Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes

It has been a little more than three weeks since we departed London for the USA, and from where I’m sitting now, it might as well be three years or three decades. It all seems so long ago, our life back in the UK. The home we lived in for five-and-a-half years has likely been emptied, painted over, polished up, and scrubbed clean of our existence, ready for the next generation of dwellers.

Moving is a kind of death, at least for me. It happens gradually and then suddenly, and once you are gone, you are gone forever.

When we caught the final Uber for London Heathrow Airport on July 29, we disappeared from that particular time and place. We will never again live in that house, on that street, on that continent, during this period of our lives. That phase of life has become a still photograph, already fading at the edges, just like the life I lived 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

I’ve already blogged about my nomadic life, having probably lived in more than 25 homes in a dozen towns since graduating college 41 years ago. Each of those homes were special in their own way – even the cheap, forlorn, roach-infested ones. Our London home was more special than most. But like the others, it has been consigned to the dustbin of memory.

As the title of this blog suggests, we have changed latitudes and attitudes. The latitude of where we are now is 40.830509, the internet tells me. The latitude of London, UK, is 51.5072.

The attitude? I’m not sure how to quantify it. We are just normal old Americans now, hitting the malls, traveling past wide-open spaces, smiling until it’s painful, joining clubs (well, not that).

What we aren’t are expatriates living in a foreign land. And that is about the biggest change of all.

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This blog itself seems like a relic from the life I’ve left behind, more London Me than New Me. I had an unreasonable dedication to this blog back in London. The blog started in London as a way to promote my novel – published while we lived in London, buy it here! – and to document my life as an expat.

I spent an inordinate amount of time suffering over this blog. I might start it on the weekend, when I had some spare time. I usually finished it on Daddy’s Night Out, usually Wednesday, while sipping a beer and listening to jazz on my iPhone, before heading out on the town. I fretted over every phrase, every word, long past when doing so made any sense, considering that maybe 50 people in the world really paid attention.

But I put a blog out, every week – sometimes twice a week – but every week, without fail.

I don’t know how dedicated I’ll be to this blog in our new life. I already skipped writing a blog last week (for shame!). The only reason I’m writing one now is because I have a small window of breathing room between the work assignments and the various moving headaches.

Wait, check that: I just got five work assignments in my inbox, due early tomorrow. Eeek!

(Brief interlude: The moving headaches mainly involve having to juggle delivery services, contractors, utility folks, inspectors, the idiots from DirecTV, the idiots from Terminix, the auto dealer who has to ship a car from Milwaukee to New Jersey, but had some title issue to deal with, which backed up the inspection, which backed up our ability to possess the car we are buying – because we still don’t have a car, and so we either rent Zipcar by the hour or Uber everywhere, and meanwhile we are staying in a hotel while the house gets ready, and most of our stuff has not yet arrived from London, but never mind……)

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London Me took up drawing last year, and I found myself strangely devoted to it. I committed myself to making at least a few pencil drawings a week. I bought one of those blank comic books and began drawing and writing comics – already 24 pages worth, a noir private eye comic, filled with mystery and shady characters…..

I have not drawn anything since moving here. I might not draw anything for the remainder of 2023. We will see how that goes.

I have not cooked anything in nearly a month. I can’t remember the last time I hadn’t cooked anything in a month. Probably since university days, early 1980s. I’m going to have to psych myself up to get back into the swing of it. We will be settling permanently into our new house in a matter of days. I need to order cookware. I need to wake up my cooking muscles. Will I enjoy it? Will it be a chore?

I have not ridden (rode? rided?) a bike in close to a month. Again, I can’t remember how long it has been since I have not ridden (rode? rided?) a bike in a month. Probably 30 years. In a couple days our stuff will arrive from London – including one of my two bicycles. I can’t wait to hop on it!

My other bike was shipped last week, via air freight rather than sea freight. But the moving folks did a brilliant job of taking it apart without being able to put it back together again, so it is sitting in our new garage now, looking all fucked up, in need of repair.

This saddens me, friends. This annoys me. This pisses me off.

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How many more moves do I have in me? Given my age, I would say: not many. But we like our new house. It’s big and old and maybe on the pricey side, but it’s in an area we like, and the schools are good, and it’s safe for a family, and we’re all excited about settling in. I have already strategized the one thing that has become most important to me in a house – finding the nooks of peace and quiet, close to a bathroom.

Soon, I will cook. Soon, I will ride my bicycle, Soon, I and we will settle into a routine. One day, we’ll move again, I suppose, and the home we don’t yet live in will be consigned to the dustbin of memory.

But for now, we’re looking ahead – full speed, ever onward!

Note: The title of this blog, as any dedicated Parrothead will know, is from Jimmy Buffett’s 1977 album of the same name. La foto es nuestro nuevo hogar.