– J. reports from the London homebase on learning the language (more importantly on the switching of Z’s for S’s and the including of U’s in words previously without). Fate and I combined will turn this man into a Brit yet!
“My first two classes are the two that everyone has to take: Corporate Finance and Financial Reporting. The two classes for my specialization are International Finance and Accounting in the Global Economy. The two that I have to wait and see if I get in are Leadership in Organisations Theory and Practice, and Financial Risk Analysis. The former is an organisational behaviour (look at me spell!) type of class on what makes good leaders and the latter is a class analysing (again!) risk using statistics and math (never gonna add an “s” to that).”
“I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.” – P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters
The school website told us to allow two weeks to find a place to live. We had to do it in six days.
We’ve been living in the same place for over 2 years now. That’s two years without having to worry about finding flatmates, divvying up utilities, spending all available time setting up and meeting appointments to view small and dingy rooms that look nothing like their photos online, and trying to determine exactly how much Ramen you’ll need to eat in order to make rent. Two years of knowing where all the local shops are, having transportation sorted out, and a settled routine of laundry, shopping, and housekeeping. Two years of being settled.
In other words, I – at least – felt woefully out of practice. But we dove in with gusto. Every morning we got up early and made our way to the school library to take advantage of the free internet and spent hours combing through university housing website. We sent off dozens of emails and counted ourselves lucky if anyone responded. We set up at least three appointments a day (which inevitably turned out to be on opposite sides of London, requiring an hour’s travel time a piece). And time after time, someone got there before us, the landlord wanted to rent to females and neglected to inform us beforehand, the residents didn’t want to live with an “old married man” (not even 26, mind) who didn’t want to go clubbing and drinking with them every night, or just found somebody else instead.
I won’t lie, both J. and I were starting to have visions of him starting grad school living in a hostel with raucous German roommates, unable to set up a bank account or phone service without an address. But then, on Friday, my second to last day there, the heavens opened and we found a place.
It’s in Zone 2 and only about 30 minutes by tube from the school. The tube station itself is a 10 minute walk from the house, as is the High Street with all the local shops. The house itself is privately owned by a pair of eccentrics (more on them later) and shared between three students – a girl from China, a British guy, and now J.! Each have their own room (which was larger than our hotel room, incidentally), the rent is half of what we’d initially budgeted, and utilities are cheap.
Saturday we moved him in, unpacked, and stocked the fridge with food and wandered the neighborhood. Turns out it’s the center of both a large Hasidic Jewish and a Brazilian community. Apparently the only languages spoken in the area are Portuguese and Hebrew. We saw a large number of men in large fur hats and black satin coats, accompanied by women in grays or black dresses meeting up and wondered what the occasion was, before thunking our heads. Duh. Saturday, it was Shabbat. We found a Rabbinical and Hebrew school just down the street from Sainsbury and a Brazilian takeaway restaurant. Gotta love London!
In spite of all the crazy we did manage to catch two shows in the West End and an afternoon at the Tate Britain, but this was primarily a working vacation and in the end we were able to land J. a place to live. Vigorous huzzahs and appropriate sacrifices to the gods of flat hunting are in order.
“Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.” – Les Brown
Thanks, minions, don't mind if I do.
Kittens, I’m bitter. Talking it over with Peregrine helped, as it so often does, to really organize my bitterness into manageable and coherent issues and I finally realized why I’m so disappointed – you know, besides the fact that my best friend and lover is moving to London without me.
The real problem is that I feel horribly left behind. I gladly put J.’s schooling at the top of my priority list and considered my ambitions and goals on hold and never considered it a burden or bad decision. I still don’t. I can write from anywhere, but there are only a few really great schools for accounting and finance and I was perfectly content to go where he schooling took us, and wherever his jobs will too. But suddenly, I’m not going with him anymore (and yes, I know I am eventually, but just indulge me in this mini sulk, alright?) and I’m not sure how that fits in.
I’ve delayed grad school or other academic ambitions, writing is hard when you can’t really devote yourself to it because you’re earning the bread/bringing home the bacon/whatever, and I’ve stayed an extra three years in my dinky university town waiting for him to catch up to me in schooling. And now, the sacrifice I was willing and glad to make (and still am!) isn’t really paying out the way I thought it would.
I hear you now, “G’DUH, Small Dog. Welcome to life, you whiner.” You’re right, I’m sure, but that doesn’t stop the disappointment.
I’m grateful to have a job, goodness knows not everyone does these days. I’m proud to be able to support my family and keep us out of debt while we finished up undergraduates, internships, and the first few years of marriage. I’m ludicrously proud of J. and what he’s achieved and thrilled about where he got into school…
But what about me?
