Well, I'm here.

I'm on horribly slow dialup, a temporary service provided by my ISP until my broadband gets connected. It's maddening - I can't believe the internet was ever this slow, let alone slower! - but at least I could clear the 50 emails and check a few sites lol.

I didn't end up getting packed on Sunday - an idiot at the removals office read the name of my town, associated it with the name of a very similar-sounding town 200km south, and sent them there instead. This was not discovered until I phoned mid-afternoon to see where they were and the guy asked which major town I was near, and was then like ". . . oh." So they came at the crack of dawn, 6:30am, on Monday, and packed and moved me all in one day.

Tuesday I went back to clean the old house, but it was hot and I was tired and my 12yo sister came with me to "help" but finding jobs for her to do turned out to be a nuisance, so I put off finishing the clean until Thursday. On Wednesday I unpacked, again with 12yo sister's help, rather more successful this time but I'm still only half unpacked. Thursday I finished cleaning the old house, handed over the keys and said goodbye to that town. It hasn't sunk in yet, no doubt it will!

And that brings me to Friday. I've got to unpack and sort enough boxes today so that my housemate can move in comfortably tomorrow. I've got a long day ahead of me and I'm still quite tired, and aching all over because my body is not used to this kind of exercise! It's probably doing me the world of good to do a week's hard physical labour, but my thigh muscles and calf muscles and back muscles think I'm an idiot.

I think I got bitten by a spider for the first time ever on Wednesday. I was unpacking kitchen stuff when my right big toe started to ache and itch and burn like crazy. Not quite get-me-to-a-hospital painful (which since I had no petrol and a twelve year old in tow is a good thing!) but very sore. Rubbing and massaging didn't help so I just sucked it up and got on with unpacking with a limp. Later I had another look and there was a dark red spot right where the centre of the pain had been. No lump or obvious puncture wounds, just discolouration. Later I did find a small garden spider of some sort in the kitchen, but I've no idea whether it was that or any other spider. It stopped hurting by that evening and the spot is gone now, so whatever it was that bit me, it clearly wasn't one of the dangerous ones!

I'm really liking the new house. It's a 1950s cream brick house with wooden window and door frames, fairly run down but with recently re-tiled floors which lift the whole thing. The neighbours have sheep, I'm getting used to the railway freight line right across the road, there's a tiny general store around the corner, and the house and its environs just have a nice feel to them. For the first time ever, I can imagine staying put in a rental house! I'd like to stay here until I'm ready to buy, if I can. I really like it and I feel at home at long last. In all areas of my life - accommodation, job, location, hobbies, I'm happy with my life and plans RIGHT NOW. Not the plans for later, the plans I'm working towards eventually, but the plans for the next few weeks and months. This is a new experience!

*Flop*

There's a million more things I could do around the house to be ready for the packers, but it is at least in a state where I won't be disgraced when they get here, and right now that's enough because I'm beat and HAVE to sit down for a while. I've had 5 hours' sleep three nights running and three very busy and stressful days (I didn't tell you about the car battery dying on Friday and Dad's valiant rescue of me, the car, and my need for bond money since the government sucks, but yeah, Friday was intense) . . . and I'm physically and mentally wiped. I have to have some down time or I'm going to wind up sobbing on the packing teams' shoulders.

Which, I'm sure, is not a novelty for them. They probably move many teachers in an even worse state of distress than I am in! It's still 10 days before state school teachers go back (9 days for me) so this is luxuriously early for a move. Many people haven't even got this years' school placements yet, let alone a moving day. So I should just chill the hell out. It could be worse!

(. . . "There could be snakes on here with us!" - thanks, Mr Pratchett)

The phone (and thus internet) at this house will be disconnected tomorrow and it'll take up to 5 working days for the phone, then another 5-10 for the internet after that, to be set up at the new house. So I'm going to be out of regular internet contact for a couple of weeks. I'll be online for sure - the local library has internet computers and so does the school, and I'll be at both frequently! - but I won't be sitting around on the internet a lot. I may go nuts. Or I may get a whole heap of writing and flute practise done. Who can say?

WAAAAAAH

So, the removalists phoned today (Saturday). They're packing me tomorrow afternoon and moving me on Monday.

HEEEEEEEEELP!

