Just a quick hello before we jet back to the UK…

When The Rock Star and I got married, we were pretty broke. We didn’t do traditional engagement rings because, “I’m just not a diamond person.” Or so I thought.

7 years later and 2.2 months away from the birth of our first child, I decided that I actually AM kind of a diamond person, so The Rock Star kindly obliged me with an engagement ring for Christmas. My father (the guy with the pitchfork in the background) insisted that it was also a good photo opportunity.

Not only that, but it’s a bit of a supreme belly shot. Yes, the Prawn is going to be a mighty Lobster.

From the land of the free and the well fed, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. I hope your bellies are as full as mine.

It seems that I start an inordinate number of travelogues with references to the Wrath of God. Its not that I believe that god has got anything against us personally, but all I’m saying is that rivers of blood or a plague of frogs falling from the overhead lockers wouldn’t be entirely unexpected.

After 11 years of trans-Atlantic travel, The Rock Star and I like to think of ourselves as fairly seasoned travelers, accustomed to delays and fuckwittery in all of their many forms. However, around Christmastime, something comes over the traveling public at large that reduces us all to the level of beasts of the field, lowing and shuffling ever forward to our doom through the aeronautical abattoir.

Arriving 3 hours before our flight departed seemed like a sensible precaution during the busy holiday period. Indeed, this would have been plenty of time had it not been that the whole population of greater London hadn’t had the same idea.

It never ceases to amaze me how airports seem to drain people of common sense. In the HOUR AND FORTY FIVE MINUTES we spent queuing for check in, the 20 minutes in security and the relatively short queue at the gate (the flight was boarding, necessitating a 10 minute, fast-paced yomp through the concourse. I discovered why one never sees pregnant sprinters.) we saw at least 50 examples of prime rib, grade A stupidity including a group of Chinese students who spoke flawless English, but couldn’t seem to understand the concept of emptying their pockets before going through a metal detector and an American student who’d obviously had a bad morning and eventually dealt with the situation by wailing, “I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!” over and over at the top of her voice. I have had similar days in airports, but have I never believed that a biblical style breakdown was going to get me anywhere.

I have rarely been so pleased to actually get ONTO an airplane in my life, despite the fact that I discovered that my Prawn-enhanced girth now no longer allowed me to fit comfortably into an average airline seat. To make matters worse, in a stunning display of stupid design, my personal entertainment system’s controller was wedged against my thigh, making it highly likely that anytime I shifted slightly, I ended up either calling the cabin steward, ordering duty-free or watching the Spongebob Squarepants movie.

However, the trip and all it’s little discomforts have been well worth it ever since arriving back at my parent’s beautiful woodland home, full of all the comforts of Christmastime. Although the weather has been vaguely freakish (72 degrees F yesterday) we have felt very jolly indeed. (As have the frogs in my parent’s pond who were enjoying their brief sunbathing session before settling down in the mud for the winter) We have eaten heartily, shopped decadently (new clothes at almost $1.85 to the pound) and very much enjoyed watching the trio of cats that inhabit the house poke their be-whiskered noses into anything and everything.(luggage, wrapping paper, the bowl of cereal that you’re currently eating, etc)

Hope everyone else is beginning to wind down for the holiday and that the Travel Gods take you safely to your destinations!

In the holiday related madness of the past week and a half, I have barely had time to scratch my ever-expanding ass, let alone try to form a coherant blog post. I HAVE, however…..

-Sent out over 200 Christmas cards that HAVEN’T BEEN FROM ME. I have to do THOSE today.

-Waged war with Amazon.com, Oxfam Unwrapped and a small specialist chocolate shop in the middle of London.

-Nearly completed 6 pieces of jewelry.

-Pushed 3 loads of laundry through the machines.

-Arranged appointments, turned up at appointments, gotten stuck with needles DURING appointments. (The Prawn, by the way is measuring “two weeks ahead”, whatever the hell THAT means. All I know is that I’m having a hard time fitting through my bedroom door.)

-Badgered, bullied, threatened and cajoled other people into completing things that needed to be completed.

So quite frankly? I’m knackered. I have survived the last two days in particular on a diet of vitamins, water and heavy metal.

Tomorrow morning, The Rock Star and I are hopping a flight back to the land of my birth to spend two weeks of well deserved rest at my parent’s beautiful house in the Maryland woods. Two weeks of good food, tea, cats and doing bugger all.

I. Can’t. Wait.

Further updates from the States!

As probably a lot of you became aware yesterday when co-workers began mailing this story to you, a plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Nashville because someone farted.

It was not merely the occurrence of said flatulence that grounded the airliner. If this was the case, planes would never be able to take off due to the volume of compressed and expelled gasses contained within the intestines of passengers. (Anyone who’s ever had a long haul flight with an air bubble that constantly keeps bubbling away in your gut will know the temptation to asphyxiate everyone in a 5 row radius in order to be rid of it.) The plane, was in fact forced to land because the woman who expelled said gasses was so embarrassed that she attempted to cover the fact by LIGHTING MATCHES.

Let’s skip over the part where we determine that this woman is obviously a brain donor. (lighting matches on an airplane. What a fucking brilliant idea, you vain asshat.) Anyone with a remotely functioning brain would have a) thought to spray what little perfume/deodorant you are allowed to bring in your carry-on- not exactly endearing you to other passengers, but if you simply can’t face the idea that your fellow travellers might discover that you have a digestive system, it’s an idea, or b) simply giving your seatmate a dirty look, making it obvious to all around you that they and not you are the culprit.

