I'm over here

So, I moved to Kuwait. And next year I'll be somewhere new. But digitally, I have moved waaaaaaaay over here at

 TwentyKilosofSalt.com

                                and here--BrazenBFF talking about those two years in Kuwait.

It's not that I don't have anything to say. It's that I'm too bloody exhausted to look at the computer screen and type.

I did this to myself with specific intention.I've been intimately involved with reverse-culture shock off and on for two decades now. I know better than having hours to fill. I know better than ten-minute breaks from the busy. I know better than sitting in stand-still traffic. I know how to railroad my mind away from reality.

I'd forgotten though that seven-years away make for culture shock. Seven years away, and I chose to return to a part of the country I thought only existed in American fairy stories. My cultural memory is useless, almost as useless as American double sheets on an English bed. I made plans to be run off my feet until I remembered what America is like. Turns out, I should have planned for the sleeping that accompanies the exploration of a new homeland.

And so it is that I'm trying to make a pattern: teach, mark, nephew, mark, teach, mark, sleep, lather rinse, repeat. Come New Year there may be more news.

First Comes the Thunder

When it rains here, the air remains stolid--as unmovable as my mother's political leanings, as heavy as our dwindling numbers on my heart. The rain here is accompanied by the kind of thunder that I once thought was surely the anger of an Old Testament god and the drops the blood of his legions. The rain here, I am told, is not of its own volition but the moods of ocean, rivers, and bay. I am told that the rain is not the rain but a symptom of a collusion of this land and this water. There is a proper name for everything no matter where your feet touch the earth.

Here the rain is not the rain. It is the storm.

I am to check the basement to be sure the pump is working. To make sure the storm has not attempted to retake its floodplain. To be sure the house built on sand remains upright. I am to remind the pump of its one purpose--to eludicate the earth. Moreover, when the rain has gone for days and days, I am to fit the second pump before encouraging the water back out to the road.

And I can count my gratitude like this: It has not rained for more than two days in a row here. I am no longer a waitress. I still remember my subject. Mangos are large and plentiful and fresh figs easily picked. I know the taste of a fresh fig. I do not break bread alone. And I can count fewer days than books my eyes have finished. And I am smart enough to learn to unpick the convoluted road between here and next year.

I Love You

I say, "Go wee, please."
He says, "Aunt Rachael says, 'Go wee, please.'"
I say, "Go potty, please."
He says, "My underwear are stuck. They're too sweaty."
I say, "Of course they are."

I say, "The end."
I say, "Now is the time for sleeping."
He says, "You can go away now."
I say, "Sweet dreams."

I say, "I need to do some work."
He says, "Let's make a sandboat."
I say, "Just as soon as I finish my work."
He says, "Let's play in the tent."
I say, "Just as soon as I finish my work."
He says, "Will you read a story with me."
I say, "Do you feel that I'm not paying enough attention to you?"
He says, "Yes. Let's make a sandboat."

He says, "I would like some raisin bread with honey."
I say, "Pah pah pah pah."
He says, "Please."
I say, "Please, will you sit at the table while you eat that."
He says, "I like walking around."

I say, "I love you."
He says, "I don't love you."
I say, "You are not obliged to love anybody."
He says, "Let's make a sandboat."
I say, "Which blanket shall we use?"

The Things I'm Leaving

One pair Alaska gloves. Worn zero winters here. One-quarter kilo freed up for my favorite pillow.
One brown leather briefcase, shed for the sake of the cuddly lobster.
Flipflops. Stained white work shirt. One bottle Marmite. A hammer, screwdrivers, box cutter, and bungee cords. I'm told they sell them in America. A grammar reference. Two copies of a PhD thesis, to make room for my parent's wedding photos, great aunt's 1912 diary, and one Joy of Cooking. A frying pan, soup urn, American cup measures, and the book that taught me how to fry an egg, so that I can have custard creams, pickled walnuts, and chocolate buttons on arrival in Norfolk. Nine pairs socks, 12 pairs underwear, three bottles of shampoo, four t-shirts, and a bottle of sky vodka to fit in one duvet, three blankets, and a plaster-of-paris casting of my left hand. 

