But sleep deprivation is a bitch to catch up on. I went back through my activity tracker (I know it is not perfectly accurate for stuff like sleep) but between travel and anxiety and overworking I am down about 8 full nights of sleep over the past month. This is why I am currently struggling with paranoia, negative thoughts about myself, irritability, and frustration. I also hurt really badly.

But I am trying to reverse the flow. The past three nights I’ve gotten nine hours of sleep. Yesterday while walking home from the community center I just about fell down from exhaustion and dizziness. Trying to catch up is showing me just how deep the reservoir of sleep deprivation goes. I need to try to spend all of this school holiday sleeping as much as I possibly can; my health requires it.

A full night of sleep for me is ~7.5 hours. I’m down over 64 hours of sleep over the past month. That’s a lot.

This move is the hardest of my life and I have moved waaaaaay more than average. Folks in the military are usually dumbfounded by how much I have moved because they feel a lack of stability in their lives and I’ve moved many multiples of times more than them. Not so much recently, but over the long run. This is my first international move and I can’t understand people who do this repeatedly. This is so hard.

We moved into a house that was more than twice the size of our old house with no furniture coming with us. We have had to acquire everything from scratch and mostly build it because we can’t really afford to buy nice stuff, we are buying flat pack. Which means I have spent multiple full days just on building furniture. Noah has helped with this way more than he usually does with building furniture and for this I am deeply grateful. Noah has spent at least six, maybe up to eight solid days building furniture if you add up all the hours. I’ve done at least as much maybe more. It’s all getting fuzzy.

We finally have consistent, good wifi thanks to Noah’s continual efforts at handling the bureaucratic mess. It is still a mess with regards to electricity. All of the advice “Just do A, B, C” has failed entirely. I think Noah is handling the stress of people lying and being deceitful far better than I could. (The main electricity company keeps saying they have done what they need to do for us to move on with the process. When the other company we want to work with checks… nope hasn’t happened. It takes eight weeks before we are allowed to complain. We seriously suspect the first company is going to drag their feet for seven weeks and five days.)  Noah has been on the phone and filling out paperwork just about daily trying to handle the electricity/internet/bank/credit card situation. Now that we have internet and we found out we literally can’t get a credit card until we’ve been here six months and we have a (JOINT) checking account and three savings accounts (grown ups + kids who are redepositing their stuff from the states) we can chill on figuring out financial stuff for a few months.

Oh, also we had an appointment with a couple of truly lovely accountants and that’s going to be a whole messy process that will take many hours of labor over many weeks. The UK tax year doesn’t run their cycle from January-December, they run April-March so we will be trying to sort out tax stuff for like six months straight. Hopefully after the first year it will get a little more clear? At least our California accountant used to work at the IRS handling international taxes?

Trying to acquire stuff for the house has been endless frustration. Between not having a car, not having reliable internet, and our US credit cards getting constantly denied for fraud… everything is taking two, three, four, five times as long to get done and the hand strain is absolutely unbelievable.

And I keep hearing my fucking mother’s voice in my head saying that you don’t go out and socialize until your house is company ready. Thus long working days and not sleeping.

Last night I made a list on the whiteboard of the chores the kids hadn’t gotten to this week. I told them they need to finish by bed time. They got it done. I supervised and didn’t help. I’m trying to reduce my arm strain.

They did a great job and they are currently playing with Her Sweetness so Noah and I can each have some quiet down time in our separate rooms.

We have a house phone number and an actual physical phone will be delivered in a few days. I have a sim card in the house for a UK phone number for my mobile and I will be setting it up once I can put the UK house phone number down on forms. I will be going through and replacing my US phone number on all of my accounts. I will be shutting down my US phone number in December after 19 years of service.

I am having so many feelings about that.

The plan with the accountants is to start moving our money out of the US. I don’t feel super ethical investing in a country that moved its slavery from the cotton fields to the prison industrial complex and is currently running concentration camps. Where freedom means the freedom to get shot at school. Where freedom means that thousands of people can be homeless so the uberwealthy can hoard a little more. Where freedom means ruining your entire future if you get sick. Where freedom means eternal debt if you want an education.

I know getting out isn’t an option for everyone. I know it is cowardly to run instead of fighting to change the system. I know.

