Back In The USA

Ok, so the highlights of my trip included seeing Big Ben a couple of times and the outside of the Parliament building (we couldn't go inside since Parliament wasn't in session... but not to worry, one of the bobbies standing guard outside said "oh, never mind-- you didn't miss much anyhow..." Heh, no political opinions there!); visiting the giant lions at Trafalgar Square; exploring Westminster Abbey and reading the inscriptions on all of the freestanding tombs and the crypts on the floor as I walked over them; getting winked at by one of the Queen's guardsman on horseback; taking the tube *everywhere*; going to see Fame and The Lion King in the theater district at Covent Garden; watching Arsenal play Wigan at Highbury and realizing that I'm more of a soccer hooligan than I'd previously thought; seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace; shopping at the Portabello Road open market; etc.

It was a good trip, and I honestly would really like to get back there sooner than later... though hopefully the next time I'm back in London, I'll be with friends. There were a lot of other places I wanted to explore and things I wanted to see and do that my parents weren't interested in doing/were too tired to do. But last night I already started planning a potential trip to Spain with Susan, and I mentioned wanting to go back to London to Matt, so perhaps international travel might be happening for me again sooner than later. Now all those two have to do is get passports!!

Ok, I guess that's it for now. I got a lot of errands done yesterday and today is my last day off before getting back to the grind, and I want to make it a good one. So far today all I've done is eat. Everything (surprise surprise). And now all I want to do is sleep... but there are some other things I know I should be doing instead. Perhaps a shower will inspire me to start the day. Heh.

Four Things

Just a couple of things I could use right now, in case anyone was wondering (or offering):

1. A haircut. I haven't had one in a few years and I've finally lost my chickenshit fright of cutting it off and giving it away. Go figure.

2. A personal massage therapist. Visiting Laura in New Haven is great, but come on, she's got a life, too. I need to figure out how to get a person of my own to follow me around massaging my back at all times, and when I'm sitting, to switch to my feet.

3. Nooky. Lots of it.

4. A winning lotto ticket-- I don't want to go back to work on Wednesday!

What do you need?

Homeward Bound

My trip to Englad is sadly coming to a close... I really liked it here and wish I'd had more time to explore. But I kind of feel OK about leaving since things were somewhat limited by having my parents as my travel companions. We got to see a lot of the touristy things one commonly sees while in London, but there were a bunch of other things I'd wanted to do while here that I fear will just have to wait until my next visit {hopefully with friends/lover(s)}.

Anyway, I'm currently at an internet cafe and it's my very first time. How exciting! This will clearly be my last posted entry in this time zone as I'm leaving in the morning for America, but I think I have a day or two off from work as soon as I get home, so I'm planning on updating this here blog with photographs and a much more in-depth account of the last couple of days of my trip.

So for now, Noodle fans, I bid you all adieu.

PS- No spell check here, so pardon my errors for now!

Greetings From Across The Pond

Hullo from jolly old England, Noodle Fans!

Britain is fun but I've only been here a short while, so I don't have too much to report just yet. So far it seems like all I've been doing is trying to catch up on sleep and trying to find places to eat... except for last night's killer football (otherwise known as "soccer" for all you Americans out there) match where Arsenal played Wigan at Highbury and Wigan ended up winning in extra time... boo! Then all I did was stand up and scream at the top of my lungs. Geez... I never imagined I'd be such a loud sporting events spectator. But it was so much fun!

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm in the hotel's business centre and internet is expensive here... even though we're expensing it to Bob's company, but still. My mom is at dialysis right now and later when Bob goes for business meetings the two of us will go to the London Museum of Natural History. The three of us went there for a short while yesterday and saw their dinosaur exhibit, which brought me right back to childhood and to walking around the Museum of Natural History in NYC... and to being scared shitless that the dinosaurs were going to come alive and eat me. Heh. Tonight the plan is to go to see a musical with my mom, and then I'm not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow.

I guess that's it for now. Knowing that I have internet available here, I'll probably update at least once more before I return to America. So for now, cheers!

On My Way To The UK!

Ok, it's 4:13pm on Monday. I'm showered, packed and ready to go. We're leaving for the airport in 17 minutes and I'm finally getting excited!

Work the last two days was ridiculous. On Saturday I only had 4 patients, which should have been an eeeeaaassssyyy day compared to what I normally have, but for some reason I didn't have a chance to sit down for more than one second the entire shift... and I barely got my paperwork done on time. Then yesterday they switched me to the other side of the unit, so not only did I have to take on all new patients that I didn't know, but I also had to have an assignment of 7. Ugh. It was a really hard day, and I didn't finish my paperwork until after my shift was complete... so I didn't leave till almost 8:30pm.

And actually, kind of to demonstrate just how crazed I've been these last couple of weeks with running around, illness and emergencies, trips to here-there-and-everywhere, and terrible patient assignments at work, I need to let you Noodle fans know that I didn't even remember I was leaving the country today. One of my coworkers asked me yesterday morning if I was getting excited for Monday. I stared at her blankly for a couple of moments, not responding. She continued with, "You know, for when you go to London?" I was completely dumbstruck-- I hadn't even had a clue. Sigh.

