Cycling on a bicycle built for two: anxiety and lethargy

Well ... school has started for 50 percent of the school-aged Buxoms. My son started high school on Monday. He seems to be enjoying it so far. In fact, my anxiety levels are much higher than his.

I don't know whether that's bad or good.

He went from a cute little school here in Newtopia with a graduating class of 60 to the Big Box High School down the road, with a graduating class of over 1,000. He's still incredibly pleased to see a few familiar faces in the crowd.

But academically, I don't think he knows what hit him.

I distinctly remember going from high school to college. At some point I realized something. Unlike at my tiny little prep school, the college faculty didn't particularly care how well I did.

At my prep school, one total loser slacker in a class of 50 (that would be me) means your college acceptance rate dips from 100 to 98 percent, and this won't do. Parents want to be assured that their daughter will get into college. The school's reputation and future tuition income depends on their getting results. And so the faculty polished and perfected me to the best of their abilities. I left a lot to be desired as a student, and only cooperated when I was actually interested. But no matter how much I hated doing homework, they needed to get me into college.

And so, from the first day of ninth grade, the pressure was almost palpable.

But in college? If I flunked out--so what? As far as my college was concerned, it was statistically meaningless.

In fact, having a student fail is a point of pride for a lot of institutions. You know the old story about the assembly of incoming freshmen at MIT. The dean tells them. "Look at the student to your left. Look at the student to your right. One of the three of you won't graduate."

Colleges love feeling badass.

Big high school? I don't know about them. So I'm freaking out a bit, yeah.

In other news, my daughter still hasn't gone back to school. They've undertaken a huge construction project at her school, so they're not starting until September 11th.

So she and I are hanging around the house, looking out the window at the gloomy, neo-November weather, and playing with our computers.

I can't wait for her school to start. This is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And then, internet--it'll be just you and me, baby.

Oh honey, I'm sorry. I forgot our anniversary.

Can you forgive me? Even though everyone knows the anniversaries that end in a zero or a five are the important ones?

Because it was on August 10th, 2004, that I started blogging by posting this.

Five years later, I've made some incredible friends, gone to some amazing blogging conferences, and even started working as a free-lance writer. Yes! Gainful employment! Of a sort.

On the other hands, some things haven't changed. I still spend August freaking out about the school year and dog-paddling around in a wading pool of cheap white wine.

A mug's life, or, reports from the laundry pile.

In case you were wondering, we arrived home safely at about 6:00 p.m. Our trip to England was wonderful. Just wonderful. Best family vacation ever. I saw Stonehenge! And Oxford! And sang in a 13th-century cathedral!

When we got home, the mail was stacked up and waiting; Toby the Turtle was fed and happy, and no one had stolen the jewelry I had never locked up at the bank because I couldn't find the safe deposit box key.

Now the suitcases are unpacked. The loot is organized. The laundry is about halfway done. Groceries have been bought. And even cooked.

I'll get around to posting more trip reports and pictures of England. I really will. I've been expensively educated and now possess a high degree of writing skill. Coming up with evocative descriptions of the sheep in the meadow/the cows in the corn is a piece of cake.

But the internet prefers pictures. And for me to shut up.

As I think about the mechanics of uploading hundreds of photographs to my laptop and then to Flickr or this blog, I realize my vacation really is over. And real life has me by the scruff of the neck.

My son is starting high school in less than a week. He's going from a class of 60 to a class of 1,000. Ordinarily I'm not much of a worrier, but I got off that plane and immediately became frantic. How's he going to handle it? And how do they get lunch? And how many gym uniforms should I buy? What's with this fancy new calculator they say we need? Why aren't the old fancy calculators good enough?

And he needs new sneakers.

Also, my daughter is sick and is coughing in a very bronchial fashion. That's a bit worrisome, too.

They're both getting full-on braces on Friday. (Should we eat caramel corn non-stop until then? Because after Friday, it's no more caramel corn for them for quite a while.)

