twenty four and nine tenths

When I was one, I had a wooden walker that I would race in, from one end of our apartment in Buenos Aires to the other. I also answered the phone "owa", mimicking my mother's "ola".

When I was two, we moved to Aruba where enormous iguanas sunned themselves on our deck. My brothers went to boarding schools, a fact that was the reason that I was never allowed to go to boarding school, my parents apparently learning their lesson about children and watchful eyes.

When I was three, I had a friend named Tania Barros and we always played the Pretend Game. "Pretend... THIS! Pretend... THAT!" She had long hair that I coveted, I had short hair that she coveted.

When I was four, I had a colonoscopy to remove what may have been polyps from my intestines.

When I was five, we had a BMW in Morocco and I was afraid of it because the round headlights looked mean. Also, I spoke a little arabic because our maid's son was my friend. Not the same maid that accidentally left the waterhose on in the indoor garden and flooded the entire sunken living room and then went screaming out of the house, terrified of the landlord's consequences. Different maid.

When I was six, I had panda pyjamas that I loved, and my mother did a treasure hunt around the mostly-empty house in New Jersey so that I could find my presents. They also took me to the Statue of Liberty for the first time.

When I was seven, I got an ear infection because the little gold earrings that my godfather had given to me were so precious, I kept pushing the backing further and further into my ear so that I didn't lose them.

When I was eight, I got glasses, and my first pair had Woodstock on the side and my mother misplaced them in an airport in South America and I was devastated. Also at eight, my mother cut her hair short and when she came home, I was so thrown off by the unfamiliar look that I spent an hour crying about it. I was sort of a melodramatic kid.

When I was nine, we moved to Cote D'Ivoire and I met Anna and Julia and when they were talking about being in the "lift" at the hotel, I had no idea what they meant but I didn't ask, assuming they were playing with a forklift. I learned over time what they meant without having to ask and look stupid, and just assuming an answer would reveal itself in context has since become a somewhat dubious skill of mine.

When I was ten, I danced a little Flamenco routine at our International Festival because I'd been home sick the day our French class had learned our class dance and the teacher had told my mother I thus couldn't participate and my mother basically said (in nicer terms) "fuck THAT noise" and taught me a little Flamenco routine which I performed wearing a Flamenco dress that my dad had brought me from Spain. I took my glasses off to dance so I have a memory of not being nervous because all I could see was the chalk line on the grass that my mother had marked down for me.

When I was eleven, I went to the US on holidays with my best friend Cecile and we insisted on owning matching clothes in everything but I pitched a fit when Cecile got a sweater in D.C. and I didn't. Also, my mother found pot in the drawer at a HoJo and we changed hotels but because I was so young, she told me it was "cigarettes" and I didn't see what was so wrong with that.

When I was twelve, we moved to Houston from a short-lived assignment in Tunisia and I was considered a complete and utter nerd at the middle school I attended. I only had one friend. We wore matching squaw costumes for Halloween.

When I was thirteen, I got contacts, the beginnings of a figure, and a boyfriend. Suddenly, I had more than one friend. Pre-teens are shallow.

When I was fourteen, I got involved in a youth group and we sang hymns and went bowling and then went to Mexico to build houses for young families. I can't tell which moment it was that I lost my already-shaky and socially-acquired faith; whether it was when our youth group changed the words to "Peaceful Easy Feeling" by the Eagles so that it was about Jesus and not a woman, or whether it was when one neighboring mission group on the Mexico trip had a somewhat charismatic Baptist leader who told us to "stand up if we felt the holy spirit" and I was almost compelled to stand up just because everyone else was and it made me vaguely disgusted with myself. Maybe a combination of the two.

When I was fifteen, I celebrated my birthday at a camp by Lake Naivasha with classmates I'd just met, having just moved to Kenya. The standout moment in an otherwise awkward weekend was that Marnix, whom I didn't personally know yet but thought hated me, saw me run full-on into a painful bush and came over to help extricate my caught pants from the thorns. It was the first time he was nice to me and I think it was the start to our friendship although doubtless he'd forgotten it.

When I was sixteen, my parents threw me a sweet sixteen party in our living room and that morning, we cleared the entire living room of furniture. My brother had sent me Billy Joel's greatest hits and I spent the morning in there, listening to it and dancing around the room. I still love empty rooms. It was also the year I lost my virginity.

