A Week From Wednesday is Fly-Day, and So Much To Do..!!

There are so many things to do in the next week or so that the mind boggles!  Not the least of these will be a visit with my camera in hand to my beloved Worcester Cathedral for one last day of shooting. 

We have planned a trip the the chemists, a trip to Birmingham, a trip to the cemetery, and a trip to the grocery.  There are documents and papers to scan rather than carry, and there is a box of junk to sort out under the table.  There are batteries to charge, gas and electric meters to top up, and clothes to wash.  There is food that has to be eaten rather than keep ordering out too!  Kids need educating while they are away from school, and there is teenaged angst to deal with, as well as the occasional ‘poopy nappy.’ 

While all of this is going on, there are arrangements to make in order to get to Birmingham airport by 3:30 in the morning, there is the going away party and the clean-up after, and there is the question of the ‘extra’ bag of luggage that we may need for that last bit of extra stuff. 

And there are addresses and address books to update, websites to update, banks to notify, and don’t tell the loan sharks… 

In the mean time, I have built a plan for a new website, and am now ready to adapt the same plans to an old one.  http://www.kelseyphoto.com will be getting a much needed overhaul BEFORE we fly out, and I have laid some of the foundations for http://www.theprosperingpeasant.com so I can get straight to work on it as soon as we land in America!  The two websites will hopefully provide more than a hobby and distraction for me, but an income as well.  That is going to the the hard part, of course, but if I market it right, who knows?  Now for the hard part, content! 

I wonder though, if leaving England will be like Leaving Portefields Road was?  Will it be a moment without emotion, or will something latch onto my heart so strong that it hurts?  Probably the Cathedral, the history, the countryside…  I know that when they search my belongings and check my bags, and when customs clears my boxes of things I have shipped, I will carry more inside me than all of that. 

9 days and counting

Kelsey Bacon

Worcester, England

I’d Love To Say…

…What a wonderful trip to London it was!  Kiry was very good on the train there and back, and the purpose of the trip was fully accomplished, which was to register Kiry as a US Citizen born abroad, and to get her SSN and US Passport.  While I would love to say also that we went around to places like Notting Hill and Buckingham Palace, or anything like that, but we didn’t.  It was nice to walk out of Paddington Station and across to the Embassy and then back again a different route all from what I know in my head of London though!  Love the city! 

We are down to two weeks before we go, and the excitement is starting to build around here!  Katrina is getting eager to get out of the country, and Dylan is ready to get started on his new life!  Jordan is hoping that the doctors will clear him for flight on the 29th with the rest of us, and if we are lucky, he will be.  Kiry really doesn’t know what is going to happen, but she has adjusted well to what has happened so far. 

As for me, I have not yet absorbed the idea that we are really going back yet.  I look forward to Nevada, and to making a home there.  There is so much to do!  The house is going to need a lot of work in order to make it as efficient as possible and to make it so that rather then just providing a shelter, it also provides food, and other needs for us.  I would like very much to live green, but I also want to live practically and in a mode of self-reliance.

At this point we have one more step out of the way, and one thing less to worry about.  Now the passport needs to get here on time!  That, and Jordan make the flight, and we are all set and on our way!  Strangely, it feels a lot like it did when we did not know how the Embassy would rule on our sponsorship forms! 

Nappy Credits

“If you change Kiry’s nappy, I will close up,” she said, just before bedtime. 

“If you change her nappy, I will close up.  I have changed her several times today, including two very poopy ones, and there was that one in the middle of the night last night,” I replied hastily. 

“Okay, if you close up, I’ll change her nappy!” 

It looks like I have earned some Nappy Credits.  All I had to do was a few bad ones, and one in the middle of the night, and I got to get out of one not so bad one before bed this evening.  Hey, hey!  Not bad eh?  I wonder if I am still in missus’ good books though after prying my way out of that one? 

Damp Tile Scent

Being at my mother-in-law’s flat is certainly refreshing and pleasant for so many reasons.  One is the neighbourhood!  The first Sunday I was here I walked from Sainsbury’s to the flat via the alley, a very short walk to the local supermarket, and noticed that there were loads of people out in their front gardens mowing and caring for the grass and flowers.  It was nirvana compared to Tolladine, and felt a bit like I had walked into the life of Ward and June Cleaver.  The kids soon reminded me that this was not the 1950’s, and that they are not representative of Wally and the Beaver!  Getting to know England the way I have, I am cynically positive that this is more like the Stepford Wives than Leave It To Beaver, but that aside, it was a scene I have never seen played out in Tolladine, where the neighbours are more like Sanford and Son meets Fawlty Towers.

