Heidi Chronicles

Note:  There are a lot of thoughts crammed in here and I don’t have time to properly edit it if it’s going to be posted today.  Maybe I’ll fix it later.  Maybe I won’t.  Whatever…it’s posted on the right date, for once.  Clap for me!

Today is the one-year anniversary of the day that the kids and I moved to London.  I look back on that day and all that came before it and I wonder how I did it all.  Seven weeks without a husband or home, preparing a house to sell, trying to be a single mom….  UGH.  My life was insane.

When we did finally get here, I arrived with expectations based on this list that I wrote when we first started talking about moving.

Pros

• This would be a great opportunity for Liam. He’d go to school there and he’d really remember some of it.
• We’d get to travel.
• Different cultural experiences
• It would mean that I’d have to get out of my comfort zone.
• Aaron really wants to do it and he’d enjoy the job.
• It’s only two years.

Cons

• It will be very difficult to have to sell/store everything in that amount of time.
• I was just starting to feel like we were getting settled…getting things painted, etc. It was finally starting to feel like it was our house and now we’d be leaving.
• We’d have to sell a lot of stuff. There will be no room for it in London and even if there was, there’s no way to get it there. The taxi would have to go. The 300. Furniture. It almost makes me cry to think about it.
• There wouldn’t be as many amenities. We’d have a much smaller place.
• The majority of the time it would be just me and the kids. Obviously I’d find ways to make some friends, but it would be hard. And Aaron would only be working with one partner, so it’s not like I’d meet anyone through work.
• I would be without any support system in terms of the kids. This alone could kill me.
• I would miss my family.
• I would miss my friends.
• I would miss my house.

It was a pretty good list, considering that it all pretty much happened the way I thought it would (except that we’re probably here three years and I’m ok with that now).  I called it pretty well.

Yes, selling the house, most of the stuff, and storing the rest sucked.  Then not selling the thing sucked.  Moving to a smaller place…not as bad as I thought.  And I still miss the friends and family.  But not having help with the kids nearly sent me over the edge.

When I made this list, I didn’t realize that the support with the kids was giving me the personal time that I require in order to function in happiness.

Nor did I realize the general inconvenience of life here.

I’ll not go into detail…I’ll just say that last winter was the worst I’ve ever had.  It sucked, sucked, sucked.

Since then, I’ve learned to deal with the inconveniences and appreciate London’s attempts to thwart them.  Public transportation is nice.  Grocery delivery is nice.  Being able to call someone to do the laundry when I get freaked out by it is nice.

And, I was SO lucky to meet an amazing group of women who keep me sane on a daily basis.  I’m pretty sure we’d all be dead if I hadn’t met Jennifer.

But I still struggle with getting enough time to myself.

I love having the nanny one morning a week.  I love that Aaron and I trade nights and occasionally get to take a full weekend day to do what we want by ourselves.  And I ABSOLUTELY ADORE having friends who can get me out of the house and will keep my kids at any time.  But it’s just not the same.

When I lived in KC, I had about three hours to myself a day when Liam was at school and Elena was napping in the morning and both kids were napping in the afternoon.  Plus, I had people who would take the kids so I could get stuff done if I needed to when they were awake.  That gave me ample time to accomplish the stuff I needed to AND blog every day, which is really important to me.  I even had time to read, or do crafty things, etc.

Obviously it would have changed gradually no matter what, but moving here completely cut it off.  So now it’s pretty much me or Aaron watching the kids if the other one is going to do something on his or her own.  And when I take time to do something I want to do, that usually means something I should be doing isn’t getting done (right now it’s folding laundry) and I’ll have to make up the time, so I just don’t do it. It makes me feel a little trapped.

What it comes down to is that I’m still mourning that time I had to myself.   And I’m sure that Aaron misses me having that time too – since every evening I just want to get my crap done and sit by myself and I never have time to sit and watch tv with him any more, which he loves.

