US meets UK

It may take a village to raise a child, but I’m pretty sure it took a village to make our wedding happen. The assistance and donations of dear friends warms my heart to this day.

The Gift of Joy: Mrs. Tulip kindly sent me a package of hankies from her wedding, along with a very sweet card.  I used these as she did, displaying them at the ceremony for people to take.  There were so many I was able to select the blue/purple ones to fit the color scheme. I’ll include the final product in my details post.

The Gift of Beauty: Remember my hair-tastrophy? My generous friend Holly (and her husband Mike) picked up a gift card to a great salon as a wedding gift.  Which took me from Superhero to Saucy

(courtesy of Evan Bishop)

The Gift of Sight: A lovely eye doctor friend sent me a package of contacts (for free!) right before the wedding.  I had been unemployed since the December I moved to England, and hadn’t started a new job yet so I really couldn’t afford new contacts.  I can easily recall the feeling of elation when I opened the envelope.  Anyone in the hive that wears contacts, you know when you’ve worn a pair for twice as long as you’re supposed to – but then you put a fresh pair in! It’s like jumping into a pool, or skiing fresh powder, simply beyond refreshing.

The Gift of Calm: Oh gosh, who gave me this? My bridesmaids kept me calm fo sho, but my mother also surprised me with a pedicure the day before the wedding. It was so amazing to take the time out of the day, to stop running errands, to not be in my non air conditioned car in the heat of August and just relax.

The Gift of Shelter: An ultra-nice Weddingbee reader (BucknellBride) messaged me to offer her white golf umbrellas for the day.  This solved the issue oh cover from the house to the tent where dinner was held.  The umbrellas gave me great peace of mind, and she assured me that they were lucky.  Every wedding she had lent them to was rain-free!

The Gift of Giggles: Avo-freaking-cado. Mrs. Avocado and I began our friendship over gchat while I was in England.  She was at home working on her classes, and I was in England blogging.  Since we were both home during the day we now had someone to chat to. So imagine my delight when she said she could attend our wedding! She arrived at my parent’s house the night before the wedding and we stayed up way too late giggling like children.  There was even a point where my mother knocked on the door and told us it was time to go to bed.  I almost checked the clock, but Avo stopped me. She didn’t want me to end up like Chandler, with a countdown till I had to wake up.  So we decided we went to bed at 10pm, even though she arrived at my house at 9:30pm.  I have to say, not knowing what time I went to bed was one of the best decisions I made.

Did your wedding take a village, or did you have it all under control?

Do you know what today is? It’s my Weddingbee One Year Anniversary! It’s true!

On this day, 365 days ago I began to blog along with the hive.  I was engaged 5 months and had moved to England 15 days earlier.  Looking at back at my first post I couldn’t stop laughing, if only I had known! I joked about folding a million paper flowers, and cutting wine bottles, and creating place holder corks; all projects that would become miniature labors of love. Not to mention all the invitation related projects that I can’t believe I added in along the way!

Looking back from that first post I had so much to learn and share about immigration, name changes, and ultimately deciding what country we’ll reside in (still working on a few all of those). A year ago I had no idea I’d be celebrating our union without my Grandmother, or the profound effect her passing would have on me. Who could have imagined I’d “meet” such wonderful women to invite to our wedding?

I’d also like to confess that it wasn’t for lack of pro pics that I’m starting my recaps now.  Our photographer sent a disk of photos within a month. I hadn’t started because I just wasn’t ready, it’s the same reason I put off watching the Glee finale on Hulu. Once I finish, my tenure will be over, but unlike Glee our wedding won’t magically restart in April and I won’t get to keep blogging consistently with you all. I needed to savor it all just little bit longer, please consider this my apology for not being ready to recap juuuuust yet.

So, to kick off my recaps I’ll begin with a bang.  Here is my favorite photo from our wedding, it captures all the joy of our wedding in a single frame.  If I’m ever feeling low, I just glance over at the framed photo and it buoys my spirits.

Is there a photo you enjoy the most from your wedding, or was it a tough choice?

When I first imagined what my bachelorette party would be, I assumed it’d be a low-key, pajama and game night with a scavenger hunt.  But my friends had other plans, and they were brilliant!

A friend of my MD-MOH let us use her house in federal hill for the night, so anyone who wanted to sleepover could. We went to dinner around the corner and then, my OZ-MOH organized a fantastic scavenger hunt complete with props – who doesn’t love props?

She also complied scrapbooking materials and each girl made a page with personal joke references and sweet comments.  Several people were on picture duty so I’d be left with tons of photos for the scrapbook(and general remembrance). OZ-MOH also had name tags for everyone (I have a diverse group of friends who had only met at the shower) and acquired pink/purple necklaces for each so we all matched.

