(Sort of) Wild At Heart

My friend L.K. from NC made a teasing comment today about how "wild" I've gotten over here in Ireland. I know she was (mostly) joking, but the fact is that there is a kernel of truth in what she said. There's something about having made such an earth shattering (to me) life change that makes it that much easier to try things and contemplate possibilities that would never have fit with my old self.

The pre-Ireland, pre-blogger me was caught in a rut of her own making, and she knew it. I could have stayed in my mostly comfortable, largely happy life and kept on doing the same things on and on. Eventually, my sense of being boxed in and living inside skin just a size too small may have faded away and left me, and that probably would have been ok. But, you know what? I like doing more than ok. I like finding myself chancing things that I would have pooh poohed or talked myself out of (I'm a great overintellectualizer) or just been too darn scared to imagine before. The box, the limits, I'd created for myself and talked myself into accepting was very familiar and very comfortable.

This? Isn't comfortable. Not at all. And sometimes I really feel it. I miss my townhouse, family, friends and the other great things that surrounded me in Raleigh. I find myself flashing to the most random images sometimes... being in my car driving down the highway at 74 mph (if you keep it less than 10 under the speed limit, the cops probably won't stop you); meeting up with the Friday Night Girls for Maker's Mark and random conversations about bodily functions; spending a quiet Friday night till late in Barnes & Noble with a truckload of books and something sweet from their cafe (a bookstore open till 11 pm!); long, reflective conversations with E.J.; the final moments of the Maundy Thursday church service before Easter; getting my semi-regular massage from John (best hands ever!) while Narada-ish muzak plays in the background. But, the happy truth is that I'm still glad I made the move. On the face of it, my life here is pretty normal, but just being forced out of my routine and forced to examine my assumptions and beliefs about myself has been incredibly liberating.

So yeah, pre-Ireland me would never have put her thoughts out on the web for anyone to see, hosted strangers in her house, chanced making friends online, flirted madly via text, or considered getting inked. Considering my previous comfort zone, that is pretty darn wild. But then, as I face the last few weeks before the big 4-0, I'm thrilled I took the chance to see what life could be like outside the box.

Saga of the Monkey Cat and other updates

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted an update. Sorry folks, I've just been busy, busy, busy!

OK, so as of our last installment, I was happily anticipating the end of work at the Job From Hell (JFH) and of starting to get packed up to make my move. Thankfully, the end of work came quickly enough for there to be no dead bodies, though it has been pretty surreal being unemployed. It's only been 3 weeks, but I've never been out of work for so long before! It's been a real battle to not wallow in self-imposed guilt for not packing fast enough and for "wasting time". In my own defense though, it's pretty hard to push myself to pack consistently when I haven't known exactly when my leave date is. This also makes it hard to deal with people's excited but frustrating (because I just don't know!) and inevitable question - "So, when are you leaving?"

My understanding of the time frame had been that I would be getting my Irish work permit just about.... oh, like NOW! And, had been expecting to buy a ticket to fly out at the end of June. However, I've fallen afoul of the bureaucracy gods, and I can't even blame the government this time! I got a call from the recruiter yesterday letting me know that the Work Permit Authority didn't receive the application till June 7th and so anticipate that it will be another month!! That is so not what I was expecting to hear. What this tells me is that my new agency's HR department sat on it for almost 4 weeks (!) between when they got it from the recruiter with all of my information, accompanying documents, and Fedexed signature and when they deigned to submit it. What the heck were they doing with it all that time?

So, I'm probably not going to get the work permit for another 4 weeks!! What do I do with myself that long? I certainly didn't plan for this long of a "vacation" and, if I'd known they were going to sit around scratching their ***, I would have stuck around at the JFH for another 2 or 3 weeks and made some much needed money! That's the other big problem, I thought I was being cautious in my estimates, but did not budget for this kind of delay.

So, long story short, yesterday was a bad day. Today is better - I vented to my sister and cousin, and did a not so quick and quite intense supplication to the man upstairs for some major guidance (and maybe a nice lottery windfall). No windfall yet, but I have decided on a couple of things. I'm going to take some friends up on their invitation to their beach house for a couple of days next week, will now be packing like a madwoman to completely clear out my house by the end of next week and leave it available for new tenants starting July 1st (I'm already selling off some stuff through Craigslist - the dining room table goes tonight), and plan to trek down to Miami for the week of July 4th (Independence Day) to hang out with family and friends and eat cheap :-) In the meantime, there's still a million and one things to do. I think I'll be taking up my friends on the offers of packing help in the next several days and making a few trips to the storage place.

