Five years on.

It was about 5 yrs ago about this time in Sept that I was heading home to California. I had been in England, staying with my then fiance, for 4 months. In that time we had gone from having met in person once, to having lived together for 4 months. We had traveled to Spain and gotten engaged. I remember feeling so extremely happy, as you should when you are newly engaged. I had a new diamond ring on my finger. It was all so very exciting.

I remember the night before I left. S came down the stairs and he was in tears. He said that it had just hit him, really hit him, that the next day I would be gone. We had no idea for how long. I had to get home and sell my condo, sort my life out there, get rid of everything and get a fiance visa to come back and get married.

The day I left, we stood in tears at the airport in Manchester. The thing I hated most about long distant relationships was saying goodbye, not knowing when you would see this person again. There is always that level of doubt that if a few to many months pass that they will have a change of heart. All your fears come to play. Its very painful, long distance relationships. They are really not very fun at all.

After really no sleep the night before, a 6 hour layover in Atlanta, and a long flight to Sacramento, I was home. I would like to say that the next 5 months before I moved to the UK flew by but they didnt. I had the stress of cleaning, painting, sorting and selling my condo. I had the heartache of being with my beloved step dad as he lost his battle with cancer. I had the blessing of being with him as he took his last breathe. It was a long and painful 5 months.

The one bright point was in November when S came to visit. We had a few days away from the cancer in Southern CA to get my visa, a few trips out but mostly it was a bit of a downer trip for S. We did have our fun moments though. It was also what seemed to be a start of a great friendship with him and my brother. Or as S says, his brother from another mother.

5 yrs on. So much has changed. Marriage, a son, ups and downs. I came to England all lovey with very rose colored glasses on. About a year in the rose color glasses did the typical expat thing and turned to grey. I think being pregnant really threw me into the greys. Pregnancy was mentally and physically hard. Being in a foreign country with no family was very hard. I didn’t really know people as I hadn’t been here all that long. It became easy to see the bad more then the good. Its also a pretty typical expat thing to do. There is a whole science to it.

So here I sit, 5 yrs on from leaving this land for the 1st time. I can not believe how fast it goes. I also am a bit shocked at the next stage of being an expat I seemed to hit. Acceptance. For the past year our lives have been geared towards moving. 2 weeks ago S got laid off from his job. Since then everything is up in the air. Strangely I have quickly become more comfortable with the idea of staying. A month ago I would of said NO WAY. Now, its a possibility. S seems to be more about moving then me. Its all a bit strange. Not sure what to make of it myself, but I am more of the school of if we do we do, if we don’t we don’t right now.  I just wonder what I will be doing in 5 more years and I think back to the day I left to change my entire life.

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Everything can change in 1 week.

Its been a week now since S got laid off from his job. Since then, everything is up in the air. We don’t know what we are going to do. Even the move is on hold for a bit. The exchange rate has dropped so much that we would end up losing nearly $20k with the drop. Not good.

We are looking at many options at the moment. Staying optimistic. We just don’t have a clear picture of where we are headed. I should be freaking out, but I am not. I am actually kinda excited that we have options again. It feels like everything was forced into a narrow tunnel for the last year. Now we can stop, reassess, and go forward with an open mind. Strange feeling, but sort of a relief.

So if anyone is wondering if we are still moving, we don’t know. I will let you know when we do.

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Steamed clean

I have been meaning to post about this. I have just been so busy looking up info on our move. Last week we bought a steam cleaner. The kind that has all kinds of attachments and what not. Its bloody brilliant. First, I attacked the oven. The steam just cut through all that built on grease. It just through gunk I have tried to get off for 5 years. Amazing.

Then I attacked the bathroom. Wow, the tiles look new. Everything sparkles. Amazing. I just love it. Who would of thought that steam would be such a great cleaner. No chemicals. No pollution. If your talking green, which I am not, but if I was, you couldn’t get any greener then that.

Now to figure out what else I can steam. 🙂

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T’was a good day

Today was a good day. I love good days. For one, the sun came out. We have not seen the sun in a while. Its been on holiday in the Costa del Sol, Spain. We have had about 10 days of rain. Before that it was 2 days of sun and before that… you guessed, rain. Its been cold too. This is not how Summer should feel. The grey gets depressing when you know it should be sunny.

Good thing number two… good haircut. My last haircut, just before our holiday, was horrid. The stylist I have been seeing had quit. She was fantastic and I was really bummed. So I started seeing a gal who was pregnant. She managed to not do anything I asked. I only saw her a couple times. On the last appointment with her I was the last client before she left on maternity leave. Lucky me. She just destroyed my hair. Cut a bit into my fringe (bangs) that shouldn’t of been cut. So it was a mess. Today, I started with another stylist who is fantastic. She fixed all but the fringe. My bob cut is back to a bob. Yippee.

