London Tangents

So, London. This is going to be a difficult post to put out because after writing the rough draft in my head right before I fell asleep on Sunday night I knew that the potential for me going off on random tangents was extremely high. If my Sunday Night Pre-Dreamtime Rough Draft Post is anything to go on, I’ve got enough material in this entry for a novel albeit a pretty piss poor one. I decided to give those with very short patience for tangents and those who are looking to kill 30 seconds before that budget meeting and therefore are just skimming anyway, a recap. I was tempted to do the recap in outline style, with the fancy Roman numerals and proper tabs and all that shit, but I can’t be assed to find out how to do that in HTML right now. I’ve got to order my Indian take away for fuck’s sake; I just don’t have the extra time.

RECAP FOR THOSE THAT CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO READ MY ENTIRE DISSERTATION OF BRILLIANCE: We went to London. Henry became a US Citizen. We ate food and drank beer. Hotel room was small. Saw Tiger Finger Square, London Eye, and Big Ben. We walked a lot. The End. Enjoy your meeting and don’t let them catch you doodling the financial report in bubble letters.

Because this is an expat blog I feel it’s my duty to describe to you the 10 step process on how to make a UK child a US citizen. This is under the assumption that you have a child that has a right to become a US citizen and not some ankle biter you picked up in the discount bin at Tesco’s.

STEP ONE: Have a baby

STEP TWO: Go to this website, make an appointment, and feel smug that you have all the paperwork needed.

STEP THREE: Go to THIS website and agonize for days that you did something wrong and that your child will never get to see the amber waves of grain and buffalo roaming.

STEP FOUR: If you live impossibly far away from London, book a hotel with an American hotel chain for the night before your appointment smugly think to yourself that an American chain in London will have the spacious rooms and king sized beds that you are so accustomed – perhaps they will have pancakes with real maple syrup for breakfast.

STEP FIVE: Travel to London via train with your baby. Make sure your baby needs both a change and feed during the train journey and that you booked yourself in the quiet car thinking that you wouldn’t want to disturb your baby with football supporters. Laugh that night at your ignorance. It’s also important that part of your train journey involves the London Underground (aka: the Tube) and that you are carrying a large travel stroller and two wheelie suitcases. Marvel how any UNDERGROUND transportation in the modern world would fail to provide FUCKING ELEVATORS. Almost kill your baby (not intentionally) on 90 degree escalators. Whimper at the bottom of 3 flights of stairs hoping that one of London’s finest will help you lift the stroller while a hoard of London’s non-finest waits impatiently behind you wondering why you brought a fucking stroller on the Tube.

STEP SIX: Book into your Best Western hotel and realize that room is not American size wonderfulness but typical London shoe box. Have them bring up a cot that fills up the only remaining floor space available after two suitcases and one travel stroller is present. Cry a little when your baby refuses to sleep in said cot.

STEP SEVEN: Wake up 3 hours before your appointment at the US Embassy. “Wake up” is a funny phrase as you will have “been up” for the last 4 hours. In fact, you probably never went to sleep as your baby doesn’t like the cot and you are terrified of falling asleep when your baby is sleeping next to you in the bed.

STEP EIGHT: Go to the US Embassy. I’d tell you to make sure to be on time but it really doesn’t matter. You will stand in line to get through security. You will be given a ticket. Your ticket will feel like it will never be called. It gets called. You submit paperwork. They tell you to wait longer. Baby needs to eat. Feed baby. Baby shits. Clean shitty diaper in changing room forgetting to put down paper and getting shit all over table. Clean table with baby wipes. Baby gets fussy. Number still doesn’t get called. Marvel at all the other babies that seem to be crying less then your baby. Marvel that yours is still the cutest. Number gets called. Yay! Baby is US citizen. Resist the urge to salute baby.

STEP NINE: Walk back to the hotel to retrieve your cell phones that you were told that you couldn’t bring to the US Embassy but you totally can.

STEP TEN: Go for a pint. Make that two.

