my uk life

first run

if you had been floating along the thames in a boat or walking your dog this morning, you might have seen a runner on the towpath. you would have noticed her. her cheeks were red, her eyes tearing up from the cold and she was visibly out of breath, but she had a grin on her face that stretched a mile wide.

today i went for my first run in ten months. it was both heaven and hell.

i'm it!

i've been tagged by my friend lainie. here are my responses:

four jobs i have had in my life:
"soda jerk" at an ice cream parlour
mail clerk in a bank
babysitter for a little girl who now has a four year old of her own!
editorial intern at travel & leisure magazine

four movies i would watch over and over:
only you
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
high society
ferris bueller's day off

four places i have lived:
st petersburg, russia
conway springs, kansas
new york city
newport beach, california

four tv shows i love to watch:
friday night with jonathan ross
the west wing
friends
grand designs

four places i have been on vacation:
kefalonia, greece
barcelona, spain
cinque terre, italy
malta

four websites i visit daily:
rb.log
bbc news
flickr
blogging baby

four of my favourite foods:
butternut squash and spinach lasagna
milk chocolate hobnobs
chicken tikka masala from our local indian restaurant
hot artichoke dip

four places i would rather be right now:
in the thermal heaven at pennyhill park spa
on a private beach in kefalonia
sleeping in our hammock on a sunny summer afternoon
swimming laps in our gym

four bloggers i am tagging:
richard
andrea
gavin
jeff

power naps

my daughter should be napping right now but instead she is on her playmat, happily batting around a red apple toy. i spent the last fifteen minutes with her in her nursery, trying to convince her that it was naptime, while she stared peacefully at the shadow coming in from the curtain on the wall. she didn't sleep a wink, but i could barely keep my eyes open.

it's ironic that i should be trying to get my daughter to take daytime naps, since i never have been good at taking them myself. my mother claims i never napped at all during the day after the age of two. certainly as an adult, i don't like to sleep while the sun is shining. i usually feel there are more important things to be doing, and have a hard time relaxing. if i do settle down into a sleep, i feel awful when i wake up.

richard forwarded me an article today from men's journal on the benefits of power napping. it says that if you sleep more than 20 minutes but less than 50, it can leave you feeling sluggish and slow. i think that's what i've been doing wrong.  i may need to learn this skill now, as suddenly daytime naps are more desirable than they were in the past.

where oh where does the time go?

when i was pregnant, everyone kept warning me that i wouldn't have any time for myself once the baby was born. often this warning would be accompanied by comments about sleepless nights and spending all day in pajamas.

we are lucky to have a very easy baby, and i actually get time for a shower each and every morning. i also, with help from richard, manage to keep the house relatively tidy and make the occasional dinner (although mostly we're still living on meals i made and froze before madeline was born, and yummy meals from cook). i even check email occasionally. nonetheless, the time each day just flies by, and it isn't uncommon for the sun to set with me wondering where in the world the day has gone.

we have settled into a pretty good routine with madeline, so even though i ask this question of myself, i actually know where i spend my hours:

7am – 8am
change maddie’s nappy (rich usually does this one before work), feed maddie and pump milk for freezer

8am – 8:30am
do laundry, dishes etc and eat breakfast while maddie plays on playmat (entertain her at the same time!)

8:30am – 9:15am
settle maddie for nap and take nap myself!

9:15am -10am
shower and dress

10am – 11:30am
feed maddie, change maddie’s nappy, dress maddie, feed maddie, play with maddie and settle her for her nap

11:30am – 2pm
generally free time, at home – for lunch, email, etc.

