The Queen of U-Haul

If you never need advice on renting U-haul equipment, look no further! I am, officially, a pro. I have also become an expert car saleswoman (with a little help from my friends) and a professional packer.

Moving to London is going good so far. Jim already moved. I, on the other hand, am still in Dallas with our neverending stuff, but at least we are half way there and the other half (me) is getting there thanks to our awesome families.

A word of advice for any who are planning an international move at any point in your life: become a minimalist immediately! We filled a large U-Haul trailer to the breaking point and still have more to go. And that was AFTER getting rid of a large amount of "stuff." Fortunately, my neighbors are more than happy to take any furniture we leave on the curb, so things are working out.

Current house conditions: disaster. State of dust bunnies: Dominant. Current state of mind: frazzled. Current sleeping quarters: air mattress.

I love moving.

The Tale of the Two Dancing Girls

Once upon a time, there were two young girls. The older one was named Claire and the younger one was Kate. They grew up on a farm on the banks of the Mighty Mississippi and happily rode their go-cart, jumped in cotton, climbed in trees, roller skated on the porch, tortured their younger brother, and did all the other care free things that farm girls do.

The girls went to school in a town nearby. The school was small and mean. The girls tried to fit in at the school by wearing large bows in their hair and baggy gap jeans and oversized polo shirts. Claire even cut very small bangs on her forehead in the hopes that she, too, could have pinwheel bangs, like all of the mean girls at school. Kate was more refined and did not consider bangs, but both girls knew that they would fit in if only they could do one thing: DANCE.

So they decided to learn. The girls signed up for a jazz dance class once a week. Their teacher was small and thin and smoked cigarettes during class and complained about her husband and her children. She instructed the girls to do twirls and leaps and jumps and spins, but never paid attention to their form or their positions. Her lack of focus prevented her from noticing that Claire and Kate were consistently twirling in the wrong direction.

Eventually the time came for the girls to have their first recital. They were decked out in their jazz dance finest, with leggings and gloves and frilly collared tank tops. They waited on stage and as the music began they started to twirl and shake and dance, dance, dance...in the wrong direction and without any rythmn. They crashed into their classmates with wreckless abandon. They twirled back and forth, flailing their arms. They were the dancing queens! And then, suddenly, the room went dark and all you could see of the girls were their glow in the dark outfits, twirling and twirling....

Sadly, the girls never really learned to dance in a sychronized fashion. They did grow up to be quite ravishing and after many nights of dancing to bands in New Orleans clubs, they got rhythm, but not coordination. They also collected fabulous costumes, which they wore throughout the years with wigs and glitter and boas and platform boots. But none could hold a candle to the glow in the dark costumes of their youth.

Claire's Anxieties

Today I woke up at 4:30 am, with two cats walking on me and lots of thoughts in my head. So, naturally, I went running. The moon was out, so it was actually lighter than my usual running time (6am) and I was surprised to find that there were several other people out and about (running, riding bikes) that early in the morning--psychos!! Maybe they are having trouble sleeping, too.

While I was running I had my first feeling of real remorse about leaving Dallas and everything that we are so comfortable with. I don't know how long it will be before I have a job again or where to even look for a job once we get to London. I won't even have a work permit for a couple of months, so I just have to get used to the idea of being unemployed and trying to be productive and adventurous in the meantime. We are also moving with no furniture. A furnished apartment seems like the most rational and easiest way to deal with this problem, but what if that is not where we decide to land? How will we get furniture to an apartment when we have no car? Will we take our mattress on the tube? Does Ikea deliver?

I didn't figure any of this out on my run, but I did remind myself that I've moved to a new city before (that's how I'm trying to think of it) and that it always has worked out in the past. And I heard a screech owl, which was cool (and appropriate since it is October, after all).

Cedar Fever, By: Buster Brown

This has been a horrible day. Naturally, there are embarassing pictures of me in a very fragile state: I am allergic and it is NOT funny! This morning, after a night of torture, I was rushed to the vet where they shaved my chest:


I look like a plucked chicken!

