Ho Ho Ho... Santa Snowman!

We're close enough to Thanksgiving that I feel comfortable putting out Christmas candy, and drinking out of my Christmas mug. Even if we weren't I would still do those things cause I woke up this afternoon, after getting home from work at about 4:50 this morning and sleeping for a while, with an obscene headache. It sincerely felt like my brain was crawling out of my face, or at least trying to.

I know I use this metaphor a lot, but it feels accurate and I need people to understand that when my sinuses act up, they also have a tendency to put me out of commission for hours. It's kind of how my mum described migraines, which I've never had the misfortune of dealing with. Not all the symptoms, just the mildly incapacitating parts. I never have light and/or sound sensitivity or nausea, but I do feel that if I move any part of my body my head will explode. Sometimes, it actually lessens the pain if I take my glasses off. I've had to ice my jaw on occasion because my sinuses are so swollen, and sometimes I can't chew so I have to be on a liquid diet until the weather decides to break or my sinuses kill me.

To make myself feel less invalid like I wrap up in a big comfy blanket on the couch and watch TV, whilst occasionally venturing out into the kitchen for more food-that-makes-me-fat. So instead of invalid, I go for fat lazy bitch chilling at home eating bon-bons. Which I guess is a ... trade... of some kind.

Anyway, I wanted to mention the Christmas mug cause it's the one my sister-in-law (the one responsible for the title of this blog post) and my brother gave me for Christmas two years ago. With a big ole basket of teas. I hardly ever use the mug though cause it's all winter-y but since I'm not feeling peachy keen today, and it is almost Thanksgiving (which is the time of year I can start decorating for Christmas and using Christmas things) I figured today was the perfect day for the Moose, Bear, Log Cabin Mug. And it's enormous. Half my coffee pot fits in there. Hang on, I'll try that again: I heat my water in my coffee pot, cause my kettle broke and I still haven't replaced it, and this mug took almost 6 cups to fill up. Well, more like 4 now that I look again but still, that's a big mug for tea drinking. And tea drinking, I am doing.

De-lovely, continued

I re-read my journal entries, considering whether or not I should just transpose all of it on here. I thought better of it when I found myself wondering at the lack of detail in places where there should be detail, and an excess of it where there didn't need to be. Some of the entries read like a telegraph, without the 'stop' :

"Watched 'The Lovely Bones' and ate pasta. Caught 'Spaced' and 'Black Books' on British television and felt cool. We're such losers."

"Bought a few girly accessories at a shop called Accessorize. How could I not? Found a shop called Storm. They sell ladies clothing... took a picture of it."

"We made rum and coke vanilla floats this evening. Fantastic idea."

That last one isn't a telegraph example, I just wanted people to know. We made rum and vanilla coke floats one night. We drank them in wine glasses. We took pictures of them. And they were delicious. I don't even like rum and they were delicious. I also found that I don't mind rum when it's mixed with black currant or raspberry juice. (Seriously. Tasty.) They have this line of juices from Ribena, and it's basically juice, sugar, and water. Strawberry, the aforementioned black currant, raspberry, and I found apple. The one gas station we stopped at had a slew of other flavors but I was taken in by the black currant cause you don't really find it a lot around here.

I bought this sweet mug and coaster set with the Welsh flag on them, and I'm drinking my morning tea from it right now. I just took a sip and went, 'ahh' in that overly satisfied way.

People make fun of me when I extend a pinky when I drink or eat. I don't know why. I mention this because I intentionally did it just now with my tea to be as pompous as possible when wearing what can only be described as 'Flash Dance-esque' and sitting in front of a laptop writing a blog. (I misspelled 'blog' as 'blag' and the spell check has not corrected me. What the fuck is a blag?) This paragraph also reminded me that when we were at dinner one night I was eating a chicken sandwich and drinking a half pint of Guiness (no one told me how delicious it was on draft! what the hell!?) and drowning my chips in salt and vinegar and Jeremy pointed out that despite my hands-only meal I was straight-backed and pinky-outed the whole time. I like to be posh when devouring my meals like a savage.

So, about my tea (and customs). I was all excited cause here we have the Twinings of London tea, but over there it's just called Twinings. And I really wanted to bring back a box. Except we found out that there's all this stuff you have to declare, no matter how miniscule the purchase or acquisition, and you have to keep receipts to prove purchases and it seemed like it was going to be a big fiasco when we went through customs. So we decided we would just pack things away nice and cozy in our checked baggage and just claim about $200 worth of clothing. Then when we thought about it, how would they know what clothes we did and didn't bring with us? So we decided we wouldn't do that and instead just hide everything and claim nothing and pray to god we didn't get selected for a random baggage search. Fortunately we did not, but I do still wonder (aside from the fine that I kept hearing about in the video that played continuously with subtitles in a different language each time while in line at customs, and the possible time spent at a detention facility) what would have happened had they searched our bags.
"I see you have some chocolate in here... You gonna eat that?"
"Interesting. And what were you planning to use this book for?"
"Mam, can you prove these rocks were given to you and that you did not in fact steal them from an ancient monument?"

That last one, I totally cannot prove. Because we did take a few rocks from St. Quentin's Castle, located in the lovely little village of Llanblethian. (I believe I mentioned it previously... normally there would be a link there but it was the post before this so just scroll down. I'm sure you'll find it.)

I don't know if I mentioned this but when we were at St. Quentin's I took a picture of the sign there with all the 'no dogs allowed, please do not litter' jargon on it. Specifically, of the part where it says, in both English and Welsh (like every sign in Wales): It is an offense to use a metal detector on an ancient monument.

No joke.

I'll put the picture up once we transfer the images to my laptop, cause right now they're all shared between Jeremy's laptop and Jeremy's tablet. My dream vacation and all of the photos are on Jeremy owned devices. What the hell?