oy veh, moving

Some­how I for­got that mov­ing to Lon­don meant I was MOV­ING to Lon­don. You know the cliche about how mov­ing is the most stress­ful thing next to the death of a spouse, divorce, or find­ing out it’s more than three blocks to the near­est Star­bucks. Well, I keep remind­ing myself that thank good­ness I’m not mov­ing BECAUSE I’m get­ting divorced, because I’m not hap­py right now! Here’s what hap­pened. We kid­ded our­selves that we did­n’t have all that much stuff, because remem­ber how min­i­mal­ist our apart­ment on Jay Street looked? Real­ly neat and tidy and emp­ty­ish. Well, it turns out that we require mas­sive amounts of emp­ty space that can be closed off and ignored, in order to look tidy. There is no stor­age space to speak of at our love­ly new glam­orous flat. No phone yet, and don’t even get me start­ed on how tired I am of British Tele­com and their lame rep­re­sen­ta­tives. I know phone ser­vice is always a pain, and I also know that I am the worst cus­tomer in the world because as soon as they ask me a ques­tion, they can see from my pathet­ic expres­sion that I don’t have the answer. Broad­band? Cat5? Bull­dog? I don’t know. Any­way, no phone yet.

So stuff. So much STUFF. I have found bits of chi­na and glass that pre­date our mar­riage, I have found Avery’s baby spoons and cups, I have found cof­fee mugs from grad­u­ate school, along with such trea­sure­sas a mug embla­zoned with the leg­end, “On March 16, 2003, I was in Tribeca at Elliot Sad­of­f’s 1st Birth­day Par­ty!” Actu­al­ly I have two of those. And I miss Elliot’s moth­er Alyssa so much that I don’t even mind hav­ing two cof­fee mugs that I have no idea what to do with. I don’t even drink cof­fee! But that’s beside the point. I am actu­al­ly trea­sur­ing my Elliot mugs, reliv­ing hap­py days in Tribeca when I had a friend who had a child to have a first birth­day par­ty for.

Any­way, I am mad­ly throw­ing stuff away, putting things aside to give to Oxfam, the Eng­lish ver­sion of Sal­va­tion Army, kick­ing myself that I did­n’t do this state­side, but also inves­ti­gat­ing the super-cool shelv­ing com­pa­ny Vit­soe, in Wig­more Street (on my healthy-heart three- times-dai­ly walk to or from Avery’s school). Per­haps with some shelves in the kitchen, some shelves in the liv­ing room for the 800 box­es of books in the study, and some shelves in Avery’s room, I can with­stand my tremen­dous urge to set fire to every­thing we own…

But oth­er than that, life is grand. The neigh­bor­hood is ultra qui­et, amaz­ing­ly since it’s sit­u­at­ed per­ilous­ly close to the Amer­i­can Embassy, and just a block from the Mar­ble Arch, which they are plan­ning to MOVE! I mean, seri­ous­ly! How they can imag­ine mov­ing the Mar­ble Arch, if for no oth­er rea­son than that there’s a tube sta­tion with its name on it… Next thing you know they’ll black­top Regen­t’s Park. Hon­est­ly. But yes, it’s a love­ly neigh­bor­hood, just two blocks from a great Marks and Sparks (the local name for Marks and Spencer) Food Hall, my favourite haunt, and a Sel­f­ridge’s where I can’t afford any­thing but I go just to look at the foie gras. The kit­ties are safe­ly here, scat­ter­ing lit­ter every­where, and scared sil­ly of the tele­phone men. And guess what? Keep­ing the tra­di­tion of ridicu­lous host­ess behav­ior that was start­ed when we had din­ner guests the first night we brought Avery home from the hos­pi­tal, we had a din­ner guest the evening we moved in! I cleared enough space to roast an amaz­ing Eng­lish Angus beef joint, and suc­cumbed to mov­ing pres­sure to serve with it a glo­ri­ous pre-made dish of scal­loped pota­toes from Marks and Sparks! Added to that was sauteed baby
broc­col­i­ni, here called “ten­der­stems,” with olive oil and but­ter. And a Bram­ley apple crum­ble. Our guest was the divine David from Water­loo, Iowa, here work­ing on trav­el agency busi­ness. So book ear­ly now, and be here for the next seating.

I’m off to buy a vac­u­um clean­er, hun­dreds of rub­ber stop­pers to keep all our doors open (the British love to close a door!), a big kitchen garbage can, and what else? A chick­en to roast for our third night in our new home. Avery will be full of sto­ries of Latin class, net­ball, and what­ev­er hor­ror she’s giv­en for lunch, and John will be in his usu­al state of excite­ment at spend­ing the day at his posh office in Canary Wharf. Think of me, please, as I unpack… poor me!