Author: Jen

Thanks to our collective faith, positive attitude, and willful visualization of that “SOLD” sign, there will soon be a “SOLD” sign in our yard! What an amazing feeling–if I weren’t so excited, I might be scared out of my shoes. Everyone breathe a sigh of relief and get some good sleep tonight. There will be lots of moving, drinking, eating, meeting, hanging, more moving, a blow-out party, and some bittersweet days ahead. Tonight might bring the best sleep I have had in three months…

Updates-
We now expect to board a plane for London on October 4th.
We are being fingerprinted on Friday, 29 August.
We send our paperwork to be processed to Chicago as soon as our fingerprints (and other biometrics) are on file.
We have shown our house to the same buyer twice–and she likes the snacks.
We are working on a Bon Voyage Bash for the week prior to our departure.
We cheer ourselves up each evening with cheezburgers and the failure of others.

When I stand still, even for a moment, I feel the way one feels on the last few clicks of the climb you make on a roller coaster. Although buying the ticket and getting on the ride took courage, I am aware that I could never be prepared for what’s in store. It’s going to be bumpy and my hair is gonna be bad when it’s safe to loose my grip on items such as sunglasses or hats. How do you get ready for something you’ve never experienced? Someone told me that you are much less likely to be injured if you fall down the stairs while you are asleep; she tried that one night. I think the moral of the story is to try your best to let what is wash over you, get in sync and be at peace with the rhythm that is life as we know it, and rest when it’s not your turn to row.

Thank you again for your immeasurably profound love, encouragement, and support. It’s true that you don’t know what you have until you lose it (or move across the ocean from it).

All my best and all our love to you.

Usually when you come home and someone has eaten your Reese’s cups, you call the cops–or at least the exterminator. Tonight it was awesome to find that someone (maybe several someones) had several drinks and snacks from our wide selection of yummies. Our house hosted a new family this evening, for the first time since the house has been on the market. Though two appointments had been previously scheduled, for various reasons the appointments were not kept. Tonight though, refreshments have been had! Visualize that sign…

For those faithful readers who cannot stand the suspense any longer, the move has been postponed and is now scheduled for approximately September 28th or 29th.  Additional paperwork was requested of us and we expect our legal documents to be ready for us the first week in September, but when it arrives we have to take it to a UK Consulate (the nearest one is in Atlanta) to put some magic touch on it.  He probably has to stamp our passports and verify that we are who we say we are…  Until then, please visualize the Coldwell Banker “Sold” sign in our yard.

We do plan to have an Open House on Sunday, August 31st.  Please encourage anyone you know, in the market for a great house in Smyrna, to come by.  We are looking forward to beginning the process of selling the house to its new family.  Meanwhile, the listings for flats in London gives me great hope that you’ll have a very cool place to stay when you visit!

Please do check back often for more entertaining accounts of the last few weeks and forgive us for our very lackluster post this evening.  It was all I had.

The proof is here, our house is actually for sale.  You definitely want it–or you know someone who does.

MLS Number 1003420

Julie Perkins
Coldwell Banker Snow & Wall
615-415-0311

JuliePerkins@realtracs.com

Cozy, right?  Check out the details: House For Sale.

Did I survive a yard sale or I am still dreaming?  Oh wait, it rained today.  A yard sale on a rainy day would be counter productive. Silly rabbit…  Of course, it did stop raining.  Right after it poured and then rained and then stopped and then poured.  Hmmm.   I am delirious, I still have on yesterday’s make-up, I am sore, I smell like wet dog, and there is a stack of dollar bills on my kitchen table.  I either survived a yard sale or I was the entertainment at someone’s bachelor party.

Thank God for the folks who will love my gently-used, but well-loved crap.  Also, bless the hearts of those characters that tracked dirt on my freshly shampooed carpet and let their children kick the back of my couch.  Yummy.  I am grateful that the day has passed, grateful for the amazing friends and family that supported me through this trying ordeal, and so pleased to be $28.37 richer.  This could not have been possible without the tough love of my sister–and our adopted sister.  Who else stays up all night with you singing along to crappy (but inexplicably awesome) 80’s Jams and faces death to remove all traces of cobwebs on your cathedral ceiling?  Who else can scare you straight about the mess on the dining room table and will selflessly defend the $2 salad bowl?  Thanks also belong to my dad and stepmom for making the multi-family yard sale a real event, to my Auntie Jean for her sense of humor and for sharing a margarita with me, and to my mom for windows that you can eat on.

I miss you already.

