Continuing the chronicle of our move from Portland to England...
We left Portland on a stormy Friday - all week there had been snow, then ice, then we were deluged with rain and wind. The unusual weather kind of reflected how my life felt while in the throes of the move.
* * *
We leave everything to the last minute, it seems. Despite completion of the herculean task of packing the shipping container on the previous weekend, when the day of departure came, it felt like we would never be done emptying and cleaning the house. Which we finally were... two hours later than planned, of course.
* * *
We received a call about an hour before we drove away for the final time noting that the counter offer to the buyers' counter offer to our prior counter offer had been accepted. We were going to sell our house!!!
In the chaos of the moment, it was an anti-climax that barely registered at the time.
* * *
Leaving the keys on the counter, closing the door, realizing that was is it - we really couldn't go back and do just one more thing. Our time at the little shack on the prairie was over. Very strange feeling.
* * *
We were driving to Seattle for our flight departure the next day, normally a 3.5 hour trip. It took two hours in truly horrible traffic, and even worse weather, just to move 35 miles across the city to drop off our rental car. It felt like Portland didn't want to let us go.
* * *
The friends (to whom we will be eternally grateful) that we planned to stay with overnight in Seattle told us they hadn't had electricity at home for over two days due to even worse storms up there. However, we were welcome to stay if we didn't mind flushing the toilet with a bucket. We booked a hotel instead and arranged to meet them for breakfast the next morning.
* * *
About 30 minutes from the end of our now nearly 6-hour drive, we received a call from the hotel. They'd just lost power too. We were welcome to stay... if we didn't mind flushing the toilet with a bucket. (I wish I was joking.) We booked another hotel.
* * *
Despite the fact that the Seattle airport had been all but closed two days earlier (due to ice), we lifted off on Saturday afternoon after an uneventful trip to the airport and a smooth-as-silk check in of the two suitcases each that we would be living out of for the next six weeks. I heart Iceland Air.
* * *
We touched down in Reykjavik at 6:30 am local time (11:30 pm Pacific). The frigid Icelandic sky was black as ink, with not even a hint of dawn. I'd never been this far north before.
* * *
We rode the packed, but silent coach to the bus terminal, and transferred to a minibus for the drive to the hotel. By now, it was 8:30 am. The sky was still completely black. There was no one on the street and few lights on in the houses. It was quieter than Portland at three in the morning. Eerie, almost.
* * *
D and I asked the coach driver when people tended to get up and head to work in winter, since the mornings were so dark. "Sometime after nine," he told us. We glanced at the time and asked, "Where is everybody, then?" He looked at us like we were daft and said, "It's Sunday!" (The residents of Reykjavik have a reputation for partying hard - very hard - on the weekend, and need a nice lie-in.)
D and I had both been under the exhaustion-addled impression that it was Monday already. It hardly seemed possible that it was only Sunday morning, given all that we had experienced so far.
* * *
We were staying at a little non-chain hotel where one needed a pass-code to enter the building. No one was at the front desk to let us in when we were dropped off. It was about 30F (-1C). We were stranded on a empty street, with our pile of luggage... hungry, cold and nowhere to go. After waiting around for 20 minutes, I was swiftly losing any shred of humor or poise I had left.
* * *
Eventually we were let into the hotel to check our bags, but couldn't check in early. We left in search of someplace, any place, to get some food. After a half hour of aimless and increasingly resentful (on my part) wandering, we finally settled into the corner booth at a bakery that had only just opened its doors for the day. We had endless hot drinks and pastries for several hours - which did wonders to improve my mood - before we gratefully checked into the hotel and collapsed into bed for a nap.
(to be continued)
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Long Journey, Part the First
When last we left our heroine, she was mourning the fact that her birthday weekend was going to be spent packing her life into a shipping container...
It looked enormous - four feet off the ground (with no ramp!), 20 feet long, 8 feet high and just as wide. A big empty box waiting for every nearly every possession we have, whether precious or mundane, to be packed onto it in the space of three days. By ourselves. And we'd barely made a dent in the boxing and packing in the house. Our moves are always like this. Too particular to trust the packing and moving to professionals, too proud to ask for help, we leave it to the last minute and confidently insist that we can "do by self" as the toddlers are wont to say.