When I was seventeen, we moved back to Houston and I got my first real job, working at the Gap. I also joined and hated our high school drill team, dated a punk and a theatre dork, walked around the Village alone for the first time whilst in New York on holiday, got into drinking coffee as a hobby, and got into college.

When I was eighteen, I spent most of my time with my college roommate and best friend, Beth. I also ate a chili dog for the first time, had my first hangover, lived in my own apartment for the first time, got in my first (and only) near-accident, and by the end of being eighteen, broke up with my first serious boyfriend.

When I was nineteen, I had a self destructive friend who was in love with another mutual friend of ours. I got stuck in several snowstorms, went to Egypt and hated it, and went to Maine and loved it.

When I was twenty, I was depressed a lot, got into R.E.M. and Radiohead, and am convinced the three are related. I started smoking, made more self-destructive friends, was the editor of the college newspaper, practically failed out of English Medieval History, watched my brother graduate from his MBA, and ran out of money a lot. Oh, and wore lots of hoodies.

When I was twenty one, I snapped out of it. I also fell in love with several good friends, all to disasterous effect. Notably, I quit my college newspaper and thought about moving to London. I also started this blog.

When I was twenty two, I graduated from college and got a job. I also had two or three really stupid relationships of varying lengths and stupidities. I spent a lot of time going to stores and buying clothes on a credit card that withered and died a few months later without too much long-term damage. I also met Biscuit.

When I was twenty three, I decided to apply for law school and then decided not to go. In between those two things, I had appendicitis, during a blackout, I got an agent, I dated two very different guys, I met Kate, I was pleasantly surprised by great gifts and great family at Christmas, I spent Valentine's Day alone, I went to Brasil, and I met Stuart.

When I was twenty four, I had a new roommate (Kate), a new toy (iPod), and a new love (Stuart). I also had a wedding, a honeymoon, great holidays, and a blizzard, made the decision to quit smoking, made the decision to start a diet, learned how to play tennis, painted a room red, got to know my in-laws, went to two weddings, got a great tax return, and developed a taste for Madeira. Twenty four, I think, was a good year.

Let's see what twenty five brings.

rubberstamped

The fact that I just ordered a self-inking stamp for our office that says IN so that I can more easily mark up our timesheets is disturbing to me, obviously, but I cannot ascertain if I am disturbed because:

1. this marks my eventual slide into office-bitch-dom, totally and completely, because I rejoiced at the thought of getting that stamp and making my job easier

or

2. it makes me realize that our payroll department, whilst fully computerized, is still making us do these menial sheets by hand and why, god, why have we not modernized to intranet timesheet procedures?

But either way, I am obviously far too concerned with the efficiency of my office to really be subersive in any way shape or form, and this means I am basically a secretary and a damned good one so if someone doesn't get me a very shiny red pen and a bouquet of roses next Administrative Professionals Day (HA, professional), I'm going to be very angry and I might just steal ALL the pencils. AND the sharpener.

you can't leave home again

I'm going to tell you a story in the form of a timeline, with the real point at the end which is almost totally unrelated to the timeline. Bear with me.

Friday, August 19th, 2005

7:10pm, Ryde Ferry Terminal - tearful goodbyes with Katina and Keith, Stuart's parents. In lieu of anything useful to say in the face of so much heartbreak, I say several times that we'll be back at Christmas, it won't be too long, just three months.

7:20pm, Wightlink Ferry - as the boat is pulling away from IoW, I casually ask Stuart if he has the Advanced Parole, which is the document that is the only reason we were able to leave the US before his Permanent Resident Interview and other things that start with capital letter of Importance.

7:20:02pm - Stuart blinks and goes, "AP?"

7:20:03 to 7:30pm - I proceed to fucking totally and completely lose my fucking shit as Stuart frantically searches through his bag over and over again, saying that he'd taken it out over the course of the week and didn't remember where he'd put it or whether he'd put it back into anything we were carrying with us.

7:35pm - We land at Portsmouth, me crying like I simply cannot stop crying, Stuart grim-faced and totally freaking out about both the lost document and his wife who is now a small puddle on the deck of the ferry indistinguishable from the seawater.

