I'll say Tom-ah-to if I bloody want to.

When I moved over here I had to quickly accept that I will forever be a novelty. In a way that (as far as I can tell) isn’t true of other cultures, other accents, Britishness in America is seen as uniquely quaint and, for some reason I’ve yet to understand, totally fair game. There’s mimicry, which is widespread, there’s the curling flicker of a smile when I talk that lets me know they’re only half listening to what I’m actually saying and mostly listening to how I say it, there’s the look of blank confusion that normally goes unaddressed and in that moment I realize that some turn of phrase or word I’ve used has completely passed them by. And then there’s correction:

“It’s not Basil, it’s Baysil.”

“Pavement? You mean sidewalk.”

“Um, we say Tomayto?”

"HA! Oreg-ah-no? it's oregano"

There are certain people around whom I avoid saying certain words because I know it'll result in correction and I'll result in bristling good humour. Ha ha ha, how funny that you think my pronunciation of things is wrong. How amusing. 

Am I sounding bitter? 

The truth is, pretty much every American I know has done this to me at some point or another. People I have known for years still do it. It's also entirely possible that we British (you British I should say, in this instance I am not included) do it to the Americans in our (your) midst. I have but one thing to tell you. 

Stop. 

It happens often enough that I have to drop my ts and ask for budder or warder when people fail to understand butter or water. Recently I even had to spell out children on the phone... c-h-i-l (etc) when a volunteer really couldn't pick up the word I was saying. I actively avoid calling customer service because it's almost always laborious and painful. My days are littered with misunderstandings, repeats and rephrases. So when people I know correct my speech when they already understand what I'm saying, I mostly want to strangle them. 

And then there's the "Alright Guvnors..."

Enough. No More. It was never good and it's certainly no good anymore. 

The one where my book gets rejected.

The final say came through yesterday. A year or so on from when I first sent it out to agents. 

The final say was No. 

She said it kindly – praised my writing and the changes made to the novel but ultimately she said no, which is kind of what counts at this point. I considered crying but thought better of it. This isn’t massively surprising news – it was always the more likely choice – and the thing I’m most upset about is that I don’t now have a reason to sit and write all day / fly to England whenever I please.

Sigh.

But, there is good news amidst the bad. The positivity about my writing has been a big boost and people genuinely seem to think that if I apply myself and keep going with this writing thing then one day it will happen. And the truth is I made it pretty far for a first novel - an agent willing to represent me and a publisher who was willing to read it more than once. This sounds like I'm boasting - I don't mean to - it's more an exercise in reminding myself why crying and moping is not necessary. 

So.

So I need to start writing again, a whole new book, which is going to mean summoning self-discipline, which I don’t have in large quantities. And inspiration, which to be honest is easier to come by than self-discipline where I’m concerned, and it’s not easy to come by.

Project Hannah Personality Transplant is officially underway. 

You owe me.

Me: “Sometimes I feel like you’re not interested in what I’m saying – like you’re listening but not really listening”

Jeremy: “You were talking about traffic”

Me: “Yea, but…”

But traffic has become the deciding factor of my day. Sail through and in the office within 35 – 40 minutes = good day. Stuck the moment I get on Route 9 and over an hour spent holding very personal grudges against SUVs and wannabe sports-cars = bad day. It’s all decided before I even sit down at my desk and even a good day can turn into a bad day if the mall/school / random sods-law traffic gets me on the way home.

It’s different somehow than commuting on public transport. I’m not saying that that’s a breeze – walking to the tube in all weathers and seasons; enduring inevitable hold-ups right outside Bond Street; attempting to find that happy place somewhere inside my head to teleport me away from the reality of body-odor and not-quite-clean-enough hair brushing up against me. None of that is fun. But none of that incurs quite the same level of rage.

Hang on… memory coming through…

Ah yes, I’m wrong. As a London commuter I used to have terrible thoughts about slow people, people standing on the wrong side of the escalators, tourists. I remember thinking horribly personal things that I would never in a billion years actually voice, but the vitriol in my head used to make me wonder if in fact everyone is capable of cold-blooded murder, given the right circumstances.

I don’t remember it impacting quite so heavily on my every day though. It was something to be got through and then the day started. Maybe that’s the thing – with driving you can’t switch off and go to that happy place or immerse yourself in a book and pretend the world doesn’t exist because, well, then you would die or at least cause even more traffic.

