Just Like Starting Over: Hanoi 2.0

Just Like Starting Over: Hanoi 2.0

Can I tell you about our early days in Hanoi? Back in October?     So many months ago. The weeks when we lived in a stuffy, cramped hotel room in a curious neighborhood that would have been more curious if it hadn’t been hemmed 

Notes on Resuming my TEFLtastic Educatrix Career (with Toddler in Tow)

Notes on Resuming my TEFLtastic Educatrix Career (with Toddler in Tow)

Earlier this week, I found out that this particular blog of mine had somehow made it onto the improbably mammoth and random Top 2300 Travel Blogs list, clocking in at number 18 on the Teaching English Abroad category. Aside from calling it by the wrong 

Parenthood and Place: Notes on Writing About Stuff When You Have Nothing New to Say

Parenthood and Place: Notes on Writing About Stuff When You Have Nothing New to Say

Aside from being commissioned to write ridiculously detailed 20,000 word guides for relocating to Chinese cities I’ve never even visited much less lived in (I’ve written ten of these in the past year, which must qualify for a work of relentless, massive fiction on par 

Let’s Hear it For the Boy: Notes on Thwack’s First Birthday

Let’s Hear it For the Boy: Notes on Thwack’s First Birthday

Have you seen this baby? A year ago today, he made a mad dash for the outside world, narrowly averting a first appearance in the hospital elevator, born in a hastily cleared labour room to the sounds of John Coltrane on the iPhone. Everything went so 

This Is Still Not a Mommy Blog (Even Though That’s All I Do All Day)

This Is Still Not a Mommy Blog (Even Though That’s All I Do All Day)

Before I spawned my urchin, I was adamant about keeping the metalepsical church and state firmly separated. I read all of those books about the importance of  keeping your grown up self intact and building a life where the baby mostly fits into your rhythms and 

A Totally Impractical Guide to Camping in England With a 4 Month Old Baby

A Totally Impractical Guide to Camping in England With a 4 Month Old Baby

Last weekend, we borrowed a car from our crunchy granola car-share group in Leicester and drove to somewhere in Derbyshire (pronounced, approximately, Darbəshr, in case you aren’t intuitively British*) in the cold, grey rain, for a fine weekend of family camping, frantic trail cycling (which we 

The Happiness Project Revisited: Are We Happy Yet?

The Happiness Project Revisited: Are We Happy Yet?

 Yes, I’m still plugging away at the Happiness Project.   I’m now more than half way toward the end goal of 100 days of consciously making note of happy moments. I missed one or two days along the way, unable to find anything overtly happy 

The Next Ten Days: The Happiness Project Turns 51

The Next Ten Days: The Happiness Project Turns 51

Actually, we’re up somewhere near day 53, but I’m not very good at getting my blogging act together. Some days, I really regret having that ridiculous inner drive to actually finish what I’ve started- even if that something is to find something legitimately happy for 

Notes on a Thwackless Day and Moving to Vietnam

Notes on a Thwackless Day and Moving to Vietnam

I am, today, sans Thwack. Just me. For the whole day. For, like, the first time ever. Or rather, for the first time since he rather impatiently forced his way out of me three months ago and proceeded to take over our household and our time 

Two and a Half Weeks: Notes on Memory, Stasis, Change and a Rather New Baby

Two and a Half Weeks: Notes on Memory, Stasis, Change and a Rather New Baby

About 18 days ago, I had a baby. This one. Oscar was one week overcooked and propelled himself out of me in barely two hours, emerging with a full head of mod hair, complete with side burns and enough hair over the hypothetical collar to 

Well, That Was Certainly Interesting: Brief Notes on Having Just Spawned a Baby

Well, That Was Certainly Interesting: Brief Notes on Having Just Spawned a Baby

Last Wednesday, I did something I’d never done before, in a way that went in a totally different way to how I had roughly planned it. Kind of like blindly climbing Mt Bromo in Indonesia at dawn, with the thick sulphur mists obscuring everything until