the quality of the light
from my window at 9 pm this evening.
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exciting, informative, snarky, and very likely fabricated tales of life as an american expat in london
Like this postmay is a big birthday month
my mother turns 60 this year. she taught me everything i know about being a strong, self-sufficient woman – and for that, i owe her everything. she’s been the best mother i could ever have hoped for – loving, constant, giving.
and i know she still has so much more to teach me. happy birthday mum.
beth orton – someone’s daughter
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as dusk falls over the city
when i was a kid, i knew summer was approaching by the warm, orange light still filtering through the window at bedtime, dappling the sheets and walls, the sounds of older kids playing kick-the-can until the streetlights crackling to life signaled time to head home.
i took these the other day at 8:30 pm.
modest mouse – talking shit about a pretty sunset
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for the mamas
happy mother’s day. thanks for being such wonderful mothers in our family. i love you all.
the pretenders – every mother’s son
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j hits the big 3-0
happy birthday, baby.
here’s a photo from your birthday last year – yep, the day that i completely forgot.
i didn’t forget this year 
i adore you. wishing you much love and joy for the coming year.
always yours,
j
(because i know you love it…)
howie day – she says
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reason number 473 why i love my husband
with his new (old) haircut and new specs, he resembles the delectable rivers cuomo.
only, y’know, hotter. and with an endearingly goofy grin.
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birthday shout out
happy birthday to my brother raul! who’s lucky enough to share his birthday with cinco de mayo – so there’s always a reason to party 
(and who is usually much better with babies than this picture would indicate!)
love you lots. have a great day.
ghostface killah (f/ trife) – be easy
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sending love
my baby sis turns 30 today!
this one’s for you elliot.
even if i’m not there, i’ll always be right here.
a bubbles birthday mix for you: 
the first of two parts (part two to be posted tomorrow because i couldn’t decide which i liked better!) it reads like craziness, but there is a method to the madness
here’s the 
.
Cake – The Distance
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – Desperado
The Thermals – Here’s Your Future
Nada Surf – Pressure Free
Sugar – A Good Idea
Sublime – What I Got
Lily Allen – LDN
Kirsty MacColl – In These Shoes
The Pixies – Wave of Mutilation
Leona Naess – Blue Eyed Baby
U2 – Dancing Barefoot
NIN – Every Day is Exactly the Same
Queens of the Stone Age – In The Fade
Tori Amos – Talula
Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
Califone – The Orchids
Cyndi Lauper – True Colors
if you’ve got it, flaunt it
okay, i’ve really tried to avoid turning this into a cat blog, but zeke just makes it damn near impossible. my cat is a porn star. that’s right – this is how he spends much of his time. Legs spread, showing his goodies (or lack thereof) to the world. he has no shame.
and thus, j calls him “zeke the freak”.
the new pornographers – mass romantic
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love in a box
mmmm, a box of sisterly love! thank you katie!
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fenway faithful
boston red sox v. seattle mariners. opening day at fenway park. and i’m watching it!! this nasn (north american sports network) cable channel is worth every penny.
some photos from the last time i was at fenway in 2004.
not as good as being there… but nothing is.
go sox!
and, as history dictates, i bring you…
the standells – dirty water (boston, you’re my home)
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opening day, boston red sox, fenway park life is good, pt. 2
spent the afternoon with my friend amity, scarfing lots of really good sushi, then a lazy afternoon floating through the v&a, my favourite museum.
and getting home, i find my beloved red sox on telly *with* the boston announcers! this day just gets better and better.
more photos here
victoria and albert museum two down, one to go
so yesterday i took my “Life in the UK” test – 20 minutes of my life that i’ll never get back. 24 questions that took me under 3 minutes to complete (and that was reading the questions twice!) what kind of questions could they ask me to prove i was sufficiently british and assimiliated, one might ask?
gems such as:
1. In Britain, how many children are there under the age of 19?
2. Who replaced Neville Chamberlain in 1940 as prime minister?
3. What year did women get the right to vote?
4. How many young people move on to higher education?
5. Where were bus crews recruited from in the 1950’s?
(answers below, if anyone cares)
I mean this is stuff lots of Brits don’t even know – what is the point? After living here for at least 3 years (the earliest you can get citizenship) either you can function in society or you can’t – but memorizing facts from the census won’t change that one way or another.