And still, I don't have any idea what made it into the suitcases. I will see you in Norfolk.

Rattlers are not the Only Snakes: 3

Next spring, when the country is subdued from all that bitter cold of winter, you'll hear MPs throwing blame from their green leather seats at those men and woman who sit across the aisle. And I'll be in Virgina or California or Illinois or New Zealand or China or some boat somewhere in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Where I won't be is here.

Still those MPs will be talking about me when they admit that no one really knows how many folks are illegally in the country. They'll be talking about me, when they admit that no one is really certain how many students over-stayed their visas, and me when they notice that no one checks to see who has gone over the border, and me when they tell their constituents that they're doing something about the immigrants--they won't mention that they're doing nothing different than the last government.

And I mention this because I want Don Foster, 'my' MP to note that I am leaving tomorrow morning a full 38 days before my visa expires. I am going and the theoretical numbers of immigrants over-staying visas are just that, theoretical. I suspect that it is convenient to let the public believe that all immigrants are here to take advantage of the system.

I say this because as the date of my departure has come increasingly closer, I have heard too many times to count that:

1. I should just get married. Because apparently this is an acceptable way for a white American to remain in the country but not an acceptable way for a desperate woman with a thick accent to remain.

2. That I'm the right kind of immigrant. The right wing is on the rise in the world, and I know this because people I once respected are happy to tell me that I am the 'right' kind of migrant. They are happy to share their once secretly harbored prejudices.

 3. That all those immigrants over-staying their visas are what's wrong with this country. But of course those are impossible numbers to confirm or deny. No one will be checking me out of the country in the morning.

I desperately want to remain here. And I, like many others, am following the rules and leaving in the morning.

About My Neck: Two

When I was five we lived in a duplex. There was chartreuse carpet on the living room floors and pears on kitchen wallpaper. The landlady, a Mrs. Morningstar,  lived in the top floor of the other half of the duplex. She rented out the bottom of half. A lady snake lived under our back stoop. Across the street, two sisters added solar panels to their roof, and down the road, a woman named Fritzi built dioramas inside styrofoam Big Mac containers. I still thought that everyone had sisters who came over on the weekends, that the mild grade in our driveway was a giant hill, and that if I asked the boy down the road to be my boyfriend I'd have to kiss him and marry him.

I wasn't sure I was ready to make that kind of commitment.

I went to afternoon kindergarten. I had the whole morning to play with that boy or to hop off the stoop or to run my fingers across Holly Hobby's face on my pillowcase. Before going to school, I had cheese sandwiches and tomato. Or maybe that just happened once, and it is all I can remember. School had monkey bars, an elephant slide, and part of the child-kidnapping hysteria that was engulfing America. 

Each night my mother checked that the windows were closed, and my father locked the doors. Mostly I dreamed about Muppet-like monsters driving around in wooden racing cars. They never had good intentions. When I woke desperate to urinate, I had to hold my breath so the witch who occupied the front room wouldn't reach out and grab me.

And so, even in sleep, I must have been quite relieved to find myself sitting in my yellow pajamas on the our front stoop--the stoop that wasn't occupied by a snake--in broad daylight with no sign of racing cars or Muppets. I knew that Mom was in the kitchen and any minute she'd tell me to it was time to shut the door and go to bed.

I wasn't surprised to see the Easter Bunny wandering down the street, complete with mesh mouth and colorful suit vest. I knew he wasn't the real Easter Rabbit because the real Easter Rabbit couldn't leave the mall. And I knew, because I'd been told, that I should run inside and lock the door. But my legs had gone numb, and he was half-way up the driveway. I knew, because I'd been told, that I should scream for my mother, but the rabbit had raised his white-mitten hand to his lips. With that gesture, he'd taken away my voice. I knew that it was inevitable, that he'd planned on taking me, and by not running or screaming I'd been complicit in my own undoing. Still I tried to find more screaming voice. The rabbit took his gun and shot me in the right shoulder. I don't remember waking up, only that feeling that I was being suffocated and couldn't unfreeze enough to fight.

