The Giving of Thanks

Irving Berlin wrote it, Bing Crosby sang it, and I agree: I've got plenty to be thankful for. I might not be able to buy everything I need at the five-and-dime, but I do have what I need and then some. In the spirit of the holiday (ignoring the possible historical anecdotes about Pilgrims and Indians), I'd like to list a few of the things that I'm thankful for.

My husband. He tops the list as the family I see most often, and the person who has supported me the most during hectic moving house, hectic wedding planning, overwhelming dissertation writing and job searching, and all the difficult patches of transitioning to life in a new country. Not to mention all the times he insists on doing everything for me when he's home: getting me things, putting things away, washing dishes, tidying the leftovers. He's amazing.

My family. My awesome, talented, and extremely witty (and pretty!) little sister off at our good ol' Mother So Dear...WFU. The other half of the Vulcan Mind Meld that is the sum of our endless pop-culture references, inside jokes, and intellectual snobbery; my Maid of Honour, and the only person who has been my friend her entire life. My mom and dad and their respective Other Halves. My parents deserve a lot of credit (or blame, depending on how you look at it!) for the woman I am and that I'm becoming. I hope the way I turn out earns them more credit than blame. My mom and dad especially have taught me a lot, but I owe them the most for my testimony of Christ and the importance of family in my life.

My friends. Though there are too many to name, the few who stick out to me at the moment aren't a third of the full list of people whose friendship I enjoy and appreciate. Actually, most of these people have probably been a better friend to me than I've been to them! Christina, Favourite, Alicia, Lauren, Danielle, Clinton, Rachel J., Elizabeth G., Krystle K., & Krystle O.

Our flat! As much as I've bemoaned the orange and purple accent walls, hideous statuettes, glued-on decorations, and copious vases - all with good reason, I might add - this has been a great place to spend the first bits of life as a married couple. I didn't realise how much I missed having a dishwasher until we moved in here! And I can only imagine how spoiled I've been by having an en suite bathroom...and not having to turn the heat on all autumn or winter! It's Thanksgiving and our heat still isn't on! How awesome is that? I submit to you: very awesome.

The hot water bottle I got from my mother-in-law at Christmas last year. At least twice this season it's saved me from freezing to death in an office above an 18th-century bakehouse down at Jane Austen's House in Chawton. There were days where I seriously felt one hot water bottle away from hypothermia or frostbite. You don't know the meaning of cold until it's so cold you consider holding the urge to pee for three hours rather than running to the un-heated loo down the stairs. I have a new-found admiration for Eskimos...I don't know how they do it. ;-)

My Fanny Farmer Cookbook; a birthday present from my momma that has helped me make pumpkin and apple pies, buttermilk biscuits, and blueberry muffins and pancakes galore. That book supplied a large number of the recipes of my childhood and so it's a piece of home.

The drive to work where I can crank up the volume on the car stereo and sing as loudly and obnoxiously in a harmony of thirds as I so choose. No neighbours to annoy with my joyful noise, whether it's singing to Wir Sind Helden, John Mayer, or Josh Groban and the MoTab.

Legally dubious internet TV sites that let me keep up with my 3 favourite TV shows - Glee, Grey's Anatomy, and Private Practice.

Finally, out of all the other things I can mention, I'm thankful for Thanksgiving. For the excuse to make an enormously unnecessary amount of food - all of it tasty - and lounge around in the contented bliss of a full stomach and a tryptophan overload. I also love that Thanksgiving marks the time from when it is no longer a socially dubious practise to put up a Christmas tree. It's time to deck the halls, deck the walls, and deck your kids and your wife and your husband, because it's Christmas: we're decorating everything up in here.

Where's Wally?

Who remembers the "Where's Wally?" ("Where's Waldo?" for all My Fellow Americans) books from their childhood? The long stretches of time spent finding a tiny man in a stripey shirt within a large picture of assorted candy canes, factory components, beach paraphernalia, city buildings, and other objects that made him really impossibly hard to spot. That is, until you were 8 or 9 and the whole search for Wally/Waldo could be completed in record-breaking time. Then it was time to move on to the wonderful world of I Spy books. Wow, nostalgic moment...I sure do miss those.

(Random aside: Sebastian and I found - I think in Salt Lake City - a museum exhibition on the scenes that were created for the I Spy books. They had huge pieces of the sets that the guy designed, large posters of the finished photographs, complete with the rhymes, and other optical illusions with which to compare them. It was pretty neat.)

