Here are some random things.
A Christmas thing I really don't like: That carol about the drummer boy parum-papum-pum. It's really dumb-darum-dum. Drumming for a baby is stupid. Mary would have got really cross. It would have woken the baby up.
British English words that I miss: Stupid instead of dumb. Cross instead of mad/angry.
Fruit I miss: Bramley apples!
Christmas food: mince pies.
Fact about living in Scotland: they call mince pies, mincemeat tarts (which could be great inspiration for a fancy dress costume).
Christmas food that I miss, though I don't like the taste: Christmas pudding and Christmas cake.
Christmas food that is marvellous beyond words: cold turkey and cold stuffing.
A phrase in American English that I really like and use a lot: "Good luck with that". It means "that sounds truly dreadful, I don't envy you".
Something that made me laugh yesterday: my boss called me Eunice Fairbanks all day. It was an in-joke. It was funny at the time, though I can see it loses something in the telling.
Something I am grateful for: oh lots. I'm in that kind of a mood.
Something I bought half price, in the sale at Williams Sonoma yesterday: a mix for making sticky toffee pudding. It says that they researched the recipe in the Lake District, from where the pudding hails. I didn't even know puddings could hail. I don't want to make the pudding. I just want to read the side of the tin over and over, and luxuriate in the fact that I've bought a mix from Williams Sonoma, which is what I do in my dreams sometimes.
Something I saved $100 on, in the sale at Williams Sonoma yesterday: a Le Creuset oval pot, cast iron, enamelled. Only a couple of days ago, I said to Husband "the trouble with my two Le Creuset pots is that one is too big, and the other is too small; I really need the one in between." It would have been criminal not to have saved $100 buying the very perfect one. It's like the baby bear's Le Creuset in Goldilocks. It's orange. Hot orange. I know I'm a better cook already.
Something that happened while I was writing this post that was very nice: my brother phoned from Paris to say Happy New Year. It is, of course, already 2011 in Paris. I'm just so darn international.
Something nice I'm doing tonight: going out. We have been invited out as a family. And - get this - this is the second year running that we have had a New Year's Eve invitation. This could almost be a reason to stay in America. We never used to get invited out on New Year's Eve.
A true fact: I will be late if I don't go and get ready right now.
Greeting: Happy New Year, Bloggy Peeps!
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Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
The old year ends
Well, 2009 is over. Something of a turbulent year in my life. Though I have sniffed out gains, it has largely been a year of losses. I have found strengths, but I have also met some of my limitations (I hate that). I have done things, and had things done to me, that I would never have chosen. But that is how life is. It’s not a Woolworth’s pick ‘n’ mix, where you can opt out of the liquorice allsorts. It’s not a modern day Christmas present, with the gift receipt in the envelope so that you can exchange it for something else more to your taste. You take the rough with the smooth, and somehow try and find your way through.
(I think I might have used these analogies already on the blog. Anyone know how you can do a keyword search through previous blog posts, without going through them one by one? Should I be keeping them all in a large Word document? Ed.)
This year, I’ve faced things I didn’t plan to face just yet. I’ve looked into the jaws of my own mortality, and squared up with two things: how insignificant my life is, and how significant my life is. Both are burdensome truths. I’ve found that the best strategy to deal with them is to look them straight in the eyes, but not for long, and then turn away to get on with the fabulous reality of daily life. It’s like wearing sunglasses on a very bright day. If you don’t have them, you squint all the time, and your eyes hurt, and it’s a continual distraction. So you wear them, but every now and again, you feel the need to take them off and screw up your eyes against the light, just to see how intense the colour of the sky really is. The brightness is there all the time, but you don’t want to look at it too much. It’s a relief to put those sunglasses back on and get on with the day, and then you forget about the brightness.
This year, I realized more than ever how important writing is to me. This blog, and the excuse it provides for my incessant drivel, has seen me through. I would write it if nobody at all read it. But you do, and that makes it a thousand times better.
I want to thank you all so much. This isn’t a glib “Thank you, I love you all, Happy New Year”. This is a heartfelt thank you. I know that reading about someone with cancer is not a very joyful thing to do. I know that it is more fun to read about the sweet things people’s children have said or done, or tales of expat life abroad. So thank you for not clicking away. Thank you to those of you who knew me before this year. Thank you to the new people who’ve taken the trouble to get to know me. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented. Thank you to those of you who’ve emailed me. Thank you to those of you who've read and lurked. Lurkers are nice people too. In the words of Hank Williams, “Hey, good lurkin’, what ya got curkin’?”
