More adventures of the wandering Karen

Have you missed me? I think this is the longest I've ever gone without updating my blog!! It’s been too daunting of a task to think about updating my blog … so I’ve been avoiding it … which makes it an even bigger task. I obviously didn’t think this through.

I’m mostly going to recanting the Christmas break as there’s too much to say in a brief post. I will post pictures and stories – oh so many stories – at a later date. The short version of my Christmas: I had a wonderful family Christmas in Kansas at my parents. My grandmother and Aunt Dotti came out from California, My sister and brother-in-law and niece drove up from Arkansas and my cousin (who is currently living with my parents) and I were all present. Ive never before experienced a Christmas with that much family. Such a blessing to be able to be there with everyone!

I flew back to England on New Yea’s Eve and haven’t coped well with my jet lag ever since. Or I’m suffering a bout of insomnia. Or I just have a lot on my mind. Either way – I’m not getting much sleep at the moment, which is ever so irritating, but once I’m tired enough, I’m sure I’ll sleep – isn’t that how the saying goes?


2009 hasn’t started uneventful for me. Only seven days have past and there’s been a story every day almost. Saturday I lost my wallet (I blame my sister for this one – she gave me a lovely new hand bag for Christmas, but said lovely new hang bag very poorly shaped.) I paid for my parking, put the sticker on my car then headed to meet my friend. I was zipping my handbag up as I walked up the street I zipped my hand bag and noticed that some of my belongings were struggling to stay in my handbag. I reckon during this 60 second time period my wallet must have fallen out unnoticed. It took another 2 hours before i realised I had no wallet, and by the time I retraced my steps there was no wallet to be found. Sadness. I've never lost my wallet before!! It then took me 30 unanswered calls to the police station, 2 wasted trips to police stations and 10 answered phone calls to the police station just to report my wallet lost! What frustration! Lindsay and Adam (Lindsay is a good friend and a former flatmate) came over for a while to keep me company Saturday night. Poor Adam was suffering from the start of a cold and not on top form, but as always it was good to visit with them.

Adam & Lindsay

Sunday I stayed indoors (thinking this might be a safer option and it gave me time to lick my wounds of embarrassment - who looses their wallet?!) Monday began brilliantly as I woke up to a snow covered ground - I love snow!!

This is actually the snow that was left on Tuesday from Monday's snow (I forgot to take a picture on Monday, whoops!)

Monday was also the start back to work after the Christmas break. As hard as the first day back to work always is, our work place had a harder start. One of my colleagues passed away unexpectedly over the break leaving his 2 teenagers and wife. Another colleague had a car accident and was off work for the week, another had a nasty fall down a flight of stairs over the break and is out of work for 2 months, and another lost her grandmother. With all of the tragedy, I have to feel fortunate to be in good health! After work I had to convince the bank to give me money without any ID as my wallet was gone, not the easiest thing done.

Tuesday was a relatively quiet day, but I was super tired as I dealt with some kind of combination of jet lag and insomnia. For what ever reason I had a rubbish week of sleeping. Sunday night I woke up every hour on the hour, Monday night was a slight improvement as it was every 2 hours I was waking up. I also began the book The Last Lecture, a Christmas present from my mother on Tuesday night. Good book! I highly recommend it. (I finally managed to get to sleep around 4am!)

Wednesday I had a flat tyre to deal with. (Still fighting insomnia, I managed to sleep through the night once I got to bed ... I just didn't get to sleep until 3:30am Wednesday night!) Thursday I over slept and was a half hour late into work. (Not so sup rising with the limited amount of sleep I was getting!) I often sleep past my alarm, but generally I wake up about 20 minutes before I'm meant to be in work, giving me enough time to throw cloths on, brush my teeth and get to work on time. Not so fortunate this past Thursday though. Thursday evening as I was tidying up, I went through some mail I'd neglected. One of the pieces of mail was a delightful pentalty fine for not paying the congestion charge (if you drive through the centre of London during certain hours, you have to pay - if you forget, you get fined.) The Sunday before I went to the States I went into London to visit a friend, and obviously had forgotten to pay the congestion charge, oops! Bigger ooops was not opening my mail when I got back from holiday. I opened the fine notice on Thursday the 8th, I had until the 9th to pay or my fine would be doubled. Ordinarily this would be ok, discovering just in the tick of time that I needed to pay. On this occasion I was not so lucky though. Remember me saying I had lost my wallet? This meant I had no card to pay the fine with, Paying in person is not an option and I didn't have enough time (less than 24 hours) to post the fine. Oh the situations I find myself in!!! Friday morning I explained my predicament to a friend and she was happy to help, so I gave her cash and she paid my fine with her card. I never would have realised how inconvenient it is to loose a wallet! (Thursday was another sleepless night, again only getting to sleep around 2:30am!)

