Admiral Boom washes my clothes.

You know that part in Mary Poppins where Admiral Boom sets off his cannon to mark the hour, and everybody in the family grabs a vase or a lamp to prevent it from falling and breaking while the house shakes? That's EXACTLY what it's like when my washer here goes into its spin cycle. It just now hit (although 'went off' is probably a better choice of words), and since I didn't have the wherewithal to do my usual run-and-grab, there was a domino effect as all of the cutting boards toppled over (their bang startling me so much I think I let a little out), knocking over the basket of tea bags, which then up-ended the sugar bowl. It was awesome. Or at least, it would've been if it had happened to somebody else. As it is, I just spent a significant portion of time trying to get all the sugar off the floor before the mice discovered it and threw a party.That's right, little mouse friends. I hear you squeaking. Don't think I don't speak your language.

I've got to go hang up these clothes now. Somehow they've got to be dry for packing tomorrow. I'll have to put them in the airing cupboard and hope for the best.

Next time I see you, I will probably be on American soil and blubbering through my last London Footnotes post. Thank you so much for reading this past year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to change my pants.

The London Design Festival

I was going to go into this whole dynamic story of my trip to one of London's Design Festival hubs last Saturday, but then I got distracted by this funny twitter article and watching Flight of the Conchords on youtube, so all of my visions have dissipated. That's the problem with blogging: you have to* get on the internet to do it.

But the Festival! It was [insert hyperactively gushing adjective here].

I KNOW. PIERRE PAULIN. Words cannot describe the way my heart skipped when I entered the Artifort room. They had a DOZEN of his chairs. Or maybe just five or six. I didn't count, because I was too busy leaping over photographers to jump into this one. And I didn't leave it again until I was lured away by the floor monitor offering me candy, which in hindsight was a total ploy to get me to stop humping the chair.

Veuve Clicquot (motto: 'bringing you unaffordable Champagne, one glass at a time') was the event sponsor and they built an entire lounge area out of...labels? Either way, you felt buzzed just going into it. And no, you couldn't steal those bottles on the floor. They are WATCHING you. And offering you candy and maps to other floors.

I also discovered my new favorite designer: Duffy London, you. complete. me. This canvas was the first thing to catch my eye from the design collection: it's actually backlit and it GLOWS. Yes. I kid you not. A glowing chandelier canvas. I could NOT get enough of it. Because it's AWESOME. And Duffy London doesn't stop there: they've also got these fantastic lampshades, and wallpaper, and mirrors that reminded me of playing with Lite Brite as a child, and and and! * head exploding * It was lovely.

Check out this sweet lounge. You see that bright backlighting? That's not because I suck as a photographer; it's because I took this picture in heaven. This is what I imagine my personal afterlife to look like. Sans the two strangers. Unless they're there to massage me, in which case they can stay.

I lounged around The Rug Company sipping fresh mint tea they were serving. For FREE. Because they're not Veuve Clicquot, they're wonderful. I could still peer at the Veuve crowd over the cushions, though. Like a spy, or a hobbit. I was totally cool.

Prototype THIS, Alexander. I mean...uh...shoot. Nice chair.

I've got to head to the library now. I have a mega-vision of burning kazillions of books-on-cd into my itunes>ipod for the Great American Road Trip. It would be great to go with American classics while on the road--Flannery, Raymond, maybe a little F. Scott or Ernest--but my selection may be limited by the fact that I'm looking in a British library. I'll probably end up with the entire series of James Bond or something.

*I know, I know. 'Technically' I could pre-write my post in Word and then just paste it in--a handy trick back when I was blog-posting during the workday**--but now I just can't be bothered...

**Only during lunchtime, of course. Hire me.

on throat coat, cornwall, and cough syrup

Right now the dishwasher is humming and the kettle is whispering and the soup is gurgling. These sounds are my company today, and they're keeping me warm.

The Cornwall pictures are coming along...I'm about a third of the way through, which feels really nice. But then, everything feels nice today. I don't know if it's because I'm doped up on enough cold medicine to tranquilize a horse, or because I've had so much Throat Coat tea that hallucinatory effects are taking place, or if it's just the general sense of well-being that comes from making soup and cookies from scratch and having them both cooking away at the same time, but either way...everything is so...nice right now. Except for that burning smell...hold on while I leave my stupor to check on those cookies...ahhhh. Done. They look so nice.

