Alice in Londonland

At long last, I have finally figured out that by simply inserting the little memory card into my new computer at work, I can access the many pictures I have been toting around for weeks. Little did I know that a visual account of my time so far in London was but mere inches from my fiingertips the whole time. Ah, Technology, you sly bastard. Anyway, I'm reluctant to begin with these terrible pics of my flat, because it is now looking much more moved-into and nice....and frankly, my pathetic attempts at photography really do it no justice. But alas, for inquiring minds, I provide the following...

This is my bedroom...Aqua carpeting aside, it is quite spacious and is now the proud home of a giant bed, a rug, two chests of drawers and a huge closet. The windows are also big and warehouse-like, and if you look up the street, you have three great pubs with outdoor seating. You know, the important things in life. About three blocks from me is one of the top 5 restaurants in the world. Great spot to be.

This is the main room. It's tough to get a picture of it, but it's nice. Trust me.

This is our kitchen. Every appliance, save for the oven, is covered in that lovely wood you see before you. The one directly ahead covers the washing machine. Even though this kitchen isn't the prettiest girl at the prom, it is far and away the most spacious one I have ever seen in a London flat. Plus it has ample room to house the many designer kitchenware items my flatmate Jason owns, all of which I'm scared to use--or really even look at--for fear of hurting them in some way.


This is the tenement-style view out of our window....pretty sure it's office space across the way. The whole neighborhood is full of architecture firms....which is great, because I am never around architects.

This is a view looking back at the front door to the flat from the entrance to the lounge. The entry phone to the right is only like the greatest thing ever. It has a view camera and you can see who is calling. Really, what will they think of next???

Again, my bedroom. That orange thing outside my window was once for hoisting things up through the window. It is no longer functional, unfortunately.

There is a main bathroom in the flat with all of the usuals in it: sink, shower/bath and toilet. Then there's this en suite bathroom off my room. It contains a sink and a shower. No toilet. Of the three options, I'm pretty sure sink and shower aren't the ones I would choose, but whatever, I now have a shower...and yes, it requires power. If you can make out the danging string to the right....that's what you pull to get it going.

This is what you see when you come in the front door. To the left and right are the bedrooms and straight ahead there's a foyer and then an entry into the "lounge" (that's living room for you Yanks). The doors are actually called a "Juliet Window" though I accidentally keep calling it a "Rapunzel Window" (seemed to make more sense). So those doors open up and there's a little railing and a view onto the street. I see a waterballoon scenario in my future. Also, I am growing out my hair.

This is Jason's room. He has no bizarre electric shower room, but he does have uber closet space. Am slightly envious. He sleeps in that bag.

And this is the entry to the building. To the left are out mailboxes, which we did not have the right key to for weeks until I had rough up the agent a little. To the right is the most highly coveted feature of our building--the lift.

So that's a very brief view of my new digs. I'll take some more pics once we have it all set up. (right now, it's pretty much my room that's done, and then a bunch of boxes).

Going backwards, the next set of pics are from Scotland. Alex was the best man in a wedding on the Isle of Arran, a very beautiful, but oddly difficult to get to island off the west coast. Peeps in the know called it "Little Scotland" because it apparently has everything Scotland has, only on a smaller scale. Apparently Scotland Proper has some seriously ghetto mini-golf as well (see below).

This is a pic I took out the window of the ferry from Adrossan Harbour to Arran. By this point, we had been delayed two hours on the runway from Heathrow to Glasgow thanks to the coinciding arrival of George W. Bush, who was visiting the Queen, so we had missed all of our connections. As a result, we took a cab to a train to a cab to the ferry terminal, just to have to wait an hour during which we ate every item of food in sight and I read the entire display of tourism brochures. Anyway, I thought the windmills were cool.

This is a dusky shot looking back at where we came from.

That hill you see is called Goatsfall. I would have climbed it but someone needed help with his best man speech.

This is a goat, who I guess managed to avoid falling. Alex laughed at me when I took a picture of it, but it's not every day I see a goat, ok?

I wish any of these pics captured just how beautiful Arran was, but this was one attempt.

This was closer.

colder....

Civilization in Broddick. Every person you see here is likely related to the groom or bride in some way.


This is my handsome boyf wearing a skirt. It's rented. And yes, he's going commando in another man's fatigues. Also of note, this is the bed and breakfast where the evil proprietor lives. She was crazy to begin with, literally following us around with a mop to cover our tracks wherever we went. But just to ensure that we truly pushed her to the limit, I accidentally spilled tea all over her rug and carpet. I slept with one eye open.


