Giraffes on Parade

So I know a lot of people who read my blog either live in the UK, have lived or been to the UK or read a fuck load a bunch of other blogs about expats living in the UK. I want to just tell you, this post isn’t for you. This post covers things that a billion other blogs have lamented about before so this is neither original nor life changing. This post is basically for my dearest friend, Beth, who while certainly has traveled outside of the US before has never actually been to Europe. What I want Beth to do right now, if she’s reading, is to get up from her couch or desk or whatever and take a stroll into her bathroom and kitchen and take a good hard look. When she’s done, I want her to take another look and then give a kiss to her appliances. She’s a clean person so I’m pretty sure she won’t mind doing this.

By the way, I could have called this post “For Beth”, or “For Fuck’s Sake” or “Sometimes America actually gets it right” but I didn’t. Since I don’t actually have a title for this post quite yet, I’m tempted to call it “Giraffes on Parade” just to be silly. Yes, that’s definitely what I’ll do.

If you aren’t Beth and you’re still reading, chances are that the other blogs you have read have complained on and on about the bathroom\kitchen differences between the US and the UK. I would like to state for the record that it’s my fucking turn. In an effort to not be a complete Negative Nancy, I’ve included some good bits at the end because really, I do enjoy being here and am grateful to have the chance. However, complaining is 100 times more funny than being all Shiny Happy Heather, so the majority will be bitching.

Let’s start out with the bathroom since that’s where most of the pain comes from. Here is the bathroom, as innocent as you please:

Because of the angle, you might be thinking to yourself that I couldn’t manage to get the toilet in the frame. Let me assure you that I did not. There is no toilet in the bathroom. It’s a BATHroom, which means that it is only required to have a BATH. What I find funny is that Andy’s mum had some flooding issues last year and this whole bathroom needed to be replaced. There used to be a bidet in here. Notice there is no longer a bidet in here. That bidet could have easily been replaced with another toilet since the plumbing was in place. But no. A handy 3 drawer system went in its place instead. In case you are wondering, the toilet (water closet) is in another room just a few steps down the hall. That’s all fine and dandy but what does one do when one has their period (don’t mean to be all gross here but let’s talk practicalities)? When Ole Flo is in town and I am done taking a shower, I do this lovely sprint type maneuver from toweling off in the shower to getting my ass on the toilet as not to make a mess (if you know what I mean). Because there are other people in this house, if I were to have Ole Flo in town (which thank fuck I’m avoiding at the present…thank you baby!), I would have to be somewhat dressed to leave the bathroom to make it to the water closet which by that time a mess could have already occurred and I also run the risk of losing my spot in the bathroom. Seriously, if you have a toilet in the same room as your shower\bath, hug it. Hug it hard for me.

To the right, the bathroom.  To the left, the toilet.

Moving on.

While we are still in the bathroom, let’s talk about this sink situation:

You will notice that there are two taps. One is for Freezing Ice Water and the other is for Boil Some Ramen Noodles. The concept here, of course, is to use the plug and fill the sink with a combination of both as to get a lovely mixture of Slightly Warm to Soothe Your Soul water. But really, who has time for that? If it’s late at night and I’m doing my 3 in the morning bathroom run (thanks baby!) I’m not going to risk third degree burns and will just turn my hands into popsicles for a quick wash. During the day I’m more daring and will try to wash my hands with the boiling water hoping to be finished in the 4 seconds it takes for the water to reach that point. I have lost this battle a few times already. I also feel incredibly guilty for not adhering to the ‘sing “Happy Birthday” while you wash your hands to make sure that they are properly clean’ mantra. Oprah would have a fit.

One last detail about the bathroom and that’s the shower. Or I should say, the shower “door”:

That is the complete shower door. There are no shower curtains to fill the gap for where the shower door ends. I’m a big girl. I’m also pregnant. Even though I huddle under the shower, half of me is never quite covered by the shower door. The shower door also swings in and out. This means that on occasion, when I’m washing my hair and have soap in my eyes and can’t properly see, my elbow will knock against the door causing it to swing open slightly bringing a hefty amount of shampoo and water down the outside of the shower which makes my mother in law hate me for ruining her new floor. I’m just kidding, she doesn’t hate me. I don’t think. Yet.

With these three things, I must admit that getting ready in the morning is a bit stressful. It feels like a chore. I completely get why some Brits don’t shower every day…or even just once a week. It’s scary in there.

The last few things I want to show you aren’t really complaints. They are just differences that I thought Beth would get a kick out of. Oh wait…there is one complaint. No dryer. Since I’ve hashed that one to bits I’ll just post some photo evidence. Andy will need to thank me for cutting out the bit of the picture that has his underwear hanging on the radiator.

On to the differences:

That’s the electric plugs. There are two switches, one for each side of the plug. You have to “switch on” whichever plug you want to use. These are also the closest plugs we have to the bathroom (and they are in the bedroom) so I use these plugs with an extension cord to reach the mirror that is on the OTHER side of the bedroom to do my hair. Seriously Beth, give your bathroom a kiss.

This is the fridge:

This is actually a pretty big refrigerator for the UK. The bottom half is the freezer bit and the top half is the regular fridge bit. It’s not uncommon for UK households to only have a fridge the size as the one below, which is what Andy’s mum only had before the flood. This also explains why many Brits go grocery shopping at least every other day as there is no room to do a mega shop:

Also very common this side of the world is the washing bucket in the sink. While the washing bucket makes absolutely no sense to me, it doesn’t really bother me so it’s not a complaint, more of “Huh?”:

For some fun stuff, here is the how the milk and juice is packaged:

Here’s what I’ve been eating for breakfast for the last 4 days. Sadly it is neither as sugary or as chocolately as its American sugar cereal counterparts but I guess that’s a good thing (grumble grumble):

And finally, what the UK got right:

Yes, that’s the automatic tea kettle. We have these in the States. Hell, we had one ourselves in California. The UK tea kettles are different though. They are magical. When I used to plug in our tea kettle in California, I could safely run a load of laundry before the kettle was ready. Not these UK versions. You plug this baby in and by the time you get a tea bag in your cup the kettle is ready. I’ve never seen water boil so fast in my life. I’m impressed. I’m so impressed I’m going to give it a kiss. And a hug even. Fuck, just burned myself. I never learn.