For some strange, inexplicable reason, I just took some time out to do a photo shoot with my tea box. Because, you know, I don't have loads of other stuff I could be working on. But it beckoned, and I think it wanted the glory of being the single item that's soothing my throat right now:

But I'm not gonna lie: it tastes like *ss. (Mom, I put that asterisk in there for you. Because really, it tastes like ASS, but I didn't want to offend you. I love you.) I don't what the heck this slippery elm talk is all about, but I can tell you, the flavor doesn't seem far from licking a tree. But man...my throat is coated and feels so much better than it did this morning. It's so nice.

I was going to put a couple of Cornwall pics in here, but my blog seems to have taken a different direction ever since the tea got demanding. In fact, I'm not really sure where I'm at right now.

Ah. Cornwall pics. That's right. Here are just a few of the zillion I'm working through (and by 'working,' I mean, 'zoning'):

Can you imagine how it would feel to live in that tiny little hamlet across from the water? One word comes to mind.

Yeah, I KNOW.

Every night, a sunset to knock your socks off. It didn't matter how foggy and cool the morning was--by noon, the sun was bright and crisp, and by dusk, everything glowed.

This fisherman reminded me of Elton John the second I saw him. I couldn't begin to tell you why. The hair? The glasses? The coveralls? The fact that he had a piano in the back of his boat? Perhaps we'll never know.

Alright, I gotta go. This tea is trying to kill me now. I can't wait to see you tomorrow.

What is a penguin doing on my lawn?

I just posted, but it was too melancholy and I had to take it down. I'm not a blogger in order to burden you with my woes, I'm a blogger in order to burden you with mindless ramblings and the occasional barrage of photos.

Interesting. That is pretty much my blog in a nutshell. I had no idea.

I'm just wrapping up my sixth cup of coffee (don't worry, I switch to decaf when I start twitching, which was about three mugs ago), and now I'm thinking I should switch to something slightly healthier, like Diet Coke. Which I actually HAVE, randomly enough, because I had a migraine on Sunday and thought it would help. Then I never actually opened it. So now it's sitting there in the fridge mocking me, saying, 'You know you dislike waste even more than you dislike pop, so you may as well just open me up and DO IT. DO IT DO IT! DRINK ME! IT'S DRIVING YOU CRAZY THAT I'M TAKING UP PRECIOUS TINY ENGLISH FRIDGE SPACE AND YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T THROW ME AWAY!' The cacophony this coke makes every time I open the refrigerator door is deafening. I'm thisclose to buckling and downing it all in one burning, fizzy go, before retiring to a dark space to drown in bloated self-loathing. 'Waste not want not' is such a satisfying motto to live by.

But before I go rip open that door to confront this carbonated enemy, let me leave you with this: my new favorite website, where they use poorly chosen real estate photos to make great fun. It's un-buh-LEEVABLE. Please go there. Please. Just for ONE SECOND. You will seriously LOVE it.

Not that I'm narcissistic, but...I look GOOD.

Okay, so you know how sometimes when you're bored, you start to imagine what life would be like if your face was on, say, a billboard, or in an art gallery, or on the cover of a fashion magazine*? Well, WONDER NO LONGER, because the WORLD'S GREATEST WEBSITE does it for you! All you do is pick a format (out of the KAZILLION irresistible options), upload your photo (or, say, the photo of someone you want to mess with), and VOILA! Within seconds, you get this!

If I were an artist debuting my first show, it would probably look alarmingly like the above.

Let's just say that after our amazing day together, I am NOT surprised Dave did this. I've been telling him that there's just no future for us now that I'm with Richard Curtis, but he refuses to listen.

And so a dream can be laid to rest...

Until tomorrow, when I put myself on a wall mural and a bus stop and the dollar bill and a postage stamp.

*I might be alone here.

More photos of the Fringe!

Now that I have blown my entire morning watching Google is My Roommate, videos of my friend's freaking adorable babies, and looking up curried egg salad recipes (I still haven't found one I'm wholly pleased with, so please let me know if you've got a good one!), I figured, 'I should do a blog post!' Because seriously, I can spend my life Meandering About the Information Superhighway and wind up hours later with nothing to show for it but a back-ache and a sense of disorientation.

