Boo-hoo!

Just when I thought I'd be able to avoid getting to many sweets on this blog, I came across these - chocolate band-aids (or are they band-aid-shaped chocolates?). I simply couldn't resist them - which explains why you'll just be getting the empty box.

Kidding, of course - although there have been moments when I've been called upon to defend them quite rigorously.

Pathetic

Yeah well, started off with good intentions but the letter thing proved more problematic than I anticipated. We only ever stopped at places right on the freeway (American English for motor way) and they never had anything resembling a place where you'd buy letters.

Finally, stopped in Winnie, TX and found an antiques shop that was shut. There was a bunch of stuff on tables outside and among the detritus - a bowl of wooden letters. It contained no vowels and plenty of Js, T's and H's. Fished around and found this R. Phew!

I guess I'll just have to keep looking as we make our way around LA, huh?

Got you a couple of other things to compensate. A lollipop with a scorpion in it (even though I'm trying to avoid too much candy and some nifty geological bits from a place we visited in Sonora, TX.

The ammonite is cool, I think, mainly because I've finally included

something that's older than me (by a good few million years, as it happens).

Project

I now have a project. Having found this in TJ Maxx (it was literally the only letter in the whole place), I thought it’d be cool to try and collect the other letters of your name as we drive across the States. I’ll try to get all eight from different places along the way.

Of course there’s always the possibility that I’ll fail dismally – but worth a go, I reckon.

Bye from Ga.

Cow

I thought this’d look like crap when I shot on my phone but actually it looks okay, don’t you think?

Do you remember the crocodile oven gloves we had in Sri Lanka? Probably not. We had two that were similar to this cow one and I used to do a kind of puppet show for you with them. You’d squeal with delight when the stopped arguing between themselves and start biting you.

Needless to say, nothing of the sort will be happening with this one. But then again…

Came across Buffalo Nickels and got you two. One for you, one for Farian - a we're going to study in America kind of thing. If you think it's cool, that is. If not there's still the cow.

Gross!

Yep. Totally. Don’t know why I bought you a pack of ten plastic cockroaches. Just for fun I s’pose. Then, when I came across a whoopee cushion (the last one in the shop, incidentally), they just seemed to go naturally together.

As an aside, I always wanted a whoopee cushion when I was a kid. There used to be this bubble gum that came from America (Bazooka Joe) that had offers for things like whoopee cushions and x-ray specs inside of the wrapper. You had to collect a certain number of wrappers and send them off to an address in the States with a 25¢ stamp for postage – not that easy for a kid living in England. So, the whoopee cushion (and the x-ray specs, for that matter) was a kind of impossible dream.

Saw some ‘Americandies’ at the place where we’re getting the car fixed, thought of you and pocketed a few. Sweet.

Bones

Found this plectrum in the a shopping trolley at Kroger. And even though guitar isn't really your thing anymore, it made me think of you (you're the only guitar-playing person I know, really).

Don't worry, I did wash it!

Piggie

And so it goes... just couldn't let you leave for Kalimantan (if that's where you're going) without chucking a quick summat onto the blog. I thought the piggie soap was kinda cute (vanilla scented to boot) and the little plastic pod has some kind of flashlight (oops! torch) in it. I got it out of one of those 50¢ machines at the front of the supermarket. It does work, though, which was a bit of a surprise for me. Happy travels, LoRo.