Tiny Notes From Hanoi: It’s Kinda Different With a Kid

Tiny Notes From Hanoi: It’s Kinda Different With a Kid

Welcome to this exciting new series of (hopefully) near daily updates on our very recent move to Hanoi (like, last Friday)! Between living in a compact little hotel room in an area without walkable sidewalks (but with a fine cacophany of scooters roaring at all 

How to Pack for the Person You’d Like to Become

How to Pack for the Person You’d Like to Become

  We moved out of our little terrace house last weekend. Our dining room full of boxes is now stacked neatly in the third floor spare room of a sprawling Victorian house in the groovier bit of Leicester. We have a surprising amount of stuff 

What I’m Talking About When I Talk About China

What I’m Talking About When I Talk About China

A few weeks ago, I was randomly contacted by someone working for an expat relocation company. He wanted me to write a guide for Suzhou, a city I spent a total of one afternoon in several years ago, interviewing for a temporary job doing localization 

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 

Stock Taking (Again): Notes on Preparing to Leave (Again)

Stock Taking (Again): Notes on Preparing to Leave (Again)

How many Ikea POÄNG chairs have I bought (and then sold or left behind) in my decades of careless geographic instability? How many sets of kitchen odds and ends, how many cups and bowls and sets of cutlery? How many bookshelves (and their contents), kitchen tables, 

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 

And Now For Something Completely Different: The Happiness Project Roundup

And Now For Something Completely Different: The Happiness Project Roundup

It’s been about ten days since I last told you all about the small, daily details that made me happy. The Happiness Project is still going strong, albeit significantly less long-windedly. It’s all happening on Instagram so feel free to stalk me there, should the suspense 

Day 30: The Happiness Project

Day 30: The Happiness Project

  Holy crap, we’ve made it to Day 30 somehow. Since the past month has essentially been a blur, I will assume I didn’t space out and skip whole days and/or weeks entirely. A lot has changed in this time, internally if not externally. It 

Day 29: The Happiness Project

Day 29: The Happiness Project

Yesterday (that would be Day 29, as noted above) we drove en famille to Newark, about an hour away. We belong to a granola crunchy car share group in Leicester and so every so often happen to have a car at hand. This weekend, we