All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

On this New Year's Day, I feel very much like my grandmother. I am wearing large silver earrings, a black dress that she gave me (after discovering that she didn't quite fit into it), and my mother's Taylor of London perfume, which smells exactly like the rose oil bottle my grandmother gave me a few years ago. (As sparsely as I use perfume, it it ran out a few months ago. I had every intention to buy some more, but I now I have no need to as my mother relinquished it to me, claiming it was too strong for her. The perfectly clear perfume comes in a tall, slender bottle with Taylor of London written in black lettering across the top. A simple and unpretentious design.)

I even have red hair like my grandmother. Today, as it is New Year's Day, I washed and dried it, and pinned it back on one side. My grandmother has always had shocking red hair, and even now she dyes it to keep it a vibrant colour, and she likes to keep it in a messy bun with a painted snap of some sort. She is a great collector of odds and ends. Her house is filled with leopard-printed chairs, tables, cloths, scarfs, soap dishes, and curtains; her garage is a makeshift loppis (fleamarket) which she opens every Saturday during the summer. Granted, she doesn't make much--she probably breaks even, as she so enjoys the company of people who stop to look that she will invite them in for fika--that is, coffee and a piece of cake or a cookie.) Like any Swede, she has always enjoyed traveling and has visited the customary Norway, Denmark, and Finland, but also Spain, Turkey, Greece, Singapore (thanks to our family), Indonesia, and Finland. She married her second husband in the Swedish Embassy in Thailand. She is one of the more curious and exotic members of our family.

Can I say that I am infinitely proud of my family? They are all wonderful people. My brother and sister are good-looking and well-dressed. My brother is a musical genius, picking up instruments left and right. My sister burns with a passion for the lost and needy. Social injustice pricks her soft heart. My parents have traveled all over the world. Like superheroes, they cross oceans to save souls and deliver food and clothing to the less fortunate. My uncle is an optician--you can't really argue with that now, can you?

And thus, with thoughts of my family in mind, the year has come to an end. I sit on my bed and listen to the faint booms of firecrackers. Tommy Körberg--forever fixed in my mind as Lill-Klippen in Ronja Rövardotter, but more universally known in Sweden as a famous singer--plays in the background on the television.

I wonder what this next year will bring. Many changes, I suppose. But all good ones.

Peace to all on this most fine night.

Sincerely,
Sanna

Airship Theology

Humans are quite small, mired down in pettiness of feeling, of narrow-minded thoughts, constantly backing themselves into corners or staying too long in one place. Like teabags, they steep in the hot water of their circumstances and are forever changed. And how could they possibly see the workings of the world when they are constantly pulled into quagmires by the turnings of the everyday?

I, for one, rise above such matters, mostly because I have my own dirigible to command. It helps to be able to quite literally remove yourself from the circumstances and float, far above the scrutiny of the ill-willers and evil-doers. From here, it is much easier to divide and conquer. Because, as you see, while you and yours are busy running about, following the latest trends, burying your heads in the academic sand, being engulfed by homework or politics or swallowed by the immediate emotional landscape, I plot and scheme in quiet solitude far above your heads. I rustle my maps in the peace of my study and play Risk, in anticipation of my future accomplishments.

If only you would take the time to realize--and really, I thank you that the concept has eluded you completely--that it is not the next paper or test or assignment or interview or even load of laundry that is important, but rather the big picture altogether. Time and again, you fail to realise your full potential and your ability to manipulate it accordingly.

You think that burying your head and heart and soul into a fit of passion will keep you alive and relatively well-preserved in the years to come. This is a complete fallacy. You will have a future, certainly, but a lonely one. Your plans are ultimately futile because you fail to fit your life into the bigger picture, to consider how family, friends, and the Great Master Above will be part of the extrapolation, to look at your life from a global perspective. You have failed to propel yourself to greater heights, from which you could see the great and beautiful expanse that is the world at large.

To live for yourself is to live small. And there is no future in that.

Far above you,
Captain Esmon Cloudcutter

Peter Pan's Polite Circle

At long last I write on my blog again. I am back in America, in the suburban areas of Michigan. I last wrote in Japan. And before that I had only a smattering of journal entries from all corners of the world. I don't believe I ever mentioned that while I attended the University of York St. John for four months (in York, England, of course), I also managed to travel to Cinque Terre, Italy and Scotland's Isle of Skye.

