Rainy London

It's been raining. Along with that wind, we had a helluva lot rain this weekend.
Pouring really.
It ruins stuff when it just keeps raining.
We were going to walk to the movies on Saturday night. It's a nice, half-hour walk to our local cinema, all flat, all along the high road.
London's pretty much all flat, which is really good for walking and cycling.
Anyway, couldn't do that, had to drive and hassle for a parking space, because it was just coming down in buckets when we went out to go.
And then it proceeded to come down pretty much all night long.
The last two mornings when we've woken up it's been pouring too. Rain pelting our attic bedroom windows.
This morning, not wanting to get up and not having to work, I worried about my son walking to the Tube station since all he has is one of those small black, collapsable umbrellas (the kind I keep losing ) -- and he's a big guy.
But then it actually stopped raining for a few minutes right when he had to walk to the station, so he was good.
And then it finally cleared up this afternoon. After two solid days of rain.
That's the thing here.
You give up hoping that it will clear up.
You don't give it a chance really.
Once it starts raining like that, you just think that's it.
And giving up hope is never good.
Because at a certain point, it actually does stop raining.

Wind

It's been blowing a gale here, folks.
Serious wind.
And it's changed our night life for the past few days.
Our bedroom is the attic of this old house. It's got three big windows carved into the roof.
It's our favorite room in the flat. It's what convinced us to rent the place. The room is big and flooded with light from the three windows.
I love having the windows open up there, and since it's generally the warmest place in the house, at the top there, that's not a problem. The windows are new and wooden and swivel all the way around, so they're easy to keep clean (gotta have clean windows here).
Out of the biggest of the three, while we're lying in bed, we watch the planes flying in and out of Heathrow -- and just the sky, really, which usually has quite a show going on here.
Out another, you see the gabled tops of the identical row of old houses across the street. And from the third, the back line of a row of brick houses from above, with their neat back gardens -- all tidy, symmetrical and equal.
When it rains, the rain plops right on top of the windows, right above you somehow. So you always know when it's raining if you're up there.
I like to have one particular window open at night.
But lately, it's just been too windy.
For the first time since we got here.
Blowing a gale.
The wind has been rattling the door of our bedroom, which one night, woke us up all night long until finally, we figured out we had to shut ourselves in to make it stop.
It also jars the two little trap-like doors to the loft, a big storage area, another reason we thought this flat wasn't too bad when we rented it.
I can feel the wind dropping now, after several days.
Good.
We can have the window open tonight.

Thanksgiving

Doesn't feel like Thanksgiving at all.
If we were home, the turkey would be roasting in the oven now, filling the house with its aroma. TV would be on, with football on its way.
The boys would be lying around the living room, waiting for the big chow-down, on their lap-tops, listening to their iPods -- the usual. Lots of Thanksgivings, we had guests. My husband and I would both be off work, in the kitchen.
Instead, I'm here alone in our kitchen, writing to you. My husband's at work. And my son's at his internship.
I could've done it myself, mind you. I mean I'm off, so I could've cooked a turkey and the three of us could've had it when they got home from work. My husband's coming home pretty early today, too, so he could've still done a lot of it, which he does brilliantly. (The Brits are amazing at roasting. That's their thing.)
But when my son said some young Americans from work had invited him to go out with them to a Thanksgiving do and did we mind if he went because he kinda fancied it, we really didn't.
But when he set off this morning in his football jersey (yes, he wore a Redskins jersey to work. But I think it's okay, because it is an American company, and Thanksgiving is nothing without football, as every American knows), the memories of Thanksgivings past came flooding back.
He was all excited though. At 23, you do not get bogged down by nostalgia. At least he doesn't.
And he knows people in the office will be talking to him just because he's wearing it. Which is always kinda fun. He can talk about the Redskins all day -- and how shitty they're playing this year.
My husband and I might go have sushi tonight.
It's our anniversary, if you can believe that. At least the one we celebrate. The day we met, and started dating.
31 Thanksgivings ago today.
My God. What we've been through.
He didn't know what Thanksgiving even was that day. He just got invited by an American woman we both knew and turned up in the evening, hours beyond when we ate, with a bunch of other people prepared for some big American "nosh-up," as he says.
Most of the food was gone by the time he got there.
But I was still there.
31 years.
An eternity.
Our entire lives.
And this has been our hardest year.

