Dearest Blog,

You know, I've been thinking of breaking up with you for a while now. I really do love you, and as ridiculous as it sounds, you have been a constant in my life since I lived in New York three or four years ago.

So it hasn't been fair of me to give you, oh beloved blog, the ol' "phase out" -- you know, the worst way to end a relationship. The "I'll just ignore it until it breaks up with me." The passive, cowardly way out. Nobody deserves to be ignored if they're offering themselves to you for your acceptance. The phase out is, undoubtedly, the saddest way for a relationship to die.

So, April Birds and May Bees, I think we're done here. I honestly enjoyed my time with you, and I'll look back at your archives for years to come. Much love, my friend. Good-bye.

An Incomprehensive List of What I'm Thankful for This Holiday Season, or I Hope John Doesn't Mind that I Used My Email to Him as a Blog Post.

in honor of the very blessed holiday that's coming up on thursday, i will now recount what exactly i'm thankful for, in no particular order:

1. challenges: hell, how would I define myself without 'em?
2. family: hell, how would i define myself without 'em?
   
3. frank-dog: even though my mom just told me he chewed my dining room table that is stored at their house
   
4. my desire to question everything: see "challenges"
5. my friends: genevieve bovee? keri smith? lexia snow? sara snow? sarah hill? sarah day? shan mukhtar? you? god, i can't think of a life without these folks.
   
6. new york: best time of my life; can never be recreated.
7. my ability to put a nostalgic, sentimental spin on my past.
   
8. saul bellow: how does he create such atmosphere in a couple of sentences?
9. the clash, specifically "guns of brixton": never fails to get me motivated to move my ass.
   
10. the sun: i never knew how much i relied on it until i moved to a place where it rises at 9AM and sets at 4PM (if it ever shows up in the first place).
11. my education: though i'm paying for it dearly, i can pick apart literature (and life) with the best of 'em.
12. your vegetarian lasgana: what i wouldn't do for even a small plate of that right now.
13. dreams: keep me putting one foot in front of the other. even though right now it feels like i'm putting one foot behind the other.
14. children: uncensored emotions. life before calculation and manipulation = perfection.

Thanksgiving, My Style.

Okay, so "my style" is basically my mom's style and my grandma's style. But I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday for the family I'm staying with. Yeah, it was a week early, and it wasn't quite the same as chillin' and watching SEC football and the Macy's Parade, but it was nice. And everything turned out pretty well. Here's proof:




I also cooked a pretty kick-ass turkey, but I didn't get a photo of it until after it was carved up. And a photo of a carved up bird carcass? Not a wonderful image.

Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Skye

(Finally, huh?)

I don't know how many photos of landscapes you can stomach before you become completely bored (no matter how awesome the scenery is), but I took these at the beginning of the trip, and before I knew people enough to take photos of them, my camera died. (And of course I forgot the battery recharger.) So here are photos of landscapes. And no photos of people. (Wait -- there's one with me in it, huh?) Right.

Photos from my tour of the Highlands, comin' right up.

Highlights of Today

1. Ross (3 years old): "Lauren, can I see your nipples? Here're mine. They're tiny."
2. Ross has started using the word "effectively." Correctly. Example: "But Lauren, effectively, I can eat this bite and still get a biscuit, right?"
3. Bill's mom, Gram, is visiting. And she brought her black lab. It's so nice to have a dog around. And a grandma.
   

Scottish weather is like a muscular, moody, beautiful poet. He speaks his poems aloud; his face, his voice, and his words are too exquisite to ignore. He doesn’t use iambic pentameter or regular rhyme but mocks meter and any sense of predictability. Until, with a masterful volta, he ends abruptly, and the listener becomes nothing more than a willing victim, stunned and satisfied.

(I wrote this last night when I was lying in bed, listening to the gale-force winds and rain, and remembering the impressions I had of the weather in Wuthering Heights. This description might be a little dramatic, but yeah, so was the weather last night, and it kind of cast that mood.)

The Week in Review

On Wednesday morning, I went to Edinburgh to meet up with a backpacking tour group to travel around the Highlands and the Isle of Skye. But the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh was super late because of construction on the railway line, so I got to Edinburgh after the tour had left. So I rescheduled for another tour in a couple of weeks and walked around Edinburgh the rest of the day. I really loved Edinburgh -- even the kitschy souvenir shops that sell whiskey, "kilts," family coat of arms and all of that stuff.

On Thursday, Jo, the kids, and I drove north. Great weather. Wonderful scenery. (I've never seen so many rainbows in my entire life as I did in that one day.) Here are some of the highlights.

We stopped at Doune Castle along the way. It's where the first part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed. You know, when the two guys are arguing about swallows or something, and one of them replies that he'll fart in the other guy's general direction? Yeah, that's this castle.






Then we drove until we got to Oban, caught a ferry to a little island in the Inner Hebrides (Lismore), turned around and came back.




We stopped on the way back to take some photos of Highland cows.




And here's this photo, just because I think it's absolutely hilarious. It kind of makes me like McCain a little more.

The weather was unbelievable today, so we headed to Loch Lomond for a barbeque.