Noah is on his way. He will be landing in London in a few more hours. He has a long layover (I will get the knack of scheduling travel…probably by the time we stop traveling…) and then he comes up to Inverness this evening. He will arrive after the kids are asleep tonight.

And we have plans to go to the seaside tomorrow with the cousins, weather permitting. Given that we’ve seen hail several days this week and SNOW it may or may not happen. It’s supposed to be 10 degrees for 3 hours today and otherwise chillier than that. Tomorrow at 6am (when I wake up) it’s supposed to be a whopping 2 degrees. Holy cheese toast. I’m not bringing a fucking bathing suit. I would not go in the water unless it was 25+ outside. Forget that noise. Tomorrow’s bleepin high is forecasted as 8. We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

(If the translation is rough for you: 8 C is 46 F. So this is forking cold. 25C is 77F.)

I like the “30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is chilly and 0 is ice” rhyme. It helped me get the perspective well.

Welcome to Scotland!

Could I live with this? I think so. Eldest Child has been running around outside in leggings and a t-shirt proclaiming herself far too hot for a sweatshirt.

We got moving so slowly yesterday. We didn’t get our butts in gear to go visit the cousins till after 3pm. That’s unlike us. I am in a lot of pain and the kids and I are tired. I scheduled a Thai massage for Tuesday. I am thrilled. And I have a more standard massage scheduled for the 12th. Bless Noah’s job and our ability to pay for this care. I haven’t had a massage since Hawaii. It’s been over 6 weeks.

Once again, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that Jenny’s husband is helping us get groceries delivered so I don’t have to push all of it up a mile long trek up a hill. My wrists were getting seriously fucked up. I was having to wear the braces to push the stroller because bones were popping out of joint and it hurt so much. I am in much less pain thanks to his help. (You have to have a UK based credit card to use the website.)

We had dinner with Jenny’s family last night and her husband ate with us. It was my first conversation with him. He’s not what you’d call a “people person”. He lived alone for most of his adult life and worked at home. He likes quiet. He likes his own company very much. But he’s quite charming and funny when he decides to put up with us annoying humans. It was a real treat. I get why Jenny likes him so much given that she strongly prefers her own company and quiet as well.

I am blessed that these two quiet, reserved people think I’m worth putting up with. That feels like quite an honor. It’s funny how different it feels interacting with them than hanging out with other extroverts. I feel less bubbly, less like I have to perform and be entertaining in order to get them to like me. It’s about as close as I get to understanding the phrase “a comfortable silence”. I think if I lived here I would get to the point of visiting and bringing a book and sometimes we would sit in a room quietly and not talk for a lot of the visit and that would be ok too. That’s… not something I experienced much in California. I would have felt like I was letting people down. Jenny and I are still in the “we haven’t gotten to talk to each other enough in the last nine years” so we still chat a lot during these visits, but I remember us having quiet visits when we were kids.

Sometimes she doesn’t want to talk and that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like me. I don’t… usually feel comfortable with that. That’s a dynamic I usually struggle with quite a bit. But I know Jenny likes me to the marrow of my bones and I don’t feel like I need to struggle to earn it. She decided she liked me about 25 years ago. She doesn’t have an enormous coterie of friends I have to compete with to be interesting enough to get her attention.

And the curry was divine. We ordered in from their favorite restaurant. I can still feel a little bit of burn on the roof of my mouth from the vindaloo. I am most pleased with this sensation. Her husband and I had a chummy amusing conversation about the lack of aloo in the vindaloo. I have been complaining in the same way for 15 years. It was really funny to me.

And her eldest daughter is warming up to me. By the end of the visit she was climbing into my lap and demanding cuddles. My plan of treating her like a cat (Bring nice treats and don’t get in her face demanding attention) is working like a charm. Ha. I am so happy about this. She and I actually have some stuff in common. She has food texture issues and she’s sensitive emotionally. Food texture issues ruled my life as a kid and holy tomato sauce was I sensitive.

It’s interesting to me how kids need to play through what they are experiencing. Jenny’s kids roleplay being cats and babies to get attention. They express that they need help doing things in adamant ways.

The Bonus Kids used to come over and roleplay screaming fights about divorce and yell foul names at each other.

Kids do what they are taught. My kids roleplay “school” and lecture incessantly about how “You have to practice if you want to learn this.”

Errrrrr

It was nice talking to Jenny about mental health stuff. Her perspective is different from mine (obviously) but she doesn’t invalidate what I say. And she doesn’t ever diagnose me casually in conversation. That was such a triggering part of hanging out with people in California. An awful lot of the folks I hung out with in California would default to telling me what they perceived to be my diagnosis anytime I engaged in behavior they didn’t like for one reason or another. That’s one big downside to the therapy culture there. If I am agitated Jenny is never going to tell me I am being manic. If I am angry about something she has done Jenny is never going to tell me that I have Borderline. If I am sad or I feel grief Jenny is never going to say I am depressed.

That’s just… not something she does.

It is fascinating how much less judged I feel. I feel accepted, warts and all. I am not sure I would say I always feel understood in the same way. Therapy culture means that sometimes people can understand some of my twitchiness in ways I still surprise Jenny because she doesn’t have the same pattern matching going on.

People are so complicated.

But feeling accepted and not judged…. I don’t feel like that much.

Making other friends here would be important and tricky. This is a relatively small (less than 50,000 people) city mostly filled with folk who have lived here since birth. They have their friends already and I will definitely be a weirdo. It’s a very church centric town. That would be an interesting match for our pagan/atheist bent. I mean, we would find folk. But it would take patience and time to make a community for ourselves. Home education is not illegal but it is not common.

My kids are talking a lot about how much they wish they could live near the cousins permanently. They haven’t had much of a sense of family in their life. The folks in the bay who claimed they wanted family roles stopped showing up years ago. Jenny’s kids also express a hunger for cousins.

We’ll see.

We aren’t going anywhere today and we have no academic work to do. Thank cheese. I’m so tired. We have leftovers to eat: curry, pasta, breakfast scramble and sausage. Today is going to be so chill. I need it. I’m glad we set it up so it can happen. Maybe we will even put some Netflix on the telly.

Or maybe we’ll read all day.

It’s going to be a nice day.