– J. gets to know the neighborhood and indulges his unending perplexity of all non-American sports.
“Yesterday I wandered around my neighborhood for a while to get an idea of where things are. Finsbury Park looks pretty nice; I’ll have to walk around there and see if what I can find. From the road I saw the remnants of a baseball diamond. Somehow I think they sully it with cricket.”
“I know that atmosphere of the Parisian apartment building with the twin menaces of the concierge on the ground floor and the landlord upstairs.”
– Roman Polanski
The house itself was fine, we met the landlady who showed us around, but we had to meet her husband that evening and pass inspection. Landlady is a Swedish woman, a bit harried, and perpetually busy working on her various properties. I’m not sure what I was expecting her to be married to, but it certainly wasn’t a short Brazilian man who answered the door wearing board shorts and nothing else.
Landlord then spend the better part of two hours trying to scare us out of renting with emphasis on how strict he was with cleaning, and tales of how he’d tossed various Germans, French, but mostly American students out on their ear for failing to clean the house to his draconian expectations. He hated Americans! Every American renter he’d ever had was awful and destructive.
J. and I assured him calmly we’d do our best to change his opinion of American tenants.
But look! He dragged us to the bathroom where he shoved the corroded remains of a bathtub tap beneath our noses. The water here was practically acid! And if you didn’t scrub the whole bathroom down after a shower, the mold would grow overnight, smother you, and you would die. Surely we would reconsider living in such a place.
Not at all we said pleasantly, making a mental note to rely on bottled water for drinking.
While we were waiting, three other potential renters turned up and we had to move fast to assure him that we wanted the place while he threatened teased us with the possibility that maybe he would just rent it to someone else instead, ha! Half an hour later we’d convinced him we were serious, and half an hour after that the papers were signed.
Immediately, Landlord became the soul of amiability. He and Landlady regaled us with tales of their travels and adventures, with heavy emphasis on more cleaning and domestic disasters. By nearly 10pm we were fast friends.
And I’m insanely jealous that J. gets to listen to all of Landlord’s stories while I’m stuck back in the US because I’m sure if I could turn anyone into a book, it’s this guy. He has engaged in such epic housing battles that the council knows him by name. He single handedly was responsible for the crackdown on prostitution in the Brazilian quarter. A scooter he once owned was suspected to have been used in a murder mere days after he sold it. You can’t make this stuff up, I just want to follow him around all day with a voice recorder!
– 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.
Next time: the landlords!
There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Our flights were uneventful and our luggage didn’t go missing (which was a major stress point, as J. had packed literally everything he owned into those two suitcases and one of mine). But, as is so often the case, people were the main problem.
We flew from Washington D.C. to Iceland, Iceland to the UK. The first leg of the journey was fine, the second was stressful on account of a passenger seated behind us who talked – nay, shouted at the top of her lungs from Reykjavik to London. She is a grad student going to study in the UK, even though her research is on American military provisioning, for the next two years. She’s 32, from Boston, former Navy, and divorced. Really, if the flight had lasted to Hamburg I’m sure I would have learned her medical history and social security number too. People all around her cast pleading eyes upon the stewardesses with meaningful glances in this banshee’s direction, but to no avail. She wouldn’t shut up for love or money so I clutched my seat arms and tried to drown her out with my iPod, as I was frankly too tired and feeling too stressed about all the things we needed to do once we touched down to turn around and tie her tongue into knots. So we sat there. And listened to her defend her dissertation to total strangers all the way across the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, her whole clan must be airborne this week because flying back (alone and miserable) another woman I can only assume is a relation was seated behind me on the flight home from Chicago. This time I was treated to a expletive laden account of her recent life and troubles and her vivid hatred for the final destination, which therefore merited an explanation as to why she was going in the first place.
Ergo, I didn’t get much sleep on the trips and arrived both in London and at home looking pretty haggard. I’ve written before of my hatred for That Woman On Every Plane who shows up at the airport looking stylish, comfortable and impeccably dressed, and the disembarks in the same pristine condition. Well, I am not That Woman. I am the girl who, no matter how many vitamins she pops, how often she hydrates, or how much moisturizer she slathers on, arrives looking like a plague victim. You’d think a lifetime of travel would have helped, but it doesn’t.
