Most of my friends will smile and nod when I say that I've always said I love moving house. And I do. I've done it a lot, I've always said that it's a chance to declutter and renew your sense of self, to start fresh and reinvent your life.
Up until now, every move has been from a rented house to a rented house. Pack, clean the walls, patch a few holes/cover up red wine stains, ring the service providers, move on. Brilliant. But...
Getting the house (lived in for a record 13 1/2 years, and thus much more cluttered than the usual 2-year stint) ready for sale in under three weeks while your partner is back at work, your son is commuting between his father and you every three days... is not fun. I try to make it so with a bit of Facebooking, but that just sucks me in to world of fun that I juts should be ignoring for a while. There's also the normal commitments to meet like a workshop in Bega to teach (booked before the sudden move decision) and a conference paper to write.
I have the building inspector coming this Monday morning, unfortunately just before the bathroom sealer person (the sealant had a 5-year warranty, and was misbehaving after only 2 years, so is being replaced, yay), then the window and carpet cleaner coming on Friday, Best Beloved will be mulching the garden while I'm in Bega, then the industrial cleaners coming on the next Monday, the photographers coming on the Tuesday, and then the house goes in the papers and on the interwebs.
Le puff, le pant, as Pepe le Pew's friend used to say.
OK. I'll stop whinging. There's a lovely big house up the road that is empty and waiting for me to sign the dotted line and move in. Without that thought, I'd be going crazy.
The good good news is that my cousins had their twin baby girls and are in Mumbai as we speak, living on similar nerves and adrenalin, aching to take them home and start a new life. So exciting for them! Welcome to the world, girls! (I couldn't help myself being pragmatic within my comment to them; when Bumblebee was in hospital having his first heart surgery at 3 months old, my mother had a cold, and she wore a facemask into the ward to protect him. She had so much praise from the doctors and nurses, because very few people think that their germs mean anything in a hospital environment. I hope J understands that I'm not being a party-pooper.)
Oh well, back to the sanding (I love my drill!) and the painting. And the Scrabble. And the helpful cats who bring me presents of mice and disembowel them close by to show me how helpful they are.
7 comments:
I
don't
envy
you
at all!
moving house must be worse than root canal therapy without drugs! I've never really moved house..... I left my parents home as a teenager... and perched in a caravan until I could wrestle my Dream Home (chosen at the age of 9) into my possession.... finally moved in just before my 22nd year.....
I'm still here...
Darling, how grim! Come around on Sunday afternoon for a whine and wine with Pammy and Nige, 4 ish
xx
Darling, how grim! Come around on Sunday afternoon for a whine and wine with Pammy and Nige, 4 ish
xx
Oh, sounds perfect. We can sip while we listen to the death throes of the Summerbrats.
Yikes! Sounds like you need to program some downtime in there somewhere (an hour-and-a-half in the bath with hot water and a long, cold G&T and a good book does it for me... - repeat until symptoms disappear). Hang in there, the new house sounds worth the pain. Sara x
Indeed! We've been having stiff G&Ts each night before bed.
Ronnie, every time I hear that story I have a mental picture of you plotting against your parents, with them ending up locked away somewhere dark and gloomy while you frolic around their property :)
My rejuvenation of small boy's bedroom was bad enough, without thinking about the horror of trying to prepare a house for sale. Went to paint someone who is divorcing's house as well ... have been admonishing myself every time I've moaned about something.
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