At Lightning Speed

We were preparing ourselves for an extremely long wait to hear back regarding my fiancee visa – we had been told 4-6 weeks by the visa company and up to 12 weeks by the British Consulate’s web site. WorldBridge informed us, after I sent the application in, that bank statements printed from the internet were unacceptable and the British Consulate’s phone service indicated long wait times for visa due to a “technical fault”. When I sent in the application, on a Friday, I chose Express Mail, and only after paying for the service was I informed that the package would arrive on Saturday, by noon.

Saturday? It can’t arrive on Saturday! It’s a Consulate! No one will be there! Then, when realizing we’d done something wrong (bank statements), I decided that our only hope was for no one at the consulate to pick it up until Wednesday, at which time it would be returned to me. Many tense trackings later, I discovered Tuesday that it had been signed for at noon the day before. Despair. Oh my god, what if the visa person is having a bad day? Will they deny it out right or actually call me and ask me to addend my application with the correct paperwork? A great flurry of anxiety was born, twin columns on either side of the Atlantic until sleep extinguished them.

Wednesday morning, an email! Our application has been approved and the visa issued! What? How can that be? Can we believe it? It seemed a little anticlimactic, considering the froth of fear we had whipped up. But who knows when it will actually be sent to me. It could take days, it could take…no, there’s no way it could possibly take weeks.

Thursday morning, a phone call! UPS has a package that must be signed for, please be available to receive it. Raptures! Could it be my visa? A quick enumeration of various items I have recently ordered shows there to be none which would require a signature or be forthcoming. It must be my visa! Waiting, waiting, waiting, yet another drive to JoAnn’s Fabrics (what seems like the 10th trip in the past week), look up whenever a large vehicle’s engine is heard, cut fabric, mark fabric, sew fabric (wedding dress, you know), and then….

And then! The big brown truck! I fly out of the house and hop around in front of the delivery person. “Is that from Chicago?” “Let’s see, no…Tampa.” “Oh no!” “No, I’m kidding, it’s from the British Consulate? You were just so excited I couldn’t help myself.” “I’M GETTING MARRIED! That’s my visa!” “Ohhh, congratulations!”

Sign, run, rip, out falls paperwork and wonder of wonders, my passport. With my visa inside. It says Marriage/CP. No work or recourse to public funds. Entry Clearance!

I cannot credit how fast it all happened. I hardly believe I have it and must look at it now and again, gazing in wonderment at the slip of embossed paper pasted into the most valuable booklet I now own.

In Which I Dicker with Myself Regarding Money

Is this one of those times when my parsimony, like a tired slip, is peeking out from under my normally gaudy exterior? When I will live to regret not spending a few more ducats in the face of such grand improvements to my life? Yes, possibly. After accruing over $5,000 in credit card debt on the way to trying to be allowed to stay in England with my fiancé, I am staring down the barrel of just another $150 and quavering at its enormity. This time it won’t be spent in gathering more than the bare minimum items of clothing necessities (like, could I have please just told myself that I could afford two pairs of those delicious Diesel jeans that I can no longer find? the ones that are just so perfect I could die and go to heaven in them?) but would be spent to improve my eyesight.

Seven years ago I spent a number of ducats I gained through bodily injury – two car accidents suffered in under one month. After some time, and some lawerly wrangling, I was awarded a princely sum and felt I could afford to have Lasik eye surgery. It really was awesome. And I spent $150 per eye (there’s that number again!) extra so that I could have a lifetime guarantee of satisfaction. I am on the brink of now having the surgery again, but that little bit extra required, a $150 eye exam, and not being 100% sure whether the surgery is yet needed stays my hand when I reach for the phone to set an appointment. Is it really that bad? Could I not wait? What if there are side effects? What if I have the exam, spend the money, and find out my eyes aren’t bad enough for another surgery?

Ojala que vaya en Londres soon enough, and then I won’t be able to get it for several more years. Do I want to put up with glasses if it gets bad enough? Or do I just suck it up and spend the monies now? Tough call.

