The Terrible Tour Guide

So my dad and my step mom came to visit us for ten days and it was awesome. Not only because of the free baby sitting they did (which was really awesome) but more of just having that little piece of home right here in the heart of Liverpool. Over the ten days I did determine that I am a really shit tour guide but thankfully they both like to drink so that made it somewhat easier.

Here is the run down of what I would apparently show you if you came to visit me. I will assume that you like drinking because there are precious few people that I associate with that don’t. Also, this list would be somewhat longer if you enjoyed museums – which my parents didn’t – and would therefore give me some more opportunities to say, “Well, here it is. I haven’t really been in here but it always looked pretty nice from the outside.”

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 1: Tesco’s.

This will always be the first stop because my guests will require booze. I will not know what booze they prefer so they can pick that shit out for themselves. Actually, I always have a 6 pack of something in the fridge but we all know that won’t last. Also, I get no greater thrill than cruising around a grocery store in a foreign country. I assume that everyone is the same.

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 2: Southport

Southport is ironically north of Liverpool. There are some shops there and a long pier with a penny arcade at the end of it. I will assume that you are as thrilled with the penny arcade as I am, and leave you to your own devices while I rack up gigantic pennies playing a 1920’s slot machine. You’re welcome. There is also a café\bar place at the start of the pier that always has some sort of karaoke\Elvis impersonator going on. We will have a drink there and you will marvel at all the English folks who will happily sit outside in shorts and a t-shirt when it is barely 50 degrees with a freezing wind from the sea blowing in.

 He's still in disbelief.

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 3: Albert Dock and assorted Beatles shit

A walk to Penny Lane, check. A stop at John Lennon’s old school(s): check. A pee break at the Cavern Club: check. Quick stop at the Beatles section at the Liverpool Museum (for even non-museum types): check. HERE’S THE ALBERT DOCK! Yes, it’s pretty. Yep, full of museums. Here’s a souvenir shop – buy something! Here’s the Beatles Experience but we won’t go in because they rape you at 15 pounds per person. Want a drink? Me too! There’s the Baltic Fleet!

Let us not forget the Superlambananas!

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 4: Chester

How many times do I have to tell you? They have a WALL.

 My dad is looking up to see if it's still raining...as he got a massive raindrop in his eye.  Ah, England.

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 5: The Cathedrals, Cain’s Brewery, Chinatown and the Philharmonic Pub.

Parental Feedback: The Cathedrals – “No, yeah, that’s really pretty. The other one though, is Paddy’s Wigwam the actual name?”

Parental Feedback: Cain’s Brewery – “The raisin beer is awful. Also, the men’s toilet was broken so when I took a shit it wouldn’t flush. I had to take off the lid and fix it myself.”

It's never too early to get some training in.

Parental Feedback: Chinatown – “This is really Europe’s biggest Chinatown? This is just a street. That arch thing is nice though.”

I actually love this picture.

Parental Feedback: Philharmonic Pub - *Silence in the way of happiness via an awesome pub with great beers* Also, we got in a conversation with a couple of local Liverpudlians with thick Scouse accents. My dad has a hearing problem in general and never does well with even the slightest accent. I enjoyed watching him nod and smile inappropriately while he pulled me aside and said, “You actually understand that?”

 Notice that my body is already turning towards the pub.

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 6: Asda

You know, because it’s like Wal-Mart, but different.

Moe is a Shit Tour Guide for Liverpool, Item 7: The Lake District

I honestly don’t know if I’d take most visitors here but my parents enjoy nature shit and they enjoy long walks so this was kind of Their Thing. My dad enjoyed asking a myriad of questions all week but its height was in the Lake District.

“How old are those stone walls?”
“What do the markings on those sheep mean?”
“How often to sheep get sheared?”
“What’s the difference in the wool in English sheep verses, let’s say Australian sheep?”
“What’s this lake called?”
“Can I use my Kindle’s wi-fi in the car and have it still connect to your computer connection at home?”
“Why do you never see English wool advertised in England?”
“Am I the only one who wants to add an ‘I’ in all those ‘To Let’ signs?”**

You know the best thing about this picture?  I didn't take it.  I was 2 miles away having a lovely cocktail with my husband.

 Best deal in town - a jug of Pimm's for 14 quid.

Even with my bad tour guiding skills, it really was a great visit and I miss them already. My step mom made chicken enchiladas one night (I made the enchilada sauce myself to help) and there were plenty of leftovers. I actually had the last one tonight. There are piles of Goldfish crackers in my cupboard, a horde of string cheese in the fridge and all the Q-tips a girl would ever need (for the next 4 months anyhow). I’m sure my Wisconsin accent is in full swing again being around them for 10 days as well. I was actually a bit jealous of them when they left as I suddenly had these beautiful thoughts of big highways and toilets that have lots of water in the bowl. Yeah, it was honestly those two things that I thought of first.