It does lead one to wonder why any sort of materials that can be used to start a fire are allowed on board aircraft anyhow. We’re required to leave nail files, tiny scissors and drinks behind, but hey, if you wanna spark up mid-flight, you’re in luck. THEY ALLOW MATCHES, BUT NOT WATER. HOW IN THE HELL DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER?

Just for amusement…my mother once got caught in airport security with a 9 inch bread knife in her purse. She’d spent the previous evening preparing for every security eventuality- slip on, slip off shoes, no scissors, needles, etc in her bag…but somehow missed the huge, offensive weapon in the front pocket that she’d used at school the day before to cut cake. The female security officer just looked at her.

“You can’t take this on the plane, ma’am.”

My mother stared open mouthed in horror. What she probably wanted to say was, “No shit.” What she ended up saying was;

“Um…you can keep that.”

Last week, my father destroyed a microwave oven.

After spending 30 years teaching earth science in the Maryland Public School system, he retired to a life of leisure, home improvement and internet surfing about 4 years ago. Always possessed of a curious mind, he can at least be philosophical about the fact that the microwave sacrificed it’s life to demonstrate a scientific principal.

Wishing to sterlize a plastic jug, he placed it in the microwave 3 quarters full of water and left it to heat for 3 minutes. Upon completion of the cycle, the water still had not boiled, so he set the timer for another 2 minutes. When the water STILL had not boiled, he set it for a further two minutes and sat down at the computer desk, where he was most annoyingly startled by the microwave door blowing off.

For some reason, water heated in a microwave in a smooth container can be superheated, well beyond boiling point. Disturbing the surface tension can cause the water to instantaneously boil and throw scalding water everywhere. If it’s super SUPER heated, the water can instantly vaporize, creating a large volume of steam, which is exactly what happened, knackering the door and, for some strange reason, the rotating mechanism inside the microwave.

The last time a scientific principal worked against my father, a tree fell on the house.* When he does things, he doesn’t do them by half.

*Not actually his fault, as he’d done all the angling precisely right. The only problem was, unbeknownst to him, the tree was actually hollow from an invasion of termites, causing it to fall, in slow motion, through the skylight of the sunroom. He managed to get it fixed before my mom came home.

The life of a touring rock band is not as glamorous at it might seem. This goes double for any band who has pretty much been on the road since 1982, lost the majority of the original members along the way and have accumulated a large, upper middle age female fanbase. One might wonder why they go on. I know I do.

Due to circumstances far too complicated to relate, the Mis-Spelled Band found themselves warming up the aforementioned upper middle age female fanbase (and their reluctant partners) of 80’s pop-synth sensations Go West on Friday night. Who are Go West, you ask? Well, if you ever found yourself humming the irritatingly catchy refrain to the 1990 top ten hit, “King of Wishful Thinking” then you know roughly who they are. (So popular was this song, that my high school marching band played it, but like other hits tabbed for this unusual medium, it was difficult to distinguish it from other songs that we played like “Centrefold” by the J Giles Band or even “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. Ever heard an iconic heavy metal song performed by 150 15-18 year old brass, woodwind and percussion players? No? It’s really just as well.)

At any rate, on Friday night, The Rock Star and the rest of the Mis-Spelled miscreants ended up in the soggy seafront in Worthing to perform at the Pavilion on the pier and whip up estrogen levels for the main event.

We arrived during sound check to a bass drum sound that seemed to be in danger of collapsing the entire concert hall into the waiting sea below. In addition to that, the Prawn obviously thought the world was coming to an end and attempted to hide behind my lower intestine. The Mis-Spelleds were too busy loading in their kit and ogling the vast soundboard to notice the ear-shattering loudness. Either that or several years playing with electric instruments has rendered several, if not all of them, deaf. (I know I’m in for a lifetime of yelling the Rock Star’s name across the house and having him go, “I didn’t hear you!”)

They were given a dressing room overlooking the frankly very angry sea and a stage manager with a ponytail holder in his beard and basically left to their own devices until they went on at 8. Their set was very good and elicited the desired response from said ladies of a certain age. The Idiot was spared any flying underthings, but they were most likely being reserved for the lead singer of Go West, who, while undeniably a vocal talent, needs to gently wean himself from tanning lotion and tight black shirts. The band themselves were excellently rehearsed, although not to my taste. In my humble opinion, synth heavy 80’s-90’s pop was a minor infraction against music that, at the very least, warrants a small fine.

We spent most of the main band’s set sitting in the theatre’s lounge and admiring the sea, which was heaving itself up onto the pebbled shore in a seemingly desperate attempt to get into the pub across the street. (There has to be “an ocean walks into a bar…” joke in existence somewhere.) The Mis-spelleds were rather elated at their good performance although Captain Hairy was somewhat sulky as The Idiot neglected to introduce him at the end of the set. (He shouldn’t have felt so bad- The Idiot also called Girl Friday by the surname of the bass player to whom she is neither related nor wed.)

So went The Mis-Spelled Band’s brush with the Z list.

Ring.

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You have reached Blogapotamus Rex. I’m not here at the moment as I’ve followed my husband down to Worthing on the occasion of The Mis-Spelled band supporting 80’s pop “legends”, Go West. He’s praying for death as we speak.

If you’re a bot, looking to offer me free hardcore pictures of Halle Berry, I can be contacted at vice_president@whitehouse.gov and I’ll be happy to get back to you. Otherwise, please leave a message at the sound of the tone.

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