What does Barbie drink?

Last weekend we had some very good friends over for dinner who we hadn't seen since before Christmas and we finally got to exchange Christmas presents. Although they often buy things I wouldn't for the kids, they are extremely thoughtful and always hit the nail on the head in terms of choosing something the kids love. This year they got DD a Barbie.

This is her first Barbie doll ever and she was very excited about it. It came with a kitchen, so she is a very domestic Barbie. Hmm . . . Oh well. That's OK. DD knows that in our house the kitchen is really Dad's and Mom only gets to use it on school nights to make sure we eat early enough to get everyone to bed on time. Anyway, DD was delighted and has played with it a lot in the last week.

I had to laugh when I saw the 'instructions' that came with the kitchen though. Not instructions on how to assemble it - no, it came pre-assembled. Look:


I guess they think Barbie users are really dumb if they need to have explained to them how to put the lid on a saucepan, or how to open a cupboard door! About the only 'instruction' there that might actually have been needed was showing that the hook above the oven was to hang the chandelier from. There was also an image of all the (very tiny!) parts that came with it.
Can you spot the item that surprised me? (Think about this blog post title.)






You see, there's a tea kettle, and even some honey for the tea, but no tea cups. However, Barbie does have champagne glasses!

A little bit of snow

Americans who live in the snow belt always laugh when the UK grinds to a halt because of an inch or so of snow. I was ready to do the same thing this week, but then I saw this satellite photo of the UK today:


There are a few places where you can still see green - part of Anglesey, and on the south coast in Devon - but not many! I grew up on the Wirral and we rarely if ever got any snow there, though we could often see it on the Welsh hills. It looks just as white as the rest of the UK today! I have no doubt that they really don't have enough ploughs, sanders and gritters to deal with this, even it is only a few inches.

My old secondary school is closed and will not open again until next Monday at the earliest. I don't EVER remember school being closed for bad weather when I was a kid, though my primary school closed once for a day because the boiler broke and there was no heat. I was intrigued to see this on the high school website though:


It looks as though they are trying to avoid the issue of having to make up the snow days by asking kids to login from home and complete work that's been assigned. (VLE = Virtual Learning Environment) I've never seen that done over here. Boy, I wish we could have done that last year when we had 9 snow days and ended up losing 3 days from our April vacation so that we could still complete 180 days of school as required by the end of June. (State schools in the UK have to put in 190 days I believe.) We have a VLE (Moodle) in my district, but relatively few teachers use it, and some of the towns in the district still only have dial-up internet access so it's not practical to require kids to use it anyway!

Only a few miles away from my hometown, the independent school my father used to work at also closed yesterday and today (in common with all Wirral, North Wales, Wrexham schools and most Cheshire schools) but will be open tomorrow:

The school will be open for all pupils on Friday 8 January.

Notes for parents
The car parks will still be very icy and potentially hazardous, especially after an overnight frost, so extreme care will be needed; please do not stay on site any longer than it takes to drop your children off. Staff will be on hand in the car parks to assist. For safety reasons and because of extremely limited parking, we are not allowing sixth formers to drive to school.

Buses should be running as normal tomorrow, though buses will not be driving through the villages and so will drop pupils off on the way home on the main roads at the points where they were picked up in the morning.

I guess it's a good thing schools all seem to have websites nowadays to make these announcements! Here in New England, snow days and delayed starts because of bad weather are so common that most schools districts now have automated calling systems in addition to posting cancellations and delays on local radio and TV. I remember once driving most of my 60+ mile commute to work before hearing on the radio that school was cancelled for the day. At that point we didn't have an automatic calling system, and where I lived I couldn't get the TV or radio stations that the school posted its cancellations on. Where I lived the weather was fine so I set out for work! After that, I learned to log on to the school email system or website every morning in the winter just in case!