On our way back down from Scotland, my friends and I visited the Beatrix Potter's Hilltop Farm and Chatsworth House, the inspiration of Mr. Darcy's Pemberly and also home to the world's largest chicken. (Ask me sometime.) Once you have seen the house and walked the grounds of Chatsworth House, you will truly understand how rich Mr. Darcy was.

After England, I flew to Sweden, then to Japan for a month (hence the mention of daigakumo--or daigaku jagaimo, literally university potato--slices of deep-fried sweet potato dipped in honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds) and then back to Sweden and on to America. It has been a very exciting few months for me, and I have not been good at documenting.

I miss England. I miss going to coffee shops to write on my stories and walking past the York Minster every day.

Also, I miss my family. This shouldn't be such a surprise as I have grown up constantly missing people, and I find it quite an ordinary thing. It is my life to be always parted from family, friends, mentors who taught me, teachers who knew me. It's not as terrible as some people think, mind you. I have sacrificed the norms for new experiences, new faces and places and languages. I suppose a good way to explain it is Peter Pan (you will realise in the end that everything comes back to Peter Pan), in Peter and Wendy, Ch.XVI: The Return Home:

"He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred."

I, like so many internationals, have a great familiarity with things others would consider exotic--a sure shot when it comes to culture. But I am barred from more common joys, such as seeing my family more than once a year or having best friends within walking distance. There is no melodrama in this. I would not change my life for a million others. I have gained more than I have lost, even if it stings a bit.

I suppose the delight of Peter Pan lies in the tension between the choices--that gorgeous decision that still rings from the bell of childhood. Which does one choose? Can one really choose the one over the other? I am drawn between the two, suspended in this sweet residual limbo, in daring indecision in a world that does not accept hesitation.

Speaking of indecision. I am graduating next year. What am I to do with my life? I would love to write books and live off the profits. Though people tell me that is simply not done. In polite circles or otherwise.

But perhaps I am not as polite as people would like to think...

Growing Quiet

My mother was always more surprised than exasperated by the things I brought home. I once found an old glass aquarium by the rubbish bins. I brought it home, staggering to set it down gently, promptly filled it with grass and crickets; and over the next few years followed guppies, frogs, worms, tadpoles, ants, and lizards, the last of which I captured after a mad dash through the bushes. Calotes versicolor. Changeable lizard. Soft to the touch, their bodies warm and thin in my hands, scales textured in mottled colors, round markings. Their pointed heads, red with anger, studied me with bulbous eyes, their white-lipped mouths agape, pale and pink-tongued. Their tiny hearts beat like clockwork in my hands, chests trembling with quick-drawn breaths.

There were, of course, other reptiles. Cosymbotus platyurus and Gehyra mutilate. Flat-tailed and four-clawed geckos that chirped at ungodly hours and left little black contributions on the windowsill. Geckos my mother insisted I chase and throw outside—any place would have sufficed, as long as they weren’t in the house. And so I obliged. I always wondered what they thought when they went flying through the air, their wallflower life replaced by one of sudden flight.

We once made the most fantastic gecko trap. It was all a chance occurrence. No one had thought of it until it happened by accident. Someone left the bottle of Ribena open on the shelf, only a thumb’s-depth of red, sluggish cordial left in the bottom. I came down to make toast the next morning and found a gecko floating on this tiny Red Sea, held aloft by surface tension. My mother, delighted with the contraption, left the bottle open for another night. Its comrade came to meet the same sticky end. They did not die right away. They waited as death-row inmates, held immobile in Ribena, for Death to come. I saw them blink at me. My mother only stopped the game when ants began to congregate around the bodies, tiny looters that filled mouths and dull, yellow eyes.

Apart from the occasional killing, I spent my days peacefully, preoccupied with animals. My sister and I not only cared for cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, and birds, but also the slow and graceful turtle. We bought two thumbnail specimens at the pet store and kept them in a shallow bucket filled with water and a resting stone. One never surfaced. He, the water creature, drowned. We found him wedged between a rock and a hard place, and we buried him unceremoniously in the garden. The one who lived soon grew too big, and we released him in the pond at the Botanic Gardens. We buried a great many pets in the backyard. I was sorry to see them go.