The container was dropped off on a Friday evening and was due be picked up the following Monday. Two days, three nights. D was sure that the container was more than enough to swallow what was left of our possessions after countless trips to Goodwill and the dump. How hard could it be?
We had no idea.
Fortunately, we have two very dear friends that practically insisted that we needed their help. They packed up their two children and their two dogs and all the extra moving blankets and packing tape they had lying around from their recent cross-country move and drove nearly two hundred miles from Seattle for the weekend. Boy are we lucky they did because, seriously, the job would have been impossible - wait let me all-caps that - IMPOSSIBLE to complete without them.
After two very long days and two very late nights and nearly 3,000 linear feet of stretch wrap, we got the job done, just. And we still had to leave behind more than we planned. D was a machine... he and our friend S carried everything to the truck and then D fit it all together with the finesse of a world-class jigsaw champion. In doing so, he lifted nearly every item we own no less than twice, often three times or more.
S was the king of stretch wrap - have you ever used this stuff? We encased nearly everything in this industrial plastic film to ensure it was secure, watertight and sticky enough to be fit together in a big block that won't slide around at sea. S quickly developed a two-man technique and stretch-wrapped like it would earn him time off for good behavior.
My friend R was a rock. She's a packing genius and systematically reduced all the random things laying around our house to neat packages for the boys to heave out. She made me laugh, provided critical moral support at a particularly low moment when I was exhausted and convinced we'd never be done, and generally reminded me why she's one of my best friends in the world. And I'm very glad it was a dear friend packing up my things, because one revelation I had that weekend was this: if you are going to let someone help pack up your life, you want them to be either a chosen sister who won't judge your housekeeping or the ridiculous detritus of your life... or a stranger you will never see again.
What did I do? Ostensibly, I was directing the efforts inside the house while D manned the trailer, but I'm not entirely sure I was much use. The weekend is all a big, mentally exhausted blur. But Monday morning, we finally shut the door on the container and waited for the trucking company to come haul it away.
The truck driver was brilliant, assuring us about the security of our shipment while D (in his own words) "clucked about like a mother hen." This was our entire life packed in the giant box and it feels a bit weird to watch it be hauled off for a 15,000 mile, months-long journey by sea. It had started to snow and I went inside as the container was pulled off the drive.
A few minutes later, D still hadn't come in. I went outside to find him looking into the distance as the driver gingerly negotiated the potholes on our long country road. He watched until the trailer finally pulled out of view. Then we turned and went into the strangely sad, nearly empty house that was still going to be home for four more days.
But the journey was begun.
It looked enormous - four feet off the ground (with no ramp!), 20 feet long, 8 feet high and just as wide. A big empty box waiting for every nearly every possession we have, whether precious or mundane, to be packed onto it in the space of three days. By ourselves. And we'd barely made a dent in the boxing and packing in the house. Our moves are always like this. Too particular to trust the packing and moving to professionals, too proud to ask for help, we leave it to the last minute and confidently insist that we can "do by self" as the toddlers are wont to say.
The container was dropped off on a Friday evening and was due be picked up the following Monday. Two days, three nights. D was sure that the container was more than enough to swallow what was left of our possessions after countless trips to Goodwill and the dump. How hard could it be?
We had no idea.
Fortunately, we have two very dear friends that practically insisted that we needed their help. They packed up their two children and their two dogs and all the extra moving blankets and packing tape they had lying around from their recent cross-country move and drove nearly two hundred miles from Seattle for the weekend. Boy are we lucky they did because, seriously, the job would have been impossible - wait let me all-caps that - IMPOSSIBLE to complete without them.
After two very long days and two very late nights and nearly 3,000 linear feet of stretch wrap, we got the job done, just. And we still had to leave behind more than we planned. D was a machine... he and our friend S carried everything to the truck and then D fit it all together with the finesse of a world-class jigsaw champion. In doing so, he lifted nearly every item we own no less than twice, often three times or more.