Everything Old Is New Again

Lately I’m whining about how hot it is, I feel like I’m melting and it’s one third of the way through November. I know I’m just being a wimp, especially after weathering supra-106 F temperatures in northern California. You want to know what it’s like to be cooked, that’s where you’ll find out. NYC and FL have nothing on those temperatures!

I didn’t manage to get more than about 15 stitches done on my cowl out west so this afternoon my grandma and I are going to this big house where a lady has offered space free of charge for people to complete craft projects. I hear tell there will be knitters present and I will be attempting to learn a different technique, in order that I may at least finish this first project and think towards the likelihood of starting a second. I suspect that I will finish this row (knit, slip, knit, slip, … swap!) and then switch to one plain old stitch so I don’t have to count. It’s too much for my brain at this early stage.

Mom and I have been making…well, let’s take a step back. A lot has changed, again. Two and a half months ago I thought I was back Stateside for good but just didn’t give the situation long enough to play out. At the end of this week I send in my visa application to the British Consulate in Chicago. I have a vintage pattern for a wedding dress, I have beautiful blue silk taffeta for a wedding dress, and my mom and I are sewing up a storm.

For those uninitiated into the ways of vintage patterns (*holds up hand*) they are MUCH more detailed than modern ones. I have never seen so many pressings, so many measurings, so many ripping-outs of details than I have with this dress. Which is why I’m glad Mom was too scared to cut into silk without first doing a mock up. Then, there is the why of my conviction, every time I get near a sewing machine, that clothes will just come spewing out of it wholly made. We have 1) mock up dress, 2) wedding dress, 3) and 4) pencil skirts, 5) romper dress and 6) lovely pleated day dress patterns to complete. *phew* I’m only sure we’ll finish the first two but desperately want to finish at least one of the other ones as well before I am allowed to return to England (please, please let me come back!) and everything else will be finished and posted within months.

Kept hearing this song out in CA, thought it sounded like Metric, heard it on the radio here and looked it up to verify. It is. Guess they’ve really made it now.

Ay yi yi!

With another plane trip in the works, travel preparations have been in high gear, as are my fears that I will forget something. I’ve made a list, and checked it thrice, but now that a friend has alerted me to the fact that my thrice-checked acupuncture points tattoo is incorrect on one side, I am even more afraid that I will have left something vital off the list. But there are stores, even in rural northern California, and anything I discover I need may be purchased when I get there.

It’s too bad that I’m terrible at sewing by hand, and that it’s not as secure, because I’d love to be able to make stuff while I’m there. I will just have to content myself with knitting my cowl, which I have graciously neglected to do in order to give myself something to do out there. No phone and no internet and a mountain makes for an amazing forced break from the world but will I go insane? Only time will tell. So for now I dream of redwoods and cedars and drizzly rain and fog. I’m kinda hazy on the rest.

Portland is a bus ride away, and I have joined the fixed gear/single speed forum out there and already been offered a loaner bike when I make my way up there. That’ll make it much easier to get around, my trusty map in the back of my waistband and a non-binding itinerary in my head. I’d really like to see what that city’s like, what the people are like, how much apartments cost, what kind of jobs are available, how easy it is to get to nature, what the food’s like, the list goes on…

Mt. Hood

There’s a mountain! How ’bout that? How amazing would it be to have the opportunity to look at a mountain every time you go outside?

Willamette River

And a river! It looks to be about the width of the Thames, with easily tamable bridges. Lookin’ better and better!

I will have only limited internet access for the next month or more, so please bear with me and keep checking back! I’ll update as soon as I can.

California-bound

(though in actuality, I will be in the mountains of the Fog Belt)

Saturday marks the third time in twenty four days that I will have hopped on a plane. Sleep is fractured, full of strange dreams and I awaken early most of the time. Last night’s dream was being in a flying contest [propelled by one's own muscle power] where everyone was trying to cheat by pulling down everyone else’s vehicle, which were like tiny Victorian ideals of balloon travel, and then I actually got close to the front and one of the guys opted to lose, himself, in order to lead me wrong and make me lose. Obvious, much?

