Lately...

I know that I need to continue my American Tale at some point (it involves me road-tripping around Arizona and not an adventure seeking mouse unfortunately) but I'm finding it very difficult to get motivated to write these blog posts at the moment. I'm very neglectful and I'm not really sure why.

I took my break from blogging and came back because I definitely felt like I wanted to but for some reason, no matter how many ideas and random words and phrases come bubbling to my mind, getting those out of my fingertips and on to the keyboard is just not happening.

I've decided to ease the pressure off and going for the easiest of easiest posts - one involving photos and one liners.

So. What has been happening lately?

L-R [1] Reading in bed; [2] Accidental flowers; [3] Afternoon drinking; [4] Hungover shopping

Easter has been the perfect blend of time to relax and time to have fun. I do feel like I've spent the past four days or so either drunk or hungover, which I'll be honest with you, is perfectly ok with me.

[1] Festivities for me began on Thursday night, going out for drinks with some work people. Good Friday started off well for me, which basically consists of reading in bed and drinking tea. There's something about reading in bed which feels incredibly decadent to me. No Ferrero Rocher needed thank you - mug of tea and some pages to turn is all I need.

[4] However...whilst hungover I committed the greatest of sins....I went shopping. Big mistake. I needed to get food so sloped off to Tesco to see what I could find. All I needed was lunch, instead I came home with - a candle, a can of Coke, Nivea face-wash, two small packs of sushi, Moroccan cous cous salad, chocolate pretzels, pack of six hot cross buns, sausage roll, massive bag of crisps, a top.

I'm still not entirely sure what happened in there, it's all a blur. Still I got enough food for the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend and the top is nice...

[2] The Person and I headed off to Nottingham on Saturday to spend the night with some friends. I dutifully bought flowers to give to our hosts (my mother would be so proud) which I actually forgot to take with me so we now how some lovely flowers for the house. Winner.

[3] Saturday was the perfect kind of day of afternoon drinking, followed by dinner out and more drinking. Relaxed and happy and laid back. I had some of the strongest cider of my life at The Crafty Crow. Kopparberg it was not.

L-R [5] Spooning gerbils; [6] Amazing reading; [7] Dog walking; [8] Creme Egg bonanza

[5] The gerbils have been as cute as always but lately I've been able to take some megacute (I just invented a word!) photos of them. They have a cottage that they normally sleep in but decided not to bother for a while, instead choosing to make a toilet roll nest in the corner of the gerbilarium. This meant I could take photos of them sleeping. Gerbils sleep on top of one another, entwined around one another, curled up on top of one another, and as this picture shows, spooning each other. Darn their cute little furry heads.

[6] This book is amazing. You should read it. That's all I'll say.

[7] I was on dog and nephew sitting duty. I took Rosie for a walk and we came upon some cows. These cows were initially at the other end of the field and came practically running to this end to stand staring at her. I wasn't sure if they were afraid of her or curious about her but I do know that I still have a healthy fear of cows.

[8] My work is super fun sometimes. Case in point, I get asked to buy everyone Creme Eggs for Easter. People love it when that happens. I am the Candy Lady.

L-R [9] Middle class snacking; [10] The walk towards Wembley; [11] Match in play; [12] Final score

[9], [10], [11] & [12] Luckiest most randomest break ever. I managed to get hold of tickets to the FA Cup Semi Final match at Wembley between Hull City and Sheffield United. Yes they were corporate tickets - boo hiss etc etc. But it was literally impossible to get tickets any other way so I'll take what I'm given and enjoy my non-segregated area of non-football louts thank you very much.

On the train down to London we were very much out of place. Amidst football fans drinking cans of Carlsberg I sat being the very most middle class football fan there was, drinking cocktails from a tin and eating my Graze brownie. Boom.

It was a stressful match. What should have been a fairly easy game for Hull City, as they are two Leagues above Sheffield United, they made incredibly difficult for themselves, going 1-0 down, then equalising, then allowing Sheffield United to score again less than two minutes later, before immediately going into half time. 

Thankfully the half time break was used for head pulling together and Hull City came out the winners. It is not often that I'll get the chance to go to Wembley to watch Hull City and see an eight goal game. It was absolutely amazing, unreal and I can't believe I got to go.