7:40 to 7:44pm - I proceed to simultaneously freak out, rip apart our suitcase and call my dad on my dwindling-powered cell phone to tell him to call the INS and ask what the ramifications of this are. I already know the ramifications - without that document, Stuart cannot come back into the country unless they give us a break and acknowledge that they did grant it to us, otherwise he is seen as having abandoning his case progress and OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK HELP. Stuart is meanwhile on the payphone desperately trying to get in touch with his parents to tell them to turn around, come back to Ryde, pick us up so we can go home and tear the bedroom apart and freak out some more. It was a hectic four minutes.

7:45pm - we get on the next island-bound ferry and give the man 17GBP for a two same-day return tickets, and he assures us that we'd only have to pay a couple pounds extra for a morning ferry if needs be. Actually, he totally fucking up and LIED and we found out back on the island that it would cost us another 11 pounds to take the morning ferry and I swear, I hate ferry monopolies so much, SO FUCKING MUCH, anyway whatever.

7:50-7:55pm - I continue to freak out and cry. Stuart asks me to stop crying or else he's going to lose it. I try to stop crying. I am functioning on the principle that if 1. you don't have something and 2. you don't know where it is, then 3. there's no reason it's not completely lost to you forever. This is a depressing ideology. Stuart worries that I am mad at him. I tell him with tears streaming down my face that if we just find this goddamned thing, I won't ever care, I won't ever be mad, I just want to find it.

7:56pm - I'm freaking out to Stuart that he'd thrown it away with the NYT that had been in his bag. He says, "but I didn't throw the Times away! It was on the dresser! And now it's just in the bin, IN the bedroom!" And suddenly the heavens part. A mental picture snaps into my head, almost unbidden, to my mind: something fell behind the dresser a few days before. Something that had been on top of the newspaper. Something I'd just assumed was a stupid flyer or leaflet. SOMETHING PAPER, SOMETHING THAT HAD BEEN THE AP. OH MY GOD IT'S BEHIND THE DRESSER. I cry again, just out of relief, and because it's become something of a habit for the last 20 minutes.

8:00pm to 9:30pm - we land in Ryde and spend the next hour and a half trying to get through to Stuart's family to have someone come pick us up and look behind the dresser. Meanwhile, dad has confirmed the bad news, that the INS officer had said our "best shot" would be to just fly to JFK as planned and put ourselves at the mercy of the INS officers there, riding on the theory that at least they'd only detain Stuart for 24 hours which would be long enough to try and solve the problem. Heh. DETAINED. I cry out of relief again, and hope to a god I don't even believe in that I'm right, that it's behind the dresser. I try to stop crying when Stuart brings me the world's shittiest hot cocoa from the vending machine. He says, "I'm such a twerp." To make him feel better, and to prove solidarity, and because I'M THE ONE THAT LET THE DAMN THING FALL BEHIND THE DRESSER, I say, "well, then I'm missus Twerp." And I am.

9:30pm - Keith shows up at the terminal, having been told by Stuart's sister (who was the only person we'd managed to locate) that we'd lost something and needed fetching. Keith was a hero about it, not even berating Stuart and I even further for our stupidity, just offering us a small travel-document case that was identical to the one he and Katina use to travel. I cry just from the relief of the bear hug he gave me when he picks us up. When I tell my dad it's been found, he tells me I'd better find the next Greek Orthodox church and say several prayers to several saints for Stuart's and my bafflingly continuous good luck in the face of our own stupidity. The next day I will drunkenly charge Jen with this task. I hope thankfulness prayers work by indirect lines.

9:45pm - We walk into the house, knowing that Katina has managed to locate the paper behind the dresser, and find her sitting in the kitchen looking tired but happy to see us again. My face must have said how mortified and awful I felt, because the first thing Katina says is, after a pause, "Merry... christmas".

9:45- to 10:30pm - Katina, Stuart, Keith and I laugh our heads off about how funny this is, how ridiculous it was, how fantastic family is. We tuck in for the night after a much-needed glass of wine. When getting into bed, Stuart finds Bow Bear. Seems we didn't realize we'd come home for more than just the papers.

Saturday, August 20th, 2005

7:15am - exactly 12 hours later, we board the same ferry to Portsmouth. We see the same ticketing agent, who does a double take at this family that can't seem to get it right the first time. There are a few less tears, there are a few more laughs, and the second goodbye goes down a little better than the first.

