June 10, Tuesday

One of the things Adam and John wanted to do most in Scotland is visit some whisky distilleries.  Yesterday’s Glenfiddich tour was family friendly, but most of the whisky tours are 18+ only.  I needed to dye my hair and I don’t like whisky, so I volunteered to stay home today with the kids so the rest of the adults could do some tours.  It turned out to be a depressing day for me.

Firstly, I hate having to dye my hair.  When I was a teenager, my hair couldn’t grow fast enough to suit me (mostly because I needed to grow out a disastrous perm); now that I’m in my 40s, it grows so fast I get a skunk stripe down the middle every two weeks.  I’m too vain to just go grey, so I’m stuck with this inconvenient chore with hair dye way too often.

Secondly: yesterday I had a headache at the Glenfiddich distillery, so while on the tour I took an Advil.  I didn’t have any water to drink, seeing as we were in the middle of a demonstration, and as a result the pill got stuck halfway down my throat.  An hour later, it was still there driving me nuts.  I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had a wad of peanut butter in my esophagus.  It just wouldn’t go away, no matter how much water I eventually drank.  The pill had to be dissolved by now, right?

By bedtime, I was starting to worry so I got online to google “it feels like I have a wad of peanut butter lodged in my esophagus” and discovered that this syndrome has a name:  pill esophagitis.  It turns out that if you swallow any NSAID (non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug — ibuprofen, aspirin, acetaminophen, etc.) without sufficient liquid to wash it all the way to your stomach, it can lodge halfway down and start to dissolve.  It causes irritation and swelling (and in the worst cases, bleeding) of the esophageal tissues that lasts for several days.  I didn’t even know this was a thing that could happen, but here it is, and it’s very uncomfortable.  It’s also the kind of thing that generally only happens to little kids and the elderly.

Lastly, this house has a full-length mirror …. the first one I’ve seen since we left home.  While I had a plastic bag on my head full of hair dye and a clogged-up esophagus, I changed my clothes in front of the full-length mirror and noticed an enormous bruise on my derrière.  I don’t even remember bumping into anything.  How could I have such a huge, nasty bruise?

I spent the rest of the day depressed and feeling terribly old.  My hair is grey; I’m bruising easily; I have a new pill-swallowing problem.  Then I took a look at the pictures Adam shot of me yesterday and my face looks like something painted by Salvador Dali … melting into a grotesque mask that only vaguely resembles what I looked like in my youth.  I’m falling apart!  Cue the obligatory existential crisis.  My body is falling apart, my life is half over, my kids are nearly grown up (only 9 years left with Josie, Isabella will be gone in 4!!) and I can’t even be trusted to properly swallow an Advil anymore.  Bah!

Meanwhile, Adam and his parents were having a fabulous time touring the distilleries and tasting the whiskeys.

The day started looking up a little for me when Adam, John and Elaine got back.  Elaine and John offered to stay with the kids so Adam and I could walk across the bridge into Inverness and have a dinner date, just the two of us.  We found a really neat little Turkish restaurant.

We were just finishing up, though, when we got a text from Isabella that read: “Holden’s headphones broke and when you get home he is going to blame us, so when he does, let me and Josie explain our side of the story please.”  We hadn’t even been gone an hour.

We immediately knew that whatever happened, it was absolutely Isabella and Josie’s fault:  whenever they start using the words “us” and “our side” it’s a dead giveaway that they are in cahoots and they’ve been getting their story straight.

We walked home and found Holden in tears; his headphones were utterly destroyed.  They were a very nice, expensive pair we’d given him for his birthday.  We finally got the story — Isabella and Josie broke into his room to blast Beyoncé from Isabella’s iPad just to irritate him because he hates Beyoncé.  In all the chaotic jumping and dancing around on his bed, the headphones somehow ended up knocked off a table and shoved under a blanket that was on the floor.  Someone stomped on them.  Nobody knows who did the stomping; therefore, none of them did the stomping.   It was just a chorus of “It wasn’t MEEEEE!” from every source.

