Ex-pat Woes

Last week we got back from London, where we managed to file all the 57 million pieces of paperwork necessary to get Baby her US passport, hopefully just in time for us to fly to see the grandparents in June. Super stressful, lots of queueing, (god, that word has too many u's and e's), and ultimately surprisingly disorganised at the American Embassy.

So that was good. But, in the usual way of the universe balancing itself out, this week has been a blow. My best friend, a Canadian, has had her visa application denied, after three waves of trying to get it processed in the new system. Sigh. She's brilliant - educated, smart, funny, kind, works with battered women at a shelter, and is just exactly the kind of person that the UK should want to keep around. But these are tight and worried times, I guess.

It sounds like she might be flying home sooner than soon, which just breaks my heart. Hopefully we'll get to see her this weekend. Fingers crossed. I don't have any cute pictures for this one. Although baby laughter helps everything. So imagine some of that...

Baking Day

I had big goals this morning...
We were going to walk into town, go shopping for gifts for everyone's birthdays - why do birthdays come in clumps like that? How can everyone, from myself, my partner, my father, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, etc, how can they ALL be Geminis? I wonder what that means? Anyway, the plans weren't extravagant, or even exciting.

But they didn't happen. (You felt that coming, didn't you?)

As with many things baby-related, I'm just not sure why they didn't happen. One hour-long feed bled into a 45 minute cry-fest, which led to me getting dressed about, oh, six hours later than a normal human being might.

The result? By 2:00, we'd managed to move from the bed to the sofa to the kitchen, but most definitely not to the buggy and certainly not outside the door and into town. Ha.

Which was when I gave up on any grandiose plans like oh, seeing other people, and just popped up to the local shop for some baking supplies.

Which brings me to my point. I love my local shop. I love that I know the names of the workers, that I walk up a snowdrop-laced alleyway to get there, that the aisles are so narrow I can't fit the buggy through them. I love that everything's hand-priced with a sticker gun, and that some things are way cheaper than the big market grocery stores and some things way more expensive, as if it's all a game that they play in the back room,

'White bread? Let's say, £3.'
'Washing up liquid? Is 10 p too much?'

Love it. Love the randomness, the eclectic shelves, which take me twice as long to find ingredients as a normal store might, and the fact that little old ladies seem to come out of the woodwork in an eerie sort of way when you walk through there with a baby.

So back we came,
and baked honey-beer bread
and chocolate chip cookies (two batches)
and applesauce.

And now baby is a-bouncing in her doorway bouncer, and my house smells of bread and applesauce and cookies, and it doesn't matter that I got thrown-up on about 3 times today, or that things were so frustrating this morning.

It's all about saying yes, in the end. Whatever the question was.

a good moon rising

well, sometimes when it's all looking dismal, random bits o' good news feel like gifts from the gods.

i got a quiet little email today saying that my teaching license is renewed...

which I thought was impossible, given that i've done my academic work internationally.

but there you go.

the most notoriously difficult, red-taped-laced bureaucratic nonsense organisation on earth has actually made a rational decision for once.

and i get a license until 2012. which i won't use, but that's beside the point.

small miracles grace me today.

that,
and i made potatoes au gratin with green beans for me and bebe and the sun set over the bay with glorious pink-golden light and my life is good.

only 9 days until i get my left arm back... even better.

There's a new toy in our house,
and
she loves it,
but not as much as i do!

Well, i feel like i've wasted enough negative energy on being angry now, so here's some warmer thots....

these trousers are done,
to match the lined tunic i made last week.
i'm really into lined baby-wear at the moment,
especially if it's made from old curtains.
like the sound of music.

i'm still pissed off tho.

the 3rd wave of what?

