All about the fires of hell, AKA the first few weeks of first-time parenthood

If Thayer and I decide to have another baby someday (If, people. If.) I'd do well to re-read this post again then. It would be awesome to not spend several weeks in the state of constant horror that I did this first time around.

If you're reading this and you've had babies, I don't know, maybe you can relate. Or maybe you were one of those naturals who was confident from the get-go and totally prepared for the utter transformation of your life overnight. Perhaps you were all, "Hey, life, you look nothing like I remember, but I am totally down with that!" That was not me. That was not me at all. I had hoped it would be me—that I would be insta-mom, so doped up on love and the miracle of life that everything would just fall into place and I would feel at peace with my baby and the universe and...

No. Hahahahaha. No.

If you're reading this and you're expecting a baby, maybe you'll remember this if, once your baby has arrived, you feel like the fires of hell are burning around you. When the days and nights bleed together while you stumble around in a sleep-deprived haze, wearing nothing but underwear because the clothes in your drawers are relics in your vague, distant consciousness. Think of this post if you are unable to summon the willpower to eat lunch or remember when you last brushed your teeth. (We went three days. When our toothbrushes suddenly managed to shine like a lighthouse lamp through our blind fog, it was like seeing old friends. "Heyyyy, guys.")

The first day and night and following day at home, I thought my baby would never stop crying. I was starving her, turns out, with a low milk supply I was promised would increase because "all women can breastfeed." Sadly, said promise would never be fully realized, and said credo is, in fact, a fallacy.

For the lolz.

Once we started actually feeding her, things took a big step up. But not a big enough step to convince me I would ever again recognize my life or even know who I was. I was now a mom. Every second of every day, every week, every year for the rest of my life. Nothing would ever again be for me. I would never see my friends again, never go out to dinner; forget going to a movie, I'd never even watch a movie in my own house. I'd be lucky to fit in an episode of Love It or List It on HGTV.

(JUST KIDDING. We saw every single episode of that damn show. On the rare occasion we had the presence of mind to turn on the TV, there were Hilary and David, being all obnoxious with their unbearable banter, yet after using all our brain capacity just to press "ON," we had none left to change the channel. Curse you, clever Canadian show!)

I was sure every moment of my existence would go to panicking over the life of my little baby, and there would never be any sleeping, ever. My own self was nothing but a memory, a little trinket, a souvenir from the past I might pull out of my pocket now and then, to look at and think, "Remember her? Remember that woman who did things and had friends she saw regularly and had things to say?"

You may know me as I generally know myself: as a calm, easygoing person who usually just goes with the flow. But sometimes I jump into something I like to call my "infinity spiral." This is where I believe that whatever terrible thing is happening at the moment will be happening forever. And panic ensues. It ensues like a boss.

So I flung myself down the infinity spiral and then struggled with tremendous guilt over missing my old life. For what kind of selfish, awful person misses their old life when they've just begun a new one with a tiny, precious, beautiful baby? A terrible mother, that's what.

Thus, for a solid two weeks, I was good and terrified I was doing every possible thing wrong. There were moments, even days, of hope and joy, but then the fear would return and I would feel like a failure and the doomsday horns would again play their sad song of foreverrrrrr.

Then my mom and my sister and my mother- and father-in-law showed up, and the fog started to lift. A little at first. Then a little more. And then a lot. Having helpers gave us time to have little moments to ourselves again. Little breathers, just for us, to remember that we were humans with personalities and lives. To remember who we were.

And all the while, we didn't even notice we were getting better at managing our new life. And all the while, we didn't even notice Helen was getting better at being a baby. We started getting a little more sleep, we started learning more about her, we started not freaking out about her every cry, or the fact that one day looked exactly like the day before and the day before that, because the days actually started to look different from one another. Things were changing.

Now we are six weeks into this thing, and the fog has lifted. The hellfires have since smoldered and died.

As the smoke cleared, I started to see Helen with new, tear-free eyes. And I have fallen crazily, ridiculously, head-over-heels in love with her. I can't get enough of holding her thick little body, steadily pudging more every day. Her face is the most perfect thing I have seen, and I am already fearing when she decides she no longer wants me kissing it 7,000 times a day. I find even her cry-face adorable, and I have no trouble admitting I get ecstatic over her bowel movements. Sometimes, when she stares at me until her little eyelids drift closed and she falls asleep, my throat gets tight and I have to squint to maintain my composure.