Most of all, thank you for writing your own blogs. Reading them is like keeping busy on a sunny day, with sunglasses on. When I started this blog in the summer of 2007, I was horribly homesick, and I used to read lots of blogs about England. At that time, a large number of people had recently started blogs about country life, in response to a competition run by the magazine of that name to find a blogger for the publication. There was a real excitement around as people shared stories and pictures of their lush flower beds, their burgeoning vegetable patches, the domestic projects in their homes. It was a rather unBritish blowing of own trumpets – in a very British understated way, of course. You might have thought it would have made me more homesick – all those colourful pictures of roses in full bloom, beautiful shots of the English countryside, accounts of trips to National Trust properties, complaints about the rain (it was a record-breakingly rainy summer, 2007). But it didn’t. Somehow it helped, just knowing that it was all going on, even if an ocean away, and without me.
In the same way, this summer, your blogs kept a window open for me on normal life. I was ill, and sad, and fearful. I saw too much of my own four walls. Reading your blogs, reading about your joys, your woes, your excitements, your disappointments, the magnificent trivia of your daily lives, all of it helped me keep a hold on the fact that normality was still happening, even if it felt at times a long way away, and without me.
So thank you, for being part of my blog, and for letting me be part of yours. Happy New Year to you all.
.
(I think I might have used these analogies already on the blog. Anyone know how you can do a keyword search through previous blog posts, without going through them one by one? Should I be keeping them all in a large Word document? Ed.)
This year, I’ve faced things I didn’t plan to face just yet. I’ve looked into the jaws of my own mortality, and squared up with two things: how insignificant my life is, and how significant my life is. Both are burdensome truths. I’ve found that the best strategy to deal with them is to look them straight in the eyes, but not for long, and then turn away to get on with the fabulous reality of daily life. It’s like wearing sunglasses on a very bright day. If you don’t have them, you squint all the time, and your eyes hurt, and it’s a continual distraction. So you wear them, but every now and again, you feel the need to take them off and screw up your eyes against the light, just to see how intense the colour of the sky really is. The brightness is there all the time, but you don’t want to look at it too much. It’s a relief to put those sunglasses back on and get on with the day, and then you forget about the brightness.
This year, I realized more than ever how important writing is to me. This blog, and the excuse it provides for my incessant drivel, has seen me through. I would write it if nobody at all read it. But you do, and that makes it a thousand times better.
I want to thank you all so much. This isn’t a glib “Thank you, I love you all, Happy New Year”. This is a heartfelt thank you. I know that reading about someone with cancer is not a very joyful thing to do. I know that it is more fun to read about the sweet things people’s children have said or done, or tales of expat life abroad. So thank you for not clicking away. Thank you to those of you who knew me before this year. Thank you to the new people who’ve taken the trouble to get to know me. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented. Thank you to those of you who’ve emailed me. Thank you to those of you who've read and lurked. Lurkers are nice people too. In the words of Hank Williams, “Hey, good lurkin’, what ya got curkin’?”
Most of all, thank you for writing your own blogs. Reading them is like keeping busy on a sunny day, with sunglasses on. When I started this blog in the summer of 2007, I was horribly homesick, and I used to read lots of blogs about England. At that time, a large number of people had recently started blogs about country life, in response to a competition run by the magazine of that name to find a blogger for the publication. There was a real excitement around as people shared stories and pictures of their lush flower beds, their burgeoning vegetable patches, the domestic projects in their homes. It was a rather unBritish blowing of own trumpets – in a very British understated way, of course. You might have thought it would have made me more homesick – all those colourful pictures of roses in full bloom, beautiful shots of the English countryside, accounts of trips to National Trust properties, complaints about the rain (it was a record-breakingly rainy summer, 2007). But it didn’t. Somehow it helped, just knowing that it was all going on, even if an ocean away, and without me.
In the same way, this summer, your blogs kept a window open for me on normal life. I was ill, and sad, and fearful. I saw too much of my own four walls. Reading your blogs, reading about your joys, your woes, your excitements, your disappointments, the magnificent trivia of your daily lives, all of it helped me keep a hold on the fact that normality was still happening, even if it felt at times a long way away, and without me.
So thank you, for being part of my blog, and for letting me be part of yours. Happy New Year to you all.
.
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