no, another triumph for absentee parenting! While left to her own devices, Anna had decided to construct her own treasure hunting.

Reading to writing in one fell swoop. I bring you:









"BATH"















The slightly more obscure "BANANA" (great drawing)



































and my personal favourite "HORSE", a clue found on her My Little Pony, and not (if you follow my twisted mind, on LK's stack of Playboys....

OK, maybe it's too early to call Cambridge, but Oxford surely?!

I Maddonari at the Santa Barbara Mission

Our traditional "May Grey" couldn't dampen the vibrancy of these street paintings at the Santa Barbara Mission over the weekend. It even inspired Anna to get a little creative.

Spot which one's hers.....














































































































I'm glad it's a self-portrait and not a drawing of Mummy, otherwise I would have to seriously reconsider my choice of lipstick.

Cross Dressing is the New Black

Me, standing in front of the mirror before work this morning, assessing the impact a few early morning runs, power-walks, an ocean swim, and most importantly a sleek all-black outfit have done for my post-baby body.

LK, drawling - "Hi, I'm Johnny Cash".

US vs. UK - Diamonds

If you want to know the difference between the US and the UK then just look at the ring finger of any married woman.

Even the lowliest toilet-scrubber in the US will be sporting a cantilevered confection bristling with diamonds. I first noticed this while still living in the UK. My home town in North Yorkshire hosts a US Army Intelligence Base so it was not unusual for local women to meet and marry American serviceman. After having done so they could barely lift their left hands because Good Lord - where the UK engagement ring mantra seems to be 'it's the thought that counts' in the US it is definitely 'size matters'. It honestly had me wondering whether diamonds were ten a penny in the States.


















Then I moved over here, and I swear the same DeBeers commercial that rhapsodizes 'how else can one month's salary last a lifetime' is two months salary in the US. I'm convinced I remember the 'one month' yardstick in the UK, but I'll admit I've tried and failed to google some proof of this. Am I just imagining this or are there really different standards in largesse? I really think so. Take a look at any issue of Hello magazine and you will see the wealthiest of Brits sporting the most modest of rings.

I inherited my engagement ring from my Nanna, and while it is definitely on the 'demure' side representing love in the North of England in the late 1930s it is priceless to me.



















Having said that, I realise that whatever I write here may cast me in a jealous light as a result. I do notice what I call the 'Nordstrom effect' of being judged in shops by the lack of a carbon paperweight on my left hand. If you think I'm being paranoid, in high school LK used to teach kids tennis lessons at one of the swankiest clubs in town. The guy in charge pulled him to one side on his first day and told him to be most solicitous to the Moms with the big rings. If their child was worthless, persuade the parent that all he/she needed was extra tuition, if the child showed any talent at all, persuade the parent that private lessons would guarantee acceptance to the Ivy League school of their choice. If the ring lacked carats - don't bother with the kid.

Heart-warming, no?

Obviously there are exceptions to this, and I do know a lot of cool California chicks who sport the most pared-down of wedding bands, no in-your-face bling at all - something that I think is becoming increasingly popular.

Has anybody else noticed this? Any expat Brits out there fighting the good fight with their meek solitaires, or any Americans in the UK wondering why no-one else has 17 diamonds surrounding their 3 carat centerpiece?

Snapshots of Life

There are no pictures of my brother before about 4 months of age, and even then he is dressed in evil brown 1970s polyester and he looks quite rightly furious.

(If I lived any less than 8 THOUSAND miles away right now I would scan those pictures, but it will have to wait to July).

I always thought this lack of photos was odd, and that, coupled with the fact that he is only a year younger than me (which would mean for me to repeat that feat I would have to be pregnant right now! Ha! Holy Mother of God! No!) - these things mean I have always harboured a sneaking suspicion he is a changeling.

Hi Baby Brother!

Except we have exactly the same eyes, nose and mouth and when I walked in to a bar in his University town in North Wales the barman took one look at me and went "bloody hell, you have to be PW's sister". Not that flattering really considering he was at that point a 15 stone bruiser.

Anyhoo.

Back to the point of this. When I asked my Mum why there weren't more pictures of P. when he was an infant she said "your Dad's camera was broken". Which always made me think wha? No photos for posterity because you couldn't fix the camera? You couldn't find a way?

Well, for the last two months my camera has been broken and I haven't been able to take any photos, or more importantly, movies. Lucy has been growing and evolving, throwing out gymnastics moves and achingly cute gurgles and I have been glaring at her telling her we can't afford to record, so please, halt all development. LK obviously has his impressively large and manly camera so I've not been completely without a tool (bizarre sexual word play) but I've missed having my little point-and-shoot camera and my blog has become a barren wasteland of words when I know that all you really want to do is look at the pictures.

But then the recent wildfires made me realize that one of the things you grab in a natural disaster are your photos - your memories - and that made me quash my inner tight-wad and buy a new camera. I need, I want, I must have! I am a one-woman economic stimulus package. To hell with the expense, Lucy was experiencing serious second-child syndrome and I didn't want her growing up with a picture of her at birth and then one of her at graduation.

Except my inner Yorkshireman prevailed (short arms long pockets) and it appears I bought a camera without a memory card. Gah! Which is why there are no pictures from yesterday's ultra hip surfboard convention. An event that LK thought would be peppered with hot Roxy-clad chicks but was instead absolutely choc-a-block with mouth-wateringly athletic and sun-bleached surfer-boys and I had no camera! I can't apologize enough. That's just what you needed to look at with your cup of coffee and pastry on a drizzly Monday morning I know...

I will be buying a memory card today. Watch out world!

Post-Traumatic Stress

Doesn't it seem that all I write about these days are children or wildfires?

Well, today you're in luck. Today I bring you, children and wildfires. Please don't change the channel.

A lot of people have been asking how Anna has been handling the recent inferno/evacuation debacle, which is a good question. Children have a way of seeming to handle the most ridiculously stressful situations with complete oblivion, and then they regurgitate them at a later date to let you know that a) yes they are psychologically scarred for life and b) bad parent, bad parent, sit!

