Only a few hours left until we drive back up to Heathrow and wait a couple more hours to get on a plane back to California. Yesterday, as if to say goodbye, the British weather gave us cool and raining all day. Today it's sunny - better for the drive.

Our luggage is all packed and sort-of-weighed. The kind that involves standing on the scale, holding it, and subtracting how much you weigh. We'll reweigh it again at the airport, on their more accurate scales, and probably have to shift some dirty laundry around from one outer pocket to another. But I think two out of the three pieces are under the weight limit, and the third one only slightly over.

Right now Squiddle is out playing in the garden with his granny, squeezing in a few more minutes of long-term memories for her, and shorter-term ones for him. At two years and seven months old, I doubt he'll remember this visit forever. But the rest of us will. He's blossomed so much in the last five weeks, learned so many words and is talking on level with his peers now. It will seem like forever until my inlaws come over to visit in November.

Part of me really wants to stay here like this forever.

But the rest of me wants to go home, to my garden, my cats, my own house and bed. To get on with the many things I want to do, and create.

I may have failed my goal, and not written anything while on holiday, but I am returning refreshed and ready to try again.

We flew back to the States on Friday, on a nicely uneventful flight. Our shuttle service, however, left much to be desired. Going to the airport, our pickup was wonderful! Which is why it is so very disappointing that we waited 40 minutes for our pre-booked private shuttle, and then discovered that (a) none of the seatbelts ratchet-locked, which meant it was not safe for the Squiddle's car seat, and (b) the seat I was in, the seatbelt wouldn't retract at all. Thank god we were not in an accident, because two out of the three of us would have been severely injured. We're going to be filing a report about Primetime Shuttle van #525....

But amusingly, while we were waiting on the curb at the airport, I pointed out a cosplayer to Wonderful Husband. Anime Los Angeles, after all, happening this weekend just up the street from LAX. Still, that kind of implied the person had flown in costume....

Sleep that first night happened early and fractured, with the Squiddle spending most of the night in bed with us. Can't really blame him, he was alone in a room he hadn't seen in a month. Last night was much better on all counts.

Also, we seem to have brought rain back with us from Britain. Just over an inch fell between yesterday and today. Hooray! I'm hoping the rain stays a good long while. I'm sick of drought.

The luggage has been unpacked and is ready to return to its nest in the rafters. The mess resulting from unpacking the luggage has been... mostly dealt with. Grocery shopping has happened, as has Wonderful Husband evincing signs of airplane crud. And we've borrowed my mother's Singer 201, as I've read testimonials online saying it's a wonderful machine for free-motion quilting, and my Babylock has decided it's had enough of that, thankyouverymuch.

I currently have two finished quilt tops lined up with their backings and their battings. The first one is actually going to get a double batting, as I opened up the first roll of Mountain Mist that I inherited from my grandmother, and it was as light as the name "mountain mist" would lead you to think. So it's getting the second roll too, which, hooray, is all heading toward freeing up space on my shelves! And it's going to be a gift, as were the last two quilts I did. So the next one is tagged to stay with me and go on my bed.

And a final amusing thought. We got our Costco ad when we picked up our mail on Saturday, and did a shopping run there that night. Among other things acquired was a Frozen-themed box of baby wipes. Umm, the last thing you want wipes to be is frozen.... ^_-

December ended up being a decided no go on the novel writing thing (though I did manage to squeeze out three fanfic chapters for Christmas), mainly because of the Squiddle being jealous of &/or wanting to use the laptop himself. That being said, this morning I managed a page and a bit of novel writing (343 words) before everyone came downstairs and conversation and breakfast became a thing. No promises on further writing today, though.

Read Ysabel. Now have read both the books I brought with me, and finished 3/4 of the craft projects. I may ask to go back to the local craft shop, if it's not inconvenient, just to get something to do with my hands. Because I can only write in silence, and while I love my inlaws dearly, the television is always on. At the moment I've retreated upstairs to the guest bedroom to try to clear my head and see if I can find my words.

Yesterday's trip to London was mostly a success. I can report that Chipotle here is very nearly as good as the one at home, with just a hair's difference of quality. We did Hamley's, Liberty, Harrod's, failed at the V&A because I'd forgot to check opening hours, went to Trafalgar Square and saw the 65-foot Norwegian spruce Christmas tree, and took a look at the London Eye.

Squiddle, unfortunately, threw up in the sandwich shop in Harrod's, and again on the train going home. Other than those two minutes, however, he was in good spirits. He didn't have a fever last night, and has had no recurrences today, so we think it was just a tummy bug. And fortunately there were two changes of clothing in his diaper bag.

