PooBou.com

On Tuesday, we left Carlisle (Dave’s hometown) for Scotland. I knew that we were in Northern England – whenever anyone asks Dave where he’s from, he always says that Carlisle is “up near the Scotland border.” However, I didn’t realize that we were literally 7 miles from the Scotland border. So we were in the car for 10 minutes and oh hey, welcome to Scotland! Which, wha? We just entered a new country like that? It’s odd because it’s all part of the UK, but Scotland is definitely its own country. Even the light is different here.

I’ve never seen so many rainbows during the course of a single road trip in my entire life.

We drove up through Glasgow to Inverness, and then on to a tiny seaside town called Nairn. It was dark by the time we got there, so we stopped for the night at a hotel.

The next morning, since we were in the area and I have yet to do a single touristy thing since arriving here, we stopped at the Culloden Battlefield.

It’s odd that even though the battle happened in 1746, if you walk around the place, it’s sort of creepy, and you get the vibe that something really awful happened there. Maybe it’s just the nature of Scottish moors, but the whole area just feels very sad.

From there, we drove the rest of the way up to the cottages. I’m not sure how to describe where we are. Dave described it as the middle of nowhere, but I pointed out that the middle of nowhere is a thriving metropolis compared to where we are.

The last 40-50 miles of road up to the cottages is literally a single lane road. There are places along the way where one side of the road will have a wide shoulder, so if you encounter a car trying to come the other way, you have to pull over and let them pass (or vice versa). That was… well, it sucked, quite honestly. It made the trip twice as long, and made us all twice as carsick, with all the stopping and going. We’ve been here less than 24 hours and I’m already dreading the trip back to Carlisle on Saturday.

The cottages themselves are fantastic. Dave’s family owns two cottages that are next door to each other. So we’re staying in one, while Mags and Roger (Dave’s mom and her partner) are staying in the other. We opted for the newer cottage, based solely on the fact that it’s on one floor, and it has a bathtub. The other cottage is probably the nicer one in its old-timey cottage-style charm, but the loft bedroom is accessed via a metal spiral staircase and there’s only a shower stall. Neither of those features seemed particularly toddler-friendly, so we chose this place instead.

It’s beautiful here. From the front door, there’s a view of huge, craggy mountains, and from the back door, there’s a view of pastures leading down to the cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean.

(Note: this is where I’d insert pretty pictures of the scenery for y’all to see, if only Flickr wasn’t being a pain in the you-know-what.)

I’ve promised to take Catie for a walk on the beach to look for seashells later – we even packed her galoshes for the occasion. If this cottage had Internet access, I could probably be happy staying here for a while. But I don’t do well with feeling cut off from the rest of the world. I cannot imagine what it’s like for the people who live here.

I have never been this far north in my entire life. It’s worse than Seattle in winter, sunset is a little before 3:30 in the afternoon. My mother-in-law says that around the time of the summer solstice in June, there’s sunlight for 24 hours straight. It’s insane. I told Dave I can’t look at the ocean behind our back door, and wrap my head around the notion that it’s the same Atlantic that we swam in a few months ago, on our trip to Wilmington, NC. It’s completely surreal. It feels like we’re on another planet here.

But, you know, at least it’s a really beautiful planet.

(Note: I wrote this post 2 days ago, on Thursday. I’m only just now getting around to publishing it because that’s how long it took me to find a reliable wifi signal.)

2 Comments »

This is my 1,000th blog post since I started this site back in August 2003. It’s strange, thinking about those first few entries, which started about nine months before I met Dave. If I could have imagined my life now, I’m sure that my imaginary future most certainly would not have included spending Christmas in England with my husband’s family, sitting at a cozy warm kitchen table with a cup of tea and my laptop, and looking up to watch sheep graze in the pasture behind my in-laws’ house. Meanwhile, my husband and our 2 year-old daughter take a nap together upstairs.

It’s not what I would have expected, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, yes, obviously we made it to the UK in one piece. Catie did phenomenally well on the plane until the last half hour or so, but even with the one meltdown at the end, she did far better than we expected. We went through the border (where Dave got to through the fast & speedy UK/EU passport line, and Catie and I had to wait in line with all of the other “foreigners” – aka Americans, since I think most everyone else in line was on our same flight from Dulles). The very nice immigration lady told me that next time, Catie & I can go through the UK line with Dave, since we’re a family, even though Catie & I don’t have UK passports. Good to know!

