The British Lady-Cackle, and other odd observations

I'm supposed to be finishing an essay right now. But because Quentin is passed out in my lap, exhausted from a morning of deliberate pouncing on my head while I slept, I'm going to blog instead.

Today, I'd like to discuss the elusive British Lady-Cackle (the BLC, if you will), and other odd observations from the past week or so. I'm sure you've heard all the rumors about how polite and dainty English women are - quiet, calm, icy and emotionless even (think The Queen in one of her never-ending Easter skirt-suits). However, you've not really lived in England until you're sitting in a pub on a Saturday afternoon, having a latte and reading about security threats, and there it is - out of nowhere - that piercing screech, knifing your ears with noises not yet defined by decibels in the natural world. "Where is that coming from?!" one might ask. "Is a parakeet being stabbed?" "Did a shih tzu just get a bath?" "Did (the artist formerly known as) Prince have a heart attack?" Others (like myself) may simply jump in one's seat, eye twitching involuntarily, and turn towards the noise, afraid to fully face it for fear it might actually melt your face. Enter: The British Lady-Cackle.

The Dowager Countess, upon hearing the BLC.

Brits are, in general and especially in Oxford, quite reserved, proper, polite, and friendly. However, there are exceptions to this rule, exceptions which seem to be growing the more I leave my cat-flat. Knife-fights are one exception to a common association with British gentility - although, let's be honest, I immediately thought about West Side Story. Second, we have the common drunks - usually couples who enter a bar completely reserved, and 45 minutes and six Guinness's later, are gargling unintelligible noises (probably words), eyes a bit glossy and bodies acting as if they just got off of a five-year pirate voyage. Actually, speaking of pirates, drunk Brits kind of remind me of pirates in general...the accent, the swaying, the occasional flailing of the arms. I passed a drunk couple in their 40's or 50's last night (Sunday) coming back from the grocery store...I didn't understand a word they were projecting out into the empty, residential street at 9:30pm. But, shiver me timbers they were loaded to the gunwales!

Other things I've learned about this week include, but are not limited to (OK, they're probably limited to):

• Fox hunting
• Pinkie rings
• Shower architecture in period homes
• The showering habits of the man with a body-length window in his shower directly across from my neighborhood pub
• Shetland ponies (in sweaters, not in sweaters, their height, their gardening habits, not to tickle their tongues, and other life-lessons)
• Where the "meter" is in my flat
• Yoga mats borrowed from a yoga studio are really quite gross
• It's OK if you don't understand people from Newcastle - a lot of Brits don't understand them either
• Americans drinking out of red SOLO cups at parties really is fascinating

I'm a Shetland pony in a sweater, and I'm in Scotland!

As I bid you adieu to ponder these musings (also because Quentin finally jumped off of my stomach and I should probably get around to that essay), I leave you with these departing thoughts from last night's trip to an open mic night: man-ponytails are never a good idea. In the words of my dear friend, Helena, while a man yodeled like a goat in the background: "stop putting me off my food with your horrible straggly pastiches of woman-hair." Well said. Also well said? "This is a song about devil worshiping amongst elderly women." Yep - that happened.

Snowshire

SNOW! It has snowed in the Shire and it is absolutely beautiful. When it snows here, it snows like it would in your most fairytale of dreams - spires dusted in white, perfectly constructed flakes that dance down from the sky, deer huddling together for warmth in a blanketed rugby pitch next to an icy river (that just so happens to be the Isis, aka the Thames). Walking down the street feels like you're dancing through a symphony - like violins and cellos are playing around you with every glance and every fuzzy crunch of your shoe.

Oxford blanketed in snow, from Christ Church meadow.

I know I promised I would write about red trousers this time around, but today I want to write about snow because, well, it's all around. I've learned some things about snow these past few days. One thing I've learned is the silence of snow - that soft break in noise, like the excess sounds in the world just hold their breaths for the chance to be blanketed. I've also noticed that snowflakes are like very cute versions of raindrops - you can't get mad when delicate flakes of white fluff hit you in the face, but it's pretty damn annoying when pellets of water attack your eyes when you're walking to the library. I have, at the same time, discovered that snowflakes are still a form of water, and that when you walk inside, those really lovely pieces of weather dandruff melt, and drown you. And then you're just cold...really, really cold. I've also learned that ice (yet another form of water!) is malicious, and full of evil trickery. It sneaks up, trying to cause slapstick comedy right when you've become confident in your new-found "snow-gait" (which, for me, is a distinct effort to march rather than shuffle). Along with this, I've learned that high heels in snow are a dangerous idea. It's kind of like ice-skating in an evening gown, which isn't actually as fun as it might sound...

