Big things on the way out, like my butt.

I'm doing the April 2012 A to Z Blogging Challenge. I was inspired to do so by David McCauley of Brits in the USA who did last year's challenge.

So far, I've only written one entry. I'm happy with it. I hope I can do this and keep up with it as March has not had much of a showing, writing wise. But, that's just because I didn't care to write about minutiae.

But it is the minutiae about this place that makes it so damn interesting, frustrating and experiential. Learning to recognize the mundane reality as the extraordinary reality is a chore I will both relish and complain about.

Like this afternoon. It was truly an ordinary day. Yet the sun was shining and on the walk to Tesco, the proprietors of two different shops along the high street of my village had set out lawn chairs along the sidewalk (pavement for you UK bloggers). Ordinary enough if they'd been in their backyard (garden) but nope, extraordinary in that the weather was nice enough to allow all four of them to do this in the middle of the sidewalk.

Also, as I was bringing in the trash cans (rubbish bins), the old guy across the alley decided to come over to talk to me about what I have no idea, but I've heard it before and it was the same old, same old about how he took care of young girls after the war and then was telling me all about one girl's menstrual issues and that she was in a hospital for an operation and how he said she should bang up and go to the chemist's (pharmacy) and get some peppermint oil and put just a few drops on a tablespoon full of sugar and her cramps would then go away and about how some of these women who are still alive write letters to him but his grandson is too busy to come to see him particularly now that he has a fiancee. 

Of course there was more drivel than just that... some of the RAF stories are cool, but he likes to devolve to stories about the girls and how he showed them around after the war and helped them to deal with their bodily functions. At which point I like to take out my phone to text SciMan to call me to save me from the sad, creepy old man. Bless him and his precious girls.

Also, am happily down a few sizes. When we moved here, I was a UK size 20 and am now a size 16 (US size 14) in pants (trousers for you UK bloggers). Progress. Minutiae, but still, progress.