We hung out for a bit, scrapbooking and socializing till we were ready to go on the hunt.  This is probably my favorite photo that resulted form the scavenger hunt.  There is a bar in Fed Hill called “Mad River” and the clue was “take a photo of an angry body of water”, so the girls made angry faces by a puddle.

The losers (who were already slated to lose since they created the hunt) were my MOHs, so they rocked these ridiculous wigs.

The next morning we trudged over to Little Havanas for their brunch with endless mimosas and bloody marys.  No one was really in the mood for more alcohol though, so we mostly had a lot of water, with alot of emergen-c. Our favorite quote of the night/day came from our waiter “Are you guys okay with your pitchers of water and vitamin packets…or would you like to order actual food”?

It was a fantastic night/morning and I’m grateful I have such wonderful friends. Although it wasn’t what I expected, I had the time of my life. It was a very similar feeling to the bridal shower, in that I was overwhelmed by the heartwarming friendships I share with such amazing women.

A final word of advice, strangers are going to offer you way too many free shots, so you should practice saying “oh thank you, but I just can’t” now.

Was your bachelorette what you expected?

My sister, her husband, my parents and I gathered at the house to get everything ready for Christmas

My husband and my dad worked on the outdoor decorations while Berkley (the dog) watched

And my sister and I found our favorite ornaments to put on the tree

Sometimes I like to arrange them in strange ways. This Santa Crab is kinda leering at the ballerina, but she’s all “whatevs”.

I can’t believe it’s already Christmas! Merry Christmas Eve!

ps. we have a permanent (aka fake) tree because I’m heinously allergic to real trees. Do you have a traditional (real) tree or a permanent tree?

Last Christmas was oh so very different than all other previous Holidays. I was engaged, and living in England and celebrating my very first Christmas away from home.

At US Christmas – we go to mass on Christmas eve. For UK Christmas we go to the bars. It’s the biggest bar night of the year.  I suppose because they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, their bar night is around Christmas instead. The first bar we attended was called “The Firken”, which is a re purposed church.  So… I was in Church..but drinking snakebites… and not listening to a sermon.I tried very hard to have a “when in Rome”attitude because I really wanted to experience Nick’s traditions.

I was so committed to the “when in Rome” ‘tude that although I had planned on going to mass Christmas morning, we partied so hard that I slept too late to go. I was absolutely mortified.  After indulging in a full English (vegetarian) Breakfast I gamely tried to tame the unpleasant effects of last night’s “when in rome-ness”.  Because no matter how much you think you can keep up with the English when it comes to drinking – you can’t, so just get that now.

All in all, it was a similar holiday, if a little reorganized on Christmas day. For US Christmas we have immediate family presents in the morning, followed by a gathering of the full family for appetizers, then a full Christmas dinner. For UK Christmas we had immediate family presents int he morning, then everyone came over for Christmas Lunch (also called Dinner, confusing I know), everyone else took a walk (I took a nap) and then we had appetizers (called a buffet) for Dinner.

I tried to skype with my family for their morning present opening – but because I wasn’t there they tossed the tradition out all together! There were no Cinnabons, no small intimate family gathering to open presents – not even Christmas Eve mass! This year, I’m here and I intend to revive all traditions with my presence. I even plan on incorporating a few British style surprises to make Nick feel more at home.

Have you ever tried someone else’s Holiday on for size?

I love my brother in law for many reasons, including the fact that he makes my sister insanely happy.  But, I really love my brother in law because when he gets an email like the one below. He fact checks it! The red parts are the original email, and the black parts are Jon’s additions.

How many zeros in a billion?

This is too true to be funny.

Too wrong to be true too…

The next time you hear a politician use the 
Word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about 
whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending 
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend. But one advertising agency did a good job of 
putting that figure into some perspective in
 one of it’s releases.

A.
 A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

A billion seconds ago was 1978, not 1959.  I have lived almost a billion seconds.  That’s a pretty big error – unless the email was originally written in 1990…

B. 
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

Close, but no.  In 107AD, Trajan was emperor of Rome and Christians were still just one messianic mystery cult among several in Judea.

C.
 A billion hours ago our ancestors were 
Living in the Stone Age.

Well, that’s true, but it’s a pretty big target to hit.

D.
 A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

Well, if you’re a creationist, sure.  No humans.  But there were Hominidae, like orangutans and gorillas.  This isn’t ancient-dinosaurs-ancient, but still pretty long ago.

E. 
A billion dollars ago was only 
8 hours and 20 minutes, 
At the rate our government
Is spending it.

Mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we either have to leave those places or spend the money.  The Republicans have been pushing for more and more troops and war spending.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain…
let’s take a look at  New Orleans  ..
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D) 
Is presently asking Congress for 
250 BILLION DOLLARS
 To rebuild  New Orleans  . Interesting number…
What does it mean?

