On Love, Tea and Alienship

Of course this would happen in February.

2012-02-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

I can barely bring myself to write it, to think it, to entertain the thought of thinking it.

I found grey hair.

Not just one, lurking ominously as a promise of decay (but quickly pluckable, the evidence hastily disposed of), but a cluster, a clutch, a nest. Thankfully there aren't really THAT many (just enough for me to despair) and they’re hidden behind and under a lot of other normal coloured hair so that only someone with a magnifying mirror, a spotlight and a tendency to self-torture would happen across them.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Of course I did what any self respecting woman would do.

I cried.

Then I spent a considerable amount of time pulling them out, occasionally trailing into the living room where Jeremy sat trying to watch TV, presenting him with a torch (the lighting was dimmed) and pointing to the offending area. He said they looked blonde and it didn’t matter if they weren’t.

He lied.

So, that’s it – it’s happened. And I’m only 28. I wasn’t prepared – I thought I had at least until 30. I still have spots for goodness sake; surely it’s a great unfairness to have spots and grey hair. And I know some people get grey hair early, but they normally have very dark hair and I don’t so therefore it’s unacceptable. I'm not even sure 28 is early, it probably isn't, but I barely feel like an adult and my hair's already preparing for middle age.

I will stop obsessing. I will not google whether grey hairs in one location are a sign of brain tumor. I will not be vain. I will grow old gracefully. I will consider getting highlights and invest in some expensive face cream.

sent, gone, away from me.

2012-02-05T12:10:00.000-08:00

Again my novel is sent, gone, away from me. Only to my agent so it's not as scary as to a publisher, but it's still scary.

This edit has been a hard slog - much harder than any of the others because now I'm working, time is harder to come by, as is energy and willingness to sit in front of a computer.

But, it's done and I wont have to read it again for another week at least. All in time for the SuperBowl, which of course I'm impossibly excited about. Why wouldn't I be? Given I don't like any sports and this one in particular makes no sense to me whatsoever. There is beer and food though - that's reason enough for excitement.

OK I'm done with computers for the day. Just wanted to say hi and yay, edit done.

kitty kitty no name

2012-01-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

It’s long overdue for a post about my cat. Here are some facts.

He doesn’t have a name. When we adopted him, he was called Shannon, which was clearly dumb. I had offered for Jeremy to choose the name as a lure towards getting a cat in the first place (also clearly dumb). Jeremy’s first suggestion was Spaceship Carrot Slicer. Mine was Scout. Nothing really stuck. He is most routinely called Kitty, alternating also between Tronald (Jeremy), Ollie (me), Kitchya (Jeremy) and Trouble / Bugger / Stinker (me).
He sleeps either in our bed, a purring hot water bottle, or on top of the covers between us in hammock like fashion.
He wakes up around 5.58am and stamps on my face. When that doesn’t work he attacks my fingers. When that doesn’t work he bites my nose. This is when he gets called Bugger.
He only drinks out of people glasses and if they’re empty they get batted onto the floor. As does anything else I leave on my bedside table.
He’s currently not allowed outside. In America terms, this means he’s an ‘inside cat’, which I’ve always argued doesn’t really exist. But we had to sign something swearing not to let him outside because of things like Coyotes, FIV (the kitty version of HIV) and cars. They also seemed to think that since he was a stray, going outside might trigger some sort of nervous breakdown, but he’s escaped a few times and is equally psychotic as he was before he escaped. I expect that, come summer, keeping him inside will be near impossible but, for now, he’s an ‘inside cat’ even though he thinks otherwise.
He favours Jeremy and routinely bites that hand that feeds him (me).
He’s ridiculously, wonderfully, cute. Which makes up for him behaving like devil spawn 30% of the time.

a Aaaaand here are the inevitable Cat photos.

See? Unbelievably cute. Jeremy's alright too...

This is known as 'cat-hat'... it's not entirely voluntary

This is 'display of trust'...

Marsupials

This is 'calming pose', which actually works and he doesn't seem to mind

A few unrelated things

2012-01-16T10:22:00.000-08:00

- I hate Lowes (hardware superstore place) and Home Depot. I hate them with a vehemence that screams through my veins. They're too big, filled with far too many boring things and I end up trailing around after Jeremy feeling once again like I used to feel aged 5 when I'd trail around similar places with my parents. Except these days I don't get to be pushed in a trolley. Now, as then, the only thing that can stave off internal boredom-induced combustion, are paint swatches. We now have so many there's an entire drawer dedicated to them.

- I'm writing again. It's like drawing blood from a stone. Since I'm the stone, it's quite painful. I've given myself til early feb to get this rewrite done - currently that seems like the stupidest idea I've ever come up with.

- There was ice on the inside of one of our windows this morning. Don't panic, it doesn't mean our house was below freezing inside, but it does mean this particular window isn't very good and that it's impossibly cold outside.

- All of my clothes are currently bundled in a bag downstairs in the basement, waiting to be folded and put away, because somehow all of my clothes became unfolded and scrumbled up all over the place and I lost patience and put them in a bag instead. I wish I was one of those people who folded clothes and had self control.

- Jeremy doesn't like pulp in orange juice. I learned this yesterday. We have been together over eight years. What else isn't he telling me?

Not Writing

2012-01-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

Today was going to be the day I started writing again. My agent has okayed my edit ideas and now all I have to do is breathe life into them and transform my novel into something sellable.

So, I got up at 11.30am, drank coffee and read a newspaper, had a bath, peeled off an hour's worth of wallpaper, got changed, helped Jeremy paint the garage, microwaved some dumplings, got changed again, sat and stared at my computer, called my mother, cried (about nothing in particular), called my mother again, went to the supermarket, lit a fire, cried a little more (about the lack of writing I've done today along with nothing in particular), checked facebook, checked twitter, checked email, read the guardian online, read bbc news online, aaaaaand finally scribbled down on paper a few plot points expanding on the plot points I've already come up with.

I did not add a single word to my novel. I did delete about 5 words.

Tomorrow. It's all going to happen tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go wash the ink off of my jumper (I was leaning on a pen while writing this), eat dinner courtesy of Trader Joes (with a little help from Jeremy), sit by the fire and watch repeats of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on cable (which seems to be code for gratuitous sex and violence). I'll mostly not be thinking about the 1 month deadline I've given myself for doing this rewrite. Or the half-stripped wall that glares at me every time I go into my dining room (it may also be Jeremy that's doing the glaring... he doesn't agree that half-stripped is better than full-ugly).

A post that got a bit carried away with itself...

2012-01-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

How is it possible that it’s taken me 28 years to realize that a) I love writing and b) I’m fairly good at it? Why has it taken this long for me to understand that my brain needs to be challenged and that writing challenges it in the right way? I wish I could talk with my 17 year old self and tell her not to be such a wuss – to demonstrate some self belief and to try for the scary things. I’d also tell her that dungarees are for decorating only, that straightening irons are going to kill her hair and that it’ll then take 3 – 4 years to fully recover.

(This is where this post goes awry - totally wasn't originally heading in this direction but it turns out advising my former self is kinda fun)

18 year old self: Loosen up. Alcohol won’t kill you and you can afford to read a few less books about WWI. Realise how good you've got it, try and be cooler than you are and learn to drive dammit.

19 year old self: yes he says the right things but it’s all hot air. And seriously, that hair, those jeans? It’s not a good plan. Also, 19.75 year old self, don’t go chasing Americans across the Atlantic. He’ll come to you and then you’ll be a heck of a lot less neurotic and will get lots more sleep (leading to less neuroses). You’ll also have more money.

20 year old self: Stop being so neurotic. Clearly he loves you. Chill out and stay away from the other one who doesn’t love you but says he does. Bad bad news. And don’t make decisions on housemates when drunk.

21 year old self: International Relations, while interesting, is a completely impractical degree. If you will insist on studying in America, do something that might actually result in a job. People who study international relations go on to be diplomats, economists or security advisors or other things that involve travel to scary countries and statistics. You are ill equipped for any of these things. And for goodness sake take your passport with you when you take the GRE test. Otherwise your poor choice in housemate will have to go through your laundry (because of course that’s where you’ve left your passport), hand it to a friend who will then have to take a train into london and you’ll be very stressed, poorer and embarrassed.

22 year old self: learn to drive and, failing that, buy a puffy coat. They’re not pretty but they’re warm. Also, tell Jeremy to turn on the darn heating.

23 year old self: steer clear of housemates who dictate what shampoo you use and watch out for bed-mice. Everything will be fine with Jeremy so relax, invest in that travel-card and join the gym.

24 year old self: Seriously, everything’s gonna be fine. OK it might not seem that way but trust me. And you need a thicker duvet - there's no insulation in that flat whatsoever. Also, stop wearing ballet pumps out in January. Your feet get wet and cold and do not help the situation.

25 year old self: See, I told you so. Now don’t go insane over visas and, I know the idea of paying off your overdraft and sleeping on couches sounds like a good one but…

26 year old self: You’re doing ok. Homesickness fades, although it never completely disappears. Not too too long til you get a house and a cat.

27 year old self: in a year’s time you’re going to live 10 minutes away from that job you’ve been offered… consider this before you start throwing ultimatums around.

28 year old self. This probably counts as talking to yourself, which isn’t generally seen as a good thing. Remember to pick up milk on your way home.

29 year old self: Anytime you wanna drop me a note on what not to do, feel free.

I’ll stop now…

what sort of a parent...

2012-01-04T14:13:00.001-08:00

I hug my hot-water bottle tight, rub my feet together to encourage blood to flow and wait for my 13.5 tog duvet (brought over from the UK because despite their sub zero winters, I was unable to find a decent duvet here – and even if I did find one there was no way of knowing b/c they don’t use any sort of warmth rating) to start doing it’s job.

*crash smash meow* “Stupid *$#!ing cat”

(This from the dining room.)

I wait, wondering whether I can pretend to already be asleep or whether I need to get out there and defend my kitty.

I get up.

“This can’t go on. He’s out of control. I’m shutting him away.”

“He’s young. He’s bored. We need to play with him more.”

“He’s a cat.”

“He’s young. He’s bored. We need to play with him more.”

“He’s staying in this room for the night”

“No he’s not.”

I sweep and vac and do my best to hide the evidence of kitty’s disgrace. I then fetch him from the cold cold room meanie Jeremy has shut him in and take him into our bedroom (which is also cold but there’s me, my hot water bottle, 13.5 tog duvet and electric blanket for him to snuggle next to).

"There’s still glass on the floor out here."

I feign sleep. Jeremy, after grumbling a little more about just how much glass I failed to vac up, comes to bed and, as per usual, ignores my feigning and starts to talk to me.

“He needs discipline.”

“He’s a cat – he doesn’t know what he’s done wrong.”

“We need to isolate him and teach him a lesson.”

“It wont work – he has about a 5 second memory”

“What sort of a parent are you going to be if you can’t even discipline a cat?” *

“It’s not the same” I mumble, letting kitty snuggle into me and moving my fingers out of hunting-reach”

Who, me?

*disclaimer: I'm not pregnant.

Home Improvement.

2012-01-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

"Be optimistic — assume that the paper is dry-strippable. Lift a corner of the paper from the wall with a putty knife. Grasp the paper with both hands and slowly attempt to peel it back at a very low angle."

Then, as it shreds in your hands, avoid the knowitall gaze of your husband and pretend that your decision to start on the main wall rather than a 'smaller section where if it all goes wrong and you get bored and give up it would be less noticeable' was absolutely the right one.

Persevere. Act as if you're not bored already and thinking about making a snack or whether the next episode of gossip girl is available online. Soak the wall in wallpaper removal solution. Wipe it up off of the floor. Look around to check knowitall hasn't seen. Scrape the wall. Remove about 2% of the wallpaper. Reapply solution and consider reading the instructions.

Repeat for all foreseeable weekends until the hideous wallpaper has finally disappeared and/or Jeremy gets fed up of waiting and decides to do it himself.

It's been a while

2011-12-29T05:55:00.000-08:00

… but here I am.

I haven’t blogged consistently in an epoch. This is because:

I seem to be bad at blogging when there’s actual stuff happening in my life.
When I get home I don’t want to look at a computer
I have a cat to play with
energy needs to be conserved and put towards warmth

But, I’ve been told that I need to keep it up and I’m also finding that I’ve been missing it. Blogging means you pick out smaller aspects of life to relate and analyze – and in doing so it makes the whole feel that much more manageable. That said, I’m currently stuck not knowing where to re-begin. Maybe I should recap.

Since September I have:

Got a job (non-profit volunteer management…familiar territory which has proved a good way of reacquainting myself with that old ‘friend’ work.)
Started driving EVERY day INTO the CITY, often at 6.30 AM in order to avoid RUSH HOUR.
Got a cat… this has been the highlight of my life to date. He’s incredibly cute until he gets tired of being cute and starts attacking. He will likely feature highly in future blog posts. He doesn’t have a name…blame Jeremy.
Discovered that my new and wonderful house does not have insulation. This is also likely to feature…
Become a master fire-lighter
Hosted a three course house-warming party for 50, Christmas for 14 and had eleven friends / family come to stay for nights / weekends / fortnights
Watched a best friend get married
Watched my little sister get married
Met with my agent (face-to-face for the first time) and a publisher who loved my book but not enough to publish it…yet…(she says, fingers crossed and recrossed behind her back)
Begun to re-edit my book in the hopes that said publisher will love it more.

Consider this as line drawn beneath the silence and I shall henceforth re-start blogging about all the minutiae that make life meaningful.

They haven't all said no yet.

2011-10-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

They haven't all said no yet.

But they almost have.

Four scary publishers (who do not heed deadlines) sat upon a wall.

The Nos I've had, as Nos go, have been very friendly Nos. Most have said that I can write, that they love the voice, the concept... not enough of course, but one year ago having publishers tell me I could write would have seemed monumental. So I'm clinging to that.

Today is Columbus Day, which I assume means we're celebrating the discovery of America. I'm celebrating the fact of a day off and am going to spend at least a portion of it writing. Because if / when they all say No, I need to have already reminded myself that I love writing, so that I keep on doing it in the face of the collective No I am anticipating (but still hoping against of course).

In other news, I still love my house, the new job is pretty cool and my parents are visiting at the end of the month. Life is good.

Waiting

2011-09-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Somewhere out there, there is a swarm, a scraggle, a torment of publishers on whom's desk / in whom's inbox lies my manuscript. They have 9 days remaining (8 in England, which is where they are, but shhhh) in which to read and respond to the submission. Two have already responded (and have responded No), leaving Ten.

Ten scary publishers sat upon a wall...

I try to forget, but my heart leaps every time my email pings. And I thought I'd escaped that feeling when I finally got a job.

Pah.

Watch this space - I may well be crying in it 9 days from now.

Here I am

2011-09-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't died or stumbled off the face of the planet (which, I assume, would amount to the same thing), I am resolutely and definitely here, it's just that when life gets going, blogging kinda drops to the bottom of my list of priorities (which means, I imagine, that I'm not and never will be a true 'blogger').

Anyway, in the past month I got a job, hosted a housewarming party for 50 people (and fed all of these people a 3 course meal), submitted my novel to a swarm of scary publishers and started my newly attained job.

I'm tired.

But I'm also feeling thankful and very humble. I started this move to America with a list of necessities - things that I felt had to happen in order for me to settle and feel properly at home here. These were:
- Proper friends who, if and when necessary, I could call at a moment's notice and demand wine and a hug.
- A home without mold in the bathroom and a spare bedroom for visiting friends and family
- The ability to drive
- A job where I felt I was contributing something to the world and which gave me sufficient time and flexibility to visit England.

I have been given all of these things and more. My marriage continually surprises me in its capacity for joy. My house has not one but two bathrooms without mold and three whole spare bedrooms for visiting Englanders (and new yorkers / norwegians / californians etc etc). My friends are people who will be friends for ever more, no matter which continent I live on. And somehow in the midst of all of this I've managed to write a book which is this very second being appraised by people who may well reject it, but also might not.

I am blessed, and in my moments of anxiety and fear I run through this list in my head to remind myself to trust and believe and be calm. I do not mean any of this as a boast or a 'yay me' - more as a phew and a thank god, as well as a thanks to all of you for your patience with my moaning. It's nearly winter so no doubt there'll be some more to come.

x

In

2011-08-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

We are in. In our new house, our new home, and the boxes have been emptied of their haphazard contents (and are now flattened and mountained up in one of the rooms that's waiting for furniture). We are in.

And it feels every bit as wonderful as I knew it would feel. I wake up happy, eager to get up out of bed and to start the day. I feel as if I'm on holiday (clearly this is helped by the unemployment factor) and I walk from room to room, marveling that I live here and that there are more than three rooms to walk between.

Right now I write to you from my newly christened 'writing room' (this is actually the first thing I've written in it - Book 2 is waiting patiently to be re-started). Currently the room is pink. Pink on pink in fact, because the walls are pastel pink and the carpet is dusky rose. It's also fairly sparse - just a desk (our old kitchen table), a filing cabinet, an empty bookcase and a chair. This will change in time - I want, for my writing room (known to J as the office, but whatever), a jungle of house plants (I'm hoping the resulting oxygen will inspire and energise me) and a bird feeder on the window sill. I may even paint (or stick those wall decal things) branches and birds on the walls and clutter the shelves with trinkets and ornaments of inspiration. Books will spill from the book-case and pile high on the desk and facebook will be banished to another room.All of that, in time, but for now I'm happy just typing in this sparse pink room, looking out over our garden and watching sparrows and squirrels.

One more thing before I go... we seem to have been adopted by a wild rabbit. I see him regularly and yesterday when J's family were visiting it seemed like he was following us around - sitting on the front step when we looked at the front flower beds, nibbling on the grass at the back when we sat on the deck. Weirdly, he seems to have burrowed into a big planter at the front of the house and has disguised his burrow by pulling bits of plants over the hole. I hope against hope that he's a she and she's pregnant and about to give birth to baby bunnies in a plant pot. Operation rabbit stake-out will be commencing at dusk.

I should be packing...

2011-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

...little wonder then that I'm blogging instead.

That toes-to-eyelash tingle I've been getting about our upcoming move has not diminished. In fact, on a quarter hourly basis I'm reminded of something I'm leaving or moving towards and the tingle starts all over. In deference to Jeremy, who loves our current apartment for reasons unclear, I wont list all the things I will not be missing. Instead, behold a list of all the things I'm am ridiculously excited about...!

1. Washing Machine. We had one, up until the day before we went to barbados and it broke with all holiday clothing in it (in a foot of soapy dirty water). But even when it worked that one wasn't very good and we're moving towards one that a) works and b) is under a year old. Clean clean clothes!

2. Washing line. There isn't one yet but there will be. I don't care that Americans seem to think that only 'Italians' dry their clothes outside. The English do too, and guess what, it's great.

3. Full sized appliances. A fridge, freezer, oven and dishwasher that were not built for hobbits, and are in sparkly shiny gonna-be-obssessive-about-cleaning-off-finger-prints metal.

4. Air conditioning. Not that I'd use it often, but seriously, the past few days have been ridiculously hot and it's not fun.

5. A Piano. There's space and we're not moving for a while, ergo for the first time in my adult life I get to have one.

6. A Kitten... ditto the above, with a little more Jeremy persuasion necessary.

7. Granite kitchen tops...impractical they may be, but they're so pretty.

8. The Bathtub! With the bubbles!

9. And while we're on the subject of bathrooms... a bathroom that is not essentially in the kitchen and has a lock and doesn't have mould / damp / fungus growing up the walls and doesn't spontaneously drop wall tiles on my head while showering. Too obvious I'm referencing our current place? Oh well.

10. What to pick for my final item? There are so many things! Ok, the fireplace. Because even though it's too hot to conceive of fire right now, just think how unbelieveably awesome it will be in the winter.

ok I'm done.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Moving

2011-07-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

This month we move house.

I can't wait - it is a tingle of excitement that starts in my toes and runs up to my eye-lashes every time I think about it. I never tried to settle in our current place - never cleaned the corners, so intent was I on moving as soon as possible - so I've never settled and the corners have remained thick with I-don't-want-to-know what. But OH, the new house, with its spare bedrooms and back yard... its kitchen big enough so that appliances can be stored (oh the novelty) IN the kitchen, maybe even ON the surfaces. And there's a bathtub that's deep enough for the water to cover my shoulders, and it has jacuzzi style bubble technology! (An aside: Americans seem to be anti-bath, or else think that only very short people take baths, because almost all American bath-tubs are stunted and shallow. Our new one is just stunted, and this will have to do)

I was thinking about it all yesterday and I realised that, not since I left home for university, have I known where I will be living 9 months ahead of time. Even my two year stint in London was plagued with the unsettled uncertainty of not knowing when / if J would move over and we would move apartments. That's my entire adult life spent in housing limbo. And it's all about to change.Yes, the annoying truth of our transatlantic marriage is that we'll never be completely certain that we're staying put, but for the time being we have a home. A home where I can let myself settle and clean the corners.

I tingle, I tell you.

Unemployment

2011-06-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I've refrained so far from writing about unemployment, inhibited by the idea that a potential employer could happen across my blog and somehow decide to use it against me. But 'unemployment' is becoming an ever loudening noise inside my head to the point that, some days, it precludes all other sound or thought.

Put simply, it sucks.

I'm not saying it doesn't have its benefits - I have just eaten lunch outside on the patio afterall and I didn't get up until 9.30am. But it does something to time, to days, where it sucks all the life out of them. I can't plan ahead to use all this time that I have because maybe, maybe, I'll get a job and then wont have the time to spare. So it sits, useless, passing me by. On days where I haven't planned anything - where I'm not volunteering or babysitting and there are no new jobs to apply to - the day passes in a haze. I do everything slowly and the smallest task requires the hugest amount of effort. My heart beats into my mouth every time the phone rings or an email pings; beats with hope that it'll be a job offer or interview invite. I miss the fatigue felt at the end of a work-day, miss even the occasional lingering clock-watching days; I miss the joy of leaving the office and reclaiming Time. I know all those reading this with full time jobs will be rolling their eyes in disbelief - the employed version of me, stuck in some parallel universe, certainly is - but it's the truth.