(True, I have always been [overly?] emotional, but I swear, this face could make Voldemort melt.)

In the beginning, when people would tell me to "cherish this time, because it goes so fast!" my internal reaction was twofold. 1) Sweet Jesus, I hope so, and 2) WHO CHERISHES THIS TIME? WHO?!

But the memory of those first hellish few weeks is fading. It's already so far gone it feels wrapped in gauze—I can almost see the memory inside, but I just can't feel it.

And I find myself cherishing. I am cherishing all the time, I am cherishing up the wazoo. 

The point is, my daughter, Helen—she's absolutely wonderful. And now that I've passed through those first few weeks that my good friend Amy so brilliantly called "cruel, cruel hazing," I'm only at the beginning of learning exactly how wonderful she is.

A baby came out of me.

Well, it seems we have some catching up to do. So... I'll just go ahead and dive in.

After we returned from our trip to the UK in 2012, we started trying to have a baby again, but after our previous round of trying and succeeding and losing, I wasn't much in the mood for blogging about it. I was sort of in disbelief that it would ever actually happen—even after we got pregnant that fall. Even after we hit 12 weeks and everything looked great. It wasn't until we hit the 5-month mark that I allowed myself to start believing we'd actually have a baby at the end of it.

Still, on and on we trucked through the pregnancy, and baby ran out of fluid in my uterus during her 41st week. My doc said we needed to get the show on the road, so they started to induce, but my body decided to take it from there on its own, smart body that it is. 

As I contracted and dilated away, Thayer and I hung out in our dimly lit, wood-laminate-floored, warm-colored birthing room, ordered "room service," and watched several movies I could barely pay attention to on account of all the stabbing in my reproductive system. (For the record, the movies were The Truman Show on VHS, Adventureland, and I think The Social Network. On account of my Jesse Eisenberg problem.) The nurse finally gave me some pain meds through an IV and I blissed out instantly and couldn't keep from grinning. This labor stuff was no sweat. 

Unfortunately that bliss lasted, oh, 5 minutes before it wore off and I was cringing and huffing and puffing again. It was time for the epidural. I was stoked.

I'll pause here now and say: I had always intended to give birth in a hospital, with a doctor, with an epidural. I know it's controversial because these days everybody is really into "natural" birthing, at home, with a doula, without pain meds, with a written birth plan, etc etc. For me, though, coming up with a birth plan sounded about like my worst nightmare. My idea of the ideal birth was hanging out in a giant medical facility with a bunch of folks who had seen thousands of births and would tell me exactly what to do. Home birthing without meds? That's wonderful if that's your thing. It's not and never was my thing, though nearly everyone I spoke to during my pregnancy assumed it would be my thing and talked about it as if it were the only way to go. But I learned to perfect my closed-mouth smile, say "oh" in very interested tones, and change the subject.

And so, just as I'd planned, the tiny needle went into my back and became one of several tubes running to and from my body, and I was perfectly happy about it. So damn happy I even went to sleep. It was an oft-interrupted sleep, what with the nurse clicking away on her computer next to me and checking on me every now and then, but I daresay I slept better than Thayer did, flat on his back on the clammy, vinyl window seat they call a spouse bed. 

Seventeen-hour story short, morning rolled around, I progressed steadily, and my doc was back on duty by the time I was ready to push. Serendipity! I pushed for about an hour, and I'll go ahead and spare you the details and just say it took loads of energy and strength, but I couldn't feel any pain—again, just as I'd hoped/planned. Then, at 10:34 a.m. on June 13, Helen Kay slid on out, purple and grimacing in a silent scream that soon became audible, tiny and fragile as it was. 

My whole body convulsed in an uncontrollable sob when I saw her face and knew it had been her all along, squirming in my belly, kicking my ribs. She was as wrinkled as her 87-year-old namesake, and Thayer and I stared, dumbfounded, at her, barely able to believe she really existed, barely able to believe what we'd just done.

That was five weeks ago. She still really exists. And she's awesome.

Hello again, again, Reykjavik

[Upon arrival in Edinburgh, after rental car return debacle]

Hayl: I never want to rent a car again… except for in Iceland two days from now.