2pm – 3pm
change maddie, feed maddie, play with maddie

3pm - 5pm
free time with maddie! walk outdoors or go somewhere in the car, meet friends etc but need to be home by 5pm

5pm – 7pm
feed maddie, bathe and change maddie (this is richard’s part), feed maddie, put dinner in oven (this is often richard's part too), and settle maddie for sleep

7pm - 10pm
generally free evening time with richard for dinner, etc. also time when i am taking my english history class once a week and richard and i are having weekly date nights

10pm – 10:45pm
wake maddie, feed maddie, change maddie's nappy, feed maddie and settle maddie for sleep

after this, she usually wakes up once between 4am - 5:30am, although she’s slept through the night to 7am twice now.

rinse and repeat!

best books

i have never been good at picking favourites. if forced, i usually pick my "top" one or ten or whatever is required but my choices always feel a bit arbitrary. i often feel that if i were asked the same question the next day or following week, my answer would be different.

nonetheless, i have been inspired by my friend lainie, who made a list of her all-time favourite books recently. it got me thinking about mine. without looking at my overflowing bookshelves, i have picked the books that come to mind as the best i have ever read. here they are, with a short description of why each one makes the cut, at least for today:

fiction
the kite runner (khaled hosseini)this novel about a boy growing up in afghanistan made the country come alive for me. i recommended this to everyone i met after i read it.

the time traveler’s wife (audrey niffenegger)
this novel combines science fiction--time travel--with a unique love story. it amazes me that niffenegger could keep her timeline straight when she wrote this as the sequencing is incredible. genius.

the grapes of wrath (john steinbeck)
this is a beautiful story about migrant farmers during the american depression. i read it when i was in junior high school and again last year. i don't cry that easily (well at least not when i'm not pregnant) but tears were streaming down my face reading this.

the other boleyn girl (philippa gregory)
i recommended this book to everyone i saw when i first read it. it was what made me interested in english history when i first moved here, and helped me to really remember the tudor timeline for the first time.

a river runs through it (norman maclean)
this has been on my favourites list for many years. maclean writes the way i wish i could.

the red tent (anita diamant)
this novel tells the story of women in the old testament, through the eyes of dinah, daughter of leah and jacob.

katherine (anya seton)
this novel is about a not terribly well known, but incredibly fascinating woman, with amazing historical relevance--katherine swynford.

interpreter of maladies (jhumpa lahiri)
this book of short stories is so easy to read and the prose is so fluid it makes you think that anyone should be able to write.

the last time they met (anita shreve)
shreve's novels are all a little bit the same, in my mind, but i really loved this one and had to re-read it once i finished it.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (mark haddon)
what an interesting voice and character. enough said on this.

non-fiction
coach yourself to success (talane miedaner)
i keep going back to this book each year for inspiration.

getting things done: the art of stress free productivity (david allen)
i read this before the gtd hype, and it is quite similar to the system i use for managing my time.

the time trap (alec macKenzie)
i read this book many years ago, and it really helped me with my time management. i loaned it out to someone, lost it, and then couldn't remember its name. i recognized the cover on amazon years later and bought it again.

mindfulness (ellen langer)
langer has done lots of research around the mind-body connection and covers it very clearly in this thought-provoking book.

the new contented little baby book (gina ford)
this is a controversial one in the uk, but i think there are great practical tips for new parents in this book.

the official book of sudoku (plume)
what can i say, i really like sudoku.

children’s
and finally, some of my favorites from childhood....
island of the blue dolphins (scott o’dell)
an old fashioned girl (louisa mae alcott)
sadako and the thousand paper cranes (eleanor coerr)
slinky malinki (lynley dodd)
mrs mctats and her houseful of cats (alyssa satin capucilli)
alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (judith viorst)
the giving tree (shel silverstein)
hop on pop (dr seuss)

rubber band rubbish

it seems i am not the only one in britain annoyed by the royal mail red rubber bands. the times ran an article on saturday covering this same issue. apparently the royal mail uses 342 million of these red rubber bands each year. they changed to the red variety 18 months ago--according to the times, this was so the postmen could see the ones they dropped and pick them up.

i think the royal mail's plan is backfiring. as far as i can tell, about a million of these 342 million bands end up on the ground, and everyone but the postmen are picking them up. my collection is up to 45 since the start of the month. i found two just today, one outside of the health centre and the other on the towpath outside my house. i will soon be starting a rubber band ball.

see maddie grow

one of my new year's resolutions is to take a photo of madeline each week. i am publishing these photos in a photo album and will attempt to keep it updated throughout the year.

the royal mail rubber band collection

it all started with a pair of dangerous shoes.