Hopefully my life will start to settle down a bit once I return to New York-- I think I could use a little touch of calm for awhile. Anyhow, that's it. It's now 4:23pm and I've got just 7 more minutes in which to pee, drink some water, put on my coat and leave. So... I'm off!

Late But Not Forgotten

According to Craig's post, I was supposed to update this blog. Oooooh yeah, I must have forgotten. Well, so I'm updating now. The last time I posted was the 10th of January which seems like forever ago. Since then, a ton has happened. I went to visit Matt in Boston for five days which was an absolute blast. But he doesn't have internet or television at his apartment, so aside from being completely cut off from the outside world, I didn't have a way to check email or blog. Oh well-- I found other ways of entertaining myself....

So I was there from Friday morning to Tuesday evening. Actually, it became Friday afternoon because although my plane was on time, there was some kind of confusion and the plane arrived but there was no flight crew to work on it, so I had to kind of hang around the airport for awhile. But that wasn't so bad... when I got to Logan International, Matt was waiting for me by the baggage carousel :), which was a very nice surprise. The five days flew by and before I knew it, it was time to go home... so he took me back to the airport where we hugged and kissed and where I cried (I know, I'm such a sap), and then I was off.

But not even 10 hours later I got a voicemail from him saying that he was sick and had to go to the hospital, and when I called him back, he spent two seconds telling me that he had appendicitis and needed to have a surgery, then he had to go, and all contact was officially cut off. I called his parents throughout the day, but wasn't able to get a progress report until the evening. When I got home, I booked another flight out to Massachusetts without even thinking a second thought. His folks weren't gonna get out to see him, and he was all by himself in the hospital and in a new apartment/new city without any friends. Awwww. So I went to sleep at 11:30pm, woke up at 3:30am, left the house at 4:30am and caught a 6:30am flight. Oh man, the things I'll do for love.

This is a shot I snapped from the airplane window on my flight that I woke up

for literally at the crack of dawn. See? It's just becoming dawn mid-flight.
Here's Matt looking miserable in his hospital bed. Awwww, poor guy!

So here I am now, it's Friday the 20th and it's late... I just got home and I'm exhausted. There was a problem with the trolley that I took to get to the airport and I was convinced I'd never make my flight, but somehow I magically appeared at the terminal with an hour to spare, not to mention that the flight was delayed about a half-hour. Not that I wanted to be leaving Massachusetts or go back to my job, but I was kind of ready for family/friend emergencies to end and I was in desperate need of sleep, so off I went. I was also supposed to work today but that didn't quite work out due to the details of the emergency and the timing, but I have to work Saturday and Sunday, and then on Monday I'm leaving for England!

Phew! So that's it for now. I have to do laundry before I leave the country since I have no clean laundry and don't think that my dirty clothes will make a very good impression on the UK. And then I have to pack, and I'm sure I'll think of some other loose ends I've got to tie up before leaving. Sheesh-- I'm such a jet-setter!

I'm Weird

I guess it must be more stress at work and with family stuff, but I'm back to having weird dreams again. Last night I dreamt that I had a baby, and it was Matt's, but we weren't married. The baby was a girl, and I just kind of carried her around on my hip for a long time while I went about my day. Then, at one point I was at the hospital, though I wasn't working. And my baby girl was hungry, but for some reason I couldn't breastfeed her, so I decided that I needed to pump... but when I tried to find a private place to go do that, one of my patients who was screaming and freaking out (which he'd actually done that day in real life at work) was there yelling all over again, so I got interrupted and left. Then somehow I ended up walking along a rainy dark street, like a back alley or something, and it was night, and I stepped into some shop lit up by yellowish overhead buzzing artificial lighting, and there were all these guys dressed up in big cartoony-type insect/superhero outfits in primary colors, and magically it was a dive of a pizza takeout place, and I got wigged out, so I left. Then I ended up in some mansion, still with baby on hip, and it was at that point that my phone alarm went off and I woke up.

Getting Back To Family

This year has been kind of tumultuous in terms of my personal and family lives... one year from yesterday my uncle Robert died, and then at the end of May my grandmother died, and I don't really feel like getting into what's gone on for me personally. But family wise, things have been absolutely crazy. We've had falling out after falling in after falling out with various family members, and now finally things seem to be settling down for better or worse.

Today I had a really nice visit with my cousin Samantha. It's something Robert had wanted and something I've really wanted, too. But you know how life is-- things get in the way, you become busy and then there are a million and one excuses that you make in order to avoid what you really know you should be doing. So that's how it went. For the last six or eight years my uncle had been asking me to call Sam, spend some time with her, go out to lunch with her, go see a movie with her-- anything, as long as we were visiting and spending the cousin-time together that she and I and he desperately wanted us to share. But I never did... I always told him that yeah, yeah, I'd call her, or that at the moment I just had too many things going on... so we never hung out except for Thanksgiving and the rare lovely-but-brief run-in's my grandmother made possible. And then they both died.

Strange as it sounds, we had some really nice visits during the days immediately after her dad's death and the death of our grandmother. But it wasn't really a visit, you know? And then life had to resume some of its normalcy... Sam moved to New Hampshire and I started my job, and chances for a visit went from slim to almost none...

