Scuba Certified

A. needed her open water scuba diving certification for her trip to Singapore this summer so I enrolled her in a course. Until I had to look for one I hadn’t noticed how many dive shops there were which puzzles H. Why are there so many when we are nowhere near a place to scuba dive?

I have never wanted to scuba dive and watching this course progress I wanted to do it even less. It was a two-week course that had book work and then practice in a swimming pool and then they were doing an actual dive to get the sign off on their certification. Where in Utah would this happen? Read on.

First after I signed her up at this dive shop I was told (I swear!) that class began Tuesday night at 7pm but to get there about 15 minutes early because there was paperwork. Well, I misjudged traffic and got her there promptly at 7 which I was a bit embarrassed about until A told me that class actually began at 6:30 meaning we were 45 minutes late. Then I was humiliated. The second night I was told by the instructor to pick her up at 9:45 only to arrive then and A tell me that class had been over for 25 minutes. I hadn’t even looked at my phone. Great, I’d become that parent. The next week I asked H to take her because I just couldn’t face the instructor.

I don’t think people are meant to go underwater and breathe. Here’s why, A would come home and say I need to get my fillings checked because my instructor says if there are air pockets in them my teeth could crack from pressure during the dive, or my ears won’t clear and that’s a bad thing. My eardrums could be affected. Suddenly, we need a full body scan to uncover her health issues for a recreational activity?

So it came time to do the actual dive which takes place at The Crater about 45 minutes away. Really cool. It’s also a place for mineral baths and the resort around it really reminded me of Germany. Funny, Europeans always make fun of Americans for going to McDonalds when they are abroad or looking for other American things. They are just as bad! I heard lots of foreign accents and languages at The Crater. In fact, as I was sitting in the car reading waiting for A to finish, I looked back to the entrance of the crater and there was a man and woman walking out of the crater as if they’d just finished a mineral soak. The man took off his towel and was walking in the resort completely naked. Something tells me he wasn’t American.

In the end, she’s certified and I’m glad I won’t be there to witness her doing this in a real life setting because it scares the heck out of me.

School's Out

And Sophomore year is over. This week even though school is out she has been studying for her driver’s permit, her scuba class, and a food handler’s permit so she could go to work some with H. At the end of the month she’ll be heading off on a solo flight to St. Louis to nanny for our friend RB for a couple of weeks. This is a double win for her because not only is she a big fan of RB and her family, but she gets to see her bestie in St. Louis.


So she’s taking this scuba class so she’s ready for her Asian vacation with her buddy J and it’s two nights a week. Seeing the studying that has to happen and listening to the stories makes me even less interested in scuba diving than what I was before. The first night after class she got in the car and said the teacher said that everyone should probably get their fillings checked for air pockets because if your teeth might crack from the pressure. Then she told me the next night that she was having trouble making her ears pop, which you’re supposed to do and one guy in her class said he had to have some kind of surgery on his ear canals because they were small, etc. I was laughing as she was telling me this saying that I didn’t realize that just attending scuba class would rack up a number of healthcare bills. How does one even check for air bubbles in fillings and what is supposed to happen if you have one, remove it and start over?

After the second night I came home and told H that he was going to have to take her to scuba next week. I pride myself in being someone who is almost never late. The first night of her class I swear I was told it started at 7pm but get there 10-15 minutes early for paperwork. Because of me misjudging the traffic we got there right at 7. I was feeling bad about not getting there early and feeling worse at the end of the night when A told me class actually began at 6:30pm. No wonder I got a tight smile from the instructor when she joined them in the classroom. Then second night I get her there early and feel pretty good about it. I stick my head in the room and verify with the instructor that they’ll wrap up around 9:45pm. I go about my business. I get there at 9:45 and A and the instructor are the only ones sitting outside a darkened building. She tells me they’ve been done for about 25 minutes and they’ve just been chatting. I can’t believe this! Especially after the guy at the counter told me that that particular instructor’s classes never get out early because he’s “long-winded”. I have now become that crazy parent with time management issues. I was telling my friend T about this over lunch and she assured me that local people are always late and they call it “Mormon standard time”. I told her yeah it was the first time I thought about lying about A being an only child and telling the guy I actually had six other children and so my responsibilities are great, and there’s just no way I can be bound to his timeline.

