I have issues. Quite a few in fact. My biggest problem is paranoia. I don’t know if all that crack I smoked in college is catching up with me finally or what, but I think I need to seek therapy.

Some of my fears are totally justified. For example, when I am stopped at a red light and a car pulls up behind me, my entire body tenses and my heart skips a few beats. Now, I don’t need a pychiatrist to tell me that this fear stems from the NINE MILLION times I’ve been rear ended.

We just bought our cats a water fountain drinking bowl. When we lived in the condo, we always left the sink running a tiny bit, and that is where the cats drank from. Now, in the basement there is no sink so we had them drinking out of a normal bowl, which they did.not.like. When I found this fountain-y thing at PetCo the other day I was so excited. They love it. I am no longer afraid that they will dehydrate. But, I am afraid to leave the thing plugged in all day while there is no one in the house. Why? I’m afraid it will start a fire. I feel like this fear is on the cusp of crazy. A little bit justified, what with the whole condo burning down a few short months ago, but also a little crazy, because deep down I know it will be fine.

Then there are my insane, absolutly no justification for them, crazy lady fears. I can’t take a shower when there is no one else in the house. I seem to think that someone will break into the house, come up to the bathroom and kill/rape/otherwise maim me. Even if there is a lock on the bathroom door, I am still afraid that when I open the door, the crazy killer/raper/maimer will be waiting for me on the other side. Hhmmm. Yes, I think I’ll schedule an appointment very soon.

Here is my newest one. I am afraid that the floor under the tub is going to give out while I am shampooing and I will fall through the floor to my untimely death. *I think I see the men in white coats coming for me!* Seriously. I know it sounds like I am making this up. I don’t know how I make it through a given day without curling up in the fetal position rocking back and forth muttering obsenities under my breath.

Colin is fully aware of my crazy and he just kind of takes it in stride. Last night, I got out of the shower and walked downstairs to where he was watching tv.

Me: Honey, help me.

Colin: What’s wrong?

Me: While I was showering I was totally convinced that there was going to be an earthquake.

Colin: Thats it. We are going to the mental institution. Get your coat.

I don’t know how much more of my crazy he can take.

Thursday last week, my parents left for a month long vacation in England. For me that equals a whole house for Colin and I. It also means taking care of three cats and a dog, paying bills on time so I don’t fuck up my parent’s credit, watering plants, and not burning down the house. *amused laughter* It also means that I am immeasurably jealous.

Not only do my parents, who are retired, get to escape the grueling day to day of suburban Delaware for a whole month, but they get to do it in my favorite country.

I think of England as my second home. When we moved there, I was just starting tenth grade, it was a very impressionable time in this young girl’s life. Plus, they shipped me off to boarding school, so I was on my own for the very first time. Or at least semi-on my own. Boarding school rules are much more strict then your average American household, but truthfully they can’t watch every student all the time, so it’s a lot easier to get away with crap. A lot easier to set your life on a path of continual screw up.

I wouldn’t trade my experience there for the world. It was a co-ed boarding school, so it’s not like I was stuck with a bunch of psuedo-lesbian-boy-crazy-teenagers. It was also an American curriculum school. One of the best in the country, education wise. At the time, there were 147 different countries represented at my school, making my cultural exposure better then had I grown up in Hell’s Kitchen. It filled my head with the romance of Europe, the etiquette of England, and the urban phsycosis of London.

Ah, London. What I wouldn’t give to live there again. It’s the kind of place where 14 year old girls can wander around by themselves and never be in any danger. Well maybe you have to look out when crossing the street, seeing as us Americans tend to look left then right, but in England it’s the opposite, you know ’cause they drive on the other side of the road.

My favorite days in London were Saturdays. Saturdays meant that we had all day long to spend gallavanting. Starting out the day with a walk through Camden Town, the punk epicenter of the universe. It’s a huge outdoor market where you can buy everything from vintage Almost Famous coats, pipes that weren’t meant for tobacco use, and bondage gear, to the typical ‘Mind the Gap’ t-shirts, and other typical tourist crap. Its the type of place where stores have 10ft plaster spiders perched on the facade above the doorway, and 5 inch platform pleather thigh high boots in the window.

I thought I fit in when I was in Camden Town. I was going through my wierd goth phase. My hair was dyed jet black and I wore way too much eyeliner. My favorite necklace was a black enamel circle with the word ‘BITCH’ emblazoned on it. I wore my DocMartens and black lingere covered in safety pins. I fit in here. Tourists would stare at me and take pictures as they walked by. “Look honey, its one of those punks that London is so famous for, I wonder if she knows the Sex Pistols!” Camden Town is also where I got my first tattoo. At Cold Steel. Now if that doesn’t give you a warm fuzzy, I don’t know what will.

We would stop for margaritas at the Camden Cantina (at age 14, at 1:00 in the afternoon) and then we would hop on the tube to the ritzier part of town, and go gallery hopping. We would check out the happenings at the Tate, move on to the National Portrait Gallery, and then swing by some starving artist’s studio near Covent Garden. We would shop for a bit on Neal Street and then we would drink. A lot. We had a regular rotation of bars. You were bound to run into other TASIS people at one of the regular bars. The problem was, we had check in times back at school. They coordinated with your grade. Tenth graders had to check-in at 8:00, 11th was 10:00 and seniors coul be out till 11:00.

Checking-in was always quite a fiasco. We had to go into a little office with two teachers sitting behind a desk, and sign our name in a log book. Sounds easy? Except that there was a strict no drinking policy, which is hard to get away with when you started drinking in the early afternoon. I think by the end of my three years there I had learned how to talk while actually breathing in rather than out, so that not even a tiny drop of my tequilla laced breath would escape into the cramped little room.

I complained about it the entire time I was there. I hated almost all of the other kids, the adminastration was too strict, the work was too hard, the food sucked, it was always cold, no smoking, no drinking, blah, blah, blah. The minute I graduated I was homesick for it.

TASIS gave me an appreciation for the arts, tolerance for religion, a terrific education, and a sense of maturity.

I long to go back to my old stomping grounds. I haven’t been since 2000, when my parents came back to the states. I want to show Colin where I am ‘from’, the city that made me into the woman he fell in love with. I want to walk through the quad and have the memories come flooding back. I want one more tequilla shot at the Prince Regent Pub.