In this manner I found my place in the world, firmly rooted within the porcelain pleasures of childhood. I knew that my backyard—that great, green wherein I lived and breathed and had my being—would not last the hour. It was a minute in life, regrettably short, and so I grew roots into the earth and loved my home. It was not much to look at, but it had grass and skies and trees to sustain my feverish imagination. Dilapidated white stone houses lined the roads. Our house, too, needed a fresh coat of paint, and the clay roof shingles had slipped in several places. I never noticed its condition back then—I was loathe to notice anything but fairies—unless it rained. The roof leaked.

It was little wonder. Tropical rain is not to be trifled with. It has a distinct character, a short temper, a quick burnout but I loved its fury. The storms would roll in from the jungle behind the houses on the hill; and I would watch its advent from my window. The clouds would swell fat, rising in purple towers, gathering the world into a final breath--waiting, waiting for the end. The birds stifled their song. The horizon trembled as the beast turned, his arched back breaking into streaks of light. The sky was gray—green—then sickly yellow.

I wanted to be closer to the storm, darting down the stairs to throw open the veranda door. Mamma had shut the windows, Pappa had pulled the laundry down from the line—I arrived in time to smell the rain. The storm broke above me with a deafening crash. The sky seemed to fly to pieces, shattering in a fit of rage. Thunder rumbled, the wind whipping the trees into a frenzy. Rain stood like rods to the ground, each drop indistinguishable from the next. The world was water, dripping, running, seeping. It poured into the earth, began to fill the drains.

Cold, I went indoors and watched from behind the safety of a sheet of glass. I followed the forming streams and rivulets. The rain fell on my account. Its power spent, the storm soon abated, its anger stilled to a whisper. The leaves glistened green in the late sunshine, gently dripping with an amusing self-esteem. They had survived. I went outside to feel the mud squelch between my toes, only to discover a strange sight. The rains had filled an air pocket between the grassroots and the soil, raising a welt in the grass. I let out a yell. "Come see!"
Mamma and my sister came to the veranda door and watched as I toed the bump, this green carpet undulating like a water bed. Sofia was equally excited—she tread the bulge--but our footsteps were beginning to disturb the delicate balance. Mamma (in a rare moment of silliness) wanted her turn too. She stepped up, triumphant, and laughed at the strange feel of it. Unfortunately, it did not last--the water-welt deflated like a manhandled sea cucumber.

Mamma went inside. Sofia followed. I looked up to see that dusk had stolen into view. Distracted, I had not seen the night fall, as I always did. The crickets tuned their bows. I thought I glimpsed lights in the trees. Fairies, I wanted to tell myself. But I couldn’t. A shame too, I knew. I wanted to believe, but my imaginationhad grown quiet with the years, shushed by other thoughts, each elbowing for their rightful place. I could feel it as I stood and listened to the night. I was growing deaf. My fantasies, too large and cumbersome to bring to school, too silly to take out and show to company, were put aside, forced into that dreadful corner, among lost socks and forgotten lyrics. One day I would have to put such childish ways behind me and learn to sit up straight. To listen, to know the law, to make friends. To keep them. And my efforts to stem this tide were hopeless.

Enid Blyton: Bah, Humbugs!

British food has always held a sort of magical fascination in my life. From an early age, I read the works of Enid Blyton, who never failed to tantalize my poor tastebuds with detailed descriptions of food I could never have. The children of her narratives never go hungry and are constantly eating such exotic things (to my mind) as hot scones with raspberry jam, gingerbread, boiled sweets, humbugs, lemon drops, ice lollies, treacle, toffee, macaroons, blancmange, puddings of all kinds, Pop Biscuits, Google buns, Hot-Cold goodies, and Well-I-Never rolls. (The last four examples, I admit, were of Blyton’s own invention, but nonetheless never failed to inspire my childish imagination.) In her book Five on a Hike Together, she describes a meal at the Three Shepherds.

A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

Blyton’s attraction to food most likely stemmed from having lived through the rationing days of the Second World War. On 8 January 1940, butter, bacon, and sugar were the first commodities to be rationed. They were shortly followed by meat, tea, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, milk, and canned fruit (which would explain Blyton’s fascination with tinned pineapple). After the war, rationing became even stricter. Bread was rationed from 1946 to 1948. Potato rationing began in 1947.

