Tag Archives: Moving

Four Months in Chicago

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Life has moved so quickly here that I can’t believe we’ve already been in Chicago for CORRECTION: 4 months, not six. We’ve been in the United States for 6 months. It truly feels that we were meant to be here.

With working over 60 hours a week at two positions and building up my social media profile, as well as writing and finding other people jobs, life is full.

Jock and I have successfully filled the apartment with new pieces of furniture.

I have passed many milestones this move – first new television over 20″ and under 40″ wide (this one is 47″ and thin!), first new couch, new bed and stainless steel appliances. First time living in a high rise.  Somehow at 28, I feel a little behind, but oh well. I’ve lived my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We found our local – Jake Melnick’s. Love that place and can’t get enough of their Pulled Pork Nachos. I dream about swimming through BBQ sauce.

I bought my first pair of snow boots since I was at least 10 years old.

Also, I’m an aunt once again! Beautiful Xavi Andres was born today after just a few hours. When my sister sets her goals on something, there is no stopping her. Out he came with a full head of hair, and I can’t wait to see the little guy.

Heading home tomorrow for Christmas and have a car booked just in case the plane doesn’t want to take off due to snow. Come snow or ice, I will make it back to Baltimore.

Jock is still healing from his knee injury, but walks most days without a limp now. I still forget and sometimes knock it the wrong way.

Our little lives are coming together.

Also, you may have noticed that the new website is www.meaganadelelopez.com/blog – Lady Who Lunches still works, but I am slowly transitioning to my new image. Stay tuned for the makeover!

Read here for my latest opinion on Social Media and where I see it headed.

The Start

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The shades are closed in our apartment. Our apartment. Did you catch that? And the clothes are put away in drawers, hung on hangers, paperwork is on our desk, bed is made with our sheets and the fridge is filled with our food.

Oh how good it feels to be home. To be in a home that we can call ours – for three to four months. We are here temporarily – until either he or I find a job and we can afford somewhere nicer.

Don’t get me wrong – this is the location we want – on the corner of State St and Division, but we’d prefer a place where it isn’t mostly students living here.

(Side Note: We are on the 12th floor and the building across from us has a man hanging on outside cleaning windows. That is freaky. Just had to mention it.)

Joan, a squirrelly, talkative older woman, showed us three studios on Saturday to choose from. One had a separate kitchen but an old bathroom, one was nasty and dirty and the third one had high ceilings, new tiles in the bathroom, fresh paint and new carpets. I think she showed us the other two to put the third one in good light. Since Labor Day was happening, we couldn’t move in until Tuesday.

Luckily, two amazingly generous friends let us stay at their place over the weekend while they visited their parents in Ohio. They saved us. Their gorgeous two-story place in Bucktown was exactly what we needed to relax in after our big night out on Saturday.

Our big night out with friends from England – one who was dating a girl who happened to be a childhood friend of another friend who lived in Chicago, but they didn’t meet through each other. Make sense? So, we all went – all the incestuous group of us and we headed to a bar called – just guess. Go ahead. The English – I swear to God, the bar they took us to was called The English. I don’t invent this stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever really left England with all these Brits around. I love it – I get the best of both worlds.

The Romanian cocktail waitress served us well, Englishman Matt Hoy kept the shots coming and the random raucous joke while Ella (his American girlfriend) and I compared notes on dating these Brits, the new couple said their first set of “I Love You’s,” we all jumped up and down, Jock and I kept up our American version of overdoing things and I half-heartedly attempted a dance-off with a set of men clearly out of my dancing abilities. Didn’t realize it at the time.

Look, not even a week and we made on the Chicago Scene! (Last time we’ll be doing that for a couple of months – that’s for sure. Now is time to settle, be quiet inside, save money and find a job.)

My next post will be something more philosophical about change, about finding jobs, setting up shop, starting new. Possibly about this cleanse Jock and I have started today.

In the meantime, Matty Hoy – here’s your shout out. (He’s the guy third from left with the dazed expression in his eyes.)

