Becca Jane St Clair

By far, the easiest bread in the world to make. It goes great with soups and stews!

I first made Beer Bread in 2009 out of a box mix that cost over $5.00. We loved the bread, and I knew there had to be an easy way of making this without buying a pre-made mix, so off to the search engines I went. There are loads of recipes out there for beer bread and some of them can get quite involved. This recipe is so simple, anyone can make it. You can even mix the dry ingredients together ahead of time, pop it into a jar and give to a friend with a bottle of beer for an instant gift.

Beer Bread

You Will Need:
375g self-rising flour
3 tbs caster sugar
330ml beer (lagers work best – I used Stella)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Butter the sides and bottom of a loaf tin.
2. Mix together dry ingredients. Slowly add beer (it will foam) and use a wooden spoon to mix until sticky.
3. Pour into loaf tin and bake 50-60 minutes or until the top is crunchy. Cool tin on it’s side on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before removing bread.

This doesn’t even need any butter, it’s tasty without it!

I might be posting a lot of recipes in the next few days as I seem to have a lot of recipes I haven’t yet posted!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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I remember saying to Tim back when we were dating that if we weren’t married by the next leap year I would ask him to marry me.

Funny, how things work out.

Happy once-every-four-years day!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog.]

[I got a lot of good feedback on this post both from people reading it through therealljidol and my friends in the garden railway world. I thought it was worth a re-post.]

For Christmas last year, my husband gave his little brother a thin, narrow length of steel (it looked like a ruler), a sheet of brass, a steel cylinder, some rods of assorted length, width, and shape, and a set of plastic couplings (“choppers”). He would have given me the same, but I joined the party a little later on. We gave the same gift to a friend of ours, and my husband had some for himself. We are going to make steam trains for the garden railway*.

Now, I’m a crafty person. I love beading, sewing, and scrapbooking. I used to have a (pink) toolbox and I could fix basic things around the home. I think the most complicated thing I did on my own was fixing the toilet at my mom’s house. But stepping into my husband’s workshop put me in a whole new world.

In 2009, my husband finished renovating the small brick building to the side of our house that had formerly seen life as a washing house and an outdoor loo. I helped him install two long workbenches down either side and hang a wall of shelves in the alcove that once held a toilet. Entering the workshop, your nose was assaulted with smells – the pine of the shelving, the white paint from the walls, the dampness of the building, the metallic smell of butane mixing in with the sharp bite of methylated spirit. A small heater hummed in the corner, and the room was punctuated with bursts of lighting from the three clip-on lights scattered around the room.

The workshop had a narrow aisle between the two work benches, but somehow we managed to fit three people into it. In front of me was the bench that was used for putting things together and Tim had screwed down a large, heavy clamp. The bench behind me held all of the workshop appliances – an angle grinder, a tall drill, and the lathe. Under both benches were shelves holding all sorts of delights – smaller clamps, delicate pliers, oil to grease the machines to keep it going, and various bits and lumps of metal waiting to be made into something.

I was given a set of safety instructions for using the workshop that included the following: Always wear boots and goggles, take off your rings, take off your necklace, and tie your hair back and tuck it into your collar. My eyes grew wide with fear as Tim began to tell me stories he had heard of people getting hair stuck in the turning lathe, or getting a necklace snagged and it strangling them. This was a piece of machinery to be feared. I wasn’t looking forward to using it.

We each have our own plastic box labelled with the name of our eventual loco and where we can keep all our bits and pieces separate. I have named my loco “Orion”, as a dedication to my father. The boxes contained the Christmas present pieces and were just waiting to be cut, drilled, soldered, and bent into shape.

The first thing we had to do was make the base for the engine, called the frames. The frame makes a box that everything will sit on top of or be attached to. Making the frames involved taking the bits of steel that looked like a ruler and sawing them down to size. Then came the painstaking task of filing down the rough edges to make both sides even….but don’t file down too far or you will have to start at the beginning again. It took me a half hour to saw through the metal, and just as long to file the cut side, and I had to do it for four sides. There also are some holes you need to drill in the pieces, as well as filing away a notch, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet before I wound up in the hospital and had surgery on my arm, which left me out of the workshop for a while. My husband and his brother have completed their frames, and moved on to the next part.

My husband and his brother were attempting to cut the wheel blanks one day over the Summer and had agreed to cut everyone’s since it was taking them ages just to saw one. They admitted defeat after two hours and only three wheels to show for it, so Tim rang a friend of his who offered to cut them for us in his workshop.

Of course, having the wheel blanks doesn’t mean we have wheels. They need to be turned on the lathe to be shaped into a train wheel. Unfortunately, our lathe broke while my brother-in-law was working on his own, so we have had to stop production while we search for a new fuse for it.

Even after we have the wheels done, we will all be a long way away from having a finished product. We have to make all the fiddly bits that go into a model steam train. Loads of terms that I don’t understand now, but I’m sure I’ll become familiar with them as we build our engines. Things like a boiler, lubricator, and regulator are all foreign words to me. The only piece of our engines we will be buying pre-made are the pressure gauges. Everything else will be handmade.

We still have a pile of tin, brass, and steel in the workshop, but I’ve got my eye on the end result. Here’s the instructions we will be following just to give you an idea of everything that needs to be done: http://trains.de.jardin.free.fr/minidampf/brazil_uk/contents.html

We all started work on our engines in early 2011. Maybe one of us will get one finished in 2012!

