friday night and saturday

I was rather domestic this weekend. After working at the nursery on Friday I came home and crashed. I had plans to meet up with friends but they fell through. So I caught up on all my American Thursday night shows and then I made a big pot of what turned out to be amazing vegetable stew.It's onions and leeks and peppers and chilli and mushrooms and peas and carrots and sweet corn and celery and canned tomatoes and I served it over couscous and it was very happy.
On Saturday I met some friends at the market which is always fun and had lots of samples (hello Toffee Apple Bread, I love you!) and some freshly squeezed juice. Then I went into town and purchased an amazing find at the pound shop.
Look at these jars. They are nice and big and pretty. (I love glass!) and they were only £1 each! I've been wanted canisters for a while as flour and sugar stored in their bags does not send me to my happy place. I started with five, but I'm sure I'll be heading back for more!
Saturday afternoon was spent cleaning (boring) and baking (fun!). I made a double batch of banana bread and one half made a proper loaf (hiding in the background) and the other half made banana chocolate chip muffins. So happy! Saturday evening I babysat. Great to be back in the saddle again. British TV is just as bad on a Saturday night as American... Phineas and Ferb anyone?

spread the word

I need work... badly. So on top of the job hunt that continues I've decided to widen my babysitting advertisement audience. Today I made this flyer and this week I will be canvasing my neighbourhood looking for places to post it. Also, I learned how to take screen shots on my computer today, yeah!

cleaning out my phone...

I'm switching back over to my UK phone today, so here's a few pics and videos I saved from my US phone:

Will likes his head covered when he sleeps...

Ben's Chili Bowl!

Emily, Luke, and Flower

We fed "Flower" a lot, but we're not exactly sure if she's a girl...

Alternate name if she turns out to be a boy, "Blue"

Graduation!

Will's Birthday!!!

how to find a man

While having dinner with the Sharrett boys William and Davis were shocked to discover that I do not have a boyfriend. The following conversation ensued:

William: You should get married in August.
Me: That's pretty quick considering I don't have a boyfriend right now.
William: You find a boyfriend, say marry me, punch him in the stomach, there you go.
Davis: Kiss him on the belly button.
Me: unable to speak because I'm laughing.
William: You should do the hot coffee test.
Davis: Yeah.
Me: What is the hot coffee test?
William and Davis jumbled on top of each other: You pour hot coffee on his foot. To test for anger management. If he gets angry don't marry him. If he's calm, marry him.

saying goodbye

Last night was my last time with my three favorite girls ever! We had so much fun sharing brownies and cookies and playing and reading together. Sydney appropriately picked Fox in Socks for the bedtime book. That is the one book I have read more to them than any other. (When Sydney was 4 I read it to her every day for an entire summer!) You've gotta love a book that starts out by telling you to take it slowly and ends by asking if your tongue is numb. I had a bit of a struggle with all the tongue twisters last night as I was trying desperately hard not to let the girls know that I was crying the whole time! I think I succeeded because I only stumbled once during the "Luke Luck likes lakes" part and I read the "Cheese Trees/Sneezy Fleas" bit three times! But my cover was blown when we had a big group hug and I had to keep wiping my eyes. Shelby asked, "What are you doing?" and I said, "I'm trying not to cry because I'm going to miss you so much!" They are the sweetest, kindest, most creative girls I've ever had the privilege to care for. And that is saying a lot.

a long awaited update (perhaps I flatter myself too much!)

So, I guess the last significant update into my day to day life was written way back in the beginning of July. (Was that only a month and a half ago???) So, I figured it was about time for another!

I was in Florida for just under six weeks. I went down to be a summer nanny for the wonderful girls I used to care for before I left to do Transit and their wonderful baby sister who was born while I was gone and their wonderful cousins who live in Jacksonville. I think I can safely say that everyone involved had a great summer.