This was in 2005, right after Katrina, and it got killed in committee.  It was pretty massive pork, really; but there really was that much damage to the city.  And New Orleans is a major oil port, one of the few deep water ports on the gulf coast.  So it is a valuable city to the US — not just for the people, but for the industry we all depend on.  The levees in New Orleans were built on 19th century technology before Katrina, and basically didn’t exist after.  The city needs a ton of money — maybe not $250B, but quite a lot

A.
Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of  New Orleans    
(every man, woman, and child) 
You each get $516,528..
This is simple division.  How did they get 250,000,000,000 / 484,674 wrong, given that they could have used a calculator?  $515,810.63.  But close enough, I suppose, for the author’s point.  Still, how do you get that wrong?

B.
 Or… If you have one of the 188,251 homes in 
New Orleans  , your home gets $1,329,787.

C. 
Or… If you are a family of four…
Your family gets $2,066,012. 

Washington, D.C.

HELLO! 
Are all your calculators broken??

Building Permit Tax CDL License Tax 
Cigarette Tax 
Corporate Income Tax 
Dog License Tax 
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA) 
Fishing License Tax 
Food License Tax 
Fuel Permit Tax 
Gasoline Tax 
Hunting License Tax 
Inheritance Tax 
Inventory Tax 
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax) 
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) 
Liquor Tax 
Luxury Tax 
Marriage License Tax 
Medicare Tax 
Property Tax 
Real Estate Tax 
Service charge taxes 
Social Security Tax 
Road Usage Tax (Truckers) 
Sales Taxes 
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax  
State Income Tax  
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) 
Telephone Federal Excise Tax 
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax 
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax 
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax  
Telephone State and Local Tax 
Telephone Usage Charge Tax 
Utility Tax 
Vehicle License Registration T ax 
Vehicle Sales Tax 
Watercraft Registration Tax 
Well Permit Tax 
Workers Compensation Tax

(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes) 

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago…

Incorrect.  Or a lie, depending on whether the author is uneducated or uninformed:

* 1913 (a mere 96 years ago — not 100, just yet), 16th Amendment, allowing for a mass Federal Income Tax (the Civil War taxes were only unconstitutional based on a technicality, not any founder’s intent).  Interesting note:  From 1913 through the Second World War, American taxes were very low for lower- and middle-income Americans and very high for high-income Americans.  In 1918, for example, taxes started at 6% for the poorest, after a standard deduction, and topped out at 77% of income for the high income earners.  During WWII, total income taxes took in 20% of US GDP!

And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

 We had absolutely no national debt… 
We had the largest middle class in the world… 
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids. 

What happened? 
Can you spell ‘politicians!’

Don’t blame taxes – they’re a lot lower today than they were in 1949 and 1918!

And I still have to 
Press ’1′ 
For English.

Ah, I see…

I hope this goes around the 
U S A 
At least 100 times 

What the heck happened?????

The Gini index, measuring income inequality in the US, has been rising since the “golden age” (not really, but that’s another email) where we had a large middle class after WWII.  1967, it was 39.7, which is about what the Gini index in Europe is right now (The EU Gini index is 39.0, I believe).  In 2007 it peaked at 47.0 in the US (Bush’s legacy?), and has gone down only to something like 46.0 since.  Higher numbers are more inequality (e.g. CEOs and Lawyers and Military Contractors make lots of money where Nurses and Teachers and Police make little money).  Here’s an international comparison, with more fair countries in green and blue, more unequal countries in purple and red:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png

Some poor countries are uniformly poor, like Mali; some are horribly unequal, like Sierra Leone.  That makes sense.  But some rich countries are more equal: Canada, Norway, Spain, UK…  pretty much all of them.  Two are very unequal:  The US and China.

Have you ever fact checked an email you received? I usually visit factcheck.org, but they often don’t cover emails like this.

Nick and I are off to New York till Tuesday. We’ll be staying with this lovely lady and her husband, and visiting Nick’s mother and sister.  They go to New York every year, for several years before Nick and I ever met and now we try to visit them when they’re in the country.

Last year, our families were able to meet for the first time. But I don’t have any pictures of that, I don’t know why.

This year, we all know it each other – so I don’t think we’ll be as nervous heading up there. Let’s see if I can manage to get some this time.

When did you meet your in-laws for the first time?

From my British Husband, Nick:

For anyone that doesn’t know me, I recently moved to the US (from the UK) to live with my now wife, who runs this lovely blog. I was initially going to write a post about a few of the differences between these two great places, but with health insurance being one of the big differences, I decided it needed a post all of its own!

If you don’t know, the UK has a publicly-funded health care system, known as the NHS (National Health Service), which provides free* health care to residents of the United Kingdom. The system is not perfect (my father might still be here today if it were), but it works for the most part, and everybody is entitled to a mostly adequate level of care. If you need to see a doctor, you can. If you have a terminal illness, you can get treatment. If you have an accident, you can think about your recovery, rather than the financial impact that it’s going to have. Health care is available to everybody.