Up to this point...

So I’m currently sitting in bed upstairs at Andy’s mom’s (sorry, “mum’s”) house under a duvet with no top sheet, drinking a GeeBee No Sugar Added Cherryade fizzy drink (that tastes slightly like that one type of cough syrup you had as a kid that didn’t make your mouth turn inside out), while Andy’s mum is downstairs watching ‘Hustle’ while Andy fights a losing battle with his new Blackberry phone under the Orange network on the settee next to her. I must be in the UK.

It’s going to be hard trying to sum up the last two weeks in a coherent and entertaining blog post. This is on top of being jetlagged and suffering from a cold picked up from the bowels of the frozen tundra that is Wisconsin. I guess I’m saying is that this post might be humorous because it makes no sense, or it could just not make much sense and you can wait for the next post where I attempt to entertain my best friend, Beth, with English household oddities.

Right. Best get started then, shall I?

The last week in California went entirely too fast. There wasn’t a day where we weren’t doing something marked as Really Important and I started to question my choice on working until the 2nd to last day before we left. Of course work let me out a half day early on my last day which only lead to me sitting in the hotel room watching shitty network television for 4 hours before Andy got back from whatever it was that he was doing so in the end, it was probably best that I did earn those Last Day Dollars. (Was that a run-on sentence? Probably. Fuck it, I’m jetlagged.) Anyhow, while still in California, we went to what was formally Moe’s Pub Quiz (now Vicki’s Pub Quiz) at the Harp and we came in 3rd place, had a last curry meal with Dave & Jill at Mother India, had last drinks with Dave & Maggie, and did a couple other things that I have since forgotten. I do know that I never got to properly say good-bye to Mari, Gunter, Michele, Patrick and Marilyn which makes me really bummed out though I suppose it gives me leverage to guilt them all into coming out here sometime in the future.

For expat blog purposes, I must inform you that Chloe (el gato) flew out to the UK a good week before we did. There was this huge pet carrier issue we ran into that resulted in us buying no less than 4 carriers (of which only 1 could be returned) before we had the right one. Note to all those shipping your pets, the carrier needs to be big enough so that when your pet stands up, its head doesn’t touch (and I mean, not one little furry ear touch) the top of the carrier. Also, there is a PetSmart near LAX just as a general FYI. I worried for a good 24 hours while Chloe was in route here. She doesn’t do change well and I thought the whole process might be too much for her little heart. I needn’t have worried. We called the quarantine place the morning after she arrived to find out how she was. After a general chit chat, the quarantine guy said to Andy, “When you come to visit, you’ll know the people who have dealt with her by the bandages.” Heh. That’s my girl.

Piss and vinegar.  That's how I like my pets.

On Friday, February 4th, we flew out to Wisconsin. AirTran no longer has food for sale on the LA to Milwaukee flight, as another FYI. That information might be useful to you if you happen to get nervous before flights so you decide only to have a banana thinking you’ll just buy a sandwich mid-flight and all you get is two lousy bags of pretzels. My dad and stepmom picked us up from the airport and when they asked me how I was I said, “I’m fucking hungry.” I might get a bit moody when I haven’t eaten. We had a great Conejito’s dinner that I don’t regret even though it gave me Conejito’s ass the next day during the family going away party\baby shower. As promised, I’m not going to blog about the 2nd shower as it was pretty uneventful (though Beth and her mom showed up which was like, the best gift ever).

On Sunday was the Super Bowl. I actually have some pictures from that. Being in Wisconsin when the Packers happened to be playing in the Super Bowl is nothing short of a miracle. Cosmically, everything lined up for us to be there. Andy and I headed down to Champion’s, my old Wisconsin local, at 10 AM to watch the Liverpool vs. Chelsea football match. I’m not sure the owner, Bobby, would have opened up the pub early for the game if it wasn’t for me pestering him to do so but I like to think (very immodestly) that he did it for me. After Liverpool won (!!), we had plans to kind of bum around the East Side getting some lunch and having some coffee. However, we got frightened into staying at Champion’s when someone else at the pub mentioned that it would start filling up for the Super Bowl at 1 PM even though kick off wasn’t until 5:30 PM. We seriously had rock star seating at this point (at an empty pub, go figure) and we didn’t want to lose it. So we stayed. At Champion’s. For 7 ½ hours before the Super Bowl even started. If there is something that I have learned in that 7 ½ hours of sitting there is that time goes really fucking slow when you aren’t drinking. What’s worse is that the pub didn’t actually start filling up until 3:30 PM so we would have had plenty of time to bum around. But that’s neither here nor there. The Packers fucking won the Super Bowl! And it was awesome! There was lots of shouting, and cheering, and dancing and shots being done by everyone but me (damn pregnancy!) and Andy got completely off his face and kept squeezing me and telling me how happy he was that I brought him to Wisconsin for a Packer’s Super Bowl win (not in those exact words and not as coherently). And Andy doesn’t even like American football!

Andy watching Bobby cook the brats for the game.  Yes, as a matter of fact, it was fucking cold that day.

When you say "Wisconsin", you said it all!

Look at that excitement.  Not bad for a Scouser.

 I miss Champion's!

...and I really miss shots.

I should have taken this picture during hour 4 at the pub.  Ach well.

On Monday I hung out with my mom while Andy went out drinking with my brother, Adam, to celebrate the Packers win. As tempted as I am to go into details about my day with my mom, in the off chance she does read this blog, she would be absolutely mortified if I posted what I want to post for the entire world to see. All I can say is that it’s a shame that I can’t because any story that ends with “and I had to drive my mom to the Oak Creak Police Department so she wouldn’t get put in the slammer” is a great story to tell. I know, you totally hate me now, don’t you?