Vegan chocolate chip cookies rock.  They rock pretty hard core, actually.  Vegan not-chicken noodle soup is excellent, but it doesn’t hold a candle to vegan chocolate chip cookies.  Thank you, Skinny Bitches, for the chocolate cake that saved my life and the cookies that rock my socks off.

Now, on to things that do not rock.

• Highlander, The Source
• Cleaning out the drain in the shower
• Pretending to be on Clean Sweep with my all time favorite collector, Drew Huddleston
• Babies being harmed
• Accidentally entering a hotel room that is occupied.  By honeymooners.  Happy, active honeymooners…
• Running into people you know at the grocery store before you’ve showered or brushed your teeth
• Bad Wolf
• Cats on planes to London, specifically mine
• Book Rental Failures
• Writer’s block

I am sure that you are creative enough to imagine the kinds of things one considers as he or she contemplates a move.  You are likely to be crafty enough to formulate a loosely constructed course of action for relocation to another country.  Try as you might, though, I am not sure many deliberate the way Drew Huddleston does.  I will confess that I am awed by this ability he has to study for a decision as if there were going to be a test and a right answer.  My decisions are driven by my gut, they can be messy, and may leave me with a fair amount of self-loathing.  It is quite often the case that I fail to spend that extra hour of planning on the front end which would save me from the immeasurable amount of inefficiency on the follow-through. Despite the comfort that I take in Drew’s careful pontification of every possibility, I also feel like I am that proverbial gerbil on the wheel (the cute kind that doesn’t bite), and he is the wheel.

Drew is a thinker.  I am a feeler.  And I feel like he is thinking too much.  (It’s a play on words that is funnier than true, but I’m going with it.)

He put together a budget for several scenarios:

• paying mortgage and rent, Jen not working
• paying mortgage and rent, Jen working in a coffee bar
• paying rent, Jen working with her current employer having taken a demotion
• paying rent, Jen becoming a rock star in a power suit

It was a little strange coming home from the UK this time–maybe because I had been awake for the entire return journey, maybe because of the mind-blowing philosophy book I bought for the trip, or perhaps from the heat that hit us in Atlanta…but most likely because I wasn’t sure how long I might call this place “home”. The scenery looked slightly different, in a undefinable sort of way, and I felt a sort of pride in belonging to this place.

On the plane from Nashville to Atlanta I had been seated next to a woman with an incredibly gentle smile; Drew and I were not assigned seats together. She told me about the 16 day trip from which she was returning, her daughter who lived in Germany, the time she lived outside of Washington D.C., her husband (an orthopedic surgeon in Nashville), and her recent interest in macrobiotic cuisine. She eventually asked about my trip. When I told her about Drew’s job offer in London, she smiled knowingly. She told me about her time living in the big city–and the contrast of life in the suburbs.

“While you are young you should experience big and bustling,” she said. “You can’t appreciate the life you have here because it is all you have ever known. But don’t worry about the decision to go or to stay; wherever you are together, that will be home.”

I wasn’t sure at the time that our short conversation was meaningful. With a few days gone by, I am so thankful to have made the decision to keep my seat.

A simple girl in London has many things to be thankful for.  Body shapes and sizes are so varied and not many people endeavor to hide their jiggles and wiggles.  The wind is always blowing in London and the hairstyles are evidence of that.  In fact, it seems to be rather cool to look a mess, all in all.  You have to dress in layers and wear comfortable shoes; it’s hot in the tube and on the bus, but it’s windy and cool on your walk.  Inevitably, all of the parts to your ensemble will not match.  Pieces of your outfit work together, maybe, but overall it’s just a hodgepodge of your personal style and there are so many different people here with so many different individual styles that you get the feeling that anything goes.  It’s a bit of a relief to feel removed from the pressures that I imagine at home–to be polished, sweat free, and perfectly accessorized.

We discovered a new neighborhood today, called Maida Vale.  It’s a very nice place–bordering on a not-so-nice neighborhood.  There are great quaint and quiet streets that feel a bit more like home than the flats above and in between shops that exist closer to the heart of London.  There were plenty of nannies shuffling their charges along the walk and children playing in parks.  We met with Scott and Vito this evening for drinks and then went to eat Indian food with Scott.  Wow.  Real Indian food, with an educational staff and great menu.

Tonight we say goodbye to our wonderful evening street noise (the morning street noise is not so lovely).  We do enjoy the sounds of laughter and merriment that continue past midnight each day. So, good evening and goodnight to our lovely neighbors!

Tomorrow we return to our wonderful family and friends in a place we currently call home.  I can’t wait to see you all.