The first time we were evacuated I tried very, very hard not to mention the fire. It was late evening and the fire was behind the house and not readily visible from our subterranean lair. God knows why she believed we were taking our computer, guinea pig and several suitcases to our friends house to 'watch the Lakers game', but she did. Anna therefore recalls this incident as the time all the lights went out and Mummy started swearing. That's right, she doesn't remember the fire but she does remember the other F word.

The first night of the Jesusita fire we were not directly threatened. In fact we put up evacuees. The local school across the road was used as a helicopter staging ground though, and throughout the night helicopters were taking off and landing about 100 yards away. It was like Vietnam. Every 40 seconds one would thunder overhead. Until suddenly at about 4am it stopped. What, suddenly there's a City ordinance prohibiting mass air traffic from 4am onwards but before that's it fine? Regardless, the girls slept through it all. Happily oblivious to the military operation going on outside.

The next day though, the fire couldn't be missed. As I tore across town to pick up Anna, running in to roadblock after roadblock I was becoming increasingly frantic. The fire was an apocalyptic orange-black cloud covering an increasingly large portion of the sky. I sat in the parking lot of Anna's school for a lifetime (40 seconds approx) trying to put my 'hello birds, hello sky' flight attendant smile on so I wouldn't frighten the kids. Anna may have smelt a rat when she said "Momma I need to find my shoes" and through my perma-smile I cried, "we don't need shoes! let's just go home! no shoes! let's just go home! right now!!"

In the car, shoe-less, the fire looming over us I tried to pacify her with Raffi, but Anna wanted to talk about the smoke plume. Any fears that she may be terrified were quickly allayed when she said "Kyra said that cloud is a storm but I said it is a fire. Fuh-fuh-fire. Fire begins with F and so does frog and fashion and I would like to be a fashion princess when I get home when I get home can I put my princessdressonandcanIwearmysparklyshoesand......" You get the idea. There we were driving in to the eye of the fire storm, sirens wailing all around, me fielding phonecalls about my father-in-law packing up our house and our friend evacuating with Lucy, and Anna? She was planning her evening ensemble.

Several hours later, ash falling like snow all around us, we drove out to the Santa Ynez valley to our friend's vineyard. In a typically petulant 3 year old way she complained that she wanted to go home, she wanted to watch Noggin, she didn't like the valley, etc etc but then she fell asleep. The rest of the four days we were evacuated she had a rare old time, playing with her friend K and taking endless baths with her in the ranch's old Victorian bathtub that was so deep Anna disappeared underwater for a time (according to K, she was underwater for "about 8", but K's grasp of time can sometimes be questionable, case in point when I asked her how long her Spring Break was and she said "like, a really long time, I think 13 years, maybe 10".)

Here's some pictures of Anna enduring her forced wildfire evacuation. Doesn't she look stressed?



































It remains to be seen how much this has affected Anna. I know I flinch every time I hear a siren, and I panic if I see anything orange at a distance. I need advice. I don't know how much to talk this through with her. I'm tempted to take my cues from her, but so far she hasn't mentioned the fire at all, which has to be some kind of denial. I don't want her growing up having panic attacks whenever someone produces a lighter. It would be rather embarrassing if she ducked for cover when we lit her birthday candles.

As for the true victims of the fire. Our tenants came to us yesterday to confess that they believe the violent shaking from the low-flying helicopters has caused their toilet cistern to crack. It boggles the mind.

Grateful

This is the view of the fire behind our friend's house. The friends who were looking after Lucy on the Wednesday afternoon. LK took this picture from Gelson's parking lot after we'd finally been reunited with Lulu. Believe it or not the fire had died down a little at this point as the winds were calming.

This afternoon we went up to LK's Dad's house to help them unpack and to see the damage. The trees at the edge of his property were singed and they are unbelievably lucky to still have their house. This is the view from their back deck:


















































While we were helping them unpack their cars a firetruck drove by with some no doubt very tired firefighters all the way from Orange City, CA - nearly 200 miles away. They parked the truck in front of my father-in-laws house and piled out to help unload the car.






















Then they picked up brooms and started sweeping all the ash from the drive and the deck.

I'm not kidding, look:





















They even offered Anna a tour of the fire engine. She declined the mommy blogger dream photo of her sitting at the steering wheel with a fire helmet on. Apparently she's a little scared of fire engines these days. Can't imagine why. Three wildfires and two evacuations and the kid's not even 4.
























As a paltry thankyou we gave them a bag of (no doubt) smoky fruit from LK's Dad's citrus trees.

"Hi! Thanks for saving our house! Here's a lemon!"

They thanked us and promised to make margaritas with the limes.

Mmm, margaritas with sweaty firemen.

Anyway,

This Mothers Day there are 30,000 grateful Santa Barbarans returning to their homes. That's a third of the population of the town. Basically, if you weren't evacuated you were housing someone who was. Despite the terror, the frantic packing and re-uniting, there was such a wonderful sense of camaraderie that is only rarely seen in this often snooty town. Hotels gave evacuee discounts, people took in strangers or took care of friends children if their parents were stranded. We ourselves had an 86 year old neighbour of our father in law staying with us until we in turn were evacuated - quite what she made of sleeping in Anna's princess bed is another story I'm sure. All over town there are homemade signs on every street thanking the firemen and the police, and I'm certain their money's no good wherever they try to buy food or drink.

On this Mother's Day I'm sure each and every Mum is re-entering their freshly smoked home, so happy to be back and re-united with things they thought they might not see again.

I'm certain a few of them are on their 10th load of laundry having hauled their entire jumbled household contents back inside thinking - some Mother's Day this is. This sucks. I want a rain check.

OK, maybe that's just me.

Evacuation Vacation

Really, I could write a book about this shit. How to pack an entire house of valuables and memories in less than 10 minutes when threatened with evacuation.

Yes, it is just 'stuff', and trust me when I was finally reunited with Lucy in a parking lot on the corner of State and Las Positas yesterday afternoon, flames screaming towards the sky behind us, I didn't need telling what the most important things were. 

