Immeasurably More

Saturday (18 Days) 07:00    The alarm rings.  I (eventually) get up. 10:00    I make rice krispie treats, pressing red white and blue stars onto the tops.  Rice Krispies - gone.  2 open bags of mini-marshmallows - gone. 11:00   I hand wash sweaters and dresses and lay them out around the living room to dry.  Nikki later suggests this was not one of my better ideas. 13:00   Nikki arrives for lunch and to help me get the flat ready for Sunday's party.  She brings a portable projector and a bluetooth BOSE speaker.  We put all my electronics into their original packaging and seal the boxes.  We see three remote controls laying on the coffee table and un-seal the boxes.  We test the projector and speakers.  It takes a couple of attempts, but everything is in working order. 14:00    The Sainsbury's delivery man arrives with my grocery order.  He informs us that h...

When I come into the room, half a dozen men are sitting at two rows of small tables for breakfast.  Each has his back toward a wall and faces another traveller across two tables.  I am the only one who sits with my back to the room so that I can watch the river flowing past St. Andrew's Cathedral. Something in us wants to be able to see what approaches us; open space at our backs leaves us less prepared to deal with the Unexpected. I order porridge again this morning and wonder what I will eat in Tulsa.  I wonder whether I will have too much or too little free time. Whether I will adjust to hot weather.  Whether I will be able to cook for two.  Whether I will gain weight when I am no longer walking everywhere I go. How I will cope with a life without walls.

I've been telling people for several weeks now that I can be in the UK for 14 days past the end of my employment.  I based this claim on the Home Office policy that Leave to Remain in the UK is granted for the duration of a my employment sponsorship plus 14 days. Wanting to confirm that restriction before I make my final travel plans, I was doing some research and discovered that I'm actually allowed an additional 60 days in the country after the Home Office has been informed that I'm no longer employed and decided I can't stay. So, no hurry to get out of the country then.

Being unemployed in the US means not only no income, but also no company provided health insurance.  Somewhere in my life, I've internalized the idea that it is unwise to be without health insurance.  It's risky.  If something bad happens, you could lose everything. I have mostly ignored Obamacare to this point in time, because as a resident of the UK, I had the NHS at my disposal in addition to Dr. Who re-runs which interest me more than American politics.  But  now that I'm returning, jobless, to the US, I have no choice but to figure out what Obamacare means for me. The first thing it means for me: coverage starts on the first of the month.  If I want to be covered in March, I have to apply by the 15th of February.  If I apply after that, my coverage will start in April.  Since I arrive back in the US in March, I decided to get my application in early so that I would have no gaps in coverage; I'd go straight from the NHS to fully insured in the US. To thi...

On Friday, a man is coming to see me.  He is going to look around my flat and tell me how much it will cost for his company to put all my stuff in a crate, put it on a ship, and take it off again in Boston. So far, I have been calm about my packing.  One (small) box a day.  One trip to the charity shop each week.  Give away books and assorted things at every opportunity.  A slow steady 6 week plan, designed to end on the last day of February, my last day of work, so that I can have 2 weeks of vacation time to see England and Ireland before I go to Tulsa. But now I have an appointment with this man.  And my internal packing clock has irrationally reset itself to Friday.  I won't be finished by Friday.  I won't be organized  by Friday.  FRIDAY IS TOO SOON! Driven by this panic, I packed two and a half boxes today, instead of one. And then, I ran out of packing tape. Enforced calm.