On Tuesday I got hit with this cold. I seriously spent my last day in the United States in bed with a jar of mentholatum and a heating pad. There aren’t words enough to tell you how much that sucks monkey balls. Oh sure, I know I’ll be back to the States at some point but I wanted to give it a proper good bye. I wanted to at least have some more Mexican food, instead of the stomach settling mac & cheese and tomato soup. On the plus side, I did get to see “the Social Network” and was rather pleased with it.

Obviously on Wednesday, we left. There isn’t much to tell about the journey except that it was long, hard to do on a cold, and exhausting when I don’t have the ability to sleep on planes. But we made it just fine. Thank you airplane pilots, airplane mechanics and terrorists who took the day off.

Anyhow, I don’t know if I’m excited yet. None of it seems real to be completely honest with you. It’s a bit like a cannon shot me back to my Christmas 2009 vacation and any moment the same cannon will shoot me back to my apartment in Costa Mesa. I just need some more sleep I think, and some powerful cold meds. And I’m sure sometime next week I’ll wake up under this duvet with no cover sheets with a half glass of GeeBee’s CherryAde next to me and it will all come flooding in. “WTFHID!”

You'll be disappointed if you hope this is a real post....

Just a quick whatever to let you all know that I'm still here...I haven't abandoned the blog. It's our very last day in the United States, we fly out of Chicago to Liverpool at 9 tonight. Trust me when I say I'll have a lot of time in the next weeks to update this place so you'll just have to be a bit patient.

By the way...it's 0 degrees in WI. Andy has finally admitted that it's cold (he doesn't want to come off as a pussy). Personally I'm looking forward to getting to England to warm up a bit.

The Final Week - Don't even ask me where I put my gloves...

So tomorrow marks the start of our last week in Southern California. Since last Friday, time has been going on hyper speed and I have to stop my mind from jumping around just to remind myself what fucking day it is. Andy keeps on asking me if our move feels real yet and I’m always disappointed to tell him, ‘no’. People also ask me consistently if I’m getting excited yet and I have to tell them ‘no’ too as my mind is too occupied on all the things we have to do that I can’t seem to spare a moment of thought on excitement.

Today I forgot where I put my passport. MY PASSPORT. The one with the shiny new visa in it ready to be stamped. I’m an incredibly organized person in the sense that I have small piles of disorder and I know pretty much exactly what is in those piles of disorder. Because my small piles of organized disorder got all sorts of re-ordered due to the Great Pond Move of 2011 – (KEEP ON PERSON, SHIP, or WHY THE FUCK DO YOU STILL HAVE THIS? THROW THIS OUT FFS!) my passport location slipped from my memory as I wondered why I still had a library card from Boulder, Colorado (a city where I have never actually lived) and why Andy was telling me why I had to put my tax returns from the last 5 years on my carryon luggage. Thankfully Andy reminded me that my passport is top of the dishwasher where we placed a bunch of ‘Don’t Let the Shippers Take This Stuff’ which only leads me to believe that my subconscious is entirely more intelligent than my functioning conscious and I really ought to buy it a beer once I’m able to drink beer again.

Speaking of the shippers, they came yesterday and took away all our things (except my passport). That was pretty awesome. As many times as I’ve moved, I’ve never used shippers before. My normal method of moving is the great collecting of cardboard boxes from all the local supermarkets and\or liquor stores, 3 copies of the Sunday newspaper, and at least a week spent neck high in packing tape and creative thinking of nesting items to utilize the least amount of space. This time it was simply letting 4 strange men into our apartment while Andy and I sat on the couch playing on the internet and eating cold pizza. To be fair, I felt horribly guilty sitting there eating cold pizza while these four men grunted and sweated around me packing up our things probably thinking to themselves, “Three garden gnomes? Me cago en todo lo que se menea!” Between the four of them, they managed to pack away our entire apartment and load it onto the truck in 3 hours. That’s pretty impressive. Also, because it is required to wrap or pack everything in either a box or in multiple layers of brown paper, it was pretty humorous to see an ironing board and step ladder shaped package leaving the house with such helpful references to said item with “Ironing Board” and “Step Ladder” written on it in black marker (like you couldn’t tell). I’m actually pretty grateful they put a lot of things in “MISC” type boxes as I’m sure I’d be mortified to see a box with “Holey Period Panties” and “She’s Not Fooling Anyone By Thinking She’s Going to Fit in These Pants Again” written on the side.

Once the shippers were finished and all our things were gone, our apartment…well, our apartment is fucking disgusting. Andy and I always cleaned on a regular basis but we certainly didn’t do a type of clean where we took pictures off the wall to get the spider webs or moved the couch around to get to the base boards or even detached the washer\dryer to get all the lint that gathers back there. Now that there aren’t any pictures or couches or appliances to hide all the filth it’s…it’s…I feel a bit ill thinking about it really. Let’s just say that once again I’m going against my norm and hiring a couple house cleaners to help us clean up the apartment on Saturday. I can handle dust bunnies but I really have an aversion to spider and fly carcasses.

We also moved into a hotel yesterday; our last place of residency before we leave next Friday. The hotel is OK – clean and they take pets – and it’s nice to have TV again to remind myself that’s there never anything good on. Chloe was fairly amused by the whole thing. She spent a good two hours sniffing every inch of the room out of curiosity, and then kept looking at us with this expression of, “OK, I’m done here. Let’s go home.” We actually had to give in to her wishes and dropped her off at the empty apartment when we left for work this morning as we didn’t want a Hotel Maid vs. Chloe Straight-Tail law suit.

Even though we are technically out of the apartment, we still have loads of things to do – doctor’s appointments, selling Andy’s car, picking up the rental, cleaning, apartment inspection…so on and so forth. Andy and I are both running into this frustration of people getting in touch with us trying to make plans to see us. It shouldn’t be frustrating, in fact, it’s quite endearing to know that here are all these people who love you and who will miss you that they really want to spend some time with you before you go. The problem is that it’s hard to make plans, or even want to make plans when your head is so full of Things That Must Be Done that by making plans it’s just another item to have to put on your list of things to remember to do that it kind of takes the enjoyment out of it. I’d rather just say, “we’ll be at the pub on this date and time” but that never seems to work out (these people are never free when you are or just don’t like going to said pub) so you either have to do half assed “we’ll see” plans or just tell the person that you’re too busy to see them and that just plain out sucks.