Such grand plans we’d had for how to spend our two and a half days in Iceland. We would spend one day at the Blue Lagoon, and we’d rent a car another day and drive to Eyrarbakki (EY-ra-bock-y) and Stokkseyri (STOKE-serry) [note: pronunciations are approximate, as we non-Icelanders don’t possess the know-how to even attempt some of these vocal sounds). We’d head to the country and hike the beaches, possibly see a ghost museum…

But before all that we had to catch the Flybus into town.

[On Flybus]

Hayl: What are these roundabouts doing here? I thought we were rid of those!

Thayer: I don’t know why you thought that. Do you not remember Mosfellsbær?

[Please see our 2010 video here for our little ditty about Mosfellsbær.]

We checked into our final Airbnb, an apartment above the Ruby Tuesday several blocks east of downtown Reykjavik (RAKE-ya-vick). There we met Ragnar, who showed us around his Ikea-filled one-bedroom apartment that we had all to ourselves. We hit the local Nóatún grocery store and found ourselves well outside of Kansas. In the downtown groceries, the labels, they help you out a little. Here we had no English assistance, which is why we spent about ten minutes staring at sugar packages, patting and squeezing them, trying to determine which would be raw, brown, and granulated. Eventually we just picked one and went with it. We chose incorrectly, of course, but luckily cornflakes and molasses sugar go rather well together.

That night we had our first “home-cooked” dinner in three weeks while couching it with a Richard Burton Bond movie before heading to the nearest swimming pool at Sundhöllin. There we wandered from hot pot to hotter pot to steam room and back again, reveling in a spa evening that would cost a fortune in the States but was a mere $4 thanks to Iceland’s crazy geothermal water pumping system. A word of warning, though, for all you modest Americans. All pools, including the fancy shmance Blue Lagoon, require you to shower without a swimsuit before entering. It's not up for debate. You’ve just got to own it like bam, here I am, Iceland, and in return you’ll find that, naturally, no one cares.

Requiring additional couch time after that, we proceeded to indulge our newfound obsession with British Royalty by watching The Queen with Helen Mirren, courtesy of Ragnar’s extensive movie collection.

The next morning it was time to get a move on—rent a car, drive southeast—and right about then is when we decided to check ourselves before we wrecked ourselves. Neither of us had even the tiniest desire to get into another car, so instead we chose to spend our next two days as Reykjavikians.

We wandered downtown and into the tourism office where we picked up a couple of “welcome cards” that would cover museum admissions and bus fares for two days. With that, we hit the Culture Center, where we learned more about the Icelandic sagas that were written in the 13^th and 14^th centuries and how they’d all have been lost were it not for a Dane who came over and compiled them in the 1600s (Iceland was ruled from Copenhagen at the time) and took them back to Denmark. It was a huge deal when the sagas were returned to Iceland in 1974, and they play a large part in national pride.

After cruising the incomprehensibly overpriced shops downtown, getting thoroughly soaked with mist as we did, we returned to Sundhöllin for another couple of hours at the pool. While we sat in the outdoor hot pot, the clouds finally broke and the evening sun shone gloriously. As the sun tends to bring out the chattiness in people, we soon found ourselves talking with a bright-blue-eyed and red-bearded Icelandic/American named Villi. With an Icelandic dad and an American mom, he’d grown up in Iceland and gotten his bachelor’s degree—but where else?—at Evergreen College in Washington. Villi gave us the lowdown on Reykjavik’s club scene, where folks really stay out until bar time. No, not at wee early hour of 2 a.m. like in the States. Bar time in Reykjavik is 6 a.m. At $8 to $9 for a pint of brew, we are far too old and miserly to afford a typical all-nighter in the city.

Instead, Thayer’s college friend Shauna—who lives in Iceland now—came over to our Airbnb with a bottle of wine, and we spent a lovely evening in the living room catching up on our lives since last we saw her in 2010.

Day 3 saw us at the National Museum of Iceland checking out fascinating exhibits from the beginning of Iceland’s recorded history around 800 A.D. The final exhibit was an oval baggage claim conveyer upon which sat groups of items representing daily Icelandic life from 1900 to the present. Thayer and I were stunned to learn that homes did not have running tap water until 1900, and the first Icelandic grocery store was founded in 1955. No grocery stores until 1955! My personal fave was the 1970s exhibit, which contained a teenage Björk’s first record album.

