No Tortilla Chips, Leaky Light, No coffee, Hard Water Hair and Poo

Grrrr.... I feel guilty venting over the small things when I should just be happy that I can walk upright and am healthy right? But it is the small things which will drive you mad. I am having one of the worst days ever in terms of all the little things which I know I should just brush off. However, this blog is therapeutic so even if no one reads it I will feel better. This may be a long one so family be warned and friends with too much time on your hands may want to hit pause and come back to me later.

The hard water hair thing has been going on for awhile. For those Jeopardy fans the water is Southeast England is deplorable (see map to the right as my proof). We- according to all water hardness maps have the highest concentration of mineral laden water in the UK. A decent water softener is 500 £ so we are sticking it out for now. My hair which used to be soft and shiny is dry, fly-away and flat with no bounce to it. According to my hairdresser the water in our area can also turn blond hair brassy or greenish in color. My mantra every day has been "I hate my hair". My beloved assures me my hair looks fine and is not orange or greenish in color. How do you trust hair advice from a man who shaves his head once a week? I went to Sally's Beauty Supply this morning and bought some very expensive shampoo for hard water hair. Who would have thought they even sold such a thing? The gal at the counter asked me if I had a Sally's Discount Card. Apparently if you are a hairdresser or a beautician you qualify for 20% off. I told her that if I was a hairdresser my hair would not look the way it does and I would not be asking her for advice on what to do with it. Stay tuned for future gripping narratives on how the clarifying shampoo works.

The tortilla chips are what really gets me. I had high hopes for tonight which happens to be "Bunco Night" with the Thames Valley American Women's Club members. They are a group of American Expat ladies who live in the area and I am sooo excited to be able to commiserate with them regarding the challenges of the Expat life. I had planned to make guacamole because it does not involve using the stove and there is a pitiful lack of good Mexican food to be had here at least not which I can find. I had to go to 5 grocery stores to find tortilla chips!!!! England has the market on "crisps" as they are called here but evidently no plain tortilla chips. To top it off the bags I finally did find were half crushed. Instead, the Brits have every flavored chip known to man (Fish & Chips, Hoison Duck, Chili & Chocolate, Soy and Tabasco......) What the bleep ever happened to a plain tortilla chip?

Crisps are a national treasure here but heavily taxed with a 17.5% VAT. The market is so big that P&G who make Pringles recently went to court to avoid the tax and be labeled a snack and not a crisp. I kid you not.......

UK Tax Court Says Pringles aren’t Crisps A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a potato snack that isn’t called a “crisp” (“chip” for US readers) doesn’t have to pay Britain’s 17.5% value-added tax. So, the people at Procter and Gamble went to tax court in the UK to have their Pringles brand snacks, which are clearly labeled as “potato crisps” on the container, declared “not crisps” for tax purposes. On Friday, the judge declared P&G correct; Pringle’s aren’t crisps. Most food in Britain isn’t taxed. However, the national tax authority said Pringles came under a clause that permitted the taxation of junk foods like potato crisps, puffs, sticks, “and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch.” Well, 17.5% is worth fighting over when one sells as much of the stuff as P&G. The company’s lawyers invoked an inverse of the 1980s “duck test” – if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. P&G’s legal team noted Pringles, which stack nicely in a can, don’t look like crisps, don’t feel like crisps and don’t taste like crisps. The thingies are baked from dough and are not fried slices of potato. Moreover, real potato crisps “give a sharply crunchy sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged pieces when chewed. It is totally different with a Pringle, indeed a Pringle is designed to melt down on the tongue.” Justice Nicholas Warren at the High Court in London ruled that for the purposes of VAT, Pringles aren’t “made from potato.” He said they aren’t crisps and, therefore, are not subject to the 17.5% tax. However, he didn’t say what they are either. This could bring up some trouble for P&G as a result. One could cogently argue that if Pringles aren’t taxed as potato crisps, P&G shouldn’t be allowed to sell them as such. As noted, though, that’s what each and every can of them claims to contain. By the same token, the list of ingredients on that same container says [upper case letters in the original], “INGREDIENTS: DRIED POTATOES, VEGETABLE OIL (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: CORN OIL, COTTONSEED OIL, SOYBEAN OIL, AND/OR SUNFLOWER OIL), RICE FLOUR, WHEAT STARCH, MALTODEXTRIN, SALT AND DEXTROSE. CONTAINS WHEAT INGREDIENTS.” Funny, it seems the first ingredient is . . . potatoes. An appeal is likely to succeed.

We woke up this morning and my best and most truest friend- the dog was practically hyperventilating. Mr. Jeopardy is so good at ignoring this it amazes me. How can Shadow possibly recognize him as the pack leader? I am the one that caters to this dog day and night! I asked him do you need to go out? I have never seen him move so fast in my life. He was out the door like a gun shot. I guess feeding him french fries was not a good idea. So here I sit after donning my gloves and picking up mounds of poo venting my frustrations.

It would be fine if it ended there but when we woke up we realized the coffee grinder broke. No coffee!!!! How can it get any worse? I just knew this was going to be one of those days. My beloved said he would take apart the grinder when he got home and it was probably just blocked. This is where being married to an electrical engineer comes in handy. (It's the little things). Before he left for work and while I was in the shower my beloved told me that I better call the landlord because the light above the toilet in the bathroom upstairs is leaking water and could potentially cause a fire. The water was probably overflowing from the attic water basin. He then wished me a good day and was out the door leaving me to potentially die in a fire while I was in the shower.

Not one hour later he calls and of course forgot his blackberry and would I bring it by the office? Well it's a good thing I did not perish in a fire now isn't it! Yesterday he forgot his notes for a conference call and I had to bring those by. What will happen when I start work shortly? Is it not enough that I have a career (which will entail covering hospitals in all of Southern England), clean, do laundry, do all dishes, take out the trash and take in the dry cleaning, care for the dog as well as do 90% of the grocery shopping? I admit I am superwoman but there are limits.

So what did I do but get in my little car and take his blackberry to the office because I love the sap. Appropriately enough I plugged in my ipod and guess which song came up for the drive?

None other but Creedence Clearwater-

I see the bad moon arising.I see trouble on the way.I see earthquakes and lightnin.I see bad times today.

Tomorrow is another day right?