Bits and Bobs

Wow, it sure has been a while since I blogged.  Happy New Year y'all!   Although I really must stop saying y'all because WE'RE MOVING TO SEATTLE IN MARCH!!!!  What words will I pick up there?  Happy New Year dude?  Happy New Year man?  Who knows, but I'm excited to find out.  The next few weeks will probably be pretty busy, but it's not like we haven't moved before so it'll all work out fine.  It's been interesting receiving different reactions to our news.  Most of our friends are excited for our new adventure, but I've actually had a few people react in horror and tell me how awful it is!  We have loved living here for sure, and have made many wonderful friends that we will be sad to leave, but we feel pretty lucky that we have this opportunity to move to the North West and live near the mountains and ocean again.  

We had a lovely holiday with my parents who came over for Christmas and New Year.  Lots of food and drink was consumed, and many walks taken to walk off the aforementioned calories.   We visited Nashville, Franklin and went to the movies. My "lucky" Mum had the experience of seeing people shopping in their pajamas at 3pm in Walmart, an experience not to be missed I tell you! 

Speaking of Walmart, I had yet another adventure in their parking lot.  There I was, innocently packing away the weekly grocery haul when some bloke came up and asked if that was a German flag on the front of my van.  I explained that it was actually a Scottish flag, but I guess he didn't believe me.  I then  had to listen to him talking nonsense about flags of the world while I hastily chucked the dog food in as fast as I could, before jumping in my van and driving off at top speed.  I really must check the van to see if there is actually some kind of sign on there that attracts weirdos...

Driving here at night really freaks me out.  There are no cat's eyes on the roads AT ALL!  Is it the same all over America or is this just a Tennessee phenomenon?  Please enlighten me!  It's so hard to see where the road is in the dark, especially when it's raining, so I drive like an old lady peering over my steering wheel trying to see the edge of the road.  You need to see the edge of the road here because sometimes it's a sheer drop, I kid you not!  Cat's eyes America, google them, and more importantly, put them on the bloody roads!

So that's all I've got for y'all you dudes this week.  I'm off to swot up on Seattle and the surrounding area and do a wee bit of house hunting while I'm at it.   All whilst listening to some Nirvana, Pearl Jam etc, trying to get a feel for the Pacific North West.  Ha, stereotyping at its finest...!  Till next time!

This Week In America-land...

I've lived here for a while, but I only just realized that you can't buy colored toilet paper in the US.  Or at least, I haven't seen it anywhere.  Does anybody know why?  If so, please enlighten me!  In the UK, we can adorn our bathrooms with many pastel shades of loo roll.  We have pink, peach, blue, green, yellow,  you name it, readily available at the supermarket.  The only color I've seen here is boring old white.  While I realize it's not exactly a matter of high importance or anything to complain about, I do find it interesting :)

3 lovely shades of Andrex :)

Two out of three kiddos have gotten sick recently, so we've been regulars at the doctor's office.  While it's never fun to visit the doctor, it's so convenient over here.  They have walk in appointments, people!  Yep, you just show up between the hours of 7.30 and 9.00am, wait for a short while, and walk right in to see your doctor.  When you have three children, it doesn't get better than that.  If you take one child in who needs medicine for something and the other child catches the same thing the next day, you don't need to take the second child back.  You can call the office and they'll simply put in a new prescription.  I LOVE THIS!!  Thank you for making this Mum's life so much easier, America!

I'm starting to see proper cider in the stores now, which is great, although it's usually described as 'hard' cider.   Ha, ain't nothing 'hard' about cider over here unless it happens to be a Diamond White (responsible for a few memory losses in the past...!)  I believe Diamond White is around 7.5% vol, so although it tastes delicious, it has more than a kick.  Most of the ciders I've tried here have been a bit too sweet, but better than nothing I guess.  I would kill for a Magners though, either apple or pear.  Please feel free to buy me one when I'm back in Scotland next summer :) 

This is the definition of 'hard'!

The best cider!

I know y'all wait with bated breath to see what happened on my weekly trip to Walmart, but this week, I actually have nothing to report.  Of course, I saw the usual visible ass cracks and sprinkling of Tweety Bird T shirts, but otherwise, nada.  That was indeed, a very good day!  So I bid you farewell for now.  See y'all next time in America-land :) 

This Week in America-land...

While out and about, we drove by a billboard advertising a fried bologna velveeta biscuit.  I kid you not.  I thought it was some kind of joke, but nope, it's for real.  Now I know why I never visit Hardee's.  Apparently it looks like this:

I couldn't find it on Hardee's Nutrition Guide, funny that.  Bologna, blegh!!   

