Yes, that’s right. Muffled screaming from under a cushion is what I have to offer you instead of blogging right now.

I’ve been casting around for several days for the perfect, playful, lighthearted words to use on this here blog, and I haven’t got any, I don’t think.

There’s been a lot going on. Things, as usual, that I am not able to talk about while they are ongoing, and find it difficult to write about anything else because this blog is pretty representative of my life, and I am not good at lying, or sounding happy when I am actually worrity.

But I need to try very hard to write something, because otherwise I will just sit here stewing in my own tepid juices. I will therefore be going back to abandoned drafts, and the list of possible posts next to my bed and in my diary. And trying to pull things together from there. Just warning you, because some of them are a bit random. There’s one note in my diary that just says ‘DICK/GRAVY’, so while I might not tackle that one until I have a clearer idea where it came from, and start with the slightly more fully formed ones instead.

Otherwise, while I’m on that, if anyone just wants to suggest I title, and I can write a post to go with it, that would be really good. Really good, actually. I am too much in my head to be able to pull anything out right now, perhaps it would be good to start with someone else’s instead.

Yes. Do that. Can someone suggest a title?
It can be a sentence? Or a list suggestion? Or a quotation? Or just a title?
Anyone? Please? Help.
I’m a bit drowny.

I’m very behind with blogging things. I warn you. So if I keep coming up with things that sound like they were yesterday and fresh in my mind - they ARE fresh in my mind, but they’re also from a few weeks ago. Really, I’m just really slowly ticking them off the ‘things to blog about’ list that sits next to my bed and in the diary in my bag. There is a lot going on right now. Sorry.

ANYWAY.

I now like opera. This may SEEM in direct opposition to a few posts I wrote a few years ago…

… about …

…. ‘opera and why I hate it’ … sorry for pauses, I got really led off there reading other posts from that era. And looking at this photo twenty times. Man, I have to find a way of taking my brain back to the place it was in those couple of years ago.

ANYWAY.

The point is, I used to hate opera. I like the music fine, or some of it - but don’t understand the gravitas and the elitism and the preciousness of it. And the point of paying SO much for the staging and the costumes when, really, the point was that they were singing at each other in situations where normal human beings would never sing. Actually I still don’t understand that.

The point is, I have discovered I quite like opera. Not just the music now, I quite like the production of it. I understand why you might want to get caught up in it, as a story.

Admittedly a really simple story that moves very slowly because you have to say everything nineteen times at varying pitches … but I admit, there is a story there. And I kind of like it. I kind of like opera. But only - and, you know, it’s a slow process, baby steps - if you can have hot dogs at the same time.

So basically: there was a simulcast of Tosca at the Giants baseball stadium. It was free, and you could take a picnic and (if you registered early) sit in the infield. And if you didn’t register, or did and were late, you could sit in the normal baseball seats and go and buy baseball game food. And watch the opera. And you could huddle there under blankets and fleeces (because it’s cold here in the summer)(yes, I know). And if you needed the loo, you could just wander off whenever. And if you wanted to eat hot dogs and chicken tenders and garlic fries and drink a whole bunch of mediocre Ballpark wine, you could do that too.

But the funny thing was, even with these distractions, I got involved in the story of the opera. In fact, I probably got more involved than I would have if I’d felt like I was under an obligation to stay quiet and proper and posh and quiet.

I liked it. I understood it. more than that, I understood why I should like it. And I like opera. Kind of. I mean, I like it in ball parks.

Actually, because we could talk (very quietly, obvs) during the performance, I understood for the first time why, when it’s staged, it’s so often formal and nostalgic and wooden: because of the physical demands of singing mean you have to stand up very straight, and in particular positions, in order to hit those notes and at that volume. That was interesting.

But I also just liked it. Loved it, in some bits, though I didn’t know why. When something dramatic happened, I can’t remember what, I gasped and put my hand over my mouth and said “Oh NO!”, which is an unusually excitable reaction to opera, for me. And then, when something had happened that I wasn’t sure of, I suddenly realised I was weeping.

