Brrrr!

cold post
Originally uploaded by Nancy Dunne

Okay, it's not quite as cold here as in the picture, but in the past week the temperature has dropped considerably. It's like the weather was trying to stretch out just a bit more summer, realised that it's just a few days from October, and BAM! Colder weather. The days are markedly shorter...it's now dark-ish at 5:30pm and YIKES DARK by 7pm. I know that we're WAY farther north than where I used to live in the states, but it's still a bit shocking how fast the change seems to come on. Last week I'd wear a scarf on the way in to work and be sweating on the way back with my jacket on but not buttoned. Just yesterday my nails were turning blue because I'd forgotten my gloves.

With the cold weather I'm starting to notice the difference between houses with double glazing and those, like mine, without it. Thankfully we have the fireplace in the sitting room or I'd be completely unable to watch television there without a wool jumper and possibly the duvet from the bed. Once the fireplace is turned off (it's gas), the heat is sucked out of the room and it goes back to it's recently constant state of "It's chilly in here." We don't turn the "central heating" on until October, it seems...though I'm not entirely sure that I would call radiators on the walls that don't have blowers the same thing that I'm used to calling "central heating." (I may have to take shorts and a swimsuit to the US next month to deal with the temperature of my parents' house after getting used to always being mildly cold here!!)

As far as daily life here goes, I continue to plod along through my new life. I'm getting used to the idea that the English Nancy is a totally different person than the American Nancy, but I'm still not sure I like the new me. The American Nancy had a career that she was passionate about, and that passion for language and ASL in particular made it possible to overlook difficult clients and disagreeable coworkers. The English Nancy has a part time job that brings in just enough extra money to the house to make it impossible for her to quit in the face of difficult customers and disagreeable coworkers. American Nancy had a house full of greyhounds and cats, and her non-signing life focused mostly on activities involving her hounds, about her hounds, and with other people who have hounds. English Nancy has one hound and one cat, and doesn't really have any activities outside of work and her BSL class (there just isn't time, when a four hour work day takes eight hours with the commute time added).

Homesickness has struck again, most likely because a lot of people I know in the States headed to Myrtle Beach this past weekend for Beach Bound Hounds. I've only just started going to BBH again, but the absence of that gathering of people who understand me hit me just as hard as the absence of the RID conference did in August, the absence of the Georgia Renaissance Festival did in April and May, and I'm sure the absence of the Carolina Renaissance Festival will in October and November.

If I've learned anything, it's that I had a very very full life in the United States that I did not come close to appreciating until I lost all of it to move to the UK. Chilling thought, that. I always thought of myself as unhappy there, but I wasn't, not as unhappy as I've been from time to time here, when I think of what I gave up. Now, what do I do with THAT information? For now, to quote an earlier post about compartmentalizing, I'll put on my Confessor's face and get on with it...fake it till you make it...or freeze to death, whichever comes first.