Fab Feb - Moving Forward

View from the balcony of our new house

✅Fitness (filling boxes with books and stuff

✅Alcohol free

✅Farewell party (not ours)

Over a year ago we moved into the house we are currently renting. After that move I swore I would never do all the packing again, that I would pay anything for someone else to do the dirty deed. Today I started that packing process again. I'm counting it as exercise.

I'm trying to let go of some stuff as part of the packing process. I threw out stacks of decade old Delicious magazines and selected five books to pass on to a cafe that recycles books. I was thinking about Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix. I have only watched the first episode, which I found tediously slow and boring, so I am no expert, but it's fairly well known from all the articles about the series that Marie Kondo's mantra is that each item in your house needs to give you joy. Books and stationery give me joy, making it difficult to whittle them down. Clothes give me less joy so when I go to pack them I might be able to make a better effort there.

Stumbling across good intentions does not give me joy. I have some photo travel journals I bought from Kikki-k a while back but they have no photos, nor any journalling. I blog on trips so thought it would be nice to have a condensed version in a more tangible form. Yet to happen.

I also have a pile of teaching resources that need to be filed. Some would say they need to be chucked or digitised. However, I am someone who thinks the more information I can put my hands on the better off I'll be. That's why I have a lot my resources on my website, Think Learn Act HSIE Resources. Every now and then I meet someone who has highly valued access to my resources because it provides variety from textbook work.

I have good intentions for the 2000 tweets I have 'liked'. The vast majority of these are resources I intend to examine for usefulness and discard or file as appropriate. Every now and then I knock of a hundred or two but overall the 'likes' just keeps growing.

The current owner of the house we are buying had good intentions when she invited us to her farewell party. The lure was that we would meet our new neighbours. Basically it was a case of "bring a plate of food and something to drink and I'll introduce you to everyone".

We walked into a swarm of strangers blocking the bush view normally available from the front entrance of the house. I asked John which one was Pam, since he was the only one who had met her. He pointed at someone who was going back and forth to the kitchen but he wasn't certain.

The first group of people we joined were all midwives who had worked with the owner. There is a strong possibility that one or two of these women helped to deliver our children many, many years ago. One of the midwives introduced us to the owner, not who John originally spotted.

She has just retired and is moving up Newcastle way to be closer to her family, who we met next. Lovely people but both the family members and the midwives are people we are not likely to meet again.

We moved onto a group of people out on the balcony and thus were able to take in the view and take photos. This lot were all early morning swimmers at the local pool. At least there's a slight chance we would meet them again. The owner did some formal introductions and then I asked about neighbours. Turns out none of them could make it. I asked about snakes as neighbours. Turns out there's a red-belly black snake living in the back garden, "keeps away the brown snakes". I asked if any visited inside the house. "Only, green tree snakes," she replied. Great! I hate snakes.

We went to the table of 1970's vol au vents, frozen spring rolls that had been heated and now sat at room temperature and a cucumber soup with a mug to ladle it into plastic cups. We ate the cheese and smoked salmon with water crackers from our own contribution to the table.

The real estate agent that negotiated the sale of the house then arrived. He's a really nice guy so we enjoyed chatting to him for a while. We told him of our struggles to secure the mortgage and I don't know what else but the conversation was pleasant. We thought he was alone but then his wife appeared by his side. She was my favourite at the party. After all, she was interested in my work. But I was also interested in hers, as part of the team that manages the volunteer workforce at the Salvation Army.

There were speeches in relation to the owner's retirement and moving on and then the real estate agent and his wife departed. We left pretty much on their heels. I'm glad they were there for good company and I'm glad I know about the resident snake, even if it fills me with fear and loathing. Otherwise, the whole exercise would have felt futile.

We will be back at the house in a week's time to perform a final inspection, two days before settlement. Time is rushing upon us and my brain won't stop ticking as a result. Sleepless nights and the stress makes me cranky. I keep apologising to my family for the monster I'm being at the moment. At least we have ended the weekend with a good stack of boxes to indicate that we are indeed moving forward.