Come back soon please.

**Because we had to look most of this up, I’ll share: 1400’s to 1700’s, type of branding, once a year, we still don’t know, Windemere, we don’t have wi-fi in the car, because it would just be ‘wool’, and finally – no, if I had a Sharpie marker on me, most would be vandalized.

The Queen is into bondage?! What?!

So last week I left the house a few times and it wasn’t just to go to playgroup or the damn grocery store. I went into town! Twice!

For reference sake, “town” is downtown Liverpool. I’ve come to realize that the word ‘downtown’ is completely American. If you are to go downtown here, you’re either going to ‘town’ or to ‘city centre’. This confused me to no end at first since I always call the little shopping center\street close to our home as ‘town’ and Liverpool proper as ‘downtown’. I’ve been informed many times (thanks Andy) that what I consider ‘town’ is actually called the ‘high street’. While I’ve managed to adjust my phrasing to have ‘town’ mean downtown, I can’t get the hang of ‘high street’. I always just say I’m going to the shops at the end of the road. Confused yet? Welcome to my world.

So yes! I went to town (twice!). Strangely enough, I went into town (twice!) for the same damn reason both times. This past weekend, the Sea Odyssey came to Liverpool. I actually first heard about the gigantic puppets from reading Whoopee, who has a great post on the event (which was a different story technically, but they used the same girl puppet) and which I think you should read. I think you should read it because my efforts to see gigantic puppets ran amok and you should have the satisfaction of reading about giant puppets by someone who actually managed to see them.

The first day I tried to see the giant puppets, I took Henry with me. It was jam packed in town and our timing was off and by the time we should have been able to see giant puppets (on the move, which is the important bit), Henry started screaming for his supper. This was as close as I got to one of the giant puppets before I had to run (literally, which I don’t do normally since running sucks) 9 blocks (uphill) to find a bus to take us back:

Do you see him there?  Just - right - yeah, right there.  He's sleeping.   BOoO-ring.

The day wasn’t a complete bust though as I managed to capture a photo of this wonderful piece of British consumerism. Seriously, who knew the Queen was into bondage? You know, if you are a high profile head of state, it’s always a good idea to keep your kinks patriotic.

Well, HELLO Queeny.

The very next day we tried again. This time we dropped Henry off at his nan’s so that there was no way that his dinner plans interrupted our (mine, really) pursuits to see giant fuck off puppets. Sadly, we (I) failed to check the times when the puppets were on the move so by the time we managed to get to town, the puppets were already on a boat sailing away. Damn puppets!

Me: Is that them?  Andy: I don't know.  Me: Do you know now?  How about now?

It was as exciting as this picture makes it looks, which is, like, not at all.  Damn puppets.

But this little girl was excited...and sad.  She just waved good-bye over and over again.

Feeling quite defeated, we headed to the first pub we stumbled upon and had ourselves a pint. Quite by chance, we ended up sitting next to a table where a nice British couple was hosting an American guest. Feeling somewhat brave, I thought to myself, “right, I’ll wait until a good break in their conversation and then I’m going to introduce myself – using my first name!” Being polite and all, I sipped my pint and eavesdropped into their conversation waiting for my chance. By the time I was half way through my pint, I found that this American man was from Nebraska originally, but was now living in Texas. He also thought Barcelona was awesome and the cruise ship that he used to get there was fantastic. And lastly, he really enjoyed going hunting. I finished my pint, looked at Andy and said, “Let’s go.”

 All was not lost though.  Liverpool's finest were giving free non-helmeted motorcycle rides to all the kids.  Always entertaining!

Magical Festival Playgroup...or something

So, it’s been a busy week. It actually ceased being a busy week on Monday but I was too damn tired to write about it yet. For easy reading, I have broken up the week’s tidbits into sections.

SECTION ONE: Where Andrea and Roland come to visit and I do touristy shit

Andrea is my oldest friend from California. Roland is her English (from the Isle of Wight) husband. They have a 7-year old son, Oliver, as well as two of the most well behaved teenage boys I’ve ever met in my life that they are legal guardians of. The 5 of them decided to grace us with their presence during their month long whirlwind tour of the UK. Andrea and Roland are teachers so they have the much envied summers off to do this. (!!!) We met up with them for dinner at their B and B last Thursday and on Friday I met up with them solo to do Liverpool’s famous Magical Mystery Tour. If you haven’t guessed, it’s a tour focused on the Beatles – driving past where they lived and grew up.

Find the boy that is screaming in his head, "Please don't make me get on that bus!"