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*Just in case you were wondering, yes, we have a railway in our garden. We model in 16mm to the foot and have models of narrow gauge trains, so our track is 32mm wide. We have small steam trains that usually run off Butane or meths, with a few adventurous souls making tiny coal-fired engines. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can check out the Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers here: http://www.16mm.org.uk

[This has been an entry for therealljidol Week 12 – Some Assembly Required]

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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[It was so good, there wasn’t any left!]

To make a long story short, I offered to bake my friend Brian a cake and gave it to him when we saw him on Sunday. Brian decided to donate his cake to the group we were with, so everyone got to have a taste and everyone who had some complimented me on it! So, here you go. How to use 500g of butter in one go….

Butterscotch Cake

For the cake:
225g Butter (softened. I used real butter not Stork like I usually do)
125g Muscavado sugar (brown sugar)
100g Caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

For the syrup:
50g Butter
75g Muscavado sugar (brown)
50g Caster sugar
1 tsp vanillia

For the icing:
200g Caster sugar (or icing sugar if you have it!)
25g Cornflour (cornstarch)
225g Butter cut into cubes
6 Egg yolks
Butterscotch syrup (from above recipe)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line your cake tins with some parchment paper.
2. You’ll be making the sauce first so it has time to cool. Melt the butter and two sugars together over low heat for 15-20 minutes until sugars are dissolved. If it doesn’t look like syrup, add a tablespoon of butter (I used olive spread) to make it a little runnier. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
3. While that’s cooling, start on the cake. Use a wooden spoon and beat the softened butter. Add the two sugars and continue to use a wooden spoon to mix it together until it becomes fluffy and golden in colour.
4. You can switch to an electric hand beater for the rest. Add in each egg, one at a time, with a Tablespoon of the flour each time and beat thoroughly before adding the next egg.
5. Beat in the vanilla, and add the remaining flour. The mixture should be thick enough to reluctantly drop off a spoon. If it’s too thick, add a tablespoon of milk.
6. Divide between your two pans and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn into a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Time to make the buttercream icing. You will want to clean off your electric beaters for this. Beat together the cornflour, sugar, and eggs until blended and bright yellow in colour.
8. Add butter one cube at a time, mixing constantly.
9. Pour in the butterscotch sauce and mix together.
10. To put the cake together, just sandwich the two layers with a small bit of the icing, and ice as usual.

Yum!!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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I think I re-did the menu about five times, and have edited the Tesco order at least 10. Good thing I can edit the order until 4AM!

Schedule-wise, Tim’s on the early shift all week until Friday when he rolls into a long weekend off, so I didn’t have to find fast meals to cook. We’re aiming to eat healthier, but I’m not sure how well Tim will cope with a week that has 3 vegetarian meals (four if you count the tacos on Sunday), 3 fish meals, and only one meat-y meal, but…we’ll see. hopefully he’ll tell me if he’s not happy with the meals.

Monday – Quorn Quesadillias with the leftover Quorn taco filling from tonight
Tuesday – Home made/home baked fish and chips with mushy peas and salad
Wednesday – veggie stir-fry
Thursday – Egg fried rice (Wednesday’s leftovers, just add an egg.)
Friday – Grilled salmon, green beans, and pesto packets with a salad
Saturday – Fish pie – This is still my go-to recipe.
Sunday – Hawaiian Chicken in the crock pot, brown rice, salad, broccoli

Tim’s lunches this week will be either Chocolate Cream Cheese spread (his request!) or the rest of the Chicken Tikka sandwich filler from last week (he also takes a banana, an apple, and an actimel).
My lunches will either be a bagel with cream cheese & smoked salmon or a small jacket spud with cottage cheese on top (and grapes, oranges, and an actimel)

Tesco order total for this week: £43, including delivery and a few household items. MUCH better than the previous weeks where we were spending upwards of £50, but this week also doesn’t have much meat in it and several meals are coming straight from the freezer.

Hoping the weather holds out so we can get out with the nordic poles this week!

Off to bed for me. 1:30AM and I have to get up when Tim does at 5 to make his Lunch since I’m too tired to trust myself with a knife right now!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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This past Christmas, I was sent a copy of the Hairy Biker’s Perfect Pies by my Secret Santa from an Ex-pat group. I’m not a pie person, and as you know, I’m quite loyal to Jamie Oliver, but I paged through the book and marked a bunch of the pies that looked like Tim and I would like them. Last week when I was meal planning, I read out the pies to Tim, and he picked this one. I had planned to serve it with poached eggs, but I forgot to poach the eggs in the end! Oops. As always, my recipe has been slightly modified due to my own dietary restrictions, and based on what I thought would work better.

You will need:
750g Maris Piper potatoes
3 TBS cooking oil
8 sausages (I used Tesco half-fat)
2 x 415g tins of baked beans

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Quarter the potatoes and put in a pan of boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until soft.
2. Meanwhile, fry the sausages in 1 TBS oil until browned. (or grill them)
3. Put the sausage in the bottom of a shallow casserole dish and cover with beans. Set aside.
4. Drain and roughly cut the potatoes into chunks. Don’t worry about the skins. Some of the skins will fall off after boiling, some won’t.
5 – Fry the potato chunks in the remaining oil for 2-3 minutes. Pour potatoes on top of sausage and beans
6 – Bake at 200C 15-20 minutes until potatoes are crisp on top and the beans are hot.

