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Family Of Five

• Making Memories At Estadio Santiago Bernabeu

  29Oct
  Categories: Family life, Motherhood, Travel Comments: 0

  

  Gooool-azo! [audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/bernabeu-goalbest.mp3]

  On Wednesday, Real Madrid was playing at their home stadium, the Bernabeu (burn-uh-bau), versus Olympiakos. Good-Looking was hot to go there from the time we planned the trip, checking Real Madrid’s website early on on the off-chance they were playing at home during the week we would be there. When he found out they were, he was beside himself to go.

  The original plan was to ditch at least two of the chickens with Grandma for the evening, but her broken arm put a hitch in that giddy-up, fa’shizzle. She loves him so she actually suggested that she would go through with the babysitting for him, but I said no, no way would I leave her with a broken arm and my two rowdy eldest while I went out on the town. But throughout the day leading up to the game GoodLooking kept pushing, looking for a way to go. I said he could go by himself, but he wanted me to come. And of course I wanted to see it, but I wasn’t inclined to drag the whole family out to god-knows-where on the Metro, for an evening wedged in cramped seats among a bunch of screaming sports maniacs.

  

  And all day long we saw them: the Olympiakos fans in their red scarves and jackets, lining the streets, drinking coffee, milling around the plazas.

  Poor GoodLooking.

  See, I love this man, much as he annoys me sometimes. And I understood what this meant to him. About 10 years ago, he went to Camp Nou and saw F.C. Barcelona, Real Madrid’s arch rivals, play in their home stadium and he pretty much has not stopped talking about it since. He dragged me to Camp Neu for the tour last year when we came to Spain, and it was clear that although I could let him go to the Bernabeu alone, he wanted me there, and the only way I could be there was if the whole fam damily came along.

  So we went. I strapped Baybish on my back, bundled everybody up and headed out into the night. When we came up out of the Metro the stadium was glowing above us, the crowd was roaring and people were running to get inside. We were late, but Real Madrid won and we saw FOUR goals. And as I sat there, surrounded by my family, wrestling Baybish in my lap, my husband grinning and giggling, I thought: this right here will last me a good long while.

  

  Tags: bernabeu, Family life, family love, madrid, making memories, Motherhood, Travel

• I Hope You Waited Until The 2nd Day

  28Oct
  Categories: Travel Comments: 0

  

  To wish you were me. Because the day we arrived? Not so good.

  On that day, my mother-in-law tripped on a stairway in the Metro on our way to the hotel, and BROKE HER ARM. So you know, three kids, four roller bags, a stroller, and one lovely grandmother with a broken arm. Metro Security, paramedics, an ambulance, the whole shebang. My good-looking husband is fluent, so he went with his mother, and I took the rest of the gang the rest of the way to the hotel.

  After my sister-in-law inspected the rooms, we decided on two triples at the end of the hallway with doors right next to each other. We set our things down in one of the rooms and headed out to get food. As I hung my coat in the wardrobe she asked me, “Are you unpacking?” or something like that, and I said no, I was just putting things away until we were all back together and we could see where Good-Looking’s mother and her broken arm wanted to be.

  Little did I know.

  After we ate some tapas up the street, I took the children to Plaza Mayor to run off some energy and wait for news from the hospital. GoodLooking and Grandma showed up not too long afterwards, and after they had some food and a few cocktails on the Plaza, GoodLooking and his sister went off to the pharmacy to fill Grandma’s prescriptions. I took her back to the hotel, where she took one room and I took the other. I unpacked a few things and got the chickens in their pjs.

  When GoodLooking and his sister returned, all hell broke loose. Because she wanted the other room. Wanted us–I think–to switch rooms right then, but Boyish was already asleep. So, she marched GoodLooking down to the desk to translate for her so she could move rooms. When that didn’t work, she proceeded to storm around the room they had, slamming windows and generally behaving like I had spit in her shoes or something. I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. I kept thinking I must have missed something, because the logic of her absolute fury over the whole thing was lost on me.

  

  The next day, we offered to change rooms. She refused and spent most of the morning trying to ignore me. She and her brother had a bit of a throw-down over it, and after that she softened up a bit. We put the whole thing (mostly) behind us for the rest of the trip. But we spent our days apart and met for dinner — which worked, since she wanted to eat at Burger King and shop for t-shirts, while I wanted local food and more traditional sightseeing.

  All in all a rather rotten start to what actually turned out to be a lovely trip. Which truly, I will tell you about, tomorrow.

  Tags: madrid, spain 2007, Travel

• Today I Am Going Here

  23Oct
  Categories: Travel Comments: 0

  

  And as my little yellow hotel in the barrio off Plaza Mayor doesn’t have wireless, you won’t be hearing from me until Friday. But on Friday I will return with photographs and stories for you. In the meantime, please feel free to wish you were me.

   

• Happy Birthday, Babe-ish!

