The Never Ending Winter

Aberdeen in May.

When we first moved to Aberdeen last May, it was at the start of ‘summer’. We breathed a sigh of relief to escape Houston before the obnoxious 4 month long heat wave started. Though the weather in Scotland at that time was more akin to Spring or Fall, we were fine with it being only somewhat ‘warm’, just as long as it wasn’t obscenely hot. 

Whenever I would start to feel homesick, I would glance at the scorchingly miserable 5 day forecast in the southern US and feel much better about my current geographic location. 

No thank you.

Yes, please.

Flash forward 10 months and I am longingly daydreaming about the chips-and-queso-on-the-patio weather than Louisiana and Texas are enjoying right now. 

Meanwhile, Aberdeen is being blasted with snow 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wish I was exaggerating...

I was elated when I woke up from my after lunch nap (don’t judge me; I’m still not feeling well) and saw sunny skies outside my window. 

Of course, by the time I suited myself and the dogs up for a walk, it was back to sideways snow. 

Let me remind you that it has been snowing in Aberdeen since October, which was 6 months ago. 

Back in the Fall it was charming, but now it’s just a nuisance. Especially since it’s not cold enough to gather on the ground so it just stays a constant freezing, wet and muddy mess. 

Yes, my patience for Winter time has just about run out. I’m ready for fresh blooming flowers, and trees full of leaves. 

I’m ready for sunshine, or at the very least, temperatures warm enough for me to leave the gloves at home.

I’m ready for days that stretch until 9 pm. I’m ready for evenings nice enough to walk to dinner. I’m not asking for margaritas and patio weather here, Scotland. Is it too much to ask that you just stop with the freezing precipitation for a while?

 Seriously, enough already...

Suicidal iPhone

The night before we left for our ski trip, disaster struck in our house. My iPhone was safely tucked into my fleece pocket while I was putting some clean towels into the guest bathroom. As I walked past the toilet to the cabinet, my iPhone leapt from my pocket and dove headfirst into a watery grave. 

(SOURCE)

I had no idea my phone was even depressed, much less suicidal. It must have just been overworked from the nonstop picture taking, music playing, and facebook stalking I subject it to. 

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised; this wasn't the first suicidal iPhone experience I’ve had. Around the same time last year, my iPhone took a flying leap from the bathroom counter to the toilet bowl 3 feet away. True story. 

So what do you do if your iphone chooses a similar fate? Luckily I had pinned this information from the last time it happened, so I already knew some crisis management techniques. 

First, take it out of the water, turn it off, dry it off, and place it in a sealed bag of rice for a 72 hour suicide watch period. The rice absorbs the water from within the phone, but this process takes a few days. You must turn it off as well, because a phone that’s left on can cause a short with the electric currents in a water damaged phone. 

It was a super bummer to be without my iPhone (aka camera) for the first 3 days of our ski trip, but I didn’t want to take any chances by prematurely turning it on. I’m determined that this phone will last me long enough to get an upgrade; something my last 3 iPhones (yes, 3…in 3 years) have not been able to manage. 

After the third day in rice, I tested out my phone and all the functions seemed to be in working order. I was taking pictures of the French alps, listening to my music, and iMessaging my friends and family back home without any issues. 

Good idea, Dad:)

Two weeks later, you’ll be happy to know that my phone has made a full recovery and is currently being allowed to rest a bit by only being forced to take about 30 pictures of my puppy dogs a day.  

I am alsotaking the extra precaution putting the toilet seats down whenever the iPhone is in the room. Only 14 months until I'm up for an upgrade. Just gotta keep this baby alive until then....

Scottish Grocery Experience: American Comfort Foods

Sorry for being MIA last week. Jonathan or I (or both) were bedridden for most of the week which didn’t leave much energy for blogging. Plus, I left the house a total of 4 times Monday-Friday which didn’t provide many topics worth documenting. Most of the week consisted speeding through the first 3 seasons of Friends, and catching up on the 3^rd season of Downton Abbey. 

I watched more TV last week then I did in the past year combined. Not only were we sick, but when the weather looks like this all week, you have extra motivation to stay in your jammies.

The worst part about being sick is probably the homesickness. When you’re miserable and lacking much of an appetite, you crave those old comfort foods you grew up with. For me, it was for Mac and Cheese, Chicken Noodle Soup, Saltine Crackers and American Cheese. 

Yesterday I felt up to making an excursion to Wowzie, which is a store downtown that sells American junk food at exorbitant prices. But I was desperate, and therefore didn’t flinch at the price tags for some Kraft macaroni, Velveeta cheese, Apple Jacks (impulse buy), and blow pops (secondary impulse buy). 

