however

So, to counterbalance my previous post, I have been compiling a list of things that I will not miss about London and things to look forward to in LA.

1. I will not miss the noise of the Somali orphanage upstairs. Ok, so it's probably not a Somali orphanage, but it IS a Somali family who seem to babysit or something, because sometimes many many children are there and they are really amazingly loud, running, yelling, falling down, getting yelled at, crying, etc.

2. I will not miss the people who constantly ring my doorbell looking for someone else. I used to think that the woman who did it a few hours after promising she would never do it again was the worst, but that was before the man who rang my [blaring, horrible sounding] bell twice at 4:45am the night I had just come home from the whole month of July away.

3.

Sinks like this. How am I supposed to wash and rinse dishes like this? Who thought of this? People who waste whole basins of water to rinse every little thing? People who have servants? People who in fact don't use water? I don't get it.

4. Paying utilities, etc to keep two flats in two countries afloat.

5. No screens in windows, and the concomitant big ol' bugs that sometimes come in to visit.

There are more. I'll post this for now... more will be added

one week

It's a quiet day here by myself in my flat in London. Probably the last quiet day here because in one week I will be departing here, flying out for Providence by way of Reykjavik and Boston and Heathrow (not in that order). Many plans have been made about this move and the madness of the weeks coming up. The flat itself though doesn't yet look like much is changing. A hard but silent rain has just come and gone, leaving a chorus of drops tinkling from the black iron of the back stairs beyond my kitchen window. The sky is a uniform bright white-- even the color of the cloud cover barely heralded the arrival of a sudden rain shower. The glorious British summer we've all been gushing about here ended a few days ago. On the day I traveled back from Germany to London and since then it's been much cooler and unpredictable-- sunny one minute, windy, suddenly cold, none of those weather features seeming to have any effect on each other.
Just now even-- the window has grown a warmer bright sunshiny color, belying the raindrops still clinging to the panes.
This is it. I have been cooking up the food in the pantry-- I made a delicious barszcz (if I do say so myself) fortified with the last of the dried porcinis. I am trying to get up the fortitude to start writing up the ads for the kitchen and house items I'm planning to sell. I should probably pull out another box and pack up some books. I have to click over into the mindset of relentlessly dismantling this little nest I've been building up over the year. The invisible moving preparations were hard enough to do-- the visible ones for some reason really distress me. Every time my efficiency disease kicks in and I try to leave all that to the last possible second I can keep everything as it is and then pack pack pack-- but invariably I underestimate how much time all this will take. I should have sold things earlier, I should have done without a few more days...

Maybe this is a symptom of this other problem I have right now: I don't want to leave. Obviously I'll be back, obviously big awesome new adventures are right around the corner, obviously things are great. But obviously... I don't want to go.