Tonight I am determined to make a quiche, if for no other reason than the fact that one, I impulse-bought a quiche dish last week and am determined to use it, and two, I have loads of random food bits (one zucchini, a handful of mushrooms, a spare tomato) that need to be eaten, and what better way to do it than a quiche? One could also argue for an Everything Pizza, but since I did that last week...

But before I leave you to start whipping some eggs, I will subject you to more photos of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where I spent the entire time missing my brilliant college roommate Leslie, now a successful stand-up comedienne in New York City, and wishing she were there, even though she's currently busy rocking the New York Fringe.

Wait, wait...Forgive me while I take a minute to upload the photos...I'm going to see if there's a way to upload them through picasaweb versus my desktop picasa, which only lets me do four at a go--infinitely frustrating when you're one, impatient, and two, ready to force forty pictures down a reader's throat.

hmmmm...methinks there is no shortcut. Blast. Here we go, then...slowly but surely! (This reminds me...once, when I was a (too tall for my age) teenager, I poked fun of my mother Shirley's tiny stature but remarking 'Slowly but Shirley!' whenever we walked anywhere. I don't think she appreciated it. I was some pretty funny stuff in those days. I also found great humor in telling her I was pregnant on a regular basis, just to see how she'd respond...which is actually a joke I still enjoy to this day, though she's getting wise to it and no longer takes my complaints of nausea and bloating seriously. Someday, when I AM in my first trimester, she's gonna regret that.)

I digress.

This is a photo I like to call 'Still Life with Fruit.' (The above, not the below.)

The Fringe was full of spontaneous (or perhaps scheduled, I'm pretty ignorant here) street performances. This guy and his brother had a humorous, highly-dramatized circus act going, which drew a large crowd...

I love it that these shops are next door to each other.

'Self-portrait.'

Some people took advantage of Edinburgh's influx of people to host mini flea markets...all the pottery you can carry for five pounds! (I'm exaggerating here, otherwise I would've come home with an insane number of ceramic jugs. I can't resist a useless bargain.)

Edinburgh is FULL of these little charming side streets.

One of the comedy venues...

And another one...

There was also the fantabulous Edinburgh International Book Festival going on at Charlotte Square! I know what you're thinking: did my head explode with all of the irresistible choices?? Yes. Yes, it did.

And there were BOOK signings! I don't know who this particular author is, but apparently he appeals to chicks and the occasional gay man (who you can see when you enlarge this photo).

I don't know who this guy is, either, but judging by his look, I would say he's definitely an author of some sort. And since I couldn't find Bill Bryson, he had to do. If you recognize him from any of your book jackets, do let me know so I have a sense of satisfaction having caught him in the wild.

A lovely couple, no doubt on their way to a reading or an art gallery.

And one of the many gorgeous Edinburgh skylines.

And me! Please note my super rad super new silver puffy O'Neill's vest. It IS reversable for a more 'normal' look, though I figured at a comedy festival, that'd be a waste. You will note it bulging open in an attractive fashion. Please tell my mother it's because I am obviously with child.

Beach huts, classic cars, and fish and chips: what more could you want out of a Sunday afternoon?

Before I give you the impression that Southend-on-Sea is nothing but a live reenactment of Sybil, let me tell you about the rest of my lovely day there...

This is me pretending to drive a 1953 Austin named Archie. (Deee, please note the fabulous kickin' awesome birthday bracelets you got me! They made this car look GOOD.)

Archie had a bit of trouble getting started. First, he had to be cranked, then he needed his spark plugs lovingly caressed, then he needed his bottom wiped. He was a darling.

Please note: in England, a wrench is called a 'spanner.' And instead of referring to idiot guys as tools like we do back home, they call them spanners, as in, 'I went to this dinner party and got stuck talking to a total spanner all night.' I thought it was interesting that calling a guy something from a toolbox was universal and that the English chose to specify which tool.

Archie, beaming merrily and innocently away:

The best part of Southend-on-Sea is of course the beach huts...

Except maybe the fish and chips:

Which came wrapped like this...

And blossomed into heavenly this, by far the best fish and chips I've EVER had:

Please note the grease on the paper. That's how you KNOW it's good...