Now, I’m a Beatles fan but I’m not a fanatic. I think it’s pretty cool that we live a few blocks away from Penny Lane but I honestly couldn’t tell you if the Sgt. Pepper album came out before Yellow Submarine. That said, this tour would probably be the shiznik (that’s a real word spell check!) for a die hard fan but I was pretty much bored shitless (Though I thoroughly enjoyed sitting next to Andrea for two hours shooting the shit. That’s not something I get to do very often anymore). I also felt bad for Andrea’s brood. I think as a kid if someone tells you that you’ll be going on a Magical Mystery Tour you would fully expect to see something magical or at least a bit mysterious – you wouldn’t expect to be sitting on a bus for two hours looking at houses that look just like all the other houses because some dead guy lived there, like, a BILLION years ago. We did get to see Strawberry Fields which I had always sort of questioned if it was a real place but as Andrea’s eldest said, “where are all the strawberries?” I felt a bit disappointed that there wasn’t – strawberries that is – even though I know damn well they are in season right now.

Seriously, where are the strawberries?

I turned Oliver into a SuperLambanana fan.

After the tour, we all headed back to our place where we met up with Andy, Andy’s sister, and Andy’s mum. Andy’s mum was generous (read: fucking brave) and offered to baby-sit the under 18’s while the grown ups went out for a few drinks. We went to the Penny Lane Wine Bar (note: this area doesn’t allow pubs so pubs, like the Penny Lane Wine Bar, will call itself a “wine bar” when we all fucking know it’s a pub)(just so you don’t think we are pompous types that like hanging out in “wine bars” discussing our stock portfolios). The 5 of us sat outside shooting the shit and I had a marvelous time even though it was too short of time and we were being rained upon. But we were back early – very much sober and responsible – and Andrea and family parted ways. I miss her and them very much already.

 Andrea and Sal

Roland and Andy

SECTION TWO: Where we go to the Crosby Festival and I don’t puke

On Sunday Andy, Henry and I drove up to Crosby to meet Andy’s mum and sister to go to the Crosby Festival. I have probably mentioned my love of festivals and I was pretty excited to see how the English do things. Having only been to one English festival now, what I’m about to say is probably terribly inaccurate of ALL English festivals, but let’s pretend that the Crosby Festival represents ALL English festivals – just because we can.

The first difference I noticed between how the English do things and how the Americans do things is the lack of food here in England. The festival was of pretty good size (about twice the size of a church festival for comparison sake for my Wisconsin folk) but it only had one van selling ice cream and another, slightly larger van, selling hot dogs, burgers and chips. No cotton candy, no corn on the cob, no funnel cakes (!!!). They also only had a single van selling beer – but you had to stay in the roped area around the van to drink your beer, you couldn’t wander around with it. Had I realized that I wouldn’t have ordered the large pint of beer – only to slam it when the natives (read: Mum and sis) were getting restless. Anyhow, they have the same impossible to win carnival\church festival games including one where the prize was a real live coconut. A coconut! (Having no idea what I would do with a coconut, I decided not to play). I did play one game where you pull tickets out of a spin-y thing and if your number matches the number on one of the prizes, you win said prize – and managed to win 2 prizes, some lotion and an Elvis puzzle. An Elvis puzzle! What luck!

In the center of the festival, they had the live entertainment which ranged from show dogs to high school dancers wearing leopard print swimsuits to men with chainsaws making surprisingly awesome furniture in 5 minutes.

Oh! And they had elephant rides. Yes, elephant rides! At a small little English festival even!

Right before we left, Andy and I decided to go on the ‘Sizzler’. The ‘Sizzler’ is your typical spin spin spin make you sick carnival rides – the kind of ride I love the best. We paid our two quid each, put my sunglasses in my purse, and sat myself in the ‘car’ to be the one who got squished by all the g-force. Had I have known that the English, not paranoid about pesky lawsuits and the whatnot, would spin that ride faster and longer then I thought was possible for a carnival ride I would not have sat in the ‘being squished’ seat, nor would have put my purse (with sunglasses) between Andy and myself. It’s been a good long while since I’ve felt sick from being on a ride. I didn’t puke, but I did pretend to.

SECTION THREE: Where I took Henry to play group and cried

This past Wednesday I decided to take the Henbot to a play group. This wasn’t because I particularly wanted to sit in a semi-circle with 30 other women and infants singing song after song about “fishies”. I went because I got paranoid while filling out Henry’s baby book and it got to the part in which I was suppose to list Henry’s current play mates and all I was could list was the cat (which is a farce really, since the cat doesn’t “play” and more just “bites” and “scratches”). So I swallowed the last of my pride at ever being cool again and went.