So, in summary, I’m sorry J but you’re going to have to put up with my talking about traffic. More than that, you need to start caring and being interested in my traffic related stories – you need to enquire after the hair color of the man that sped down the right hand lane even though it was closed 100 yards later and traffic was merging and he clearly knew this and didn’t care that it’s people like him that cause things to move this slowly in the first place. The reason you have to do this is firstly that it’s integral to my day and moaning about it helps. And secondly because your commute is almost, sometimes, on a bad day for me and a good day for you, a full hour shorter than mine and most days you’re still asleep when I walk out the door and into an hour of anger. Basically, you owe me.

husbandless

This week, I have been husbandless. While I've been working and doing normal working / cooking / sleeping things, he's been off in Panama, diving and exploring in the sunshine.

(I can write this now because Jeremy gets home tonight so any would be breaker-inners needn't bother, I have my man back to protect me. haha.)

Before he went away, I was looking forward to it. I go away / work late or on Saturdays fairly regularly so Jeremy often gets time on his own in the house. Me, not so much. I envisaged this week laid out before me as a stretch of time where I could make my own choices on what I ate/ what I watched on TV; where I could come home and write without thinking about making dinner or hanging out with Jeremy.

(I should say, he doesn't expect me to cook every night or push me to eat certain things or hang out or anything, but things are different, together.)

Anyway, the point is I had all these plans and I expected to feel free somehow I guess - free to do what I wanted, to have that space of solitude that is only fully real when you're alone - when there's no one to know you're still in PJs at 2pm or that you mostly had ice cream for dinner.

Needless to say, I missed him within 8 hours of him being gone. 24 hours later I was calling friends and booking in sleepovers so that I wouldn't have to be alone in the house all week - not so much for the fear of being alone as much as the emptiness of it. Time passed slower without him, and not in a good way.

I missed his constant singing / tapping / general noise-making. I missed his hugs and his jokes; I missed laughing and snuggling; I missed him remembering to take the trash out.

On the flip side, my house is full of flowers I bought to keep me company, and a few other purchases too...shhhh

Keeping in touch.

When I first moved over here, two whole years ago now, I probably spoke to friends and family more than I had when I lived in their country. Our country. Phone calls, emails, facebook updates, blogs, even the occasional card sent in the actual post (although more likely, written and never posted because I'm crap like that). We kept in touch - I knew about their days, the minor things that had happened, the major things. And they knew about mine - knew that I hated the clock that ticked or what clothes purchases I'd made or what I was planning for dinner.

Then life here began to gain momentum. I volunteered, started learning to drive, we got Starz and Showtime in our cable package  (and with it the US version of Shameless, which is awesome, along with Spartacus [essentially just porn in togas] and Camelot [porn in tights] and multiple on demand films), we moved house and got a cat (who yet remains nameless, or namefull because he has about 10 and counting). But throughout all of this, while maybe not as much as those first new months, I managed OK at keeping in touch. I visited England regularly enough, went home via Switzerland once to meet my godson, had multiple coffees in Paddington Station and curries on brick lane. I phoned, emailed, blogged, g-chatted, facebooked and failed to post letters I'd written.

And then I got a job.

The job has tipped the balance rather. Two hours spent commuting in traffic, 40 hours spent emailing and organizing volunteers (ok maybe not all 40 - I spend a fair amount of time visiting volunteers, playing with children, cleaning toys and the occasional trip out to buy coffee / diet coke / iced tea etc etc) so that when I get home I don't want to talk or write or type and time slips through my fingers and suddenly it's tuesday again and I'm back in a hotel/homeless shelter (when the shelters are full they spend $1000s housing people in hotels - one room for a family, no cooking facilities, no transport, no case-management -  when they could pay their rent for much much cheaper) playing with children and thinking about coffee.

Friends, I'm sorry. A feeling of helpless inadequacy has been simmering away of late. The emails I've failed to respond adequately to (if at all), the phone calls I've neglected to return. Life here is full but not to the point where I don't need the people I have in England (or New York, or California, or Attenschwiller) not even close to that point.

So, a concerted effort is going to be made. Birthday cards and presents posted, emails written, phone calls made. It's going to happen because it has to happen - because the second I feel those relationships fading, a part of me begins to fade.

I know that no letters or phonecalls make up for an hour, a minute of no-pressure time (the type of time where you know you'll see the person again and again, soon and sooner, so that there is no weight on the minutes you have). I know that. I just prefer not to think about it.

A recent attempt to cross the miles. It's not the same as a hug.

Of course this would happen in February.

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.

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.