Phew. So Alisa came to visit and it was completely lovely. She and I have chatted (thank you GMail IM) every day, no really, since 2005. We met, as did many of my much-loved online circle, while we were waiting for our children. She lives in Canada, I live in England and our daughters were born about 100 miles and three months apart in southern China.
There was some anxiety about whether or not the friendship would translate to real life but really it was seamless. In fact, there was very little 'Oh my god Alisa's HERE! In the ROOM!' because...er...she always is. It was exactly the same only better and with more coffee. There were no secrets to hide or reveal because Dude...seriously...we did all that loooooong ago.
The odd thing was, for me, that I felt no urge to record it, blog it, photograph it, tweet it. We just talked until we both had hoarse voices about probably not very much at all. We dug around in mucky old junk shops in mucky old Wiltshire towns. We did not tour ancient relics (unless you count our house) or walk Jane Austen's pavements. We went to Bath and the pasty shop and ate lunch perched on the Disney shop window ledge, listening to buskers. It comfortably rocked.
Yesterday, Evie and I went to see The Wiggles live. The Wiggles are the one love that has endured for Evie, their presence in our lives dates back to 2006 and the first days home. She's right on the cusp of moving on and honestly, prefers the Power Rangers but we got tickets centre stage, three rows back and I was probably more excited than Evie (see: mad old woman in the stalls, singing too loudly).
It rocked too. I kept having flashes of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy (for you SpongeBob peeps out there) and no, it'll never be the same without Greg, but it was superb and the little kids loved it. After the show (their second of the day), we waited outside and my years as a rock chick paid off when I discovered the door they were really coming out of. I got blurry phone pics of Evie with Anthony, Jeff and Murray and what gents they are. Wiggle on, Dudes. Wiggle on.
In the middle of this I got a very exciting commission through my etsy store, making some gifts for a lovely lady (hi Kim!) who bought some spirit stones recently. I'm so thrilled to be able to work with her on this and will be spending some time this weekend making prototypes. How cool. "Yeah...I'm making a prototype...yeah...this is a lab coat...goggles? Yeah...prototype..."
That's all the good stuff from this week. I'm trying to catch up with everyone and their news. Here I may be having to move the blog off Typepad and into Wordpress, purely because WP is free. Not sure yet. I'll attempt to keep it simple whatever happens.