Not just feeling sad. Actually Weeping.
The lead character (Tosca, the fat lady previously discussed) was sad about something and the song she sang was so sad that the whole audience in the baseball park - about 30,000 from the look of them - fell completely and utterly silent. And there were seagulls swooping overhead and the darkness of the bay behind the screen and it was just so quiet and so lovely, and I wasn’t quite sure why this fat lady was so sad at this particular point but she was, and I wept. A lot. I wasn’t quite sure what it was I was weeping about … but I wept.

And then.when she finished, I looked around at some of my other not-usually-opera-fans around me, and they were wiping their eyes.

It was a beautiful, casual, wonderful thing.

I tried to get a video to record the scale and atmosphere of the event …

And I would have got a lot further with that if by beloved wasn’t a complete dick.

But yes. Opera.

Not as bad as I previously mentioned.
Yes, this one in particular happened to end (ricidulously suddenly) with the cliched fat lady singing - but let me state for the record: the OTHER fat lady (me) survived.

But only with the help of garlic fries.

Well, they’re not good for EVERYONE, and sometimes, not for the people involved. But they’re good for some people. Or, you know, me.

There’s that moment where someone too busy texting walks straight into small piece of poo on the pavement. Or shouting loudly on their mobile phone on the train when a fly shoots through the window and straight into their throat.

And it’s nothing wrong with THEM, really, or with what they’re doing. It’s abot the way I feel about the what they’re doing. And how the what affects everyone else..

ANYWAY:

Best of all are the people I saw the other day: three guys helping their friend, Fourth Guy, push a car down the road. It was a beautiful thing.

Well, the team work thing? That was beautiful.

But the thing was.

They were all dressed in the modern gangsta costume of a huge white t-shirt and a pair of oversixed jeans. The kind of jeans that - apparently - are cool if you’ve inherited them from your older brother who can’t wear them because he’s gone to prison, and people can tell that, because they’re very large, so you have to hold them up when you walk.

Believe me when I say all four young men were rocking the full ‘my brother passed on these clothes, they;re eight times too big for me, I’m going to wear them even if i have to keep my fingers firmly gripped around my beltloops at alltimes’ look

And the good thing was:

When, in the middle of a busy San Franciscan street, pushing a car whose starter was having some problem down the middle of the road, the four boys, already with trousers around their thighs, pushed; hands too busy to hold their waistbands.

People I saw at LEAST two pairs of low-slung gangstapants fall to the ground. And that was in the fifty metres in front of my house.

Men, pushing this car
you look hard; hanging so loose…
trousers: they fall down.

My telly is, in many ways, the epitome of California. Not content with simply giving a service and letting me decide how I feel about that service on my own terms, it is determined that I should have a nice day while doing it.

Plug in anything, or switch something on, and it pops up with a happy little message.

A new external device is connected
Do you want to enjoy this?

Enjoy it?
How do you know I want to enjoy it? How do I know I’m going to enjoy it? It might be terrible. I wish to USE it, certainly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Let’s not start wildly attributing emotional judgments to things without a few introductory conversations and a general sense of where this whole relationship is going first, hmn?

It doesn’t get any better when you press ‘yes’, of course.

“Select the input source you would like to appreciate” indeed.
It’s just, you know, it’s a machine. It’s asking if I want to connect it to another machine. Why do we have to get all personable and happy about it?

/Britishgrumpyperson

You know how, even though you don’t need to read every sign, you generally know what they say, because you’re so accustomed to the shape of the words? Or used to assuming what they say, because of where they are, so you don’t actually have to read them. You just note something is there, and then your brain fills in the rest?

Because you know a short word next to a long word painted on a garage door will say NO PARKING, or that letters in red in the middle of a road way they’ll probbaly say No Entry, that kind of thing.

