Year: 2004

The new house is narrow and three stories high and furnished with not much more than a baby grand piano.

Other than sitting on the piano bench and looking out through french doors at the garden I am still at a loss — the household goods passed customs but have not yet been released to our care.

I have urgent deadlines predicated on work that cannot be completed without my other computer, bored children who want their rooms back, and a traveling husband who keeps ending up in the emergency room.

I miss my friends and my mother. Though my opinion is that they should all just follow me here.

When I unpacked the suitcases I found another set of random mix tapes that seem to consist almost entirely of the music I listened to in 1985. The current theme song is What Difference Does it Make?

Internet access is once again sketchy, so if you are expecting email, please pardon my silence.

Everything we own was shipped in early June. The only cds left out of the shipment were simply overlooked, not chosen. For the last several weeks we have had a grand total selection of three mix tapes and the Dennis DriscollTalent Show album.

Since the teenager will only let us play the Dennis Driscoll, this move will forevermore be associated with that whimsical young man and his musings about love, longing, and Ilwaco WA.

This is the last day in our temporary apartment. I need to pack the suitcases once again, coaxing the children to locate whatever precious things they have stashed around the place.

Byron is in Boston, selling our Seattle house via fax from his hotel and visiting as many friends as possible when he isn’t at the conference. He is supposed to come back to England tomorrow, then fly back to Seattle at the weekend, and somewhere in the middle of all this our household goods will have passed customs and we will celebrate the girls birthday with a short trip to London.

Oh, and we have to unpack, start the utilities, get a phone number, arrange internet access, and the kids need to visit their new schools.

Not to mention the fact that Byron has to actually go to work.

Whereas I have to do the final copyedits on the anthology, and finish the memoir.

In addition to my full-time job running a digital media empire.

The idyll has ended and I’m going to be a wee bit busy this week. But at least I’ll have my cds back.

The first few weeks in a new country have passed rapidly in part because we are staying in temporary digs and still living out of suitcases.

This is not much fun, even though the apartment is more posh than we deserve, and our collective family anxiety level was slowly rising even before Byron ended up in hospital with an asthma attack the morning before he flew back to the states for a conference.

We are now so disheveled that we have reverted to the comforting strategy of singing Chorus songs while meandering about Stourbridge Common.

Though we have no songbook at hand and have forgotten many verses – so we go from a fragment of Union Maid to a snippet of Barrett’s Privateers to a mixed up rendition of Rote Zora. The song I wish we knew all the way through is Ramblin’ Rover but we only retain this verse:

Well there’s many who feign enjoyment
   At merciless employment
Their ambition is this deployment 
   From the minute they left the school
And they save and scrape and ponder
   While the rest go out and squander
Roam the world and rove and wander
   And we’re happier as a rule….

Back in the temporary apartment we have been entranced by copious lashings of television time. It is in fact amazing to sit here and watch the BBC for hours on end, in part because the quality is much lower than I had imagined growing up on imports.

The regular programming consists almost entirely of tedious reality shows, many of which are based around the theme of real estate. People sell houses. Buy houses. Decorate houses. Renovate houses.

I watch even though I’m not particularly interested, mainly because I haven’t had a television in so long it has taken on the allure of a secret vice.

Beyond the home shows this country is mad for relocation stories – an hour doesn’t pass without some dramatic short documentary about people going off to start a new life somewhere. Though they never seem to have capital, savings, or jobs, which seems rather stupid to me.

Maybe I’m just too keen on stability. Despite my cultural and aesthetic preference for risk and adventure, I always have an infrastructure… or at least a plan.

It is possible that my puzzlement over these shows may have more to do with the fact that I would never want to be a hotelier, takeaway shop owner, or tour guide for rich tourists.

I am not (yet) experiencing culture shock by definition. This is after all the country where my primary language was devised. However, having said that, there are a few strange differences between the UK and the US.

First of all, instead of pronouncing Adidas Uh – dee – duhs they say A – eh – dee – dass. Which might not have come to my attention except they seem mad for the brand.

Secondly, the washing machine has a capacity of perhaps three towels, which it can successfully launder and dry if you allow four hours.

I’m not joking.

Many of our friends line dry to circumvent the process but our allergies preclude this solution so my days are dogged by washing clothes.

The only other general observations are more regional than cultural.

The weather here is much like my memories of growing up on the Kitsap Peninsula: cold and wet with occasional sun.

Also, people had assured me that the English are reticent and polite but my spectacles are soliciting full-on stares of a nature I have never had to deal with. Strange.

During our trip to Barcelona, after walking around in the rain for days but before my wallet was stolen, I changed my personal motto.

Until that moment it was I live to serve.

In the shadow of the Sagrada Familia I decided it had better be Don’t be a dumbass.

The whole thing is working out rather well…. my life is much more pleasant now. However. It appears that it is necessary to reduce operating costs, which means that with exactly a week until we move to a different country, we have decided to sell the house.

I keep waking up in the middle of the night to wander around admiring the coved ceilings.

Onward!

Watch as your new style lofi superheroes Asthma Boy and Cancer Girl throw themselves recklessly into the maelstrom of home repairs! No skills or stamina? No problem!

We’ll hold our breath to avoid the paint fumes; we’ll wrap our weak wrists in elastic bandages when the muscles shred! We might end up in the hospital by the end of this escapade, but at least we won’t show our weakness by asking our friends for help!

Though really, it hasn’t been that difficult. I bought environmentally sensitive paint and we’re almost done. The only pressing thing left to decide is whether or not I should paint over the foot high stencil downstairs that reads DIME CHICKS ICED UP * * * MINKED OUT * * * TROLLY SICK.