Anyway, back to Wally and where on earth he was. So last night involved a trip into London. Alas, not to see our friends but to attend the Classical Extravaganza concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The concert set list was nice, and introduced me to at least two works of classical music that I hadn't previously heard, but enjoyed thoroughly. And it was my first time inside the Albert Hall. My problems begin long before the concert (yes, it's time for a brief list of grievances):

1. The first we heard of this concert was in July. It sounded pretty interesting, but we made no formal commitment to ourselves or anyone else to go. Apparently that wasn't clear as tickets were purchased for us and we broke our budget this month to avoid recrimination and awkwardness. At least, though, the concert felt worth the ticket price, so it was nice.

2. After the concert came our game of "Where's Wally?". Wally is an 80-year-old man in our congregation who absolutely LOVES going to the Classical Extravaganza concert. Incidentally, his wife refuses to accompany him...as she's one of the choristers at church, I find this quite telling. Anyway, several of our party - a party amongst whom, I must add, we were the youngest by about 30 years with one exception - met up at McDonald's in town to carpool into London. Yay saving money on fuel! So we volunteered to take Wally in our car and meet everyone at the concert hall.

After some mind-numbing traffic (we spent an hour inching 10 miles along the M4) we got into the city only to find that between emergency sewer work and the general construction on Exhibition road, we would still be inching along towards the Albert Hall. Having not checked our tickets for a while, Sebastian and I assumed that the concert started at 7, (which had passed 23 minutes ago), and told Wally as much when he asked. He and his cane promptly hobbled out of our back seat and beat a hasty (and surprisingly quick and nimble!) advance upon the Albert Hall. Having just passed the parking garage, we executed a highly illegal and marginally dangerous 5-point turn to get the car in the other direction so we could park and make our way there. Mind you, the reason we'd passed our parking spot before Wally got out was because we assumed we had to drop him off in front of the Hall on account of his nearly crippled state. Lies. The concert, we discovered, actually started at 7.30, so somehow, Wally and his cane made it (a)halfway up Exhibition Road to the Albert Hall, (b)up 4 flights of stairs and (c) into his seat in the row all in the 6-7 minutes before the first song began.

The concert proceeded along fine until the end. Wary of our car being locked in the church garage (our old church building is conveniently on the same street as the Albert Hall), Sebastian booked a pre-emptive retreat to make sure that we didn't have to beg a place to sleep at Angus' or Jake's place. Returning successfully with our Clio, I joined him only to inform him that shortly after he had left, Wally made another swift and nimble exit and was now nowhere to be seen.

On the chance that he may have just nipped off to the little old men's room, Sebastian circled the Albert Hall to look for him; on the hope of being able to inform him that his place in our car for the ride home was still available if he needed it. I kept watch on the nearest door and saw our party scarper in two large groups. Sebastian came back: no Wally. My report: others had left, but I saw no Wally either. He found some other people we'd met up with and asked them, "Do you know where Wally is?" upon which, the full humour of our situation was revealed. Alas, they hadn't seen Wally either. And when we called the first group to depart, none of them bothered to answer their mobiles! Honestly, old people. What are they like?

After some more waiting and another swift circuit of the building, we decided to call it a night, and if little 80-year-old Wally was left in London to fend for himself against some fierce and resourceful homeless people...well, upon his own head be it. We even had other responsible adults agree to back us up if anything untoward happened after we washed our hands of the magically vanishing Wally.

So what, class, is the moral of this story? For the love of all that's good and decent, PLEASE remember that it's good manners to inform the people who were kind enough to give you a ride there that you don't need a ride back! To ignore this action is unkind and irresponsible. Seriously. When you're that old, you're old enough to know better, forget that you know better, and forget that your forgot at one time so that all previous lapses in judgement are conveniently forgotten under the guise of senility. I swear, some old people grow up to be juvenile delinquents.

Random Observations

1) I'm still amused that I live in a country now where the term "armed police" isn't redundant.

2)Now that I don't own or have access to an actual television on a regular basis (the ones at the gym don't count), I think I actually watch more TV per week than I have at most other points in my life.

3) The key to running for long distances is to pretend it's easy until you fool yourself. Then, whatever distance you've covered seems impressive because your perceived effort doesn't seem proportional. I thoroughly enjoy exploiting this phenomenon to make myself get through 5+ mile runs.

Another Short Note

Dear UK Border Agency and Immigration Office,

do you enjoy making people's lives just a little bit worse? I politely request that you stop "updating" your Leave to Remain forms when no changes have been made to either the questions or the fees. Also, do you really need £475-730 just to pay for the clerical fees and salary of the handful of people who actually look at each individual application? I don't think so. Please kindly stop sucking.

Yours Truly,

the annoyed wife of a British national

PS - do you tell us not to call while you're processing our applications because you're actually too disorganised to keep us updated, or is it because you're tired of people's justified rants on your inefficiency? Just wondering. :-)