S was the king of stretch wrap - have you ever used this stuff? We encased nearly everything in this industrial plastic film to ensure it was secure, watertight and sticky enough to be fit together in a big block that won't slide around at sea. S quickly developed a two-man technique and stretch-wrapped like it would earn him time off for good behavior.
My friend R was a rock. She's a packing genius and systematically reduced all the random things laying around our house to neat packages for the boys to heave out. She made me laugh, provided critical moral support at a particularly low moment when I was exhausted and convinced we'd never be done, and generally reminded me why she's one of my best friends in the world. And I'm very glad it was a dear friend packing up my things, because one revelation I had that weekend was this: if you are going to let someone help pack up your life, you want them to be either a chosen sister who won't judge your housekeeping or the ridiculous detritus of your life... or a stranger you will never see again.
The truck driver was brilliant, assuring us about the security of our shipment while D (in his own words) "clucked about like a mother hen." This was our entire life packed in the giant box and it feels a bit weird to watch it be hauled off for a 15,000 mile, months-long journey by sea. It had started to snow and I went inside as the container was pulled off the drive.
A few minutes later, D still hadn't come in. I went outside to find him looking into the distance as the driver gingerly negotiated the potholes on our long country road. He watched until the trailer finally pulled out of view. Then we turned and went into the strangely sad, nearly empty house that was still going to be home for four more days.
But the journey was begun.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Happy Effin' Birthday
It's my birthday today. 13 is my lucky number and a birthday on Friday the 13th is just cool.
I've scheduled this post for the precise minute when I was born all those {ahem} years ago, adjusted for time zone effects and all.
That's about all the acknowledgment my birthday's going to get from me this year. The monstor move has taken over our lives. In fact, I got myself a 20 ft shipping container for my birthday. That's how I roll, and I hope there's a big effin' pink bow on it when it shows up on the drive this afternoon. Kind of like those cheesy Lexus commercials for Christmas.
Not that it hurts my feelings if my birthday doesn't happen.
If a birthday candle is lit in the forest and no one is around to see it, does one turn another year older?
I don't think so.
I've scheduled this post for the precise minute when I was born all those {ahem} years ago, adjusted for time zone effects and all.
That's about all the acknowledgment my birthday's going to get from me this year. The monstor move has taken over our lives. In fact, I got myself a 20 ft shipping container for my birthday. That's how I roll, and I hope there's a big effin' pink bow on it when it shows up on the drive this afternoon. Kind of like those cheesy Lexus commercials for Christmas.
Not that it hurts my feelings if my birthday doesn't happen.
If a birthday candle is lit in the forest and no one is around to see it, does one turn another year older?
I don't think so.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
So many stories...
... I could tell you.
I could tell you how the job opportunity in the UK with my old company did work out.
I could tell you how I was feeling so optimistic and happy at how things were coming together for the big move to the UK. Until the monumental task of actually accomplishing the move caught up with me.
I could tell you how hard we worked to get the little shack on the prairie remodeled and ready to sell.
I could show you the before and after pictures which remind me just how far we've come with the house. Even when all I can see are the few little things that aren't done yet.
I could tell you how we worked every waking moment on the house until it felt like we had nothing else to give and yet the work still wasn't done. And how I thought I would never, ever, be done painting the utility room.
I could tell you how we didn't really get to celebrate Christmas, our absolutely favorite time of year, and it felt like we were robbed.
I could tell you about how we still managed to put up a little Christmas tree and the small treasured light it brought to our miserable existence nearly saved my sanity.
I could tell you that we stood in the biting cold on our new back deck and surveyed our 130-degree view of the horizon and watched as the fireworks went off all over to ring in 2012 and how I will never forget the moment when this life-altering year kicked off.
I could tell you that I was optimistically hopeful that since everything else came together for the move, selling the house in this dire market would be a piece of cake. But now I'm not so sure and it terrifies me.
I could tell you that my immigration application was ridiculously easy to get approved and for that I'm grateful. But it doesn't stop me from having a recurring nightmare that I've forgotten some critical step and won't be admitted to the country when I get to Heathrow.
