Compliments and Crooks

I invited one of my American girlfriends and her friend over for a boozy lunch yesterday.  I knew I would never got to the gym after our lunch, so I went much earlier than usual.  I was in the middle of my kettlebell routine when one of the trainers came over to me.  I am lucky to work out at a nice club, and the trainers are always friendly.  Still, all I could think was 'uh oh, what am I doing wrong?'.  He started talking about how much he loved these weights and that he brings them to the park for his workouts.  He introduced himself... and then the compliment... he said that I should feel free to ask him any questions but that I look like I know what I am doing.  A trainer told ME that I looked like I knew what I was doing with kettlebells of all things!  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!  I might have blushed, not sure...

   

My girlfriend and her friend came over, and we had great afternoon catching up.  When she and I first met, I wasn't sure if we would click.  We had the American connection, but I didn't know if that would be enough to have a friendship over.  She is also very fit.  She is a distance runner and has run two half-marathons in Europe this year.  She is also running a FULL marathon in Iceland in a week or two.  Would this super fit gal have any interest in being friends with the fatso?  Fast forward to yesterday.  She was saying how I look so good and I had so obviously lost weight since we last saw each other at my 4th of July BBQ.  She knew that I had lost a lot, but this was the first time I told her exactly how much I have lost.  She had an ear to ear grin she was so happy for me.  I have a decent number of friends who have been silent over my weight loss, and hearing that a super slim girlfriend of mine was actually happy for me made me feel very good! 

   

We were hanging out in my garden, which felt almost surreal.  Parts of the city had experienced severe rioting, and we were chilling in the garden with some wine and Lebanese food.  It felt eerily normal.  Then Kenny called to say that his company had emailed all London employees and told them to go home because the rioting might get bad.  My girlfriend's husband works for the same company and received the same message.  Of course my husband decided not to leave immediately and kept working for about an hour.  Then my girlfriend's husband popped up from the Underground and saw that the local Waitrose (grocery store) was CLOSED 'for the safety of the customers'.  Kenny finally made it home, and we decided to order Thai for dinner.  That would have worked if the Thai restaurant hadn't been closed as well.  We ordered even more Lebanese, I am convinced we keep this restaurant in business, and walked to pick it up.  The little Sainsbury's (another grocery store) was closed due to the riots as was the liquor store.  Now shutting down the markets is bad enough, but things are looking especially bad when the people at the liquor store decide to call it quits for the evening.  This is London after all- alcohol is a way of life. 

    

I, of course, get a bit freaked out that the rioters must be coming our way if businesses are shutting down for the night.  I get to thinking, if these SOBs riot near us so that we need to leave our flat, what will we do?  More importantly, what will we take?  One of the benefits of digital photography is that I can replace most of my pics if they are destroyed, but I love the frames.  Still, it probably makes sense to be a bit more systematic about what to grab.  First, passports, jewelry and our wallets.  This stuff is small and easy to carry, and having to deal with the embassy to get new passports would be an amazingly huge pain in the tush.  Second, the computers probably.  We have two laptops, and they are our lifelines.  Third (though I forgot about it yesterday), our wedding album.  I love the album.  I know we could have it redone, but I'd prefer not to. 

  

Now things get more difficult.  How much more could we reasonably carry, and what is most important?  I knew the answer immediately- shoes and purses (and just a few dresses, including two of the dresses that Catherine lent me last month).  So here I am, conducting a mental inventory of my shoes and bags to determine which I could live without and which had to come with me.  I have 40-50 pairs of shoes that I could not possibly leave behind along with probably 15 bags.  Are you seeing the problem here?  I envisioned Kenny and me leaving our flat with more luggage than we took for our two week Italian vacation (remember, I didn't even address the items he would want to take and how silly he would look walking through a riot with his golf clubs).  And then it dawned on me- these rioters are only looting the expensive stores, the stores with the fancy clothes, etc.  Rioters might be too lazy to work to purchase these goods the way you or I would, but they aren't completely dumb.  They would see us with our gigantic bags, and they would STEAL OUR STUFF!  So I decided that maybe our belongings would be safer in the flat after all.  Just take the passports and jewelry and get the hell out of here!   Luckily London was quiet last night, and we didn't have any issues.  I hope tonight is just as uneventful!