With love from sender

I'm from mid-west US.  Pete is from Auckland, NZ.  We live in London, UK.

How do you maintain your relationship with family when its divided between three countries? *

Do you…

a)      Make regular Skype dates and yell at each other while staring at a jumpy picture of your loved ones and the occasional confused cat.

b)      Answer the phone despite it ringing at the most inconvenient times (I mean they have uncanny timing) and let dinner (or partner) go cold because it’s the least you can do since you decided to live halfway around the world.

c)       Dutifully read every piece of news lovingly clipped and sent every few weeks, sometimes with photos, and realize that the clippings are doing the exact opposite of what the grannies/aunties/mums intended.  Instead of enticing you ‘back home’ you realize you have no idea what is going on ‘back home’ and aren’t entirely sure you can go back.  

d)      Regularly do battle with Royal Mail/Parcel Force in order to track down and receive the packages sent by family every month (and vice versa).  Packages which regularly go ‘missing’ or arrive broken to such a degree that they obviously were involved in an impromptu cricket and/or rugby match between RM and PF carriers.  Then gamely attempt to find room for all those coffeetable books (you don’t have a coffeetable), blankets, pillows, framed photos, lamps, flatware, etc…that do make it through unscathed.

e)      All of the above.

*I am stretching the truth here a bit for entertainment purposes.  We love that our families are thinking of us.  We know you love us and miss us.  Rest assured that we are thinking of you just as frequently and love you just as much.  However, we live in a very small rental flat with no storage.  Save yourself the postage.  The amount you are dropping on sending packages and/or newspaper clippings half-way around the world every month could pay for a plane ticket and you could tell us in person.  Seriously.  

The Fun Stuff

And in contrast to yesterday's soul-searching, some fun stuff.  Putting together outfits is my new favourite hobby.  Here are two.

Jacket: Circle of Trust, Shirt: emma nissim,
Skirt: Anthropologie, Shoes: TK Maxx

This was a party outfit.  Actually it was a birthday party for one half of the emma nissim venture.  This T-shirt is the first item I bought from them.  They have a gorgeous little shop in Greenwich Market decorated with Victorian antiques.  They use steamer trunks to store their stocks of hand printed shirts, dresses, baby clothes, scarves, ties....  Everything is green fabric and this particular pattern of elephants helps the shop adopt an elephant in Thailand.  They also have a sea turtle design that supports a turtle in Barbados.  Their iconic designs are based on Cockney Rhyming Slang.  If you visit them at the Market, be sure to say 'Hi' to Alfie.  The Golden Lab (and their first animal model) is always lounging in the shop somewhere.  Now that I am attending their birthday parties, guess how much I have dropped since that first tee?

Jacket: Peter Werth Men's Jacket,
Shirt: a shop in Beyoglu, Istanbul
Jeans: GAP men's, Shoes: TK Maxx

This was a running errands/meetings outfit.  Nothing special, but that doesn't mean it can't still be stylish, right? That's assuming it is stylish. 

Mind Fit

Since my last Tuesday Fit-Day post, I have shifted between being five and eight pounds away from my goal weight.  That was over a month ago.  I still have yet to find an occasion for that suit. 

However, I want to move this thread toward Mental Fitness.  I’m feeling pretty comfortable with my physical fitness levels and body shape.  I run 5Ks two-three times a week and almost always take the stairs and I can regularly go shopping without breaking down in tears, which is not as great a thing when you have no income.  I have been sliding a bit in terms of making healthy food choices, but I’m reigning it in.  Lately, I am more concerned with my mental self-care.  It sounds like terminology.  It is. As regular readers may be aware, I am currently battling my third bout of depression in a little over 10 years.  I am trying a new type of therapy this time around and it feels like a good fit.  This time around it is about trying to change behaviours and allow for self-care with the goal of learning how to stay mentally fit in the long term and avoid back slides. 

A big part of this exercise for me is to work toward seeing who I am now and not who I used to be or thought I would be or wanted to be, etc.  This brings me to another change.  The Ariel and Sadie theme was a product of this thought process.  It was a way to stand back and take stock of how I have grown as a person in the last 10 years or so.  When it began, I was of the mind that I had lost myself because the Ariel I thought I remembered and the Sadie I had become seemed completely different people.  And, let’s be honest, in some areas that is a completely true statement. 

The Ariel I was channelling was a combination of late High School/late University persona.  That’s problematic to start.  That Ariel had yet to experience the world outside of her little bubbles, and while her bravado and idealism is commendable, it makes me cringe to think of the way I carried myself then.  However, that Ariel also dreamed big and without really trying, or noticing, Sadie accomplished some of those big dreams; living abroad, travelling the world, finding a life (and travelling) partner, earning a PhD…

Ariel and Sadie will no longer be about lamenting a lost future.  By definition, can a future really be lost?  In a lot of ways this last year has been a bit difficult for me, but it has also been equally illuminating and awesome.  (By the way, I tend to mark my passing years by the academic calendar which happens to correspond with our anniversary.)  Pete is now officially my life and travelling partner and I finished that effing PhD.  Not too shabby for one year. 