I could tell you how hurt and angry I feel since someone I considered a close friend here in Portland wrote me a "have a nice life" kiss-off message (she's got her own things to deal with right now) and didn't even respond to my gracious and understanding reply.
I could tell you how another one of my closest friends has volunteered to drive over 300 miles for an overnight trip with her family and her two dogs to help us load the shipping container. But I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to have a friend that would do something like that for me.
I could tell you how I was so focused on the future after we move, I forgot to prepare myself for how difficult it would be to tear myself away from the life I've built in a city I love.
I could tell you how lucky I am to find that a dear friend's mother was willing to adopt my two cats...how I was prepared for how hard it would be to give them up when we dropped them off on New Year's Day... but that my husband was not prepared for how hard it would be for him - and how experiencing that pain with him intensified it more than I could have imagined.
I could tell you how we found a place to rent in a fantastic location in the UK and how I'm slightly worried since we rented it sight unseen (in person anyway), but so excited because it's a little cottage set in the English countryside and seems like the perfect place to start our new life there.
I could tell you that I've gone back to work at the start of January (commencing in the Portland office before moving to the UK later in the month), which was perhaps a foolish decision given how much we have to accomplish before the move.
I could tell you how I have nightmares and wake up in cold sweats because I feel like I'm balancing spinning plates and I'm just barely managing not to drop the whole lot of them.
I could tell you that no matter what happens, we are on a plane to Iceland in two weeks. And after a few days relaxation in the frigid Icelandic winter, our new life will begin - ready or not, here we go.
I could tell you all this, but I've barely time to breathe, let alone write. I'm a ball of tears and optimism, and I'm just hanging onto my sanity by a thread until this relentless pressure ends and I can finally relax.
I could tell you how the job opportunity in the UK with my old company did work out.
I could tell you how I was feeling so optimistic and happy at how things were coming together for the big move to the UK. Until the monumental task of actually accomplishing the move caught up with me.
I could tell you how hard we worked to get the little shack on the prairie remodeled and ready to sell.
I could show you the before and after pictures which remind me just how far we've come with the house. Even when all I can see are the few little things that aren't done yet.
I could tell you how we worked every waking moment on the house until it felt like we had nothing else to give and yet the work still wasn't done. And how I thought I would never, ever, be done painting the utility room.
I could tell you how we didn't really get to celebrate Christmas, our absolutely favorite time of year, and it felt like we were robbed.
I could tell you about how we still managed to put up a little Christmas tree and the small treasured light it brought to our miserable existence nearly saved my sanity.
I could tell you that we stood in the biting cold on our new back deck and surveyed our 130-degree view of the horizon and watched as the fireworks went off all over to ring in 2012 and how I will never forget the moment when this life-altering year kicked off.
I could tell you that I was optimistically hopeful that since everything else came together for the move, selling the house in this dire market would be a piece of cake. But now I'm not so sure and it terrifies me.
I could tell you that my immigration application was ridiculously easy to get approved and for that I'm grateful. But it doesn't stop me from having a recurring nightmare that I've forgotten some critical step and won't be admitted to the country when I get to Heathrow.
I could tell you how hurt and angry I feel since someone I considered a close friend here in Portland wrote me a "have a nice life" kiss-off message (she's got her own things to deal with right now) and didn't even respond to my gracious and understanding reply.
I could tell you how another one of my closest friends has volunteered to drive over 300 miles for an overnight trip with her family and her two dogs to help us load the shipping container. But I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to have a friend that would do something like that for me.
I could tell you how I was so focused on the future after we move, I forgot to prepare myself for how difficult it would be to tear myself away from the life I've built in a city I love.
I could tell you how lucky I am to find that a dear friend's mother was willing to adopt my two cats...how I was prepared for how hard it would be to give them up when we dropped them off on New Year's Day... but that my husband was not prepared for how hard it would be for him - and how experiencing that pain with him intensified it more than I could have imagined.
I could tell you how we found a place to rent in a fantastic location in the UK and how I'm slightly worried since we rented it sight unseen (in person anyway), but so excited because it's a little cottage set in the English countryside and seems like the perfect place to start our new life there.
