Up to this point...

So I’m currently sitting in bed upstairs at Andy’s mom’s (sorry, “mum’s”) house under a duvet with no top sheet, drinking a GeeBee No Sugar Added Cherryade fizzy drink (that tastes slightly like that one type of cough syrup you had as a kid that didn’t make your mouth turn inside out), while Andy’s mum is downstairs watching ‘Hustle’ while Andy fights a losing battle with his new Blackberry phone under the Orange network on the settee next to her. I must be in the UK.

It’s going to be hard trying to sum up the last two weeks in a coherent and entertaining blog post. This is on top of being jetlagged and suffering from a cold picked up from the bowels of the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin. I guess I’m saying is that this post might be humorous because it makes no sense, or it could just not make much sense and you can wait for the next post where I attempt to entertain my best friend, Beth, with English household oddities.

Right. Best get started then, shall I?

The last week in California went entirely too fast. There wasn’t a day where we weren’t doing something marked as Really Important and I started to question my choice on working until the 2nd to last day before we left. Of course work let me out a half day early on my last day which only lead to me sitting in the hotel room watching shitty network television for 4 hours before Andy got back from whatever it was that he was doing so in the end, it was probably best that I did earn those Last Day Dollars. (Was that a run-on sentence? Probably. Fuck it, I’m jetlagged.) Anyhow, while still in California, we went to what was formally Moe’s Pub Quiz (now Vicki’s Pub Quiz) at the Harp and we came in 3rd place, had a last curry meal with Dave & Jill at Mother India, had last drinks with Dave & Maggie, and did a couple other things that I have since forgotten. I do know that I never got to properly say good-bye to Mari, Gunter, Michele, Patrick and Marilyn which makes me really bummed out though I suppose it gives me leverage to guilt them all into coming out here sometime in the future.

For expat blog purposes, I must inform you that Chloe (el gato) flew out to the UK a good week before we did. There was this huge pet carrier issue we ran into that resulted in us buying no less than 4 carriers (of which only 1 could be returned) before we had the right one. Note to all those shipping your pets, the carrier needs to be big enough so that when your pet stands up, its head doesn’t touch (and I mean, not one little furry ear touch) the top of the carrier. Also, there is a PetSmart near LAX just as a general FYI. I worried for a good 24 hours while Chloe was in route here. She doesn’t do change well and I thought the whole process might be too much for her little heart. I needn’t have worried. We called the quarantine place the morning after she arrived to find out how she was. After a general chit chat, the quarantine guy said to Andy, “When you come to visit, you’ll know the people who have dealt with her by the bandages.” Heh. That’s my girl.

Piss and vinegar.  That's how I like my pets.

On Friday, February 4th, we flew out to Wisconsin. AirTran no longer has food for sale on the LA to Milwaukee flight, as another FYI. That information might be useful to you if you happen to get nervous before flights so you decide only to have a banana thinking you’ll just buy a sandwich mid-flight and all you get is two lousy bags of pretzels. My dad and stepmom picked us up from the airport and when they asked me how I was I said, “I’m fucking hungry.” I might get a bit moody when I haven’t eaten. We had a great Conejito’s dinner that I don’t regret even though it gave me Conejito’s ass the next day during the family going away party\baby shower. As promised, I’m not going to blog about the 2nd shower as it was pretty uneventful (though Beth and her mom showed up which was like, the best gift ever).

On Sunday was the Super Bowl. I actually have some pictures from that. Being in Wisconsin when the Packers happened to be playing in the Super Bowl is nothing short of a miracle. Cosmically, everything lined up for us to be there. Andy and I headed down to Champion’s, my old Wisconsin local, at 10 AM to watch the Liverpool vs. Chelsea football match. I’m not sure the owner, Bobby, would have opened up the pub early for the game if it wasn’t for me pestering him to do so but I like to think (very immodestly) that he did it for me. After Liverpool won (!!), we had plans to kind of bum around the East Side getting some lunch and having some coffee. However, we got frightened into staying at Champion’s when someone else at the pub mentioned that it would start filling up for the Super Bowl at 1 PM even though kick off wasn’t until 5:30 PM. We seriously had rock star seating at this point (at an empty pub, go figure) and we didn’t want to lose it. So we stayed. At Champion’s. For 7 ½ hours before the Super Bowl even started. If there is something that I have learned in that 7 ½ hours of sitting there is that time goes really fucking slow when you aren’t drinking. What’s worse is that the pub didn’t actually start filling up until 3:30 PM so we would have had plenty of time to bum around. But that’s neither here nor there. The Packers fucking won the Super Bowl! And it was awesome! There was lots of shouting, and cheering, and dancing and shots being done by everyone but me (damn pregnancy!) and Andy got completely off his face and kept squeezing me and telling me how happy he was that I brought him to Wisconsin for a Packer’s Super Bowl win (not in those exact words and not as coherently). And Andy doesn’t even like American football!

Andy watching Bobby cook the brats for the game.  Yes, as a matter of fact, it was fucking cold that day.

When you say "Wisconsin", you said it all!

Look at that excitement.  Not bad for a Scouser.

 I miss Champion's!

...and I really miss shots.

I should have taken this picture during hour 4 at the pub.  Ach well.

On Monday I hung out with my mom while Andy went out drinking with my brother, Adam, to celebrate the Packers win. As tempted as I am to go into details about my day with my mom, in the off chance she does read this blog, she would be absolutely mortified if I posted what I want to post for the entire world to see. All I can say is that it’s a shame that I can’t because any story that ends with “and I had to drive my mom to the Oak Creak Police Department so she wouldn’t get put in the slammer” is a great story to tell. I know, you totally hate me now, don’t you?

On Tuesday I got hit with this cold. I seriously spent my last day in the United States in bed with a jar of mentholatum and a heating pad. There aren’t words enough to tell you how much that sucks monkey balls. Oh sure, I know I’ll be back to the States at some point but I wanted to give it a proper good bye. I wanted to at least have some more Mexican food, instead of the stomach settling mac & cheese and tomato soup. On the plus side, I did get to see “the Social Network” and was rather pleased with it.

Obviously on Wednesday, we left. There isn’t much to tell about the journey except that it was long, hard to do on a cold, and exhausting when I don’t have the ability to sleep on planes. But we made it just fine. Thank you airplane pilots, airplane mechanics and terrorists who took the day off.

Anyhow, I don’t know if I’m excited yet. None of it seems real to be completely honest with you. It’s a bit like a cannon shot me back to my Christmas 2009 vacation and any moment the same cannon will shoot me back to my apartment in Costa Mesa. I just need some more sleep I think, and some powerful cold meds. And I’m sure sometime next week I’ll wake up under this duvet with no cover sheets with a half glass of GeeBee’s CherryAde next to me and it will all come flooding in. “WTFHID!”