Author Archives: Cindy

A Day at the Beach

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Here’s the thing about 2 year-olds: if you make a promise, you’d damn well better stick to it if you ever want to hear the end of it. We’d been promising Catie ever since we got to Scotland that we were going to take her to the beach. Friday rolled around, and it was our last day at the cottages, so… well, off to the beach we went, even though it was ridiculously cold outside.

at the beach!

We managed to get to the beach during a brief dry interval, in between rain storms. Of course, dry does not necessarily equal warm. Because believe me, it was effing FREEZING out there.

Dave & me on the beach
Tip: If you see me standing like this, it means I’m really, really cold. Or I need to pee. One of those two things.

Catie on the beach
Quite possibly the best picture I’ve ever taken in my life.

See those black clouds on the horizon? They moved in a lot faster than we expected. We were only there for maybe 15 minutes before we got caught in the freezing, pouring rain and had to run as fast as we could back to the car.

Still, that might be one of the most fun experiences we’ve had yet here. Catie had so much fun running around on the beach, picking up seashells and throwing them back into the surf. She cried when we left, even though it was pouring rain on us. I promised her that we’ll try to take her to the beach next week when we’re in Yorkshire, visiting Dave’s dad & stepmom.

Catie on the beach

I have to say, Catie has been amazing on this trip. We’ve asked an awful lot of her with all of this traveling and driving. We’re never in the same place for more than 3 days, and we’ve driven hundreds of miles since we got here. The poor kid’s entire routine has been shot to hell. And overall, she’s doing fantastically well. She’s had a couple of meltdowns here & there, sure, but mostly she’s been completely sweet and delightful and fun.

Catie & me at the cottages

And sure, it helps that she’s got the undivided attention of four adults. I think I’m just amazed because I always talk about how she doesn’t adapt to new situations quickly. And clearly, this little girl of mine is just full of surprises.

In Scotland

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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.

rainbow!

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.

memorials at 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.

cottages_my_map

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.)

one thousand

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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.

ready for take-off

Catie & I in the bathroom mirror

sheep pasture

{W} My Dad

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This week’s (W)rite of Passage challenge is: Character. The idea is to study a person’s character and make a story surrounding them.

This was extremely hard for me to write, and I have a feeling I’m going to get in a whole world of trouble if my dad ever reads this, but here goes.

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Sometimes he doesn’t recognize the old man in the mirror.

He gets up in the morning and has his breakfast – cup of coffee, bowl of cereal – then heads off to the golf course. Rain or shine.

Since he retired, this golf course has become his life. All of his friends are here. He even got a job here; two days a week, he’s the guy who stands at the first tee and tells groups of golfers when they can tee off. Sort of a traffic director, if you will. In exchange, he has no membership dues, he gets free cart rentals, and a free lunch at the clubhouse. For an old golfer, you can’t find a much sweeter deal than that.

He’s at his happiest when he’s here. He’s friendly, even outgoing. They gave him the “Sportsman of the Year” award a few years ago.

But at home, it’s a different story. He doesn’t want to do much, he just sits in his chair and watches TV. He likes to watch sports – football, golf tournaments – and the History channel. But he gets angry and frustrated a lot. He thinks that his wife of 40 years nags at him all the time. She keeps pointing out that his memory is slipping. He doesn’t want to think about that. He’s seen some of his friends from the golf course who ended up with Alzheimer’s, and it scares him. So he refuses to admit that maybe there is a problem with his memory, or that he should talk to his doctor about it. When his wife reminds him of times that he’s forgotten things (like the time he forgot where Northside Drive was, even though he’s been driving down that street since 1971), he denies that it ever happened.

He’s 73 now. His parents are gone. He was an only child. He has a couple of cousins that are still around, but they don’t see each other often. His wife and kids are all that he has left, really. His kids have all moved away. He doesn’t understand why none of them like Mississippi, he thinks it’s a great place to live. Of course, he’s lived here for at least 60 of his years on this earth.

His two youngest kids are now in North Carolina, and it’s looking like his oldest daughter might move there, too. His younger daughter has a child of her own now. His only grandbaby. She’s such a sweet little girl, he adores her and spoils her rotten. He also worries about her a lot. That’s what he does, though, he’s a worrier. He worries about her asthma, he worries about whether or not she’s eating enough, he worries about why she isn’t potty-trained yet, he worries about why she has so many tantrums. His daughter rolls her eyes and reminds him that his granddaughter is only 2 years old, but still. He worries.

