Not dead (yet)

Sorry, didn't mean to leave you all stranded by my sickbed! I got home and hit the ground jogging (can't run quite yet) and have only been at my computer for brief perfunctory email sessions since. I am a lot better, apart from a hacking cough.

We had a grand plan for the weekend: After we'd unpacked and caught up with the neighbours, we were going to slowly sort out the house and move things to my studio while Bumblebee used the majority of the studio floor to put out his Warhammer things and play with them with some friends.

Of course, when my plans are grand, they invariably bugger up, which is why I tend to make lists of small plans instead. For a start, B's dad asked if he could pick him up a day early, on Saturday rather than Sunday (he has him for the rest of the holidays). No worries, but it meant that he would only have one day in the studio, so we shifted the plan slightly so that we would pack him a fresh bag on Friday night and he could have a good full play day. Then he couldn't rouse any of his friends who all seemed to have disappeared down the coast like every other Canberran. Oh well, solo play day.

Friday night turned out to be awash with bubbles as Zoe and I drank our way through a number of bottles of champagne and by the time we got home, all we could do was fall into bed groaning. So no packing.

Saturday, Bumblebee awoke sick as a puppy, and could not bring himself to move further than the couch. No Warhammer. He was very sad, but slightly cheered by the fact that I won't be moving my press & type into the studio for a month or so, so he can use that side of the studio for small bouts of after-school gaming. But nothing on the scale that he would have had if the plan had worked.



The upside is that I spent the whole weekend moving things out of the house and into the studio. Saturday, while Best Beloved and B flopped wanly in front of the tv, I put small things into green bags and moved them slowly and steadily from one venue to the other, stopping to have cups of tea with nice people through the day.

Sunday, I borrowed the Zowen (collective word for Zoe & Owen) trailer and the muscles of BB and Byrd, and we moved the bigger bookbinding stuff, including two work tables donated to me by a friend and some comfy chairs. So now the space is usable, if not organised in any way. There are boxes everywhere, and will be until I can organise some shelving, but I have chairs and tables and guillotines and nipping presses, so when I can find a minute, I can start working! Hooray! I'm going to try and get in there a few hours every day until uni semester starts.

And the loungeroom is amazing. Most of the stuff that we moved was jammed into half of our loungeroom, and now we have the whole space again, albeit strewn with half-empty boxes and bits of bubblewrap. Best Beloved has gone back to work, so I can't do any major shifting of furniture and things until the evenings, but with Bumblebee away we should get a lot done in the next two weeks. I love being able to rearrange my living space, it's almost as good as moving house (but not quite).

So here it all goes again, balancing work and work and work and play. Already the year seems so short!