Tag: Home
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John McCain Crashed His Plane Just Outside Our New Flat
It was a few years ago (1967), but still- he ejected just over there- you can see it from our living room window. About two weeks ago, we moved house. Again. I may have mentioned the reluctant need to uproot, yet again. The construction work, the noise, the dust, the madness. Remember? Yeah, that.…
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Tiny Notes From Hanoi: It’s Like Downton Abbey, Except Different
We have a house, people. A whole house to ourselves, partway down a narrow scooter-wide lane, off a side street, a block from the lake. After two months of living out of suitcases, over a month living with family (both sides, on both sides of the Atlantic), and over three weeks camping out in hotel…
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This Is Still Not a Mommy Blog (Even Though That’s All I Do All Day)
Before I spawned my urchin, I was adamant about keeping the metalepsical church and state firmly separated. I read all of those books about the importance of keeping your grown up self intact and building a life where the baby mostly fits into your rhythms and routines rather than the other way around. I was pretty…
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Waiting For Godot (or a Baby): Notes on Identity, Change and Public Presentation
Any day now, I’m going to have a baby. Like, an actual baby that I get to keep indefinitely. Which is, admittedly, an awfully long time. I still haven’t wrapped my head completely around this concept, even though I’ve been quite pregnant for many wine-deprived and sushi-less months now. Little Thwacky McKickerson, currently 2…
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I Want to be Sedated: Adventures in Getting my Act Together in Leicester
People, my mind is muddled like a big ball of muddled things all muddled together with a muddling pestle. I’ve been trying to get my act together to write all of the posts that this particular point in time deserves. Of these, there are many. Changes of all sorts are afoot. Interesting, strange, complex changes.…
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On Existential Migration, Home, Leaving, and Scaring Yourself Silly
One day, not so long ago, when we were still in the exhausting throes of impenetrable visa applications and living out of two battered China Post boxes, partly in my parents’ basement and partly in the little house in the big woods where I grew up (the one heated only by a cast iron wood…
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Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England
People, I have moved to England. The seemingly interminable spouse visa application process suddenly terminated and within a week of getting our surprise approval we were safely ensconced in a ridiculously genteel, chocolate-box village just outside of Leicester. That’s the one pronounced Lester. The standard phonemic alphabet doesn’t necessarily apply here. There’s a…
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Killing Time in Familiar Places: Notes on Learning to Enjoy Enforced Stasis
It’s been raining for about three days now. The kind of rain that comes with leaden dark white skies, streams of water everywhere, and cacophony on metal roofs. Yesterday, near hurricane winds led to all ferries to and from the mainland being cancelled. A wheelbarrow in our yard blew over and crashed through a…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to Roughing it in the Wilds of Vancouver Island
For those of you used to my usual summer missives replete with food porn photos and freshly gleaned insights and wild tales from exotic locales such as Morocco or Sri Lanka or Myanmar or Indonesia, I fear I am letting you down. And for those of you who rely on me (desperately, I hope) for…
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How to plan a wedding in just three weeks
Last Friday, I got married. Married! Moi! To a man! Not a cat, not a mop, not an ambitious travel plan, not an abstract idea! A real live man! For those of you who have known me at least somewhat over the years, this may come as a bit of a surprise. I know this…
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There has been a slight change of plans, folks
Sometimes one or two overly personal and private things can derail your ability to write at length about all the millions of notable and weird and interesting things going on concurrently. Sometimes you don’t want to talk about those things just yet, for any number of reasons, but if you don’t at least…
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We’re Not in the Middle Kingdom Anymore, Toto…
I have a feeling I may need to change the name of this blog, or at the very least acknowledge that its impracticality is about to soar to new heights of uselessness. I have, you see, buggered off. I’m actually in rainy, green rolling hilled rural Leicestershire right now, with my life in…