Peering at the diorama.

This is my first time actually "living" in snow. I've been skiing, yes, and I think I built a snowman once when I was eight in Yosemite. BUT, I've never actually "functioned" in the snow. Every day this weekend I felt childish wonder - peeking out my window in the morning was like unveiling a covered diorama, excitedly anticipating which scene I would find before me. I've taken many moments these past few days to experience the snow in different ways: observing it from the indoors (mostly out of the initial fear of how to interact with it), trekking through it, playing in it, letting it fall on my tongue and nest in my eyelashes, then greeting it with a firm handshake as I molded it into a ball. I've settled into a fond appreciation of snow, and what it does to the world around us - to the disorienting beauty it drapes everything in, and its ability to repaint an entire city and cloud it at the same time.

I could go on for a long time. But, instead, I think I'll leave you for now with this poem:

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

(that was pretty Oxford of me, huh?)

Trouser-Pant-Suspender-Braces

If anyone ever tells you that you're full of shit for saying you're living abroad in England, you have my permission to punch them in the nose. Yes - the nose. Because they're lying. And you know who else was a liar (and was associated with noses)? Pinocchio. And you know who is actually full of shit? Them, and most children's stories.

"Sorry, Cricket with a top-hat, I'm just full of shit."

Now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you why their noses may be momentarily bonked. England may technically have the same national language as the Americans (and Canadians, for that matter, eh), but they sure as hell don't sound like it a lot of the time. Granted it may be easier to "assimilate" when moving across the pond to a British nation than, say, to Bangkok or Doha, there still is a language barrier - and that language barrier can get you into more trouble in England than if you simply didn't know the language of the country you were a resident of, because you're assumed to understand what is claimed to be the same mouth-noise as your homeland. But, nay, says I - nay.

I've alluded to some vernacular differences in previous blogs - the difference between "pudding" and "pudding," for example (ya, see, it's not that easy). However, this week I have had the distinct pleasure of welcoming my very first house-guest from the States. That means that not only did I get to figure out how the hell to get to Heathrow from my Oxonian cave, but I also was (1) reintroduced to the many misunderstood phrases and accents from the point of view of a fresh-eared American, and (2) I was constantly giggled at for having apparently acquired some sort of pseudo-accent. "Hello," "sorry," "thank you," and "walk," I'm told, are especially entertaining to hear me say nowadays.

Enter: the Scottish bus driver. Me, to my house-guest: "So what do you want to do when we get to Oxford? Are you hungry? I know a great place for hamburgers - it's quite tasty. Or, we could get you settled in? A shower, perhaps? It's totally up to you. How is everyone back home?" My flurry of questions were happily administered over the fuzzy speaker-gargles of the bus driver's standard safety speech. What my house-guest heard, though, was something completely different than what the Scot intended: "Wait," he stops me - "why are we sitting here if there are donuts in the back?!" His nose was quizzically peeking around the seat behind him; I was inhaling delayed laughter so deep it felt like I was recovering from sit-ups (haha, ya right, sit-ups!).

Immediately, I had an idea - the first thing we were to do when we arrived in Oxford was to buy my friend a journal, a little one, that he could carry around with him throughout his three month exploration, and in which he would jot down anything he "thought" he heard from the Brits around him, and a translation of what they actually said (to be attempted by myself, the pseudo-veteran from a measly four month tenure). I'll ask Dan to share the journal with you all at the end of his trip, but for now I leave you with these three tidbits gathered from his first three days:

Stop seducing me with your suspender-braces, Steve Urkel!

1. Trousers vs. Pants: I personally hate this one, and still can't quite remember to translate the word when I'm speaking to locals. "Trousers" are the English word for what we in America call "pants" - jeans, khakis, dress-slacks, etc. "Pants" in England are, well, knickers or underwear. Therefore, if I said to someone "I'll be right out, I just have to throw on some pants" - they would assume I was walking around my house commando and needed to dignify myself with panties before exiting my abode (a good idea, in general, I think). 
2. Suspenders vs. Braces: Also a risque mistake, if made. Bluntly, "suspenders" in England are what we in the US refer to as "garters" or "garter belts" - lacy bands worn above a woman's "pants" to hold up old-school stockings lacking elastic, often worn by pin-up girls. "Braces," then, is the English word for American "suspenders" - the elastic straps synonymous with Larry King and Steve Urkel, and with gangsters during the 1940s, that hold up men's "trousers." So, again, if a man went into an English shop and when asked what he was looking for replied "suspenders," the (probably 80-year-old) shop-keeper would probably (1) look at him shocked, and (2) assume he was a lost cross-dresser.
3. Spotted Dick (pudding): This is one of my favorites, simply due to the sheer number of five-year-old giggles that emerge when asked quite seriously if you'd like "a bite of my spotted dick." It's a proper English dessert, that resembles a dense cake with raisins submerged in custard. Go ahead - make some spotted dick jokes, god knows I did the first time I saw them lurking in the freezer aisle of the supermarket. I also took a picture. 