Now need to figure out how to get tickets to the FA Cup Final where Hull City will face Arsenal....

---------------

So there you have it. What have I been doing lately? In summary:

- Gerbils

- Dogs

- Drinking

- Eating

- Reading

- Football

Not bad, my friends, not bad at all.

Of planes and baseball - America 2014; Part 1

I've got to tell you. You need to brace yourselves for quite a few posts about America. I mean I could try and condense into one or two.....but I'm not going to.

Consider yourselves forewarned.

Let us start at the beginning.

As I mentioned in my last post, the turnaround from engagement to wedding was kind of fast. Knowing me and the kind of person that I am you may think that I would have been all over the planning of it.

I was not.

It just seemed to creep up on me and became on of those things that you say to yourself "Oh that's after Christmas, I'll think about it then" - and then suddenly it's mid-February and you realise that you're going away in a few weeks and nothing is organised.

We had a vague idea of what we'd do when out in Arizona. We didn't want to be too under feet whilst American Boy and American Girl were in the lead up to the wedding and still at work and we wanted to take the opportunity to do a bit of road tripping when out there. Cue lots of list-making and looking things up on Google Maps and looking for accommodation and getting tips from anyone we could ask.about where to go.

One piece of advice I was offered was from someone who recommended that we upgrade our seats from Economy to Premium Economy for the flight. We were taking the direct flight from London Heathrow to Phoenix Sky Harbor which is over a 10 hour flight. So not a short flight. I listened to my friends and I thought "Nah. We'll be fine." - basically I'm a cheapskate.

The worst thing about being in economy is that they make you walk past the Business Class seats in a Bullseye "This is what you could have won" style. As I gave everyone richer than me deathstares I realised that there was a nagging noise in my ear. What was it? Oh it was the sound of a child. Screaming.

This child then went on to scream for what definitely felt like the next 10 hours.

It must have been awful for the parents. Terrible. There they were with a baby (who was actually silent) and a toddler on a 10 hour flight. No mean feat. But my god I wanted to hurt somebody. Shut. the child. up.

We ended up in the middle of the middle of the plane. The person next to me fell asleep as soon as we took off and stayed that way for the night 9 hours, the guy next to The Person did not move for the whole flight either (he didn't wee, how is that possible?!) so we weren't massively comfortable. About 5 hours in I eventually found a position that didn't cut off the circulation to one of my limbs and determined to stay in that position. When I then tried to stand up I realised one hip was about 5cm higher than the other.

By the end of the flight I didn't know whether to cry or cry. The Person had managed to get some sleep, I got nada.

(The child was still screaming when we went through immigration. I hoped they might not let them in to the country but sadly it wasn't to be.)

Anyway.

You know what you do when you go to Phoenix in March? You go to Spring Training baby.

Spring Training took me a while to get a hang of but basically a load of baseball teams from up where it is cold have parks that they have built in places where it is hot so they can come and do some practice! So the Chicago Cubs leave behind the freezingness and the snow and the horrible weather and come to the boiling hot Phoenix. I'll be honest, I'd rather practice in the snow than in 30 degree heat but I'm just crazy like that.

So you can be dedicated and go and sit in the boring stands or you can take a blanket, sit on the grass and get drunk and not really watch the baseball.

The other thing you do is eat a hot dog.

Here we experienced American hospitality at its best. When we went up to order our hot dogs they were just in the process of making some more. The guy who served us apologised about three times in the space of about 3 minutes that the hot dogs were not ready immediately.

I wanted to take him home with me. It's hard to imagine the same happening if you went up to order a Pukka Pie at the Emirates...

From the baseball it was on to drinking and then a little bit more drinking. More sitting in the sun and talking. A slightly anti-semitic moment in a bar. (Don't ask, I can't even go there.) Before ending the day on this rooftop, American Girl and I talking whilst American Boy and The Person ended up inexplicably inebriated, gesticulating wildly, silhouetted against the setting sun.

I decided a screaming child on a 10 hour flight was probably worth it.

(But you bet your backside we upgraded to Premium Economy seats for the way back.)