my uk life

next june

those of you who are not formula one fans will probably be scratching your heads, wondering why one would spend a fortune to watch cars go around and around on a track, but ten years with richard has made me a bona fide f1 fan. so i'm thrilled to say we will be watching the final british grand prix at silverstone from our very own reserved seats next season.

in celebration

tomorrow i am running in the adidas women's challenge. this year i am running in support of bowel cancer uk, a charity dedicated to raising awareness of bowel cancer (colon cancer), improving the quality of life of those affected by the disease, and reducing deaths from this very common form of cancer.

those who know me know that we have had a tough year health-wise in our family. when i signed up for this run, earlier in the year, my father-in-law had just been diagnosed with bowel cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. in july, he had surgery, and only last month he learned the fantastic news that he is now cancer free. i am running in honor of malcolm and in celebration of his recovery.

i know budgets are tight this year and many of you have been asked to donate to other runs, bike rides and other events for other equally worthy causes. but if you have the means or inclination, please visit my justgiving page and donate online.

fingers crossed it doesn't rain!

blue ribbon day

twenty years of practice making banana bread pays off. on the weekend, i won first prize and 3 british pounds in class 92 of cookery at the egham royal show.

no need to be supermom (or mum)

i will always be grateful for the full year of maternity leave i was able to take in the uk when madeline was born and the fact that my current job share allows me to work in a challenging, interesting role 25 hours per week but spend my afternoons and fridays with maddie while she is a little girl.

her majesty

i have seen the queen! i was driving home this afternoon to take the rest of my conference calls from my home office, and, as always when i come the windsor route, i approached the long mile that runs down from windsor castle. i noticed people standing on either side of the mile first, then literally ten seconds later, her cars came through. as drivers, we were stopped to let her convoy pass over the road en route to ascot for the races. i had a brilliant view and could clearly see the queen through her window. five minutes later and i would have missed her entirely but as it was, i had a front row seat.

i am so excited!

tips for travel with a baby or toddler

at the young age of 2.5, madeline is a seasoned traveller. she has already flown back and forth to the united states five times (let's see...seattle at 8 months, my parents in missouri at 10 months, my grandmother in iowa at 11 months, cape cod/boston and family in philadelphia at 19 months, back to missouri at 2 years, back to missouri again at 26 months). she has also flown to madrid at 6 months, copenhagen at 16 months, milan at 26 months, and egypt at 27 months. i think there may be other trips that i'm forgetting. isn't that scary?

at some point along the line, i wrote my top tips for travelling on a plane with a baby.i've had several friends say they've used these on their own adventures and have found them useful. a friend just pointed me to a website dedicated to travel with children and on this site they also have a bunch of great articles around this same topic:

ten tips for keeping toddlers occupied on a plane

air travel with babies, toddlers and kids

our favorite travel toys

these are well worth a read before you find yourself trapped on an airplane with a small friend for what seems like an eternity.

now i know my abcs

i can't seem to get flickr embedded video to work, so i will have to link to this clip of my little american idol. the alphabet song, complete with the "zed" pronunciation....well done maddie!

celebrity (near) collision

a couple of months ago we were driving along not far from our house, headed somewhere mundane like toys-r-us. when we came to a roundabout, a car to our left--that should have been yielding-- came to a quick stop narrowly missing the side of our prius. it caught our attention, and when we looked over in annoyance, we saw a high-end black audi with a driver that was the spitting image of hugh grant.

i was suddenly less annoyed and almost wished for the first time in my life the car had gone ahead and plowed into us. at low speed of course.

raleigh's sandals

when i was a child, my parents owned a store in clarksville, iowa, called "in pots and print," where my mom sold a combination of plants and old books. when they closed the store, my parents kept the wooden sign that hung from the window and a bunch of leftover brown paper bookmarks that advertised the shop. some thirty years later, the bookmarks still turn up occasionally, tucked between pages in novels on my shelf, marking places that are no longer relevant. i flip them over and find half-finished to do lists from the 1970s on the back, scribbled in my mother’s handwriting.