I still sometimes dream that I'm sitting on the front stoop in my yellow nightgown waiting for the inevitable. I always know that it's the shock of the thing that will keep me from running. But I have never since dreamed the Easter Rabbit coming up our driveway.

It's the anticipation that most of my nightmares are made of, the knowledge of what will happen if I let my guard down.

I expect that's why I don't worry so much about the rattlesnake simply biting me. It's the length of time, the enforced patience of waiting for her to climb my body, before she struck my neck. It's the knowledge that my hands, like my voice, would lose all usefulness and fail to act before the snake truly stuck.

There are six whole months before September 1st, and I am trying hard to keep my wits about me. I'm trying hard to see more that an arrival in the US without job, without healthcare, without savings. I am trying hard to remember to shake off the snake rather than, in my own inaction, offering it my neck.

About the Serpent: One

There must have been a sale at Sears.

September is whispering at my heels. Not so much a dog as a great rattle snake, threatening to work its way up to my throat before biting. I'm not sure why it is the idea of  bite to throat that I find so horrifying.

I've lived my life in fear of rattlers--those and bull snakes. They're both fears learned while tracing my fingers through the hunter-green patterns that wound their way--yes, like serpents--through the chartreuse carpet of my first ten years. The carpet was the same chartreuse carpet all writers in their mid-thirties will tell you about. It must have been a Sears' special mid-1977 or so. Or maybe I still have the mistaken thinking of all those years ago, the belief that the world began with me.

Can of beer in his left hand and a cigarette burning down in the ashtray, my dad used talk about the rattlers he'd killed while guiding rich folks about on horseback or the ones he'd found making babies in the brush. My once-rich-folk mother could tell more than a few stories of her own. Add to that the stories of three sisters and a slew of great aunts and the one uncle, and my fear of all snakes met and bred a whole new monster in my small mind.

I revered all those grown-up folks who knew how not to get bitten.

I know it's the sort of pissing contest folks from the Great Plains engage in. In Alaska, it was how nearly the moose had crushed my car or how low the thermostat sat. In Oregon, it was the number of sunless days one had lived through.Here it's the drought of '76 when this small island saw so little rain, or for those in their mid-thirties, the hurricane in the Channel.

The first time I saw a snake, any snake, we were living out in Lakewood in the house on Twenty-Fifth Place. I was big enough to sit out in the backyard on the concrete stoop by myself; though, I wasn't so big that my mother was taken with telling me to pick one, in or out. She wasn't watching me out the kitchen window that day. I'm sure of it because I can still taste the grapevine I was holding in between my molars and my left cheek. I hopped up and down those three steps, two feet at a time. And there she was, a snake as long as my own chubby arm, and moving as fast as her body would take her. And now I think, of all things under the sun, why was she in such a hurry to get through the cracked cement and under the steps. Surely, she wouldn't have headed for the piece of ground on which I was making an unseemly racket. That was the last time that I went down those steps without trepidation.

I learned to leap from the bottom step and well over the crack in the pavement. This despite my mother's reassurance that garter snakes were good: they ate mice, her own deepest fear.  I hadn't even started school, but I was sure my mother was wrong about the snake, and sure she was right about the god I prayed would keep me from harm each time I leapt across the crevice.

I wonder when it is that we stop believing our parents, and start making truths out of our own fairy stories.

Happy Christmas

Badly Followed Patterns

The making for Christmas is well underway; though, I'd intended to be finished before 1st December. With nine days or so before the big event, I am finding myself running out of time quickly. I've completely missed the send by date to the States, so the nieces and nephews won't be getting their gifts until at least January. Believe it or not it isn't the insanity that surrounds gift-giving that I hate about Christmas. I love giving gifts. I like that we're all reminded to give during, at least, this season of the year. Of course I'm avoiding Bath proper like the plague this year. You could call that painting the lenses of my glasses rose.