Enjoying his first spotted dick on NYE.

There, that's three - keep posted for a riveting description of the sea of red "trousers" I wade through on a daily basis in this hamlet...for a preview of my disdain, go here.

You're welcome.

Red Pant Reflection

Well, I'm 25. It's my birthday, and while the world did not, in fact, end today as the Mayans predicted, I did wake up with a migraine. Thanks, Mayans...thanks.

I also woke to realize that I've been an *awful* blogger this past year (that's right - bold, italicized, underlined, and asterisked). Like a flaky significant other circa 1685 on a sea voyage (to probably kill the Mayans, let's be honest), I promised to write, then didn't, then made a flurry of excuses once you guys got impatient and sad, then teased you with another post, only to act exactly as I did before and drop off the face of the earth (although, again, happily the earth's face is still intact). 

So, now, I say it - because birthdays are for reflection, and truth, and eating way too much cake, and getting sloppy drunk with your best friends (which, in my case this year is Quentin): I have failed at blogging. 

I've always enjoyed writing, I've always enjoyed making people laugh (something I only discovered recently, actually), and yet I've always been terrified of sharing these things on purpose (letting others read my writing, hearing my songs, watching me perform - anything). This blog was a secret attempt to change that, to "put myself out there" as they say. But, then, I got busy and scared and distracted again. This year, though, I really do want that to change - and not only through this blog. This year I want to do things that scare me - at least once a month (we gotta start slow, ya know?). I want to be vulnerable and insecure and unsure, but I want to try - I want to put something, anything, out there. And that starts now, with this blog, on my birthday - on the end of the world day.

As my first "scary" birthday vow to myself, I vow to write on this blog in the coming year once a week - YES, ONCE A WEEK. I know, lofty expectations can breed monumental disappointments, but you know what - what the hell, let's do this. As my first blog of my new year, I decided to reflect on the past term that I so-assholishly (new vow #2: make up ridiculous words more often) failed to update you on. I'm celebrating my quarter-century crisis in a very rainy Oxford, eyeballs throbbing as I torture them with MacBook light, and most of my new friends - my new family - have flown home to be with their biological kin for the holidays. A blessing and a curse of my birth date: you get an obese old man in a questionable red pantsuit promising you tons of presents and everyone seems really happy to celebrate (in your mind, you), but your friends also scatter away to spend time with their own families. And let's be honest, a lot of people respect the "birthday-christmas-gift-combo-pack" without actually doubling the amount of anything they give - I'm not complaining, just saying.

OK, so Oxford. It's weird. No, really, it is. Nothing makes sense, and nothing is logical - they tell us there are 8-week terms, but then expect you to be on-call during the secret 9th and 10th weeks nobody talks about until a professor emails you asking for an essay you never knew was assigned. Thanks? There's also a secret 0-week (not pronounced, "zero-th week," as I thought, but in fact referred to as "naught-week"...oops). This week, logically the week before "official" term begins, is in theory supposed to be the week when all of the students return and go wild, with parties and dancing and laughter and good cheer. HOWEVER, not-so-logically, previous-term exams can also apparently be held during naught week of the new term - like the big statistics exam being held the Friday of 0-week of next term (i.e. we finished our stats course the last week of November 2012, and the exam is on the Friday before the next term begins, in mid-January 2013). Logical. Totally logical. So now instead of fully enjoying our holiday season, all 26 of us have r(squared) and p(hat) hovering above our holiday cheer, reminding us we have to learn about numbers and graphs and stuff at some point after we trample grannies at Boxing Day mega-sales (like USA "Black Friday") and nurse our New-Years Day (from now on NYD re: vow #2) hangovers. 

So, today, while STATA terms float around in my throbbing skull, and the Mayans cry in their misinformed graves, I will update my blog - I will update my blog like crazy. I will make myself a Dutch Baby Pancake (the first breakfast item I ever learned to make), smother it in butter (because butter is delicious, and strangely more yellow in England), drench it in powdered sugar (called "icing" sugar here - hey, what if I don't want to use it for icing?! huh?! huh?! what then?! that's false advertising, or just plain rude), and I will write. Because that's what I love to do - and I forgot that until now.

