My Articles:
Valentine’s Surprise!
My first Valentine’s Day with my husband (or boyfriend, as he was at the time) was a rather strange affair. For starters, we were on the other side of the world from each other – he was in California and I was in the UK. With the time difference, it made it quite awkward as those eight hours can really screw with the romantic atmosphere!
We were communicating via webcam and Skype, but I thought I would make an extra effort for Valentine’s Day. So I spent ages having a shower, putting on make-up, getting dressed up in a skirt (and for those who know me, that is a rare occurrence!), even shaving my legs. Which was a bit daft as he could generally only see my top half on the webcam and certainly not in enough detail to tell if I’d got hairy legs. But I thought, what the hell, if it made me feel sexier then it was worth it.
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Moving Across the Pond
We moved out to live in San Francisco from the U.K. a year ago, arriving in torrential rain—where was all the famous Californian sunshine?—overburdened with way too much luggage and high expectations.
There were three of “us”—me, my 13-year-old daughter and 11-year old son—and we were merging with three of “them”—my soon-to-be husband, his 15-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son. Oh, and a mad dog! Quite a household, as you can imagine.
During the first month, it was absolute chaos. In order to accommodate so many extra people into his existing home, my fiancée had to build a new bedroom for his son. It was sort of like a shed on the side of the house that we have since nicknamed “The Shack.” His daughter redecorated and moved into the dining room and my kids moved into theirs—empty, apart from peeling paint and a single bed. So, out we rushed to Ikea and back we staggered with half the shop, all beautifully flat-packed for us to put together at our leisure. Finally, after much swearing and cursing, a week or so later my kids had new beds to sleep on, new wardrobes to hang clothes in, and new desks to work at, while I ended up with blisters, cuts, and bruises. I vowed never to set foot in “that” shop again!