Coming into the Flat I feel better than I did at the old house because it is cleaner and very finished.  Mom is always ready in case Her Highness the Queen happens to stop in for a spot of tea.  Well, at least mom won’t be as ashamed of her home as I would have been if the local Council Officer stopped in! 

We never planned on stopping in for very long, so there was no justification in putting money into the place, especially as it is a rental and the money lost could never be recouped.  But under the rental agreements in this country, if we wanted the place to look nice, we have to invest in its decoration from wall coverings to carpets, to light fittings and the garden (yard).  The council only rents the structure in its most basic form; walls, shabby floors, and a roof with electrical fittings and heat.  There is a kitchen and basic toilette, but even a shower is up to the renter.  The one we fitted in the house was torn out after we left!  We decided long ago that it was not worth wasting money in such an arrangement on making the house nice, and as a consequence we lost out on having a home. 

Mom’s house feels much more like a home in so many ways, but nothing more compels this feeling than when I walk into the bathroom first thing in the morning, when all the scents of usage are gone and the tiles are left to fill the air with their odour, and the slight damp that might be resting on them.  It takes me back to one of the two scents that always lingered in my great-grandmother’s bathroom on Leighton Drive in Ventura, California.  Of the two scents, the dominant one was always Irish Springs Soap, which great-grandma used faithfully for as many years as I could remember.  The other matches almost exactly to this tile smell in the bathroom here. 

I am not expert enough to tell you for sure that the smell is damp tiles.  It is not important really what it is, but rather, THAT it is.  The scent takes me back to a place of innocence and youth for me, and identifies itself very much as a home for me.  Strange then that I find something like this to warm my senses to the place I knew before, and the place I am going to now. 

Home is where you make it, and where we go now, we will make it our home and we will chose our favourite things that emanate scents that will remain in the minds of our children as home. 

Settled In For A (Short) While

We are settled into my mother-in-law’s flat for a short while till the date of the flight to America.  Jordan is going to have to travel separately, which is not an easy prospect for us, but it is an inevitable one if we are going to make use of the VISAs we worked hard and paid a lot for.  Worst case scenario is that we have to apply for him all over again, however, hopefully we can get his extended somehow and that will be the end of it.  He should only need a month or so more before he is safe to travel, but it is once again in the hands of the Embassy.  Rats!  Just when I thought the hard part was done for! 

Mom’s place is quite a bit nicer than our house on Portefields was, and it is a lot easier to clean up and keep clean!  We are settled in for a short while, but even as the days roll on, it just seems so far away still!  What to do with these last few weeks?  Things keep filling the days, but watching a pot really does make it feel as though it will never boil! 

Kirynie has been hard pressed to feel settled at all right now.  She is doing better now that everything is not moving in transition, but she is relying on her dummy more, and hanging on my leg so that I cannot get anything done.  I think it is coming time to employ the boys on some babysitting!  Everything has been so confusing for little Miss!  And it is going to go all Kafooey on her again as soon as we get to the end of September!  Strangely, she seems to understand that we are going to fly up in the sky!  I can’t wait to see what she thinks of this!

As for the boys, Jordan is of course in a bit of a longer limbo than Dylan is facing, and they are being as lazy and as hard done my as ever!  Neither one wants to do school work, but Jordan is actually working on it more willingly.  Dylan is the most hard done by, as if moving to a new house and a new country is not enough, he wants to have the best of everything here in the flat, and he wants to do the least to help out.  He is by far the most selfish and the most difficult to get to understand anything, such as why he has to use his own blanket when he sits on the settee rather than assuming the nicest in the house and leaving his for someone else to use. 

Katrina is eager to go, and so am I.  I would like to get moved on and settled in and looking for incomes!  I am also eager to get to work on some things that I have been planning on such as a blog I have all laid out and ready to work on.  I am so eager to finally get this life on pause rolling and no longer, and never ever to be on pause again!  23 Days to go!