Friday, November 28, 2008

Ten Things I Most Miss About Home

Saturday, November 29, 2008
London

So after more than three months in London, I guess I can sit back and think of everything that I miss about home. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE London and I LOVE every experience with which I have been confronted. But there are still some things I miss that will preclude me from ever thinking of London as Home. So, in the manner of David Letterman's Lists, here are the Ten Things I Most Miss about Home:

10. American Prices:
I miss the fact that everything is SO much cheaper in America. And it doesn't just have to do with the exchange rate. In fact, in recent weeks, with the pound plunging, the dollar is holding court magnificently and I am no longer concerned every time I make a purchase. It's just that EVERYTHING costs so much more in the UK. We don't realise how fortunate we are in America (where our salaries are so much higher and our taxes are so much lower) until we live overseas. Maybe the low cost of most commodities is what has made us such a rabidly consumerist nation. But I do look forward to the day I can return to the States, fill my shopping cart till it is overflowing, then get to the cashier and wonder how on earth so much stuff can cost so little!

9. American Ice-Cream:
I miss the multitude of flavors and the size of the tubs in which we purchase ice-cream in America. In particular, I miss Friendly's Forbidden Chocolate Explosion--that triple whammy containing chocolate fudge and bitter chocolate chunks swathed in a profoundly chocolatey ice-cream. I also miss the two-flavor sundaes Llew and I fixed for dessert most nights--Forbidden Chocolate Explosion and Breyer's Snickers sprinkled over with toasted almonds and pistachios--yummy!

8. Watching TV in Bed:
I dearly miss not being able to lie in bed and watch TV. With only one TV set here that is fixed in my living room, I miss the convenience of reaching for the remote first thing in the morning to get the news and the weather forecast. This has meant that I do much more reading in bed than I ever did at home, but it is a nuisance to have to get out to the living room to find out what is going on in the world or how I should dress for the day. Yes, a TV set in my bedroom would have been blissful.

7. Our Garden:
I don't think that I miss my house too much. In fact, now that I have become accustomed to this minimalist, compact apartment lifestyle, I am beginning to believe that we don't really need three floors and 3, 500 square feet of living space. However, I do miss our garden. I do miss sprawling on the chaise-longes on our deck and watching the drama of the changing seasons and the antics of the squirrels. I miss awaking to birdsong. And I never thought I would say this considering how much damage they do to our flower beds, but I do miss the deer.

6. Westport Public Library:
I so miss the large stack of audio visual material I took out each week ABSOLUTELY FOR FREE from my beloved Westport Public Library. The more I travel, the more I believe it is simply the best neighborhood library in the world with the most enviable resources and facilities. I mean think about this: in a country in which I am asked to pay 3 pounds for each video that I take out of the public library, I feel blessed to have been able to use the Westport Library for over ten years now. Almost every movie and TV series I have seen in the past decade has been through the library and I miss it dearly. I also miss the incredibly helpful staff there especially Suki and Christine and the ease with which I could just call them to renew my material or use their Elf services and go online to place titles on hold for me--again for free (here I was told to pay 40p to place a hold on a book I wanted to read through my Holborn Public Library). This, to me, is the miracle of American taxation at work and I appreciate it so much now that I live away from the country.

5. Driving:
London has an amazing transport system and I absolutely adore the fact that I live in the heart of the city and don't feel the need for a car at all but I do miss driving. I realise how much I love to drive now that I am here. I miss the seaside route I always took from my home in Southport to the Westport Library along Connecticut's Gold Coast, past the homes of the rich and famous (Phil Donahue, Martha Stewart, Rajat Gupta of McKinsey). I miss Bronson Road and the drive along the Mill River. I guess I just miss the ease with which I could go whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted...

4. My Kitchen and Cooking:
I absolutely miss my kitchen and cooking. Everyone knows that I find cooking therapeutic. While I did start out rather ambitiously cooking up a storm and freezing most of it for future use, my friend Amy Tobin was right in her prediction that I would barely cook when I lived alone in a flat in London. I find the convenience of ready prepared foods quite irresistible here and have been buying shepherd's pie and cottage pie, lasagne and moussaka, chicken jal farezi and lamb korma, fish pie and fish cakes from Sainsburys and Marks and Waitrose and tucking in. They are incredibly inexpensive (by British standards) and incredibly good and by the time I went to purchase all the ingredients I would need for one dish, I would probably spend more than I currently do buying these foods right off the shelf. So I miss pottering around in my lovely large kitchen with its mutiplicity of utensils and implements, pots and pans, appliances and gadgets. I miss printing out recipes that I have just watched being prepared on TV from off the internet and then trying them out in my kitchen. Amd I miss talking about food with my foodie friends.

3. American Public Television and the TV Food Network:
Despite having such a wealth of cable TV channels here in my London flat, I miss my American PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) channels. In particular, I miss CPTV (Connecticut's Channel 12), WLIW (Long Island's Channel 21) and New York's Public Television on Channel 10. Oh, and I also miss the TV Food Channel and all the great stuff I learned from it--in particular during this holiday season, I miss watching the turkeys being trussed and stuffed and the great wealth of American cookies emerging from those magical ovens as the season grew merrier and brighter. I have been watching the British Food Channel with someone called Gary Rhodes who does a program called Food Heroes and Market Kitchen which I quite enjoy and there is the occasional Nigella Lawson show that I still catch, but I miss The Barefoot Contessa and Tyler's Ultimate.

2. Curling Up on the Couch with Llew and watching TV:
This is one of the greatest pleasures of my life. While I miss Llew in general, it is the evenings, after we both got back from the gym, had showered and were eating one of our TV dinners to the accompaniment of a good British murder mystery on video, that I miss most about our togetherness.

And talking of it...I also miss my gym and my daily workouts and the trashy magazines I read while on the exercise bike.

1. Being a Mom:
I realise how much I miss chatting and giggling with Chriselle. In her company, I always feel like a 16 year old. The nuttiness we share, the private jokes, the mixture when I am interacting with Chriselle of the maternal concern and the teenage buoyancy that only she can bring out in me--I miss that the most. And now that she is engaged and looking forward to her Big Day, I miss the girlie chatter in which we would have indulged.

And omigawd, writing this has made me feel seriously homesick, so I better sign off right now.

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