I took a picture standing on the lawn of the chapel where the nuptials occurred. Pretty, pretty.

The reception was in a marquee (translation: tent) next to a castle. And yeah, the fact that I went to a wedding in a castle the first weekend I was in the UK seems fittingly cliche. It was beautiful, complemented by the groom's vintage Porshe.


The view from the entrance to the marquee.

Le bride and groom. What's missing from this shot is the thirtysomething female bagpiper. Badass.


The gardens next to the castle.


Me and my kilted beau, post successful speech-giving.


This was a complete coincidence.

Kissy face.

The next day, after fleeing in fear of the B&B owner's wrath, we played miniature golf. It was just too good not to photograph. It's what I imagine miniature golf is like in post-Taliban Kabul.


Not sure what's more challenging...the actual hole or the completely uneven pavement. If you wait long enough, you might even get it to stop rolling long enough to actually hit it.

We went to Glasgow for lunch on the way back, so I took this pic just to prove I'd been there. After we got back from Scotland (again, major delays and cancellations compliments of Dubya's return journey), I started work for one day and then headed to Holland for a meeting. We stayed at a resort in the beachside town of Noordwjk.

To the left is my hotel, the lovely Hotels de Oranje.

Directly in front of me when I walked out of my hotel. It was the perfect place to spend two days in a windowless conference room.


Beachy keen.
Looking back at my hotel.

For some reason, whenever I'm in Holland, people take me to the small towns. So I think I have now covered every second-tier Dutch city, yet still have never been to Amsterdam, Rotterdam or the Hague. Baffling. Anyway, this nice place is called Haarlem, former home to Napoleon's brother (or something).

Some big church.


Forget the tulip and windmill thing, I have never seen as many bicycles as I have in Holland.


When we came out of dinner, there was a concert playing in the square. We argued for a while about which language the band was singing in, drank a beer and went home.


So that about brings us up to date on pics. I have a new post a-brewing regarding "firsts"....and not even necessarily my own. I made Alex his first ever peanut butter and jelly sandwich last night! And he says I don't cook...

Crying to Belong

I have found that in life, often it’s best not to stop and think. As anyone who has ever gone through a painful breakup knows, sometimes the best course of action is just to keep swimming along at a frenetic pace and eventually you’ll arrive at the other side. My psychologist friends (of which there are many…not sure if that means I’m exceptionally sane or a raving lunatic) would probably advise that this avoidance tactic isn’t ideal per se, but sometimes, in my humble, doctorate-less opinion, it’s the only way forward.

Take my recent move, for example. (It is, after all, why we’re all here. Haha.) On January 5th, 2008, I sat down with my tirelessly hyper-organized mother in her kitchen in Dallas, and we made a list. No, I’m sorry, we synchronized the calendars she’d bought earlier that day. With her help, I outlined the many steps I would need to take to emerge relatively unscathed from my life in Baltimore and subsequently arrive in London, life’s necessesities in tow. Sitting in that kitchen with our matching lime green appointment books, the many months stretched out before me, all of the logistics and tasks didn’t seem SO bad. I figured if I took things day by day and followed my mother’s lifelong mantra of “keep moving” (seriously…you’d think she been running from the Feds all this time, haha…hmmm…), I’d be okay. And most of the time, I was.

I am.

But then there were / are the other times. What you can’t write on a calendar or predict months in advance is what happens when you stop for a minute, in the midst of all the limitless crap you have to get done, and let the gravity of what you’re doing wash over you. You can’t really prepare in any easily definable way for how you’re going to feel leaving one life behind for another. You can assume that there will be moments of panic (“WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY COLORFUL CLOTHES WHEN EVERY BRITISH PERSON WEARS BLACK AND GREY??” note: this, however, turned out not to be true in the summer. In fact, the London ladies are quite liking the colourful flouncy skirts and dresses this year); loneliness (“I’M THIRRRTY. NO ONE WANTS TO BE NEW FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE WHO’S 30.”); fear (“WHAT IF MY RELATIONSHIP FAILS AND I’M ALL ALONE IN LONDON SURROUNDED BY ALEX’S FRIENDS?”) and of course, excitement (“I’M LIVING LONDON. YIPEE!”).

But you can’t truly know what mélange of emotions await you until you’re standing in the middle of Ikea / your boyfriend’s bedroom / the garbage dump bawling your eyes out.