I think this would have been tasty with a poached egg on top, but Tim thought it was okay on it’s own!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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[picture from Mollie Makes]

In late Spring 2011, I discovered my first issue of Mollie Makes magazine. Unfortunately, it was issue 2, and I never managed to track down issue 1.

Mollie Makes was a new craft magazine and it drew me in because it looked like it was all of my favourite blogs and projects I looked at on US blogs/websites being made in the UK. I was so excited to finally find a magazine I could identify with after being disappointed with scrapbooking/card making magazines on offer here. I tore out the insert and took it into the Spar shop and asked if they could please add the magazine to our order (Tim gets loads of railway and garden railway magazines and I already received Jamie magazine). It took him a few months and a few trips running around Lincoln trying to find copies, but I finally now regularly pick up my issue at the corner shop each month.

Every month, Mollie Makes comes with something attached to the magazine. Usually a kit, but it’s also been ribbon and in January it was a calendar. I always devour the magazine and look at all the amazing projects…and never do them. I wind up putting the magazine in my magazine file “to do later”.

Last night, I pulled out the first issue of Mollie Makes I have. Attached to the front was a cute little felt flower kit – the kit that first drew my attention when I saw the magazine on display in WH Smith. Directions for the flower can be found inside the issue, including the pattern at half-size. In order to make the flower, you need to enlarge the pattern by 200%. Now, this can be tricky for people who don’t know how to us a copy machine, so Mollie Makes kindly puts all their patterns on their website, one pdf file per issue.

I printed the flower pattern out on regular paper, but soon wished I had used vellum or tracing paper as the printer paper was too stiff for pinning to the felt and I wound up with some misshapen petals as a result. The magazine also didn’t give much in the way of sewing instructions, so I had to make things up as I went along. The flower stayed together, so that’s all that matters.

My flower next to the the kit

See? Not bad.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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We haven’t had any snow all Winter, despite the massive warnings in mid-October that it was going to be a “hard winter” with “snow as early as November”. Granted, it has snowed in other areas of the UK, particularly Scotland, but this weekend was the first time it snowed over pretty much the entire country. When I woke up on Saturday to see the light dusting of snow, I laughed as I thought that was all we were going to get. The hard frost on Saturday morning was thicker than the snow. However, we received more Saturday night into Sunday. As far as I can tell, it started around 8PM or so, it was still snowing when we went to bed, but it had stopped when I woke up around 4AM and looked outside. There wasn’t much by my standards – only about 5cm total in our garden – but it was enough to grind the county to a halt.

As a Northeastern US girl, I’m used to snow. It’s not Winter unless we’ve been dumped on with a foot or more of snow, so it always amuses me how badly most of the UK handles the slightest amount of snow. Busses get cancelled (good thing it was Sunday), local shops are shut, and people can’t seem to understand the idea of shovelling their driveway and clearing the snow off the roof before trying to move their cars. My first Winter here as a visitor, it snowed. It was November 2008 and it was something like the first time parts of the UK had seen snow in over 20 years. I decided to walk down to the Co-op in the next village over, and I was amazed at the state of some of the vehicles on the road. People had barely cleared off their windscreens of snow, let alone the rest of the car. Since then, it has snowed pretty regularly each Winter, with at least one snow “storm”. You would think people would have learned and remembered how to handle it from one year to the next.

If Tim has off work, snow for us is just a reason to get out the snow plow for the garden railway. Fortunately, this was Tim’s scheduled Sunday off. We invited our friends Helen and Mark over to help — well, Mark was outside with Tim, and Helen and I stayed warm inside and chatted over a cup of tea. Our snow plow seems to be allergic to the camera though, because every time I aimed a camera at it, it decided to derail, but I still managed to pull off one nice image:

It took Tim 4 tanks of gas to get the lower circuit done (one tank is good for a 20-30 minute run). Our upper circuit goes into a cutting about 4 inches deep, and the cutting was completely full of snow so we decided to only open the lower circuit. We might have gotten the plow around, but it would have made the cutting unstable and probably would have caused an “avalanche” (at 16mm to the foot that’s what it would have looked like). Plus, the upper circuit has two level crossings across our front walkway, and most of that snow had been compacted down by our boots so it would have been a struggle to move!

Mark used an end of train marker from Austria as a temporary stop sign to indicate that the line off to the left (what line?) was currently closed.

The platform at Horncastle. We actually have 5 tracks here, but only cleared the one for use.

Running the first train completely around the service.

While stating “England doesn’t get snow” might have been an accurate statement 5, 10 years ago, I think these photos prove that is no longer true*!

[This post has been cross-posted to my LJ as my entry for this week’s The Real LJ Idol topic: Current Events.]

*Not something I say, but something a friend said she was told by a friend.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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The Week 11 Topic for LJ Idol was an open topic, and I chose to go back and pick one of my unfinished entries for a different topic, Sticks and Stones, that I decided against using. I am really pleased with this post, and even though I was stuck in “Tribe Redemption” from the week before, I still scored pretty high on this entry. Remember, if you want to read other people’s entries or vote on the current week, you can go to the LiveJournal Community .

I was an imaginative child. I would make up worlds inside my head, sometimes writing them down on paper, other times just playing in the world inside my head. Each Summer I would go and spend a week visiting my aunt and uncle at their home in Central Pennsylvania. I loved being a “big girl” and not needing my parents for a week.

My Uncle bought the house in the mid-70s and “invited” his parents and two sisters to live in it with him – his older unmarried sister, and his youngest sister who would later get married and become my mom. I always loved sleeping in my mom’s old bedroom because I never knew what kind of treasure from her past I might find hidden in a drawer or in the closet.

