A Moving Experience - PART TWO

With every new home, comes a new set of “firsts”.

First dinner party (no dining room yet available…), first party (all booked – hope the dining room is sorted by then!), first birthday, first argument…or five.

Today’s first was the first dying of the hair. Not a very exciting first, granted, but with all of the mirrors lying around waiting to be fixed to their appropriate walls, the old lady who kept looking back at me was getting too comfortable in our house.

Anyone else who can’t afford/refuses to spend £80+ every 6 weeks on stemming the unrelenting tide of grey that is sweeping across my head will feel my pain.

Apart from my friend Kate, who can quickly and successfully bleach her hair blonde whilst on holiday, without even looking in a mirror, it’s an event that most of us “DIY Dyers” have to work ourselves up to.

In my case, I’ve been psyching myself up for the best part of a month – there was just another glass of wine to drink, episode of Sons of Anarchy to watch or box to unpack. It really doesn’t take that long; I am just a dreadful procrastinator.  

The lazy feminist in me even considered NOT doing it at all and seeing how bad it really is up there.

When today’s mirror image was that of Mrs Pepperpot however, I decided to grab the dye bottle with the too-small-gloves (SERIOUSLY – how fucking tiny are people’s hands?!) and 

just get the hell on with it.

First issue that came to light, was that of space.  Whilst our old bathroom was smaller, the sink was in between the bath and the loo, giving plenty of elbow room and lots of wipe-clean surfaces.  

There admittedly was the incident where I had missed a big blob of dye that landed on the green toilet seat and looked like a skid mark for the next 3 weeks, but Cillit Bang dissolved enough of the seat to make that merely a memory.

Our new sink however, is nestled snugly into a cranny – not a nook, a nook is a lovely place with possibly a soft throw, maybe some books and a scatter cushion or two.  A cranny is much smaller, much colder and less forgiving. 

This cranny would be OK, if I was a small child or only had a Mohican, but by the end of the application, I had bruised funny bones and it looked like a murder had taken place. A small, pinky kind of murder, but a splatter pattern that Rizzoli and Isles would love to investigate nevertheless…

Luckily, the shower 20 minutes later removed the "blood" from my hair, the washing machine removed it from the towel and the Cillit Bang came into it's own again on the walls...in the main. 

Mrs Pepperpot firmly back in her, well, Pepperpot, I can get on with my day to day activities.  This now definitely includes searching for tiles to facilitate the easier cleaning of the murder scene for next time she appears in the mirror.

I am also now looking forward another first - the first lottery win in this house, so I can jog off to the hairdressers and let them worry about stains whilst I drink champagne.

A moving experience...PART ONE

For the last 6 months or so, our lives have been filled to the brim with all things “House Move”.  Now we are finally tucked into our new pad, the stress and the seemingly never-ending list of paperwork to complete seems like a dim and distant memory.  Thank goodness.

Writing about it whilst we were in the thick of it all felt like tempting fate, but it’s too late now!  We’re in!

Everyone knows the old adage of moving house being up there with bereavement and divorce in terms of stress, but you don’t really remember, especially when the last time you did it was 16 years ago.  And like childbirth, people generally do it more than once, so it can’t be THAT bad, can it?

Let me start by saying – we LOVE our new house.  Everytime I walk through the door, I can’t quite believe it is actually ours.  We own a 3 bed DETATCHED house with parking.  Us.  We drink own brand coke and cider – just to give you a level if you don’t know us personally. 

We have 2, that’s 2 toilets.  Amazing.  Apart from the fact that I now have to clean 2 toilets and buy more loo roll (WHY?  How are we using more loo roll, when there are exactly the same amount of bums in the house still?), it’s fantastic to be able to have a wee downstairs, but NOT to have to trip over a chair and stub your toe on the step up into the kitchen on the long, dark trek to the downstairs loo at 4am.