The loss of food is a blow to any culture, and it is understandable that England lamented its loss during the war years. Over the centuries, English food has been shaped by the country’s temperate climate, geography, history, and even its religion. It has a wide and varied background, beginning with the Celts, whose agriculture and animal breeding resulted in a variety of foodstuffs for the indigenous population. The Angles and Saxons developed different stews made from meat and herbs, and during the Norman Conquest, exotic spices were introduced into England in the Middle Ages. The British Empire, stretching far into the Orient and across the oceans to tropical islands, brought back new recipes, among them the Indian tradition of food and its strong herbs and spices.

The traditional food of England, however, remains simple and relies on high quality, natural produce. England’s Puritan heritage made it almost impossible to incorporate strong flavors, such as garlic, or use complex sauces, as these had political affiliations with the Catholics. The majority of the population consisted of farmers, which is why England is famous for its simple, but small variety of breads and cheeses, meat and game pies, roasted and stewed meats, boiled vegetables and broths, and fresh and saltwater fish. Still, it is possible to find these traditional foods in most eating establishments.

As I first walked down the cobblestoned streets of York, I was glad to discover that restaurants and pubs still serve Shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips (one of the few foods unaffected by WWII rationing), and Sunday roasts (a roasted joint of meat, served with roasted or mashed potatoes, and a Yorkshire pudding). Thomas the Baker serves bread and butter pudding, rhubarb crumble, apple pie, treacle tart, spotted dick, trifle custard, and summer pudding, along with the traditional Cornish pasty (pronounced pass-ti, a light puff pastry wrapped around a mix of beef, potato, onion, and Swedish turnips), mince pie, and fruit tarts. The local teahouses dish out a daily, dainty delicacies, such as hot teacakes, currant scones with clotted cream and jam, and pots of Earl Grey. As a result of India being the “crown jewel” in the British Empire, Indian restaurants sprang up all over England, and the tikka masala is even jokingly hailed as “England’s true national food.”

As for myself, I find English food to be part of a larger body of work. Farmers’ dishes generally fall into similar categories—simple, heavy dishes made of meat, vegetables, and potatoes, originally made to serve hungry farmers after a hard day’s work. Pasties, steak and kidney piece, and bangers and mash have continental equivalents; pasties compare to the Swedish palt and kroppkakor (meat dumplings eaten with pork slices, butter, and lingonberry jam), and the Lithuanian cepelinai (zeppelin-shaped dumplings made from potato dough filled with ground beef, milk curd or mushrooms with salt and spices, and eaten with bacon and butter sauce); Scottish haggis is comparable to Swedish pölsa—even bloodpudding has its exact replica in Swedish cuisine. Though food is an indicator of national identity, it also works to include the country into an international community—England has, for centuries, been linked to the rest of Europe by its food. Its food has evolved and adapted with its historical circumstance, and now, once again, it is evolving to incorporate itself into a more international identity. Curries and pasties are sold side-by-side without a second thought, perhaps as harbingers of things to come.

I WANT AN A. I hate A minuses.

English Pub Culture: A Mark of the Past

A stroll around the cobble-stoned streets of York will reveal a multitude of quaint pubs, named everything from the normal (The Cross Keys), to the fairytale inspired (The Golden Slipper) to the just plain strange (The Three-Legged Mare). Pub culture, in fact, is such a prevalent part of English culture that I feel the need to reach for a metaphor: if England were Cyrano de Bergerac, pub culture would be its proudly prominent nose—a bit of an eyesore, but generally considered quite good to have. Pub culture has had a long and valued history in England. Ale has been served to British inhabitants since the Bronze Age, and gin entered the country via the Dutch in the eighteenth century. However, it was not the natives, but the Romans who would be the first to establish inns, or tabernae, as they were known. In Rome, it was common practice to hang vine leaves outside the door, signifying the selling of wine inside. Once this was tradition was transplanted to European, specifically English soil, it was discovered that vine leaves were in short supply. The vines were then switched out for small evergreen bushes, signifying, “Come hither for a pint of ale.”
With the building of roads across England, it became necessary to have places of respite—public houses which provided food, shelter, and a hearty drink. When the Romans withdrew from the rainy isle, the Anglo-Saxons took over their business and established alehouses in domestic dwellings. The beginnings of the modern pub lie in these alehouses, wherein the locals could have a drink and gossip about their days. The alehouse provided a place for the hard-working farm labourers to take a moment and enjoy a drink before going off to bed. By 965, alehouses had become so popular that King Edgar decreed there should be no more than one per village. Inns and pubs were so common by the twelfth century that it was necessary to name them, and with the names came pub signs, as most of the people were still illiterate. By an official act, King Richard II made it compulsory for inns and pubs to display signs in order that the official Ale Taster could find them more easily.