After the embassy, we took a cab to the Strand. I don’t know anything about London but Andy told me the Strand is incredibly touristy. I really didn’t care. I wanted to go to the Strand because the internet told me there were some Mexican restaurants in that area and I wanted, nay, NEEDED some Mexican food. (Warning! Tangent ahead!) If there is one thing the Liverpool does not have is Mexican food. I would venture to say most of England is vacant of proper Mexican food but having never searched out Mexican food anywhere else but Liverpool, I can only attest to there. And Liverpool, my dear Liverpool, does not do Mexican food. Don’t get me wrong, Liverpool does plenty Tex Mex, and really good Tex Mex at that. It does not do Mexican. To properly convey this, when I got my hair cut a few weeks ago the ladies there were asking me how I liked the area so far. I told them that I love it but I was missing certain foods like Mexican. They then mentioned some “Mexican” restaurants to try (that I had already been to) and I had to inform them, with a sober face, that on no planet should a Mexican taco (or enchilada, or burrito, etc) contain chili beans (red kidney beans). Pinto beans, sure. Refried beans, fuck yeah, but not chili beans. The ladies at the salon were in shock – was this not normal? The differences between Tex Mex and Mexican run deeper than just the beans but that’s what gets me the most. Don’t get me started on the margaritas. OK, do. First of all – if you can find a place that actually knows what goes into a margarita (which some places don’t I’ve found), make sure that place doesn’t try to serve you a margarita as a martini, which I’ve also encountered. I might be going on about this Mexican food thing, much to Andy’s utter disgust, but when Mexican food makes up one of the sections on your personal food pyramid (cheese, greek salads, spaghetti, and beer being the others on mine), you feel the hole. (Tangent over) When we were planning our trip to London I knew that if there was one place in this entire country to get my Mexican fix satiated, it was going to be London. And I wasn’t wrong. We went to La Perla, meaning ‘the Pearl’ as indicated by the gigantic mermaid making sweet love to a clam shell on the wall of La Perla, and it was fucking fantastic. No chili beans! Proper margaritas! I could have stayed there all day but ANDY made me go out and see the stupid sights.

Ha. Just kidding. I totally made him be the tourist.

 I wish to be transported there again please.

We battled with all the other 100 billion tourists and walked past 10 Downing Street (hello Prime Minister sir!), and the London Eye, and Big Ben\Parliament. I would like to state for the record that it is an American right (I think it might be in the Constitution or Bill of Rights or on a Denny’s menu somewhere) that when you see Big Ben\Parliament you must say, “Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!” and it will be funny – almost like you are the first person to ever use that pop reference. So I did, and I found it very funny, even though Andy didn’t know what the fuck I was on about.

It was pretty hot and humid so we stopped in a pub called the Sherlock Holmes for a bit of reprieve before continuing on to Tiger Finger Square (Trafalgar Square). Now as far as the Tiger Finger thing goes, I must mention that I have a really hard time with pronunciation. I sometimes think my tongue is 3 times bigger than my mouth (dirty!) the way it manages to trip over itself like it does. Words I trip over I just modify them into something I can pronounce and use it until the end of days. Andy finds this trait especially irritating as he is a Word Nazi. We do this Argument Dance that goes like this:

ME: Last time I came here I went to Nottingham (knot-ing-ham) …
ANDY: It’s Notting-am
ME: Whatever.
ANDY: (rolls eyes)

We actually do that all the time. He gets irritated when I screw up a word and I get irritated when he corrects me on it. Trafalgar Square was no different. I simply can’t pronounce Trafalgar Square. There’s just too much going on in that word for my tongue to handle it. So it became Tiger Finger Square (ANDY: Trafalgar Square!) (ME: Whatever). Anyhow, it was pretty cool.

That was another tangent by the way.

After Tiger Finger we walked back to the hotel. I don’t think either of us intended to walk 3 miles ALL AT ONCE because we are horribly unfit and don’t much care for walking a bunch without stopping at multiple pubs, but we did it and now our legs have bloody stumps at the end. I cannot stress the importance of proper footwear when in London. I would like to point out that Henry was quite comfortable during all this walking and once insisted that we feed him peeled grapes because he was feeling a bit “peck-ish”.

