Road Trip New York-Washington

On Saturday 16th in April we started our epic road trip down the east coast of America towards Florida. Our little hairy baby Dexter was dropped off first thing in the morning at the Vets for boarding. I feel so bad, because he looks at us with those poor doggy eyes not understanding why we’re walking out the door and he’s not coming with us. Then we went back home and loaded up the two cars. It was a miserable cold and damp morning in New York so I couldn’t wait to get on the road and enter more sunny climates. The first couple of hours on the road went quickly and we had a quick stop before getting onto the New Jersey Turnpike. It was still dark, cold and feeling of rain was in the air. We passed NYC and Newark with the sky getting darker and darker until finally the heavens opened and the rains came. This coincided with heavy congestion that seemed to have no reason to it.

Left: Us at the start. Right: NYC on a grey day

Below: Stuck in traffic but we see a British car with NY plates over the British ones.

We took the opportunity to stop again even though we hadn’t travelled that far since the last stop, but we had been in the car in traffic for ages. I also took over the driving to give my husband a break. It was as if the fates knew and decided that my leg of the trip would mean I had to go through torrential rain and thunderstorms. It was quite a sight going over the Delaware Bridge with lightning dancing around you. My parents who were in front of us some way, called to say the I-95 was heavy with traffic again and coming to a stop, they suggested that we get off and take another route. It was at this time that it really pelted it down. I had the wipers going as fast as they could but you could hardly see anything and I had to reduce my speed down to 20 mph. We parked and swapped drivers again and the thunder shook the car it was that loud. The skies looked evil.

We got back on the 95 which was clearer now and passed Baltimore, then the skies cleared and the sun came out. It was now I noticed that the trees were green and in full bloom, the trees back in New York were still bare and dead looking. Our plan was to stop overnight on the outskirts of Washington DC for the night and then get the Metro into the city first thing in the morning to go sight-seeing before continuing on to our second overnight stop in Raleigh NC with a friend of my parents. Just before 7pm we stumbled onto our motel opposite Andrews Air force Base.

I was shattered, hungry and gasping for a cup of tea. We thought we’d drive down the road for a place to eat, but our drive turned into an hours drive around some unsavoury areas. In the end we came back to the McDonalds that was next to our Motel and that had to do for the night. When we got into our room and switched the TV on I turned to the weather channel. That when we saw the news of the terrible storms that had passed up the east coast that day, the storms we had driven through were part of that system, it also turned out that a tornado had hit parts of North Carolina including around Raleigh.

The next morning we were all up bright and early to go into Washington DC. It was amazing, a really beautiful city. It was a gorgeous day, sunny but breezy. We did all the normal tourist sights, such as the White House, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Cemetery and the Smithsonian as you do and walked miles. Below are some photos of the first leg. Hope you enjoy.

In these pictures are Hubby, mum, dad, sister, brother and Me

The second leg of the trip is to follow.

Family Reunion

For the next 3 weeks I'll probably be a bit quiet on the blog front, as in no long articles, because tomorrow my family arrive from England. I haven't see them since August last year when hubby and I moved out here to the States. So today and tomorrow i'll be busy cleaning and making up beds ready for them.

It will be nice to have a full mad house again and it will be interesting to see how Dexter will deal with it. We've had people round, but no more than two before, so 4 people will probably blow his mind.

Trying to find photos of them but the only ones I have on my computer are my wedding ones.

Above: My Parents

Left: My Sister and Brother (yep big age gap, 20 years)

We plan to go to Florida with them while they are here. Looking forward to getting a bit of guaranteed heat and sun after such a long and cold winter. Never again will I moan about the cold and snow back home, it's nothing compared to what New England gets.

I hope to post little updates on our road trip to the sunshine state, as long as I can get a wi-fi signal, so stay tuned.