This year I've found myself in the strange situation of having to insist to people that I really do have plans for Christmas. It wouldn't be beyond me to assure people that I had plans for the day in order to spend the day on my couch watching films. So I can see how friends are reasonably convinced that that is my intention for this year too. As for boxing day, I may well spend that checking to see how my knee feels about going up hills.

Now back to the crocheting. Does anyone know what I did with the button? or the 3.75 hook?

Winter, Again, Apparently

Bath is never ugly. Even on days when it is tipping with rain and the temperature has dropped well below freezing, Bath remains the second most beautiful place I have ever lived.

A few of you asked what I meant by the alternate version of "We Three Kings." I so wanted to provide you with a video, but it seems that few people have been inclined toward recording it. And as much as I like you all, I'm not singing to you.

We three kings of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar

It was loaded, it exploded

We two kings of Orient are Trying to smoke a rubber cigar. 

It was loaded, it exploded/I one king of Orient am Tring to smoke a rubber cigar

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, All is bright.

Bah Humbug, Again?

Right, so folks who are better at this Christmas gig than I am are:

Zosia from Polonica: Home Again made an Advent Calendar that would make me dance more than teeny tiny candy canes.


And  Belle from A Belle Abroad has some seriously exciting news to go along with her Christmas preparations in her new country.

The Christmas tree has arrived in Auvergne, France.

Robynne from Robynne's Nest has been wandering around under London's lights. Oooh and Giant Red Barn!


And Annie at Sew Graceful has been making mittens.

And there are still a few days left to see The Nutcracker in Fairbanks, with Cindy.

Smoking on a Rubber Cigar: Teeny Tiny Candy Canes!

That is A1 steak sauce, in England!

Maybe one of the reasons I'm feel less bah-humbug about the holidays this year is that I spend some time near this display every week. It doesn't really seem like enough reason to be singing the version of "We Three Kings" that involves a rubber cigar, but it is certainly helping. They also do Sweet Potato Fries with maple syrup. So, you know, a place with a full English and the best bits of America all at once. And yes, those are Bread and Butter Pickles. Yum, Bread and Butter Pickles. So, you know, go eat Here*. And pick up some Jolly Ranchers for your in-laws.

A friend swears this is the best ever sandwich

*As it turns out, this is not a sponsored post. The owners of the cafe have been extraordinarily good to me this year. But even they think my can't concentrate on anything else, look teeny tiny candy canes, excitement may be a bit over the top.** Of course if any of you want to sponsor my incredible spiced gumdrop habit or my Twizzlers habit or my Fritos habit or my Ez Cheese habit, I'll joyfully share with you. Unless it's Ez Cheese. Then I won't share at all.

**Should I talk about my general frustration with blind requests for sponsored links? Or should I just hurry up and finish talking about religion?***

***Did you see the teeny tiny candy canes?

Naturally forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit

14.5 tog duvet over fleece blanket.

It was 9 degrees C yesterday. That would be almost 50 degrees F. The heat did not get turned on. I went to bed with my hot-water bottle on Wednesday night and found it thrown across the room on Thursday morning. This is a good thing, really. Afterall my duvet over my fleece blanket over me is far better than watching the gas meter tick by. And I am so glad we are not having the cold winter than was predicted. At this time last year, we had the heat on five hours a day (with both of us working 30-50 hours) and were still sitting on the couches trying to remain warm under several layers of blankets and clothing. 

And so it is true--I had wondered in my heavy heart as I left Alaska six years ago--it is true that there comes a time, when as much as the far North draws me toward it, that I realize that I could not live through another arctic winter. The trappings of that life are now largely gone. I no longer have a heavy parka. My winter shoes met with the recycling bin a year or two ago. My gloves are still in nearly new condition. It's simply too warm here to wear them for more than a few minutes. The knit in my fleece hat is coming apart now, and I simply can't imagine a place so cold that an afternoon walk alone will not warm my feet. 

