More Empty Nesting Chat
Our eldest daughter, Annie Grace is back with us in Bangkok again. Yippee! When she isn’t with us we always feel the sad pull that comes with being empty nesters. The four of us together makes for a happy household and we can put those ’empty nester’ feelings away – well for a little while at least!
Refusing airport photos after a rough night on the plane, stuck between two inconsiderate travellers, who were as economical with their manners as they were in their flight booking. Annie explained how when she is on the aisle, (which we usually try to get) she gets up to go the loo four or five times a night, whether she wants to or not, enabling her neighbouring travellers the opportunity to stand up and make a call themselves. (I brought her up to be considerate!) Not so her neighbours! Splayed arms and immobile bodies didn’t lend themselves for Annie having a good flight. She looks exhausted in a ‘still young and gorgeous’ kind of way! I should have given her the advice on flying I shared in an earlier blog post, Flying High on Awkwardness about handling fellow travellers.
Anyway, it is great to have Annie home, though she has gone straight off to the pool at our local Thana city country club for a swim with her sister Betsy. I’m staying home minding our dog Wizzy. (I’m choosing not to worry about when the Empty Nester situation re-emerges.) Our live-in housekeeper is away and as the dog is an illegal resident in our condo I can’t let her bark. (Expat problems and no mistake!) Whilst I’m happy that she and Betsy are catching up, and she is fending off lack of sleep and the inevitable jet-lag, I am a little regretful that she isn’t here as I had hoped to spend this first afternoon together, explaining tasks I need her to help me with. In no particular order, they are:
Daughters' Advice
- Updating our ‘printed’ photo albums. We label and keep just two or three pics from birthdays, Christmas celebrations and the like. However judging by the empty non-updated albums it seems Christmas hasn’t happened and we haven’t done anything of note since the kids were about twelve years old. I exaggerate, but you get the idea.
- Exploring SEO Google ranking and helping me progress up the laboriously steep and rickety blogging ladder. I wish someone (anyone!) could explain how all this works.
- Advising me what to wear for Betsy’s Graduation. Do I go kitted out in a sensible and very lovely fifty-something-frock or do I aim for a more edgy look to go with my ‘salt and pepper’ hair look?
- Committing to do Betsy’s and my hair and make up for aforementioned graduation.
- Sorting out of all her old clothes and stuff in her Bangkok bedroom with the idea of recycling and redistributing most of it-I do hate clutter!
That’s in addition, to talking her ears off and generally seeking lots of life advice. It’s struck me as interesting how often I do now seek out both
Anyway, so that the relationship isn’t too unbalanced, in return I will.
Mum's Purse Strings
- Buy Annie a graduation outfit. Interesting how she didn’t have time to shop for one in the UK where she has a visa card and bank account that has money in it!
- Have her ‘catch me up’ on British politics, especially the European elections, which to be honest I don’t really understand. Annie will explain things to me patiently. #Justsaying!
- Treat her to lunch and silently admire what a marvelous young woman she is.
- Lend her (which probably means give her) my new cabin sized suitcase to take on her ‘UCL swim tour’ trip to Malta next week. Though on a separate note, have you noticed how airlines are getting much stricter about the size of cabin baggage passengers are allowed to have these days? I think it is because more people (like me) have stopped taking check-in luggage to speed up the ‘getting home’ part of a journey.
Back to Being an Empty Nester
So we’ve got a nice few days in store before summer starts properly for us next week. On Wednesday, Annie will travel to London Heathrow and I will go to Humberside airport to check in with mum and dad. We get to sit together as far as Schipol so elblow room won’t be a problem! Betsy goes on her after-grad trip to Koh Samui on Tuesday (I’m still preparing my lecture on dos and don’ts for it!), which will just leave poor old Saint Mick of Thana at home earning the pennies! Hmm… another part of my life where things are unbalanced. I feel a blog post coming on about how I need to return to being financially independent one of these days. I will be looking for empty nesting strategies again!
For now though, I’ll not worry about that and instead I’ll focus on savouring the smell of freshly baked bread that is coming from the kitchen right now. I mention that just to prove that, housekeeper or not, my kitchen is abuzz with home made delicious produce! Nigella eat your heart out. Did I use a breadmaker? What do you think?