Yes, I’m perfectly aware of how selfish that sounds, but I can’t help it. What about me and what I wanted and planned for? Three years isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, but honestly it has seemed horrendously long to me. I’ve been working a job that I can say I am grateful for and usually enjoy (and you can bear witness that the stories I’ve got out of it are amazing, eh, ducklings?), but I don’t want to be a police department receptionist for the rest of my life. It’s a job without the possibility of promotion or progression. Ditto really for the town we currently live in, and frankly most cities compare unfavorably to London. J. really was the only reason I stayed where I am now…and he’s leaving. I’m having a weird time processing that.
So, I’m bitter. Six more months of slogging (yeah yeah, I hear you again, “Cry me a river, C.”) past when I thought I’d be moving on and forward with our/my lives/life. It’s not the great tragedy I’m making it out to be, I know that, but it’s still not…what I planned. And I hate having my plans messed up!
At the same time, I’m feeling a little smug that I’m holding up as well as I am. I’ve only really whined to Venice, Peregrine, and Hennessy, and in the meantime I have packed up a third of my house to store (the reason for which you will just have to wait and see!), kitted J. out fully in sweaters and suits, researched places to live, made due when Her Majesty’s Government turned our plans on their heads, and generally kept on keeping on. I’m tired, disappointed, but proud and damned effective.
Rant over! Thanks for listening, kittens, you’re all sorts of awesome. But you knew that.
“I would have to say loneliness is next to uncleanliness.” – Janeane Garofalo
Today kick’s off J.’s final week at work, which means next week we head back East to see my parents for three whole days, which means two weeks from today we land in London…which means three weeks from today I’m back in the States, sans my husband.
I’m starting to get awfully depressed about the fact, but trying to buck up. I’m useless if an emotional wreck and we’ve still got work to do in getting him settled in the UK…but I can’t promise I won’t collapse into a puddle of wimpy tears when I get home. Dratted immigration law changes!
Small Dog...sulks.
I got really mopey last night as we cuddled on the couch watching movies – as evidenced by the fact that, when we ran out to get some frozen yogurt at the local froyo bar, I combined sour gummi worms with dark chocolate yogurt, a revolting combination. Obviously my brain wasn’t working due to stress. And then neither of us slept well, me because I was too busy trying to picture what it would feel like going to bed without J. by my side. I can joke all I like about sleeping in the very middle of the bed when he’s gone (usually countered by J. claiming I already do anyway), but the prospect of actually not having him there for months is starting to feel…decidedly crappy. To think, I used to like mostly being on my own!
Cheer me up, kittens. It’s Monday and far to early to burst into tears at work. What’s going on, good and bad, in your corners of the world?
“Well, I suppose the earthquake is over. What is left standing?” – L.M. Montgomery, Emily’s Quest
The earthquake that justifiably freaked out the East Coast a couple of days ago had it’s center only a few miles from my parents’ house. During my check in phone call to see how they all fared, yet another aftershock struck. “Oh dear,” Mum sighed before bellowing, “Everyone out of the house!” right into my ear. We then continued our conversation with everyone in the yard and my sibs rolling their eyes at the inconvenience, teenage style.
My family is notoriously unfazed by natural disasters, because we’ve lived through a great many of them. Earthquakes have featured heavily.
Mum spent a good chunk of her girlhood in Japan and can tell many a tale of the earth heaving beneath her feet – including one rather hilarious account of having to leap from a bathtub and run into the street wearing naught but a towel.
More randomly, an earthquake struck Germany when we were living there.
Then we moved to the Pacific when I was 15, to an island that experiences probably a dozen earthquakes a year (in addition to typhoons, but that’s another blog post). Most were small, a tiny shudder, your bed rocking once beneath you; the earth more or less hiccuping. But about once a year, a large one would strike, wreaking havoc on an already poor, unstable, lonely island and shutting services and communications down for a period of time.
Honestly. Who sleeps through a 7.something quake? Twice!
I cringe to tell you that I slept through two of the most massive earthquakes in that godforsaken rock’s recent history and am therefore unable to report on them. However I did manage to wake up for the third and biggest shaker (thanks mostly to Mum – in the same crisp tone as she used on the phone – ordering me awake and to the doorway). I was still half asleep as we watched the ground go up and down in waves. It felt like half an hour but it was only seconds before the rumbling and the pitching faded.
We found Buddy dangling by his pajama shirt, which had become hooked on the ladder of his top bunk bed, and yelling for help. We all got a chuckle out of his predicament and yanked him down. Minutes later we were all panicking to find that Snicker’s bookcase had collapsed on her bed and her dresser was blocking the door but for an inch – through which we couldn’t see if she was alive, hurt, or worse. Dad mobilized: he shoved his shoulder into the door, dragged the bookcase off – when it turned out that the miraculous had happened and the shelves had fallen to perfectly frame my sister’s little body without touching her, missing her skull by inches. Snickers had slept through it.
