Escape from USA; starring Bridgjo

So it was bridgjo's turn to get across to Blighty at the week-end. It was fortunate, in a way, that we are almost royal in the way we'd decided to travel separately, as it made his journey less difficult than it may well have been.

He arrived at the airport on Friday and was told that his flight was cancelled as snow-bound Amsterdam was closed, but, no worries, he could travel the next day via Atlanta/Schipol/Teesside.

So the next day, he optimistically set off, and had got as far as Atlanta when he was told that Schipol was closed (as they were refusing passengers other than those who were not going on a connecting flight (ie Dutch people only, presumably)), but he could get to Teesside (possibley) on the 23rd.

He'd naturally checked all his bags through and was stuck in an airport which was rapidly becoming a little bit truculent.

He tried (with alternating success) to persuade them that he was quite happy just to go to Amsterdam, thinking maybe he could get a ferry across, or, maybe, by this time, fashion a small dirigible out of discarded drinks bottles. But although one desk said yes, another said no, and yet another said "Have you tried this airport cheese?", he had no luck.

Luckily, due to his Northern grace and charm, he managed to get on a stand-by flight to Manchester.

All around him though, people were in tears, starting to lose their tempers (and in one case, losing their passport).

He then had to rugby-tackle a few old people out of the way when the stand-by list was opened, and finally managed to get himself a seat.

By the time he got to Manchester, he phoned me up at my parents in Stoke and insisted, quite manfully, we met him there. I felt quite giddy.

It was a surprisingly rubbish trip up by train. Although we had first class tickets (this was so I'd be surrounded by a better class of people when I travelled up by myself with T), it was basically second class with a the 2 crossed out in biro and a 1 written in. I am never too impressed when I have to clean the toilets myself before use. Furthermore (FURTHERMORE!) there is only one first class lounge at Manchester Piccadilly...and it belongs to Virgin which refused us "cheap-seat Trans-Penine losers" entrance. Luckily, I had yummy-mummy-made Christmas cake and water which I had knicked from the lounge in Stoke, so the journey just flew by.

By the time bridgjo got to his home, and he was seated, washed, fed and clothed in his dad's pants, he gave a audible sigh of relief.

No sign of his suitcase, though it might even make it before we leave. In case you ever need to know, it is actually quite possible to go on holiday with the clothes you stand up in (as long as those clothes include two pairs of knickers). Even Whitby sells socks.

Hats off to Delta for getting us all here though, and struggling to get our bags to us. They deserve a mince-pie.

It is the coldest I have ever experienced in Whitby without there being an enormous Easterly gale of the variety which causes locals to mutter "Yes, it's 32 degrees centigrade, but it's minus 6 wind-chill". It's been minus 11, which caused my chilblains, which haven't been around since I was a student and going to night-clubs in high-heels, to wake-up and say "Ey-up".

The next-door neighbour came round quite early on asking for hot water to unfreeze the out-door toilet as he has a burst pipe, and needs to find out where it is (suspecting it's somewhere under the concrete floor there). So he's had to turn his water off.

Hilariously, the gas men came round to the street outside to check on a gas-leak, didn't tell anybody, and turned it off and on. Unfortunately, Marnie's boiler is teenager-like and has buggered off to its room to sulk...so we have no heating as it refuses to come out and turn on.

No mince-pie then for British Gas.

Where's the Christmas Pot Noodle?

The traditional day-out on my arrival in Stoke is to go to the local Tesco's and to stand around like a refugee in front of the twenty-seven varieties of crisps.

The journey here was not quite so enjoyable. We had an extraordinarily rabid snow-storm on the Saturday. When English people say "And it was 2 feet deep, and minus 30 degrees", they tend to be exaggerating. This was actually IT. In spite of this, the snow-ploughs still managed to come out about three times even in our 2 house cul-de-sac. So off we trotted to the airport, having checked the Internet just before leaving. I breathed a sigh of relief when we arrived, as it seemed truly hazardous and I didn't fancy the trip back (I helped by pressing the brake-pedal from my side of the car all the way).

It took us however, an hour, rather than 10 minutes, and five minutes after the bags were checked in, the airport was closed. This is very unusual indeed, and means that the snow we were experiencing was a tad more than they get at Manchester. This meant of course, that we had to drive all the way back home.....where we discovered the heating had broken down.

We went to bed early and talked about the necessity of eating each other the next morning if one of us made it.

Delta was lovely and booked us on the same flight the following day and promised our bags would be waiting for us (hah!).

T and I were flying by ourselves, and were very happy indeed to discover we were going to get 4 seats in a row. It's the small things, as shortly afterwards T decided to mark each passing 20 mins for 7 hours by throwing up. At least I didn't have to apologise to anyone about leaky sick-bags and misfires.