I'll whinge at the cold at work this afternoon as I pile the wood high into the fireplace. This despite my total gratitude for the warmth of my current sanctuary in England.

And on Came the Gas

Among the few girlie items I own.

Every year the housemate and I compete to see who can wait the longest before turning the heat on. The heat comes on December first, provided we have both lasted that long. Last year it was cold enough in mid-November that we couldn't really justify leaving the heat off in our rental. There is being thrifty, and there is being irresponsible.

For the last few years, downstairs guy has heated with wood, and I've spent those winters mentally begging him to turn on his heat for the sake of our frigid flooring. This year he's returned to the land of radiators, and maybe that's why the housemate and I will be calling this year's competition a tie. The heat comes on tomorrow, provided, of course, that we don't see another wave of mild weather.

This doesn't mean we've been freezing. It's been heavy blankets and hot-water bottles most days. The key to hot-water bottles is to avoid using boiling water. Melting rubber reeks rather a lot, and it's a smell that you don't really want to sleep with.

The Tradition of Felt Elves and Penguins

One of those Fairbanks' Thanksgivings, I had the biggest house. I had, by graduate student standards, a huge house. I didn't want to attend Thanksgiving, much less host it. Steph agreed to sleepover and make the turkey. And when she heard that I was going to serve canned cranberry, Marie asked me to make it by hand. By 6:30 in the morning Steph, Joe, and I were drinking champagne and making felt elves and penguins. Steph followed the directions perfectly; I free-handed mine. You must see why it was so important that I not be in charge of the turkey; I'd have free-handed that too.

By the time the sun rose that morning at ten. By the time it had set at three, folks had begun to pile coats and hats and boots in the cold room, and we'd settled into the holiday, as it should be, shared by friends and a handful of strangers. All that I remember of that year, though, is the early morning hours and the solace of a gathering of friends on the backdrop of an arctic winter.

I hope that you are all well gathered, American or not, with those who love you in the coming weeks. That you'll open your doors to strangers, and that you'll offer comfort where it is needed.  I will do my best to do the same.

And more pumpkin and more pumpkin

I have no idea what the pies taste like. The puree was a bit chunky, so they could resemble stringy sweet-potato pie. I hope not. And I braved a handmade crust for the first time. The slivers came out tasting awfully salty. Hopefully, that won't be too much of a problem. And I accidentally bought whole cloves, so ummm glad I knew where the hammer was.

If I lived in the States, the pie would have come from the frozen aisle. Can someone remind me to look at this post next year?

 I cannot think which of my English friends likes pumpkin pie. It won't hurt my feelings if it all comes home from dinner with me tomorrow. I've even picked up some double cream for just that eventuality.

I had half a pumpkin leftover,so pumpkin bread and muffins have also been made to avoid unnecessary wastage.

A few weeks ago, I made a fabulous lasagne. This one is for this week's dinner. A few weeks ago, I made a perfect white sauce, my first white sauce ever. This week's dinner is pretty lumpy.  I'm trying not to spend hours on the internet to figure out why.

I miss the Thanksgivings after university, when it was no longer even possible to contemplate returning home for a four-day weekend. Those years when we'd gather as friends at the person who had the largest home's house. I do not miss those days enough to return, but I am grateful for the happy memories.

We're twenty-eight days from winter solstice. It is, for me, the most joyful of the sun's phases. We are on the verge of hope; that must be hope in itself. And for that I am thankful.

To Clarify, and Pie!

The thing is that I'm content.  And that's not despite a hard year, nor because of it. It just is. I am certain that that is what we mean when we talk about a state of grace--that state of contentment despite what the future is likely to hold. I recall this feeling, six years old now, during my last autumn in Fairbanks. Maybe it is really the feeling of living a last season in a place. Maybe last seasons are, by definition, a state of grace.

One of the things you learn to do in a new country is to cook from scratch the foods of the country you've left. Mostly the English do not eat pumpkin pie; though, slowly the idea does seem to be catching on. And so there isn't really a quick option down the freezer aisle for Thanksgiving puddding. So I learned to make pie from a pumpkin. Last year, Waitrose carried tinned pumpkin. This year, those tins are 100% pumpkin. Still, I've started again with the whole gourd.

