name tapes

Did any of you grow up in the East, or in Eng­land?  Because appar­ent­ly if you did, you grew up with name tapes.  Rather, your moth­er did.  I recent­ly went online to Cash’s, the place for such essen­tial Eng­lish items, for name tapes for Avery, that is lit­tle cloth tapes with her name embroi­dered on them in prepa­ra­tion for the even­tu­al­i­ty that she los­es some arti­cle of cloth­ing at school.  In fact that’s already hap­pened, the dread­ed full-out­fit exchange with Lily which result­ed in no cardie for sev­er­al days.  Any­way, I ordered them, and paid 50 pence extra to have a horse embroi­dered on each one.  Well, they came.  And my pun­ish­ment was to have to sew one of them on every blessed item of Avery’s school attire.  Shirts, skirts, jumpers, coats, swim­suits, dance cos­tumes, socks, tights, track suit sweater and trousers, what­ev­er.  Urgh.  Kind of cute, though, in a for­eign, “we’ll nev­er have to do this again” sort of way.

Any­way, appar­ent­ly Eng­lish chil­dren all have them for school, and all my East­ern friends had them for the oblig­a­tory eight weeks of sum­mer camp.  Geez, I bare­ly sur­vived one week of gym­nas­tics camp at eight or so, no name tapes involved, or at least my saint­ed moth­er did­n’t com­plain about sewing them on.

I’m con­tem­plat­ing a much nicer week.  Just rub­bish to get tak­en away, and then, fur­ni­ture to be bought, and then…OH NO!  I have to get a life!  I can no longer pre­tend that being 1) class moth­er at school, or 2) some­one about to close her gallery or 3) some­one about to set­tle into a new coun­try house in Con­necti­cut, or 4) some­one about to move to a for­eign coun­try, or 5) some­one who just did move to a for­eign coun­try… can clas­si­fy me as some­one with some­thing to do.  Soon my desk will have a print­er, my phone will work, my kitchen appli­ances will work, my child’s back­pack will every day with­out FAIL be packed with its prop­er stuff.  And then what?  I had bet­ter find an occu­pa­tion.  Well, there is edit­ing the beloved cook­books writ­ten in the 40s by my Con­necti­cut friend Anne’s moth­er, Gladys Taber, and writ­ing my own (whose over­all con­cept needs a much bet­ter blurb than I’ve con­coct­ed so far, for any­one to buy it).  And then I hearti­ly hope to receive you all as guests soon.  So there’s that.

Mean­time, I just found out my dar­ling par­ents get to trav­el to Con­necti­cut to cel­e­brate Baby Jane’s first birth­day.  How we wish we were there.  We did select the per­fect present, how­ev­er, but I can’t tel­ll you because that would be…telling.

Mon­day beck­ons so must to sleep.