Well, there was a sign on a garage door that was driving me nuts - just a few roads away from our house - and I went past it on a bus a few times and, out of the corner of my eye, could see there were lots of words on the door, words that my brain couldn’t rearrange into any shape they knew. But then I’d forget to look out for it at the right point the next time, and the same thing would happen again and again and again.

Anyway, after a few weeks, I saw it, and remembered it instantly, because it was phrased really oddly and it took me a couple of seconds to work out why. It said (almost exactly this, I think)

Old warehouse driveway
Car is missing! What happened?
The sound of towing.

Yes. Someone has written a bloody haiku to explain that if you block their access, they’ll get your car removed.

Oh San Francisco.
You are so very random.
And also awesome.

I went on a bit of a tin rampage. I’ve always had a thing about old tins - old every day product tins for gravy or spices or medicines or sweets. Just a complete sucker for them. The lettering the fact they are useful and impermanent things cased in these very colourful, very permanent metal objects - I love them a lot. It’s something about the mixture of the boring everyday thing and the longlasting, special remainder.

So i got extra super excited when I found a tin toy at the flea market. It was the girl’s equivalent of a tin toy car or a toy tin army, as far as I could see. It was a tiny fridge. And it was extremely cute. On the next table at the same stall, I found an oven.

I loved them both. But, after asking how much one was, and receiving a bad answer, and after discussion with my beloved about the stupid things we should be saving money for, just in case … I walked away.

I walked away and wandered up and down the rows of amazing stalls (occasionally stopping to buy other tins, when they were cheap. I got a gorgeous little mailbox and a tin globe money bank, as well as some pharmaceutical things) - but I couldn’t stop thinking about my kitchen appliances.

The thing was, I’d had this idea about getting three box frames - and maybe three flat frames for the boxes, and then putting them, icon-like, in the kitchen. And once I’d thought of it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a gorgeous little house design idea. Especially once we go back to the UK. It will be not only a reminder of the place, but a reminder of the culture and the Dream and blah blah blah.

Anyway. So after more than an hour, after wandering several rows, and oohing and ahhing at a bunch of things, we had to go home in time for The Apprentice in the UK… and I ran back to the stall. Just to get pictures of the boxes so I could find them cheaper on eBay. And I did that (and found a sink as well, on another part of the table) and I returned to my beloved, and he told me to go back and buy them, whatever the price, because he could tell I was going to be sad if I didn’t.

Reader: I bought them.

And I LOVE THEM.

And, actually, I looked them up on ebay later, and i got them far cheaper than I could have otherwise. So Hells Yes. I win.
Tin wins.

I didn’t get the lamp, but I got these, and I Love these.
Yay.

I have been, I mean. Sowwy. I have three days in any given week where I can do me-blogging without feeling like I should be doing something else. And when those days get filled with other fun things, like real life, or going away, or lovely people coming to visit - and then I have NO days. And then with lots of things going on and stuff up in the air and … well, other reasons I’ll explain another time (No, before you ask, I’m not pregnant. I swear, you lot are worse than my mother for guessing at that. And one of you IS my mother) sometimes it’s hard to tie my brain down in one place.

So I’ll get on that, because it will help, perhaps, if I do.

But in the meantime, having two brilliant houseguests at the weekend, I got to go out and do lots of my favourite tour guide things rather than sitting at home and staring at a flashing cursor, which I do a LOT.

And that? That was brilliant, because I’m getting to really really love this city, and trying to learn more about it every day, thanks to a stack of city history books and guides and local writers and things. And frankly? Tailoring routes and itineraries to perfectly suit the personalities and capabilities and interests and energy levels of all my favourite people is more fun than anything else I can think of. If I could have a job just doing that, please? That would be the best thing ever. Thanks.

Anyway. There’s more to say on that another time. And if I have some more time at some time, there will be much more to say about it. Tonnes.