After hauling a stroller up and down stairs and escalators through London, however, we have concluded that handicapped access is a distant dream in the face of the Underground. Between three of us adults we were able to handle the one infant and pushchair. A wheelchair would simply not be possible.

I'm really hoping this won't be one of those trips where I never adjust to the time difference. Because after getting up to nurse Squiddle at 1:30, I laid in bed for three hours, trying to get to sleep, before finally giving up and coming downstairs for tea, toast, and internet.

The weather here has been cool and damp, though we haven't actually got rained on yet. The BBC weather reports are including 50-foot seas in the Outer Hebrides, though, which pokes my bunny brain into thinking "Hey, I can use that..." though I have no idea how or where. The Hebrides, of course, being where Berk is fictitiously located.

I have been able to poke at some writing over the last couple days, though setting myself anything like a number of words to do a day is useless. The editing program on Laptop-chan is SciTe, which has no word count function that I can find. Also, the Squiddle is not fond of me reading or typing or, in fact, holding much in my hands that is not him. Still, I'll have at least one piece to post on Christmas this year, and have managed to read my way through American Gods, which was more to my taste than I'd feared. The blurbs which mentioned horror elements had me worried, but apparently for naught. So now I'm two books behind on my 2014 book reports.

Time to finish my tea and see if I can find any of that elusive sleep before dawn.

Have been running around like mad whittling down the list of stuff-to-be-done-before-we-go-to-England. Thus the radio silence. Most of it is now done, which is good, given that I have about 36 hours left before we leave. Included in the stuff I've knocked off the list is shipping another batch of milk to the milk bank. 302 ounces!

Anyhow, midnight. Bedtime. I'll probably be more chatty once I'm on a different continent. Later~!

Last day in Washington. Luggage is mostly packed, and one last batch of jam (blackberry sage) is cooked and cooling. I love the architecture up here and wish there were a lot more houses of this age and style in Orange County. The weather's cooler than I'm used to anymore, but I like the rain. Glorious greenery everywhere! Home is going to be warm. But we're barely there for a day before going off to SDCC, and then I have less than a week before Costume College. No costumes for me this year. No time.

On vacation with Wonderful Husband and Squiddle in the Pacific Northwest. Currently in the Portland area, having a good time. Moving on to SeaTac later this week. Posting from my phone because my RAZR 2 broke and I got dragged kicking and screaming into the era of Smartphones. Has made taking lots of pics easier, at least...

Now in Cambridge, for the next couple days. Wales had the effrontery to be completely sunny and gorgeous the day we left. The peak of Snowdon, the day after we visited it, was completely clear. Of course. :)

The drive was broken up by stops for lunch, petrol, at the Glassblobbery, where we got to watch a glass dragon being made, and at Shugborough, which is a working historical estate that really would require a week, not an hour, to explore properly. Just a little bit after leaving the Glassblobbery, we passed a bison farm! So, to my tally, Wales contains uncountable cattle, even more innumerable sheep, half a dozen llamas, five goats, two pigs, and a herd of bison.

Then, coming down the A14 about 30 miles out of Cambridge, we watched a rainbow (the second one of the day) grow. And it hit the point where it was doubled. Gorgeous! Of course, as soon as I thought to fumble my camera out of my bag in the backseat, we had passed through the rainstorm and it vanished. :/ But the world is a richer place for such things existing.

Thus far this trip, Wonderful Husband and I have ducked hail three times. First when we were driving out of the carpark in Stratford-upon-Avon, yesterday when we had gotten back on the Ffestiniog Railway to return to Porthmadog, and this morning just now, when it started hailing outside the vacation home we're renting in Beddgelert. Given that it was in the 80s shortly before we left California.... :)

Though it did clear up yesterday afternoon and we had a lovely sunlit walk around Beddgelert. It's incredibly beautiful here, and Wonderful Husband, a very urbanite person, was heard to remark that he could live somewhere like this.

Part of the fun of going around Wales is, of course, figuring out how to pronounce (if not actually understand) all the signs in Welsh. Double ds, as in "Beddgelert," are actually a "th" sound: "Bethgelert." Double fs, as in "Ffestiniog," sounds as an f, so "Festiniog." Single fs, however, as in "Caernarfon," are actually vs: "Care-nar-von." Doubled ls, like doubled ds, are a "th" sound, but harsher, like in Cthulu - "Llewelyn" becomes "Cthewelyn." The th in "Porthmadog," however, is pronounced as a straight t: Portmadog. And, amusing because it should have been obvious to me, on the signs that say "siop / shop"? Both are pronounced exactly the same.