Cleaning

During our move when we were cleaning it was obvious our lack of deep cleaning had caught up with us.  I’m not one to regularly clean windows, baseboards, etc.  I’m more of a is the kitchen sanitary and the bathroom clean kind of a cleaner.  As we were driving a load of stuff to the new place I was on my soapbox telling A how that wasn’t going to happen again, that we were going to clean more regularly.  She said to me, “I don’t get it.  It’s not like not doing that kind of cleaning impaired our quality of life”.  Well played A, I didn’t have a response to your two dollar sentence.

Hmmm

Someone who doesn't mind that their bedroom looks like a tornado hit it needs to find order in the organization of the leftover Halloween candy.

Vibrant Ginger

I love this photograph. A was laying down on the floor, feeling low energy and Sebastian wanted a cuddle. I love his little paw on her shoulder. I also haven’t posted any pics of A’s hair since she got it coloured in the summer. In England her girl’s grammar school was very strict about makeup, haircolour, and jewelry. A had a friend that would push the boundaries of the hair colour rules but we strictly forbade it. We didn’t think she needed to give her teachers any reason to dislike her since her attitude took care of that all on her own. But I swear every other week I’d be driving her to school as she’d have herself a rant on how her school was denying her her individuality, which I would respond with, “Exactly, that’s the whole point!”


Years ago I worked with a woman who had a lot of children and I always appreciated her thoughts on motherhood. She told me once that as long as her kids were getting good grades, they could do whatever they wanted with their hair. Hair grows back so no matter what, the damage is temporary. I agree, and if I could get away with it, I’d probably have purple hair myself. So coming back to the States, one of the first things that A wanted to do was colour her hair. We did it at home but the colour wasn’t as vibrant as she wanted. I told her I’d make her an appointment at a salon but she had to pay for that herself with her allowance. When I called the salon to make the appointment the assistant started asking me additional questions about what colour A wanted and I told her, not sure what she’s going to want but it won’t be a colour found in nature. Her response was, ‘’Huh?” I had to explain that this was a teenager wanting to rebel with her hair.

So four hours later, voila, fire engine red. It suits her much to H’s dislike.

A few weeks ago we were walking into a store when one of the employees said to me, “How’d you pull up a redhead like that?” I had to explain to him that it wasn’t natural. As we walked away, A repeated what he said and then added, “He makes me sound like a carrot”.

Knock Me Over

I thought this would come eventually but not this soon…


Thursday night A was working on an assignment for school and it revolved around Edinburgh Castle. She’s taking a European History class and she’ll mention a topic like Henry VIII and I’ll start to say, “Remember when we visited Hampton Court Palace” and then I’ll quickly remember that was me alone because she wouldn’t let us drag her to many historic places. As I was digging up some of our pictures from our visit to Edinburgh turned to me and said, “You were right mom, I should have taken advantage of it when I was there. I miss it”.

I made her walk into the next room and say it again in front of H. :)

School on a Movie Set

Initially because I was told that the school boundaries weren’t as strict here I thought we would look at all the high schools in SLC and let A pick. After being here for just a few days and thinking that out a bit more, I thought she needed to just go to the school that she is districted for since it was only six weeks. She needed to get into a routine and I needed one less decision to make. She’d been off for two weeks for Easter half term and then had spent a week sitting around a London hotel room waiting for our flight. We had all spent a little too much time together by this point.


The school that she started attending was East High. Getting a tour around the school after she registered, A came back saying it looked scary. I joked and said that’s just because she hadn’t seen boys at school for two years and they made is scary. We were directed to go down to the bookstore in the school to get her gym uniform and walked into a gift shop instead. You see East has become a bit of a tourist attraction because they filmed the Disney High School Musical films there. Not only can you buy sweatshirts and t-shirts with the school’s logo on them, you can buy an autographed picture of the cast as well.

Of course for the first week every time I would ask A about school one of those darn High School Musical songs would play in my head. The first week was a little rough because she was so nervous. However, she has enjoyed a little more lax approach by teachers and that she is also ahead of some of the kids. She got moved up in math class to the next grade and when she came home and was telling us how she had showed the class her way of solving some math problem (I shut down on the details since it was trigonometry and she and H had their own private math moment). My response to this story was, “do you need to move up again in math? Is that not the right class?” Her response was a horrific, “Mom, please don’t do that! I’m already the youngest kid in the class.”