What I came here tonight to say was
a) I’m not dead, I was just being vewy vewy quiet. Sowwy. But
b) one of the things we did with our friends was to go to Alameda Flea Market - which is one of my favourite places ever in the world and may soon be the root of my financial destruction, but never mind - where I wll tell you about the things I DID buy in my very next post … but my point, my POINT (I had one, I did, it’s not compulsory in blogging but I really honestly did) was that I wanted to share my utter, utter dismay that My Beloved wouldn’t agree to my buying this:

He said that, as a lamp purchase, it was “a sackable offence”.

I have been feelng aggrieved about this ever since. Becuse I think we can all agree that this lamp, right, is AWESOME.

That is all. (For today)

People keep saying this: Oh, advertising is down; oh, it is not a sustainable form of media in an internet age; oh, it is a dead tree, floating down the river, never to be seen again.

I say: Booooooooooo.

I realise this is not a stunningly complex media argument but then, if you wanted that you’d go find yourself a stunningly complex media commentator, rather than, say, me.

Instead, you have me. Hello! Anyway. My point is, I will be sad if they do. One of the first things I do on reaching somewhere: the first first, if at all possible, is to pick up a copy of the local newspaper. And then go and find somewhere with a nice cold drink, and read it cover to cover, if there’s time.

Within a few pages - especially by the time you reach the opinion and letters (features are generally interchangeable from place to place - although, of course, they are also Very Important Things and writen by geniuses. Genii. Oh hell.) …

Anyway: by the time you reach most of the way through the front section of the local newspaper, you know what’s going on in the town, what the big stories are, how people feel about it. It’s a way of getting to know a place and its people (without, you know, actually talking to anyone, which tends to be helpful when you are about as shy as me).

So while we were driving around, we picked up quite a few newspapers. And there were some stunning stories in them all, and some brilliantly outraged letters about this or that or the other (though nothing on the ones in the local paper I’ll tell you about next week, she said, making promises she’d almost certainly never live up to) - and then sometimes, if you are very lucky, there will be a police log, detailing all the call outs the local police have taken over the last week or however. None of them are as poetic as the famous Arcata Eye one, but they’re still a good read.

Anyway these two things were just ones I particularly loved from the first couple of papers we picked up, from the village by the Grand Canyon - a paper for there and a couple of other local towns.

LOCAL DOG!

Now, the remarkable thing about this story you can’t really tell how brilliant it is from the headline: though the headline iteself is pretty damned good.

But when you look at the caption, you can see something else: the story about the dog because the dog was looking for three young hikers who’d been swept away and lost in the canyon.

Now, obviously this was a story that had been and gonein the local press but still, I thought: crikey, that’s horrible - how old were these hikers? Were they ever found? What were their names? Were they on a guided hike or just going out on their own.

And you know what, reader? I have NO idea.

I combed though the whole front page paragraphs, flipped over to the page where all the stories continued with large words on the top of their columns to denote which story they were continuations of. “See page 6: DOG” and then I read all the way through that. I knew then name, length and weight of the dog, where it lived, what it ate for dinner, how proud it’s owner was of it, and what it’s favourite toy was (bit of rope).

I mean, I understand the focus of the story here was the local one, and the local thing about the story was the dog, and I know that, sadly, hiking accident stories are quite possibly quite frequent around those parts. And, you know, I have NO news sense whatsoever … But I know what I need as a reader, and what I needed was just one mention of the three dead people and what may possibly have happened to them: and nope. Nothing.

He really likes marrow treats though, if you’re wondering.

This was my other top best most favouritist thing: and it was so simple, just one of those ‘Man on the Street’ type features, asking people what they thought of a certain aspect of current news.

The problem is, with only a small pool of people to ask, including children and those who just don’t give a stuff about current affairs, surely they end up calling on the same people over and over again.

And if they don’t, they surely come across the fact that, overwhelmingly, if you ask people to describe what they think of a current event in a single sentence without giving them a very directed question, you might not get a very newsworthy answer.

For a perfect example of this I give you: “Are YOU worried about coming down with swine flu?”