We ended up making Isabella and Josie each pay 50% to buy Holden a new pair, since it was clearly their shenanigans that caused the circumstances of breakage in the first place.  Holden was just minding his own business in his room, enjoying not listening to Beyoncé.

Isabella didn’t put up too much of a fight over the ruling because she has quite a bit of money saved up, but Josie is beside herself.  Her account is now completely wiped out — no more spending money for the rest of the trip.

June 11, Wednesday

John and Elaine are leaving tomorrow morning to go back home, and are flying out of Edinburgh.  We spent the day driving from Inverness to the Edinburgh airport, with no real plans.  We decided to just stop at interesting looking places we found along the road.  It turned out to be a really fun day and thankfully I’m over my blue funk about life being subject to entropy, decay, and eventual death.

The first cool place we found was a surprise gourmet pit stop in the middle of nowhere called the House of Bruar.   They have a huge high-end shopping center for cashmere and other really nice clothing, along with a restaurant, gourmet food center, and art gallery.  We ate a snack of assorted pastries and had coffee and tea, then hit the cashmere shops.

The merchandise was very nice, but also very expensive.  I didn’t find anything in the ladies department, but when I went upstairs to the men’s department to find Adam, I found a rack of men’s cable-knit wool sweaters that were 50% off.  They were all size Small, and fit me.  I assume they were on sale because I can’t imagine any adult man fitting into one of them … the sleeves are a bit tight on me, and I’m small even by woman standards.  I’ve been wanting a cable-knit wool sweater for three years and haven’t purchased one yet because the prices always make me cringe, but at 50% off it was bordering on reasonable.  Who cares that it was meant for a man!  It’s mine now.

Josie hanging off the back of the Land Rover, holding her rock candy.  She managed to scrape together enough money to buy a treat after all.

Next up:  We spotted a sign on the road for Blair Atholl Watermill and decided to stop.  (It sounds like Phteven was asked about someone named Blair, a person whom he holds in low esteem: “Blair?  Atholl.”)

The mill began operation more than 140 years before George Washington was born … that’s the kind of history this place has.  It’s still running today, and we bought some ground oats.  We also pilfered the free samples to bribe ducks into being our friends.

The kids getting to experience what grinding oats the old fashioned way was like, which made it crystal clear why people wanted a mill so badly.  Grinding oats by hand is hard and takes forever.  You’d probably burn more calories grinding it into flour than you’d consume by eating the bread it produced.

After:  now we have bread samples and the ducks are suddenly interested in being our friends.

We stopped at a small town (well … to be fair, pretty much every town in Scotland is a small town) called Dunkeld for lunch.

The setting is gorgeous.

Last stop for the day, and possibly the very best:  Stewart Tower Dairy, in another small town called Bankfoot.  We stopped here because they advertised homemade ice cream.  It turned out to be a very neat farm.  In addition to ice cream, you can buy things like fresh eggs, milk, butter, cream, and preserves.

The cows; presumably the very ones who produced the milk that became the ice cream we ate.

This girl liked to have her ears scratched.

Baby goats.  There just isn’t a cuter thing on Earth than a baby goat.

Grandma is enjoying this stop much more than yesterday’s whisky tastes.

I skipped the ice cream because eating it would have cut into my talking to/playing with the animals time.  They had cows, goats, sheep, chickens and pigs.  I’m at my very happiest when surrounded by animals, so this day totally made up for yesterday as far as I’m concerned.

Packed into the back of the Defender.  Seven passengers and about 25 pieces of luggage.  Every time we turned a corner, I’d have to yell “TURNING A CORNER!” and these two would brace the luggage with their hands so it wouldn’t topple over on their heads.  I was halfway convinced we were all going to die.  I’ve tried to like the Land Rover for Adam’s sake… but I just can’t.  How many safety features does this car have?  Zero.

We spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express near the Edinburgh airport, and it was very, very nice.  I’d recommend it to anyone needing to stay right by the airport.  We’ve stayed in some pretty grubby, depressing places next to airports before; this one was quite pleasant.  It’s not real big on atmosphere, but it’s clean, roomy, and has a pretty decent free breakfast that is served starting at 4 a.m. so travelers don’t have to catch early-morning flights on an empty stomach.