Wayfaring stranger

Yeah, so not to seem all needy and stuff, but 20 visitors in one day is just shameful. A girl more paranoid and blessed with sufficient sleep would wonder what happened to all of her blogging friends. I know what happened - I got pregnant three years ago and a huge chunk of them jumped ship. Things just ain't like they used to be. Wah wah wah, etc etc.

Ok, I'll try and pull myself together. I'm reading a lot of books lately, so perhaps I shall make them my new friends, harrumph. Please don't remind me that I'm so shit at commenting that most of you probably don't even remember my name - we'll just brush that under the carpet, ok? I'm digressing again, aren't I...I'm going to do a real post, I promise.

Do you recall that we were going to move to Canada? Weeeell, it appears as if that's off the table now. Once we submitted our final paperwork (prior to the required medicals), The Dude started to haunt ex-pat boards and ended up frightening himself out of it. I remained positive for a whole day or two before his negativity made me second guess my own optimism, and now I'm all, "Booo! America's hat wants to keep the non-Canadian down, booo!!" He is of the opinion that Canadian employers are unlikely to hire non-Canadians, and that job security is a foreign concept. I suspect that these perceptions originate from posts on the ex-pat forums from embittered, narrow-minded people with a rigid sense of what they perceive to be "right" or "wrong". Most of the women on my American expats in the UK list are provincial shrews who just cannot bear to accept that life is not the same in the UK as it is in the US. I imagine a lot of British people living in Canada are the same way.

With this recent development, our perspective has shifted and now I am looking at re-patriation. I check a specific job listing site as if that itself is my job, and I may even be applying for a position in my home state within the next couple of days. I'm exceptionally nervous about the prospect, as it dawned on me yesterday that I've never had a "real" job in the US. I have only ever worked a standard Monday through Friday job in the UK. My familiarity is with UK working culture, and it's bizarre to think that I would likely feel like an outsider in my own country's culture.

This isn't just an update about our migration plans. I acknowledge that only a couple of you have been marking my whereabouts with drawing pins connected with string on a large map on the walls of your living rooms. All of this talk of living here, living there, and all points in between makes me worry that I am a bit too migratory for my own good. Will I ever settle down and believe that I want to stay in that place?

I didn't have a transient childhood - we moved to a different local school district when I was 11, and that was it. Due to money issues and my Dad siphoning my college fund to support his drinking and gambling, I had to stay at home while I went to university. Toward the end of my studies I was desperate to the point of insanity to get out of the town in which I grew up, and I moved to the UK after graduation.

In the nearly seven years that we've been here, we've always had this goal of living in our ideal house in the perfect location. In the first couple years that could have been in the UK, until reality set in and it occurred to us that we could never have that life here barring a large financial windfall or 24 hour prostitution. After that, Canada came into the picture. The rambling house on the fringes of suburbia started to take shape, and my chickens called Ted and Dot became a realistic possibility. So much of our lives in the past seven years has been, "When we have our proper house..."

I've reached a point now where I desperately need to get out. I want that life now, in Canada or the US, and though for years I was content to cheerily say, "We'll have that one day!" Polyanna has done packed her bags and hopped on the earliest red-eye. I'm nearly 31 folks, I ain't getting any younger.

Now I'm concerned that this next step, if it takes place, will still not be enough. Am I always chasing a perceived happiness which isn't remotely steeped in reality? I know it's not all about material goods, and honestly, what makes me look forward to this hoped-for future is that P will have a big yard to run around in, trees to climb, outdoor toys to play with, and a house big enough that she isn't always in the same room as her parents. Here she lives on the top floor of our building, has no garden, and can only spend time in one of a few rooms. This poor kid strokes out when a friend of hers produces a bike and rides it around an open space. It's a completely foreign concept for her, the poor mite.

I hope you're still reading a couple of years from now when I'm ensconsed in my nice house, airing my firmly middle class concerns like the irritating prat that I am. I just hope I don't get pregnant before then - my only reader will be my brother. Can you imagine the embarrassment...