[leaving the museum]

Thayer: Takk. That means “thank you,” right?

Hayl: Yeah. Takk. I like that. Nothing’s cuter than two K’s in a row.

And then it was time for the pool. This time we tried out Laugardaslaug, a much larger facility with not only hot pots but a giant hot outdoor pool with kid waterslides and the whole bit.

“Hi,” came a familiar voice shortly after we submerged ourselves in the warm water. And there was our red-bearded friend Villi from the day before at the other pool, having “guys night” with his little nephew. We’d heard that Reykjavik, a city of 250,000 people, had a small-town feel, and having run into one of the two people we “knew” in town, we experienced that for ourselves. We were stoked to happen upon our new friend again, and we spent some more time chatting in the hot pot while Villi’s nephew squirreled adorably around him. It turns out Villi's dad, Villi Senior, runs the popular Volcano Show at the Red Rock Cinema, which we hadn't previously heard of, but were now totally bummed to miss out on. I guess this means we'll have to go back again to see it.

After a late dinner of overpriced burgers and brew at Islenski Barinn, we crashed back at our Airbnb, waking early to pack and clean up so we’d have time enough to hit the pool for the fourth and final day. As we floated in the pool, we talked about how great it would be to have pools like this in Seattle, lamented the impossibility, and laughed as we said our goodbyes to Iceland and happily discussed returning to home and Frank and Stu.

[on the Flybus]

Hayl: They have a Kaffitár at the airport.

Thayer: What’s that?

Hayl: That coffee shop. And do you know what they have there?

Thayer: No.

Hayl: No? You haven’t heard?

Thayer: [laying on the sarcasm] Nope.

Hayl: Let me tell you a little story about a beverage called the Swiss Mocha…

Thayer: You are a desperate fool, you know that?

We made it to the airport with time to spare, so we hit the Kaffitár and grabbed some floor space in our terminal.

[waiting for boarding]

Hayl: Someday we should fly Saga class. I bet they have hot pots in their airport lounge. Hot pots, swimming pools, sheep… someone to massage your shoulders…

Thayer: Someone to cut your head off…

Hayl: What?!

Thayer: The Sagas were dangerous times.

And here we are, on our return flight to Seattle, cozily watching movies as we fly over the clouds. UK/Iceland 2012 has been a long and unforgettable three weeks, and I think I can speak for us both when I say meeting new people was one of the very best parts. There are wonderful people all over the world, and we feel lucky to have met just a tiny handful of them.

And with that, I close the trip with a big thanks to all the family and friends who have kept up with this blog.

Skól!

Slàinte mhath!

Cheers!

.

Exhausted in Edinburgh

The nearer we came to Edinburgh (that’s ED-in-bur-ruh) the more palpable our relief at soon being rid of our rental car. The little Fiat 500, Fifi, has been grand on these country roads, but the time was nigh to give it up. So much navigating and driving and getting lost has exhausted us to our cores, but at least we can still laugh about it. Each time we find ourselves circling somewhere we’ve already passed, I quote Jim Carrey in the Truman Show: “We’re on a loop! We just go round and round!” and Thayer responds by quoting Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s European Vacation: “Look, kids, it’s Big Ben!” I can’t tell you quite how many times we’ve had this exchange.

To reach the Budget Rent-a-Car return on the outskirts of Edinburgh, I frantically wielded three or four different maps, trying to reconcile them against each other, and I nearly wept with joy when we finally arrived. Sadly, this joy was to be short-lived.

While Thayer went inside to take care of business, I stayed outside and unpacked the car. I took it as a very bad sign when I finally went into the office and found him on the phone saying, “…but I’m looking at our paperwork and it says to return the car here.”

Our online Budget booking had directed us to this office for the return but, as we were horrified to discover, this office was a franchise that did not take corporate returns. There was “nothing anyone could do” but send us off to the car return at the airport, about a 20-minute drive away, and yet no one in the office could quite tell us how to get there. No truer words have been spoken than when Thayer, very calmly, explained to the Budget associate how desperately close to “losing it” we were. The memory of it makes me laugh now. It didn’t then.

