BEGINTHEBEGUINE

(april 2009: lake district, england. mom and i. this is one of MAYBE two pictures in which my mom actually smiled in 10 days . . . probably because i was squeezing her really hard. and you know what? if i'd known she was going to snooze and whinge most of the trip, i wouldn't have dropped a small fortune on those badass versace glasses she's sportin' just so that she could see everything more clearly and in style. fuck!)

a distant second to andre's death is reason number two as to why last year sucked . . .

but first, a little background.

for over a year leading up to april of 2009, i scratched and scrimped and saved $10,000. and rather than selfishly blowing it all on myself (believe me, there were some very cool jimmy choo and manolo blahnik shoes calling my name), i prepared a week and a half long, first rate (or at least to the best of my ability), SURPRISE, 70th birthday trip to england for my mom. her FIRST ever to europe.

though i couldn't afford business or first class plane tickets, i made sure everything else was awesome. we flew non-stop on british airways, lax to heathrow. i booked us into all of the best hotels in wales and old blighty, including several nights at the sofitel london st. james, juuuuuuust steps away from trafalgar square. in the lakes, we stayed in a suite at the linthwaite house hotel . . . i even booked two private, day-long tours in cumbria. you name it, i did it. the best restaurants, the best tours, the best hotels, the whole matzah ball.

it was supposed to be the ULTIMATE mother-daughter adventure. it was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. it was supposed to be fucking amazing.

my mom was supposed to have the greatest time she'd ever had. my mom was supposed to applaud and adore me. my mom was supposed to give me all her pearls of wisdom.

i was supposed to show her all the sights. i was supposed to duet "begin the beguine" with my mom across the uk. i was supposed to fall in even deeper love with my mom.

instead, my mom complained the ENTIRE trip, from the moment we landed in heathrow until the moment we landed back in lax.

she hated everyone--especially me--and everything. she hated wales, she hated cardiff, she hated tintern abbey (MY second most favorite place in the universe, next to sequoia national park), she hated the lakes, she hated the food and the crowds, she hated london, she hated the tours and the weather.

and my mom NEVER hates ANYTHING! that is, until i took her to great britain.

the ONLY thing my mom liked was coming BACK home. no, wait, not true: she liked bath abbey. in fact, she LOVED bath abbey. but that was it.


(my mom in bath abbey. THE ONLY THING SHE ENJOYED. truthfully, i think that when i told her we were going to "europe", she was expecting italy, not england. or maybe spain or something. she obviously doesn't share my views on how great great britain really is. alas.)

never mind my planning!
never mind the posh hotels!
never mind that i sucked down close to 40 hours of driving, while she snored and slept in the passenger seat!
never mind that we never made it to a single restaurant i'd hand-picked for her tastes!
never mind that i paid an arm and a leg for special tours i thought she'd love!

NEVER MIND.

essentially, she thought the uk was shit and that i was even shittier for taking her there.

now, she didn't SAY that, exactly, but her face did!

you don't believe me? just take a look at the majority of the photos. in most of them, she looks like she just ate camel shit pie and washed it down with horse piss.

god, she doesn't know how lucky she is that she's the greatest mom who ever lived or else i'd have drop-kicked her into her 80s!

what's that old saying? ah, yes: "no good deed goes unpunished."

*note: pictures of my mom looking like she's having a colonoscopy are forthcoming. probably tomorrow. it's almost 11pm in california, i've had a long day and i'm still not done selecting photos . . .

ok, i'm back. here's the first batch. and just to prove my point, i'm going to start with a photo of my mom IN EL LAY (BEFORE) and one IN ENGLAND (AFTER):

(BEFORE leaving los angeles):




(AFTER arriving in england):


can you see the difference already? and that was just after landing! that's not even into our trip yet! it's like she aged an additional decade by simply breathing british air. ok, so the flight was long, but still, couldn't she muster a TINY bit of excitement?

you know what? fuck it. i can't be bothered to post more pictures of my mom looking miserable at my hands. i lived through it once already.

in my next post, i'll put up my favorite pictures of the trip and be done with it. if i'm gonna look at something, i want it to be pretty.

just trust me: it sucked.