Familiarity and Mind Numbing

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Being back in familiarity makes the mind numb. Makes my mind numb…or perhaps just comfortable. Every day flies by so quickly and leisurely for I know my surroundings so well that I don’t have to think. I know my family and friends inside and out so I can just be. It’s as if the brain cells have literally slowed in their transmissions.

Writing this entry should be so simple, I was up last night thinking about what I was to write and how and this thought-provoking idea came to mind – mainly that I have lost all thought-provoking ideas since my return to my “home of comfort.” Or maybe I’m just tired and needed this break.

Maybe I should trust that this is what I need at this moment. After all, very shortly I will be in Chicago in another new city, finding a new home and a new job. Instead of beating myself up for it, maybe I need to give into it.

I haven’t been back in Baltimore for longer than two or three months in ten years and yet, it is here that will always be home. I’d forgotten how easy it could be to be back home – I’ve lived in unfamiliar territory since my 18th birthday. I got used to that – it’s not an on edge feeling – but it’s more survival instincts perhaps…being on your best form because you don’t know what someone will throw at you, how, when or why.

It’s also when things are unfamiliar and new that the idiosyncrasies of life come alive and creativity flows out fast and with need.

I’m not complaining. This sense of comfort is relaxing, but it’s amazing how quickly coming back home becomes normal and like I never left.

Nearly a month and a half has passed since we left the UK for the United States (the United States because we’ve driven through 15 of them), and I have had so many adventures, but have only really written in detail about one of them.

A family reunion, my 28th birthday party, a wedding, Americana at its finest (there are so many eloquent ways to describe the Americana I’ve seen, but I can’t think of any), a beach in Delaware with my best friend and her family, a funeral this week, partying in downtown Chicago, sipping champagne at the top of the Hancock building, an outdoor movie downtown, Charlie and Eileen visiting, biking with my stepfather and his new wife on the NCR trail – the list goes on. I’m only now processing this.

My neurons are slow.

How am I supposed to find a job in this climate of slow mental emissions – SME they call it?

A comprehensive list of things to do to regain control of ambitions:

1. Google “Jobs in Chicago”

2. Google “Apartments in Chicago”

3. Send off letters to literary agents requesting that they grab my novel and sell it right away because I will make them a lot of money.

4. Google “Literary Agents”

5. Wake up before 10AM every morning.

6. Stop watching “Housewives of New Jersey” marathons, followed by “Intervention” programs and “Hoarders” (oh, it’s even better than they said it would be! Now I just have to try to catch “Teen Moms” and my life will be complete.).

7. Stop being distracted while making lists of “to do” items by children’s television programs.

Now, enjoy some more of these Natalie Dee comics that I just found.

In honor of babysitting my nephew this week:

In honor of random jokes that make me laugh a little too hard:

In honor of being back home:

Reality Strikes, Now What?

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We’re back in Baltimore, Maryland.

Our month long escapade across the roads of America is over. My month long escape from monetary, artistic and logical goals has quickly caught up to me. And here we are.

Here we are in the spare bedroom in the house of my wonderful sister, her boyfriend and my nephew on their blow-up bed. Their very comfortable and hospitable blow-up bed, I hasten to add – but it is nevertheless their blow up bed.

As many travelers know, the traveling is wonderful (if not a bit tiring), the seeing beautiful places is the best and the adventures are what you write home about and never forget – but it’s the getting home afterward that is the killer, and is the part that you forget about. The part that when you’re planning all the incredible things to do in the world that you don’t want to even worry about.

Because what is the point? Of worrying. It will all work out. It always does. (Read this blog post by Alisha if you want to hear her take on it – Bird by Bird. Have I already linked to that in a previous post? My mind is frazzled.)

And here we are back at The starting over. From square one. With three suitcases holding all of our possessions in the world, and our bank account aching for us to make it fatter.

So… I need to find a job.