We were driving in the countryside at the weekend when we came across a truck with flashing lights in the middle of the road and a bunch of people in florescent vests picking up trash.  On the back of the vests in huge writing was "I am a drunk driver".  It was a group of people convicted of drunk driving doing their community service by picking up trash - what an awesome idea, the UK should practice this too!  But no doubt it would violate some kind of Health and Safety or Human Rights rule...

Almost every time I visit Walmart, I see questionable things.  I normally just keep my head down and ignore, but I was guilty of rolling my eyes at a young man who almost ran me over as he tried to park in the space close to the door for pregnant women.  Huge mistake.  He jumped out and started yelling at me, asking what was my problem.  I then proceeded to break my personal speed record, sprinting for the safety of the store.  A reminder to keep my eye rolls to myself in the future.    

I love my American kitchen tap (faucet).  You can lift the top off of the tap and it turns into a retractable hose.  How bleedin' handy is that?!  If we ever move back to the UK, this is one thing I will miss terribly!

And the last observation this week is that it is always a good idea to know if your tent is waterproof or not.  Make sure that you know this before you go camping with your kids and dog and get hit by a massive thunderstorm.  Yes indeed.  We got absolutely soaked and the tent floor turned into a small lake.  On the plus side, at least the tent didn't blow away in the crazy wind gusts - the water weight probably helped with that.  

Until next time in America-land, folks!

What's in yours?

My handbag (aka my purse in America speak) isn't a huge one.  My preferred style of handbag has a long cross body strap so I can chuck it on and forget it's there.   I favor the the left side of my body so that my right hand is free to salute any officers who may be walking my way, even though I actually left the RAF 17 years ago...  I guess that habit is forever ingrained on my soul.  I feel most uncomfortable if I put it on my right side although I probably won't be bumping into any RAF officers down the gym or at Target any time soon. 

Now that the kiddos are older and can carry their own stuff, the contents of my handbag are pretty minimal.  Wallet, chapstick, phone, chewie, pens, you know, all the usual things.  But I do carry a couple of extra items that I would never have dreamed of carrying around with me before we lived here.  I most certainly would never carry either of them around at home!

No. 1 item - Pepper Spray.  I always feel slightly guilty when I see my little pink spray cannister in my bag.  This is probably because it's illegal to carry it back home and I'm a bit of a rule follower.  But like most people, I have an aversion to being robbed/attacked/carjacked so I pack my pepper spray to defend myself if necessary - because I can!  People back home may think it's a bit dramatic and unnecessary, but I did have my finger on the trigger once when a crazy lady in the Walmart parking lot tried to take my groceries and get in the trunk of my van.  Not a fun experience, but I did feel safer knowing I could have used my spray if warranted and believe me, I came close!  I also have a runner's hand held pepper spray for when I'm road running on my own.  Better safe than sorry!     

No. 2 item - Teabags.   As my friends will testify, I carry a wee ziploc bag containing teabags at all times.  It's soooo difficult to get a good cup of tea over here!  Most places give you a tiny rectangular paper bag containing a teabag that feels like it's made out of wax paper, complete with a stapled on string and tag.   You need at least 2 of these to brew a decent strength cuppa in the usually lukewarm water provided in a plastic coffee jug.  Sometimes there is still a taste of coffee from this water because the tea is so weak and the jug is only used for coffee (until you come in with your diva request for tea).  Blegh.  When you ask for milk on the side, you get a funny look and then the milk comes to your table a good 5-10 minutes after the teabags and water have been delivered, thus allowing the already lukewarm water to cool further.  Oops, that turned into a right little rant!  Anyways, my main point is that instead of having to use the dreaded bags on strings, I have my own little supply in my purse.  So comforting for this ol' lady, it's not pretty when I don't get my morning brew.  

So there you have it, that's the 2 'special' items that I carry in my handbag every day.  What do you carry in yours?

Easy Breezy

I've lived here for a while now and have assimilated pretty well (I think)!  I say yard instead of garden, trunk instead of boot, soccer instead of football and I even pronounce tomato and garage the American way.  Mostly, anyway.  It's easy to do so when everybody else is speaking like this, but some things just aren't quite so easy.   Let's start with the positives though, there are a lot of things here that HAVE been very easy to get used to indeed :)

GETTING YOUR GROCERIES BAGGED FOR YOU
I LOVE THIS!!  In fact, I'm so used to it that when I do go grocery shopping at home now, I'm standing looking around me, not realizing that my groceries are piling up at the end of the belt with nobody to bag them.  Cue red face and mad scramble to throw said groceries in bags as quickly as possible.  Then get charged for each bag.  Not so over here, either the lovely checkout person or a bag packer packs your bags for you and sometimes even offers to take the bags (which are free) out to your car.  Just call me Princess :)