The moral of the story isn't that we now know how to carry documents around, or even that I managed to get my teddy bear the second time around. It's that Katina said Merry Christmas and made me laugh for the first time in hours, and family is always good to come home to. Twice.

ain't life grand

If I ever try to complain about life please link to this post* and remind me that on a random Wednesday in August, there are big fluffy clouds outside my floor-to-ceiling 43rd story office window, and that I get to leave work and go test cupcakes at crumbs, which I'm ordering for my birthday in exactly one week, and that afterwards I'm having cosmos with my favourite new friend, not because I don't know what cosmos taste like and need to make sure they're perfect for my birthday gathering but, uh, just because I like cosmos, okay? Okay.

*yes I expect you to link to it even in conversation, i.e., "remember, a href equal sign quotation mark etc etc etc."

vectis

It's hard to describe the Isle of Wight. When Stuart and I first met, I think he played it down a bit. Perhaps all natives do. Is it because it's unremarkable to them? That can't be it, because as we drove through the west side of the island and I'd gasped my delight at one more stunning vista, I asked Stuart and his friends, "You know how lucky you are to call this beautiful place home?" and they all said yes.

So perhaps it's because it's their little gem, their little secret paradise of Englishness. When Sharon and I were lazily discussing where the bridge to the mainland could feasibly be built, at the end of the conversation, I said, "well, economic and other reasons aside, I wouldn't want a fixed link if I were an islander because I'd just be selfish. I'd want to keep this place to myself." She smiled and agreed and perhaps I sold myself to her in that moment, to her and Dave and Stuart, as understanding a little bit about the quiet charm of the island.

I can't wrap my brain around the difference between the island's physical size and the size of the feeling it imparts. It's only thirteen miles by twenty. That's smaller than one neighborhood in Houston, about the size of Queens. Yet there are probably about a hundred little towns. The roads almost never go in a straight line, thanks to the majestic downs that intersect the island. The attitude and atmosphere from the southern tip to West Wight to Cowes to Newport changes almost completely.

Even though it's small in size, it's not small in spirit. It feels not just like an island, but like its own country. We went to explore Carisbrooke castle and when we got there early, we tromped down into town to buy breakfast of bread and cheese and coffee. When we got back to the top of the hill with our spread, we sat down and through a break in the trees could see the valley below with Carisbrooke town nestled right in. It could have been Switzerland or Austria, with its open-air freshness and quaint quiet.

The bus took us careening across the southern end of the island where the downs rise up from the cliffs and the cliffs drop down to the sea. It could have been the north of France, or Canada, in the majestic harmont between cliffs, downs, and choppy grey sea. But it wasn't. It was this tiny island, this thirteen-by-twenty stretch of England that feels at once so English and yet so unique, so impenetrably island-cultured that people can't help but refer to the land across the Solent almost as if it were a foreign world.

I am trying and failing to capture what it feels like to be in a place so familiarly friendly and pleasant, and yet so proudly different and remote. And I don't mean remote in the sense of unconnectedness, I mean remote in the sense of removed, unlike, other-than. And I, being someone that has always lived under a certain standard of that remoteness, have fallen in love with this island. I loved every bend in every road. I had a peculiar connection and fascination with the sheep. And my American pronunciation and grammar, which I have so proudly and stubbornly clung to when visiting other parts of England, melted away a little. I had no problem asking Stuart to get me a jumper from upstairs, asking Katina if she wanted us to stop in the newsagents, putting my bags in the boot. I didn't mind bending my ball-busting, charge-aheadness to the slower, more rocking gait of this bit of rock. I relished every minute of being foreign because it didn't feel like I didn't belong.

That's what it is, I think. Somehow and unpredictably, the land I stood on led me to feel like there was something in it that I could belong to. Not a house or a photograph, but an understanding. Perhaps it's that age-old kindred with your beloved's homeland. But perhaps there's just something I understood about the island, something I appreciated, something that meant it became a place much larger than just pensioners or regattas, just island-roads or esplanades. It really is its own, enormous, splendid place.

the english seaside

This may well be one of my favourite pictures from everything I've uploaded to the vacation flickr set. It was a windy day that Tuesday on the beach, and we flew kites and drank tea and watched the children stubbornly building sandcastles. It was perfect. Thanks, England.

homesick

I didn't really miss New York at all when I was on the island. It's weird to call it "the island" because that makes it sound tropical but one can't really call it "the isle", can one. That sounds even weirder.

