The Whirlwind Begins (Again)

I've read that moving house is one of the most stressful events that occurs in our lives. My general experience is in alignment with that statement. For anyone who wonders what it might be like to get ready to move overseas, it's probably fairly similar, but I would tend to place it somewhat higher on the stress scale. Basically, everything that you have to do to move house normally has to take place, but you have to add in lots of paperwork and correspondence, and changed timelines. (Just as an example, we'll be sending our stuff back before we leave, but don't expect it to arrive until a month or so after we get back.)

All that said, we're now at the point where things really start to move rather quickly. That's both a good and bad thing, as being quite a procrastinator, the pressure will make me have to do things that I otherwise would have left until even later. On the other hand, it's going to be very busy. Most everything has to be sorted out in the next three weeks, from flights to shipping to arranging final billings for utilities and, well, like I said, pretty much all the other normal stuff that goes with a move.

That's about it, really - our plans and lives at the moment are largely consumed by the preparations to come to the States, saying goodbye to friends here, and trying to squeeze in a few last sights before we go.

Tick, tock, tick...

Time is rapidly approaching our last day here, and it's safe to say that it is causing high amounts of stress and anxiety. We've begun the process of cleaning, throwing away, promising our electronic goods to those who want them, and preliminary packing, however, at the same time, it's hard to get too prepared as we still don't know where we're going to land. That is, I think, probably the largest stress creator in the whole scenario, and it occupies a great deal of our mental and emotional energy. As one of my favourite authors said, "Man's greatest fear is the fear of the unknown." (I'm paraphrasing, but close enough.) We've made tentative plans for our last weeks here, but again, that is partly contingent on finding out where we're going once we get back.

So, March has begun, and although the month started out looking like it was going to warm up a little, it has returned to cold and damp - they predicted snow earlier this week, which didn't come, but there was a hard frost that delayed several of the trains. Still, there are the signs that spring is coming - the birds are starting to come and chirp outside the window early in the morning again, and you can see the flowers starting to bud (and in some cases, blossom). Springtime is always so pretty here.

Other than the excitement of seeing U2 this past weekend, there isn't too much to report. We had a parent-teacher meeting with both Dalton's teacher and Maggie's teacher on Tuesday, and they both said that Dalton and Maggie were doing well, so we were pleased. Maggie's teacher was highly complimentary of how much Maggie knew before starting school, and commended Michelle for doing such a good job of teaching her. Of course, this is something that I've tried to tell Mich several times, but maybe now that she's hearing it from someone else, she'll take it to heart. The kids also dressed up as their favourite book character yesterday at school. Dalton was Harry Potter, while Maggie was the princess from the princess and the pea. It's funny how little things like that excite them - Dalton was up and dressed as Harry Potter by the time I got out of the shower, and Maggie spent the morning wandering around looking for a pea so her costume would be complete.

And that's the news from London.

Mother's Day

Continuing on with our string of unusual holidays, we celebrated Mother's Day yesterday. In yet another difference between the US and the UK, Mother's Day was celebrated in the UK yesterday. Interestingly, Father's Day is the same. However, other than the unusual date of the holiday, the weekend, and the week preceding, were rather normal - or at least as normal as life in our family can be.

We had hoped to at least go out on Sunday, but unfortunately, our train station was closed for maintenance work. When that happens, they replace the train with a bus to the nearest open station, which, in this case, was Purley. And so, we didn't go anywhere. I suppose I did go up the street and buy some milk and bread, but that was it.

In other news, we are, much to our chagrin, looking at moving. We found out earlier this week that our landlord is unlikely to allow us to renew our lease for more than six months, and may not allow us to renew the lease at all, as he thinks he will need the house again. As you can probably imagine, this has created some heightened stress levels in the household, although if you know us, you can also probably imagine who is stressing the most.

I apologise for the short post, but that's all that really comes to mind at the moment. Maybe some more later?