It doesn’t take much to make me cry at the moment, with the realisation of our huge move becoming clearer by the day. I even welled up in the supermarket earlier when A-ha’s Take On Me came on over the speakers. What the..?
Here’s my Music Monday tune for this week. It’s so American, and I think that’s what gets me. As well as the line ‘let me go’. Kind of like I want the letting go to be easy.
It isn’t.
Oh god. Welling up in the coffee shop!
I’m a yard saler. Before I left the UK, I was a car boot saler. They’re pretty much the same thing, except one involves driving around neighborhoods looking for individual piles of junk outside people’s homes. The other involves going to a field where lots of people have gathered to sell old junk from the back of their cars.
I love both kind of sales, where I pounce upon shabby chic items that have character. I also have a tendency to think I’ll renovate or restore things, and can’t resist a bargain. So basically, I have a lot of junk. A couple of weeks ago, while setting up our own yard sale to start clearing the decks in preparation for our international move, it became apparent how much junk I’ve managed to amass in our 5 years in Denver. A LOT.
We spent a couple of nights preparing, putting out signs and making sure we were kind of ready. Then on a sunny Saturday morning, we had our first paying customer at about 8am. She bought a basket that had sat in a box somewhere since I bought it. Then a trickle of customers, who bought all kinds of trinkets, toys, books, garden equipment, candles, picture frames, chairs, etc etc. Someone even shoplifted. With most items priced between $0 and $1, they must have been in need, so we hope they enjoy their speakers and make some dancing magic with them.
Look – customers!
Towards the end of the yard sale a guy drove up and immediately asked if we had any musical instruments. I left Mr D to negotiate over the price of his electric guitar and amp while I attempted to keep P-nut from wounding herself on some randomly placed tools. Music man drove away and Mr D walked towards me looking very happy with himself for selling both our guitars.
Both? BOTH?!
As well as selling his electric guitar, he’d sold our acoustic guitar, which used to hang in our living room. We never really played it. I can barely string a tune together and Mr D can only play about 4 songs recognisably. But that guitar was part of my world that I could see on a daily basis. The kids loved it when we occasionally got it down, and could spend ages strumming/hitting it. They liked to put small toys inside it and get us to shake them out. It had travelled all around the North West with us on our 10 week camping trip and helped lull both babies to sleep when they were little.
In that moment, I felt physically sad. My heart felt tender and it hit home that selling up and clearing out is going to be an emotional process. I say I’m not attached, having bought most things second hand. But our world here is unravelling bit by bit and it’s sad and a little bit scary.
Now a couple of weeks have passed, I’ve got used to the bare wall where the guitar used to hang. The chaos of all the other preparations has swallowed up that guitar-shaped void.
I’ve been starting to tell my wider circle that we’re leaving. So the move is becoming even more real. When it’s someone like my bikini waxer, it’s kind of weird. But good. A bit like snipping away at the strands of a rope that are keeping us docked here.
Soon we’ll have to cut the last few strands and that’s going to be hard, and almost too surreal to think about. For now, I need to keep my eye on the future and remember all the things that we’re just about to gain. Like old friends, family and a sense of being where were meant to be. I hope….
This song makes me cry when i dance to it. In a good way.
Bedtime. Night night x
A couple of weeks ago I set up a super easy way of posting more regularly (a current goal) – a weekly music post. Just a song that moves me in some way. To share and hopefully give you a break from your day. Maybe you could play it loud and jump around the room or something. That’s what we do in our house.
So yes, a super easy thing to post. But I forgot to do it. Doh.
Without further ado, here’s some MJ to put some funk in your Friday. It popped up as the first song on shuffle on a morning walk around the lake today. And I happen to know it’s about 5 years since he died, after seeing a commemorative Time magazine cover while standing in the line at Safeway.
Here he is. Go MJ!
The title of this post is not something I would say out loud. Unless I was making a typically bad attempt at an American accent and pretending to be in a movie.
But with the arrival of my husband’s citizenship interview letter yesterday, shit did, in fact, just get a lot more real.
We now have an idea of when our work here will be done. When we can book flights and move back to our motherland. When we’re going to uproot our little family and resettle in a place we call home but that we don’t really know after 10 years of living away. It’s going to happen soon. Really bloody soon! Yippeee. Argh. Sigh. Shit!!!
This is where we’re going – so green!
The first thing we need to do is sell the house. We’ve known this time would come for months and yet, just as neither of us ever prepared for school exams in advance, we haven’t really done much about this mammoth task until now. Receiving yesterday’s letter felt like having a firework shoved up our butts. We were both jittery, excited, and full of adrenaline about the chaos, change and huge undertaking ahead of us.
The first thing we did was have a cup of tea. Then I went out to my Wednesday night dance class, followed by a quick drink with a friend. Ha! Don’t get me wrong, I was still excitable and had the firework-up-the-bum feeling, but with limited Wednesdays left here, there was no way I was going to miss my midweek shakedown and catch up.
Anyway, at lunchtime today, while in a clothes shop when I should have been trying to get all my work done quickly so I could go home and undertake some of the huge undertaking, I met a couple of English people who are here on holiday. They made me feel so good about the move. Their funny ways, the instant humor that popped into the conversation, the mutual appreciation of clouds and narrow roads. We really did talk about clouds and narrow roads!
Now I must go home to pack a box or at least think about packing a box. I’m not sure where to start. But a start must be made. And bit by bit the long journey begins….