Anyway I say I didn't really miss New York. That's not to say I didn't miss my friends (I did) or I want to give up life here and move to the island (I don't) but homesickness only affects me when I feel that the place I'm in is not fulfilling me in some shallow or meaningful way that home does fulfill me.

Does that make sense? When we were in Kent, at the B&B getting ready for Shiv's wedding, we needed to eat. The inn was in a residential part of the town and there was nowhere easily walkable. So we looked at the menus for the area that the hostess provided. After three tries, finding out one place didn't deliver until 5 and another place wasn't OPEN until five, we had to order from Pizza Hut. Who didn't even want to deliver to us because we were at a hotel, until Stuart convinced them by use of cunning exessive politeness to bring us food for which we'd pay hard-earned money.

That was a shallow moment because the whole world doesn't have to be like New York. But in New York I can get sixteen kinds of food from cultures around the globe delivered to the park bench I'm sitting on at three seventeen in the morning on Christmas Day. That's fucking awesome, by the way. So I had a shallow moment, where my inner brat lay down on the floor and kicked her arms and legs around and said WAHH TAKE ME HOME.

I had a more meaningful kind of homesickness the next day, at a pub in Covent Garden with friends where we went to kill time before our flights. Stuart and I decided to go for a little walk through the busy square, watch a little Punch and Judy, and just generally revel in not carrying our heavy suitcases. It was nice to be walking along hand in hand in the perfect English summer sunshine, watching all manner of people stream past us. We sat down in one of the alcoves and watched a string quartet play recognizable classical music. I turned to Stuart and said, "You know, for all I say London is just like New York so I might as well live at home, we don't have string quartets." I went on to think, we also don't have this gorgeous summer weather, we also don't have cornish pasties or quince jam or wonderful canal holidays or sheep, SO MANY SHEEP. Okay, that's England, not London, but you get where I was going with that.

Then, almost unbidden, I thought of the blind Greek accordionist on the N/W that I like to call Themistoklis, who played Fools Rush In for a solid year and always says in heavily accented English, "Ladies and Gentleman, your donations are greatly appreciated." I thought about Leroy, the black guy with nothing but his thumbs who, when he asks for money on a Friday because you've just gotten paid, says, "If you can't give me your cash, then just give me a smile!" And how I always smile. And I thought about how we might not necessarily have classy string quartets with more charm in them than all of the Bond actors combined, but how there's nothing quite as awesome as walking through Herald Square and hearing a saxophonist play Girl from Ipanema and wonder what he knows about you, nothing quite like the guy that plays Edith Piaf songs on guitar in Brooklyn, and how much I missed those things.

So really, it came down to realizing that for me, walking through Covent Garden on a busy Sunday felt like a moment in a pleasing Richard Curtis film, but walking through Astoria on a muggy Sunday to have lazy breakfast at Tastee Corner, well, feels like normal life.

what i wanted to say

was that i wish i had things to say and a long story to tell about the 30 hour travel day and the four different airports and the seven foot australian and the sight of stuart hugging his mother for the first time.

but the thing is, here i am, and it feels like a whole second family, and family is precious, and right now there is a glass of wine and a warm island night and two men, a father and a son, drinking whiskey together and talking about the cricket and a mother-in-law who can put foot long fishes in the tiniest space in a freezer for which she has my eternal respect and two parents to call and say hello to, one in brasil and one in rhode island, and the thing about all this is, family is more precious than blogging.

sorry, guys. give me a few more days.

oh god help

It was only when I was actually DONE with this spreadsheet that I realized the extent to my madness. Does anyone else actually DO this, I wondered? Am I the only one? I am basically Joan Crawford with less jumpsuits? And Internet, don't say I never show you my flaws, bitches. THESE ARE MY FLAWS.

In my defense, we have plans both tonight and tomorrow night, leaving us precious little time to pack our joint belongings in a suitcase and a travel pack. So I figured a list tacked up in the bedroom somewhere would make the last-minute frantic double-checking a little easier.