So.  I feel like I’ve adapted to everything else pretty well.  It’s just this one thing.  But then I look at and think, well, it’s just two more years and then I’ll get that part of my life back to some degree – surely I will since we’ll be moving back to the States and Elena will be in preschool then while Liam is at school (regardless of where me move), right? And life will be easier since washing machines in the US are four times the size of my machine here and I can do all of the laundry in one day instead of three loads PER day. And the school system makes sense.  And the grocery stores carry brands I recognize.  And the oven is in Farenheit.

Um, is this the American Dream?

Anyhoo, it is crazy how many things have changed in the past year.

• I have gone from knowing absolutely not one other mom to having some amazing friends who are willing to listen to me bitch so that I don’t have to call anyone at 3 in the morning U.S. time.
• I have botched nearly as many hair color jobs in one year as I have in the rest of my lifetime.
• I have gone from pants that fit to pants that are too small to pants that fit too many times to count.
• My definition of a nice day has changed completely, because if it hadn’t, I’d lose my mind.
• Elena has gone from this
  
  to this.
  
• Liam has gone from this
  
  to this.
  
• Aaron has increased his sock wardrobe by nearly 100% – and they are not black, grey, or white.
• Macey has learned that we pass on the left when we’re on a walk.
• Murphy has learned that he doesn’t do air travel.

And, there are a lot of things that aren’t any different from living in KC, so that helps a lot.

• I have friends here for whom I would do ANYTHING – just like I do in the U.S. (which I can see from my back porch, by the way…do you see me waving to you?).
• Liam is in school and he adores his teachers and friends, just like he did before we moved.  He still talks about the mechanics of things and asks me a hundred thousand questions a day…it’s just that now they’re different questions instead of the same one.  (Do you hear the beep?)
• Elena is still NOT in school and wishes she was and she’s sweet as pie and cuddly as ever.  She’s also still nursing.  Will it ever end?
• The kids and dogs still run to meet Aaron at the door when he arrives home and Murphy is still the most excited to see him.
• I have something planned that I can do – or not do – to get out of the house every day, and if I change my mind, my friends just laugh at me.

You know…even with the struggles…I feel like I’m pretty much settled in.  I’m getting more and more involved in things here, so I’m sure the next two years will fly by and we’ll be on our way back…

assuming you people put Obama in office and we don’t have to move to Germany and live in a commune with the all of the other Americans and their big dogs and cats that you throw out of the country by putting Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from being the next president.

I will take it personally, people.

It turns out that I did not come properly prepared for the weather here.  That seems to be the theme of my trips these days.  I’m either cold or hot – and here, I’m cold.

We determined that we would not be going to Oktoberfest today – after we finally got up (did I mention that word from the home front suggests that L and E were up at 4 a.m.?) – and decided to check out the city instead.  We took a three-hour walking tour.  It was great.  I highly recommend doing it in any city you visit if you get the chance.  However, I also highly recommend doing it on a warm day.  Today was freaking cold – but not rainy, so not quite like being at home (although it was lovely and sunny when we left London. Go figure.).

Anyway, the tour was very fascinating as it was one not afraid to come right out and talk about Hitler’s involvement here – yet another opportunity to see how much of an asshole he was, but in his “home” town.

It is interesting the way that Munich has dealt with its history.  It’s very subtle, but the remorse clearly exists throughout the city.  They’ve placed plaques where the buildings were  trashed on krystallnacht and there’s a place in Dodger’s Alley where they’ve memorialized the people who did not want to walk by Hitler’s guards and perform the salute.

They’re trying.

This is the synagogue – heavily guarded of course.

I learned a lot from our Irish tour guide. (Did you know…someone in Munich took very detailed pictures of all of the buildings before the war so that they could reconstruct them afterward?) I am very glad that we did the tour, even though we’ve been home for nearly two hours and my toes are still freezing.

On a completely unrelated note…I’ve been cold in Germany twice before.

I first froze my ass off here in 95/96 when I came to visit my friend Nelly, who was living in Giessen at the time.  We had cold toes in Hamburg, and Berlin.  We spent New Years at the Brandenberg Gate where I ate my first crepe (mmmm), and first got shot at with fireworks. (No, they didn’t warm me up.) (We also went to Poland, but that’s not Germany, so freezing our asses off there is a story for another time.)

