Birthday Week!: Mommy Edition

It's birthday week here at londoncasey, and I've just realized that because I've been titling all of these posts with what I actually call my relatives- that means that this one is titled "Mommy" and though I'm not 100% certain that I wanted the internet to know that I call my mom 'Mommy', well, meh. Let's go with it. (She typically gets called "Betsy" by those who know her.) 


I'm leaving London.

My visa is up in mid-November and though I have spent most of this year trying to figure out how to stay, I  couldn't manage to find a method that would both work (you know, legally) and feel right. So I'm heading back to America and I am (ever so tentatively) starting to get in to the idea.

About a month ago, when this decision was really made and I closed the doors on the half options that were still floating around- I talked to Laine and *FREAKED OUT* about things like...phone bills. And health insurance. And the price of food in America. Because I've not really dealt with those things in the US, only in the UK. (She promised me that I would be able to figure it out and then forwarded a link to a freelancers union in NY. She's an excellent sister.)

At the end of this month I will be done with all of my contracted work, though the tykes may continue to pull me in for supply/substitute teaching the first couple months of school. What this means is that though my income drops dramatically come September, I do have this glorious gift of time coming to me. And it feels like a good bookend in a lot of ways- I showed up in London (and, in fact, started this blog) with a whole month of time on my hands, a travel card, and a sense of exploratory adventure. Now I get the chance to leave like that as well.

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I'm done with teaching for now. I'll be moving in the middle of the school year and it's not something I've been particularly excited about for a while (you may have noticed the diminishing number of tyke related posts). It very well may be something that I come back to, but I shouldn't think I would look for classroom teaching positions in America. (For one thing, I really really don't have an education degree.)

I'm done with the bass. I don't think I posted this to the blog, but I don't own a bass any longer- the one I had been playing in London now has a happy home in Norway and my American bass is helping out the Seattle Youth Symphony.

And maybe I'm done with London. (Maybe just for this round.)

Things I still want to do before I move back to America
1. Go punting. Andrew is moving to Oxford in October, this may become his responsibility.
2. Do some more rambling. There's an awful lot of the country I've not tromped through yet, and some more tromping needs to happen.
3. Go to Kew Gardens. I still haven't made it there yet, which is ridiculous given how much I like plant museums.
4. Have a massive birthday party of goodness. I did a bouncy castle last year, this year needs something new.
5. Do some European travelling. I'm going to France (finally) in, oh, a week! I'd forgotten it was so soon! But I want to see Berlin and maybe Hungary too.
6. Go camping! I want to burn things and sleep outdoors and get really, really muddy.
7. Get my English finances in order so I don't worry about having messed something up once I'm far away again.

You know why this list isn't longer? Because I do the things I want to in London. I go to improv class every week and I have a marvellous yoga teacher, and I get to be involved in all of these cool and exciting games and I walk in a London park at least three times a week, and every time I get on a bus I sit on the upper deck (and very often in the front), and I wander over to Trafalgar Square and squee at all of the squee-ing Harry Potter fans just because it is there and goodness me I am blessed. Not least because everywhere I go I am surrounded by some pretty extraordinary people.

Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

I'm going to miss here. But maybe it's time for something else.

Birthday Week!: Papa Edition

It's birthday week here at londoncasey, where once a year we celebrate the 50% of my family who managed to be born during BIRTHDAY WEEK. It is, I think, exciting for all of us. Next up is my father, Dan. For his birthday he gets a blog about some tykes....


In spite of numerous leaving parties and speeches and class parties and general end of the year-ness, I am still at school. This is because I decided to work for the summer camp. Down in the junior camp ("down" because we're in the basement) we've got a surplus of tykes. On Monday morning we were expecting around 25, but as I was registering they just kept coming and coming and coming. When the dust settled we had 35. Maybe 10 doesn't seem like that big a number, but in terms of tyke corralling, it is significant. Fortunately we've now got six staff people, so it has actually been a pleasure so far this week.

We do, however, have one child who is literally a hand full. When he wants to be he is an absolute sweetheart and I genuinely enjoy working with him. That being said, when he starts acting up there is very little that we can do. Explaining quietly and in a deep voice while making lots of eye contact that throwing things at other children is not okay only makes him laugh. When he gets worked up he starts getting violent as well. This morning, and I don't even remember what set this off, I was holding him back and trying to get him under control. He kicked me, pinched my neck, and bit my hand- all of which I could handle and while it wasn't enjoyable didn't really phase me. Then he bent my glasses and I lost it.

