Uprooted and homeless

Did I mention moving sucks? I have just done it; or more accurately, my family did it around me while I ran around weeping and wailing about how much I hate it. They packed, cleaned, cooked, weeded, and kid wrangled until I suddenly looked around and realised it was all done. Utter legends, the lot of them. To think I spent 6 years living in a completely different country from those guys and spent the better part of all of those years not just functioning perfectly well, but moving about a fair bit as well. The moving part was a la backpack and sleeping bag, so my possessions were few and as light as I could manage (slim novels became all the rage), and thus even in the middle of a complete hung-over, time-challenged, disorganised meltdown, even I struggled to really jeopardise a move in any meaningful way.

I think it is safe to say that that was a different time, involving an altogether different, carefree and responsibility-less self. I have discovered, for instance, that I have packed for storage all of my fully elasticised and functional underwear, and left myself nothing to actually wear but the scaggy embarrassments that should have been thrown long ago. It’s the same story with my bras; I have nothing save for the scaggy embarrassment I dubbed, in some fit of twisted logic, my ‘moving bra’, (because surely if you don’t need extra-good boob support while hefting, sweeping and scrubbing, you don’t need it at all?), so I will have no choice but to morph into a saggy titted hippy mama for a couple of weeks. (I could buy some more, of course, but my Inner Tightarse is screaming that there are perfectly good ones still in storage and that a couple of weeks is not such a long time). Worse than all this, I still can’t find the brilliant bees wax stuff-in-a-tin which is all Anna needs to sooth her red bum back into a more fetching shade of pink, and which I distinctly remember putting somewhere safe because I knew I’d need it. Naturally, she got a bad case of red arse the first night we were here. Luckily, I am living in a proper mother’s house, because a quick rummage through the first aid box (note to myself: get a first aid box, you slattern!) and I found some ancient gooey soothy stuff which looked grossly yellow but worked fine.

Yep, having a breakdown about moving out of one house and having a breakdown about finding a new house to move into was way beyond even my considerable drama queen talents, so Anna and Bud and I are bunking in with my mum and her dog until a new house presents itself. So far, we have not fallen out, which is pretty impressive when you consider we have two fiercely independent set-in-their-ways women, one teething baby who has developed an intense dislike of being in Portacots longer than three hours at a time, day or night, and two fiercely irreplaceable set-in-their-ways dogs, all squished into one two-bedroom duplex. Of course, it’s only been three days, but each hour that goes past without an increase in the West Australian homicide rate is a credit to us all.

Even more impressive than this, given our predilection for sweet things and slothing, we have only had one pizza and ice cream night, which means healthy and home cooked is so far winning 2 to 1.