Which is not really an opinion gatherer as much as a yes or no answer, which might be better for a percentage based poll than a vox pop feature, but anyway - all that is evident in those brilliant answers (well what else would you say?!) given by the featured local opinionites:

“Not really”
“I don’t know. Not really”
“Sounds like regular flu to me” (trans: “not really”)

Brilliant!
I mean, I don’t blame them, because they’re right. Were YOU really worried? Not really, right?
Exactly.

It’s just the fact of deciding

a) this was the right question to ask, then
b) thinking it was STILL the right question to ask when you’d asked the first three people and they’d answered ‘not really’, and then
c) not choosing to ask any more people in case you could find a differing view to present a bit more variation in opinion.

Nonono,just stick with that ‘not really’ verdict. And one from a guy with a breathing hole in his neck!
Brilliant!

YAY!

Hurray for local news!

Do you all know I liveblog things from the telly for work? Well, I do. It is one of the things I do. I like it. Anyway. For very obvious reasons no one much cared for having a blog of the National Spelling Bee, apart from me, not least because of the stupid time zone things that mean it’s already finished by the time I’ll see it anyway.

Anyway, so I thought I would liveblog it here instead. For my own amusement.

(more…)

There are some things I was going to move onto that I’ve been meaning to write up and other bits of my trip I should write up so I never forget them, but I just needed to stick these two pics somewhere and they were never going to fit in anywhere else, unless it’s a post about how I compulsively take pictures of signage, even in places where there are things much more photogenic than signage (I just like signage)

I like this helpful sign explaining why one might not want to get too close to the edge of the canyon.

Although I think it might work better if they didn’t make it look so fun.

WHEEEEEEEE!!!

That is what she is saying. I think.

And the other thing was just one of the many uses of the word RIM around the site. I don’t know whether it’s because it sounds funnier in a British accent, or rude if you say it out loud, or because the word means so many, MANY different things, but I never stopped making nose-explosion noises at signs like this:

A ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry, I’ll write more in a minute.

A ha ha ha. They said ‘rim’. Hee hee hee hee.

Think of the biggest thing you’ve ever seen. And multiply that by the biggest thing you can imagine, and add to that the word ‘BIG’, in mile high shiny letters, riding on the back of an elephant 50 times the normal size of an elephant and wearing a very big hat, you’re still possibly not close to how big the Grand Canyon is.

It’s really big.

And of course I knew that before we got there - I had figured out that ‘Grand’ probably wasn’t much of an overstatement, as it’s a bit too famous to be completely made up. And also when people want to describe something ridiculously large in this country they tend to describe it as ‘filling the Grand Canyon X times over’, which would seem to suggest it’s large on the kind of scale that you can imagine in relation to other things.

But it isn’t.
It’s just ridiculously big.

We drove up from Las Vegas to the south rim of the Canyon - although we were staying outside the National Park, so, as we got there after dark, we didn’t see it that night. Luckily, I was so excited about being on holiday I couldn’t sleep and luckily, due to some assiduous shin-kicking, neither could My Beloved.

And by 7am we were stepping out onto the first viewpoint in the National Park…

…And looking out over the grand canyon.

Which is, as I may have mentioned…

… stupidly big.

I mean, you’re looking across and you can see the other side of the canyon, and it’s probably about ten miles across at that point. And you look down, and it’s just layer after layer of cliffs, and there are canyons within canyons, and you’re staring straight down at a mile of air: because that’s how far the floor is, it’s a mile. And the trees look like tiny specks of green - like the individual buds on a head of baby broccoli - not like a whole floret, like the tiniest bud on the end of the tiniest branch on the tiniest floret - THAT’S what it looks like. But tinier.

And then you slowly start to realise that you’re looking at something very big, but that this bit that you’re looking at is just a little slice of the whole thing. That it goes on for hundreds of miles, and that the cliffs and valleys you can see are only ones among hundreds of thousands of similar cliffs, the tiny broccoli practically goes on forever. You’re standing looking at the opposite side of the canyon, and you wonder if you might just go there … and then you discover that you could go there, but it would involve hundreds of miles and about 5-6 hours of driving.

BIG.

