From One Extreme to Another

Posted on July 31, 2010 by MAL

Moving back to the United States, the one thing I’ve noticed are the extremes. Extreme fat people versus extreme skinnies. Extremely large cars versus Segways. Extreme hicks versus extreme snobs.

Then there’s the food portions. Two nights, two extremes.

Thursday night – Tapas night! This isn’t Spain, it’s Federal Hill in Baltimore, but oh how I craved some Spanish tapas. Mixed with having dinner with my best friend and her new English beau, the evening couldn’t go wrong. And it didn’t, with the company. I made the mistake of going to dinner starving and somewhat penniless after splurging $2,500 more than we originally intended to do on a car. But oh, the 1997 Toyota Camry in Champagne color is a beauty – a grandpa beauty, but with 115,000 miles and one mechanic in its lifetime, we are happy to have a reliable car (pictures soon) with a sun roof, oh, and did I mention it has leather seats? Who cares about the hail pellet indentations on the roof when you’ve got automatic leather seats!! Woohoo. (More importantly, we have something to drive to North Carolina next week).

Anywho, at an average of $9 a plate for half a bite of food that was mildly delicious, all four of us opted for some french fries at the local bar down the street afterwards. And I’m all for gourmet food, but Centro Tapas was good, but not amazing for the small portions they fed us.

Then I come to last night’s dinner at Carmine’s in Washington DC. It was the largest portions I’ve ever seen with tasty big morsels of seafood, veal, pasta, calamari, cannoli’s, caesar salad, lasagna – and that was just for the five of us. It brings me back to the beauty and the curse of American society – our love of extremes.

What do you guys think? What are your views of the extremities of American society?

Casual Meanderings of America

Posted on July 20, 2010 by MAL

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I won’t mention the canceled flights, the overnight stay in Minneapolis or the 9 hour delay in Newark, NJ. I won’t discuss the high amount of obese people rolling around on their automatic wheelchairs through the casinos or the woman in her wedding dress getting a cosmo at the Ghost Bar at the Palms with no wedding party in sight. I won’t talk about the waiter on auto-pilot who was dead behind the eyes and didn’t even register that we were two live beings sat at a table or the man with platinum teeth falling off his chair, or for that matter, the clearly underaged girl puking behind the couch. No use in harping on fact that roads in Vegas are bigger than freeways in England or that the portions thus far have allowed Jock and I to share a couple of meals.

What I want to talk about is how amazing it was to hold my nephew, to hug my mama, to meet my sister’s boyfriend, laugh with my best friend, look into my sister’s eyes right in front of me and relish in my uncle’s company and incredible cooking. Hearing American accents around me still makes me turn my head – you can imagine how often that’s been happening. Oh and the use of a cell phone is miraculous. I can actually communicate and call my friends and family on a whim, for no reason whatsoever, just because I feel like it. That’s a great feeling.

CNN isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It seems America has grown up a bit since I’ve been gone – I say that and then I hear about the USDA official being fired over a badly cut youtube video depicting her as a racist that in no way described what she actually meant.

Oh how I’ve missed the nonchalant chit chat that goes with being in America, follows you to the grocery store, into Terry Fator’s show at the Mirage (absolutely recommend), up the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower and into Yama Sushi. The southern woman who wants to talk about her bad vertigo, the young rocker who boasts about which sushi to order or the old man who laughs at the fact that the margarita he consumed fifteen minutes before is now making its way into his brain (he doesn’t drink much normally). The casual meanderings of the simplistic and genuine American citizen floats its way back into my heart and I can feel myself re-opening up that side of me – transforming back into my louder, more gregarious person (which may surprise some of my English friends that I can become more of that – I didn’t shy away too much). But now its more accepted.

I never thought I’d be so happy to be back. I truly didn’t. The tear I felt leaving France after a year of studies abroad and the yank of incredible reverse culture shock coming back here five years ago was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps the difference is that I wasn’t ready to leave France, I felt it wasn’t my choice and that the school system’s decision to make me leave by June 1st felt unjust (even though my visa had ended and I actually didn’t have a choice.). This time I decided when I would leave, how it would happen – it was on my terms.

And the difference also is that I know I’ll be back in no time. Back then, I was a student, unsure of where my next paycheck would come from, let alone how I would ever be able to go back to the way I lived in Paris. Now, I am more settled, with beau and money – how much comfort comes from that feeling alone – for, I am not alone.

More soon. Leaving Las Vegas for Chicago today. Then back to Baltimore. Will update as regularly as I can.

Thank you all for continuing to follow my journey.

VIEW FROM MY LAST MEAL OUT IN ENGLAND, The Ship, Portsmouth:

VIEW FROM MY FIRST MEAL OUT IN AMERICA:

The Day Bloggers Came to Life

Posted on July 7, 2010 by MAL

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Follow up to Bloggers Unite entry.

First time waking up at 6AM my entire year and a half in the UK. I must have been excited. Three hours on not so smelly bus (think up a notch from Greyhound my Americanas!) with Writer’s Digest on my lap. I just realized that I wore the exact same outfit to meet my kooky, wonderful blogger friends as I wore to meet Jock in Chicago our second time meeting – that must mean something.

Who knew how nervous I would be!

After searching the hazy streets of Earl Court for the underground, forty minutes on the tube and a grope around for the Crypt’s Cafe (when it said “crypt,” I didn’t really think it meant there were dead people under our feet, but there were), I was at the appointed location for the blogger meetup. I took a minute outside before I entered just to really take in what was to be my last time in London this year. There’s something so freeing about entering a city on your own, traipsing through its subterranean villages and emerging to an entirely different world; watching the grumpy faces of even the most beautiful Londoner, upset that they have to spend another day buried under the humidity makes me appreciate this experience even more – they weave through this maze of interpersonal skills everyday and I get to observe. I also sneakily pretended for a brief moment that I was back in Paris, reliving my days as a student at the Odeon metro.