I injure myself often enough that I don't mind some bruises or cuts (I have a foot long self inflicted bruise on my thigh right now from where I accidentally tripped and fell onto a bench in the hall during lunch last week. That was embarrassing. I threw food everywhere. One of the year 1 children came up to me after I had cleaned up and sat down again to tell me not to worry because he had fallen down as well and he was okay now.) But don't touch my glasses.

I felt weirdly exposed with my glasses broken. The right earpiece was bent wide to the side. Nothing was actually broken off but it meant that in order to stay on my head the ear piece needed to be outside my ear rather than behind it. If I looked down, say, to talk to any of the tykes, they slipped down my nose. Linda took the boy away from me immediately after my glasses got bent and I rushed outside to try and get myself under control. I cried. Liz came out and gave me a hug. Chetna came over and gave me a hug. I gulped some air and let myself be led over to the shooting range where the Senior camp was later going to do some archery. So that was cool. I at least managed to hit the target. (And didn't further injure myself like I did the last time I did archery as a 9 year old when I somehow managed to shoot the fletching into my index finger.)

We called the kid's mom and sat him in the room next door away from everyone else. (With the door open so we could still see him.) He calmed down quite a lot once he was by himself and ended up sitting there for over an hour while we waited for someone to come and pick him up. I suspect that being in a dark, empty space was probably a good thing for him- less stimulation. By lunch time he was back to being his charming, smiley self. But we still sent him home. 

I went to an opticians after school and they were able to bend the ear piece back, more or less. They hang behind my ear now but the fit is still looser than I would like it to be and probably now is the time to get a second pair of glasses so that I am not completely bereft if this happens again. 

Um. Happy Birthday, Papa! I understand now why you used to get to annoyed when I went for your glasses as a kid....

Birthday Week!: Mical Edition

It's time to launch Birthday Week! This is the week that about 50% of my family was born, so it's an important one. Today, kicking the whole thing off is my grandma, Mical. What does she get? A completely random blog entry....

Today I washed my teddy bear.

It is sunny and warm out and I figure he has as good a chance as any for actually *drying* today. I've tried washing him once before, the first year I moved to London. He had started to smell and, well, that was at least as gross as it sounds. I washed him in the sink of my dorm room and the water turned a disgusting, dark brown. I was discouraged. Also, he took many many days to try. I was further discouraged.

So I did what any normal person would do and ignored the problem for another three years. Until today! Today I fixed the problem! Today it occurred to me that while the water may turn a truly vile dark brown colour, filled with grime that does not bear thinking about, I could continue to wash him. Today it occurred to me that this wasn't a one sink full of water kind of a job.

Twelve. It was a twelve sinks full kind of a job. And my hands and wrists hurt from squeezing that much water out of essentially a fragile sponge. But by the 12th sink full? The water was running clear. Thank goodness.

Gross.

Also, can I just say that 25+ years of anthropomorphising Soft Bear makes it VERY difficult to push his head down into a sink full of water? I had to consciously keep reminding myself that I was not being evil, that teddy bears do not need to breathe, that his eyes weren't accusing me from underneath the water, that, really, it was good for him to be washed and he would thank me later even if at this current moment he couldn't understand why I was doing this to him, that when I pulled him, sodden with water, out of the sink that the reason I was holding him like a baby and supporting his head was because the fabric was fragile. Yes.  That's why.

I fear I may have revealed too much here today.

Happy Birthday Uncle Andy!

Dear Andy,
You asked me if I had eaten any British strawberries as they are your favourite and you remember eating many of them around your birthday. Well, I am here to say that YES I have, and in fact, I made your grandmother's strawberry pie with them in honour of your birthday. I think these ones were from Norfolk.

Here's the thing though, I got the recipe from my mother's (your sister's) cookbook, and it actually is a little difficult to translate it from American into British. Things like "2 large packages of Jell-O" and "2 packets of graham crackers" are a bit difficult to find/guage volume wise in a country where Jello-O is called "jelly" and it comes already woobley. The crackers I replaced with digestive biscuits and then I guessed at all the volumes. I'm not used to working with jelly or hand whipped cream (thanks, Ella!) so this is not my most aesthetically pleasing result ever, (excuses!) but it was delicious. And enjoyed by many at the picnic today (it disappeared in minutes). We toasted you and your birthday!

Also, this morning I taught some tykes- I had them make you a little birthday card:

So happy birthday, Andy. You're the best uncle a niece could ask for! 

love,

CASEY

Bouncy Castle Goodness or I need a new camera

I finally had my birthday party! It ended up being a joint birthday with my friends Lyn and Jon, and I would post pictures so you could see how cool it was...but none were taken. Sorry.

FORTUNATELY

I can still tell you all about it.