[On the way to the airport]

Thayer: Two roundabouts here, are you kidding me?

Hayl: Nobody is kidding us, honey. Nobody.

Well, we made it to the airport, freed ourselves from the car, and took a bus to downtown Edinburgh. There we met up with Simon, who let us into his partner James’ Airbnb apartment, which we had all to ourselves for the next two nights. James joined Airbnb last year, thinking he would just stay with Simon when someone wanted to book his place, but interest in it was so high that he fully moved in with Simon and rents his place pretty much constantly. Rightfully so—the sleek one-bedroom apartment overlooking Edinburgh’s old rooftops and Arthur’s seat—the remains of an extinct volcano—is fantastic.

We spent the next day and a half exploring Edinburgh on foot and by hop-on/hop-off audio-tour bus, stopping into nearly every cheesy-wonderful Scotland tourist shop on the Royal Mile, touring Edinburgh Castle, gawking at the stunning St. Giles’ Cathedral, and visiting the National Museum of Scotland. There the highlight for us was viewing the taxidermied Dolly. Remember her? Dolly-the-sheep was the first ever animal to be cloned; born and raised in Scotland, she was, aye. And named for Dolly Parton, for she was cloned from cells from her mother’s udder.

[reading some information at the museum]

Hayl: I knew that already because I have a brains in my head.

Thayer: You do? You have a brains?

Alas, the exhaustion had finally reached our brainses. We dropped off our purchases at the apartment and then made our way to Grass Market, a narrow street running up a steep hill, its different colored storefronts contrasting adorably with each other. We spotted some people up above us on a terrace we hadn’t noticed before, so we climbed a staircase and enjoyed the view of the dimly lit old street from a story above it. Up there we enjoyed delicious Kurdish food at a patio table at Hanam’s before hoofing it home and collapsing into bed, grousing the whole way about our old, weary bones. We are not in our twenties anymore, that much is for certain.

In the morning, after not nearly enough time in Edinburgh, we quickly bustled ourselves and our luggage down the 60-step circular staircase and to the rail station about a mile away. A relaxing train ride to Glasgow and bus ride to the airport followed, and with a quick zip-zip over the pond, we landed again in Reykjavik.

Until next time!

.

Fàilte gu Oban

Fàilte is the Scots Gaelic word for “welcome” and, having no idea of pronunciation, we’ve ungracefully been articulating it as FAIL with a “t” at the end. This has come in handy for every mistake and wrong turn we’ve made along the way. “Fàilte!” we shout and then laugh at each other. Lest ye make the same mistake, fàilte is pronounced “FALL-cha.”

We knew we must be nearing the end of our travels when we finished off our 12-pack of car crumpets. We’d purchased the crumpets over a week ago and had been eating them with peanut butter—basically a sacrilege—for makeshift car lunches. Kirsty-the-Irish-lass had informed us of our folly: everybody knows they must be toasted and covered in butter. I suppose we’ll have to save the proper crumpet experience for our next trip abroad.

On our way to Oban, we drove by the Glenfinnan railway bridge—the 21-arched bridge over which Harry Potter and his wizarding friends ride the magical Hogwarts Express. Everything begins with “Glen” in this region because glen means valley, and this terrain is covered with them. The next glen we hit was Glencoe, also known as “The Weeping Glen,” named so because of the 1692 Campbell/MacDonald showdown. The MacDonald clan chief was late in swearing his oath to the British monarch, and the local Campbells led the British Redcoats into the glen, where they were sheltered and fed by the MacDonalds for twelve days. On February 13, the soldiers were ordered to rise early and kill their hosts. The stunning glen still weeps with cliffside streams when it rains.

The nearer we got to the bustling town of Oban (that’s OH-bin), the more people we saw out and about, clad mostly in summer shorts and sandals. Now, we were just as stoked as the Scots about this seemingly endless warm sun, but let’s not forget that that this “warm” is upper 50s, Fahrenheit style. We were quite comfortable in our jeans, long sleeves, and North Face jackets. But that kid we passed on our way into town was quite comfortable in his swim trunks and bare feet, splashing in a kiddie pool.

[Passing a sign for A’Chonghail]

Hayl: The Gaelic sure needs a lot of letters to say “Connell.”
(Seriously, "Connell" is how you say A'Chonghail.)