However, having been evacuated from our home twice in the last six months (and we pay a premium to live here - are we fucking insane?) I can say that there's stuff and there's stuff. Toothbrush, passports, birth certificates etc are all fine but when you're lying in a friends bed wondering if your house is on fire, that's when you go 'oh crap, I wish I'd packed that photo of my Dad and brother instead of all of Anna's pairs of pink shoes'.

My assistant lost her house in the fires yesterday. When we spoke yesterday afternoon before we both bolted from work she gave me the best piece of advice I've ever received about being evacuated in a hurry:

Pack your laundry basket. Don't stand in front of your wardrobe wasting valuable time looking for that pair of pin-striped work trousers, and that top you always wear them with, which necessitates that bra and those shoes. Get a black bin bag and tip your entire washing basket in there. Those are the clothes you wear all the time and the clothes you will miss the most.

Unfortunately her fiance had to run to get out of his house before it burnt and they lost everything.

Other good advice? Don't drive over the speed limit, on your cell phone, looking at the fire, eyes blinded by tears because the fucking Sheriff has blocked the road to your daughter's preschool and then swear at the police do an exaggerated one-handed u-turn and try and remember a sneaky back roads route to Hollister - because that's exactly what everyone else is doing and you need to pay attention to them because they are surely going to kill you a lot faster than that fire.

Fuh, Fuh, FIRE!

Firstly, a huge hello to all the readers of Julia's site who have accidentally clicked their way over here. Welcome! Feel free to walk around, admire the scenery and I will try and tidy things up a bit around here for you.

Actually, there I was, falling off my computer chair the other day when looking at my stats wondering where the chuff did all these new readers suddenly come from when I am used to only my Mum, my brother and a lovely lady from Missouri popping by and then suddenly hello interweb! It's a bit like coming home and finding 100 people on your couch nattering and having a cup of tea.

So there I was thinking, crikey, I'd better find something a little more entertaining to write about than me trying to cure Lucy's eye infection by squirting breast milk into her eye (you think you're surprised, you should have seen Lucy's face - she was like hey! lady! my mouth's over here!). When suddenly.........

Another wildfire.

Another mandatory evacuation.

So much worse than last time. 

We are camped out miles from home at a friends ranch (it doesn't hurt that it's gorgeous up here). I will post more later about the fire, but I will leave you with the fact that for 2 hours yesterday while the fire raged out of control, traffic snarled in every direction I couldn't get to either Anna or Lucy. That is a special kind of terror.

Tempus Fugit

Anna: Momma! Momma! Momma!
Me: What!
Anna: Momma! Momma! Momma!
Me: WHAT!

.....etc etc

Me: *sigh* Anna if you need something come downstairs please, I'm feeding Lucy
Anna: But Momma, I've been waiting since the dinosaurs.

Diversionary Tactic

Because life is so hectic right now this couldn't have been more timely. Thanks to Laura for the meme. Honestly, just getting out of the door in the morning these days is a military operation......and if I ever do get out of the door on time I shall call that military operation 'Shock and Awe'.


1. What are your current obsessions?
Money. The taste of it. The schmell of it. (Sorry, obscure Austin Powers reference).I am so ashamed to be admitting this, but I devote far too much of my day, and a fair chunk of my sleepless night obsessing about the bottom line. I am constantly re-working our family spreadsheet to find extra money. I have a budget spreadsheet - that pretty much says it all.

I had to laugh at the recent 'Real Simple' magazine article devoted to money saving ideas. Bring it on! I thought there may be useful ideas, and you know what? They had a page devoted to 'you may be overusing shampoo and toothpaste'. Thank God. Financial problems solved! I thought it was our negatively amortizing mortgage that was the root of our economic woes, but no, apparently I've just been using too much shampoo.

Instantly richer.

2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?
Giant bras. When I stop nursing and these things deflate it's going to be one hell of a mess but I'll probably be about 10lbs lighter.

3. Last dream you had?
I'm honestly not sure I clock enough back to back hours these days to achieve REM sleep. I do daydream a lot, which could explain why I managed to reverse over a tricycle at Anna's preschool last week (no child attached - thank God).

4. Last thing you bought?
That would be a tricycle.

5. What are you listening to?
The slightest peep from my sleeping infant, which I will then attempt to ignore for as long as possible.

6. Embarrassed to admit?
I had a Dead Poets Society poster on my wall throughout college.

7. Favourite holiday spots?
Hawaii, preferably Maui or Kuaui. Every time I land at the airport I think, 'why don't we go here all the time, I need to just make it happen.' Having said that, let me take another look at that spreadsheet....

8. Reading right now?
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I bought it years ago at a John Singer Sargent exhibition in LA and it has been sitting accusingly on my shelf ever since. Now it's a case of 'I've started so I'll finish'. I can see the genius, it's just too ambitious for a sleep-deprived Mum who can only snatch 5 minutes of reading time at a go. I need to be reading a mentally un-threatening Jilly Cooper instead I think.

9. Four words to describe yourself.
Not good at this.

10. Guilty pleasure?
Hello magazine.

11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak?
Right now, 30 Rock.

12. Favourite spring thing to do?
Eat Cadbury's mini eggs and if I'm lucky go and visit the daffodils in England.

13. Planning to travel to next?
Boston, Maine, then on to the UK. Apologies to all who will join us and our two tiny children on those planes.....

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately?
Today's lunch: artichoke and sundried tomato stuffed chicken with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. Actually, maybe I should change 'guilty pleasure' to drug company sponsored lunches. Your prescriptions cost a fortune for a reason. *burp*

15. When did you last get tipsy?
Although I'm not averse to the odd drink (a night...) while breastfeeding, being woken up at 2:30am, 4am and 6am with a hangover means I haven't dared get plastered in far too long.

Ok, honestly? A week ago. And the hangover was hell.

16. Favourite ever film?
Withnail and I. Definitely the most quotable film of all time, case in point; "We demand the finest wines known to humanity" or "there must and shall be aspirin" or "we're making time" or.....sorry.

17. Care to share some wisdom?
Always know where the candles are, otherwise your 3 year old will be forever quoting 'FUCK! The lights!".