British qualities

Yael pointed me in the direction of this article on differences between the British and Americans.
The opening line ("The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. ") reminded me of the kids I was teaching when I decided to leave for the US for a couple of years - in every class there was at least one kid who responded to my announcement with a comment along the lines of, "Ooh miss, you'll get mugged!"

The author of this article, Geoff Dyer, would clearly like to be American.

It turns out that the qualities that make us indubitably British — that is, the ones that we don’t share with or have not imported from America — are no longer conducive to Greatness. They actually add up to a kind of ostrich stoicism that, though it can be traced back to our finest hour (the blitz, the Battle of Britain), manifests itself in a peculiar compromise: a highly stylized willingness to muddle on, to put up with poor quality and high prices (restaurants, trains), to proffer (and accept) apologies not as a prelude to but as a substitute for improvement. We may not enjoy the way things are, but we endure them in a way that seems either quaint or quasi-Soviet to American visitors.

Sadly, it's too long since I spent any significant time in the UK to really be able to comment on this, either to agree with it or refute it! Of course, Geoff Dyer's audience for this article is primarily Americans as the article was written for the New York Times and that may have something to do with the slant of the article.

Birthday parties

mom/Mum and Nappy Valley Mum both blogged about kids' birthday parties recently. I blogged about food at birthday parties, but they had both actually given birthday parties for their kids. You see, we haven't actually done a party in a couple of years now because we hit upon the idea of asking the kids if they'd like a party or a family trip instead. Both children, very wisely, have chosen the family trip. Nothing huge or expensive, you understand. Trips down to Maryland to visit their great-aunt and uncle, and the kids get to choose which activities we do when we're down there. Things like the Baltimore Aquarium or the Smithsonian Museum. My favorite memory is of watching them looking through the fence at the White House and DS turning around and saying quite scornfully "I could climb this fence really easily!"

I think in 2010 we may have to have parties for them and I'm thinking I need to start planning now - especially as to what will go in the goody bags! On the other hand, if we do a trip to the UK to visit family, I could avoid the whole goody bag issue that Mom/Mum talked about, by telling them that's their birthday 'party' this year.

On Being Foreign

A commenter on another expat blog, pointed out this article from a couple of weeks ago in The Economist:

The funny thing is, with the passage of time, something does happen to long-term foreigners which makes them more like real exiles, and they do not like it at all. The homeland which they left behind changes. The culture, the politics and their old friends all change, die, forget them. They come to feel that they are foreigners even when visiting “home”.

I know I feel like a foreigner now visiting the UK :-(

Years ago

I'm copying the idea for this blogpost from NFAH. She wrote about changes in her life in the last 10 years. I went a little further back than that.

20 years ago . . .

10 years ago . . .

Now . . .

I couldn't imagine being a parent, even though many of my contemporaries were already
I was a mother of a four-month old and was just beginning to sink into post-natal depression that was partially resolved by returning to work
I am the mother of two highly articulate, demanding, and gorgeous children

I commuted 10 miles a day
I commuted 130+ miles a day
I commute 40 miles a day

I was in the best shape of my life and had my cholesterol under control without the help of medication
I was overweight and had high cholesterol
I am still overweight but my cholesterol is back under control with the help of medication

I wore contact lenses most of the time, and rarely wore my glasses
I wore contact lenses much of the time, and sometimes wore my glasses
I wear glasses most of the time because even when I wear my contact lenses I still need to wear reading glasses

I had no grey hair
I was beginning to go grey but could hide it with the right hairstyle
I am most definitely grey-haired!