Lessons from Longbowmen

Well, I've been in Britain for a full two days now, and I've been shockingly productive. I secured a flat, walked around the entire city, got a British mobile, and made four friends in my first 24 hours. My feet are aching from walking on cobblestones, I got caught in a rain shower while traipsing between the Thames and a cow field with the most robust bovines I have ever seen, had cream tea with two lovely families of Scots, witnessed the degree ceremony I will be partaking in two years from now (conducted entirely in Latin, for "graduannes"), and had a few pints of cider at a variety of local pubs. All in all, a pretty successful start. I have thousands of more details that are delightful, but I thought I would first share 25 knowledgeable tidbits I've acquired over the past couple days, translating American to British English:

Your physical representation of the number two insults my history!

1. What we in the US call "private school," the Brits call "public school."
2. It's called the "pavement" in England, not a "sidewalk."
3. Raising your index and middle finger (so as to signify the number 2) is actually an insult, dating back to the wars between the French and the English when the French used to cut off the index and middle fingers of British longbowmen when captured in battle (so they could no longer shoot a bow and arrow). I learned this the hard way when a couple of Brits asked me how many days I had been in Oxford. Oops? 
4. It's a "mobile," not a "cell phone."
5. A "toilet" is a restroom outside of the home; a "bathroom" is what you call your lavatory at home.
6. "How do you do?" is a rhetorical question; it also signifies that you've gone to boarding school (i.e. are a member of the upper class).
7. Titled members of British aristocracy are generally "asset rich, but cash poor."
8. You can meet Prince Harry, if you go to the right parties in London.
9. You can also meet "the other Harry" (Harry Styles of One Direction), if you go to an East London bar called Birthdays during the week.
10. Chips = french fries; crisps = potato chips.
11. It's pronounced "toh-maw-toe," not "tum-eight-toh."
12. Cream tea is high tea but without the sandwiches (as Andrew's mom put it, "with only the good stuff!")
13. "Pudding" doesn't refer to actual pudding, but rather to the general category of "desserts."

    

    Wrong pudding, Bill Cosby.

Silence + A Week

Greetings Gentlefolk!!

I have returned, and just in time. First, I must apologize for being MIA. I promised you all a blog dedicated to the ins and outs of moving abroad, and I only gave you two posts - TWO - over six-or-so months. I know, I know, I've let you down - or have I?

Quentin (aka the soon-to-be renamed Sir Quigglesworth) has been busy summering with his grandparents in Washington, practicing his laziness, getting acclimated to British-like weather patterns, and eating everything in sight.

Sir Quigglesworth, conducting an important meeting with Grandpa-pa

Meanwhile, I have not taken a deep breath since May. I will now provide the usual excuses - I meant to write! I put it down in my calendar but kept getting distracted! I fell asleep! I was too busy exercising (hahahaha, that's a funny one!) - but the honest truth is I have been more busy and more stressed in these past few months than I ever could have imagined, and the silence of this blog over many moons is actually the most adequate proof I could ever provide of what it's like to plan a move as big as this - one, big, fat, blurb of SILENCE.

Now, I sit here, finally in the same house as Sir Q, one week away from departure, and a different type of silence has hit me. The past few months have been filled with an almost static silence, a period of time so filled with so much, with no time to think or talk or analyze or breathe, that it just becomes muddled together and...silent. With all that I've done since May, I barely recall a single day, a single event, a single accomplishment. I have memories, of course, but it all feels blurred together, like one huge movie on fast-forward xx8 (you know, the level where everyone looks like they're robots on crack). In essence, three months that feel like they never even happened.

Q, patiently waiting for his rabies vaccine so he can become British.

Countless lists have been created, haphazardly typed in a 3am insomnia-ridden frenzy, crossed off, consolidated on iPhones and MacBooks, transposed in actual notebooks, sticky notes, and special "list-making" paper (ya, that's right, I bought special list paper). Suitcases have been purchased, returned or exchanged, packed, re-packed, unpacked, only to be packed again and weighed on Monday (or Sunday if I'm feeling really restless, which might very well happen). Visa applications have been groaned over, filled out, priority-mailed, and finally delivered to my gleeful digits this morning by two very confused UPS delivery people, wondering why I, in my pajamas at 11:45am, was doing a jig while providing my (wobbly) electronic signature. Over 500 "letting" inquiries have been sent, and the difference in time and currency have failed me more times than I'd care to recall. So, the good news is I have my Visa, the bad news is I'm homeless. Makeshift hobo tent out of my sub fusc cape, anyone?!