18. Song you can't get out of your head?
I need a Raffi lobotomy.

19. Thing you are looking forward to?
Introducing Lulu to my family in July. Lucy sleeping through the night and LK and I finally sharing the same bed.

Rules of the meme. Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag 8 people.

I'll get to the tagging part in a bit, just as soon as I rustle up 8 people I know.

That might take a while.

Pity The Blind and Dyslexic

....and not for the obvious reasons. The other night our book club (well all two of us) volunteered to be recorded at Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic. I was so excited to try this, and not least because it got me out of the house, childless. After all, if you consider a blog self-indulgent then you can imagine how happy I was to have my voice recorded for posterity! Everyone's a winner.

I actually had a blast, but for all the wrong reasons. Driving there I imagined myself reading a chapter of the latest NY Times bestseller, or cosying in with a well-thumbed Maeve Binchy. I figured that would probably be our audience, fluffy-haired myopic old ladies wanting a good yarn. At first glance, everything confirmed my preconceptions. The place was comfortably shabby in that North of England Methodist Hall kind of way. A huge urn of acrid coffee, mismatched mugs and peeling 'see how much we haven't raised' thermometer posters. I was instantly at home. It occurred to me that fundraising in the hallowed Hollywood playground of Santa Barbara usually involves fine wines, seared Ahi canapes and a silent auction of 2 weeks in a private villa in Capri. This brought me right back to the jumble sales of old. I was in the right place.

Then an implausibly snowy-haired and snaggle-toothed man (hello Britain!) showed us to the wall of books we could choose to read from. I scanned for my Maeve. Nothing. Not even an errant Bill Bryson. It was quickly explained to me that the real users of the facility were dyslexic children who needed textbooks recording.

Crest *falling*.

(as an aside, isn't it rather cruel and unusual punishment to be both dyslexic and have the name of your syndrome be so bloody hard to spell?)

Anyway, there had been rumours that a TC Boyle novel was in the mix earlier that morning, but that TC Boyle himself had snapped that one up. Cheater. Ignoring the textbooks entirely (sorry children!) I weighed my options between a self help manual, because of course, this was America, and a Julian Barnes novel. I picked up 'Nothing to be Frightened Of'. I've actually read several of Barne's novels and while not my usual cup of institutional tea I was willing to have a stab, until the remarkably spritely white-haired man in charge appeared behind my shoulder and whispered 'it's about death!'.

What, and I'm too blonde?

So I panicked and picked a book with a woman on the cover who looked like me. A moron.

And that's how I ended up in a sound booth giving a play-by-play of the 2007 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

I'd picked Diary of a She-Fan, and Lord almighty pick a novel next time you muppet. I'm not a big baseball fan - fortunately I'd heard of Derek Jeter, and I've been to enough baseball games (*two*) to recognize the terms 'innings', 'outs', 'bottom of the ninth' and 'hotdog' etc etc. The players names? Lord have mercy. There I was, manfully ploughing my way through the batting list and the names just got more and more comic. Dear SB Blind and Dyslexic baseball fans. I'm sorry. There are no words. Well, actually there are, lots and lots of words and most of them are like 'Mientkiewicz'. That's right! And if you think that's bad, imagine when I got to the end of the chapter and had to describe in full detail every column of each Major League Baseball Teams batting average statistics for the year.

Next time I'm picking the organic chemistry textbook for a little light reading.

Things I'd Forgotten About Newborns

In the later stages of a second pregnancy you have a faint recollection of the lack of sleep, of the bodily fluids leaking from every orifice (the baby's not yours - well, yes yours too if I'm being honest), and when you pull that breast pump down from the loft you remember the joy of sitting in your office praying no-one will walk in on you doing your Daisy the cow impression.

Babies are like crack. You know they're no good for you but you just can't stay away.

Even in the space of only three years there are some things I'd forgotten about infants, and if you're pregnant right now, they're not all bad trust me:

• Firstly, they smell so good. Yes I know you think you remember this but you don't. I can't stop sniffing her head. When did Anna's head stopped smelling this good? Somehow it's morphed in to a preschooler head smelling of dirt, grass and if I'm lucky watermelon shampoo. Lucy's head must be pure pheromones because it is a smell that provokes a fundamental biological need to protect and nurture. And trust me, neither of those two are my forté. Which is why I keep sniffing her head.

• Newborns are noisy. You might remember the cooing, chirruping and maybe a bit of squeaking, but I'd forgotten the grunting. Honestly, the noises that can come out of that girl while she's still asleep are astounding - sometimes she can sound like a fifty year old Scotsman on the toilet.
  

• How lovely nursing is. I'll admit it can be inconvenient when you're in the middle of something, such as screaming through traffic whilst late for an appointment, and you can't whip out a boob like a bottle from the front seat and feed her in the backseat (actually, a few more months of nursing may leave my boobs capable of achieving this feat) but it's so wonderful to be able to sit down, cradle your baby and make them blissfully happy. When I get ready to nurse Lucy and put her on her side she actually laughs at the thought of what's coming next. Sometimes mid-boobing she'll look up, my nipple clamped in her gummy mouth and grin at me, her eyes communicating the infant equivalent of 'we are having SO much fun'. It is indescribable to be able to make them absolutely, perfectly content. For the last time in their lives. I need a photo of her when she's finally sated, with just enough energy to pull off the boob, a trickle of overflow running down her milk-coma face. I'd like that photo, except it always has my giant zeppelin breast in shot, so it's not for public viewing, sorry.

• On the same topic, I'd forgotten how their schedule is your schedule. With Anna being 3 we'd achieved that blissful stage of quasi-self sufficiency. No more diaper bag, no 'I can't meet you at 10am she's about to nap'. Freedom. Newborns are tiny Nazis. When they need something they need it yesterday. They're never a little peckish, they are ravenous and why aren't I eating, wail, wail, wail. Your only coping mechanism is to skilfully anticipate their needs - case in point when I drop Lucy off at Jen's house in the morning and tell her "she's either going to want to eat..... or sleep .....or maybe wake up, or she could be pooping. I really haven't the slightest idea." Thanks! That's skilful parenting. I'd honestly forgotten how tricky it is to be so tied to their schedule. You can't be somewhere at 3pm, you'll be there after they've finished eating, or after you've cleaned up that explosive poop. I used to hate people who said 'you should sleep when they sleep' because after all, aren't babies supposed to be adapting to your schedule rather than you to theirs? But no, they rule with a rod of iron and you will cave to their demands.