And, no, the bags weren't there, but this had the advantage that I didn't have to cart anything about. Unfortunately, T's penicillin was in there, and, of course, all the knickers. So, on the way home we had to nip to the doctor's for a prescription (which they actually did without seeing her!), and then off to Tesco's for an Emergency Knicker Run. Delta, who are, quite frankly, ace, have said they'll reimburse us.

Today we went to Gladstone Pottery just so that I could show T where I used to spend Saturday mornings when I was 10. I think she thinks I helped out the sagger-maker's bottom-knocker (that happened much later on....), but still had great fun making a china rose, throwing a bowl and painting a hedge-hog. Reckoned I should show her her heritage before the last of the factories closed (unless they have done already).

Tomorrow we shall see monkeys.

'Tis the season to pack emergency chocolate

The long-term weather forecast is always a little bit hit-and-miss here. Last week it was to be sunny on Saturday, then windy, then over-cast, and by yesterday an unseasonable flurry of wildebeest falling over the NW Metropolitan area was expected. Now they are saying 100% snowy precipitation just roundabout the time we're planning to take off. As Amsterdam and Manchester are in much of the same boat (although without the wildebeest), I personally forecast an eventful journey full of Bach's Flower Remedy, Christmas cake and Whale music piped through MP3 players. My hand-luggage will contain an abundance of food, a blanket and spare thermals.

This last week has been hectic with last-minute preparations, particularly as we'll be meeting bridgjo later on in the holiday up in Whitby. This means I actually have to be On the Ball (and not running off to hide in the airport coffee shop).

I've been also trying sort out speech therapy for T. She was a paper waiting to be written, when she never babbled as a bairn, and then only started talking when she was about two-and-a-half. Now, naturally, there are a few sounds she has difficulty with, namely "s" and "th". We have to make appointments for a Speech Therapist for her now, as leaving it too late would result in her having to make the phone-call herself, and then irony would ensue. She also has developed just the one sound which is obviously American - '-ar'. As she normally talks with an English accent, it's then rather alarming to be faced with a seven year-old yelling "Come on! Get into the car!"; she sounds like a rather irate, small pirate.

Alas sorting out the threrapy is tricky due to complex insurance issues. I have given up, and will try again once I have located the bottle-opener.

Dashing through the snow

The weather has been most unseasonable. Since the beginning of October it has not been at all unusual for the temperature to reach 65 Fahrenheit (which is about ten past six in new money). Yesterday I had a run dressed only in a t-shirt and shorts (although I came back pretty quickly, admittedly). Today, however, the cloud has gathered, people are talking about winterizing their gardens, and I have been forced by Minnesotan mores to pop out and invest in spruce tops. Yes, tomorrow it will snow. This means several things:

1) Everyone has to relearn how to drive.

2) I have to find where my jump-leads are, as my current way of starting the car is a little like making a phone-call on a Miss Marple episode: switch to on, press right pedal, release, press brake, start engine. (Hello? Hello, operator? ARE YOU THERE???).

3) There will be a segment on the local news whereby they will send the newest memeber of the team out on location, getting him to throw a cup of hot coffee in the air in order to make slush-puppy, and forcing him to do an entire presentation whilst talking through the scarf his mum knitted him.

4) People start putting up their external Christmas decorations as nobody likes to be up a ladder with tinsel in minus 20.

It is apprently against local laws to feed deer in your garden. No-one has mentioned it to them, so they have started to nibble around the bark of the only tree I have (currently adorned in (chewed) solar powered fairy lights).

We went to Redwing on Sunday. It was a little like Stillwater, but the drive there was much easier as very few people seem to go. They are famous for their pottery and, um.

A lot of antique shops too. I feel it is my duty to force T to go around shops for hours in which she has absolutely no interest in. There has been very little in the was of professional research into this topic, but it has to be good for her to at least utter the words "I'm boooorrree-EEEDDDDDDDDDDDD" at least once a week.

Season of Mist

I went for a long run at the weekend. This wasn't entirely intentional as I got slightly lost, but it was, indeed, a poetical morning. The mist hung low over the lakes like Athenian smog hugging the Parthenon. I came across some wild turkeys; it being close to Thanksgiving an'all, they are starting to fill out. They are remarkably docile and I very nearly tripped over one, startling it into giving an indignant "Plok" before it scuttled off. It is no coincidence then that the local aboriginal word for "to hunt turkeys" was, apart from a slight vowel shift, very similar to "to pick daisies".

