Pond Hopper

My Christmas party is tomorrow night.  The good news is I do not need a bigger house to hold the twenty guests  that originally accepted my invitation.  One by one most of them contacted me with mainly weak excuses on why they wouldn't be able to make it.  This is the problem with having few real friends and many acquaintances.  Real friends show up and acquaintances say they will, but if they are presented with a better offer will almost always opt out. My guest list went from twenty to six in a matter of a week.  I also have six who are still on standby probably waiting to see if they get a better offer.  I'm sure it sounds like I'm angry by the result, but I'm really not.  I'm just telling it like it is.  I moved here eight years ago, well into adulthood.  When you move to a foreign country at any stage, it is always hard to find friends, but when you do it at a time in life when friendships are already formed and social circles...

After watching the horror of what happened in CT all weekend, I kept my son home from school on Monday.  It just felt better having him here with me.  He's been having trouble sleeping and even though I made the decision to keep him home well before he woke up with a nightmare Sunday night, I told myself he needed the extra day off to get some extra rest.  The truth was I just wanted him close by.  I wasn't ready to drop him off and watch him walk out of sight. Over the weekend he woke up at least once a night crying and asking me to stay with him.  On Sunday, he called me in and said, 'I can't sleep, Mommy.  Please stay next to me.'  After I finally got him back to sleep, I said to my husband, 'I hope he didn't catch any of it on TV'. We made every effort to turn it off any time any mention of it came on when he was in the room, but when it first happened, he was there as we saw the children being brought out of the school.  As s...

I guess all I have to do to get myself to go back to blogging on a regular basis is to say I'm not going to do it for a while. I'm in the process of trying to write a book.  I am n page 42.  The problem is that I have been on page 42 for the last two weeks.  I'm going through yet another bout of writers block.  I'm struggling with self-doubt.  I feel like I'm no good and I've lost momentum.  I feel disconnected from the story and I'm struggling with finding a way back to it.  I've thought about reading what I've wrote so far, but I know it's awful (a first draft isn't supposed to be great) and I fear it will only make it worse.  I start the day thinking I'll write and then do all I can to avoid doing it. Part of the problem is that my writing course is over and now I feel lost.  I feel like without the course, I will have no way to learn the craft.  I have no idea what I'm doing.  The thing is, you either have it or you don't an...

Yesterday, twenty children got up, got dressed for school, had breakfast and probably searched the house for an elf before they kissed their parents good-bye for the last time. I watched the news in horror as the details unfolded.  I cried countless times thinking of those children and their loved ones and my heart broke more every time the body count went up. Today I have heard some stories of the teachers and school employees who tried to protect the students.  Some were successful and some weren't, but all of them were heroes. As a class mother to my son's kindergarten class (UK- reception), this really hits home for me.  I spend one full day a week in the school with 30 wonderful children and some really great teachers and teacher's aids.  I can't imagine someone coming in and ending lives.  It's a horrific event and I find it terrifying.  Since moving to the UK, my heart has always been in the US and ...

I'm sorry it's been so long.  It's not a good time of year for me.  I get homesick when the holidays come and get quiet.  It's not like I sit around depressed - I just get quiet.  This year I've been making an effort to not let it get to me.  I invited friends over for Thanksgiving and made a huge dinner and next weekend, I'm having a Christmas party.  It was a bit of a last minute plan so I didn't expect so many people to accept the invitation, but somehow I'm supposed to find a way to fit 20 people in my house.  English houses just don't have rooms big enough to fit a lot of people so the party will end up spread around the house.  I'm looking forward to it though.  It might be just what I need to lift my spirits enough to get through the holidays... Anyway, I hope by the time the holidays are over, I'll get back to blogging on a regular basis.  Until then, thanks for checking in and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and all...

I had to share an excerpt of our projects in my writing class today.  I hate reading my own work and hate even more, reading it aloud.  I did it though and it went really well.  After reading it, we were given feedback from the teacher as well as the class.  All of mine was positive which made me feel really good about it.  As I haven't been very proactive on my blog lately (because I've been concentrating on my book) I've decoded to share the same except with you as well... It was the beginning of July.  My mother had just gotten central air conditioning and she liked it cold.  What made it worse was that my room was in the basement and because it was underground, it felt at least ten degrees colder than it did upstairs.   I laid in my bed shivering with the phone under the duvet wearing my thermal pajamas. ‘Come on Eve, just come to the party’ Tess pleaded. ‘You know my mother hates that you call me Eve.  She says my name is E...

My 4 year old son is obsessed with Angry Birds.  Last Christmas, my husband bought me a tablet PC.  Soon after, my son started playing with it.  At first I was showing him all of the educational apps I could find, but he watched me download and started downloading things himself.  I had to take my card number off of Google Play because he started buying games as well (yes, he's four!).  Somehow, he discovered Angry Birds and he's become obsessed with it! He has an Angry Birds lunch box and wants the toys for Christmas.  Last week, was the much anticipated release of Angry Birds Star Wars.  He couldn't wait to get home from school to download it.  I'm not sure if I should be proud of his skill level or ashamed.  I never wanted to be the kind of parent that lets their four year old become obsessed with computer games, but he goes to school full time now and when he gets home, I just want to let him relax and have ...