Preachin' to the Choir

This year the gifts will be handmade out of necessity rather than by choice. That is to say, the gifts from me are often hand made. This year though they must be. There will be no hurried last minute Christmas shopping or splurges for the little ones. Six-year-old girls want knitted muffs for Christmas, right? Right? And little boys are desperate for dinosaur hats in acrylic? And who doesn't want a pumpkin pie rather than some nice hand cream? Clearly that last one doesn't include the English.

And I am blessed, and I am grateful, and I am certain that I am enjoying more than my share of grace in this lifetime.

At this time last year, I was working for a large company. My schedule frequently changed three or four times in a week. I was told to work later than the last bus home, and the company wouldn't pay for the two-mile taxi ride--the one that cost more than an hour's wages. I was asked to slide the company's advertising through my neighbors' doors during one of the coldest Decembers on record. All because the company in question was 'struggling.' Never mind the numerous new stores they were opening or the shareholder payouts or upper management that was making more than 20 times that of underlings like me. And I kept the job because I wasn't making enough as an hourly-paid  lecturer to make ends meet.  And then I felt lucky, because the company didn't hire full-time. I was working with folks who were subsisisiting on beans on toast. I told a friend at the time that I had no idea how I could possibly live any closer to the edge.

I didn't leave the job until I had another lined up. The new company went into administration two days before I was supposed to start. Two months later I lost my teaching position in a mass layoff with two weeks notice.

It turns out that it is really easy to live closer to that edge. It wouldn't be if I had children or dependent parents. It wouldn't be, if I weren't so close to so many people who are using boots and nectar points to feed their families and themselves. It wouldn't be, if I didn't love my job, exactly the job I got a PhD to avoid. I am blessed. I am grateful. And I am experiencing more grace than I should. And by accident of life, I am learning to be a short-order cook.

It's lovely to be surrounded by wool again, to be digging in boxes for forgotten notions, to be searching patterns for just the right sort of muff, and to be fantasizing about the wool I'll buy in end of season sale. And wondering if the children will remember their dinosaur hats. There is a miracle in yarn unfolding around me.

I hate the holidays, and I'm not looking forward to them. This year I'm willing to give them a try even though I know my Christmas wishes are unlikely to be fulfilled.

Maybe you'll join me in wishing that all the children around the world will find their forever homes (and the courts get through a backlog of confirmations of such homes) this Christmas. It's a selfish request. A little boy who is dear to me is among them.


And you should totally go read this: a PK mate of mine  in Spain. This Christmas, in all of the wealthiest countries in the world, there are still street children.

Cider, Cider, and Cloudy Apple Juice. Also Eww!

I still think cider should be spelled 'cidar.' I can't find any explanation for it, except that I also pronounce 'bag' with a long 'a,' resulting in a word, I'm told, that is better spelled 'beg.' A friend here tells the story of attending a hayride somewhere in the US Bible Belt. She was horrified, and more than a little confused, to learn that there were plans to give the children cider. Certainly, more than a few young Americans have woken to an unexpected hangover, thanks to too many glasses of cider in Europe, or I'm told reliably, most any place outside the United States.

Cider's fine as far as it goes. I'm partial to local scrumpies. Still the best I've ever had was in St. Ives at New Year. Where local scrumpy isn't available, and it rarely is, I'd far prefer dark beer. I'm not a connoisseur of  American cider any more than I am of the British versions. But when the leaves have truly fallen from the trees, I find myself thinking a lot about, what is ultimately, mulled apple juice. And like most sanguine moments of homesickness, this one propelled me into making a rather embarrassing purchase.

It turns out that the Apple and Cinnamon tea, new to the UK, tastes exactly like I remember it tasting.  I had forgotten that the stuff is rank. And so I will be avoiding the satchets of powder that look suspiciously like what we used to beg for at the end of hayrides. *


*I've never actually been on a hayride.