The party was sort of epic. We hired out two tunnels at T47 which is an indoor football (soccer) pitch underneath London Bridge Station. Fire-Hazard runs Survivor Sports there, which is how I knew about it. The neat thing about T47 is not only do they have space to let us run fun games, they also have a bouncy castle that they rent out. So in one tunnel we ran glow in the dark tag, dodge ball, red light/green light, and a game wherein you have 1 minute to throw as many glowing objects on to the other team's side as possible. In the other tunnel we had music, food, general chatting, and a massive bouncy castle.

I think about 28 people showed up. Everyone was really helpful (if a little confused when I made them all put on glow stick bracelets. Had I not explained that part before? Oops.) We ran a bunch of the games from Survivor Sports, though in a less focused way. We didn't run Riot Ball (a.k.a. indoor glow in the dark Circle Rules Football) because people were so wiped out from the bouncy castle. Instead we improved on Red light/green light/grandmother's footsteps/night stalker: usually it is played in a small area that is difficult to get as dark as the main pitch and with only half the group while the other half is tearing each other up in Riot Ball. This time we had the whole group playing at the very back of the pitch where it is the darkest. And because we couldn't find a laser that worked (in order to let people know they'd been seen moving) we used a flash light. So the combination of being periodically blinded by the flash light (torch, whatever) combined with the fact that if you were It the only thing you could see was an ever encroaching line of disembodied coloured lights, meant that the whole game was a lot creepier. In a good way.

In running these games I discovered that while I love talking to players after the fact, getting feedback, thinking about long term strategy for the organization, and the general planning-ness of game running- what I don't love is being the figure head/spear head/main leader. I can do it, but I tend to forget half the rules, ignore the back story, and fail to consistently referee. I'll get to know you as a player and improve the running of the games, but I don't want to be the head zombie unless I have to.

FORTUNATELY

I have friends who like ref-ing, so we were set. Then at the end we played a big game of pass the parcel which was nice to get everyone together. I think I had 8 different social groups represented and then with Lyn and Jon that bumped things up to about 11 different groups (if not more) and everyone got along! It was really lovely. We were only supposed to have the space until 9, but I left with a group to go get some supper just before 10 and the bouncy castle was still going strong and they hadn't kicked us out. Thanks, T47!

Rattling around in my head

It's been a bit of a tough week. A bunch of my friends are going through some rough times and since 75% of them are foreigners we're also all panicking (do different degrees) about the new, more stringent visa laws. I'm good to go for another year still but it has been dawning on me that all of this is both precarious and likely temporary. Though I would like to stay in London and have all my friends stay here too- it is not up to us. So that has been frightening and difficult to come to terms with.

There have been two jobs that I have applied for recently that would have allowed me to stay in the UK. One I didn't get an interview for and the other I spent Wednesday taking four hours worth of assessment tests for. I didn't get called back for a second interview for that one.

(Part of the issue is that I'm not even sure what fields to even look in. The two I've applied for differ in all respects.)

I've been feeling down about it and so had tea and freshly picked cherries at Peter's house this morning when I picked up a bass I'm borrowing for a gig on Sunday. We had a good chat and literal tea and sympathy can never go wrong. Particularly as I now get to play with a 19th century, fretted, guitar shaped bass with a lion's head scroll for the next week.

I came back to the flat and glumly walked around the kitchen, bumping into Ella and Geoff. Ella, being the darling she is, listened to me moan for a while and then came up with an idea that hadn't totally occurred to me.

I currently *love* my job with the tykes. I bounce down the hallways and sing and grin and regularly walk into my boss's office and announce grandly that I. LOVE. MY. JOB. So I'd rather not lose that. That being said, I've run the numbers and it would be nearly impossible for me to make the amount of money that I need to through teaching alone (especially since I don't have a teaching degree). So the new idea is to scour any and all arts jobs bulletins, arts schools, and arts organizations to see what vacancies they might have. If I can make 70% of the amount I need from one of those jobs and if they'll allow me to take either one day or two mornings off a week then I can do that and my tykes and make enough to stay.

I don't know if it will work, but the new idea at least offers a glimmer of hope where I was starting to feel like there wasn't one. Between the two of us we've already managed to find two more jobs that would fit the bill, sound interesting, and I have a hope of getting. They both close on July 19th- so there is even still time to apply.

So there you go, those are the things rattling around in my head currently. Wish me luck?

PS. Happy Birthday Mommy! Happy One Day Belated Birthday, Grammy! Happy Three Days Belated Birthday, Papa!

More of Meredith's Pictures

Did I mention that Meredith rented a car? She had to get to a rehearsal in Brighton on Monday so it made sense to get a car that would also help us all to get around and to pick people up as they arrived at the train station. We figured it would be a good idea to get the dent insurance because they upgraded her to a Mercedes Benz (the only automatic they had available) and as a special deal that meant that she could add a second driver for free.