Oh how glorious are these European cities. I will miss you.

Bristol, you are wonderful, but I’m just not a minor city girl. I need BIG. You have your charm though.

So, in I go. There sit Smitten by Britain, A Mid-Atlantic English, Pond Parleys (both of them!) and Laura from About.com – then finally, 3 Bedroom Bungalow (and her adorable daughter). I felt as if I were meeting my long lost friends – surely I’ve spent just as much, if not more (at least online), time with them than my real everyday friends here in England. We have shared our stories, read our woes, crusaded together to finish a script in 30 days, emailed our annoyances and joys at life in England and they have been just as much a part of my journey as any real person. It’s amazing and I feel like a big nerd when I say this, but I felt like these other bloggers really understand my English experience in a completely different, but still just as relevant, way as my friends and family.

(Missing Michelle and Laura in this photo)

I arrived at noon and only left at 4pm when I absolutely couldn’t stay any longer. I booked my return ticket at 5pm, thinking that surely four hours would be plenty of time to catch up, chat and meet them. I was so wrong! We had so much to talk about.

Without kissing too much ass, I loved them all. I can honestly say that because its true – how interesting to hear what everyone thought everyone else would be like in real life. I think the biggest thing for me was seeing how their writing suited their personalities and reflected who they are in real life.

Definitely a fascinating trip, and if it weren’t for the fat smelly man seated next to me, the loud, annoying woman behind me who spoke on her phone the entire ride back or the rain that greeted me when I got off the bus – I would say it was the perfect day.

Thanks Melissa for organizing!

Side Note – Mike from Postcards from Across the Pond (A.k.a. Pond Parleys) gave me a copy of his book and I highly recommend it for anyone planning on traveling to England. He has quite the knack for perfecting in words all the idiosyncrasies that come with moving to England. This is not a paid endorsement – I just really like his book! So buy it.

No More Safe House

Posted on June 29, 2010 by MAL

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There’s something about safety that I have always felt uneasy about. “Staying safe,” “playing safe,” “safe house.” It screams boredom, dull, passionless life or literally, insane.

This move back to the states for me is reclaiming my risk-taking. I’m not talking jumping off bridges or spitting in the eye of a Mexican policeman risk-taking, I’m talking becoming artistically relevant. I’m saying pushing past my writing limit. Daring to experiment with stories I have never considered or thought possible – praying I can be stretched to such an extent.

I just re-read a few of my pieces from college that I wrote and performed and they are shocking. As in, how complacent have I become? My writing before was raw and certainly lacking in eloquence, but it touched on topics that went straight to the core, didn’t hold back and wasn’t afraid. What is it about becoming older that drips in mediocrity and lacks audacity? I don’t want to become complacent.

So, why am I writing this to the world? My blog will follow my move back to the states, but once I get settled, my goal is touch nerves once again, to provoke conversation and debate and to unearth topics that aren’t easy to read but that need to be discussed. Its a big aim, but I believe I need it. I need to get back in touch with that side of me. Whether or not the same readers will be attracted to my new blog will remain to be seen, but I invite you to try it out. I’d love to hear what you have to say. I can’t promise to know what I will be writing about or where the inspiration will come from, but I do vow to keep it interesting. Just give me a month to get in the groove.

I can’t promise brilliance, but I can promise interesting.

The Lady who Lunches as a theme is retiring in its original form. That lady isn’t really me, never truly was. She’s a facade I created so I could relish not working, living in a country on a temporary tourist visa unable to truly have a life. It was fun for a second, but let’s face it, I’m a middle class workaholic who needs to feel validated in my life and that life lunching in England simply wasn’t cutting it.

Now, when I write that I am the Lady Who Lunches, it’s for business meetings, lunches with best friends and as a symbol for working and enjoying the simple yet luxurious things in life.

I can’t wait.

Stay tuned…

Blog Integrity

Posted on June 8, 2010 by MAL

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Since I’ve recently jumped past the 25,000 visitor mark just past my one year anniversary (thanks George for bringing that to my attention!), I’ve been thinking a lot lately about blog integrity. (Picture below is stock photo)

For me, I had no intention in making this a popular or mainstream blog. In fact, it has a long way to go before it reaches that stage, if it ever does. I’ve been really surprised how the last couple of months, the readership has shot up, its now at approximately 7,000 visitors per month. Even though my intentions were to only reach out to my friends and family whilst living in the UK, it does feel pretty awesome to know that something I’ve worked so hard on is starting to blossom.

Some of you may have noticed my recent Adsense integration. I’ve been playing around with it to see if I can make a bit of money on it, and why not if I can? My only problem is that I don’t want to compromise the look and easy access of the blog. I don’t want to make it look like a money making scheme either, thus turning off my new readers. After all, that was never my intention.

I also have no interest in bringing in traffic just for the sake of it. (Read this entry from David Weedmark about it). Anytime my stomach starts turning and my hands start sweating, I either know that its a really amazing, terrifying thing for me to take part in, or its an absolute loss of integrity.

I really believe if I just stick to writing about what I want to write about, then the right people will come my way. After all, this is just a creative outlet, isn’t it?

Ultimately, once my book comes out, I do hope my readers from here will buy my book and I will do my best to promote the hell out of it without becoming a “promotion whore.” Read Allison Winn Scotch’s take on this here.

Also, I trust that if my readers ever feel I am beginning to sell out (whatever that means), they will let me know.

Thank you all for helping me to reach 25,000 and for keeping me in check!