"A Breeze, Huh"? or "Why Packing is Evil"

1) You have to go through everything you own. EVERYTHING.
     a. 30+ years worth. Save me.
     b. Do you see how the handle of that suitcase looks like a sad
         face? He knows what's coming.

2) How the hell do you pick what stays, what gets given away, sold, or tossed?
     a. My cousin: "I want a memento, you hear me?"
     b. Will an old math certificate from eighth grade do?

3) Bending and lifting are not good when you've forgotten you have a bad back.
     a. It all started with a held-in sneeze.
     b. I'm not lying.
 
4) Blowing your back out means you remember how fecking BORING it is to lay in bed all day, even with  your laptop and the internet for entertainment. God forbid that there's anything on the television to catch your attention these days.
     a. You know you're in dire straits when you watch three episodes of
         30-minute meals back-to-back.

5) Not being able to cook means you order in pizza, which isn't helping the six pounds you put back on and set you solidly back into your size 16 pants.
     a. I'm getting sausage pizza.
     b. Don't judge me.

But at least I can catch up on the blog, and the CV that is side-eying me from it's little folder in my documents library....come on, self-confidence!

It's a Celebration, Charlie Murphy...

Yesterday, I just spoke about only one week having gone by in the seemingly-interminable wait for my Visa approval.

(It's only a three week wait in total, but I like to make mountains out of molehills.)

I woke up late this morning--well, the twin poked me awake--so I roused myself to putter around a bit while she made her eff-awesome pancakes. And since she'd already loaded my laptop, I figured I'd check my email, yes?

In the list was an email from the Border Agency. All I could think was "Oh my God, I've forgotten something." As I started to fret myself into oblivion, I opened the message. Inside was this:

Holy shitsnacks.

I never would have figured it. I just knew that I wouldn't get an answer until the last week, and that I'd be a babbling puddle of drool by then. Granted, the bribe extra we'd paid for Priority Service had a definite timeline, but less than a week from the first email I received? Helloooo, frabjous day!

After I frantically emailed The Englishman and let him know, spread the word to family and friends, the newest worry made itself known: the plane ticket. My scheduled date is for mid-December, so I can be in London with The Englishman in time for Christmas, something we'd been hoping for during our first year as a married couple. Prices, however, are astronomical. Trolling various airline sites as well as places like Expedia, I quickly found out that the lowest price for a one-way ticket was around $1300...the highest over $1500! Damn you, holidays! The Englishman, of course, had expected it; I however had not! And being that I had to have an possible itinerary to end along with the application, this realization has been bugging me for a good three weeks. We'd just forked over major loot for the application, now we were going to have to almost match that price to get me there....and I still need to ship my things!

Well...thank goodness for ExpatForum.com. It's a giant of a website dedicated to helping the singular individual, as well as families, on their emigration to another country. We were encouraged to post our Visa timelines so others can gauge the waiting period for regular versus the bribe Priority service. I posted mine this afternoon as I was skyping with The Englishman, and a really nice woman congratulated me and said she'd gotten her approval as well, then my eyes nearly fell out of my head as she went on to tell me that she'd booked her flight for less than half of the prices I'd come across! So you can bet your butt I asked her how, and she pointed me to Kayak, which I'd never even thought of.

Oh, sweet deal:

One layover, under 24 hours, for less than $800!! The relief is enormous. I can't even describe it. Suddenly packing my clothes and selling my furniture seems like a breeze. Well, once I get my CV completed....I don't even want to talk about that right now.

But progress has been sweet!

Doing Too Much?

One week of waiting down, two weeks to go.

This Visa application is going to put me in the asylum. That's such an awesome word, asylum.

So not only have I been carrying on an endlessly-long distance relationship with the Englishman, preparing for and marrying the Englishman, getting all the necessary documentation ready for the Visa application, and begin packing, I also needed to hand in my resignation at work, re-assess just what it is that I do at the library so the administration can get a replacement--

(it turns out I do a lot more than I figured on, and they have my best wishes on finding someone!)

--but I also decided to start transitioning my hair back to it's natural state. Now. In the middle of all of this madness. And transitioning isn't a walk in the park. My hair has had the creamy crack since I was around ten years old. While there was a brief three-year stint with a Leisure Curl that we won't speak of, I've pretty much haven't seen my natural hair for 25 years. My twin sister stopped putting relaxers in her hair in 2007, and has been fully natural since 2008....and I adore what she does with her hair. The number of styles alone have me frothing at the mouth. But she's always had much more interest in hair than I have. I'm positively lazy(plus for the longest time I wanted that white-girl swing in my hair....I'll admit it!), so relaxers were easiest. But the stress of 2011 has taken it's toll on my hair, its been dry and brittle and falling out. So I figured I'd better give my natural hair a bit of freedom before I lost my edges(plus I'm kinda jealous of the twin's hair, ya know? It's so dang lovely). Transitioning however, means taking almost daily care of my hair to keep it from breaking off while the relaxer grows out, and taking care of the new, murderously thick, natural kinks. Le OMG.

