One of the hideous aspects of doing taxes is the fact that I have to account for my whereabouts on every single day, and state whether or not I was working.

While this might be fun when simply musing, it is a massive pain to present in a form accepted by tax and immigration officials.

During the two years I documented yesterday, I was never in my designated residence longer than four weeks at a time.

2006 found me in Seattle, Amsterdam, NYC, San Francisco, Barcelona, Trento, Venice, then back to Seattle again – with lots of trips to London in between.

2007 looks better at a glance but the trips were longer, including a whole summer in the Pacific Northwest, then the South of France, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Denver.

Both years were easier than 2005, when I traveled in a similar fashion and also went on two long book tours.

In the abstract it all looks like great fun, and it would be churlish to claim otherwise. I am delighted that I had the freedom, opportunity, money, and sufficiently good health to go on all the trips, no matter how difficult or strange.

I started this journal in 2002 to document the process of abandoning my home in Portland for what looks easy in retrospect – just a move up the I-5 corridor to a house on top of a hill in Seattle. At the time the decision seemed perilous, risky, extreme.

I didn’t know that a little over a year later I would end up leaving not only the Pacific Northwest but also the country. I had no idea I would end up in England, let alone this rarefied and irritating academic enclave. I did not guess that I had the capacity to spend most of my time recklessly, on the road, or that my domestic arrangements would devolve to include not much more than a boat and a bicycle. I did not understand that I could love an unsettled existence more than the security of home.

When I finished filling out all the fiddly little details I closed the folder and said I want my old life back.

I worked too hard, cooked too much, stayed up too late, indulged beyond reason, and thrashed my immune system. I always forget that I am technically fragile, and should restrict my actions or risk some health consequence.

This time the curse has taken the form of bleeding hands. Fun!

Possibly the only thing more fun than having this mysterious stigmata is using the bleeding knuckles to do my taxes. Especially given that I’m self-employed, need to file in two countries with tax years that do not match, and …. etc.

My life is filled with excitement and glamor!

Speaking of which, last night someone pointed out that my music collection includes no love songs whatsoever. I was quite huffy – what, Elliott Smith isn’t romantic?!

But then I was able to dredge up some John Denver and Stevie Wonder, so my reputation was saved.

Anyone living in or near Cambridge, England (and even those beyond) should definitely consider snagging tickets for The Magic Lamp.

Yes, I know it claims to be a ‘family’ show…. but it is my mates Sally and Steve – two of the most interesting people I know here  – at the Junction!

The show will be fabulous, for everyone! Buy!

Planning for my annual expat feast always starts with the directive Borrow a house.

This year it should have been Borrow a bigger house.

People congregated from near and far, sworn vegetarian Nick made the meaty gravy like always, I bustled around making food and holding babies and laughing.

I have no idea how many people turned up, but it was so crowded I couldn’t get in the room to serve the turkey. Or sit. Or eat.

In fact, I did not even get a slice of pie!

It was an honor to feed my friends and loved ones a traditional harvest meal, and to reflect on all the things I am thankful for.

Top of the list, even after all these years? The National Health Service.

Perhaps one day my homeland will offer decent provision of health services to all citizens. Maybe our new president will keep his promises.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For those who have a prurient interest, here is the menu for the overwhelmingly organic, free range, locally sourced, ambidextrous (carnivore, vegetarian, vegan, gluten free – you all have an oft-replenished seat at my table) feast. Made by my own hands, no shortcuts. Scaled to serve at least sixty:

Starter:
Bread, cheese, olives, pickles

Main:
25 pound turkey
10 pounds mashed potato
Candied sweet potato
Stuffing
Gravy
Spicy green beans
Brussels sprouts
Beet & cabbage slaw
Green salad
Pasta salad
Cranberries

Dessert:
Apple crumble
Pumpkin pie
Ice cream
Whipped cream

No, I’m not a masochist.

Yesterday morning was brilliantly bright and achingly cold – the worst sort of weather for me, since I am both clinically photosensitive and have that pesky “fingers feel like they are about to snap off” disorder.

Trudging from store to store, stall to stall, unable to find not only pumpkins but also new pie tins, cheesecloth, half a dozen other required items, I just lost it, indulging in a moment of quivering dismay.

Much to the irritation of Byron, who instantly took my state as a direct attack, and chastised me.

I burst into tears and said I’m only in trouble because I learned to have emotions!

Charming companion looked startled, then agreed True…. I liked you better when you were a robot.

Seasonal trauma alert!

I have not been able to find the necessary requirements to make pie.