Driving into work today Andy asked me if now, after everything we’ve been through, if moving to another country is as exciting as it seemed to before we started. After a moment of reflection I said, “Ask me once we get there.”

Even girls like me get baby showers...

So after reading Vegemite Wife’s recent picture post on a baby shower, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit smug coming home this past Saturday night from our baby shower (California edition) and going away party. First of all, our baby shower (CA edition) was at the pub. I think even the most heated Baby Shower Haters (read: Men) can appreciate a baby shower at the pub. Secondly, there were no stupid baby shower games like “Guess what that brown substance is that we smeared in a diaper!” or “What objects could successfully pass through a 4 inch dilated cervix?” – (having never been invited to a proper baby shower (for obvious reasons), I’m only guessing these are the games women play at them. I could be wrong. They could be playing ‘Spin the Bottle’ or ‘Let’s Get a Male Stripper to dress up in a bee costume while we hurl donuts and condoms at his “stinger”!’). What we did have at our baby shower was plenty of beer, a cornucopia of fried food and of course, cake. Who doesn’t like cake?

I want to give a huge thanks to Michele, Mari and Marilyn for throwing us this awesome party. Sadly, unbeknownst to them and me was that a good chunk of the invitees (including my sister) had already made plans (with tickets) to see the English Beat in LA that same night. When Andy and I first walked into the Harp there were balloons covering most sections of the pub. I went out to the girls on the patio and said, “I think we seriously overestimated how many people were actually coming tonight.” All in all, I think we had about 20 people (who probably all went into a cholesterol filled shock after all the fried food) and it was a great group and it turned out to be a really good time. I also got some awesome gifts.

Some pictures from the evening:

I'm so stoked that someone got baby Henry a PGA Tour video game.  How else is he going to learn his 8 iron from his 6 iron?

Andrea, Michele, myself and Mari.  Bunny ears supplied by Andrea's son, Oliver.  Sure, I could have cropped the ears out, by why?  Totally makes the photo.

Patrick, Brendon and Gunter letting me know exactly how they feel about attending traditional baby showers.

I totally commend Andrea for her attempt at photo bombing this picture.  It would have been better if she had one of those horrible orange tans or a random tassel, but this will have to do.

No, I'm not strangling the giraffe.  Sadly, this is how I hold most things - Homer Simpson style.

Andy, with beer, trying on Henry's new clothes. 

Spot the sober person!  I actually yelled at Andy for ruining this photo but on reflection, I think my obvious sobriety is what kills it.

I will say that as the sole pregnant lady at the pub, I was really jealous as I slowly watched all my friends get hammered. Then again, I also had a good time watching them get hammered as there is nothing quite like fucking with a drunk person, albeit kindly since they were, after all, my friends. I don’t reserve the same restraint for strangers.

In a couple weeks, we’ll be having another baby shower\going away party at my parents’ house in Wisconsin. I’m sure it will be more of the traditional type of shower where I won’t get to feel smug, or eat my weight in fried food or get to watch my relatives get smashed (well, not most of them anyhow). I probably won’t blog about that one either. I will, I assume, be blogging about watching our beloved Packers play in the Super Bowl from a stool at Champion’s - my old home pub.

WTFAID!

So last week I was suffering from a serious case of the WTFAID-ings. I will admit that I’m still sort of suffering from them but I’ve been so busy that they have kind of fallen to the wayside. WTFAID of course stands for “What the Fuck am I doing?” and I tend to suffer from them every time I do a major move like this. Beth, my very best friend in the whole world, can attest for me that I tend to move a lot and you would think that this shit would be old hat by now. But I get them every single time. About a month or two after I move I will get the very homesick WTFHID (What the Fuck have I done?) before I finally get used to things and enjoy where I am and where I worked so hard to get to. I wish my brain was different. I guess you could say I suffer a bit of bi-polar personality in this regard…I love moving, I love living in new places, I love meeting new people but on the other hand I love my predictable schedule, I love being places where people know me and I really don’t care for change. Truth be told, I probably would be one of those sad lots who never left their home town if I didn’t have this subversive trait of getting bored so easily.

The ‘getting bored easily’ is a trait Andy and I both share by the way, which is why we get along so well I think. He still doesn’t get my flip side (the not liking change side) though and I think it’s hard for him to understand why I get so emotional over the loss of my possessions. For example, this past Saturday I sold my car, Boring Boring Buster Brown. It wasn’t my most favorite car that I’ve ever owned but it held a lot of memories for me and it was hard to see him go. At the end of the day it’s just a fucking car but it was MY fucking car and I already miss him. I suppose it doesn’t help that I know that it will be years before I own a car again and I already miss that bit of my freedom (WTFAID!).

This past weekend we sold more than just my car. We sold a bunch of stuff to our friends as a pre-rummage sale bonanza. Now there are places in the apartment where things used to be and it really is a bit depressing passing by those empty spots and knowing in two weeks those empty spots aren’t even mine to call my own anymore (WTFAID!).

Are you thoroughly disgusted with me yet? Seriously, I’m pathetic. It’s like I do this thing where I’m all excited about moving but have to go through a mourning period the last few weeks to feel justified I ever chose to live in that particular place to begin with. Of course that leads into thoughts about how wonderful the place I’m living currently is and why I couldn’t appreciate it more when I was still firmly here (WTFAID!).

But I need to move. I only feel like I’m learning and growing if I step out of my comfort zone and experience something new. Living in another country has always been a dream of mine and now I’m finally doing it.

Ugh. This blog post is like my head at the moment. It’s all over the place and not very entertaining. I’m sorry. They say writing is therapeutic and that’s what I’m trying to do. Still doesn’t make for an interesting post though does it?