I want to be purposeful again. Volunteering helps but it's not the same. Writing helps but it's not yet been given the stamp of published approval, meaning it could just all be one long exercise in disappointment. I also really, really want to walk into Ted Baker and buy something entirely unnecessary but beautiful and to feel self-justified by the knowledge that I've worked hard for it, have endured multiple Monday mornings for it, have earned it. But, then again, I'm married now so maybe that guilt-free clothes purchase thing is a thing of the past... I need to get a job to find out.

A challenge

2011-06-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

I have recently started volunteering as a 1-1 English tutor. I signed up for it, thinking it'd be a bit like my beloved Time Together, where I could befriend a new arrival and we could muddle through the confusement of this crazy country together while I helped a little with English along the way.

It's nothing like that.

For a start, my tutee has been here longer than I have. Thirty years longer to be exact. So if anything he is more American than I may ever be (please note that it's not a particular goal of mine, in fact remaining English against all odds is more of the goal). And he can speak English - yes he has an accent, but so do I. But, after thirty years of living here, he's decided he now has the time and the motivation to learn to read and write in English, and that's where I come in.

If I were to choose two 'things' that define me in this world, beyond family and friends and Jeremy, I would say I am a reader and a writer. A reader first, because I've been doing it obsessively, compulsively, since I first learnt to, er, read. And my writing comes from reading - it's through reading that I've developed a habit of narrating my life as I live it. In my head, I should add, although it'd be pretty hilarious if I started doing it aloud, and often in the style of the book I'm reading at the time. In this way I think I was a writer long before I started committing words to the page. I use language, absolutely, to interpret my world and to interpret myself. Without words, actual words, with their roots and derivations, their specificity of spelling and fluidity of pronunciation, I would be lost.

But when faced with teaching someone, teaching an adult, how to read and write I panicked. I started to see my world of words, my language, so differently. With its rules that I never give a second thought to, that are so slippery and wriggly - almost impossible to pin down, entirely impossible (for me) to explain. To get anywhere I have to narrow my vision, to look at one small pocket of the language and explain only that, to ignore for the moment the exceptions to the rule - they will, I assume, come later. Knowing all the time that he should put no trust in this language, yet, because it will move and unbalance him the moment he thinks he has mastered a part of it. I'd never realised before this how inexact spoken English is, how vague and easy to misinterpret when it is not accompanied by the knowledge of its written form.

Sometimes it feels impossible. It is too vast. It needs to be learned intuitively, with the instinct and trust of a child - who casually accepts irregularities and soaks them up into their very being so that they become fact and truth and normal. But then I think how great a gift it is to learn to read, to learn that there are words that can describe frighteningly accurately who we are. Words we do not use in the every day but that exist as counterweights to our everydayness. Reassuring in their precision, their beauty.

So we plod on. My biggest fear is that I am doing a terrible job. I am a reader and a writer, but not a teacher, and I know that I will learn as much from this relationship as he will - probably even about my language (certainly the UK curriculum setters did my generation a disservice when they decided grammar lessons were inessential) but definitely about how to teach. If nothing else so far I have learned a deeper respect and wonder for this language of mine.

Everyone is having babies...

2011-06-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

Everyone is having babies. I don't think that's even much of an exaggeration. I now have skype dates with 'people' who still count their age in months and whose length is measured rather than their height.

It'd be fair to say that it's freaking me out a little bit.

I can feel a strengthening tug inside me towards motherhood. Granted it may just be a longing to claim a definition that is something other than 'unemployed' (how many people get pregnant as an easier option to job hunting??), but I think it's more than that. Even Jeremy is less horrified by the whole idea than he used to be (he used to equate having children to death, so it'll take a while). But the bit that's properly freaking me out is the fact that I'm here, not there. Having children in this country feels like a root too far - one which would be harder to pull up than the others. And, for reasons related to yesterday's post, along with the fact that my mommy and I are really close, I could never imagine having children when living more than like three miles away from my mother. (OK, thirty - ninety, no J I'm not suggesting we move to Dibley). Yet here I am, feeling that tug, living in America, and I'll be 28 this year.

Like I said, Jeremy's only now starting to revise his thinking that you decide to have children once you've resigned yourself to your life being over, so I imagine there's a ways to go yet before we actually are faced with these decisions, but it scares me. There's the matter of maternity leave (so much better in England, but you have to be living there for a while before in order to be eligible) and the fact that deciding to start 'trying' doesn't mean a baby will appear nine months later. Which all seems to mean if 'we' (read 'I') want to be in England when we have kids then shouldn't we start thinking about it like yesterday?

There aren't any answers to any of these questions I know, because life just isn't that plannable; but when, aged twelveish, I mapped out my ideal life (married by 24, children by 25... I KNOW!) I never thought that moving continents would be something I'd have to worry about. (Nor did I have nightmares about my children being unable to say Worcestershire sauce.)

Ah well.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to shower and change in time for a skype date with a two month old.

In remembrance

2011-06-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Today is my brother's birthday. As far as the majority of the world is concerned, I don't have a brother, but I actually have two, or had two, depending how you look at it. I have two brothers who died while still babies. One, Samuel, before I was born and the other, Joseph, when I was two and a half. They died from what may or may not be an unidentified genetic disorder of which the girls in my family may or may not be carriers, if there's anything to be a carrier of (there have been various tests, each one being less conclusive than the one before). Today is Joseph's birthday. He would be 25.

I often imagine who they would have been - who they are, in that parallel world where they didn't die. A mechanic perhaps, or an artist. Maybe they'd be quiet and more serious like me or quick and deliberate like my sister. I've never pinned down an imagined character for either of them - they are nebulous in my mind, full of possibilities. The only thing I'm sure of is my love for them - we would love and like each other, I'm certain of that. They would drive me crazy and we would love each other fiercely. Because that is how our family is.

I think the loss of them has brought us all closer, bound us more tightly, for we know that it is possible to lose and what it feels like, so we love more intentionally and deliberately because of it. We do not talk about them often, but their loss is a presence in our family - one that we wouldn't be without, given we don't have them - and we remember their birthdays as a way of saying outwardly that we have not forgotten. We do not need to say it inwardly. Today is Joseph's birthday. He would be 25.

writing

2011-05-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

Writing is like painting a still life. There is what it should look like and there is what I am capable of painting. I know how it should look, how the colours should blend. I can see the outline of shadows and the glare of light. I can see it but recreating it, pinning it down and forcing it to paper is quite another thing.

The added difficulty is of course that I can't actually see it, only imagine it. The story that I have envisaged poses a question and it is my task to answer it, working through problems of words and character, slowly drawing out its true form which has been there all along waiting for me to wake up and realise it. It nags and it tugs and it never fully stops hassling until it's perfect, and of course it's never perfect.

It puts me on edge. In the way I used to be when I was at university - there is always something I should be doing, always a puzzle to unravel. I can never fully relax or forget, like a forgotten name on the tip of my tongue, my mind is rolling it and prodding it, trying to solve the problem.

I love it and I hate it and I'm not remotely convinced I'm capable of writing another book, even though I know it's there, waiting patiently for me to write it.

It should also be noted that my first book is far from finished, I'm just waiting for a kindly editor to come along and tell me what to do.

Too much information

2011-05-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

We are once again, tentatively and nervously, putting in an offer on a house. Our realtor suggested that before we did so, we checked out crime stats and sex offenders in the area. Not that sex offenders can't move, but just to check there wasn't one next door, because, y'know, that might hurt resale value. So along we trundled to the sex offenders register and I don't think I'll ever be quite the same again.

Because I had no idea that the sex offenders register here not only tells me the name of any level 3 (the highest level) sex offenders local to any area I search , but also their address, list of crimes and provides me a photograph.

Am I alone in failing to see how this helps anyone?

It doesn't help me - unless I'm prepared to live my life in fear and to memorise photos and addresses, and even then that doesn't insulate me from possible attacks, because there's such a thing as first-time offender or un-prosecuted offender or not-having-eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head.

Perhaps parents would feel it helps them - perhaps they'd like to tell their children who to avoid, or would like to not buy houses on streets close to pedophiles. I mean, no parent is going to intentionally buy a house next door to a pedophile, so maybe in some way it helps parents. But doesn't that also generate a false sense of security (for all the reasons that I wouldn't be safe even if I committed the sex offenders registry to memory)? And why, if it's just about where to live, can it not just be a dot on a map rather than a face with a name?

But what shocks me the most about the whole thing is the complete lack of trust in any system of law that it displays. What it says is that a) these people are not (and will never be) rehabilitated and b) that there is no such thing as suitable punishment. It also says that the institutions that should be safeguarding children - the ones who should be doing background checks before hiring staff - are not to be trusted.

How can anyone ever re-enter society and move on and not re-offend if that society is watching them, ostracising them, waiting for them to re-offend? I know that sex offenders do re-offend, I know that allowing them to reintegrate into society isn't a sure-fire way by any means to stop re-offending, but it seems to me that creating a sub-class of people, publicising addresses and photographs is a sure-fire way to generate bitterness and hatred and to encourage re-offending.

In the UK, as I understand it, the sex offenders register is accessible by certain institutions and police do keep track of where sex offenders move to. This also, of course, shows a lack of faith in rehabilitation, but it's probably a realistic lack of faith, and we do need to protect our children.

There is a voluntary organization called 'Circles of Support and Accountability' that operates in the UK, Canada and some parts of the US whereby 3 - 4 trained volunteers form a "Circle of Support and Accountability" around an ex-offender, with the aim of preventing re-offending. A study of the scheme in California showed that participants in the scheme had 83% less sexual re-offending than the matched comparison group. Obviously there are factors such as that the ex-offenders who choose to take part do not want to re-offend, but that can not account for the entire difference in re-offending rates.

I've never written a blog post like this before, and I probably won't again, but I was so shocked by the discovery of this register with its names and addresses and photographs that I wanted to share it with you. I know one thing - I only looked at two of the names, out of curiosity that it was possible more than anything, but I don't feel safer. I feel less safe, and nothing has actually changed in my area beyond this knowledge. I have to say I think America's got it wrong on this one.

that buzz of homesickness

2011-05-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

This week, homesickness returned. It's never fully and completely gone, but since those first few home-sick months it has retreated to a low buzz in the background, entirely manageable and mostly ignorable. Until it comes back. And when it does come back, it hits me in the chest and knocks the air out of me, leaving me feeling incomplete and lost in this foreign life of mine. Longing for familiar voices, food, friends.

So I mope around the house, with Jeremy reminding me that it's all entirely hormonal (it's been 'that' time of the month afterall). 'That doesn't matter'. I say. 'I still feel crap'. 'But it's got to help to know it's not real, it's not forever', is his point. It's a valid point.

But real or hormone fueled, I hate this feeling. It makes me feel insubstantial, awkward, unwilling to be in a group of people that are not MY people, because although I do have some people here, I do not have a gaggle of them.

The homesickness has retreated again, back to its normal level of buzz. But I am left a little startled by how quickly it swept in, scared by the realisation that it is never far away - always at striking distance.

But then I suppose I knew that already.

So

2011-05-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

So I managed (somehow, inexplicably, miraculously) to get an agent. A living breathing agent who likes my book and believes it has potential and sends me editorial comments so that I can make it better and more publishable (or maybe just publishable).

An agent.

Wow.

Thank you God, thank you friends, thank you Jeremy for making unemployment = time-to-write rather than time-to-move-in-with-my-parents. Of course this doesn't mean that I actually will get published, but it means I have a better chance than if it was just little old me sending of my manuscript to publishers without another edit and without making it publishier (I've noticed that the more I get into writing, the less attention I pay to whether words are actually words).

That's all.

Jeremy got bitten by an ant.

2011-04-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday night, Jeremy got bitten by an ant. I know because he woke me up to tell me and then proceeded to tell me by:

-leaving me a note
-sending me a text message
-writing me an email
-posting me a letter (stamped, addressed and everything) which I received today.

So, because he clearly feels the need to share this piece of information, I thought I'd tell the world (or all 40 odd people who read this).

It's not a particularly normal thing to do, right? But when Jeremy commits to a joke, he commits. For all I know there's a plane writing 'An ANT bit me' in the sky right now. It wouldn't surprise me. And this is one of the reasons I love my husband. Because, abnormal as he is, he makes me laugh. A lot, and often.

A ( relatively short) revelation

2011-04-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

You know how in England, if a person said they lived in the South-West, that would mean that if you were to look at a map of England and mark off the South-West of the map, you'd probably have a rough idea of where this person was from. Anyone could do it. Even someone who had never heard of England. They'd be able to follow simple compass directions and work out roughly where you were from. Right?

Well.

In America it does not work this way. In America, a person can say they are from the South of the country and another person (say, me) could think about compass directions and draw a rough area on the map and might come up with a state in the south of the country. Like, perhaps, Texas. Fair enough, right? It's dead center and directly south.

But that person (the 'me' person) would be wrong.

Because, as I have very recently realised, American regions have stuff all to do with compass directions. In fact, you need a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the American civil war, of Mason Dixon lines and early settlements. The South, as Americans know it, isn't 'south' at all... it's south-ish... South East perhaps. Texas, apparently (which actually is south) doesn't conform to any compass directions and is simply 'Texas'.

And don't even get me started on the 'Mid' West.

Sigh.

It should be noted that it has taken me seven years to figure this out.

On fear.

2011-03-12T19:14:00.000-08:00

I've told you all already that I'm writing a book. I don't mean to go on about it, but it takes up so much head space I can't help it. Plus, somehow, in admitting it here, I am taking those first baby steps towards hoping that in writing a book I may one day be able to call myself a writer. Like in the boxes where I currently write 'unemployed' or, recently, 'homemaker' (which is a bit of a joke but they didn't have unemployed as an option), I might one day be able to honestly and unpretentiously put 'writer. Maybe.

I'm scared. Of rejection, yes, but right now I'm scared of what must come before rejection. I'm scared to believe in myself, to allow myself to hope. I'm scared to let other people see me hoping, in case they see me as some poor delusional reject like the ones they exploit on American idol.

Let me take you back fourteen years or so. Which makes me approximately thirteen. I had bushy short hair, acne and braces. I had to wear a blazer and tie to school. By this point I'd figured out that wearing my tie short and my shirt untucked just made me look more ridiculous than I already did so instead I wore them properly and, in doing so, conformed myself nicely to the geek stereotype. I hated school. I wasn't bullied, not really, but I felt stifled there. The uniform, the compulsory maths lessons, the unavoidable social cliques.

I wanted desperately to stand out and be different, to be exceptional in something. In my eyes, my only real talent was playing the piano. So I practiced. Three - four hours a night of playing. Obsessive playing so that one wrong note would send me back to the beginning again. Even today my little sister can't hear those pieces without crying out in despair. I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist. Never mind that I had acute performance anxiety - that my entire body shook when I played in front of anyone - I wanted to be brilliant. So I came up with a plan to audition at England's best music school, which conveniently happened to be a few miles down the road.

My parents took me to look around. The school is old and rich. Parts of Harry Potter were filmed at it. It smells of stone and had long corridors with doors behind which budding musicians played. I spoke to the headmaster and let my eyes sparkle when I talked about playing piano. We scheduled an audition.

My piano teacher came first thing every morning for a fortnight and I practiced before school. Finally the day came and I went and played my pieces. I played well, with feeling, a few wrong notes but that's not surprising given how nervous I was.

I wasn't good enough.

I had chosen the wrong pieces, I had poor technique, did I not realise that only the top 1% of musicians are good enough for this school?

To this day I cannot remember crying more bitter tears, cannot remember ever again feeling quite so crushed. I still played after that but less and less. My performance anxiety got worse so I stopped accompanying the school choir, stopped practicing as hard or as often, stopped learning new pieces.

It is this that I think of when I start to tell people I want to be a writer. It is that feeling that I remember and that fear I have to overcome.

That line between independence and loneliness

2011-03-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

The past month or so Jeremy has been MIA. Well, that's not entirely true, I know where he is but he's not here and when he is here, he's working in a language I don't understand so he may as well not be here.

The language is 'Java', which brings to mind coffee and a far off land, but in Jeremy's reality means writing in 'code' and something about algorithms. Had to spell check that one.

The reason is that he's taken on an evening course in addition to his normal job. The course is through Harvard, which means it's difficult and he seems to be doing more work on this one module than I can ever recall doing in an entire year of modules when studying English Lit.

When he started out working late, it was a novelty. I quite enjoyed being the cool wife who was ever-so understanding and supportive. It helped that he wasn't having fun and that he took time to apologise for working late. What also helped was that for the first time in a year I was cooking for myself alone. Cue instantaneous return to Dr Oetker's frozen pizza, fish-fingers chips and beans, jacket potatoes and a not small amount of red wine from a box. After a year of eating like an adult and cooking proper meals (or being cooked them - I'm not the model of traditional housewifery, never fear), the sudden freedom to just eat what I wanted and not having to worry about whether Jeremy would want to eat it was quite liberating.

Equally liberating was my having a car and being brave enough to drive it. I was going out and doing things without Jeremy, coming home and cooking a satisfyingly un-nutritious meal and settling down to watch medical dramas. Bliss.

Until now when the novelty has totally worn off. I'm back to cooking proper meals (because there's only so much Dr Oetker one can eat before realising one's skin is turning grey from lack of vitimins), Greys Anatomy is doing that weird break-in-series thing that American TV does annoyingly often and the only places I can think of to drive to involve shopping, and I've already done a fair amount of that in the past month. Yes I could drive to art galleries and be all cultured, but... yea.

I miss Jeremy. And J, I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty - like I said, the fact that you're not having any fun makes it all much easier. I'm writing this because, well, because I'm sat here thinking about driving to the library (essentially just somewhere else to sit and mess about online) and pondering what to do with myself for another evening spent alone after another day spent alone and I'm willing May to hurry up and get here so that Jeremy's course can be over and we can get back to eating nutritious meals together.

On the bright side, it's pancake day tomorrow (I moved it). Which, if you don't know what it is, is essentially the singular greatest contribution England has given to the world and I have appointed myself as a pancake-day evangelist. So tomorrow, nutrition be damned, I'm cooking a thousand pancakes in ingenious ways and feeding them to friends.

Maybe I'll go buy eggs.

(I should insert a don't-worry-about-me disclaimer. I babysat on monday, went to a women's day event on tuesday and had an interview on wednesday. Life is not as dull as I'm making it out to be. Except for right now this minute and maybe a few minutes yesterday. But I do miss Jeremy)

One year on.

2011-02-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

I am nearing a year. A year of America, a year of marriage, a year of living far far away from 90% of the people I love most. And I sailed past a year of unemployment over a month ago.

One whole year.

And here's the thing. The thing I breathe in and out with relief and thankfulness and more relief:

I'm happy.

Not just happy, I'm happy and I am in love. That quiet stillness that I found on a beach in cape cod almost a year ago has stayed with me. One year on and I love my husband and I'm happy.

Of course I'm not supposed to say I'm relieved. I'm supposed to act as though I knew all along that this would work and we'd be happy. But I am not a person that ever really knows anything, and there were quite a few massive variables at play. Things like us not having lived on the same continent in years and my frightening potential for being completely overwhelmed by homesickness. This whole year has been a massive exercise in trust for me. Trusting myself that I made the right decision to move and marry, trusting Jeremy that he trusted himself, trusting in God for strength and the ability to take the year one day at a time.

And now, one year on I can say that I know:

I know that J and I work, that when we argue we make up within the hour and that he can make me smile even on my darkest and mopeyest of days. I know that I'm resilient enough to live 3000 miles away from family and still be happy, even though I miss them every day. I know that missing people doesn't equal misery, that the fact of having people to miss is in a way a blessing. I know that I am stubborn enough to hold onto my accent, even if occasionally when asking for water or butter or informing J's grandma that the soup flavour is tomato, I have to begrudgingly drop 't's and alter vowels, just for the ease of being understood. I know that I can make friends and, through doing so, that I can still be myself here - with my funny accent and love of pashminas - that the 'spark' of 'me' is not lost in this big new world.

I know I can be ok.

A year ago today, I was one sleep away from moving to America, and I did not 'know' any of the above. I only hoped and trusted for it - based on the knowledge of years of loving Jeremy and knowing myself.

Thank God it all turned out OK.

Seriously.

Fraud

2011-02-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

For the next three weeks I have the use of a car, which is good but it also completely negates all excuses for not driving on my own. I have driven on my own a bit, but only really on routes I already know well and only short distances. Today I drove on the highway to a previously unvisted destination. And I didn't die.

Yesterday I drove to the supermarket and bought groceries (I've completely forgotten what we'd say in lieu of groceries in England... is it just 'food'?).

Yes I know this is all very mundane, and when I demand praise from Jeremy for such things, he looks at me like I'm asking for praise for learning to tie shoe-laces or count to ten, but it comes with the weirdest feeling. I feel exactly like an adult in disguise. As if I've donned adult clothing and am moving around undetected amongst other adults, but really I know I'm only an impostor.

I'm wondering whether this feeling will ever rub off, or whether it's just going to get worse when I'm a home owner or parent. And when I get wrinkles and grey hair, is it just going to feel like a more elaborate disguise? I'm not saying I feel young in that 'you're only as young as you feel' sort of BS, I'm saying I feel incompetent and unworthy. A total fraud.

To make matters worse I got asked if I was a teenager today.

It seems the disguise isn't all that good.

Mouse-trap.

2011-02-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Our apartment has mice. They're fairly polite - they don't come out and scare me or eat the bread we store on top of the microwave. They stay in one particular cupboard and only occasionally make noise enough to prevent me from denying their existence. I've been ignoring them because a) I don't want them to exist and it seems a good way to go about things and b) we're moving. soon. and I'm putting off all unpleasant jobs in this house until I no longer live here and don't have to do them.

That is until yesterday when Jeremy produced mousetraps I didn't know we had and decided to catch them. What follows is an instant-messaging conversation and the drama that ensued.

me: I think we may have just attempted to trap a mouse...

Jeremy: what do you mean?

me: I heard the trap go.And I don't want to find out

Jeremy: oh yeah? I emptied it this morn

me: serious? ugh

Jeremy: yeah

me: please PLEASE can we make an offer this week?????

Jeremy: theres a plastic bag with a mouse outside teh door. Ha.

me: nice

... (10 minutes or so pass)

Jeremy: did you check the mousetrap?

me: nope. Because if I check it and it has a dead mouse in it, I'll have to do something about it and I really
don't want to

Jeremy: you just lift the spring

me: right but there's a dead mouse underneath it. I don't like dead animals much

Jeremy: me either

me: no but they're yours.