According to wikipedia there have been some other notable students at East High – Roseanne Barr dropped out of East, and Patrick Fugit, best known for his role in the movie Almost Famous, went to high school there.

She has also found one good friend, which is all she ever wants.

One Month

And what a month it has been, so I’ll start from the beginning. Our flight was delayed leaving London which meant we missed our connection in Denver. If you haven’t flown international lately, you have to go back through security after customs, which on a Friday at 5:30pm is daunting. We were told to go through security and head down to the gate where the next Salt Lake flight was leaving in hopes we could catch it. We asked the agent if he needed to re-tag our bags and he assured us that wouldn’t be a problem…famous last words. We got down to the gate which was of course the furthest away gate possible in Denver and they were boarding. We were told sorry, we can’t get those bags on this plane and if we can’t get those bags on this plane, you can’t get on this plane. Because of 9/11 bags and people are supposed to match on planes. This was super frustrating because by this time we’d been up 24 hours and we were told we’d have to sit around the Denver airport for three hours waiting for the next flight. We were so irritated, especially when we got to SLC and our bags were waiting for us, you know the way bags are waiting when they arrived on AN EARLIER FLIGHT! We were so tired in Denver, waiting around eating over-priced pizza. I don’t quite know how the conversation devolved but at some point Angelina was crying saying that we don’t love her. I know it was exhaustion and travel talking. I honestly didn’t know what to say since all I wanted to do was lay down on the floor and take a nap so I stood up and said, “Okay, well I’ll meet you at the gate”, and we all walked down close enough that we could all see each other out the corners of our eyes but not close enough to actually hang together. Still pouting over I still don’t know what, she didn’t want to sit with us at the gate, which ended up being a problem for her since the woman sitting next to her had this annoying habit of smacking her lips together constantly. Everything was fine once we got to SLC, again, not sure what that was all about.

We were supposed to get in about 7pm but instead by the time we got our rental car and got to our rental place, it was after 1am. I was so tired but the temporary house we have for two months was so cold and had unfamiliar sounds that my sleep was restless.

The next morning we walked out our front door to the stinky smell of a blossoming Bradford pear tree and it felt like home.

It's Been Difficult To Write Lately

Not because I have writer’s block or nothing to say but because of a skylight. A’s room has no windows but has a skylight right above her bed. By 9am if you walk past her room a natural reaction is to try the light switch thinking she left the light on and realize it’s the skylight, it is so bright. I usually write in the mornings when I’m the only one awake but because of the skylight it’s not uncommon for me to wake up at 7am on a Saturday and find her in the living room flipping channels and complaining about the skylight.  So while I've been loving getting reacquainted with the sun, she's not so keen.


It’s overcast this morning! I’m all alone and it’s 7:21am!  But by 7:37, A was on the couch next to me complaining of the light.

Something Good Comes From Ash

I’ve mentioned in the past that A is obsessed with Rupert Grint. We waited in vain for him at an awards event and he didn’t show. Every week if not more she has been giving me the update on his new non-Harry Potter film called Cherrybomb which has been trying to find a distributor. When we gave A the ballpark date of our move the first thing she said was, “No! We can’t move then! Cherrybomb is coming out on April 25th.” You can imagine the reaction that generated with H. Our flight was booked for April 19th.

As A was monitoring the Rupert fan sites they announced that in London last night he and a few friends were gathering at a private club in Chelsea for a private screening of the film and she was desperate to go there and see if she could catch a glimpse. Of course her friends couldn’t meet her on such short notice and I agreed to take her down there. Side note, they first announced that it would be held at “a private screening room in West London”. I had no idea until after talking to a friend that there are private screening rooms all over London. We headed down the Kings Road in Chelsea and got to the location. A was the only “fan”. The PR folks and the wait staff at the club were staring at A. I told her to go ask them some details and she got very embarrassed, afraid they were laughing at her. I tried to motivate her by saying that she would never see these people again so go for it. Finally close to 7, a car arrived and she saw a mop of ginger hair which made her gasp super loud, so loud that a guy walking down the street stopped and asked in a concerned voice, “Is everything alright?” She navigated the busy street but by then he had walked in the door. One of the PR ladies turned to A and asked if she wanted something signed. A asked if she could take a quick picture with him so he came outside. Cue the shaking and multiple thanking for coming outside. Rupert replied in a calming tone, “Is-okay, Is-okay” and posed with her with a genuine smile on his face. She swears that will be her Facebook profile pic and phone wallpaper forever!


