You are going to have to trust me that this post is not sponsored by Meyer lemons—or any kind of lemons, or any kind of fruit at all, although damn, I hear the boysenberry pays well*—but I am really, really into them at the moment.

* (I don't really hear that. I don't even know what a boysenberry is. Also, I just realized I should have said "I hear the grape pays well" because then you would have said "where did you hear that?" and I could have said "you know, through the grapevine.")

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You may remember that I have a little bit of a thing about driving. The "thing," to be more specific, is that I hate it. Or I guess just fear it, whatever, same difference.

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I must say one thing about Germany before I say anything else: they have got this whole sleeping thing figured out. They have a great many other things figured out better than the rest of us, of course—beer; knives; punctual public transit; gummybears—but it is in the area of beds that they really excel. To wit: did you know that when you stay in a German hotel with a double bed that it's not actually a double bed but two single beds pushed together? And that instead of getting one large duvet between the two of you, you each get your own single duvet?

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A few weeks ago, Sean and I got back from a trip to the UK, where we went to see my best friend Anna get married in a big country house that allowed everyone involved—though predominantly, I am coming to suspect, only me—to pretend they were living in a real life episode of Downton Abbey. Afterwards, we took advantage not only of England's convenient budget airlines but also of its convenient proximity to everything else, and flew to Germany for a few days.

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Happy New Year's Eve from under a blanket on my couch, where I am about to have the most crazy, insane, balls-to-the-wall, rock n' roll evening ever, and by this I mean I have bought a special yogurt. Yes, you heard me right: a special yogurt. I also have a frozen pizza in the kitchen and a load of laundry on the go, plus a 70% chance of being able to live stream a fireworks display on BBC iPlayer at midnight, if I can figure out how it works. Do I know how to live or do I know how to live?

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England is cold and rainy and damp. I'd remembered the cold and the rain, but the damp is a surprise, a cruel curveball I'd managed to block out since the last time I was here in winter.

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Happy Christmas Eve!

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Now you're going to have to be patient with me, because I'm a little rusty at this whole blogging thing. I've been snowed under with work, and more work, and things that aren't work but feel like work because I make them work, like throwing a holiday party for forty people and insisting on making adorable little santa hat brownie bites and homemade invitations for everyone, when anyone knows a veggie plate from Costco and an evite would have been fine.

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As I climbed under my duvet just shy of 2am on Tuesday morning, I realized that out of the last twelve nights, I'd spent exactly one in my own bed. That sounds rather scandalous and exciting, until I clarify that most of them have been spent in other people's spare bedrooms. Wait, that still sounds kind of scandalous and exciting. Huh, except maybe not so scandalous. Or exciting. 

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Wait, wait, wait—before I have an important update about mascara, I have an important update about the ear balls. Thank you all for being so kind about the ear balls—and also for being game enough to refer to them as ear balls in your comments, which made me cackle with glee every single time—but it turns out that my mother doesn't have ear balls after all. No ear balls! It's a negative on the ear balls! Instead, it has been determined that she has something with an even crazier name.

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