Our England Christmas: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 11 and 12

You may have noticed that I skipped day number 10 (probably not, though, because you aren't so methodical). This is not because I have a secret day that I am not going to tell you about; instead, it's because I messed up my numbering (pointed out by Aaron, Mr. Methodical himself) and am now correcting it. I counted 2 days of travel as day 1. So, Christmas Eve should be day 11 and today, day 12.

Now that that VERY important detail is out of the way (major sarcasm alert), let me tell you about our Christmas.

As I said earlier, we got a much nicer hotel than usual for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, so that when all was closed and there wasn't much to do, we could be in a spacious room in a hotel with room service and amenities that we are used to (Every Motel 6 in America has a bathtub and in-room temperature control, but not here!) Our room is very nice, and the hotel overlooks the Thames and Tower Bridge.

After we checked in on Christmas Eve, we ate amazing Thai food (all the Asian food here is amazing so far), and we went to Harrod's (big mistake, but we were looking for something specific). It was slammed full of people and slammed full of expensive stuff we were afraid we were going to break. There were Christmas crackers that cost 400 pounds with silk handkerchiefs and jewelry inside. We got out of there as soon as possible with very little trauma (except for Aaron, who can't even stand to go to the Marietta grocery store). Mama, we were very right to avoid it.

After that miserable interlude, we went to do fun stuff. We saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie at Leicester Square, and it was great fun. I thought it was better than the last one without all the crazy coming back from the dead stuff. Aaron thought it was too silly to be better, but we both still loved the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After the movie, we went back to our favorite London neighborhood, the one near Earl's Court, where we stayed for a few days before Bristol and Bath. We ate at our favorite Indian restaurant (more chicken balti!), bought some champagne, and tried unsuccessfully to find Christmas crackers that cost 4 pounds instead of 400. After we got back to the hotel, I took a bath (A BATH!), which I have missed so much. Showers can only make you feel so happy; the biggest amount of happy requires a nice, immersion bath.

We exchanged presents, too, all of which came from Blackwell's Bookstore in Oxford. Aaron got me a lovely illustrated version of Cooleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which he would have to have been blind and deaf to not get me, as I oohed over how beautiful it was for 10 minutes. (It was after this that I suggested we get each other book Christmas gifts to exchange.) He also got me 2 surprise books--From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages by Michael Adams and The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer. I love my books, but we realized after packing them up that it might have been best to get something lighter for Christmas. I got Aaron The Gun: The Story of the AK-47 by C.J.Chivers, If Rome Hadn't Fallen: What Might Have Happened If the Western Empire Had Survived by Timothy Venning, and Alexander the Great Failure by John D. Grainger. Aaron likes What-If books and guns and has found that he has "huge gaping holes" in his knowledge of the Roman Empire, so I think my gifts were a win.


Today, Christmas Day, we slept in until noon and ate a ridiculously over-priced lunch in the hotel restaurant. For Aaron, the price was not as bad as for me, since he got to take home 2 noise makers and a mask. Apparently, Brits celebrate Christmas with the trappings we use for New Year's Eve. The person who gave Aaron his stupid whistle and horn should be tortured for all the hours I have been tortured; he takes every opportunity to blow those awful things. Too bad I can't just send him off to David's house with them, like I do when Livy has some super loud and annoying toy.


I used went down to the fitness center of the hotel and relaxed in the steam-room, sauna, aromatherapy room (that's a warm room that smells yum), and swam some lazy laps in the pool; Aaron actually did a real workout. Later, I went to the spa for my foot and leg massage, which included buffing my feet, exfoliating my feel and legs, and tons of wonderful massage. Aaron was considering doing one too--his feet have been hurting from all the walking--but I don't think he would have enjoyed being buffed and exfoliated. Maybe I should just rub his feet for him. :)


For dinner tonight, we had more Indian food. We may start to smell like curry, but that's okay because if both of us reek, we won't notice it on the other one. As we ate (chicken balti!), we watched a bit of the second Bourne movie on TV. Now we are hitting the sack. We had a very happy Christmas, and we hope all our friends and family did too!

P.S. Lest you think we never try any new Indian dishes, I wanted to tell you that we always get an order of chicken balti and something else. I just mention the chicken balti so often because compared to it, all other curries are red-headed stepchildren, squibs, and B movies.

Last blog Post Errata

In my last post about our Texas trip, I made a couple of mistakes. First, Aaron says that the queer, dead hominids were Homo Heidelbergensis. The homo part still stands.

Also, I left out one bullet point. We also saw the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It sucked. We had to see it, as I am a huge fan of the books and Livy of the movies, but I kind of wished I hadn't. The first two were fairly good retellings of the books, but this one went all awry. Reepicheep and his coracle were done all wrong, and there was this weird evil island with creepy green mist. Not right at all.

