Moving House! (Or Fuck Me Dead, Why Am I Crying In A Corner?)
Today was a bad day for me. People wonder why I don’t tell them things about my life; moving, having babies, getting married, and it’s because I’m superstitious and I think it jinxes things to talk about them. And mate, I jinxed the absolute fuck out of myself today by telling everyone I was fiiiiiinally moving into my new, bigger, better house.
This is how I move: allocate the entire job of moving to Nick. Go to work. Return to the new house and live there from now on. This is how Nick moves: begin packing forty five years in advance. Buy boxes weeks out (unfortunately this time Nick bought boxes he thought were new but they were all stamped “medical use only” with postmarks, like they’d already been used to post lungs cross-country. The point is, he tried). Label everything as to where it goes. Book a truck. Pack the truck the day before the move so it’s ready to be driven to the new house the minute of settlement and begin unpacking. Organise friends to help you move. Organise snacks and drinks. Get everything moved. Unpack it and place it neatly in the appropriate room. Style the house. Clean and present to Maz when she gets home.
Today was our day to move the truck from old house to new, shiny house and we waited patiently for the pre-settlement inspection and subsequent settlement and new keys. New keys to our “forever home”. But what do they say? When you make plans, god laughs? Well today, god shat his pants with mirth. Diligent husband he is, Nick was scrubbing our old house clean, ready to dazzle its new owners, so I took a friend along to the inspection and started getting super excited for our move later in the afternoon. And there, smoking on the lawn out the front of the house were the old owners, surrounded by a halo of activity and smoke. On introduction by the estate agent they briefly filled me in on how much trouble they’d had moving; truck issues, moving buddy issues etc. Despite having two small trucks there and a couple of friends moving stuff, they began telling me maybe they’d have to leave some stuff in the garage and get it later. They were going to leave some screen doors for us, some mozzie screens, old light fittings… I just nodded, confused. I’m sure we’d just spent the last month making tip runs so we didn’t leave our old garbage at someone’s new house. But I’m a perennial pussy so just sympathised with their woes and proceeded into the house.
And there it was… a dirt bike. Just leaning against the wall in the living room of our new home. On the carpet I’d envisaged my son playing trains on in the very near future. Surrounding it was an array of detritus, nothing like our medical boxes of ordered belongings. Moving from room to room my heart slowed, there was stuff everywhere. In the house we were to move to in less than three hours. Dishes in the sink, washing still on the line. I looked at my friend and with abounding pity she asked tentatively if I was ok. I made my way out the back to see the large double garage was still jam packed full of stuff. At least two truckloads full. When I looked at my friend again she was crying. And it occurred to me, there was no way we are moving today. The two days of prepping my kid for coming home from childcare to the new house. The power, gas and internet relocations, the wardrobe guys coming to quote on Friday morning, the catch of the day delivery due tomorrow, the truck absolutely chock full of all our belongings, uninsured outside our house due back Friday morning. The annual leave days taken, the fantasies of our first night in the house tonight. All for fucking nothing. Sorry to be dramatic, but did you know people can do this?! They can sell you a house and then just not get out in time? And then tell you in the front yard about the bad day THEY’VE had? Come on guys, I’m twenty one weeks pregnant, have a toddler and a truck full of everything I own which is going to have to just sit outside now, with my frozen breast milk slowly turning sour in an esky that was meant to be in a freezer in the next three hours and now it looks like chances of plugging my fridge in anywhere in the next three days are slim. Seriously, did anyone know this shit could happen?!
Which brings me to where I am now, homeless in Big W, buying myself undies to wear to work tomorrow because mine are packed in the very front of a truck that I assumed would be unpacked in my new bedroom, in my new house. Unable to go back to my pristine, empty old home and unsure when I’ll be in my new home with my $250-a-day truckload of stuff.*
*not actually homeless because I’ll be staying at my parent’s very conveniently located, comfortable house and having a spa bath, but I wrote this for the condolences, so can you all please oblige?