I have been checking out the local area, trying to find out where the amenities are. We have a plethora of clothes boutiques - testament to all the ladies who lunch, a decent coffee book-shop, and a restaurant which must have the sloooooweeeesssst service EVER. The Post Office is tiny. It would have been closed long ago if it was in the UK. I enjoyed, in a very staring ex-pat sort of way, the policeman coming in and greeting the locals by name. I wanted to introduce myself, but feel that etiquette dictates one should always be introduced by another gentleman to one that is armed.

Happy Birthday....eventually....

We had T's birthday on Saturday. Bravely, we decided to have it At Home, without any clowns nor ponies "which you can dress up". Bridgjo came up trumps by having a treasure hunt which involved me throwing gold coins from the balcony to the garden below. Each kid had to find five coins which could then be exchanged for one go on the Slide of Terror (a slide made of corrugated cardboard down into the swamp). This was incredibly popular.

It was nice to see the kids sharing the coins with each other, as I had half expected them to be rugby-tackling each other to the ground.

I'm not too sure how long we can cobble these parties together, but one of the guests was 9 and was throwing herself into it.

T's birthday cake was an array of highly decorated and differently flavoured cup-cakes. She was most disgusted to learn that this was the compromise as not many kids like fruit cake with brandy. She'll be getting her birthday cake as requested tomorrow. It would have been today. We made a complete fuss of her, helped her open her presents and phoned the grandparents.....who told us her birthday is actually tomorrow - which shows you just how rubbish parents can be. At least I remembered to be present the day she was born.

Why-oh-Why Wayzata?

It was a fair bit alarming to be told 3 months ago that we had to move out. As the credit crunch had hit people quite severely, it meant that people were selling low (in the case of the house in Minnetonka) and renting high (ie everything else). It seemed pretty unlikely we were going to find anything like that which we had at the time. I saw 15 places in one week - overpriced, not nice neighbourhood, odd layouts or, surprisingly, filthy.

Luckily bridgjo came through and we were able to score a jolly nice place outside of Wayzata. The only down-side is that it is pretty close to the rail-way line which isn't too noisy (they move all the freight at night, as the length of the trains (up to 90 wagons) can block off all the crossings in the area for about a mile), but the bed actually does hop slightly around the room. As it is also built next to a swamp I can only guess that the foundations must be pretty rock-solid.

We had an army of little men over three days who packed, moved and unpacked. I like this as otherwise I know that any unpacked boxes would remain just that for the next 12 months.

It's smaller on the ground-floor than our place in Minnetonka, lacking the huge back-room which we never used. But it does have a fully converted basement ("Play-room!), completed with two sets of hooks in the ceiling to hang off swings (as it's too cold for small possums to play outside in the winter, of course). The kitchen is great with two ovens, dish-washer and wine-fridge, although the fridge itself and freezer are a little bit English in size.

The biggest down-size to everything is that because the ceilings are so high (we'll have to get somebody in to change bulbs), and the counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms non-standard (about 10cm higher than usual), I feel about 8. I have to use a stool to cook, and do my prep on the table.

T loves the jacuzzi, although we haven't tried the steam shower yet. The jacuzzi even has a setting to keep the water warm. She's not so keen on the fact that in trying to find our bed-room during the night she keeps ending up in the linen-press.

I am very definitely going to get a sewing machine and run up the curtains, They need to be about 8 feet long, and am not sure Ikea does cheap voile ready-mades in that size.

So we have space if you fancy a visit.

And your little dog too

So when it went completely black outside yesterday afternoon at about 4.30pm, we just looked at each other knowingly like all good English people and murmured "Nights are drawing in, then". But nooooo, nights do not normally draw in quite so completely 4 days after the summer solstice.

The tornado warning went off. The stagiaire had been telling me how much she wanted to see a tornado before she goes back next week. In retrospect I think she also meant to add "from a distance", as, when we all piled down to the cellar, I was holding a blanket, an emergency radio and a small child, she'd run off for her passport. Bridgjo remained on the sofa, too tired after his business trip to move. I checked him for stripey socks before I left him to his fate, just in case I needed to insist.

I cranked up the radio and listened to some very crackly Lord Haw-Haw well-enunciated Emergency Tornado Propaganda on the emergency band ("Into the cellars, we're all going to ...."), for about 2 minutes, then we all looked at each other and thought it would be more fun to watch it instead.

My friend had explained to me how to recognise the siren ("The fire-engines go 'woooo-Oooo-oooo-OOOO', up and down, whereas the siren goes "WooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'"). She unfortunately neglected to tell me what the all-clear sounded like, and as my experience of the Second World War is based entirely around a bloke called Foyle, who has usually sorted everything out by then in any case, it looked as if we were going to be there for the night.

So we came up again. An anti-climax for us, but one of those wonderful holiday memories for the stagiaire...