I'm still waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day.

It's raining. Maybe that's why it's kind of dark outside ...

We interrupt this series of trip reports for a brief announcement

I'm still in Salisbury, but in about an hour I'll be boarding a bus to take me to Heathrow and home.

I'm sorry to leave England.

But I'm not sorry to not be drinking English coffee.

Madonna's birthday

Trip report: Oxford

I might as well admit this from the start; there are so many Oxfords. Too many.



I mean, you could do tours of the fictional characters who supposedly went there, let alone the actual human beings who really did. If you wanted, you could do a tour of the Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey Gaudy Night Oxford. Or the Brideshead Revisited Oxford.

Are you religious? There's always C. S. Lewis's Oxford. Or how about some Oxford Movement Oxford? A little Cardinal Newman? Great idea.

What about Shelley? OK, but you know he got kicked out, right? Philip Pullman? If you must. Some Tolkien? Sure. Oscar Wilde? Fabulous.

Are you a Monty Python fan? You could do a Michael Palin/Terry Jones tour.

So now you know why I was awfully disappointed in the tour we endured from a very nice French woman whose accent was so neither here nor there that Mr. Buxom and I thought she was German. Maybe it was because of all the dates she spouted.

So this is what we did.

We looked for the White Rabbit.

Trip report: Cirencester

After we landed at Heathrow and got organized (which took a while because part of our group came by another flight and showed up late, and another person's suitcase went missing) we boarded buses and drove straight to Cirencester, which is just charming.


This could be a painting by Constable, but is actually a cell phone photograph taken from a bus window, can you believe it?

The money around here has traditionally come from the sheep business. "Cotswolds" means "sheep pen in a crappy location where the weather sucks and the soil is so poor that all you can do is raise sheep."

Naturally, they revere sheep. They even put up statues of them.



Don't you love that the sculptor's last name is Tweed?


"It's almost like a Tom Swifty," she mused slowly, while taking pictures of her shadow.

After some pub grub (I had steak and kidney pie! Without the kidneys. And a Pimm's Cup!



Which came with a Pimm's swizzle stick! That I forgot to keep, God damn it) we went window-shopping to admire many things that wouldn't fit in our suitcases


Including the cutest broom and dustpan I've ever seen


Where you revere sheep, you have wool shops. So you can knit a poppy purse. And tea cozies!


Sorry, tea cozies are not for sale.

And everywhere I went, I saw Miss Marple.







I even saw where Miss Marple would buy new clothes. If Miss Marple did buy new clothes. Except, of course, she doesn't.


No, not vintage. It's new.

Reason number 53,295 I love my son: he'll pose next to anything. He'll let me prove that in Cirencester, the guitar store that drew him like a fly to honey is next to one of those fancy toy stores where all the toys are wooden and from Italy--or based on an English children's book.


The metal fan and the giant wooden clown

And of course, we had to go to a bookstore. Because why would I buy The Cleaning Bible or Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany or the second Twilight series novel for my daughter from Amazon when I could buy them in England???

Maybe I should have bought something a little harder to find in America, like Beautiful Pigs or Ripping Things to Do



Or these:



Then, a visit to the wonderfully-named Cake House for tea, Bakewell Tart, and Millionaire's Shortbread.


And a peek at our iPhone

By the end of the afternoon, we were feeling as worn as the local parish church


Seriously, I feel like a gargoyle, only crumblier.

Right now, I'm drinking a draft Long Bow. Which is hard cider.

I'm just trying to force myself to stay awake

You know what I realized when I was on the way to the airport? That I had my laptop, iPod, iPhone and their respective chargers. I even had my new Nike CoolPix camera! But where was the Nike battery?

At home in the charger.

This is just. so. typical.

I'm the only one bringing an actual camera on this trip. And now it won't work. Which means I'm reduced to taking pictures with my iPhone.