I admit it

Okay, it's official. I'm depressed.
Why else would I be sitting here writing to you at the crack of dawn? And often awake and panicked at the first break of light?
And anyway, if a guy says it, it must be true, right?
Read a moving first-person story yesterday in one of the British newspapers about a successful writer, husband and father of four kids who fell into a deep depression after moving to a big house in the country. (Not another country, folks, just THE country. I bet he still kept his car and his sofa.)
Anyway, it was a lovely, poignant story, because he told the truth. How he was embarassed to admit it, because so many people are dealing with huge economic issues now (like getting kicked out of their houses) and life-threatening illnesses.
I know exactly what he meant. That's how I've been feeling.
Not wanting to admit how I feel to anybody, making it feel even worse and more isolating, because, yes, people are dealing with life-threatening illnesses.
And I know my life-threatening illnesses. I buried two elderly parents not that long ago (by myself, pretty much) and saw my husband through one. I was on a first-name basis with my local hospital for quite awhile back in the States.
So yeah, that's such a hard battle, I know.
So I apologize to anyone who's reading this who has a life-threatening illness. I'm so sorry for your pain.
But then he wrote about his symptoms.
How he felt he had lost his moorings, how the rug of stability and comfort had been pulled out from under him.
Yep. That's my flying carpet that's never gonna land feeling.
How he woke up panicking every morning, and crying.
Yep. Yep.
How his heart raced in anxiety and fear for the future, particularly in the early morning.
Check.
How he felt there was no escaping it, no out.
How he withdrew from people he knew who probably wanted to help.
Check. Check. Check.
So. Now what?
The guy in the story had a complete collapse one night and his (loving and supportive) wife took him to the GP, where they put him under the care of a psychiatrist, and got him on the happy meds.
And then slowly he began to feel better. And now he's much better, seeing the joy in his life again. And that's why he was writing the story.
I could feel a book coming as I read. Why is it that millions of women are depresssed and it's just normal everyday shit and then when guys admit it, you can feel the six-figure book advance check landing as you read?
Is male depression somehow more dramatic? Or is it just that when they admit it, just that fact in itself is book-worthy?
Anyway, he was advocating the meds, to help one get over the hump, just for awhile, to jump-start your brain.
Don't want to go on any meds.
Think that my problem is situational.
Gave up too much.
For too little in return.
Don't like it here enough.
Too old to waste time living in places I don't like that much.
Want to get going with creating my next life in a place I want to create it. In my own house that I can make nice, like I like to do.
That's got a living room big enough for a Christmas tree -- and my two sons.
Get a car. Get a comfy sofa. Get a life.
I don't know. Stop feeling like this.

Another umbrella?

How many umbrellas can one person lose?
I mean really.
I'm up to about half a dozen now.
All little, collapsable black ones -- the ones that slip in your handbag.
Because you've got to have an umbrella here. Because you never know when it's going to be raining.
And despite what I said about it not raining that much (which it actually hasn't, in British terms), it still feels like it's rained a helluva lot. For me anyway.
But then I'm Italian.
Where it's hardly rained at all.
I keep leaving them on the Tube mostly. Or at the station, I guess, when I'm reading my free paper.
Even though I always tell myself when I put the dripping thing down, that this time, I'm just not going to forget it.
But then I do.
Geez.
And no way can you carry a big umbrella around all day.
So gotta get another one, just like all the other ones.
Before I realized that they sell them everywhere -- and that the price fluctuates madly -- I paid £14 for one, which is about $20. Lately, I was down to about £4.
When I got off work today, it was raining. Well, drizzling really. And it's a 10-minute walk to the Tube either way. So I got wet.
When I stepped outside the building and noticed it was raining, I told another woman standing there bundling up about how I keep leaving umbrellas everywhere.
And how I was friggin' sick of it.
She said I gotta go to the lost and found at the Tube station and tell them I've lost a black collapsable small umbrella.
They'll have hundreds of them, she said.
No problem.

Spin it dry, baby

America is the land of dryers.
Dryers. Just the word could make me orgasm.
If you don't have a dryer in the States -- and you're 55 years old like me -- boy, are you down on your luck.
Even some of the shittiest rentals have dryers in the States. And people always have access to a dryer somewhere -- at the laundromat, their apartment building's communal dryers, their mommy's house, wherever they're doing their laundry.
Because a dryer is fundamental to doing laundry in the States.
Not here.
Some people I know here have dryers -- but choose not to use them.
Imagine that. In a damp country like this.
Unthinkable where I come from.
In Italy, people don't have dryers either. But there, they have sun.
We've got what they call a washer-dryer in this flat.
Does both. Sure.
When I told one of my American friends, she said, "yeah, a washer-dryer. Doesn't wash; doesn't dry."
Ha ha ha.
Tried the drying cycle once. It involved water, as far as I could tell, which seemed counter-intuitive. But what do I know?
Clothes came out like shit. Didn't use it again.
Wash everything on the delicate cycle. That seems to come out the best.
And then hang it up on a clothes dryer in the spare room.
Need to do a load almost every day with the three of us.
One, because some of the stuff takes a couple days to dry.
Two, because there's not a lot of room on the clothes dryer. (Or the spare room).
I also drape jeans and sheets and towels and bathmats all over the banisters for all those steep steps we've got. You should see the place when I wash the sheets. Looks like a gypsy camp.
Would love to stay and chat with you.
But just heard the washer click off.
Gotta hang today's load.

British stairs

Are the knees the first to go?
My knees feel creaky. It can hurt to walk up the steep stairs in our flat here.
We have two sets of steep steps, one as soon as you walk in to get to the main level of the apartment and then another set leading to our attic bedroom.
This morning, before dawn, I slipped down the stairs from our bedroom as I was coming down to turn the heating down. I was hot.
And I slipped. And I'll get bruises on the back of my thighs.
Anyway, I may be getting too old for steep steps.
The house we were lucky to have sold in the States was all on one level -- a rambler. Our bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, dining room, kids' rooms -- all on the same floor. Downstairs was the basement and the laundry room. After the boys' left for college, days would go by without us going down there.
I remember when we bought it, 12 years ago, my husband liked it because it was all on one floor, saying it's easy to be all on one level.
I remember thinking that was absurd at the time, considering we were in our early 40s with school-aged boys. And then I kinda hankered after a Colonial, with its stairs right when you walk in.
Now, that we've sold our house, and we live in a flat with not one, but two sets of steep steps (why?), I know what he means.
It was really nice to be on one level.
I miss it.
And I think it's my future.