After winding up very narrow one-lane hillside streets and getting thoroughly lost, we finally found and checked into The Old Manse Bed and Breakfast, where the windows overlooked the whole town and the tea tray contained a tiny glass-stoppered bottle of sherry. From there our first stop was the Oban Distillery. The late afternoon hour prevented us from going on the tour, but we were able to read some information about the brothers who founded the distillery in 1794 and the town that was built around it.

We grabbed a tasty dinner at Cuan Mor, Gaelic for “the ocean,” and then set out to find a pub and meet some locals. Enter Donald MacFarlane.

Donald was lugging an enormous duffel bag from pub to pub, as he had just returned from four weeks at sea—old hat to a 32-years fisherman, such as he was. Our American accents are a beacon in some of these towns, and Donald chimed in as soon as he heard us order our respective cider and whisky.

Two gents nearby were joking about fighting one another, and Donald informed us that bar fights were common, as any old thing might set a couple of inebriated Scots to fighting for their honor. “Like the clans,” I ventured. Donald stared at me in stunned silence until his face broke into a grin. “Like the clans!” he agreed, laughing.

We had heard (from Rick Steves) that “the ‘45”—that is, the 1745 campaign of Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland to retake the British throne—and the subsequent 1746 Battle of Culloden are still rather immediate to some Scots, and with Donald we learned that was true. He fired right up as he talked about it, this 250-year-old event. By the end, we learned that the MacFarlanes—his kin—and the MacGregors were the only two clans never to have surrendered to the British monarch. “Never have, never will,” he said, utterly solemn.

We shared stories about driving around our respective countries, and he told us of his youthful drive from Oban down to the south of England to see his then-girlfriend. The harrowing 120-mile-per-hour drive took him nine hours and, naturally, required him to hit “every bloody stop for bloody petrol!” We told him a drive of the same length might get him across one American state in some instances and he, horrified, declared that when he takes his wife traveling stateside in a few years, they will stick to exploring Utah on horseback. He really, really wants to see Utah.

Later he begged our forgiveness for “so rudely” having neglected to offer us his home to stay the night. We told him we’d already secured our lodging, but that we’d be sure to look him up the next time we visited Scotland. “And you will be truly welcome,” he replied, never breaking eye contact. The old clan hospitality is alive and well.

We awoke—a bit worse for the wear—early next morning and had our “full Scottish” breakfast, differing from the full English by the absence of beans and the presence of a potato pancake. After briefly chatting with the Old Manse host Simon about the similarities between Scotland and Seattle weather, we headed out on our last drive to our last stop in the UK: Edinburgh.

Until next time!

.

The Highlands Part 2: Isle of Skye

From Dundreggan we made quick time west, stopping first at a ruined church and its surrounding cemetery that held many MacRaes, just because it was a beautiful day and ruined churches fascinate us.

We continued along Loch Duich until we reached Eilean Donan Castle (that’s EYE-lin or ELL-in DOE-nin), stopping to tour the inside, which was dressed from head to toe in MacRae clan tartan. Clearly they owned this region; in fact, a MacRae had purchased the castle ruins in the early 1900s and had it restored. Today the MacRaes still own it and use it for summer stays and clan gatherings. A giant portcullis raises and lowers the castle gate, but only in April when the MacRaes have their annual banquet. I had no trouble imagining them, dressed to the nines in their clan tartan, listening to bagpipes play as the gate opened to allow them inside for their ceilidh (read: big dance party).

On we drove to the Isle of Skye and found our next Airbnb: a “traditional croft house” with a white stucco exterior and slate roof, two one-window dormers on the second floor, a large garden out front, and a line of laundry billowing in the wind. Our sweet hostess Sarah welcomed us in and allowed us to use her kitchen to heat up some leftover pasta we’d saved for lunch. We ate at a picnic table in the yard and soaked up the unseasonably warm sun.

Not wanting to waste a moment of our one day on Skye, we hopped into the car and drove the loop around the Trotternish Peninsula, stopping to see rock formations like Kilt Rock, a cliff whose dried lava columns look like kilt pleats. Intoxicated by the weather—gusty wind with a bright, baking sun—we stopped frequently to hike around cliffs, falls, and beaches and breathe in a distinctly earthy Scotland smell.

