Ah, life is good. We were told that September and October are the best months here, and that certainly is true. It’s hot hot hot, warming up to 36 Celsius over the next few days. Yay! One of F’s new friends came round today with her mum for a playdate, and it was actually too hot to sit outside.
This is a girls alone weekend. S has flown off to London today, and we’ll be spending the next 4 days on our own, till my parents arrive on Tuesday (they’ll be very happy as the weather over there is currently totally unacceptable, colder and rainier than it’ll ever be here even in deepest winter). I’m a bit nervous, although obviously I’ve done plenty of lone weekends back in the UK. But this is somehow new. The plan: A Build-a-Bear birthday party, horse riding lessons, a movie and lots of pizza and pasta. Doesn’t sound so different from what I’m used to, does it?
We might even go to a festival. It’s festival time in California (there are always festivals, but it seems that September and October are the busiest), and there is pretty much everything on offer: arts & crafts, wine, beer, garlic, artichoke, pumpkin festivals and a gazillion others. Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve already been to a local “support the community” festival, where we met lots and lots of people from school (and realised how many we’ve got to know in the last 6 months). The kids had fun with their friends and danced and ate candy floss, and the day after that we visited a nearby wine & arts festival (although it was more arts & crafts than wine, which was probably a good thing, as it was so hot that we had to eat ice cream just to stay cool. It’s really strange to wear shorts and flip flops even though the leaves are turning colour, and it looks like fall, sorry, autumn is fast approaching. More and more Americanisms are creeping into our vocabulary… I find it really difficult to use American words (so people understand me) but use British pronunciation. It doesn’t work!!! So I say them with a kind of washed down British accent, which probably sounds hideous (and receives a lot of sniggering from my husband, who doesn’t seem to do that, and even cranks up the Cockneyisms whenever possible). I suppose that’s the lot of the non-native speaker…
I’m loving today: The American post box, sorry, mail box system. You write a letter, stick a stamp on it and put it in your mailbox, flicking the little red arrow up. Next time your mail gets delivered, the mail man picks up the letter. No need to go to the post office. Genius.
Transcontinental Overload 