In the case of the return journey, this situation was further deteriorated by sniveling and crying halfway to Chicago (on account of having walked away from my, you know, husband at Heathrow airport and leaving him alone in a foreign country). Circumstances were not helped by the fact that I was self-medicating heavily with Cadbury chocolate for all of my meals.
Next time, the hunt for a home!
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
– Ayn Rand
Floors: swept and mopped
Bathroom: reorganized and purged
Oven: oh dear…
Packing: commenced
Produce: nearly all eaten
Living Room: a disaster zone
Bedroom: not much better
Kitchen: let’s not talk about it
Dry Cleaning Pile: large
Bags of Clothes To Be Donated: three (so far)
Moping/Sulking: over with
Excitement Levels: rising
Stress Levels: ditto
Things Left To Do: legion
Ducklings, we went to work this weekend. And, ducklings, we are tired.
J. has his final check out at work today, we have more things to eat so our fridge isn’t a possessed cesspool of rot and evil when I get back, and we can’t find a garment bag that we were sure was in a suitcase. I’ve started deep cleaning everything so I have fewer things to worry about while I’m gone and things are more pleasant to come home to. The living room is carpeted with piles of clothes and paraphernalia in and out of suitcases. Also! We cleaned the oven just for kicks and discovered [quit reading here, Mum] that the interior is blue instead of black. Let’s not dwell on that. Onward!
“Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment, put your head down and plow ahead.”
– Les Brown
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 just got hit by a wave of sleepy.”
“Huh. I’m scary hyperactive.”
– J. and C.
Today is J.’s last day at work.
This weekend is our last together in our first flat.
Four days left until we fly back to the East Coast.
Nine days until we’re in London.
Things to do: legion.
Gloom and sulking tendencies: alive and well.
However, a few phone calls with friends shows that they are going through their own sloughs and confirms that mine aren’t really that bad, just damned inconvenient. I have not had a child I was babysitting urinate all over a several-thousand dollar harp in addition to having seizures. No kids have conducted a drug deal in front of me resulting in arrest. And good grief, Venice, you’re still laughing, smiling and going to work? You’re a champ.
Packing commences this weekend. Gah.
“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!
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?
“The day I made that statement, about the inventing the internet, I was tired because I’d been up all night inventing the Camcorder.”
– Al Gore
Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I feel as if I’ve been neglecting you, possums, so here’s some of the latest from around the web – my corner and otherwise. If you have any pretty, cool, or interesting things to share, post them in the comments and share with the other minions.
Janssen has an equally fabulous and talented sister, Merrick, who has a kinda rockin’ sense of style. See here for the reason why I must now head to another state to find an H&M in an effort to recreate her outfit. Also, check out some of her recent commissioned art for a local haunt – it’s nouveau Art Nouveau, brilliant!
Speaking of fashion, watch this charming video and enjoy.
The news that I am a history nerd will surely shock no one here, right? Check out an article on the Smithsonian’s website on attempts to save the Taj Mahal.
Decision fatigue…another term to add to my ever expanding vocabulary of ways to describe my (and some of my nearest and dearest’s) problems and neuroses.
Tom and Lorenzo are back to blogging about their original muse, Project Runway, as well as the ups and down (and crashing failures) of the fashion world. I want desperately for them to be my gay best friends and help dress me on my more blah days.
Since we’re in a London mood these days, here’s a fun Facebook group that shows off the city and allows insiders to give you tips and hints of where to go. There are also pictures of random things that group members find all over the city, like the Daleks!
In related news, J. and I bought the new series of Doctor Who
Drat. It’s true. I’ve been working out steadily for a couple of weeks now. I ache constantly and in some strange places – especially when I let J. tell me what sort of exercises to do and wake up the next morning unable to walk – but I’m determined to stick with it.
And because I’m a habitual self destructive-ist, I’ve got a hankering for this recipe with summer peaches and nectarines. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that I’m sure I’m capable of downing one all by myself in one go.
One of the truly loveliest of my lovely friends, Marie, dropped by with her husband unexpectedly yesterday and we managed to squeeze in a visit that probably cut into the time they should have been spending at a wedding reception, but I was too selfish to let her off easily! The flying visit had only one cloud over it, that she informed me that They (whoever They are) are remaking one of my most favorite campy films, Clue
We’re not the only ones relocating to Europe, Margot’s sister Pinto and her husband are heading to Germany. Also there will be future exciting news on Margot herself, stay tuned.
Small Dog Syndrome 