Early days

I moved to a new country on Wednesday. It is now Saturday, and I have spent the last two days cleaning my house, stocking up my cupboards at Costco, befriending the kitten (including believing I had lost the kitten out of a window, crying in the garden thinking I would be dumped for being a negligent girlfriend, finding said kitten inside the house after all - hiding in the recliner), and attempting to get my head around the gargantuan to-do list. It's early days in the New Life.

I have also succeeded in eating badly, sleeping badly, overreacting, panicking, and my personal favourite: sitting in a stupor.

Cowboy is hiding from me this morning, while I scowl at the computer. Who knew it would be so difficult to find affordable, relatively nice furniture in an actual shop where I could go in and just get the furniture? I didn't realise how important it would be to me to have furniture. I've been living out of a suitcase for weeks now. It was fine while I was waiting to move, but now I'm here, I want to plunge some roots down and feel like I have a home.

It's becoming an ordeal. If I could hide from myself, I would.

On the flip side, things that I thought would be horrible, terrible, insurmountable issues as part of the move have turned out to be nothings, and the relief is overwhelming.

Yesterday I played with the horses in the rain, and began to see how good life is going to be. If I could only get some furniture...

Back to the books

I've been back home in the UK for a couple of days now. I'm so jet-lagged, I could vomit. The weather was kind enough to be that glorious March sunshine that makes the rolling clouds look wonderful when I landed, but now it's gone back to the dreary grey.

My month in Washington went far too quickly for me to understand. We lost several days, snowed in, and a good deal more time travelling up and down the state. I spent a small fortune.

I spoiled Cowboy on Valentine's Day, buying him a leather splitter and a pattern for him to make his own spur straps. I know, I can hear you thinking it. He's the luckiest man alive, with romantic gestures like that. His gift to me was driving me to Seattle more times than he'd care to mention, and with only minimal complaining.

Who says romance is dead?

Now that I'm home, it's time to get on with boring tasks like doing the company accounts, realising I need to stop spending so much money on Cowboy, and hoping like heck that I can get the right paperwork together for the school in Seattle to accept me into their programme as of May. I don't particularly want to have to wait until September.



Although Cowboy said it was a good thing I was leaving for a bit, as Sunshine was getting kind of smart-arse about things and he needs some time to put her back to work. I didn't think we looked too bad.

Adjusting

I have scurried back to the Oxfordshire countryside for the weekend, trying to stay away from the bright lights of London and get my body clock back on Greenwich Mean Time. I've experienced a double-dip jet lag coming home, where I thought I had it conquered by Tuesday, but overslept until noon on Wednesday, and still struggling to go to sleep at night time and wake up at day time.

Cowboy is doing his best to help. At 7.30am this morning, he spammed my phone with messages:

You awake yet?
Wake up woman ;)
It's morning
Rise and shine
Wake up!!!!!!
Quit sleeping!!!!
Do I need to come pull the covers off you?

It took seven messages to rouse me from my dream, in which I was receiving messages from him telling me to search for something on Youtube but I didn't understand what it was I should be searching for. I was a little confused when I eventually came to.

I'm currently enjoying the wonders of... compression! That is tubigrip from my left ankle all the way up to above my knee. Swelling from my torn knee ligaments (long story) was apparently pooling in my calf and behind my knee, and needs to be encouraged to get out of there. I tend to view it as a nice excuse to put my feet up for a few more days.

I started to sort through my photos from Washington and Montana, and immediately began pining for my trip.


Doesn't seem like that long ago that I was sitting with my feet up, a cup of tea and a good book, with this glorious sight spread before me.

So it's only natural that, upon returning to London and to university, stricken with jet lag and PMT, my first impulse is to hide in my dad's man cave and research preserving jars. The adjustment phase is an interesting journey.

Returned

I've been returned to London. Cowboy drove me from the US, over the Canadian border (much, much easier than driving into the US from Canada) and to the airport where I picked up the long flight home.

After a day in the Oxfordshire countryside, I drove back to my home in London. London had a distinctly autumnal smell to it in the dark and chilly night air. Before too long I'll be wearing a scarf and my sheepskin boots again, watching fireworks and drinking vast amounts of tea just to keep warm.

But not yet. First, I spent a jet lagged afternoon in my parents' garden, which couldn't be more shamelessly English if it tried.




Then this morning, I returned to university. With jet lag so severe that I thought I was going to vomit, faint, and die, I sat through several pointless lectures introducing us to year 2, and slept through one actually useful lecture about something I will need to know in the future (lumbar spine dysfunction).

Whilst away in America, I had various adventures and learning experiences which I will share in due course, but the most foolish thing I did out there was to buy something that literally eats money... But she's so very pretty...



This is Sunshine, she's a 4 year old quarter horse mare with no breeding or papers to speak of. She's not worth much money, and she came to us with a little too much jiggle in her jig, having been living the easy life for a while. Cowboy loves her. He's turning her into a dream horse.

I get to deal with the sleeplessness and the jet lag for the next few days. Funny thing about the insomnia - it's not because I'm not tired. It's because it's too quiet. I imagined I'd be glad to have the whole bed to myself and not have to endure Cowboy snoring down my ear, but the reality is I miss the sound of him being there. I miss his warm, solid presence. At night I feel exposed and alone without him.

"I ain't sleepin' for sh*t right now," he said over the phone yesterday, which is Cowboy code for: he feels the same way.

He's coming over to England for Christmas, just as soon as he gets his dates worked out with his bosses and I can book his tickets. It's exciting beyond measure.