Stefanie's 13th Birthday party

I'm very happy that's over and done with! Stefanie, in her typical style, made me do the invites over 2 months ago and had been nagging me non-stop since then that I had to finish the plans for the event. Sounds like a military campaign, doesn't it? Well, almost...Stefanie is a big fan of American reality shows like Amazing Race and Fear Factor, and she wanted to her birthday party to imitate those shows (as you can see from her invitation).
We started off with the Fear Factor portion of the party: I switched labels from a tin of dog food and beef stew (amazing how alike both products looked!) and told the girls that the first one to finish off their bowl of "dog food" would win their team 5 extra minutes for the race portion of the party. One girl claimed she was a vegetarian, so it was left to the fearless (or those with a penchant for Pedigree) to step up and take one for the team. It was only after they had all finished that I told them that I had switched the labels. One team insisted that dog food would have tasted better.
Next, we had them try and find a piece of bubble gum from a plate full of whipped cream. The first one to not only find the gun but make a respectable bubble from it would also win their team an extra 5 minutes for the race. Not especially hard, but it was fun to watch them get covered in cream!
Now, the race...I had gone around some of my local shops earlier in the day and asked for their help with this one. First I made them go to the Library and find a specific book with their next clue in it (Nancy Drew, of course - America's Favourite Girl Detective), then off to my hair salon, where they were required to present a shorn lock of hair (theirs or someone else's) to the receptionist to get their next clue. They were then given a pound coin each to purchase as many items as possible at the corner shop to get their next clue. They then had to get up to the local park as quickly as possible to where Orest would be waiting with Jessie (our dog) and the next clue was strapped to her collar. Their task was to catch her and get the clue. I know it sounds easy, but if you know our dog, she's not the type to get close enough for you to grab anything off her (balls, sticks or otherwise). Plus I advised Orest that he was to make it as difficult as possible by calling her to him every time she got close to one of the racers. I wasn't there to see it, but I was told the sight was similar to that of a greasy pig-catching contest.


Anyway, the last clue told them to leg it home as quickly as possible. It was amazing how quickly they finished, because I had scheduled enough time to get from one to clue to the next, thinking the race itself would take 1 and a half hours, only to have the first team cross the Finish line within 35 minutes. Luckily these were 13-year olds able to entertain themselves for the rest of the time with trampolining, Playstation, DVDs and pizza.

Apsley House and Wellington Arch

Went with the Canadian ladies to visit Wellington's house at Hyde Park corner: Apsley House. (Named after its original owner.) I tried to get as little traffic as possible in the photo, but you have to image a four-lane highway right in front of what's known as "Number 1, London", so it was difficult. (We weren't allowed to take any photos inside, either.)

The tour was handled by a fellow Canadian, Belinda Beaton, who has been studying Wellington and written her dissertation on him, so she had a wealth of information about his life, his military tactics and the politics of the day. It was really easy to picture the post-Waterloo celebrations at Apsley House with Wellington as its host and hundreds of the military elite sitting down to dinner in the newly built west wing banquet hall. (The re-creation painting of it certainly didn't hurt, either.) Wellington amassed hundreds of gifts of paintings, dinner services and other artifacts to see, and what amazes you is that all of it was gifted to him. Wellington could have obtained it by looting and pillaging during all the wars he fought, but you could really see what a principled man he was.

We then went across the street to walk up to the top of Wellington's Arch. The photo here does not give it justice, but the horses on top are amazingly detailed and life-like. The views over Green Park and the back of Buckingham Palace were lovely too. I think the views would have been more interesting had the Arch been in the same place as when it started, facing Hyde Park and Apsley House, but back then it was being used as the smallest police station in London and as a thoroughfare north and southbound. They ended up moving it to its present position on a traffic island off south east of the House when they decided to widen the main east-west route in and out of London. (I don't think you could fit some of the 4x4's through the middle of it anymore anyway.)

My worst little nightmare

What a day I had with Adriana yesterday.

