6 Weeks in Yorkshire {Garforth} Part Two // Sept & Oct 2020

The last 3 weeks of being in Garforth were similar to the first 3 weeks, ha. The bed obviously did not improve so we ended up moving the mattress downstairs onto the living room floor so one of us had the option of the couch if need be. The living room was a total shit pit and looked like a fucking dorm room, but in situations like that it's 100% comfort over any sort of aesthetic.

Kris’ bicep is doing better. After that shitshow nightmare trip to the ER in Leeds to “get in the system” and try to get surgery - it turns out he can’t. Even the private hospitals are bogged down because of the crazy backlog from Covid. He is bummed, but doing better about it. And it legit is feeling better, so I’m sure that helps. Also - P.S. - did you know that your bicep is actually mostly responsible for the rotation of your forearm? It doesn’t actually do all the heavy lifting like you might think. Also - side note - the doctors couldn’t make sense of why he could still move and rotate his forearm. Even though clearly the bicep was fully detached from the bone. Like they literally could not explain it.

ANYWAY. Most days were waking up and snuggling, coffee in our little kitchen, a little bit of work time, and then taking an afternoon walk or doing an errand or something. And then back in the late afternoon to do a bit of work and then make dinner and watch amazingly crap British T.V. that we love so very much. Okay also P.S. - did you know that a french press is actually called a cafetierre? Why the fuck do we have to ruin everything? Kris has taken to saying, “So - are you gonna give it the old french press?” every time the timer goes off and the coffee is ready. Since we’re both not really morning people, mornings tend to be really goofy because we’re both super out of it. And there’s lots of shit talk like, “Make the fucking coffee you dickhead” or “OMFG I feel like garbage, I feel like just….shit me up the ass, you know?” And one morning he said, “Speaking of shitting up the ass… Doctors in Finland discovered that babies born by cesarean are missing the dose of healthy bacteria, but that it’s actually from poop.”

Did I mention that we’re MFEO?

We found a nice little 5k loop on a pedestrian trail that we did most days in our afternoon time. And we also continued going to the french bakery on the regular and walking through the cemetery across the street.

One day we hauled ass all the way down the Linesway trail to the canal and walked alongside of it into the next town over called Allerton Bywater and holy fucking shit was that adorable. There was a little pub called The Queen Victoria that was about the most charming goddamn place I've ever seen, it was right out of a movie. But the kicker was this little cafeteria style cafe around the corner - Samuel Valentine's. The first time we were there they were about to close so we just got stuff from the bakery cases, but it was amazing - Kris had a scotch egg and I had a goat cheese and red pepper tart. But the next time we went there we sat down and had literally one of the top five best lunches of our entire lives. Kris had a burger that was just, you know - a burger and fries. Except it was ridiculously luxurious and gourmet - it had an entire patty of fried cheese on it. It was RIDICK. I had a Yorkshire Rarebit with mushrooms instead of ham and it was exquisite.

Other days we'd walk into town in the afternoon and have a little town experience - going to the post office, picking up a few things at the market, having coffee somewhere, etc. It's so fucking charming here. And there was just so much right on the main street in the little town center. We had a delicious breakfast one morning at Pride & Produce:

We also went to a coffee shop called CLO a few times and the coffee was top notch. This is all just in a normal little English village, this was not a tourist area whatsoever. Just a tiny cute village full of bangin food, coffee and walks. The quality of life is so high over here.

Also our hosts Carol and Kevin started bringing us heaping plates of Sunday dinner every Sunday. It was so cute.

A couple of times mid-week Carol would just show up with trays of food. One time it was cheesy pasta bakes and a cheesecake, another time it was chicken casserole and a plate of cupcakes. She's so adorable in her little sweater sets I can't.

We had another really fun day where first our produce box showed up - I ordered it from a local farm and it was literally $28 for a crazy ass box of produce delivered right to my door.

So that was super fun. And then the post man popped these stickers that I had ordered from Hurrah For Gin thru the mail slot. And then we walked to pickup Kris’ new glasses in the next town over and the walk over was just insanely beautiful. We had passed by the most adorable pub so after the glasses were sorted, we went back there for drinks and a snack - it was called The Barnbow. And it was so fun to be able to just unplanned get drinks and a fancy appetizer and not think anything of it. You know - because we’re not fucking poor as shit anymore.

One day we got a big ham leg on the bone and roasted it and the next day set the bone up in a crockpot to make broth. It was kind of a strong broth smell after a few hours and I asked him if he wanted to move the broth upstairs to contain the smell and he said, “Fuuuuuck no. I'm not walking upstairs with that boiling ham water.”

Another day we had a hilarious joke where I was talking trash to him and he didn’t like it so when I asked for a bite of his sandwich he said, “Maybe I withhold sandwich.” Like as a way to shut me up and reign in my behavior. So from then on we just would say, “I’m about to withhold sandwich” whenever things would get out of hand.

Then one night we tried watchin Emily in Paris. A few minutes I asked, “What do you think of this horse cock show?” and he said, “I mean it's a fuckin horse cock show.” It really was the fucking worst.

One afternoon we went to Carol’s to borrow something and Kevin was standing out front, I think with their adult son who said we should grab a Scotch Bonnet (super fucking hot pepper) from their greenhouse and put it in our tomato soup. That sounded fine - a little spicy kick to our soup and how spicy could a pepper from Scotland possibly be? Well. It ruined our soup. Later I said, “I should've just politely taken that pepper but then thrown it in the goddamn garbage.” And he said, “You should've shoved it up his fucking ass.” It really was awful. We tried to save it with different augmentations, but just couldn’t. The spicy penetrated deeeeeep.