still, it was a hoop… so i had to jump. the lady at the test centre last night said, “You’re my first American – why do you want a British passport?” and I said, “Because I live *here* now.” people used to ask me all the time why i was here – i suppose the grass is always greener.
and now the last component is my application appointment on sunday. they take my application, make sure it’s complete, copy my passport, (rob me blind) etc. then it’ll take anywhere from 10 days (J’s turnaround time) to 6 months for them to decide. then I have to do the ceremony, swear allegiance to the queen, yadda yadda yadda – which takes another few weeks. *then* (and only then) i get to apply for the passport (and hope I don’t get selected for the new personal interview process, which takes even longer – right now they’re doing a phased implementation on this over the next year, with every new passport application requiring interview [including credit check, police check, etc] by next April).
blech.
on an entirely different note, here are some photos from my lunch hour walk the other day. can’t believe i’ve lived here all this time and never taken photos of this stuff.
answers are: 1. 15 million, 2. Winston Churchill, 3. 1918, 4. 1-in-3, 5. West Indies
husker du – something i learned today
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matches and kerosene
my dad was here for a long weekend visit.
i love him. of course i do – how could i not? but we have a hard time not hurting each other. i wish i knew why, so i could fix it. i wish we could talk without land mines. i wish our conversations were not fraught with the barbed unsaid, the sharp edges sidestepped, the little bruises we inflict in our fumbling attempts to communicate. it’s death by a thousand papercuts.
still: we keep trying, the pull of halves trying to make themselves whole. the father/daughter connection crashing headlong against the walls of our hearts. and maybe all family relationships are like that. trying and struggling for recognition, acceptance in spite of the pain – the kind of ache that only someone who knows you as part of themselves, can cause. maybe the love that comes after is the exceptional bit.
but there is love.
a few photos – more here.
guided by voices – hold on hope
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gratuitous kitty porn
now that zeke will sit still for more than 5 seconds, and occasionally emerges from under the bedclothes…
song of the day: cat power – the greatest
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patience is a virtue, part 2
so a little more about “bob” (paco? taco? bingo?)
we got him through an ad we’d answered – some family in a council estate in Tulse Hill. The guy called J on his way home from work, so we hiked over there around 7pm. He’s 1 and a half, and used to being an indoor cat. I was a little worried when we picked him up – he didn’t want to meet us, was running all over the house, running away from us. Right now he’s really skittish – spending the night under the dresser, cowering behind the curtains and seeking shelter under the bedsheets. But slowly he’s getting braver – and he really likes affection. He vacillates between hiding in the tangle of cords behind the television, and brazenly strutting around the house, head-butting you for a stroke or tickle. J is already calling him ugly and smelly… which means he likes him. I took a half day at work and came home early to be with him and found him wet and shivering in the tub. but he didn’t utter even a peep of protest when i took him in my arms with a towel and held him until he warmed.
he’s getting more comfortable. i’m sure it’s a huge adjustment. But just when I think he’s getting used to things, some sudden noise will send him fleeing into the corner. and i have to sigh.
I’m trying to be patient. coaxing and cajoling are really not my style, and after diving under the dresser for the third time this morning, dressed in office clothes, only to emerge with a fistful of dustbunnies, i was getting a wee bit frustrated. but the thing about cats is that, unlike dogs, they don’t seek to please. you accept them on *their* terms, or not at all.
i have a feeling “bob” never really got that kind of acceptance from his previous family. maybe i can learn to be that for him.
dumb guy still won’t let me take a decent photo though!
song of the day: the weakerthans – plea from a cat named virtue (and yes, i really did have all these cat related songs in my library!)
