Buxoms 1; Looters 0

Just a quick note to let you know that we're fine. We traveled to Canterbury last Monday and have been busy with rehearsals, services, and short day trips every since.

Also, I've been chaperoning an extra teenager in addition to my own kids. It's obviously a question of the blind leading the blind, but there you are.

Naturally, I've done some shopping--my motto is, after all, Dum spiro, shoppo. But a lot of it has been in gift shops or places like TopShop for my daughter. Not for myself. Damn it.

I've got my eye on a Boots, though, and as God is my witness, I'll be there today.

My iPhone wrote this post

I like to think that my particular blogging forte is Deep Thoughts on Shallow Subjects, but I'm a little short on fashion and style thoughts these days. (This will no doubt please the two or three weirdos readers who would rather hear about my life.) Therefore, the following is a version of My Life in Pictures. With commentary. And a minimum of whining.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Buxom and I drove out to Hancock, New York, to watch our kids in a production of Les Miserables.

Here they are being peasants. Miss Buxom's cheeks are extremely red, partly because of the lavish way I applied Chanel's Rouge (from the Fall 2011 Byzantine collection.) But also because she was coming down with walking pneumonia.

After two days of driving from New York, we were greeted by the news that our house, which had been full of painters for five days, was going to be full of painters for Quite a While Longer. The painting, it took much time. The patching, it went on for many days. Only to be followed by the sanding, and the depositing of lavish amounts of plaster dust.

Please notice the lovely soft celadon/light avocado green in my dining room. Also note the Chinoiserie curtains. (Honestly, someone with such Old Lady taste in interior decorating should shut her pie hole about fashion, don't you agree?)

See the trim over the sideboard? It used to be two asymmetrical white rectangles. I asked the painter to make it one big rectangle. Now I can hang art. Or a mirror. Or sconces! Maybe all three! What joy.

Wow, I really need to polish those candlesticks. And put everything back where it belongs.

Study in chocolate

Mr. Buxom's study used to have navy blue wallpaper with a pattern of stars. Now it's painted chocolate brown. I hope bird approves, as Mr. Buxom's study doubles as bird's guest quarters. Please note the dramatic effect of the super dark walls only partially illuminated by the afternoon sun. That, my friends, is Style.

OK, now we're up to a week ago.

On our way to take Miss Buxom to the doctor to hear the bad news about the walking pneumonia (which I've decided to call La Pneumonie Marchante out of free-floating Francophilia, and because she contracted it while she was being a French Peasant, and also because the French pronounce the "P" in "Pneumonie," which amuses me to no end) we discovered that the previous evening's torrential rain storms had caused flooding in my basement. And some destruction of drywall and such.

So. Disease, dust, disaster, distruction ... somehow I'm not doing a lot of shopping.

Thank goodness I'm still in deep, deep love with the bag I bought last April.

I've also fallen down on the grooming front. 

Faux Fuschia, please note that it's not chipped, per se. But it's still revolting.

Ooh-la-la! Those nails are misérables! I desperately need a new Shellac manicure. I've put  off my re-Shellacing due to zee Puh-nee-mo-nie, the painting, and the flooding, but I'll be dealing with it very, very soon.

Because? On Wednesday, we're flying to London.

p.s. The house is still at sixes and sevens, but Miss Buxom is just fine.

Last year's Christmas card

In case I never got around to sending you one, here's the picture from last year's Christmas card.



Inside the card it said "We hope your Christmas rocks!"

As you can see, it took quite a while to get a picture good enough for a Christmas card:






I know what you're thinking. What kind of narcissist thinks we'd be interested in her Christmas card outtakes?

Hey! This kind of narcissist, that's who.

Actually, I'm not doing it out of ego. I'm doing it so you'll get an idea of what I go through. I spend the whole year trying to get a picture of the four of us looking passably attractive and doing something interesting. And this is a huge challenge, because we're generally sitting around staring into a laptop and looking like dog vomit.

See, I'm not a narcissist. I'm a whore. I want pity, or if not that, empathy.

I mean, those Christmas cards of the entire family looking adorable and perky on a beach somewhere--the little girls in Lilly Pulitzer shifts, the little boys in matching polo shirts ... don't you just hate those people? Please say yes.

We interrupt this series of trip reports for a brief announcement

I'm still in Salisbury, but in about an hour I'll be boarding a bus to take me to Heathrow and home.

I'm sorry to leave England.

But I'm not sorry to not be drinking English coffee.

Trip report: Cirencester

After we landed at Heathrow and got organized (which took a while because part of our group came by another flight and showed up late, and another person's suitcase went missing) we boarded buses and drove straight to Cirencester, which is just charming.


This could be a painting by Constable, but is actually a cell phone photograph taken from a bus window, can you believe it?

The money around here has traditionally come from the sheep business. "Cotswolds" means "sheep pen in a crappy location where the weather sucks and the soil is so poor that all you can do is raise sheep."

