Not my kind of tea party...

I recently got quite excited when I heard about the tea party movement in America. At last, I thought. Americans are recognising the brilliance of tea and cake.

Alas.

This glorious concept has been hijacked by Sarah Palin et al to champion the republican loony cause - and not a single cucumber sandwich in sight.

(Yes, I know it's stealing its name from the day Americans tipped lots of perfectly good tea into the sea - another sacrilege - in protest for us Brits taxing them. I feel like if they'd only just sat down with a cup and a slice of victoria sponge, instead of putting it in brine then the same result could have been achieved in a much more yummy fashion. )

So what is to be done?

I could defame them, embarrass them, point out all the many holes in their arguments. Or I could just sit back with a cup of tea and a scone and let them do it all for me. Fear not. The good name of Tea will not be besmirched for long. As they say on their own website, they only have 114,369 signatures for the repeal of the bill-to-help-people, and while they're right, that is 11.4% of a million, it's also 0.37% of the population of America.

I think they should all have a cup of tea and calm the heck down. And while they're at it, they can think a bit about the Christian values they espouse so fanatically: "And God said we should all carry weapons and prevent the poor from receiving care"...something like that, right?

Dear America...

I have a few complaints.

I'm going to forgive you the gaps in public toilets, the insane number and size of pot-holes, the dearth of electric kettles and the poverty of the public transport system. You're a big country, you mainly drink coffee (and well done on the shunning of instant - even I'm not going to champion that), you have massive extremes in weather and for some reason you seem to have a deeprooted fear of getting trapped in public toilets (either that or a latent fetish for peeping on people while they pee)... I'm not judging, every country has its quirks and goodness knows England has more than most. What I'm struggling to get past is quite how under-represented British food stuffs are here and how much you see fit to charge me for that little taste of home.

For example.
Sausages. How did a country, such as yourself, become quite so powerful without ever mastering the art of sausage making? Chorizo has its place for sure, and Italian sausage is pretty tasty but what have you got against Cumberland? Pork and apple? Or just a good old inoffensive Chipolata? To make matters worse, the only sausages I've ever found here, that have any similarities to my beloved English sausages were called 'Irish Bangers'. Irish. The cheek. They weren't all that good though so maybe they can stick to being Irish.

Chocolate. I am baffled. Baffled! That Hershey's is your primary brand of chocolate. Even Americans don't like Hershey's, although they don't seem to have realised quite how foul it is.I can only deduce that there must be a very strong Chocolate hating lobby (probably linked to the Christian far right, since they seem to be responsible for lots of strange things) that campaigns to keep Hershey's in power. One word. Galaxy.

Squash. Not butternut or spaghetti, summer, acorn or pumpkin. Robinson's Squash. The reasonably healthy concentrated juice drink which makes even London water palatable. And do you sell it? Yes. You do, for EIGHT DOLLARS A BOTTLE. If that's not discrimination I don't know what is. I can buy wine for less...in fact maybe that's exactly what I'll do...

Prawn Cocktail crisps. I need them. And I promise, this country would be a far better place with them.

Baked Beans.... ok I actually found out that I can now buy them here and not for an extortionate mark up. This is what progress looks like.

You do get major points though for Jelly Belly, Greys Anatomy, Affordable Sushi, BBQ (English barbecues do have their place but in a war, American BBQ would win solely because of the addition of mashed potato), Sunshine and ummmmmmmmmmm Jeremy. So all is not lost. Just sort out those issues in fact and I think we may be able to be friends.

Yours hopefully,

Hannah

Turns out there is such a thing as too much 'me'.

I have a distant memory of relishing days spent alone. Time to catch up on life-admin, sleep, to breathe in deeply and push back against the crush and clamour of London life in order to make enough head-space to survive the week ahead. Precious time spent drinking lattes alone in coffee shops, buying take-out sushi and sitting alone in parks reading the newspaper or floating on daydreams. I used to panic if I had no free days in the weeks ahead- I'd feel like I was losing control, like that time alone was absolutely essential to my ability to function smoothly.

Now of course, all I have is alone time and it's getting to me a little. I'm so fed up of being inside my head I've dug out my ancient mp3 player (never did get on the ipod bandwagon, although I'm holding out for Jeremy to upgrade so I can have his old one) so that I can have music in my head rather than just me.

I'm pretty fed up of me.

In fact, I think the time may have come to get out my 'lonely, be my friend' sign and sit on a street corner. Truth be told I wouldn't look all that out of place on certain street corners in Waltham.

I've reached the second stage in Operation Build A Life. Up til now it's all just been form filling which, while boring and occasionally stressful, comes with handy 'how-to' guides and online forums. This next stage rather relies on me having a personality and being capable and some days I'm not entirely sure I can pull it off.

