teeny tiny pre-northern adventure update

Message recieved from mayoduck: 
By the time you get to me tomorrow it'll be late, maybe near midnight. Phone or text me on your travels, let me know if you will want a bit of supper when you get in. I went to my favourite flirtatious butcher today (he's my version of your bagel guy), and I got a steak family pie, and also some leeamb

then she told me that the baby's stroller is getting its all-terrain wheels ready to go. 

i could not be more excited. this may be the one time in my life i'm praying for it NOT to snow very much.

im sending a letter, ill send it right to you

in the words of a certain dustin hoffman character, i am an excellent driver. you can ask a great many people. i only fell asleep driving once, and that was when we decided to go to ohio and back in a day to see radiohead, and i have never been in a wreck that was my bad. i have covered a good third of the union, a decent part of a tiny area of greece and about 10 feet in borneo.

but american driver's licenses don't last forever. and mine expired. and even if it hadn't the UK only accepts those for the first six months you're here. so last year i thought i'd get a new one. for anyone outside the UK this part will sound as totally ridiculous as it is, and actually make you thank whatever it is you thank that you ONLY have to go to the dmv.

first  you fill in a form, which you have to send, along with like a passport (in my case my residence permit), to the middle of fucking nowhere in wales. I think they moved the dvla out there so welsh people could have career opportunities.

so yeah, i sent it off, and before you ask, i didn't send it special delivery. and before you say anything else, yeah i know that was dumb. but the envelope was all addressed and freepost so i thought that was just the like normal way of doing it.

if you fancy ending up without your residence permit and then passport, while having to miss three holidays, then it is totally the normal way of doing it. let's break it down.

1. report your permit missing
2. get police report confirming the above is true
3. fill out a bunch of forms and pay like £90 in processing fees
4. wait
5. travel to america twice with only a passport and a panicked look and a letter from your immigration attorney
6. miss birthday trip to zagreb
7. miss razberet's birthday trip to iceland
8. miss trip to mallorca
9. get pissed and find anyone to call
10. receive replacements just in time and go back to the US, and to vietnam & cambodia

It may now be obvious to you why i am doing nothing but hitting refresh on the Royal Mail website for the next 48 hours.

i've been driftin' along in the same stale shoes

you'll probably get the idea that i do fuck all with my life these days, but any of you sarah lundies out there will know that there's more than meets the eye with stuff like this. really i haven't been writing to you fine people cause i'm like totes busy style.

and because i love you all so dearly, i will start with the least interesting updates.

I bought new kicks, we are in love and will be together forever:

after the most scientific and legitimate study conducted since those guys tried to kill us all at CERN, we now know that it takes me two and a half months to get through five bottles of salad dressing.

my bagels, while delicious, lack a rob reiner-produced lovin' feeling these days. as the pod man is gone, gone, gone, whooa oh oh oh oh.

and now, in the name of chronology, turns out that i managed outdo my escapade home just before christmas with my escapade home on boxing day. Yep, i said boxing day. 'but sara, we're in england. you know shit is snoozin' on boxing day!' dear readers, i sure as shit do now. but i didn't think of it at the time. i was once again enjoying the vast hospitality and fine food and drink one encounters when staying with the razberets, when mrs razberet asked when i was going back. 'today! for i must be at work on the morrow!' i declared. everyone looked a bit shifty after that. and it was only then i remembered that last year i hadn't come home on boxing day but the day after, since we had that extra day off and whatnot and so on.

POINT, WCS, get to the POINT!

right fine! so mr razberet had to drive me and the fam to cambridge (i was duly mortified), whence i spent a panicked hour trying to book a national express bus on each of my dying phones. three coaches were booked. which got me up to about 6pm. but luckily (depending on your outlook on life) there was a 3pm coach. from cambridge. to stansted. to london. which took three hours. instead of the 40-min train journey to king's cross. whatever! i cried. 'i shall book this and have the divine comedy stuck in my head and get home before midnight and all will be right with the world!' it wasn't actually that bad after i freaked out when my phone died and thought they wouldnt let me on the second coach with literally zero proof that i was a paying customer. this was about the only way in which it being boxing day was of any use. the guy was also clearly convinced by the sheer terror on my face that evinced the underlying sheer terror of having to live at stansted airport.

i made it home safe, and then i ordered a lot of indian food.

the next morning, i woke up feeling like someone was taking a weed-wacker to the back of my throat and had a fever, and called in sick.