This time she made it out of the gym with only one shoe, she’d been in the process of putting the other on when the quake struck. Buddy apparently was the one who ordered his Spanish class under the desks and the out the door when the shuddering was over. Also, their high school partially collapsed, no one seriously hurt. Weirdly enough, it’s nothing we haven’t experienced before. I’m not sure whether that makes us sangfroid in the face of disaster, or just terribly well-adjusted travelers.
“If the psych boys ever got hold of him, they’d never let him go. No. This is a family matter.” – Louis McMaster Bujold, Memory
I apologize for thinking that it only produced self-congratualting jerks. I mean, I knew J. came out normal and well adjusted, so did Janssen's lovely husband, but I never really gave the institution in general credit for a well rounded education. I herewith apologize. Sort of. History still rules!
One of the reasons I like J. so much is that we have largely completely separate interests. You’d think this might lead to marital incompatibility, but au contraire! It means that we’re constantly introducing each other to new things and are obligated to at least try them out once. I expose him to opera, he takes me hiking, etc. Occasionally this is not only interesting but useful as he has a whole brain chock full of things from business and accounting that I never learned in a liberal arts degree.
For example, his upcoming move to London. As it turned out, my good friend Margot may need a place to crash for a while before she jets off to South America for a job (my friends are nifty!), the timing of which just happened to correspond with my grad-school-induced widowhood! In any event, she need a place to store some things as she figures out life plans, and I needed an excuse to pack up the back room and get it stored, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and clear out my space so she could occupy it for a while.
I press ganged J. one evening and we packed up our entire collection of books (no mean feat), our fine china (a present from my parents which I’ve never even used because I’m terrified of breaking it), and our desktop computer and stacked it all in a closet awaiting transport for storage.
Then, on fire with my success, I turned a baleful eye on my front room. Before I knew what had happened I had cleaned out our closet and reorganized all the coats, athletic gear, shoes, and luggage. I vacuumed everything. I dusted. Everywhere I looked I saw lists of things to be done and my stress level (exacerbated by recent events and circumstances) rose slyly, but steadily. Finally when I lashed out at J. for leaving the dishes undone, he crossed his arms and declared, “You, my love, are experiencing scope creep.”
“And just what’s that supposed to mean?!” I frothed, clutching the Swiffer Sweeper manically.
And he explained. Personally I appreciate that he used a business reference rather than a (in my opinion likely more accurate) psychiatrist term.
But see? A problem properly cataloged and my worldview expanded. He also sat me on the couch and told me to watch some mindless TV for an hour to calm down. How handy!
“A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.”
~Paul Sweeney
Don't disturb.
The Fourth of July prep is done. After staying late at work and taking short lunches (if any), either crawling into bed idiotically late or horrifyingly later, and consuming my body weight in Jamba Juices (due to utter failure at getting up early enough to pack any food at all), I’m done. Finished. Dusting my hands in a self-congratulatory manner. Calling it.
I am taking today off. It’s my two year anniversary and J. is taking me to my first breakfast in longer than I care to think about. We’re going to hang out outside in natural sunlight, I’m going to call my Mum and Venice (who are owed marathon phone calls), and flirt with my husband shamelessly in public. And I am not going to have anything to do with fireworks until Monday when I’m flat on my back in a park staring up at ’em.
“I came the simple way, down the stairs.” “Down the stairs? To Ursa Minor? Hey, you must be unbelievably fit.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy
On the recommendation of a coworker, a rather impressive sister-in-law, and over a thousand Amazon customers, I picked up Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred. Amusingly, the DVD case got worked over in the mail and it arrived, ahem, shredded! (Guffaw)
The DVD itself runs just fine, but that’s more than can be said for us. J. pushed himself too hard the first day we did it and lost his dinner rather inelegantly. I’ve been unable to walk without wobbling a bit for the past few days,. Iimagine a more than usually ungainly penguin bobbing back and forth across the ice and you’ll have some idea what I look like going up and down stairs.
My bum hurts.
In other words, it’s working. I’m determined to be extremely fit by the time we go off to grad school!
“Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine.”
~ Honore de Balzac
Margot and I couldn’t work out as usual last night, but she decided to come over to utilize my prodigious cutting and pasting skills to make a project for her class. She wasn’t coming over until 8pm so after putting dinner in the oven and dropping on the sofa, I threw a baleful glare at Harley.
Wait a second...
“I need to bike tonight,” I sighed, snuggling down in the cushions.
J. glanced over at me, saw my lazy intentions, and grinned cheekily.
“I bet you won’t.”
I sat up sharply. “Excuse me?”
“You,” he reiterated. “I bet you won’t bike.”
“The hell I won’t!” I snapped and dragged it of its corner before everything clicked.
“Oh. You’re clever. I’m on to you.”
“But is it working?”
“Yes. Drat.”
Small Dog Syndrome 