It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered that all of these products were hovering right around their expiration date. Which is pretty scary since I consider most of these items to be basically ‘non-perishable’.  How old  does Velveeta ‘cheese’ need to be exactly before it expires? Because this block goes bad next week. Which by my estimations, means it must be at least 14 years old. Scary. I better think of an occasion to make queso dip really soon. 

The Apple Jacks are technically past their ‘best by’ date, but I just had a bowl, and though a tad stale, they were totally edible and delicious. I doubt they’ll last for more than a week in this house. 

The main reason I made the outing was for Kraft Mac and Cheese, only to discover that they only had one lonely box in stock. I still have a month before it goes bad, so I will choose the time of my indulgence carefully.  But hey, if any of you would ever like to send me a care package of Easy Mac, that would be highly appreciated. Anybody? You Americans don’t know just how good you have it…

Though I did find this Kraft ‘Cheesy Pasta’ at Tesco yesterday morning, and it turned out to be a pretty tasty substitute. 

Good to know, especially since it’s manufactured in the UK and therefore costs about 1/5 of the price of the real American stuff. 

Looks the same.

Tastes the same!

Too bad they had to go and ruin it by putting a recipe for tuna macaroni on the back of the box. Yuck!

 

What are your go-to comfort foods when you’re bed ridden?

3 Months Later...

This past December, Jonathan and I traveled to Siena, Italy, where we purchased a full ceramic tea set as a souvenir. 

,

Since Italy and the UK are both part of the European Union and are close enough to practically be neighbors, I figured this order would take no more than 6 weeks to arrive. When 8 weeks came and went I started to panic, especially since that was about the amount of time it took my friend Nary to receive a similar purchase all the way from Thailand. 

Since we just reached the 3 month mark with no sign of our Italian keepsake, we resigned ourselves to the fact that it was never gonna happen and started looking into our options. Jonathan had resolved to call the credit card company this very day to see if they could cancel the order. 

Imagine my surprise when at 10:30 this morning, there was ring at the door from a delivery truck delivering a fragile ceramic package. 

I promptly took the box to the kitchen to make sure all the contents were accounted for. It took me about 30 minutes to get through the suit of armor protecting my fragile tea set, which I didn’t mind one bit once I found that there wasn’t a single broken item in the bunch. 

So for the rest of the day, my task will be reorganizing my China cabinet to make room for these beauties. 

The pattern I chose is decorated in a lovely blue and green floral and bird pattern. I love me some ceramics and I love me some birds, so it was a no brainer when I stumbled upon this option. 

We got 6 teacups and saucers, 1 teapot, 1 sugar and creamer set, and 3 extra dessert plates. 

I ordered a few things rimmed in teal green and a few rimmed in a royal blue to give it more of a hodge podge feel.

All's well that ends well, and now that I have the set in my possession, I’m very happy with it. Now who wants to come over to my house for tea?

Happy St. Paddy's!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from an Irish-American girl, living in Scotland. In honor of my Irish heritage, here's some pictures from our 2011 anniversary trip to the Emerald Isle.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

May the luck of the Irish be with you today!

Bucket List: Skiing by Numbers

We’ve returned from our Alpine skiing trip to snowy Aberdeen. Both Jonathan and I have arrived home exhausted and with a bit of a lingering cold. Please forgive me if I’m not the most consistent with my blogging for the next few days, but one of the benefits of housewifing is the luxury of rest. 

Today I just wanted to take a small break from napping to give you a quick recap of our bucket list ski trip in the French (and Swiss) Alps. This was Jonathan’s biggest wish on our European Bucket List and it lived up to expectations.

It was different than our usual travel experience, because mainly we didn't feel like we were traveling. Instead, we were on vacation. Our days were full of skiing and dining in our chalet, so in many ways, we didn't feel like we were in France. I didn't spend any time sight-seeing or taking pictures. In fact, I never even turned my fancy Nikon on. 

The benefit was that it was a low maintenance, relaxing getaway. The downfall is that other than snow quality and slope inclines, there is nothing much to write about, and certainly not many pictures to illustrate. 

But just because I can't write a novel about our week in France or make a full photo album of our holiday, doesn't mean it doesn't rank up there with our other European vacations. Quite the contrary. Here's just a little numbers game to show you how much we enjoyed our trip.   

13 friends

10 Americans

 2 Welshmen

1 token Canadian

1 connecting flight
7 nights in a chalet

6 days on the slopes

 

1 ski lesson

1 wolf sighting

34 bottles of wine 
6.7 pounds of cheese

3 game nights

2 mountains

2 countries

4 pounds gained

2 chalet angels

1 injury requiring emergency surgery
1 trip of a lifetime (well, maybe not for the injured party...)
2 exhausted but happy people in our household. 

I'll try to write more throughout the week depending on how I feel. I hope you're having a fantastic Tuesday!