The farm kids can’t get “eating pumpkin” until the end of the week, and the market square farmers I normally bribe have gone walkabout.

This morning I trekked to Waitrose, savior last year with cans of the good stuff, to no avail.

I’ve now checked every logical local store, every faraway illogical store, all online vendors, and enough of the rest of the country to state that there is no canned pumpkin to be had in jolly ye olde world.

Oh, woe is me!

In desperation I finally tracked down a bulbous green object claiming to be a pumpkin, and will now proceed with the experimental baking required to ascertain if it will work in a pie.

Cause nobody can tell me what it actually is, or what it is for.

Wish me luck.

Recently I was on a train traveling from France to Germany and had one of those strange moments of floating displacement, looking out the window with amazement and unease and thinking However did this happen?

I certainly was not born to have this life; I was never meant to move more than six miles from the homestead on the northern end of the Kitsap Peninsula.

It occurred to me then that the reason might be simple: my home county had a truly great children’s librarian.

When we were small she read to us with a large dragon puppet on her shoulder. When we were older she made sure that we had access to high quality, challenging books – pushing us to participate in summer reading programs with incentives, yes, but at the same time making sure we knew which books had been banned in other areas, and talking about the underlying issues.

I finished all of the kid and juvenile books (reading alphabetically through the stacks) by age eleven, when she pointed me onward to the classics most suitable to encourage a lifelong reading habit.

Literature was a revelation, the only possible escape from a life mired in the muck of cancer and poverty, before video games and cable television offered quick fixes.

What else did I have going on? Nothing whatsoever: for years I was either in the hospital or sitting on a stack of tires in the back room of a gas station.

Cue maudlin violin music here.

The librarian changed my life, but also other lives through me – even when they were little, my kids read comics, but also the New Yorker. They were denied television and video games in preference for literature, and they are both (while admittedly eccentric) excessively bright and verbal, with vocabularies far beyond many people who have finished a PhD.

My daughter is grown-up now, with a bruising and urgent need to discuss philosophy that often leaves me clutching my hair and moaning.

My son has been a massive P.G. Wodehouse fan since age three, and has recently been on a Louisa May Alcott binge. He is also reading the Anne of Green Gables series – and enjoying it far more than anything published in his lifetime.

Who knows where any of us will end up; the point is, reading books gave us the freedom to go.

I feel a great debt to that modest, determined, rural librarian.

When I went home for the funeral of my namesake the librarian spoke to the assembled crowd, and I would have liked to tell her how much her work meant to me. It just didn’t seem like the right moment, and besides, I suspect we are both too shy for that conversation.

The first night of fitful sleep after a ruptured ovarian cyst featured a reunion with Dwayne – hardly surprising, not just because I miss him, but also because his mom was the receptionist for my surgeon at the height of my cancer treatments. She was the first person to see me enter the clinic for each appointment, and the last person we talked to when my mother settled the bill.

Of course I didn’t recognize Dwayne when we met as adults. It took a few years of singing together before we were lounging around at a lingerie-and-glasses breakfast for me to figure out that he was the cute boy who worked at the record store next to my high school. My best friend would drag me over there so she could stare at him while I sighed and looked through the albums. Or wander off to visit the guinea pigs at the pet store.

Oh, memories….

What did we do in the dream? We sat around talking about nothing in particular. My dreams are never very interesting.

Last night I was feeling better physically but that is when I always freak out (the fact that the pain was located directly under the six inch scar on my lower right abdomen did not help matters).

For the most part, I did not sleep, though when I managed to drift off near dawn I experienced a paranoid mixed up return to the Seattle house, which as you may recall was located at the top of the Beacon Hill crack staircase. This was fine with me when it was my daily reality – but my neighbors were always spying on strangers and each other. Those antics caused me way more anxiety than dealing with the whores and junkies.

I did not know Mark Mitchell when we lived in the same city, but happily he turned up in the dream with some houseplants and caustic comments. We sat on the porch mocking the neighbors until my alarm cut off the festivities at 6:30am.

The interesting thing to me is that nobody I’ve ever dated shows up in my dreams, or in any aspect of real life. Whenever I broke up with someone (and I was always the breaker upper) they’re gone – forever – scrubbed from every aspect of my life, including my subconscious.

I can’t even remember their names. But why?

Byron knew me at age twenty-one, when I was still married to someone else, and about to dismantle the first version of my identity. Back then he kind of drifted around in my orbit, yearning but not speaking, watching the mayhem. Our courtship did not happen until a couple of years later.