I could tell you that I've gone back to work at the start of January (commencing in the Portland office before moving to the UK later in the month), which was perhaps a foolish decision given how much we have to accomplish before the move.
I could tell you how I have nightmares and wake up in cold sweats because I feel like I'm balancing spinning plates and I'm just barely managing not to drop the whole lot of them.
I could tell you that no matter what happens, we are on a plane to Iceland in two weeks. And after a few days relaxation in the frigid Icelandic winter, our new life will begin - ready or not, here we go.
I could tell you all this, but I've barely time to breathe, let alone write. I'm a ball of tears and optimism, and I'm just hanging onto my sanity by a thread until this relentless pressure ends and I can finally relax.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Remembering
 |
| Photo: Magnus Manske |
* * *
I was working in midtown that bright Tuesday morning. Around 9 a.m., I received a call from D in Cayman to check I was okay after he heard the news a plane had crashed into an office building in Manhattan. It was the first anyone in our office knew of it and the last time I was able to speak to D, or anyone, on a phone for a while. I flashed up CNN live video online as co-workers gathered around my desk. We watched in disbelief at the smoke pouring out of the north tower a mere 4 miles away and wondered how it was possible that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
9:03 am: Overwhelmed by site traffic, the CNN video weblink crashed, leaving us with the audio broadcast only, while the video remained frozen on the haunting image of Flight 175, a split second before it crashed into the second tower. The image remained on my computer and is still burned into my mind. Everyone on board that flight in that moment knew their fate but were powerless to stop it. I wished the power of video technology worked in real life to freeze a moment in time and forestall the inevitable. CNN reporters were discussing "some sort of explosion" in the south tower. I stared at that frozen image, thinking, "It's another plane. How can they not know it's another plane?"
Riveted by the reports of disaster in downtown, we start to hear about the plane hitting the Pentagon, and rumors about other flights that are MIA. The stricken looks on the faces of my coworkers mirror my own emotions. How far would this disaster, this attack, extend? It feels like the end of the world and for the first time in my life I feel hate in my heart - for those that could do this terrible thing to so many innocent people. I'm not proud of it, but that is truth.
By 9:45, we have lost the audio link to CNN and I decide to cross the street to bring back the clock radio from my hotel room. I get back to the office and have barely plugged it in and found a news broadcast when the reporter starts saying "Oh my God, oh my God, the tower is collapsing!"
The view of downtown from our office is blocked by the MetLife building straddling Park Avenue, but the group of us rush to the conference room on the southwest corner to see what we can. There is a growing cloud of dust emanating from the area, enveloping the city like some kind of evil creature. A few people begin to cry - I don't remember if I'm one of them. It's barely been an hour since I received the phone call from D. The world is already forever changed.
I had been introduced to a friend of one of my coworkers at a happy hour the week before, and she is panicking now because he works at the WTC and she hadn't been able to reach him. I did some quick mental math based on news reports of the 50,000 people usually in the complex at that time of day and came up with an eerily accurate estimate of the lives lost - about 3,000. I told her to keep up hope, the chances were very good that he was okay. Thousands of people may die, but tens of thousands more were likely to survive.
He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, and we didn't know it then, but that firm was in the direct line of fire when the first plane crashed. They never found her friend. I still don't know whether to feel bad about my platitudes to her at the time, or to be relieved that I gave her some hope, however futile, to calm her in the moment.
I don't remember many clear moments for the rest of that day. Most of the local employees began their hours-long trudge home, lacking any other mode of transport but their own two feet to make it back to their loved ones. The out-of-town travelers like me milled around the office, unsure of what to do.
I do remember, vividly, crossing Park Avenue to go back to my hotel in the afternoon. The city streets were empty and deathly quiet. I started to cross, against the light. US airspace had been shut down for hours, but I heard the roar of an aircraft and felt a flash of panic, stopping in the middle of the street to scan the sky for a threat. It was a fighter jet, on patrol. The strangest thing about that moment was the quiet on the street. If I had stopped in the middle of Park Avenue while jaywalking on any other day, I would have been mowed down by a cab. But there was nobody out there now, only a few lonely souls such as me.
