Brunchish medicine

You know what is absolutely and wholly restorative? To body, mind, and soul? 

Brunch. 

Brunch is a beautiful thing. Especially when eaten on a small neighborhood-joint patio with mismatched vintage furniture on an spectacular September-in-Colorado day. Especially whilst consuming a fresh squeezed grapefruit mimosa served in a cutie-pie vintage mini milk jug and sipped through a straw. Especially after strolling through a European-ish market searching for just the right table--all by oneself. Especially while friends who love your children nearly as much as you do volunteer to take the lot of them to the zoo. And especially when it follows an hour-long pick-up-where-you-left-off conversation with one’s best girlfriends who live halfway around the world and for whom you positively ache with loneliness. 

Brunch. It’s just the thing.

Ahhhhhh...

How about you? What’s been the surprisingly restorative medicine for you recently?

The Sound of Summer

Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop. $5 at Old Navy and our summer is complete. Flip-flop to the pool. Doing the duck-waddle as they strain to learn how to keep them on their feet. Flip flop home and a complaint that their legs (aka calves) are tired. Flip flops lost whilst peddling hard on their bikes. Flip flops lost running across the grass at the pool. Summer feet protected by squishy rubber flops across the burning pavement. 

“If you’re wondering why I’m wearing them inside it’s ‘cause I really like the noise.”

Flip-flop. Flip-flop. “Mama?” he says, “Don’t you just love that sound.” Yes, my sweet boy. I do. That is the sound of summer.

Destination KNOWN!

Countdown to departure: 11 days.  

After many months of “maybe Singapore/maybe Hong Kong no, scratch that!  Maybe Singapore/maybe Sydney.  Sydney. Singapore. Sydney most likely. No, Singapore most likely. No...where in the heck are we moving?!?!” We finally have our destination!  Drumroll please...we’re moving to...DENVER!  Yep, it was door number three apparently.  

To be honest we’re still in shock.  It’s so totally not what we were expecting.  Bridger summed up how all of us were feeling quite well.  After a fist pump and an excited, “YES!” in response to our location announcement, his face clouded over and he proclaimed “But I wasn’t quite ready to be done with our grand adventure!” We tried to help him see life as the grand adventure.  Life lived anywhere in the world.  We reminded him about all the adventures to be had in the mountains camping and skiing.  About baseball and American schools. About the yummy foods he’s missed and all of the friends and family waiting there.  In the end though he cried quite a bit.  “Why does the COMPANY get to say where we live?  Why can’t we live anywhere in the world that we want to?  I love Colorado to visit for a holiday, but I’ve lived there before. I want to try out a new country!”  When we asked what country he’d choose if he could live anywhere he wanted he sighed, thought for a moment and exclaimed, “I don’t know.  Denmark?”  

I sure can relate.  I’ve taken a fancy to this world traveling stuff.  I struggle with feeling like there’s still SO much here we haven’t seen or done.  So much close by in Europe that is so worth exploration and time.  Leaving here seems hard on a lot of levels--but the friends we’ll miss and the adventures still left to be had are the two biggies. Somehow it seemed easier--I’m not sure why--to leave and head into another great unknown.  Going back to what is more ‘known’ feels like short circuiting the ‘grand adventure.’  

At the same time I’m so stoked to go back to Denver too.  I’ve started a ‘Top 10 Things I’ll Miss About England” list, but in honor of our move and finally having a destination here are the 

“Top Ten Things I’m Looking Forward to About Denver”

(in no particular order)