Little Shop of Horrors

I have to go buy some art supplies for my mom today. This is a very dangerous thing for me, as art stores are my kryptonite. Not because I am an artist--no, no, then it wouldn't be so bad--but because as soon as I step foot into an art store, I'm convinced I'm THISCLOSE to my life's fulfillment in the creative arts. That maybe, if I just had the right tools, all of that latent talent would reveal itself, and my new paints will fly from my new brush onto my new canvas, and galleries will seek my magnificent works, and in only a few short weeks, the SFMoMA will call to interview this Fresh Young Talent, demanding to know where I've been hiding all these years. Or if I don't feel like painting on canvas, I can tackle my new textiles that I will stamp with my new rubber pads, on which I will carve designs with my new knife, after squirting my new textile paint onto my new piece of glass, rolled out with my new brayer roller. I'll be the next Lotta Jansdotter! I think as I survey the colors in the shop and imagine hand-stamped leaves adorning the corners of the new pillowcases I'd buy that afternoon.

And then I come home, arms overflowing with supplies, brimming with enthusiasm and ideas. Supplies that will never be touched more than once every six months, when I need to decorate a postcard.

This is why I can't go in art stores and have forbidden myself more than passing entry. But maybe a little bit of stationery can't hurt? Maybe some vellum, with glassine envelopes? That will inspire me to write more letters! I NEED it...But NO! No, today, I will be strong. Oh, yes. I will be strong.

MY NEW BEST FRIEND!

It's been a week since I've posted, for a number of reasons...the first delay due to a long weekend spent in the Lake District (photos of...trees...to come--try to get excited), and the rest is due to...well...apathy. But today, Something Big Happened and it is DEFINITELY news-worthy.

I met my new best friend.

Oh, yes. It has finally happened.

I was shopping at Habitat when I saw her. Our eyes met. She smiled. I played cool, because that's how I roll, but then when she was fully past, I slowly rotated and began to follow her. I watched her shop from behind a decorative tree full of ornaments for sale...I saw her touch a tapestry, then when she moved on, I casually strolled past it and took a good look--just to get a feel for her taste. After all, I'll be buying her Christmas and birthday presents soon.

A moment later she was gone...like so many mists on the surface of haunted lakes, I felt lost and scared without her. I resumed my shopping, still high from our contact, but disappointed at a lost opportunity to tackle her, force her into a photo with me, and then have her sign everything on my person with the sharpie I always carry in my purse.

Until half an hour later, in the midst of perusing the shop next door. I was buying Christmas decorations. Loads and loads of Christmas decorations. I didn't mean to. I'm really not the Holiday Decorations type (mostly due to apathy, not any sort of principle on the thing). But this Christmas is different...I'm going to be in London, away from friends and family. And as a result, I find myself seeking creature comforts this season--I'm eating food from my grandmother's church cookbook, I'm wearing fuzzy socks, and I'm decorating for Christmas like it's the last one I'm going to spend on this earth.

So there I am at Heal's, arms laden with wreaths, ornaments, dragging a plastic tree half my size. I look like Christmas just threw up all over me. Glitter is all over my hands and face, my hair has been caught in the pine bristles, and I've got some sort of silver sparkley thing that looks like a disco ball dangling from my arm.

And there she is. In front of me in line. She looked at me, then laughed lightly: 'Getting ready for Christmas?' That's when I knew: this was her way of asking me to be Best Friend's Forever. 'YES!' I replied, 'A THOUSAND TIMES YES!' I cleverly regaled her with stories of my holiday season abroad (hoping for an invitation to her country estate) and discussed the merits of waiting until the day after Thanksgiving to put up Christmas decorations. She nodded understandingly: 'I've always wanted to do an American Thanksgiving!' I could tell she wanted an invitation to my party, but REALLY, Emma. I only have food for four. The wreath around my neck chose that minute to strangle me, at which point she began to back politely away: 'Right, right, well, nice plastic reindeer! Must be on my way...!'

We didn't trade names, of course, as we both understood that I already knew hers, and mine wasn't relevant. I like to think that when she goes home tonight, she's going to be thinking of me...maybe with a pet nickname, like 'Christmas Girl.' Something like that, something we can laugh at together in years to come.

Oh, yes. Emma Watson, I look forward to the start of a beautiful friendship...