It was a large Cape Cod style house with two bedrooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms on the top floor with a full bathroom on each floor. The ground floor also had a large living room, dining room, and the kitchen. A basement ran the full length of the house and it had been divided in half – half of the basement was left unfinished and had been my pappy’s workshop, and the other half was a family room.

Along one side of the family room was a long bar with tall stools. My pappy used to mix drinks behind it, and there were still containers of stirring sticks on top of the mini fridge. Under the bar was a long cabinet that used to hold glasses and trays. The cabinet became the storage area for all of the board games my family had collected — some were from my mom’s childhood, others were purchased new as nieces and nephews got older and needed games to play with. Many were purchased for me.

My favourite games were the games that had lots of pieces to them. The banks from the game Piggy Bank, the triangular shaped Triominos, dice, pick -up sticks, tinker toys, etc. One in particular I don’t even know if it had a name or was just blocks to play with, but it was blocks with different coloured rectangles and triangles on them – red, green, yellow, and blue. There were no instructions. While digging through the cabinet I found an old game my aunt simply called “Milkman”, consisting of some milk floats (delivery cars) and bottles of milk. I also loved playing Chinese Checkers almost as much as I loved playing with the marbles it came with and I would spend hours organizing the marbles and colour-coordinating each side of the board.

If I didn’t play in the basement, then I was upstairs in the sewing room pulling out buttons, ribbons, bobbins, and fabric scraps to make art projects with (I am quite embarrassed to say that there are still two of my creations hanging in my mom’s old bedroom 25 years later). Sometimes I also played in what we always called “the back room” – the second bedroom on the ground floor that had a mustard yellow sofa and some of the games we played more frequently. The back room often times became a school room for playing school or a store if I wanted to play store. My aunt was always willing to play with me and would even keep things from year to year so the box I pretended was a cash register was always there. We usually raided some of the game boxes for money.

When I visited, I was always there for a week. My visits would always include at least one day trip to some place local such as the Land of Little Ponies or Hersheypark and a picnic at Kiwanis Lake. I would also help my aunt with her grocery shopping and housework. We didn’t have a clothesline at my parent’s house, so I loved pegging out the clothing and watching it blow in the wind. My aunt also always let me do the dusting and watering of her plants, but there were always some tasks she either didn’t need my help with, or things I couldn’t do.

I would be sent to play on my own. I always had a choice – the sewing room, the back room, or the basement, unless my uncle had a puzzle on display on the ping pong table. If the table was empty, I almost always picked the basement.

The first thing I always did was get out the coloured blocks. Spread out across the full length of the bar, these blocks would become the base of my village. I used the marbles for people, and I made a swimming pool by putting a bunch of seashells in a circle. The deep end was marked off with a piece of ribbon. The piggy banks from the piggy bank game were coralled into a farmyard fenced off with stirring sticks, the milk man trucks were placed around on the “streets”, and I played town.

I would play with my made up village for the entire week. I always hated the last day of my visit when I had to take everything down and put it away, but I knew I could play with it the following year. As I grew up, my village evolved from a village with farms and a community pool, to separate houses with backyard pools, to city scenarios with row houses.

I probably made my last village when I was around 11 or 12, but I know if I went into my aunt’s basement today all of the pieces would still be there waiting for me to create something.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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I created an Excel spreadsheet to track our grocery store spending throughout the year, and my first month is complete. We have spent £173.18 this month on groceries ONLY. I filter out of the total delivery charges (£17.50 for the month), toiletries (nothing, bought everything at Boots or Wilkos), household goods (laundry soap, etc. £15.21 this month), pet supplies (£2.29 this month as all Prudence needed was a box of wet food), alcohol (£0), and misc (like if we pick up a DVD at the grocery store. £0 this month)

I’m debating about adding onto the sheet all times we go shopping for toiletries (boots/wilkos/etc), as I am interested in knowing what we spend on those things. I might still have my receipts from this month, or I can price things out individually and work out the total. It was less than £25, but more than usual because we ran out of everything this month including Tim’s aftershave.

Still, £173 isn’t bad. We’ve always aimed to spend less than £200. And yesterday was the most expensive delivery because we defrosted the freezer and needed to restock it.

Paying for delivery annoys me sometimes, but I can justify it, easily. If Tim isn’t available to drive me to the shop, I’d have to take a bus at £4.80 Return. Delivery fees hover between £3.50 and £4.50, depending on how fast I book it. Petrol would be negligible, since we live fairly close to most of the shops (though I bet Asda would be more in petrol than the delivery fee), but when you think about how much time you spend in the grocery stores…..the delivery fee is well worth it!

Here’s hoping I can do better in February, though. Ideally, I’d rather groceries be down in the £125-150 range for the month, especially since we will have houseguests in April and May that will add extras! (Dear houseguests: No, I am not asking you to buy groceries while you are here! Stop thinking that!!). We also are going on holiday in June, so groceries become a little iffy then, too. Even with camping, we still wind up doing a daily shop and it can add up since you never have a stocked pantry to work with.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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This is MissM:

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Lately, Miss M has been gaining attention all over the internet for this photo (even though she posted it months back). And every time I read some of the comments, I can’t help but jump in and talk about Miss M, because she is my friend.