Until then, friends, friends’ children, Mom & Gma, the beach, and working on my tan.

Beach. Book. Water. Tan.

Beach yesterday. Went early and left before noon, the better to protect my delicate cutaneous membrane, and discovered that apparently I don’t have to worry about skin cancer quite as much as I thought I did after realizing I was tanning quite nicely, quite quickly. I’ve never tanned very well, so this was a pleasant shock. As I am not the biggest fan of the beach, I did not go in the water (hey, I couldn’t wash off afterward!), just laid about on the sheet that I brought, reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I gratefully found in the airport used book store (eh?!) in Wisconsin, on my way back to Florida. Obviously I have a death/zombie theme going lately, thinking over the books that I have read or wanted to read in the last two weeks (the other, that I didn’t get to, is World War Z; I’ll have to make sure I grab a copy of it before I go to California).

Today, water again: my mom’s boyfriend is taking us out on the sailboat. Whee! Hope I don’t get seasick. I didn’t on the powerboat but I am dreadfully prone to motion sickness and had problems the last time I was on a sailboat. Maybe my inner ear has matured since then.

Fear not – I will again work on my tan.

Whatevs.

Chicago is off the itinerary since I had no clue how exhausting children are. I have not slept very well, and have been enjoying doing stuff around the house, riding the bike around occasionally and going to the park, and mostly doing stuff around the house. Since time both drags and seems to suddenly run out when you least expect it, it is now Thursday and I fly back Saturday mid-day.

So today I will be riding 10 miles to Mitchell Park Conservatory, locally known as The Domes. I’ll be heading past Ben’s Cycles again because it turns out I will actually need a chain breaker in my near future and they sell the one I suspect the bike shop in Florida was going to sell me, but $7 cheaper. That works.

Then, I have directions to go to the Milwaukee Museum as well, but don’t know if I’ll get there. Actually, after looking at the site, maybe I will. There are some cool exhibits on. G is going to pick me up after the kids’ nap time, and we will go to the knitting shop she likes. I guess I’m going to learn how to knit! Because I want a few more cowls, and because no one I know, except G (who is overburdened with projects) knows how to knit, a new hobby sounds like a plan. However, I bet I’ll have to check my luggage this time as I doubt they allow knitting needles on the plane, though I could check easily enough. Turns out I can. Sweet. So I’m borrowing G’s 10.5’s and buying a skein of alpaca (super soft and keeps its shape), awesome! Will give me something to do instead of trolling the internet and reading.

Speaking of reading, I’m so happy to be reading again. We went to the library last week and I took out Charlaine Harris’s third in the Harper Connely series, An Ice Cold Grave. Banged that out in two days, then moved on to the Dexter books. Book 1 down in three days, now I’m working on Book 2, which I will take with me to the conservatory. It’ll be nice to read among the flowers.

Otra vez, ustedes trajo un video musical:

Me encanta Shakira, cuando tiene razon o no, no me importa! Pero, en serio, que pasa con eso video!?

In the Jell-O

Hunh…I totally had things I was going to write about but can’t for the life of me remember them. This is what happens when a 19-month old is sick and wakes up over and over again all night and the room you’re sleeping in is totally not sound-proof and you’re suddenly, randomly afraid of the dark again.

It’s been hard for me to write for a while, I’ve been worried about England and now England is over (finito, no more country, poof!) and I’m back in the States and trying to figure out how to start my life over again. I have a potential opportunity to go out to northern California for a few months to make money and check out the area. Last night I was all about this, no questions – it was my best bet and I wasn’t keen on going back to NYC. This morning I wonder if I want to go back to NYC. Another option is Wisconsin, here with G and her family. There’s a sizable bike community (they even play polo) and rent is cheaper and I may even be able to find work relatively simply. I like the slower rhythm, as evinced yesterday by sewing and enjoying the view from the dining room table, through the kitchen, into the backyard, watching the branches on the walnut tree be blown around. But I also worry about the cold and having to have a car and not being able to ride my bike mostly-year-round and if it would be too slow.