His wife keeps talking about how she wants to move to North Carolina, to be closer to the kids and their granddaughter. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t like change. He keeps using the golf course as his excuse to stay. It might sound like a flimsy excuse to some, but not to him. That golf course is his life.

But the golf course isn’t doing so well. They’re losing members. Sometimes when he’s at work, there are no golfers to direct, so he just stands around and practices his swing. The secretary who works there mentioned to him that the place lost tens of thousands of dollars last year, and the owner is getting phone calls about unpaid bills. She said she doesn’t know how it’s going to survive another winter.

If the golf course closes, he won’t have anything to keep him here. He supposes that then, his wife will get her way and they’ll have to move. He doesn’t like to think about that.

So he’ll try to forget about it. And tomorrow, he’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and wonder who that old guy is staring back at him.
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More (W)rite of Passage entries here:

Hungry Eyes*

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Last night seemed normal at first. I got Catie to bed, checked my email one last time, took my melatonin pill and headed off to bed. Dave had left the TV on in our room, and “Dirty Dancing” was on. I ended up watching it that rather than going to sleep. Why? I don’t know. I can never seem to turn that movie off when it’s on. It’s one of those guilty pleasure movies – it’s awful & I love it.**

By the time the movie was over and I turned the TV off to try to sleep, I noticed that my stomach felt… wrong. It was hurting and cramping a bit. I thought it was probably something I ate, but didn’t think too much about it. I just tried to ignore it and go to sleep.

I woke up about an hour later in major pain. Seriously, I don’t even know how to describe it. My entire torso was cramping up, and it kept hitting me in waves. I didn’t know if I was going to poop, barf, poop AND barf, or die.

And even though it’s totally illogical? It felt a whole lot like labor pain, and I thought for a few minutes that I was going to end up like one of those women on I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, and my big 15 minutes of fame was going to happen when Joel McHale mocked my stupidity on The Soup.

Seriously, I was half-asleep and in pain. Sound reasoning isn’t top-notch at 2:30 in the morning. The only thing that calmed me down is that I had a physical back in August and I’m pretty sure that the doctor would’ve noticed if I was pregnant during my pelvic exam. So the idea that I could be nine months pregnant and about to unknowingly deliver a baby? Well, it seemed a bit unlikely.

So… I’m not pregnant. Of course. I do, however, seem to have a pretty vicious case of food poisoning. No idea what caused it, either. I’m feeling a little better now – I had some chicken soup and a piece of toast, and everything is staying down, so I think I’ll live.

Dave very kindly got up with Catie this morning and took her to Target so I could get some more rest, since I had been awake and sick during so much of last night. They came back with a “get well, Mommy” present for me. A box full of miniature plastic dinosaurs. Just what I’ve always wanted. Oh well, the dinosaurs are keeping Catie happy and occupied, so I guess that’s good enough.

*That song is stuck in my head after watching Dirty Dancing last night. But believe me, my eyes are anything but hungry right now. Blech.

** Random thought: Is it just me or was Jennifer Grey way cuter before she had a nose job?

this is why I don't drink beer anymore

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The lovely and amazing Mrs. Flinger has issued a challenge for some of us bloggers to try to write better, and since I lurves me some Mrs. Flinger, I figured what the hell, I’m in.

First assigned topic? My most embarrassing moment.

I’ve been pondering on this one for a couple of days, because there are so many to choose from. Horror stories involving your first period? Been there. Pooping during childbirth? Done that too. And since I didn’t meet my husband until the ripe old age of 28, I have plenty of embarrassing dating mishap stories too. (One of my personal favorites? The time I was making out with a boy and I got a nosebleed. Neither of us noticed until I had bled all over both of our faces. We looked like a couple of extras from a bad zombie movie. Traumatic, to say the least.)

Then I realized that my most truly embarrassing moments involve alcohol, and the over-consumption of it. (I promise, I’m not an alcoholic. I hardly ever drink now. I just flirted dangerously close to being one when I was in my 20’s.) But there’s a lot of good fodder there. Puking in public? Yep. Being so lovey-dovey from the booze that I’ve made out with total strangers, even those of my own gender? Um, yeah, that too.

But there’s one that keeps standing out in my mind: Halloween 2004.

What’s funny is that I just checked my blog archives (which go back to August 2003, when I started this little site) and I noticed that I never mentioned anything about it, because I was so horrified at my own behavior.

Dave and I had been dating for about five months. One of my girlfriends invited us to a Halloween party, and we decided to go, even though my friend was the only person there that we knew. I dressed as a Catholic school girl, Dave was a priest. (Note: neither of us is Catholic.) Dave also wore a Bill Clinton wig and black lipstick, but I don’t remember why. We just thought it was funny at the time.