HUGE WASHING MACHINES & DRYERS
Doing laundry over here is serious business and is actually quite pleasant!  Our machines are MASSIVE and economical and are mostly housed in a laundry room of their own.  At home, our machines are significantly smaller and are sometimes in the kitchen or outside in the cold garage.  I understand how a lot of my American friends struggle with this in the UK now I'm used to my lovely laundry room over here :) 

THE DRIVE THRU
I'm not just talking Fast Food Drive Thru's either.  When you have 3 young children, convenience is everything.  Sick kid?  Go to the Drive Thru Pharmacy to pick up their medicine instead of having to drag them inside and sit and wait!  Drive Thru ATM's - fabulous!   Drive Thru Dry Cleaning?  Okay, sometimes it is nice to get off your lazy ass and actually go inside, but more often than not, convenience rules.

FUEL PRICES
Goes without saying.  Crazy price difference between the UK and the USA.  For the better over here obviously :)  It's almost twice as expensive to fill up your car over there!

FIREFLIES
I'm not a fan of bugs and insects, but nothing beats sitting in your back yard watching fireflies on a warm summer night.  Such a beautiful sight, every yard everywhere should have some!

I CANNOT, however, get used to the following things.  Please excuse my tendency to over-dramatize :)

TRAFFIC LIGHTS
Back home, we have these lovely, orderly traffic lights sitting on the side of the road or mounted on sturdy poles.  Easy to see, always in the same place.  Over here however, the lights hang precariously over the road, dangling from a cable!  I still get freaked out when it's windy and I have to drive underneath these lights, blowing around all over the place!


BEDDING
In the UK, it's easy to buy bedding.  We mostly have cotton sheets & pillowcases with quilts or duvets on our beds.  Everywhere sells bedding and quilt/duvet covers, you can get decent bedding at your local Tesco.  It's pretty cheap, there is a huge assortment of colors and styles and the standard sizes: Single, Double, Queen, King.   Over here?  Forget it!  Even a huge place like Bed Bath and Beyond has a sad collection of duvet covers.  They're usually designer, ridiculously expensive, made of horrid material (shiny, scratchy) and just plain old ugly!  Hardly any nice 100% cotton stuff to be found at all!  You can buy limitless beds in bags however, which is great if you don't care about the scratchiness of the polyester type material against your skin.  These are  monstrous.  I've bought a few in the past thinking they couldn't all be bad.  But they are I say, they're horrid!  The sizes are different too.  Over here, we have Twin, Full, Queen, King and the bizarrely named California King.  California King?  What the heck?!

ALCOHOL
Now I know this is a Tennessee thing, but I live here and I find it difficult to get used to.  I go to the supermarket to get the weekly groceries.  I can pick up some beer while I'm there, but if I want wine, I have to make a separate visit to the Liquor Store because supermarkets are not allowed to sell the evil grape.   Children aren't allowed inside Liquor Stores.  I discovered this after a stressful day, in the rain when I made the mistake of trying to nip quickly in to the Liquor Store with my children to pick up a bottle of wine.  Could you imagine if the poor children were to witness their parents buying a bottle of wine?  Shocking!!!  Grrrrr.... Yes,I did feel like a criminal.  Nor can we buy wine on Sundays.  Anywhere.  I enjoy the occasional glass of wine throughout the week.  Why can I not just pick it up at the supermarket with everything else?!


PANHANDLERS
Again, this might just be a Tennessee thing, but sometimes I can drive by up to 10 panhandlers in a day by just going to the gym and the store.  They come right up to your car window with their signs explaining why they need your money.  It's horrible and makes me really uncomfortable.   Of course I feel bad for the genuine people who are truly down on their luck but some of them are downright threatening.  You're sitting waiting for the dangling traffic light to change to green and hoping it doesn't fall on top of you.  You're stuck with nowhere to go and the panhandler is glaring at you for trying to look in the opposite direction.  Can't get used to this at all. 

PUPPIES BEING SOLD FROM SOMEONE'S TRUCK IN THE WALMART PARKING LOT
Self explanatory.  If you buy a puppy from some guy's truck in the Walmart parking lot, you need your head checked.  Harsh but true :)

SALES TAX
Unless you are a math whiz and can calculate percentages off the top of your head, you have no idea how much something actually costs over here.  There is a price tag on everything, but when you pay for the item, sales tax is added on so it's always more than you think!  Sneaky huh?!  I know, on the flip side we pay more taxes in the UK, but it's so nice to buy something and know exactly how much you're going to pay for it at the checkout!


Yes, at the end of the day, most of these are pretty trivial and I hope they gave you a giggle, but they're different from what I'm used to so please don't judge :)  Time to go see a bloke about a puppy at Walmart...