The EYE.  Please say that in a menacing voice.

If you're American, you know what to say.

Tiger Finger Square

National Gallery

Say hi to the Queen...if she was there...which she's not.

Piccadilly Circus

It's really hard to contain Henry's excitement sometimes.

On Saturday we had planned to do some more sight seeing. After the cab dropped us off at the train station (thus avoiding the Tube) and we dropped off our bags, we ran into a quiet pub on a quiet street and they were serving delicious Pimm’s on a hot day and we said “fuck it” and stayed there instead until our train departed. I would like to clarify that I know that was a run-on sentence and that when our train departed we were most certainly on it and not still at the pub drinking Pimm’s (which are the most delicious things even if they are made with gin which is my most hated and feared spirit after that thing in ‘Poltergeist’). Don’t get me wrong. I could have stayed at the pub all day drinking Pimm’s but I’ve got responsibilities now, like laundry and taxes and miniature American citizens, so I had to say adieu.

Mmmm...Pimm's.

And that, my friends, was London.

Scattered

So it’s been 6 days with a newborn in the house and as expected, things have been utter chaos. Despite my best efforts, I’ve become a cliché with all grown up talks with Andy revolving around feeding schedules, poo consistency, thoughts about gas and our ongoing argument on whether the baby is too hot or too cold. Compounded with all this is the lack of sleep which to be fair, I’m not handling gracefully. I’ve never had the best record for sleep. 6 hours is my typical night of sleep and if I don’t get those 6 hours then I tend to turn into a four headed monster – moody, difficult, impossible – basically I revert back to a 2 year old.

Saturday was when I hit my wall. I had done 4 days on 4 hours sleep (sometimes that 4 hours broken up into 45 minute segments) and it was my turn to do the couch sleeping night shift. While Henry can sleep for 3 hours solid before requiring any of his basic needs, that particular night he was up demanding something every half hour. I just lost it. I don’t mean I lost it in the sense that I screamed and yelled or threw anything, I just broke down. There was a point at 5 AM where I’m feeding Henry for the 5th time that evening and tears are just rolling down my face. I’m sobbing. And I couldn’t stop sobbing. I was just so tired and overwhelmed. Typically when I hit a wall like that, when things get too much for me at work, or in a relationship, or if I’m just having one of those days when everything goes tits up, I leave. I leave and go for a drive or I leave and go to the pub or I leave and go sit in a park…I just leave. The fact that I couldn’t leave made me break down that much further and I ended up waking up Andy around 6 AM, eyes all puffy and red and tears still streaming telling him over and over again that I was sorry and that I couldn’t do it anymore. My husband is awesome. He put me to bed where I slept for almost 5 hours. Then last night, he sent me to bed at 11 PM and let me just sleep….and sleep…and sleep. I never thought that being given 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep would be as romantic as a getting a surprise shag in the middle of a car park, but my god…it is.

Today I feel normal again. My brain seems to be able to process more than “hungry = eat food”. I feel up to making important decisions like deciding to cut out Facebook and news\blog reading for the week so I can utilize Henry’s sleeping hours to actually unpack a box or two….or prepare a meal more complicated than a bowl of cereal…or to take a fucking shower.

3 days later…

Very typically, after I wrote “fucking shower” Henry started screaming and I completely forgot to finish this up until right now. Part of that was due to the fact that because I had gotten some sleep I managed to find the energy to tackle some of the boxes littering every corner of our house. I’m proud to announce that my kitchen is back. Well, as back and complete as it’s going to be. Even though the physical size of our UK kitchen appears to be the same size as our US kitchen, the kitchen cabinets here aren’t as deep or as wide as the ones in the US and I’ve had to go through and repack things that we don’t immediately need. Like barware. I know! The barware! My theory behind packing the barware away is that we don’t exactly have a group of friends here yet to invite over for BBQ’s and the likelihood that Henry will let us get out and about to make such a group of friends is away off still so…away it goes. In another Shit We Paid to Ship that’s Completely Useless Here are my baking trays. My baking trays are made for those wonderfully wide US ovens and simply don’t fit in my UK oven. Not that I didn’t try. Holding one of the baking trays in hand I could physically see that the tray was too wide for the oven but it still didn’t stop me for trying to jam it in. Not that it would have worked, but the tray didn’t even fit if I put the tray on an angle. Looking back I’m not sure why I tried to fit the tray in at an angle – I think maybe if it fit that way I would have gotten all smug and justified that we paid to bring it over…or something.