When I call her my friend, I mean it. She is my friend. She is not an “internet friend” (though we did meet via a community on LiveJournal years ago!). Miss M and I have met-up on several occasions. I have been to her house, I have met her fiancé, and I have fussed at her kitties. My husband, mother, and one of my cousins have also met her. We call each other on the phone (thank you Skype!), we text (when it’s working), and we keep in touch via email, facebook, and twitter when we’re not commenting on each other’s blogs. I helped her start up PhoenixFunds, and I continue to support her and search for help for her. Therefore, when I comment and say “Miss M is a friend of mine”, I really do mean friend. And yes, I know what the M stands for. No, I’m not going to tell you. While Miss M appreciates all the support she is given, she does not want her full legal name out there on the internet, and I respect that.

As a long-time friend of Miss M, I know what she’s been through. She’s not kidding when she said she tried all other avenues for assistance.

But here’s the sucky part for her. It’s not over. Sure, she had her surgery in October, but the thing with major surgery is it takes ages to get over. Heck, I only had minor surgery on my armpit and it knocked me down for months afterwards. Miss M had major surgery and is looking at at least a year to a full recovery. On top of the months she already was ill. So by the time next October rolls around, she will have been out of work for a year and a half. And while she’s in recovery, she needs to see her doctors. Her insurance costs $250/month. This is on top of having to pay for the part of her surgery that wasn’t covered by the insurance. She owes around $10,000 for the surgery, and for her ER visit before she was able to gain insurance. She’s in a bit of a catch-22 — if she doesn’t pay $250/mo for her insurance, she has to start paying out of pocket to see the doctors. If she doesn’t pay back on the $10k, it goes into collections and puts her farther into debt making it impossible to afford the $250, and if she pays out of pocket to see the doctors, that adds even more to the $10k, never mind the fact that the doctor will want some of that money up front. And if she misses a month of paying $250, she goes right back to the beginning in terms of her deductible, which means shelling out $1000 up front before it starts to cover things.

And then you hear the “advice” – cut out Starbucks, drive a less expensive car, get rid of satellite TV, get rid of your iPhone, etc etc….but the thing is….Miss M doesn’t have or do any of those. She’s not a Starbucks junkie, her car is an older model (which means it needs to be repaired more frequently, which costs money…see? Catch-22), she doesn’t have satellite TV, and she doesn’t have an iPhone. She has an iPod touch that her fiancé gave to her several years ago because it was given to him at work as a Christmas gift, and he knew she wanted one. Her mobile phone is not snazzy, but she can’t get rid of it because since she drives an older car that is prone to breaking down, she needs to be able to call for help when she needs it (catch-22 again). And honestly? Cutting out a $30 bill isn’t going to magic $10,000.

I also know for a fact that Miss M participates in as many points sites as possible and earns points she can cash in for other things, like meals out, Amazon gift cards, her Disney pass, etc. Nothing that this woman does is done for the hell of it, and if she has any “disposable income”, well, I know it goes towards supplies for her business, food for her cats, or other necessities (you know, clothing, toiletries, food…).

It hurts me when people on other websites that have picked up her photo and story make nasty comments about her. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, because if you’re reading this entry, you are probably a friend and have probably read my other posts about Miss M, but if you’ve googled for more information about her, I hope you’ve stumbled upon this.

Ways to Help
I am NOT asking you to donate money to aid Miss M, but if you’re in the market for some jewellery, please visit her site or Etsy shop. Valentine’s Day is coming, and I can vouch that her pieces are stunning. I myself own a tree of life and snowman earrings, my mom has a custom bracelet, and my mother-in-law received a nestlace (bird’s nest pendant) that Miss M personalized with an un-heard of SEVEN birthstone pearls for her children and children-in-laws. I also have many one of a kind pieces Miss M has gifted to me over the years, including some lovely purple earrings I wear all the time and a red and gold beaded bookmark.

If you do want to donate, you can do so via both PayPal and GoFundMe.

Other links you might find useful:

Her Blog: http://giveneyestosee.com/blog

PhoenixFunds: http://PhoenixFunds.etsy.com

PhoenixFireDesigns on Etsy: http://PhoenixFireDesigns.etsy.com

PhoenixFire Designs: http://www.phoenixfiredesigns.com

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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Yesterday was probably the most nerve-wracking and important day in our lives. As if getting married and applying for a Spousal Visa wasn’t bad enough, it only lasts for 2 years (technically, 28 months to give extra time in case you arrived more than a month after your visa was issued). To stay in the UK longer, you currently need to apply for ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain AKA Permanent Residency). You can apply by post or in-person. The in-person appointment has a heftier fee, but it’s an immediate decision and saves weeks of finger nail biting. We decided on an in-person appointment for peace of mind, and also just in case we decide to go abroad on a long weekend (we’ve toyed with a weekend in Paris, but might put it off so we can save more for a trip to Austria in June).

My appointment was for 11:15 at the Sheffield PEO office and the appointment information states you should arrive 30 minutes before your slot. We decided to take public transportation the whole way starting with a bus at 7:40AM out of the village. Our train was running early and we actually arrived at the PEO office with an hour to spare.

Getting through security was an ordeal. There was a couple behind us complaining that their appointment was in 10 minutes and I couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t read the information on the website! To get through security, we had to take the batteries out of our mobile phones to show the inside. We were allowed to put the phones back together, but we had to leave them off the whole time we were in the PEO. Tim made the best blunder of the day by forgetting his dress shoes were work issued and had steel toes! Fortunately, security just waved him through after I said “it’s the shoes”.