Also, this was not a blog erratum, more of a life erratum. Never, ever, ever mention in front of your seven year old that when she is all grown up and living in her own house with her own family, you might move to Texas. This will be bad. Apparently, she was planning to spend half the week with me and half with her dad for the rest of her life. Woops. Much crying and gnashing of teeth. But by promising that she can live with you as long as she wants to and by assuring her that when she 40, she can still have a room in your house even if it is in San Antonio, she was placated. She will want to move out one day, right? Not that I am in a hurry, but I don't want her to live in my basement forever.

Alamo movie was good. A real tear-jerker. Like The 300, but with less muscles. Goodnight.

We Already Went Westward Ho, and I Didn't Blog About It

So, the thing I learned this trip is that if you have another adult with you, when the kid goes to bed, you don't want to be blogging. So instead of really interesting blogs every day, you get a list of all the things we have done so far since we left my mom's and my last blog post.

• Drove from Meridian to Shreveport, LA, listening to The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.
• Stopped at a park and had a picnic lunch in the COLD.
• Went to Sci-Port, a really good science museum in Shreveport. Livy and Aaron had a blast doing hands on science experiments.
• Watched a documentary on human evolution. Learned that Homo Erectus once buried their dead with pink quartz hand axes. Made lots of gay hominid jokes.
• Drove from Shreveport to Houston, listening to The Long Winter and singing along (well, I did) to millions of classic country songs that seemed appropriate for Texas.
• Stopped at an awesome park that had all the old playground equipment - a merry go round, see-saws, swings, monkey bars, etc. See-sawed for a long time.
• Went to the space center in Houston. Loved it. Very kid friendly with lots of things to do, not just stuff to read. Wish we could go once a week. Livy's favorite was riding the flight simulator. Aaron and I liked the Saturn V rocket best, with its timeline of the Apollo missions.
• Ate dinner with old friends of Aaron's. I hate meeting other people's old friends, but these were actually super nice and entertaining. Had a really good time.
• Drove to San Antonio, finishing The Long Winter and hearing more of The Order of the Phoenix. Also sang many Merle Haggard songs. He sings a lot about jail.
• Walked from our hotel (downtown, yay!) to the Tower of the Americas and looked out over San Antonio.

Now, Livy and I are headed out to an IMAX about the Alamo (which we are going to see tomorrow). Aaron has to work, at least for a while, but tomorrow he can wander San Antonio with us.

Yo! Westward Ho to the Alamo: Day 1 (Indian Mounds, Rattlesnakes, and Family Dinner)

We left Atlanta this morning all covered in snow. Both Atlanta and we were covered in snow as Livy felt the need to dive into it face first right before we got into the car. But, as Lorelai Gilmore says, "It was the snow; . . . it's like catnip."

So, after a fairly long car ride, which included the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and a reading of "Rapunzel" from my new Grimm's Fairy Tales (my Christmas present!), we arrived at the Moundville Indian Mounds. These mounds were built by the same bunch of Indians (the Mississippians) that built Etowah Indian Mounds just north of Atlanta and the Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis that Livy and I visited last year.

We really enjoyed this site, partly because it had so many mounds. They weren't that large, but there were 20! And they were less regulated than the Etowah ones, so we could climb on them as much as we wanted. We wandered all through the large, open grounds, stretching out travel legs, and we ran up and down mounds. The largest had a model of the chief's house on it, and there was a river overlook and some diorama kind of views of life in the Mississippian culture.

The museum was nothing super special; it was new and flashy, but a little too text focused. For museums, I like pictures and artifacts and more bulleted kind of text. We did really enjoy learning that when the Mississippians died, they believed that they would walk along the Milky Way (called the Path of Souls), make their way past winged snakes and ginormous birds of prey, and then reach heaven. Their chiefs got to turn into these winged snakes (which looked a lot like dragons on the pottery) or into underwater panthers. How cool is that? I wanna die and go become an underwater panther.

Also, they also buried the dead sometimes in shallow graves in the floor of their houses. Gross.

Over all, I like Etowah better, mostly because of the fish trap in the river. I am really unreasonably obsessed with fish traps. I have see two, and they were both remarkably cool. Basically, the Indians made these big Vs in the river with rocks so that the fish would get washed right through a small opening into their nets. Sneaky!

The Etowah mounds are larger, but fewer. I can't really remember the Cahokia mounds very clearly because Livy and I were 7 days into our whirlwind trip and very tired. I remember the Cahokia museum being best.

Oh! One more super cool thing about the ramble around and over the mounds: Behind one mound, near a lake formed when the dirt for the mound was carried out, we found a snake! We think it was a rattlesnake, but it was dead. We didn't get close enough to be absolutely sure that it was a rattlesnake or that it was dead, but we got a picture of it that I will post tomorrow night when I have an internet connection and an SD port on the same computer.

After we left the mounds, we drove the nearly two hours to get to Meridian, my home town. We had dinner with my mom and Mimi at Mimi's apartment (leftover Christmas ham and some boiled shrimp!) and then came back to my mom's to spend the night. We leave in the morning, headed west with the sun.

