London -- Fashion, Or Momma Suits Up

Before Claire-Adele and I went to London, we went shopping.

"Why do you need to go shopping before the trip?" I asked.

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

"So?" I said. "We can shop there. That is the cool part about London. Shopping."

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

Fine. We went shopping two days before the trip. We hit Nordstrom Rack downtown one day after work for both of us. If she wants to go shopping at the Rack, that is fine with me. What she doesn't realized that this opportunity of shopping in one of the leading fashion cities in the world mixed with her mother's generosity and credit card will only come but once, maybe twice, in her lifetime.

So we went to the Rack downtown. While she was shopping, I was poking around. I wasn't planning on buying anything because I was going to shop in London.

Until. I. Saw. The. Designer. Racks. I felt like Bilbo Baggins when he enters Lonely Mountain and sees all of the elves gold. Is all of this for me?

I thought I'd looked through the racks when I saw It. It was destiny. We were meant to be together. Me and a black St. John black wool Chanel style jacket. When I tried on this jacket, I didn't feel like a million bucks. I felt like five to ten million. The jacket was one third of the original price, but still astronomical.

I brought it home, I showed it to Jack and the Boy. The Boy, who is a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. The gay married family man with two kids plays a very well dressed scoundrel and a womanizer. Barney's tag line is "Suit up."

Even the Boy was impressed at the cut and fit of this jacket.

"Momma suits up," said Jack.

I packed my bags, including in two dresses I bought of the bargain rack at The Rack and one dress I had in my closet for eight years and never wore. I am not one of those people who buys clothes they never wear, mainly because I am not that adventurous to buy anything that I might possibly feel the least bit uncomfortable wearing.

And then we left for London.

When we were there, Claire-Adele suggested we get off at a random Underground stop and explore. I picked Notting Hill. On our way to the restaurant, we walked by a thrift shop with a window full of fancy shoes. We had to go in. Turns out this "thrift shop" only sells designer stuff.

Not in my size otherwise I'd own them.

Yeah, those are Prada.

Claire-Adele started looking at the clothes. She found a dove gray sweater with ruffles along the front button area. It would be a perfect sweater to wear in the fall on the eastern seaboard. It was 70 pounds, so I checked the label.

Armani.

This was my kind of thrift shop.

A few days later, we were in line to see the Harry Potter play and we talked to some women from Florida.

"You have to go to Kensington Palace. They have an exhibit of Princess Diana's dresses," she said.

So we did. This is something Jack and the Boy would not want to see.

The dress she wore to dance with John Travolta.

Could you see me in this suit? I could! Love it.

She wore this to a fundraiser in Chicago for Northwestern. Go U NU!

There more more clothes in the rest of the exhibit. I don't Jack and the Boy would have had much fun here, either.

This is a replica outfit made out of what appeared to be Tyvek or some other industrial paper.

I love this outfit. 

These dresses were designed to show off the fabric. Like a billboard.

Emeralds

Diamonds. This was valued at 1.4M pounds and was used to pay the estate tax for someone's estate.

So my clothes aren't as awesome as Princess Diana's. No one's clothes are, which is why these clothes are in a museum. Nevertheless, Claire-Adele and I were at the Tower of London, and this woman stopped me and told me she loved my dress.

"This is the first time I've worn it," I told her. "It was in my closet for eight years."

"Sometimes those things are the best finds," she said.

Even in the Tower of London, we saw some cool fashions that Jack and the Boy might have foud interesting.

This one is cool.

Add caption

London, Jack's Back and Keeping Up with the McGuire's

No, not "Jack is back." I mean the back that belongs to Jack. On our second day in London, Jack crashed on his mountain bike while riding with the Boy.

Text from the Boy: "He's all good. A bit stiff. He ate shit going on jump 11/13"

Which means he crashed on the 11th of the 13 jumps on the Gravy Train trail at Duthie. Oy. I can't load the picture of his scratched up and bloody back, which is probably for the best. You might not want to see it anyway.

I talked to Jack the night of the crash, and he seemed fine. He has been battered and bruised before.

The second night was concerning.