The second time I froze my ass of here was in December of 2002 when we came with Aaron’s family and stayed in Berlin.  We mostly stayed in the hotel, but we did make it out a couple of times between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (when it was light) where we saw all of the stuff I didn’t get to see the inside of last time I was in Berlin because everything was closed New Year’s Day.

And just look at me now…freezing my ass off in Munich.  Clearly Germany loves me.

(There was that one time in 2001 when I was here with Aaron in Freiburg and it wasn’t cold, but we’ll gloss over that one for the sake of the theme.)

Anyhoo, after our tour, we came home and sat on our frozen asses.  It’s lovely to be on vacation.

We got warmed up in time to head out to Nurnberger Bratwurst Glockl am Dom for a traditional Bavarian meal.  As we got off of the U Bahn at Marienplatz, I noticed an odd thing.  It seemed a little strange to me that the police presence had increased from none at our first stop to 50 at this stop.  Then I saw the riot team hanging out at the base of the entrance/exit to the subway.  They didn’t have helmets on, but they did have their helmets at the ready.

It freaked me out a little bit until we walked out and saw the huge barricade with police stationed about every 10 feet or so.  It seemed that the 10 people or so inside the barricade were enjoying themselves tremendously, while the people outside of it were taunting them.  I finally figured out that they were saying “No Nazi.” Turns out that the “insiders” were all about the National Socialist party and the rest of the world was there to drown out whatever they were trying to say.  It was nice to see them so outnumbered.

At the restaurant, we sat at a table with another couple and didn’t speak to them.  We ate our food and I downed a whole bunch of cabbage salad along with my pork roast, and left the “potato dumplings” on the plate.  That shit was nah-stee.  It wasn’t the tastes as much as it was the texture.  There were two different kinds and one of them tasted like liver and the other was squishy like jello’ only made from riced potatoes.

We finished diner and I was enjoying my sparkling water.  (Ahem, have I mentioned that I quit drinking?  No worries…I still want everyone else to drink.  It’s not that sort of thing – I just feel better.) when the quintessential Loud American Woman and her husband, Tom, sat down at our table.

Woman was from someplace on the East Coast and clearly wore the pants in the family.

First she fell madly in love with the sauce containers that they used to serve the…wait for it…sauces.  She told Tom that she wanted to get some before they left and he evidently looked at her like she was loony because in an irritated New Yorkish accent, she responded, “They’ll fit in my suitcase, Tom.”

Then in her excitement at finding such a treasure, she asked Tom to take a picture of them and she pulled out her phone.  Why she couldn’t take the picture herself is beyond me because when she handed the phone to Tom and asked him to take the picture and he fucked up her phone, she was NOT thrilled.

“Tom!  Don’t you know how to take a picture?  Give me that.  Now what in the world did you do to the phone?  I can’t get in to read Sandra’s message now.  If you knew how  many messages I get that require an emergency response….welll….” and she continued messing with her phone.  She finally decided that she’d have to mess with it later (“Sometimes you have to blow on the sim chip, Tom.”) because she put it in her purse and when Tom asked what she was doing, she told him as much – loudly, though she seemed to be trying to whisper it across the table to him.  It was comical (to me, anyway) and I was having a hard time focusing on Aaron.  Poor guy.

The waitress came to take their order, and even though I’d heard her discussing So-And-So’s recommendation of the bratwurst she decided to ask what was good…in English.

She wanted to know what “the people here eat.” I heard the waitress pipe in with “suckling pig” and wurst (pronounced versht), but before she could go on, the woman said something about the white sausage and offhandedly tried to order a different amount than was available on the menu.  After the waitress corrected her, she ordered something breaded and he ordered pork.

She really wanted everything to be good because she commented. “That this is the best X I’ve ever had.” for everything she ate.

I had to laugh when Tom took a bite of his “dumplings,” choked it down, and coughed, “well THAT was a mistake.”