On an unrelated (or perhaps related) note, someone buy my damn refrigerator. It’s cheap and it makes things cold. I don’t know what more you can ask from it. I’ve personally asked it to sing me the Coconut Song every time I go in for some juice but all it’s done is whir at me and suggest that I keep the door closed if I want to keep my cheese solidified. I thought that was pretty considerate of my refrigerator and perhaps it’s embarrassed of its singing voice so I didn’t press the issue.

Preparing to move apparently isn't funny

So the Great Pond Move of 2011 is highly underway. While I sincerely hope to continue updating on at least a weekly basis, I can’t make any promises until I’m sitting my pregnant ass on a settee in the north of England eating a biscuit sometime in the middle of next month. Obviously it’s been a bit hectic around here so I figure I’ll just give you a roundabout update on everything.

The boring things to mention (which makes me wonder why I’m bothering to mention them) is that we’ve put in the 30 day notice on our apartment, set the utilities to cancel at the end of the month, put in our notices to our jobs, and told the post office to start forwarding the mail on January 29th. All that was all fine and dandy until our postal carrier decided to start forwarding our mail immediately making me wonder what my dad is going to think when he gets a Netflix version of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2 weeks time. Of course, having to deal with correcting this error with the post office is a feat in itself but it’s all taken care of now even though I might have a few less hairs on my head because of it.

On the Chloe the cat front, things are also taken care of though it’s not exactly the route we wanted to take. The only person who was willing to watch Chloe for us was my mom, which is fine. What wasn’t fine is that my mom was severely concerned about what would happen to her furniture once a cat with claws moved in. To solve the problem, my mom was planning on constructing a chicken wire type cage in the basement with barely a window for light (and not one Chloe could see out of). I told my mother my concern about Chloe not eating if she didn’t get human contact which my mom responded, “that’s not a problem; Charles (her boyfriend) is down there smoking all the time.” Basically my mom was planning on storing Chloe in a chicken wire type dungeon with someone to torture her by blowing smoke in her general direction for 4 months. We decided to buck up and pay for her going into quarantine. I honestly don’t want to discuss the cost of this option as it pains me too much. All I know is that for 4 months Chloe will reside in Chester in a 4x5 foot enclosure attached to another enclosure that goes outside so she can sit around yelling at birds and we can go and visit her as often as we’d like. Chloe the EuroCat is what we’ve come to call her, by the way.

Please teach this poor cat how to construct a shiv.

I guess the biggest hurdle that we need to get through now is selling all of the things we aren’t taking without getting robbed in the process. We had our first yard sale this past weekend which was mostly clearing out the upstairs office of furniture, books, and clothes. Having a yard sale here is completely different than having a yard sale in the other states that I’ve lived in. First of all, this is Southern California which means that we have a plentiful population of Mexicans. Mexicans are nothing if not thrifty, clever, and have a willingness to do tasks the rest of us are just too damn lazy to take on. If you advertise that you are having a yard sale at 7 AM, by 6:30 AM there will be no less than 10 Hispanics waiting for you to put things out on your yard to sell. You won’t have even a fraction of things out and they will be there bargaining with you. Of course it’s Saturday morning and you’re probably a bit tired and a bit cranky that you have to move heavy things out to the wet grass that early and you’re defenses are down (clever Mexicans!) and suddenly you find yourself selling that brand new tennis racket for $2 even though you fiercely told yourself to sell it for $10. This continues for awhile and you suddenly realize that half your crap is sold and you’ve only made $27.35. Of course you reason with yourself that at least you don’t have to haul it all back in but you can’t help but feel you got cheated a little bit. These are your THINGS after all. The real kicker of it all is that those clever thrifty Mexicans do this every weekend – they go around to all the yard sales and get things dirt cheap – then a day later sell those same things at the weekly swap meet for 5x to 10 x higher than they bought it off of you. Hey! I don’t fault them and I’m certainly not mad about it. Hell, I’d do it too if could ever get my ass out of bed before 5 AM on a Saturday, drive around all morning bargaining with tired yard sale holders, then get my ass out of bed before 5 AM on Sunday only to sit around a hot asphalt parking lot selling other people’s crap all day. I’m too damn lazy to do that – hell, I’m too lazy to use that brand new tennis racket.

After the morning rush, it’s a lot of waiting around for all the people with hangovers to come and look at your things. These are the people that will look for a 20 minutes, talk to you for another 20 minutes, then try to get you to sell that 50 cent book for 25 cents – the only item they are wanting to buy by the way. My favorite guy was this skinny 50 year old white guy with a 70’s mustache who saunters up with a cigarette and a can of Red Bull. He tells us good morning and then states, “I’m so hung-over. Like REALLY hung-over. Do you have any candles?” and proceeds to buy every candle I had there. You just have to wonder what he has going on in his house on the weekends.

All in all, we sold over half our crap and made a little less than $200. We have yet another yard sale to do in two weeks to try to get rid of everything else. Then there are the big items (fridge, dishwasher, washer\dryer, cars) that we are posting on Craigslist. That means a lot of answering emails and scheduling times for people to come and look at your things and hope they actually bother to show up. Like I said, it’s a bit hectic around here and I’m already tired.

FYI - If you are interested in buying a brand new tennis rack for $30, I know a great one for sale at the Orange Country Fairgrounds.

This makes me squeal like a little girl....

....while simultaneously scares the crap out of me.

Oh yes, those are badgers.  I believe they would call this a whole shitload of badgers (technical term).

On a related note, this should give some insight on how interesting my day has been thus far  - that I have just spent a half hour Googling "Funny Badgers".   

Under $80, or how I wonderfully foolishly spent the day.

So I’d like to say that I am not one bit girlie and by extension of that, I hate shopping. Of course, to say that I hated shopping would be telling the lie of the century since shopping is on the top 10 list of things I really get a metaphorical hard on doing. The caveat to that is that I only like shopping alone – which if you were still dwelling on my metaphorical hard on quip might make me seem a bit disturbed.