Adios to our Colonial Carpool

Turns out there is this nasty thing called snow that falls out of the sky to plague us. There is a bunch of it in the yard right now. Rumor has it there is more of it spread all over the east coast. Williamsburg is on the east coast. Screw you, snow! Anyway, because of the big storm, we are changing our trip. I cried a bunch because I really had my heart set on Williamsburg, but we finally hit on a plan that makes me nearly as happy.

We are setting out tomorrow for the Alamo! What other name rings with so much adventure? We are going to drive into Texas by the northern route, through Birmingham, Meridian (we're staying tomorrow night with my mom), and Shreveport. We'll go through Dallas-Ft. Worth, down to Austin, and finally to San Antonio and the Alamo. Then, we'll come home by the southern route through Houston, Baton Rouge, and Mobile.

We haven't made many plans for what to do on the way, yet, but we will hunt up good adventures every night in the hotel. We are going to stop at Moundville, AL to see the Indian Mounds tomorrow. The day after tomorrow is still hazy with indecision, just the way I like it.

You'll hear from me on this blog as we travel, and Livy will be posting her pictures. Our new trip name is "Yo, Westward Ho to the Alamo." You have to imagine it with a little bit of a downtown ATL rapper sound; then you'll really understand it. :)

Carpool to the Colonies

Last year, right after Christmas, Livy and I went on Kelly and Livy's Excellent Adventure, a roadtrip through TN, KY, IN, MO, AL, and GA. I blogged all about our adventures on that trip, and I loved the Christmas tradition of getting out in the world and having them.

So, in the spirit of Christmas adventure, Livy, Aaron, and I are setting out again. This time our trip will be called Carpool to the Colonies, and we intend to drive from Atlanta to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown and then trek down the Outer Banks through Kitty Hawk and Roanoke Island. We will no doubt stop many places on the way and on the way back to hike (for Kelly), to play at playgrounds or children's museums (for Livy), and to admire the largest wad of gum in North Carolina or biggest junk yard (for Aaron).

I plan to blog our trip, and hopefully, Livy (who will be unwrapping a camera tomorrow for Christmas) will keep us supplied with photographs to share. And I will certainly tell you what we are reading or listening to as we drive; that's a big part of our trips too.

Hope you all are having a Merry Christmas!

Joy and Tomatoes Cometh in the Morning

Today, the day of the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, I sit surrounded by gardening catalogs. They started coming in the mail last week, and now gorgeous pictures of ripe tomatoes and a drawing of a tee-pee full of beans and blossoms are on my lap.

There is something so hopeful about the act of winter garden planning. Outside, my tomato plants from last season still stand in their cages all brown and withered. The grass has stopped growing, and my perennial flowers sport dead puffs of seeds. And yet, in the midst of all this winter, I am thinking of spring. I am imagining the taste of yellow pear tomatoes and debating how many hot and how many sweet peppers I will want.

It is something essentially optimistic about the gardener's certainty that winter will end, that darkness will be replaced by days of almost endless sun, and that warm soil will be ready for planting. We dream of tomatoes, believing that the world won't end; the sun will not go supernova; nuclear war won't annihilate everyone. Spring will come, just as it did last year, just as it always has. Humans will be the same lovers of tomatoes that we have been for years.

It makes me think of Easter, which is weird at Christmas time. I think of the resurrection myth and of the belief that, after dark times and grief, warmth and happiness will return. I think of Anne Shirley and the night she realized she loved Gilbert and that he may die; when she knows that he will live, she quotes Psalm 30, "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning." I think of Boethius's wheel and his certainty that bad fortune will give way to good, turning through cycles, just like the seasons.

And here I sit, acting out the human hope for resurrection and rebirth and a change for the better in our fortunes, with my seed catalogs.

Reading By the Fire

Tonight, Livy and I built a fire and read. This is possibly my favorite thing on earth.

I love to read aloud, and something about the fire makes it seems like we aren't in the modern world connected all the time, whether we like it or not, to everyone with all of our devices. The fire tricks me into thinking Livy and I are isolated somewhere, on the prairie or in the English countryside, with only ourselves for entertainment. We are quieter when the fire burns and most of the lights turned off. We aren't in such a hurry. And we pay attention to each other.

Tonight, I read 4 chapters of By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ox-Cart Man (my favorite picture book), Where the Wild Things Are, an I Spy book, an animal book half in Spanish, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and 3 Bob Books (Livy read these to me).

We do this all winter. Usually Aaron is here too. Our favorite selections are definitely Laura Ingalls Wilder books (perhaps because they seem so appropriate at the fireside), but we also read poetry, Greek myths, nursery rhymes, Aesop's fables, Beatrix Potter, Murray Rothbard, Jared Diamond, Edgar Allen Poe, L.M. Montgomery, and Harry Potter. Basically, anything anyone is reading is fair game.

Livy roasts marshmallows with a coat hanger and pokes the fire way more than is necessary. I read. Aaron listens and makes popcorn. They both come to look when there are pictures. Sometimes we spread a blanket on the living room floor and have a picnic supper in front of the fire.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

My paradise is a small room, darkish, warmed by a small fire, with the people I love most crowded around me, listening to me read.