I was a UK citizen working in the US on a J-1 (exchange-visitor) visa and had no idea whether I'd still be in the US by the end of the year
I was a UK citizen waiting for my US citizenship interview with the INS, unable to vote either in the US or the UK.
I am a dual-national, citizen of both the US and the UK, able to vote here in the US but not in the UK

I was looking forward to a busy year of travelling - a trip to Canada in February and Florida in March, the UK in early summer, followed a trip to Taiwan
I was looking forward to a trip to the UK once I had my new US passport
I am again waiting for a new US passport and hoping to get to the UK for the first time in several years within the next year

I lived in a work-provided 1 bedroom apartment
I lived in a 2 bedroom house with my husband, with only his name on the mortgage as he bought it just before we got married
I live in a 4 bedroom house with both my name and my husband's on the mortgage

I had colleagues who used Apple IIe computers and Macs
I had a Mac and dial-up access via (I think) a 4800 baud modem to the internet at home (but by August of 2000 we had 52k dial-up with wireless access - ooh!) and broadband access from the Mac on my desk at work. Some sites were too slow to load from home so I only ever visited them at work, or I surfed at home with images off
I have a work-provided Mac laptop, and wireless broadband access to the internet at work and at home, but my access at work is filtered, so there are some sites I can only access from home

I didn't know anyone who had a cell-phone
I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't want a telephone land-line as we had such bad cell-phone coverage at home
Would love to cancel the telephone landline but we still have terrible cell-phone service at home

I was teaching the main subject I had trained for years to teach and loving it
I was teaching a subject I had no formal qualifications to teach and loving it
I teach the second subject I'm qualified to teach and finding it harder than the one I had no qualifications for!

I had never been online (although a year later we had an email system at work that only a few of us used - access was via a 300 baud modem!)
I had some online friends who I'd never met in person
I still have some of those same online friends and have still never met them, and have made the acquaintance of many more in the meantime

I didn't know that the man I was destined to marry only lived a few miles away but I wouldn't meet him for another five years, after I had moved to a different part of the state
I thought I was married to the most wonderful man ever
I know I am married to the most wonderful man ever

Merry Christmas!

Having a wonderfully perfect day thanks to my darling DH!

Christmas traditions

For many years after I first came to the United States, I was often a guest in someone else's home at Christmas. When I eventually got married it was really nice to finally be able to celebrate Christmas in my own home and start creating some of our own traditions as a family.

Some things we do a little differently to when I was growing up. We leave the stockings downstairs, but Santa always delivers one present upstairs to each of the kids. Breakfast on Christmas morning is cinnamon rolls. (Although this year it may be banana blueberry muffins as they are already made!) Lunch is never turkey, as we have turkey at Thanksgiving and for some reason DH thinks it's too soon only a month later to have another turkey. Not really - we just choose to have something different. As DH had to work until the end of the day this Christmas Eve, he is not making beef Wellington as he did last year. There will still be beef though, and salmon for those of us who don't like beef very much. No Christmas pudding or Christmas cake. After my recent attempt at making mince pies, I'm thinking I should try making a real English Christmas cake next year and am hoping my mother still has the recipe she used when we were little. I do make a 'kid's trifle' - with jelly/jello instead of sherry, but mostly I'm the only one who eats it. (Trifle makes for a yummy breakfast on Boxing Day!) DH surprised me this evening by producing a box of English Christmas crackers - the kind that go bang and have silly paper hats in them.

I got the following via email from friends a couple of days ago:

1st Annual Christmas Day Open House
Friday December 25th, 12:00 noon -10PM

For Kids & Childish Adults ▪ Dress Exceedingly Casual ▪ Light Fare Served All-Day
Leave your present-opening mess at home & come mess up our house, instead!

Although we've always considered Christmas Day a family day, I think we will take them up on their invitation. There's room in the routine for a new tradition!

Where is Mr Kipling when I need him?

Mince pies are not easy to find here in the US, and when you do find them they are often quite expensive. Most Christmases I just go without, although occasionally I do find some imports and decide to indulge in a box. This year, inspired by Karen, I decided to try making some.

I'm not sure when the last time was that I made mince pies, if ever. I think I need to practice. The store-bought mincemeat was acceptable, but the pastry left something to be desired. They did look quite nice though:


Maybe if I master making mince pies, another year I'll try making a real Christmas cake.

Search terms

Here are some more of the search terms people have used that brought them to my blog in the last few weeks. Some are fairly obvious. It's gratifying to see at least one person (probably my mother) was clearly specifically looking for my blog.