I only really like shopping alone because I have a predisposed nature of worrying nonstop if a person I am with is having a good time while doing an activity that I suggested. Because of that I can’t really concentrate on the shopping experience and will instead try to rush through a shop not buying anything and suggesting instead that we just go for a beer. This goes double if I’m shopping with Andy. The way I actually shop when alone is to go through a store once to locate where everything is and if anything stands out to me, then double back and do it again paying more attention to items that I may have missed. I then have to do a walk around the store again with the items that I did pick up deciding to myself whether or not I actually want said item(s). You can probably see how irritating it is to shop with me, especially since I can spend a crazy amount of time looking at things in stores that aren’t that great to begin with – like a 7-11.

Today was one of those rare days that I had all to myself. My company decided to extend the New Years holiday to include Monday but Andy’s company did not. I had a few things to take care of today, one of which was to go to Barnes & Noble to pick up some half priced calendars – something that I’ve been religiously doing since the dawn of time even though after New Years the choice of calendars is really limited (unless you like pugs and ferrets dressed up in farm outfits). With much hemming and hawing I finally decided on these two calendars since I didn’t feel like looking at pugs or ferrets dressed in farm outfits for the rest of the year.

"Bad Cat" is a misnomer.   More accurately would be "Cats Normally".

After the calendar purchase – which also included 45 minutes of looking at other half priced items – the whole shopping thing kicked off in my brain. Since it was like, RIGHT THERE, I decided to pop into Old Navy too. I don’t know quite how it happened but I ended up in the baby clothes section. This is really Shopping Mistake 101. I happen to know that I’m not suppose to be buying many clothes for the baby since I’m going to be getting a shitload at my shower(s) and the baby will grow so fast that he’ll be lucky to get one wear out of the clothes that I do buy. But I also have a weakness for both clothes with stripes and clothes with cute animals on them which is all baby clothes are really. Thankfully it was Old Navy and I didn’t exactly break the bank with these. You seriously can’t tell me that the Superman one isn’t awesome because I know that it is.

This picture makes these outfits look huge.  I swear I'm not giving birth to an ogre.

After Old Navy I knew there was no turning back so I got in my car and headed to Matsuwa, the headquarters for all things imported Japanese, to pick up some Koala March. Coincidentally, I never did get Koala March (because they only had the mega Koala March serving size (more like Koala Army) and not the individual packets) but I walked away with plenty more. I managed not to spend a whole lot here either though. Check out the booty. And why yes, those are childrens learn how to use chopsticks Chopsticks. They were only $3! (Andy is going to give me a lecture on the cost of shipping cargo to the UK tonight, isn’t he?)

Sadly, I'm getting hungry again.

Being in Matsuwa made me hungry for Vietnamese pho so after I loaded yet another bag to my truck I headed down Harbor Blvd to get something to eat. I just happened to stumble upon the Pho Company driving along and even though the service was pretty crap, the food was excellent.

Not my actual pho, but damn close.

Because shopping couldn’t let me go quite yet, as I was walking out to my car after eating, I noticed that there was a Russian deli next door. A Russian deli! I didn’t even know we had that sort of thing in this town! I must go in to take a look! And it was great – a bunch of things I couldn’t identify labeled in a language I couldn’t read. My kind of store! I actually tried to be good and just get a couple of chocolates for $2 but I didn’t have any cash with me and there was a $10 credit card minimum so I ended up getting a couple of beers and what looks like a Russian equivalent to Jaffa Cakes in a sad effort to appease Andy when he reads this and realized how much money I spent today.

 The KGB made me do it, I swear!

A Christmas Foregone

So Christmas has come and gone and all and all it was a very good day. Truth be known, Andy and I consciously decided to forego Christmas this year. Half of the reason behind it was we knew that with a child joining the family, we would never again have the luxury of foregoing Christmas. The other half, as I told my friend earlier this week, is that with the move and the baby coming I just don’t have any room in my brain for anything else. Foregoing Christmas basically means that we sent out Christmas cards and nothing else. No tree went up, no stocking were hung on our shoddy 70’s black railing with care, and no presents were bought or wrapped. In hindsight, I probably should have told more people about the no presents thing as I felt like a right heel when we received a few gifts this year. There were a couple times when it was all, “this is an awesome gift, thank you so much! Sorry I only brought my appreciation for your thoughtfulness.”

On Christmas morning, Andy and I hung around in our pajamas doing chores. Eventually I got around to making the Bird’s Strawberry Trifle mix that I had bought to bring over to Dave’s later thus sending Andy out to the grocery store multiple times when I realized I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed. I would like to issue a formal complaint to Bird’s Strawberry Trifle mix. While I can certainly work out a milliliters to cups conversion with great thanks to the internet, I do not know how much “About 700 ml” is, nor to I know what you mean (I’m talking to you Bird’s) exactly how much “some of” the milk is. When I complained to Andy about the directions on the box, he laughed at me stating that Bird’s was assuming I could decide for myself how runny I wanted my custard to be. If that is the case, Bird’s failed to realize that someone may have not had their delicious custard before and would have NO IDEA how runny one would enjoy their custard thus making “about” and “some of” the single handed worst cooking directions you could give to someone since the invention of the “pinch”. ANYHOW. I managed to make the trifle with some success after having to buy additional pound cake and whipped topping since the mix was severely lacking in these two items. Sadly, I failed to take a photo of my efforts so you will have to imagine that it was lovely looking.

It was a bit like this, but without the weird acorns on top.

Around 3 PM, Andy and I headed over to Dave’s apartment for the annual orphans’ dinner. I would say Maggie and Dave’s apartment, but Maggie went back to Wisconsin for Christmas and Dave’s father, Jim, was in from the UK I guess making it Dave and Jim’s apartment for the time being.

Dave gets out his aggressions on the poor bird...

...while Jim just flips me one.

