It's Almost Halloween. . .

And believe it or not, I don't even have costumes ready. They were going to be Alice and the (new) Mad Hatter, but I had a feeling this would happen (I would run out of time), and I didn't want to waste such awesomeness on lousy costumes. So they'll be those next year. And it will be AMAZING! Feel the power of my awesome costume-making abilities. Muahahaha!

The weather here has been nice for the last few days, as nice as weather in 50s, windy and overcast can be. Ha. At least it isn't in the 30s or 40s and overcast, windy and freezing. Especially because that means more park time for the kids.

Mr. A is due to start school on Monday, which is exciting! The way it works in this borough is we have to send an application to the council, which will then contact the schools and find an opening. They recommend you contact the council before filling out the application to find out which schools actually have openings. Which, if you know me, you know we did. They gave us the names of three schools. Two were secular, one was either Catholic or Church of England (CoE).

I put two of the schools down on our application, dropped it off IN PERSON on the 16th of September, and very stupidly expected a reply within two weeks. After about two weeks, I hadn't heard anything, so I called. I was told the woman handling Mr. A's case wasn't in, but that they had so many applications, it was going to take three weeks to get to his. Aaaand she just had to mention, "I don't think they have any openings at [school #1]." Uh, ok. You're the ones who told me they did.

M was getting really frustrated by this point, because Mr. A had already missed almost a month of school. Not to worry, M, I said. They'll get back to us in about another week.

TWO more weeks go by, and I call again. This time, I spoke to the woman in charge of Mr. A's application. She said, "We're just waiting to hear back about the two openings at [school #1]. Once we hear back from those at the top of the list, your son will be. . . .oh, wait. He's #30 on the list." The end. Seriously, it was silent. Sometimes I think I fail at interactions here. Finally, I said, "Well, that's not going to do. I've already told you, he's not in school at all. This is a problem. I don't care at this point WHERE you put him, but he needs to start school."

She said, "I see you also have down [school #2]. Oh! There's no waiting list there, and they've got an open spot for Year 4." If it were possible to strangle someone through the phone, this might have been a prime opportunity. They were going to leave him on a 30-person-long waiting list when the other school on our application had places the whole time?

(Mr. A took this one -- not bad for a little guy!)

I'll cover his actual new school on Monday, on his first day. It's fun.

FAQs and More Pictures

I have extra pictures, so I thought I'd throw them up with a FAQ. I get a lot of the same questions over and over (not just from people who read the blog), which isn't really annoying, but I thought it would be fun to put them up.

1. Why did you move to Paris (in 2004)?
A: Because I felt like it. I wish there was a more exciting reason than that. I get bored easily. Other places on my list were Australia, the British Virgin Islands, Germany, and Italy. I found a program teaching English that we could do in France, so that's where we went. It seemed like a fun idea at the time. I don't regret it.

2. Why did you leave Paris?
A: My mom died in 2004, and there were issues with my brother. Without getting into too much detail, we moved back to the States in 2006 take care of him and eventually became his legal guardians. We always intended for it to be a temporary move until he graduated from high school.

3. Why did you move to London
A: See #s 1&2. Essentially. I get bored easily and we knew we wanted to move back to Europe. Most of the big stuff fell on me last time because M, while he can speak and understand French, wasn't quite as helpful with bureaucratic things. I thought it would be easier on all of us if we moved to an English-speaking country. That left Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. We chose London.

4. Are you even going to work in archaeology?
A: Maybe. I don't really like having to work for other people, although I realize it's necessary. It kills all the fun in the job, though, thanks to the whole office politics nonsense. Why would I want to kill my love of archaeology? If I'm volunteering, I don't have to deal with that as much. But I won't discount working for pay. We'll see. :)

5. Why do you act so weird?
A: I don't know, but it's Mini-Minion's favorite question right now. Thank you, Lilo and Stitch.

6. Do you regret moving to London?
A: Nope. I like London. I don't know if I like it as much as Paris, but I like living here. I like public transportation SO much better than driving, with a few exceptions (Costco & Ikea runs, for example).

7. Why do you put up unrelated pictures on blog posts?
A: Ah, the picture thing is mostly for mine and M's (blood and extended) families, who don't get to see the kids very often. Maybe they're boring to everyone else? At least they break up the blog posts.

Driving in London Is So Much Fun!

I'm lying. It's not. Especially when you're driving a van and it's raining. But even less fun than driving a van in the rain in London? Sitting in the passenger seat while someone else who is nervous by nature drives a van in the rain in London.

