And that’s when I saw the cockroaches

Depending on when I found the time, energy, and inclination to sit down and write this post, it would have had different flavours ranging from rapture to despair.

Chimney swifts by the hundred performing a small miracle night after night!

Neighbors so friendly we have had to throw cookies away because so many entered our new home all at once! Neighbors who, when I asked for a bit of advice, just came and put up the whole curtain rod themselves!

A national work ethic so ingrained that I even saw a bus driver spray and clean the inside of his cab while waiting at a red light!

Or…

Being organised enough to have tins of staple favourites delivered on move-in day, only to get to dinner time and discover we don’t own a tin opener. Making a loaf of bread (with no mixing bowl, no scales, no loaf tin, no measuring jug, and no cooling rack), only to realise at the end of it all that we also don’t own a bread knife.

Living without hot water for the first several days in our new home, which was apparently not a matter of urgency to our managing agents.

And, the piece de resistance so far, tiptoeing downstairs one night to go and collect the laundry from the communal laundry room (we have been without washer, drier, and usually both ever since we moved in), turning on the light and discovering… cockroaches having a party on the kitchen floor.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. Household pest infestations have a unique ability to make you feel besieged and defenceless.

(Tip: leaving the vacuum plugged in in the kitchen makes it very easy to vacuum throughout the day. Second tip: Cockroaches survive being sucked up in the vacuum. Empty the dust container with care.)

Moving countries is hard. Every tiny thing takes more mental effort than it used to. We have to make ourselves look left when crossing the road. A lot of online retailers don’t like the combination of a US address with a UK bank account, so I am constantly thwarted in my efforts to buy the things we need. We had to find out what on earth ‘broil’ means on the oven. Asking for ‘cutlery’ in shops gets you blank looks because nobody here uses that word. The children need new shoes and I have no idea where to start with finding a good shoe company, and I don’t know what size they are in US sizes. Of course these things are all trivial and easy to google, but they add up.

Mostly things have seemed incredibly easy, and I’ve never seriously worried about not having food or a roof over our heads, which is all that really matters. Our old, charming house, that I was so desperate to rent, has more things wrong with it almost every day, but I don’t have to worry about the chimney catching fire or an ox putting its foot through the roof.

We’re so happy to be here, the people are delightful, the food stores are incredible (also incredibly expensive, but I’m adjusting), so many things just work better than they seem to back in London. In the UK there is a prevailing ‘computer says no’ attitude, but here the attitude seems to be ‘the computer says no but we’re going to find a way to make this happen anyway’.

Coming here is a great opportunity, but it’s not a free lunch. Several months ago I explained the concept of ‘tolerance cups’ to the children. (It led to a lengthy discussion of how it would make more sense if the cup emptied as your tolerance ran out, and now my son periodically claims that his tolerance cup is full when, as far as I can tell, he’s spent the day in his pyjamas playing with Lego.)

My tolerance cup is running at 3/4 full, at best, and more often at 7/8.

My husband is away for four days and nights. I feel like Ma left behind with the girls and the gun while Pa goes off to town. Except instead of wolves I have cockroaches and instead of a gun I have glue traps. 72 traps are arriving today. It remains to be seen whether I just lay all 72 of them down at once, like peanut-scented, bug-infested snow. I am slightly dreading what else will get caught in the traps that I’m not currently aware of.

So we’re taking it very, very gently as we ease into a little bit of homeschooling now that September is here, and I’m not spending a lot of time on Substack telling you about it. If I owe you a reply, I’m sorry, and don’t hold your breath. I didn’t even manage to tell my own mother our new address for a couple of weeks and only then because she mentioned she didn’t have it. I’m focusing on getting our home set up (it’s hard to do read alouds without a sofa to sit on), establishing a whole new kitchen from nothing, finding our way around and hopefully making some nice new friends.

I can tell you that the Arlington libraries rather brilliantly let you borrow board games, and so we’ve been enjoying Hansel and Gretel (for age 6+), and Scarabya (8+), both of which I recommend. Hansel and Gretel we felt we’d ‘done’ thoroughly after a few days of intensive playing (we’re slightly above the target age), but Scarabya is one I suspect we will end up buying, and it’s nice because grown-ups are not necessarily any better at it than children, and although you play to win, it’s not combative or ‘mean’. At the moment I’m classing it as maths because it’s great for spatial awareness and shape manipulation. Also good practice for moving small fiddly pieces—on which subject, a reader got in touch to say that the handwriting books I recommended for struggling young writers were working a treat for her son, if you think they might also be helpful for your own family. And if you want a reading recommendation, my son is currently enjoying the Half Magic books by Edward Eager, published in the 1950s (thank you GK!).

If you have suggestions for novels (for me) that are cosy and comforting without being trash, I would love them. Also if you have a favourite cookbook that gives you lots of ideas for easy family meals, please share. And/or tell me your favourite basic dish that you can prepare blindfold. My capacity for cooking is almost zero at the moment and we’re enjoying a steady rotation of baked potatoes, meatballs, bolognese, and roast chicken, which is not at all terrible but could do with some livening up. I tried the library but was so overwhelmed with choice that I left empty-handed. (This happens a lot here. Faced with an entire wall of coffee/shower gel/laundry detergent I sometimes decide it’s easier to just leave and live without it for another day.)

I’ll also take all the cockroach tips you can send me.