Jeremy: why

me: I'm not sure but they are

me: I didn't set the traps

Jeremy: I did because of you

me: no you did because you got fed up of losing chickpeas.I was perfectly happy pretending that I didn't know they were there but now there's a dead one so I can't do that anymore.

The conversation ends there but in my head I know that there's a dead mouse in the chickpea cupboard. There are cans and stuff in there too, but I'm guessing the mouse was mostly interested in the dried chickpeas, of which there are many. I steel myself and go and look in the cupboard. Sure enough there's a mouse in the trap. What I wasn't prepared for was quite how mouse-like it looked, or how big its eyes were.

What follows is a comedic and stereotypically female response involving rubber gloves, a phone call to Jeremy, tears (of sadness for the mouse, illogical fear for me and hilarity, all rolled into one) and much hopping to and fro. I cover the mouse with a shroud (made of kitchen towel) so that I don't have to look at it and attempt to release it from the trap and into its grave (made of a plastic bag outside the back door...Jeremy's earlier mouse is also in it so it's fast becoming a mass grave). Cue more hopping, heart racing, tears and one bit where I thought it wasn't completely dead and dropped it on the floor. Eventually I get it together and deposit the mouse into the bag and wash my hands about 10 times.

I do not reset the trap.

An epiphany of sorts.

2011-01-31T10:10:00.000-08:00

Today, as if from nowhere, I realised something about myself that most of you probably already know.

I am impulsive.

This came as a surprise because in so many ways I'm not at all impulsive. When asked at a party recently whether I would prefer to 'burn out or fade away' (no context given then so none given now), I immediately chose to 'fade away'. Burning out sounds far too tiring and potentially sudden.

My idea of impulsive people is one of rash devil-may-care (not sure what that means exactly but it seems appropriate) attitudes. People who don't take extra pairs of shoes out with them in case the heels end up being the insensible choice they know them to be. People who aren't afraid of flying, who don't purposely travel at the back of tube trains (because a sensible terrorist wouldn't strike there). People whose favourite activity of all time is not reading.

But the evidence speaks for itself.

When it comes to big, life changing, should-really-spend-some-time-thinking-about-this decisions, I make them in an instant.

Go and visit man in America I've known for 5 days? Naturally

Embark on long-distance relationship when all evidence points to them being painful and, ultimately, disastrous? OK

Do Masters as a way to live in America? Sure thing (this was literally decided in an airport when saying goodbye to Jeremy)

Marry American and move whole life over there with no guarantees of employment or, well, anything? Easy (well, not easy, as you'll know from all my moaning, but the decision was made pretty quickly).

I think I've proved my point. In almost every area of my life, where big decisions are concerned, I listen with my heart. Move with my heart. And when my head catches up I ignore it until my heart makes the argument and wins it around.

Recently this has been a little problematic.

Because Jeremy is the opposite. When it comes to the small everyday things that I'm careful and sensible about, he's as headstrong and carefree as you like. He'll travel on any carriage of a tube train without a passing thought, thinks airplane turbulence is 'fun' and enjoys scuba diving at night in deathly cold temperatures. And on the small things he doesn't think twice - he throws himself into his hobbies with abandon. Bread baking, beer brewing, cheese making, vinegar fermenting. All things that I'd be cautious about because they take up so much time / the equipment costs money / they smell bad , he doesn't give a second thought. But on the big things he takes his time. Chews things over. Considers, weighs, deliberates.

I suppose you could argue that he's made the same decisions as me. He too long-distance-relationshipped and married a foreigner (one who practically wrote into the marriage vows a future move to her homeland). But he did so carefully, with thought. I made up my mind in an instant, Jeremy took, well, longer.

The reason it's been problematic of late is because we are house hunting. And we've found a house. A beautiful, party-perfect, walking-distance-to-shops-and-restaurants house which is not in danger of being consumed by a mud-slide and which doesn't have a septic system that will need replacing in a year. And there's granite in the kitchen and beams on the ceilings and a deck.

So you can guess my decision making process on this matter.

And Jeremy's.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending how sensible you are), Jeremy is the one with the power in this decision making process. And by power I mean he's the one who's managed to save more than 10 pounds (that's coinage, not weight) in his life. And I do understand that when you've saved enough to buy a beautiful house, you might want to be careful and considered in how / when you part with those savings. You might want to understand the process and be fully aware of all potential pitfalls.

I understand, but it doesn't stop me from jumping up and down with excitement / impatience, waiting for his head to catch up with my heart.

And yes, I also accept that it's a bloody good thing he's the one with the savings power, because I'd have probably bought the house before this house. The one with the septic system and a hill ready to avalanche into it at the next rainstorm.

Uniform

2011-01-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

Jeremy has accused me of using this blog as a moaning forum. He's probably right, but it's light-hearted moaning.

On that note, let me talk to you about cold.

This week has seen temperatures drop to record lows. We're talking -15 degrees C and landlords phoning up to tell us to keep taps(faucets) running throughout the night so that the pipes don't freeze and explode. We're also talking waking up to an apartment that's 12 degrees C.

No, don't call domestic abuse hotlines on my behalf, it's OK - I don't mind the heating being off over night and yes I do turn it on the second I manage to summon the will to exit my electric-blanketed bed.

But despite heat, there is still a chill in the air and consequently I have developed a uniform of cold resistance that I don upon waking.

This consists of:

Fuggs - because I can't afford real Uggs and I only wear them inside anyway...although I think they are responsible for the million electric shocks I've been getting whenever I touch anything, including soup.

Pyjamas / leggings / jeans - in that order, depending on how dressed I decide to get that day.

Chunky socks and / or legwarmers - worn over bottom of trousers to prevent drafts.

A million T-shirt type layers - no explanation necessary.

Massive jumper (sweater) - ditto on the explanation.

Scarf - because my neck is always the first thing to get cold.

Fingerless Gloves - aka homeless-person-gloves... although my reason for wearing them is so I can type. If I were a homeless person, I think I'd be wearing finger-full gloves.

Snuggie / Blanket - the Snuggie is a new addition and I only actually put my arms through the arm holes in emergency situations or for comedy value. It's supposed to be worn like an oversized and overfluffy hospital gown, complete with a pocket for the remote, just incase you're too cold or comfortable to reach for it on the coffee-table. However I prefer to wear it like an oversized wizards cape, with a tiny hunchback (from the remote pocket).

Hat. Also only worn in emergency situations. But they can and do happen.

And finally the all important hot water bottle. On hand for emergencies and bed-time. I was amazed to discover that Americans seem to have misplaced the knowledge of this time-honoured warming device. I thin kthis has a lot to do with their ignorance of the super cute teddy-bear-esque covers you can buy to go over them. I am hearby starting a campaign to bring them back in all their teddy-bear covered glory.

So there you have it. The Boston Winter Uniform for all sensible human beings (that don't have to go to work). The only thing I'm missing so far is a nose warmer. I don't know if these exist but they should, because my nose is eternally chilly.

HA! I just did a quick google search and they do exist. I think I may be risking my marriage if I were to include this in my uniform though. And my self respect.

procrastinating in unusual ways.

2011-01-21T09:31:00.000-08:00

So I'm busy applying for jobs while it blizzards outside. The snow and I aren't great friends at the moment, but I'm campaigning to go sledging (sledding) tomorrow at an attempt at reconciliation.

Job applications. (Boo hiss). For the first time in my life though I'm using job search as procrastination tool. Something I can do and pretend to be productive when I really 'should' be doing something else.

What I 'should' be doing (and Jeremy would probably favour my procrastination activity, hence the inverted commas) is writing.

Deep breath.

For the past 6 months or so I've been writing a book. A story that may or may not adopt the form of an actual book. I feel ridiculous admitting that. It feels like admitting I'm auditioning for the X-Factor, following a long-held belief in my talent for singing. I should say here that while I do hope for fame and fortune (and by fame and fortune I mean a book on a shelf in a shop somewhere. I'm not hoping to be the next JK Rowling), I'm also realistic enough to realise that it's highly unlikely. I should also say that it's targeted at 14 year olds. No Ian McEwan or David Mitchell genius here. Oh and I definitely haven't spent every waking minute of those 6 months writing. The vast majority have probably been spent on facebook and watching various American medical dramas.

But either way it's true. And it's provided me with sanity- a sense of productivity, of non-worthlessness - while I've been busy being unemployed. And it's finished. Finished in the sense that it's got an ending. Not finished in the sense that I can stop working on it. Because after 'finishing' comes editing, which turns out is harder than writing in the first place. I feel like I've been posed a complicated maths problem that's niggling away in my head every waking minute. I have plans of attack, but very little attacking motivation. Or perhaps attacking ability.

So instead I'm applying for jobs, while sitting on the couch watching re-runs of 'House'.

(When is Hugh Laurie going to realise that he's just regurgitating the same episode every week and go back to speaking with an English accent and being hilarious?)

I suppose it's a fairly sensible procrastination technique - so that when I don't become a successful writer, I at least might have a job interview or two. Except I don't stand a chance if I don't cut the crap and start editing...

I'll start next week.

Ditto for the post new-year diet.

And exercise...

... although probably not exercise.

Snow.

2011-01-18T06:51:00.000-08:00

"Whaddya mean you're stuck here?"

Jeremy says as I look out the window morosely, seeing yet another layer of snow falling down to further complicate any path I might want to take to anywhere that isn't our apartment.

"I mean, unless I want a full on expedition out of here then getting anywhere is pretty tough"

"Nah. Stop being negative. Snow is awesome."

I disagree. Snow is only awesome when you're at the top of a hill, sledge in hand, ready to whizz your way to the bottom. The rest of the time, snow is inconvenient, wet and cold. And everywhere. In the past two weeks we've had about 3 feet of snow. None of which has melted, all of which has been ploughed so that the roads are lined with snow-walls. Any attempt to walk along the pavement (sidewalk) is thwarted by intermittent snow walls and the fact that home-owners are responsible for the pavement outside their house and therefore the quality of shovelling corresponds to the errr quality of the homeowner.

Jeremy and I leave it all up to our landlord, who has a snow-blower so it's all fine

So, here I am, a newly anointed driver who as yet has only summoned the courage to drive across town to Walgreens and who definitely does not possess the courage to drive on/in snow (nevermind the fact that my husband has taken the car to work) and unless I'm prepared to snow-shoe my way into town (which I'm not), then I'm stuck here.

Oh and it was 57degrees in the apartment when I woke up this morning.

On the up-side I got given a 'snuggie' (blanket with arm holes and a curious pocket which I think is meant for the remote) for christmas.

Does it get any bleaker than this???

It's Christmas...

2010-12-23T10:55:00.000-08:00

That inevitable time of year that I've had mixed feelings about ever since the year the gravy boat broke mid-pour and deposited gravy all over the table and with it a substantial amount of stress.

Some of my favourite Christmases have been the simplest ones. The one in America when I was 5 and we got a plastic tree for the hotel room and quite possibly ate at red-lobster (I recently discovered that I'm possibly the only person in MA ever to have seen, let alone eaten at, a red lobster. Although I doubt I was allowed lobster.). The one where everyone got snowed in so it was just my immediate family and an oversized turkey. The one where we cooked chinese food instead (although I'm not sure that ever happened - I think I just wanted it to happen). My Mum went mental for Christmas. She used to have our next-door-neighbour write the Santa letters with her left hand, just in case we were smart enough to recognise our neighbour's handwriting. She also once tramped sooty boots all through the house at an attempt at Santa authenticity. And we got a photo of rudolph (taken I think at the natural history museum in DC which they'd visited that year.)

This year Christmas will be spent with Jeremy's extended family. There will be no crackers (no not those sorts of crackers), mince-pies or Christmas pudding and there will probably be salad served with a roast dinner (this isn't a bad thing btw, it's just weird for English people).

It's strange, contemplating a time so rich with tradition and all my traditions are 3000 miles away. I don't mind, mostly because I'm going home on the 27th and will insist on having crackers with every meal and will most likely eat my weight in mince-pies (I attempted to make them but the only mince-meat I could buy here tastes faintly of soap). But without my sister bouncing off the walls with excitement and waking me up about 5 hours too early and my Mum camped out behind the sofa wrapping top-secret presents, it just doesn't quite feel like Christmas. But maybe that's just being an adult...maybe Christmas wont be Christmas again until I have children to lie to...

...In which case Christmas can wait a few more years.

Officially Adulted...

2010-12-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

On Friday I passed my driving test.

I'll repeat.

On Friday I PASSED my driving test.

All yee who have been driving since birth will fail to understand the monstrous enormity of this accomplishment in my world. But driving, to me, has been a massive wall in my head that I could not scale. Maths is a similar wall, along with assembling Ikea furniture. But while I may (will) never conquer the wall of Maths, I have conquered driving and I am absurdly proud of myself.

Here is the tale of my scaling the driving wall:

1. Got my provisional license (permit) aged 18 - a little late but still an acceptable age.

Didn't use it.

2. Started having lessons over the summer when I was 19. Stopped after I returned to uni and a) couldn't afford it and b) couldn't be bothered.

3. Spent 8 years coming up with a mountain of reasons for why I didn't need to drive. Things like being environmentally friendly (total BS since I was flying across the atlantic every 4 months), and not needing to because of public transport (and friends with cars) and money of course (in England you have to be insured on whatever car you're learning on and it's not cheap).

But really I was just afraid. Terrified, in fact. I used to have a recurring nightmare that I was driving and I didn't know how or I couldn't open my eyes. When I barely trust myself to carry a glass across a room (not many people have songs made up about the clumsiness of their hands), putting myself in charge of tons of moving metal didn't seem like the best of plans.

And then I moved to America, which leads us to

4. No longer able to rely on public transport to get me everywhere and faced with the fact that EVERYONE drives here (and thinks you're a mutant if you don't know how) and that I'll likely need to if/when I actually gain employment, I took the theory test to get my permit and then...

5. Did nothing for about 6 months. But then I...

6. Interviewed for a job that involved a ton of driving so decided I really should learn how. And so a few nights a week (like at 11pm) Jeremy and I would brave the roads and carparks of Waltham and slowly, slowly I learned to drive. I had multiple temper tantrums and one panic attack but eventually I pretty much got the hang of it and I booked my test.

7. Took the test with my dear mother-in-law sat dutifully in the back seat and all was going well (well, not 'well' exactly but I hadn't yet failed) until I drove through a stop sign.

Yes, I said it, I failed my first test because I drove through a stop sign. Classic. I was not amused. But, thankfully, driving through stop signs is a fairly easy flaw to rectify so I rebooked my test and

8. Then I passed.Only 9 years after I first got my provisional license I passed. Not with flying colours mind you, but I don't really care about the colours provided I never have to take that test again...

...oh yea...

9. When I move back to England I will have to retake the test and learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road and drive on roads ridiculously narrow and windy and terrifying...

10. Before that though I need to summon the courage to drive somewhere, anywhere, on my own.

The approach of blobdom.

2010-12-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Since I last posted, my little sister got engaged and the temperature has dropped. As far as I know the two are unrelated.

Beyond that, nothing has changed. I am fast falling into the routine I struggled against all year, which basically means sleeping in too late and then being unable to fall asleep at a respectable hour and therefore visciousising the circle. It's the cold I tell you. And the laziness.

Spell check just told me that every word in the above paragraph is miss-spelt. I find this hard to believe.

So yes, the laziness. It's bad. I'm in mortal-danger of becoming a blob. I do lunges as a way to get around the house in an effort to stave off total blob-dom and I've given up beer (because I don't really like it anyway and it seemed like an easy way to cut out calories) and drinking on weeknights (unless it's absolutely necessary), but I fear that my total lack of movement is likely to catch up with me at some point. If it hasn't already - I'll be conducting an opinion poll when I'm back in the UK over Christmas, although with the added variables of (proper) roast-dinners, galaxy, mince-pies, sausages and prawn cocktail crisps being available it may not be a fair test.

The problem with the temperature is that it's only going to drop further and will soon be followed by snow and ice and these things are going to prohibit me from moving anywhere at any speed, even if I am inclined to move, and thus perpetuating my rapid demise. It's not like I've ever been one for exercise, but I have been licenseless and employed (paid or otherwise), which has necessitated walking everywhere. Now I am unemployed, and while I'm writing a lot as a means to occupy myself, having fit-fingers isn't going to help much.The only thing for it is to get my license and a car and to drive to the nearest gym and exercise there. Yes I know that sentence contains many things that seem unlikely or impossible. Stop laughing.

Oh if only I could curl up in a cupboard and slow my heart-rate down to barely perceptible levels and sleep out the winter...although I'm currently making a fairly good go at it.

Dear Thanksgiving...

2010-11-24T17:01:00.000-08:00

I do love you so. Entirely because you are a 'holiday' based solely on food... and gratitude, technically...

I was a teensy bit shocked recently though when I realised that the original thanksgiving began with pilgrims breaking bread with the 'indians' and, well, we've all seen 'dancing with wolves' and know how that turned out. So it does seem slightly ummmm strange to carry on pretending that all was friendly and helpful and thanksworthy. But hey, that's probably just me.

But still, if we overlook your somewhat dubious claims to origins of goodwill to all mankind, I appreciate you. And for this reason I'm going to do a cliched and self indulgent list of things I am grateful for: I warn you, parts/all of it may be soppy.

1. For Jeremy. Anytime I feel lost or disheartened, lonely or fed-up I think of Jeremy and feel unbelievably blessed to have him in my life on a daily basis and for us to be growing this marriage of ours. Yes he makes vinegar out of smushed up peaches and lays out a welcome mat to fruit flies, and he watches impossible amounts of Family Guy/ The Simpsons / South Park etc etc, but that's insignificant in comparison

2. For Grace. I don't much talk about God or faith, because I struggle to define myself within the parameters of the popular definitions available to me, but I do have a faith and this year I have felt so blessed and looked after. So many times I have felt entirely incapable and so many times great things have happened despite me... Jeremy can take some credit here also.

3. For family, and the fact that although they are 3000 miles away, they remain my most precious source of strength and support.

4. For friends, new and old. Making friends was the thing I was worried most about when I moved here and funnily enough has been the easiest thing. Jobs and driving on the other hand...And for old friends who have done a brilliant job at keeping in touch (shout out to Abs for sending me chocolate often enough that I still love chocolate and haven't been reprogrammed to think it's all hershey's and nasty.)...thanks to everyone in advance for visiting me in 2011!!

I warned you it was soppy. But tis the season after all.
x

You know it's time to move...

2010-11-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

... when your apartment starts attacking you with bathroom tiles.

(I failed my driving test by the way folks... I've rebooked and will reveal the exact hilarious reason why I failed after I've passed)

But anyway...

There I am, taking my customary afternoon shower (because by the time I've got up, had coffee, checked email and caught up on whatever cheesey hospital dramas Jeremy refuses to tolerate it's more often than not the afternoon) when not one but 2 tiles come crashing down from above the shower head. Quite how they didn't hit me I'm not sure.

After reassuring myself that there wasn't a poltergeist (this involved waiting for tiles to start flying at me from all directions...that this was among my first thoughts says something about me) I washed the remaining conditioner out of my hair, standing as far away from the zone of tile-fire as possible, and then made a decision:

It's time to move.

Problem is I've known it was time to move since before I moved in. It was one of my conditions of moving here in the first place - along with learning to drive and getting a job...ahem...And we are looking for a place to buy, it's just not been found yet. I've come to the conclusion that realtors (aka estate agents) are geniuses with cameras and that architects have a few screws loose because it seems SO simple to build a house that has normal sized rooms but most have failed in this task and consequently we have so far failed in moving.

And now my bathroom, which was already pretty grim, is raining tiles on my head. I'm nearing a year of living here, and while I do feel like I've achieved a lot since moving (namely warding off depression and not feeling completely isolated, and technically I did get a job I just turned it down...), I would like to achieve something a teensy bit more tangible. A new house with tiles firmly fixed to the wall would do.

Approaching adulthood, perhaps.

2010-11-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about keeping this secret so that if / when I fail, no one knows. But I think we all know by now that I'm not averse to airing my failures in public.

I'm taking my driving test tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow I look my licenseless shame in the face and say 'bring it on'... or, more likely I whimper 'please, pretty please...'

The thing is I have no idea what to expect. Taking a driving test here seems to be like a lucky dip. People choose locations based on which testing-centres are renowned for giving easy tests. I've heard reports of people being asked to drive once around the block and that being deemed sufficient to pass. Or one friend who, when asked to back up 50 feet, backed up into oncoming traffic and was repeatedly given the opportunity to 're-do', until he kind of got it right. But equally there are internet rumours of people being failed for minor faults, and I definitely do know people who have failed here, for things much less than backing into the wrong side of the road.

I think the test in England is harder. It's certainly more expensive, takes longer than the reported 5 minutes and has to be taken on a standard unless you want to be limited to driving automatics for life (whereas here I can take the test on an automatic and then cheerfully get into a standard to drive home, never-mind if I've driven one before or not). And there's a system: you are guaranteed to be asked to do the whole gamut of driving tasks and X many minor faults = fail, 1 major fault = fail. I've even heard that they have a quota of passes for the day so if you're at the end of a day where lots of people have passed then you may be out of luck... although that sounds like a myth to me. Here though from what I've gathered, unless I'm unlucky enough to get one of the professional driving test testers (normally it's just a policeman... don't ask me why), it's all highly subjective and dependent on the person you get and whether they've had their weetabix.

OH and the best bit, just to make me feel that much more of a child for not yet having my license, my mother-in-law is going to be sitting in the back seat the whole time because Massachusetts dictates that I must have a 'sponsor' and Jeremy's at work so she's kindly volunteered. I'm not sure if I feel more sorry for her or me.

So, cross all flexible body parts people in the hope that by tomorrow afternoon I shall have graduated into adulthood. Either way I'll be sure to give a full report of my humiliation or triumph.

Leviathan

2010-11-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

This week I took on the leviathan that is The American Work Ethic and, well, failed.

Basically I asked for the option to take a week’s unpaid leave because my European unionized self couldn’t quite bring myself to face 3 weeks of vacation (less any time where my immune system failed me and I had to use said ‘vacation’ in order to not puke all over my desk) and they said, ummmmm, no.

