Barking Mad

A Letter to Jamie Oliver from the Asylum's Resident Englishman

 

Dude,

As a fellow Englishman, you are driving me bonkers!

Don't get me wrong, your new series "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" is fascinating, enlightening and seriously entertaining.  Some of the things on the show are truly frightening to see.  We will be watching like hawks when Gaby starts school, because she's already a finicky eater (to put it mildly) and we want her to have a good diet, not just junk food.  So your series is an eye-opener for us.

That said, you need to stop trying so hard to sound like an American.  You're not.  You never will be, with an accent like yours.  The only accent harder to lose here is any of the Scots accents, but especially the Glaswegian.  Still, with the GEICO Gecko on TV every time the ads come on, you should be a breeze for the colonials to understand.

And what's with the "brother" a hundred times in ten minutes?  You may have been helping the young lad to cook, but he doesn't even look like you.  For a start, he's too tall.  So he's not your brother.  He isn't even your second cousin twice removed.  Back in Britain, he'd have been "mate", or "sunshine", or "young man".  Okay, the last one is a bit Brian Clough, but you can see what I'm getting at.  Don't ruin it and go all transatlantic on us expats.  We already have Catherine Zeta Jones for that.

Where does "ass" come from, too?  You're not ghetto-smart.  The only 'hood you've ever seen is the one on your parka.  You're from London.  And Londoners use "arse", especially when preceded by "silly", or followed by "nal", or, dare I say it, "hole", unless they are actually talking about donkeys.  Even then, they usually just call it a donkey.  Next, you'll be dropping the "u" from colour, rumour and ... shock!  horror! ... flavour!  Seriously, it could ruin your whole image if you can't spell the word that is intrinsically intertwined with the very thing for which you're famous.  Don't do it.

Lastly, where's the Lambretta?  Couldn't they fit it on the plane?  Didn't you get it shipped over here?  You are so not the SUV type.  I mean, can you imagine driving a tank like that around the streets of London?  You get stuck just off Regent Street and they'd have to knock down a couple of buildings just to extricate it.  Two wheels, mate.  Even if the trip is a couple of hundred miles between towns here.

Ta Ra for now!

G

It’s Not 3,500 Miles, But It Takes Almost As Long

 
         Long distance relationships aren’t easy things.  Sometimes the distance itself can be deceptive.  Who would have thought that 3500 miles and 322 miles could be so similar?  It takes a transatlantic flight 8 hours to get from Gatwick to Boston.  It takes a Subaru 6 hours to get from here back to the house in Maine.  A case of so near, but so far away.

Now I know that the new job is the number one priority.  No job means we have nothing at all and that is unacceptable.  So here I am, in New York in a hotel room, while the wife, Lil’G and Matt are back in Maine suffering under the strain of moving, feeling under the weather (in Audrey’s case, quite under the weather!) and literally being under a lot of weather.  I just got an e-mail saying that it was windy, with thunder and lighting, to follow the snow that blew through earlier.  So, not only is Audrey working out the kinks of another house move without me there, she’s doing it just as winter decides to show up.  My Dad used to say that I never did anything the easy way.  Seems like that still holds true.

Now I’ve done the long distance relationship before, when Audrey was here in the USA and I was back in England, so I have had more practice at it than I really wanted.  More than that, I thought I’d never have to do anything like it again.  Yet here I am, 6 hours away and unable to lift a finger to help pack, keep the kids under control and take care of the unwell.  It doesn’t make me feel too great, leaving Audrey to get over being ill by herself.  My place should be there, fetching, carrying, cooking, tending and taking care of everyone.  And it sucks that I’m not.  Badly.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though.  Oh yes it is.  We got snow here in Upstate New York this morning and my car got hit in the parking lot outside our site office.  The funny thing?  The car that hit it was being driven by one of the safety engineers.  As Alanis Morrissette once sang, “Isn’t It Ironic?”  Oh, the damage isn’t bad, because he wasn’t driving that fast.  It’s just that the car park was icy under the snow and he slid as soon as he touched the brakes.  Could have happened to anyone, but it did happen to me.

OK, I was kidding (a bit) about the doom and gloom.  It feels good to be working again, even if the whole thing was thrown together in a mad panic.  My computer turned up on Day 2 and the security pass on Day 3.  Why do I mention the security pass, you might wonder?  Because without it, I needed to have someone let me back into my section of the office every time I went to the bathroom, break-room, or any other damn room!  You don’t need to ask how happy I felt once I was able to do that on my own.

