British Obsession with Potatoes

Have I mentioned before that British people eat a lot of potatoes. Well, they certainly do. In fact I think it counts as a vegetable in a meal with just meat and potato. They eat them with every meal: breakfast potatoes, baked potatoes for lunch, boiled potatoes, French fried potatoes with fried fish. The problem with that is that although it is a vegetable, it is a really a starch and does not contain the nutrition that many other vegetables do such as greens and other healthy essentials. So, needless to say I am a bit sick of potatoes and I also feel that someone needs to let these Brits know that they need to eat "real" vegetables and more importantly raw ones! If you go into a restaurant and order a meal it may come with a salad garnish even if it says it comes with salad, but it will be a leaf of lettuce with a slice of cucumber and tomato with no dressing. In terms of hot veggies, they are usually just boiled with little to no seasoning on them. No wonder no one wants to eat salad and vegetables! So, here's my advice to solve the potato issue: Get into fresh vegetables and learn how to make a nice salad dressing with the basics- olive oil and vinegar and herbs. Also learn how to bake, steam or saute veggies with olive oil or other healthy oil and season them with fresh or dried herbs and spices. Don't be afraid of a little flavor! It might actually make things taste better!

Book Review: P.S. I Love You

Well, with a title like that, you know it's gonna be a major chick flick, I mean book. Wait a minute...yes this book cover is a picture from the movie. The problem with this book is that it is probably much better as a movie and much cheezier as a book. See, with a chick flick you can take a little bit more cheez, but not with a book. You want some meat, some tapestry threads weaving in an out, some character development, some interesting twists. Not the case with this book, in fact, I am still wondering how the book got to be so long with so many pointless pages. Shouldn't someone have edited it and at least said, cut the crap, develop the characters?! Well, I guess the author, Cecilia Ahern did not learn what we did in High School which was summed up in a couple of famous quotes: "Brevity is the soul of wit."-William Shakespeare and another one which paraphrased sounds like: "The art of good writing is never using two words when one will suffice."-No Clue who said it other than my history teacher.

So what is the deal with the book? Sentimental fluff based on the death of a young girl's hubby from a brain tumor who before he died wrote a series of notes for her to open for 10 months after his death. In each one, she is living for what he is telling her to do, little fun things and big tough things like getting a job. each one she does while life around her is moving ahead especially with her friends. It sounds interesting but really it is too fluffy and things happen to predictably and unrealistically that it just ends up being trite instead of meaningful. That's what I think! But I have heard that the movie is ok, so I might check that out at some point to compare. For now I am no to a more intellectually stimulating book....To Be Continued

Quarter Life Crisis

Have you heard of this? I hadn't until I checked my hotmail and saw this article and thought, is that what I have been going through for the past few months? Well, one thing is for sure and that is that I am certainly not where I wanted to be at the age that I am, and I certainly do think about it constantly trying daily to do what I can to close the gap on my plan and my actual achievement. Here is a quote from the article I just read.

"There’s a strong message in society that women are expected to have a successful career, a good salary, strong friendships, a toned body, have found their life partner, be married and have children all by the time their 35. We only need to switch the TV on or open a magazine to be bombarded with images of successful career women with perfect figures and a happy, chuckling baby balanced on their hip, holding down a busy job, kissing their perfect husband, all the while smiling broadly to the camera. Even to the most dynamic amongst us, it can make life seem pretty impossible. So, how can today’s woman compete with that kind of propaganda?"- Liz Frost, Are you Heading for a Quarter Life Crisis?

You remember how this used to happen to middle aged men who suddenly felt their youth slipping away and start working out and cheating on their wives with younger women. This is a completely different thing somehow and much worse. This is when you haven't even lost your youth yet, but you feel like you haven't gotten to where you are supposed to be yet, and time is running out.