We were right on the beach, as you can see from this picture. This is the spot where I did quite a lot of reading when I was "off duty," not bad, huh? The summer was full of sand and water and sun and origami and reading time and ice cream and the dynamics of little girl relationships and naps and trips to the park and trips to the girls' Papa's tree farm and good food and all kinds of other fun things like getting caught in the rain almost every time I went out for a walk in the evenings. And big, beautiful rainbows.

No summer would be complete without a trip to the zoo and this one included petting and feeding sting rays. (Their "stinger" had been trimmed, apparently much like you would trim your fingernails.)

We drove back to Charlotte on the 29th of July, I think. It was definitely a Wednesday. And that evening I booked my flight to Ireland. I fly into Dublin on the 12th of September and will make my way north to Belfast where I will be living until I find a job or run out of money which I project will be sometime in December! No, seriously, I'm heading to Belfast to job hunt and make connections and do some volunteering and have committed to stay through December, which hopefully will give me enough time to find a job so I can stay forever, or at least two years which is how long my visa will be issued for.

So, naturally, I'm excited and nervous and thinking about packing way more than I'm actually doing the packing. And I'm sure to run out of time to do several of the many things I have projected to finish before I leave. So it's all rather exhilarating and tiring.

On a sort of side note I saw movies 24 and 25 of the summer this week. Time Traveler's Wife with my sisters, Laura and Emily, and Nights in Rodanthe with my mom.

I feel a bit like Clare in the Time Traveler's Wife. (If you haven't seen the movie or read the book I'm going to be giving away plot here...) In the scene where Henry travels to and from the bathroom. She's very pregnant, but has tried to keep herself from hoping about this baby because she has lost so many before. Henry comes back from travelling to the future where he meets their daughter, Alba. He tells Clare all about her and she says, "You mean it's all going to be all right?" It was such a moving scene and I feel like her. There's this thing that I've been dreaming about and hoping for and working towards for so long, but because it's been so long it's so very hard to understand that it's really happening. That the dream is becoming reality. I think it can't be true.

But in three weeks from today I'll be sitting (well, sleeping actually) in Belfast. And I'll never again have to cry when I leave Ireland because I don't know when I'll be coming back. It's all rather overwhelming.

So anyway, that's my update.

having a laugh

So I realize that a true and proper update is very much needed around here. But I can't be bothered tonight. Thought I'd share a couple things that made me laugh this week.

This is from Rosie's blog:

"Why do we date? It's not in the Bible, and it makes everyone nervous...."

This is from Confessions of a Shopaholic (the book which I have read before, but not for a while and I found at The Book Rack for $2):

"I can do this, I tell myself firmly. I can be attracted to him. It's just a matter of self-control and possibly also getting very drunk. So I lift my glass and take several huge gulps. I can feel the bubbles surging into my head, singing happily "I'm going to be a millionaire's wife! I'm going to be a millionaire's wife!" And when I look back at Tarquin, he already seems a bit more attractive (in a stoaty kind of way). Alcohol is obviously going to be the key to our marital happiness."

Today, when we were playing Winnie-the-Pooh Uno, we decided to play a third round in the hopes that everyone would get to win a game. Sydney had won a round and I had won a round, Shelby was the only one left. Sydney said, "God made me win a round, and God made Miss Rebekah win a round, so God will make you win the next round Shelby."

(I did explain to her that we don't know if God made us win our rounds. I certainly hadn't asked him to get involved and so he may have just let the game go on as it was. But she was unconvinced and Shelby did win the third and final round. "See, I told you that's how it worked!" said Sydney.)

the contents of my purse

1) blue and white little girl's hair clip
2) diaper and wipes
3) toddler sized t-shirt
4) sippy cup
5) wind-up inch worm
6) discarded bag from Claire's Accessories
7) plastic harmonica
8) lollipop
9) ballerina hippo finger puppet
10) baby einstein travel discovery cards
11) crackers
12) two empty boxes of raisins

around the dinner table

While eating pizza with William and Davis, both seven, this conversation ensued:

William (reading my shirt): Jamaica me happy. That means I'm happy.
Me: Yes. Guess where Miss Laura is going on her honeymoon? Jamaica.
Davis: For my honeymoon, when I grow up, I'm going to go to Antigua. ... Or Atlanta. Atlanta is a popular place. Lots of people go there for their honeymoon.
Me: Oh! How about you William? Where will you go on your honeymoon?
William: I don't know. ... I have abs.
Me: What?
William: Abs, I have abs.
Davis: Yeah, me too. I have a six pack.

things that have made me laugh, or cringe, recently or just random things I feel like saying

1. Being given a horribly wonderful lime green "I ♥ Ireland" t-shirt by one of my favorite people, Shelby, age 7. (The heart is a little tri-color and I've worn it to bed every night since she gave it to me.)

2. A lady I have recently started babysitting for told me that I had the perfect name to be a country music star.

3. My new cerise dress. It's wonderful!

4. Getting a ticket for driving a car with an expired registration.

5. Baking cakes for my sister's bridal shower.

6. My computer has begun to die. (This kind of fits into both categories because I've decided that when it goes I'm going to get a mac.)

7. Finally seeing two movies I've been wanting to see for a while. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and He's Just not that into You. I liked them both.

8. Last night when I got home from a full day of bridal shower and family gathering and movie with my sister I had a glass of wine and finished off a bag of dark chocolate covered pretzels.

9. I think that women who wear heels all the time must have gone through some sort of training or boot camp to be able to endure the pain. I wore maybe 2.5" kitten heels for the better part of the day yesterday. My feet are still not quite back to normal.

10. I'm reading the Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien and I'm loving it. The writing is beautiful and still very Irish (not that the two terms are mutually exclusive but if you've read a lot of Irish fiction maybe you'll understand what I mean). I've found some of the content surprising for books that were published in Ireland in the 1960s. Anyway, I'm adding her to my favorite authors list.

oh, um, something about the deer we need for the venison... tacos

This has been a week of new experiences... On Sunday night I experienced my first snow-thunder storm. (I didn't even know that was a possibility!) Tonight I made tacos for dinner where I was babysitting not with ground beef or ground turkey... no, with ground venison. I didn't have any. I'm undecided on whether I would eat venison or not and I didn't want my first experience to be mixed with Old El Paso taco seasoning.

my new byline is "no capes!"

The girls I used to nanny have dubbed me Edna Mode of the Incredibles. They have recently become obsessed with the movie and have assigned each family member a character. I have told them that from now on when I'm putting my foot down I'm just going to say, "No capes!" and they'll know that I mean business. What's even funnier than this to me is that they've decided that "Miss Rebekah, whoever you marry is going to be that ice guy" Frozone for those of you who haven't seen the movie. I was dying laughing!

This is the best part of the wikipedia article on Edna:

"In the special features section of the special edition DVD of the Incredibles, Edna is 'interviewed' about her work in the film. When asked whether working with superheroes was difficult, she replies, 'Superheroes are easy, darling. Mediocrity is much more difficult to work with—and it is in such great supply.'"

As a nanny/babysitter I have some pretty funny conversations. Here's one from Tuesday night between me and Sydney who is five years old.

Syd: Do you have super powers?
Me: Yes I do.
Syd: You do? Show me! Fly!
Me: I can't, I have to protect my secret identity... I guess I could tell you one. I have super cleaning powers.
Syd: You do?
Me: Yes. Can't you tell, I cleaned your room today.
Syd: Wow!
Me: And tomorrow I'm going to clean your bathroom.
Syd: Can you please make sure to do the toilet?
Me: I'm not doing that kind of cleaning. I have super organizing cleaning powers.
Syd: Oh. Well the top drawer needs extra help.
Me: Yes it does, don't worry I've got it.

a little taste of my weekend

We have 5 days together. Two nights with homework, three without. Two basketball games. Some (American) football to watch. A movie to see (Madagascar 2). Stories to read and card games to play. So far so good, except for the darn cat who woke me up needlessly in the middle of the night.