Category Archives: “Ladies Who…” Club

Thank You, England

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There will be an entry sometime soon about what I will miss, my favorite memories, images and dreams of England. For now, I just want to say – Thank You, England (and the wider Great Britain and Ireland).

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to write my novel.

Thank you for slowing me down from the pace of Los Angeles life – for bringing me back to basics, for remembering what life is all about. Without this time, I may have become the vapid vampire that there were shades of lurking beneath my surface – 8 years in LA can do that to a gal.

Thank you for seducing me with your seemingly illusory emerald landscapes and creaky country pubs.

Thank you for introducing me to Pimms, cider, roast dinners and jacket potatoes.

Thank you for finally giving me time to learn how to cook. Remarkably, I’m quite good.

Thank you for reminding me what I love about my own country, what I miss about it and for showing me there are other ways to live.

Thank you for reminding me to waste not. We are incredible lavish squanderers in the states.

Thank you for introducing me to running – to allow my body to become the lean, healthy being I knew it could be and for providing a landscape on the Downs that I never once took for granted.

Thank you for reminding me to not take myself so seriously, to giving me my sense of humor back and that taking the piss out of myself is truly good for the soul.

Thank you for letting me borrow Jock’s family – they’re not mine, but they did a pretty damn good job of making me feel at home. I love each and every one of them with all my heart.

Thank you for The Ladies Who...without them and our monthly book chats, gossip and random girl moments, I may have turned into a man. Women are my breath of fresh air…reminding me of why I love being one of them.

Thank you for all the friends who are having babies. They show me how much I love children and how not ready I am to have one.

Thank you for Royal Mail and Skype, without you I would not get the much needed phone calls, packages and postcards from home. You kept me going.

And most of all – thank you Jock for showing me your country. It is truly fabulous. I look forward to coming back one day.

Ladies Who…Dare to Inspire

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As part of my monthly promise from April (click here to read about it), I am going to pick another lady who has inspired me this month to represent the ongoing award.

Kat from 3bedroombungalow.

Not only has she moved to a completely new country (she’s American and she now lives in England) with her two children, but she faces on her own it while her husband is deployed to war. It takes a heck of a lot of courage to face every day, to blog about it, to have such a wicked sense of humor about it and to watch as her children morph into tiny British people calling her “mum.” Readers are attracted to her blog, in my opinion, because she consistently writes really funny, real stories, she’s honest about her fears and giggles, and she has a unique point of view….that and her heart is humongous. I’ve never met her, but you can just tell that she has a whole lot to give.

Enjoy the award, lovely Kat! I look forward to meeting you this summer, I hope!

Ladies Who…Dare to Inspire

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On a lighter note from my previous post, I’m getting on the band wagon, and creating my own award.

To kickstart the award ceremonies off, I’m going to announce a few people who have been on my mind.

There have been a few people who have truly made a difference in my life since I started this blog, and I would like to recognize them. They may not know they have; they may not have reached out personally, but in some way, these people have made me re-think my opinions, helped me to succeed in my own quests or just written such brilliant entries that it inspires me to better myself.

Every last Friday of the month from now on, I will be acknowledging one female blogger who I feel dares to inspire. She doesn’t have to just inspire me, she can inspire the world, one little girl or a dog. It’s up for debate.

Without any further ado, in no particular order, I’d like to pass on my award to the following people:

Mid-Atlantic English – Michelle reached out to me last month, and asked if I would join her on the journey that is Script Frenzy. Without her introduction, I wouldn’t have done it, or even known about it. Plus, she is so generous with her comments and feedback.

Smitten by Britain – Melissa is one of those women who I feel took me under wings when I was just starting out. Her love for Great Britain inspires others and her continual effort to put out great blog posts inspires me to keep my blog up to standard.

Bristolian Moments – Sabrina, don’t worry, you don’t have to share this if you don’t want to! She is just getting started, but I applaud her for starting her blog and sharing her incredible anecdotes, to emailing me when she first moved to this country to see if we could meet up and for being courageous in her attempts at making friends. She’s more ballsy than I!

