WE ARE MOVING

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really like to move. I get super excited about new adventure and am ready to go as soon as the announcement is made. Unfortunately, in Nomad Papa’s line of work, move announcements are usually followed by 9+ months of waiting. It is just like being pregnant – you wait and wait, prepare as much as you can and then your life gets turned upside down . You also lose sleep and find yourself pooping either more or less often, and eat copious amounts of calories that you swear “don’t count”.

We have had a whole, never-ending, incessantly long year to prepare for our move. It is now just two weeks away and I still don’t have an exact move date from the movers. Welcome to my life. I’ve had a long time to mull over the move and think about the things I want in our new place. Here they are:

NOMAD MOM’S MUST HAVES

1. A good neighbor – What the hell am I going to do without my trusty neighbor? The one I can call on when I am moments from tossing the kids into the canal. The one that eats half my batch of brownies so that I can justify making a new set every day. The one who sees my two year old taking her pants off on the bike path behind the house and laughs instead of calling child protective services. The one who is just like me, so hanging out with her is like hanging out with myself, only better. I’d start to tear up, but that is so not me. or her. shit.
2. A good grocery store – I thought all grocery stores were more or less equal. And then I moved to the Netherlands. Now I have some basic requests. I’d like a grocery store that sells baking soda. I want one that puts the sugar in the baking aisle instead of next to the coffee. I want one that stocks something other than potatoes in the pre-washed ready packages. Is that so much to ask?
3. Friends – I am old, married and have two kids. How am I going to make friends if I have to go to work everyday? I am going to be that desperate mom that accosts parents as they pick-up kids from school. Me: “Do you want to go and grab a pint in the pub?” Other Mom: “Um, could you let go of my kid’s jacket you psycho?” Maybe I should put an ad in the daycare newsletter….
4. All of you – you guys travel, right? I am going to need all of you, your comments and your likes more than ever…or at least until I find a pub I can nip off to when life gets to be too much. So pack up your virtual suitcases and get ready for the UK

Here is the scoop. Nomad Papa has a new job at the University of Oxford. Yes, that Oxford. And Nomad Mom also has a new job. (Someone is going to pay me to come to an office…I still can’t wrap my head around it.) We are leaving lovely Delft behind after four fun, terror and tear-filled years (we have toddlers, remember). Because we are gluttons for punishment, we are going to do all of it again in another new country we have barely visited.

That, my friends, is how the Nomad family rolls. More fun to follow, guaranteed!