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.