We got our bags, got a rental car, and spent the night at a hotel near Heathrow. The next day, we got up and drove to Carlisle, where my mother-in-law, her partner/boyfriend (Grandpa Roger, as he’s known around these parts), and my brother-in-law Steve all live. It’s about a 300-mile drive from London, and it was probably too much to ask of Catie with the previous day being all travel as well. She did great for the first half of the trip, but the poor kid was just exhausted and bored, and she decided she’d had enough. We ended up pulling over and rearranging suitcases so I could sit in the backseat with her to calm her down, which (surprisingly) worked.

Also, from the backseat, I was able to effectively ignore Dave’s driving, which helped. I mean, he’s an ok driver, I just kept involuntarily reaching for a steering wheel that wasn’t in front of me, and almost screaming, “LOOK OUT!” because I kept panicking that we were on the wrong side of the road and the other cars were going to drive straight into us. It’s much easier to ignore the fear of your certain impending demise from the back seat.

We’ve spent the past two days just recovering from jet lag and not doing much else. This morning, Catie & I watched the UK version of the Wonder Pets. As in, the voices of Linny, Tuck & Ming-Ming are done by entirely different child actors with British accents. It blew both of our minds. (And, before you ask, no, the British version of Ming-Ming can’t pronounce her R’s either.)

Tomorrow, we’re driving up to Scotland – we’re spending one night in Inverness, then heading up to the Highlands to stay in our cottages. It feels weird to say they’re “our” cottages – like, oh so casual, “why yes, we own some land up on the northern coast of Scotland, doesn’t everyone?” But now that Dave, Steve, and their mom have made this a joint business venture, those two cottages really are ours, and someday they’ll be Catie’s.

I understand the cottages are near the cliffs and the ocean, and it’s supposed to be really beautiful there, so I look forward to taking a LOT of pictures.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favorites that I’ve taken so far. The rest of the set is here.

10 Comments »

When I was little, I thought that my grandparents lived really far away. In reality, of course, that wasn’t the case at all. I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. My dad’s parents lived in Meridian, MS, about 80 miles away. My mom’s parents were in New Orleans, which is about 200 miles from Jackson. Both sets of grandparents were a road trip away.

In hindsight, we saw them relatively frequently. Holidays were generally split. We spent Christmas with my dad’s parents – which I guess is fair, since my dad is an only child and we were his parents’ only grandchildren; my mom, on the other hand, is one of seven, so there were plenty of grandkids around during the holidays for her folks. A couple of days after Christmas, we’d go to New Orleans and usually stay there through New Year’s.

Flash-forward, and now I’m an adult with a child of my own. And Catie’s grandparents genuinely are far away. My parents are still in Mississippi, which is a good 800 miles from here. And Dave’s parents are in England. Both sets of grandparents require airplanes to visit, not short little road trips.

We’re lucky that Mags (Dave’s mom) has been able to come over for a few visits. But Catie has a granddad (Dave’s dad) who she’s never met. Heck, I haven’t even met my own father-in-law either, and Dave and I have been together for over five years. He & his wife haven’t ever come to the US, and Dave and I have never gone over there – which was first because of problems with Dave’s visa, and later because we had a new baby, and then we just couldn’t afford it with the move. There was always a reason that stopped us from going.

Now, though, Dave has a green card so he can freely leave and re-enter the country (hooray for that!), and we aren’t quite as broke as we were a year ago. So, we’re going to England for Christmas. Actually, we’re going for more than that – we’re flying out on December 11th, and we won’t be coming back until December 28th. Seventeen days. Hopefully that will be enough time to see all of Dave’s family, make a touring visit of his friends who’ve spread out all over the country, and also do some sightseeing, since I’ve never been to England before. How sad is that? I’m 33 years old, and this will be the first stamp on my passport (because they don’t stamp it when you go to Canada).

Obviously, we’re all really excited. It’s going to be weird for me because I’ve only spent one Christmas away from my family in my entire life, but I’m also really looking forward to this trip because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I emailed Dave’s parents yesterday to let them know we’re coming, send them copies of our flight itineraries, etc. Dave’s mom of course is thrilled; she and her partner, Roger, will be coming over for a visit in a couple of weeks, but she’s like any other grandma in wanting to get as much Grandbaby Time as possible, so she’s very happy. And Dave’s stepmom emailed me back to say that when she told Keith (Dave’s dad) that we’re coming, he got choked up and teary. He’s beyond happy that he’ll finally get to meet his only grandchild. Of course, hearing that he teared up made me all misty, because that’s just so damn sweet – and, well, also because I’m a big wuss.