We watched Bonnie Wright and Jamie Campbell Bower make their way into the club and then we started the walk to the train station. A hugged me and thanked me for bringing her down. I told her that for the rest of the time we were stuck in flight limbo she had to drop the attitude and every time she got snotty, I was simply going to say “Rupert” and she needed to change her attitude. That lasted about 14 hours.

Last Day on the Farm

A. promised that she would come out and work at the farm last Saturday. I was surprised that she made those arrangements as it would be her last Saturday in Buckinghamshire and figured she’d be hanging out with friends. However, she does love being there. The first time I picked her up from the farm she explained what she ate for lunch that day by saying, “Mom, we had eggs and sausage for lunch and it was the best sausage you’ve never tried”. They make it there at the farm, so she has requested that I buy some since, and yes it is good.

Friday night she started whining about going to the farm because she was tired and didn’t want to spend the whole day out there. Saturday morning she whined some more and when we got in the car, she said to me, “Can’t we just go there, I’ll hide in the car and you can explain that I couldn’t make it today, you buy the sausages, and then we’ll come home?” I had to laugh because the idea of NOT going there was out of the question all because of the sausages.

It was a beautiful sunny day on Saturday and once she got there she was happy she didn’t change her mind. I did buy the sausages, brought them home and H made sausage and peppers for lunch, and of course left plenty for A.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

As the countdown begins, I’ve been thinking of all the things I would have liked to have seen while living here that just won’t happen in the next few weeks. Forget all the trips to mainland Europe I wish we could have taken, what things would have been fun to do right here on our island.


1. Liverpool – Yes, I would have liked to have done all the touristy Beatles things in Liverpool.

2. Hadrian’s Wall – Starting in Newcastle with my camera in hand.

3. Cornwall – Like A, it would have been fun to horseback ride along the beach (minus the horseback riding)

4. The Fat Duck in Bray – Is it worth all the fuss?

5. Wales – There’s a lot of natural beauty and I would have liked to have seen more of it.

6. Ireland – Any and all of it.

7. More Scotland – Would have loved to have gone even further north and also seen more islands.

8. Isle of Man – The pictures of the motorcycle races that happen along the streets in May look amazing.

Two things have stood in the way of us checking things off the list. The first is money. Don’t move to the UK unless you’re independently wealthy, and then if you’re independently wealthy you usually move somewhere else part of the year for the tax shelter, LOL. I believe I have mentioned this here once before but American travel writer Rick Steves proclaims that Americans don’t realize how poor they are compared to Europeans until they travel. Yes, this is so, and having to work for a living just gets in the way of seeing all that you’d like to see. The other thing that’s gotten in the way is travelling with a spoiled teenager. If it doesn’t interest her, she’s not interested, in fact she’s downright rude about it. I said to H last night, I hope at some point she realizes what she’s been like while we’ve been here and what we have been trying to expose her to and what a butt she has been. H assures me in 10 to 15 years’ time it will dawn on her. I don’t know if I can wait that long!

Last Day of School

Cue the Another Brick in the The Wall Pt. 2 by Pink Floyd


Because of Easter holidays, Thursday was A’s last day of English school. We will be flying on April 19th, the day that her friends will be going back after the break. She packed paint pens so her friends could sign her school uniform which she initially asked if she could burn when we told her we were moving. I explained that the lack of natural fibers would probably make burning the uniform somewhat anti-climatic.

I must admit, I will be happy to never see these shoes again. This is what you get when your school regulates sturdy black shoes. Many of the girls wear this same shoe but none of them look quite like hers. In rebellion, A refuses to tie or clean them which add to their clunkiness. But let’s face it, those shoes can’t even be ironically cute.

A Very Long Day

A and her friend J have had tickets to see YouMeAtSix at Brixton Academy for about four months now. This would be their last concert together and A was really looking forward to it. Following the success of this band was the first British thing she embraced when she got here so it seemed appropriate that this would be her last concert before leaving. She wanted to go down to Brixton really early and it’s not an area where you send your kid alone for several hours. Inevitably I ended up spending more time in Brixton than I was planning on Saturday. There was some drama surrounding getting the girls where they needed to be but by show time it was all okay.

