Well, I made it to Thursday 🙂 When I wrote the last Blog, we had only 2 weeks until we flew to Dallas, and it was my last day at work.

Today, we have only one week until we fly 🙂

So, am I missing work? Interestingly, I don’t feel any regrets at all about it now. On Saturday and Sunday, and some part of Monday, I felt very shocked and didn’t really know what I was feelling. I was very drained and emotional. By Tuesday, my patient, wonderful, loving husband had held my hand through the worst of it and I was enjoying the sunshine again.

What did surprise me was that i wasn’t sad for amazon, rather for the implications of my not working — I’ve supported myself since I was 17; even when i was at university I worked full-time. I’ve always earned my own wage (well, except for one disastrous year in which I tried to live on a student grant — remember them?!)

So what is odd for me is the feeling that I have to access Daniel’s money — that I’ll have no bank account necessarily; that anything i do have will in some respect have been negotiated through daniel.

Of course, that’s not how it is with us. i will have full, unrestricted access to everything; we’ve already discussed that my work in being at home earns 100% of Daniel’s wage, as much as his work in employment does.

But the fact remains that I will have to get used to not having an independent income.

—–ooooOOOOO00000OOOOOooooo—–

I am so glad that I haven’t got to drive away from this delicious, green, sweet countryside into the dirty of Slough.

And i have to say — I don’t really miss Amazon very much at all yet. I do feel still the deeply etched body alarm-clock, that has timed my corporeal feelings around that office timetable. I guess that will wear off. I feel nervous about what is to come, because it is such a huge change.

the moving front has progressed — both cars sold, gerbils (or the Giblets as we are calling them when we don’t want the girls to understand what we are saying) have been rehomed, and we have a skip sitting in our back drive, which is already half full!

Skip to the Charity Shop

Old ski boots slope slyly sunwards

next to scraped roller blades full of

curled-up spiders.

Rueful books with damp words chastising,

musty Madeline’s gone a rusty red in her

carboard, soggy, forgotten bed.

So row, row, row the boat

with a hop, Skip and jump

the past has gone to a charity shop

but a trinket-free future’s in front.