About halfway around the peninsula loop, we stopped at the Ferry Inn for a mocha and a rest. There were two bartenders and three patrons including us, and the locals entertained us with amusing conversation about how it was the Sabbath and we were in a “heathen place.” Until recently, there’d been very strict expectations about not working on the Sabbath, so the deviation from this tradition is relatively new. It was wrong even to tidy your house on Sunday, but as the little gray-headed bartendress reasoned, “Would you really miss out on a day like today to hang out your laundry?”

Scots everywhere have been abuzz over the glorious weather, as were the English and likewise the Welsh over the sunny—though cooler—weather we’d experienced there. Warm days are not lost on us pale-faced Seattleites, and we consider ourselves fortunate to have been rained on only once so far. (Knock on wood.)

In the evening we had dinner next to a wood-burning fireplace at Cappuccino’s in Portree. You think you’re getting off easy with the pronunciation of Portree, but you’re wrong; it’s Por-TREE. Cappuccino’s served us up a mean sticky toffee pudding for dessert, and we thus discovered that “pudding” over here means “cake.”

After dinner we returned to ye auld croft house and cuddled up for an early bedtime, waking in the morning to have breakfast and chat with Sarah and her two other guests: a mother who was driving her college-aged son around Skye while he studied religion and its importance to small, close-knit communities. He might do well to visit the bartenders at the Ferry Inn. We went on to debate the merits of coffee versus tea in the mornings, with us firmly on the coffee side and him deeming our high-tech coffee makers silly and excessive. That is, until we told him about the machines you can program to grind your beans and brew your coffee by the time you wake up, which he sleepily pronounced “bloody brilliant.”

Instead of being sad about leaving, I prefer instead to focus on Skye as a place I know I will go again someday. It has become my favorite part of Scotland, easily and immediately. I can’t wait to see it again.

Until next time!

.

The Highlands Part 1: Inverness

On our way to the Highlands, I decided I’d heard enough of the Scottish accent to begin trying to imitate it. As you may well know, accent imitation is something I love to do but rarely do in front of anyone because I get stage fright and my mouth freezes up, the resulting lilt like none found on this planet. A few stops ago, a glass or two of wine made me bold enough to show off my English and Irish accents to Kirsty-the-Irish-lass, but the Scottish burr was uncharted territory.

It’s safe to say my version of it was pretty terrible at the start, but I am getting the hang of it better than I’d thought I would. I like to practice it while I read our travel books.

[Reading aloud to Thayer about William Wallace, about three sentences in…]

Thayer: So it was Edward I who was in power at the time?

Hayl: I have no idea what I just read. I can’t do the accent and process information at the same time.

We soon stopped in Pitlochry (that’s Pit-LOCK-ry) and toured the Edradour (ED-ra-dower) whisky distillery—the smallest distillery in Scotland. Only about three people work it, producing in a year what the larger distilleries produce in a week. They pride themselves on using much of the same equipment as they’ve always used, only upgrading when they absolutely must. To hear our tour guide talk about their whiskies—his voice going soft and his eyes closing gently—you’d think perhaps they were his mistresses. The time, effort, and love put forth, from tapping the spring to bottling the spirit, indeed suggests a loving and giving relationship. Our guide poured us each a small dram and toasted a reverent Slàinte (SLON-juh, the Gaelic “cheers”).

From there we continued north to the general Inverness area and stopped to walk the battlefield of Culloden (Kuh-LAW-din), the site where in 1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie and many Highland clans (the Jacobites) fought against the English government for control of the throne, resulting in a horrific bloody massacre for the Scots and the end of clan life as they knew it. Thayer and I knew about the Battle of Culloden from reading the historical fiction Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and were thankful to have that background as we walked the paths around the battlefield.

The field has been kept mostly as it was back then: boggy, hummocky, and barren save for long, matted-down yellow and green grasses. Memorial gravestones were erected in the late 1800s for each of the mass clan burial sites, and lines of red and blue flags show where the front lines of the government and the Jacobites stood, respectively. The eerie sadness cuts through, added to by the sinking late-afternoon sun, thick haze, smell of wood fires burning, and white noise of passing cars that can almost be taken for the echoes of battle chaos.