Luckily the previous tenant already covered the murals that said SACRIFICE and RESIST PSYCHIC DEATH.

The extra teenager who lived with us all year just moved out.

Grief, despair: there are actual tears escaping from my head.

This tour started in Madison with plenty of time to make a futile attempt to find an ATM that would accept a deposit for Anne. Ten banks along in the process I started to make helpful suggestions involving overnight mail service that did not go over too well.

The Inevitable Banking Emergency always happens when I travel, but usually because I’ve done something trenchantly weird with my money. I felt rather pleased that it wasn’t my deposit going so seriously awry.

We arrived early to help set up. Lisa had everything well in hand so we ended up hanging out with Dan Sinker, who just started a line of books with Akashic, and Joe Meno, the author of the first in the series, a novel titled Hairstyles of the Damned.

Beth, Lisa, and Joe read interesting and good stuff and then it was my turn to go up. As I walked toward the stage I decided to read a piece called Fighting. I’ve been performing this essay for about a year now and the audiences have always been rather twitchy about the whole thing.

I mean that to be taken literally; they recoil and shudder. But for whatever reason, the Madison crowd laughed at the right places

The next day we headed to Chicago for BEA. Trade shows are always . . . interesting.

The best part of the whole event was hanging out in the Soft Skull booth with Richard Nash, Ammi Emergency, and other SSP writers. I’ve spent significant and lamentable amounts of time with PR professionals and was completely amazed to find that Richard is in fact a world class gladhander. It was extremely amusing to see our raggedy crew being marketed and sold, each of us taking turns nodding solemnly and answering questions as best we could.

Before the event I knew that SSP was good but now that I’ve met more people I am honored to be associated with this group of writers. Those who showed up for the Expo included Daphne Gottlieb, Matthew Sharpe, Josh MacPhee, Jared Maher (Justin begged off sick), Derek McCormack, Billy Wimsatt, One Ring Zero (with instruments), and possibly others I should list but failed to write in my notebook.

The AK, Akashic, Arsenal, and other small presses were all staffed by people who were so much fun it was hard to drag myself away, but I but ventured outside of SSP land and managed to see Michelle Tea, Lawrence Schimel, Gayle Brandeis, and Jim Monroe. It was rather unbelievable… not to make too much of a generalization, but it was like finding that mythical peer group I always wanted to have in high school. Like being a band geek without having to actually play an instrument, or something.

Though when I mentioned this to Matt he replied that he was first chair flute in high school.

The sense of camaraderie between the writers and the publishers I spent time with is probably at least in part because we were all marooned in the midst of a massive commercial trade show; it could have been grim and grinding but instead it was great.

On Friday the Quimby’s audience was even more receptive than the crowd in Madison. They even laughed at what I see as the funniest line in the whole performance: I was a bleeder.

After the reading we went out with Daphne, Ammi, Jared, and scads of other interesting people. Just as the party broke up Dan Sinker paused in front of me and asked Is that piece part of a book?

I shrugged an indifferent yes.

He said I would like to publish it.

I blinked at him and said Okay.

My house is empty.

I have no amusing anecdotes, except the fact that one of the movers was almost certainly my cousin by marriage (although I did not inquire to verify). I was able to woo him with my proletariat charms when he threw a tantrum toward the end of the day.

Now that the furnishings are gone I cannot avoid the fact that the house needs to be painted.

Luckily Gabriel arrived to save the day – he always turns up when I need help. We toodled around town trying to match paint colors for the better part of the available daylight hours, and chose all the wrong things, but at least the kitchen is well under way.

I’m making a pasta dinner and hoping the paint brush doesn’t fall in the water. I suppose I could have cooked in the other kitchen but during the move it acted as the repository of important papers and assorted items we cannot take to the UK.

Every single time I walk in the room I jump in fright at the sight of an animal on the counter, even though I know perfectly well it is just my taxidermy deer head.

I have no choice in this process; the company will only pay for professional movers. It would be better for me if I could do all the work myself, but that is not how it has been organized.

There is nothing quite like the experience of having strangers sort your possessions. Not that I’m complaining; no, I worry about the strangers.

They arrive imagining that we are a respectable sort of family and quickly uncover the degenerate truth… from the assortment of cracked Madonna statues to the santeria candles, the dental prostheses collection to the taxidermy, the punk posters to glass eyeballs — we make a poor showing.

These nice men do not know what to say and I just hope they will not be offended.

I lurk around feeling awkward because I think that I should be doing the work, not standing here with a clipboard.

My house is full of boxes and the container arrives any minute to whisk it all away across the ocean.

Weeks before we can even apply for the visas.

This is alarming.

I’ve been to England for the first time. Cambridge was brilliant.

However: my friends weren’t joking when they warned me that most houses have carpeting everywhere. Even in the kitchen and bathroom.

Fathom.

Home now for a brief respite before heading off to Chicago. We might have found a place to live but we won’t be sure until we have a signed lease in hand.

Now I need to find someone to rent this place and sell the cars (aside from finishing the visa process and etc.).

Sunday morning we had arranged to visit Stella and Al and when we arrived we were surprised to learn that it was their twelfth anniversary. We were honored to spend the day with them, eating a picnic feast of salmon and champagne on the beach where they were married.

I held up my skirt and waded out in the salt water of the Sound, with tiny crabs and jellyfish all around. Later we stretched out in the shade under an alder tree and talked.

Stella told us about the flowers people donated to decorate the cabin, about the friends who brought food and cake and gifts.

The day was perfect – lovely in every possible way.