We checked in early and were quite surprised to get called up to the desk within 5 minutes. Our case worker, Joe, looked at my application and asked me when I filled it out. I told him I had printed it off the website a few days prior and he said “everyone’s been telling me that, but this is the old form”. He then handed me the new form and asked me to fill it out. There are NO differences between the old form and the new form, save for the fact that the bottom of the new form says “10/2011” and the old form “04/2011”. Apparently, the website hadn’t been updated with the new form and everyone coming in this week has had to re-do their form on arrival. I told the man at reception I had finished the new application, and before we even found seats in the crowded lobby, we were called to the desk again.

This time, Joe went through our entire packet. He asked me where in New York I was from, and I puzzled him by answering “I’m not”. I then explained how I was born in Brooklyn, but my parents moved when I was a baby. Surprisingly, he knew where Princeton was after he didn’t know where Hightstown was. He checked to make sure we had the required documents, transferred it into a plastic document folder, and told us to proceed to the payment counter. We had to wait for about 10 minutes while someone came to the counter, but the money was soon out of our account and the woman at the payment counter said she would “pop (y)our documents over to the case worker” and that he would be with us “shortly”.

Shortly turned into two hours. Two nervous hours. I tried reading, but I couldn’t even tell you what I was reading. I couldn’t even speak to Tim because I knew if I opened my mouth I might start crying from all the stress. I kept worrying that we had missed something, or something was wrong. I kept wondering if I should go back up to Joe to ask him if they needed more documents, because I had two years of bank statements, payslips, etc. with me just in case. Finally, we were called to another window where we faced a stony-faced man named John.

From the look on his face, I was expecting bad news, but he surprised me by telling us we had been approved! He then chatted with Tim about his job for a little, and asked us how we met (in some ways, I wonder if he was checking the information on file from my first application, but I’ll pretend he really was interested). He then told us we could leave and return in a half hour to 45 minutes for the visa to be processed. I really wish they had given us the option of leaving and returning during the two hour wait instead!

We left and walked down the river to a Tesco Extra for a snack and by the time we got back and went through security again, my visa was ready! Happy day! What a relief!

We celebrated by having a late lunch at Meadowhall at our favourite restaurant, Frankie and Benny’s.

As of January 2012*, These are the minimum required documents for ILR (if settling as a spouse**):
-Completed ILR application. The bottom of the application should read “10/2011”.
-Life in the UK pass certificate
-Your passport
-Your spouse’s passport
-Two passport photos of yourself
-One passport photo of your spouse
-Three most recent payslips for your spouse and yourself (if applicable***)
-Three most recent bank statements (jointly held or singly held)
-Six pieces of post spread out over the previous two years illustrating that you and your spouse share an address. Alternately, you may use six addressed to each of you for a total of 12. They should be from at least three different sources****.

Anything else is just extra fodder and they honestly don’t need it unless you need further documents to prove residency, employment, or funds. If you are in doubt, contact an immigration lawyer^.

All hurdles are complete for settlement in the UK. Once you have ILR, as long as you do not leave the country for an extended period of time (I believe it currently is two years), you are permitted to live here.

My plans? Citizenship, once I become eligible. As a spouse and under current rules, I will become eligible on January 22, 2013, after three years of residency.

*Please check the UKBA website for up to date information as requirements can change at any time and use my information as a rough guide.
**ILR applicants that fall under other categories have additional requirements. See website and application for details.
***Include payslips from whoever is employed. If you both have jobs, include payslips for each.
****My documents were council tax bills for both 2010 and 2011, e.on bills from random months in 2010 and 2011, a barclay’s bank statement, and a Santander/Soverign Bank statement. If you have changed address, you might require more documents.
^ I did not contact a lawyer to review my application as I felt fairly confident I knew what I was doing based on my own research. However, I brought along additional information in case we were asked for it including our birth certificates, marriage certificate, expired passports, Tim’s payslips for the previous two years, bank statements for the past 6 months, mortgage statements for both 2010 and 2011, and pieces of mail for each month from January 2010 to December 2011 addressed to either myself, Tim, or both of us. If I was sending my application by post, I might have included some of the other documents.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog.]

I had to half-ass our meal plan at around midnight last night because I had the Tesco order coming today and there was NOTHING on it!

So, here’s our sad plan.

Monday – Breakfast for Lunch
Tuesday – Steamed salmon with veggies and rice
Wednesday – Tuna steaks with salad
Thursday – something with the frozen leftover turkey, probably pot pie or Tetrazinni
Friday – Swedish Meatballs
Saturday – Cranberry burgers
Sunday – Roast Chicken

Total cost of groceries for the week? £30. In the freezer (or over at Tim’s parents in their extra freezer) we have the salmon, tuna, turkey, meatballs, and a whole chicken.

Total so far for the month? £50. Though I have a feeling after we eat the freezer down it might get a little more expensive.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog.]

Over the Summer, a friend was talking to me about Quidco, a website that offers you cash back based on your purchases you make through their site. I was a member of a similar site when I lived in the US (I currently can’t remember the site!) and had earned back around $20 on various online purchases, so I signed up for it, but then forgot about it.

In October, Quidco sent out an email with an offer to join Weight Watchers UK. The offer was that if you signed up for their 3-month package at £32, you would gain £30 in cashback, making your three month subscription £2. I decided to give it a try, since I felt there was little to lose since in the end I would have only spent £2.

[screenshot of the email offering £30 cashback]

I am now out £32.