"I couldn't sleep flat on my back because I couldn't breathe because the pain was too bad, so I slept on the couch. I want to make sure I can breathe deeply so I don't get fluid in my lungs."

Okay. Did you break your ribs or something?

"No, I'm a doctor, even if my ribs were broken or bruised, nothing to do, blah blah blah," he said.

The third night was more concerning.

"I really shouldn't be driving," he said. I can't turn my back and it hurt when I turn my head." This was the week Jack and the Boy were going to do crazy outdoorsy kind of stuff.

The fourth night was totally sketchy.

"I took some of the Boy's old percocet from when he broke his collarbone so I could sleep," he said. "I had to stop taking ibuprofen because I was getting a rash. At least three times a year we get kids in the ICU whose skin sloughs off because of a reaction to ibuprofen." This is typical dinner conversation at the McGuire's, the rare but nasty side effects of over the counter meds.

"I called one of the pharmacists in the ICU to see what they would recommend."

Probably not taking your kid's old meds, but whatever. Jack has a license to prescribe narcotics, and while I know I should dump old pain killers at the QFC drug return center,* part of me is afraid the massive earthquake will hit and someone I love will have a broken leg and we won't be able to find medical help but I will have a jar of pain meds from a surgery in my medicine cabinet. Better Jack taking one pill for legitimate pain management instead of our kids taking it for recreational use.

So now I am feeling bad for leaving Jack and the Boy home in Seattle while I am out and about with Claire-Adele eating in restaurants, seeing plays, visiting parks and museums in one of the coolest cities in the world, especially as Jack is seriously injured.

But then I don't feel too bad. Two and a half years ago, I tore my ACL trying to keep up with the kids and Jack. Now he is the one grounded for not keeping up with the Boy.

* PSA: You should get rid of old pain meds. http://www.takebackyourmeds.org I've done it before.

London -- Low Maintenance

Forgive me for being off my blog for the past several days. Claire-Adele and I are on a mother-daughter trip to London before she leaves for college in less than a month. When Claire-Adele was ten, she and I made a trip to London. Now, she is eighteen.

What was she most excited about for this trip?

Drinking.

Every night so far, we've had a glass of wine, beer, prosecco, cider or sangria with dinner. As a very lightweight drinker, I am feeling a little sloshed after a week.

"I don't think I'll have an addictive personality," said Claire-Adele. She's probably right, yet there were nights when she drank more than I did. Which means she finished her drink and I didn't.

"I'm going to be responsible," she said as I bought her a 14 pound glass of champagne, hoping this would be a good investment in her learning to control her alcohol at college. Hoping, because if I am wrong, she cold be screwed.

Why did we come here instead of going someplace new? I wrestled with this, and here are my thoughts:

1. It is London. Seriously, how could it be bad? I love big cities.
2. They speak English and the food is predictable.

Most importantly,

     3.  This is an easy planning trip. London is the perfect low-maintenance destination for high maintenance people.

Compare to our two week trip to New Zealand a few years ago. It took us months to plan the logistics of that trip. We stayed (if I am remembering right) seven different towns on two islands -- Auckland, Pohara, some cute spa town with a hot springs water park, Christchurch, Queenstown, Manapouri, and Hamilton. We took three plane rides within New Zealand.

For this trip, all I had to do was book theater tickets (Ham for me, Harry for Claire-Adele), book airline tickets, and find a place to stay. In that order. Done. I was ready. Need to get from destination to destination? Buy an Oyster card for the Underground. Done. Easy-peasey, lemon squeezy.

Jack and I went to brunch last weekend with Carla and her husband who met in London while they were working there.

"What are you going to do while you are there?" she asked.

"I dunno," I said. Then she told me 300 things we could do, and I wrote down about 150 of them. I didn't open a guide book until the third day of our trip. Why? Because there is so much to do here that in Central London you can walk five minutes in any direction and find a castle, palace, museum or place of cultural or historical significance. With the Internet and a printer, you can find train schedules and print tickets for taking tours of Parliament or Bletchley Park.

Plus, Claire-Adele already had a ton of ideas in her mind of what she wanted to see and do, which made my life much easier.

Can you imagine how little I would write if I had to plan a trip, too?

Egads.