Vis-a-Visa

Awwww, yeah- it's what you think it is. The Boyfriend is now officially The Husband and I am a happier bunny for it.

Future plans may include wanting to reside back in my homeland, The ol' U S of A or 'Mer-ca as it sounds when we're saying it (no disrespect intended, Uncle Sam, more of a piss-take on Somerset accents...). The Husband will therefore require an Immigrant Visa at that point, and friends, this is no easy task, as some of you may know. It's like doing your income tax times 5. Collating, filling out and researching all the necessary paperwork is a part-time job in itself, wholly underpaid and humourless to the max. Uncle Sam is no fun-loving boss ready to throw you a break as quick as he is a tequila shot at the company barbecue. No, this guy is a vigilant, hard nosed, rule following, jobsworth, task master without any tolerance for mistakes or ignorance. So like many bosses I've had. Or my dad.*

And if that isn't enough, the kicker is it all costs big time money or on average £33 per page from my calculations. Wow. I am so going to look into working at the National Visa Center when we get back and get me some of that blood money.

But hey-ho, ithat's what it takes to get your British husband over there legally, so we're just going to roll with it. If I wanted it to be easy, then I should have picked a local boy or forever resign myself to living in soggy England. Besides, 'Merca is going to love The Husband whether Uncle Sam does personally or not.

*Actually my dad does have a sense of humour and does not do tequila shots at company barbecues to my knowledge.

Zen and the Art of Cleaning

Okay, that title maybe a bit far-fetched, but I’ve found myself describing this phenomenon to people, in probably admittedly somewhat of a defensive tone, when explaining my recent choice of employment. I’m finding it all rather meditative like. As far as jobs of this ilk go, that is menial labour really, I find I have by far preferred cleaning as opposed to waitressing or admin desk jobs. Now hear me out.

Number one reason: my mind and my thoughts are my own. Rather than having to actually to hand over my precious limited concentration levels to an office job to enter boring data or sacrifice a good mood by waiting on customers, I’ve found myself sometimes entering into an absorbed but empty trance whilst ironing for an hour or while dusting the 3 floors worth of wooden stair railings. This is a state I’ve never managed to get to when meditating. I only seem to be able to enter those lovely quiet states of mind when cleaning or driving, the latter being a bit dangerous.

This Zen state however, only seems possible for me when cleaning someone else’s house, not one’s own, as I differentiated to my sister in a recent email. I think that’s because I not only witness but participate in the reversal of my own clean house. And there’s no one paying me to do it either. I think the only bit that will get to be a drag with the current situation- cleaning something that isn’t really that dirty, which I know can’t possibly be dirty, because I just cleaned it yesterday. But then maybe that’s the trick to keeping your house from getting into such a state in the first place. Clean regularly. Or hire someone to do it for you- even better.

Number two: a small and somewhat fleeting sense of accomplishment of a job well done that rarely occurred for me in office or waiting jobs. Not that I’m a super fanatic cleaner but we were raised with a ‘cleaning day’ (Thursday) as kids and weren’t allowed to have any plans for the weekend until our rooms were tidy. So yeah, I’ve been trained and I’ve not heard many complaints from my employers. I myself prefer a tidy atmosphere, especially the kitchen and my desk area, though I’m hardly neurotic (in my own opinion*). I just find piles of papers and stacks of stuff to be draining and a good clearout usually has the benefit of removing the cobwebs in my mind as well as my surroundings. I usually feel inspired to do something more creative. Like mess up the kitchen baking something.

Number three: an unexpected but pleasant surprise that all this running around cleaning a 3 floor, 10 bedroom house for 5 hours a day means I lost 20 pounds in the first 2 months and have managed to keep it off despite eating like a pig and drinking like a fish. Those are numbers that add up. And a physical job to me just seems to make the time fly faster, than when I've been sitting in a cubicle, clock watching .

So although I may have had my own snobbish stereotypes about the life of a cleaner, and I still prefer to call it house-keeping when asked, I'm holding my head proud at my current method of keeping a roof over my head and food in my mouth.

*In fact, no one really complains about my cleaning apart from The Boyfriend when I insist on turning my energies to our own dishevelled, neglected house, the usual catalyst being mates coming to stay. During my whirlwind Tasmanian Devil last minute clean-a-thon he reminds me that’s it’s not the Queen coming, and I remind him that unless he wants anarchy in the bedroom, he better pitch in. As my Aunt Ramona says, “Foreplay starts with the dishes.”

Missing In Action: My Brain & a better photo of these people

Have you ever thrown out something in a fit of smug cleaning and later regretted it?

One day back from our US trip and I've been searching high and low for a photobook that includes a picture of my dad and me that I wanted to retrieve for a top secret project. It's in a collection of photographs that are centered around me and an ex, which makes me wonder if I didn't throw it out in the Grandaddy of all my clutter clearing- a hyper one right before I moved to current digs and had stayed up to the wee hours reading Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston, loaned to me by HR, which included questions to ask yourself about each item. 'Is it useful?' 'Is it sentimental?' 'Does it make you feel good?'. There was also some stuff about detoxing your liver on an internal clearing clutter note but overall it's pretty practical. I even threw out all of my old journal/diaries because I couldn't claim that looking through them, reading old entries made me feel good- only melancholy, sad or just plain embarrassed.

However, I can't see myself not keeping those photos, as they are sentimental as so many of them are of my family. If I did, I regret it now, but I'm also very jet lagged at the moment so will have another look when less zombified.

John Goodman vs Henry the Hoover

Latest news on the Cinderella work front: there is a fly infestation of horror-movie magnitudes in the top floor of the house. I mean these aren't your normal flies that come in through open windows and buzz around annoyingly- there are literally hundreds of the black beasts, and they're really dozy and hang about in packs on the window sills, floors etc.

Apparently they are called 'cluster' flies and invade old stone houses says The Owner, which is a less gory explanation than The Boyfriend's of a load of dead bats or pigeons rotting in the ceiling. Still it's pretty gross and Owner's tactic is to hoover them up, that is, you guessed it, for me to hoover them up, rather than use fly spray. Not fun. Even in mid-suction, I could see them trying to get in from outdoors- perhaps like deer in headlights, they coudn't resist their inevitable doom. I could feel the little 'ping' of their bodies as they made their way down the hose of death and the whole experience has given me the heebie-jeebies, and put me right off my lunch, which is really saying something. I would almost feel sorry for them if they weren't so gross and plentiful. I just feel sorry for me.

I plugged the end of the hoover with a j-cloth at the end of the day as I had this catastrophic vision of them all collecting at the end of the nozzle ready to give me some payback hell tomorrow. Not looking forward to the day I need to change the vacuum bag.

I'm going to be well ready and deserving of a break- our trip to the US in less than a week. Hopefully most signs of indoor insect life will have diminished by the time of my return and I can get back to the normal backbreaking cleaning and ironing.

We come in piece(s)

It's sock monkey-a-go-go at the moment. I'm sending these guys/gals off for an exhibition and the due date is the day I arrive back from the US soooooo for the first time in my life, I am going to be really, super early.
Looking slightly creepy without their faces although clearly they already displaying their personalities with their hand and tail antics; not purposely posed by me, I might add.