Friday 18 December 2015

"Must NOT Step On Pet...Must NOT Step on New Pet"

Ok so it has been awhile...but 917 boxes of unpacking are a force to be reckoned with. Believe me.

We FINALLY moved into a new home...OUR new home.  Two years and as much headache ended with us taking possession of a brand-spanking-new set of keys three weeks ago to the day, to a domicile avec garden in SW London after two long years of hardship trying to acquire said domicile. Of course this momentous occasion couldn't go down without some sort of incident, and in our case it was the shrieking loud burglar alarm which went off for a good twelve minutes which alerted our new neighbours to our arrival.  Clearly the husband and I were not paying enough attention during the instructional run-through of our new place to make note of the CORRECT four digit sequence to stop the alarm.  (Not unlike our wedding when we publicly displayed our utter disregard for the previous nights rehearsal, and blithely led bridesmaids and groomsmen outside of the church during the wrong hymn, a good ten minutes before the service had concluded.)

The initial euphoria has morphed into something resembling mild panic and exhaustion as we have come face to face with the fact that we are hoarders.  (The husband would of course refute this, but I stand by the fact that although I confess to have somehow acquired enough shoes, handbags and jeans to stock a small L.A. boutique, his bike paraphernalia and tools and boxes and bags of random, miscellaneous crap takes up WAY MORE SPACE.  End of.

Anyway, all this to say:  To those who continually ask us, 'How are you getting on in your new home?' I have this to say: "Umm...it's cool and we love it but Dumpie has been wearing the same pair of socks for days now."

In such a rush to move out of our old flat, we (and by 'we' I mean 'I', as I am a mother, a female, and hence apparently in charge of all things hygiene and domestic related) neglected to pack intelligently.
In all fairness, we were so beaten by life at the point of move, that we splurged on the 'all-inclusive-we-will-pack-all-your-belongings' option, in the hopes that it would negate a one or both voluntary admission into the Priory come January.

Unfortunately, our (mostly Serbian) movers became fairly unmotivated to shift our millions of mirrors/picture frames/vases/etc. by the second day, and instead were discovered taking selfies on their phones in our (former) bedroom by the husband.  I kid you not.

All this to say, for the first week after we moved in, the boys were having to wear the husbands' hole-ridden Rapha socks to school, and I was forced to wear TRACK PANTS in PUBLIC(!) for going on five days, for the simple reason that we could not locate our essentials among the millions of boxes littering the landings and bedrooms.  After a week or so of manic unpacking I have completely given up, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of 'stuff' I never knew I had (thanks to not one but two storage units) and have adapted to my new environment of chaos and just about manage to muddle through most days.  Just about.

If that weren't enough, I desperately attempted (and succeeded) in winning the opportunity to bring home Squitty's nursery pet (a giant tortoise named 'Lightning') for the holidays.  Lightning is FAST. (Hence the name.)  He's also big into exploring, and has already been lost once in the six odd hours he's been at ours. I'm desperately afraid that either Egg or the husband will accidentally step on him at some point given their predilection for being 'otherwise mentally indisposed' at various points throughout the day and have even half-composed my apologetic grovelling rant to the Nursery teacher should it indeed come to pass (sigh).

At any rate, we've had him for a mere eight hours thus far, and the husband has already managed to torch the instructions thanks to an over-eager four-wick candle on the kitchen table. Nuff said.