• How heavy that infant car seat is and how your black and blue shins make you look like you've been having frenzied sex on the carpet night after night when in actual fact you've just been banging that damn car seat in to your legs each time you leave the house.

• and finally, and most critically, the buck stops with you if you have boobs. Yes babies can drink formula or re-heated breast milk from a bottle, but if you have the boobs any person holding the baby who is tired of holding the baby will say 'I think she just needs feeding'. Sometimes they will hunt you down just to say this. I spend a great deal of time hiding under furniture while LK paces around the house trying to find me.

Case in point right now (she wrote, whilst typing r-e-a-l-l-y- quietly).

Our Survey Says....

It's a camel.

Something you could have found out if, like my Mum, you double-clicked on the picture to get a better look and saw it described as 'camel.jpg'. Genius alert.

The reason I posted it, is honestly not because it looks like a giant hairy appendage, it's because as she sat back on her heels to survey the finished masterpiece, she frowned, rooted around for a grey felt tip pen and with painstaking precision added a dot in the middle of the picture:

















Then she turned to me and with complete seriousness said:

"I added an eye so that you should know it's a camel"

Oh. Of course.

I loved all of your comments. Thankyou, and huge props to Laura for guessing right first time that it was a camel. You must have noticed its eye.

The Girl's Got Talent

Any guesses as to what this could be?

Remember, when you say the wrong thing a 3 year-old's artistic dreams will be crushed for ever.

I'll put you all out of your misery in a little while.....

Easter - by Anna

Anna, the night before Easter -

"I know a lot about bunnies. I'm problee the world expert on bunnies. I know that bunnies like quiet. So if I hear some noise tonight I will go downstairs and say EASTER BUNNY! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM"
























Easter Sunday - after finding lots of chocolate and having mellowed rather in her opinion of the Easter bunny she said:

"Oh, he is darling".

I don't know where she gets it from. Honestly. She's an absolute nutter.

Lucy

Lucy turned three months old this week and I went back to work.

There's no point dwelling on how awful it is to be away from her. It is what it is. It's like when people ask how you manage to get out of the door in the morning with two small children. You just do it because there's no alternative. Having said that, picking her up at the end of the day is like Christmas, and I am so happy that my friend Jen is able to look after her right now so I can't really complain even if I wanted to. Even though she's still so tiny, and still breastfeeding, and probably still needs her Mum, and in any other country this would be considered unnatural, and, good Lord stop it.

So no, not quite over the separation thing yet.

Rather than talk about the sadness, I'll choose to write about the good stuff. I'm aware that I haven't written much about Lucy. Quite frankly, it's a little hard to when Anna tosses 3 year-old gem after gem your way, each one better than the last (this morning she said "*sigh* the chuffing gardeners have left the sprinklers on again"), where she got that from I have no idea.

Lucy is lovely. I'm completely head over heels. She has two types of smile, a tentative half-smile and an explosive grin so large it takes over her entire body so she flails her arms and legs with the joy of it.

I loved my maternity leave, particularly the three days a week when Anna was in school and I could devote all my time to blogging, er, I mean bonding. With Anna I felt so pressured to educate my tiny fleshy blob. I would dangle plastic keys in front of her and recite 'this is a RED key, this is a BLUE key, this is a YELLOW key' while she quietly emptied her bowels. This time I embraced Lucy's pupae stage. We snuggled. I sniffed her head and nibbled her toes. I blew bubbles at her and tried to remember not to balance my cup of tea on her head whilst engrossed in 30 Rock. This time round there was no moving house, no anxiety about dealing with an infant, no horrendous rending of flesh during the birth, no living in a partially renovated apartment with open sewer lines and piles of boxes everywhere. This time seemed like a piece of cake and I loved every minute of it. Our time together was a gift. Thanks Mum and Dad.

Lucy and I took long walks all over town in an effort to rid myself of the eleventy billion pounds I seemed to retain after her birth. I enjoyed the sunshine and she would sleep in the stroller or wake up and quietly watch the world go by. People would dash over to say hello and look at the baby and Lucy would respond with a spit bubble or a fart, however the mood struck her. I only ever had to stop once because she was crying, and even then after a quick boobing she soon shut up. She is such a brilliant walking companion. Anna would scream after about 10 minutes (fair play to her, she was probably hungry, wet, tired or upside down - I hadn't exactly perfected my parenting skills at that point), and later on Anna would not. stop. talking., asking why Santa Barbara didn't have any monkeys, or whose mailbox is that Momma? and whose mailbox is that Momma? and whose mailbox is that Momma? Lucy just smiles and I turn up my iPod to maximum volume and continue my Motown shuffle up to the Mission.

She is already so tall and strong. In the 97th percentile for height, but only the 50th percentile for head circumference which would lead me to believe California's in for another leggy dumb blonde. Except she looks smart, and by that I don't mean she's pig ugly. She is so alert, constantly watching. With the peculiar tufts either side of her head and her unblinking eyes she reminds me of a little short-eared owl. In a pink onesie. And that's another thing. With Anna we chose not to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Consequently all but two or three of her first six months of outfits were gender neutral. Ducks or frogs. I sometimes wonder if Anna's princess obsession is a bizarre reaction to too many yellow baby-gros. Lucy on the other hand, there is not a hue of pink unrepresented in her wardrobe. She has some white clothes, but they will be turning pink soon as I'm pretty rubbish at laundry. I wonder if she'll grow up to be a tomboy as a result. She reserves her biggest smiles and limb-flailings for bathtime and I caught LK whispering in her ear the other day 'are you going to be my surfer?' (when Anna gets her face wet she screams 'I NEED THE BIG TOWEL').