So I walked away. Or rather I sat on the couch and read the email and sighed.

Overnight I’ve gone from facing a prospect of gainful employment : a salary and a title that isn’t ‘unemployed layabout’ to being ‘unemployed layabout’ once more. But I’m ok about this. Here’s why:

1. 1. I can take my driving test without mortal terror of failing, since there’s no job waiting for me where I have to drive across New England in the first week.

Hmmmm I think that may be the primary and possibly only reason. On the bright side, the mortal fear did kick me into learning how to drive within a month, after having put it off for a good decade.

My other reasons that I tell myself to make me feel better are:

1. I’m not yet ready to compromise on the criteria I set when I first decided to move here (even though I know I may well have to eventually since that leviathan is pretty indomitable)

Ok so I’ve only got one reason on that also…

I’m lucky because I have a Jeremy who is OK with me putting off compromise until I can stomach it a little easier. Although, if we look at it from the other angle (which I do find useful), if I hadn’t moved to this crazy country then I’d be comfortable in my 5 weeks vacation, unlimited sick leave and in close proximity to family and friends so therefore able to use those 5 weeks on things other than visiting Devon… so while I am very grateful for my loving and supportive husband, this was all in the deal to begin with (this particular angle really just makes me feel a little less guilty for turning down a salary... love you Jeremy x)

Back to square one it is then, and an earnest weighing of the pros and cons of being a teacher.

I miss the EU.

Why I probably deserve to be bopped on the head with a frying pan.

2010-10-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

This week one of my best friends had a baby and another close friend announced his wife was pregnant.

And I feel very far away.

(probably because I am very far away)

It comes at a time when life is beginning to take shape here. Jobs are being offered, driving tests passed (hopefully!) and houses bought (eventually). I have new friends, new kitchen equipment and if all goes to plan I might even have a new kitten (post house-buying / moving / jeremy-persuading etc etc, but I can dream).

Things are going well, they are going to plan. Lists have been ticked to the point that new lists have to be written, with things like 'buy new mattress' on them, rather than 'make friends'. But it doesn't help that some days I don't want my life to take shape here, I want it to take shape there. Some days the thought that I do not know when I'll get to meet my godson, that he'll probably have doubled or quadrupled (how quickly do babies grow?!) in size and weight by the time I get to hold him, kills me. Some days I want a hug from my mum so much that there is physical pain in my chest. I'll be walking down the street and the need for 'home' and old friends and family is so acute I start to cry.

Some days.

Those days have basically been this week. Possibly because of the life-shape-taking events. Because those events root me here - they dictate how much vacation I have to go home and see friends and family, and how much money I have to do it with. They tell me what my life is going to be like here, what my label will be and what people I will meet. They tell me that life here is going to be real and normal and I am going to be far-away from my other life for a long time.

Of course this is a fairly negative way of looking at things.

I think at this point I should probably give credit to Jeremy, who has had to deal with a wife this week who, rather than getting excited and happy about exciting and happy life-building news, has got anxious and low and positively pessimistic. Not because I'm not excited and happy about those things - but because my best friend just had a baby and I can't go to visit her and, well, it's all a bit overwhelming. Jeremy, thank you for not bopping me over the head with a frying pan - I'm sure the temptation is sometimes very strong.

Maybe that's what love is - resisting the urge to bop someone with a frying pan when they most truly deserve it and instead giving them a hug and telling them it's going to be ok. Because of course it is going to be OK - I just have to live with the reality of what being 3000 miles from 'home' means. And I need Henny to get on Skype so I can make cooey noises at my Godson.

The good life...

2010-10-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing a whole lot of late because the only interesting things that are happening are job interviews and, well, it seems unwise to start blogging about them.

So instead I am going to tell you that my kitchen smells of vinegar.

The reason it smells of vinegar is because Jeremy decided a few weeks ago that he would like to make some vinegar and, in true Jeremy fashion, he set about doing so with enthusiasm, determination, and little thought to what inconveniences might ensue. Consequently, there are now 3 or 4 tubs of wine / fruit juice / mushed up peaches slowly but surely doing their vinegarising thing in our kitchen cupboards.

(Is anyone else disturbed that the jelly-like creature that lurks in vinegar is called a 'mother'?)

Their vinegarising thing is having two notable effects:

1. It smells of vinegar. Well of course, I hear you say.... but it smells of vinegar even with the lid on and the cupboard door shut. Did your lovely store-bought balsamic ever do that to you?

2. It's attracting fruit flies. It seems they don't care if the 'fruit' is slowly fermenting and acidising and whatever else happens to make vinegar vinegar. Fruit is fruit to these flies and they can sniff it out a mile off. As a result, these tiny floaty bugs are busy floating all over my house and they also do not know the difference between vinegar and end-of-the-day-glass-of-wine, so all attempts to drink in peace are thwarted by the little buzzy buggers.There are also a suspicious number of black fly-like dots floating around in the vinegar. Jeremy seems unperturbed and just fishes them out from time to time.

I shouldn't be surprised. This is Jeremy - the boy who gets more excited about buying a pressure canner than most 'normal' men would get about their ball bouncing / kicking / throwing / batting team winning the world whatever.

We don't boil pasta in this family. We mix it, roll it, stretch it, slice it and then we get to boil it. Yoghurt is not bought from the store (or the shop), it's cooked overnight on a very low-heat oven, inevitably using up the last of my all essential coffee-in-the-morning milk. Beer is brewed, bread is baked and left-overs are not thrown away, they are fed to the worms which then fertilize the tomatoes which, if there are any left over, will be canned for the winter.

Don't get me wrong. I love this about him - even if at times I do foresee my own end as being brought on by an avalanche of kitchen equipment.

I could, however, do without the fly vinegar.

We're going on a job hunt...

2010-09-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I finally caved to responsibility and started properly looking for jobs. Prior to that I'd just been pretending to look for jobs while actually looking at facebook. Quite who I thought I was fooling when I was the only person in the room I'm not sure.

The result of this flurry of job-search productivity is that I am heartened, perturbed and pink.

I am heartened because there are actual jobs out there that I actually want to do and believe I could do well.

I am perturbed because that means that I actually care if they like me or not and that's always a little unsettling.

I am pink because writing cover letters never fails to make me squirm. No matter how qualified I feel I am for a job, no matter what skills or experiences I genuinely have, the process of putting this information into a cover letter and 'selling' myself mortifies me.

However this is not a time for meek and reticent Englishness to hold me back. Therefore I have developed a technique for writing cover letters that has so far succeeded (in that I managed to write the cover letters, not in terms of anyone responding to them): I write with an American accent.

I find if I list my skills, abilities and qualifications with an English accent I sound smug and self-satisfied and more than a little unconvincing. Yet when I switch to American I just sound like a girl trying to get a job. I think this is because we British are so uncomfortable with anything that isn't self-deprecating and wry, whereas Americans have a frankness and an earnestness that makes these things far simpler. I'm not saying that Americans don't experience similar horror when stating they are a perfect fit for a job. Just that, in 'American' it sounds better, more acceptable, less...stiff.

I wonder whether there is any credibility to this theory - whether I write any differently than I would in an English accent - or whether it's just a matter of adding 'zees' to words like organization (but never advertised - confusing that - ooo, or confusing... don't Americans think we're weird for not using Zs? There are a few holes in their argument)

Apologies. This post was really just a long exercise in procrastination.

The other side of the wedding fence... sort of

2010-09-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Life right now feels too big to encapsulate in a blog post. Mostly because nothing is happening beyond me feeling incredibly overwhelmed by everything that needs to happen and that's not particularly easy to write about.

People warned me that I could face post-wedding blues. That all the glitzy glamouryness of the wedding would leave a big wedding sized hole in my life.

I don't feel this way.

In fact, I have decided that while I loved my wedding, and while wearing a ridiculous-but-beautiful white dress for a day totally lived up to the superstar princess celebrity feeling I'd secretly dreamed of, other people's weddings are much more fun. At other people's weddings you just happily accept food and drink and more food and more drink and do not notice that the canapes seem to have shrunk or that the caterers have neglected to tell vegetarians that there is an option other than pork and lamb. And you most certainly do not obsess over napkin quality (that one comes with a warning - steer clear of napkin conversation with me for the next er 5 - 10 years ). At other people's weddings these details are irrelevant and unperceived (except perhaps if you're a vegetarian or napkin enthusiast.)

So, I have resolved never to get married again and to enthusiastically attend all the other-people's weddings I can.

I do however miss the excuse that the wedding provided. Everything I didn't want to do was put off until after the wedding - casually thrown over the wedding fence, mounting and piling into a big life-sized to-do list just waiting for the wedding and honeymoon and week-of-jet-lag-recovery to be over.

And now here we are.

So rather than doing what I should be doing, here is a list of what I learned over the past few wedding-filled months:
1. That I need to get over my need to appease people because I really just end up pissing off everyone.
2. That the steak and ale pie served at The Plough (in Dibley) is delicious and should always be ordered in preference over fish and chips.
3. That Jeremy cannot be trusted to share his steak and ale pie.
4. That I'm writing a novel (as announced by my dad in his speech...)
5. That I'm a saint (as announced by my father-in-law in his speech)
6. That if you're holding hands with someone when dancing and they fall over, you may end up damaging your finger for life.
7. That I have Miss Havisham tendencies that absolutely need to be suppressed
8. That Jeremy is capable of dancing - sort of - but it takes the peer pressure of 100+ people to make him do it.
9. That England can always be trusted to produce terrible weather
10. That I should never underestimate the power of Dibley - from accommodating guests to donating metric tons of hydrangeas to church transformation. That village is one of a kind.
11. That Jess is guaranteed to do something like turn an electric toothbrush covered in toothpaste on while wearing her bridesmaids dress...

I think I knew the last one already.

Post ceremony with the Dibley river and mist for a background.

Evening attire and one of Abbie's amazing cupcakes.

The original Italy crowd, 7 years on.

A particularly cold gust of wind.

My wonderful bridesmaids, who did an amazing job attempting to keep me sane. Hats off to Abbie for braving the Stratton Family madness and emerging unscathed.

Decompression

2010-09-06T02:32:00.000-07:00

Later this week I will rewind back 3 weeks or so and recap on all the adventures of Wedding preparation and the Dibley Flower Army and grooms with flu and sprained fingers and sleeper trains and honeymoon scooters on the French Riviera. For now though, I'm sat on Helen's bed, trying (and failing...sorry) not to get slightly-scorched croissant crumbs on her bed (The no-croissant diet is being put off for the foreseeable future), drinking coffee and gearing myself up to shower and head to richmond for a day of coffee and shopping and probably a fair amount of cider with a conveniently unemployed friend.

Two days in London before heading 'home'. It feels like a Hannah Decompression Chamber. I don't thnk anyone has ever referred to London as decompression before. Normally it's total compression, in the form of packed tube-trains, sucking all the air out of you and cramming you in to the tune of 'can you move up please' (seriously, who are the people who say that?). But these few days are allowing me to become accustomed again to my family being further away, to me being the independent adult that I'm supposed to be, before I really do the distance and resume life in Waltham.

I'm not sad about going back. Ahead of us is moving house (I'm far more excited about this than Jeremy is) and me getting a job (Jeremy is far more excited about that than I am) and me learning to drive (neither of us is looking forward to the effort required for that to actually happen). Lots of busy, good, life-building things.

I am sad to leave though. There is always a moment when I say goodbye to the crucial people when it feels like the air has been moved just out of reach and I have to gasp to find it.

Which is why saying goodbye in stages is helpful and good. From the hugs of family to the hugs of friends to the free wine and strangely comforting food of BA, I am decompressing back into a person who can handle living 3000 miles away.

(Jeremy is guaranteed to be asked to confirm about 10 times a day this week that yes, one day, we will live in England.)

Progress Review

2010-08-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

As I'm heading back to the UK today and as I'm looking for anything to do that isn't a) finishing packing, b)cleaning the kitchen floor or c) moving the mountain of wedding-present packaging out onto the curb, I thought I'd review one of the original to-do lists to see whether I have actually made progress in settling in here.

1. Get learners permit.
I put it off for as long as possible but eventually did achieve it.

2. Learn to drive.
This is happening. Slowly. I'm currently still recovering from attempting a hill start and then rolling backwards and almost hitting a car behind. Jeremy and I have so far only had one argument resulting from driving, where I was informed that I 'transform into a terrible person' behind the wheel and I have since tried very hard to remedy that.

3. Get social security number
Done, although I now have to go to the office and change my last name / get them to remove working restrictions etc etc.

4. Apply for /get Green Card.
Thank goodness this happened otherwise leaving today probably wouldn't be happening. Upon receiving my permanent resident status I cried out 'Yay, now I can leave'. Before that I'd been a prisoner of the immigration system.

5. Volunteer.
This is by far the best thing I've done. I'd like it even more if I got paid for it.

6. Learn French.
This was me thinking that with all my unemployed time I'd actually be motivated to put it to good use.

Hannah, meet Hannah...

...OK, this goal has been reviewed.

I did re-start my Rosetta Stone course, I just haven't got very far. I get frustrated having to answer stupid questions like "Is the boy eating an apple?" under a picture of a boy playing football and having to tell the computer "No, the boy is not eating an apple."

7. Move house.
I'm getting there. But this has been moved into the P.W. section of the year (Post Wedding)

8. Get a job.
See above, minus the 'I'm getting there' bit. Unemployment Rocks. (when you have a husband who transfers spending money into your account... which I think will start to have conditions attached P.W)

9. Make friends.
This is a work in progress. I certainly have people that were not in my life 6 months ago - I have people I can laugh with and get dinner with and probably confide in, should I have anything worth confiding - but it will take time for these friendships to really take root. In past experience, proper friendships have been born either out of living together or something dramatic involving hospitals and tears. I'm not going to be living with people any time soon so...

...hopefully there's more than one way to cement a friendship 'cause Manchester hospital UK is a long way from Boston.

10. Paint a picture.
See point 6. I think I got as far as drawing a chicken with oil pastels and I then accidentally cut it up while making a template for birthday bunting.

Progress Summary
"Overall Hannah has made good initial progress in settling into her new American life. She drags her feet when a task seems difficult or the results of said task involve effort, but eventually (after multiple motivation speeches from her mother and a few kicks up the bum from Jeremy) she does get her arse in gear. Perhaps most significant is that homesickness, while still present, has receded and on most days she feels happy in her life here. It will be interesting to see how homesick she feels when she returns from her upcoming visit to England. She is a little dubious about the approaching winter, and plans to weather this with red wellingtons, thermal underwear and a resistance to Jeremy's heat-saving tendencies. It is still early days in the emigre story, but the initial signs point to the move being a successful one."

Dammit now I've finished this I really do have to clean the kitchen floor.

Packing...

2010-08-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to be packing, but writing about packing is far easier than actually packing so here I am.

Usually I don't find packing hard at all. I chuck a ton of stuff in bag and trust that Jeremy will have remembered all the essentials I've forgotten. Or that I can buy them when we get there (hence the ridiculous number of sun-cream bottles, plasticky hair-brushes and cheap sun-glasses that we own).

This time packing is different. For every item of clothing that I put on the bed, ready to be smushed into my suitcase, my heart does a double beat. It sounds like this:

Wed-ding.

Somehow I have to pack for 2 weeks of English summer (which means packing for most countries' 4 seasons), a week of backpacking in France and a wedding. Even if we ignore for the moment the massive wedding dress that I'll be hand-luggaging my way to England with, it's still going to be a lot of stuff.

Meanwhile, whilst packing rain-coats and bikinis, jeans and summer-skirts I'm also processing my return to the motherland. So much has changed and I'll be seeing so many people who it's broken my heart not to see. Just thinking about it overwhelms me.

I know from past experience that the England I left will not be the England I'll return to. I will have changed - there will be inflections in my accent, new mannerisms, 'bad' table-manners (no judgment - it's way easier your way...) that will distinguish me as not-quite English and if other people aren't aware of it then I will be anyway. That doesn't worry me too much though. What worries me is that I'm only now beginning to shake the homesickness, to settle here and accept the distance. Am I going to lose all that ground?

Stop rolling your eyes at me. I am NOT complaining. I can't wait to be back in the UK, knowing my way around and being understood and having EVERYONE I love most in the world in one errrr tent for a night. I'm just aware it's going to be a little odd and saying goodbye is never ever easy.

Which is my excuse for packing very very slowly.

A Trifle

2010-08-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

Wedding planning madness is being interrupted this weekend by Jeremy turning old.

To celebrate, we're having a big BBQ where we'll smoke a pork shoulder to make pulled pork and accompany it with many many delicious sides, demonstrating conclusively that Americans know how to do BBQs in a way us Brits would never imagine. British BBQs of sausages and burgers certainly have their place in my heart but this is something else. The mere addition of mashed potato is enough to convert me, but throw into the mix collard greens, corn bread and jambalaya and I'm sold.

I recently discovered that an array of English roast-dinner accompaniments go surprisingly well with BBQ. cauliflower cheese has been a massive hit, and I think roast potatoes and yorkshire puddings would fare well also. So in a strike of genius, I decided that for Jeremy's party I would make a traditional English trifle. A taste of home that would integrate well with the BBQ deliciousness.. I checked with Jeremy on whether the ingredients would be available in our local supermarket and I set out on a humidity soaked quest to obtain them.

It took me about an hour of traipsing around the supermarket and one phone call to Jeremy asking for descriptions of brands / boxes / locations before I finally had a basket of passable trifle ingredients.Here is what I found out, in case you too want to make trifle in America.

- Custard is called Pudding and is to be found disguised as Jell-o. Birds custard does exist in the 'British Foods' section but it was, like everything there, prohibitively expensive.

- Jell-o, as we English already know from watching far too much American TV, is what they call Jelly, only it comes in disconcertingly powdered form, rather than the temptingly edible gelatin cubes that I grew up with.

- Lady fingers don't exist but I settled on Vanilla flavoured wafers, which seem comparable but are found with the cookies rather than baking section.

- Jam, as I'm sure everyone knows, is Jelly, which is fine only it lurks in the bakery section, plus by this point I was getting confused with the jelly / jell-o thing anyway.

I was then asked at the check-out if I was paying with food stamps, which either says something about me or the food I was buying, I'm not sure.

Sorry, that was SO un-pc of me. I take it back.

So, armed with my dubious substitutes for trifle ingredients (what would Delia say?) I am going to attempt to wow Americans with my British culinary skills.

I can't say I'm holding out a huge amount of hope.

Driving with Jeremy

2010-07-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Jeremy: Ok, now you’re gonna take a right and then an immediate left…

…Woah, woah, watch it….

- Silence –

Jeremy: Sorry

He’s apologizing because I don’t like it when he voices nervousness when I’m driving. Only in this instance he’s perfectly entitled to because I’ve just nearly crashed into a tree.

Jeremy: “Er you can go faster if you want” (I'm now driving about 10 mph)

Me: “I’m still processing the tree.”

Until recently, my only experience with driving was with a driving instructor in England 7 years ago. This is completely different. Firstly because I was not married to the driving instructor and therefore crying / sulking / moaning was not permitted – I had to suck it up and get on with it. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, because the driving instructor had a brake.

I feel the need to state here that I’m learning on a standard. Possibly the only standard in the whole of North America. I know this will not garner any sympathy from you English folks, but at least a large number of Americans reading this will concede that they wouldn’t be able to turn a corner while shifting gear either.

A major advantage (or disadvantage, depending what mood I’m in) of living with my driving instructor is that he can motivate me to practice and I need motivation because I am not remotely inclined to risk my life (and more importantly Jeremy's car's life) of an evening. Motivation from Jeremy generally comes in the form of a reminder that no one, absolutely no one aged 26 does not know how to drive.

It does the trick.

Because literally everyone drives here. If you have not learned to drive by age 17 then you are a freak of nature. The literature on the DMV’s website about getting your learner’s permit reads: “You just turned 16 and are ready to obtain your learner's permit. This is what you need to know before planning a trip with your parent or guardian to your local Registry branch” When I went into the local registry branch (without my parent or guardian) I was asked had I been there before. When I replied no I was asked my age. When I told her my age she said ‘So, you have been here before.’

Sigh.

I am an anomaly, a mystery, an aberration. When I tell people I do not drive they look at me as if trying to assess what exactly is wrong with me. I try to reassure them that it’s normal in England for people not to learn until later but that doesn’t help much – it just confirms their suspicions that all English people are weird.

All I can do is learn how to drive as soon as possible. Which means stopping being such a wimp about the whole thing and just doing it. And looking out for trees.

Getting married while being married...

2010-07-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

Getting married when you're already married is a curious thing. Not only does it confuse the heck out of grandparents (I think I reassured Jeremy's Grandma about 20 times this weekend that yes, we are already married), it also frames the whole ceremony and process entirely differently to what I imagine most brides experience.

Case in point. I've been searching for readings / poems to be read during the ceremony and I've been struggling to find ones that honestly speak to the heart of marriage - that capture the terror and the trust and the beauty of it all. Things that I don't think most people truly realise until way after the ceremony planning is done.

Because being married is near beyond description. I don't want to come across like one of those couples (we know who you are) who seem to imagine they've taken on celebrity status upon sharing surnames. Getting married is hardly an original thing to do. But there's something magical about it that even I, a die-hard follower of the hopeless-romantic school of thought, could never have imagined and I'm still busy marveling at the whole thing.

I think because the act of getting married is so deadly terrifying - promising forever to someone when you have absolutely no control over what forever might throw at you, there is such a profound depth of trust placed both in yourself and in your partner. And this trust wraps around you both and creates a space of comfort and confidence that is unimaginable before you get married.

That said, the every day details of life don't change. We're still incredibly messy. It still drives me crazy that he doesn't flush the toilet when he pees and that to get into our house you must first navigate an obstacle course of tomatoes and hoses and a watering can with a sock wrapped around it, brewing 'worm 'tea' (don't ask...). I know it annoys him that I always forget to wring out the kitchen sponge and that I don't care which way the toilet roll goes onto the thingy.

There are still times when I think of 'forever' and my stomach tips with vertigo before I mentally place 'forever' in the context of day-by-day and the dizziness recedes. But it's that luminous trust that binds us - that step together Indiana Jones style (if you've been to as many christian camps as I did growing up you'll know that clip well) into the unknown, stepping into each day together and securing this life of ours so that it is able to face future storms - that is what I want to communicate in the marriage ceremony and what I want to re-promise.