The good thing is that I get to eat bologna a lot for some reason. The bad thing is that they keep spraying me with this cold stuff that really @(#*&$ hurts. I don't want to humiliate myself further by rolling around on the ground in agony, so I use all of my energy to stay upright and just rush from point to point while foaming at the mouth in a manly way. Good thing my Dad knows how to make me feel better:

Never ending stuff

It is very hard to become a minimalist after a lifetime of pack rat-like behavior. But that is what we are forced to do as we start the moving to London process. One would think that getting rid of everything wouldn't be that hard, but when there is so much of everything to get rid of, it is not that simple. The key, I have found, is to check your sentimentality at the garage door. Yes, yes, that Christmas ornament that you made with your sister and your then-boyfriend, now-husband, is sweet, but it's a piece of crap, so get rid of it. The outdated public health books that have been in boxes since 2000? Those go, too. If you haven't consulted them in six years, you're not going to start now. Pictures albums are tricky, because even though you can't remember the names of half of the people in your college photo albums, their pictures do trigger memories. If you have six guitars and a banjo, but you only play one of them, keep that one and sell the rest--even the one that is just like Robert Smith's. What to do with that box of costumes dating back from the days when you had no qualms with walking down the streets of New Orleans in barely more than your underwear? Do you really think that you would be caught dead in any of those slut costumes now, much less in five years?

And we haven't even gotten to what's in the house yet.

LDN!!!

It's been a long, long time since we have updated this blog, but now it has become our official "moving to London" site, where we will document all the trials, tribulations, and excitement involved in moving from Texas to London. We are not moving to New London, CT or London, TX (I'm sure that there is one), but we're off to the real deal: London, England, UK. We're hoping to blend right in:



Our friends are welcome to visit and stay in any spare space in our 700 square foot apartment (bathtub, kitchen counter, window sill etc.) . Just think, if you had come to see us in Texas, you would have had your own garage apartment to stay in!

For those of you who are concerned, Buster Brown will be staying behind to live full time on the farm he so loves. Chowder and Emma (our cats) will be microchipped, rabies tested and vaccinated, put into "quarantine" in Tallulah (also on the farm) until we can come back for them, at which point they will be drugged, stuffed into boxes, and flown across the ocean to us. I'm sure that this will be a fascinating and exciting experience for them. Poor kitties..but we are selfish and want them with us. The only reason Buster will miss out on this experience, is that we are pretty confident that putting him on a plane for 9-15 hours will scare him to death (seriously) or at least traumatize him completely.

Stay tuned as we attempt to sell both of our cars, pawn our electronics, and force our relatives to take over all of our stuff...all in the next 3 weeks!

Underwear on my head is not a funny joke

Oh hah hah, really funny. Why don't you put some flowery underwear on my head while I'm innocently resting on the forbidden bed after a long, hard, and exhausting weekend? And then, after you do that, I think you should definitely try to blame it all on me, as if I would ever, voluntarily put a pair of seriously dorky underwear on my head. Frankly, I think the person who owns those underwear, should, in the future, consider the consequences of taking a picture of it. I'm sure that she didn't expect that I would post her underwear on the internet for all the world to see or she would have picked a much more respectable pair.

So, I'm back. It's been a while since I have had the time in my busy schedule to post a blog, but now that life is settling down, I can update you all on important things.

First of all, we moved to a new neighborhood with lots of new smells and interesting animals. I have discovered that vines are a great place to sniff out critters and I would spend the majority of my time in one particular patch of vines if my parents would just stop it with the whole dragging me out by my leash thing. At least they had the good sense to get me a harness, so that I don't choke to death, although being on a harness definitely moves me further into the realm of the not-so-cool and slightly reminds me of the hotdog costume. My Dad says it's my S&M look. I'm not sure that's the look I'm really going for.

After we moved, I got to spend several glorious weeks with my Grandma and Grandpa on the farm, where I got to eat lots of leftover people food on top of my dog food and run around the back yard and bark at squirrels all day long every day. Being on the farm is the life, so when my Uncle Will came by and took me back to Dallas, I showed my disapproval, by expressing my anal glands very violently in the back of his car. Then I did it several more times on my parents' couch as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, that got me a nice trip to the vet, but it was worth it to be able to express...no pun intended...my emotions about the whole coming back home and being left by myself for 8 hours a day situation.

The good news is that there is a dog park here and we went the other day. I was pretty tired, because we had some people over the night before and one guy gave me about two hamburgers and the people were making a ruckus playing some game where they jump up and down and wave their hands in the air and try to guess who each other are without talking. It was so stupid and very disruptive for those of us who would have liked to have gotten some sleep. But, the guy who kept feeding me hamburgers rocked and the next time we go to the dog park, I will be more into it. The only thing I'm a little worried about with the dog park is that there is a fenced in water area for dogs who like to swim. I don't like to swim, but my Dad can't seem to accept this fact and thinks it's really funny to throw me into pools and such, so I'm a little concerned that he will get the genius idea (like the undies) to throw me in and laugh at my frantic swimming to shore. If he does that, I'll just make sure to pee on his guitar.

So, that's the latest in my life. Peace out. Buster.