"Hey, jaundiced Lego-man, can I borrow that cape to live under?"

And now, one week away from my departure, I'm a mess. I've sat down, taken a breath or two, and suddenly all of the emotions I compressed and compartmentalized are bubbling out. The stress and anxiety have morphed into sentimentality, and I find my eyes burning with tears multiple times a day. Who knew moving across the world would make you have PMS (Pre-Moving-Syndrome?!). No, but seriously, my mood swings and stress levels have been all over the board, and if excitement exists at this point, it's hiding itself in a constant, lingering nausea. I went into this whole thing ready for an adventure, and it sure seems like I've got one. As of, well, now, I have six-and-a-half days to decide what I'm going to be wearing for the next nine months, cross my fingers, break down at the airport, take one final deep breath, and board British Airways flight 48, direct from Seattle to London, Heathrow.

And the truth is, I can tell myself I'll use the nine hour flight as a way to catch up on my chick flick quota for the year, but in reality, I know I'm going to be that girl, who just packed whatever she could of her whole life into a couple of suitcases, choked back tears while fumbling through security, and is bat-shit terrified of the adventure she is about to embark on, no matter how magical it may turn out to be. In the end, I'll just be a girl, who is moving far away, trying to carry with her memories and places and people who she will desperately miss and love, despite a deep fear that more than a physical distance will grow between them over these next few years - scared that this might be the move that changes everything.

Coping with PMS

...but first, I need to stop crying from that Parenthood season premiere I just watched (really, Parenthood, the season premiere had to be about Haddie leaving for college?!?! Goddamn PMS...)




Until England, or maybe before...

The Big Ticket, a First Class Kennel, and some Orthopedic Foam

I did it - I bought "the big ticket." You know, the one that will carry me from the USofA over the pond to the UKof...the UK. It was terrifying and exciting and nerve wracking, but I did it, I finally hit "purchase now" and I'll be on my way come September 18th at 6:55pm. I chose to fly out of Seattle for a few reasons: first, so that my dad could help me as I will be a mess with suitcases, a cat, a guitar, and just a head full of worries; second, because it was the most logical choice, considering I will be spending the last few weeks of my "summer" with my dad in Washington state; third, because (strangely) the shortest possible direct flight from the West Coast is from Seattle to London (a mere 8.5-9 hours, compared with the 10.5-11 hour flight from SFO or San Diego, my other two options), and this shortened flight time is actually really important considering I will have a fluffy ball of Q cargo'd in the hold; and finally, because I found a really cheap-ass ticket (75% off!!!). So, obviously, my priorities are in order.

That ten minutes working up to the "purchase now" moment were honestly awful; a million second-guesses were streaming through my head, the mouse practically drenched in palm sweat. Maybe I needed a bit more than two weeks to get settled in? I should go earlier... But, then again, what if I'm there all alone and scared and bored and there's an Oxford serial killer on the loose and I don't know how to buy eggs at the market, or use the bus system, or oh-my-god I'm going to die in England, and it'll be in an alleyway of cobblestones with a cape on (I revisit the cape later, promise). JUST DO IT, GOD DAMMIT JUST HIT - oh-my-god-i-bought-it. There is a date. It is real. I am actually moving to England. 

The rest of the weekend was a flurry of planning; spreadsheets, google docs, board-room-meeting-like phone calls with parents to coordinate logistics. And it was all kicked off through the ample research and purchase of Q's new international-flight-approved and first-class-quality travel kennel. It's a snazzy black and grey-blue (see below), and most importantly Quiggles actually fits inside (he's put on a few pounds, what can I say). I had to make sure it had ventilation on all four sides, had a food/water feeder, etc. etc. I also bought him a super comfy pad to go inside, and later discovered it was made out of orthopedic foam; pretty much this guy will be traveling first class in an air conditioned and mood-lit hull while I am stuck above shoved against a humming engine and probably sitting next to the "smelly food" guy (you know exactly what I'm talking about).

But, it's a first-ish step, and that is how everything begins, with a first step, a first click, a first purchase...or two, or three, OK or four - I also bought a paper shredder (I have super-top-secret documents, I swear...). But it's beginning - it's all beginning - and while I still have the occasional freak-out or second-guess or stomach flutter, at least I have solidified my choice and am moving towards it, inch by inch, purchase by purchase. 

Until next week...