New Norms.

It's a rainy day in London (sounds like an old Robyn Hitchcock song, doesn't it?), so we're staying in and being cozy. The girls are sitting on the couch playing games on Franny's ipod, Steven is painting in the kitchen, and I've been on-line planning our October holiday to Italy.

We do have some new norms now, and are getting used to things in our 'hood. The ice cream truck driver has met the kids and now parks in front of our house most days. They buy soft serve cones with choc flake, which is where most of their money is going thus far. We've had our first curry take-away, which was excellent; Greta declared that it was the best Indian food she had ever tasted. We've discovered that the take-away menus for most things (dinner, lattes, etc.) are considerably cheaper than sitting in to eat. Franny chose her bedding for her new room- see the attached photo. It's starting to feel more familiar.

The house projects have begun in full force: the plumber comes back next week to replace the upstairs toilet and we're planning to put in the new bathroom floor up there. Steven patched a bunch of holes, and is currently priming the walls of the dining room/kitchen. Our brand new vacuum cleaner (hoover) arrived, so we're able to clean the floors finally, which makes a huge difference in itself!

Yesterday we took the bus (a double-decker of course) to Wimbledon, which is only about 20 minutes away from us. It has a completely different feel, much more upscale, than where we live. It brought to mind again the huge discrepancies in Londoners' lifestyles given how much money they have. Of course, this is true in Seattle, Boston, Montreal, everywhere, but we had forgotten some of it. Our area offers such cultural diversity and the opportunity to find things from all over the world for cheap, but Wimbledon is much more polished and pretty. We saw young girls riding horses right through the village and then playing on the lawn. Different world, indeed. Taking the bus there, you see the neighborhood change in a matter of blocks. I'm trying not to worry too much about the financial extravagance of taking this trip, trusting that it will all work out and we're able to pull it off. But it is hard to see so many people who are struggling just in the day to day.

Had another interesting experience yesterday: as we were walking home from the bus (all of us tired and hungry), we saw a car brake quickly to avoid hitting a little boy of about 2 years. He was walking across the street crying, with no shoes on, and clearly looking lost. We ran over and picked him up, trying to ask where he lived and where his parents were, but he had no answers for us. After knocking on many doors and trying to find his home, we ended up calling the police to report a lost child. Two nice women officers came right away and took over, calling me later in the evening to report that they found his home. Apparently, he'd been playing in the front garden with his dad while his mum cooked dinner, then when dad left for the shops, he followed without anyone knowing. He was lost but his parents didn't even know he was missing, as both thought he was with the other! It's the kind of thing that could easily happen anywhere to anyone and makes you realize how precious your children are. I am so glad that we took that route home and grabbed that adorable little guy to help; we were in the right place at the right time.

Life goes on, and every day won't be a wonderful tourist adventure, but will hopefully be a positive experience for our family of challenging ourselves to do something very different from our old norms. So far, so good.