I like running errands!

One thing I will miss about living in the UK is home delivery. Many people here still do not drive, so many more companies offer home delivery.

Groceries, for instance. I know you can get this in the U.S., but at least among the people I know, it was seen as a silly thing to do. We all drive past so many grocery stores, it's silly to pay for delivery. But, I don't drive here, though I did live down the block from a large, new grocery store. Still, I couldn't carry but so much, and it got boring walking over there everyday in all weather. Sometimes my husband would walk over & carry stuff home too. Sometimes we'd drive & stuff the car full, but that meant wasting half of Saturday.

I began by ordering sometimes, to stock up so I could then get along for a while walking over every couple of days. Then sometimes I'd get more because I knew the weather was going to be too yucky to walk in, or I knew we'd be away visiting relatives on the weekend so unable to fit in a drive to the store. It grew. By the time we moved to this house, I had gotten in the habit of a weekly order. I'd just walk up to the local shop for milk.

THEN, the milkman came by & we started getting milk delivered 3 days a week. We never run out! I will REALLY miss milk always being magically there. Though we often forget to bring it in until Tony goes out the door. Not so bad in winter, but when the weather warms, that will be risky. I know it's delivered around 5 a.m., Tony sometimes doesn't leave until close to 10!

They also deliver a whole range of basic groceries: all the sorts of dairy products, eggs, bread, sugar, flour, & pet food. Not a bad brand, but not the brand we use, but we thought about it because the store we get pet food from requires a car to get to, so it required PLANNING. When we did go, we'd get 2 or 3 bags each of food & litter.

Then, when I was going out of town, we didn't go to the pet store the weekend before, & Tony didn't want to take sick baby while I was gone. I had bookmarked the petstores website long before, but thought the delivery fee too high. We were desperate though, so decided we'd just pay the fee this one time. While ordering though, I found out that ordering 50 worth gets you free delivery. So we ordered 4 bags of food and 4 bags of litter. Which lasted until last week. So I just ordered 6 of each, which should last 'til we move.

I will really miss home delivery. It's so great to 'run errands' at 11 pm in my pajamas, with a beverage on hand. Plus, I think I'm saving money by not picking up this & that while I'm in the store. My husband will tell you, I can this & that the budget pretty painfully.

In response to 'When do Moms Come First'? on LA Moms:
http://svmomblog.typepad.com/la_moms_blog/2008/11/when-do-moms-co.html

The thing is, as middle-class women, we are uniquely able to feel 'dissatisfied', and to be ever involved in re-defining ourselves.

This second time around, my circumstances are very different than when I raised my daughters. In those days, I and most of the women I knew worked hourly wage jobs and struggled to make ends meet. If we dreamed of school, it was of office skills training that would allow us to go up one or two levels at work.

Nowadays, most of the women I know are middle-class SAHM who, despite college degrees and the ability to obtain quite interesting work, dream of training as writers and artists . Unlike myself, most I know did the college thing back when, and have held the sorts of jobs women in my previous life couldn't conceive of holding. I find it interesting that even with the training, skills and jobs they could hold, they spend time dreaming like teenagers of 'someday' instead of truly digging in to the here and now.

I guess guys do have dreams of chucking and all and becoming __________, but it seems women are the ones that get the opportunity. Often because they've been working at home, being the mom, and can't easily get back to their old career.

Things to eat upon my return home:

1. Steak, possibly at my friends restaurant in Seal Beach on my way to Irvine from LAX. I miss the taste of American beef.
2. Big American Breakfast, at Chester Drawers in Costa Mesa
3. Vietnamese baquette sandwich from Lee's
4. Fish Taco feast
5. Hamburger at Ruby's--more American beef!

I'm sure the list will grow.

Starting Over Again, Over Again

That's where I am now. Actually, it seems I've been here before. Does everybody's life change radically every few years? From here, it seems some people at least, have lives that flow from one stage to another. Mine seems to take sharp turns, sometimes unexpectedly and I'm starting over.

After the divorce, after marrying again, after moving cross country, after buying a house, after going back to school, after graduating, after moving overseas, after having another baby last year! This one seems to be the hardest, cause I keep thinking I KNOW how to be a SAHM with a little one. I've done this bit before, right? But I'm in a different place, physically, mentally, financially, so, it's all new. But I'm loving it!

We moved fairly often when I was growing up, and it seemed if we didn't physically move, then my class at school would be the first or last in the way the school system divided up the sequence, so I'd be at a new school. Up until the point at which my husband and I bought a house when I was about 36, I'd lived in 18 houses and apartments that I remember, and 2 or 3 more when I was a baby.

The first morning I woke up and went down the stairs in our house, I recall thinking, "How odd! I may never live anywhere else! Maybe a nursing home, but maybe not. Waitaminute! THIS house? The last house I'll live in?" I looked around at the unfurnished downstairs and wondered if this house was worthy of the task. I also suddenly wondered if I'd like the security of owning a home after being somewhat of a gypsy all my life.

I needn't have worried. Five years later, we moved overseas! Due to some unfortunate circumstances involving our first landlady, we've already lived in two houses here and are actively looking for a third! We still own the house in California, so I may yet grow old in it. In the meantime, here's to being a gypsy again.

There are a few things in cuisine that seem to be universal.

This subject came up in another blog (http://frugalupstate.blogspot.com/2008/06/frugal-food-part-one-eggs.html in comments) and it reminded me of a discussion we had in the kitchen at my old job at the Yacht club. We were working around the table, a mixed bag of Americans of various ancestries and combinations. German, Native American, French, English, Vietnamese, Mexican of Native Origin and Mexican of Spanish Origin, Swedish, Irish. It started out with comparing various Eggs and ____ breakfasts and evolved into, how picky an eater could you be and still manage to eat whereever you traveled? We tossed around a lot of candidates, but in the end, only came up with a few items:

• Eggs, of course. Bear in mind, you might have to eat non-chicken eggs in some locales.

• Beans. Is there any cuisine which doesn't have a favorite bean?

• Grains. Wheat, Rice are certainly almost universal, though what is made from them can be a long way from the nice slice of yeasty bread westerners expect. Maize brings up a strong 3rd in the America's, but is not as devotedly used elsewhere.

• Onions/Garlic and some sort of leafy green option seemed to be the only universal vegetables! Potentially, Tomatoes but we weren't too sure. And, the leafy green is laughably vague!
  

Meat consumption is unpredicatalble as to variety and availability. Cheese and Dairy only SEEMS universal to westerners. Potatoes also. Peppers or Chillis are woefully underrepresented in some cuisines. But, we concluded, if you only like the items listed above, you ought to be able to find an acceptable meal anywhere in the world and maintain pretty good health. And not look too rude to your hosts, so long as you carry off the idea that this escetic diet has a purpose for you other than allowing you to be too picky to expand your culinary horizons.

Though, a bottle of hot sauce in your rucksack would be a nice bit of insurance.

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