Lucy is lovely and we are lucky. Yes she finds sleeping a bore, farts like a Yorkshireman and likes to puke on my work clothes, but we're counting our blessings. Which is why this quote made me laugh:

From 'Things I Learned About My Dad (In Therapy)' a brilliant book of blogger essays edited by the inimitable Dooce, and given to me by my friend Fussy who authored one of the chapters.

"No-one ever says, "My first baby was an angel, and the second one was even better!"
Kevin Guilfoile

That made me laugh out loud, and then cross my fingers, because baby you seem too good to be true.

Love, Mum

Knickers!

Our house is overrun with small plastic animals and princess paraphernalia. It's as if My Little Petshop vomited over every room. Every day Anna takes all of her stuffed animals out of her room and all of her dresses from her closet and 'makes princesses'. It's not easy to stuff a seal in to a sundress let me tell you. However, this game usually occupies her for 30 minutes at a time and I will gladly deal with a partially-clothed princess-strewn room if it's given me a bit of peace and quiet earlier in the day. The issue is tidying up afterwards. Now I have glanced at enough parenting websites and taken enough triceratops to the instep to know that if I:

a) want to avoid throwing myself out of the window in despair I should

b) involve Anna in the process of tidying up.

You will read that 3 year-olds live to be given tasks and to feel useful. Unless they're completely wise to you and then your suggestions of cleaning up that jigsaw puzzle are met with 'no Mummy, you do it, you're so much better at it than me'. My withering reply of 'that's because of the practice, Anna' falls on deaf ears.


















I may be bloodied but I am not beaten and I am constantly trying to 'encourage' Anna to help around the house. And quite frankly, this maternity leave is killing me because spending too much time in our home is really opening my eyes to what a tip it is. It's so much easier to come home after a long day of work and be blinkered by exhaustion as to the state of the living room. Not so when you're sitting hour after hour nursing, staring at that tangle of VCR wires in the corner, or that parakeet bobblehead that's been collecting dust under the couch for three months. Solution to a dirty house - don't spend any time there!

There I was, faced with another mountain of washing and rather than head swiftly to the cocktail cabinet I decided to 'engage' Anna in the 'fun' of laundry. I explained that we have to separate clothes so that the colours don't run. I showed her how to make a pile of whites, darks and pinks (such is my life). Impressed by the novelty and unable to resist the genetic impulse to organize she set to work.

In no time we had a pile of whites, darks, pinks and knickers. Lots and lots of knickers. She had really taken the ball and run with it and no doubt disappointed by the comparative smallness of the knicker pile, had decided to add all her clean underwear as well. What these parenting websites don't tell you is that trying to involve a preschooler in any kind of productive activity inevitably produces more work, and in this case more laundry as there was no way I was going to sniff-test for freshness each pair of Dora knickers.

Knicker battle #1 fought and lost.

Then her knickers disappeared entirely. All of them. Not in her drawer, not in the laundry basket, not in a secret knicker stash - nowhere. I couldn't find any trace of them. I even checked to see if we had a cross-dressing guinea pig. Anna seemed as surprised as I was, suggesting that perhaps someone had 'borrowed' them. I renewed my search desperate to find a solution to Anna going to school in the morning clad in a Nemo swim diaper.

It was only after a full day of searching, and I started my routine de-princessing that I discovered this:





















....and all because I'd once told her that Princesses always wear knickers...

Like Water For Chocolate

Oh, now I get it.

I'm not the world's best cook. It may even be stretching the point to use the word 'cook'. However, this is my last week of maternity leave, and dammit, I've been attempting to 'parent'.

I had a half-remembered childhood memory of edible Easter nests made with shredded wheat and chocolate. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, how hard can it be to;

a) crumble shredded wheat in bowl,

b) melt chocolate,

c) mix shredded wheat and chocolate to form nests.


What a great mother-daughter project! Instant happy childhood memories!

I even sort of remembered that you should melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Not having one to hand though, I decided to wing it. While Anna steadily ate her way through square after square of Cadbury's chocolate I set about boiling some water. I floated a dish in a pan (so far so good!) and put the chocolate inside. Genius! Except when I tried to stir the chocolate the dish tipped ever so slightly and the smallest amount of water mixed with the chocolate where it turned in to instant crap. Of course, I didn't realise what had happened and thought, hmm, it's taking an awfully long time for this chocolate to melt. Maybe I'll just turn the heat up a bit. After five more minutes of chocolate death I did what all self-respecting chefs do, which is swear profusely (sorry Anna) and dash upstairs to google 'my chocolate won't melt *sob* and all I'm trying to do is create memories for my child and the only thing she's taking away from this is a sugar high and the words jesus fucking christ how the fuck can chocolate not melt when it's 110 fucking degrees'. That search amazingly turns up all manner of articles.

Apparently even the slightest hint of water will make your chocolate wither and die. Like water for chocolate. *Oh*. Who knew chocolate was so temperamental? I did find a few 'post chocolate-death rescue ideas' on google but they mostly involved controlled temperatures, vegetable shortening (WTF?) and cookery skills, and as I was making these nests for a class of 3 year olds I decided a fresh attempt with new chocolate rather than possibly killing them all with random cupboard items was best. "Well Mrs B. I'm sorry the chocolate nests turned out a little strange, but I tried to rescue my buggered chocolate with vegetable shortening, but as I didn't have any of that I just used miniature carrots instead...."

Alarmed by the nuclear mushroom cloud above my head, LK fled to the shops for more chocolate. I had a cup of tea and prepared for round two. Which worked.

More effortless perfection from the kitchen of AliBlahBlah.....

Us vs. Them: Driving

I love driving in California. Yes we have six lanes of freeway traffic, unbelievable congestion and people driving without licences or insurance, but that's preferable to driving in the UK any day.

It's hands down easier to drive over here and these are just some of the reasons:

• For a start the roads were built after the invention of motor vehicles so there's no inching down medieval streets or narrow country lanes praying that you don't meet an SUV coming the other way.
  

• In Santa Barbara I've never felt the pressure to overtake a tractor on a blind corner because I have sixteen irate Ford Mondeo drivers behind me wishing I had the balls to just make a move.
  