• almost american blog

There was the usual handful who appear to have an agenda they are looking to reinforce:

• why americans shouldn't travel
• americans should only speak english
• no one is more american than anyone else
• americans only speak english

Others who appeared to be looking for the answer to a specific question

• my license photo does not look like me, should I get it retaken?
• why americans only speak one language
• why do americans only speak one language?
• how to know what turkey to shoot
• why is there february vacation

I didn't understand what some of them were after or why Google would have brought them to my blog in search of it:

• Wednesday in hat
• tornado american hat
• out of office humping-mania
  

I don't believe I have ever mentioned humping on this blog before, let alone any kind of humping mania!! (DH wants to know "Is there an in-office humping mania?")

• m&ms vs smarties

was back, along with

• m&ms vs smarties vs skippers

Never heard of skippers, but I assume it must be another kind of candy.
Apparently at least one Russian-speaker was in search of information about Doctor Who:

• доктор кто

This one I thought was somewhat scary:

• shooting my own thanksgiving turkey in supermarket

I hope this person found out that it is NOT OK to shoot your own turkey in the supermarket. Indeed, there should never be any need to shoot the turkeys in the supermarket as they are always dead already!

I wonder if this one was an American living in the UK:

• britain has too many rules

So do a lot of places. Some of the ones without rules aren't places I would want to live!

All true!

When I got home from work today, I found a message on our answering machine from President Bill Clinton. Yes, the man himself! Of course, it could have been someone impersonating him, but I very much doubt it. We also got a Christmas card from President Jimmy Carter and his wife today! Less impressively, I just hung up the phone on Governor Dukakis. (Hey, it was bedtime for the kids and reading a story to the kids was more important!)


Of course they all wanted something - our votes, our money . . . I will be glad when both the primary election and the seasonal fund-raising are over!

Birthday party food

A while ago Parent Hacks website posted a 'wonderful' idea one of their readers had come up with: serving jello (jelly) in individual serving sized paper cups. Hmm - we were doing that years ago in the UK for birthday parties. I've never seen jelly (jello) served at a birthday party in the US. Over here, the food at kids' birthday parties is usually pizza followed by cake served with ice cream.

When I was a kid in the UK, we had sandwiches (cut into little triangles), jelly in little paper cups with whipped cream on top , and 'fairy cakes':
(Picture from citybumpkin's blog.)

I remember chocolate blancmange rabbits on lime jelly grass too. I don't think they sell blancmage in the US, not that I've ever looked for it. (No Angel Delight either, which I remember we often had for dessert - I loved the butterscotch flavour!) Here's a picture of a blancmange rabbit, though the red jelly looks weird to me - it really should have been green!


(Photo from howarew's photostream at Flickr.)

The actual birthday cake might or might not have been eaten at the party, but guests were usually sent home with a slice wrapped up in a paper serviette. Americans I've mentioned this too all think that is really weird!

What do you remember about the food served at children's birthday parties when you were growing up? Has kids' birthday party food in the UK changed?

Lunch

. . . is nearly ready. And , yes, it includes green bean casserole (as discussed in the comments over at Pond Parleys) because my father-in-law likes it! DD has already announced her intention not to eat it! I'd like it better without the fried onions on top. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving tradition

A housemate of mine introduced me to this many years ago - the New England Thanksgiving tradition of listening to Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie.

