What a difference a day makes...

Well, quite a few days, actually...to be truthful, months of sheer agony.  I've never been so stressed or worked so hard in all my life during the finding of and moving into this house.  The day of the move I went to bed about 7pm and my sister had to wake me the following morning at 10!  Been here five days now and have just discovered how to use my laptop as a laptop, and without the mouse!  Tricky.

I'm sitting in my living room (as in the photo) looking out onto the pool.  It's terribly hot outside but I'm as cool as a cucumber in here.  Muffy is asleep on my bed.  Fortunately I've not had to worry about her at all.  She miaowed all the way down in her cage on the front seat of my car, then made a bee-line for the walk-in wardrobe and tiptoed out in the middle of that first night to cuddle Mummy in bed.  She then had a nibble of her bikkies and did a wee in her litter tray, then hopped back onto the bed.  She's only ventured out once or twice and that for only a couple of minutes.  Seems she's become an inside cat overnight.   

Great to hear from you Bianka (Germany), and to know you're reading my blog.  Also great to be back in touch with you Tarja (Finland).  I hope to be more regular now as the worst is behind me and I should soon be getting back to normal.

I didn't move on Monday as mentioned in the last blog.  Philip had workmen pulling out the old ceilings with their dozens of halogen downlights, replacing them with state-of-the-art soundproofing and central lights.  Then he had to paint all the rooms.  So the move was delayed till Thursday.  What an effort he put in!  He went to the old house a few times to help me with the packing, then helped with the unloading here and had to fix up my TV antenna, tune my TV to Sydney channels, connect my washing machine and change my computer server.  Next job will be to get me a phone. Then we have to put in a kitchen. No hurry for that as the upstairs folk are bringing me the most delicious meals on a tray.  Talk about healthy eating!  No wonder the Japanese live so long!

Muffy finds a spot!

This time next Monday the removalist will be here!  The whole process is becoming more and more of a nightmare and I hope I last the distance!

Floods are now in northern NSW and Victoria and I have a friend on the river bank in Echuca.  I rang last night and they've put all their stuff up high.  There are lots of fund raising activities for Queensland, so I hope they have more for the other states.

Hard to believe

I certainly can't complain about my move when thousands of people are putting up with the worst floods in Australia's history.  ABC TV and a commercial channel are running non-stop flood information, as are some radio stations.  It is truly a disaster of monumental proportions and everything else fades into insignificance in comparison.

But I will have a little whinge - the more I throw out or pack, the more stuff there seems to be!!!!!!!!  It's been going on for weeks and still 10 days to go...The paperwork is, of course, the most unpleasant.  Old bills, receipts, cards, letters, photos, articles printed from the internet, etc, etc, are all going out.  Now I have to notify everybody of my new address, even the Companion Animal Register so Muffy will have a new address and phone number if she gets lost.  (It's compulsory to register animals and have them desexed and microchipped.)

When I'm not packing I'm lying on the sofa in front of the fan, watching the tennis.  Still practise the piano and swim early every morning.

Oh dear!

This is becoming an absolute nightmare and three more weeks to go!  Every day I sort, throw out and pack and mysteriously there seems to be ever more junk!!!!!!!!!!  Masses of stuff has gone to charity shops and I've filled two whole garbage bins that were so heavy I didn't think the truck would be able to lift them, but fortunately they were emptied successfully. 

The backdrop to all this is bad news on both a macro and micro level.  Not me personally, but dreadful things have been happening to friends:  a drowning off Cancun in Mexico, husbands abandoning wives, sickness.  And the floods in Queensland are unprecedented, with damage that will take months to fix and prices of fruit and vegetables going through the roof.  Before we know it, we'll be having bushfires!

Somehow in this chaos I manage to practise the piano and swim every morning, and have coffee and meals with friends.  I drive to the new house every couple of weeks with the car loaded up.  Philip and Manami also have boxes everywhere, but are getting new curtains, lamps, and other lovely things for the bedrooms and gradually settling in.  Emma is enjoying the pool and baby Hugo sleeps peacefully through it all! 

Let the game begin!

For weeks now I've slowly been getting used to the idea that I'm moving, alternating between tears of sadness and smiles of relief, but now I'm actually packing!  It is an extremely fraught time, I have to admit.  So many memories being left behind yet a new period of life beginning.

Christmas 2010

I have the most wonderful daughter-in-law!  Just look at this Christmas cake she made for our dessert yesterday, with strawberry and cream Santas!!!!!!!  It was our first Christmas in the new house and we sat out on the deck, overlooking the swimming pool surrounded by trees.  The in-laws were there, too, so it was just a perfect family time.