Here's the closest poem I've found so far, although given the choice I'd sub in prawn cocktail crisps for popcorn...

Habitation - Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far
we are learning to make fire.

Nudity and Salad Bowls

2010-07-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in every Boston summer where the only solution is nudity and salad bowls full of iced water.

No this isn't some kinky American practice, it's called stifling heat and no air conditioning. I'm not sure I've ever been this hot. There have been holidays to hot destinations, but they are always accompanied by pools or oceans and never by kitchens that need cleaning before father-in-laws come for dinner.

(The salad bowl is for my feet by the way.)

I drive Jeremy crazy. Because while yes, I am wandering around the house sans clothes, I am also moaning my head off. Basically I off-set the lack of clothes with unattractive complaining so as far as Jeremy's concerned I may as well be wearing an astronaut suit.

But seriously, I think I might die. I am not a person who sweats. Mostly because I am a person who avoids all activities (other than sunbathing on beaches) where sweating is a consequence. I don't like sweating. It's sticky and uncomfortable and pretty gross. The ~~dungeon~~ basement is about the only place where the temperature is bearable and, well, I'd rather die of heat exhaustion.

The worst of it is I can't even blame Jeremy for our lack of air conditioning, because this principle is mine also. I don't believe in it - I think it puts people out of touch with their environment, it wastes tons of energy and the recycled air makes people ill. So, no blaming Jeremy on this one.

Seems complaining is the only answer. That or McDonalds. I may have principles but they have Mcflurries and air conditioning...

Hi-Five, America.

2010-07-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

Americans love to Hi-Five. Even when they do it with full ironic awareness, I'm pretty sure the majority of their being is indulging entirely in the cheesy exuberance of hand-slapping expression.

I hate to hi-five.

My reasons for this are as follows:
1. I'm not American
2. I'm not stupid
3. I'm fairly introvert and such demonstrations of enthusiasm make me uncomfortable

To combat this, and because it's funny, I developed an anti-hi-five tactic: when faced with an expectant hand saluting before me, I extend my hand at normal hand-shaking level and offer to shake. 'I'm British', I say. I don't do Hi-Fives.

Americans hate this.

For a while I found it pretty funny - and I assumed that they got the humour. I knew they were disconcerted, but I figured they'd just chalk it up to me and my dry British wit. However, this fourth of July weekend (the only time they ever say the date that way around, which is my reason for celebrating) I was told in no uncertain terms that in refusing to hi-five I am being rude and stand-offish and downright un-fun. OK the person doing the telling had been drinking since 7am, but I tend to believe the kernels of truth that come from alcohol loosened tongues.

Dry British humour bellyflops again.

(Or maybe they could just see through it to the fact that I hate hi-fiving and it's all a bluff.)

So I have to find a new technique for Hi-Five coping. Because believe me they appear at the most unexpected moments and from the most unexpected wrists.

My options as I see them are to either half halfheartedly indulge the Americans, whilst letting them know that I do not in anyway enjoy it. Or to irony the heck out of the situation and conjure up more enthusiasm and hi-fiving vigour than you'd find in High School Musical. I think the latter is far more funny. I think knowing me there's no way I'm capable of pulling it off. A future of reluctant hi-fives it is.

Wedding Countdown and More Lists to be Ticked...

2010-07-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

There's under two months to go until wedding no.2 and the nightmares have started.

I'd thought I was pretty well prepared - I'd done a lot before leaving England and it was really just sundries and a few loose ends left. Nothing to stress about.

Apparently my subconscious disagrees.

In my subconscious, I am the epitome of flaky disorganisation. I forget to do flowers, my dress is a foot too long because I've forgotten to have it taken up and I have mean friends who spitefully throw massive glasses of water all over me. For some reason I haven't yet dreamed about Jeremy not showing up, which is actually a valid concern because he hasn't booked his tickets yet and I have. I did manage to veto his master plan of flying via Iceland though. There's a reason why those tickets are cheaper. That volcano may have quietened down for the time being, but that's no reason to go and taunt it.

Needless to say, my wedding related anxiety has been slowly but surely mounting in the past two weeks.It's an ongoing dialogue between Jeremy and I that has no end. Or rather, it's an ongoing monologue where every now and again in the middle of unrelated conversation I'll throw in a task that we really really need to do and Jeremy attempts to ignore me. I am not easily ignored. Jeremy's solution to try and stop my anxious wheedling is to book in wedding time. Whole chunks of time devoted to wedding related chores and in return I'm supposed to not worry aloud for the rest of the week.

I do not keep my side of the bargain.

Wedding time does work though. On Tuesday we bought Jeremy's suit and our rings all within the space of about 2 hours. On the way home, all I could think about was the satisfaction I would get from ticking those jobs off the list on the fridge. I was genuinely excited about it - one big permanent marker tick per job. Maybe two in the wedding ring box because there were two rings. For once my wedding chatter was about tasks accomplished and ticking...

We got home and I momentarily forgot about ticking and went to the loo or made tea or ate part of the mountain of carrot cake that is the result of my bridal shower and me having chosen a not-universally-loved cake flavour (and my sister in law buying a cake for 45 people when the shower was comprised of 15. I'm not complaining though, I have enough cake to last at least a week)...

When I returned, marker in hand to tick off my list I found to my horror that Jeremy had already done it. Not even a good tick either, the sort of half-arsed badly proportioned tick that only a malicious left-handed husband could do. While he chuckled in the background I morosely traced over his ticks.

It did not have the same effect.

The phrase 'candy from a baby' comes to mind, although in that story I'm the baby so that's not great.

Never fear, there are many more tasks on the list and I shall get my own back by nagging him to death.

Jeremy. You really need to book your flights. Now.

I'm serious.

Family Visit

2010-06-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

My house is eerily quiet, my eyes are swollen, there is a new pot of marmite in the cupboard and I have an abnormal amount of washing to do (that's laundry, Americans - I'm not abnormally dirty...). This is the aftermath of the first visit of my family since my moving and marriaging.

It was wonderful to see my mum and sister- as they walked blearily through the arrival gate at Logan, I felt that part of me that's only fueled by family take a breath.

The week was emotionally charged but full of love and at least one lasting legend. Being chased by a squirrel from a park is likely never to be forgotten (seriously, I threw water and flip-flops at him and he kept advancing). I'd needed desperately to be around people who I could be completely normal and relaxed with - people who I could suspend politeness and just be me with (of course I can do this with Jeremy, but the more the better) - and I got it. What a treat to be able to growl at people who talk to me before my morning coffee, instead of feigning pleasant wakefulness.

The week also had its disappointments. These by no means defined the week but it's these I'm going to write about because they seem to be key to the expat experience.

Because when you gather up all that missing - all the longing for hugs and implicit understanding, all the wished for confidences over tea and biscuits - when you bundle it up and lay it at the door of a week-long visit, asking the visit to be the golden family sustenance to nourish you through the upcoming months of missing, you are guaranteed to be disappointed.

Add to the mix a basement spare-room so heavy with humidity it almost squelches, a husband bent double in agony with a back-problem and a dependence on public transport and you have enough niggles to ensure moments of tension and misunderstanding. These moments are of course part and parcel of family dynamics - particularly my family as we're very good at sharing our emotions. The problem comes when you pair them with the bundle of need and expectation, and you're left with a frustrating feeling of the visit being somehow incomplete or imperfect. Like half a sentence left hanging in the air.

Somehow we are going to have to work out a formula for visit success. In it will likely involve some heavily managed expectations and a dehumidifier. Ultimately though I have to accept that in moving to America I have changed how I can be with my family. I no longer have access to un-pressured family time, and resenting that isn't going to help.

That said, every now and again I'm going to have to shut myself in a room, stamp my feet and shout "it's just not fair". This may be the norm for the near-future, we may have to work out techniques to manage it, but man it sucks sometimes.

Final Fantasy

2010-06-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

"Hans, can you find out how I change the cloudy mirror to the celestial mirror?"

"Sure - you go find a man at the campsite and tell him where his wife is. Then you go back to the woman but the boy will have gone. Then you go up the glowing path to find the boy and the mirror will change"

Unless you too have a husband / partner who is prone to video-game addiction, you are probably wondering whether a) Jeremy and I have moved to Avatar land or b) we've lost our tenuous grip on reality.

But no, alas, while I'd really quite like to live in Avatar-land, in actual fact I'm sat on a sofa googling cheats for my husband.

For the past few weeks, since some dear soul at Jeremy's geek-filled workplace lent him a stack of games, Jeremy has been transfixed. I go to bed with the music to Final Fantasy playing in my head. At least, I think it's in my head, but it also might just be audible from the next room because for the past two weeks I can't remember going to bed at the same time as Jeremy. I also can't remember waking up and him being there. In fact, it's entirely possible that he hasn't been to bed at all.

I'm not sure what the correct plan of anti-final-fantasy attack should be. My options as I see them are:

a) pinch him whenever he plays as a subtle aversion therapy so that he ultimately associates it with discomfort.

b) feed the games to his worms as some sort of modern-take-on-a-greek-myth revenge.

c) find out as many cheats as possible and wait until he falls asleep (assuming he does sleep) and then subliminally communicate them (he only intentionally cheats when he's exhausted all possible options) so that he wakes inspired and actually finishes the damn game.

I have a feeling that the latter is the only real option available to me, since from past experience I know that until he finishes the thing, there'll be no distracting him.Plus I'm not 100% sure worms eat CDs...

Do you think it's a sign that the honeymoon period is over when your husband tries to get you to go to bed early (alone) so that he can play his video games?

That was a rhetorical question.

Biking in Burlington.

2010-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

"I'm not going any further" I call out to Jeremy's receding back. "Jeremy!"

He screeches his bike to a halt and turns around. "What's wrong now?"

"I'm not going any further." I get off the bike and resist the urge to throw it into the bushes and stomp my feet.

"Come on - we're almost there and you're doing so well."

I know when I'm being patronised, plus we're not almost there. There's at least another mile of hill ahead of us and the 100 feet I've just done has near enough killed me.

There's a reason I'm wary of bikes. I have a habit of spontaneously and inexplicably catapulting myself over the handlebars and I am pretty much entirely without muscle. So when Jeremy suggested we get me a bike so that we could cycle around Burlington VT this weekend, I was apprehensive. "Will it be hilly?" I asked. "No." was the reply - "it's a lake-side city - all very flat". So against my better judgment I borrowed a bike from my friend's oldest son which we strapped to the back of the car and drove off up to Burlington.

It turns out that while Burlington VT is on a lake, the lake is in a valley and our hotel was not. Our hotel was at the top of the hill that led down to the lake in the valley. And while cycling down to the lake was fun and required more exertion of my brakes than my legs, cycling back to the hotel was less fun.

There are times when I hate my husband. There are times when I glare into the back of his head (these times are always when he is ahead of me on some excursion of some sort where my heart rate is required to go above what is comfortable), furious at him for being so frustratingly reasonable and nice and physically fit. (Furious at myself for being so unreasonable, annoying and embarrassingly unfit.) Cycling up hill in Burlington VT on a bike that was last owned by a sixteen year old boy, with Jeremy riding way ahead with mocking ease, was one of those times.

"Well what do you want to do instead?" He asks.

I consider asking him to go get the car to pick me up, but I don't much fancy waiting in the dark for him to return - plus I think his saintly patience might be wearing thin and he might just decide to leave me here. I weigh the amount of time it'd take me to push the bike back to the hotel vs the pain and anguish of riding back vs the fact that I need to pee.

I get back on the bike.

"There you go - I knew you could do it - you're more capable that you think" Jeremy says. I glower - refusing to let him see that while I know I'm being patronised, I like it all the same.

Snap Crackle Pop

2010-05-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

Today (while volunteering) I met someone who had never seen rice krispies before. Someone who had never heard of cereal. Any cereal.

Imagine that.

I know it's not exactly an integral part of our existence but just imagine.

No snap

No crackle

No pop

The thing that baffled me was not so much the lack of cereal experience. If I'd never eaten rice crispies I think I'd be OK . (In fact the only thing rice-krispies are good for is to mix with molten chocolate, cool for an hour or so and then indulge in the chocolaty crispy goodness.) The thing that confounded me was the degree of separation from western culture that lack of rice-krispie knowledge represents.

Now imagine that the person who has never heard of rice krispies has arrived in America. Friendless, homeless and emotionally scarred because of experiences that drove them to leave their family, friends, home and familiar breakfast food. Neither permitted to work nor entitled to benefits. Able to speak 5 languages but none of them English. Expected to navigate an immigration system so abstruse and dense that I, (a person who has grown up with rice-krispies) lost considerable amounts of sleep, saline and sanity because of it.

And if they fail to navigate that system - if they fail to attend appointments for health assessments, biometrics and immigration interviews - if they can't afford to get to the appointments or are so overwhelmed by this country they're scared to leave the house, then they become an 'illegal immigrant' and are immediately thought of by the masses as the scourge of society.

There are people who flee to the west who have never before encountered stairs.

That blows my mind.

I've taken two things from today:

1. I've remembered why I'm passionate about helping refugees and asylum seekers. I've remembered the importance of extending warmth and welcome to people who have experienced the worst of this world and then find themselves in a foreign world - technically 'safe' but in reality exposed and disoriented and lost.

2. I've seen my situation in its true perspective. I am lucky. Blessed. This experience of mine is not easy, but it could be worse beyond all imaginings.For all the times I am homesick, at least I know that my family is safe from harm. For all the times I miss chocolate digestives and sausages (and I do miss them, very very much), at least I have the means to buy food (ice-cream gets special mention). For all the times I long for the familiar, at least I speak the language.

At least I know what rice-krispies are.

Curbed enthusiasm

2010-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

There is a frustrating trait of mine where when those key life moments come, when one is supposed to scream and jump and squeal, I stall. When I got 4 As at A-level (which even after two degrees still feels like my biggest academic achievement to date), when I got my first 'proper' job, even when Jeremy proposed...

Whenever I am supposed to have an excited ecstatic response, I freeze. 'I'm happy', I say. 'Really happy, honest.' While friends and family watch on, curious and perturbed by my coolness, my detachment. Where are the squeals? The yelps of joy? I summon more evidence of excitement at the prospect of ice-cream (this invariably elicits small claps of glee) or greys anatomy (more clapping).

So it was yesterday when my mum surprised me with the announcement that she will be coming too when my sister Jess visits in 3 weeks time. It's something I've wished for, hoped and prayed for. There have been times when the 3 months stretching ahead until I saw my family again felt like a desert and I felt parched and weakened at the thought of wading through those months. But when she told me I found myself drained of emotion. 'Wow, that's amazing.' I said. 'I couldn't be happier'.

And the words were all true. This visit is something I need - I want my mum to see that Boston is not always gray and cold, to see that Jeremy and I are happy and our home is ours rather than his - I want a big hug and a chance to recharge that part of me that is fueled by my family alone. And yet I still sounded like I'd be more excited if someone told me Ben and Jerries was 2 for 1 at the local shop (granted that would excite me).

I don't think I'll ever understand this part of me. It's like the really big, really crucial things are too much for me to react to there and then. I am not a squealer. Ever. And certainly not at the times when other people expect me to squeal. Perhaps I'm just contrary. Or maybe I'm taking the time to let my heart digest the change in tack. To process that the 3 months of desert I'd prepared myself for no longer lie ahead. To let the happiness and relief build. It's as if in these moments - when things I've waited and hoped for actually happen- the barriers I've built up to shield myself against the alternatives come down and I am left tired at the effort of having kept those barriers there. That's the best analysis I can give, and I'm still not sure it's entirely accurate.

I'm thrilled. Really. Just give me time to assess and reflect and maybe then we'll have a few hand-claps thrown into the mix.

Saying goodbye to mum back in March.

Cities to live in...

2010-05-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

This week I made a flying visit to New York (city - for all you Americans who don't automatically assume I mean city, unlike the English who barely know there is a NY state). A friend of mine who works for BA had a stop-over there so I spent 5 mind-numbing can't-believe-the-girl-next-to-me-isn't-sticking-to-the-arm-rest-territory-limits hours on a bus there to spend under 24 hours with her and then 6 desperate rush-hour-and-raining hours back.

(Which basically means I spent a day playing Tetris on my phone this week)

I've never navigated NYC on my own before. Normally I'm with seasoned NYers, or at least a more competent nonNYer - and it's been a good 5 months since I last ploughed through London rush-hour. So when I arrived at Penn station in the pouring rain at 5.30pm and attempted to get down and across town via Grand Central, it is fair to say I was overwhelmed.

New York is like London on crack. In a fight, New York would kick London's ass all the way back to Samuel Pepys and beyond. Not because it's cooler or more fun but because it's hardcore and seems to have unfathomable reserves of strength and rage. New York rush hour left me in no doubt that I could ever live there and marveling with a mixture of awe and dread at the breed of human that can and does.

So when I arrived back in Boston, where 'rush hour' equals more than one train every 10 minutes, where there are pigeons rather than rats on the platforms and where people actually chat to each-other on the trains (not me, mind you - I'm English after all), I was washed with a wave of fondness for this city.

Because if New York is London's evil twin (a lot of fun to visit and party with but not gonna be invited home to meet the parents any time soon), Boston is its unassuming country cousin. In fact if it wasn't for volunteering at the hospital and seeing its grimmer 'city' side, I would need convincing that Boston even qualifies to be called a city at all. And that's just why I like it - love it, even. Boston, with its profusion of fairy lights and enchanting steaming grates, its pride in all things Irish and its love of chowder, is a city I could live in, a city I could learn to love.

All that remains to be done is to either cause a massive land-shift, resulting in England being attached to America again, or bamboozle friends and family into moving here too. Oh and to speed up global warming enough that Boston isn't buried in 10 feet of snow come December. Simple.

Grovelling.

2010-05-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'm being unreasonable. I hate it when I'm unreasonable, because I can hear everything that I'm saying and I know it's all crap. And I know that Jeremy knows that it's crap and I look pretty dumb but I can't stop myself from saying it because when I'm unreasonable there's nothing to be done about it but see it through to its humiliating end.

I'm not about to write what I'm being unreasonable about. a) because writing about arguments on a blog seems unwise and b) because I'll look stupid, and even in my unreasonable state I can recognise that I don't want the world to see me at my full irrational height.

Suffice to say that my argument has no grounds, is not supported by any evidence and is largely borne out of grumpiness and ever so slightly too much wine. Either way it's the principle of the matter. Except I've forgotten what the principle is. Plus I have a sneaking suspicion that principle is not on my side.

There should be a gag button I can press when I start to go down the unreasonable road. Because it always ends in shame.

Bugger.

When Jeremy gets back from whichever room he's skulked off to I'm going to have to apologise. I think that may have been his skulking plan all along. He knows I know when I'm being unreasonable and his reasoned approach is just to wait it out until I give up and apologise.

Guess he wins this one on all counts.

Double bugger.

For once the Atlantic comes up trumps...

2010-05-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a strange few days for me. Being here while the UK is left hanging, waiting for a wink and a nod and a few fingers-crossed-behind-their-backs promises to tip the balance into a Tory government (albeit with a few Lib-Dem concessions, to be weaseled out of at a later date).

I feel more detached and more enamored with Obama with every new report on deals and coalitions and muddled-explanations of what exactly has happened/ could happen/ will happen and why.

I guess it doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of any of the political options right now. Me and the rest of my country it seems, since no consensus was reached. The conservatives keep saying that there's been a decisive rejection of Labour - I don't really see what's so decisive about a hung parliament, but whatever.

I was talking to a young republican recently (always a rare find here in Massachusetts) who, worried that I was unfamiliar with what a republican was, told me that they're kind of like UK conservatives...only different.

Good job I already knew what a republican was.

Because UK conservatives are different. This is by no means a defence of them, but they do try to hide their social-conservative tendencies. They'd be in a lot of trouble if they just came out and said that they don't have much time for gay people. Instead, they give tax breaks to the traditional-nuclear family and hold press interviews of unparalleled incompetence on gay rights issues (seriously - it'd give Palin a run for her money). And they don't align themselves with the Christian Right. Probably because there isn't one. Or if there is, it doesn't have much muscle. And besides championing the rights of people to chase foxes until they're exhausted and then have them torn limb from limb by dogs, they don't really speak of gun laws. And while they moan their heads off about the NHS, they wouldn't dare disband it.

Basically, UK conservatives are just that. UK conservatives. With all the reticence and reserve and feigned politeness that being British entails. Which actually leaves me more suspicious of them than I am of American conservatives - at least with them you know exactly what they are thinking. They shout it, with refrains of 'drill baby drill' and "baby killer" and the like. With UK conservatives, you get the impression that beneath the smirk and Eton polish they are carefully maneuvering their way towards an uncertain but definitely sinister goal.

As a semi-politically aware adult, I have yet to live in a conservative country. My one memory of Margaret Thatcher's policies (John Major just doesn't count) is that she discontinued the distribution of milk to primary schools - something I was disappointed about since I'd read all sorts of picture books where kids got milk with straws at break time. Never-mind that the law was passed before I was even born, or the fact that she did a lot worse than lessen the country's calcium intake, that's still my lasting-thatcher memory.

And now here we are, a few slimy steps away from a conservative government, and for once I'm glad of the distance that the Atlantic gives. My self-interested-master-plan is that Labour will now be forced to get its arse in gear, remember what its values are and be ready to take on Smarmeron in 5 years time. Right about when I'm planning on moving back to England and a couple of years before Obama will have to leave office (I'm working on the assumption that he's getting voted in again - I can't bear the alternative).

So, I'm alright. I just feel sorry for anyone living in England who is poor...or gay...or eastern-european....or a single parent...or an unmarried cohabiter...~~or principled~~... oops, didn't mean to say that out-loud. Gonna shut up now before I lose friends.

So this is the choice we get. Appealing, huh?

Change, Prostitution, Crossing Roads and a Confession.

2010-05-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

1. Too much change.
No, this isn't me lamenting my uprooted disoriented state. I have too much change.

Literally.

In my wallet.