i remember in pots and print as a bit dark and musty and smelling of soil. my mom’s green thumb was apparent, and the store was crowded with life. she sold sensitive plants that closed to the touch, and i couldn't resist running my little finger along their leaves to watch them respond. ferns were a particular speciality and their leaves cascaded over their pots like wild, frizzy haircuts or spiders stretching their long legs toward the floor.

my mom played national public radio on a small transistor that sat on a shelf in the front of the shop, and the voices of the announcers were muffled and distant. at a very young age i learned to recognize the melody that introduces the news program "all things considered." i didn’t listen carefully to the strangers’ words but the background drone was comforting.

the store had a small back room, where my brother raleigh and i played as toddlers. he was two; i was four. i read to him out loud from books we kept there in an apple crate, turned on its side into a makeshift bookshelf: hop on pop by dr seuss. green eggs and ham. richard scarry’s cars and trucks and things that go. raleigh sat beside me, his chubby legs crossed indian-style, hanging on to my every word. my mom used a cassette player to record us together. i played the tapes back later, hearing my mother announce the date before my little voice came in, slowly reading words in stilted, childish tones.

mom made us ketchup sandwiches for lunch. we asked her to fold the white bread over instead of cutting it in half, so we could bite through the fold and squish the ketchup through the semicircle bite-mark.

we played in the alley behind the shop, collecting rocks in an old metal cigar box. our clothes and knees got covered in dirt. we wore blue-and-white striped marimekko t-shirts with jean shorts, osh kosh b’gosh overalls, and shirts adorned with popeye the sailor man. we had matching brown leather sandals. the neighbourhood kids, tougher and older, joined us in the alleyway and taught us their games, changing the rules as we played to ensure they were always victorious. one of them, robert ackerman, laughed at raleigh and told him sandals were for girls.

iowa snow days

it's cold in iowa.

when autumn turns to winter and the days are short and dark, the snow begins to fall. most years, it doesn't stop until the black earth of the corn fields and green rolling hills of summer are gone, covered under layer upon layer of powder. at night the wind comes, bellowing, and the snow is picked up, thrown against the house and covering basement storm windows, creating massive drifts that merge with the roof in one clean line. in the morning, it’s calm again. the sky is blue. parents open curtains and look out the upstairs windows where they see fields of soft white peaks, like cake frosting, that hide the imperfections of the land. fathers bundle in scarves and hats and brave the cold with shovels, severing the pristine surface and rediscovering the sidewalks.

for Iowa children, snow is not a novelty. it is part of life, its coming and its eventual melting away, no different from the sun or the rain. they enjoy it as children do everywhere, digging tunnels and caves, lying down to make snow angels, and flying across it on sleds and plastic discs. but it is expected, common place, like ocean waves are to the children of California. it is only special when it closes roads and forces schools to shut their doors for the day.

i was an Iowa child. a few times each year, a major storm would come in overnight and in the morning while it was still dark outside, i would stand in the kitchen in my flannel nightgown, listening in anticipation to the monotone announcer listing school cancellations on the radio.

most winter days, though, we went off to school despite the snowdrifts. an orange school bus stopped outside our house to get us each day, its windows foggy from the heaters blowing out hot air and the warm breath of dozens of kids already inside. we waited impatiently at the end of our driveway for it to pull up and open its doors, dressed from head to toe in winter wear, with immobile arms that were forced parallel to the ground like a scarecrow because of our snowsuit bulk. i had white puffy moon boots, a 1970s american phenomenon that made your feet look twice their normal size but kept them toasty warm. i carried a shoe bag alongside my backpack and metal raggedy ann lunch box, so i could take off my wet boots and put on my shoes when we reached town.

once on board we pushed our way down the narrow center aisle, looking for an empty space or a friendly face. our bus had red vinyl bench seats that held two comfortably or three kids in a pinch, and windows with tabs that slid down individually on hot spring days. in the winter they stayed firmly closed, and we wrote messages and drew pictures in the condensation on the glass as we drove through snow-covered fields to school.