Julia Park Tracey

Missive From Mia 1.4.06i’m here, i’m here! lindsay and i made it safe and everything is going very smoothly so far. it’s going so well, i’m waiting for something to go wrong! our hostel is soo nice, very comfortable and i’ve been riding the underground like crazy! i think i might just get the hang of it soon. today we are at the student union (where i have internet access, yay! send email, stamps are expensive!) and looking for housing/jobs. lots of posts, hopefully lots of luck too. the jet lag is stinky. i had the worst time trying to sleep (woke up at 11, 1, 3 and finally got…

Hey, I’ve got so much news I’m bursting. But first, this: The Beautiful Mia made it safely to London and is having a ball. With her permission, I’m going to post some of her missives from England and beyond, so look for those in future posts. Here’s a picture of her dancing with ACLO, a while back. She’s sick of this photo but it’s the only one I have handy just this second. Sorry, chica!Thank God it’s Friday, and past five o’clock. Woo hoo! Let the weekend begin. The girls are slated to be at their dad’s this weekend but decided to stay home instead. They’ve been working, noses to…

Here we are, between the end and the beginning, between major holidays, just poised and waiting for a new year/phase/life to begin (with apologies to TiMoune in Once on This Island). Christmas was good, with several days of feasting and celebrating, and now it’s quiet, with my girls gone to their other houses, and much of the business world stopped or in slow motion. I’m still running behind on about a hundred projects (maybe not that many), and trying to plan my new year. There’s that list of things I want to do, and the list of things I have to do. There are the fun things and the “wish…

I get giddy around the holidays. I already blogged this, so hit the snooze button now and move on. But I just love Christmas. (Lather, rinse, repeat…) Did I mention that I love Christmas? I do. We have been shopping and bustling and baking and decorating. We’re having about three different Christmases, if not more, as kids come and go to and from various houses. It is weird not to have one Christmas Eve and one Christmas Day with everyone you know and love all together in one house. But this is more like the Twelve Days of Christmas, I suppose. I’m trying to like it, even if there are…

It’s official. I had my annual Christmas meltdown last week. I had been running around trying to meet these ridiculous expctations that I had set for myself when I finally sat on the top stair and burst into tears. I’m glad to have gotten it over with so early. I usually like to have my Christmas meltdown a little closer to the actual holiday, but I had out-of-town relatives coming in to visit, and for crying out loud (har har), I couldn’t not be ready. I blame my family entirely, of course. My sisters are excellent cooks, my sisters-in-law handy with the gift baskets, my brothers are wine connoisseurs, and…