Pubs had almost become the focal point of the community. Samuel Pepys’s writings describe the pub as the heart of England, and he may very well have been right. Of course, pub culture did not come without its fare share of disapprovers. The temperance movements spoke out against the evils of gin and the loud and unruly drinking dens (described by Charles Dickens in Sketches of Boz), and attempted to shut down or at least diminish the proliferating beer and winehouses in the larger cities. The many Beer and Gin Acts passed during this time would be the predecessors of the modern debate over alcohol moderation in England. I was interested to find the correlations between the past and the present when I read a newspaper article about the worry over rising levels of alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom. The article outlined how the government was debating whether or not to raise taxes on alcohol in order to control its availability to young people. This proposition has been met with opposition; the locals of pubs claim that taxes would only punish the wrong people—namely, themselves—and would do little to stop excessive drinking among today’s youth.

As for myself, I have had nothing but good experiences in the pub. Unlike smoky dance floors or overcrowded student unions, the pubs provide a cozy atmosphere for the regulars and an assorted group of students. The atmosphere and crowd of the pub depends entirely on its traditions. The Brigadier Gerard catered to an older, more staid crowd. Quiz night consisted of general information questions, with the elderly pub owner (or landlord, as they were traditionally called) calling out the questions, only interrupted by the occasional drinking song emanating from a corner. (A woman was having a concert of her own and repeated the first line of the chorus until someone from the other side of the room raised their voices and told her to “Shut up.”) The Independent, off Haxby, sees a younger crowd. I, along with a few of my fellow students, signed up for their quiz night on Monday, only to find ourselves completely stumped by questions pertaining to British music from the eighties. One of the best and most innovative experiences I have had in a pub was its appropriation as a tool for Christian fellowship. Though historically condemned as a place of immorality, my friends from church took me to the Old Starry Inn as a way to introduce themselves.

Pubs have not lost any of their charm with the years, but rather new sources of entertainment have arisen to satisfy the public. They used to be places of congregation for hard-working farmers and merchants, bringing the salt of the earth together after a day’s labour. Most of today’s generation does not work in agriculture, and the pub no longer seems a necessary watering-hole. The discoteque has distracted the younger generation; bars have stolen drinking clients; cinemas and theatres are inexpensive and entertaining enough to draw the masses. The pub, however, is an unchanging fixture of the British countryside, a bastion of historical importance to the layman. With its polished oak counters and green booths, the pub cannot offer bright lights or fast entertainment. It offers what it has offered for generations—good food and drink, good company, and a place to rest your feet.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary / How does a poem grow?

I just finished re-editing my poem The Journey. I am still not completely happy with it, but I suppose I will have time to change it later on.

Did I tell you someone wrote a short piece on my stuffed animal Macaroni? We had to describe something which mattered a lot to us, and the only thing that came to mind was my duck, sitting on my bed and waiting for me to come back home, his beady eyes, slightly scuffed from years of love, staring at the door handle. We then traded slips of paper, and she--I forget her name--wrote the following:

In the grey drip of dreary weather
He acts like a thermal blanket which wraps around
My lungs, my heart, my whole being.

Shielding me from the terrors, the dullness, the nothing
the horrid world outside
I realize I am alone, apart from him
and he is a toy, inanimate, yet somehow living
Secretly and solely to me.

His life emanates from memories, trapped inside him
he is a well-traveled duck
faded from journeys to Sweden and Singapore,
the confident, busy style of life I used to lead

One where I never expected I'd be
Sitting alone in this room

Pretty spot on, wouldn't you say? Well, you would say so if you'd ever seen Macaroni. I also went over three other poems, The Rack, The Dirk, and Iscariot. I never plan to write poetry, but most of all, I do not plan the subject matter. It always turns into something strange and slightly creepy. Can't help it if my deepest thoughts are cold and calculating.