My point in all of this is (and I promise I have one) is that in the past six months of packing, cleaning, unpacking, moving, packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking, moving and on and on, there were many high points....but the low ones arrived swiftly and unexpectedly. There was the time I was painting my basement floor (long story) and banged my head on the vent for what must have been the 200th time that day. I was so frustrated to be stuck in one of my least favourite (sorry, it spell-corrects automatically) places on earth, doing taxing and utterly ridiculous manual labor for eight hours, and so aggravated that I kept. hitting. my. damn. head. that I flipped out, screamed and in a moment of sheer hysteria, punched the vent back. Then I burst into tears (the dent from my fist remains…let that be a lesson to low-hanging ductwork everywhere). After about twenty minutes of feeling sorry for myself, lamenting to the mice about how ridiculous it was that I had to deal with all of this stuff on my own, I got up and continued painting.

Then there was the time at the garbage dump, when I had arrived unprepared to contend with just how high up the dumpters are (I had pictured a Heathcliff the Cat junkyard scenario...I was so wrong). I was heading down to DC that day, so I was business casual, and had a car full of oddly shaped trash from the aforementioned basement to haul over this 15-foot wall. To add insult to injury, it began to rain just as I pulled up. So I’m standing there, hauling and jumping, literally jumping, in heels trying desperately to clear the top when suddenly I feel something slip from my hand. My car keys. I had thrown them over the wall and into the dumpster.

It took about 10 seconds for me to totally lose my shit. Five minutes, 10,000 superfluous heartbeats, and several vivid mental images of me dumpster diving in my dryclean onlys later, I found the keys lying in a ditch to the left of my car. Apparently, they had spared my emotional stability by taking their own course from my hand to the parking lot rather than into the dumpster. I drove to DC, sobbing the whole way.

And then there was this week. First, a nervous breakdown in the car on the way home from Ikea about the fact that I still don’t have any access to money. Alex actually laughed at me: “You cry about the most ridiculous things!” which made me laugh too because he’s probably right. What I didn’t explain is that, as in the basement and junkyard situations, sometimes it just takes a ridiculous trigger to tap into the just-beneath-the-surface anxiety, fear, sadness etc. The act of stopping and thinking about how something just sucks becomes a portal to what I'm starting to think might acutally be raving lunacy after all. (Women are complicated, okay??).

Which brings me to last night—-the first time I’ve just BEEN HERE. Nothing to do. No one to see. Nowhere to travel. I was alone in my new flat, absent of any sound due to lack of TV/radio/stereo, just hanging out, and thinking about how incredibly annoyed I am that some raging arsehole stole my bankcard...when suddenly the fact that I’m so far away from my friends and family finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know why then or what it had to do with bankcards (or raging arseholes for that matter), but frankly, it was a sad moment.

But really, that’s all it was. A moment...a slight snare in the tapestry of this experience, which far more often than not, is everything I want it to be. The high points too come often and in forms I didn't expect--how content I feel when I hang out with Alex knowing that I don't need to get on a plane tomorrow or the next day, or how invigorated I am by the almost palpable energy during my walk to work, or how hopeful I feel as I go to sleep in my new flat, knowing that all the hard work paid off in such an amazing way.

The truth is that this stuff--these blips--while scary to boyfriends, are all part of the process, I think. Anyway, that's my diagnosis. I'm ready for my PhD now please.

Nesting and Nudity

The entire time I lived in America, not once was I naked in public. Since I have been in the UK, I have revealed my, um, assets to the good people of London twice in two weeks.

Despite the fact that I STILL have no access to money (thank you, HSBC), my disrobing was not a quick way to generate some cash (though give me another week, and I might turn to busking in the tube. The female part of ‘Love Shack’ has to be worth 50p, right?). No, my forays into flashing were completely random and involuntary…and can be blamed almost entirely on shopping for home goods.

I love not having a car, but when you’re trying to furnish a flat from the ground up, the absence of a trunk (that’s ‘boot’ for my English brothers and sisters) is a quite substantial restriction on getting anything bigger than a breadbox from store to home. As a result, I have been trying to purchase only items in combinations that allow me to somewhat comfortably lug them on the tube and on the ten-minute walk to my flat. This activity, however, usually requires the use of both hands and swift, controlled movements through the tube stations to prevent the blocking or tackling of anyone in my path.