She normally cannot be relied upon to remember much of anything, and I do try to keep in mind that she is only 5 and a half, but man, sometimes she tries the patience of a saint. For some reason , she woke up early (6:15 am) and proceeded to wake everyone else up by her trying to get the stairgate open, knocking it backwards and forwards. A little while later, she threw a hissy fit because I needed to log on to check the weather report online and I kicked her off the computer.
Finally got her to school and went about my business until I tried to get on the computer myself only to find the mouse had disappeared. (Been hidden, more like it...) I didn't want to accuse her of something she hadn't done; but it did look fishy...
When I went to collect her from school, she came out wearing someone else's sweatshirt (fairly obvious since it hit her knees) and had lost some money I had given her to buy a red nose with (in support of Comedy Relief). I would have been ok with all this and taken my usual "if I weren't laughing, I'd be crying" approach, but Adriana decided to blow all of us off and run to the playground to play. This sort of made me lose it, and we spent the next 10 minutes searching for her sweatshirt and money by me dragging her around behind me. Then I got more cross with her when she admitted to hiding the mouse on me in the morning because she was mad at me.
Things went from bad to worse later when I tried to take her to her ice-skating lesson. For some reason, she decided she hates ice-skating, she hates me and wants to go home. I was trying to wrack my brains for a reason that sounded reasonable to her coach, as to why she refused to move on the ice and just stood there, but I had nothing.
Was she trying to assert her will after I had run roughshod over hers at school?

Was she upset that I hadn't given her anything to eat before going on the ice?

She did say she was too cold to skate in her spring jacket...was she coming down with something?

About halfway home, I was trying to hash this out with her:

"Adriana, why don't you like skating anymore?...Adriana?...hello?"

I looked in my rear view mirror; she'd fallen fast asleep! Poor thing was exhausted and I just didn't recognize the signs.

20 years of facsinating adventures

So what do you get the man you've been with for over 20 years?

Yes, Orest and I just celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss(and not-so bliss), and how better to do so, than by taking him on a surprise weekend trip to Florence? I'd booked this long ago, but I needed Orest to take the Friday off in order to maximize the amount we could take in. So here's a recap of of that conversation:
"I'm busy at work, I can't take too many days off, blah, blah, blah". he says.

"So what you're telling me is that you've got time to go skiing whenever you want, but you don't have the time to celebrate the fact that we've been married for 20 years?!?"

Silence....

"Ok...Well, if you put it that way...I'll put it in my calendar."

Ya think?! Men, sometimes they just not on the same wavelength!

Anyway, the trip went really well (considering we flew RyanAir for the first time). Our hotel was fabulous, very modern; one of Salvatore Ferragamo's hotels. (He's the famous shoe & bag designer, originally from Florence and has about 4 properties there, plus a shoe museum.) Our room overlooked the Ponte Vecchio, so we couldn't be any closer to the centre of old Florence.

We spent the first afternoon just doing a city tour, walking and taking in the feel of Florentine architecture, much of which dated back to medieval times. (I'd read the Birth of Venus by Sandra Dunant over the summer and was intrigued to see how much of what I'd read was there before my very eyes.) The next day, we went in to two of the most important churches: the Duomo and Santa Croce and then spent the rest of the day at the Uffizi gallery, to see Boticelli's famous Birth of Venus. And the final day we went to see Michaelangelo's David at the Academmia and drove up to San Miniato al Monte for a final vista of the lovely bridges over the Arno river.

It was probably the best way to spend 2 days in a city, because when we left, we felt we truly had seen everything there was to see in Florence (historically, architecturally and artistically). I'm sure if we had been on our own, we would have just wandered around aimlessly and never gained the in depth knowledge that both Orest and I received on not just Florence, but the de Medicis and the political history surrounding this beautiful city.

Druggies and Druggists

Did two tours this week...First one was at Dennis Sever's House in Spitalfields on Monday evening. I was ready to be shown an interesting take on living in the past as the house is billed as a step back into time. But get this description from their website:
"Whether you see it or you don't - the house's ten rooms harbour ten 'spells' that engage the visitor's imagination in moods that dominated the periods between 1724 and 1914. Your senses are your guide."
Things get weirder still as you walked around the house in the semi-darkness and relative silence, with no tour guides or brochures to explain what you were seeing. Instead all we got was cryptic notes laid around, like:
"...the Kitchen - which addresses your simplest state of consciousness: your Soul. Here - in every object - form and function are at one, so that with nothing to explain, you may simply "be". N.B. - like a contented infant."
Huh? It wasn't til I caught a whiff of 'spliff' that I realized the people running this place have smoked a few too many joints in their lives and have transcended reality to somewhere in pot heaven.

Next tour was still on the theme of drugs, but slightly more legal. It was the Apothecaries Hall, where the society of Apothecaries began their trade centuries ago near Blackfriars. It was a treasure trove of mortar and pestles and some other interesting tools of the trade (including a scraper they used to bleed people).

I didn't take photos at either place, but I did get this one sent to me of an apothecary table and items.