A Literal Girl – Her grasp of the English language is only something I can aspire to one day. Her entries are always filled with such specific insights into everyday life, you wonder how she notices such seemingly mundane moments and turns them into …well, magic. She showed me around her town of Oxford and took us under her wings. And, at the age of 23, I know she’ll do alright for herself!

Erika Lopez – A monster girl. She is gutsy, ballsy and has opened her heart to the me and the world like no woman I have ever met. She has just started her own publishing house, and has so much in the hearth right now, you just have to go look for yourself. Incredibly talented writer, artist and woman. The way she manipulates words leaves me breathless.

Seattlite Imagery – Only just getting to know Alisha, but she and her husband have made the plunge and are official world travelers. Since that is where Jock and I are headed, I look to her blog for beautiful stories, insights and plain old ideas for my own life. She is also writing a book (I guess that’s what we unemployed gypsies tend to do!), and she exudes light and love.

RULES:

There are none!

If you’d like to pass this award forward, feel free. Otherwise, just go on and gloat.

(Also, if you do post it, it would be fantastic if you could give me a link back!)

Consistency

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The thing with consistently outlaying anything – be it this blog, a lady’s night, running, tweets, whatever – is that there will be times where it goes stronger than ever, and other times where it teeters on non-existent. I imagine marriage to be similar, but that’s another whole blog entry. Sometimes I will have ten to twenty comments on a blog post, and other times, none. But it all comes back to the fact that I love having an outlet for expression.

Same with the lady’s group I started back in July with the other girls.

Last night, we had “Ladies Who….Wii” night, and although the RSVP’s started strong – there were 12 people who were going to attend. By five o’clock yesterday afternoon, the numbers dwindled down to 3. Poor Jen who was hosting, she couldn’t help but feel it was indicative of how people felt towards her! Silly how we women think. It was just one of those days where people had other things come up in their lives…one’s moving this weekend and needed to finish moving boxes, another’s studying for a course, another one had a birthday party that was scheduled last minute, etc.

At first, I was disappointed because I had been working my ass off to get my novel finished by yesterday night. I worked until midnight every single evening this week, and stressed both Jock and myself out by running to the printer’s last minute yesterday. I found the cheapest guy in town, but with 225 pages and 7 copies – it still came to £47. I still have at least twenty pages left to write for the ending, but I figured I could email them those pages. At least the rest of the book was up to snuff to show off.

I handed out two copies, and the rest are still sitting in a box. But would I have worked as hard the last couple of weeks had I not had a due date? Probably not. Would I still be slowly peddling through the editing process, checking my email every five minutes? Yeah. Did this teach me how much I love getting lost in my work for hours at a time, and the biggest reward is when the time passes without you knowing? Definitely. Did I ever feel this way about acting? Nope. Do I regret giving up acting? Not right now. Will I go back to it? Yeah, probably. Performing is in me.

Nevertheless, the three of us who were there had a really amazing time chatting, playing Wii (Jen kicked my ass in bowling and tennis, but I literally punched her lights out in boxing. Yeh!). And my BMI is 22…I’m the least likely to get sick.

Having the time to consistently work towards a goal is the best gift that England and Jock have given me. And, if people don’t show up every once in a while, my knee decides to stop my running for a bit, or my readership dwindles on my blog, I’ll still make the best of it. I’ll still keep asking the universe for shit. And, as my wise sister says re: the universe and asking for stuff: “I ask for lots of things. We have an ongoing dialogue and it never ceases to make me laugh at the answers it gives. Trusting in that is the most rewarding and hardest life lesson.”

Ladies Who…Wii!

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No, not that kind of wee.

This month, in hono(u)r of the New Year and all its resolution mumbo jumbo, The Ladies Who… have opted to do a bit of physical exertion to kickstart 2010 – that is if you consider being a rock star and bowling to be physical exertion.

And, yup, I’m bringing my book for everyone to read! Looking forward to the comments – good and bad.