It is raining again. It's been doing that a lot lately. So it does rain in San Francisco and when it does, on the past couple of days evidence, it really really rains. In a kind of sideways, road flooding, clothes soaking, no escape from the water way. And of course we are the virtuous non-car owning family so the girls and I have been running to school and then changing the girls into fresh clothes. Today it is raining in a straight down normal style which somehow feels like good weather after yesterday when at one point we had thunder, lightning, hail, wind and rain all at once.
Rain isn't very good for the mood. I feel a bit trapped in the apartment with not enough interesting stuff to do. I've ended up pondering the fact that I am here and unable to work and stuck with the housework, childcare and so on. What seems like another lifetime ago, I had a career which I mostly enjoyed. I did consider going back to work after I had Emilia but chose not to. I had reached a natural break point and the pluses at that time of spending time with my small daughter outweighed the minuses. That choice has led to opportunities for a lifestyle and experiences which would not have happened had I pursued my career as Tom pursued his. We would in all probability still be living in London rather than have moved to Wales, and we certainly wouldn't have had the opportunity to live in San Francisco. We also wouldn't have as calm a home as we do, we wouldn't eat as well and the girls and I wouldn't get to spend the time together that we do. Most of the time this is enough for me to know I made the right choice. But sometimes I do think "Holy Shit, I'm bored!"
So what brought on this latest bout of "what the hell am I doing with my life"? I was lying in bed watching Julie & Julia on DVD last night - Tom was out at a work thing. (Film is a bit slight like the book, but charming and enlivened considerably by Meryl Streep and the lovely Stanley Tucci as Julia and Paul Child). Anyway there's a bit in it when she asks "what am I going to do?" while her husband works at the Embassy in Paris. And then you see her bored stupid by hat making and bridge before finding her raison d'etre at the Cordon Bleu school. Part of me thinks I'd love to dive right into something as demanding as that. Part of me knows that while Julia Child could do this, I also have two girls who need taking and collecting from school, ballet lessons, the library, not to mention feeding and putting to bed. And I'm not superwoman. Never have been.
I'm just going to have to find ways to inject a bit of time for my own interests/passions into my life when I don't have the children with me. I'm using far too much of the school day to run errands and do laundry and housework (boring boring boring) when I should be off doing my own thing. I know I had lots of ideas of what I was going to do before I got here but some realities of living here have made logistics rather trickier. For one thing the girls' school day finishes at 2.35 which is earlier than I imagined it would. Secondly, Tom's commute and work load are such that evening classes are out. Such is life at a start-up. I have signed up for a cookery course in Berkeley on Saturdays to start in late February. I'm looking at language classes - am trying to decide between French (which I speak but very rustily) and Spanish (which I don't speak at all). And I'm trying to streamline life a bit by doing things like signing up for a CSA which is a fruit and veg box scheme, meaning I won't need to do so much shopping.
Meanwhile my plans to cook a gourmet meal tonight seem less likely to happen as it is still raining and I can't be bothered to go out again. Chinese takeaway?
1 comment:
The answers will come. Give them time. Changing countries is a HUGE undertaking; it's a year, at least, before you're out of the crisis hard part.
PS Mrs Soilman and I visiting SF in June. I've been getting excited reading about it all here!
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