I completely discombobulated the house so that I could sort boxes and throw stuff away, thinking I would have at least a couple of days' warning before the packing team arrived - not 20 hours' notice and when I was 2 hours from home! There is SO much sorting and tidying to do, and it's already got to nearly 8pm and it's still over 30 C and as sticky and humid as a sauna and looking like it's going to storm, and I had a late night (stayed over at Dad's and nattered until nearly 2am) and an early start (up at 7:30 to get to the Montessori foundation course) and sat on hard chairs in the course all day so I'm stiff as a board, and both my hands ache for various reasons and my knee is acting up . . .

In a nutshell, BAWWWWW.

I don't know how on earth I'm going to be ready for a packing team who are turning up "tomorrow afternoon" when I don't know what time . . . I'm an Aspie, I need a deadline! *panics*

This is going to be a LONG night, and I only have four frozen cupcakes and no chocolate or diet coke. Maybe I should run up to the servo and remedy that before it closes in 10 minutes.

. . . yeah, I should.

But before I do that, because I won't have time to do a proper entry on it, I LOVED the Montessori course and found it inspiring and validating and brought me right back to my roots as a self-regulation raised child and a firm believer in self-directed education and respectful pedagogy. I am totally in the right place.

Oh, and it turns out that my new principal taught my brother during his time at a Montessori high school, the presenter of the course taught my cousins at another Montessori school, and one of the teacher aides is the mother of a boy who was in 10yo brother's class at the public school he started school at. LOL Perth.

Ouch

I'm still sorting through those boxes of papers and bits and pieces. There's so much accumulated stuff there, and reading parts of it (particularly when flipping through old notebooks to see if they're still usable) is quite painful. It's like reliving the past 5 years of my life, the problem being that I already lived them and they were sodding miserable. In one notebook I found pages and pages of journaling from when I was making up my mind / screwing up my courage to quit my archaeology job and leave Sydney. I was living in a constant state of fear and anxiety in that job, never knowing where the next blow was coming from, constantly on that fight-or-flight edge. I had to slam that notebook shut and chuck it away as fast as I could. I know now that a lot of my problems in that job were generated by my own issues as an Aspie - all the misunderstandings and confusions - but it was still a crazy-making place regardless. I've worked as an undiagnosed Aspie in places that were not that manic. It was not just me! But remembering what I went through at the end there was gut-wrenching.

I've found some good stuff, too, of course - old cards and letters from caring friends, photocopies of good papers that still interest me, random photographs, etc. And a few bits of humour.

The following was written on a piece of notepaper from that same archaeology job. It was fairly early in my career there, and was inspired by two draft reports I'd received back from the client in a heavily, and idiotically, edited state. "C" is the client's comment; "A" is the snarky answer I wished I could give! All of the comments are real and came from high-profile public clients.

C: There does not appear to be an executive summary.
A: Appearances can be deceiving. Executive summary is on second page.

C: Significant vistas: you have not addressed the view of the building from the grave on the hill.
A: You can't see the building from the grave on the hill.

C: Spelling error: unkempt
A: No, that's the correct spelling.

C: The "grassed area" you refer to is not grassed. Do you mean that it should be grassed?
A: No, I mean that it is grassed. What you mean is that it is wild grass, not lawn. Would you prefer "abandoned lot" to "grassed area"?

C: "Possibly Pinus radiata" - is it possible to be more positive?
A: If it was, would we have said "possibly"?

C: Is this paragraph out of place?
A: . . . No?

C: The diagram only has 4 layers . . .?
A: There are four lots of information represented in the diagram

C: I disagree that this item has heritage significance and should be retained.
A: Me expert, you client. You don't have to like my findings.

C: This information is not referenced. Please cite your source.
A: That would be your email on the subject directing me to include this information.

C: Please remove all interpretation schemes and suggestions from the report as it is not part of the scope of this project.
A: You mean the ones you requested at the last minute, right before the report was due?

C: The section on indigenous heritage has disappeared.
A: You did mark it as "irrelevant: remove" in the last edited version.

C: I don't understand this sentence.
A: That's not my fault, please consult a dictionary.

C: "Item is of little significance." Do you mean it is of no significance?
A: No, I mean it is of little significance.

C: "Maintenance is the responsibility of the client" - this is incorrect. Maintenance is the responsibility of the tenant.
A: Remember those emails I sent asking for information on who is responsible for maintenance? This is why answering them would have been good.

C: ?
A: Are we playing guess-what-I-don't-like-about-this-section? "?" what?!

Any theories on why I burned out after 18 months of consulting? Anyone?

