Judging a book...

Yesterday, I participated in a great yardsaling adventure with Penny, Katie and my mother. Spirits were high, as well as temperatures. Not that we were feverish, but the outdoor temperature was up in the low 80's, I think, at one point. In November! The whole Southern balminess thing still surprises me, even after a year. I got a chair and matching ottoman for a mere fifteen bucks at the first yardsale. It's a tad oldish and there are a few spots and such, but on the whole it is a very sound, comfortable chair and pretty good-looking. I got it for our basement apartment, which is soon to be inhabited by Grandpa/Uncle Charlie/Mr. Pass.

At the next yardsale, I found some Happy Hollister books. As a child, I read this charming, archaic, corny, wholesome series about a family of sleuthing children- kind of junior Hardy Boys, except there are three girls in the family. They seem to run into adventures and mysteries everywhere, and the bad guys are always brought to justice, mumbling about how everything in their nefarious schemes was going well until "these prying kids showed up and ruined everything." Anyway, I bought four of these books, including the pilot episode, which introduces the Hollister family, as they move to the town of Shoreham. ( What is it with books of this ilk and the way they name towns? Bayport? Shoreham? River Heights? They all sound like cheesy subdivisions. But then, if I'm getting into criticism of this genre, town names merely scratch the surface of the campy iceberg.)

The books were a little tattered, but I thought it would be nice to have them, for sentimental value, and perhaps someday, our future children might like to read them.

I was leafing through the first book today, and found a few pages that looked as though they had been stabbed. Whatever. I kept going and suddenly found that someone had carved out a rectangular space through several pages, from page 17 - 44 to be exact, as if someone had been intending to smuggle something within the book. I was annoyed - I wish I had seen that before I bought it- but I was also a bit intrigued. What is the story behind this tale of tome mutilation? Was it the act of some child, just being mischevious? Or is there a darker story involved? Should I have the book exorcised, to cleanse it from a shady past? If this was the instrument of sketchiness, I have to admire the genius of whoever used the book- who would think of suspecting a Happy Hollisters book of containing anything untoward? It's a deliciously ironic little scheme.

I asked Brad if he had ever read the Happy Hollisters. He said, "No, it's against my religion." Okaaaaaaay. Clearly, three years of marriage isn't enough to plumb the depths of all our differences.

Tales of a Traveler

I'm home again, safe and sound. Here are a few pictures from my trip to Cambridge. I didn't actually get a lot of good ones, sadly. I struggled with the camera quite a bit, but I'm afraid I'm just not a natural photographer. If I had photographed everything I wanted to, I probably wouldn't have had much time to do anything else.

The day after I posted last, I came down with a strange sickness that reduced me to heaving up into the trash, and left me utterly useless. Great! It is just the WORST to be sick away from home and I felt bad to be endangering the household and inconveniencing everyone, although Karena was super nice and took care of me... I got over it by the afternoon but I was pretty miserable and desirous of death for a few hours. And then I was afraid to eat for a day- and subsisted on dry toast and gingerale. Poor Lexie came down with it a couple days later...You can just pray that it ends there and that nobody else in the house catches it!

It was fun to get to know Lexie and Arthur a little bit. Lexie is super creative; she will occupy herself by the hour drawing, cutting up paper, taping bits of paper together, and making things. I was the recipient of a gorgeous piece of paper jewelry- a bracelet of priceless green and white construction paper with an exquisite little clasp of string. Sadly, I think I left it in England, along with my sunglasses.

Arthur is extremely musical. He can really carry a tune perfectly; his repertoire consists mostly of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and variations on this tune. It is so rewarding to have him charge up to you and happily attack your leg like a little bear.

Karena and I spent some good, quality time together over the week and we went to all sorts of great places, including shopping at the outdoor marketplace, lunch at a tea room, visiting the Fitwilliam Musuem...etc. I loved the Fitzwilliam and ended up going twice- hurray for free admission. I skipped the Egypt stuff and the armor and ancient things and instead, spent most of my time on the European art: fabuloso. The incredible things I saw - in the museum and also around Cambridge- just fed a great, big beauty hunger in me.