One of my friends is a fabulously fit and active mama who told me great things about the barre studio in our neighborhood. So today, when I realised I had a bit of spare time on my hands, I decided to take them up on their first-class-free offer and give it a whirl.
Oh my goodness. What a lot of serious faces!
If you’re not familiar with barre, the idea is to do lots of repetitions of small movements, isolating certain muscles to get deep toning. This naturally involves quite a bit of concentration, so I would imagine serious faces are apparent in every class. Not just a little bit serious. But seriously frowny serious.
Well the best thing about the class was realising I like to smile when I exercise. Not always on the outside – smiling would definitely not go down well while swimming, and looks a bit weird while walking by myself. And grinning while cycling comes with hazards such as flies in the teeth.
But I like to feel smiley. I like my body to feel good and happy and not punished. Not drilled. Worked, yes. And strong and flexible and spacious and open. That’s what swimming and cycling and walking and dancing all do for me.
I can’t wait for dance class tomorrow, when I can twirl and whirl and stomp and do crazy moves and laugh and smile and cry if I want to.
Here’s a song by Sia that P-nut and I have been dancing to at home a lot. She likes to dance like the girl in the video. That makes me happy too 🙂
This is the first of my weekly Music Mondays. Basically it’s a way of posting something and feeling productive without having to write or think much. Because I need to get home and make the dinner.
This song is one that my dance teacher has used in her playlist recently and I love it.
It’s by Xavier Rudd and it’s a rousing call to action against the damage that humans are inflicting on nature as we know it. Sounds heavy but the song isn’t. In fact it makes me immensely happy and emotional, partly because I won’t have my dance teacher for much longer because of our move and she’s so flippin’ amazing. And because I love nature as we know it and don’t want humans to carry on inflicting so much damage.
Anyway, here it is. I’m going home to hug a tree and my kids and then make the dinner.
Summer in Denver means many things: outdoor jazz, outdoor movies and outdoor pools! That excitable exclamation point is 100% referring to the pool part. I get to do my lengths (a.k.a. laps) in the glorious sunshine with nothing between me and the clear blue sky.
How could you not be excited about swimming in this…
My lunchtime swims here refresh me, revitalise me and make me feel like all is well. They also make me a better mum. Maybe it’s the rhythm of breathing. Maybe it’s the wonder of seeing how my hands make shadows on the bottom as each arm extends forward and then pulls underneath me. Maybe it’s the juicy feeling of water on my skin and sun on my back at the same time. It’s quite possibly the fact that I haven’t got anyone hanging off my leg for 30 peaceful minutes. Whatever it is, I love it.
Sadly, this is going to be my last summer of outdoor swims here. We’re moving to Cornwall, where I don’t think the indoor pools have quite the same effect.
However, I’ve found an alternative that I’m very, very excited about. Wild swimming! In the sea. The biggest pool of all! I imagine it’s going to come with some challenges, such as waves, saltiness, coldness, jellyfish and probably the odd floating poo, or things that look like poo. But it’s given me a focus to my swimming here (get stronger because the sea doesn’t allow for breaks every 25 metres) and I’m super excited to have a new way to explore our new home.
I’ve joined the local wild swimming group on Facebook, who seem like a welcoming, friendly bunch. They look out for each other and swim together regularly, so there should be plenty of opportunities to get wet.
Look at the kind of places they swim!
Clearly the weather isn’t always going to be as nice as in these photos. And obviously finding time might be an issue – I have a hunch that settling into a new town/ country with a toddler and a preschooler is going to be pretty jam-packed with daily craziness. But I’m thinking we can incorporate it into family days out with hubs playing on the beach with the kids while I pop off for an invigorating dip.
A mum can dream!
I love a good to-do list. The satisfaction of ticking things off and feeling productive.
I’m a big list person and I even do that silly thing of adding things I’ve already done just so I can cross them off and feel better. Yes, yes, I know!
Anyway, top of my list of things I want to do before we pack up and leave is use up my fabric stash. I’ve got big pieces that I bought for projects that never materialised and small scraps leftover from rare bursts of creativity.
So it’s time to put them all together and have a memento of our time in Denver. I was thinking of making one for the kids but that will only end in arguments when they’re old enough to fight about things like that. Instead, it’s going to be our family quilt that will live in whichever living room we find our lives revolving around.
I’m thinking stripes. Here are a few ideas I’m pondering:
I like the backing on this one from s.o.t.a.k handmade
Mine will probably have a random color scheme like this one from Sarah‘s flickr stash
This one from Film in the Fridge has patches and stripes – too ambitious?!
With Glastonbury to entertain me on TV, I’m going to have a wild and crazy friday night cutting my fabric and planning my stitchery. Rock n roll!
Today I had to do some digging into potential British citizenship routes for the girls.
Why am I only just doing that when we’re planning to move home within a couple of months? Because I didn’t even think about how we would get them into the country as legal little people!
Yes, call me stupid. I’ve called myself stupid many times today. But just as my friend thought it would be ok to take her baby on a plane to Mexico without any kind of ticket because she was traveling on her lap (only to find out otherwise at check-in), until today I hadn’t really thought things through. What a donut!
Anyway, I’ll go into the ins and outs of citizenship in another post. What I want to share today is that just when I was feeling bogged down in red tape, I saw a heart-warming video that snapped me right out of it.
This mum’s smile helps me remember what’s really important in life …. living.
Mumorama 