Ok, so I was out with the dog this morning and thinking about the move...and then my stomach lurched. The time of day and the quality of the light reminded me of my first morning in England and the light around St. Pancras. I've had a few "whoa, this is happening" moments in the last few months, but none that were quite so vivid.
I'm so going to be that girl at the airport crying her eyes out as we depart from Canada.
This past weekend was spent staring down every item in our house and making the T.S.P. call. We were both working full-tilt and I think we covered more ground than both of us ever hoped to in two days. Our basement is jammed full of sale stuff and I'm thoroughly excited to get this sale done. The sheer amount of the items we're parting with was a surprise and we were so brutal in our decision making.
It feels like such a big part of prepping for our move and moving past this weekend will make me feel a lot lighter and closer to our date. Now the sorting and pricing begins...I do love a little project. Ha ha...
Ok, I'm indulging myself right now and imaging a thousand wonderful things I want to do when we move to England. All I can really manage to type out right now (time is an issue this morning), is that I'm sooooooo excited!!!!
I just want to get there.
That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled day.
It's all been a little bureaucratic around here lately. Lots of filling out of forms (thankfully lawyers seem to be handling the bulk of this work) and then waiting for things to happen. We did, delightfully enough, have to renew our passports early. That meant a new passport photo. Too bad I wasn't thinking about that when I got dressed that morning. Oh well, it's just five years, eh? Suffice to say, I'm not legally allowed to leave the country for the next two weeks or so as part of the requirement was having your previous passport invalidated. I didn't have plans to go anywhere, but it does seem a little frightful to not have a passport at hand. I can hardly believe there are people out there (quite a lot in fact) who don't have a passport.
In other news, I'm sick this week. I've been on the couch for the better part of two days now and am rounding the corner on this head cold. I blame children. But, then again, I'll always blame children for things. While on the couch, I delved deep into Netflix and came up with the film, "Love, Actually" and I'm shocked to report, I've never seen it. James swears up and down he has, so I can only imagine when he found the time to watch it...without me. The setting is all sort of London-y at Christmas which wasn't lost on me. I'll be there in two months and 23 days. I cried a bunch and I'm fully aware that I will cry most of this holiday season, being away from my family as we will be. London is exactly what it was in the film: a setting. In my mind it's a film environment or a tourist destination. It's not a place to live. I'm going to find it very odd, I think.
I suppose I could also share that we have a potential place to live for the first 8 weeks or so that we're there. The accommodations are all taken care of for us, so we've been sent the Marylyn Lodge to look over and approve. I don't really know what more I'm supposed to require, so this looks sufficient. And I did lose about ten minutes to Google Streetview already. Have located several places of interest, such as a Starbucks and one place called The Peacock. I feel like this will disappoint me, however I set myself up for it....nothing that's actually called "The Peacock" is going to be half as good as I imagine it to be. At the very least, the area looks like it will accommodate my stomach on a whim, but it's downtown. The point isn't to have a heart and soul, the point is to be close to the financial district and, in this case, mere moments from Tower Bridge.
Our yard sale is not shaping up as quickly as I'd hoped, but the interest is high. It makes me laugh, every person I mention the yard sale to has the same response, "Oh, you guys have great stuff! What day is it??" I wasn't aware so many people were interested in securing little pieces of our life. Thankfully we're taking the time to do a thorough cleanse shortly and now we have the added pressure of not wanting to disappoint anyone. It actually makes parting with my "on the fence" items a lot easier.
For two years running, The Reverb Syndicate have been ever-so-fortunate to be invited to play at Barnstorm. Last year the Soviet Sisters were able to come along, but this year we were one down and when there's only two of you, that's noticeable. So I didn't dance the show. But after the set our contingent headed over to the Chill Out Barn where we did get to dancing. I was mid-dance when I realised that this sort of dance breakout is going to be a rare event for me in the coming months. It takes a particular sort atmosphere and carefully curated participants to all get their groove on over the same music in the right mood for the night. We had that last night and I'm thankful. The ease with which this occurs in my Ottawa life will be harder to come by in my London life.
I've been thinking a lot about friends and friendships lately as I realise I may see the end of many of the more tenuous connections in my life with this move. I haven't tried as hard as I should with my friends. It's a trait I think I've picked up from my family: during my childhood my mother always had work friends and then a string of one-at-a-time supernova friendships that burned bright and strong then completely disappeared. My father might have other friends, but I really only know of one constant outside of the workplace and, even then, I'm not sure how often they're in contact. Both of my parents have cultivated strong relationships with our family, though, so please don't take this to mean they are hermits. And in the ten years since I've lived at home, I know they've expanded their circles quite a bit, but that's not the example I grew up around. Bearing this in mind, I see now that I didn't pick up the skills I think are necessary to really build and foster a friendship with my peers.
Yes, I have friends. I even have some great friends and some whom I'd consider to be quite close. But I don't put the right amount of effort into them and so I haven't done them justice. It used to make me very sad, but now I have lived with it for so long and have adapted my definition of "friend" to such an extent that I don't feel sad, though I do wish to improve on my efforts. In this one area, however, I have been incredibly lucky as two of our friends have impeccable taste in friends. This sounds a bit odd, I know, but they're masters. They've constructed an amazing group of wonderful people with solid characteristics and warm personalities that all support and encourage each other. Through contact with them, I've been able to share in this group and have had some of my most fun and memorable moments with these people. It was this group that I was dancing with last night and it's this group that I'm going to miss getting to know better in the coming couple of years.
I don't see my connections to this group as tenuous enough to break irreparably, but I do know that I'll lose others. This is a loss I'm willing to accept as I know I can have a direct impact on who gets lost in the shuffle and who stays the course. My brief sojourn abroad will give me a crash course in friendship-making and I look forward to making it work.
The stress is making me sick. There's a cold coming on and I just want to walk out the door and leave now. The piddly nit-picky parts of packing/prepping have worn on my nerves and I feel lonely all the time.
Tomorrow my countdown lurches (much like my stomach), into the double digits. It's alarming how short 100 days actually is when you stop to think.
My stress and concern for Penny has been assuaged. The trip to my parents' house went well enough. Tigg barely noted Penny and there was no bloodshed. I'm going to call that a success. What's more is that Penny loves the house. She's already commandeered spots that are now hers and there's so much carpet. At one point she was dragging herself across the living room purely by claw across the carpet. She was in compete broadloom heaven. That's one little stressor out of the way....now to confront the dozens more waiting in the wings.
It was actually alarming how my mood changed the second we returned to Ottawa. The stress and overwhelming feelings hit me and I was thrown right into the sort of mood where no one wins. I had no idea being in Ottawa and dealing with all of this was destroying me as a person in little ways. To remedy this, I think my only hope is to do as much as possible, as quickly as possible. That can't possibly go poorly, right? *eye roll*
The majority of our weekend was spent with my family helping them plan their European adventure. It was a lot of fun to get caught up in someone else's plans and forget my own. I'll be meeting up with the group of them about mid-trip in Chaziuex, France, where we'll also be spending Christmas this year. I'm looking forward to it all and will likely let that consume me for some time during the bleak English winter.
Chazieux, France
Our packing efforts got off to, what I thought at the time was, a good start. I've since realised one lonely box of yard sale-worthy books does not cut the mustard and a redoubling of efforts is called for on both our parts. I should probably be packing, not blogging right now...