However, thing’s are a bit different in the US, which is a new scenario to me. Health care in the US is run by insurance companies that are trying to make a profit, based on risk — in this case, the risk of an individual becoming ill. Now, I have no problem with companies trying to make money, or the insurance model in general, but applying the insurance model to something as important as someone’s health is just plain wrong.

Here is how I understand it: each individual (unless they have group coverage through their employer) is accessed by the insurance company on the risk of them becoming ill. The calculated risk then becomes a premium, which the individual must pay in order to have the luxury of being able to receive care. Then, depending on the plan, you will usually be required to pay an additional cost if you go to the doctor, are admitted to the emergency room, require medications etc. Additionally, if someone has a history of health problems, they can expect to pay a higher insurance premium, because the risk of them becoming ill is greater than someone who has relatively few health problems. You can literally end up paying tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on your plan (and the treatment you receive).

Sadly, this often gets to the point where that person can no longer financially afford the premium, or worse still, is refused insurance because they are “uninsurable”. Believe it or not, millions of Americans today are in this very position. People are dying and nobody wants to do anything about it, or at least that’s what it seems to me.

Enter President Obama’s Health Care Reform plan. If you haven’t been spending your spare time chasing hot air balloons around Colorado, you will no doubt be familiar with this term. In short, this public health reform would introduce a public health care option, giving every American access to some level of health care. People that currently have no insurance, would be thrown a life line.

“It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance.
It will provide insurance to those who don’t, and it will lower the cost of health care
for our families, our businesses, and our government.”

President Barrack Obama

The thing that amazes me, is that there was resistance against this plan. Not just a small pocket of resistance, but massive disapproval. I was astonished. Seriously, does anyone want to stop this madness? People are dying because they can’t see a doctor, and being under treated and over treated left and right. It seems that everyone who was against this plan, didn’t want to see their own coverage affected. They were scared of higher premiums or not getting the same level of coverage they have now. They don’t want change, they don’t like change, and they most likely didn’t vote for Obama. To me, this is extremely foolish (not to mention selfish) and it makes me very sad; these people are worried of being in a position that millions of their fellow Americans are already in.

Anyway, regardless of the resistance, a somewhat mangled version of the health care reform bill recently passed the house of representatives, and is currently in the senate, for more squishing. What comes out the other end is anyone’s guess, but I hope to god it makes even the smallest improvement to this flawed, unfair and unethical health care model.

What do you think of health insurance? Do you think the health care reform plan is a good idea?

* There may be additional costs for eye tests, dental care, prescriptions, and many aspects of personal care. UK residents contribute to the NHS through National Insurance (NI) payments, which is calculated from earnings.

Do you read That Wife? If not, you should.  It’s written by a woman who could arguably be my most favorite e-friend ever, who spent the night before my wedding staying up with me and giggling like school girls at a sleep over.

She recently posted about the gender differences when it comes to Thanksgiving and it definitely gave me pause for thought. In my (relatively) progressive family the gender  chores/roles are becoming blurred as time passes on. For my parents (and Aunts and Uncles), the cooking/cleaning has been done by the women.  When I was a kid, the moms would cook and when we were all old enough the kids (7 girls) would clean up (the men would watch TV).

When Food Network came on the scene and made cooking cool, my dad really took notice.  Now he can whip up culinary delights to rival the best of them. He regularly is in charge of dinner, if not always in charge of the meat part of dinner.  This is probably because it often involves grilling, ooo fire! Or marinades, he’s into those too.  When it comes to Thanksgiving though, my mother is still in charge of choosing which dishes will be made (with my father’s input) and in charge of orchestrating how it will all be pulled off.
Once at Thanksgiving, the men hang out with the Hors d’oeuvres and the television and the younger girls float between there and the kitchen. Again, after dinner the younger girls clean up and ready dessert. Only for the past few years, it’s been a bit different.

Since my sister and I are both married, and I have a cousin who is engaged we have a new crowd of younger men in the ranks.  My sister’s husband, and my husband (and my cousin’s fiancé) both help with the cooking and clean up.  Which is great, because now there are more rotations for the dishes, more people to dry the plates and more (taller) people to put the dishes away. It feels so much more equal around the holidays now than it used to.

I still have Uncles that show up to Thanksgiving, eat and bicker over politics, and that’s their participation in the holiday. The part that irritates me though, is that they have the audacity to ask WHY our husbands are helping.  As if it’s so foreign to them that me would help with the dishes. I feel like every holiday, no matter how “advanced” the older generation of men seem, they revert back to the expectations of gender roles from their childhood.
What are the gender roles in your holiday experiences?