Two weeks

After a flurry of posts last month, I have gone all quiet. I guess I have settled back here enough to use all my spare time! I have actually been quite busy being ill, going to Texas, and working. The former being the least interesting one. It seems like I have not been 100% for ages now. I thought that maybe my body was not used to the cold anymore or that maybe my immune system is weakened from being away and can't cope with all the germs floating around in our overcrowded ecosystem over here. But, it appears that others have been feeling the same. There must be some sort of nasty little bug going around that doesn't quite make you totally ill but also hangs on for a long time.

Anyway, I'm still alive and have managed to do some fun stuff. As I mentioned I spent a few days in Texas for Thanksgiving and to celebrate the marriage of Rebecca's Mom and now Step Father. We had fried turkey again! This time uncle Lee deep fried a 23lb bird in the back yard while we played horseshoes - a classic Texas afternoon!

People always ask me what it is that I miss about home and vice versa whilst I am here. It is really difficult to answer these questions because it is all the really small things that add together to make places missable, if that is a word! However, when I was back in Texas the other week I did realise that I miss vultures! They amazed me when I first got to Texas but I guess I just got used to seeing them circling around up there everyday and it wasn't until I'd been away for a little while that I noticed them again. On a silly note, when I was in Texas I missed packing my own shopping bags. It's one of those things that I like being done in my way, like my ironing. I just don't want anyone else doing it for me. But, as with the vultures, after a while you get used to it and now I let most of my shopping go through the checkout before I remember that I am supposed to be packing it into bags at the other end. So, the I have to rush around trying to catch up with the checkout person and get done in time for the next person to be checked out. Obviously there are more serious things I miss, like beer! I mean, family and friends of course. But the things I think you miss most are the ones that you don't really notice, as I said above. These are the everyday smells, shapes, sounds and textures that you don't notice individually but together give you that feeling of being in a certain place, in this case 'home'. The biggest thing I notice in these terms is in the fields and countryside. It's the greenness of the grass and foliage, the hedgrows and shapes of the trees, the little funny shaped fields, how soft the ground feels under you, that cold, slightly damp feeling of autumn/winter. I don't care what anyone says about our weather, this is really a great time of year to be in the UK and just the other day whilst walking to the car in a cold driving drizzle, I had a huge grin on my face!

And I've been working but we don't need to go into that!