It's been a while

… 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.

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

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

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

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...

...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

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.