The Madness, the Madness

Steve was happy the coffee machine made it

I’m desperately missing blogging. It’s been more than two weeks without one and I’m starting to suffer serious withdrawals. The challenge? I have not only completed four of the most grueling work weeks I’ve ever known, I also moved into a new home smack bang in the middle of those weeks. Awesome. Then on Friday, I’m sitting in a series of meetings I’ve sweated blood to get happening only to get an email from Lex’s school starting off with this little beauty:

“We know Lex has been through lots of changes recently with Mum working so much and with sharing a bedroom with Jax. We’ve kept our focus positive while acknowledging his feelings about Jax being in his bedroom and missing Mum. He’ll get through it soon, not to worry – he’s a trooper!”

Sometimes 18th and 21st tankards come in handy
– what is it with boys and tankards exactly?

Thanks guys, when I saw that I nearly burst into tears right in the middle of a room full of 40 super serious people – Agggggggh!! Bloody KIDS!!

It’s been intense let me tell you – at work and at home – and when not in the office, I’ve had to snatch every second of time I can get to first pack boxes and then open boxes and sort stuff out. Steve – I should add – is bloody useless at this stuff. He sees an enormous pile of boxes and doesn’t know what to do, so he either does something useless, or, more often than not, gets distracted along the way and doesn’t finish anything. I, on the other hand, am very experienced with this moving malarkey, and I know that I must finish what I’m doing, allowing absolutely nothing to distract me until that particular job is done.

When moving from one place to another in the same country – no drama. Everything has its home and you usually just put it in a similar home in the new place. When merging two homes together, a large part of which has been festering in storage in Australia for three years, well it’s a whole new ball game. Some of the finds were delightful, however the families of cockroaches escaping stale boxes were not – then again, at least no red back spiders made it here alive. The stench of our clothes wasn’t delightful either, nor the back breaking agony us old farts feel every night we go to bed from too much bending over boxes. Not fun I say!!!

However the best bit was opening boxes of toys appropriate to the boys three years ago… oh and how kids’ toys love to come in tiny, weeny, itty, bitty parts, and if you don’t put all of these bits together in their rightful place, then you have lots and lots of tiny, weeny, itty, bitty parts that become unusable shite clogging up your home. As Steve loves to say, organising this was a lot of lot of fun.

The good news is Vick will be able to set up a decently provided kid’s playroom in her village in the Philippines for street kids. We’re super happy about that, as all of the waste at least results in a good outcome.

A couple of happy snaps during the time I was actually at home the last couple of weeks.

Yours without the bollocks

Andrea