I am naturally, friends with the Weather channel here, who informed me via Twitter that there was 4 feet (not inches apparently, though it had to have been a typo. Surely you can only get that much water if someone is standing over your head with buckets of the stuff) at Medicine Lake, and that we experienced a total of 6 tornadoes throughout the state yesterday. A usual alert reads like this:

"Large Hail. GR2 Analyst shows some 2-4" diameter (golf ball to baseball size) moving through the metro area, biggest hail appears to be tracking from Plymouth to S. Minneapolis to St. Paul. Flash Flood warning in effect through early tonight for some 3-5"+ amounts. Stay alert and be ready to head to the basement if threatening weather arrives. If you live in the Mankato area you should be in the basement, under the stairs, under a table or work bench." The journalists here are well-meaning, if slightly hysterical in their copy.

T thought it was hilarious as she had immediately made a den in her card-board box castle. She fancied spending the night there with her torch and wants to play again.

According to the news, possibly even tonight.

The Valleyfair Scare

Off to Valleyfair yesterday, the Minnesotan answer to Alton Towers - the major difference being it is not found at the end of a country road, slap-bang in the middle of a tranquil, country village. Lots of similarities; The Corkscrew, Nemesis and rubbish food (although Staffordshire has probably never seen giant turkey legs and Dill-Pickle-On-A-Stick). There's also a very tiny water-park, with a few slides and a jump around in the waves pool. T was extremely disappointed that she was an inch too short for a lot of the rides. Me, I'm concerned that next year I will be dragged around on them.

All the creatures have successfully come out of hibernation and are now creating havoc in the garden. The raccoons like to sit in the tomato plants, for instance, as testamented by their little muddy footprints around the edges. One raccoon, who seems quite young and little compared to some which come around, eats his cheese and Branston like a six year-old. He held up the sandwich (he was there in broad daylight), opened it carefully, putting the top piece on the floor. He then commenced licking the pickle off, then gently peeled off the cheese and nibbled that, followed by the two pieces of bread. His nose goes up and down as he eats, making his whiskers tremble like a particularly agitated RAF Flight Sergeant.

The temperature, thanks to El Nino, zipped up to a toasty 34 degrees yesterday. Today it's a bit colder, but hopefully all the rain will be tonight and we will have a clear day for boating on the lake tomorrow.

School holidays start in 2 weeks' time. This year we will be playing tennis, doing outside swimming lessons, making forts, jam-tarts and a bit of a mess, then making up and a spot of TV. That's the first day sorted, then.

Miami mia

We did that thing the other day which teachers hate, and took T out of school for a week to take advantage of cheap(ish) flights to Florida. For the first time, we went to Miami. It was super - and it amazes me how each state can be; in effect, a different country. Everyone spoke Spanish (including me, I was very proud! Yes - I ordered a coffee), and it just didn't seem like the US at all. Miami South Beach was amazing- all the art deco houses were super-looking.

Our hotel, The Viceroy, had a 100 m pool. I started swimming and thought blimey, it's a bit far. The end dropped away onto a vista of the harbour, and each morning at 7 I had the whole thing to myself.

We were able to go fosicking and found clam fossils on the foreshore of the hotel which itself was very grand. Each time I used the toilet I felt a need to fold the end of the toilet paper into a point. It has apartments as well as hotel rooms, although not that many of the apartments have been let. The food was great there, although the service was a tad Mediterranean. Most restaurants we went to made an effort to get T served first, which is always appreciated (via tips).

It never felt dangerous there and in fact the ambiance wherever we went felt great. We stayed in Miami for 3 nights, taking in the Everglades. Even though we saw lots of alligators on the air-boat tour we did (like on the James Bond movie), we even saw them when we stopped the car at the side of the rod....one came up begging like a duck in Sands End.

We then had another three days down in Key West ("Drive 157 miles and arrive at destination"). The drive down is quite long on single carriage-way roads, so we had a few stops to feed the tarpons (enormous greedy fish) at Robbie's Pier, and a couple of gardens.

Key West wasn't at all what I expected. It was streets of touristy two-level stores, lots of partying, but a nice atmosphere. The snorkeling was great. We took a small tour boat out (just us and three crew) to a reef about 7 n miles away (about an hour's trip). Luckily the sea was completely calm. T adored the snorkeling and was out for about an hour, spotting turtles and lobster plus loads of fish. She pootled off back the boat and sat on the dive ledge, feet dangling over the side, whilst I swam around the reef and saw (and this gets closer and bigger in the re-telling) two reef sharks swim passed. As I have no real idea about fish I thought "Cool!" and then saw T's feet flapping in the water. How exactly does one sacrifice oneself? Pretty amazing though.

Came back to cold weather when people complained there was a chance of snow, yet today it is a muggy 90. I have planted marigolds and remain optimistic that deer are allergic to them as it makes them sneeze.

No tengo dinero

The stagiaire got a bit sick the other night. It was two hours after I made mussels for the first time, but she, very "perfect house-guest"-y said it was a migraine. I had taken her to our book-club, and I think it was a little over-whelming, ie the way they all speak at once very, very LOUDLY and sometimes even use rude words. She said it was like Sex in The City without the shoes.

I've had a look at a couple of houses, but so far have been disappointed either by size or location. I'm not keen on the sitting-room in the basement idea, nor about having two bedrooms right next to the kitchen. I saw one today which was on the 11th tee of the golf-course. It was close enough to be a sort of two-stroke hazard, and only lacked one of those windmills going round over the entrance to the garage doors.

My Spanish is still enjoyable (in that I still go and don't yet make excuses for coffee instead). The other lady on the course said she likes it as it makes her live very much in the present, which is a good feeling, except at some stage I suppose we will also have to study the future, subjunctive and the past-imperfect.

Dunkirk spirit

Last Thursday the headmistress got a rather panicky call from a headmaster in Paris saying that they had a group of 43 school-children stuck in Minneapolis on their way back to Paris from Chicago, and could something be done? Luckily, Minnesotans are pretty decent (especially if there is any free publicity), and the Hyatt were able to offer them rooms and meals, and even the zoo coming up trumps with some free tickets. The local district is providing lunches for them (even picnics for when they go out). These kids are only about 10 years old, and were meant to be away for a week - how must their parents be feeling?

The local news came round today (for which I did not prepare, so was not able to be yummy, more slummy, when I went in to help in the canteen, so had to hide behind the tinned peaches), and CNN may pop round tomorrow. I may have my hair done.

In sickness and...

Yes, thanks the Medical Establishment - T's been sick since she had her last (yippee) MMR vaccine last week. A measle-type rash all over her, headache, stiff neck. Hmm, perhaps the nay-sayers have a point after all? So, with varying amounts of grace, on both sides, we have made towns out of card-board, then cities, then, hell, why not an entire world? Painted nails, made a fairy garden, repotted all my planted herbs (we've been given notice to move house by the land-lord and I'll be buggered if he gets to keep my parsley) and watch, yes, an awful lot of TV. Cheetos have been high on the menu, and strangely not too much broccoli, but it seems she is pulling through.

Suddenly everywhere is beginning to get really green. When we did an Ester-Egg hunt last week in the garden, we managed to get several plastic eggs full of very cheap candy (which, and I just don't know how seemed to disappear each time T averted her gaze) along with a tic each. Luckily they are the large ones (and hence not Lyme's disease-y) but it is still a surprise when you flick one off your scalp. Lots of mosquitoes around too - the price you pay for an early spring. At least I've managed to get daffodils this year (is it churlish to also dig those up?).

Under the counter

I think the butcher fancies me. Every now and then he slips me the not-so-nice looking steaks or tail-end of the salmon in with my order, saying they don't look good enough to sell. Obviously this will put me in good stead should the Second World War break out again.

T, after spening the last 18 months tip-toeing across the ice, has passed her first grade ice-skating. She is the same level as I am, and is everso strict when it comes to her giving me a leson each time we go out. By forcing her to enjoy sport (sometimes physically, sometimes through crisps) I am hoping she will never have to experience the full unmitigated horror of being chosen last for the netball team.

The ice-skating has now finished for the summer, and I have replaced it by attending a personal trainer at the gym, courtesy of one of bridgjo's friends who can no longer use the lessons he paid for. The Swiss friend and I have started running around the lake again. The weather is beautiful and sparkley....though now and then a Minnesotan will sigh and murmur "It's not over yet, y'know".

A bloke said "Howdy!" to me today. I giggled.

Retail Therapy, A Case For

I have a bit of a problem at the moment, well, since I got here, in that I cannot use my American Visa card to purchase items on the Internet.

Each time I go to a web-site and have entered all the selections I want - colour, size, mailing address, billing address, card number, expiry date, those three little numbers on the back, orientation, religious preference - I sometimes get a box saying “This site is verified by Visa”, which then presents me with another set of boxes whereby I have to enter all sorts of extra data, as a further layer of security, which includes my Social Security Number.

Unfortunately, this means that the security is now so high that even I, as a lazy ex-pat spouse who does not have a SSN, cannot use my credit card over the Internet.

This screen has both the Wells Fargo (my bank) and the Visa symbols on there, indicating that it is with some sort of mutual agreement with those two institutions.

However, I have now spent:

1) 1 hr on the phone to Wells Fargo, who eventually said they couldn’t help me as I could neither recite the last 397 transactions verbatim, nor did I know my maternal great-grand-father’s favourite pig’s name.