(That's a lot of bubbles.)

I felt quite bad for M, because it was a terrible day to drive. We made it to the warehouse to pick up our boxes just fine, but we had to sit out in the rain for 20 minutes until they were ready for us. This caused a bit of a problem, because we only booked the van for 4 hours, and it took us 90 minutes to get to the warehouse. 90+90+20+we still have to pick up Mr. A's bed with this van = Not Good.

(This is our neighborhood park. It's small, but nice!)

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Why didn't you map this out first?" Well, we did. But maps don't take into account horrendous London traffic, compounded by road work, and of course, the lovely English rain.

We made it out with all of our stuff intact, thankfully. I had it palletized before we left, so I was pretty sure it would all be safe anyway. We frantically pulled all the boxes out of the shrink wrap and threw them in the back of the van, with M saying, "How are we going to fit that bed in here?"

Then we drove off to pick up Mr. A's new loft bed. With absolutely no time to spare. . .we got lost. Oh yes, we got REALLY lost. The guy ended up meeting us at the edge of his town and drove us back to his house so we could pick it up. M kept saying, "He's got a van. Why didn't he just bring the bed here?" I dunno.

When we got there, though, the guy was like, "Uh, I don't think it's going to fit in the back of that van." Doubt not, Mr. Englishman. I was raised on Tetris. So while the men fretted and M managed to drop a box on my foot AND accidentally slam my head into the side of the van, I repositioned the boxes and we slid the bed in on the top. It took less than 10 minutes total. Nice.

It didn't rain on the way home, so we actually got to appreciate the Essex countryside. UH-mazing. Seriously gorgeous. We were pretty pleased with ourselves until we hit traffic and ended up 90 minutes late dropping off the van. Fail.

By the time we unloaded everything and carted it upstairs (including a box of solid books -- haha, WHAT was I thinking?), we were pretty over the whole moving thing and vowing never to do it again (until next year, right?).

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Look at it for a few seconds. Notice anything? (Other than the blurriness! Our lens got a pebble in it and wouldn't turn correctly for a few weeks.) Do you see them?

Yes, this is a playground. With headstones in the background. It is essentially a cemetery/playground. Ahhh. . .and how could anyone NOT love Europe?

We live next to a cemetery. Well, we live next to a church. And if you climb the wall in our garden, you can see the tombstones, because they're literally next door. But it could be worse. There's a little cottage for sale down the way, and the windows in the kitchen face the cemetery. I asked M, "Do you think that affects resale? I mean, seriously. How badly would you freak out if you were doing dishes at night and saw someone walking through there?" No thank you, ma'am. It's an old cemetery, too, which I think just makes things even creepier.

Back to THIS cemetery, though. Mr. A was playing in it, happy as a lark, for about 15 minutes. The first pictures is when he was completely unaware of his surroundings.

Hey, Mr. A. What's behind you?

At 8, though, it's not enough to want to leave. The playing in a cemetery (and living next to one) adds to his 'street cred.' It's creepy enough to pretend shiver over when he's on the phone with his cousins, but overall, he doesn't bring it up.

It's Not Me, It's You & the Summary

(York House Gardens, Twickenham)

Haven't you ever wanted to say that to someone? I want to say it to people all the time. "Yeah, really, it's not me, it's you." Well, I got to say that to the property management company we were working with, and it was actually a lot of fun after the two weeks of hell they put us through trying to get into the place in Soho.

Obviously it didn't work out. Obviously we spent more than we should have on hotels. But obviously we're still alive, and we're still in London, so we did find a place to live.

We're in Mortlake. Where's Mortlake? Exactly. It's a few miles away from London city center, in the southwest part of Greater London. We're wedged between Barnes, East Sheen, Kew and Richmond. Hammersmith is pretty close on the bus. It's definitely not Soho out here, but really, it's probably better for the kids that way.

(Twickenham)

Trying to get utilities transferred and set up turned out to be hilariously and irritatingly complicated. We went about a month without internet, which, when you work online, doesn't work so well. We ended up spending a lot of money on pay-as-you-go internet that restricted our time and data usage.

Another thing that ended up being irritatingly complicated was signing up Mr. A for school. As I type this, he still hasn't gone. He's going to be pretty far behind.

In the meantime, my grad program started, and I love it, but it is hard to balance grad school, work, the kids, the house, and time with M. Who wants to hear more complaining, though? I'm throwing up some posts tonight with pictures from our "missing" time.