One night I asked him, “Can you get a flashlight and check this thing at the top of my crack? It feels like I have a paper cut. He said, “I don't really see anything...Well I mean...I see maybe like a teeny tiny something…..” And I said, “Well put some fuckin cream on it.” And he said, “But it's like nothing I don't even know what it is. Maybe you have ass cancer.'“ And I said, “Well at least put some fucking proctal anal cream on it!”

Another night he came downstairs from the bathroom and I asked, “Why did you take your socks off?” And he said, “Because I had to get in the bathtub to wash my ass.” I keep a water bottle by the toilet to rinse after pissing and shitting so I asked, “You don't like the water bottle method?” And he said, “HellII no that doesn't work with a shit. I don't have a front butt.” I said, “My ass is in the same position as yours. Front butt?! Do you think I poop out of my pussy?!” He said, “I don't know what you do, but the water bottle angle is all wrong.”

Oh, and also - we binged (kind of) the entire series of Game of Thrones in about a month. It was AMAZING and I now have dreams telling Kit Harrington that I love him. Kris, on the game of thrones finale: “She's got three dragons and she's naked and she's ready to kick some fuckin ass. Shit just got real.”

One morning I asked him, “Do you want me to just split the last of this milk for our cereal?” And he said, “Oh goddammit. If it's not one fucking thing it's another.”

I've had a couple of little dings of like missing my "stuff" and being ready to settle in somewhere, whatever that even means, but it's very fleeting. And I can't even tell you how psychologically different it is to have nowhere to go back to - that's not a bad thing, it's just different. And it doesn't fill me with despair or fear or anything, it's just a new deal. Previously on our long stints of travel we would sublet our house, so "home sickness" inevitably snuck in towards the end of our trips because we knew we had a home to go back to that was all set up with our stuff. But when you don't have that - it's kind of a moot point. Like as much as I miss "being home" - I don't actually miss Phoenix or want to go back there. And even if I was "done" with traveling or whatever - I'd have to be really fucking done as fuck to want to go back to the U.S. because it would mean flying to Phoenix, purchasing a car, driving around and finding a place to live, coordinating moving all of my shit out of storage at my dad's house, etc. You know? It's no simple thing. So when you're up against that it's like - yeah, I'd way rather be here and just continue renting monthly Airbnb's, for fucks sake.

And anything that goes wrong really isn't bad at all because our financial situation is SO DIFFERENT. It's such a load off it's insane. We're both just making modest regular income, but it's regular for the first time EVER and our living expenses are less over here. So for example, even though we've been traveling for two months now - we still have the same amount of money as we had when we left, actually a tick more I think.

The only things that have even come up are Covid related anyway. Firstly, our workaway hosts in Scotland for the month of December started getting really shifty and weird. All of the sudden our chill B&B sitting work trade setup turned into the owners saying - oh nevermind we're actually going to be there so we don’t need a B&B sitter anymore and we have a bunch of manual labor planned for you guys instead. Like, I'm sorry - what? That's a shitty workaway host for ya. So that was out the window. We just booked an Airbnb in Duns (Scottish Borders) for December instead.

Then we were planning on going to Italy and spending the month of November in Perugia. But then Italy tightened up it's restrictions and started requiring Covid tests upon arrival. If I can get out of a stranger swabbing the depths of my nasal cavity in a public setting immediately after getting off an airplane - I will. And I did. We contacted our Italy host who kindly let us without penalty move our reservation to next year. And our flights were turned into vouchers and it was all actually pretty easy to change. We decided to contact our French workaway host we had booked for next year and see if she could last-minute host us for the month of November and she said yes.

But then, a few days before we were set to leave for France, a funny thing happened. We were just walking around our little English village headed back to our little cottage and we were just like - fuck, man. Do I really wanna give up my personal autonomy for a month? We had arranged a few workaways when we left the U.S. because we didn't know how this was all gonna shake down and our finances were far from solid - the lady I work for is a certified Grade A nutter and Kris’ job was also not secure, so we wanted to make sure that in the event either of our jobs went tits up that we’d at least have housing and food covered (with a work trade arrangement) and it wouldn’t be so dramatic. But everything has worked out in our favor, work is steady, expenses are low, etc. So now that we don't "need" free lodging....do we want it? You know? In the end we decided we both had enough hesitation about it that we just made something up and told the host we weren't coming. And instead we booked a baller ass apartment right outside the grounds of Versailles. Because that's who we are now. Ha.

But then literally the day after we booked the place, France announced a full lock down. Thankfully our host gave us our money back (she didn't have to), but we were sitting there super last minute having no idea where we'd go from our little cottage. That was stressful for about two fucking manic hours, but then we locked it all back down and found an awesome place with a great sounding host in Edinburgh renting an apartment right off the royal mile, we booked all our transport, etc. I'm actually really fucking psyched for that. The only thing we might lose is our French train tickets if they don't end up deciding we're worthy of a refund, but again - not the end of the world, an easy problem to have.

Right now as I’m writing this, we're sitting on a baller ass first class train to Edinburgh with two other people in the whole car. They've served us lunch and tea and everything is sparkling clean and it's just the fucking best.