Before we went to Brixton we went into Fortnum and Mason to round out the gift for the French family with some tea. A mentioned it first. The crazies seemed to be out in full force Saturday. Strangers struck up conversations with us. As we rode down the escalator, A standing behind me, she put her chin on my shoulder and told me to slowly turn around and look behind her. There was a bald guy in a peach cardigan with nothing on under it. The V in the cardigan revealed the thickest carpet of chest hair I think I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t a good look.

When we arrived at the venue the line was already crazy long so we thought we’d explore a little bit, check out Brixton Market and get some lunch.

The girls had downstairs tickets. I had a balcony seat where you weren’t allowed to stand up during the show. A license to stay seated, that sounded good to me when I’d been standing in line with her for hours. By the time I got J home it was about 2:00am. H had only been home about an hour and I had to be up by 6am to get A to her bus for her French trip.

She woke up in a foul mood, no surprise after 3 hours of sleep. After a few tense conversations between us I drove her to the bus in silence still in my PJ bottoms so unlike the other parents, getting out of the car was not an option. I was tempted to yell out the car window as I left “Hope you’re nice to your French family because you treat your American family like crap!” I thought better of it since I hadn’t had any coffee yet and driving a car AND trying to make a statement would be considered multi-tasking and at that hour without caffeine something could go horribly wrong with that plan. Oh yeah, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass her.

The Moving Starts to Happen

A is walking around with a spring in her step. She keeps hugging me and saying “We’re moving to Utah!” I keep smiling and saying she’ll be singing another tune once we get there, because after all she’s 14 and it’s change. She’s just so happy to be going back to the States. I always ask her if she’ll miss her friends and she says yes but she doesn’t feel like she knows them well enough to be that upset about it. Is this a cultural thing or just an A thing? She says that while she has a big group of friends here, none of them are her best friends. Being in a big group seems to mean that you tell one friend something and it’s like telling the group which makes people more guarded. I was talking to a friend here about it and she said when she was growing up “the group” was the most important thing, forget about having one close friend. I see it in their interaction, it’s kinda cool and polite. I wonder if being at an all girl’s school has anything to do with this.


She’s been compiling a list of things she’s looking forward to and the funny thing is that two things high on her list are Tuna Helper and SpongeBob Squarepants Macaroni and Cheese. Forget that she’s been eating better the past year than many people eat their whole lives!

H is wrapping up his last week of work so he can focus on the logistics of the move. We’ve put together a list of things to sell and I think about having to buy a new life again when we go back to the States. If we would have seen into the crystal ball and known we wouldn’t be here for at least five years we would have put some things in storage, but in a way, it’s nice to not be saddled that way. Financially not the best thing we’ve done but it’s just stuff right? I was telling one of my colleagues here that I think about the future sometimes when A meets the boy she wants to marry (although she swears that will never happen) and we get invited to the soon to be in-law’s house and they have beautiful furniture, china and a fancy dining room table. Then they come to our house and we’re still living like college students because we’ve moved around so much. What will they think of us? She just laughed that I would be concerned about that. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking of that because in the end I guess the lesson we can teach her is that possessions don’t really matter. Get some life experiences instead.

Me, I feel like I’m having a mini mid-life crisis. With this big move, work not letting up a single moment, and a milestone birthday around the corner that I am trying desperately to ignore, it’s a little stressful right now. The day my mother died, we were leaving the cemetery after the service and while her death in many ways had been a long time coming, I still felt like I’d been sucker punched. As we walked to our cars, my best friend put her arm in mine and said to me, “Just promise me you won’t do something stupid with your hair”. Fast forward to London a few weeks ago and me admiring a woman with bleached platinum blonde hair. The train journey home I was thinking to myself, yeah that would be cool! The next morning when I verbalized this to one of my co-workers and saw the reaction it evoked, I realized how well my friend knew me. The moment of insanity passed. I will be heading back to the U.S., brunette as usual.

Au Revoir

Our student headed home yesterday. A will be taking the Eurostar to his house on Sunday. She’s nervous but I think it will be a good experience for her.

She's Dreading France Now

As A watches our exchange guest struggle to understand English she is starting to freak out about going to France and staying with his family.  In true dramatic fashion she keeps saying "I'm gonna die there".  Unless the family puts her through a death-defying obstacle course I kinda don't think that will happen, and after the stress of this visit, SHE IS GOING.