My third day in London, I went to Marks and Spencer in search of a duvet (that’s ‘comforter’ for my American brothers and sisters) and some pillows. At good old M&S, both items come in nice, ergonomic boxes with handles on top, but they’re big and require some muscle. Because it was quite warm outside, I was wearing a knee-length swingy cotton jersey skirt. Happy with my purchases, I went back into the tube station, successfully navigated the turnstile and headed down the stairs to the train tracks.

Now here’s an important piece of information about the London underground: Many tube stations blow air at you. I don’t know why, but they do, so it does tend to be occasionally windy in the bowels of the system. So, picture if you will a be-skirted Alice, laden with huge boxes in both hands, walking down a flight of stairs in a manmade windstorm. Suddenly, with about 30 steps remaining, I become painfully aware of the fact that the wind has caught the bottom of my skirt, and it is now quite literally in my face. To the dozen or so people around me, including three men directly behind me, I am now completely, as they say here, “starkers” from the waist down. To add insult to injury, I also am not wearing, um, “complete coverage” underwear, if you get my drift.

I knew I couldn’t stop because I would have just been standing there trying to hold the skirt down with my boxes on either side of me, dreading the inevitable journey the rest of the way down the stairs. The only real choice was to keep going. So I sprinted down the remaining steps, totally aware that a crowd of people were watching my naked bum streak through Oxford Circus tube stop, and collapsed onto the train. Pretty me.

Then on Sunday, I was in Muji, a great Japanese design-for-the-masses store. High off the recent delivery of my bed to my flat and the subsequent stressful but productive trip to Ikea for matching furniture, I was eager to collect the remaining necessities required to settle into my new home. I was attempting to juggle a fitted sheet, a set of pillowcases, a blanket and several other items by clasping them to my chest on my journey to the register. As I dumped them onto the counter, I looked up at the sales clerk. And he was staring unabashedly at my chest.

Suddenly self conscious, I looked down and—I cannot being to fathom what sequence of events needed to take place in order for this to occur—my button-down shirt was completely, 100% unbuttoned. I was standing no more than three feet from this guy with my bra on full display. What sort of person does that?

I mumbled an apology and turned away to button myself back up, while the guy politely pretended I hadn’t just given him a peep show. I thought about jokingly asking for a discount on the items I was purchasing, but thought better of it. Then I hung my head in shame and headed back to the tube (this time, in what I’d thought was good defense against nudity, I was wearing jeans…no such luck).

So on the two-week anniversary of my arrival to London, I have exposed myself twice. Hopefully the trend will stop here. The good news is that in the process, I have also furnished my bedroom. It is really shaping up nicely and is turning into sanctuary I was hoping for. Tonight I’ll finish unpacking the last few boxes and then I’ll be set! Pictures coming soon, I promise. Of the room, not my nudity.

Rehabilitating after my expaccident

Yes, there has been an unacceptable time lapse between the post of last and this one, but give a sister a break. I have been a globe-trotting (or at least western Europe-trotting) fool of late; I have been living out of several disorganized suitcases for going on two months; and I am officially paying for two homes, neither of which I live in. Somewhere in London there is a bed with my name on it (literally), but it requires me to wait for it in an empty flat for 8 hours, and I simply haven’t had the time. Plus, Alex’s room looks like a bomb went off and although he’s a peach and a half, I’m sure he’d like to wrangle some real estate back from my dirty clothes and countless “important papers” some time in the immediate future.

In short, things here are great. I’m not so much settling in physically, or financially for that matter, but I’m feeling great in all other important ways. No doubt – London is where I need to be right now for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it’s just so exciting to be here. I had forgotten how much I just love big cities, and even though I have no idea where I am or what’s going on half the time, it’s nice to be a part of it all. The conquering of a city must be a patient, immersive process, and I get an amazing sense that every time I leave my house (or rather Alex’s house), every time I master a route, and every time I rely on an newly developed instinct (like looking the right way when crossing the street or glancing up just as the train pulls into my stop), I take another small step toward feeling like a real Londoner.

That said, I also feel like a brain trauma patient. It’s like I have suffered a dangerous fall—an Expaccident—and now suddenly I’m incapable of performing even the most rudimentary tasks. Things that seem second nature to other people are completely baffling to me; and when I ask for direction (which I don’t usually), people first laugh like I’m kidding, and when they realize I’m not, they look at me with a distinctive mix of pity and confusion that can probably be captured verbally with, “aww…poor, stupid American.”