I feel like I’m stuck in honey and everything’s warped and I can’t see straight and I can barely move. I need someone to push me in a direction and make me go that way. That someone has to be me. I’m tired of waiting for outside influences to create change in my life. I have to make the change.

Por eso, NorCal for a few months is my best bet. I can make money, adelantar my Spanish, most likely couch surf and/or trade massage for rent, see Northern California (which I have been super-interested in) and either go back to NYC or stay there or go somewhere else! when I have decided.

It’s huge! It’s huge!

I’m in Wisconsin, visiting G and her family, especially her two young children, one of whom I hadn’t met yet. After a couple of days, they figured out I was OK and now I’m getting hugs, hand-holding and baby night night kisses. It’s pretty funny. I’m also learning how to decipher childspeak which is where the subject line came from. Yesterday we went to Menard’s (~~~save big money at Menaaaaard’s!~~~~) and I saw these giant blow up figures at the top of a staircase. I decided to take the kids up there to see the cat and about a third of the way up the littler one pulled my hand to make me stop and said, “It’s huge! It’s huge!” I had to help him down the stairs and back to Mommy, who got him to come back up the stairs and look at the giant cat. That part went just fine.

Today is G’s birthday party and I’m wearing shorts with tights because I didn’t expect it to be cold up here, despite having to always keep a sweater on me while out and about in London. At least my legs look good.

Next week I plan on trying to get out to Chicago. Apparently there’s a commuter train that’ll get me out there pretty quickly. I’ll have to take saaaammiches b/c I’m poor and don’t want to eat Chicago-style pizza, no matter what you say about it. I’ve had it before and it gave me the worst GI distress I’ve ever had excepting the two times I had to go to the ER in college for mystery stomach pains (neither time involved alcohol). Yesterday I rode around Milwaukee on a borrowed bike, the kind that is the reason people don’t like to ride bikes, and went to Ben’s Cycle Shop, a place I’ve been shopping from online and sending customers to for years. It was about an 8 mile ride there, along Lake Dr. which took me beside Lake Michigan. I’ve never been on a lake so big that I couldn’t see across to the other side. It’s weird. Ben’s makes their own frames, one of which, the Cream City, I’m especially interested in trying out. I think I’d like a new frame, mine having too much toe overlap, and I’d like to try it before I leave so I can see whether it would be a good idea to buy one eventually.

In other news, my consumption of children’s television has again gone up and I’ve found one called Lazy Town. Here is Robbie Rotten, who totally amuses me.

Ok, maybe the continuation is better.

But seriously. This show is so weird! Can someone explain exactly what weirds me and every other adult I know who’s seen it (admittedly, not a representative sample) out so much?

Taking Stock

Life has changed in a big, dramatic way for me in the past few weeks – in a number of ways I’m not entirely comfortable discussing online, but the upshot is that I am back in the States for good. Currently in Florida, soon to be visiting Wisconsin, and then deciding whether I possess sufficient temerity to move myself to a completely new city (Portland, OR or maybe somewhere in northern California) during an economic downturn, or if it is better to return to the town where all my stuff and most of my friends are: New York City. Where I go will depend entirely upon where I can find work. Massage, social work, the combination of the two, albeit not at the same time, is my eventual goal. It will be nice to have the steady paycheck and schedule of a social worker, punctuated by the ability to take time off and also to see immediate results from my work when a massage client feels better as they walk out the door. Currently, I need to decide whether trying to launch my own business with the rest of that part-time schedule is a good idea, or whether refilling the coffers and spending a year or two contemplating life, liberty and the pursuit of a home and future is a better one.

Today I got my bike back from the new (to me) LBS and rode it the short distance from storefront to home. The saddle is too high (easily remedied) and I dislike the big, open streets and unfamiliar traffic patterns of my hometown. I cannot imagine living anywhere it is truly unsafe to consider a bike my main means of transportation. It is also too hot in Florida. I can no longer imagine living anywhere that does not take me through more than two seasons per year.

It is time to contact friends and past employers and blag my way back into NYC.