By the way, I’m doing pretty well at my Facebook ban. I couldn’t manage to give up blog reading and a little news reading but I haven’t logged on to Facebook for 3 days now and I feel…a bit free really. I might have to continue my ban for longer than a week – or modify it a bit and only check in once a week.

This is a random post, isn’t it? It kind of reflects my brain at the moment. Like now I want to tell you that Andy has gotten me hooked on “Jonathan Creek”, a now cancelled mystery show that humors me to no end. In the two specials that I’ve seen so far (which with a baby takes us 2-3 days to watch) the main character will solve the murder and announce how he solved the murder TO the murderer (or relative of the murderer) and yet the murderer doesn’t feel inclined to, you know, MURDER the main character. Yeah, I know…I’m easily amused these days.

So I know this post isn’t that entertaining but my sweet son is about to roar his head in hunger so it’s the best I can give you for now.

And so it begins...

*WARNING: Gratuitous photos of baby ahead.

Diaper changed. Check. Milk drank. Check. Gas removed. Check. No milky crusty shit stuck in the chin folds. Check. Possibility that child will sleep long enough for me to get out a proper post. Undetermined. Possibility that midwife will show up right when I’m in the middle of a thought. Almost certain. Possibility that I’ll get distracted by the utter cuteness that is a small sleeping newborn that I get to call my own. Guilty.

So it’s 3 days later or perhaps 4 days, since the birth. Actually, what day is it? I have no idea. I think its Friday. The Grand National is on tomorrow so it must be. I’ve managed to get showered before 9 AM and I just realized that my normal jeans already fit me again so fucking hell, it’s already a good day in my book. Not to mention, there’s a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen and a Friday night to justify cracking into it. It might ease the pain of the 20 some boxes and various unassembled furniture littering the house at the moment.

Not sure how he managed to get his coat up there, or where he might be going at night.

To get the details out of the way (for those of you who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about baby things especially labor and delivery, I would recommend just reading ahead to the end where I will put a picture of badger for your amusement), Henry’s arrival this week started off by my water breaking at 4 AM on Monday morning. Just as an FYI, in the UK they consider this process as your waters breaking (note the ‘S’). This is just a further example of the Brits shifting their S’s all over the shop and lands in the same pile of wonder as “reading the Sport page” (note the lack of ‘S’). I was actually prepared to give you more examples of this ‘S’ phenomenon but I’m fucking tired and can’t remember another one at this time. Anyhow, my water broke at 4 AM but nothing else was really happening so I just stuck it out at home. By 4 PM, I was getting random contractions but nothing more. We called the hospital (in the UK, you would say that you’re going to hospital – no ‘the’ – yeah, I know) and they told us to come in to check things out. Since we were just in the hospital 2 days earlier for the same thing and were sent home, I didn’t bother to bring all my things with me the 2nd time around. This was a huge mistake on my part as we didn’t get sent home the 2nd time and by the time we left 16 hours later, I had my hair pulled back using a surgical rubber glove. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

Because I wasn’t in what anyone was considering “active labor”, I was sent to the midwife unit for assessment. I had been weary about going to the midwife unit because I wanted an epidural and the midwives are not allowed to give them. I went anyways because I really didn’t have a choice at that point. This would appear to be the theme of the evening. Now before I begin, I would like to say that I really have no issues with the NHS (National Health Service) in this country. I’ve had numerous doctors’ visits in the two months I’ve lived here and besides one time with an extremely long wait, I’ve had no complaints. Everyone has been both very nice and knowledgeable in their profession. So when I say that the midwives at Liverpool Women’s Hospital were awesome and complete bitches at the same time, take it with a grain of salt.

