in with both feet, Lon­don style

Yawn.

Excuse me!  It’s the jet­lag talk­ing.  Our lives involve a fair amount of spec­u­la­tion as to what method will pre­vent jet­lag.  Or reduce jet­lag.  How to man­age jet­lag.  There’s no fool­proof approach.

Now, fly­ing the other way, west, that is, is fine.  We feel like it’s later than it is when we get there, so get­ting to sleep straight­away is no prob­lem.  I wake up early for about three days, but that just puts me where nor­mal peo­ple usu­ally are, feel­ing great at 7 a.m.

Going east, on the other hand, poses a small set of insur­mount­able lit­tle obsta­cles, pri­mary among them the fact that we don’t want to GO!  We want to stay where we are.  A sec­ond prob­lem involves Avery and me being nightowls to begin with, so when the clock tells us it’s bed­time, we’re just begin­ning to think about din­ner. We tend to give Avery a week or so for her body to fig­ure out the sit­u­a­tion, then school starts.

This fall, we adopted a rather more rad­i­cal approach that I’m call­ing “Pre­tend It Isn’t Hap­pen­ing.”  We hopped on a day flight on Wednes­day, spent eight delight­ful hours in the com­pany of a young, gor­geous British com­edy screen­writer (I’m not mak­ing this up), arrived in our Lon­don home at nearly mid­night, and got up at 6:30 for school.

Did it work?

We thought it did, Thurs­day and Fri­day.  I spent the days at Lost Prop­erty, sort­ing through piles of nox­ious flot­sam, and Avery spent them in Latin, His­tory and Biol­ogy, sort­ing though her own intel­lec­tual jetsam.

No prob­lem!

Today, how­ever… I can­not seem to keep my eyes open!  My lat­est strat­egy (I tried laun­dry, BBC News 24 and gro­cery shop­ping) is mak­ing pizza dough.  Avery’s beloved friend Lille is over for din­ner, and as such I’d bet­ter pro­duce some­thing.  Cap­pellini alla car­bonara and home­made gar­lic bread it is.  But I’m still yawning.

My good­ness, our flight com­pan­ion was sim­ply the best.  Paul sat down, strug­gling with his car­ryon which was a back­back tied up with shoelaces.  “This is my new method of secur­ing my belong­ings, since I don’t really believe in belong­ings, peo­ple who steal just don’t have enough them­selves,” he assured us as he wove and unwove the shoe­strings to remove a bat­tered note­book cov­ered in illeg­i­ble but entertaining-looking graffiti.

“I’m just com­ing down from 89 days of couch-surfing,” Paul offered, and we fell for it.

“What’s couch-surfing?” I ask, ready to lis­ten to just about any­thing this hand­some, win­some and very young charmer had to tell us.  Avery’s face was a pic­ture.  It was as if you’d given her a list of boxes to tick for “what makes a per­son fas­ci­nat­ing” and there was her list, ticked off and only one mother’s air­plane seat away.  Slightly unshaven, flash­ing white smile (which flick­ered con­stantly), America-admiring, adventure-seeking Eng­lish chap, hers for eight whole hours.

And couch-surfing!  It’s dot.org, so you know it’s a good idea.  My good­ness, if I were 23 again I’d be all over the idea.  You log in and go to the place you want to go, say New York, and find peo­ple who are will­ing to share their couches (and din­ner tables, and sage advice, and prob­a­bly a fair amount of alco­hol) in exchange for the very vague, karma-friendly notion that some­day they might need a couch in, say, Sydney.

So Paul and his three lovely friends — one brave girl among them! — who knew each other to vary­ing degrees when the adven­ture began and, one imag­ines MUCH bet­ter by the time it ended — spent the whole sum­mer tour­ing the United States of Amer­ica.  On people’s couches.

And in ham­mocks!  Their blog… well, it’s a heart­warm­ing list, really, is here.  Yes, if they couldn’t find a couch, they resorted to the ham­mocks they brought with them, and each other.  “There had to be some spoon­ing,” Paul reveals.

Can you imag­ine the adven­ture?!  I can’t wait for Avery to be old enough — her father will say it’s a LONG WAY AWAY — to do some­thing like this.

Our con­ver­sa­tion ranged from Stu­pid Informer­cials We Have Known (Avery con­tributes “How often have you wished your blan­ket had ARMS?”) to food fads (Paul: “I have friends who are veg­e­tar­i­ans but they eat fish.  They are veg­e­quar­i­ans.”), and every­where in between.  What fun.

John’s worst night­mare, to get on a plane and have to talk for eight hours.  But it turns out that Avery is at least partly me.

Eng­land is just as won­der­ful as when we left.  We are try­ing to remem­ber our flu­ency in the lan­guage like “apart from” instead of “except for,” “cash­point” instead of “ATM,” and said machine ask­ing if you’d like an “advice slip” instead of a “receipt.”  And last night Avery said, with­out miss­ing a beat, that some­thing at school was “Manda-tree,” instead of the pro­saic Amer­i­can “Manda­tory,” so I know we’re home.

The cats are ENOR­MOUSLY fat, both com­pared to how they were when we left (a sum­mer of eat­ing and not mov­ing from their chairs except to eat) and com­pared to the tiny kit­tens we fos­tered.  But the ter­ri­to­r­ial fights with neigh­bor cat Char­lie are as fierce as ever…

I’m ashamed to say I let this par­tic­u­lar con­flict last long enough for me to take a pho­to­graph, then I shooed Char­lie away.  After all, it counted as exer­cise and maybe Hermione peeled off a few ounces, out of sheer anxiety.

Partly what is mak­ing Avery and me so sleepy is our lone­li­ness for our Third Mus­ke­teer.  John has stayed behind in Amer­ica, actu­ally dri­ving all the way up the East­ern Seaboard to spend some Him Time with old friends in Maine.  He sends his love, and this view…

But real life is here at my din­ing room table, which soon must hold plates of creamy, gar­licky pasta and wedges of crunchy, cheesy gar­licky pizza dough, none of which will hap­pen if I don’t run.  Or walk.

Yawn.

Capellini Car­bonara

(serves 4)

8 oz dry capellini
1 cup good Eng­lish bacon, diced
4 coves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parme­san cheese
1/4 cup creme fraiche
3 tbsps light cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
fresh ground pepper

About 15 min­utes before you want to eat, boil pasta accord­ing to direc­tions, about 10 min­utes. Drain over a bowl so you can reserve 1/2 cup of the cook­ing water. Set aside. In a large heavy skil­let, fry the bacon and then add the gar­lic, stir­ring over the flame until the gar­lic is JUST cooked but not burned. Add the pasta, toss well and take off the heat.

In a large bowl, mix the cheese, creme fraiche, creme, salt and eggs. Then add the reserved pasta water and whisk well. Pour over the ham and spaghetti in the skil­let and turn the heat up high for just long enough to toss the whole mix­ture together with tongs. Serve imme­di­ately with grated Parmesan.