Quidco failed to acknowledge the transaction so in mid-November, I submitted a claim on their website. Oddly enough, the site would only let me put in a claim for £15 instead of the £30 advertised, but I figured at least I’d get £15 back and wasn’t going to be too upset over losing £15. A few weeks later, an email from Quidco arrived that simply said “We have an update for you from the Quidcare team.” and directed me to log into my account. I logged in and the standard “this is what will happen” message appeared. I didn’t receive any more email updates from Quidco.

In all the excitement of planning my emergency trip back to the US, I forgot about it until today, when I realized that I would need to cancel my original WW subscription soon if I didn’t want to be charged another £30. I checked into Quidco to see if the reward money was there because if it was I would have used the £30 cash back to pay for an additional three months of WW. My reward wasn’t showing. Instead, it showed that my claim had been denied based on my not providing information they asked for “in an email”.

Er?

Here is a screenshot of my email box filtered down to messages from Quidco:

[apologies for the small print, I had to re-size this for WordPress]

No where in there, beyond the first update email do I see anything related to this claim requesting additional information, yet here’s what Quidco has on their website under my claim:

[screenshot of the claims screen on Quidco]

I found where it was possible to re-submit a claim, so I’m filling it out online:

[screenshot from Quidco, Click for larger]

As you can see, it still is allowing me only to ask them for £15, when the original offer read £30, but again, I’m kind of past that point and really now only want at least the £15 they are offering. I go to the next screen, where it asks for my username on WW and my confirmation number when I joined. I provided those details, and moved on to the next screen.

[screenshot from Quidco, Click for larger]

Getting a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? I clicked on “contact us”, which brings me to a page where I need to click on if I am a member of the site, an advertiser, or part of the media. I select member and go through another set of pull down options to get to the following:

[screenshot from Quidco, Click for larger]

Okay, I will click on that “denied cashback claim”, but oh look where it sends me right back to:

[screenshot from Quidco, Click for larger]

Looks familiar, doesn’t it?

I have now been through this circus about 5 times now, hoping somehow that something will have changed and it will magically let me re-submit the declined claim. Seeing how there appears to be no other way to contact this company, I went directly to their facebook page:

[screenshot from facebook]

The link they gave me? Goes to the same page as the previous image, which is the same page as the first image, so my options are to start the cycle on their site again, or write off ever seeing my £15, let alone the original £30 I was promised.

I’ve since gone to the WW site and cancelled my membership there so I wouldn’t be charged in January. It was a very simple form to fill out and asked for the reason. So I told them this problem as well, though I doubt WW can really do anything about it.

I flew back to the UK from the US on Christmas Eve so I would arrive back in the UK to spend Christmas Day with my husband. My aunt gave me two small containers of Christmas cookies before I left – one was a small round tin filled with about a dozen and a half peanut butter cookies, and the other with some of my favourite cookie of all time, pinwheels. Since she packed the containers tight I packed them into my checked bag along with loads of Christmas presents for other people, including 6 packets of a McCormick Buffalo wing mix my FIL likes and some peppermint Hershey Kisses, so my bag smelled pretty interesting.

I checked my bags in Philadelphia and headed to security. Security in Philly was a LOT tighter than it was in London*. In Philly I was required to remove my laptop from it’s protective case, remove my kindle from it’s case, and remove my shoes. Oh, and could I step to the side even though the metal detector didn’t ping for a personal pat down?

Yeah. Don’t wear a dress when travelling through Philly or they will have to give you a pat down. Fortunately, there wasn’t many people present and the woman doing my pat down was very apologetic and explained to me that it was required because a dress/skirt doesn’t show the contours of your body so they have to pat you down. Nice. Here I thought I was making it easier by not wearing trousers that might have bits of metal all over them. The agent patting me down did not touch me above the waist, did not pat down my rear, and did not pat higher than mid-thigh. I thought the whole idea of the pat down was to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything? Not that I’m complaining. It just all seemed pointless, especially considering my dress was fairly form fitting to begin with and the fabric was clinging to my tights. I wonder what happens to people who go through wearing baggy clothing. Soon we will have to fly wearing form-fitted bodysuits.

Funny enough, I went through security with my 1-QT bag of liquids and yet in the bottom of my carry-on I later discovered two items that had fallen out – a small container of hand sanitizer and a breath spray, neither of which were detected by their machines. I also had a packet of mustard my mom stuck in the bag with the lunch she packed for me and that didn’t get flagged, either.

First trauma over, I headed on my merry way to the gate, boarded my flight, and was soon landing in London (LHR). The UKBA was on the ball and I didn’t even have to answer any questions on my return to the UK, she just told me “welcome back” and stamped my passport on the page opposite my spousal visa (unlike when I landed in the US!**).

I noticed the “cleared by TSA” sticker on the outside of my suitcase and found the “Notice of Baggage Inspection” buried inside as soon as I got home. I didn’t really think anything of it and assumed the combination of the peppermint Hershey Kisses and the Buffalo wing spice caught the attention of the baggage inspector. But it wasn’t until this morning that I discovered something was wrong with my luggage.

As I mentioned above, my aunt sent me home with two small containers of homemade cookies. The first container was a square vintage Tupperware container that contained my beloved Pinwheels. No problems there. The second container was a small tin she was re-using that contained some peanut butter cookies. When I opened the tin this morning, I discovered HALF MY PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES WERE GONE, and the remaining cookies were broken and crumbled due to being shaken around the half empty tin.