1. Buffalo Burger. Red meat in general really.  The English specialize more in lamb and pork.  Having grown up in the Western United States I had no idea we had it so good when it came to beef.  I cannot wait for a really good burger.  Mmmm...makes my mouth water!
2. Country Music. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. I know I will lose some of your respect with this admission, but boy howdy do I miss me some country tunes!
3. Mexican Food. Green chilies from the Farmer’s Market frozen and used for Green Chili Stew all winter. Tacos from D' Corazon. Blue corn tortilla chips.  Good salsa. Tamales with mole. Lola’s. Chipotle! All of the food my mom cooked growing up I would describe as ‘Mexican Fusion’. I have REALLY missed the Mexican food!
4. Margaritas.  The Brits are really good at beer. I adore PIMMs.  But I haven’t had a decent marg for ages.  Are you noticing a food-based theme here?
5. Baseball. Especially the Rockies and the Anderberg boys. We had already decided to spend 5-6 weeks in Denver in June so I had signed my boys up for Little League.  I can’t wait to be THAT mom in the stands!  Yippee!  Plus we’ll be in town with our beloved Rockies.  Baseball games at Coors Field or on the couch (perhaps with a hamburger and a margarita thrown in!) I can’t wait!
6. Good haircuts. My sister is an absolute genius. I have so missed her artistic presence in the hair around here--mine, my husband’s, and my boy’s.  I’m going to be cute again!
7. Date nights! We’ll have babysitters close again! WOOP WOOP! Here in England almost everyone has their parents or family members watch their kiddos. So no one I know knows anyone to pay to do the job. I can’t wait for both the paid and the grandparental types of babysitters. YAY!
8. The mountains.  Not just because I’ll now know which way is west again either.  There’s nothing like the Rockies on the horizon.  It just makes me feel safe and grounded.  It’ll be so good to have them in the distance but even better to get up there as often as we can!  Camping anyone? Hiking? Skiing?
9. My Friends! So many friends to go back to there. I am so looking forward to beers around the backyard firepit. 
10. MY FAMILY! I can’t wait to be near my parents and my sisters again. Lunches. Movie nights. Being able to call my mom when I’m sick. Watching baseball with my dad. Plus I’ve had two cousins and their hubbies move to Denver while we’ve been away. I. Am. Stoked.

So there you have it. We finally ‘know.’ Watch this space as the adventure continues!

The Countdown Begins...

Countdown to departure: 13 days.  Whoa.  Could barely drag myself out of bed this morning in spite of the fact that the baby slept through the night.  Half of me was super-motivated, “I’m going to blitz the house!  Tidy things up, wrap up the organization, and clean one more time before the movers get here next Monday!  It’ll be great!”  Then  I was going to go traipsing about in London and the countryside for the rest of the week.  Alas, in spite of working my butt off all day I didn’t even finish the kitchen.  Perhaps I should have done what the other half of me wanted and gone back to bed and pulled the covers over my head.  

This is hard.  I don’t do well with this unknown stuff.  It’s so clear I need a lesson in being in the moment.  Or...well, I’m getting a lesson.  So far I’m pretty sure my grade is a D minus--not an F perhaps, but pretty darned close.  I keep living in the moment we arrive.  The moment we find a house.  The moment I get schools squared away.  I live in the moment where we can’t find a good house too.  The moment the only school is a crappy one where the teachers are mean and the lunch lady tries to poison the kids.  I live in the moment where we end up on the streets.  Or worse--a tiny 2 bedroom basement apartment with a leaky ceiling and no heat. Yes, I am a touch dramatic.  But dude, the internal monologue is a real doozy these days. Sure, it’s silly--I have a oodles of evidence that the world is a friendly place and that everything will work out swimmingly.  The bottom line is that I’m over it.  I’m tired.  I’ve been cheerful and chilled-out and cool about this whole ‘we’ll get there when we get there and we don’t know where ‘where’ is but it’ll be grand!’ thing.  Cheerful and chilled-out is one thing--brave is quite another. My inner-control freak is freaking out.  

Scott asked me today what would be gained by knowing.  What would it change if I knew?  If I knew where we would live.  If I knew where the boys would be going to school.  If I knew...how would things be different right now? How would I be planning or acting or what would I be doing differently? After I told him I sort of wanted to punch him in the face I considered what he said.  I don’t know...I’d stop obsessing I guess.  I’d stop worrying. I’d work on plans for the one scenario instead of making wildly obsessive plans about the 784 fabricated scenarios running through my head. I’m sure knowing would make me stop obsessing.  Right?  Right?  Don’t you think? Come on, back me up here.

Bridger came in a little bit ago--still up nearly two hours after he went to bed. “Mom?  My brain is too full.  I can’t shut my mind off.”  Poor kid. I have no idea where he gets it.  

Boys

Sometimes my sons make me feel crazy.  We’ve had a bit of attitude going on at our house.  Is there anything more hateful than the small person you birthed and whose bum you wiped and puke you caught in your own bare hands rolling their eyes at you?!?!  I ask you?  What’s a mother to do.  It tempts one to smack them and I am not that kind of mom!  

