One Year
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.