  22Oct
  Categories: Family life, Motherhood Comments: 0

  

  Happy Birthday, Babe-ish!, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

   

• A Recipe for Cake

  17Oct
  Categories: Family life, London, Motherhood Comments: 0
  • 175g butter
  • 175g flour
  • 175g sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • homemade jam (we had plum)
  • overwhipped cream (until it curdles, just a bit)

  Bake two layers in sandwich tins (have to find out what these are) at 350 until done. (What am I, a baker? Just don’t overdo it.) Spread jam, then whipped cream on bottom layer; plop other layer on top. Powdered sugar? Maybe just a bit. Voilá!

  On Sunday we had lunch with Dear Friend of Girlish’s (DFG’s) family. They are lovely people, and good cooks, too. He is Greek, from Cyprus, and cooked kebab for us on a barbeque about the size of a trombone case, with brackets for skewers and little motorized fittings that turned them. Her mother made cake, and gave me the recipe.

  Like Girlish, DFG is a bright and imaginative child. They get along well, engaging in elaborate role-playing games, while Boyish hangs around and pretends to be their dog. DFG says things like, “Oh, it’s really quite wonderful, the rope swing. You simply must see it, Girlish! We’ll go there tomorrow.”

  As you might imagine, Girlish is quite taken with her. I, however, am generally suspicious of pretty and popular little girls, so I have kept my heart in reserve.

  After lunch we were drinking wine in the garden when I heard Boyish wailing his extremely loud and very distinctive “hurt feelings” wail from inside the house. Not surprising, given that he had been sharing Girlish all afternoon, and he much prefers to have her to himself. I went in to see what happened, and was told that he had messed up something in DFG’s room. She was obviously upset, but I could see that she was trying to be nice about it, so I said I’d fix it for her. Pretty little girls are given to melodrama, I thought as I went up the stairs with Boyish by the hand.

  What I found were tiny paper animals: foxes, lions, cats and whatnot–all painstakingly drawn, colored and cut out, scattered under the window on the floor. The animals were arranged inside a complex maze of paths and enclosures constructed from a game of Jenga. The paper animals resided in little piles in each of the enclosures. Or at least they had, before Boyzilla apparently trampled it.

  “Oh, my,” I said.

  DFG came in behind me and began to put it back together.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her, “I thought I could fix it, but it turns out it’s a bit more complicated than I anticipated.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “What is that,” I said, “a leopard?”

  “No, it’s an ocelot. It’s a zoo for rather less well-known animals.”

  “I see.” And I took my heart from my pocket and handed it to her.

  Tags: dfg, Family life, London, Motherhood

• Your Fair Share

  15Oct
  Categories: Save The Planet, Weblogs Comments: 0

  

  El Capitan in Winter, originally uploaded by texasgurl

  When we arrived in London we stayed in a Travelodge for the first few nights while our landlords moved out of the house we’re renting. The Travelodge was clean and serviceable, but that was the extent of it–there were no amenities, no little luxuries. We figured they saved money on some cut-rate shower curtains, as ours was about 3 inches too short. Every time any one of us took a shower, water ran out under the curtain and onto the floor, flooding the bathroom with a puddle of water that required at least two towels mop up. Which, in a regular hotel, I would have complained about. Or I would have demanded a longer shower curtain. In an American hotel, I could have easily requested more towels, which would probably have been delivered to my room by a uniformed attendant.But this was a low-budget European hotel chain, where we had been given three towels for the five of us, and no sheets for the spare bed where the children were sleeping. I could get more towels, sure, but I had to go down to the front desk and ask for them, then stand around while the desk clerk rummaged in a room down they hall before bringing back an enormous stack towels wrapped in plastic, slamming them on the front desk, peeling two off the top and handing them to me in a pile. And me feeling like I’m doing something weird, only I’m not sure what.

  In the bathroom of our apartment–and in most of the places I’ve seen here–there is a shower screen rather than a shower door, usually extending about 2/3 of the way along the side of the tub. And every time my good-looking husband or I take a shower, we get water all over the floor where the screen doesn’t extend. Every time. And I’m thinking: this is not right. I mean, surely this is not how people bathe? Mopping up water after every shower?

  And then one day I had Babish in the tub with me, playing in the floor between my feet while I washed my hair. I turned the water down low so as not to bean her in the head with water needles, and lo and behold, the water stopped spraying all over the floor. And no, it wasn’t as pleasant, showering in a warm drizzle rather than a hard hot rain, but it was something I could imagine getting used to, like bringing my own grocery bags to the store.

  We do that. Except when we don’t. But when we were Germany, I noticed that I didn’t go in a single store that offered bags of any kind for carrying groceries out. We had the baby buggy, so we managed fairly easily, but the one time I slipped down for groceries without Babish I realized the mistake I made as I left, clutching wine and milk in the crook of my arm, trying not to crush the bread or drop the cheese on the sidewalk.

  I’m learning as I go. When I moved here I couldn’t figure out where people stored their linens–their sheets, their towels, their extra blankets. Not only do we not have a linen closet in this apartment, but Good-Looking and I now share a closet that’s a quarter of the size of the one he used to have all to himself. Poor Girlish no longer has a closet at all, and in the bathroom? We have a medicine cabinet.