It’s also bloody marvellous to have a shower, walk out of the bathroom and straight into your bedroom, where your clothes are all stored in your lovely new wardrobes and drawers – just waiting for you to put them on.  No more the walk of shame from the downstairs bathroom, covering your best bits with a towel, through the kitchen, through the dining room, up the stairs and into the bedroom, only to find you’d forgotten to pick up a bra from the airing cupboard just outside the bathroom.  The most annoying thing was discovering 5 hours later, the wet towel you’d left on the bed...

We also now have a hall.  I know it might sound daft to those of you who already have a hall to be pleased about such a simple thing, but it’s a very important simple thing.  Previously, we had an awkward porch, filled with shoes and coats and bags, followed immediately by the lounge where you had to circumnavigate the finely honed selection of exactly the right sized furniture and cat hair tumbleweeds.

The hall is ace.  The amount of doors leading off it to other rooms is a revelation.  4 if you count the downstairs loo.  That’s 4 places I can be shut away from the children.  Bliss.  If you don't understand the need to be shut away from your children, then this blog is not for you...

The bedrooms are bigger, full of character and period features and MOST IMPORTANTLY, nobody has to walk through anybody else’s bedroom to get to their own.  It’s the best thing ever.

Here’s the trade off.   

It doesn’t smell like our house.  There is still a definite whiff of dog in the air.  He was a lovely, friendly dog, but a stinky doggy dog nevertheless.  Also, it smells a bit damp occasionally, but she is a 120 year old lady so quite frankly, we can allow her a bit of leeway.

Add to that, the reluctant temporary return to the heady aroma of a cat litter tray in a bathroom with no outside windows and an electric vent fan that sounds like the unlikely offspring of a Boeing 747 and a mosquito.  Not a great mix, nasally speaking.

The windows are gorgeous, original, magnificent wooden sashes.  They are also completely knackered.  The glass is cracked, the sills are rotten, they rattle when the cat sneezes and we have banned the children from touching their bedroom ones on pain (pane!) of death.   

We want to give our beautiful stinky house what it deserves, which is the TLC and the period restoration of the features that I (ahem, we) fell in love with.  But Sarah Beeny and Laurence Llewelyn Bowen we ain’t.  Neither do we have their cash, boobs or sleeves.  If I had my way, we would replace and maintain the wooden sashes, but only if the following criteria were met:

1.   We could afford it.
2.    We could afford to get a professional in to paint them every couple of  years.
3.    We could afford to pay the heating bills of a detached house with no double glazing.
4.    We could afford it.

None of the above are relevant, so we are therefore doing the next best thing and getting double glazed uppy downy ones. (Technical FENSA approved term...) Hurrah for UPVC *sings Pulp’s Common People in head*

The house also needs a new lid.  Terrifying and expensive, but true.  A lovely man is coming to do it, but I am not sure either of us can properly relax until it is finished and the sharp sucking in of air over teeth is all over.  It’s quite a fundamental thing, a roof.  Apparently...

So that’s it.  A month in.  Still surrounded by boxes, bubble wrap and stuff that we don’t know what to do with or where to put.  A lot of it I’m not even sure if we still want, it was just “our stuff” and we were bringing it with us.   

The giant roll of barbed wire that was loaded onto the van on moving day had to be the highlight of “WTF!!!” for me.  Until I was passed a box to go up into the loft, labelled “OLD BANK CRAP” that is. 

Luckily, we’re getting a new roof, so no rain can leak in and ruin the very important contents of THAT box...

Things I should know by now, but apparently don’t...

I am 36 and a half.  I should know better.  For the most part, I’d like to think I do.  In fact, a large chunk of my life is currently spent in abject frustration that the thing I knew was going to happen (because if you bounce that big football in the house it IS very likely that it’s going to knock over the cup of coffee on the table) DOES in fact happen.

I was slightly dreading my 30^th birthday when it started to loom large.  Old, I thought.  I don’t want to not be in my twenties.  I remember distinctly thinking about my life in terms of a newspaper report and how I would now be described as a “30 something mother-of-two”.  Terrifying.

And then it happened.  I had a fabulous birthday, surrounded by my family and friends, with loads of surprises and a particularly unexpected and expensive present from my lovely husband.  The best present of all though, was actually my thirties themselves!