I needed a happy day, as the previous day had been very stressful, with me reading old letters and sorting throughvarious bits and pieces, like the tickets, boarding passes, etc, from when Philip and I went to live in France in 1973!!!!!!!!  I threw them out, but have hung onto the drawings he did when he was in kinder, and all the cards he's ever sent me in his whole 40 years.  There's a tear-bringing card that his Nanny sent to me once when I was holidaying in London and he was about 6:  'Dear Mummy, I miss you more and more as the days get longer and longer.'  Needless to say, I hopped on the next plane home!

Michael, by now you will have received my email and know I did, indeed, get your ecard.  Thanks again.

And thanks to you, Winifred and Frank, for the lovely cards that were waiting for me at the new address.

Sky and sand...

This is the carpet - laid only yesterday - in my new bedroom.  We picked a tough one to withstand Muffy's clawing.  She never did take to her scratch-pole, always preferred the carpet.  However, in her 8 years in this house she never did any damage, so I hope this one will be just as hard-wearing.

I love the painted walls.  Years ago, when this effect was all the rage, I spent a fortune on books showing how to do it but never tried.  Now it's done for me, which is nice.

The previous owner was a plumber but I think he must have had an electrician as a mate as I've never seen so many power points, switches and lights!  It will take forever to work out what all the switches are for.

Now that I have a date for moving I'll really get stuck into culling again.  I did do a bit a while back, but then gave up as I needed a deadline to keep me motivated.

Contract exchange day in November

Friends Bruce and Wendy were with me in this shot, taken moments before Wendy tipped her tea all over me!!!!  My handbag, trousers and shoes were completely soaked and people ran from everywhere to help clean up the mess.  Wendy took advantage of the opportunity to introduce me to them all, telling them I'd just bought a house in the area and would soon be moving in.  So I made lots of friends!

Yes, that pic of Hornsby shopping centre sure looks deserted, Winifred.  I didn't take it myself - found it online.  I'll bet it's full of peope now, just days before Christmas.  You can't imagine how nice it was to read your positive comments about being with the grandchildren.  My 'friends' continue to be extremely negative, so much so that I really don't want to be bothered with any of them any more.

I spent the weekend in Montview, among the dozens of cartons waiting to be unpacked.  Emma and I sat for hours together in the living room bird watching while Hugo snored away contentedly in his rocking cradle.  The view from there is nothing but trees - just beautiful.  We're having a cold snap, though certainly nothing like yours in the northern hemisphere, so were not in the least tempted to try out the pool.

This morning I rang my swimming friend at 7, saying, 'Let's forget about it today!'  I think it was 12 degrees, with a gale blowing.  So Muffy and I curled up and stayed in bed till 10, when I had to get up and get ready to go out to lunch with friends.

Philip has booked a removalist to take my stuff down on 24 January.  I met the young couple who've bought the house - they're both architects, and fell in love with the place after 10 minutes, so I'm very glad to be leaving it in loving hands.

Nice boardwalk near home

This morning I signed my house away.  What a strange feeling...I have to be out by 31 January 2011, but can, of course, go anytime from now.

To celebrate, I bought myself Susan Boyle's Christmas CD, which is playing as I type.  I know I said I'd never buy another thing, but this will be nice to listen to in the car as I go between houses over the next weeks.  Philip wants to borrow my car - a stationwagon - so I'll drive down (with a lawnmower that a friend gave us) and he can use it to move various bits and pieces they don't want the removalist to handle.

I've googled the library, aquatic centre, etc, in Hornsby and am pleased to discover they are only about 4km from the house, as is Westfield, one of those dreadful shopping centres that I don't like a bit, but I suppose I will go there occasionally.  Here's a pic - I'm sure these places are the same the world over:

It seems too good to be true, having both bush and city right on our doorstep!

I can hardly wait...view from near my new home.

My house sold in a blink to a young couple and now it's just a matter of their doing the paper work and building and pest checks.  I'm stressed out of my brain making decisions on what to keep and what to throw away!  This morning I took a couple of boxes of books to the university, where they have a huge book fair every two years.  I told them two of the books, 'Firing,' by Ninette Dutton and 'Out in the Open', by her (now late, and deservedly so) husband, Geoffrey, must be sold together.  Written in the 90s, Ninette's book was a charming tale of her life with her husband and family and Geoffrey's, 'a disarmingly frank autobiography', revealed years of betrayal with other women.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I read it.  What an absolute rotter!!!!!!!!!  How could a man so publicly humiliate his wife like this???????  Wikileaks has nothing on this shameless revelation.

I'm listening to old tapes, dating back to some of Philip speaking French when he was 3 and 4.  I can't possibly get rid of them as they bring tears to my eyes.  He was so cute, just the way Emma is now.

I'm also having coffees and lunches with many friends, to say goodbye, though I intend to come back here to Newcastle frequently.  Am also doing a lot of lying on the sofa in front of the telly watching reruns of 'The Bill'.