Catchphrases (2)

1. "Ooh, Betty!" - Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford) in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
   
2. "I didn't get where I am today by . . . " - The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
3. "Get down Shep!" - John Noakes on Blue Peter
   
4. "You're gonna like this - not a lot, but you're gonna like it! " - Paul Daniels, magician
   
5. "Good game, good game", "Nice to see you, to see you nice", "Didn't they do well?", and when memory fails say "Cuddly toy!" - Bruce Forsyth on the Generation Game
   
6. "Ooh, you are awful! But I like you!" - Dick Emery
   
7. "Boom boom!" - Basil Brush
   
8. "Rassen-frassen" - Muttley in the cartoon Wacky Races
   
9. "Can you tell what it is yet?" - Rolf Harris
   
10. "What do you think of it so far?" - Morecombe and Wise (I think their answer was always "Rubbish!")
11. "You dancin'?" "You askin'?" "I'm askin''" "I'm dancin'" - The Liver Birds
    
12. "And now for something completely different..." "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" "This is an ex-parrot!" - Monty Python's Flying Circus

Catchphrases

Some more phrases from my TV watching past.

1. "I didn't get where I am today by . . . "
2. "Ooh, Betty!"
3. "Get down Shep!"
4. "You're gonna like this - not a lot, but you're gonna like it! "
5. "Good game, good game", "Nice to see you, to see you nice", "Didn't they do well?", and when memory fails say "Cuddly toy!"
   
6. "Ooh, you are awful! But I like you!"
7. "Boom boom!"
8. "Rassen-frassen"
9. "Can you tell what it is yet?"
10. "What do you think of it so far?"
11. "You dancin'?" "You askin'?" "I'm askin''" "I'm dancin'"
12. "And now for something completely different..." "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" "This is an ex-parrot!"
    

Phrases remembered (2)

1. "Stupid boy!" - Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army
   
2. "It's good night from me" " And it's goodnight from him" - The Two Ronnies
   
3. "Que?" ("He's from Barcelona") and "Don't mention the war!" - Fawlty Towers
   
4. ''You've all done very well'' (in a quavery voice), “It’ll ride up with wear”, "Are you free?" "I'm free!" - Are You Being Served?
   
5. "May your God go with you" - Dave Allen
   
6. "I've started so I'll finish" - Magnus Magnussen on Mastermind (Did you know he wasn't British? Lived in Britain most of his life but never took British citizenship.)
   
7. "Evening all!" - Dixon of Dock Green
   
8. "Exterminate!", "It’s bigger on the inside!" - Dr Who
   
9. "Shut that door!" - Larry Grayson
   
10. “Just like that” - Tommy Cooper
    
11. “Gissa job” - Yosser Hughes in Alan Beasdale's Boys from the Black Stuff
    
12. “42″ - is the answer to the ultimate question in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was a radio show before it became a book, computer game, comic book and TV show.

Phrases remembered . . .

. . . from TV shows:

1. "Stupid boy!"
2. "It's good night from me" " And it's goodnight from him"
3. "Que?" ("He's from Barcelona") and "Don't mention the war!"
   
4. ''You've all done very well'' (in a quavery voice), “It’ll ride up with wear”, "Are you free?" "I'm free!"
   
5. "May your God go with you"
6. "I've started so I'll finish"
   
7. "Evening all!"
8. "Exterminate!", "It’s bigger on the inside!"
9. "Shut that door!"
10. “Just like that”
11. “Gissa job”
12. “42″

More to come . . .

Bill and Ben and Little Weed

Answers to Saturday's questions:

1. "Little weeed!" - Bill and Ben, the flowerpot men (1950's and 60's)



2. The Woodentops and their Spotty Dog. While Daddy Woodentop was busy doing 'men’s work', Mummy Woodentop was busy in the kitchen with assistance from Mrs Scrubbit. (1950's and 60's)



3. This (American) one from the 1960's was in color - but I mostly remember Stingray in black and white.



4. "Hugh, Pugh, Barney, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!" The firemen in Trumpton.



5. "A house. With a door. One. Two. Three. Four." Playschool.



6. The Clangers. (No soup dragon in this episode though.)



7. "Making good use of the things that we find, things that the everyday folks leave behind." The Wombles - who went big time with a hit record and a movie!

Vision On!

One of my favourite TV shows as a kid:



Tony Hart and Rolf "Can you see what it is yet?" Harris both made art look so easy!



"Jim fixed it for me!" - another cultural reference that DH doesn't get!