So what do I need to do? I need to meet people and make friends and I need my CV to not be dead in the water by the time I'm actually permitted to work.

So I figure I'll just volunteer. Can't be too hard right? Given I spent 2.5 years helping other people to volunteer, you'd think I'd have a pretty good idea as to how to go about it myself.

Hmmmmm

If I were in England maybe I'd have a good idea. Here volunteering looks suspiciously like charities are just trying to fill should-be-paid-for-positions with poor unemployed people. The majority of interesting opportunities are for 20 hours a week for a minimum of 6 months. I'm hoping that in 6 months I wont have 20 hours a week spare. Where oh where is Time Together when you need it?

The other problem is that the volunteering opportunities are all in far flung suburbs that would take me over 2 hours on Boston public transport to get to. Which means before I sign up to working-full-time-for-free, I need to learn to drive. Which means I need get a learners' permit. Which means I need to open the drivers' manual I got out from the library and actually learn the rules of the American road to take the theory test I need to pass before I can get a learners' permit.

Whoever thought that making friends would begin by learning that a Stop sign is octagonal?

This can be done. Unfortunately it all relies on me doing it and I'm feeling pretty lazy. I have enough people behind me with their feet at the ready to give me a kick up the arse though so I doubt I'll be permitted to stall for long.

Mama said there'd be days like this...

So far today I have accomplished absolutely nothing. I've cried a few times - not really because of anything as much as something to do and I wrote a list of things to do (besides cry) but haven't done them so it's basically a list of failures.

At the moment I'm feeling a bit like a spring weather forecast: sunny with patches of cloud and showers. Although today it's mainly showers and frowns with the odd quiet spell of reading. I'm homesick, my laptop is still out of action and I really want to moan my head off except I'm not allowed.

"Just remember that you chose this Hannah, and you're living the dream."

(Mum told me not to quote her in my blog but I'm ignoring her. Sorry.)

Living the Dream.

I know this is just a phase to get through, that summer is just around the corner (literally and metaphorically) and spring has its beautiful days for sure - on Saturday we spent the whole day sitting outside in the sunshine with friends, barbecuing USA style (which basically means cooking meat til it gives up all resolve to do anything but be delicious and infusing it with so much smoke that if you ate it every day you'd almost certainly die of cancer within the year. Yum.) and being married is proving to be more of a blessing and a comfort than I could ever have hoped for - but still, there are days like this.

I could end on a positive note, but I don't really want to. I'll be fine. Today sucks. That is all.

Catastrophe

On Tuesday, disaster struck.

All had been going well - It had stopped raining, I'd finally finished and enveloped the visa forms, we'd had yummy sushi for dinner and I had a glass of wine and an episode of House waiting for me in the living room. All I had to do was walk the 10 steps from kitchen to living room without upset.

I failed.

Any spectator watching my reaction to what happened next would have thought a friend or loved one had just been diagnosed with a life threatening illness, or I'd discovered the sun would explode in a matter of minutes.

Have I added enough suspense in yet?

OK so I dropped my laptop.

I swore rather a lot and fell to my knees - at first with a shocked despondency which quickly gave way to sobbing and more swearing. Jeremy meanwhile attempted to revive my laptop, giving me false hope when it turned on but then crashed (which it continued to do every time I turned it on, which I did about every 5 minutes just in case it had had a change of heart). It was making some weird squeaky scrabbly noises so my final diagnosis was that a mouse had got trapped. Jeremy decided the hard-drive was bust. However, one $60 hard-drive later and it's still not cooperating.

I feel bereft.

I've stopped crying - at about 3pm yesterday I gave myself a very strict talking to which went something like this:

Hannah: (out-loud...I know, doesn't bode well for my sanity but I'm alone most of the day) "Stop being such a wuss and crying. It's only a lap top"

Hannah: (in-my-head...I feel if only one side of the conversation is audible then it's slightly further away from full blown madness. The day I start doing different voices for the different sides is the day I check into a clinic.)

"It's not just a lap top. It's my connection to all my friends and family. It's my sanity"

(considering the talking to myself only happened post lap-top-death, I had a point)

Hannah: (out-loud) "Grow up. If it can't be fixed you can buy a new one. You have a husband who loves you and is trying to fix the thing and there's a computer downstairs you can use."

Hannah: (in-my-head, sulky) "In the dungeon."


Hannah: (out-loud, exasperated) "It's a basement."

Hannah: (in-my-head... turns away in a strop to sulk)

The sensible Hannah won out. She had to really because the other Hannah was being particularly childish and rather annoying and therein lies the way of the abyss.

Meanwhile I'm still without a laptop, which while not a full-blown life-shattering apocalyptic disaster, it's pretty bad. There is a computer downstairs (hence the blogging) but it's about 20 years old and not particularly sprightly and while the basement isn't really a dungeon, it's dark and not really where I want to spend all my unemployed and newly emigrated time.

