midlife monday: finest hours

summer in october?

Our house went on sale at the beginning of June.
We sold it towards the end of August.

Prior to the putting up for sale was a month of prep, decluttering* and decorating.
During the selling period, came a teachers strike, prolonged summer holidays, and visiting lots of open houses in different areas, trying to work out where we would like to live.

Once we had sold, it wasn't until the end of September that we found, made a successful offer, and settled our completion/move in dates for a new house.

What I'm trying to say is, it's been quite stressful, for a long time ... and it's not over yet.

blue sky thinking?

This weekend saw me reaching the pinnacle of stress, realising what no one else seems to have clued into, that we needed to knuckle down to packing for our move out date, optimising garbage collections to get rid of junk and making sure we have enough boxes without running out at the last minute. I spent the week filling boxes and then stuffing work, homework and other projects around the packing.

What's complicating the whole deal is that our move out dates do not coincide with the move in dates. Thanks to my incredible network, we do have a short term rental for a couple of months so my worries about homelessnesslessness were unfounded. But we still need to pack for two life stages - what we don't need goes into storage; what we cannot live without, comes with us.

Hello Griz!

So this pinnacle of stress episode. Yes - 3am.
Then at around 6am I start packing like a mad woman in the garage, berating mr ebb for not doing more of his share, and that I resent him leaving everything to the last minute.

Grrrr. I spent the whole weekend cracking the whip, and feeling like a total shit for being so mean.

But then I remembered.
Holidays are like this too; I pack in advance, knowing that I won't have any help close to the date for last minute planning, emergencies at the eleventh hour and so on.

We have less than three weeks to get ready for our two moves.
And after the rec room, our books, the kitchen and the garage, I'm not packing anyone else's stuff!
Stress? What stress?

*at least, I thought we decluttered. mr ebb and the Wee Guy were still chucking out stuff yesterday evening ...