Far more change than I ever had in England, which is weird as we have a lot of redundant coins - not only do we have £1 coins (whereas here they have notes, unless you're paying for a subway ticket in which case the change it spews is all $1 coins that inspire suspicious resentment in any sales assistant recipient), we also have £2 coins and 2p coins and 20p coins and 50p coins... in fact, England has eight different coins to America's four. Five if you count the rare and begrudged $1s.

Yet I still have far more change in my wallet here than ever before. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm spending less. It's because although I know that the 10p shaped coins are actually 25c and the 5p shapes are 10c and the other silver coins that don't look like anything other than maybe the old 5p pieces that were decommissioned back in the 80s are 5c, I don't trust myself to know this instinctively while I search for money at the cash register. So I reach for the largest note I see (which in itself is hard because they all look exactly the same). This results in my wallet weighing more than a small child and my periodically emptying my change out, promising myself that I'll take it to the bank soon to convert it back into easy notes. Only I wont because I don't really know how to do that here and I can't be bothered to find out.

2. Prostitution
All the English people who visit me nod gravely when I say that some parts of Waltham are a bit deprived. "We've noticed there seems to be a big problem with prostitution here", they say. Jeremy and I look at them puzzled. Prostitution? Alcoholism, maybe. Meth addiction even. Homelessness, for sure. But prostitution? "yea - all the stores here have signs on them saying 'no soliciting'...". At which point Jeremy and I catch on and I start to giggle. "They mean trade soliciting / salesmen", we explain.

I don't mention that I knew what they meant all along because I'd thought the exact same thing back when I first visited here.

3. Crossing roads.
Aside from the obvious issues with crossing roads in a foreign country where one has to retrain one's brain to look left first instead of right (or is it right first? I can never remember.). And the fact that I've grown used to the pavements in London telling you which way to look (directions are literally painted on the road - seems I'm not the only foreigner to get confused). And that I'm just not a very good road crosser (Jeremy calls me R2D2 because of my tendency to walk unwittingly into danger...I had to have the joke explained to me 'cause I've never seen Star Wars)...I have another problem with crossing roads here.

Cars always stop.

Sometimes of course it's nice, but they stop even when there's nothing else coming and it'd be much easier for them to pass me by. I'm not sure if they're scared of getting sued or they assume anyone crazy enough to walk is likely to throw themselves in front of a car. Either way, I don't like it - I feel self conscious having them watch me cross when had they ignored me we could have continued on both of our journeys without this momentary pause where I am observed and they are delayed. Sometimes, I pretend not to be crossing the road to trick them into not stopping.

4. A confession.
There's a taxi company here called 'Veterans Taxis'. For a long time I thought they were for veterans only and I was surprised by how many Veterans there must be in need of transportation. Surprisingly enough it turns out it's just a taxi company with no stipulations on whether its passengers have served in a war. Although I do still wonder whether they give a discount to those that have...

Meet the Nersasians...

2010-05-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

I spent last week holidaying in the US Virgin Islands with Jeremy's family. St John is insanely beautiful - teeming, seething with life. Turtles, iguanas, deer, mongoose (mongeese? mongi?), kittens, donkeys, goats, chickens, mice, crickets. It has it and we saw it all.

A lesser known species non native to the islands are the Nersasians. Aka my in-laws. I could write and write about late night debates, travel debacles, itinerary disputes and just plain crazy statements. I could, only I wont because I'm planning on remaining related to these people for a long long time. And besides, a description is unnecessary, because they're just a family like any other. With the same tug of love for each other - no matter how inconvenient that love may sometimes be - the same frustrations and rolling here-we-go-again eyes.

The difference is of course that this particular family is not my family, or rather they are now but haven't always been. And while I've known them for over 6 years now, something about the binding rope of til-death-do-us-part has meant that I've lost any sense of distance. They are mine, and they're here to stay.

So I have to learn the intricacies, the dance steps, that will allow me to navigate unscathed the inevitable ructions and turbulence that accompanies family gettogethers. Here are a few survival tips I've garnered for in-law-holiday-navigation:

- Coffee is of paramount importance upon waking. Do not speak / pass go / collect any amount of dollars or pounds before taking that first all-important slurp. Proceed with caution until well into the second cup of the day.

- Headphones are always an option, as are sunglasses, if the need to appear / feel invisible becomes overwhelming.

- Cocktails are permissible from 5pm, Beer from noon.

- Choose your battles - know what principles you're prepared to overlook in favour of the greater, calmer good and which you are duty-bound to defend. Learn to lose gracefully.

- If all else fails, the pool / ocean is your ally.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions about my own family. For sure, it's easy enough for me, but they're mine and I contribute to the mystical dynamics as much as anyone else. For the uninitiated, I'm sure my family can be more than a little daunting- we flare and fight and forgive with alarming rapidity to those unaccustomed to voicing gripes. We also say 'I love you' more often than is normal, demand hugs at inconvenient times and love each other fiercely - so that an outsider might feel uncertain how to enter the tightknitness of our unit.

What coping techniques Jeremy has developed I'm not entirely sure. He's yet to go on holiday with my family though, so maybe the need has not yet presented itself. I'd wager that tapping, yawning, neck-clicking and his incomparable ability to appear to listen while he's elsewhere entirely would be part of his in-law defence.

Families. Unavoidable, infuriating, miraculous. They are what they are, and now I have two.

Chickens on the beach at St John

Jeremy and I attacking my mum with kisses - on a much colder beach in England.

Girl Friday

2010-04-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

This morning as the alarm went off I groaned and hit snooze. "Thank goodness it’s Friday", I thought as I clung to the lingering bliss of sleep. Nothing is ever as comfortable as bed first thing in the morning as you try to get up. Nothing is as painful either.

And somewhere, in amidst the pain of waking and the dread of the second tinny alarm chorus going off, I realized. Fridays have become Fridays again. Lie-ins have resumed their hallowed status of something-to-be-treasured rather than just a way to make the day shorter. Already I’m looking back on the past 3 months of lazy wake-ups and am kicking myself for not relishing it while I had the chance.

You know what this means, right? Normality is reasserting itself, in all its tiredness inducing strength.

Weirdly, I think Friday becoming Friday is the most progress I’ve made so far and although I felt deep regret on leaving my bed this morning, it felt like a significant achievement (the having a reason to get up rather than the getting up…although that was brutal, so that counts too). I’m a little apprehensive about Monday becoming Monday, but as I’ve only signed up to volunteer 3 days a week, I have a little while to gingerly ease myself back into the unwelcoming waters of early mornings. Meanwhile, tomorrow is my first Saturday since December.

Hello Life, my name is Hannah.

Honeymoon Dungeon

2010-04-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

This week the Atlantic got bigger. 5 days bigger to be exact, because that's how long it now takes to cross it - and that's if you go in a freight carrier, it's 7 days if you go by cruise (although granted much more enjoyable).

I didn't even know Iceland had a volcano until Friday and now it's upping my feelings of displacement and I'm feeling the distance acutely. When England is a 7 hour flight away I can kid myself it's easily accessible - should disaster strike I could be home within a day - unless the disaster is a volcano apparently...

Offsetting this Atlantic expansion are the English accents in my ~~dungeon~~ basement.

No, I didn't go out and kidnap English people to quell my homesickness. As of yesterday, Jeremy and I are hosts to a stranded British couple (known vaguely to me and not at all to Jeremy) who are currently wishing they'd chosen Bogner-Regis rather than Boston for their honeymoon (I don't actually know if Bogner Regis is a nasty place, from its name I just assume it is a giant toilet-by-the-sea).

So while they phone Virgin Atlantic every 5 minutes and debate the merits of building a raft to sail back home, I am taking solace from once more being around people who put milk in their tea and mind their Ps and Qs. People who understand what I mean by 'mind their Ps and Qs' - not because it's a phrase used all that often in England but because they most likely grew up reading Famous Five. People who know what Famous Five is, and who need it explaining that broil means grill and grill means BBQ and BBQ means something we don't really have in England but it's really yummy.

Around these people I make sense (or at least more sense than I make around Americans), and I am even able act as translator, making me feel slightly more adept at this country at the same time. So while the volcano has widened the Atlantic to unacceptable proportions, it has also brought with it a welcome sound of home. I'll forgive it for now - provided it stops with the ash spewing by August, because if it gets in the way of me and my our wedding I'll probably do a little erupting myself.

The scent of spring...

2010-04-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

I feel like England in spring time smells crisp. The bite of chill is still in the air and there's an occasional sweet sharp whiff of cut grass or daffodils. I associate it with fairy liquid (no, not me being fantastical - it's a brand of dish-soap) and promise, tentative washing being hung out to dry.

Here the prevailing smell seems to be of mud, with the odd sniff of cat-piss. And yet it's not altogether unpleasant.

Let me explain...

The mud smell has two sources. Firstly, the bank-burst-rivers and temporary-lakes are receding, leaving behind them sodden gasping sludge which is slowly drying and emitting a dank damp dark smell as it does. Since March was the rainiest March on record ever, I'm not sure I can say that this smell equals Spring to Americans, but it will be forever associated in my mind with my first Spring in Boston.

The second source is more generalizable and that is the smell of mulch. Mulch is basically mushed (or mulched) up grass, bark, compost, leaves etc that is placed over soil in gardens. Apparently it protects the soil and stops weeds from growing. Americans use it all over the place and it has the curious effect of making everything look like it's just been planted. The smell of mulch is everywhere - rich, smokey, deep and earthy, signaling that life can come out of hibernation and things can reattempt to grow without the threat of ice and snow. It seems here, you know it's spring when your neighbour decides to unwrap her shrubs from the sack-cloth-blankets they've been covered in all winter and the air suddenly smells of smoke and earth.

Surprisingly, the cat-piss element of the spring bouquet comes from blossom trees that line the streets. The trees are so beautiful that I think I can bear the smell. It does add an interesting and slightly unsettling layer to the wafting scents around here though.

So, the smell of spring. Not quite what you might expect, but strangely appropriate given the rich heady heaviness of summer in this part of the world. The smells of mud and pee herald sunshine and warmth. Who'd have known?

More on homesickness

2010-04-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

Not looking to worry anyone - generally I'm doing ok. But I find the phenomenon of homesickness interesting and it helps me to unpick the emotions so that I better understand them and am better prepared to stay strong when they hit - know thine enemy and all that...

I realised this week that my last post on homesickness only told half the story - the crying, moping, all-encompassing-glooming side. But sometimes, homesickness expresses itself in inexplicable rage and frustration. Sure there is still crying (when is there not?!) but the tears are bitter and it's less easily solved with a hug - mostly because I'm likely to punch the hugger.

The anger comes from an intense frustration at my self-perceived inadequacy and awkwardness. Angry because all the feelings of not-fitting, of loneliness and longing - of feeling like a shadow just following Jeremy around in his life - are just not me and I know that elsewhere there's a place where I feel bright and likeable and socially graceful (this may be self delusion, but it feels that way ok?!). I want to scream sometimes that 'this is not me' - this quiet shy shadow is not me. Most of the time I can push past the urge to introvert and force myself out in the open, and when I do I'm able to laugh and joke and forget my difference, but just the effort of having to do this angers me at times.

In these moments - where I feel so intensely out-of-place and so angry at this displacement when there's a place across the ocean where I truly belong - I become inarticulate and basically adopt the tactics of a small child when faced with total and utter powerlessness. I haven't yet laid down and thumped the floor but I'm pretty sure my face does go a shade near purple and feet have most definitely been stomped.

(I should make it clear here that all of the stomping is done in private and mostly inside my head. I'm not busy having temper tantrums in the middle of the street - Jeremy is the only witness and I'm so thankful that he recognises my rage as frustration and gives me the grace and space I need to calm and clear.)

There's nothing to be done but to be brave and get through this stage. If we work on the basis that the process of change is similar to the grief cycle, I figure that acceptance is just around the corner...right? (Although I have a feeling the process is not linear and these stages will reassert themselves a few times over.) In the meantime, understanding reasons behind why I want to scream sometimes means that I can move beyond behaving like a 5 year old.

Use your words Hannah, use your words.

Two American things...

2010-04-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

1. The amount of choice here never fails to overwhelm and baffle me. Something as simple as ordering a sandwich prompts about 100 questions. Type of bread? type of cheese? you want pickles? tomatoes? peppers? They often don't even suggest combination fillings, assuming (wrongly in my case) that you know exactly what you want and have the imagination to conjure up a sandwich. I miss Pret with its pre packaged, pre-chosen, no surprises (other than the odd sneaky addition of celery salt) sandwiches.

Yesterday I was in a cafeteria, full of the hubbub of choice and I, being a wuss and unwilling to betray myself as one-who-does-not-understand-the-system-and-isn't-brave-enough-to-admit-it, gravitated towards some ready-made unappetizing-but-apparently-unthreatening wraps. But when I asked for a 'veggie wrap', thinking I'd foiled the choice-filled system, I was asked which veggie wrap I would like. There's more than one kind? I said in a panic, flailing around and looking very confused until a kindly woman behind me pointed out that the bread-wrappings of the wraps were different colours. Oh, America.

2. Yesterday I went with a friend to watch her 6 year old play ice hockey. Yup, UKers, I said 6 year old. To us mild-climate people, that's like a 6 year old playing polo, which possibly happens but it sounds improbable.

The kids were all kitted out in so much body armour they wouldn't have looked out of place on a medieval battle field. The armour, which initially looked a little excessive, turned out to be fairly key since the kids fell over all the time. Don't get me wrong, they were amazing and I wouldn't have a chance of staying upright and racing on ice after a puck while holding a stick, but they fell over a lot. Some of them seemed to use falling over as a tactical technique to trip up the other players or to push the puck towards the goal. It was pretty comical, until I remembered they were 6, but they didn't seem to mind much. Anyway, I was very impressed, and actually think that children's ice-hockey is far more entertaining than professional hockey 'cause no matter what's happening, no matter how inevitable a goal seems, it could all change in a split second as they can always (and generally do) fall over.

Homesickness

2010-04-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not feeling particularly homesick right now, so I figure now is a good time to write about it. I can't write when the homesickmist descends - at those times I don't think I could attach words to the feeling - they'd slip off and meld in with the grey and gloopy gloom.

Homesickness is one of those terms which means nothing unless you experience it. Heart-break is another, along with love-lorn and green-with-envy. A special class of cliches which suddenly break into 3D given the glasses of experience - much less pretty and much more heart-wrenching (oops, there's another) than Avatar.

In fact, I think it's hard to talk about one cliche without employing multiple others - so that ultimately you only talk to a select group of people who have had a cliched experience...of course the fact that they're cliches means that applies to a majority of people, so that doesn't limit the communication too much.

The closest thing I've experienced to homesickness is heartbreak. I suppose it is heart-break in a way. A grief for loss of 'home' - of familiarity and the people who reinforce our identity. We spend so much of our lives trying to stand out, to be different, notable, extraordinary. With homesickness I find myself longing to be ordinary - to speak without immediately distinguishing myself as 'different', to be part of the crowd, to be sure of how things work and where I fit within them.

The other similarity between homesickness and heartbreak is the tendency for it to hit you out of nowhere. I'll be happy - cooking or cleaning or joking around - and then out of nowhere I'll feel entirely flattened, the air sucked out of me (these cliches are unavoidable it seems) and I'll want to sit on the floor and cry.

Jeremy is getting used to these sudden swings of mood. Generally all I need is a hug to give me the strength to push back the gloopy-gloom and resume the happy. But the way it swoops in from nowhere means I never feel completely safe - like sleeping with one eye open for danger - I'm waiting for the day when I fully close my eyes and feel at home in the moment. I'm scared of that day too - because does that mean that I've forgotten 'home' - that I've switched my allegiances and betrayed my history? Or will it just be that I've transferred what 'home' means onto Jeremy and the family unit that is 'us'?

The latter doesn't make me want to cry, so I'll go with that.

1 month (and a bit) on

2010-04-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

In the past month (and a few days) I have (in no particular order):

- moved countries
- got married
- had at least 2 panic attacks
- cried uncontrollably about 3 times (and somewhat controllably a bunch of other times),
- broken my laptop (responsible for at least 2 of the 3 times),
- terrified Jeremy into fixing my laptop (by crying),
- said goodbye to my mum (more crying),
- read 3 very good books (shout out to William Boyd for 'Any Human Heart' - brilliant),
- opened but not read the drivers manual approximately once a day,
- baked brownies, lemon drizzle cake and cheese scones,
- got a social security number
- opened a bank account
- moaned enough about the lack of decent chocolate in America that at least 3 people have sent me chocolate in the post,
- acquired a mobile phone
- been running out of sheer boredom,
- considered applying to do a PhD as an easier way to meet people and make friends,
- signed up for a volunteering opportunity,
- eaten my weight in Jelly Belly,
- got myself hooked on private practice and flashforward (thanks hulu)
- slept for over 11 hours on multiple occasions,
- come to terms with having a very different surname
- reorganised most of the cupboards in the apartment,
- sent off visa forms,
- joined the library
- nearly engaged in a fist fight with a doctor about visa forms,
- suppressed the urge 10 times a day to throw Jeremy's very loud ticking clock out the window into oncoming traffic
- mastered skype
- dragged Jeremy to Ikea
- and Old Navy
- and Gap
- and Target
- bought Jeremy his first ever pair of Jeans EVER (this may be my biggest achievement of all)

It's been a month full of effort and will power. Neither of which come naturally to me. It's also been the wettest march on Massachusetts record, which hasn't much helped the effort and will power. But somehow I'm still standing.

A lot of the credit goes to Jeremy for making me coffee every morning so that I have a reason to get out of bed (you can't drink coffee lying down - I found that out the hard way), to my mum and friends who have sent care-packages to keep me stocked in edible chocolate and to the many many people who are praying and / or sending positive vibes and thoughts and candy my way.

I feel like I've turned a corner and gone past the hardest bit. But that may just be because the sun is shining and it's Friday - I've also not yet got into the driving seat of a car, so that might set me back a few paces (Jeremy keeps telling me how easy it is - I have a feeling he's in for a nasty surprise).

I'm happy. Not giddy smiley happy - not all the time at least. But calm I-can-cry-and-be-homesick-but-after-I'm-done-crying-I'll-be-OK-again happy. Marriage is beyond description. On the face of it there's nothing to describe and yet the world has changed.

Not my kind of tea party...

2010-03-30T13:41:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-03-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

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'.

2010-03-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-03-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-03-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-03-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

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.

And so it begins.

2010-02-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

On Monday my mum and I battled 4 suitcases, each weighing 23kg exactly, up to Heathrow. Just getting there felt like a massive achievement - and it was won with a fair few suitcase-inflicted bruises. Of course it turned out that heaving suitcases onto train luggage racks was actually the easiest part of the day.

Next came wine and goodbyes at Terminal 5 with Helen and Sian, dear dear friends who love me enough to give up holiday for my farewell (and holiday is clearly worth much more than gold because holiday is sunshine and sunshine is the source of all life on the planet). The wine didn't help much on the emotion front.

So, bestowed with boarding passes and relieved of our gargantuan cases, mum and I crossed through that one-way street that is airport security.

Deep Breaths.

Topped potato wedges and beer in Giraffe.

Gossip Magazine.

Then the flight. I hate flying and my general solution is to get as drunk as acceptably possible so that turbulence just sort of melds with the general swirliness in my head. The only good things about flying are the distractions of 'free' alcohol and films. We watched 'An education', which is brilliant and the girl in it is 100% deserving of her Bafta. Unfortunately the film only lasted 2 hours at which point I was very ready to get off the plane and there were 4 long anxious can't-sleep-in-case-my-brain-power-is-needed-to-keep-plane-in-air hours left.

Then the final visa hurdle of getting past passport/visa control (missed out a whole section on mum's form and had to go to back of queue but that was the worst of it) and the reuniting with our bruise-inducing cases and then the triumphant steering of case-stacked-trolleys through the arrivals gate.

No Jeremy.

2 minutes later he appears looking rather sheepish as apparently he thought he'd choose that moment to go and take a ride on the escalator rather than waiting anxiously for his future bride to come through the doors.

Nice one.

Thankfully for Jeremy I saw the funny side.

Which pretty much brings us up to now. In the past 48 hours I've felt every emotion possible and more. Kind of like when you climb a mountain and the next aching day discover muscles you didn't know you had.

I'd be lying through my teeth if I said the past few days have been easy. The weight of the realities of moving countries has hit me and I'm exhausted in a way you can only be when you've been functioning on adrenalin and will-power only to cross the finish line and immediately collapse. There have been highlights though:

- Applying for the marriage license, the form had 2 columns with the right one for Jeremy and the left one for me and since he's left handed we filled it in simultaneously. Way too cute.

- Late night conversations where I'm reassured that Jeremy is the friend and support I need.

- Unpacking cases and realising that not only does all my stuff fit into the spare drawers / wardrobe, it also wont need to be packed up again any time soon.

- Reeses peanut butter cups.

The weather is bleak. Rainier than England on a rainy day bleak. In fact, think Willesden high street on a cold wet Monday trek to the tube and you have an approximation of the level of bleakness that the weather is welcoming me with.

But the house is warm and Jeremy is here and I don't have to say goodbye to my mum for a week.

No one ever said this would be easy.

Packing...packing...packed.

2010-02-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

Today I have scaled a metaphorical mountain, completed a task of herculean proportions, achieved the impossible, a mammoth feat by all accounts...

...I've packed 3 suitcases all within the weight limit.

So now here I am, my life packed away, waiting to take my packed up life across the ocean.

And I'm feeling? Everything.

Chickens crossing roads.

2010-02-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

I recently told Jeremy of this hilarious idea I had for the 'going out' music at our wedding ceremony. Here it's fairly common for people to choose a slightly silly song for the outward walk and I thought it would raise a few ironic chuckles if we had (wait for it) 'Aint no mountain high enough.

If I could I'd get Diana Ross to pop up from the choir benches, but failing that a CD belting out 'Ain't no mountain high enough, Ain't no valley low enough (Say it again), Ain't no river wild enough, To keep me from yoooooooou' would do the job.

Jeremy did not get the joke.