On the bright side though, I'm rather pleased with myself. OK I did have a minor breakdown where I lost perspective for about 24 hours but I decided against depression and despondency and that's errrrrr good. Because I know very well that depression and despondency are lurking. They sense my vulnerable support-network-3000-miles-away state and they know I can be a total wuss sometimes. I know it too, which is why I've taken to talking to myself.

Jeremy, who of course is far more practical and level headed and I'm sure thinks my attachment to my laptop is a little unhinged, has been wonderful. He appears entirely unphased by my mini-breakdown, accepts my unequivocal need for lap-based-computing and has set about fixing the laptop with determination and zeal.

I think this may be the first bump in the road to life-settlement...I knew there would be the odd bump and bruise, I just wasn't expecting my poor beloved laptop to be at the receiving end. RIP dear friend...unless Jeremy succeeds in Lazarusing you back of course (oh ye of little faith and all that).


(Abbie, I just want you to know that the 'Hannah and her hands' song is entirely inappropriate and unwelcome here. Hannah's hands are most definitely in the dog house. I doubt they'll ever be permitted to lift anything of value ever again.)

Rain, lists and two types of ticking.

It's raining. Not just any old raining, it's the sort of rain that sends the rapture index soaring as a prelude to Armageddon, or where all the animals in town start to pair up and march in the direction of a very large boat. Roads are closing, rivers are lapping undersides of bridges and I am seriously regretting leaving my red hunter wellies in Devon.

I'm trapped.

Well, not really trapped - if I wanted to walk the mile into town with saturated feet and a broken umbrella I could, but that doesn't sound too appealing so I'm opting for trapped.

The television is tempting me but I will not give in. The clock is ticking maliciously. It knows I hate ticking. I hate ticking about as much as captain hook hated ticking and I've never been attacked by a ticking crocodile. I should probably just move the clock.

I may be getting cabin fever - genuine cabin fever because outside is basically ocean and the ticking could sub in for wave noises.

My solution to this rain / unemployment / ticking induced craziness is to write lists. Lots of lists. So far today I have written a list detailing what forms we need to fill out to apply for my green-card, a list listing what documents we need to photocopy to accompany the forms, a list of things I would like to buy at the supermarket if Jeremy ever manages to sail home and escort me out of here and a list of tasks to be completed today. This last list is a secondary list to the one on our fridge which lists all the things I need to do in order to have some semblance of a life here. I'm about one tenth of the way through. The highlight of my day is when I get to tick something off the list (this sort of ticking I can get behind) - it's like getting a gold star in life-building. Actually that's a lie - the highlight of my day is when Jeremy gets home and I stop hearing the ticking (clock not list) and all my life-building tasks lessen in their significance because he is the foundation of the building and he makes me laugh and gives me hugs.

I have another 4 hours until that happens.

Next task: reorganising the spice cupboard and hanging up the washing. But first, clock dismantlement.

Three notable events in the endless bureaucratic saga of medicals and vaccinations

1. Almost got into a fight with a doctor who tried to convince me I shouldn't have had my medical in the UK (despite the fact that one cannot get an embassy appointment without having had a medical)

2. Paid $70 to watch said doctor transcribe the medical form completed in the UK onto a different medical form. Took him all of 5 minutes (and 4 of them were spent chastising me for having had the compulsory UK medical)

3. The HPV vaccine, which I paid so much for and expended so much energy on getting is no longer a requirement of US immigration - as of 2 months ago. Sods.

I'd like to say the end is in sight, but am loathe to do so in case they hear me and decide to create another pointless hoop on this long and very hoopy road.

1 week on.

So this is Love. This quiet peace. This complicit communion. This stillness. Why did I not realise this before?

I feel more in love than I've ever been...I say 'more', it's entirely different to anything I've ever been. Before I measured love in heartbeats per second, in obsession, behaviour analysis and time-spent willing the phone to ring. I've always been someone who thrives on drama and excitement, who is fearful of peacefulness in case it gives way to boredom.

And now this calm.

I feel a bit like I've just invented the wheel or discovered water displacement and yelled out 'Eureka'. And I'm going to share this with you, even though many of you are already married and will probably know this already (unless you're 'normal' people who do not think anywhere near as much as me, but you're reading my blog so I think this is unlikely) - you can look on with patronising indulgence like the father who's just pushed his child's bike for the 100th time and the child for once doesn't fall over but rather wobbles on in that mystery of balance and euphoria.

There is a difference between getting married and becoming married.

Getting married is the easy part - there are flowers for one thing and all you need to do is stay rooted to one place and repeat the words of the vicar / clerk and you're married. Easy.

Becoming married has, for me, been significantly harder.