• Over here it rains about five times a year, and granted you do get floods, raging torrents of water flying down State Street, but I'll take that over driving in snow, black ice or a heavy fog.
  

• Cars start here. There's no early morning WD40, no rust, no cold engines. I used to look at some of the steep driveways in SB and think 'however do they get their cars up there in winter'. Not a problem. (I'm not the brightest bulb sometimes).
  

• 99% of the cars here are automatics, there's no stalling, no hill-starts, parallel parking on a slope is a breeze. My driving skills may be atrophying here due to lack of a challenge, but I don't care!

• Roads are built on a grid system making getting lost relatively impossible (although even geography graduates have been known to fuck up occasionally...).
  

There are a couple of exceptions that prove the rule though:

• Firstly, we have smog tests here but no MOT. If you're in a car that's not obviously impeding traffic, whatever the dangers lurking beneath the hood, then it's considered roadworthy. That coupled with the fact that cars don't rust means you have the worst selection of cars driving around. Accidents waiting to happen. Old VW wagons shuddering on to the freeway at 12 miles an hour, tires more threadbare than our bank accounts, brakes so spongy they make my stomach seem like a six-pack. I should know. We used to drive a battered VW Rabbit (a Golf for those in the UK). One day I was cruising down a steep hill to a traffic light at the bottom. A heavy marine layer had left the road if not wet then moist. I hit the brakes. Nothing. The lights at the bottom of the hill turned red. I frantically pumped the brakes and slowed perhaps 2mph. I was still hitting the brakes as I careened across the intersection miraculously avoiding traffic. That same car's clutch cable snapped on the freeway a few months later leaving me trying to slow down but unable to change gears. All of which would be caught by an MOT, oh, perhaps seven years prior.

• The most glaring difference between driving in the UK and here though is the freeway on-ramps and off-ramps. In the UK you'd better be paying attention to your exit, because if you miss it the next one is Sheffield, 30 miles away. This can leave a car full of nervous passengers if the driver has a short fuse let me tell you. Over here, exits come by the street, not the town. They are everywhere. Convenient, yes. Practical, not so much. Sometimes in their enthusiasm to have as many on- and off-ramps as possible they combine the two. Case in point the one particular off-ramp in SB that I navigate every day. It's also an on-ramp. That's right, cars merging on to the freeway combine with cars using the off-ramp as a regular street, combine with cars moving off the freeway. It's high-octane hell. As if that weren't bad enough, it's the only freeway exit to the City's main hospital. This leaves you driving past watching for cars merging on to the freeway, or exiting the freeway, or driving along the on-ramp having no intention of getting on the motorway, many of whom are driving sick loved ones to the hospital and aren't exactly paying the best of attention in the first place. Bonkers. Then there are the on-ramps in Montecito that are approximately 15 yards long giving a Formula One car racing start a run for its money, or my personal favourite the on-ramp that enters onto the fast lane of the freeway. Try navigating that one in a car that does 0-60 in five minutes.
  

• That's it though, my pet peeves of Southern California driving (well that and people NEVER using their turn signals/indicators over here). Am I supposed to read your mind dear? From the look on your face even you can't decipher what's going on in there.

Despite this, it's still, so, so much easier to drive over here. Not an errant sheep in sight. No sideways sleet, 14th century bridges, or hill-starts.

I do hate stop signs though.

No Smiling I'm Half British

Lucy is now a whopping 10 weeks old, and you know what that means in the K household?

Passports!

Here's Lucy's picture, and below that Anna's, also taken at 10 weeks.















































What do you think? Sisters?

I think they look very alike, except Anna was a cheery old soul with a rounder face and a too-cute-to-be-true hair tuft and Lucy has the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders and has perfected her new-world-order economic-meltdown look of gloom.

As it happens I also have to renew my passport, which you can do out of the country if you can pony up one hundred million dollars and lure a current British passport holder to counter-sign your application. Amazingly I am able to do just that (well, the second half anyway) due to a freak birthing of my friend Mooks in England while her parents were studying Shakespeare in Stratford. I knew I liked her.

So there we were in Sears, Lucy frowning in to the camera perfecting her superior British scowl, apparently unaware she was posing for her American passport and cheerfulness was allowed. I gave my hair a cursory finger-comb, tried to look British and OH. MY. GOD. the chins, the eye-bags, the lank unstyled hair. Don't get your passport photo taken two months after you've had a baby.

Is it vanity to think your passport photo is so bad you want to rush to another photographer and have it retaken? Well yes of course it is, but bloody hell I'd even slapped a bit of lippy on, but obviously to no avail. I will grant you than any photo of me wearing white, against a white background leaves me looking pale at best and bizarrely suspended nostrils and eyelashes at worst but damn.

It isn't helped by the fact that my last passport photo is really rather good. So good that several INS workers have looked at it, looked at me, and concluded that either we're different people or that that was one hell of a bad flight.

You could think positively on the situation and conclude that, well, your age 35 photo is really shitty, but in 10 years time if you have a good photo taken then you'll actually look better than your 35 year old self. I couldn't look worse surely. However, I know what it's like to live with a shockingly bad passport photo.........

When I was sixteen my family were driving down to Harwich? to catch the ferry over to Belgium to spend Christmas with my Aunty and Uncle. It was a Saturday, the day before Christmas Eve. I think it was an overnight ferry and it was pretty late in the day as we were nearing the coast. That's when I casually asked my Dad - "since I'm 16 now don't I have to have my own passport?"

*Crickets*

The answer of course was, yes. The reality was, no, I did not have my own passport.

To cut a long story shockingly full of expletives short, we filled in some emergency passport forms, and I had my photo taken in a crappy WWII throwover photo booth. I think we boarded the ferry with an idea that we could certainly be able to leave the UK, but there were no guarantees I would be able to get back. From Belgium. I thought that was bad. Then I saw the photo.

This is the picture I carried with me as my only form of ID in the States for many years.....




























There's really no excuse for any of it. All I can say is, from the looks of that jumper, thank God it's a black and white photo.

Fast forward 10 years and we have this ethereal photo. As I said, pupils, nostrils and not much else.
