Rise, Tyro! and receive my golden rays, my fiery hues,
my red seal upon your breast, pressed deep into
your nature, binding you and casting you into my copper
Son , my full-forged prentice singing, singing praises to the
dawn, your hammer ringing, ringing in the early
morn

Don't ask.

Unapologetically Yours,
Bodo of Dobo Isle

Now I must finish my paper.

We're All Mad Here

Sitting at my desk, with one shoe on, one shoe off, like Miss Havisham.

At least I have not been abandoned on the day of my wedding on account of my wealth and fortune.

The last two days have been busy. As you already know, I can do everything, and a few things are not to get in my way or distract me from my larger purpose. For example, yesterday was Thursday, and I had class at 10:30, and at 3:00, I met up in town with a guided walking tour around York, highlighting the Christians that have gone before us. Our guide, an elderly gentleman with a sonorous, dare I say Shakespearean, voice who led us through the city, beginning at the statue of Constantine outside York Minster and ending outside of St. Michael Le Belfrey, discussing David Watson and his ministry in the 1960s. Our guide's father turned his life over to God at one of D.L. Moody's sermons here in York.

It is good to have a history, a Christian history spanning hundreds of years, one--as any--filled with both sordid and kind acts. It is good to have a group with which to identify yourself, to help anchor your place in history and situate yourself in the face of the future. Where would we be without the people that came before us? If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

After the tour, Theresa, Melissa, and I went to Chandini, which is an Indian restaurant that has a student deal on Thursdays. I had a Chicken Tikka Masala, nan, and a Mango Lassie. It made me miss Singapore even more. It also made me think of my father's good work in India, among the poor in Calcutta and Jharsuguda, Orissa state. I visited two Christmases ago, just before the persecution of the Christians flared up again. Instead of a family Christmas at home, we visited the Children's home and were able to distribute some Christmas gifts. It was not much by any modern standards, but it was much appreciated. The children had never seen a frisbee before, but got the hang of it once we showed them how. The orange one quite quickly disappeared over a low wall and was never seen again.

After the city tour, we dispersed and went home, each to her own. I joined Melissa and stole her chocolate while she was not looking and then returned home to read a short story for my Creative Writing class called Sally, In Parts.

We used the story in class as an example of how a specific, even artificial structure was used to tell a story. In this case, the narrator goes through Sally's different body parts, such as her eyes, nose, lungs, etc., and, while describing them, manages to weave in a story about her relationship to her father and his final days in the hospital.

After my class, which finished a few minutes early, Erin and I went to the cinema to chope seats for Melissa, who would come later because she was dying her hair. We watched Alice in Wonderland, and ate Sainsbury's dark chocolate and a candies collectively called Strawberry Things. (Imagine! Strawberry is a flavour phenomenon. Not a day goes by without my coming across this marvelous little fruit.)

Aren't we all a little mad? Aren't we all the Mad Hatter? To which, you would reply, Not at all. There are people in this world that are perfectly sane. You have just yet to meet one. As like attracts like, you are decidedly out of the sane circle of health and well-being.

I suppose that's true. Mad as a Hatter, mind you, mind you.

But only the Brain could dream dreams as big and as wide as world domination. And he was most decidedly delusional. No one faults him for his dreams. Or perhaps, do you?

We are all mad here.

Sincerely,
the Cheshire Cat

(P.S. I ended today with a potluck dinner and then a brief stop at Professor Dean's house where we watched an episode of Simon Schama on the Young (and eventually Old) Queen Victoria and the times of progress during her reign.

Lunatic's Laundry

Had a frustrating laundry day. Overstuffed one of the machines, and when I arrived to put the supposedly clean load into the dryer, some of it was soaking wet, some of it was dry. None of it was washed. Wasted 1.60. Separated load into two different machines. Had to borrow change from people. (DOES NO ONE IN YORK HAVE SMALL CHANGE?) Waiting, waiting for laundry now.

Note to self. Do not repeat.

Laundry done.
One came out
of the dryer
Dry.
The other one
still damp.

That was my poem for the day.

Since I have had to handwash three of my dresses, I had to find a place to hang them up to dry. I placed them on the heater and they have been drying nicely. The only problem is that I turned my room into Singapore. Instant humidity.

Makes me think of my family.

All for now.

Peace out,
Homedog