I can’t deny, my reaction to the grand canyon was neither poetic nor profound.

Nor, it must be noted, fitting for a family-friendly blog. (Which this isn’t, by the way. Never has been. I mean, it’s friendly to MY family ((hello little mother! hello uncle john! hello beeeeeg seeeeester!)) and to all people with families and perhaps even to people who might euphemistically say they were ‘family’ when they meant they were actually in the mafia. I just mean this blog is just possibly not what you would put on the required reading list for your kids unless you were hoping they would grow up to be swearword salespeople. Or sailors)

ANYWAY. So this is the Grand Canyon:

And…

(are you ready for purest poetry and deep insight?)

… My first words on seeing it were:

“Oh for fuck’s sake”

Because nothing should be that large.

My words for the next ten minutes mainly revolved around the same theme, generally being a rather disbelieving ‘Seriously? Fuck OFF.’.

Not just for the sake of swearing. But in the same tone of voice you would use if someone tried to tell you they had nine stomachs, or that the pope was made of cream cheese, or that you had just won 187 million pounds, or that the plane you’d just boarded was actually going to the moon.

It was just so BIG.

SO beyond reasonable scope of understanding. SO utterly, insanely awesome and audacious that, to my shame, I couldn’t stop swearing at the bloody thing.

BIG, it was.
Big. Really big.

It was so large, this incredible and improbable thing, that it quickly became too much to take in, all at once. You started increasingly focusing in on little details on the sides of the Grand Canyon, or taking pictures of nice branches on trees NEXT to the Grand Canyon, because those were beautiful yet comprehendable, size-wise. And by doing that your brain could shut down the overload being caused by trying to take in something SO big and SO magnificent all at once, by zooming in on a small part.

Oh course the problem is that you’d do that, then turn around and the Grand Canyon would be standing behind you, waiting to ambush you again, and it would go “BOO!!!!” in its enormous booming silent shouty canyon voice “BOO! I AM THE GRAND CANYON! BOO!” and you would go “Oh, fuck OFF!” out of sheer surprise and disbelief that it managed to sneak up on you again, and then you would sound like a lout, all over again.

And then someone with you might complain that you were getting a little boring with the constant swearing, especially since for all your stubborn pleading, the Grand Canyon didn’t seem to be fucking off, and was, in fact, more likely to stay right where it was than you were. And that the RV-ing pensioners from Idaho sharing the viewing rock with you were starting to look at you a bit funny.

So you might start focussing on other thoughts to amuse yourself and distract yourself, like imagining the first people to come tramping across the plateau just minding their own business, trying to get from A-Z, when they suddenly came out of a grove of trees and found this. And you draw a little cartoon of it in your mind. “Oh bugger” they are saying. And then you amuse yourself by taking pictures of the many signages that employ the word ‘Rim’ somewhich way or another.

But then you forget what you are not looking at, and you turn around once more and BOO!, the sodding Grand Canyon has crept up on you again. But you don’t swear (out loud), instead, you might try very hard to switch it up a bit and replace your nonsensical swearing with something entirely more rational.

“Well that’s just RIDICULOUS” you would find yourself saying, over and over again. “That’s just STUPID.”

As if outraged by the idea of someone having the CHEEK to put that there. The sheer AUDACITY! And did they think they’d have you fooled?!

And then you’d revert to swearing for a while.

I mean, come off it. That’s just fucking insane. Nothing’s that big.

I don’t know if you would react the same if you were a country person, used to bigger scales and wider horizons, or whether you would react differently if your brain didn’t go in quite as much for super-detailed observational overload as mine tends to. And maybe it’s just because I didn’t have any canyon to compare it to, mentally. I don’t think I’ve ever known another canyon. I mean, I think there might have been a log flume called Splash Canyon at Thorpe Park, but not I say that I’m not quite sure, because it sounds like the kind of dreadful euphemism someone would have remarked on even then (Mi<"I took her up the Splash Canyon at the weekend" etc), so maybe I’ve no canyon experince at all.