 The people I’m working with are a good bunch and they have made me feel welcome in the week and a half since I started.  I have work to keep me going and it’s only going to get busier as the project ramps up into serious construction work come next Spring.  A big plus is that I get to see the building as it goes up, as there are windows looking that way on my side of the office.  It’s an impressive sight.

So I guess I’m lucky.  There are many out there who have lost their jobs and remain unemployed after months out of work.  I know now a little of how they feel.  The mere thought of putting my family through that gives me the shivers.  One month was bad enough, not knowing where the next opportunity might come from, whether anyone would see any value in bringing me on board and where it might lead us.  As I said, I’m one of the lucky ones.  This company came after me, for a job I didn’t know was out there, in a place I didn’t even know about.  I owe them a great deal and I intend to give them full value for their Estimator.  Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?

It’s still a little reminder of a long distance relationship, though.  But we’ll get through it.  And once the stress of this move is over and done with, we’ll emerge on the other side, stronger, more humble, but, more than anything, together.

G

While the Cat's Away ..........

Who said anything about mice?

Hi, this is G here, sitting in for Auds while she and Meg are off down South at BlogFest. For those of you out there without Twitter, you'll all be glad to know that the two of them survived the road trip, even including for the fact that one of Meg's stints in the driving seat involved driving through that little place called New York.

They even survived the horrifying "SatNav doesn't recognize the destination" disaster.  Well, it didn't want to recognize it until Auds took it into Radio Shack to get a new map card and show the rep it didn't work, which, of course, prompted the thing to work after all. I guess it got a bad case of replacement angst in the shop.

This is not to say that even with Ms. SatNav working they didn't get lost anyway. I have it from a reliable source, i.e. Auds herself, that this happened at least once on the trip. Somehow, it just doesn't surprise me as much as it should. It's that woman's voice, you see (Ms.SatNav, not Auds). Now, if I got got a menu with, say, Jeremy Clarkson's voice on it (from BBC's Top Gear), she would never get lost again, I guarantee it.

They made it there eventually and I can tell that Auds is enjoying her time down there, as is Meg. But I'll let her fill you in on the details when she gets back.

Meanwhile, back here at Casa Barking Mad, it's just me and Lil'G, hanging out and having fun. OK, this "fun" part.  Let me tell you about that.  I was due to take a half-day's vacation Wednesday, then all day Thursday and Friday, to let me spend time doing things, going places and having fun with Lil'G while her Mum was away. That's not quite what's happened.

Tuesday morning, I wake up with a really sore throat and a head that feels like it's had silly-putty pressure-injected up my nose. A cold. In the middle of July. It could only happen to a Brit. I must have sounded pretty bad, because Auds seriously thought about cancelling her road trip to stay and look after me and Lil'G. Not only that, but when I phoned in sick to work, my colleague at work just said "TFFT, you sound like crap, don't come in 'til you feel better - a lot better". After more than a little worrying on her part, I managed to convince the wife that it was only a cold and that she should still go. So, I snuffle my way though Tuesday and Wednesday at home. The worst was over by Wednesday afternoon and I was feeling really good about getting out and doing things with Lil'G on Thursday and Friday. Except for the manic itching at the back of my knees.

All through Wednesday night it was driving me nuts. It was a fairly warm and humid night, so I didn't think much about it, beyond the  fact that it itched like crazy all night long. Eventually, Thursday morning arrives and I try to see what the deal is. Well, the deal soon becomes blindingly obvious, because it's not just the backs of my legs that are affected, it's my arms, legs, torso, the works. When I got to see the Doc that afternoon, and when he could get a word in edgeways, with Lil'G talking his ear off, he called it a serious allergic reaction, the worst he'd seen in a few years. Worst thing is, I don't know what caused it. Doc said that given the extent of the hives, he thought it was something that I ate - and that prescribing a topical steroid would be no good "because there's not enough in Hannaford to do you any good". But I didn't eat anything new, which leaves a couple of cosmetic items, which will never encounter my skin again. I know the picture of my arm isn't great, but you can't pay me enough to post the one of my chest on here.

All of which means that me and Lil'G have been spending quiet, restful time around the house, playing with stuff, watching movies (Barbie and the Diamond Castle, Sound of Music, more Barbie, Shrek 2 & 3, Barbie again, yay). It's not what I had planned, but Lil'G seems to be making the most of her Daddy time. Most of all, because she knows I'm not feeling well, she seems to enjoy being the one taking care of me, making sure I'm OK. She has been a little gem, too. On her best behaviour, you might say.

