Crazy neighbors and Emily and Alex

We had a lovely weekend. Friday night I went round to my neighbors who lives directly across the street. She had invited a few other friends of hers who live in our little neighborhood. It was very, very funny because these women are all mothers who are about 10 years old than me and have lived in Basingstoke their whole lives. It was like being around a bunch of hens clucking about the neighborhood for seven hours! I have been living in my house thinking no one was paying any attention to John and I, and when I left my eyes were opened to the fact that people are very interested in what everyone is doing.

One of the ladies asked me if I am still horse riding. I have only met her once before, many months ago, and she lives quite a few houses away from mine, around a couple of corners. I asked her if we'd talked about my riding before (wondering how she knew about this hobby), and I went bright red when she said, 'Oh well, Kara, the men just LOVE seeing you in those johdpurs!' And I found out that Basingstoke is the swinging capitol of Hampshire, and Kempshott Park/Brighton Hill is the swinging capitol of north Hampshire! And I also learned what dogging is, and of course they gave me all the low down on what each neighbor is up to, practically house by house! It was something else.

We had all gotten there at 8 pm and finally at 3 am I decided I had to get home. I thought people might take advantage of someone making a move to go home, as it was so late I thought maybe people were waiting for someone to make the move to leave first (as I had been), but no one left with me, and I heard from my neighbor's husband that she didn't get home until gone 4!

Then on Saturday we went to Kent, which is a truly lovely part of southeast England, to visit John's college and uni friend Emily and her husband Alex. We haven't seen them in a very long time, in fact I hadn't seen Alex since their wedding which was 2 years ago December. It was great to see them; they are a really lovely couple. Although, John was definitely having a bad day. We got rear-ended on the M3 on the way there. Luckily it was in stopped traffic so there wasn't much damage to our car (the other guy's car was crumpled in the front) and no injuries. Then John picked up one of their cats, which apparently opened up a cyst on the base of the cat's tail, and cat puss went all over John's white shirt! Emily tried to squeeze the puss out but we all agreed it was best to just call the emergency vet (as it was late at night, after regular vet hours), and the vet said to bring him in. They ended up being gone for 2 hours because the poor thing had to be shaved, have a local anesthetic, have the wound opened and flushed out, have some jabs, etc.

Before all of the cat stuff we went into Canterbury (THE Canterbury, from The Canterbury Tales, which my senior year English teacher would be most impressed to find out I'd set foot in) for a nice meal. What a beautiful place, and what we could see of the cathedral (as it was closed off for the evening) was breathtaking.

We left early on Sunday. The weather was gorgeous so we spent the day in the garden reading and giving the cats attention. It was the perfect way to wind down. If we hadn't have done that I think the weekend would have felt like it got away from us.