Third good thing today… we went to B&Q. Our toilet has had a leak going into the tank. My wonderful husband got all the parts we needed. Even got the grout to re-grout the tile. Fantastic. This will be done tomorrow.

Fourth good thing. Gardening. My wonderful step daughter hung out with my wonderful son long enough that we got to get the front into some form of shape. We even did a bunch in the back. Its starting to feel like its all coming together.

Number five in the good thing department… we found a home for Kitty. As we are moving back to the US we needed a new home for Kitty. I have belonged to a forum for the past 5 years and one of the lovely ladies will take Kitty. This made my step daughter very happy that we can keep track of Kitty and her life. She had tried to find her a new home for nearly 2 months and no one wanted the cat. When all is said and done, Kitty will be a Northern cat in Cambridge. I just hope no one takes the mick about her Cheshire accent.

So it was a good day all around. No one had a tantrum (namely our toddler) No one got the hump (teens are good at that) and everyone spent the day happy together. You gotta love days like today. 🙂

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Clear, sort and pack

In my never ending quest to try and get this house sold I am absolutely amazed at how much crap we have. Most of it is my husbands. Only fair as I got rid of everything I owned to move over 5 years ago, sure I was here to stay. I came with 10 boxes and 2 suitcases. I know how to sort and get rid. I just find it hard to do that for someone else.Motivating him to do it is impossible. He is waiting for eye surgery at the end of the month and the fatigue from his eye has started to become overwhelming for him. I guess I should say we are lucky for the cloud and rain England has been experiencing for his sake, but I hate the dark so I just can not bring myself to feel “lucky” for a months rain in a day. I will cut him some slack, but It means I am left to do all the sorting and packing. I am going to go to town this weekend and he just wont know what has hit him until he has to take it all to the tip (dump). He may not realize it, but he has given me permission to do a search and destroy mission. 🙂 Now to just get him into the loft to figure out what is up there. I wonder if that will end up my job too.

Credit to him, the bathroom did get painted last weekend and it looks fantastic. Its the same color as the kitchen, which I really like. We just need to re-grout, put new flooring down and its done. If we move before this time next year I will be amazed. Patience is a virtue as I continue plodding along getting rid of all his things. How on earth do you collect so much unnecessary stuff in 5 short years?

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The last day of June

There are some things I will never get used to living in the UK, no matter how long I live here. First, in late Spring and early Summer the sky never seems completely dark.  At 1am, standing outside, you can see light on the horizon.  Its also light around the 4am hour. When we went to the airport in late May the sun was already rising as we drove to the airport at 4am. So strange to not have the sun rise the next morning until 7am in Spain.

The other thing that I will never get used to is that, on the last day of June, its cloudy. I am cold. Its been cold. Going out does not sound like fun. My poor son has not worn any of his Summer shorts since Spain. This is the second year in a row that has happened. And, as we head into the “hottest” months of the year, we are looking for more sweats for him to wear because I did not buy enough sweat pants for him to wear around the house to stay warm this SUMMER!

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Something every day.

I am trying to do one thing every day that will get us closer to our move. Yesterday it was cleaning out a cupboard. Today we went through the coats in the front porch, went through all the junk stuffed in the kitchen and sorted and thrown things out. I also went and cleaned out the shelves in the bedroom. I got rid of two rubbish bags of clothes, which surprised my husband to know end, and put a ton of stuff in a large suitcase to store in the loft (attic).

I have gotten pretty darn good at being ruthless. When I moved to the UK, I got rid of a lifetimes worth of stuff. I managed to sort my life down to 10 boxes and 2 suitcases. That was a major achievement for the pack rat in me. So I look at the stuff I am sorting through and ask myself ” do I want to pay to move this?” Most of the time that answer is no. So its gone. I am feeling very very motivated at the moment and need to take advantage of it.

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One step closer.

We are one step closer to our move. S went to London this last week and had his medical done. They did the typical blood work and chest x-ray. All should be okay. Next step is the interview at the embassy. Nearly 1 year after we started this whole process there is finally light a the end of the tunnel.

The house is that much closer to being on the market. Now that we are this close we are going to really push ourselves to get it listed. My poor son has had most of his toys put away so we can make way through the living room. Funny thing is that he hasn’t even noticed. He seems happier with less toys to choose from. I may be on to something here.

I am really looking forward to starting a new life back in the states. Being closer to my family and having an area that we can live a more outdoor lifestyle will be fantastic. I just got back in touch with my best friend from 5th grade. We haven’t spoken in a decade or there abouts. Looking at pictures of her kids out in the sunshine makes me homesick. They look so happy and healthy living an outdoor lifestyle. It also makes me a bit more motivated to light a fire under us and just go.

