Everydaystranger

We’re getting ready for tonight.
Hope yours was as full of smiles as ours has been so far.
-H.

Happy Thanksgiving from my beloveds to yours.
-H.

Yesterday my stepmom arrived. She’s in town for the week and my dad arrives Thursday night, just in time to be there for our massive Thanksgiving bonanza.
“I’m going to need you to pick me up in the big car,” she’d said hesitantly on the phone the night before.
I laugh. “Why, how much are [...]

I am a big fan of the disaster-scenario. The end of the world, virus-gonna-wipe-you-out kind of thing. Stephen King’s “The Stand” computed (the book, not the film because seriously? Rob Lowe as a sensitive deaf-mute? What’s next, “Conan the Barbarian as portrayed by Richie Rich”?). As did “28 Days”, only [...]

DD tagged me for a meme. Now, I really never do memes but this is DD, she of unbelievably cute family, and she’s from Nebraska and I totally want to score points with someone from Nebraska.
The meme is simple – go to the 6th file of photos on your computer. Choose the 6th [...]

I have started my new job, and so far so good.
Really.
I am very, very happy here. I got a phone number yesterday, I get my own laptop today, and soon my phone arrives. I am badged and car-park stickered. I don’t have my own desk but none of us do, hot desking [...]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – life is difficult when you’re an American English speaker in England.
Actually, I’ve probably never said anything like that. What I have more likely said is “Stop fucking making fun of me, you prick!” That’s more along my lines of distinction, really. I’m [...]

The Baby P case is affecting me greatly.
How can it not?
Last night for the first time they showed a photo of the little guy, one when he was close to the end of his life. His golden curls were shaved off. His eyes are sunken in. He’s covered with chocolate – done [...]

Today is a special day.
Tonight is Children In Need, and we’re only

Angus and I have had a long-running discussion about class.
I know, it sounds like we are one wildly exciting couple, but hear me out here.
We’re not class snobs. We won’t avoid people who don’t have jobs any more than we will avoid people who have landed titles (although it’s not like we meet people [...]

I was awake since 5:30 this morning, spinning around in my bed. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about something.
It never fails to amaze me that you don’t have to take a test to become a parent. That (fertility or lack thereof aside) you can basically go out on a Friday [...]

Nick was sick all day on Sunday, crying with fever and chills. He spent most of the day sleeping it off, and by Monday he was fine.
Yesterday Nora got it. It started with vomiting all over the sheets in the middle of the night and continued with fever, chills, and listlessness. She [...]

We’re just had an exhausting night coping with two sick babies, both of whom are finally asleep now at almost 8:30 am, and we are both exhausted, sad for the babies, and smelling quite strongly of puke.
But when they were better:

We have five days to Children In Need. It’s next Friday, and this is [...]

I’ve been writing this blog for 5 and a half years now, which is a shocking amount of time. It’s lasted longer than the majority of my relationships in my life, longer than my time in university, longer than any time at any of my jobs in my career so far. I look [...]

First off, this:

Why, you might ask, are my children wearing ridiculous headscarves?
Those headscarves are the official BBC Children In Need headscarves. I’ve signed us up for some fundraising, because Children In Need is something I feel very, very strongly about. Every year I spend a Saturday evening on the couch watching Children In [...]

You know what I hate?
I hate opening up a news webpage or opening a newspaper and seeing in large print that a gay couple has gotten married. There it is – splashed large across a page. Same-sex. They don’t have wedding announcements in the usual “birth-death-wedding-engagement” section as heterosexual couples, they get [...]