Earthshaaaaake!

This morning started like any other - Paul and I got up to the lovely sound of Elijah yelling, "GET UP YOU TWO!" Paul and Elijah were heading up to Canterbury to go suit shopping for the wedding, so they had to get ready. The two of them hopped in the shower, and I went into the bathroom brush my teeth (yeah, all three of us can actually fit in our bathroom). After finishing my teeth brushing, I hung around to chat with Paul and all of a sudden, we felt a violent shaking, like, our entire house was shaking. We all looked at each other with priceless shocked faces and I said, "What the hell is that?!" Paul had to take on the surfer stance to keep from falling over, I held the sink and thought, 'Sweet Moses, the back of our house is collapsing!' Hahaa. Most of you know that we're doing a lot of demolition back there, and it wasn't build too well in the first place about 30 years ago, so I wouldn't be horribly surprised if it did fall down. As soon as the shaking stopped, I ran back to check out the house - it was fine. Nothing out of place, but our power was out. What in the world was it? I asked Paul if it coulda been an earthshaaaaake, he said probably not, earthquakes are hardly heard of in Britain. I chucked on some appropriate clothes and went outside to see if anyone else at felt it. Well, the entire street was full of confused people - many rumors beginning to spread - power plants blowing up, gas explosions, etc. etc. No one had a clue what had happened.

To make a long story short - it was an earthquake. About 5 on the Richter Scale - so a "light to moderate" earthquake. You can read about it on most news sites. Pretty weird in jolly ol' England.

Obnoxious little toof gnome

I know this isn't important to anyone but me, and it will show you how truly vain I really am...but I must gripe about this for a minute. I'm not one to normally care THAT much about my physical appearance. Don't get me wrong, I like to do myself up and look nice, but I'm not the girl who obsesses about being a few pounds overweight, or if I have an extra long third toe, or if I have a new wrinkle on my forehead or a grey hair. It's all just me, and that's fine. Until today, I have been mostly accepting of the changes my body has undergone because of various life events, such as pregnancy, general stress, and plain slowly getting older. The one thing I have taken pride in and genuinely love about my appearance is my smile. I gots some nice straight toofs that are pretty white and nice and things. Well, I looked in the mirror this morning, and YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I SAW!

My bottom teeth have always been completely, totally, utterly straight. Well, this past week, some obnoxious little toof gnome (dressed in lederhosen and pointy buckled shoes) has broken into my house and screwed up my teefs. I think he had an accomplice too. My lovely straight teeth are now C-R-O-O-K-E-D! Yes, crooked, as in, not straight. What is this alternate universe? When did this happen!? My wisdom tooth on the bottom has been acting up lately, and I now realize it's out for mouth-domination and will stop at nothing to achieve it. I know, I know, I'm totally overreacting, It's hardly a big deal, it's hardly noticeable.

But it so is.

I have a slight overlap. Oh my - did you read that? Let me repeat myself. I have a slight overlap. Am I the most vain girl ever to be born? Yes. I have scheduled surgery with Dr. Paul Teeet Martin for 8 o'clock this eve to rid my mouth of the evil wisdom tooth from hell.

Deer Woman

It's Tuesday, after a pleasant 4-day weekend of leisure. We totally let the house go, didn't clean or do anything responsible and just had fun. It was great, and now I have to spend the entire day purging the house of piled-up crap. Anyways, Paul had 4 days off and we did all sorts of things. We went to Leeds Castle on Friday, to Neil's BBQ on Saturday, went to church and did Easter things Sunday, and went to Port Lympne Animal Park yesterday. I put pictures of most of the weekend activities up on the site.

Let's see, what's going on here in England? We're all finally over our sicknesses, I think, so that's a good thing! Today I have one of Paul's friends coming over to introduce me to her babysitter. Yeah - Paul and I can go on dates! It's so weird getting an actual babysitter. Ya know, a teenager, just like I was, who's gonna raid our house for all the good food, have her friends over, talk on the phone all night, do all those things most babysitters do. It makes me feel all growed up, that I'm the one on the other side actually hiring a babysitter! Good lord, I'm the mother of an almost 4-year-old!

This is so not important information, but it's hilarious. Paul and I were flipping through channels late one night, and came across "Deer Woman" - a short horror film that was, by far, the most amazing specimen of acting, directing and production I've ever seen. It was about a woman who had deer legs and seduced men, then trampled them to death. Hahaaaa. At the end we actually got to see the deer legs and stuff, it was classic. She jumped off a balcony to get away and her skirt flew up and you could see her super awesome deer legs. Hahahaaaa. If you ever have a lonely boring night, see if you can rent "Deer Woman". It's almost as good as "Sasquatch Hunters".

OK, I must really stop slacking and get to working cleaning my house, it's embarrassing.

Stinky (but oh-so-cute) polecat

Sorry it's been a while since I added anything to the website. We've all been sick and uh, I've been what's known as "lazy". A few weeks ago Elijah had croup. He woke up at about 10pm from his sleep and couldn't breathe. The only way he could breathe was to violently cough and then suck in air. It wasn't very fun. It took us an hour to calm him down and get him breathing ok again. I took him to the doc the next day and he just confirmed the croup and said it's a virus and it'll go away on its own. This family has caught every virus known to man in the past 3 months. It'd be nice to feel totally better. I think Paul & Elijah would second that.

So I tried being a master baker again - I've come to the conclusion that it's my oven that's the culprit here. 'Tis my new nemesis. There's no way I can be THAT bad at mixing ingredients. I made a 10" cake that's supposed to be a nice light & moist butter cake, and it turned out like pound cake. Actually, more like ton cake. It's eatable though. So yeah, then today I made an 8" chocolate cake and same thing - it's like crazy dense pudding. It stuck to the pan despite my thick layer of shortening and butter, and I had to patch 30% of it with frosting. Awesome! Anyways, I think we've decided to get someone to make our wedding cake. Paul has convinced me that I may kill somebody if I'm trying to make a wedding cake the week of the wedding when all my family and friends are here. So yeah - he knows someone at work whose wife does cakes. I'm past the point of caring!

This morning we found a polecat in our back garden. It's like a humungo smelly ferret weasel thing. Of course anyone that knows me knows that I was all like, "AWWWWWW - it's so cute! I must have it! Can we keep it pleeeease?!" When I find cute little animals in my yard, no matter if they're actually someone's pet or not, I assume it's poor and starving and homeless and I want to take it in and nurture it like it was my own wee babe. At first we were just throwing ham at it and it was gobbling it up, then Paul went outside and the polecat ran directly at Paul. Polecats are apparently quite vicious creatures, so Paul jumped back thinking it was gonna go for him. Well, quite the contrary. It got up to him and was jumping all over him like a dog, rubbin' on his legs and lookin' fer love. We came to the brilliant conclusion that it was someone's pet. By the way, polecats STINK! Paul stowed it in a box in our kitchen while he figured out what to do with it, and it let off this insane musky butt stank. Ick. We eventually found its owner about 6 houses down from ours. Weee, fun small cute animal adventures.

I just got back from walking Elijah to playschool only to find out there isn't playschool this week cause of Easter. Nice of them to tell me. Shoot.