Tag: Husband

Home, Humor, Husband

Alarm Clocks And Other Concerns

“You’re Garfield.  You’re a kitty and you hate Mondays.”
– J.

I had a reliable morning routine with J..  Our alarm would go off, one of us would smack it silent.  Fifteen minutes later, ditto.  Fifteen minutes after that I would poke and prod him to get up and shower with many protestations of showering after him, he’d get up, and I’d go straight back to sleep.  The probability of whether or not I would shower depended utterly on whether or not I needed to wash my hair.  I’d be awoken for the final time when he would march back into our bedroom and order me up.

With him gone, I’ve had to go back to pre-marriage mode of getting myself up like a big girl.  And, minions, I do not like it.  I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person.  These days mornings are cold, dark, and currently husband-less.  I see no reason why I should have to leave the comforts of my bed, on a Monday in November.

I’m in a bit of a strop (if you couldn’t tell), so cheer me up this fine (wretched) morning!  How was your weekend, my loves?  I had a nephew’s baptism, a date with Margot, and the beginnings of seasonal shopping to leap into – and I’m not even talking Christmas.  J., Venice, and my father all have their birthdays this coming week, Sadie and Pieter have a couples wedding shower next Monday, and I’ve a wedding to attend this weekend.  I’ll be exhausted before Thanksgiving!

Humor, London, Marriage

Long Distance

“A box of gorgeous flowers just landed on my desk and made me cry at work.  I hope you’re happy.”
– C.

Confession: I knew it was going to be hard to have J. move to London.  Even if it was just for a few months, I knew I would hate it; I’d feel lonely, bored, occasionally bitter, and all of this would war against my very real excitement for and pride in him.  But looking at a roller coaster and riding one are two very different things, my doves, and I’ve felt a little miffed by the experience so far.  Granted, I’ve got this marvelous cocktail of female hormones flooding my system right now, so that can’t be helping.

I’m not an overly emotional person, but I’ve never felt so weepy in my life as this past month.  Talking to him on Skype for the first time – stuttering in my throat.  When suddenly his face popped up on my screen (I don’t have a camera for my computer yet although he does, but we hadn’t been using it) – eyes watering.  Today when a box of beautiful flowers showed up on my desk – full on tears.

I married him and he turned me into a girl.  The horror.

But, ladies, everything I know about love I learned from this guy, so take my advice on this.  If a man stays up until midnight just to Skype with you because he, “likes listening to you talk,” run away with him.  Immediately.  Sooner if he’s got flowers.  Even if they make you cry.

And even if he goes to Hampton Court Palace without you.
Humor, Husband

Me, Myself, and Jane Austen

“Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them.”
– Jane Austen

In the new version of Emma , Mr. Knightley notices that she is having a bit of a down day and says, “If you were to ask me, I would say that you were in need of a project.”  Which of course, interfering busybody she is, she does.  And if ever J. was in the house while I was watching it, he would chuckle a bit under his breath and refuse to explain why.

I didn’t get it until talking on the computer with him on Saturday about how life without him is rather dull.
“I’m running out of ideas.  I’ve made and frozen two batches of chicken tetrazzini, turned the chicken carcass into homemade broth, cleaned the whole house, did laundry, reorganized the kitchen and my closet, mended a pair of trousers, and am considering baking cookies.”
And suddenly, with the same rumbling, cute chuckle, “You are in need of a project, love.”

Har har.

Anyone need to be married off?  I have a lot of free time on my hands.

Keep still, I'm bored.
Humor, Husband, Marriage

Low Point

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ”
~ Charlotte Brontë

I woke up the other morning on J.’s side of the bed for the first time since I got back.  Only half awake I was trying to snuggle up against him because fall is slowly moving in and it’s getting chilly in the morning.  Bam.  Marriage nostalgia punched me in the face, kicked me in the stomach, and laughed at my misery.

I self medicated: rented an entire season of a show, got dinner takeaway, and wolfed down a whole piece of cheesecake.  Like I said: low point.

I miss this. I suspect even J. does too.
Grad School, Humor, Husband, London

The J. Files II

– 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.”

Home, Humor, Husband, London

The London Chronicles: My (Land)Lord and Lady

“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!

Grad School, Humor, Husband, London, University

The J. Files

– 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).”

Home, Humor, Husband, London, Travel

The London Chronicles: House Hunting

“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!