How I'm celebrating Leap Day.

By shaking my hands...one as a fist, with rock concert elan and the other as a fist also, but old-lady-yelling-at-whippersnappers-style

Fist Pump 1. I'm hanging out my laundry for the first time this year. I'm so damn excited about this!

Sure enough, the signs of spring are here... The gal I work for (this is the couple who own their internet business) said she couldn't remember the last time crocuses, snowdrops, and daffodils were out at the same time. Usually, they're out in stages, one blooming and fading as the next takes its place.


Fist Clench 2. I'm getting the new Samsung Galaxy S II (?) today. The contract's up and Vodaphone's been bugging me to upgrade. To shut them up, I'm going to get a free phone that I can use when I move home. Because I will move home someday.

Yeah, am celebrating Leap Day with some major homesickness issues. Got an email from MomUnit that sent me into a blubbering spiral of drippy snot and leaky tear ducts. It was an attachment! It was a picture of my dear friend's three children, two of which I've never met. Her children are just beautiful and it's like looking at her from across the classroom that first day I met her in junior high. I want my kid to be friends with her kids.

And there's other children I've never met, which bugs the hell out of me. Because they don't know me and because I've just figured out that I really like other people's kids. I like mine just fine, hell, I LOVE her...but I like other people's kids. Not when I was younger, like baby-sitting age...couldn't stand that. But now, I guess it's because I've got one and I'm all like, ME TOO! So, yeah... a niece that's new last year, SciMan's bestie has a kid and another coming... another couple have two children, one I got to spend time with, the other was born two years ago or so... I don't even know when! My brother and sister are becoming adults without me buying their first legal beers. Who's gonna drive them home? DadUnit's going nuts and no one's stopping it. My former students... I can't observe them from my corner of the school and feel proud. I can only just feel a pale imitation from memory. Some dear friends are getting married this year and I've no way to know if I we're going to be there to see it.

So I want to put everyone back home in a time capsule and insulate them in tree sap so that when I come back I can just Jurassic-Park scientist them and resume where I left them. I want to reel in that false sense of control I had over everyone and cast it back out among them. My pot, it is not stirred.

This is the part of living overseas that I knew was going to happen and I accepted it, but it doesn't mean that I have to smile about it. I had it in my head that I wouldn't go back until this "three-hour tour" was over. If I wanted to be illogical about it, it's mainly because I thought that if I did come home just for a visit, a taco and some Ted's queso filling in as a carrot or a crowbar threatening to pry me off the couch wouldn't be able to get me back on a plane for the exhaustible flight. There's been an exodus in the Americans in the UK online community and I sure as hell am jealous about it.

Because they're getting to not only have the very best in laundry drying equipment (a dryer), they're getting to be present, stirring the pot, making a difference, participating in the life fabric that is quilted by shared experiences.

It was a bad decision to come here when viewed in this context.



But then again, if not for that decision, I wouldn't have the trifecta of spring flowers in bloom in a graveyard that has been converted into a playground next to the Kiddo's school. So, really, little things give back and  compensate for other little things that take away and negate.

Snowdrops you can see, crocuses you can't.

I drank the Kool-Aid...

...and it tastes all pink, green, and blue.

...because pink and green and blue were the colors for the day.

Took Kiddo to the park nextdoortoournewhouse! Packed a picnic bag (Thanks SJ!) and felt content after arrival. I had the kind of contentment that is a barrier to ever leaving this country.

DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING LONG IT'S BEEN SINCE I'VE BEEN CONTENT?

Too long.

So here's some eyecandyporn for Friday's Fone Fdump

BEFORE

AFTER

I highly recommend to you Brookeshields wannabees that you immediately go find your nearest Indian lady and beg her to thread your eyebrows. If no Indian lady can be found, try some Iranians. Oh so much better than wax. Only, I recommend you not go get it done if you've just done really awesome eyemakeup. Smudged City. Ah, imperfections. How I love mine.

When Dad came for his visit (<3!!!), he brought the Lego set he bought me in 1988, The Black Monarch's Castle. 

And every good castle has to have a dragon... SO I BUILT THAT BADASS DRAGON! Design and implementation all from my brain...no showsies from a how-to booklet! Look, look! He even doubles as a T-Rex!

Also of note... We hosted poker for the first time in over 3 years. And here's what's cool about it => present at poker were the following people: A Cuban, an Englishman, a Taiwanese, a Belgian, a Frenchwoman, and two Americans.

This is the Cuban! They really do exist outside of Cuba and Florida.

Guess who won?

THE REALLY STYLISH FRENCHWOMAN OF COURSE!

Anyway. Like I was saying... if I was saying anything, which I doubt, my point is that I've now entered the phase of the ex-pat {wait, do I even qualify as 'ex-pat'?} experience where I'm reluctant to contemplate going home. I've found myself making plans that do not involve considering a move homewards. I enjoyed having people here to visit and found myself wishing for more time so that I could show them more of what I find wonderful about this place, like hot chocolate from a bar/lounge that really should be called hot liquid cake.

I really do still hate a lot about this country...and if last week's riots were any indication, so too do a lot of other people and for probably what's tantamount to the same things as me. Like, for instance, a 23 year old guy gets jail time for knowingly passing on herpes to his now ex-girlfriend. He got 14 months.

14 months?

How's that going to do anything to his future behavior? Would that deter you if you were determined to use a disease as biological revenge? It's just not common sense. The jails are basically full, from what I've read and it's not solving the fundamental problem. Does anyone even know what the problem truly is? I most likely don't, but I've got the outsider's perspective and shit ain't looking good from out here.

When I read about this crap or when I watch the result of economic and opportunity poverty unfold, my gut response is "I gotta get out of here." When I have to call the NHS Health Visitors to cancel an appointment that they set up but that I didn't want in the first place, I'm all like  ಠ_ಠ . 

But then there's being in places like this...

And this....

And this...

And so, yeah. I may have drank the Kool-Aid already...and I didn't realize it.