Thank you USO!

Well, it's official. Elliot Yamin wants me to run away with him...All photos under copyright protection (remember, you steal, you get my kids for a week!)

but his timing is all off.

After the hubby came through with such a great date, how could I even consider? (Now Elliot, you come around when I've had a day of nothing but diaper changes, bickering children, piles of muddy and stinking laundry, dishes reproducing in the sink and a husband who has stared at his mistress (MacBook) through it all-- then we'll talk.)




Oh, fine. He didn't want me to run away with him. He didn't even ask.

When he came up on stage, he had a "polite", respectful audience. I was close enough to see the subtle glances to his band members... "Ok, this is going to be a long set", but by the end of his second song, people now knew what they were in for and were in to it. The floor was vibrating with the foot tapping ( I can't stop my leg!) from behind me, teeny's in front of me were holding up signs "I HEART Elliott!" (put that down, can't you see I am trying to take a few hundred pictures here?)

I realized how long it's been since I've seen a live concert (um, I think it was Billy Squire, or Billy Idol... they were both in the same year--wait, it could've been Journey with opener, Bryan Adams) when the girls up front didn't pull out their lighters and sway to the music... they used their mobile phones! What a strange, new world I've been (not) sleeping through.


And speaking of "swaying",
See who is singing behind Elliot? Any American Idol season six people out there?

It was a great show (and he was polite enough to suffer through all of our "Idol" worship while probably suffering jet lag).


Never give your camera to someone shorter than you, the angle is not the most flattering...

Forty-Something

Recently I heard a man on BBC Radio mention that he was doing a lot of reminiscing, "You begin to do that when you reach your forties, don't you?".

We'll make today my "All Things British" day and point out that most sentences end in a question. "We all make mistakes like that, don't we?" "It's horrible how polar bears are losing their habitat, isn't it?" "You can't buy good clotted cream unless you're in Devon, can you?".
It goes along with their obliging, uber-polite nature, "I'm terribly sorry I hit your car when you pulled out in front of me nearly causing my child to lose all of her teeth on the dashboard".
I find it's almost like they are giving their statement the opportunity to be more of an inquiry in case you might be offended by it.
Anyway, we love it and we love all things British, don't we?

So, back to the radio comment.
Yes. I think you do (start reminiscing).

I cruise the Classmates page and wonder what people are doing (and then click on the "don't show my visit" button because I don't want to look as if I have no life and I am living in the past). I desperately sought (and found) the Christmas music I listened to as a kid and played it over and over and over.... not to mention the Koo Koo Choo Choo train that I had to have and paid antique prices for (and now won't let my kids play with it because it cost so much).
But I would say my biggest trip down (lack of ) Memory Lane is my quest for a doll's house. I never had one. I used to pathetically stack boxes on one another and fill them with anything I could gather from around the house.
So when I got here, I had to have a British doll's house.
You may not know this, but pathetic is something that you can wear, because one day this elderly man approached me at church and asked if I had a doll's house yet. I told him I didn't, but that I would get one before I left. He said, "Well, I am going to build you one" and did. He built one like he had built his wife (but got me the "proper" windows his wife tells me with a subtle glance towards her husband).

While it was being built, a dolls house showed up at my favorite auction house. I loved it. I hovered around it and nervously watched as the bids didn't make the reserve. I went back the following week thinking the reserve would be lowered, but it wasn't. I anxiously watched as the auctioneer rattled through bids on his book and maybe a lady in the back, but as the crowd moved towards the furniture, I looked at the tag and saw that it was still unsold! Third time I called my husband in Germany. From the car park. "Talk me out of this" I told him (he had already seen several pictures I sent with my camera phone). Something he said that got me was, "You need to ask yourself why you want it so bad. What need is this filling for you?" Wow. I didn't know....
So week four, I bought the darned thing. I couldn't bear to watch someone else take it away. It's like when the young man is asking if the young girl is right for him, and Mom says, "How would you feel if she walked out of your life tomorrow?" "I'd be devastated. I can't imagine my life without her in it." "Then I think you know the answer." (Real conversation, the couple marries on the 12th).
I still don't know what need the house is filling for me. I just know that when I look at it as I go up the landing, I want to hug it (and did the first couple of times).
Forty-something has been expensive for my husband, and unfortunately I plan to be in this age for a very long time.