Apparently this happens more to women and I think that makes sense to me. All the women I know seem to have an internal planner that men don't seem to have. Tim doesn't worry about where he is compared to other guys, at least I don't think so. I guess the problem really is that these internal planners seem to have been written by outside imposed expectations. I think the media is involved, but basically its comparison with other people. Women love to compare, and even when they fancy themselves absolutely-one-hundred-percent-individually minded wonder how they are really measuring up to other women if they seem to be lagging behind. They are the ones who make excuses like, "Oh that's not my thing, I like to go against the grain. I just don't worry about that kind of stuff." YEAH RIGHT! They do, I know because, I fancy myself absolutely-one-hundred-percent-individually minded but I am totally not when it comes to this stuff. I am vulnerable to these comparisons of trends, conventions and TRADITION.... TRADITION! Get the musical theatre joke there? This whole comparison thing wouldn't be so bad except that there is probably too much choice out there and we are unsure if we are ever making the right decisions to get us to these goals. Unfortunately not a lot of these choices are really in our control, but we are lead to believe that they are. And when we start comparing, we certainly think if we only get ourselves under control we could get to where we wanted faster.

Well, I think what we all need is some self- esteem and faith. You don't get anywhere without self-esteem that's worth going, and you certainly get nowhere without faith. Like for example, it is not under my control how many houses are on the market in my price range, but I gotta have faith that God will give us the house He wants us to have. It's not a matter of control, it's a matter of surrender and acceptance (which I am slowly learning, turtle-slow that is). So I don't know really, but I think it's an ongoing process. The important thing as always is to be "in the moment" accept things as they are so you can enjoy them without wishing away your entire life trying to get somewhere and then realizing that you got to a lot of places but spent the whole time at each one, looking at the map and missed the scenery on the way. I don't know where all this wisdom is coming from, but I think part of it is what I need to tell myself, so I guess it all came out like a pep talk to all women who may be undergoing a Quarter Life Crisis. Let's seize the day and enjoy what we're learning huh?

6 Months in Stansted

So This month has marked the half-year that we have been living in England. Woohoo! Well, not exactly. Most of you who have been reading know that things have NOT gone amazingly smoothly all the time we have been here. For one thing, I haven't even started working yet and we are barely earning any money. That has been tough. As I remember what we were thinking when we decided to move here, I think it is much more than we bargained for and then some. We are still hoping to move out of the in-laws house as soon as Tim gets a job lined up. We are hoping that will be beginning of the summer. We might live here in Stansted or we might move to Bishop's Stortford where our church is and where it is a bit more busy. This picture here is pretty much the down town of Stansted which is where the train station is. There are maybe 2 traffic lights in the village, but not even any roundabouts either. It's more of a , -get to the intersection see who's coming and go- kind of thing with driving in Stansted. Oh yeah and this building is the King's Arms, a pub, one of 3 that I know of in Stansted. Bet you like the little mini castle tower effect! So anyway we are looking forward to getting a place of our own with or without a castle tower (just kidding), but we are looking for a small house with character. This is mainly because it's either that or a small house without character! It should be fun!

O Deer!

This is a muntjac deer that is an inhabitant of the woodlands near the house and around this area. These are much smaller than regular deer which is why I was very confused when I kept seeing them over a period of a few days. I had thought of all the things it could be but still thought it was related to deer or in the deer family somehow. I thought it was a cross between a goat and a deer but the size of a baby deer somehow. Apparently these deer are called the "barking deer" because of the strange barking noise they make which sounds like barking and is pretty loud. I didn't hear any barking, but I did finally talk to someone who knew what these creatures were because we spotted one in the woods by the side of the house and said, "Oh, there's a muntjac deer." I was so grateful to not be going crazy seeing these things that I had also considered could be baby moose! Well, that mystery is solved. We definitely don't have muntjac deer in NJ.

Book Club

Well I recently joined a brand new book club. Actually it was started by one of the girls from my boot camp class that meets 3 times a week at 6:30am. We are hard core! Anyway, so we all thought it would be cool to do a book club. So far, we have only had one meeting last Friday night. We read the book, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, and pretty much no one liked it. Oh well, it was still a great time. We met at Gloria's house who organized the club, and she cooked us a very nice and healthy meal. It was all around a fun night. So the thing with our book club is that we take turns having around different people's houses and choosing a book to recommend. This one was chosen by Gloria, and next we are Ellie's and to be reading P.S. I Love You which is admittedly trash by Ellie who recommended it. Anyway, I am sure it will be much more fun to read than this last one which was pretty sad all around. The theme of the book is a first generation Ukrainian family with 2 sisters trying to take care of their aging father (after the death of their mother) with his issues of getting involved with a younger woman from Ukraine who is just after UK residency. The relationships are all very strained but it is clear that everyone is trying to do what they think is right while accepting their lot in life. She (the author) seems to have captured the tone of life post-refugee camp and life post-war. These characters, we decided, were not developed as much as they could have been, especially the male characters. It was also pretty difficult to get into and a bit slow moving, the slowest parts being the interjected chapters of a book about tractors written by the aging father. So, that is my short, short history of the sad book about tractors in Ukraine.