He brings home the bacon and cooks it up in a...bottle.

About a month before giving birth, I was watching one of the morning news shows and they had a piece on how epidurals aren’t readily given in this country and in fact, there are midwives who flat out refuse to send a patient for one. At the time I scoffed at the piece, turning to my mother in law and stating matter of factly, “I’m getting an epidural. I will make sure of it.” Oh, how naïve I was! Because I didn’t get one. I asked for one. I pleaded for one. I begged for one. I whined for one. At one point I turned to the midwife and said, “I WANT A FUCKING EPIDURAL. WHY CAN’T I GET AN EPIDURAL? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKING PEOPLE?!” I would like to state for the record that I did do a lot of apologizing after the fact to any of the midwives I might have offended.

You may be wondering why I was refused an epidural. To be quite honest, I really have no idea. I was told from the get go that the delivery ward – where there are real doctors who give real epidurals – were too busy to take me. Too many emergencies, not enough beds….or some bullshit. I refuse to believe that and instead think that because the only thing that was wrong was me was my pain and my trucker mouth, there was no real reason for me to go up to use the resources of a real doctor. So yes, the NHS, you get what you pay for. Which is nothing, which is what I got in terms of pain relief.

First day out on the town.  He looks like he's going to an NFL game in Green Bay.

I am exaggerating a bit, because it’s my blog and I can. I did get morphine twice – which worked for an hour at the very beginning and fuck all at the end – and I got laughing gas which made me sick to my stomach – very pleasant when you are in that much pain and also feel like puking. In my eyes, besides that hour at the very beginning, I did this birth naturally, something I would highly recommend to anyone I hated or who might cut me off in traffic. For the 6 hours I endured the worst pain in my life, these were the only words\phrases in my vocabulary: Fuck. Fucking Shit. Fucker Fuck Me. Jesus Fuck Shit Fuck I WANT AN EPIDURAL Fuck Me Christ. These words\phrases were accompanied by banshee screams and various body flings into the walls. What I find amusing (now) is that the windows to my room not only looked over the main entrance, but were also wide open allowing any and all visitors, patients and staff to get the full extent of my soon to be Harvard speech that I was giving.

You may wonder what giving birth naturally feels like. I’ve been comparing it to passing a baby dragon, with all its claws and scales and breathing fire, through your love hole. I think that’s all I really need to say about it really.

Just born and already complaining.

16 hours after arriving at the midwives unit, we were sent home. Technically, if I wanted, I could have gone to the maternity unit with Henry to rest while Andy would be sent home. Since I had no desire to lounge around with a bunch of other women who may recognize my voice (the embarrassment of hearing, “Jesus Fuck Shit Fuck I WANT AN EPIDURAL Fuck Me Christ” all night), I agreed to go home when they asked if I wanted to.

Since then it’s been everything you probably expect. No sleep. Visitors coming to coo at your child. Take out dinners. Laundry (my god, the laundry!). Spit and Shit. Bottles of milk sitting next to glasses of wine. Crying (both Henry’s and mine). Burping (they call it “winding” here). Little socks. Love. Lots and lots of love for this tiny little thing that made me uncomfortable for 9 months, near death pain for 6 hours, and refuses to let me sleep ever since he arrived in the world. You rock K.I.S.S. style, my son.

 You rock even when you're farting.

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE POST, HERE ARE SOME BADGERS:

Introducing Henry...

Henry managed to arrive smack dab on his due date, April 5th at 12:39 AM. He weighs in at a whopping 7lb 2 oz which only means that I didn't lose as much weight as I hoped in the last 48 hours. The shippers with our stuff from the US also arrived this morning so I'm assuming that you'll all understand why I'll have to give you a proper post with all the fun stuff later. Until then, please enjoy this photo of our handsome son doing his best James T. Kirk impression: