Month: May 2011

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Dalhousie2011-6742

the day we woke up in a castle

Every taxi, bus ride, train, flight that Walker and I make seems to be a little closer than I'd like. We've done the whole running up an escalator with two 50 pound suitcases and we even made a bus yesterday (seemingly impossibly after waiting in line to realize we had no cash) after the fastest ATM in history spit out money for us in time to catch it. And as I sat on that bus, I wondered how long this would last. Despite snow storms, despite delays, somehow, ours is the plane that takes off sti…

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Guess where we're going today-o!

Booyah. Walker is done with exams, done with university! Congratulations, darling!! Life is coming at us so fast, there is not enough time for many words or photos. We took our last Sunday afternoon beach walk yesterday, and the winds were so strong that Walker had to grasp my hand and hold me from blowing away as we walked across the Old Course. We stood on the empty beach with its streams of sand rushing into the waves, and leaned into the wind. I wrote the I loved Walker on the sand with the…

Ranch photo 4

Where's Waldo girl

Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Scotland and Tennessee and New Jersey and Scotland and now New York. Six moves in three years. I’m becoming Where’s Waldo girl--- no one remembers where I am these days. Being me is only slightly less confusing. The next month we'll take 11 flights. It's exhausting mushing it all into my brain right now. It’s even more exhausting processing it all. As we approach leaving, I want to hold onto poignant instants of the past in this place, to suck the wisdom out of th…

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Pack attack

I sit in the living room castled in by papers watching the big willow-like tree across our garden throw its banana-yellow strands of flowers in the wind. Part of me for an instant wants to be out there, to make a list of my favorite things, my favorite sights in this picturesque town and go do them. Get a scone at my favorite scone take-out (butter and jam, please). Drink pink tea in the hotel overlooking the golf course and eat fish 'n chips overlooking the beach. Walk to the end of West Sands…

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the party that outdid the Great Gatsby

When you're at the end of a three-year string of dinner parties with the same dinner club, there's only one thing to be done. Go big. And when you've had a suit in your closet for three years that can only be worn appropriately at one event, there's only one thing to be done. Plan a party around it. Turn on some 1920s music, buy a flapper hat and feather necklace, fill the room to saturation with citrus and flowers and licorice. This time, we planned. I'm talking reading Calvin Coolidge's menu…

the scottish flat: unwrapped

I sat on the floor with a lair of coins in front of me this morning telling myself it could be worse. Euros, pounds, pence, francs and quarters swam in a pool of tarnish, and as I counted and bagged them, I turned to Walker and informed him I never imagined my life holding such a task. The coin-sorting machine technology hasn't made it to the UK yet (a little irritating), and yet, one of the best things about living internationally is that it makes me, control-freak extraordinaire, adapt. It’s n…

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On getting rid of skullcaps

By my reckoning, we’ll have eight suitcases to transport our life from this country back to that one. So I've set out on Mission Disappear. I’m obsessed. Just ask Walker who wondered why I was racing around the house cleaning every pair of glasses and sunglasses I could find. I’m just trying to use up this glasses cleaner so I can throw it out I explained, tiptoed to the trash, dropped the bottle in, and did some mental arm-windmilling. One item down, 435 to go! I sit on the floor for hours sort…

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I've been waiting for you

I was marveling at short-sleeves and that grassy smell in the cool air this morning as I ran out to open the garden gate for the day, and then (squeaky brakes and quick reverse), there she was, open and exuberant in the morning sunshine. So that's what's been happening for weeks inside that tight, fat chrysalis of a pod--- wings have been growing. Somehow I want to pull a metaphor out of that about worrying, something about how worrying about the future inside this cute little pod of a flat is…

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itsy bitsy postcards

Sometimes thoughts come to me like little packets of pretzels on the plane. I savor them and then they are gone. This weekend we were traveling, and thoughts flitted in and quickly dissolved. They connected and then disconnected, drawing knots around me. Now we're home---the umbrella collection has stretched a bit, the bluebells are tingling, and our garden is hued in vivid purples. Here are my postcards from me to you from the journey. 2pm. It should stop surprising me how much I miss being ho…

LondonMay2011-6337

please mind the gap

We stepped off the train into a quiet King's Cross station Wednesday night, and made our way on the underground to our hotel. Every underground you get off, you hear the same caution: Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. We woke up to London weather. Drizzle. Fine drizzle. Fat drops. Wet air. Hazy sky. and, then, finally the clear of the evening. Walker bought an umbrella under guise of keeping the camera dry. Umbrellas are his small luxury. Being back here is delightful, fami…