The bright side of this is I now have a shopping goal. Which means we won't have nearly as much browsing and out-of-control covetousness that can absolutely consume me when I travel.

The last time I was in England I dragged my husband through innumerable used book stores and thrift shops. I thought seriously about buying a pair of hilariously preppy (or I should say, Sloane Ranger-y) Wellington boots with a print of little whales all over them. I bought a pair of fake Gucci loafers at Marks and Sparks and Tom Holt "Mapp and Lucia" books at Waterstones and I ... well, I went a little nuts at Boots. I think I brought home a year's supply of Pear's soap because it was 50 p. a cake, less than half of what it costs in the States.

And I was already obsessed with the Hetty vacuum cleaner. So now that I can just walk into a store and get one?



It's lucky that I really need a battery for my camera.

Amazing, incredible news

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be locking the windows and taking my jewelry to the safety deposit box at the bank, but this needed to be said:

1. I took my son shopping for shoes yesterday because his old Merrells were pretty much shot. So we bought him a new pair. AND THEY'RE THE SAME SIZE AS THE OLD ONES.

I know. When does that ever happen? It's like I'm leaving the dentist office and the receptionist is saying "see you in five years."

2. I am totally caught up with the laundry. Every sheet, every pajama, every towel, every sock, every single pair of jeans. The laundry room is empty.

I think I'll make my entire family travel to England with their pajamas on just to keep things that way.

Laundry. Shopping. Packing. Cancelling the newspaper. And writing blog posts.

Point the first: The laundry, it never stops. Because not only did I have to deal with the stuff that accumulated while I was lolligagging around town with my BlogHer friends, I also have to wash the sheets and towels my BlogHer friends used.

I'm hygienic like that.

Point the second: I've noticed that when I do laundry, my kids wear their favorite clothes first. And I can predict exactly what will happen. There will be the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth when his/her favorite jeans/t-shirt is in the hamper in Newtopia while we're unpacking the suitcase in England.

So I'm confiscaing their clean clothes. I take them out of the dryer, fold them, and pack them into suitcases that I'm hiding in my study.

I don't care if my children spend the next two days wearing their pajamas--I'm not washing those damned clothes again.

Point the third: Hey church! Enough with the rehearsals and the Evensongs, already!

I guess we have to be ready to do this in great big English cathedrals, but three Evensongs in a row? Who's going to attend? We might have to bus up some skid row bums a selection of Chicago's shelter-deprived underprivileged to fill the pews.

Point the fourth: Really? With the white blouses and the black pants? Really?

How many white blouses do they think I own? Or summer-weight black pants? Because the answer is none.

I mean, how much time do I want to spend looking like the waiters from a Parisian bistro?


Point the fifth: I posted this BeautyHacks entry this afternoon. The typing and the formatting, it took hours. Cutting and pasting emails left me with really huge spaces
and hinky formatting
problems. Which took forever to
fix. So please read it. It's interesting! Really! I quote bloggers who are (justifiably) more popular than I


am!

I'm leaving on a jet plane

Not today--we'll be leaving on Thursday.

I'm going to England with my husband, son and daughter. We'll be there for 10 days, during which time my son and I will sing in about a million Evensong services at Salisbury Cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral

Between Evensongs, we'll be doing whatever it is you can do within a few hours drive of Salisbury. We'll explore the Cotswolds, visit Oxford, go to Cardiff, take the ferry for a day trip to the Isle of Wight, marvel at Stonehenge, and buying and eating disgusting amounts of English candy.

So here I am, frantically going through the lists of what we're supposed to bring and freaking out that my son's dress shoes don't fit him anymore. All to get ready to start packing as though we were going on safari instead of to a country where they speak English and have stores like Boots and TopShop.

So here are some nice pictures stolen from the internet:

The Cotswolds

Oxford

Cardiff Castle

Isle of Wight

Stonehenge

Because I"ll probably forget my camera--or leave the cable or recharger at home.