Yes, we made it!!! Here we are seeing our new house for the first time. I’ve now been in the UK for just over 24 hours. Everything about our flight went smooth as glass. I sure wish the Boyz could talk because I’d like to know what it was like for them traveling as cargo. They came out of customs happy and perky with no adverse effects from the travel as far as I can tell. I was able to see their kennels load while waiting to board in the terminal:

I felt like crying seeing them go up the ramp like that—how I wished to be able to talk to my dogs to tell them what was going to happen and to not be afraid. But now they have this lovely yard to hang out in, and today we are enjoying sunny warm weather too.

Paul looks really really good (how glad I am to be reunited with him at last!) and I’m happy to say that he thinks his horrific work life will be getting better soon. The house is wonderful. It is smaller than I visualized but very well laid out and I actually like the compactness of it. For two people our house in Boulder is really kind of large! The immediate neighborhood is super quiet and very green! There are large mature trees at the back of our yard which completely screen us from the yards of the houses back there.

The three of us are pretty jetlagged. We all woke up at midnight last night and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep until the sun came up of course! I’m used to this feeling since we’ve traveled overseas a lot and it’ll take me about 3 nights to get back to normal. The thing I dislike the most is the way I feel “stupid”—my brain just doesn’t want to work!!

I envy the Boyz’ ability to just fall back to sleep even when they woke up last night with me; they’ve been sleeping a lot this morning as I unpack all the things I sent over in the crate a month ago. We took a little walk to check out the pretty park in front of the house and some of the neighborhood streets. The area looks delightfully British—just the housing styles alone let me know we’re not in “Kansas” any more. I am glad; I really wanted to feel like I had moved to a foreign place, not just another place that looked like USA suburbia! Because I’m still in “stupid” mode I need to be extra careful crossing the streets—the traffic is coming from the wrong directions, gaaack!!

Well, I need to get back to unpacking, and then go take a nap!

Well…. actually…. not yet. Sorry!! I couldn’t resist the joke based on this photo. It’s the lake by my house, and this time of year we Coloradoans are heard saying that our state looks “like Ireland”. In just a few short months all the grass will turn brown when the spring rains are gone. So we love May and June for the green!

I’ve got 10 days to go! A teensy little voice in the back of my head has been screaming, “OMG OMG OMG OMG!” for a few weeks now. Like, are we crazy to just pick up and move like this?? Well this close to going, the voice in the front of my head still answers a resounding “NO!”. But right now it’s like the day before going on a vacation: thinking what have I forgotten… only multiplied a hundredfold!

All joking aside, I really am ready to GO! All the last details are just about taken care of. The dogs are booked on my British Airways flight (pretty much the last thing to obsess about because they wouldn’t let us book dogs onto flights until 2 weeks before). Paul’s nephew is set to move in on the day we leave next week.

All my work is done. The studio is packed up and cleaned up. Fido the Kiln has been unplugged (sob!). I will miss him for sure! I still hold out hope for getting a tiny kiln (which I must name Lil’ Yapper) while in the UK. But after the last year of nothing but glazing china, I honestly don’t care if I pick up the airbrush for a loooong time. I’m ready to run my fingers through raw clay and china slip instead. Native British slip at that! Wooo!

I probably won’t write again until next week when I log in from my new “studio” (aka the reception room) in our house in Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom. The Boyz and I could use your best wishes for a smooth, uneventful flight across the Atlantic.

(Should I rename my studio “Easterly Design” temporarily? I’ll certainly be east of the USA…!)

Cheers,
Karen