So we get there, and there were significantly more men than women, and I didn’t really know any of them, and I felt a little bit slutty and uncomfortable in my costume, so I did the most natural thing I could do, and got completely drunk.

I don’t remember much of the evening, honestly. There are pictures, and they make me cringe every time I see them. I’ve never posted a single photo from that night, but since I’m opening up and sharing my embarrassment now, here you go.

P1010127
This is seriously the least embarrassing photo of me from the entire damn night.

P1010129
Oh hi there, Cindy DrunkFace!

So, yeah. I was drunk and made a general idiot of myself. No big shock there. And really, it wouldn’t have been a big deal because I didn’t know any of those people and I would never see them again, so what do I care?

But then, somehow I ended up in the bathroom with the guy who was hosting the party. I’m not even sure why, I think it was because my bracelet broke and he was getting me a safety pin to fix it? And the dude was kind of sleazy, and Dave insisted that he was hitting on me (maybe he was, I was too drunk to notice), but while we were in the bathroom, I started telling him about Dave and how in loooove I was with him, but we hadn’t officially said “I love you” to each other yet, and I was so crazy about him, and I was so tortured about it because what if he isn’t in love with me like I’m in love with him, and blah-blah-drunken-rambling-blah.

Then, someone comments to Dave, “Hey, where’s your girlfriend?” And Dave realizes that I’m… uh… in the bathroom. With another guy. With the door closed. So he comes to get me, and in my drunken-rambling state, I slammed the door on him when he tried to open it. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: I slammed the door on my boyfriend so I could stay in the bathroom with another dude. And of course, all I was doing in the bathroom was talking about Dave, but how in the hell was Dave supposed to know that? So he was pissed. As anyone would be in that situation, really.

When I came out of the bathroom, Dave said it was time to go, and as soon as we got in the car, he told me how pissed he was. I sobered up enough to suddenly realize that holy crap, he’s about to break up with me right here because of how freaking stupid I am. So I burst into tears, and I told him I loved him.

And that was the first time we said our “I love you”s.

Three months later, we got engaged.

This past Halloween, I reminded him that it had been five years since the first time we said “I love you” to each other. He said, “Oh yeah, the night I almost dumped your ass.” I pointed out how happy he should be that he didn’t dump me then. It’s funny, though, that even though everything worked out ok in that situation (exceptional, even), I still cringe whenever I think about that night.

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Want more embarrassing moments? Here are the other people in the (W)rite of Passage challenge.

Thanksgiving Recap

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My poor little blog has been pretty neglected for the past couple of weeks. Sorry about that. There’s a bunch of stuff going on right now with the holidays and family visits, and yadda yadda yadda… basically, it’s been hard to find the time to sit down and just write.

My family was here last week for Thanksgiving. Since we’re going to the UK for Christmas next month, this was our early Christmas. Which meant that Catie was overloaded with presents, because for some reason my parents feel like she needs multiple gifts for each day that they’re here. So when they’re here for a week, that adds up to a lot of toys. In fact, if I’m making a wishlist for Catie’s birthday, number one is that she needs a new toy chest because her current one is overflowing.

And not that I’m complaining, because I think it’s awesome how generous my family is – my brother and sister both bought Catie multiple presents as well. But I do worry a little about what her expectations are going to be when she’s older. I don’t want her to be the kid who says, “What did you bring me?” when family members come to visit. So, yeah. I guess this is just what happens when you’re the only grandchild/niece.

shrieking with excitement about PRESENTS!!

But we had a great time, and they all left yesterday, which put me in kind of a funk. Of course it’s nice to have the house back to just the three of us and to get back to some sort of routine, but I love having my family around, and I really wish they all lived closer.

I think Catie might like Tracy just a little bit

Chris & Catie dancing together

Mimi & Catie play with her new Magna Doodle

this picture of Catie & my dad cracks me up

It just got me thinking that you know, my parents are getting older, their health isn’t so great, and I worry about them a lot. My brother is in Charlotte, so we can get to each other in a couple of hours if necessary. But with my sister in New York and my parents in Mississippi, it just feels like we’re very spread out. My mom would move here in a heartbeat, but my dad is not a fan of change, and I think it’s hard for him to consider leaving the town he’s lived in for the past 40 years.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I spent a good chunk of my online time yesterday looking up houses in 55-and-older communities. You know, just in case I need that information someday.