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Garden

Five years ago, when I first stepped foot into this house, we had a nice garden. It was pretty simple. Nothing fancy. Neat. We had a patio at the bottom that my husband only used to put pots on and we never sat on it. The cats loved it though. So the first two years I set about trying to get that English garden feel. Loads of flowers. Tons of color. I spent a small fortune on plants. Loads of pots all over the patio. I just didn’t work right for me. That patio was in the only really sunny spot of the garden. It had to go. I spent the whole of the next winter watching every Titchmarsh show on telly on how to put together a garden. I had my plan.

So the next year, good and early, I planned on tearing it out. It was early May when I had nagged my husband enough to get a skip and get it done. We spent a weekend tearing out one ton of concrete, stone slab, bricks and a bunch of other builders rubbish that had been dumped there. We brought in a huge truck load of top soil. We worked our asses off. What a job that was. But I had a perfect patch for my soon to be flower garden. A lovely spot where I could spend hours away just lost in the joy of gardening. I was so happy. One week later I found out I was pregnant.

That year I had a nice garden. I planted all the flowers that I had planned. It looked like a young garden. It had flowers. I was pleased. I made my plans for the following year.

The next year I had a little tiny infant. You guessed it, gardening with an infant in 90 degree weather doesn’t happen. I watched from the window as my flower patch grew weeds. I got out a few times on the weekends that wasn’t raining to get something done, but that didn’t give me any results. Then the next year passed and I had plans. My son was older. Learning to walk. He could play outside and I could try to garden and make sure he didn’t eat anything he wasn’t supposed to. That went out the window with the wettest Summer in the history of Summers in Britain. We spent the summer watching it pour as we sat inside going stir crazy. Town where flooded. People all over lost everything. I shouldn’t complain as we still had a roof over our heads. But the Californian that I am went nuts. No sun all Summer. It rained until late August. The best we did was a hanging basket out front that never really took off.

This year things will be different. I am willing it to be a wonderful summer. It WILL be like my first Summer here. Summer in England is unlike any other place. Its amazing. The air smells sweet. The sky is bluer then anywhere else. You still get rain, but its Summer rain. The kind that you sit and actually watch the grass grow in the back garden. You have to be out. This should be, if all goes to plan, my last British Summer.

Today, there was sun. Not constant sun but enough. The weather was in the low 60s. I couldn’t help myself. I put on an old pair of trainers, put my son in his Wellies and out we went. I was a bit worried that my son would be underfoot. In to things that he shouldn’t and making it hard for me to get things done. We spent an hour cutting out dead vines. Cutting back dead wood. Just general clean up. Guess what? My son loved it. He ran around and picked up little sticks. He put them in the plastics recycling bin. He was an amazing helper. My son never ceases to make me proud.

My hope is that in a month or so the garden will look like a garden again. Right now its a massive weed patch. As the weather gets better and things dry out we will spend a bit of every day out there. Its good for me, and its good for him, to get in the garden. At this moment I am so excited about Summer.

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Can we please get this show on the road?

I have come to the conclusion that if I want this move to happen it is down to me. My husband just gets overwhelmed and shuts off. Great. Thank goodness that when ever I have decided that I want something in my life I figure out how to make it happen. I just need to get the ball rolling. Inform him of what he needs to know when the time comes, and move on. We have been looking at moving back to the states since last July. We started the visa process then. Its getting really close to a year and I am getting anxious to start a new life and frustrated with living in limbo. This is a feeling that I hate more then anything. Limboland. I have taken back the visa process as I have done a visa before and know its all about baby steps and checking off boxes. I am going to find out about contractors licenses in the state we are looking for because S would like to do tiling. I will figure all this out because this is what I am good at doing. All we need to get a mortgage is a letter of acceptance for a job. All we need to do is sell our house here… and that is going to be harder and harder the longer we put it off. If we would of just did everything last July we would be in the states now. House sold. New home. New life.

Fear is a big thing for my husband. Because he has never just up and left his life behind he is very afraid. I, on the other hand, have done this more then once or twice (or more) to one degree or another. Moving from country to country, state to state or just city to city. Starting over and starting new is nothing to me. I believe last count I have moved 32 times that I can remember in my life of 40 yrs. The longest I have ever lived anywhere is 6 yrs. So moving is a go with the flow and get rid of junk collected process.

This may actually be a really good thing for me. It may just be the ticket to feel like I am taking my life back, so to speak. As I feel like I gave up a lot of my independence and strength moving abroad. I have loved an awful lot about living in the UK and I am ever so grateful for the experience, its not the place to make a long term home out of. We can have so much more in life in the states. I want my son to grow up in America, near my family. It became very important to me when I had him. I want my husband to experience a different life as well. Its only fair as I have experienced Europe. So, I will make this happen. I will get all this figured out. Get done what is needed to be done. Then move on.

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