J: "What's so funny about that"

H: "Because it's super cheesy but people will know we mean it in a tongue in cheek way and are kind of making fun of ourselves and our relationship"

J: "But there aren't any mountains between us - there's an ocean"

H: "Sigh" (whilst mentally crossing off idea of having Shania Twain's 'looks like we made it' for first dance)

I'm starting to realise, perhaps a little late, that Americans don't put their tongues in their cheeks. This is a problem for me, because my tongue lives in my cheek. Jeremy and I have had full on arguments arising from me making some offhand comment and him taking it completely seriously. OK the argument was on msn and, well, everyone knows msn and irony should never be mixed, but the point is the same.

I'm not saying that Americans aren't funny. Jeremy makes me laugh more than anyone. Granted it's almost always him making me laugh at me, but he's still pretty damn funny. But when it comes to wry, dry humour they are lost.

I think the root of this problem is that Americans do not possess the phrase 'taking the piss'. Say to an American 'don't worry, I'm only taking the piss' and they will glance uneasily downwards before writing it off as a weird Britishism and continuing to take offence or be confused at whatever they are having the piss taken out of them for.

The nearest translation I've found to taking the piss is 'kidding' or possibly 'taking the mickey' (but I'm not sure?). Frankly that's like decaffeinated coffee. Looks, smells, even tastes pretty much the same, but no kick.

For at the root of British humour (I'm including the Scots / Welsh and Irish here 'cause they're worse than we are) is a deep and dark cynicism. We don't kid, we take the piss. Ours is a humour that is not supposed to be buoyed by canned laughter.

Problem is, in America, it's either mistaken for rudeness or it just isn't understood and is taken completely literally.

A few days ago I asked Jeremy if he had named all his worms in his worm farm. This is funny a) because Jeremy is not a person who names worms. b) because who names worms? and c) if you did name worms, how would you be able to tell them apart anyway?

Jeremy's reply? "There are over 2000 of them."

I'm doomed.

Chair.

2010-02-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

There's only so much you can write about a rocking chair. Weird as it may be. I just like rocking.

Bookcase.

2010-02-15T16:35:00.001-08:00

In one week's time I will be living in the house in which I will own my first bookcase. I will own it soon because Jeremy owes me one from my birthday in October and, second to marrying him / no longer crossing oceans to see him etc etc, it's the thing I'm most excited about.

Ideally the bookcase will cover all walls of the living room and have one of those slide along ladders, so I can pretend to be Audrey Hepburn in Funny face. But really, as long as it's a bit more substantial than the Billy series at Ikea, I'm happy.

I know I sound more than a little nuts. But the thing is a bookcase equals a home for my books and my books equal me. I think I've already confessed on here that when I was a kid my mum got so worried about me not playing enough with other children that she hid my books (under the couch cushions - didn't take me long to find them). She may have had a point - my inner world when I was growing up was much more substantial and real to me than the outer world. But it didn't do me too much harm - I managed somewhere to learn social skills (possibly through reading about them in Malory Towers) and I made friends with people who had as much of an imagination as I did. Never mind that the rest of the kids thought we were bonkers - we got along just fine with our clogs and codes and secret languages (secret even to ourselves).

Reading is, to me, sanity. The peace some people find in music or hiking mountains or solving crosswords I find in reading. I don't know of any other time when I'm able to shut down the rest of my mind and worries and just focus on one thing.

Here are a few of the books that will be finding a well deserved home on my new shelves.

1. Narnia. While I define myself as 'Christian', the theology expressed through Lewis' allegorising in Narnia (particularly 'the last battle') best describes the way I see the world and the world beyond the world.

2. Rebecca. Gothically indulgent it may be, this is a story I never grow tired of.

3. Moontiger. This focuses on the power of memory and the idea that a remembered life does not happen in sequence. I stole my copy from a holiday home in Lanzarote - I couldn't bear to part with it... I'm hoping it was one of those 'take one, leave one' sort of bookcases, since I'm not the stealing kind.

4. Ghostwritten. A recent discovery and the first male author I've engaged with in a long time. Reads like a lesson in how to write, provided you're a genius - incredibly elegant and addictive.

5. Anna Karenina. The only book I read and loved at university (I studied English Lit...). I wrote a very hurried essay on it and the only book in my bibliography was errr 'Anna Karenina'... an academic low point all round, but an amazing novel.

6. The Sky is Everywhere. This is a young adult book about to be published in the UK by my friend Helen's publishing house...well, not her publishing house exactly but she 'found' the book and is editing it so gets all the credit from me at least. The book is one of the most engaging I've read. I've also just won major brownie points for including it. (Also just remembered that I don't actually own a copy... hint hint)

Of course there are more books. There are always more. And I don't really believe in these sorts of facebook 'interests and activities' lists. But as I repeat and repeat my 'Jeremy, Bookcase, Chair' mantra over and over, the significance of these books having a home is hard to overlook. I've already ordered Barbara Kingsolver's new novel to Jeremy's place for when I arrive. Gonna need some doses of sanity in those first few Boston days.

Jeremy.

2010-02-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

So why am I moving countries for this guy?

It's not because of his love of warmth.

Or his imagination and flair for fashion.

Or the way he never cracks the bones in his fingers / toes / neck.

And it's certainly not because of how he recognises that eating super spicy food makes him ill and grumpy and therefore he doesn't do it.

It's because when it comes to Jeremy I stop writing.

Here's what I'm talking about:

Lately I've been sorting. It's a necessary preliminary and/or procrastinatory packing activity, to make sure that I make best use of the precious square foot of loft space my parents have bestowed upon me and to make sure that I don't end up treasuring forever bits of wrapping paper when I can't even remember their relevance (if there ever was one).

I am an emotional hoarder (I'm sure you are mightily surprised by that revelation). I attach significance to almost everything. I'm also a compulsive scribbler. All emotions, fears, dreams, random thoughts are recorded - in backs of books, middles of note-pads, multiple diaries kept for a few months and then forgotten - my entire life from age 10 is written down. So you'll see that sorting through all of this stuff is a) time consuming and b) embarrassing. My teenage voice makes me want to build a time machine so I can go back and give myself a smack and tell me to stop being so painfully introspective and sentimental.

Because of course I've moved on so much since then...

In amongst the angsty blush-worthy chronicles are also letters. Letters from ex boyfriends, from distant friends, cards from parents and grandparents, notes and scraps and scribbles that when added together plot my life and my people so accurately and substantially that voices and feelings push their way through the clouded recesses of memory to assert themselves with surprising potency.

And so I spent hours reading my life. It was all mixed up of course - no order whatsoever, but since when is life remembered chronologically? What stuck out for me, aside from the number of trees that sacrificed themselves for my histories, was how simple things became when I met Jeremy.

There are people reading this who have just choked on their breakfast.

Yes yes, I know that Jeremy and I have been anything but simple. I know there has been heartache - what do you expect for a relationship spanning 6 years, 3000 miles and 5 irritating hours of time-difference? But what I mean is that when it came to Jeremy all my scribblings stopped. Prior to Jeremy every relationship had been accompanied by a forest's worth of confusion, doubt and indecision. Even declarations of love had been fanciful and overblown, often aged with coffee and burnt around the edges to give that really authentic look (you think I'm kidding?). In my holiday diary the summer of Italy, I spent whole trees theorising about the tall Australian I regretted kissing in Sicily but my entry for the 5 days where I met Jeremy was 'Jeremy kissed me'.

When it came to Jeremy I stopped writing and started living.

Well, mostly. I'm still a Hannah after all.

Some person somewhere wrote that happiness writes white. I really hope they're wrong because I'd very much like to be happy and to continue writing.

Having said that, considering how corny the stopping writing/ starting living sentence is, I have an inkling they're 100% right and that happy people better hope they write white because they don't have any business writing at all. Forgive me - I promise not to go all saccharine smug married on you. I have more than enough cynicism to sustain me and America is guaranteed to give me excessive amounts of material. Let's just hope, for the sake of my marriage, that Jeremy stays out of print.

Language etiquette 201

2010-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

Following on from my beginners class on how-not-to-offend-the-English (generally and at my our wedding), there are a couple more points that have come to my attention that need addressing...

Yard. Please, please, I beg you, do not refer to my parents' garden as a yard. I know that's what you call them in America, I know that 'garden' to you means something along the lines of a vegetable patch, I know you're not intentionally causing grave offence, I know this. And yet whenever Jeremy says something like 'we're having the reception in your parents' yard' (usually in budget incredulity), I feel like throttling him, and I'm pretty sure my mum would bear a life-time grudge against any American that says such a thing (she bears serious grudges does my mum). Why is this? It's because 'yard' in 'English' means 'scrappy patch of land', often concreted and fit only for broken-down cars and rubbish bins (trash cans). I'm serious about this one - put it to long term memory please - it would not go down well.

Pants. Mean underwear. No exceptions. Any reference to pants will receive strange strange looks while people smile and edge away. My grandma may give you a slap around the face.

Cider. Is of the 'hard' variety, always. Non-hard cider is apple juice. The cider at the wedding will probably taste vaguely of manure, be non-sparkling and about 7%. None of this ciderjack or woodchuck crap. I'm a Somerset girl and I know my cider. You will learn.

Fag. If someone says they're going off to 'have a fag', don't have a fit (unless it's because no semi intelligent person should be smoking these days and it's gross gross gross), they're off to have a cigarette. Please smack them for me and tell them they're a muppet.

Scampi. You guys getting this one wrong isn't gonna upset any English people, in fact your perturbation at what will be placed before you will probably cause mild amusement. Scampi in the UK is breaded, fried prawns (shrimp) - no garlic butter in sight.

OK I'm done on the lessons for now. Let me know if there are any points you think the English folks need to know so as to avoid a second revolutionary war in our garden.

In other news, I'm moving to the states on the 22nd Feb and we're getting legally married on the 1st of March. Don't do things by halves, me.

Pebbles and visas

2010-02-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday everything fell quiet. The VIIIIISAAA screech finally FINALLY fell silent and I am now in possession of a genuine get-me-into-America fiancée visa. For some reason I'm rather green in the photograph. Maybe that's part of the process of becoming an Alien.

And I felt? Relieved, yes, but primarily I felt tired. Like the end of a race where I've just about crawled over the finish line. I'm ignoring at this point that there's a whole other process to be undertaken once married to achieve a temporary green card [note the use of the word temporary - I wont be a permanent green card holder until we've completed 2 years of marriage]. I'm also ignoring the fact that I haven't ran a race since I was about 12 so I can't really claim much authority on crossing finishing lines. Either way, my immediate response to receiving the visa was to fall asleep, only I'd had the HPV vaccine that morning and was a little worried about dying so I didn't let myself. No dances, no shrieks of joy, just an intense fatigue.

I have since mustered a few smiles, and every time I try and remember what I'm supposed to be worrying about and all I can come up with is painting pebbles, my heart does do a little leap...

...which brings me on to painting pebbles...

After much wedding magazine / Martha Stewart consultation, I decided it'd be a good idea to do pebbles as place-names. No faffing about with sticking bits of ribbon on lace on card (and thus adhering to my 4 core-wedding-values) and also they could double as favours...

...I should state here (if you haven't already guessed) that I don't believe in 'favours'. Seems to me they're just another trick to up the budget, plus they're not a true English tradition, more an imported one akin to Jelly Belly or phrases such as 'what's up'. And really I think guests should be satisfied with a meal / alcohol / dancing and the gift of sharing in the happiest day of our lives (blah blah blah) without being given a present each on top of all of that...

Anyway, off I went to Whitsands bay, aka most-beautiful-beach-in-cornwall, and collected a metric ton of pebbles and then painstakingly painted them with each and every guest's name. It took hours. And when I'd finished? I decided I didn't like how I'd done them and washed it all off.

I also stamped my feet more than a few times in frustration.

Think I may have violated a few of the core values.

So, back to square one. I'm still determined to have pebbles though, if only because I've now gone out and bought 4 big bags of fancy ones. They will look good. They will. They will.

Tippex is the answer.

Trust me.

Getting vaccinations in Devon and the difficulties that ensue

2010-02-02T03:43:00.000-08:00

Today I had the second instalment of the HPV vaccine. You'll remember the first one of course - it was the same day I shelled out £330 to be told I was a girl. Now, I had assumed that getting the second vaccination would be easy.

As usual, I was wrong.

Behold the 30 steps to getting my second vaccination:

1. Asked NHS doctor in London if I could get the vaccination at my local doctors (thus avoiding extortionate private fees). She said yes and wrote me a prescription. (Visit no. 1 to doctor)

2. Booked appointment for vaccination at my doctors' in London for same morning as I was planning on leaving London forever.

3. Turned up for vaccination, with multiple leaving-london-on-11am-train bags. (Visit no. 2 to doctor)

4. Asked by nurse if I had the syringe with me.

5. Huh?

6. Told by nurse that I needed to take my prescription to the chemist and they'd give me the vaccine syringe which I'd then bring with me to the doctors' for sticking into me.

7. No time as needed to catch train to Devon so decided to just get it done in local town.

8. In Dibley, called local doctor (in neighbouring village...we'll call it Dobley) and asked if possible to schedule appointment to have vaccine. Was told they'd phone me back.

9. Called Dobley pharmacy and asked how long it'd take for them to get in vaccine. 2 days.

10. Went to pharmacy to drop off prescription only to be instantly recognised as girl-causing-confusion-in-village and given note by doctors' surgery who apparently had been trying to contact me (surgery in UK means something like clinic I think) telling me they can't do this particular vaccine.

11. Huh?

12. Go to Dobley surgery to tell them I can get the vaccine and all I need from them is someone to stick it in my arm. Still told they can't do it and told to go to hospital in a slightly bigger neighbouring town. (Visit no. 3 to doctor)

13. Go to hospital and wait for ages to speak to a nurse. Explain predicament. Am told if I bring syringe with me next week they will be happy to administer jab. (Visit no.4 to doctor)

14. Phew.

15. Drop off vaccine prescription at (different) pharmacy

16. Spend weekend worrying pharmacy will have forgotten to refrigerate vaccine and I'll die of somethingorother.

17. Collect (refrigerated) vaccine and go back to hospital. (Visit no. 5 to doctor)

18. Wait for an hour

19. Realise I should have registered with the reception when I went in so waiting all for nothing. Look sheepishly at my mum (who was sat waiting with me, of course). Register. Wait.

20. Speak to nurse (different nurse than in step 13.) who instantly knows me as girl-causing-confusion and tells me they can't actually give me the vaccine because they haven't had the training. Sits me in a corner and says she'll make a phone-call to figure out who can give me the vaccine.

21. Sit for an hour listening to various people behind nearby curtain explaining their problems to various nurses. Apparently it's a bad-blood-day. Think this means they're struggling to take blood from people.

22. Nurse gives me phone and I speak to a vaccination team in Exeter who tell me that I need to get the OK from my GP. Explain my GP is in London and I need to have vaccine in Devon. Told to speak to local surgery (the one in Dobley). Go to leave, feeling distinct sense of impending doom.

23. Cry.

24. Fail to cry in secret. Nurse sees and shepherds me back to my corner and says she'll phone the surgery for me.

25. Nurse phones surgery and upsets various receptionists and doctors with her stressed-but-highly-efficient-no-time-for-niceties manner.

26. Nurse hands me phone. Speak to now-irritated doctor to explain situation.

26. Doctor agrees to OK a nurse in Dobley surgery to do vaccine, but first I have to register.

26. Go to surgery and register as a temporary resident and make appointment (visit no. 6 to doctor)

27. Cajole Jess into driving me to doctors' for appointment.

28. Show up for appointment. Realise I have to pay £20 to be given vaccine (not essential therefore not free but still cheaper than private). Send Jess to cash machine. (Visit no. 7 to doctor)

29. Nurse is unsure about vaccine as has never given it before. Horrible moment when I think she's going to say she can't do it. Nurse figures out she just needs to shake and stick.

30. Ouch.

So there you have it. Seven visits to the doctor later and I am finally 2/3 of the way towards being vaccinated against a virus which if I'm gonna get it I probably already have it. I am also now infamous amongst the medical world of Devon.

There's a lesson here: assume nothing, explain everything and if you need to stay longer in London to get something done, do, because it's gonna take 1000 times longer anywhere else. Especially in Devon.

Interlude

2010-01-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging as much of late because nothing is happening (if you ignore the shouts of VIIIIIIISAAAAAA echoing in my cavernous skull, which I do try to).

I feel like I've entered a second childishness - thankfully not the sans taste/teeth/eyes/everything sort that Jacques waxes lyrical about in 'As you like it' - rather, life has adopted a simplicity I haven't experienced since I was about 4 years old.

I've literally taken to just following my mum around on whatever she happens to be doing that day. I've stomped my feet in boredom around B&Q (Homebase equivalent), whined about too-long dog-walks (my new red wellies help complete that picture), wandered around in search of bunny rabbits at 'Pets at Home (Petco) while mum bought boring dog food and sat in coffee shops listening while mum chatted with a bumped-into friend. Today I actually sat painting pebbles at the kitchen table while mum and dad had a coffee with friends. While the pebblepainting was wedding related and not quite as juvenile as it sounds, I had a distinct déjà vu.

The only difference I can see in this new simple world to the one I inhabited 22 years ago is that I get to drink wine with dinner and I haven't named all the snails in the garden. Yet.

God Save the errrr Queen?

2010-01-20T15:32:00.000-08:00

As my train was barrelling through South West England on my way towards London last week, past ocean and rolling hills and great big white horses cut into chalk hills, a peculiar feeling welled within me. I struggled to define it...could it be? No, surely not, not pride? Pride in England? That's practically patriotism. Must have been simple aesthetic appreciation of landscape. There. Far more acceptable.

But the thing is, this sort of thing is happening more and more regularly. I find myself drawn to cushions and tea towels with Union Jacks on them (there's one tea towel in particular that I love...just a hint for those intending on waving flags at my final departure - why not wave tea towels instead?!), I get wistful hearing pomp and circumstance, I even felt a stirring of appreciation for Prince William and his prematurely balding head.

The only explanation I can see for this dalliance with royalism and rule-brittaniaism is that it's a natural defence against the over-powering force of American patriotism.

Take the Stars and Stripes. Also known as 'The Star Spangled Banner, 'Old Glory' or 'Red White and Blue' (never mind the fact that there are at least 28 other countries whose flag is coloured red white and blue , and that Russia, Cuba and North Korea are amongst them). In America, The Flag is EVERYWHERE. On houses, on cars, lining bridges. I can not overstate its ubiquity. There are even little postboxes where you can (and I quote) "retire your flag with honour". This is serious stuff. Hey, it's the same even in good old 'liberal' Massachusetts (who let the side down today), which demonstrates that (in America) patriotism doesn't necessarily mean conservatism (although I'd argue the reverse is almost always true across the board and the Atlantic).

Now in England, patriotism is practically a dirty word. And unless it's football season, British Flags outside of houses tend to signify that the occupants are ummm skinheads (literally or politically). The photos at the American Embassy of kids wrapped up in American flags or marching in red-white-blue-tshirt-formation to denote the flag, if replicated in Britain would most likely be advertising a BNP rally. At a guess I'd say that if the British Embassy has any photos on its TV screens (and I doubt it does), they would be of cricket, rugby, David Beckham... beefeaters perhaps (people in funny costumes, not people who eat beef, although they probably do) - things it's ok-to-be-reasonably-proud-of-without-being-labelled-a-nationalist.

America, I'm not mocking you...or at least not too much. If anything I think it's nice for it to be OK to have pride in one's country - provided it doesn't blinker a person to the validity of other countries and provided (of course) that that pride accepts all citizens, regardless of heritage (Nick Griffin take note) - but as an English person about to attempt to settle in the US, the whole extroverted patriotism thing is rather overwhelming. Hence my sudden desire to dry my dishes with a Union Jack (although have just realised that that's probably not proper flag etiquette in the states and I'd probably be seen as defaming my country rather than hooray-ing it).

It's strange how when faced with being a minority, these tribal instincts seem to surface. I'm not accustomed to championing Britain. I'm accustomed to self-deprecating humour, to moaning about the weather, disparaging our politicians and ridiculing our monarchy. But suddenly I want to be British, want to stand stalwart in the face of marauding flags. I'm just not entirely sure how. God Save the errrr Queen?

Doom. (And not the slightest bit of exaggeration.)

2010-01-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

So this weekend I got rejected for my Fiance visa...

...OK I'm exaggerating...

(but not as much as I wish I was)

When I left the embassy on Friday morning, I was expecting to feel elated, overjoyed, relieved, with a weight lifted from my metaphorical and literal shoulders.

That (literal) weight was my passport. You see, had everything gone to plan, I would have walked out of the US Embassy passportless, as my passport would have been sitting in the embassy, happily awaiting the addition of a fiance visa to its hallowed pages. As it was, I walked out of the embassy passportfull and not entirely thrilled.

Here how it happens:

The ~~sods~~ gracious, kind and (omniscient) magnificent ones schedule my appointment for 8am, which means I have to arrive at 7.45 am, which means I have to leave the house at 7.00am, which means that I get up and force courage-inspiring porridge down my nervous and resistant throat at 6.30am. I deprive myself of my all-essential morning coffee(s) because a) when anxious, coffee makes me more so and b) it makes me need to pee and, as I've confessed previously, I'm a nervous pee-er. I don't want to have to pee at the embassy because I know from past experience that the voice announcing the numbers does not extend to the toilets, so I decide it'd be a good idea to forgo all liquid.

I have to queue outside, but thankfully England has chosen to be kind and it's not raining / snowing / sleeting / hailing for the first time in decades. I'm then ushered into a decontamination zone where they scan and frisk and search and then into the main building where I am given a number and told to wait...

...and wait...

...and wait...

The waiting room in the embassy is just rows and rows of chairs, full of paper-clutching suckers (like me) listening intently to the recitation of endless numbers. All around the room are booths like you get in a post office, with the important booths at the far out-of-the-way end of the room. Each time a number gets called a paper-laden visa-hopeful scurries to the relevant booth.

In the middle of the room are TV screens which, along with flashing numbers-of-doom-and-consequence, have multiple photographs on repeat primarily of children either wrapped in, or faces-painted with, or marching formations of American flags. But I'm not going to get started here about the American obsession with the stars and stripes - it deserves a whole other blog entirely.

I have no idea how much time is passing because there are no clocks and I wasn't permitted to bring my mobile into the building. It feels a little like the sensory deprivation torture used in interrogations. A little... sort of.

Finally my number is called and I gather my highly-organised folder and walk/scurry with false confidence to the booth.

