My Wonderful Weekend

I have had a marvelous weekend! It's currently 20.00 (8.00 p.m.) on Sunday night and the sun is still shining! Steve is reading "Paddington Bear" to Caleb, Audrey is in her bed, and Julie is asleep in her room. Domestic bliss.

Yesterday, our "British experience" was to ride a double decker bus into "the city." The city is Reading, according to the locals. Caleb, Audrey, Steve, Julie, & I waited at the stop at the kerb outside our house for #3`. It's the only route that goes by here. We dropped the change in the box, put the folded stroller in on top of some kids' scooters, and went upstairs. The kids wanted to sit in the very front. It felt like we were going to run over cars and kerbs and such as we were driving along. The kids enjoyed themselves. The plan was to go to Reading for lunch, then Steve & the kids would ride the bus back home and I would have an afternoon to myself for shopping. The plan worked well.

I ended up buying more stuff for other people than myself, but that's part of the fun! I was home by 6:30. Steve and the kids got home about 3:15. It was nice for everybody!

Then today after church, Steve asked what I wanted to do today (for my b-day). I said I wanted to go get ice cream. What I meant was that I wanted to go back to the city and do some more shopping, but if I said that, the kids would mutiny. Fortunately Steve knew what I wanted to do and was cool with it. This time we drove and parked in a garage. Mom - it was a different garage, located not at Broad Street Mall but at Oracle Mall. Much airier and the ceilings were higher.

Tomorrow I will try to go somewhere and get my first British haircut. I don't know if beauty shops over here are closed on Mondays like home. Guess I'll find out. I'm looking kind of shaggy - and not in a fashionable way.

Speaking of fashion, I am having some major fashion flashbacks to the 80s. What's scary is that I've seen a couple of mullet haircuts on girls - not as a fashion "don't" but as high fashion. Yikes! What's more, the floaty gauze skirts and tiered ruffled skirts are coming back. As are espedrilles. Some of you who live in more fashion-forward areas than Los Alamos might have already seen these things, as they have been out here for over a year. I remember seeing them last summer when we were here.

On to other things now - BT has acknowledged now that we have THREE phone lines into the house, instead of the TWO they acknowledged for the first 2 weeks of our stay here. Two of the lines are BT lines and the third is still under contract with the previous tenant and another company. Steve and I are not sure how this works, since at home we have ONE phone company who is responsible for and/or owns all the lines to a building. Anyway, we were told that the other BT line could be connected for us...on July 26. One step forward, two back.

Still no TV or dryer, but hopefully Monday we'll have that all straightened out with a rental company.

Speaking of laundry stuff, I've had a question about our washing machine. Specifically why it takes 2 hours to do a load of laundry. Karen - to the best of my knowledge here is the answer:

The washer is a front-loader. It's not as big as the front-loaders in laundromats at home, but it might be as big as household front-loaders. I don't know how long those take to wash clothes normally - maybe Gwen can help out there. Anyway - after loading the clothes in, I can choose to use either the normal load size setting or I can push a button for a "half load." I guess it just uses less water on the half load. It doesn't load with water like mine at home does. It will spray enough to dissolve the powdered detergent tab, then intermittently over the next 10-15 mintues it will add water to the load as it spins the clothes. I really don't know why it takes so stinking long to wash clothes. Maybe with Gwen telling me how long her front-loader takes we can get a better gauge.

And you're right, Karen...washing everything by hand (including cloth nappies) would be TOUGH!!! I guess that would build character, huh?

That's all for now. I need to log off so Steve can call his folks. Next weekend our "British experience" will be to go to Warwick Castle for Audrey's b-day.