2) 1 hr in Wells Fargo (with extra ID) who said “It’s to do with the people who are selling you stuff on the Internet, nothing to do with us”.

3) 30 mins talking to a nice lady called Eileen in the hamper shop in the UK, that she’d never heard that before love, and what time is it there, then?

4) 10 mins talking to Wells Fargo, who put me through to their Visa department….

5) Who put me back through to Wells Fargo….

6) Who put me through to Rita, the cleaning-lady, I think…

7) Who put me back to someone else at Wells Fargo who said “Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s definitely nothing to do with Wells Fargo, but I’ll put you through to the Visa department”;

8) 1 hr talking to the Visa department who got a bit huffy “You keep interrupting me Madam”, when I tried to explain to them that the credit card was not fit for purpose. She said that there was nothing I could do about it and her solution was that I could always phone up the company I was ordering from, but obviously not after 1pm if it’s in the UK due to the time difference, and I’m not sure whether I could actually be that bothered doing stuff over the phone when there are, allegedly, easier ways of purchasing an item.

Even if she made a note, she said, nobody would get back to me (because by this time she hated me).

She then put me through to Visa, who, after a rather jaunty Irish jig, cut me off.

9) I then sent a snippy e-mail to Visa, whose contact details (rather understandably) are extremely difficult to find on their web-site, who responded thus:

“When activating VbV or using a password to shop online, the cardholder is always interacting directly with his issuer, not Visa.

As many Visa card issuers have a Verified by Visa area on their website, you may wish to search for it. If you are not able to locate a Verified by Visa area on the website, please contact a Supervisor or Manager at the Verified by Visa Customer Service (a.k.a. EBusiness) Area at your Visa card issuer to request alternative options to the Social Security Number requirement. Your Visa card issuer contact information can be found on the back of your Visa card, on your Visa card statement or via their website. The local branch office will not be able to assist with this.”

Meaning that Wells Fargo, if they could just bring that careering carriage under control for just one instant, might be able to say “Hey, we are an international company. Any chance of an NI number instead?”

At which point I’d probably think “Bugger”.

I never met Hercules while he was shovelling out those stables, but know that I would have been hanging over the fence with a cup of tea saying “Oooh, I know, but listen to what happened to me….”.

And talking about visas, I didn't have to go to Canada after all to get T's visa transferred from her old passport to her new one. I just had to go to the Illegal Import of Vegetation and Small Mammals section at Humphrey terminal and a nice chap did it for me.

Fame at last

At last I get the fame I deserve....hmmmm, quite. Nevertheless, I scrape a mention here:

http://www.working-mum.co.uk/2010/03/mummy-bloggers-carnival/

I currently have a cold and am incapable of writing the HTML necessary to provide a direct link after the hot toddy (which naturally include rather more whiskey than honey, belying my Irish roots). Which reminds me, T needs to get a new green T-shirt in time for St Patrick's Day. French School. In the US. Yep, we celebrate Irish-ness here more than they actually do in Ireland...

Quite a reasonable rate

We went to a birthday party today. I'm not completely sure, but I think it's quite an ex-pat thing to stay at the children's party and hang-out with other parents, surreptitiously swigging gin whilst their kids quietly throw up over the cat. In Perth, however, I heard of a friend throwing a party for their seven year-old where the parents not only dropped-off their invited child, but also additional siblings (leaving her to run down the street after the retreating 4WD with a child under each arm).

I was asked to do the face-painting. One child, possessed by an old lady, as 6-year olds generally are, observed very seriously "Goodness, you can paint birds *and* draw butterflies on faces. Gosh". Luckily, they are still only 6 or 7, so even when I painted a butterfly wing which actually resembled more of a small dog poo, but in pink, it was quite all right as long as I put glitter on afterwards. Small girls can be very forgiving in their criticism as long as there are sparkles involved.

We saw a small patch of grass today for the first time in five months. The Minnesotan equivalent of hearing the first cuckoo.

And I have just put a chicken carcass out on the garden, and already a grey fox has come down and helped me out with my recycling.

Wheeeeeee!

I went ski skating today. Like skating, but with skis and more down-hills. Bridgjo said I didn't look too fliddy, meaning, I assume, that my bum wasn't sticking out too much. At this stage in my life it's with relief I can get off a horse/take off my skates/return the hired skis/get up in the morning and think "Phew! Still alive, then...".

One of the girls from book-club was giving a group of us a lesson, and it was really nice to be out on the track in the blazing sun (ONE DEGREE CENTIGRADE!!!). I think I'll have another go next week, whilst the tracks are still open, but might try the cross-country instead.