The Modern Past: Women's Role Today

The other day I was thinking about how the roles of women have changed over the decades and centuries. I am reading a book about 17th century women and how in an era when all they were suppose to do was breed and be a dutiful wife (if you were well off) or be a dutiful wife and live beyond 30 years old (if you were poor), there were some women who tried to buck the trend and do something other than being a constant bun making machine.

Women in the past have had the indignity of being seen but not heard. We were the little women, too delicate and too little brain power to do a man's work and a man's role. The various European thrones of old had king's obsessed with begetting a son in order to carry on the work and the good name of the house. A daughter born was a great disappointment, and her only destiny was to be married off to a good family of similar royal stock. Men thought a woman could not rule, they wouldn't have the stomach for it, they would be too emotional. The most famous king whose obsession to have a son saw him take six wives, was in the end succeeded by a little boy who died after 6 years on the throne. Then his eldest daughter tried to govern, but was ultimately a disaster, mostly because she was swayed and manipulated by the men around her. It was eventually this old King's youngest daughter that took control and being free of men and vowing to only be married to her country did she prevail and show that a woman could be great at doing a man's job.

We have got better at letting the roles become equal. The 20th century was the most radical for change in giving women the rights as equal citizens of the world. We got the right to vote, we took on dangerous industrial work and hard labour that men had done during the war, we became CEO's, Prime Ministers, Presidents and adventurers. The invention of the contraceptive pill gave us control over our own bodies and our own lives, we could decide when we had children. Education improved and we were shown we didn't just have to just get the basics in life to go to work for a while until we were married and then be taken care of by our husbands. We could go to universities no matter what background we came from and have a career!

We have come such a long way and we continue to push the boundaries, which is great. My generation and my group of peers have it ingrained in our psyche that we must have a career first, we will wait till we're older to have a family. Then we can go back to work after having our children. We can do it all, that's what society tells us.

But can we? Are we now going too far the other way? TV, magazines, lifestyle websites and the rich and famous bombard us which the images of the modern day woman. She has a career, she's a mother, lovely nice clothes, nice house, does the cleaning and cooking, looks all sexy for her husband/boyfriend/partner when they come home. But that's all false. I don't know any woman like that. Most women and mothers I know rush around like their arse is on fire. Take the child to school, go to work, pick up this, drop this off, pick the child up from school, do the vacuuming, make dinner, feed the dog/cat, do any household business, walk the dog, bath child, put child to bed, tidy up after child and husband/boyfriend/partner, sit down to see that nothing is on TV, maybe have a shower, to tired to read book/magazine, bed. Restart the next morning. Now I don't have children myself, all I have is a dog and a husband and that is work enough at the moment, so god knows what its like to put children into the mix. I have friends that are studying as well as doing all of this also. My question to them would be how?! By the way, the day I described above is my mother's normal work day.

I personally have never really been ambitious, I haven't seen myself as a high powered career woman. I just want a comfortable life. I would be happy doing a small part-time job, having a couple of kids and not working when they come along. Maybe go back once they're older and can look after themselves a bit. Just a simple life. But then when I think that, I feel I'm saying something really terrible, I feel guilty even, am I backstabbing all those years of pushing for equality?

I understand that most parents have to work today just to be able to afford a roof over their heads and food on the table. I just think that the idea of having it all (lifestyle, money, house, career and family) has made it now unbecoming to want a more traditional lifestyle. Surely the result of feminism was the freedom of choice and options. We can have a career, we can delay having children, we can marry or not marry, we can stay at home, we can go to space, we can sail the oceans, we stitch and sew or we can weld and hammer. Women use to be shunned or looked down upon in history if they broke the mould and worked or didn't marry, if they went travelling or got an education. Now the tables have turned the other way, I feel looked down upon if I say I'm a homemaker/housewife.

So where do we go from here? Who knows. The social landscape is forever changing and the roles we face in an ever complicated world evolve like us. All I can say is we should be thankful we were born now. We now live longer and healthier lives, where we can try every lifestyle at least once. We have choices and we can be whoever we want to be.