The rest of the week is a blur of isolation and frustration. For two days, my flight out of the city was cancelled and rebooked waiting for the airports to open again. By Thursday morning, the airline just told me they couldn't rebook and would contact me when a flight became available. I fell apart. I was alone in New York and I couldn't escape. I couldn't book a flight to London from another city because I couldn't get transport out of New York. The rental cars were all gone - in fact, some of my coworkers had left for a two-day drive home to Dallas the day before. Eventually I booked a train ticket to Washington DC for Friday morning and then checked all the airlines for a flight from a city anywhere between New York and DC that could eventually bring me to London.
When I got to the Philadelphia airport to check in for a flight I booked to Miami, the line stretched for a quarter mile outside of the airport. I was never going to make it, but saw no other course of action. I had struck up a conversation with a teenager, traveling on his own, who left the line to make a phone call and asked me to hold his place. An airport worker, for some reason, came down the line calling that young man's name and I directed him to the phone bank. Miraculously, that same airport worker, after getting the young man settled, came back and personally escorted me through security and to my gate. If I hadn't made that flight, who knows how long I might have been stuck in Philly. It was like an angel had been sent to rescue me.
Arriving in Miami, I had time to meet D briefly at the airport before his originally-scheduled British Airlines flight to Heathrow. His plane was full, and I got the last available seat on my American Airlines flight so we couldn't travel together. The BA employee at the front of the blocked-off check-in lines impatiently asked for him to just wait for his name to be called when he inquired on how to check in. How would they know to call his name when they hadn't let him register his presence at the airport? Never mind, I was already checked in and had to leave for my own departure - an hour before his - so I'd see him the next morning at the customs exit in Heathrow.
Saturday morning, I waited at customs for two hours after his flight landed, impatiently scanning the crowd. Eventually I checked my voicemail to find a harried message. BA had given away his seat "because he hadn't checked in." He was now stuck in Miami for another day.
I know that I did cry then. I was alone, more alone that I had already felt during the week, now in a foreign country, with nothing to do but find a hotel, wait for D, and contemplate the horror of the tragedy back in New York. I remember little of that time, which felt like purgatory, but I do remember that people were so kind to me when they detected my American accent.
The next morning, I was back at the customs exit anxiously awaiting D's arrival. In more than 10 years together - that includes nearly three years of commuting in a long distance relationship - I was never, ever happier or more relieved to see him at an airport. He enveloped me in a great big hug, and in his arms, although I was thousands of miles from where I lived, I was finally home.
* * *
What's your story?
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Fascinimation
I recently received an email with the following video attached along with the text in italics below....
This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones.
This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa . Amazingly, 97% of the machine's components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft , Iowa . Yes, farm equipment!
It took the team a combined 13,029 hours (6.26 years) of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see, it was WELL worth the effort.
It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.
The thought that such a machine could actually be built is an intriguing one. However, having read a bit about chaos theory in the fascinating book by James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, I questioned the feasibility of launching thousands of balls with enough precision to form the soundtrack and land in the collector cones every time. I undertook in-depth research (okay, a quick google search) and found that the email story is a hoax.
The video is still remarkable, and kudos to the folks at Animusic who put it together. Stuff like this makes me feel so fortunate that there are amazing, creative, artistic souls in the world that share the product of their inspiration with the rest of us.
This is almost unbelievable. See how all of the balls wind up in catcher cones.
This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa . Amazingly, 97% of the machine's components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft , Iowa . Yes, farm equipment!
It took the team a combined 13,029 hours (6.26 years) of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see, it was WELL worth the effort.
It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.
The thought that such a machine could actually be built is an intriguing one. However, having read a bit about chaos theory in the fascinating book by James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, I questioned the feasibility of launching thousands of balls with enough precision to form the soundtrack and land in the collector cones every time. I undertook in-depth research (okay, a quick google search) and found that the email story is a hoax.
The video is still remarkable, and kudos to the folks at Animusic who put it together. Stuff like this makes me feel so fortunate that there are amazing, creative, artistic souls in the world that share the product of their inspiration with the rest of us.
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