And honestly, I’m feeling a little bit guilty that we haven’t made more of a concentrated effort to go there sooner. There probably was a time when we could have gone to England, and we didn’t. I guess neither Dave nor I truly realized how important it is to them. I think that in the future we’ll have to work harder at that.

6 Comments »

We got home from the Type-A Mom Conference yesterday afternoon. This was only my second blogging conference; BlogHer was my first. It feels odd, to go to two in one year, when I’ve been blogging since 2003. I’m not sure how it worked out like that, but there you go.

I think that overall, the Type-A Mom Conference was a lot more enjoyable for me than BlogHer. At BlogHer, it was like Overstimulation Central. The schedule is packed, there are tons of people there, the marketers and their swag are all over the place, everything is rush-rush-rush, and while I certainly got to meet a lot of the bloggers I adore, I didn’t really get a chance to spend a lot of time with any of them. And that’s not really a criticism of BlogHer, honestly, I think it’s just the nature of the beast. By the time it was over, I was so glad to be home again.

By comparison, Type-A Mom was totally different. For one, just the fact that you’re at a resort in a smallish mountain town instead of being in a hotel smack in the middle of downtown Chicago gives it a different vibe. And the fact that it’s a smaller conference means that instead of rushing around trying to meet everyone, I had the chance to actually spend time with people; to have a real conversation and form an actual connection with them, not just a “hi! OMG you’re here! So great to meet you! Ok bye!” Which is sort of what BlogHer felt like to me.

Also, for me personally, Type-A Mom was different because Dave and Catie came along with me. In some ways that was harder (no “I’ll take a nap whenever I damn well please” policy like I had at BlogHer), but it was also great because then I didn’t have that urge to rush home to them – they were already there. Saturday morning, I totally skipped out on the morning sessions, which ok yes, maybe I would’ve learned something if I’d gone. But I spent the morning lying in bed with my family watching cartoons, and I can honestly say that there was nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment.

Oh, for the record? Catie freaking loved Kid Con, which I wasn’t expecting at all. She cried the first time Dave dropped her off there, and we tried to stagger her time there to keep her from getting too overwhelmed. But seriously, after that first time? Every time we took her back to “daycare school” (her term), she’d run into the room with an “Ok, Mommy, bye! You go now!” She was glad to see us when we’d come back for her, of course, but she clearly had a fantastic time there. That was an amazing program that they set up for the kids, all blogging conferences should follow that example.

So, yes. It was great. At BlogHer, I was so exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home by the end of the weekend. With Type-A Mom, I just felt sad and melancholy the whole drive home because I had so much fun, and I wish that all of those fabulous women lived in my neighborhood so I could see them all the time. Sigh.

Oh, and Catie’s take on the conference?
During:

After:

I know how she feels.

9 Comments »

With all the moving and house stuff, I sort of forgot to mention that we’re going out of town this weekend. Or rather, today. Thursday.

We’re heading over to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’ll be there until Sunday. I’m going to the Type-A Mom Conference, and since it’s only a road trip away from here and doesn’t involve airfare, we thought it’d be fun to have Dave and Catie come along. We’ve never been to Asheville, and I hear it’s beautiful there, so I’m really excited.

What’s odd about this little mini-vacation is that we each have different agendas. I’ll be at the conference, Dave wants to go hiking in the mountains, and Catie has a pass to attend “Kid Con,” which is a whole separate event for kids at the conference. I’m a little nervous about that, since Catie isn’t really used to large daycare scenarios, and I’m sort of expecting her to freak out.

But then, she may surprise me. She’s done really well at the YMCA daycare several times. And yesterday, I had a work meeting at 10:30 in the morning; Dave was at the office, and our baby-sitter is out of town this week. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I took her to a drop-in daycare facility that’s close to our new house. I’d typically be a little iffy about that kind of place, but I had heard good things about it from one of our old neighbors, and I didn’t really have any other options. Catie was very excited to go to “daycare school” (as she called it), but when it was time for me to actually leave her there, she had a full-on screaming, crying meltdown. I had to walk out the door while she cried for me, and I swear, I’ll never get used to that. Still, the daycare teachers there said that she was fine about five minutes after I left, and she had a great time playing for the next two hours. She even asked today if she could go back to daycare school. So, I’m thinking that maybe Kid Con will be fine. We’re certainly talking it up to her a lot, about how she’s going to have SO! MUCH! FUN! I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about how she might react.