Before I get the side-eye, don't let the light skin fool you...there aren't any loose, snaking coils of hair here. Sure, I may carry the blood of two Native American tribes, with a bit of Irish and English thrown in; but my hair does not believe in integration, and rejected all of that DNA. I have tight, twisted, knotty hair that will tangle on itself like a group-sex/Twister marathon if I'm not careful. So I've been stalking YouTube, websites like Curly Nikki, and the Nappturality forums for tips and tricks and a way to soothe my fears of wild, crazy-ass hair taking over my head like Timmy Turner's did in that one episode of Fairly Odd Parents.

It's been a tough two months. I started with braid outs. However, trying to cornrow wet, slicked, half-assed detangled hair was not fun, even with pretty nice results:

Plus I had to re-braid a third of my head every night. And I believe I stated before that I'm lazy.

Bring on month two, and bantu knots. This requires two-strand twists, which are then twisted in on themselves to form knots. Didn't take me half the night like the braids, which is already a bonus, hellooooooooo....

And by the second day, even with re-twisting in a few select places, I ended up with a style I really liked:

I'll be keeping this. It's much easier, which means I won't be fiddling with it every day when I have so much else to do before Thanksgiving. But of course my cousin, who's getting married right before I leave, tells her bridesmaids that she would like the ladies to be able to wear their hair down. *sigh* First she has us in short, strapless dresses in December...we also all have the same shoes, and more than likely we'll all have the same jewelry. Can't we be a little different? I'm just saying. We'll see how that goes, because I'm not going to relax my hair just for the wedding, but neither am I paying her stylist a bunch of loot to straighten my curls with a flat iron or a hot comb.

I'll just see if mom can do it first. *LOL* I need to do it anyway before I leave the country. You know, since my hair is straight in both my state ID and my Visa photo, and I'd like to not be deported before I even spend two hours in the UK...

Nineteen - and a Little Backstory...

Nearly two years ago, I took notice of a politically-savvy, ridiculously amusing new commenter on my favorite blog. Being a website with mainly black American commenters, suddenly seeing posts from a white British guy was a surprise to the blog's core group. But after a month or two, he fit right into the insanity, and I found myself more and more drawn to him: his intelligence, the clever snark, his wit and charm....and he didn't even have a personal avatar yet!

"Mmm, I'm kinda liking this guy," I thought. Then, of course, he decides to put up that avatar. That bore a resemblance to a young Rutger Hauer. Lawdy. *fans self* He and I clicked in so many ways that I found myself wondering more and more often about how this man was like offline. Was he exactly the same? Shyer? Bolder? A serial killer that dressed in ruffled manties?

"But he's in England! He's 3,000+ miles away!" - Logical Me

"So the eff what? Take a chance, heffa!" - Really Interested Me

So I kind of umm....."spoke" with one of the admins-most of who had become friends by then-and wheedled his personal email out of them. But then Moral Me popped Really Interested Me in the back of the head with a side of Guilt; and I realized that I couldn't in good conscience approach him that way. Damn it. So I waited for the right moment and got it from him on the sort-of pretense of an interest in old British films.

And since I really do love old British films, it was half-true, right?

So we started communicating off of the blog, where I admitted to him that I was interested in getting to know him better. Luckily-oh, so luckily-so was he. Though he did need a bit more convincing to take a chance on a relationship that was so long distance as to be nearly ridiculous(okay, not nearly....). Fast forward those nineteen months....The Englishman and I now married, and I am currently applying for a UK Settlement Visa so I can move to England. I can't even tell you how crazy these last nineteen months have been; the highs and lows, the visits and departures and the frustrations, oh my....but not for any amount of money on this planet would I forego this experience. Because as I told my mother, who is rightfully concerned about her daughter marrying and moving so far away, he is exactly what I never thought I would find.

This blessing of a man.

Inspiration

I'm embarking on two new adventures. Married life....and life as an expat. I'm on the wrong side of thirty, and while I'm not exactly terrified at this two-for-one deal, being somewhat open-minded, it turns out that I'm not a fan of major change. So this new situation has certainly kept me up some nights.

That's what I get for marrying a Londoner.

So I've been toying with a blog to keep track of this complete 180...but what to name the damn thing? Do you know how long I've been agonizing over this? I have enough crap to stress over - the Visa application, packing and shipping my clothes, staying in touch with the The Englishman through email and Skype.

(And at this point, after 19 months? Skype? I f*cking hate you.)

I should have known that I would have to look no farther than Harry Potter when title hunting. Or, to be more specific, the voice behind the American audiobooks published through Listening Library: Jim Dale. He once remarked:

"I'm still a kid inside, and adventure is adventure; wherever you find it."

Just like that, we have a winner.

Now that I've chosen a title, let's see if I get past this first post.