The Mean Reds. AKA Giving my husband his due ...

I have been having the worst week.
This is especially not cool as the weather has been amazing recently (save for the rain on Tuesday but ... I'll let that one slide this time London) with clear blue skies and near-freezing temperatures so that this morning I actually broke out a pair of gloves as well as my bright red pashmina scarf.
My gloves were bright pink. Hee.

Anyway. Everything's just been going a little bit wrong recently. And I don't know why.
But I'm trying to ride it out and be positive because I think that's the only thing that can change it.
That and avoiding stepping on cracks when I walk. Yes I'm being serious.

Craig knows about this so gave me my birthday present as soon as it (finally) arrived (I'm looking at you, Royal Mail).
Which sadly meant that I came home on a night where he would be out til 11pm to find it sitting on the bed. It would have been nicer if he'd been there too but I couldn't be at all mad because the box it came in was very distinctive ...



And inside that little blue box was a little blue bag and inside the little blue bag was this ...



I can't help it! I just love it.
I've always wanted to get something from Tiffany's. Merely for the history and the cliché of it, but I've never liked the chunky air-hostess so-cal-college-girl bracelets and necklaces.
This is small and discreet and I lovelovelove that it's Oval. Circle or Heart shaped would have been too obvious.

There is also a teeny teeny tiny Tiffany & co on the chain. But I have to wait for a sunny day and super-macro and the internet to work at home to show you that.


And I told you that story to tell you this story ...

Later that night Craig and I were lying in bed discussing something to do with "our money". Let me preface this by saying that it was late.
Me: Well I was just, you know, running it past you because it's kind of a frivolous purpose. purchase. purpose. porpoise. hee. porpoise.
Craig: hee! And what is the porpoise of your visit to the United Kingdom?
Me: It's more of a killer whale actually.
Craig laughs. A lot. A lot.
Me: Oh I am so telling the internet that you laughed at that joke!
Craig: No! Hee. Don't. Please.

Oops.

I cannot believe that this actually happened. But it did. Just this afternoon.

I was walking back to my office, snacking on my lunch-time whole-wheat bagel from Salisbury's and as I was walking past the key-only garden in the square near my work I heard a scritching scrabbling sounds and saw some movement in the bushes.
I looked over, thinking to myself Vagrant? Junkie? Murderer, as, you know, I am wont to do.

Instead I saw 3 squirrels playing chase around the trunk of a tree.
It was so cute it even thawed my cold black heart just a little bit.
Just a little.

I kept walking (after squealing just a little) and I heard a scritching, scrabbling sound on the pavement just behind me.
I paused, and turned.
The squirrel following me froze, splay-legged. It then, very very slowly (I hear humans can only see movement) squirrelled it's way over to the metal-post fence of the garden. And came a little bit closer to me.
I took two steps before turning to look back.
It froze again, having moved the squirrel-step equivalent of the steps I had just taken.
I stood there, torn shred of bagel forgotten halfway to my mouth as the squirrel rushed out of the garden, around my legs and back again, climbing up to the fence and stretching up to balance on a horizontal fence bar at about my knee height.

The squirrel stood there, looked at me, cocked his (her?) little head, wavered just a bit and reached his (her?) little hands (paws? claws? squirrel fingers?) out for the bagel in my hand.
Seriously.

And that is how I found myself talking to a squirrel in the square near my work.

What do you want? this is my bagel. Bagel, not nuts. Bay-Gel, Not nuts.

Window into my mind

Craig and I are walking along Grafton Street (a pedestrian shopping areain Dublin) and I'm gazing off to the left, shops passing by.

Me: (involuntary gasp) eep!
Craig: No.
Me: What?
Craig: You canNOT have a hanging skull in a cage.
Me: How did y- dsmn.
Craig: I saw your eyes light up.

And this is why we work.

p.s. I took manymanymany photos in Dublin. I wonder when I will get to post them.
p.p.s. We looked around 3 churches, 1 distillery and 1 brewery.
p.p.p.s. I had Molly Malone stuck in my head the entire weekend

We're finally getting out of London. But only for the weekend.

Craig and I have been in London for 117 days (yes. I counted) and I still get deliriously happy when I realise (yet again) that I live here!.

I think it has something to do with the fact that it has only been the last month that I have truly been living the life I dreamed of as I trudged to work in the cold, wet, early, early mornings.
I leave my adorable flat (modern inside, oldoldold without*) and get a coffee at Starbucks (they know my order!) which I sip as I walk around the Tate Modern and across the Millennium Bridge up to St Paul's before getting on the tube and walking to my Grade Listed office building. Walking by the Thames in the weekend, hand in hand with Craig, lazy lunches at a market or pub ...

So we're leaving.

Hee. Kidding. We're just away for the weekend, my Birthday weekend (!) which we're spending in Dublin.

And while in Dublin, I am under strictest instructions to visit a certain bar and pick up a certain father a t-shirt. Goodness, if only I could remember the name of the bar ...



P.s. I have literally Three Hundred and Fifty Eight photos on my camera, waiting to be posted (don't panic. There are a couple of photo-collage-projects on there as well) and I may cry if the internet doesn't start working properly. Especially if it is still down in November.
I will be taking photos in Dublin (and of our flat!) but oh, oh poor internet, you may have to wait a while to see them.