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welcome home… “bob”?
so we suddenly have a cat!
he’s pretty shy at the moment. he’s spent the past 2 hours hiding behind the curtains, making a photogenic snap damn near impossible.
not christened him officially yet (his given name, “sky”, is just out of the question). for now, we’re calling him “dumb cat behind the curtain”. and “bob”.
he’s very cute though. not that you can tell from the photo.
song of the day: cowboy junkies – hold on to me
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home is where my heart is
Dearest J -
Last year on our anniversary I wrote:
i never would have picked j as someone who was exactly perfect for me. but he’s steady and ambitious and incredibly goofy. he’s got a perspective on life which constantly amazes me and he always knows what’s really important, yet never takes himself too seriously. he makes me laugh like no one i’ve ever met, is completely unafraid of facing stuff head-on, is always up for fun, and can still kick my ass at chess.
and for some unfathomable reason, he seems to fancy me. and makes me believe. he makes me believe in pablo neruda love poems, and 50 year anniversaries, and in that impulse that would make one lay down their life for another. he makes me believe that there might be a force in the universe which has a plan for my life, and that perhaps he is part of that plan. because i can’t conceive of any other explanation for it without attributing to blind luck, and i refuse to believe that such an incredibly significant event in my life could only have occurred through a random act of capriciousness.
he makes me believe in the possibility of forever – because i can’t imagine my life without him.
And since last year, we’ve been around the world and back again. We planned and plotted, got lost and lost the plot. We spent 24/7 joined at the hip, waking to brilliant cold lake mornings in New Zealand, playing dominoes in the spartan mountains of China, riding through a rainstorm in Cambodia, watching the sun drop into the ocean in Costa Rica.
It only made me love you more – I didn’t even know that was possible.
But lying on top of that hill in Fiji, watching the night sky so full of stars I thought my heart would burst with the beauty of it, holding your warm hand, I remembered reading this to you from my vows on our wedding day:
a slow shift in the stars
an imperceptible twining
of my soul with yours
my hand with yours
through subtle spinning of the earth
which brought us here and now
as if it never could have been otherwise
as if nothing else ever was
Happy anniversary, baby. Two down, only 48 more to go.
because it makes me think of you: leona naess – home
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ek het jou lief
happy valentine’s day. i love you.
Song of the day: Crowded House – Fall at Your Feet
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It’s civilised to queue, it’s glorious to be polite
Apparently, China is trying to teach its citizens to queue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Anyone who’s ever been to the country knows just how hilarious a proposal that is. The only thing essential to the Chinese “queue” is the liberal use of elbows. In my month in the country, I never saw even two people in any sort of intentional linear arrangement. Most everything in China is “first come, first served” and that’s a motto they take pretty damn seriously. Queueing is a system for people assured of abundance.
It’ll be an interesting experiment to be sure.
song of the day: modest mouse – the world at large
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it’s a small world after all
i am sitting on the train, reading the paper on the way home, engrossed in the latest jade goody saga.
“jen?”
i look up, and across from me is a thin blond woman who seems oddly familiar, but is not ringing any bells as I try to place her face.
“it’s lucy. from laos.”
…
we were on the slow boat down the mekong river in Laos, from Huay Xia to Luang Prabang – a two day journey, with an overnight stopover in the tiny flyspot village of pak beng. pak beng has exactly 3 rustic “hostels”, limited running water, and electricity only between the hours of 7-11. still, after 9 very long hours on an uncomfortable cargo boat, we were eager to explore, so we walked down to the dirt path by the river as light began to fall. as we walked past a brightly lit house with blaring, thumping american music, we saw a few other tourists from the boat inside, beckoning us in. turns out the party was actually a wedding reception for two young laos newlyweds in their late teens, and we spent the rest of the evening dancing to rap music, drinking the local moonshine, and chatting with a group of australian girls who were on their way to england after their holidays. in particular i spent some time talking to this girl lucy, who was a qualified occupational therapist, about the nhs and her tentative plans to move to london, giving her my email and telling her she should get in touch. we bonded in that way you do when you are travelers thrown together in a strange environment, and you’ve been drinking too much homemade grain alcohol, and the whole world is your friend.
…
and now here she was in front of me – holy shit. i am really bad with recognising people out of context, but as soon as she said “laos” it all came flooding back to me. turns out she lives just in clapham, of all places. so she filled me in on her experiences since moving here, and i told her about the rest of our travels. we engaged in small talk until we reached her tube stop. and then, she was gone. there was a brief moment where i thought about exchanging phone numbers… but then it passed. i think sometimes travel bonds don’t always survive the real world – and maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be.
the train pulled out of the station.
i went back to reading my paper.