Today I came downstairs after my shower to a sobbing Bridger.  I have this red chair, see.  It’s my favorite ‘thing.’  I own lots of stuff and am not particularly attached to any of it, but this piece of stuff has rank.  In a discussion of what to sell, give away, or move on to our next destination the one thing that always makes the ‘it goes where I go’ list is my red cowboy chair.  I bought it out of a girl’s garage a few years ago.  Found some fabulous red pleather and some cherry-red paint and had my favorite furniture gurus in Denver make it over.  It is a fabulous piece of furniture, and today my son wrecked it.  Well, not really.  It’s not wrecked.  He just picked a bunch of paint off of the arm of the chair.  There was a tiny bit pealing up and he did what any self-respecting eight year old would do.  He started picking and pulling and messing with it.  I can’t blame him.  It does not make him a horrible person.  I once pulled the brail sticker off the inside of an elevator because it was pulling away and I couldn’t resist peeling it off.  That, I’m pretty sure makes you a horrible person.  But a little paint off a chair?  Even if it’s your mother’s favorite ‘thing’?  It just makes you a point of frustration.  Even that I didn’t let out in front of him.  He was genuinely heart broken and sorry.  So, I couldn’t be angry.  Just really bummed.  Then even more bummed when about two seconds later I found one of my vintage turquoise bracelets had been bent and mangled by the other son who ‘wanted to see how it worked.’

What with the recent snotting and eye-booger sickness, the demanding (as in I want it not now, RIGHT NOW) breastfeeding, the eye rolling, the constant bickering, and the el destructo boyness in general--between you and me I dream of weeks away from my children.  Still sometimes, they do or say or be something that simply melts me, and I am able to regroup and not smack them and even love them an extra lot.  Caid has lost his two front teeth and the lisping and toothless grin are so stinkin’ cute I can’t stand it.  Asher has started giving the most spectacular hugs.  Just wraps his little arms around you and presses his little head against you and mmmmm...it’s so nice!  Then there was the conversation around the dinner table the other night.  One of those moments that reminded me that these little beings around my table are from some other place.  Full of a life and light that is a gift to me and blesses me constantly. 

Bridger started a conversation a few nights ago with “Dad?  If you could raise money for something, what would you raise it for?”  Neither one of us were certain what he meant.  So we asked him what he would raise it for.  “A baseball field.  I’d build one for kids who don’t get to play baseball.  Maybe in Ubie’s [Ubaldo Jimenez--his favorite pitcher from the Dominican Republic] country.”  He then proceeded to line out all that he would do to accomplish this.  Find a field.  Ask the local people whether we should do it in a meadow or cut down some jungle.  Ask what sort of field they would want.  Decide how much it would cost.  Not forget to include equipment like balls and bats and helmets.  “Do you think they would want uniforms?”

Then he talked about how he’d write to schools and see if other kids would want to help him raise the money for the fields.  “I think kids in England and America would want to help.”  He went on and on.  Outlining different components of a very well thought-out plan with passion and clarity and excitment.  

He may be hard on my furniture, but I wouldn’t trade him for the world.  

Laundry Therapy

Take the reds out of the washer and put the whites in.  Lots of scrubbing before hand, after all these are the boys school shirts and karate gi’s.   Hang the reds on the line in the still misty morning as the sun begins to rise and burn off the fog.  Walk the boys to school.  A little extra chatting on the way home.  Nurse the baby and put him down for a nap.  Laugh as he dances to the song his Fisher Price Aquarium plays.  Pull the whites out and revel in the sunshine as the mass of wet, wadded up laundry becomes tidy rows on the line.  Shake it out.  Put it up.  Breathe deeply.  This task, this day, is my therapy.  A respite from the myriad of unknowns.  Chaos to order.  Sunshine and lovely smelling laundry.  Two giant English bumblebees nearly the size of my thumb buzzing their working song and encouraging me not to start obsessing or panic.