I DROVE ON THE LEFT! IN A MERCEDES! IN THE COUNTRYSIDE! AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!

(I love driving.)

(These pictures have nothing to do with the driving. Except that the way I felt at the end of the gruelling six hour hike/ramble? Similar to the way I felt after driving successfully through teeny tiny country roads without hitting anything or anyone. So this is a tangentially related picture.)

Meredith's Birthday

For Meredith's birthday she rented a cottage in a little town just off of the English Channel and we stayed there as a group and made delicious food and chatted and laughed and bumped our heads on the ridiculously low ceiling beams and went on a six hour long hike over many, many, many hills. It was beautiful and we were drenched in sweat and grime by the end of it. Meredith said it would be okay if I posted some of her pictures so that you all can be jealous...

I had a lovely birthday, thanks for asking!

I had stayed up late the night before making pancake batter, deciding that chicken hot dogs were close enough to count as sausages in a breakfast environment, and washing all the dishes. This meant that when Sarah showed up for breakfast and chatting it didn't matter that I was still totally in my pajamas and had only rolled out of bed because the doorbell was ringing. We had a marvelously wonderful time talking about life after school, being a freelance musician, visa issues, upcoming nuptials, ohmygodwe'relikeadults, music pedagogy, and the like.

We ended the conversation because I had a lunch date to make and in spite of completely losing track of time managed to show up only 20 minutes late...sorry Jon. Jon and I had dutch pancakes which are giant crepe/burrito hybrids with things like eggplant and bacon cooked into the batter. Craziness. Lunch was delightful and it was great to see Jon again.

Then I wandered over to Covent Garden where I located an astrology shop and read all of their Virgo birthday cards. We are apparently critical and perfectionist. Hmmph. Also- our astrological vegetable is carrots.

Ella called and I remembered that there is a restaurant/bar/tourist trap in Covent Garden that has wonderfully creative cocktails for 50% off on Sundays and Mondays. So we proceeded to get a little tipsy in the early evening. Remind me later that I dislike bright, fruity drinks that turn my mouth unflattering shades of blue. Banana Coladas though? Yes.

We then walked up towards Oxford street to meet up with Sarah, Dave, and Meredith at John Louis where we provided unhelpful advice on the topic of Buying A Lamp. We also lusted after beautiful but expensive and impractically deep pile carpets. Should I end up with scads of money at a latter point in my life I may need to be restrained from decorating my house entirely in William Morris prints.

The five of us, having disagreed on lamp purchases but agreed unanimously that bean bag chairs are a Good Thing, continued on to tasty tasty Thai food. I had some delicious Tom Ka Gai and some disappointing chicken satay.

So there. Doesn't that sound like a nice birthday?

Happy Birthday Nancy!

Thanks for being my favorite aunt- even though you're the only one I have you're still the absolute top. You introduced us to "spoil the nieces" and the joys of peering into houses that are for sale.

Remember when we went to see In America and we stopped by your friend's flower shop and ended up with bouquets of orchids for the movie? I think all movies should involve bouquets with orchids the colors of skittles.

I wouldn't know anything about salted liquorice without you. And Crossing Jordan while eating that liquorice.

Thanks for helping to send me to London. It's been brilliant and wonderful (And without you the title of this blog would be somewhat nonsensical...)

Remember at the Horniman when we were folding cranes and you pointed out that I really should be a teacher? It turns out I've been having quite a lot of fun doing just that. Good thing you're observant as well as being such a good role model in that capacity.

Plus- you have the most conveniently memorable birth date ever- (there are two of us, our birthday is the 14th, there is one of you so divide ours by 2 and you get the 7th! I think it's handy.)

Cat had a birthday

So we all went to this lovely wine bar in Embankment called Gordons that is in this old cellar or tunnel or something. The ceiling is very low. Let me put it this way- Standing in the middle of the arch, I am about 1" away from scrapping my head on the ceiling.

Cat is a recorder player and super cool. So this is my early music crowd- I don't see them very often but they are all lovely people. Top picture: Mina and Adrian- GSMD early music singers, note the very low ceiling next to their heads. Cat, the birthday girl. Cat and and her boyfriend Tom.

Adrian is the best person to invite to a party: the last time we were at Gordon's Cat was raving about the olives- Adrian and I thought they were rather bland and overly oily, so this time Adrian brought tasty tasty olives with him- nice big green ones with basil and kalamatas. He also made an apple cake, which was wonderful. Adrian is apparently a legendary baker (though not as legendary as his wife, Helen.)