Anyway. I’m now just being silly because I can’t stand how stupid my sincerity would sound if I tried to describe it to you.

Or how I would even start doing that. It’s just BIG, people. Really: seriously: I knew the Grand Canyon was big. The clue was in the name. I just didn’t realise how big, or how hard that was going to be to take in. Big like you can’t understand unless you’re looking at it. Big like exceptionally, unbelievably big, but so far outside the parameters of normal experience that you can’t think of anything logical to compare it to or measure to describe it.

So when people say “What was the Grand Canyon like?”

All you can think to say is “Big.”

And they say “Obviously. But how big?”
And you say “Really fucking big”
And they look at you like that didn’t help very much, and they’re not sure why you started swearing at them.
And you say. “No. Seriously, it’s just ridiculous. Don’t even get me started.”

I am glad I am not an astronaut, my brain would just explode.

I didn’t buy you a present, I’m afraid - though I honestly thought about buying you this:

Only I couldn’t work out how to get back to you from the flea market in Buttfucknowhere, Colorado without spilling the precious, precious liquid that made up such an essential part of its being.

My surprise holiday was not entirely Colorado based, though. We flew to Las Vegas, and then struck out immediately out of it again, driving over the Hoover Dam into Arizona and arriving near the Grand Canyon in the dark. I will tell you about the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Or maybe Thursday, because tomorrow is a busy work day. In the meantime, I can tell you: it’s pretty good.

And then we went other places, and saw lots of other things, including trees made of precious stones, and holes in the ground made by space. And volcanoes. And ruins. And museums, and diners, and a million gift shops.

And one day - and this is good, because I’m collecting states (I’m actually collecting vintage charm bracelet charms of states, but only ones I have been to. Yes, I have a long way to go) - we woke up in Utah, breakfasted in Colorado, had lunch in New Mexico, and then went to bed in Arizona.

In fact, this is a ‘welcome to’ version of our very condensed holiday roadtrip:

YAY! I love this. At the moment, Because it’s basically all the pictures I’ve managed to put up so far. But also because it was a great - and needed - release of stress and things.

That mosaic isn’t quite right. The two Arizona ones are actually out of order, I just didn’t notice. And of course ‘Nevada’ should be at the beginning there and ‘California’ should be at the end, but these are all the ones we could see from the road. You couldn’t see the other ones from the plane, damn them.

Anyway. It was, in just so many ways, amazing.
Lots of exploring, and sitting in silent places in awe of things. And lots of singing loudly in the car and making memories and shouting ‘HELLO COWS! HELLO!’ every time we passed cows (it is only polite), and lots of talking and lots of new sights and amazement. All my favourite things.

But yes.
Thank you for all your lovely wishes and general wonderfulness.

I will tell you all about more of it when I have the pictures to match.

And I’m so, SO sorry about not getting the spinny bally dry icey thing.
Still, thought that counts, right?
It’s the really random, weirdly ugly yet strangely hypnotic thought that counts.
Right?

I have that over-excitable ‘I’m on holiday’ feeling. I meant to get to my blog earlier this evening, but no, no, work just span itself out till the very last minute. Or I span it out. Because that’s what I do. Whatever.

But I meant to get here and write at least one of the posts that have been sitting on that list that hangs around on the table next to my bed, with memory-prompting phrases like ‘Dick/Gravy’ and ‘This is… theme project’ and ’sex club tree ambulance’ and ‘media/”miracle pill”/poo’, ‘tofu’ and ‘dentist’ and ‘that magazine for elistist scumsuckers that will be first against the wall when the revolution comes’ and other things.

But I will have to write those while I am away. As well as the things about being away.

But first I should just go away.

My Beloved has created the best birthday present in the history of birthdays. Tomorrow I am going away. I don’t quite know where. And we will have some kind of holiday. I know we’re flying somewhere late morning on Thursday, I know that I’ve been allowed to be quite slapdash with the packing, so we may be hiring a car when we get there, I know that I’ve got a wrapped book that I can open on the plane that will explain everything.

