Viking Tea Party

In the US I Loved Vera Bradley, Here I Love Just Radley

I gaze longingly at the Radley line of handbags in the window of Ingrams every time we walk into town.  Thanks to a certain squirrel and a great sale at the John Lewis in Southampton, I'm now the gleeful owner of this Dot to Dog bag!  It has the cutest lining fabric of little yellow daisies and more pockets than I have things to put in them but it's the little Scottie that got me hooked....

Why I Cannot Write a Post Tonight

A Very Lucky Woman

I took this photo - my very first in England - of the cathedral close one year ago today.  When I took it, I had no idea that I'd be living across the street in less than a year.  By the time I flew back to Ohio two weeks later I knew that I'd be living there eventually but could have never imagined it would all happen so fast. 

Watching the Day Go By

I've been doing far too much of this - the equivalent of gazing out the window, watching the day go by - today.  I'm having trouble tying myself down to a routine here but I'm going to have try harder.  There are still boxes to unpack and rooms to work on, writing to do, emails to send and, because I do things like spend an entire day reading Sookie Stackhouse books and watching season one of True Blood, there's a lot of housework to be done as well.  I did finish Buddy's sweater, though, so I got something done at least.  

Seeing as how it's nearly midnight, though, today is a complete and utter wash which means I should just give up and go to bed with yet another Sookie Stackhouse book (I'm addicted).

P.S.  This time last year I was waiting to board my flight to meet Matt for the very first time.  I can't believe it's only been a year!

Polly's Tea Room

I have had tea at Polly's five times over the past two weeks, I think.  We stopped this afternoon and I took a couple of photos.  None of them turned out all that great but here's a the view from our table - complete with the flapjack and brownie Matt and I shared.  There's something a little odd about Polly's but I can't exactly put my finger on it.  The tea is good, though - especially the new Earl Grey they're using because it's strangely sweet and I like my tea like my men...sweet - and it beats always going to Cafe Nero, Starbucks or Costa. 

 

I'm finally branching out a bit when it comes to tea.  I've found that if I have a cup of Earl Grey near bedtime I have terrible heartburn.  At that hour I really should be going for a nice decaffeinated fruit tea or something but I 'm going to try English Breakfast (because, I will admit, I like to have a couple of digestive biscuits with my last cup).  If anyone has a tea suggestions - teas that aren't terribly strong, that is - I'd love to hear them! 

A New Favorite: Baked Eggs

I've been thinking a lot about eggs and cream ever since I saw the link to this Apartment Therapy baked egg article last week.  I love eggs any way you make them. In another life - the one I live that graces the pages of Country Living magazine - I have a backyard full of scratching chickens and fresh eggs every day (and, as if the chickens don't occupy enough of my time, I'm now thinking about beekeeping). 

Anyway, thanks to that whole getting married business, we actually own ramekins and I decided that tonight, while Matt - who is also known as The Husband Who Dislikes Eggs - was at work, I would use them for the very first time (being used as salsa dishes doesn't count) and try making baked eggs.

Because we had a couple of stray slices left from the weekend, I decided to go all out and add bacon in with my layer of shredded cheddar.  British bacon is completely different from American bacon and, while this is full of a different kind of wonderful flavor and I wouldn't turn it down, I do miss miss scrawny, crispy bacon from back home.  

 

Two eggs, a few dollops of single cream and some more cheese and then baked in the oven in the closest thing I have to a bain marie - a glass pie plate.  

 

After 25 minutes I thought things still looked a little too runny and gave it another five which was a mistake because that baked the yolks all the way through but...wow, I could eat this everyday!  Creamy and cheesy with just a little salt from the bacon...fantastic. 

 

Considering how much bread and butter and other wonderful things I consume on a ridiculous daily basis, though, this should really be confined to weekend mornings...thank goodness there's one of those less than 48 hours away!  

Airplane Ticket Home for Thanksgiving: $727 Understanding Husband: Priceless

If I had been five years old this morning rather than thirty-five, I might have laid down on the floor and thrown a fit.  Arms swinging and legs kicking and screaming through tears, "I want to go home!"

But I'm thirty-five so I had to settle with sulking crankiness and a few tears that welled up but never quite escaped.

In the shower I drew a vertical line in my mind and started a list of Pros and Cons with both words written in thick, black letters.  I tried to keep them even, too.  Under Cons I had, "Can't walk out my front door, get in my car and drive anywhere I want."  Under Pros, though, I had, "Can walk out my front door and walk to a multitude of shops and other things."  Other things like, "Can't have a burger and a fountain diet Coke at Wendy's" were harder to balance and I gave up.  It crossed my mind to actually sit down with a pen and paper and make a list, hoping that the Pros would outweigh the Cons but that really didn't seem like a very good idea.  Instead I continued on with my sulking crankiness.

Matt got the worst of it, I think.  I wrinkled my nose at anything he suggested that we do with his day off.  I believed myself when I told him to pick something and that I would go along with it happily.  I think I even flashed a smile.  Until he actually suggested something.  More nose wrinkling and finally I just crawled back in bed.  I didn't want to go out and be reminded that I live in an entirely different continent and yet I didn't want to stay home.  I wanted to clean and unpack yet those were also the absolute last things I wanted to do.  

I finally decided that laying in bed was about the worst way to deal with homesickness so I dragged myself out of bed and called up to Matt, "All right, let's go to Stourhead."