T did the cross-country, with her skis firmly wedged between the ski-width tracks which are cut into the path for this specific purpose, and I did skate-skiing (or ski-skating, I've forgotten). This involved attempting to skate in, well, skis on a quite frozen polished surface this late in the season, with no edges. Slightly less graceful than "Dancing on Ice".

T wants to "louper l'ecole" next week and go again, though at the rate the snow is melting, we'll have to see, although I am always up for a bit of constructive skiving.

Ah yes - "home schooling" - how to have fun yet still satisfy the school inspectors....

I went to the doc's last week as I thought I had a fungus under my nail. He said it was actually psoriasis, and looked very smug when I said said that I had had psoriasis (thanks Spell Checker) before. Obviously a bit of a House moment for him.

While I was in the waiting room, there was an elderly lady who'd been dropped off by presumably her daughter, who then dropped a pen on the floor. "Oh crap" she said, in the loudest voice. She wasn't even wearing purple.

Where have all the flowers gone?

I was talking to an Australian friend the other day and she was moaning about the relentless heat they were experiencing back in Perth. She also commented, genuinely perplexed, on the fact that we didn't usually go to the beach in the evening any more. "At least the snow will be gone soon, hey?" she asked. Umm, no actually. Although we probably only get three good snow-falls or so, it all just hangs around in the sub-zero temperatures and melts in one big cascade at the end of April. Whilst everyone in the UK is smugly busy writing poetry about yellow flowers, we are struggling to remember where we last put the lawn.

T jumped into a snow-drift in the front garden on Monday, and I temporarily lost her.

We did a bit of a mini tour around Downtown and St Paul today, for the stagiaire, taking in Punch Pizza and the Truffle shop (the latter owned by a man from Leicester. We also popped into the State Capitol buildings. There was, surprisingly, no security, so we ambled around at our own pace. I was especially impressed as much with the Senate's titles, as I was with the decor. I imagine the Sergeant-at-Arms at one point actually did have a gun (or probably, even still does), but I could only assume that the Engrossing Secretary maybe was furnished with a plentiful supply of lipstick and the odd flirtatious remark.

Pay attention at the back

As if I didn't learn my lesson (hah!) last week, I was called out of retirement on Tuesday for another bout of Helping Out ie "We need a temp but can't be bothered with spending money". This time I was to lead the class (although there is a perfectly capable assistant teacher in operation who could have taken over), and to also take them in English and maths ("because Mlle X isn't very 'mathy'"....whatdya mean the assistant isn't very 'mathy'....she's a teacher. How tricky is first grade math(s)?).

Unfortunately, in the English part the original teacher was working on "rhyming with 'AN'". Yep, quite easy until you ask an American child "Spell 'fan'". "What?". "Fan". "Uh?". "Fan". "Nope, still don't get it...". " Fen?". "Oh...F-A-N?". So yep - had to put on an extremely unconvincing American accent for 3 days.

I was struck by the huge difference between their abilities - a couple could read 'daughter', 'caught' and 'draught', others struggled on 'Please put the pecan in the pan'. But more I was struck by the difference in behaviour. Some kids would just sit there and do the work and ask for more (how can I not have favourites?), whereas others, in an obvious parody of their principle caregivers, would throw their arms in the air and yell "Why the hell should I want to do that?". Hmmmm - not quite what I remember from Miss Keyes' class in Infant 1 (but then again I remember that it also involved a jam spoon).

I realised towards the end the one big lesson of being in front of 6 year-olds.

Don't show fear.

A bit under the weather

We've had a sudden warm snap. Suddenly it reached the heady heights of 28 degrees at the weekend (F). In Minnesota this generally means getting the t-shirts and shorts out of storage. It caused some of the native wild-life to come to at least for the one day and check out the cafeteria situation on the back patio.

The little possum who seems to live under the wooden slats came out looking most bewildered, and in need of a shampoo, and hoe'd into the cat-food. It missed quite a bit though being completely blind and normally nocturnal.

Since then the weather has plummeted again to something bone-jarring, resulting in the wearing of blankets in the car on the way to school and extra hot water bottles.

I've been back to the dentist's to have another crown fitted and two more fillings. I've always a been a little freaked at the dentist's ever since I was forced to have fillings without anaesthetic as a child (being held down screaming by a nurse is no fun). Dental visits nowadays are much more ideal, involving, as they do, bounteous amounts of lovely drugs as they drill merrily away. However, I do feel one should never really be in a position to smell one's own teeth.