Random insert here - Ed paid me a visit on Friday the chair in my office was taken ... so he decided to make himself comfortable on the table. I guess this is pretty comfortable as it's not the first occurrence of this (click here to reminisce). I didn't have a great view!

Friday I got a new flatmate. Which is a story in itself. So another good friend and colleague, Meghan, now lives with me. I'm not able to go into all the details, but Meghan had a really rough time in her last place and I "rescued" her. I try to tell her that she made lots of memories that she will look back on and laugh; that and she has learned many life lessons and is now much wiser. (Click here to remind yourself who Meghan is.) A possitive from Friday: I finally managed a normal bedtime and full night's sleep on Friday night - and boy did I need it!!!

Saturday was just one big adventure day. It started late and finished pretty late come to think of it. I had to go into work on Saturday (urg!) but before I headed in, Meghan and I made pancakes. Yum yum! Then I rushed into work for a few hours and came outside to yet another flat tyre. I kid not! Two flat tyres in one week! Flat tyre number two sorted I picked up Meghan on the way into town to do some returns. My items had not been worn, I had the correct packaging and I had my receipt. I didn't however have the card that they were purchased with as it was lost. Store number one didn't want to give me my money back, but instead would be happy to issue a credit note for the store. I have shopped at that store once in the past 10 years! A credit note wasn't helpful. They were not willing to refund the money onto a different credit card or one of Meghan's. I'm not a crier, but I was so frustrated at my fortune that I was very tempted to just sit down and cry. Meghan took charge and we decided to shop in store to try and find new goodies. An hour or more later Meghan came out with several treasures and I exchanged my unwanted goods for her cash and her new clothes. Bonus! We then went onto 2 other stores where I exchanged a pair of boots for a smaller size and found a second pair of boots that were marked down from £80 to £25! (My sister, the ultimate bargain shopper, would be so impressed!).

Above mentioned bargain boots

At store number three I returned a set of shoes that I had decided I wouldn't wear enough to warrant the cost and instead bought a pair of leather gloves (I lost one of my gloves last month - 1 glove is not so helpful!). I was hmm-ing and haa-ing whether I should spend £25 on these gloves as I wasn't over excited about them, but decided - I need gloves, my hand are cold! To my absolute delight they rung up at £3 ... 88% off! How chuffed was I!!! Meghan and I then headed to the grocery store (my cupboards were so bare!) and spent a good hour stocking our cupboards and fridge very nicely.

Then it was a dash home, a quick change, and off to Clare's (a good friend and previous flatmate) for a sing-a-long night of Mama Mia. I'd seen bits of Mama Mia and wasn't overly enthusiastic about seeing the whole thing, but went along for a girlie night with friends. I loved it. I'm not sure if it was the sing along with the girlies that did the trick or whether it's just a good film by itself - whatever it was, I'm a convert! After Mama Mia we were treated to a sing a long version of The Sound of Music, a classic!

Bad photo but you can just make out Clare's head in the right hand corner of the picture and Sophie's red hair in the bottom left of the picture.

Me, Sophie & Louise

My head had started to pound so around 1am I headed home for bed...but never quite made it that far. Instead Meghan and I ended up reading stories from the book The Last Lecture and then we watched an episode of The Gilmore Girls, finally getting to sleep around 3:30am!

Meghan reading me one of the chapters - what fun!!

Today I awoke with a return of my headache, only it had gotten worse! So I moped around for a bit before greeting the day. All my Christmas garb was in Meghan's room when she moved in (she moved in quite quickly and unexpectedly so I didn't have a chance to get the room all nice and clean and empty) so we stacked it in the hallway (by "we" I mean Meghan had to move my junk out of her room while I slept in on Saturday morning - I'm not starting out as such a good flatmate to live with I fear!!). Today I began the huge task of sorting it out. It's a huge task because in order to sort out the Christmas stuff and put it away, I have to sort my shed out so there is enough room. One of the "sorting" tasks was going through my photos. If you can recall when my shed died it's final death in October, I lost 10 years worth of pictures to water damage. When I say I "lost" a lot of pictures what I actually mean was that I put them in a box to dry off so I could sort them out when they dried. Today was the day of trying to sort them out. So I was pretty miserable trying to unstick these pictures and knowing that my photographic evidence of my memories is in ruins. Very very sad! The good news is that all the photos didn't get destroyed. The bad news is that my sorting and organising ended with the photos so my lounge is still a tip!

said lounge

Do you feel up to date?