Unfortunately, we met a wall of dark clouds about ten minutes into the drive and decided a walk wasn't really such a great idea.  After a look at the map we decided to drive to Marlborough where we wandered around the shops.  I even came close to a fountain soda when I had a bottled diet Coke at Pizza Express where we talked about good things like Christmas and what kinds of traditions we wanted to start as a family.  

I know this isn't the last of my homesick days and the days I wake up feeling fine - when I wake up without thinking about the differences outside our front door - far outnumber the days of sulking crankiness; that's a fact that I need to keep in mind.  And I'm lucky to have an understanding husband.  I know I'm not fun to live with on these bad days.  I know even as I'm wrinkling my nose at suggestions for the day that I'm being difficult and I admit it freely with copious apologies.  He doesn't patronise me with statements like, "It'll get better," he just listens and lets me get through my mood no matter how long it lasts.  This morning he even suggested that I go home for Thanksgiving but that - surprise surprise - only merited more nose wrinkling from me.  Honestly, I have something better than an expensive ticket home for a short visit: I have a husband who is understanding and tolerant and I have him all of the time.  There's no longer a five hour time difference or unbearable 4,000 miles between us and I think that is worth more than a few rough days. 

Duck Walk

It rained so hard this morning that my jeans were thoroughly soaked from the knee down by the time I got back from having tea with Sandy (my mother-in-law - it'll just be so much easier to call her by name from now on).  Within ten minutes of shedding my wet clothes and pulling on pajamas, the clouds parted and there was the blue sky I didn't think we'd see at all today. 

So I decided to go for a walk, feed some ducks and take a few pictures.  For this outing I packed the following:

 

- a shopping bag in case I decided to stop at the Oxam bookshop in my way home.  I did and picked up Vanity Fair and the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I'm already two-thirds through it and am already thinking about hunting down the second. 

- a teeny, tiny, bright green moleskine

- my Filofax wallet

- my everyday camera

- my mouse change purse

- my Canon camera.  When I turned it on I realized I'd left its SD card in my computer - thank goodness I had my little camera with me.

- bright pink Clarins lip gloss tossed in for some unknown reason

- camera lens

- duck food.  Unfortunately, this is really only for feeding ducks whilst they are on dry land (it sinks in water) and most ducks automatically start quacking like crazy and hop in the water when they think you have food.  Needless to say, a couple of pigeons were fed by me today but no ducks.

- my iPod.  Soundtrack to my walk: Strict Joy by The Swell Season.  If I were a little less sane, I might have thought I was really in a movie. 

Of course, by the time I got to the park, it started raining again but it was light enough that I stood under a giant willow and stayed dry.  

I took a lot of photos but only kept a couple.  It's hard to go wrong with the cathedral and blue sky.

Or a cookie cutter cathedral...

I also really like the texture of the wall surrounding the cathedral....

I'm listening to Pillars of the Earth right now and it was really interesting to hear the bits that took place in Salisbury as they were building the "new" cathedral (this one).  Even though a few people have recommended it, I've shied away from that book for a long time thinking it would be too slow and heavy like books about that time period sometimes tend to be.  I bought it for $5 on Audible a few months ago but I only started listening to it last week after I (finally) finished The Road.  I'm only a couple hours in (it's 41 hours long) but it's fantastic and not at all what I expected.  

Okay, some french fries (see?  I'm still an American!), a warm blanket and the rest of Dead Until Dark are waiting for me downstairs....

You'll Have That

It was "you'll have that" afternoon today.  We walked into town to buy National Trust memberships and then drove out to Stourhead for a nice, chilly, autumn walk.  Unfortunately, though, we were about ten miles away when Matt said, "I know this is a silly question but you do have our membership paper, right?" 

Argh.  No.  Instead of sticking it in my purse, I had dropped it in our shopping bag (a cute burlap one we'd actually purchased at the National Trust shop a few weeks ago that says "Truly Madly Greenly") and that shopping bag was sitting on the floor in our sitting room.  A few minutes later we saw a sign for Longleat and decided to salvage our day by taking a drive through the safari park.  Last year it closed the day before I came to visit Matt and we just assumed that it would be closing around the same time this year which would be next weekend. Unfortunately, we were wrong.  It closed this past weekend.  

So, yeah, you'll have that.

But Matt had spent the weekend at work and will be working a lot more this week so it was at least nice to spend the day together.  

And we got back just in time to have a fun little photo shoot by the cathedral.

 

 

Susie's Reading Mitts
Poems Yarn
US 5 / 3.75 mm dpn needles
Very cosy!

 

This Week I....

:: baked flapjacks.  Twice.  I'm tweaking a recipe I found online so both batches were radically different.  They only last about a day around here so I think I might make another attempt tonight.

:: finished my mitts.  I wasn't even going to try to take a photo by myself so I'll have Matt help me out tomorrow.

:: went to knit group - can't wait until next month.

:: finished my FLS at knit group.  It needs a serious blocking and buttons but I'm happy with it.  Now it's back to knitting Buddy's sweater.

:: read Revolutionary Road and loved it. 

:: got a haircut and love it.

:: toyed with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo.  Still haven't decided but if I were going to, this would be the year to do it.  The whole idea thing is a real hang up, though....

:: watched Gladiator for the first time and liked it.  I've wanted to watch it ever since we went to Rome.  It was good - a little gorier than I'd expected - but I wanted to see more of the Coliseum. 

:: had my first pasty - onion and cheese.  It was okay but I'm not in a real hurry to have another one or anything.

Yipes, just enough time to make a cup of tea - it's freezing in here and I turned the heat on at least an hour ago - before I do a Skype chat with Mom and Dad!