I went to see (hear) Debussy's La Mer last night. I'm such a philistine - IMHO I thought it was a bit too Disney-esque, and didn't really think it was that much cop. However, a couple of thousand Minnesotans unable to find anything else to do on a cold Thursday evening would probably beg to differ. I went with the new stagiaire and One of The Mums. They both thought the music was OK, marred only slightly by the two people on OTM's side who were on a blind date ("Hello, I'm Jude", "Ooooh, I'm Cathy"); I wanted to keep leaning over and tapping him on the shoulder and asking how he was getting on. Then there was the two people in front of us who were making out (at a classical concert), and the bloke behind us who started snoring everso slightly off-beat. In spite of the music, I think I'll go again....

The teaching assignment has finally come to an end. I decided that I really needed to take early retirement. It was good fun, although I deeply admire their teacher. We got some good results though, and it was really quite interesting just how well they each did once they were talked through certain bits.

The two wonderful "my child is a genius" examples are, naturally by my own "I-cannot-believe-she's-only-6,-it's-about-time-she-took-Chinese" daughter.



When is it considered the correct time for them to earn their keep?

Unfortunately they are not to keep, as the school will be selling them for fund-raising. One parent has already told me that they will be "putting in a maximum bid of $2,000" for the class portfolio. Not all the parents there are charity cases (like us), you understand.

Twitter

Today was the first day of teaching. Now this is an anathema to me. If there had been an exam to be a mum, I'd have scraped a C (in old money - otherwise possibly an A*). An example - I had always prided myself on telling the truth to my daughter....right upto the time a few weeks ago she fell and split her scalp open, and had to have staples. I explained the process to her, and what would happen, and that yes it would hurt, but only a little bit then it would stop hurting. Afterwards,on the way home, a small voice came from the back-seat "Mummy,you know how you always tell the truth? Well, do you mind if sometimes you could just fib?".

So, yep, me and kids (especially other people's); it's *really* hard work. I felt very much like Joyce Grenfell but less pearls. I was teaching the class how to draw birds, so first off was "what's the difference between a bird and an animal?". They got the hang of that, but it's so hard to keep on track when a voice says "but Miss, your sheep looks like a hamster". The next stage was teaching them the different shapes of beaks and claws, eg certain birds have beaks because they eat certain foods. "Diego, what sort of food does a chicken eat? No, not alligators. Anyone else?".

And that was the hour. Tomorrow is getting them all to draw a duck out of two circles and a rectangle, and then to talk about how to use a pencil, and then how to use water-colours. At some stage we shall actually do the drawings themselves.

I had a mouse man in yesterday to sort out the vermin. Apparently, they like to get in at ground-level (in our case the basement), and it's actually a bad idea to put bait in the kitchen as although this will kill one mouse in unspeakable ways, it in the mean-time lays a trail of pheromones encouraging all the other neighbourhood mice back in. He showed me all the mouse tracks in the snow at the front of the house. Lovely.

And what will poor robin....?

Christmas was great, but made far too short by the travelling involved.

With an award-winning naivety we both said, on the way, isn't security easy now, the papers have been saying they're going to ease up on the checks etc.

We landed in a snow-storm in Manchester on the way there, circling for two hours as it had shut. The pilot mumbled something about going to Liverpool instead, but unbeknownst to us by this time we'd run out of fuel (as we were later told by a relative who works there at Manchester). I expect that this is the equivalent in aviation terms of "Well, the fuel light's come on, but I reckon we can do about another ten miles".

We landed OK, being first in the stack, but the Airbus which came after us skidded on landing, so they reclosed the airport. The AA flight after ours ended up being redirected to Dublin. We then had to spend a further 45 minutes on the run-way waiting for the path and bridge to be de-iced.

The return trip back was made exponentially worse by potentially explosive underwear, of course. Everyone (travellers, staff, small animals in travel cages) was practicing deep-breathing techniques, and smiling through gritted teeth, but it wasn't really as bad as I thought it could be. We got there 3.5 hours before take-off. And so did everyone else. There were two extra security checks, one before check-in and one at the gate. The former one involved all those rubbish questions which obviously Don't Work, eg "Did you pack this bag?", "Are you carrying anything for anyone else?", "Is there anything in your suit-case which may be mistaken for a bomb?". Now, call me Little Miss Old-Fashioned, but surely even the most basic of terrorist training might prepare people to say "Um, no".

It was the pat-downs at the gate. By this time I had been queuing for about 4 hours (bridgjo entertaining T by looking at the sealed perfume and the inflatable cushions). I was told I had to wait, as out of the 5 security guards, only one was a woman. "But, really, I don't mind being patted down by a bloke," I started to wheedle, hoping to brighten my day somewhat. "No," said the woman on the desk, "it has to be a woman". "And what if she a lesbian?", I asked (somewhat hopefully, by this time).

And then when she did frisk me "around there", in a completely asexual sort of way, she asked "And do you have anything soft in your pockets?". To which I replied, "No, that's my stomach".

Coming home to minus 23c and two foot of snow was quite a welcome relief.