It was exactly how you would think play group to be. The infants were doe eyed and smiley. There were songs and clapping and “ooohs” and “aaaaahs”. There was a little pool filled up with a half inch of water to splash in. And yes, there were puppets. Henry loved it all. I imagine that if he knew how to talk he would say something profound about it, like, “I never knew it could be like this.” *Sigh* We’re going again next week.

Oh yes, I did mention that I cried. I didn’t cry buckets. I more cried like the cry you do when you see that stupid fucking Sarah McClaughlin commercial for abused animals and it gets to the part where the wee kitten has its one eye sewn shut and all of a sudden you want to save all the animals in all the lands – even the ones that don’t need saving really – and waaaaaaah! I cried like that. I don’t know why. I seriously don’t know why. Was it my child was happy cry? Was it “I’m finally out of the house” cry? It’s hard to say. I suspect it was a tearful good-bye to my ability to ever look anyone of my childless friends in the face again cry. But that’s just a theory.

Some news, then some more news.

So I’m a bit disappointed that no one but Andy commented on my going to jail post. It’s by far the best life story I have in my arsenal; if it did not amuse then things are looking very dire indeed. I’m guessing I’m going to have to step things up and finally spill forth all the going-ons behind the going-ons in order to keep you all interested. And yes, since you asked, I AM fishing for comments.

The first order of business is to admit why I have strayed off my beloved sauce – that is to say, why nary a drop of whiskey, Harp lager, vodka mixed with anything (Chocolate sauce? Why not?), and house margarita has breezed past my lips in two months. Anyone with a brain in their head and any inkling of my lifestyle can probably guess this teetotalism isn’t voluntary. My comfy seat on the wagon is of course due to one of these brewing:

One of the first thoughts I had when I found out is, “Oh Jaysus. People are going to think the end of the world is coming.” You see, I’m not really what you call a child-liker. I don’t coo over babies, I don’t offer to babysit someone's rug rats, and I certainly never (used to) browse through Target wistfully caressing the soft fabric of a toddler’s size 2T pant set. I also get really annoyed at the kids I see running around restaurants screaming (OK, I’m actually more annoyed at the parents). Anyone who knows me- and even knows me very well – might be shocked that I of all people decided to breed.

I don’t know if I can really explain it. I think being married put me more in the perspective of family. Because of this feeling of family I am experiencing, after I came home from my yearly this past June, I sat down with Andy and said, “You know, I’m getting older. I’m definitely fatter. I don’t know if I can even physically have kids. I think that if you agree, that we should stop being careful and let whatever happen, happen.” I said this for a couple reasons – 1) I didn’t think having a child with Andy would terrible – in fact, I thought it could be a Very Awesome Thing and 2) Because I thought it would take at least a year to happen, if it happened at all.

As it turned out, it took approximately 1 week…and Andy and I aren’t exactly “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”. (I probably shouldn’t have said that on the Internet.)

So there’s that news, and that’s all I’m really going to go into about it here. This isn’t a pregnancy blog and it’s not a baby blog. I just thought you all should know why I haven’t had a hangover in two months. Is it weird to miss hangovers? I think I just miss Carl's Jr cheeseburgers tasting so good.

What could possibly top the news of a (now) 3-inch human growing beneath the layers of my belly fat? Well, our final moving plans of course! Andy is going to read this and get all paranoid that my work will also read this and get all, “if you’re leaving, we’re going to fire your ass” on me – but I think it’s very doubtful. I could be wrong, but no one mentioned the earthquake post which I think is much more damning then my intent to move. Moving on…(pun, bad but intentional) The final word is that in January Andy and I are going to be British. Well, he’s already British and I can only ever pretend to be British and then very badly so, but we will be in England nevertheless. We’re going back to his hometown of Liverpool which means that my child will be a Scouser. What this really means is that I will never understand a god damn word my child says. So yes! Liverpool! Home of the Beatles and the Super Lambanana! I’m actually really really stoked about this move. I’m excited to eat biscuits. I’m looking forward to be so close to other foreign speaking countries (I’ve commanded Andy to take me to Rome for my next birthday).

Super Lambanana, how I love thee!

I’m actually sitting here trying to think of other things I’m going to look forward to but my mind has suddenly gone blank. I must really like their biscuits so that every other positive aspect of the British Empire has been wiped away from my head.

Hob Nobs make me lose my mind.

If anyone is keeping track, I have just admitted that not only am I having a very life changing baby but in less than 4 months, I’m uprooting every little American fiber of my being and hurling it across the ocean. I may seem very calm and collected (I’m just really tired) but I’m actually freaking out quite a bit. The worst thing about it all is that now, of all possible times, is when I could really use a drink.