29th August, again

 I've been wailing for some time about how the writing thing has completely seized up once again, this time for months, but have instead just focused on my embroidery projects.  But then the growing embroidery interests also lost it's fizz and appeal, just in the last month.  The one thing I have been managing to do, like in the olden days of my constant transition lifestyle, is a tapestry which makes no creative demands on me.  It's like the cross stitches I used to do but it doesn't have a cross stitch - all the stitches run one direction.   I listen to podcasts while working on it and that has become a favourite activity.

Today, late afternoon, I was browsing on FB on my phone and the "look what you posted last year" thing came up and reminded me that last year I had posted a blog - and noticed that it was on the same date as the last blog I'd written two years before as well.  Well.   I just have to continue the trend, don't I?  Hopefully FB will continue to remind me because otherwise, it would have been a two year thing and that's it.  Maybe it should be.

I'm sitting here in a house which has people in it, which is unusual anymore, as Katherine and Michael are here for the weekend.   We had just finished the family phone call which has started happening on Saturdays since the lockdown.  Katherine and I are usually in our separate houses in England and Scotland, AnneMarie is seven hours behind in Utah and Erica is eight hours in Oregon, so we are getting ready for dinner and they are getting up for the day when we usually talk.  We usually have four little screens on the House Party app - but today!! we only had two!   Because Katherine is here with me and Erica is visiting AnneMarie.  They called from the Leishman cabin up in the back hills of Utah, where they are spending the weekend.

This year is 2020 and it is truly doing many people's heads in.   Last year I wrote about the Fed Ex and postal system, and a proper rant it was.  I'm still fuming and have managed to avoid using Fed Ex ever since.  I determined at the time to not use them again - and get out of the US mail system box that we've had for ten years too.  I'm about ready to make that shift, finally, a year later, due to the antics I got up to this last month.   

On 29th of July - exactly a month ago, Dave got the call from work where he had been on furlough for four months by then - and told he was being made redundant.  Fired.  From the job he has held for 30 years while living in three countries and two states.   On the same day, my daughter Anne-Marie sent a link to the latest house in Utah she had looked at, saying she really really liked this one, pictures didn't do it justice.  I didn't get this until the next morning, of course, but thought the timing was interesting.   I've had her looking for a house in Salt Lake City area, for a few months, after getting some strong directions it would be a good idea to buy one there.  Even though Dave and I have no interest in actually living in Utah again.  It was also time to get all of our household belongings which have been in storage for 20 years, back out into the daylight.  So her instructions had been to find a house which had a big garage or some sort of space where a bunch of furniture and boxes could be fitted.

I was actually on my first trip since the start of lockdown in April.  I was going up to Scotland to finally visit Katherine and get some help on starting a tweed jacket with a seamstress I'd met up there the year before.   I had planned to be gone for a week.   So I leave my stunned husband, reeling with his job shock plus pictures of a house I was thinking looked good, to his own devices and company.   This is after four months of constantly being at home together, not leaving the house, sometimes for days on end.

While I was in Scotland we continued discussing the house and made contact with the real estate agent, who had probably given up hope that this young woman he'd been showing around houses for months was ever going to come through, and started sending separate messages to which he always quickly responded.  The next Thursday, exactly a week after Dave had gotten The Phone Call of Redundancy,  before I'd even come back home, we put an offer in on this house.  I drove home the next day, my head really beginning to spin.

We stayed focused on all the ins and outs and questions and demands and decisions of directions to go in - on buying this house for the next two weeks - and I didn't do much else.  Dave had a meltdown when he realised it was a 'duplex' or as they say in England, a 'semi-detached' - after we'd put the offer in and were doing negotiations.   Interestingly, while there has always been a stigma attached to duplexes - they are usually rentals for one thing - in the US, there is no such stigma to them in England.  They are not as valuable as a stand alone house, of course, but they have more prestige than terrace housing and I've even seen mansions and very large houses built in this fashion here.   So, while we have the English mentality about them now, it was another thing to suddenly be facing buying one in the US.  But we got past that block and a couple of other concerns were alleviated and the more we looked at this house, the more appealing it became.   It had four bedrooms - which was one more than I'd been hoping for and then half the basement was completely unfinished with just concrete walls.   And a perfect size into which to stash everything from storage.  It was the weirdest thing - a complete house, with new features and decorated, furnished kitchen, carpets, blinds, etc - and a big empty storage space almost designed for purpose for us!  Another fun thing was it was exactly AnneMarie's age and had been built in 1996.

On 19th of August, we signed and sent the money but it didn't get registered until the 20th.   So on the 20th of August 2020 - we buy a house in the face of Dave losing his job.   You can't make this up and be believed!    On the 25th, which I thought would be Dave's last pay day (it won't be though), we had some movers clear out the storage unit and dump it in the basement.   Erica and Brian (and Baci, their dog), drove into town the same day.

I now have an address in the US which will become my new mailing address and I can finally get rid of the mailbox service which has driven me nuts several times through the years.   I have a real presence in the states again, rather than a fake one and a deep storage one.

