The Move - Chapter One (or How I Fell I Love With A Lady)

Well there I go again, announcing sweeping changes and then disappearing for weeks.

Why? Total lack of the interwebz!

Well, not entirely total. I did manage to wrangle myself my very own smart phone (finally!) and use ridiculously large chunks of bandwidth to feed my Facebook addiction. But any plans I had for blogging were shot down by the ruthless combination of teeny tiny keys and massive data costs. Besides, I needed all my spare bytes to navigate my way around the new city!

I had so many posts in my head, too. All mentally written, edited, and promptly forgotten. Drat!

Well, best I start at the beginning...

"How was the move?" I hear you ask, on tenterhooks for weeks waiting for our riveting removalling stories, keenly anticipating my return.

It went remarkably smoothly. Technically it was the quickest move we've ever pulled off, because this is the first time every box we own has been unpacked. All our last moves we never actually finished, dragging a box or two with us over several years per house.  We had to unpack every box this year, because this house is tiny. REALLY tiny. (And currently being made even more so by the additional of a hulking, man sized teenage boy, but that's another story.)

By the end of the move, we had ditched two skip bins and a medium sized truck's worth of junk, never mind all the still semi-useful stuff we managed to give away. It was a real wake up call on assessing the things we needed and really wanted. The downsize has been very cathartic, and do you know? I haven't missed a single thing I tossed. Not one.

We've found all sorts of ingenious places to stash the things we kept, too. All hale Ikea and underbed "storage". (Storage is a loose term I'm using here for the absolute cram-fest that is under every bed. I've put my childhood Tetris skills to excellent use. I'm pretty sure Peanut's bed legs are no longer actually touching the floor, but instead she's perched, floating on a morass of stashed Christmas decorations and excess crib parts.)

I'm in love with the house. Madly. She's a grand old dame with character. There are certain things I've always wanted in a house, and she ticks my boxes. Even the boxes I didn't know I had. Picket fence - tick! Hydrangea - tick! Wooden staircase - tick! Wooden floors.... shaker kitchen... dog door... formal dining... decorative arches... snug upstairs sleeping quarters that feel like we're tucked into the frankensteinian love child of a treehouse and a boat - tick!

And she's a house with history, who has obviously been loved for a long time. She's not just been cobbled together as strictly a rental concern. Everything from the hose fitted shower heads to the handy washing machine pipe hole in the laundry has been thoughtfully done. My friend Joel put it best: this is a house that was built (and recently delightfully practically renovated) to actually be lived in.

So, that's the end of The Move, Chapter One. I suspect the next chapter will cover the trials and tribulations of Moving With The Accidental Pets (we're down three, mien gott) or perhaps Ten Easy Lessons On How To Stow A Full Sized Christmas Tree In A Shoe Box. Who knows? See you tomorrow!