At first it all goes fine. I hand over my passport, my affidavit of support, Jeremy's tax returns and bank statements, feeling very pleased with myself as I slide the documents out of their neat and tidy poly-pockets... and then she asks for my birth certificate, which I duly hand her:

Visa woman: "No, not that birth certificate"

Hannah: "Errrr what do you mean?"

Visa woman: "I need your long birth certificate. That's your short birth certificate"

Hannah: "I have more than one birth certificate???"

Silence (in which I look at her in horror waiting for an explanation and she looks at me in total boredom)

Hannah: "What does this mean?" "Can I still get a visa today?"

Visa Woman shakes her head

Hannah: "So...."

After making me stew for a while, she finally tells me that it's OK - I can still have my interview but I need to order my long birth certificate online from the central-office-of-birth-certificates (or something) and once that arrives I need to send it back to the embassy with my passport, using their extra special(ly expensive) courier service and then and only then will they put my long awaited visa into it and courier it back to me.

I start to breathe again.

I'm then directed to sit back down again to wait some more, so I return to the waiting room and sit, checking my pulse to make sure I'm still alive and trying not to swear too loudly.

Then the last and scariest bit - my number is called for a second time and for the first time that day I speak to an American (this is when I know it's serious). The first thing I'm asked to do is to raise my right hand and pledge that I'm not perjuring myself, or something like that (I wasn't paying much attention to this bit 'cause I was concentrating on not laughing). I then give the entire potted history of Jeremy and I and, after she rubs it in that I have the wrong birth certificate etc etc, she says that providing I actually have a birth certificate then I'll be issued with a visa.

I then leave and return to the outside world. I realise I'm starving, dehydrated, exhausted, desperate for the loo and still have no idea what time it is.

So I go shopping.

1 shirt, 1 coffee and some false eyelashes later I go back to Sian and Marc's, call my mum and Jeremy, sob in shock that the Everlasting Visa Application is STILL NOT OVER (the clue is in the name, perhaps) and fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.

More positive people keep reminding me that it's all OK. They didn't refuse me, this is just a minor hitch. I want to invite these positive people inside my mind, to let them hear the continuous shout of VIIIIIIIIIIIIIISAAAAAAAAAAAA that echoes there which wont shut up until this whole thing is over and then ask them whether they still think it's a minor hitch.

I know, I know, I'm a drama queen.

Change

2010-01-11T15:15:00.001-08:00

On Saturday, I had the first of a year of many wedding related events - my hen-do. I'm approaching my our wedding with the same attitude as I approach birthdays - make it last as long as is possible. If you consider that the hen-do is supposed to happen a night or two before the wedding and my our wedding is in erm August, then you'll see that in this endeavour I am going to succeed immeasurably.

My task is somewhat aided by having to have 2 weddings (visa wedding and proper-white-dress-aisle wedding...although technically I have a whiteish dress for the visa wedding too but shhhh) and two lots of friends and family to celebrate with, along-with two sets of traditions. My task is greatly aided by the curious American tradition of doing everything twice: save-the-dates and invitations, bachelorette parties (aka hen-do) and bridal-showers, rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions. In fact, you could argue that in having two weddings, Jeremy and I are just seeing the American way of doing things through to its logical conclusion... sort of?

Anyway, so Saturday was my hen-do, kindly and brilliantly organised by Sian after I was told I was absolutely not allowed to organise it myself or to micro-manage anybody else organising it. So I was more or less in the dark on the whole plan and had to blindly follow everyone around London to various delicious destinations for brunch, ice-skating, cocktails, cupcakes, dinner and drinks. Much laughter, fun, sugar and wine had by all.

Part of the day consisted of embarrassing me by making me guess Jeremy's answers to a questionnaire about him / me / us that Sian had devised. The penalty for mis-answering was to eat a penis-shaped sweet. Needless to say I tried my best to answer correctly. All told I did pretty well (although numerous penis-jellies were consumed...I refused to eat the red ones, they disturbed me). We both answered that my favourite bedroom activity is sleeping, that we're most looking forward to no longer having to talk on the phone and that my most annoying habit is worrying. We also both decided that in a shag/marry/kill scenario (with Jeremy in the scenario, not me, although I'd draw the same conclusion) Paris Hilton would have to die.

And then the day was over. Poof, gone, nevertobeseenagain. And I realised (I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes) that this year, despite my bid to make things last as long as possible, is going to be full of firsts and lasts. Full of that weird post-birthday shade of disappointment that all the anticipated fun has come to fruition and is over (we're saving our honeymoon till 2011 which will help counteract that...plus there's always Christmas). Full of adventure and difference.

Ordinarily at the beginning of a new year I look at it with hope and ambition, crossing my fingers for it to be a good one. This year I know without doubt that the me at the end will not be the same as the me right now. There is going to be Change - as promised by Obama and threatened by David Cameron - and it's all starting with penis-jellies. Bring it on (the change rather than the penis-jellies - they really didn't taste that good).

Returning to London and playing the safety game

2010-01-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

I'm back in London rather unexpectedly. I wasn't supposed to be here until Friday but then weather warnings sent the world (England) into a frenzied hysteria and I decided to travel up early to play it safe. This may have been a little bit over cautious (and that might have been a tiny understatement) but I blame Sian for this entirely because I hadn't even considered coming up that early, but once she'd suggested it, I couldn't not - because if I didn't and then I couldn't but I could have prevented it by coming up earlier then it'd be all my fault...or something like that.

(I know I sound like a lunatic but England does not handle snow well. It kinda goes into a blind panic. Of course I don't expect us to have battalions of snow ploughs and mountains of salt and grit to hand, like they do in Boston - since our weather's usual M.O. is drizzle, it's not really necessary. But, you would think that a couple of cms of snow wouldn't result in total apocalyptic chaos, wouldn't you? You would be wrong.)

I am the Queen of playing it safe. Except where my heart is concerned and there I let loose with reckless abandon. But in all other areas I take the safe option. I've often ended up waiting at the airport for 5+ hours after all the catastrophes I'd envisaged stopping me from getting there failed to occur. I sleep on couches rather than navigate my tipsy way home alone at night. I drink lattes (skinny ones) 'cause I can't handle espresso. I sit in the last carriage of the tube 'cause by my thinking it's the least likely one to be bombed (I once got off a tube and onto the next because the man opposite looked very nervous and had lots of wires in his bag). I hold tight onto handrails and don't go near edges. I'm not so good at road-crossing, but that's more me being oblivious than risk taking.

I figured coming back to London would feel exactly the same as it always did, that I would feel like the reluctant Londoner I always have. It didn't and I don't. Maybe it's the Dibley Quiet working its magic in my soul or maybe it's that with my 10 days of lie-ins and unemployment I've successfully shrugged off the obligatory London mentality of speed and hassle and suppressed rage. Either way I am free of the shackles of stress and now serenely stroll my sibilant way wherever I happen to be going. I'm the bane of Londoners lives and I care not.

So, here I am, back on Sian and Marc's couch. Everything the same except it's different. And it is snowing, but not enough to prevent them from trudging to work today (I felt so guilty and smug staying in bed while they had to go out to work). And as it has 4 whole days to sort itself out, I kinda think I may have taken the whole safe option thing a teensy bit too far. But if I can break out of the London shackles, maybe I can break free of 'what-iffing' my way through life. We'll see. For now, I have a whole series of Mad Men to watch so this 'better safe than sorry' scenario isn't the end of the world.

Resolution in Action

2010-01-05T17:21:00.001-08:00

Ten Things I love about America:

1. Pretty much no one has pronounceable names over there. My mum still can't spell Jeremy's surname and has taken to calling him Jeremy at-the-station.

2. Enthusiasm. Americans are the most enthusiastic people on the planet. It's like a nation of 5 year olds on Christmas eve, and half the time I feel like the kid who told their little sister that Father Christmas doesn't exist - so out of place does cynicism feel.

3. Sushi... not that it's exactly native to America, but it's readily available and affordable and yummy.

4. Fox news. It's appalling, but it makes me feel ever so smug about the BBC.

5. Bears. There are Bears.

6. Obama. For the first time in ummmm ever I'm going to live in a country where I actually feel a sense of Love towards its leader. OK, he's human and I'm sure all this adulation is just setting him up for a fall, but he's a heck of a lot more lovable than our Gordon.

7. Sarah Palin. Actually she terrifies the life out of me but I find her and her political existence absolutely fascinating - only in America. Or Italy.

8. The Everything Bagel. Best invention known to man.

9. Water. You never have to ask for water in restaurants. Ever. If there is one thing European countries should learn from Americans it is this.

10. Ice skating on ponds. OK it's a little bumpy and OK Jeremy's 'test' of stamping on it to see what happens isn't the most scientific so there's always the slight possibility of falling through and having it freeze over and there being one of those horror movie moments of banging on the ice in terror before falling away into the gloom, but it's still pretty magical.

I'm just limbering up on the positivity stakes. I'll be singing Annie songs before you know it.

Lost in Time

2010-01-03T13:34:00.001-08:00

Today is Sunday. I think. I'm not entirely sure. I slept til noon, which would suggest it was a weekend, except I've slept until at least 10.30 for the past 10 days, so unless weekends just got longer I can no longer use that as a day-guide. I'm pretty sure everyone I know is going back to work tomorrow, which suggests tomorrow is Monday and therefore that today is Sunday.

Solved it. For now.

(And have also just made pretty much every friend who is sat at their post-Christmas desk in a post-Christmas funk and reading this as a procrastination technique hate my guts. Sorry.)

It's weird. I am totally losing a grip on time - the way you do when you're on holiday and have nothing to think about other than tide times and sunscreen application - except unless you're on an interminable holiday, you're conscious of it ending in 7, 6, 5....days (Sarah, stop smirking). While I can assure you sunscreen application is not on my timetable (I'm living in leggings, leg-warmers, fluffy jumpers and fingerless gloves and don't move from the fireside unless forced to by my mother), and tide-times are only relevant in that when I'm in my parents' bedroom looking out, I can either see mud or water (it's an estuary), Time has never felt more abstract or less relevant.

I love it.

It's like a breaking free, a reclamation. I could spend the whole day walking down the stairs and it wouldn't matter. Bloody great waste of time and pretty damn boring (not to mention cold - there's not fireplace on the stairs) but I could. I haven't felt that way since exams ended in my third year at uni and the longest summer of all time stretched out before me.

So what am I doing with my time? I hear you ask. Well, so far, nothing much. I wake up, don various necessary layers of clothing and go downstairs to make a latte with my parents' fancy new coffee maker and sit in quiet while I wake up a little. It's generally too late for breakfast so I wait a few hours and then have lunch. Then, if I'm feeling adventurous, I might go with mum to walk the dog. Then I read some more (I've just finished David Mitchell's brilliant book 'Ghostwritten' and have now moved onto Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia', for which she got assassinated for), maybe blog, check email, snoop on facebook, cook dinner for the family, watch TV, read, facebook, email, sleep. If my mum's around then my day is interrupted by demands for me to fold laundry or clean out cat-litter, but that's OK, I have time.

I'm guessing that tomorrow morning when I wake up and realise that everyone's been at work for the past 3 hours, I will feel a twinge of something. I don't think it'll be regret, or even relief, maybe sheepishness and an odd parallel-universe type sensation where everything continues as it always did except I'm not there (my peter pan complex doesn't extend to that particular window though - they're welcome to close it and forget all about me. Especially since if they don't forget me it's probably because I forgot to do something and they're all mad at me).

I like to think that this time of slothism is a necessary process for me to hoard the energy needed to move countries and all that that entails. I do think though that the knowledge that everyone is back to work tomorrow, will guilt trip me into setting my alarm for around 10am and maybe also setting myself the task of beginning to filter through all my stuff to try and condense it down to a few suitcases within the BA weight allowance.

On the other hand maybe I'll just give myself one more day of sleeping until I want coffee enough to get out of bed... friends, don't hate me, I'll be back to working soon enough and all of this will be but a wonderful, long, slothful dream.

A Very Dibley New Year

2010-01-02T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dibley (my parents' village, code-named here a) for descriptive purposes and b) in case of reprisals) is awesome. It is the anti-London in so many ways, most of them good, some of them hilarious, all of them peaceful and quiet.

Quiet that is, until there's any cause for celebration and then all is disrupted and raucous carousal ensues. This village, buried deep in the Tamar Valley, celebrates everything - from Burns Night to Wassailing to Apple Harvest - which means that when quiet does descend it's normally the result of the whole village having a hangover, or being off celebrating something else in a neighbouring hamlet. So while it might seem slightly strange that this year I ditched London in favour of a village with a population of 300, it was with good reason.

In fact, so confident was I of the new years offering here at Dibley, I got Sian, her boyfriend Marc and Marc's boyfriend Graham to ditch London for Dibley too. And it didn't let us down.

Dibley at New Year has an incredible sense of unity and community - the entire village goes to the pub and then, at 11.50 the pub gives everyone champagne and sends them to the church next door. No, you didn't misread, The Church. And there, in the church-yard, propping their tipsy selves up on 100 year old grave stones, while the bells ring the old year out and the new year in, everyone joins hands and makes up the words to Auld Lang Syne. Then goes back to the pub.

Incongruous though it may be, this tradition is somehow perfect and just thinking of it makes me feel philanthropic - something I don't think London ever made me feel. Because somehow at the heart of all Dibley Hullabaloo, there is a sense of calm confidence. Maybe it's the assurance of traditions or community enduring, or maybe it's just the fact that when you look up at night you see the stars rather than murky light pollution, but either way, celebrations in Dibley are somehow more frank and heartfelt than their cooler, glitzier city cousins.

The very best bit about a Dibley New Year is that on new years day, instead of festering in a bottle-strewn hangover pit, fires are lit, breakfast is readily available and the world outside has green fields and fresh air to offer as a cure. So off we went, Sian and I, pretending to be 10 again and tramping our way across fields, swinging across quicksand, skipping through swamps and clambering over trees while Marc and Graham (stuck being 28) trailed far behind.

And then I felt it. Quiet. I stood at the top of the hill, looking over the river, waiting for Marc and Graham to catch up, and felt entirely calm. No monsters asking to be fed, no heart pounding anxiety, not even a slight twinge of nervy sickness (I ignored the twinge of hangover), just quiet and the peaceful knowledge of the year's promise.

Have A Very Dibley New Year.

Year of the Resolution

2009-12-30T15:40:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to resist the stereotypical New Year post.

I fear I'm about to fail...I'll keep it brief.

I've spent the evening with mascara smeared across my face, crying at the prospect of saying goodbye to my family. But, as my dad said in his usual blunt and not-particularly-helpful-but-well-meaning-manner, I 'just have to be more positive.' And that's my resolution. I'm fully capable of making this move a resounding success - of beating down the negativity and embracing my new life wholeheartedly. Granted, in doing so I'll probably use up my energy quota for the decade, but needs must. I'm also fully capable of bringing about doom to all mankind - this is primarily accomplished by donning warmest, comfortablest clothing and sitting in a morose stew while watching ANTM. But I think we can all agree that in doing so I probably wouldn't be doing myself the biggest of favours.

So. Positivity. 2010. Yes.

Feeding the monster

2009-12-28T07:30:00.000-08:00

Like befriends like, right?

As such it will come as no surprise that a large number of my friends are as neurotic as I am, and, over the years, I have built up quite a collection of CBT metaphors (the fact that I casually know it as an acronym rather than its full word expansion says something). There are boats to be floated, ropes to be dropped and parrots to be silenced. Quite often I'd like to tie the parrot up with the rope and send him out to sea in the boat.

Generally I don't tolerate these metaphors particularly well. While they have their place and do work for some, I don't really find them helpful - but maybe I'm just jealous that I've never been bestowed my very own metaphor (just give me time). However there is a borrowed metaphor that has resonated with me, not so much as something to help me control my neuroses as much as being a useful descriptive tool, and that is the feeding of the monster.

In this little story, the monster is Worry and the feeding of the monster is giving into the Worry in a futile attempt to shut the monster up. Unsurprisingly the monster never shuts up and just gets bigger and stronger and more capable of mind domination.

I was contemplating my personal monster today while walking the dog (real dog). It was so quiet and beautiful and as I stomped down the muddy hillside I felt like Tess of the D'Urbevilles or Daphne DuMaurier or Jane Eyre (the only one of my hill stomping heroines that's a) not fictional and b) from Devon is Daphne, so I decided I was most like her). Except I was unable to fully appreciate my heroine-embodiment because inside my brain the monster was doing some stomping of its own - up and down on white matter, causing grey matter to go into overdrive.

The monster's current concerns are primarily visa and wedding related. He's not very imaginative. He tends to be at his most active when everything else around me is quiet - at night, for example, or when I'm bored or when I'm ummm in long spells of unemployment...

I don't much mind - I don't really have the will or energy to kill him off. Or maybe it's a case Stockholm syndrome - he's dominated for so long I've come to love him. Either way we've reached something of an equilibrium - feeding him these days is pretty cheap and easy - all I have to do is google my various anxieties or ask Jeremy questions for the 1000th time and he's fed. Temporarily of course, but I don't feel particularly disadvantaged for having him around, although that may just be because of the company I keep.

There was a time when feeding the monster was particularly costly and caused great life-upheaval...

...It was the summer of 2003. I'd just got back from Italy where I'd met an American. He was lovely. We were still emailing / IMing back and forth and we were making plans to for him to visit around Christmas time that year.

At the same time I got a job working for the MOD. The most boring job at the most boring place surrounded by the most boring people. I was bored out of my mind for 7.25 hours per day and then I was staying up til the early hours IMing the American, so I was exhausted and bored.

Prime Monster Prey.

I started to go a little crazy. I didn't think I could wait until Christmas to see the American again. So my mind did something like this:

What if he forgot me? Or met someone else? What if I met someone else and forgot him? I didn't want to forget him. I had a hunch he was special. But he said he was coming over. But what if he didn't come over? How could I know for sure?

The lack of control over the situation was killing me. While I should probably have sat back, cool and calm in the knowledge that the American liked me and was going to travel 1000s of miles to visit me in just 3 months time, I couldn't.

So I fed the monster a £300 ticket to JFK.

My parents were livid. In both meanings of the word - they were so angry they turned purple. I can't really blame them. Their 19 year old daughter was flying 3000 miles to stay with a man they'd never met and she'd only known for 5 days in Italy.

Jeremy was worried - I had to convince him I wasn't coming over with any expectations other than following up on a hunch. Thankfully he shared the hunch or it could have been one big belly flop.

So you could say that feeding the monster paid off. I'm happy aren't I? Jeremy and I fell in love, my parents realised he wasn't a raving-lunatic (although they probably still think I'm one) and the story worked out. Right?

Right. Except that the story would have worked out without me feeding the monster. If I'd sat on my fears, silenced the monster and waited for Jeremy to come to me, nothing would be different except I'd possibly be a little less irritating.

At some point I'm going to have to start withholding food. For Jeremy's sake if nothing else. I might wait a few more months though, until Jeremy's nearby to help me out with the monster starvation - I have a feeling that after years of regular food, it's not going to take being cut off particularly well.

Boxing Day and Missing the Boy

2009-12-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

I love Boxing Day - if anything I think it's better than Christmas Day - no pressure, no cooking, just family and left-overs. Where the name comes from I haven't a clue - something about boxing up gifts for the peasants - I could look it up but it's bound to be dull so I wont.

Boxing Day, like electric kettles and proper sausages and irony, doesn't exist in America. It's not even a (bank) holiday. I'm wondering whether when I live there I can claim it as a cultural holiday-right.

This Christmas has been my first apart from Jeremy in ummm 4 years I think, maybe 5. I've managed to cajole him into spending the last 2 Christmases in England - I thought I was onto a winner this year too but he had the cheek to want to spend it with his family rather than mine. He also did his usual trick of never quite categorically saying he wasn't coming ('I don't think I can' rather than 'no'), so right up until Christmas eveevening I was holding out hope for a surprise arrival.

Maybe because I was half expecting him to walk through the door bearing a rocking chair (my Christmas gift-request, yes I know I sound like I'm a grandma already but I really like rocking) at any time, or because I was focusing primarily on the thought of sleeping in a bed for the first time in 6 months (that plan was well and truly scuppered in a joint effort between my Grandma usurping my sister's bed and my sister very selfishly refusing to sleep on the floor and insisting on sharing my bed), I hadn't really given much thought to him not being here this Christmas.

Christmas morning I was distracted by presents and then by food, so it wasn't really until the afternoon (one of those endless afternoons that only seem to happen at Christmas... but maybe that's just the TV/Internet ban enforced by my mother) that I really noticed he wasn't around and The Missing set in.

Missing Jeremy has been something of a constant over the past 6.5 years (with an 18 month gap when doing my masters in Boston). It's become such a habit that I even miss him when we're together, but that's more of an anticipatory missing and is less potent. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, that I'd be able to turn down volume on The Missing, and focus on the fact that soon we'll be together... you might think that but you don't know me very well if you do.

On an average day, missing Jeremy is something like a constant low electrical hum - like a big fridge that's trying to cool itself down, or the sound of Marc's tiscali box recording 'Match of the Day' - it's there, it's a little annoying but it's manageable. But on some days it ups the ante and causes brain interference, and no matter what I do I can't shake it. Phones suddenly become malicious non-ringing meanies, collaborating with my email account and mobile in non-conveyance of Jeremy contact. And me? Well the brain interference means I can't quite concentrate on the matters at hand, so I become reserved and distracted and, well, grumpy.

So that was me yesterday afternoon- distracted and grumpy and resenting all forms of communication-technology. There were some highlights which distracted me from my distraction momentarily- my new red Hunter wellies, walking with Mum and Jess in the cold and the quiet, laughing at Jess when she fell over on the ice, laughing more when she fell over a second time and dragged mum down with her (I didn't try and help, I just took photographs)...

Finally I called Jeremy and it turned out he'd been trying to get in touch all day but our mobiles had conspired against us. And the Missing Mist lifted - yes he was still 3000 miles away but there he was on the end of the phone, missing me right back, and that helped some.

So today I'm back to the electrical-hum sort of missing, buoyed by the knowledge that this is my last Boxing day without him, although it's arguable whether I'll see another Boxing day for a while if I'm going to be stateside next Christmas...but that's a whole other conversation yet to be had...