Making Plans

I'm still working through those boxes, throwing away amazing amounts of stuff as I go. Whole piles of the stuff. Undergrad lecture notes from 10 years ago - I don't care how many funny apropos elephants I drew in the margins. Goodbye! Et cetera.

In between times I'm procrastinating on the internet and looking at various things I want to join or do after I move.

I've found the church I want to get involved with, a very active and progressive Anglican parish with its base in an adjacent suburb. Closely involved with that church, and located in its buildings, is a choir I want to join. The choir practises will take care of my Wednesday evenings rather nicely, and worship is at the very civilised time of 9:30am on Sundays.

The concert band I want to join rehearses in the city on Tuesday evenings, so that will be my once-a-week trek out of my normal area! That will be my flute outlet.

There are two local swimming pools, one in the same suburb as work and one in the suburb adjacent to my house. The former is an open-air one that is only open in the warmer months, and only has one swimming lane open when I'd like to be there, so I will probably go to the latter, which is indoor and has more room for laps. I'm aiming to stop and swim for half an hour on the way home from school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It won't take long out of my day to slip into bathers, go for a swim, fling on some dry clothes, drive home and then shower and do my hair and stuff. So it should work pretty well.

So my week will look like this:

Monday - School 8am-5pm, swimming
Tuesday - School 8am-5pm, concert band 7:30pm
Wednesday - School 8am-5pm, swimming, choir 7:00pm
Thursday - School 8am-5pm
Friday - School 8am-5pm, swimming
Saturday - NOTHING! (well probably grocery shopping lol)
Sunday - Church 9:30am

On the days when I don't swim I'll probably aim to go for an evening walk at least, but I know that once I'm teaching again my feet will be very sore in the evenings and walking may not be a possibility (hence the swimming).

I'm really looking forward to all of this!

. . . and K-Mart has 30% off womens' swimwear if I try on my swimsuit and find that it's too big. Of course they do o_O

I Hate Packing

Have I mentioned that? I've mentioned that. Yeah. I hate packing.

Today I'm starting on the task known as Working Out What Is In All Those Blasted Boxes. I have boxes of stuff - that's the only way to describe it. Papers I need. Papers I don't. Photo negatives from high school. Random items that have become jumbled together, like a small plastic bag containing three candles, an AA battery, a decorative teddy bear and a comb. Bags of untouched toiletries from some forgotten birthday. Bags of half-used toiletries that got lost in a move and turned up again years later. Six kinds of notepaper because it always goes missing. Broken coathangers. Lone socks. Scraps from notebooks. Scrappy notebooks. It's a MESS.

Some of the boxes are largely unchanged - apart from frantic I-can't-find-that-mathom rummaging - since my friend Jenna helped me turf things into boxes at the last minute when I left Sydney. There's good stuff in there that I bought, lost and forgot all about. And there's heaps of crap in there too because every time a friend helps me move house they do well-meant things like assuming that my paper recycling pile needs to be packed, so the same throw-away stuff ends up in boxes again, and again, and again.

It HAS to be sorted. I refuse to keep lugging the refuse of the last 5 years around with me. But oh man it's giving me a headache trying to get through it all! I have to look at every single item and every single piece of paper and decide whether it it's 'keep' or 'throw', and if it's keep, I have to work out where to put it.

I'll be so glad when it's done - it'll be awesome. But for the time being? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I HAVE A HOUSE!

The completely insane train of luck continues.

We applied for one house, and got it. Just like that.

The removalists say I'll be going sometime next week, probably the 20th or 21st like I originally asked for.

It's all happening!

WHEEEE!

Edited to add: AND, get this - we want to replace the curtains in the rental house because they're those chiffon tab curtains that are basically see-through. Right now, Spotlight (fabric, craft & homewares store) has 25% off tab top and eyelet curtains for VIP members. I'm a VIP member. *falls down in a dead faint*

When I told her this, my housemate-to-be asked whether I'd saved a leprechaun. She may be on to something.

Have I Mentioned . . .

. . . how much I hate the heat?

It got to about 42 here today, on the 14th day of a heatwave that has seen maximum temperatures above 37 C every day for two weeks. And consequently I'm lethargic, can't seem to get hydrated no matter how much I drink, have an inconsistent appetite, can't sleep at night and can't wake up in the morning, keep getting headaches and generally feel like crap. And because my temperature is off I keep burning my mouth on hot food, which just isn't fair!

The heatwave is supposed to break tomorrow, which means that we're expecting a maximum temperature around 33 degrees instead of the 38, 39, 40+ days we've been having. It's better than nothing, but Perth is only expecting 27. *sigh* I can't wait to move!