But he is the only available witness so I asked him why the people who fall in love with me lurk around for years after I break their hearts, hoping for a reconciliation or at least sex, lavishing me with attention and hilarious adventures. And also: why the people who claim to fall in love with me vanish when something goes seriously awry.

The answer: Because you would never be attracted to anyone who would take care of you the way you should be looked after. Oh no. You think chaos is hot. Just look at [long list of thugs, thieves, liars, and killers, though only one rapist]. In fact, you married the two craziest people you could find. Why did you ever bother dating? You would have been better off moving to Kansas and kissing a tornado!

Two hours of sleep over three consecutive nights does not translate to a positive, optimistic view of the world. If only I could take naps!

I woke up today with an awful belly ache, and it never went away.

Even during one of the best treats available each month, the British Film Institute archival films (this time, ‘Austerity Britain’ – propaganda about coal mines and comprehensive education), I was nearly doubled over with wrenching pain.

This is not the flu, or some kind of easy virus – oh no. Symptoms tally to exactly one option: the rupture of an ovarian cyst.

It happens every few years, but has been sufficiently destructive various physicians have offered to snatch away the ovaries in a prophylactic fashion. You can even see the damage on ultrasound scan, if you ever wish to accompany me to the various appointments intended to identify ovarian cancer before it (some would say inevitably) kills me.

The pain is somewhat unique in that I want to stretch against it – push it away – instead of curling up around the burning center.

Since I am such a practiced patient, I know that there are no relevant treatment options, aside from pain medication, and I’m allergic.

Unless I start to hemorrhage, there is no reason to seek expert advice or go to the hospital.

Knowing that does not in any way translate to comfort or solace.

I hate this. Not because of the pain, but because of what it reminds me of, what it represents, what I can never escape, the way I have to prioritize taking care of the people around me instead of just feeling.

Dissolve in tears? That might be a relief, but I have a kid who needs supper.

I’m sad and sick and very tired.

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.

One of my pals back in the Seattle remembers the event as the first that truly scared him as a child. The mass suicide is certainly the first international news I can clearly recall from my childhood, though I always had a sense that the world was a dangerous place.

Not a very radical or delusional concept, given the fact that we had three serial killers on the loose in the Northwest. Ted Bundy, Westley Allan Dodd, and The Green River Killer (I’ll never be able to think of him as Gary Ridgway) were active, real threats, not phantom fears.

Even the most innocent activities were fraught with anxiety – I was at Campfire Girls sleepaway camp the summer the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders hit the news.

Of course I also grew up in brutal yet aesthetically ravishing rural poverty. There is a reason Twin Peaks was filmed partly in my hometown. Where I’m from, victim and perpetrator were conflated. Violence was a standard expression of devotion.

I was conditioned to be wary, but also to accept the grim as normal. Why have I always consorted with criminals and killers? That is the life I know. The people who have fallen in love with me start on the pathological liar point in the spectrum, veering out across serial rapist to sociopathic killer.

I didn’t choose them, I just went along with whoever came my way. Though I have always been highly amused by the ensuing antics.

The other day I posted a short, throwaway anecdote about something that happened when I was nineteen. It was (in my opinion) just a funny little memory.

Ten minutes later I erased it.

When I moved to England I was relieved because the risk of custodial kidnap was reduced by the complexity of crossing international borders. When my daughter reached the age of majority the danger vanished entirely.

This does not mean I am safe, since I was informed – with a loaded gun at my temple – that a certain person would be much happier if I were dead. At the time I was exasperated, and the years have not tempered my response.

I was never afraid. I just accepted the facts of the case.

I am widely and correctly perceived to be a cold-hearted bitch, but the truth is: I am too tolerant of mayhem, too entranced by trouble. I moved far from my home to raise my children with a different set of values.

It is hardly surprising that I struggle to make polite conversation at Cambridge dinner parties.

Another misery memoir is front page news, challenged as lies! Fun!

I am amused; although my intention in writing Lessons in Taxidermy was to subvert the genre, I was extremely careful to use only those facts that could be verified by medical records, school reports, court documents, and newspaper accounts. I can prove my claims.

While it is true that I could have written several books from the same source materials, my family declined to participate and I took that as a big flashingdanger sign to avoid intruding on any portion of the history that would distress them. Or they are dead and beyond either testifying or caring – but that is another matter entirely.

Without the contribution of witnesses I did not think it safe to rely on my own memories as fully accurate – since I was in horrendous pain, often drugged, and very young.

Wherever I am fanciful in the book, it is presented as exactly that – the whimsy of a childish imagination. Since I was, in fact, a child.

Yes, truth is subjective – but childhood is even more so.