i'm so in love with my music

i wish you could see pictures of what our flat looked like on saturday night. we decided to do some laundry (as one does) and while all of our clothes were in the washer we tied long pieces of rope from one end of the flat to the other in order to have lines to line-dry our clothes on. the only thing is that we had to use all of the doorknobs in the flat as anchors for the yellow lines and as a result we couldn't open any of our cupboards or our wardrobe. whenever we needed to get something out, one person had to hold the line full of clothes off the floor while the other person attempted to slip the knots off of the doorknobs and grab whatever the thing was that they needed. then of course, getting from one side of the flat to the other became a maze that required us to crawl under our clothes whenever we needed to move more than five steps in any direction. it was absolutely ridiculous. :) i won't say what happened to sarah, but you would have laughed if you'dve been there.

i have a job! that's pretty important information, so i figured the time had come to let you all in on the happy secret. speaking of happy secrets and on a completely unrelated note - i have been seeing pregnant women everywhere! it's starting to weird me out. but seriously, i swear i've seen fifteen pregnant ladies in the past three days. - anyway, i got hired at Hardy's Restaurant and Wine Bar, which is the place i interviewed at and told you about a few posts ago. i wasn't sure about the hours and such, but i talked to the owner and i think i'll only have to work 2-3 nights a week, which is perfect. i had a trial shift this last tuesday and then she called me late tuesday night to say they'd like to hire me. i had my first shift last friday and i'm on the schedule fulltime this week starting tomorrow. it's a really good job and something i think that i'm going to be happy with. the place is nice (here's the website - http://www.hardysbrasserie.co.uk/) but pretty laid-back. i like everyone and i feel like i fit there.

it's funny - even though we'd had a flat for almost a week, it wasn't until i was going home from my shift on friday that i felt like i really lived in london. i think i needed that last piece of the puzzle to find its place before i knew that i was here. i'm here now. i live in london. i have a job and a flat and a grocery store. :) good things are happening.

back to saturday. sarah and i were looking forward to this weekend because it was our first real london weekend. we weren't flat hunting, or waiting to hear about jobs, or anything. so saturday morning we slept in and then found our way down to the river and went to the borough market. that place is magic. there are samples everywhere - cheese, olive oils, bread, fruit, meats. we each got some cheese and then a loaf of french bread and a bottle of wine and sarah got some pretty olives. she said they tasted great, but my mother brainwashed me as a child to dislike the taste of olives, so i just admired the colors (mom, i kid). for lunch we had the best fish and chips and ate them on little plastic stools in an out of the way alley.

so, as we were sitting in that little alleyway, eating our cod and chips and chatting, we started talking about how hard we already feel like it's going to be to leave. we've only been here about two weeks now, but we can feel that we've started to put down roots. i can feel myself falling into rhythms that i'm going to have difficulty falling out of at the end of our time here.

i do have to tell you that i climbed a tree on saturday. we went up to hampstead heath because i needed to smell grass instead of exhaust and cigarette smoke and there was this lovely, sprawling, curvy tree just waiting for me in this meadow. i kicked off my shoes and climbed around for awhile and felt something living under my fingers and watched the sky and smelled growing things again. i wonder if it's just growing up in portland, but i need green growing things around me. i need trees. and i need to be able to lean on them and smell them. it's very important for my soul.

so, that's my latest and greatest. the rest of the weekend was wonderful too. we cleaned the apartment, went to church, ate cheese and bread and jam for dinner on sunday and then spent the evening reading and drinking tea. if that doesn't sound like heaven to you, then imagine yourself doing your favorite activity, and think about that alive feeling you get while doing that thing and you'll know how happy we were to be in our own place with our own hot water for tea and our own blankets and books to keep us company.

thank you so much for reading this and caring about me and leaving comments. i love hearing from everyone. the world seems so small in those moments, doesn't it? thank goodness. :)