After nearly two years of working on my own terms, under my own auspices (I just had to look up that word to make sure I was using it correctly – see what a month of driving around America does to the mind!) and making my own hours, it is time to find something to bring in the cash.

Don’t get me wrong, I will still be writing, selling my book and eventually finding a job that I love to do….but in the meantime, hard and cold, and even a little bit pretty, cash is what I need. And I’m not afraid to get my hands grimy.

This lady who lunches is not afraid to hang up her dainty lunching hat and pull up her dirty knickers to get this couple a place to live. (Although before I start getting charitable contributions or letters of sympathy, I want to clarify that we are in no way poor or starving or lacking in funds – we will be if I don’t get a job soon, but we have enough for the general down payments, moving expenditures, food, etc. Don’t want anyone to worry for no reason ;)

Tomorrow I will outline my plan and have something more inspiring to say – or contemplative – or philosophical – or observant….

In the meantime, time to catch up on that much needed sleep. 28 years old catches up to a gal!

Casual Meanderings of America

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I won’t mention the canceled flights, the overnight stay in Minneapolis or the 9 hour delay in Newark, NJ. I won’t discuss the high amount of obese people rolling around on their automatic wheelchairs through the casinos or the woman in her wedding dress getting a cosmo at the Ghost Bar at the Palms with no wedding party in sight. I won’t talk about the waiter on auto-pilot who was dead behind the eyes and didn’t even register that we were two live beings sat at a table or the man with platinum teeth falling off his chair, or for that matter, the clearly underaged girl puking behind the couch. No use in harping on fact that roads in Vegas are bigger than freeways in England or that the portions thus far have allowed Jock and I to share a couple of meals.

What I want to talk about is how amazing it was to hold my nephew, to hug my mama, to meet my sister’s boyfriend, laugh with my best friend, look into my sister’s eyes right in front of me and relish in my uncle’s company and incredible cooking. Hearing American accents around me still makes me turn my head – you can imagine how often that’s been happening. Oh and the use of a cell phone is miraculous. I can actually communicate and call my friends and family on a whim, for no reason whatsoever, just because I feel like it. That’s a great feeling.

CNN isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It seems America has grown up a bit since I’ve been gone – I say that and then I hear about the USDA official being fired over a badly cut youtube video depicting her as a racist that in no way described what she actually meant.

Oh how I’ve missed the nonchalant chit chat that goes with being in America, follows you to the grocery store, into Terry Fator’s show at the Mirage (absolutely recommend), up the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower and into Yama Sushi. The southern woman who wants to talk about her bad vertigo, the young rocker who boasts about which sushi to order or the old man who laughs at the fact that the margarita he consumed fifteen minutes before is now making its way into his brain (he doesn’t drink much normally). The casual meanderings of the simplistic and genuine American citizen floats its way back into my heart and I can feel myself re-opening up that side of me – transforming back into my louder, more gregarious person (which may surprise some of my English friends that I can become more of that – I didn’t shy away too much). But now its more accepted.

I never thought I’d be so happy to be back. I truly didn’t. The tear I felt leaving France after a year of studies abroad and the yank of incredible reverse culture shock coming back here five years ago was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps the difference is that I wasn’t ready to leave France, I felt it wasn’t my choice and that the school system’s decision to make me leave by June 1st felt unjust (even though my visa had ended and I actually didn’t have a choice.). This time I decided when I would leave, how it would happen – it was on my terms.

And the difference also is that I know I’ll be back in no time. Back then, I was a student, unsure of where my next paycheck would come from, let alone how I would ever be able to go back to the way I lived in Paris. Now, I am more settled, with beau and money – how much comfort comes from that feeling alone – for, I am not alone.

More soon. Leaving Las Vegas for Chicago today. Then back to Baltimore. Will update as regularly as I can.

Thank you all for continuing to follow my journey.

VIEW FROM MY LAST MEAL OUT IN ENGLAND, The Ship, Portsmouth:

VIEW FROM MY FIRST MEAL OUT IN AMERICA: