In the house

We have finally moved in to the new house! I hadn’t been here for a couple of days (too busy packing) – what a transformation when I arrived yesterday! Suddenly it looked like a home again instead of a bit of building site – it’s amazing how much difference having the carpets down and some items of furniture in has made. My wonderful brother Adrian, nephews Jamie, Jason and Craig (plus girlfriend Charlie) and friend James all came over to help load and unload the van and lug furniture and boxes about – not quite sure how we would have managed without them.

Last day in the flat

I have spent my last night in my little flat. It looks so different with nearly everything packed and ready to go, and the walls all bare. I’m looking forward to finally being in our new house but do feel a little sad to be leaving the flat. I’ve been here for five years which is longer than anywhere other than the house I grew up in and it was the first place that I felt was “my” home. I’ve been here longer than I thought I would be though – I only expected to be here a couple of years.

Set for The Big Move

The carpets have now arrived, our bed has finally been delivered (on the fifth attempt!) and most of the cables have been laid so we are all set for The Big Move. There will still be a few things to do once we are in (probably will wait until after we have painted the flat and handed the keys back) and a couple of rooms are probably going to be used mostly to store boxes until we start putting up bookcases and getting new furniture in. It is all quite exciting – tomorrow we will be living in our new home!

Feeling cut off

Got woken this morning [Thursday] by the man from Virgin Media coming to take away the TV box and broadband modem from the flat which I was not happy about as he was supposed to be coming tomorrow. So we have no internet or TV at the flat anymore and all of a sudden I feel very cut off from the world. It makes me realise how much I rely on the internet. I do have internet access on my phone but it’s a bit limited (I haven’t yet succumbed to the lure of the smartphone) and not good for blogging!

Too much stuff, so little time

Last time I moved, I shocked Michael with how much stuff I had managed to fit into a small bedroom. I seem to be very good at fitting a lot of stuff into a fairly small space, and despite having had a bit of clear-out and taken a few bags to the charity shop, there is still a lot of stuff in the flat needing to be packed. I thought I had done a lot, but now realise quite how much I still have left to do. I’m hoping there are enough boxes to be able to pack it all!

Passion - review

Passion started off well with a beautiful opening with lovers Clara & Giorgio singing about how happy they were together (a clear indication of a doomed relationship). The music was evocative, emotive and restless at times and was easily the best thing about this show which otherwise had a fairly weak and unconvincing storyline (Giorgio eventually choosing the ugly, obsessive and clearly mentally unhinged Fosca over the beautiful but unfortunately married Clara) and seemed to confuse ‘real love’ with obsession. Scene changes were impressively slick and acting generally good, but overall a night of Passion that left me feeling unsatisfied.

The magic of massage

It’s amazing what a difference a good massage can make - making time for a full body massage this afternoon has left me feeling like a new woman – less achy and with more energy than I’ve had for days. I went from feeling tired and grumpy to feeling energised and optimistic and wondering why I hadn’t planned time out from decorating to do this sooner! The effects have worn off slightly now thanks to the crawl home in rush hour traffic and lugging heavy boxes around whilst trying to pack this evening but I’m still feeling much better than before.

The decorating bubble

One of the downsides to all this decorating is not having very much time to catch up with friends and I’m looking forward to finally having a bit more of a social life again once it is all done. I feel a bit like I’ve been in this little bubble of ‘house stuff’ for the last couple of months and lost touch with life outside it a little bit It’ll be good to have a bit more time again to be able to catch up with friends properly and not have to rely on their Facebook updates for the news!

Putting a foot in it

With the cabling work going on, there are a few floorboards up in the bedrooms at the moment. Progress on the house was impeded slightly by Michael’s dad putting his foot through one of the gaps and right through the ceiling in the dining room. Fortunately I was not at home at this point and by the time I arrived home, the pieces of the ceiling had been retrieved and it all glued back together although it doesn’t look too good there right now! Michael has assured me that once it is filled and painted, it will look okay again.

General dogsbody

My father-in-law has been very helpful with getting our new house ready for moving in – getting walls ready for painting, helping lay flooring, put various cables in and general fixing things. Unfortunately, he tends to see my role in the process as being tea-maker and general tidy-up-er (although I’ve developed selective deafness where this is concerned!) He also occasionally doesn’t seem to realise that there are limits to my abilities in this regard – this morning, he asked me to take a box of rubble to the tip. I couldn’t even push the box across the floor, let alone lift it!