it was last summer, and i was living in a pair of black sandals with chunky heels. they were comfortable and matched most everything. the only problem was that the leather strap had stretched and the heel didn't necessarily stay under my foot when i walked, particularly if i was on a rough surface. this was a particular issue on the towpath along the river, where i tripped a few times and threatened to fall while hurrying to the gym. since i was four or five months pregnant at the time, this made richard --and even me-- really nervous.

so while i looked for some safer shoes, and struggled along with the dangerous sandals, i started watching my feet, very carefully. i learned every pothole and mud puddle on the towpath, and at the same time, i started noticing just how many red rubber bands were scattered along the half-mile route amongst the other rubbish.

once i noticed the rubber bands along that towpath, i started seeing them everywhere. in london, on oxford street. outside sarah and karl's house in ealing. in egham. and most noticeably, underneath our mailbox, which is just inside our gate on the river side of our house. in fact, one day, i noticed that the postman, who delivers our mail on a bike along the towpath, bundled our mail in these rubber bands, and i saw him drop one on the ground while trying to slip it into his mail bag.

it was around this time that my expanding pregnant belly starting cutting off my oxygen supply when i leaned over, so rather than pick up all these discarded banks from the royal mail, i pointed them out to richard, and i vowed that starting in 2006, once my waistline was back, i would start collecting them. so my new year's resolution is to gather them together into the world's largest rubber band ball, and once i have a year's worth, send them straight back where they came from, in the post.

my resolutions for 2006

it's time once again to publish my new year's resolutions, in the hopes that showing them to other people will help to ensure that i work to make them happen.

2006 Goals for Shannon Banks

Personal

1. Write something every day (Letter, blog, or fiction)

2. Work on a basic family tree

3. Organize two family vacations

Wife

4. Create a wedding album. Finally!

5. Update recipe database and print top 20

6. plan and go on weekly date nights

7. Enjoy at least 24 more days out in

   London

Mother

8. Get professional photos taken of maddie

9. Take and post at least one photo weekly

10. Breastfeed at least six months

11. Make homemade baby food

12. Write in Maddie’s baby book

Health

13. Go on at least 24 Geocache hikes

14. Exercise at least three times weekly

15. Walk, don’t drive, to Egham

16. Get at least six spa treatments

Environment

17. Use cloth nappies

18. Say no to plastic bags

19. Organize a 2^nd annual towpath clean

20. Create a royal mail red rubber band collection

job change

when i was twelve, i joined the work force. i put a classifed ad in the local newspaper, advertising my services as a babysitter. our junior high school had offered a baby first aid course that i took and from which i receved an official "babysitting certification." i mentioned this proudly in the ad, and it worked. within a few days, the calls started coming in.

all summer long and after school many nights a week, i watched children and babies, giving them bottles, making french toast for breakfast and feeding pureed food out of little jars. i helped kids take their baths, read to them, played outside on the swingset and, in the summer, sandboxes and plastic wading pools. i changed diapers, did laundry and helped them fall asleep. once i babysat a neighbour boy who was only two years younger than i was. his parents said they didn't trust him with his younger siblings, and wanted someone responsible to keep an eye on them.

i babysat for years, before graduating to other jobs. i moved on, and left babysitting behind. i worked as a soda jerk at an antique soda fountain, making ice cream delicacies and deli sandwiches. i checked papers for my high school english teacher. i cleaned a campground during a summer holiday. i worked in a grocery store, stocking shelves and ringing up sales. from there i went on to working in the mailroom of a bank, then the bookkeeping department. i taught english to foreign students. i wrote and edited for international magazines, worked in marketing, led a development organization, and product managed, then program managed, software products.

this year, i am taking a full twelve months of maternity leave, setting aside my job managing an international product planning team, and going back to bathing, changing, feeding and teaching. and this time it is all with my own child.

i started this thinking i would be writing about what it was like to leave the work force for a year after two decades of employment. but as i wrote, i realized that it was less about leaving work than changing jobs. i am thrilled to have the chance to spend this time with madeline, but there is no question that it is work, a true full time job, and a really important one.

i am returning to my roots and becoming a babysitter once again.