Just down the road are the Clava Cairns, hair-raising ancient burial sites from 3000 and 4000 years ago. Can you even process that? I have a really hard time with it. The cairns are made of stones stacked into a ring standing about six feet tall, with a long hallway-like entrance, also of stones. Once a cairn had been used for a burial, it was closed and surrounded by a circle of tall standing stones. This area, too, felt a bit ghostly, but we lightened the mood by acting out the scene in the Outlander series where the protagonist gets pulled back in time through the stones. If you look at our UK pictures on Facebook, you’ll recognize this part by the photo of my head and torso disappearing between a split stone while my legs splay out the side.

Twilight was falling by the time we headed through Inverness and south along the Loch Ness. Ness is big around here—there’s the city Inverness, or “mouth of the Ness,” the river Ness, and the lake Loch Ness. And of course, there’s Nessie, the fabled Loch Ness monster.

We only saw Nessie in plush huggable form inside the area’s many tourist shops, but I will say this for the Loch Ness. It is creepy. Driving alongside it in the near-dark, everything cast in a grey-blue glow and shrouded in mist, I was so thoroughly spooked that I needed to play some Robyn on the car stereo, hoping my Swedish songstress would soothe my frazzled nerves. A few minutes later…

[Hayley switches from Robyn to ABBA]

Hayl: Even Robyn isn’t doing the trick. I need the cheesiest sh*t imaginable to make me not terrified.

ABBA’s cheerful song stylings indeed made the freaky drive more fun, and we soon arrived at Graineag (GRAIN-aig) Bed and Breakfast in Dundreggan, where the chatty hostess Barbara was kind enough to call the closest restaurant to make sure they were still open for us to get dinner at the late hour of 8 p.m.

We raced to the Glen Moriston Arms in Invermoriston and enjoyed having dinner in the fancy restaurant decorated in clan tartan carpet, curtains, and seat cushions. It was there I enjoyed my first ever Kopparberg Pear Cider, the lightest, freshest, peariest cider I’ve ever tasted. It was Swedish, naturally—the third Swede to rescue me that night.

I continued to practice my Scottish burr and lamented the lame boringness of the American accent, to which Thayer wisely replied, “Sometimes you just have to live with your own mediocrity.” Life is full of hard truths.

The next morning over breakfast, Barbara explained the thin line of liking/loathing between the Scottish and the English. Many of her loved ones were English including—“unfortunately”—her husband, yet the Scottish would never and will never root for the English in any sporting match. No matter who they’re playing, the Scottish will root for the other team.

Barbara: It’s not that we don’t like England, we just never want them to win… anything!

As she went on to talk about the Highland region of Scotland, she interrupted herself to ask, “Have you read the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon?” We were thrilled to learn that her father had spent his life working at the Fraser estate—the modern-day iteration of the Clan Fraser castle featured prominently in the books. Not only that, but she once went to a book signing and met Diana Gabaldon. Gabaldon was headed to a Clan Fraser gathering, and Barbara said to send her regards. Gabaldon then emailed Barbara—emailed her!—to tell her that her regards were warmly met and the Frasers fondly remembered her and her father. And that was our brush with a brush with fame in the Highlands.

After breakfast we drove to Cannich (KONN-ick) and hiked around Glen Affric, then drove back to Invermoriston and hiked around the falls that tumbled down either side of a giant sheer slab of rock. We tooled around the small town of Beauly before exploring more of Culloden, and then we found a scrumptious dinner at the Gathering Place, a Chinese restaurant in Inverness.

On our drive back to the B&B, I considered how all I’d ever read about Scotland’s landscape had called it “rugged.” Rugged, rugged, rugged until I was blue in the face. Quit with the rugged, I’d thought. Surely there’s another word to describe it. As we drove through England, I even wondered how the landscape of Scotland would be so different from what we were already seeing there. Well, guess what. It is different. And guess why. Because it’s rugged.

The next morning we packed up and had breakfast, this time sharing stories of our travels thus far with a young couple from Essex who were also on holiday. Then we hopped into the car and headed for the sky. The Isle of Skye, that is.

And with that, I leave you with a quote.

[While practicing the Scottish “aye,” said while inhaling sharply, like you’re gasping out a “hi!”]

Thayer: Except we look like we’re convulsing and they don’t.

Until next time!

.