Naturally, they revere sheep. They even put up statues of them.



Don't you love that the sculptor's last name is Tweed?


"It's almost like a Tom Swifty," she mused slowly, while taking pictures of her shadow.

After some pub grub (I had steak and kidney pie! Without the kidneys. And a Pimm's Cup!



Which came with a Pimm's swizzle stick! That I forgot to keep, God damn it) we went window-shopping to admire many things that wouldn't fit in our suitcases


Including the cutest broom and dustpan I've ever seen


Where you revere sheep, you have wool shops. So you can knit a poppy purse. And tea cozies!


Sorry, tea cozies are not for sale.

And everywhere I went, I saw Miss Marple.







I even saw where Miss Marple would buy new clothes. If Miss Marple did buy new clothes. Except, of course, she doesn't.


No, not vintage. It's new.

Reason number 53,295 I love my son: he'll pose next to anything. He'll let me prove that in Cirencester, the guitar store that drew him like a fly to honey is next to one of those fancy toy stores where all the toys are wooden and from Italy--or based on an English children's book.


The metal fan and the giant wooden clown

And of course, we had to go to a bookstore. Because why would I buy The Cleaning Bible or Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany or the second Twilight series novel for my daughter from Amazon when I could buy them in England???

Maybe I should have bought something a little harder to find in America, like Beautiful Pigs or Ripping Things to Do



Or these:



Then, a visit to the wonderfully-named Cake House for tea, Bakewell Tart, and Millionaire's Shortbread.


And a peek at our iPhone

By the end of the afternoon, we were feeling as worn as the local parish church


Seriously, I feel like a gargoyle, only crumblier.

Right now, I'm drinking a draft Long Bow. Which is hard cider.

Amazing, incredible news

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be locking the windows and taking my jewelry to the safety deposit box at the bank, but this needed to be said:

1. I took my son shopping for shoes yesterday because his old Merrells were pretty much shot. So we bought him a new pair. AND THEY'RE THE SAME SIZE AS THE OLD ONES.

I know. When does that ever happen? It's like I'm leaving the dentist office and the receptionist is saying "see you in five years."

2. I am totally caught up with the laundry. Every sheet, every pajama, every towel, every sock, every single pair of jeans. The laundry room is empty.

I think I'll make my entire family travel to England with their pajamas on just to keep things that way.

Laundry. Shopping. Packing. Cancelling the newspaper. And writing blog posts.

Point the first: The laundry, it never stops. Because not only did I have to deal with the stuff that accumulated while I was lolligagging around town with my BlogHer friends, I also have to wash the sheets and towels my BlogHer friends used.

I'm hygienic like that.

Point the second: I've noticed that when I do laundry, my kids wear their favorite clothes first. And I can predict exactly what will happen. There will be the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth when his/her favorite jeans/t-shirt is in the hamper in Newtopia while we're unpacking the suitcase in England.

So I'm confiscaing their clean clothes. I take them out of the dryer, fold them, and pack them into suitcases that I'm hiding in my study.

I don't care if my children spend the next two days wearing their pajamas--I'm not washing those damned clothes again.

Point the third: Hey church! Enough with the rehearsals and the Evensongs, already!

I guess we have to be ready to do this in great big English cathedrals, but three Evensongs in a row? Who's going to attend? We might have to bus up some skid row bums a selection of Chicago's shelter-deprived underprivileged to fill the pews.

Point the fourth: Really? With the white blouses and the black pants? Really?

How many white blouses do they think I own? Or summer-weight black pants? Because the answer is none.

I mean, how much time do I want to spend looking like the waiters from a Parisian bistro?


Point the fifth: I posted this BeautyHacks entry this afternoon. The typing and the formatting, it took hours. Cutting and pasting emails left me with really huge spaces
and hinky formatting
problems. Which took forever to
fix. So please read it. It's interesting! Really! I quote bloggers who are (justifiably) more popular than I


am!

I'm leaving on a jet plane

Not today--we'll be leaving on Thursday.

I'm going to England with my husband, son and daughter. We'll be there for 10 days, during which time my son and I will sing in about a million Evensong services at Salisbury Cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral

Between Evensongs, we'll be doing whatever it is you can do within a few hours drive of Salisbury. We'll explore the Cotswolds, visit Oxford, go to Cardiff, take the ferry for a day trip to the Isle of Wight, marvel at Stonehenge, and buying and eating disgusting amounts of English candy.

So here I am, frantically going through the lists of what we're supposed to bring and freaking out that my son's dress shoes don't fit him anymore. All to get ready to start packing as though we were going on safari instead of to a country where they speak English and have stores like Boots and TopShop.

So here are some nice pictures stolen from the internet:

The Cotswolds

Oxford

Cardiff Castle

Isle of Wight

Stonehenge

Because I"ll probably forget my camera--or leave the cable or recharger at home.