  So where, I ask you, am I supposed to put my spare contacts, the jewelry I never wear, my bath potions, lotions, hair products, emery boards and bath toys? Where do I keep my hairdryer, my cowboy boots, my ankle weights and all those hand-me-down Coach purses my mother gave me? Where do I hang all the coats we used to keep in the hall closet?

  Ah, god, we have too much stuff.

  When we decided to move to London we got a moving estimate for our house that came in at 15,000 lbs. After two garage sales and round or ten on Ebay and Craigslist, we trimmed that down to about 6,000. And as I’ve unpacked I’ve set aside still more boxes and boxes of stuff to donate to charity. Finally, I’m beginning to look around at what we have left and feel like our lives will fit in this apartment. Because still, we have so much. It has been a lesson for me–because I didn’t consider myself a materialistic person, really, before we moved here–I had no idea how much we had that we didn’t really need. It’s been a lesson in what a family of five actually needs to live comfortably, and America–I’m talking to you–it’s so much less than you think.

  Stop buying so much stuff. Stop buying clothes and towels and toys and cosmetics and gizmos you don’t need. Don’t forget your canvas bags when you go to the store and for christ’s sake, please stop turning the water up to eleven.

  I’m trying to remember that I’m sharing this planet. With all of you and those who will follow after us. Let’s leave some pie on the plate, shall we?

  Tags: blog action day, bloggers unite, reduce reuse recycle, the environment

• Loving London

  15Oct
  Categories: London Comments: 0

  

  Sydenham Rail Station, originally uploaded by texasgurl.

  This is my rail station, where the day begins for real. It’s about a ten-minute walk from our house, depending how much I’m carrying and whether I’m herding chickens down the sidewalk. On days I travel alone, the train station is like a magic portal between the rest of this amazing city and our leafy little corner of it. Get on the train and go anywhere. Get off and truly be somewhere else.

  Last night, after a two days of yet more unpacking, I was “doing the washing up” (that means the dishes), when it occurred to me that we are actually here. Living in London. We are here, our things are here, the children are in school, and I know where the grocery stores are. We’ve even made enough friends that we have social obligations to manage now. And although I expected to feel a sense of relief, and possibly accomplishment in that moment–a moment I’ve been anticipating, mind you, since we undertook this move some seven months ago–I didn’t expect to feel so damn happy and relaxed.

  

  See, I didn’t really expect to like it here. I was worried about the weather, worried about the expense, worried about the grime, the crime, the urban living. I didn’t dare anticipate the art, the culture, the unbelievably stimulating beauty of this place. A place where I can stand on the street in front of Charles Dickens’ house, or watch a guy dance ballet with a backhoe along the banks of the Thames. A place where I can reach out and run my very fingertips along the worn brick walls of history. And my god, it’s amazing.

  Tags: london trains

• My Eyes Welled Up With Happy Tears

  12Oct
  Categories: Current Affairs Comments: 0

  When I heard this. For the last five years or more, with so much going on the world that I disagree with, with so many leaders acting in an irresponsible, short-sighted, and often reprehensible way, this made me feel good about the people I share the planet with.

  Well, some of them, anyway. A few more of them, let’s say.

  Tags: al gore, globalwarming, nobel prize, will he run?

• Quitter

  09Oct
  Categories: Family life, Motherhood, photography is amazing Comments: 0

  Right. I have not been blogging. Every day I think about it while I’m working on 13 other things. The day goes by; I am sleepy; I have to get up and trek up the hill in the morning; I am laying in bed with Babe-ish all snuggly and (finally) still in the crook of my arm, and I debate: Get up and work on stuff, or stay in bed and sleep?

  Sometimes, I do this thing where I take on too much. Like the time I was six months pregnant and I tried to set up a web business on the sly while working my 60-hour a week lawyer job, taking yoga religiously 3 or 4 times a week, and going to therapy two times a week to figure out how to have a relationship with my mother again. I decided, you know, I needed something else to do, so I signed up for a class in magazine article writing as well. So I paid my money, went to the first class and then never went back again. Too much.

  So, here I am in London, managing my kids, getting ready to start a kick-ass writing program in January, doing a cool internship with English PEN, blogging, toying with the idea of setting up a small-scale portrait business, unpacking from the international move, and I decided–you know, because I needed another project–to give the 365days Self Portrait project another go.

  Too much.

  365 Days is an amazing project on Flickr where you take a self-portrait every day and upload it. You really have to flex your creative muscles to keep a daily portrait of yourself interesting, and then there’s the set-up, shooting, editing and uploading. And the thinking. It’s wonderful because you take so many photographs that you can’t help but learn something almost every day: about the camera, about Photoshop, about perspective, about yourself.

  But like all good artistic projects, you get out of it what you put into it, and I can’t seem to half-ass it. I knew it was too much when I took it on again, but I told myself that I’d not overthink it, that I’d take crappy random arms-length shots of myself and call it a day sometimes. But I just can’t seem to do that. And I don’t have time to do it right.

  Or if I take the time to do it right I can’t blog and I can’t start getting my head straight for Warren Wilson. So I’m putting 365 aside. Again.

  Tags: art, photography is amazing, projects