When the time came to move overseas, I was totally prepared for the big things (the trouble with opening a bank account, the lack of customer service, the no power in the bathroom, NHS, no tipping, washing machines in the kitchen) —and I even got used to the medium-sized things from coming here so often (the multiple toilet-flushing buttons, the benefits of the Oyster Card, and the staggering politeness of the vast majority of people in London). But it’s the little things that get me, that make me feel that not only am I new to town, but I might be new to planet Earth. Why are there countless ways to write a telephone number? Why do some have area codes and some don’t? Why can’t you hail a cab in Scotland? Why do you have to turn two knobs to pre-heat an oven? Why oh why do some showers require power?

However, there is a good side to this situation. Suddenly, I’m a really high-achiever. I actually call Alex (lucky bastard) and tell him, “I just figured out how to dial a phone!” or “I turned on the oven all by myself!” He tells me he’s proud and I’m special, and we celebrate my ability to overcome life’s little challenges. With such low expectations of my basic motor skills, I feel like every day that I emerge from alive and functioning is a victory not only for me, but for others afflicted with my condition.

But enough about that. I have had many adventures lately and am eager to share them all. Unfortunately, I have not yet figured out how to retrieve pictures off my camera (again, something that was easy for me to do in the U.S., but has somehow become a major obstacle 3,000 miles away) but as soon as I do, I promise I will show:

1. My trip to the beautiful Isle of Arran…home to stunning scenery; 4,999 delightful people and one evil bed and breakfast owner; and countless midges (mosquito-like bugs) who are all a little fatter this week courtesy of their violent feasting on my flesh.

2. My trip to the charming beach town of Noordwjk, Holland and Haarlem, Holland, where I witnessed my first public four-man urinal.

3. My first brush with fame…the lead singer of REO Speedwagon in the BA departures lounge in Heathrow. Yes, it counts.

4. My flat. I will take pics once I’m settled in too, but I have some of it empty that will hopefully give a sense of where I’ll be living for the next year.

This weekend should prove very fulfilling in terms of getting physically settled in. Fingers crossed. More soon, I promise. Kisses to you all.

The whole shack shimmies

Some people would kill for fame. I am not one of those people.

I'm the person who runs from video cameras, who hates when I'm the center of attention, and sobs after public speaking from sheer relief that it's over. The idea of ever being on a reality show makes me physically ill. The fact that the itty bitty bit of fame I have ever gained led to a scary stalker email from a machocist who wanted to be treated like a dog in the bedroom (long story) only confirms my absolute, resolute lack of desire to be famous. Ever.

Then you add five margaritas to the situation, and suddenly I'm Dina Lohan. Around about drink four, I start to fancy myself a Super Special Person. At drink five, I'm well on my way to completely delusional rock stardom. The reason I bring this up is two-fold (I warned you about the lists):

1. At my going away party on Saturday night, I took no less than 10 pictures of myself trying to do a Paris Hilton pose.



(At least I was in good company.) Then, of course, there was the "dead eyes," an ever-present (and surprisingly difficult---there is just too much life in these eyes, dammit!) Saturday night challenge.



And of course, the ever-popular Signature Alice and Jenguin Head Tilt.

(Don't think I'm going to give that one away....that's the one that going to take us TO THE TOP!)

Anyway, the fact that in my attempt to look "so hot right now" I inevitably end up looking, well, drunk is really neither here nor there. I'm a woman on a mission. Fame. Infamy. I'll take it all at that point in the night. Which brings me to my next item...

2. Later on in the night, at the best karaoke bar EVER (well at least on the east side of Baltimore), I joined Diamond Dave in a rousing rendition of "Love Shack," and this time, was determined to MAKE. IT. COUNT. One of the many great things about DD is that he too fancies himself a rock star. Together, we have managed to convince several rooms of inebriated Baltimore locals (not to mention a bunch of co-workers in Miami) that the B-52's got nothing on us. My murky brain tells me we got the job done once again on Saturday night. Tin Flipping Roof, mofos!

So as you can see, despite my everyday attempts to avoid excessive attention, I like to think I went out with a bang from Baltimore...even if just to my spectacular friends, who went above and beyond to make me feel missed. In fact, I think it's safe to say that even without the margs, I still felt like a Super Special Person after this past weekend (cue vomit). I mean, look at this....



I don't know what I did to deserve them, but hopefully I'll do it again (and repeatedly) in London so that I can attract some similar fantastic people in my life.

Only a few days left here now. Stay tuned.