Under pressure

With moving date set, various items of furniture to be delivered next week plus carpets to be fitted, the pressure is now really on to get everything in the house to the point where we can live in it, even if there will almost certainly be a few things that will still need to be done. Sitting surrounded by the chaos of it all, it is not always easy to stay optimistic and there are moments when I find myself wondering if we really will get to a point where we are not constantly surrounded by boxes and dust sheets!

More on moving

Moving seems to be the general theme for my life at the moment. Not only am I finally moving house, but we are also moving our office at work. So it feels like I am constantly packing and surrounded by boxes and general upheaval. For someone who gets stressed very quickly at being surrounded by mess, staying calm under such circumstances is not the easiest thing! The next few weeks look like they will continue to be hectic – just waiting for everything to be done and dusted so I can finally have some time to relax and wind down again!

Feeling the pressure

On the plus side, we’ve now finally settled on a date for The Big Move. So the pressure is really on now to get all the decorating finished (painting is pretty much all done, just got to finish the cabling and get the floorboards back down so the carpets can be laid) plus finish all of the packing back at the flat. Once we move, we have a flat to decorate before giving the keys back. We’ve started painting the doors – which means the flat is currently freezing because none of the rooms currently have the doors actually on them.

Birthday wishes to heaven

I’m missing my dad a little bit more today on what would have been his 77th birthday. On days like these, I find myself wishing that heaven had a phone line so I could just pick up the phone and hear his voice and sing happy birthday down the phone to him like I always used to do. But as heaven doesn’t have a phone line, I went down to the churchyard to put flowers on the spot where his ashes are buried and to sing happy birthday to him there. It was good to be with the family today.

Riding the stress-coaster

Life is feeling a bit on the stressful side at the moment – lots of change and uncertainty on the work front at the moment combined with trying to get the house ready so we can finally move means that I’ve been up and down like a yo-yo recently. Having a mercurial temperament at times like these is not helpful – I swing wildly from being optimistic and being very positive one minute to deciding that everything is turning into a complete disaster the next. It’s all very exhausting – can I just hibernate now and wake up when life settles down again?

Into the breech

Just as I was drifting off to sleep, my phone rang. A few minutes later, I was off out to be with a lady in labour. She was progressing well – I went to have a nap whilst my colleague took over and was woken up about 30 minutes later with the words “Can you come back in – I think baby’s breech” which are guaranteed to wake me quicker than a gallon of Red Bull. Baby was indeed breech which meant for a slightly more dramatic experience than expected – a trip to hospital and baby girl born shortly afterwards by caesarean.

A bit on the blue side...

I wasn’t keen on the plain white downstairs bathroom. It needed a bit of colour and I thought a nice pale blue would be great. So I spent this evening painting. And when I finished, I look around... and hated it. It looked so much darker than the colour on the tin, and the room is just too small for that much colour. Sigh. It looks like I’ll be spending tomorrow afternoon painting it white again. Unless by some miracle, it dries to a much lighter colour and actually looks like I thought it would by the morning. Fingers crossed!

How not to have a romantic meal...

Our anniversary meal at a local pub last night was not the best. Five minutes after our starter arrived, the fire alarm went off. The staff hastened to reassure us that there was no fire, but no-one seemed to know how to stop the alarm so we spent 15 minutes sitting there with our hands over our ears until it finally stopped. Then my chicken, bacon and avocado salad turned up minus the avocado and the waiter tried to convince me that he’d seen the chef put avocado in even though I couldn’t see or taste any in the salad.

10 years of being together

It was nice to have a break from the decorating this evening and go out for a meal with my lovely hubby to celebrate having been together 10 years today. We met in 1998 at ballroom dancing and finally got together on Friday 13th October 2000 – it was definitely a lucky date for me! The past 10 years have definitely had their ups and downs, but the good times have definitely outweighed the bad and I feel so blessed to have someone so loving, caring and supportive by my side. He makes me smile and gives the best hugs ever!

The winds of change

In the five years I have been in my job, I have seen a lot of changes. People coming and going – sometimes there is a bit of a mass exodus, then things settle down again and tick along at a steady pace for a while and things get comfortable and things look like they’ll stay the same for a while, something happens and things start shifting once again. The next few months look set to be quite changeable on the work front – I know from experience that it will all settle down again but it’s definitely challenging in the meantime!

Not exactly Dream service

2010 seems to be the year for poor customer service and things taking much longer than expected. Earlier this year it was the washing machine; now Dreams are being rubbish at delivering our new bed. We’ve arranged the delivery four times, only for it not to turn up each time and when we chase, we get told that the delivery has been cancelled due to the bed not being in stock (after being told it’s in stock each time we try to arrange delivery). We now have to wait until 24 October – very frustrating considering we ordered it in August!