In my total lack of a defense, THIS SHIT IS INSANE, YO. I can't tell whether I'm proud or horrified. I think a little bit of both.

before friday, i must:

find passport [most logical place, check]
ask USCIS why they sent two identical travel documents for Stuart
write article for work
finish september invoices for work
sort out prescription mail-order
do dishes
clean bedroom/put away clean laundry
bring traveler's backpack home from office
buy/borrow/steal enormous-capacity CF card [duly borrowed, 512MB, what's up]
drinks at the gate
dinner for stan's birthday
talk to bank so they don't cut us off halfway through our trip for security reasons [done]
figure out if i can feasibly take less than 4 pairs of shoes
find a garment bag for the kent end of the trip
buy favourite shampoo
decide what to do with this here blog while i'm gone

delivery

The sidewalk outside Life, our local Greek hoodlum nightclub, is littered with pamphlets and beer cans in brown bags. I'm walking east on Newtown, pushing forty pounds of laundry on a yenta cart. He's walking west, pushing a handtruck with one box of groceries and two jugs of Poland Spring water. Neither of us are using both hands to push our light loads.

"Hi," I smile.
"Good morning," he says in a slight accent. I guess he's either Senegalese, or Ivorian, from the accent and the bone structure and the smile. I remember a lot of smiles, always, in the Ivory Coast.

I think about this until I've dropped off my laundry, taken my chit. I'm walking west on Newtown, now thinking about the subway changes this weekend, and pushing my empty yenta cart. He's there again, in front of Life, walking east and pushing the empty handtruck.

"Have a great day," I grin. He smiles even wider.
"Take care, okay."

People who say New Yorkers aren't friendly don't live here.

making the trains run on time

The last two times I went to England were very different than the trip we're taking in a week. For those of you just catching up to our show, here are ways in which it was different:

1. Hello, in May I was flying on a plane to see my fiance, for, like, the second time ever. The little part of my brain that had some how been asleep for the past two months woke up somewhere over Greenland and went, "DOUBLE YOU TEE EFF, LADY?!" and I spent the rest of the flight having butterflies about meeting his family, seeing him at the airport, whether my dress was pretty, what the HELL I WAS DOING, were we right. For those of you keeping score, we were.

2. The weekend in July was spent happily cloistered together in Hatfield, a place made more charming because we were in love but still somewhat bereft by charm. Like charm dumped it, cruelly, on New Year's, and it had never recovered.

This time, we're going together on the plane. We're packing together, even our toiletries exist happily in the same handy travel toiletry bag (actually, I snobbily refer to it as a necessaire, something that endears me to Stuart and probably no one else, except my mom, which is where I got the word). We are buying train tickets together, ferry tickets together, and the only time I plan to be apart from Stuart on this trip is in the separate customs lines, getting into the UK and then into the US.

This is critical because it is indicative of our life now, versus last summer. We are married now. We have been married, as I giddily like to say, "since last year", which makes it sound SO established, loves it. We are going home to see his family, possibly the most important thing we will have done all year. We fought tooth and nail for this trip, begging the INS for a special travel visa, waiting on pins and nails and needles and porcupines and rhinos for the special travel visa to come through, taking critical vacation time to do so. Attending Shiv's wedding will be the fun and much-anticipated end to our trip, but for that first week, we're spending every minute with his family.

Me, I'm spoiled. I see my parents every few weeks or so, my brother every few months (and that's still not often enough). I have a small family but damn if they don't rock that casbah. Stuart has been, as it is with so many emigrees, very far away from his wonderful nuclear (and so similar to mine) family for ten months now. That is such a heartbreakingly long time to be away from parents, when I try to imagine it, I can't, which is one of the reasons we're living here in the US (because I am a spoiled baby).

So going home = huge big important wonderful thing. But so is going home as a couple - one of the reasons we wouldn't split this trip for the world, me going now and Stuart going later or vice versa. We're going home to his family as a pair, as a team, and maybe for the first time, I'll really get to feel part of someone else's family instead of just nervously (but wonderfully) meeting them. I'm going to visit my in-laws. His mom will see the rings on our fingers for the first time. They can legitimately tease us about grandkids now.