The only disappointment I have is that she didn't try my cooking last night. I made a pot of beef stew last night in my first time cooking in a while. It turned out pretty good, even for me, but Lil'G was having none of it. Now I have never had a cooking misadventure on the scale my Dad had once, when my Mum was ill in bed. When it said 4oz of batter for the Toad-in-the-Hole recipe, there was a reason. Dad thought it didn't look enough. The batter didn't rise and get fluffy, there was a lot of it and when it came to dinner time, we didn't have Toad-in-the-Hole, we had Tapdoles-in-Quicksand. No, my cooking, as even Auds will admit, is pretty serviceable.  Gaby took one look and wanted Spaghetti "O"'s.  Oh well, there'll be other times.

And when it comes down to it, you just can't get upset with your 3½ year old daughter when she worries about the "plumps" on your arms and snuggles closer on the sofa so she can rub them better.

More later,

Big G and Lil'G

Germs 1 - Auds 0

What do pneumonia, strep throat, dual ear infections, dehydration, and exhaustion have in common with the wife? 

They are all cohabiting rather unharmoniously right now.

After turning over several times last night thinking one of the cats had crawled into bed with us and was mewling pathetically (not something that's uncommon, yet they are never very loud), I realized it was Aud's laboured breathing and the wheezing sound that was produced as she struggled to breath and not the cats.

After a couple of hours spent in her physicians office this afternoon, accompanied by a chest x-ray, she was sent home with strict orders that if her lungs haven't cleared up by Monday morning that she's going for a stay in hospital for a while.

Auds, being just a little on the stubborn side, insists she'll be back in the saddle on Monday.   Knowing her intense dislike of more needles and the general smell of medical facilities, let's hope her hard-headed nature wins out and beats each of these illnesses into submission.

In the meantime, me and Lil'G are taking good care of her (you know she has to be feeling really bad, because she let me cook dinner tonight).  I provide the matériel support and Lil'G provides the hugs, the smiles and the laughs.  With us for support, she'll be right as rain in no time.

Big G & Lil'G

Is Trauma Contagious?

Hi there. G here, "pinch-hitting for Auds, who's laid up in bed with what could be the flu.

Now, I'm sure you are all aware of Aud's nickname of "Trauma Magnet" and it is fair to say that she has had more than her fair share of "stuff" happen to her. However, the question in the title is a very real concern of mine, being married to her. So, is trauma contagious? I'll let you decide.

This story goes back to yesterday, just before 11am, at the office. That's around the time I usually like to have my mid-morning cup of tea. OK, it's an industrial-sized mug, but you get the picture. The office has an open kitchen area, with a big double sink and one of those kitchen faucets (taps to all the Brits out there) that you can pull out from the base unit, with a braided hose, rather like a shower head.

The short series of events begins with me realizing the time and thinking I want a cup of tea. So, I go to the sink in the kitchen to wash out the mug, same as I do every time I want a drink. I turn on the faucet and notice that it's not quite seated properly in the base unit. Then I do what 95% of people would do and push the attachment back into
the base unit.

Big mistake.

Next thing I know, the attachment gets fired in my direction, almost clearing the sink and almost hitting me. Thankfully it didn't. Unlike the jet of water from the hose, which, instead of pointing vertically down, as would have ben the case had the faucet attachment still been, like, attached, was now pointing directly at my chest, at maximum flow rate.

Cue water everywhere. There was water all over the kichen area. There was water all over the floor. Spike, our admin girl, thought it was raining in the office as the spray cleared the partition into her cubicle. Even Beanpole, whose space is one cubicle back from the kitchen area, a good 20 feet away, felt the splatter effect. And the thing couldn't have been running for 5 seconds before I shut it off. It was a watery disaster and I was soaked (as was a good part of the office).

Turns out the hose had come 99% unscrewed from the faucet attachment and that I was the (un)lucky one to make that a round hundred. To make matters worse, the smallest spare shirt in the office, one of our company polo shirts, was an XL. Now I'm not the smallest guy on the planet, but you could fit 2 of me in this thing. I guess it just wasn't my day.

I really hope this trauma thing isn't contagious. On a Trauma Magnet scale of 1 to 10, this rates as maybe a 3 and I really don't want to find out what a bad case of trauma looks like.

Do you think they have a vaccine?

G