She jumped right in and assured him that it most certainly was not and took a bit herself.  She tried to like it, but I could tell that it wasn’t settling so well.  He put some on her plate (that’s right…stick it to her, Tom.) and it was still there when we left after I couldn’t stand listening to them any longer – but not after I made a few notes.  (I love my bluetooth keyboard.)

Leaving was a stupid thing to do though.

We searched for a drinking establishment for about an hour without luck – nothing stays open past nine around the area.  Seriously…bars and coffee shops would die in the rest of the world if they did this.

We finally headed back to our apartment and changed clothes and walked up to the main street in our area where we located a drinking establishment titled [Something] Cocktail Bar.  We headed in only to find that the door was locked and we had to be buzzed in.  Hmmm.

Upon entry Aaron noticed that everyone was smoking, even though there’s a smoking ban in place.  Double hmmm.  Upon entry, I noticed that the bartender seemed to have a penchant for Phil Collins.

The set up was just weird.  The whole place was sort of neon pink.  The bar itself was stainless steel, L-shaped and the ‘tender had to squeeze in to the short end of the L to get to some of the patrons.   Fortunately the patrons at that end of the L were not the bartenders.  They would not have fit.

Aaron had one beer and we each smoked about three cigarettes secondhandedly.  In the time we were there, the music went from Phil Collins to reggae to Green Day to Notorious B.I.G. as I sat next to the fake floral arrangement, the real floral arrangement, the Buddha, and the picture of one of the Baldwin brothers or their twin sitting at a bar (not this one) next to a woman on horseback.

It was a leetle weird.

Monday, Sept 15

• Today I don’t want to do anything.  THis is how the kids spent most of the day.
  
  I am a terrible mother.

Tuesday, Sept 16

• Daniela took Elena to Penny’s to play with Alfie.
• Cleaning woman came and didn’t do everything I wanted done.  This seems to be a constant issue for me.  Maybe I need to do something different.
• Liam went to Daria’s this afternoon.
• Kids watched a lot of TV – more than I ever thought they would in a week.
• Kept Cheryl’s kids so she and Dave could do dinner.  It was perfectly quiet and I LOVED it.

Wednesday, Sept. 17

• Aaron worked from home today.
• Jenn kept Elena while I went to the Dr. (who mentioned in passing that “some people seem to be really affected by the lack of sunlight”.  REALLY?  He’s such a dumbass.) so that we could leave directly from her house since we
• Went to the Hampstead Women’s Club meeting.  I’ve been meaning to go, but wasn’t motivated enough to do it by myself.  It was good.  I’m definitely joining.  Unfortunately, it’s 75% American so I won’t be meeting a lot of British people.  I’ve not heard that many familiar accents since I left America.  It was nuts!  Oh well…there’s always school to meet the Brits!
• A and I were supposed to go out this evening, but I was exhausted and didn’t feel well.  With the fam coming tomorrow, I figured sleep was the better option.

Three good things about yesterday:

• It was a GORGEOUS day.
• I took a walk.
• We went to Jenn and Noah’s for dinner and figured out what we’re going to do for our Spain trip this winter.

Today, I did a whole bunch of crap around the house and tried to keep the kids happy in the meantime.  Elena has had a tough day and she won’t leave me alone.

Suds did the trick.

Aaron cleaned out his clothing and moved stuff around to get ready for the crappy winter months and found a bunch of stuff for Liam to play with in the process. As you can see, Liam is thrilled.

No, really…he is.

This is what he does when you ask him to smile.

Oh, and our trip to Paris is now off.  We’re going to Portsmouth instead.  Whew.

This is an elevator.

This is a doorknob.

That’s the word on the street, anyway.

We cruised on over to Cheryl’s this morning for our regular Friday play date and the kids went wild, like those spring break videos except clothes stayed on and none of them were drunk.  Crazy how that happens with toddlers and pre-schoolers.  Anyway, Hannah cried when we left.  She can’t live without Liam.

This evening I started watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia with AJ.  So freaking funny – and so uncomfortable to watch….  I’m hooked like Dee on crack.