Jim had made sausage rolls and since I was hungry and obviously pregnant, I ate three of them right off the bat prompting a day long joke of “where did all the sausage rolls go to – there was a least 50 more before Moe arrived”. Ha ha. Assholes. Eventually a bunch of other orphan Brits arrived (the only Americans being myself and McGurk’s girlfriend whose name I have since forgotten) and dinner was served.

Bish with beer and Andy doing his Sears Male Model shot.

McGurk with girlfriend (sorry I can't remember her name)

Look!  I do exist!

Me, attempting to show off 'the bump' but failing miserably due to the huge shirts I insist on wearing.

I tried to get everyone to sit down for a group dinner shot but they were being difficult. 

We stayed for about an hour after dinner, then stopped home, then headed out to the Harp since we had thought some of the group would be there. However, no one showed up so we just had some beers (O’Douls for me) and started to head home at 9 PM. While we were sitting in the Harp parking lot ready to leave, we got a call from Michele and Patrick inviting us over for a drink.

PATRICK: "Did you get it when the nose was blinking?  No?  Take it again!"

While we only intended to stay for one drink, we ended up staying quite a bit longer playing a board game and talking until Patrick kicked us out by falling asleep in his chair almost knocking his head on the coffee table. Can’t say we don’t know when our invite has run out!

PATRICK: "Please leave before I fall asleep on you."

I would have to say it was an awesome way to end our Days of Foregoing Christmas.

I have no idea what to call this post so I'll just call it 'Ted'.

So it’s been raining a lot recently. I don’t suppose that means much to anyone outside of the Southern California or Sahara Desert region but it really is a bit of a Big Deal to us here. That’s mostly because nobody knows how to drive in Southern California, much less with a bit of rain. As well, everybody has holiday brain on so it’s just that much worse. I would also like to point out that Southern California has a whole isn’t equipped to deal with rain, no more than Philadelphia would be equipped to deal with a volcano-lava eruption so it’s been a sad state of affairs this past week as Poseidon has gone ahead and released the Krakken on our pansy asses.

While I could show you the flooding and the mud slides and the cars in sink holes and ditches or some poor ole lady walking to the bus stop getting soaked, I’ve instead decided to give you a bit of a personal visual that is pretty unimpressive compared to mud slides and sink holes but I’m too damn lazy to go searching for those types of photos online at the present moment. So here is our beverage bucket that we use to keep beer cold when we are having a BBQ. A week and a half ago, this bucket was empty:

I can see how impressed you are from here.

Here is a picture of the cat just because I felt stupid taking a picture of just the bucket:

Chloe wanted me to delete this photo because she said it made her look fat.  I refused.

It was raining pretty hard this past Sunday when Andy and I went to the Harp for the annual Christmas party as demonstrated by these two young lads who obviously have no clue what that crazy liquid shit is that is falling from the sky nor does the one know what the fuck a coat is.

The young lads of Southern California are mystified.

Andy and I are a tough sort of lot and our group as a whole would rather suffer a bit of blowing rain than go inside where one can’t smoke cigarette after cigarette in between doing shots and taking shit about young lads who don’t know what the fuck a coat is. We just all sat outside and Dealt with It. I tried to take pictures but everyone was hiding from the camera or making faces that I’m sure that once they were sober would not appreciate me posting on the internet so all I have is Andy being charming (as usual).

My prince...

In completely unrelated to rain news, Andy and I bought our plane tickets this past weekend. We leave the sunny shores of California February 4th to head to the snowy shores of Milwaukee for 5 days. On February 9th, we leave the snowy shores of Wisconsin and head for our new home on the icy shores of Liverpool. With the tickets bought it feels Really Official and I’m starting to mentally go around the house regarding my things as Keep, Toss and Sell. The cat still has no takers for temporary 4 month housing though my mother has reluctantly offered to take her for 4 months if absolutely no one else will. My mom and Chloe are truly oil and water and I’m sure this arrangement will force Chloe to log onto Roommates.com to submit a full complaint of her living situation.

In case I’m absent until next week, I hope you all have a very pleasant holiday. Remember, there is no such thing as “too much booze” when it comes to Christmas, especially if it falls over the weekend.

Friday's Pointless Point

I could also title this, "Why I Love the Internet".

More awesome randomness found here.  Also, if you find the chicken one, THAT'S what I want for Christmas.

Exciting!*

So this past weekend was pretty exciting* – or as exciting as my weekends are nowadays (read: not very). On Friday, I met Andy at the Harp and I had a celebratory little glass of red wine in honor of my visa being approved. Sadly, the Harp was pretty dead Friday night. Only American Dave was there hanging out with us and he didn’t get excited over the visa news. I didn’t take that to heart as Dave doesn’t really get “excited” about anything really; he’s a bit of a cool cat that rides motorcycles, wears cool motorcycle gear and has a fanny pack. Anyhow, Andy and I didn’t stay for long – we were home watching crap television by 7 PM. But hey! I was out on a Friday night – that’s exciting*!

On Saturday it was a lovely 82 degrees and the sun was shining and I just felt like taking a drive. I left Andy at home to finish up some of his chores and drove the Pacific Coast Highway south. I managed to get lost twice, ran into a bit of construction, got cut off by an aging hippie from Oregon driving a VW Eurovan, had an emergency pee at an out of the way coffee shop (which made me guilty enough to purchase a coffee even though it was the last thing I needed), got stuck at a non-arrow left turn lane for 20 minutes, and absolutely devoured a taco, enchilada, rice and beans like only a pregnant woman can at some crappy Mexican restaurant in Dana Point. It was awesome. Even with all that, it was 3 hours of blissful sunshine, looking at the ocean, and singing my heart out to my iPod until the battery went dead. Once I got back, Andy and I headed back to the Harp to see Patrick’s band play. Obviously when I say we saw Patrick’s band play, it really means we sat out on the patio talking with the group and telling Patrick how awesome he is when he came out during the band’s breaks. That’s how we roll.