So while on the surface, it looks like nothing much is going on in my life, major tectonic plates have been moving underground.  I think my body is slowly processing all this, thankfully in a way which is not overwhelming me, and that's why it has been okay to just be laying around all day, rather uselessly, but also why there is no energy for creating or writing or handiwork.

We've also realised that my life has dramatically changed for the last four decade changes - due to Dave's work.  His company sent him to Egypt in 1990 and then to England in 2000.   In 2010, he got fired from the American expat system and moved his status from US to UK based, even though it was still with the same company.  He got a big paycut in the process and we applied for and got British nationality.   And now, here in 2020 - still not sure how this is going to play out but his company has forced another big move on us.  And so it goes.   If I don't write again for another year, you can be assured it will be from an entirely different place.   That's all I know.   

My Guinea Fowl Best Friends

I had a pair of guinea fowl move into my back garden and live for a couple of years in about 2015.  They were a couple who were devoted to each other and I spent much time observing and even being involved in their routines.  They first appeared in the field near a small lake out back and took about a week to gravitate toward our house and yard where they finally settled.  They can get the silliest expressions ever on their face when excited, with a kind of goggle eyed, jiggle around on a bouncing neck which I think keeps them doomed to disregard when smartness of birds are considered - but I found them to be quite savvy and with defined personalities. 

They would arise with the dawn and settle into feeding across the large, wild patch that sits out back, mown occasionally but never otherwise cared for.  We first noticed them sneaking up onto the patio to look at the tv through the window and eventually, they became comfortable enough that the patio became part of their routine, even though they never let me get near them outside.   I never fed them. After a munch around for a few hours, they would come up and have a groom and nap right outside the window next to where I had breakfast. They would murmur and chat with each other while fluffing and smoothing various feathers.  I put a chair there, so they had a place to roost next to the window and I often had a meal with a headless bird sitting next to me as they tuck their heads in under their back feathers for the nap. At some point in the day, they would gravitate around to the front of the house where they’d spend some time pecking on the frosted window (and wooden ledge) next to the front door and chirping.   They were definitely as fascinated with watching us as we were them and after some months, I considered us to be friends. 

We grew concerned for them during the winter months, especially after we found out they were originally from hot climates (Africa) but they somehow kept right on going even when it was freezing or blowing up a raging windstorm.  They tended to hover around the house even more as they drew comfort from all the heat that would escape our very drafty house. They lived through two winters with us.

 In the late afternoon, after one last graze session, they would fly up into the lower branches of the birch trees at the back of the garden and settle in by sundown to sleep.   This wasn’t always a simple process as sometimes they’d jostle and change places and even branches and one would try and snuggle up and the other would say “not tonight dear” but they usually ended up quite close in the end, and headless, go to sleep, safe from foxes. 

         They were good guardians who would start screeching if visitors came around but luckily, this wasn’t often.   However, one day, the big black vicious guard dog from next door got loose and bounded into our yard, chasing the birds.  He’d long been frustrated with having to merely watch while they grew accustomed to grazing closer and closer to his fence line and was determined to pounce one.  They started squawking and flying all over the place and I ran out and started screeching with them and trying to drive the dog away. My foot landed squarely in a gift he deposited for us.   After the commotion was over, one of the birds was missing and I sat sadly with the remaining one, watching and hoping, for a couple of hours until he re-appeared. They would actually nuzzle and greet each other with great affection at such times. 

  Wind storms and then winter when it would get really cold, really made me worry but they seemed to get through them.   One time there was such a fierce wind storm with rain bulleting down that the bird (she was a widow by then), was unable to stand on the patio and I watched her being tipped almost upside down before she gave up and ran for the trees.  I fretted all night and was so relieved when she appeared unscathed the next morning, I almost went out and nuzzled her myself.

  The larger one, the dominant white, turned out to be female and the smaller grey was the chap and we learned this in a most interesting way.   One night, after sunset, my husband told me the birds were out back acting really peculiar. This being after their usual bedtime, I came running.  We have a large backyard - maybe a hundred yards wide and the two birds were utilizing the whole space. They were running and flying low, back and forth, taking turns in chasing each other.  The white bird would settle and let the grey catch up and then it would try and pounce on her at which point, she would squawk and peck him and run off. Then he would circle around bewildered and she’d come up to him and peck him again and run off and he’d give chase and the whole thing kept going on and on - for at least 45 MINUTES.  It finally grew too dark for us to see anything but was continuing. We were in hysterics with the show but didn’t know what was going on. I checked google and found a man who owned a lot of guinea fowl and was describing their habits. He then went on to try and explain their mating habits but confessed he’d never actually seen it so didn’t have exact details.  We were watching them try and have sex!! I sent him a message to say that the reason he’d never seen them was because they’d chosen the darkness, after dusk, to do the deed, when normally, they’d be up in their roost asleep. We don’t know if they were ever successful - didn’t seem to be on our watch - and no little chicks ever appeared. It was a sad, sad day for me and the white one, when the grey one disappeared for good.  She actually carried on for a few more months alone and I found her to be a great example for me, who was struggling myself, on how we need to just do this sometimes. And then she went too. Gone but never Forgotten.