Progress

The last few days have been quite productive on the moving house/home improvements front. A few more boxes are packed, carpets have been ordered, several doors have been painted along with the woodwork in the downstairs bathroom, half of the garage and most of the study. The laminate flooring for the upstairs bathroom has arrived (just waiting for the floor to dry out after neglecting to pay attention to a dripping pipe) and many metres of cable have been laid ready for various computing/music/networking/TV functions – Michael has explained what it’s all for but I’m not sure I’m any the wiser.

Little Miss Impatient

Some people think that I must be quite a patient person, probably because I waited eight years for Michael to propose. The thing is, I’m not actually very patient. I waited eight years because I wanted to be with Michael and had no control over when or if we would get married, but I didn’t wait quietly! Hints were dropped very frequently throughout that time. I have never been very good at waiting for something I want to happen without grumbling frequently about it not happening quickly enough! Trying to get the house finished is a classic example of this.

Decorating drags on...

Another Friday evening spent in paint-splattered dungarees continuing with the decorating. I feel like I have painted half a million doors (although there are only 12 in total plus 5 from the flat to do later as well) and seem to spend half my life with a paintbrush in my hand. The thought of having a ceremonial burning of all things decorating-related after all this is done is highly tempting but probably isn’t the safest thing to do, or the most environmentally-friendly for that matter. Must keep reminding myself that progress continues to be made and it won’t last forever!

A new challenge

As it was National Poetry Day today, I’ve set myself a new challenge and started a new blog. This time, the challenge is to blog about my life using rhyme. It’s more for fun than anything else – I’m not all that great at poetry. It probably won’t be updated on a daily basis – I’m not sure I have the time to try and come up with rhymes about what I’m doing every day, but I’ll try and keep it updated regularly . I’m still aiming to keep up with the 100 words per day which is a bit more achievable!

Headless chicken day

Michael’s working on another event which happens later this month and had to go to Madrid for a site visit today. We left in plenty of time to get to the airport – 2 miles from home, we hit traffic and crawled at a snail’s pace. What is normally 15 minute journey took over an hour – we arrived at the airport 10 minutes before the gate shut, having pretty much lost all hope of Michael managing to catch his flight but by some miracle, he managed to make it! A frantic start which set the pace for a ‘headless chicken’ day.

The joys of a mercurial temperament

I tend to be someone who experiences most emotions on a fairly intense level. If I’m feeling happy – I’m usually very happy and life, at that moment, is just wonderful. I’m rarely indifferent about people - they’re either the most fabulous people ever or I just can’t stand them (which makes relationships with the in-laws tricky at times!) Similarly I don’t tend to be mildly irritated by things – I get boiling mad about them. Sometimes the swings are abrupt; usually they’re very short-lived. It can be very exhausting sometimes! Thank goodness Michael is generally much more placid, easy-going and understanding.

Bugs and beasties

My twin sister is scared of spiders. She won’t move off the sofa if she sees one on the floor and will sit frozen until someone else disposes of said spider. My brother wouldn’t sleep in his bedroom once because there was a spider on the ceiling. I’m not too keen on spiders, but they don’t affect me to the same extent. Now moths are a different matter. I once called Michael to ask him if he would come over to my house and remove a moth from my room as I couldn’t go in there until it had gone!

Hibernation

One of the things that I constantly talk about with my clients at work is the fact that women will (if ‘allowed’) revert back to mammalian instincts during labour – needing dark, quiet and a safe environment to labour effectively. The nights drawing in have made me aware of the fact that I’m a mammal too – I’ve suddenly had a drop in energy levels and find myself almost feeling like I want to go into hibernation. Unfortunately, with the amount of work that still needs to be done on the house, hibernation is not really a valid option at the moment.

Phil & Becky's wedding

The fifth wedding of the year was Phil and Becky’s wedding held at a pretty 11th century church in Warwickshire with the reception at Ragley Hall. It was one of the poshest weddings I’ve been to, but not so posh that I felt out of place! Phil is one of my old university friends – myself, Clare, Tany and Phil were known as “Phil and his three wives” for a while as we were almost inseparable during the summer of 2000. He’s now settled down to just the one wife and I hope that he and Becky will be very happy.

Despairing over decorating

It’s the start of October, it feels like there is an endless amount of work still needing to be done on the new house and we were intending to move in by the end of the month as well as having repainted the flat before we hand the keys back. Today is one of those days where I begin to wonder if we will ever get there or if my life for the foreseeable future will just continue to be one endless round of work, decorating and sleep. Must keep reminding myself of how much has been achieved so far...