all right, i generally disaprove of using blogspace to vent, but, well, i need to vent.
i get now why every woman i respect has always told me that having a child makes you a feminist if you weren't one before. i get this because my sometimes/very/supportive partner has decided that the 3 weeks I'm in a cast is the time to turn into a pubescent boy-man and start being completely irresponsible- going off on lots of fun jaunts, deciding he wants to 'do this shop alone', ignoring that dishes are incredibly hard to wash with one arm in plaster, quitting quitting smoking, pretending that he hasn't quit quitting, and generally acting in lots of self-destructive ways that impact heavily my quality of much-dependent life at present. don't get me wrong. i understand that this is only a problem because of our current living arrangment, which places me in a wholly dependent state, but it doesn't mean that he can't change a fricking nappie now and then, does it? and to make matters worse, there's some 6 month colic coming on, we've had two houseguests all weekend, and we have to go to london on tuesday to get baby's US passport sorted. i would love to be able to snap myself out of this cast, get in my own car and take a fricking drive somewhere with lots of wide roads and lesbian baristas. i miss Portland at this moment, I miss my hippe/anarchist/musician friends, i miss my old life today... which makes me appreciate all the other days when i'm so so happy to be here in jolly old, so happy to be living such a new and different existence. today, i'm praying for the 3rd wave of feminism to arrive, in my spirit and my life right Fricking Now, and wondering why oh why i married this stubborn-ass man when i don't believe in marriage in the first place. but here we are.
the strange country called
this life
you claimed
by waking up
and no one earned the right to winge about it
except refugees and cancer survivors
and a few others

but today,
i've had enough and i'm pissed
and that's that.

No pretty photos, just a good hearty bitchfest.

sweet potato puree

Note the new passport photo. Goddess bless paspic.com, I say. Home delivery of a US passport photo while living in the UK? That's progress.

We've started Baby on solid foods... which is a blessing, through and through. She was watching us eat like a vulture, making smacking noises and looking eager, and since she's been feeding on the breast like a fiend, it just all added up. I have to say, it's made a world of difference already. Just one feed a day and she's actually satiated, which gives me a whole 15 minutes to try and get something done...


like this dress in progress, made from a burdastyle pattern,
























or to make homemade baby food like this, sweet potato with apple, mmmm....


















But my Yogi Mumsie's 70th birthday gift isn't done yet. Woops. One big project to go, and only two days to finish it. Better crack on.

This is what life looks like at the moment.
Add one baby, constantly feeding,
Add one mama, one-arm-working,
Add one radio, constantly playing BBC 2,
That's about it, really.

Small Steps Week.

long days

i'll be honest... these are long days at present.

long hours of stir-crazy woman, with a sense of caged fierceness which is self-imposed...

so here are some more quiet joy-things, to accompany a Sunday morning of cuddles, love songs, & a big breakfast. things always circle around again. ride it out.

one more joyful still thing.

because i've taken a gander out into the interweaver world and seen that this first week of may is a tough one for lots of good people, i figured i'd cheer myself up with Simple Gratitude #1...
















i love this sewing machine. a gift from my yogi british mother, it churns out simple joy almost every time i use it. and when it breaks, which is rarely, it's all simple manual parts and easy to fix. i love that the singer family lived down the hill from where i'm sitting now, and i love that this a locally-sourced, much-used, well-loved machine of making, creating, and connecting.

one armed and dangerous

Well, the left arm's in plaster, and the mind is thusly askew...

trying to do the dishes or walk to the shops is suddenly more than I can manage.

so today will be about small things

small
simple
doable beautiful things

like pictures from the weekend
and straightening my squashed hair from a week of surgery and bedrest

and watching clouds

and singing songs

with a sweet baby-child who rolled herself over yesterday...

achievable miracles of the mundane. that's all.

the way things spin

Well, this week's been a blend of the oh-so-amazing and the oh-so-terrible.

On the plus side, we've had two lovely, sandy, beach-filled weekend days of sun and surf and red coast joy at Nana's beach hut. We've had jumpy trampoline time and baby cuddle time and good take-aways and lots of cosy gentle moments.

On the not-so-plus side, I have to go into hospital tonight and tomorrow to have my arm worked on, which means I'm putting the NHS through their 'how much can you accomodate an adamant breastfeeding mum' stride, to which they are actually responding with grace, believe it or not. I am now the biggest NHS fan on the planet, having survived 27 years of my life in the American anti-humanitarian health 'system' and now finding myself luckily landed in a country that believes in universal health care AND breastfeeding. How lucky can you get?

So our bank holiday weekend was gorgeous and wonderful, and now we're facing down a bit of a stressful week - with some formula feeds and a bit of adjustment. Here goes!