Quite a transformation from 16 to 25 don't you think? As a bouncer in SB said when reviewing my passport as ID 'hon, you've grown in to yourself well'. Well the degeneration from 25 to 35 is no less dramatic, and that's why I'm going back to get my photos retaken this afternoon.

Why Sisters Don't Babysit

Honestly, you leave the room for 2 minutes and someone 'decorates' your baby....

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Lyrics

At the beginning of the year we moved Anna to a new preschool. We (well, I) agonized over the decision, wondering if switching schools coinciding with adding a sibling would blow Anna's conscious world to smithereens.

Her old school used to be brilliant, we were absolutely thrilled to get her in there. No mean feat in this town. Then they expanded and suddenly her cute, artsy little school became a heaving morass of screaming toddlerdom.

Anna has never been particularly rambunctious, and she's definitely a follower not a leader. The sudden transition last year to a larger more impersonal school really shook her. We know that now. Suddenly six months after being potty trained she started having 'accidents' and crying at drop-off. Being pregnant, overworked and quite frankly oblivious to some pretty glaring signs of unhappiness I was clueless for a long time. I work long days and was dropping her off early when there were only a few other kids at the school, and picking her up late when she was one of the few remaining kids. It kills me that for so long I had no idea what a zoo the place had become.

Finally a friend of mine looking for preschools for her own daughter, visited Anna's school upon my recommendation and gently explained that Lord of the Flies wasn't exactly what she was hoping for at a billion dollars a month tuition. LK visited in the middle of the day after that and was pretty shocked. Anna was not an attention seeker, not a trouble maker, and consequently was being left to her own devices. She had been having accidents because as she explained later, she couldn't find a teacher to help her with her clothes.

Ouch.

Being a parent means assuming all sorts of guilt, and I feel terrible about what Anna had been going through. It took my friend and then another parent of one of Anna's friends to wake me up to what was going on. My drop-off and pick-up had taken all of 5 minutes each day, I was on a 'hello only' basis with all but one of the parents. I had written most of them off as unapproachable SB Bugaboo Moms. A little extra time, and a little extra effort to get to know the other parents might have clued me in faster. It was a stark lesson that I needed to get that insecure 'I'm not worthy' chip off my shoulder in front of terrifyingly wealthy and confident SB parents, for Anna's sake.

So, in January, just a few days before the tectonic shift of her sister's arrival, Anna started at her new school. It's a brand new place run by a favourite teacher from her former school. It's small, funky, laid back and friendly and we both love it. Her best friends from her old school also made the transition and Anna has blossomed in to a chatty (oh Lord!), confident girl who gives barely a backward glance at drop off. When she first started she would say every day in the car ride over there 'they will be so pleased to see me!' with the unconscious self-assurance of a happy child.

*Sigh*

I try and remind myself of that fact now that the commute to her preschool is 20 minutes not 5. Oh well.

I agonize over even the simplest of decisions, particularly those relating to my daughters, but this I think was a good one. Underscored by this little gem from a couple of days ago.

Anna (from the backseat whilst driving back from school): "We sang a new song today!"
Me: "Brilliant! Let's hear it!"
Anna: "Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant."
*pause*.
"Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant."
*pause*
Me: "but if you try sometimes, you get what you need?"
Anna: "No Momma! I'm singing..."
Anna (starting again): Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. Oh you can't alway get what you wa-ant.

This continues for another 3 freeway exits, I'm practically crying with laughter wondering how you unstick a record if the record is your child when we finally fit the off-ramp, jolting my little Rolling Stone to say:

Anna: "Oh you can't always get what you wa-ant. But if you try sometimes you might get what you, oh Momma look! Purple and white flowers can I have some?"

That's an education worth paying for.

British Slang vs American Slang

Anna is very verbal and has always been able to express herself very clearly. I am thrilled that she shows little of the debilitating shyness I experienced as a child, even if it is at the expense of a little modesty on her part. Going out on a limb it seems that American children are much more self-confident and vocal than their British counterparts. Or maybe times have changed and I'm talking out of my arse. I certainly don't mean to suggest that the old 'children should be seen and not heard' culture still exists in the UK, but it does seem that American kids are more encouraged to voice their opinions. They are not backwards in coming forwards. Again, it comes down to the idea that freedom of speech seems to result in Americans feeling that they have to share their thoughts all the time.

What I'm struggling with, still, is not what she has to say, but how she chooses to say it. I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that my little cuckoo won't have a British accent, unless we move back in the very near future. I will try my best to avoid her having that peculiarly nasal whine that a lot of Californian women have, 'Sanna Barrbrah!'. Sorry. King Canute might have a better chance. What I'm still finding it hard to deal with, what I struggle with myself, is that it's not how you pronounce a word, it's what words are being used. What grates more than her accent is her phrases, her word choices. And quite honestly mine too. I find myself wondering what I used to say before I started every sentence with 'like', or when precisely I started using 'mad' instead of 'cross'. I used to have to translate myself to be understood, then the translation became automatic and suddenly I can't remember what I made the translation from anyway.

I'm going to sound like the complete snob that I am when I write that it bothers me to hear Anna talk Californian slang all the time. I wonder if she's going to be at school writing 'dude, it was such a bummer that the weekend was totally fogged out and we like had to hang indoors for like, ever'. Is it worth fighting? Is it the equivalent of a New York parent moving to the South and hating their kids say 'y'all', or kids from the north of England moving to London and suddenly ending every sentence with 'yeah'???

Re-reading this I sound as if I'm about a hundred years old. How much does it matter these days anyway? I'm not suggesting I want a precocious 3 year old parroting her pretentious parents by saying 'mother, the weather this weekend was so utterly abhorrent we were completely unable to go outside'. Some middle ground would be lovely (how English of me). In some ways it's just as startlingly odd to hear a small child use grown up words such as 'perplexed' and 'ravenous'. As much as I hate hearing her saying 'bummer!' (my pet peeve) I have to conclude that it's just my inherent snobbery. After all, I'd be so much happier hearing Anna use British slang and admit to being 'bloody knackered' instead of 'wiped out'.

I am trying to get her to replace 'bummer' with 'bollocks' though.