my birth­day

A sun­ny day! The first in ages. The British, who are famous for
being per­pet­u­al­ly aston­ished by the weath­er every day, were well and
tru­ly stunned today to see the sun.
Spent the day walk­ing, walk­ing, walk­ing, as I decid­ed to see “The
Con­stant Gar­den­er”, with my old crush Ralph Fiennes before he was
sup­plant­ed, and GEE! Much too scary. Real­ly vio­lent. But a good
plot, and he was love­ly, but real­ly too scary for mushy me. Tried to
walk home but got hope­less­ly lost and saw Buck­ing­ham Palace from fully
three dif­fer­ent sides, sev­er­al times! Hailed a taxi and told the cab
dri­ver it was time to put my case in the hands of the professionals.
He sym­pa­thized and said that it had tak­en him three years to “do the
knowl­edge,” the incred­i­bly pre­cise train­ing Lon­don cab­bies do so they
know places like Dun­raven Street, a cool two blocks long, when a New
York dri­ver could eas­i­ly ask you how to get to Broad­way and Spring and
MEAN IT. Becky brought Avery home from her play­date, with gorgeous
flow­ers for my birth­day! And a real­ly sweet note. She is tru­ly a
good friend, even though both Anna and Avery lost their homework,
about a “papil­lon” that I heard a lot about at din­ner, feel­ing good
that unlike with maths home­work, I actu­al­ly enjoy remem­ber­ing French.

Avery has a new babysit­ter! The gor­geous Katie from Chica­go, here on
a Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame schol­ar­ship for finance, shar­ing a flat
with three girls in the Edg­ware Road, tall, sophis­ti­cat­ed, love­ly and
friend­ly. So shock­ing to find she’s turn­ing 21 this week­end. I am
try­ing to remem­ber 21 and fail­ing! To think she could be my child
quite eas­i­ly. She will pick Avery up each Tues­day at school and
they’ll have some adven­ture. Guess what the first adven­ture is Avery
has planned? To come home and meet the cats. I think the strain of
mov­ing and adjust­ing comes out in fun­ny places with Avery. Every once
in awhile she reveals how hard it has been, but not direct­ly. “Anna
has not had trou­ble putting her ear­rings in every week­end, like I
have, but then she has not had to unpack.” As though Avery has done a
thing to unpack since about day two. But she must be absorb­ing the
strain. If only through her earlobes.

Our two big pieces of news: we are going to see David Suchet in a
play, “Once in a Life­time,” at the Nation­al The­atre on Sat­ur­day! And
two, we’re going to Rome for Avery’s half term break next Wednesday.
Today dropoff was rife with dis­cus­sions of des­ti­na­tions: Zermatt,
Tener­ife, the Sey­chelles. Ah, the drama!

I have to say how much my pack­age full of microwave pop­corn from
Alyssa meant… remind­ed me that no mat­ter how cos­mopoli­tan a city,
you need your friends when you need your friends. And a People
mag­a­zine! How I miss her… Had a long talk with my Uncle Kenny,
stay­ing with my par­ents this evening, and must try to get ahold of
some of that Reuters’ guy’s tea for him, he’s such a tea buff. They
all seem far, far away tonight…