Now this may of course have something to do with the fact that I decided to leave everything familiar and my entire support network in England a week before I got married. On reflection that was definitely an instance of biting off so much that my jaw had to dislocate itself in order to even stand a chance of successfully chewing (ouch).

The process of becoming married felt like shedding a skin - a comfortable skin that I was perfectly happy in - and underneath that old comfortable skin was a new, raw, needing-breaking-in skin. This metaphor is making me squeamish (and I've just realised that coupled with the jaw dislocation, there is something of an unintentional serpentine theme going on), but you get the picture?

When people talk about getting married they just talk about this lightness and golden-glow, the happiest-day-of-your-life. They fail to mention that part of the process is a necessary loss - a giving up, a surrender. I'm not saying these are bad things, they are inevitable and necessary but they are hard.

Accepting that my role as 'daughter', 'sister', 'friend' had been succeeded by 'wife' was hard. Taking on a new name and finding myself without a signature was hard. Realising that life decisions now need to be made as a pair rather than just on my own is hard (and will probably get harder when the first significant life decision arises). Promising forever when I have no idea what forever will bring is hard (especially for a person with control issues such as myself).

It all sounds so darn obvious now and I feel stupid to admit it (especially because Jeremy was about 20 steps ahead of me on all of this) but I had no idea quite how monumental all of this would feel, or how much of a struggle it would be to win the will to get married, to commit, to shrug off my old self and step into the new.

For me, the happiest moment of my life was not on my wedding day (which was happy, but happy in a high-on-adrenalin-can't-stop-smiling way) but 5 days later on a beach in Cape Cod. Just me and my husband and a quiet calm. An answered prayer. A breathing-in. A recognition of Love as I'd always hoped but never known.

Married.

Brave New World



Yesterday I got married.

Married.

I whisper it to myself when I look in the bathroom mirror. I hear it in each heart-beat (which are stronger and faster than usual). Every footstep and tick-tock underlines it.

Married.

This is a hard blog to write. The usual tongue in cheek cynicism has no place here. It's also virtually impossible to describe or explain the multitude of feelings and emotions I went through in the lead up to the day and on the day.

After arriving last Monday, I spent a week coming to terms with the reality of moving countries and cultures, with the implications of marriage and making decisions as a pair rather than just a 'me' - with realising that I can't just run back home to England if / when the going gets tough - with accepting that in marrying Jeremy I am to some degree separating myself from my family and creating a new family. I felt like I was peeling back the layers of some sort of meaning-laden-onion - the England layer, the culture layer, the family / friends layer, each one making me cry and question my strength, until I got to the centre of the onion (and this is where the metaphor founders and falls) and there was Jeremy.

This possibly seems strange to you that I had to experience all of this upon arriving here. If you've been reading regularly you'll know I've contemplated all of these things multiple times. But thinking things through is not the same as feeling things through and I don't think anything could have prepared me for the force and contradiction of feelings that I've felt in the past 8 days.

All of this feeling things through meant that the wedding day crept up on us somewhat. Certainly the night before I was emotionally exhausted and couldn't quite fathom a day of smiling for photos. But then the wedding day arrived and the beating in my chest retreated to butterflies of excitement and a strength of hope and happiness rose in me.

We then realised we had 9 people coming over in expectation for pre-dinner drinks and dips (I learnt this week that 'Americans' [based entirely from Jeremy so maybe there are Americans that do] don't do 'dips'... they do houmous / salsa / guacamole of course, but don't have a collective noun for them. Weird) and so Jeremy and I did a mad dash for balloons and chopped multiple tomatoes (or Jeremy did, I drank coffee and breathed deeply).

A few memories that will endure:
- Buying helium balloons on a very blustery day, and almost losing them all when I got out of the car and they (almost) escaped.
- Racing Jeremy across a car park to T J Maxx (T K Maxx in England - strange huh?) as we rushed to buy him a black belt so that his suit trousers a) didn't fall down and b) weren't held up by a crummy brown one.
- Dancing with mum in the living room to Paolo Nuttini - doing our special dance that involves bouncing and jogging and much hand-waving.
- Jeremy and I realising we'd forgotten to bring cash or cheques to pay for the ceremony so cobbling together $100 from family and friends in the lobby.
- Heather and Scott (dear friends who once trusted me with babysitting their 2 amazing sons) turning up laden with un-prompted roses to decorate the hall and to make me into a bride.
- Sitting with Jeremy at the end of the day, marvelling at the grace, kindness and generosity of friends and family.

Of course it doesn't end there - the reality of being married, of the meaning of 'forever', of releasing the singularity of 'me' and accepting the unity of 'us' is still sinking in. And of course I still have a whole life to build here. But we've made it thus far. We're in love and I'm feeling stronger and more capable by the hour. And we're married.

Married.