Thankfully, my sweetie, the above referenced Monkey Cat (as a kitten, she looked just like a lemur), does have a place to stay for the 6 months before I can bring her over to Ireland. It's not free (my cousin's daughter "decided" to get asthma, so no free family visitation for the MC), but is still cheaper by far and a whole lot more humane than the worst case scenario, which would have been placing her in a kennel. Small wire cages and once a day free time, what a nightmare that would have been for her! In the meantime, I've gotten the initial microchipping and extra rabies booster done (more money draining from the overloaded wallet) and we're now waiting a couple more weeks before I have to take her back to the vet to get the blood sample, which I have to pay to be sent to a special Kansas (?!) lab to verify that her blood levels are optimal. After that, nothing to do but wait out the 6 month holding time before I can finish up the paperwork to bring her over.

Here's a picture of my baby. It's a little blurred, so it doesn't really do her total and complete cuteness justice!



Pretty much the last thing that's still hanging in the air for me is my car. Still no takers for assuming my lease, so I went ahead and listed it for sale yesterday. I would probably make enough to cover VW's payoff amount. Even if not, the remaining amount shouldn't be higher than it would be for me to continue to pay for the lease for several more months. We'll see.

Thankfully, not everything has been stressful. I have had a couple of extremely fun Bon Voyage parties (yeah, me!) and had a chance to hang out with some great friends at the local Irish pub "practicing" :-) I actually have another party on Saturday. Eating deep fried whitefish and hushpuppies while sitting out on the deck in the middle of the country. Darn, I really love the South sometimes! :-)

Ups and downs

Another of life's little humiliations: Volkswagen has kidnapped my car for the next week while they wait for the new version of an obviously defective ball bearing, so I'm driving a loaner. Lucky me that the local dealership's advertising strategy is based on egomania. For the next week, I'll be driving around town in a car with their logo and the title "Loaner" emblazoned in foot-high letters in the rear window! Now, I not only look like a geek, but I also can barely see what's going on behind me. Grrrr. If they'd listened to me 6 months ago when I complained (admittedly in girl terminology) of the "growly" engine sound, this would have already been taken care of!

Went to a reading by one of my favorite authors tonight. David Sedaris rocks! I didn't even mind sitting alone across the auditorium from my friends. We spent the whole hour and a half drive home repeating back our favorites of his stories and laughing helplessly anyway. My favorite ever? - 6 to 8 Black Men. A Christmas story with a twist!

Unfortunately, going to hear David meant I couldn't go to Maundy Thursday service tonight. Maybe I can find a Good Friday service tomorrow?

I got my first sign today that someone other than family and friends has read my blog. I firmly believe that this now moves me out of the realm of online diary cum newsletter to (self)published author. Literary world, here I come! But, uhhm, where's my advance?

My reader assures me that I'll still get to watch my favorite TV shows in Ireland, albeit a little delayed. Sweet! Even better, apparently there are hairdressers who know how to do black hair in the Cork area. Does this mean I don't have to go afro?

Fool me once

I have egg on my face. I am so not up on numbers and money issues! It turned out that the amount VW had listed as the residual owed on my lease isn't actually the "payoff" value. That's $10,000 more! So, selling it isn't an option. I'm going to have to go with the swap-a-lease option. Not as easy. More fuss. Sigh.

Better than a funeral

I'm getting to like this idea of moving abroad more and more. It's like having a funeral, only better! So many friends telling me how much they'll miss me. People making an effort to come and visit me, take me out to dinner, ply me with drinks, promising (threatening?) to come and visit once I get to Cork! And, unlike a funeral, I get to be there to enjoy all the eulogies! :-) Seriously though, I guess it takes a big shift like this to make it clear to you how you're appreciated by the people in your life. I should have done this years ago!

Practicing stick shift continues whenever I have the nerve ... actually, at least once a day. I've been doing it by halves. I haven't gotten a chance to practice in my friend's old Beemer again (she assures me it's still running, at least as well as it was before, so I didn't really kill it!), but I realized that my Passat has a Tiptronic transmission which gives me the option of manually shifting the gears when I'm in Drive. I've been practicing on the way home from my practice, and anytime traffic isn't too hectic. It's oddly seductive. Now that the initial terror has faded and I can practice this piece by piece (i.e., no clutch), it's much more interesting than I'd expected. Maybe I'll even come to prefer a manual transmission, who knows?

More good news about the car situation. I found out that I'm not stuck with trying to get someone to take over my lease on the Passat. I can sell it! Volkswagen doesn't care - as long as I get enough to pay them off, they don't give a hoot. Such a relief for me! I'm thinking I might just wait till the last week before I leave and sell it to CarMax. No muss, no fuss. I won't make much (or much of any) profit, but it'll be off my hands. Whew!

So, I've pretty much told everybody about The Big News. The only people still in the dark are my supervisors/administration at my day job and my private practice clients. They won't get the news until all the paperwork is finalized - I'm only waiting on the psychology/government folks in Ireland to approve my training and degrees ("Yes sir, I'm a real psychologist and I might actually know what I'm doing") and then I'll be eligible for my work visa and can start winding things down here.