So Ariel and Sadie will become a conversation about how awesome my life is turning out.  Hopefully its a fun one filled with pretty drinks and dresses and maybe even a job at some point.

 

Fly-by

The beautiful weekend is done and gone.  We enjoyed it thoroughly.  This morning I feel like I was out way past my bedtime and have the nagging feeling that I might have done something that was caught on film and will forever mar my chances of taking a public office. 

I didn’t.

What actually happened is that we experienced the first proper summer night of the season.  And while it was lovely to not have to cart that extra layer around (though I still did, and some other things besides.  Or I should say Pete did.  Sorry, baby.) it is not lovely for sleeping.  It was a very still night and all the windows were open, but there was no movement.  This might have been rectified by opening the blinds a bit, but as I have described earlier, our neighbours’ windows and back patio have a direct view of our bedroom and marital bed.  However, I would have been more than willing to allow viewing of our sleeping patterns if it would have brought a breeze without bugs.  It would not.  Because, like the rest of Europe and the world, as far as I can tell, for some unknown reason Britain does not do screens.  It’s not like they don’t have flying bugs and mosquitoes.  They do.  They just seem happy to let them cohabitate.

I am not happy to do so. 

I open our windows and back patio doors pretty much every day in the spring and summer when there is no rain (so about 10 days.  I kid.  12.) and within moments there are at least three very large, very lazy, flies bouncing their way through the flat off of every window and mirror they can find.  Of course, they never find their way back out again without strong direction from some rolled-up paper good.  They can't identify the gaping open air of the ajar door, but they can thread the needle of the barely open blinds like maneuverability pros.  Most days I strongly will myself to ignore them, or at the very least turn up the TV/music to a level that drowns out, what I can only believe are suicide attempts.  However, on my baking days, which are steadily increasing with my prolonged unemployment much to the distress of my newly svelte waistline (and the waistlines of my neighbours, friends, local shop owners, random strangers), the flies drive me to the brink of committing insectal genocide.  If they were smart, they would stay away.  Do they not see the scores of empty snail shells littering the back patio?  We have already started down the path of evil, it will not take much more to tip me over the edge!! (I should note that I did shed some tears over the snail incident.  I didn’t realize we had so many and watching them turn into florescent green bubbles is quite horrifying.  If they just stayed away from my basil these steps need not be taken.)

But nothing is worse than the incessant buzzing of a bouncing fly on a sticky, sleepless, restless summer night.  I find that they love to take breaks from bouncing off the wall by dive-bombing my ear.  Or maybe it’s a game.  They hover above the bed and play ‘How close can you get to the ear of the semi-sleeping giant before she sits bolt upright in bed arms flailing and yelling obscenities much to the distress of her slumbering husband who can sleep in any condition despite his arguments to the contrary.’ 

If that’s the case, the three (thousand?) from last night had a rip-roaring time. 

Now I think on it, considering the potential viewing audience outside our bedroom window (and my summer sleeping state of undress), my feeling of dread over in-criminating/decent video may be well founded. 

To lead a better life...

I need my love to be here...

photo by Genevieve Nisly

Simple.

Welcome to ‘The Chronicles of a Reluctant Housewife’ where I document my love/hate relationship with my current occupation.

Today marks the first Year of the Housewife ala Sadie. 

So far today I have done three loads of laundry and baked the second layer of our anniversary cake and done some light cleaning. 

It’s been a long year.  I’ve learned a lot about myself and marriage. 

But for now, I think I will keep those lessons to myself. 

Over-sharing will re-commence on Monday.  We are promised a beautiful weekend full of sun and humidity and I plan on relishing every second.  Sundresses at the ready!!!

Morning Fantasies

There is a moment in the morning where all is right with the world.  Pete is in the process of rolling out of bed and the sun is brightening the room despite the blinds.  I can stretch out into my preferred diagonal position and relish having the whole bed to myself for these moments.  The neighbourhood is waking around me.  The birds singing in the garden in the back, water gurgling down the pipes from upstairs and next door’s showers, the boiler exhausting into the side return outside our bedroom window, and then it starts.  Voices erupt from the next door’s kitchen (just below our bedroom window).  I mean, it is just toast.  Does it warrant actual screaming and swearing and ganging-up? Could we not have a morning without broadcasting your dysfunction to your bed-lounging neighbours?

Every. Single. Morning.

I try not to get too annoyed by these daily morning disputes spilling into my auditory space, as I assume that our family (when we get around to adding to it) will also be a loud family, but I would hope that we could manage to get out of the house most mornings without a full-on screaming match. 

I’m dreaming aren’t I?  Don’t tell me.  Let me enjoy the fantasy.