We ate out at a couple interesting places - one was a Japanese noodle place- excellent,yummy food- and also at a vegetarian place, with great cuisine as well. The thing about the British is- their customer service leaves something to be desired. I almost fell out of my chair at one point when someone at the next table asked the waitress something about their bill as she was walking by, and she didn't even LOOK at them. She didn't even pause. She just kept walking and said, "It's on the table." The person had to get up and follow her to have their question answered. If that was in the U.S., her tip would have been mud! I was apalled! But Karena tells me that is pretty standard.

It seems to me that 95% of British people are above-average in ugliness. It kind of made me feel relaxed though. I didn't worry so much that I was having a bad hair day and that my teeth are crooked and my socks clashed with my shoes. I felt in a strange way that I belonged. I think I fit in well, on the whole. Although wearing the Red Sox hat may have made me stand out in a way. I felt like I was wearing an American flag on my head and it made me feel proud but it also felt as though I was wearing a sign: "Foreigner! Tourist! Alien!" The subject came up on my return trip to the airport, and I asked my taxi driver ( I had the same one from before) if he knew what my hat meant, and he said no. When I told him, he was puzzled as to why there was a B...I explained, and it made me smile, because I suddenly remembered being a small child and asking someone the same thing. I saw a man at Gatwick that had a Yankees shirt; there was a small second of recognition between us as he saw my hat and I saw his shirt and I smiled. It felt as though I had spent a week on a distant planet, surrounded by a different species of creatures and that suddenly, I saw a human again- maybe a pygmy or an albino, but a human nonetheless! 

A postcard from England ( minus the picture, sorry)

I figure I better document the fact that right now I am fulfilling a life-long dream: I have finally made it to England. There is so much going on right now, so much to see and experience that it's practically a sensory overload...between the fantastic architecture of Cambridge, the sights and smells of the outdoor market ( which I have been to three times so far), the gorgeous countryside, the adorable little bookshops
( some of which seem like glorified closets), and of course the fascinating sound of English accents all around me. ( I just wrote a few postcards last night- and that line is almost straight from the backs of those postcards- sorry, recipients, for the redundancies...)

The jetlag stuck with me longer than I anticipated. I took off on Friday evening and got into Gatwick Saturday morning 2:00 a.m. according to my body- but 7:00 a.m. local time. Unfortunately, there were a number of small children on the plane so sleep was hard in coming. And I've never had anyone wake me up at such an ungodly hour for a boxed breakfast of airplane food- which was actually quite good as airplane food goes.

My taxi driver said that he had driven Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in his car. "She sat right where you are sitting now!" Yep, me 'n Justice Ginsberg- birds of a feather. "Not"- as we used to say in the 90's.

It's been good to spend some quality time with my neice and nephew. I've taken pictures, but it's hard to get them to sit still long enough to get a good picture. And being a little more comfortable with the video camera, I find myself spending too much time figuring out how to get the still camera to do what I want it to...and then the moment is lost. Or rather, the nanosecond is lost. Lexie wants to see the picture immediately, and sometimes gets up to come see it before I've even taken it!

Last night I took Lexie around to do some trick or treating- as Sleeping Beauty or some such princess ( she is obsessed with "princessesses") - until a gaggle of hooligans in ghoulish masks overtook us and frightened her senseless. ( Another postcard line stolen...)So we went home. I was secretly a little glad to go home early; it was cold. Poor Lexie- I think she hasn't quite grasped the concept of trick-or-treating. She kept trying to GIVE candy to the people in the houses...I had to encourage her to TAKE the candy, not give it. I felt like such a bad aunt: what kind of message am I giving here: GET- not GIVE!

And today was Lexie's birthday: HUGE excitement! Presents! Cake! Balloons! Joy! Silliness!

This morning, I spent a few hours by myself walking around Cambridge, visiting churches, shops, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Man- every INCH of this city is CRAMMED with beauty and history and charm. I just want to EAT it.

The whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing is much less of a weirding-out factor than I imagined. The fact that the roads are so narrow and that bikes are whizzing everywhere freaks me out a little more. I'm a little surprised I haven't been mowed down yet. And I would never survive driving here.

Well, there is lots more to say and many pictures to download, of course, but I will wait til I get home to post pictures, and who knows when you may hear from me again...