Job Offer

Well, without further ado, I would like to admit that I have been offered a job. I am currently in the process of "pre-employment" as they call it because I am waiting for my salary approval and also for my criminal background check to be completed. This, they tell me, may take a long time, so I am still waiting. But, this does mean that I have a job at the end of the tunnel, finally! What a relief! Now, it's just a matter of time until I can actually work, and meanwhile i can enjoy the free time I have left to do other things like work on my craft stuff and read some books etc. I am definitely looking forward to actually working in a real job again, but part of me wonders how much I would have forgotten and how long it will take me to get back into the swing of things. We shall see. So my new job, is working as a Speech Therapist for the National Health Service (NHS) so it's a government job. I am working with children and am based at a health clinic but will travel to different schools to see children there. I have no idea what it will be like other than that, but the team that I will be working on is good. They all seem nice, especially my line manager. So I am looking forward to making friends with all of them soon. So my guess is that by my birthday I should have started working, which would be great, because Tim and I are looking to move out over the summer and I need to have a pay check to show someone in order to get a mortgage. Tim is also interviewing for jobs in September which is good and he is hoping to find something suitable soon. It seems like things are looking up now in a lot of directions.

Painting Crew

One day, in order to earn some extra money, Tim and I and Elise agreed to help my dad paint the hallway of the apartment building he owns in Newark. Here we all are after the long day! We took most of the day painting the ceilings and the walls including the yucky brown color on the bottom half of the walls. There are three floors that we painted, and all of us were working together all day. As my sister will attest to, this was not the first time that our whole family has spent time painting. It is a long tradition in our family. So since we had so much practice doing painting, Tim and have kept up the tradition by painting every place we've lived in since we got married. We are pretty much a professional painting crew at this point which is of course why my dad hired us for the job. (That and the fact that Tim and I could definitely use the money while we were out there. Oh yes, and the sign we are holding says, "Careful, fresh paint, banister painted too." It had to be in Spanish because everyone who lives in the building speaks Spanish and some of them don't speak much English. What can I say it's Newark! All in all we did have a fun time painting, and we got free lunch and a check at the end of the day to ease the back pain!

Visits With Friends

While I was home, I spent some time visiting with my good friends. On the right are friends from Liquid church, my girls: Vanessa, Kristie and Esther! On the left are my work friends from the Hearing Impaired Program school where I worked. We had a nice dinner after work at a cute restaurant with yummy food just around the corner from the school. It was great to catch up with my old friends who reminded me of what I missed and remembered me the way I always was at home. Being back in NJ with all its charm was definitely good for my personality , and I enjoyed being a part of my old life again. I also got to hang out with my grandparents and in CT and visited with my cousin Renee. That was great, and I enjoyed the drive to CT in my parents' car. The rest of my time at home I split between hanging out at home with my parents and sister, babysitting, reading, watching movies and painting.....SEE NEXT POST.

There's No Place Like Home

This is where I have been the last two weeks. Ok so it actually didn't snow at all while I was there which was a bummer because it snowed 5 inches the day after I flew back across the pond. It would have been nice to enjoy one last snow storm, but oh well. We seem to be on to spring here in England. I enjoyed being home though. I guess I was too busy visiting with family and friends to even think about blogging so that's why it's been a while. I caught up on some movies, reading, eating awesome home-cooked meals and salads. My sister and I spent some quality time together mostly arguing and watching movies and shopping. Hey, it's what sisters do! I caught up with old friends which was refreshing. Also, the best part was getting a chance to hang out with my own hubby. Yes, that's right, we had much more time to hang out than we ever do where we live, what with his school work taking up every evening and weekend with no time together to speak of. That was great! All together it was great to be home!