P.p.s. See that new button over to the right? the one that says Oh Dear Oh Dear, NaBloPoMo? that means that I am going to try my little heart out to post something every single day in November. Which will be interesting if the internet is still down at my flat. Interesting in a tearing-my-hair-out kind of way.

P.p.p.s. Fiddle dee dee potatoes!

* I love the idea that our building has been standing since before the First and Second World Wars. Craig is sceptical but the building next door was built in 1854 (1852? 1857?) and while ours looks a little more modern & less damaged, it could still be very very old.

Blood is thicker than ... well, many things Actually!

Instead of photos of the cats or my sisters or cousins or anything, my family sends me photos of the new funeral home that has opened up near our familial home.
Because they know I'll actually, seriously, can't-wait-to-see-it-myself, be interested.

And I am. Ghoulishly, but I can't help it! and they know that. And love me anyway.

The clock had been going well, but he picked it up and broke it.

I do have other photos to post. But the internet hates me.

I do however love it when it seems like my spam has been written by a poet :

Peachy looked up into Teatime's face. But thou maist lend it me to
sport with all.
He had been dreaming, and bits of those dreams still tumbled together
with memories in his head. The trail forked and he paused, stark
still for a moment, listening, thinking.
It had been here that she and Egwene and Elay.
The steadily increasing gravitational pull made a reduction in speed
necessary, both because of increasing weight in the ship and an
apparent accumulation of solid matter in the ship's path.
The religion by which you rule is very ancient, goddess, but my
protest is also that of a venerable tradition.
Other people make copies, all with Starbucks cups, sipping. Due to
the volume of mail received we are not able to individually respond
to each report.
Every nerve in his body screamed that he should kill these two
failures before him, vent his fury upon their miserable lives. After
what seemed a long time, the door opened a crack.
Suddenly a large map hung in the air to one side, with a glowing red
dot at one end labeled "Cairhien" in large letters and another as
"Salidar" at the other. It is cold and quiet outside and the horizon
is infinity.

A Most Disturbing Package ...

Dear Glasses-Website,
Might I suggest that the best way to thank someone for making a purchase through your website is not a wide wide staring squishy eyeball candy.
That's less oh hey, thanks! and more Oh Sweet Jesus What Is That??.
It is also kind of awesome!*



However, Thank you for my glasses. I now have an option for when I'm not feeling so emo.







Sincerely,
Sarah-Rose

p.s. Sarah's super secret s ... project (blast) is back underway!

P.p.s. Oh! Oh no. I've just noticed that according to the indredients the eyeball contains Strawberry Flavouring. Which indicates the presence of something red.
And you have to bite before swallowing.
I'm officially terrified.



* But then I enjoy both bad puns (glasses = eye candy) and pretending I've received a package from a serial killer.

Transpontine

Our New 'Hood



Transpontine (trans-PON-tyn) adjective

1. Across the bridge.

2. Situated on the south side of the Thames River in London.

3. Melodramatic (alluding to the type of dramas once performed
in theaters south of the Thames).

[From Latin trans- (across) + pont (bridge). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root pent- (to tread) that also gave us words such as
English find, Dutch pad (path), French pont (bridge), and Russian
sputnik (traveling companion).]

As of last night Craig and I are officially transpontine.
I'm not going to shout my address to the world-wide-web but the above is a satellite image of our neighbouhood. We are on there somewhere. The green arrow indicates the Tate Modern, the circle just to the right (underneath the words "Bankside Jetty") is the Globe Theatre and the whiteline across the Thames is the Millennium Bridge, which leads up to St Paul's Cathedral at the toptoptop of the image.

And that's the way I walked to work this morning! The sun was out and it was absolutely beautiful.

Someone found this website by searching google japan for "inside sarah rose"

Last night I rushed into the bedroom and slammed on the light. Craig turned to look at me (blearily, he had been asleep) and I, sodden & dripping, could only press a finger to my lips and turn away, repeating lines in my head.

They really should invent waterproof dictaphones:

'Don't you see?' she wanted to say as his madeline fingers twitched away form her mouth. 'Don't you see that choosing to kiss this, the whorls near the tip of your middle finger, is how much I love you? I love each square inch enough to kiss' but his eyes just looked at hers. His, her ghostly reflection, pale & open. Why then was she the one who felt so translucent?
Simon watched her moth-eyes flicker as she chewed her lip & stared at him, at the wall, the ceiling and back, focussing, on him.
"Claire? Claire please?" It had been three days since her last sentence, at least two since her last word. Simon sighed. She could see it in the cold, pale shafts of moonlight, she saw it settle, grey & potent, on their bed, their photos on their dresser, the clothes she never put away. She felt as though they would be buried, by her silence and his sighs.
A twitch of her head and a curtain of hair fell between them.
She felt Simon turn away and lie back down. 'Maybe tomorrow' she thought as she stretched her mouth curiously and breathed into the grey black night.

I've never seen one from New Zealand before!

When the Religious Right Goes Too Far
Teen #1: Did you know tumors can sometimes grow hair and teeth?
Teen #2, stunned: Um, those aren't tumors. Th-those are babies.

Wild Thyme Restaurant
Queenstown
New Zealand

via Overheard Everywhere, Aug 16, 2007