Yesterday they went ice skating with a few of her friends and their exchange guest.  Ours had never been ice skating before so he liked that.  I then took them to the chippy for dinner (fish and chips shop).

Today it's a Thai lunch and bowling with two other friends and their exchange students.  Our exchange has not even seen H yet due to his work schedule so he'll get to meet him today.  H is going to make a Sunday roast dinner while we are gone.

This is Awkward

I imagine hosting a student for a week that’s part of a group of students visiting is different than hosting a student travelling alone who will stay for a full semester. Initially I thought this student would be someone who really wanted to practice their English, but actually no. My smattering of French is the only thing he understands and I believe he’s trying to avoid us because he doesn’t want to speak English.


I have been dreading this Friday night trying to figure out some entertainment. Thank goodness A’s friend came over and her friend’s mother was smart to come by with her friend’s teenage brother and volunteer to have him hang out here tonight as well. They are now speaking the universal language of Guitar Hero.

It's a Boy!

He arrived today, our bundle of joy. I’m talking about A’s French exchange student. He’s here with us this week and part of next and then she will stay at his house in Versailles the following week. When she first brought the paperwork home for the exchange program she told me she would have a better chance of getting into the program if we said a boy or a girl would be fine instead of just a girl. Reluctantly I wrote down “doesn’t matter” on the form. Soon after we found out that a boy would be staying with us. I wrinkled up my nose and acted disappointed. I think I commented on it a few times before A said to me, “Gosh mom, what’s wrong with you? You have nephews! You act like you don’t like boys!” Was I worried about the balance of power in our household evening out for once for H? Was I worried she might fall in love with him? Maybe all of the above.


So far he seems very sweet and terribly nervous. He looks so much younger than A even though he’s only about six months younger. He came bearing gifts, some chocolates, a book on Paris, and a book of French cartoons. I have to pack him a lunch every day so I was trying to find out what he likes and what he does not like. Because his English is not so good I said to A, I’m going to ask him what he likes for lunch, is that voulez-vous manger pour le dejeuner? A’s response was, “You could just ask him what he wants for lunch, he is supposed to be practicing his English”. She didn’t say this to be cruel to him, she was trying to cut me off from continually embarrassing her with my smattering of French. I am sure next week she’ll be happy if one of the parents breaks out a little anglais every now and then, even when he is cringing in the corner.

The two of them and one of her friends and her exchange student went to see Alice in Wonderland tonight. I’m not good with awkward silences and as we drove to her friend’s house I wanted to ask him some questions just to be polite. I held off because I was thinking of a story that A told me recently. Her friend R was getting a ride home alone with another parent. R grabbed an extra muffin at lunch and when someone asked her about it she said something like “I’m hoping if I’m eating this on the way home K’s mom won’t ask me questions”. I laughed until I realized I should no longer be relating to the teenager in that story. I’m the dreaded mom!

Keeping Busy

Duke of Edinburgh Award activities are happening. A has a practice overnight hike next week and had a list of items that she needed for it. Now it’s rarely over freezing here so sleeping in a tent would be my idea of hell, but she’s looking forward to it. The funniest thing about this activity was A telling me all horrified that they were going to have to pee outside and that their leader suggested they practice “performing” (their word) in the far corner of their back garden (yard). A’s friend responded, “I don’t have a back garden”. A offered her our back garden. While I want them to be prepared do the girls really have to squat in our back yard?


She also started her volunteer work three weeks ago and loves every minute of it. She’s working at the farm we visit and she is getting a workout. I wonder if she will come out of this experience either wanting to be a farmer or a vegetarian because she loves the animals. She cleans chicken coops, collects eggs, feeds sheep, cows, and pigs, and lots of other things. They don’t seem to coddle her. She comes home absolutely exhausted. When I picked her up Saturday evening she said that a calf had been born that morning.

She’s also enjoying her horseback riding lessons. I don’t understand it at all, especially when it is just a few degrees below freezing, raining, and I’m sitting in a stinky barn while she is having her lesson. After sitting out in that, it is difficult to warm up the rest of the day. It’s made me look forward to my business trip to Florida this week.

Figures, as I drink my coffee and get ready to pack the last of my things the sun looks to be making an appearance in the UK!