So, yes. Asheville! Road trip! Type-A Mom Conference! Getting to hang out with some of my favorite bloggers! Long weekend! Yay!

Oh, and just in case I don’t blog while we’re out of town (because I very well might not), here’s a cute video of Catie opening a present from Mimi & Pop-Pop (my parents).

The guitar (“gui-tahhg,” as she says) was really cute for the first 15 minutes. Now I’m taking bets on how long until it mysteriously “breaks” – or at least until the batteries disappear.

P.S. Happy 3rd birthday to my beautiful little cousin, Elizabeth! We love you & can’t wait to celebrate when we get back next week.

4 Comments »

I don’t have much to say, since I’ve been in Crazy Unpacking Mode for the past several days. A brief progress report:

* We’ve been doing all of the shopping that you have to do when you move into a new place: we bought a new washer & dryer (because this house came with none, and I’m not hauling our stuff to a laundromat), a new box spring for our bed (since the one that Beaumont spent the night inside on the moving truck reeked of cat pee), a couple of ceiling fans for Catie’s room and a spare bedroom, a new shower head (which feels like getting a scalp massage by angels, no lie), plus some towel hooks and other random stuff.
* We celebrated Dave’s 38th birthday on Saturday. When we asked Catie how old Daddy is, she said, “Forty.” Ouch. Dave is convinced that I taught her to say that, but I honestly didn’t.
* We went to see They Might Be Giants on Saturday afternoon. We met up with Cat & Tony for that, and Catie and Elizabeth had a great time running around dancing. I took some pictures that I need to get uploaded.
* While Dave enjoyed his birthday weekend by lounging around watching the first couple of seasons of “Prison Break” on DVD, I single-handedly emptied the garage of all of the boxes our movers dumped there, and moved them upstairs to the attic. My arms & legs are killing me, but I can now park my car in the garage, and there’s almost enough room to get Dave’s car in there too. We have never, in the history of our relationship, had a garage that was clean enough to actually park a car inside of it, nevermind two cars, so this is huge.

I’m going to try to get some pictures of the house posted soon, as soon as I have it remotely presentable. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorites from our trip to my parents’ house last week.

Pulling a Flashdance move with her Tinkerbell t-shirt.

Catie recreated the moment of her birth.
(Seriously, that’s the caption I wanted to put on Flickr, because the pink tunnel made me think of it, and the look on her face just cracked me up. But I knew my parents would be offended, so I’m keeping it here.)

Catie became a flying unicorn, with a little help from her Pop-Pop.

We played with the hose.

And Mimi taught Catie all about gardening.

6 Comments »

Sorry for the delay in getting all this written down, I’m unpacking like a maniac and I’m actually having a hard time making myself sit down at my computer, which is freakishly rare for me.

SO! We spent the night at Cat & Tony’s house, and the next morning we all loaded up our respective children into various cars and went our separate ways. I dropped Catie off at daycare, and went to check out the new house. Still no power or water. I checked on the cats, dropped off our suitcases, and went to run a couple of errands. Came back to the house, and got to work setting up Catie’s room. I wanted the new house to make a good impression on her, so I figured that making sure her room looked like “hers” was a good place to start.

The utilities finally got turned on around 3:00. I was elated. I drove back to Cat & Tony’s house to retrieve our fridge & freezer food that we had stashed at their house. Came back, and picked up Catie from daycare. Dave got home a few minutes before we did, so we both got to witness Catie’s first reaction to the house. She seemed to like it, she was very excited to see a lot of her toys that she hadn’t seen in over a week. She kept saying, “Wow! Hey! Where’d that come from?” Like she couldn’t fathom how her stuff all magically got transported from the old house to the new house.

She’s had a couple of meltdowns since then, where she cries, “I no like new house! I wan’ go home!” Which stinks, and I hate it for her, but I think that once we get this place feeling a little more like a home and a little less like a box factory, she’ll start to like it more. Last night was rough, I found her standing in the dark hallway screaming her head off because she was scared and didn’t know where she was. (There are nightlights in both her bedroom and the hall, but it didn’t seem to make her feel less freaked out.) I’ve been trying to get things set up quickly to help her relax. The kitchen is almost done, then the family room is next on my agenda. I’m so focused on trying to ease Catie through this transition, I have a feeling that I won’t get Dave’s or my stuff unpacked until last. Oh well.

So. The transition is sucking, but we’re here. And this house is still beautiful and perfect and the absolute house of my dreams. So we’re good.

3 Comments »