Am I sufficiently conveying how huge this is, spelt all in capitals like AITCH YOU GEE EEE? It's huge. So because it's huge, its hugeness and sentimentality and importance and brilliance and success is almost too much for me to think about. Every time I think about what Stuart has gone through to be at my side - the waiting for the visa, the part where he told his family he was leaving England for a girl he'd known for a week, the part where they were supportive but struggled to come to grips with his decision, the part where he said goodbye to biscuits and whiskey sold at grocery stores and the National Health and hedgerows and the Solent and Jim and Len and Lynn and imperial pints, and the part where he was unemployed here because of my government and .. and - every time I realize the immense weight of the sacrifices he's made and with what grace and good will and cheer he's done them for me, it's all I can do not to impulsively wrap up the entire world in a big bow and give it right back to him, move to England tomorrow just to prove I could do it all too.

So going to England in all its hugeness, doing everything in my power including crying on the phone (twice!) to INS officers begging them to expedite this and realizing I'd have to miss my best friend's wedding to get this trip right even if it meant a month late, going to England is all I can do to pay back the wonderful gift Stuart has bestowed on me. So how do I cope? I get obsessed about trains, and train times, and tubes, and where we can leave our luggage, and how to get around the island, and how many times we can take his mom to the beach and whether I'll be able to find ingredients to cook them a Brasilian dish and oh my god, will they really love me and see how happy we are and be glad that we're a little family now, even if it means we're a little family thousands of miles away? And since this post is long enough already I can tell you that I've printed up a google map of the roads around his home and have marked down the places I already know, the places Stuart has told me about that I want to see, what inns to check out to see if my parents can find someplace to stay if they come for Christmas. I can tell you that I know the entire Southwest train schedule from Waterloo to Portsmouth by heart, that I know all the subways that take us to Waterloo including alternate routes in case of closure, that I've asked around and timed out the exact Heathrow-to-island time frame, and I can also tell you HOW COMPLETELY USELESS this process is because the ironic thing is, it's STUART'S HOME. He knows how all the things work there. Why am I even getting obsessed over it?

Because it's the only way I can cope with how excited I am to be at his side when this happens, to watch him take it all in, to watch him hug his mother again and get grilling tips from his dad and tease his sister and walk down to the shore along the High Street and to watch his face as he looks at his homeland with eyes of an expat, a married man, and yet still an islander. I can only obsess over the maps because it's a good way to not cry with joy and excitement and if I were a chihuahua instead of a neurotic New Yorker, I would just pee all over everything all the time and fall asleep from the exhaustion of anticipation.

So it's all I can do to keep checking train times as an obsessive-compulsive way to make this trip perfect, to tell Stuart that I know how much this means to him, and because I know how much this means, to you, honey, here's a typed-out, cross-referenced and highlighted schedule of all the trains and buses and tubes and ferries and cabs and dune-buggies and rickshaws and unwilling french manservants.

All the ways we're going home.

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I do not even know what to title an entry in which I explain the past ten minutes, wherein I:

1. knocked my cup of tea over and promptly soaked my entire desktop, a calendar, and an invoice, also

2. my jeans and the bottom left of my tee-shirt (now a tea shirt HA oh my pain)

but better than that, wherein I then:

3. sat back DOWN in my fabric office chair after cleaning the tea off of everything, somehow spectacularly failing to realize that

4. the tea had also hit the chair which now meant that

5. my butt is now also soggy from tea spillage.

Christ. It's like Valdez around here. Except with tea.

Update: wait, NO! I can top myself in the awful department! Wherever the tea spilled on the desk, it somehow seeped through to a hollow metal component of my desk that has something disgusting living in it, because now the holes in the hollow metal component are leaking out all over my jeans and tea shirt on the OTHER side of my body, which I just realized. The black stuff leaking out of there smells like unwashed ass and so, now I do too.

Apparently, I didn't get the memo wherein Monday gave up the ghost but Wednesday is coming up like a fury on steriods.

Coffee tables and allen wrenches, A LACK!

This weekend, amid the flurry of our second set of shows, we found (made?) time to refurnish the book and media storage in our living room. We ended up with two tall bookcases named Billy, a TV cabinet named Benno, and three tables called Lack! Plus a ... rooster. And a lamp. And some wicker baskets. It was fun! Click through to see the entire set.

fox trot teenies

We had the following conversation today over breakfast at our local diner, as the Elton John song played on the radio:

K: "Hold me closer, Tony Danza!"
S: "What is he actually saying?"
K: "Tiny dancer."
S: "... like.. what kind of dancer is that?"
K: "Like a ballerina."
S: "Oh, I was thinking, like, a midget ballroom dancer."