Things feel a wee bit chaotic in my life right now.  We make a major international move in eight weeks, but still don’t know where to.  A simple task like brushing my teeth turns into, “Hmmmmm...if we only get the 500 lbs of shipped goods it doesn’t make much sense to bring the towels.  Funny though, I love these towels.  Bought them to match the downstairs bathroom at the old house.  Should I give them away?  Do you give away towels?  Throw them out?  I know they’re just towels, but...Oh and that ceramic dish, can’t see shipping that.  Then again the boys gave me that for Mother’s Day a 3 years ago.  It’d be a shame to get rid of it.  Baskets?  Are they worth shipping?  Of course if they decide to ship a container then maybe I will go ahead and bring the towels and the dish.  But then again...Oh Cori, stop!  You don’t know anything yet so stop thinking about it!” 

The good news is, it’ll all be decided and sorted in 8 weeks.  In the meantime, I’m searching for schools and filling out school applications and trying to tell by a website if my children will be happy there and get a good education.  I’m looking at houses and apartments in Sydney and Singapore and trying to picture us there.  The Sydney ones have big back yards.  How fun would that be?  We could get a dog.  A swingset for Ash.  Then again that’s a lot of mowing and I hear there are very big spiders.  The Singapore apartments all have pools.  Oooo...fun!  We could get in every day after school.  Then again there’s balconies.  Is there any way at all to convince Master Climber Middle Son to stay off of the railings?  I try not to imagine him plummeting to his death.  There are at least variations of the seasons in Sydney--it’s so stinking hot in Singapore.  But the boys would be in such a good school (if they could get a place) in Singapore.  I start to go round and round and round in my head.  Then I take a deep breath and remember that it always works out eventually.  If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not eventually yet.  

I finally found some tears about it all today.  I knew they were there.  Lurking.  Hiding out behind getting ready for trips and going on outings with my mom.  But I knew they were there.  Waiting to burst out when I could stop long enough to let them.  Maybe it was the slow, steady rhythm of the washing going up on the line.  Or the relief of the sunshine after months of grey.  Maybe it was that my mom left, and I’ll really miss her.  The lingering chatty-girlfriend time on the way home from school.  I don’t know for sure.  They just burst out.  Finally.  I just started sobbing at my kitchen table.  Sobbing about how frustrating it is to have so much up in the air.  Sobbing about how much work it is to try to figure it all out.  I sobbed about England. About the daffodils and bluebells and woods and lambs in the fields and the crazy gorgeous English countryside.  The castles nearby and the fantastic London so close.  Bodiam Castle and Hever Castle and Borough Market and Peter Pan Park and Portobello Road.  But mostly I sobbed about my friends.  About how much I love them and how sad I am to leave them.  About how pleasant it is to walk to school every morning and chat and figure out how the world ought to run and bemoan the fact that no one asks us to do it and about how much I’ll miss that.  Curry nights and girlfriend days and hugs and laughs and all of it. I finally have begun to acknowledge that this season really is coming to a close.  It’s been so fantastic in so many ways, and I’m so sad to see it go.  

I think I’ll just let myself cry a lot these next few weeks if I need to.  In some ways it’s like the laundry.  You sort out the memories and hang them on the line.  Fold them up and tuck them away.  

I sure wish I could bring the people with me, all my lovely friends.  I’ll have to make due with the memories I suppose, and do my best to keep in touch.  

of squonchiness and other adventures...

We took a wellie walk on Saturday.  Easily one of my top 5 favorite things about England.  As we were walking along in the mud and mist B said to me, "I love to walk when it's like this, don't you Mama?  I love the squonchiness."  When I asked what he meant he said, "You know.  The noise our boots make in the sucky, squonchy, squelch-squirchy mud."  What more explanation does one need than that?  

C peaking out of the oldest tree in England.
Believed to be 4000 years old.

B & C inside the hollowed-out tree.
Queen Victoria herself is said to have taken tea inside this tree.
They found a cannonball from the English civil war embedded in the tree when they hollowed it out.

Snow Drops.  One of my favorite things about England in February.

Trails go right through farmer's fields here.  You climb a style and go through the field.  These sheep came running up to us.  B was not thrilled.  The rest of us thought they looked very jolly and friendly!  

Very tiny crocus.  Right before C squashed them (accidentally) with his wellies.

St George's, Crowhurst

Sleep drunk after his nap in the Ergo.

The village sign.  I love this about English villages.