Never have I been happier with where I am, what I am doing and who I am.  Because that’s what happens in your thirties.  Nothing’s particularly different.  I am now a 36 and a half mother-of-two.   

I am forever grateful for my gorgeous kids.  I am also grateful that I have been there, done that, got the t-shirt (I am literally wearing the t-shirt I wore in hospital for the first one, as I type this...) and I will never again have to argue with my husband about what to name the next one.  They wipe their own bums, brush their own teeth (with a lot of nagging) and most excellently, DON’T NEED NAPS ANYMORE.

I am also the fittest and healthiest I have ever been.  I haven’t smoked for 10 years and 8 months.  I miss it every day, but don’t miss the cost, the smell and the horror of it.  I run. I RUN! I am 5 ½ stone lighter than I was 10 years ago.  OK...at some points I was 6 ½ stone lighter than I was 10 years ago, but I’m working on that.

The point is, being in my thirties has given me a certain perspective on life that just wasn’t there in my twenties.  I am fully aware of how lucky I am to have all of the things in my life that I have, and am thankful for them every day.  A decade ago...not so much.   

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the kids then and life wasn’t as settled, but I also think it has to do with my attitude.  If you think your life stinks – it will. If you focus on the negative aspects of where you’re at, then you will never see how much positive there is around you.

Whilst there are at least 12 occasions on a daily basis where I internally say “I knew THAT was going to happen”, there are still a few lessons that I never seem to learn...

1. Intensive Conditioners.  What’s that all about?  It’s just conditioner, in a smaller bottle, for twice the price of the normal conditioner that you use.  And yet...every 6 months to a year I buy one.  I then use it once a week for a couple of weeks.  It makes NO DIFFERENCE to my hair, apart from making the roots greasy because, even though I know you don’t put conditioner on your roots, that’s what it says in the instructions. Idiot.  Stop it. 
2. Alcohol is bad. M’kay? (Hopefully someone will get the South Park reference there.)  It’s my worst remaining vice - alcohol that is, not South Park.  Whilst I certainly don’t spend every morning necking paracetamol and hankering after a fried egg sandwich, there are a significant number of days in the month where I feel less than perfect due to overindulging in the demon drink.  Is that number more than in my twenties?  Probably not.  Is it sensible to drink to the point of dancing on tables?  Probably not.  Will I ever change? Probably not. 
3. Skirts.  They don’t work on me.  Not now, not ever.  They just don’t.  Yet once every 6 months (is there a memory loss pattern going on here?) I am inexplicably drawn to a denim, button-up number.  I think to myself – this is the one!  This is the skirt that will work.  I take it hopefully to the changing rooms, wiggle into it and then...laugh.  Laugh out loud.  Skirts and me. Nope.
4. Hairwashing (see no. 1 for reference) When I was pregnant, the hormones caused a hundred different disturbing side effects – heartburn, cravings for ice, excessive wind (well...it COULD have been the pregnancy...) but the best side effect was how amazing my hair looked.  There was a significant amount more of it in places I didn’t necessarily want it, but nevertheless, the glossy, shiny locks on my head were manageable, thick and lustrous.  And I only had to wash my hair once every 3 days.  It was amazing. I was last pregnant 7 years ago and since then, there has never been a time that I can go more than 2 days without washing it.  Maximum.  It’s just the way it is now.  And yet...sometimes I wake up and think – I wonder if I can get away with it today?  I’ll just put some dry shampoo in – it’ll be fine!  No.  No it won’t.  Never again.  Don’t kid yourself.  You look like one of the heroin addicts in OITNB. Just wash it. 
5. Staying up late on a school night.  Just one more episode of Game of Thrones won’t hurt...will it? *snores quietly into breakfast coffee* 
6. Cheese.  Need I say more?

Will I ever learn?  I do hope not.

At least I can rest safe in the knowledge that I will always be right about doing homework when you get it – it’s always better to have tears and shouting on a Friday night when there is a whole weekend of wine in front of you, than on a Monday morning...