I am NOTimpressed. Thank you, TSA agent for stealing my little bit of a homemade Christmas. I hope you were allergic to nuts.

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*Security in London consisted of taking my laptop out of the bag but not the case, having my kindle out (but in it’s case), and I was able to keep my shoes and cardigan on.

**Oh, this is great, too. When I got up to the desk at US Immigration I was GRILLED by the agent. Excuse me, but isn’t it the right of an American Citizen to be able to freely leave and return to the US? No? I got asked when I was last in the US (I was vague and said “about two years ago”, why I moved to the UK, why I was returning to the US, who I was staying with in the US, and the best one? When was I leaving the US. Again, I thought American Citizens are allowed to stay in the US for as long as they’d like. Apparently not. I suppose I should consider myself lucky I didn’t get a time limit visa stamped in my passport!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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Feel free to pass this post on!!

My mom lives in Penn State country. University Park is about an hour and a half away, and then there’s also at least a half dozen satellite campuses within an hour’s drive, some as close as 20 minutes away. I was always well-supplied with Penn State merchandise growing up, once I expressed an interest in Penn State to my family. I think I declared I was going to Penn State right around the time my cousin Tim was attending, and the same time my German teacher’s son was attending, but that’s another story.

I grew up with my aunt getting me small Penn State items at her local shops – pencils, notepads, napkins, etc. And when I finally was accepted to Penn State my senior year of high school, she went all out and bought me a stadium blanket, paper plates, napkins, plastic cups, everything imaginable with the Penn State logo on it.

Living in the UK you can imagine I don’t see a whole lot of PSU merchandise unless it’s something I brought with me or I get sent, so while I was back in PA I thought I would stock myself up on some Penn State merch. The regular football season has ended, but we still have a bowl game to play, so I was expecting to see merchandise all over the place.

I have been in 2 of the local grocery stores as well as Wal-Mart, Target, and K-mart and have barely seen a whisper of PSU merch.

What’s going on? Have all the shops decided to quit selling Penn State merchandise based on the actions of one man? It’s ridiculous. I am and will always be proud to be a Penn Stater.

If I have to order my merchandise directly from State College, I will.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this via the email subscription, please click on the link to go directly to the entry on my site to comment as the email address used to send the posts does not accept replies.]

I worried before my trip to the US that I was going to sound “too British” and people would think I was putting on airs….have you ever seen that episode of Friends where Monica and Phoebe have a friend who moved to London and then comes back and talks with a (fake) British accent? Yeah, I was afraid I might wind up doing that subconsciously. Don’t know what I’m talking about?

http://youtu.be/a1wGVD93NXY

Or where they are making fun of her (beginning of this clip):

..and I was THAT American. I can’t help it. I’ve spent two years in the UK and using British words for things so that people would know what I was talking about. My cousins took great delight in poking fun at me for saying things like “ring up” and “put it in the rubbish”. Words like “mobile”, “garage” (pronounced differently in the UK), “loo” or “toilet” (instead of “bathroom”) and “trousers” (instead of “pants”) have crept into my vocabulary without me even noticing, but it makes me stick out when I’m talking to an (American) family member or friend.

But at least I still sound American. While I was at the Lincoln Christmas Market, a man at one of the stands asked me if I was Scottish and the man running the stand with him responded that no, he thought I was Irish.

I wonder if the more time I spend outside of the US, the less American I will sound?

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this via the email subscription, please click on the link to go directly to the entry on my site to comment as the email address used to send the posts does not accept replies.]

Friends and Family,

We hope this post finds you all well and enjoying the holiday season with your families. Our holiday season was disrupted this year by a family tragedy. Rebecca’s Aunt (in America) had a stroke two weeks before Christmas and passed away a few days later. Rebecca flew out to the US to be with her family.

This year, in lieu of sending cards, we have decided to make a donation to the Stroke Association in memory of Barbara A. Ohlinger, to aid others who suffer from a stroke.

We wish you all a happy holidays!

Love,

Tim & Rebecca Lockley

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users reading this from my Networked Blogs link can either comment on facebook or on my blog. If you are reading this via the email subscription, please click on the link to go directly to the entry on my site to comment as the email address used to send the posts does not accept replies.]

My aunt passed away during the night. This morning, Tim and I had a short discussion about if I should go to Pennsylvania or not, and my response was “it’s Aunt Barb”, and Tim said “there’s your answer”, so flights have been booked.

I’m going solo because Tim just can’t ask for the time off this week as one of the other MOMs is currently on holiday and well, one ticket was enough!

I’m heading out on Friday and will arrive in Philly around 3PM and take the train to Lancaster so my mom doesn’t have to worry about picking me up at the airport. I’ll leave on Christmas Eve. Because it’s an overnight flight, I will arrive back in the UK on Christmas Morning. It was the only way to book things and still be able to afford anything reasonable that didn’t involve a lot of crazy transfers and layovers (seriously, one flight I looked at was Birmingham to Dublin, an 11-hour layover in Dublin, then flying to Miami, five hours in Miami, and then onto BWI). To make things easier on me, I’m not checking any bags. I’ve got toiletry type items still at Mom’s and if I need anything, she has a CVS and a Rite Aid around the corner from her house (within walking distance, even). I’m just going to toss a few changes of clothing into a carry-on. Mom has a washing machine, so I can always wash things.

This isn’t the way I had hoped to return to the US for a visit, but I am glad that I am able to. This truly IS the hardest part about being an ex-pat.