On Sunday, we slept in late then lazed around in the morning watching crappy cable shows. I ended up getting suckered into watching this show on the Travel channel (or Food Network) about the best hot dogs in the United States. One of the segments was on Pink’s Hot Dogs up in Hollywood, which I’ve been meaning to go to for a long time but am always put off by the long line. Of course, watching the show made me hungry, so we rode our bikes to the Little Knight to watch the Packer game and have some breakfast.

Normally I would have stayed to watch the Packers, but as far as NFL games go, the Packer game last Sunday might as well have been watching two girls playing hopscotch. It was boring and dull and frustrating. We left before halftime, rode home, and tried to decide what to do. It was still a gorgeous day out weather wise, so I suggested we take another drive, which we did by ways of PCH going north.

What is there to say about taking a long, leisurely drive? We talked, and sang, and took loads of pee breaks (me). I started to make a joke of getting really excited every time we passed a Ralph’s. After an hour and a half, we were nearing LAX and I made the suggestion to Andy that since we had gone this far, why not drive all the way to Pink’s for some hot dogs? He agreed.

This is a true testament to not only how much Andy loves me but how much of an awesome husband he is just in general. First of all, Andy is a vegetarian. While Pink’s does offer a vegan dog, hot dogs as a whole are not topping Andy’s favorite food list. Second of all, he knew that we’d be waiting in line at Pink’s for at least a half an hour, if not more – and it was hot out. So take a guy who doesn’t like hot dogs or heat and make him not only drive for another hour to get to a hot dog place but make him stand in line for a half hour for a food he doesn’t even like in heat that he has a hard time tolerating. That’s love if I ever saw it. I’m a very lucky girl.

The Holy Grail of Hollywood Hot Dogs

The hell that is waiting in line for the Holy Grail of Hollywood hot dogs.

They had CAKE??  How did I miss that?

My awesome husband being a very good sport.

The bounty: The Patt Morrison Baja Veggie Dog & the Nacho Cheese with Chili Dog

After Pink’s, it took us another couple hours to get home with a few emergency pee breaks thrown in and a bunch of Los Angeles traffic. We were both exhausted by the time we made it back at 6:30 PM, but it was well worth it. It was a great day – and exciting*!

*(The term “exciting” will return to its normal meaning sometime in April 2011)

Suddenly, it's a very good day.

It appears the Consulate reads my blog. I received the following 15 minutes ago via email:

"Your application has been approved and the visa has been issued.
Please check your visa immediately on receipt to ensure that we have completed your visa correctly. Please send details of any errors or omissions to complaintslavisa@fco.gov.uk ASAP."

I'm assuming that I'm still not going to get flowers, but honestly, I think I can forgive them.

Blighty, here we come...

An update, if you could call it that.

Since this is now technically an expat blog, I figured I’d give you an update on how the process is going. The update is…there isn’t any. We are still waiting patiently for my Settlement Visa to be approved. It’s currently Business Day 25 of a projected 50 Business Day wait (half way!) and it’s not like the consulate is sending me flowers with a little note attached, “Sorry love! There are still 143 applications in front of you. Blimey! That’s a lot, innit?” While we could be approved tomorrow, we aren’t holding our breath. I think that we’ve pretty much resigned ourselves to pushing the leave date to mid-February as I don’t think we can take the risk of buying plane tickets and moving out of our apartment without the evidence that I’m clear to go.

As anxious as I am to get going already, truthfully I’m a bit grateful as it gives me another month of paychecks. I do miss my passport though. I feel a bit naked without it. It’s not like we can afford to spend a week in Mexico at this point in time, but I like the feeling of knowing I could if I wanted to. (This reminds me that I should tell you my Mexico story sometime.)

We haven’t really done anything much in the way of packing or selling. Last weekend I did get a front hand brake installed on my beach cruiser. For months Andy has been going on about how coaster brakes are completely illegal in the UK which in turn would make me cry inside since I love my bike more than is probably normal for a 36 year old with butterflies and flowers on her bike. I did a bit of research though and found out that it’s not illegal to have coaster brakes; it’s just illegal to not have brakes on both the front and back wheel. We took my cruiser down to the bike shop and $15 later the most Awesomest Bike in the World (that has butterflies and flowers on it) is UK compliant. Of course, now I just have complete paranoia that my most awesome bike (with butterflies and flowers on it) will get stolen the first time I take it out in Liverpool but I suppose I’ll cross that sad lonely bridge when I come to it.

My cruiser on her maiden voyage.   See?  Awesome.  Who wouldn't want to steal this sweet ride?

Oh! I did do some shopping for dual voltage flat irons this afternoon since I’ve made the executive decision to risk a dual voltage US flat iron with a converter plug in the UK. I bought a flat iron at Argos last Christmas when we were there, shelling out 40 pounds for a hair appliance that had all the effectiveness of trying to straighten ones hair with two heated up toothpicks. 40 pounds! That’s like, a billion zillion US dollars! Figured I could risk spending $30 American dollars for the chance of silky luminous locks. That’s a farce really – my hair does not do well with moisture, something England has plenty of. Its hats, ponytails or butch haircuts til Oz I think.

So there, you are officially updated. And nary a swear word in sight.

It's called a bandolier, but that's a boring name...

A conversation between Andy and myself last night while watching “The Good, the Bad, and the Weird”*:

ME: Do you think there will ever be a time when wearing a sash of bullets is a good idea?

ANDY: I doubt it.

ME: Well, you never know. I mean, what about an apocalypse? You might need a sash of bullets if there were zombies or whatever.

ANDY: Of course with an apocalypse a sash of bullets would probably be helpful.

ME: …like a wrist watch is now.

ANDY: I don’t wear a wrist watch.

ME: Exactly. Who says you have to wear a sash of bullets? It would be handy, sure, but you don’t have to. I mean, a sash of bullets is pretty heavy. It’s probably pretty poke-y in the skin-y.

ANDY: …depending on what kind of bullets you had.

ME: Shotgun bullets might be nice. Heavy, sure, but they come in that nice red color…I think I could match a blouse or two with that red.

I could totally match a purse with this.

*I don’t have a stenographer so some of this conversation may vary. The general gist is there.