Until this week. I've been getting good at doing things more spontaneously, I've noticed. And I had plans for today, but I also knew that Sam was in town and would be leaving before the next time I had off from work. So I jumped on it and asked her to meet me for coffee. What a positive experience that was! We spent a couple of hours just chatting and laughing, telling stories and spending that much-needed cousin-time Robert had always wanted for us.

I don't know if it's the deaths of my uncle and grandmother that have made me think more about getting back to my family, or if it's just maybe a sign that I'm starting to grow up a bit more and realize what my priorities should be. But whatever the reason, I'm glad I'm on the right path, and I can only hope that this trend continues and that there'll be a lot more cousin-time in the future.

Hi, I'm Emily And I'm A Shopaholic

I guess today wasn't the exciting adventure I thought it was going to be. I ended up waking up at 9am, eating everything in sight, then curling up on the couch with "A Baby Story" blaring in the background, and falling back to sleep from 10am until just after 12. Sheesh-- when I'm not working, I'm such a bum.

When I woke up again, all I did was eat and procrastinate (surprise surprise) until the point when I couldn't stand the rat's nest in my hair enough to force me to finally get into the shower to start my day. By then it was almost 3:30pm. My bright idea of getting an early start on the day had failed. Oh well.

So I got ready and then headed out to the mall to make some returns. A couple of weeks ago I'd bought three really cute pairs of jeans, but since then I've lost a little bit of weight, so when I wore one of the pairs recently I realized the big saggy ass part of the pants looks ridiculous on me, and I wanted to get rid of the other two pairs I'd not worn. I'm glad to be getting smaller, don't get me wrong, but it's really annoying to be in between sizes right now. It makes shopping (one of my favorite activities, I'm kind of ashamed to say) and looking presentably cute almost disastrously impossible.

Then I went to the sometimes sexy/sometimes trashy/always overpriced underwear store to check out the giant sale they're having, and instead of glancing at the frilly underpants and walking away, I ended up spending a hundred bucks. I felt a little guilty as I left the cash register with my huge pink-and-white bag, but not guilty enough to turn around and return it all. I mean come on, I know I have too much crap already and that I really don't need any more pricey undergarments and it's all just going to come off as soon as I put it on anyway, but I really like buying things, and I haven't been feeling too hot about myself lately, and my butt really does look cute in some of the stuff I picked out...

And then I went home. No more damage to my wallet, please! And now here I am. I just finished dinner with my folks and suffered through a riveting discussion of "what's going to happen to the house when my parents retire and move to Florida" followed closely by the emotional lighting of a yarzheit candle for the first anniversary of my uncle Robert's death.

Phew. For a day that'd supposedly had nothing too much happening in it, a lot seemed to have happened. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Puntabulous Is Popular

So Craig's blog reached its 4000th hit, and in honor of that, he called for some more reader submissions. This is what I sent to him:


"Here’s an MS Paint representation of when I took you as my date to Mattea’s wedding two years ago and we were dancing up a storm (notice the disco ball) and the photographer asked me if you were my 'honey.' I told him 'no' only to discover that he then wasn’t interested in taking our photograph at all… because being single at the time hadn’t made us feel badly enough.”

Isn't it amazing? I'm so proud of myself. I really think I should consider marketing my MS Paint skills... that'd clearly have me going places.

Anyhow, I'm off from work tomorrow and the next day. Since I'm relatively county-bound, I won't be going upstate to see my manfriend. Sigh. Maybe I'll do something fun locally and will be able to tell you all about it.

Actually-- something kind of funny: I told one of the nurses I work with about my car crash and she asked how fast I was driving. I answered that it wasn't too fast, maybe the posted speed limit, and asked why she wanted to know. She replied that she'd have thought I was speeding... "speeding upstate to get laid." I was quick to assure her that while I was in fact going upstate to get laid, I had not been speeding. Heh. Oh well, I guess I won't be doing any speeding or getting laid for quite awhile. Sigh again.

Ok, that's it for now! More to come later!!

Something To Offer

Ok, so maybe I do have something to offer after all. It's not much, but watching it just now made me smile (in a weird sort of skeeved out way), and I want all of you to do the same!

Watch this and prepare to be amazed. Don't forget to turn on your speakers though... it's only good if you've got sound.

Enjoy!

Ugh

It's the second day of 2006 and already it's been three days since I've last showered. What a way to start off the new year-- no car, no visit to the manfriend, no soapy-fresh scent and apparently no motivation to do anything but eat and sleep. Sounds like a blast to me. Wallowing in my own filth and plumping up before my very eyes is absolutely amazing.

But I have to get back to work tomorrow, so no more wallowing and moping as of 5am Tuesday. Maybe taking care of a whole bunch of sick people will snap me out of my funk and will help me to realize that I'm fine and that things could have been *a lot* worse. Shudder.

Anyway, instead of great new year's eve stories and hilarious photographs of moments perhaps nobody would care to remember, I've got nothing to share. Sorry Noodle fans, but right now my life sucks. Hopefully tomorrow things will be different.