And the best thing is I have not had to worry about a single bit of it, nor have I had to worry about whether we’re going at all, we’re just going. And that is the end of it. How lovely is my Best Beloved? Very. He is awesome.

So. Next week I will be back - possibly with all the posts outlined above pre-written - and in the meantime I might be back with a photo or a brief thing or something, once I know where we are and if we have internet once we get there.

In the meantime: YAY!

(Also: sorry if anyone has been having trouble with comments getting modified: I’m not sure if the comments I approve are actually showing up - so if your comment hasn’t shown, please don’t take it personally - the same goes with unanswered email. I have a special pile of nice mail to answer when I reach a day I don’t have any other anxiety to address. It’s kind of been piling up. For maybe a couple years. Sorry.)

Now, however: I go on frikking holiday.
Somewhere.
Hell yes.

I spoke too soon. There was I complaining about my desire to be far away across a continent and across an ocean so I could be with my friends, and I made it sound like I wasn’t grateful for the friends I’ve made here. And I am. Because they’re brilliant.

I turned up at a barbeque on Sunday which, we had decided, was going to be a Happy Mother’s Day (US)/Birthday/Commiserations-On-Your-Laying-Off barbeque for various members of the invited. I had thought that sounded like a good idea, because it was a good way of celebrating with people that I really like without worrying about looking like I was trying to be the centre of attention or worrying that people wouldn’t show up.

Ad so I did turn up, bearing the kind of things that almost-32-year-olds bear, was presented with a birthday balloon by one of my favourite two year olds EVER, and then taken by him into the dining room, where I found this:

Which was just amazing. So thank you Amy, who made that, and who will read this. You are lovely.

So. Now it is my birthday. In fact, if you go by the fact that I was born at about 5.30am GMT, then it was my birthday about an hour ago in Pacific Standard Time, even though it is still technically yesterday here. Or it is if you are in the UK, or reading this tomorrow. If you’re reading this the day after tomorrow it’s not yesterday now, it’s the day before yesterday, and it’s not my birthday there either, unless you’re in China or something, and it is. In which case it isn’t the day after tomorrow, it’s tomorrow, if you’re in the UK. But today, to you, reading this now. If you’re reading this in more than two days time then all of that is void.

But it is my birthday, and I am going to be 32, which is odd, because I used to think I could imagine what 32 would feel like, and it’s just not like that. It’s not like that at all.

It’s just like being 25.
In that you feel like you’re twenty-five, but look at all the other 25-year-olds and wonder why they’re all acting so very young.

Mainly on my birthday I am going to be working, because it’s a Tuesday. I will, however, be taking the afternoon off to do a coupl of hundred miles road trip for a pizza. This is because I happened to be living near here 11 years ago, and spent my 21st birthday in a pizzeria in a small college town 85 miles inland. This is my desired Birthday Tea, and as whatever-you-want birthday tea is a sacred tradition, that is what we will have.

I will spend most of the morning before that, inbetween bouts of work, waving at my computer as I speak to my lovely family on the videothing (it’s like we’re in the future!). And I will open my cards and open some presents, maybe. And I am grateful for all of that. (OOOH. That reminds me, someone asked where my wishlist had gone. It is now here and is filled with things I am meaning to buy at some point when I’ve got some money. But I don’t think you can use it from the UK, whichever nice anonymous person was asking, so thank you, I am grateful for the thought)
And after all that I will probably do some blogging, because it’s important to keep yourself occupied as you reach advanced age.

So yes. IT IS MY BIRTHDAY, and BIRTHDAYS ARE GREAT.

And that is the end of it.

Happy Birthday Me!
Happy Birthday, EVERYONE!

Update: AND my sister made me a birthday animation with a happy seaworm monster!

How blessed (blessed-by-non-specific-non-godlike-forces, obv) am I?
Very, I say.
And I am very grateful for it.

HAPPY BIRThDAY EVERYONE!