What a ridiculous week it’s been. A week ago today, Kevin got down on one knee, in the chatterbox. It completely took my breath away, even though the topic had been on the table for a while. He’s a completely romantic nut case, as am I, and it’s one of the many reasons I adore him.
With all the well-wishes from so many people, I haven’t managed to send back thanks
to everyone who has sent us love, blessings, congratumalations. So I’ll give it a shot here, instead. THANK YOU ALL, so incredibly much, for the messages. I will at some point catalogue them all and probably list most of them on wertperch.co.uk.
It boggles my mind to think that happened a week ago, today. I’ve packed about a month’s worth of emotional uproar into the last week, not to even mention the rest of the month of December. (No wonder I’m sick….) Wednesday last week was my last day of work. Thursday I RAN AROUND, as Helen would say. I pretty much traded off kid duty with my friend Jenny, so that we each could run Christmas errands, but it was a nutty day. Bank, phones, minimal shopping, etc. The three kids (Juliana, Tessie and Chloe) were all rather wound, so the emotional pitch was fairly high. I wept all over Jenny at one point, with fatigue.
That evening Tess and I flew to Seattle. Because of storms on the east coast, our flight left 2-1/2 hours late. Instead of 9:15, which is tough enough on a six-year-old and her mama, it left at 10:50. Or rather, was supposed to depart at 10:50. Unfortunately one member of the crew was coming in on another delayed flight, so we also waited half an hour for her. Got into Seattle at 1:15, effectively missing the last ferry. Luckily my cell phone was finally working, so by calling ahead to Bob we had a hotel reserved. I’m not much of a fan of cell phones, but once in a while they are pretty handy.
Crashed at the dry, overheated hotel, which pretty much put the final touches on my now raging sinus infection, and then went over to PT the morning of Christmas Eve. We rode the bus up to the ferry with what I can only describe as a busload of street people, which was highly entertaining. The outfit of the day seemed to lean heavily towards oversized ratty down jackets patched with duct tape. The man next to me offered to cover the extra quarter of the 1.25 bus fare if I didn’t have it. He was headed to downtown to clean a laundromat. Another guy, after having the bus driver point out that his bus card was long expired, was bailed out by ANOTHER guy across from us. The christmas spirit flows freely amongst the down and out in Seattle, apparently. I love riding the bus. Tessie and I look awfully prosperous, by contrast. It reminds me to be so grateful for everything we have – a roof over our heads, plenty of food (thanks most of all to former formerfarmer Jim and working at the Farmer’s Market), more than ample clothing and tchackas and what have you.
Stumpie picked us up, fed us at a lovely bakery, and then we headed off to my sister’s house. Some sit around time, then taking the girls down to see Bob, and some last minute Christmas shopping. Kate and I had agreed on the phone, to try and decrease the amount of “Stuff” this year, and I think we somewhat succeeded. I was fairly fried, but still up and wide awake at o dark 30. (With Kevin in Nottingham, there is an 8 hour time gap. That means that on working days, the time I’m most likely to catch him is at 1 pm, before he goes to work (5 am for me) or 7 pm for me (3 am for him). Even though he is a night owl, I keep him up late, and though I’m a morning person, getting in the habit of waking up at 5 am every day means that I have a good two hours before the sun comes up. Sigh. I’ll be glad when he’s back in the same time zone, among other things.
Christmas was lovely and low key. I cooked the turkey, everyone else pitched in, and it was my favorite part of the day. The next day Kate and Billy and I went in to Seattle, and beebled around the Farmer’s Market. Kate and I sort of don’t know what to do with ourselves when we don’t have kids in tow, so quite a bit of our time was spent eating and drinking tea in various cafés.
I took off to the airport, and managed to get on the bus just as the SeaHawks game was ending. Very crowded, heavy traffic, and again, many moth-eaten down jackets. Made it home about midnight, although the low point was trying to catch a shuttle from the airport to the long-term parking, and sitting in a VERY cold wind for half an hour. Poor sinuses…
Back to work the next day, and my corner of the office is now known as Typhoid Central – three of the four of us are sickly. Yick. I suspect I was the vector about two weeks ago.
I FINALLY managed to get my cell phone working after it’s dunking earlier this fall (don’t ask) and after many calls to Sprint the international dialing started working. Yay! Kevin and I can talk on the phone again. I long for him here, at the moment because I’m utterly pitiful when I’m sick – I regress to four, and want to be tucked up in a blanket on the couch, served Chicken Noodle Soup (Campbell’s ONLY) ginger ale, and lot and lots of Poor Little Chrisses. I suspect Kevin is very good at this.
But there is so damned much HAPPENING. We’re trying to sort out when I’ll be in the UK, Kevin is trying to sort out the beastliness at work, Bob and I are shuttling Tess back and forth, grieving for Sue, trying to get something done at work, finalizing all those applications….yikes. I need two of me. Now, plan a wedding involving two continents and many, many people. When I'm on the phone, we seem to talk as fast as we possibly can, and it's still an hour, sometimes two. The woes of modern long-distance relationships....
Kevin? Let’s elope.