The good news is that as of Thursday I have a future housemate. Her name is Grace and she's pretty cool, and we have a lot in common, so I think it will work out well. On Friday we put in a house application, so we've currently got fingers, toes etc crossed while we wait to see if it's accepted. Then of course we have to start paying for the damn thing. I HATE rental bonds! Oh well, it will be managed somehow-or-other.

So . . . yeah. I'm hot and sticky and feel like crap, but stuff is happening slowly and in a few weeks' time it'll all be managed and sorted and settled. I start at the new job in two and a half weeks - how scary is that? Scary but wonderful. I just have to move first . . .

More On That . . .

The author of Getting Past Your Past talks about "D-BOM" moments. The name comes from the saying "dawn breaking over Marblehead", which is from Massachusetts apparently and, in my own words, means 'finally realising something you immediately realise that should have known already'. The GPYP method of recovery leads to many of these. And in relation to the housemate business, I've had one.

If looking after myself and doing the right thing by myself means letting someone down, then that's OKAY.

Especially if it's someone so utterly unrelated as a potential housemate I've only just met!

The unhealthy me of even a few months ago would have agonised over the decision and probably ended up going through with the house-sharing arrangement because I would not have been able to stand the idea that I was letting this person down. I would have said "but I SAID I would . . . I SAID so . . ." and let fear of others' disappointment or disapproval rule my decision-making process. I would have quailed at the idea of backing out, and convinced myself that it was best to leap in head first and take this opportunity, rather than waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Hell, I've done it enough times with relationships!

But the me of today thought, what does it matter? He's just some guy who's looking for a housemate. He'll find another one. I am under no obligation to him, the universe or anyone else to go live in a suburb I hate in the wrong part of town and make myself miserable for a year, just because some guy might think I'm a cow for changing my mind.

In fact, I realised he's welcome to think I'm a cow for changing my mind. He can even call me one, if it helps. It doesn't make my decision any less right! If he did react that way, his negative emotions would be about him and his needs, not about me and mine. Not my problem.

I have the right to put my needs first!

D-BOM!

Ha!

Christine 1, Bananaheads 0.

On Saturday I had a meeting with a guy who is also trying to set up a share house. We got along alright and it seemed to be viable, so I gave a tentative answer of "yes, start looking and we'll go from there". But on the 2 hour drive home I started critically analysing the guy's actions and words and how they compared, and I realised that he was not as great as he was making himself out to be. When I looked back over the conversation, he talked over the top of me repeatedly, and I had to keep repeating myself because he wasn't actually listening when I was speaking. He was only interested in one suburb (the one adjacent to his work) and wanted all his own stuff in the house ("just sell yours!" - no thanks, I like my stuff). He also wanted to just lie about my having a cat on the rental application, which I was in no way okay with.

When I got home I found an email from another house seeker who is actually looking in the area I want to live (she works a couple of suburbs away from me) which reminded me that there are other options out there. So I sent the guy an email explaining that the suburb he wanted was too far away, and also not really my sort of suburb, because I was a hills girl and wanted somewhere in a natural setting, rather than sterile newly-established suburbia which is where he is looking.

Well, I just got a response, suggesting a place much closer to where I want to live. Okay, but it's a 3x2 apartment that would be WAY too expensive for two people, and with three or more it would be way too crowded (I had said I needed two small rooms or one big one); it'd be totally unsuitable for a cat, and even more sterile and prissy than the suburb we were originally looking at. Way to miss the point! For an added bonus, he also called me Christy instead of Christine. *headdesk*

Not going there. NEXT!

Too Easy?

Do you ever get the feeling that things are just going too well and you're beginning to wonder where the catch is?

I'm feeling like that right now.

I got into the uni course I desperately wanted.

I wanted out of the education department, applied for one perfect job, and got it.

I just found out that since I resigned at the end of the year, the education department will move me back to Perth.

WHERE'S THE CATCH?

When will my luck run out?

I'm worried that the catch might be housing. It's more expensive in Perth but there are some not unreasonable places around, I just have to snag one. And I'm looking into sharing as well - keeping an eye on the share house adverts. I guess I'm feeling a little het up about it because there's currently nothing I can do - I can't start house-hunting until after Christmas because I don't have any money! I just want it settled and sorted and I feel kind of like it's going to get out of hand if I don't do something RIGHT NOW.

Of course . . . I could pack. That would help. But . . . nah :D