My children are already walking to school and home from school alone sometimes. It’s so safe here. I spoke to a mom who is terrified of her kids being alone and that’s why she pays for them to have cell phones from really young so they have to text her all the time to prove where they are and she tracks them on her phone.

We will have a house phone. I’m giving up full service internet on my phone and downgrading to a pay as you go plan that I don’t want to use much. I will be deleting most apps so I’m not tempted to be idle on my phone out in the world.

My kids will be fine here. I am not worried about their safety. We have an agreement: you ask before you take off and you are given a time to be home. You have a watch (without the ability to receive phone calls on) and if you are late, for every minute you are late you owe me a push up.

That’s as much enforcement as I want. That’s as much control as I want. They are big kids. They are responsible. I trust them. The neighbors aren’t going to call the police if they are out walking to the park. I have anxiety about stuff. I am overly controlling in some ways, but I’m trying hard to back off. They will be ok. And frankly the push ups won’t hurt them.

EC forgot her school computer at home one day this week. Noah asked if we should bring it to her at school. Nope. She can accept the consequences for her behavior like a big girl.

It will be good for her.

I went to a couple of activities with Her Sweetness this week aimed at her peer group; these are the kids she will know in school. These are the kids in our neighborhood. It’s good to start getting to know them. She will make friends over time and I will get to know the mothers.

This move is the hardest of my life. Let me write down just how painful this is so that hopefully I remember and never want to do this again. Some day as an empty nester I might want to move to the downstairs apartment with Noah and rent out the big house, but that’s different.

Solstice is going to be interesting. EC has a bunch of needs still. MC has a bunch of wants. YC (I should shift to this at some point soon here because goodness Youngest Child is more fair than just always referring to her as the sweet one–not to mention that she is sassier by the day) has few needs and can’t speak any wants. I am going to start wrapping presents soon just because we don’t have many good stash spots in the house where unwrapped presents won’t be seen.

Oh, and to put the cherry on top of the moving process, we are all learning how to ride bikes as our mode of transportation. This has resulted in at least one, often three or more major crashes per person. We are all sore and wincing and moving slowly. My knee still hasn’t healed from my crash and every time I get up or down to help YC with something I hiss because it forking hurts.

At least MCs lip has healed and they no longer look like an abused child.

It’s a process…

Hardest fucking move of my life. But the house is basically company ready. I want another couch for the down stairs apartment before guests come. I want a real kitchen table for the main dining room with actual chairs we don’t fall off of on a regular basis. EC still needs a bed frame. Then we are done acquiring stuff.

Mostly because I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making bookshelves out of uniform moving boxes and that’s what I’m doing with the books that arrive. I’m not buying bookshelves any time soon. I want artistic fancy-pants book shelves and I don’t want to pay for them now. So I won’t really get all of the boxes out of the house by the end of November, but the stuff in boxes will be out and in use and the boxes will be semi-permanent (until they give out) furniture.

I am struggling with the fact that I need to give myself approval for how hard this move has been because I won’t get it from anyone else. No one but Noah can see what I’m doing and I’m an asshole about not accepting his approval as much as I should. He will give me approval whether it takes me a month or five years. He isn’t judging me based on what I care about. His priorities are different. (He wishes I would slow the fuck down and rest more.)

I have a ridiculous drive to get this done. This is important to me. I need to see this progress so I can sit in the mostly finished house and dream about the art I want to add. I can’t start painting until after my next birthday, but I can make sketches. I can figure out what kind of mosaic backsplash I’d like to make for the kitchen wall where we keep splattering the shit out of it with food. (Did the previous owners cook?! How in the fuck did they keep the wall so white?!) What would I like to do in the upstairs bathtub bathroom?

Art will come, but not until all of the other pieces are in place and I can dream around them.

We still have a few entirely empty cupboards in the laundry room and main kitchen and the downstairs kitchen is basically empty. But we have the stuff we need finally. Those bits will fill in over time as we figure out what other things we want or need.

Realistically it is going to take me many years to finish this house. But I feel moved in now. The art will come. The guest kitchen will come. It’s ok that it isn’t all instant.

I needed to feel settled. Those bits are extra. And I have my name on a bank account so that I can build my own credit. That’s a big deal. Being dependent is hard enough without also being vulnerable.

And proper locks are on the way for every door in the house.