The Decision - The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. ~David Russell

Blog 1 : Monday 30th January 2012 -The Decision aka being sooooooooo cold brings with it a state of unrealistic attempt to move house in 4 days flat without a husband and still 2 boys and one demolition man to look after as well as doing normal chores


Sooooooooooooooooooooooo cold Hubby has returned to work in London  (quite happily might I add after a very very freezing cold weekend). I've contacted the letting agent to explain that the heating isn't working and to please please get someone out to us asap as we are now hitting freezing temperatures and its sooooooooooooo not fun . Letting agent got back to me really quickly (THANK YOU) and said she'd pop round to have a look. Just to explain a little to those that don't live in the countryside we don't have central heating we have an oil tank that needs to be filled up with a minimum of 500 litres per order. So my letting agent suggests going out into the cold, ok ok, its not much different indoors and look at the tank. She tells me to pull the level to get a reading from the tank and if it still has oil she'll send over an engineer. Now i'd already looked at this tank in the hope that by smiling and pleading with it, it might miraculously come back into life. I also knew that I had seen oil in the measurement BUT hadn't pulled anything????
and ...................................ZERO bugger (very very mild comment to say the least). After coming into the second week with no heat and facing the prospect of enough I come up with a marvelous decision. We get the keys to our new house on Friday and ....................................although we were due to move on 17th Feb surely it would be just as easy to move this coming weekend.

STRESS after all is my middle name. Now just so you can have a clear idea of this stupid (yes hindsight has a huge part in that word) decision of mine and mine alone, poor long suffering hubby just goes along with all of my madcap ideas. I wasn't due to see hubby again until Friday (we've been through the commute from Norfolk to London), I am effectively a week long single mum that is looking after 3 boys, one of which demolition man to whom is extremely demanding. I need to pack up an entire 4 bedroomed house alone, sort out change of address, utilities, tv, internet, redirection and most importantly telling schools. What have I done????/ Oh and then there's sorting out a van, timings, helpers etc flippin etc.

Thinking about this has just made me leave the keyboard briefly to scream ever so loudly in the garden sorry new neighbours.

Now this is
1:because we don't have £300 to put in the minimum amount of oil to get us warm.
2:because the snow is on its way and where we live we'd be stranded for as long as the snow was down and i'd never see hubby.
3:see points 1 & 2 what more do you want greedy people.

So that set about 3 days that came and went without any pause for breathe. I felt angry that I had to take time out from packing to, feed the kids, wash the kids, wash the clothes, go to sleep at night. You catch my drift, to this day almost three weeks on I still can't stay awake much past 9 and the only way I can see to rectify this enormous strain of continuing tiredness I have is to find my adrift on a desert island (alone) and to just sleep for a week and then it'll be nice to get rescued not much good unless there's a crisis going on in my life !!!!!

The rest of the week as I say was a complete haze as I tried to pack boxes, clean cookers, fridges etc, sort (ish) garage  gave up on that as soon as I started. Now please excuse the italics but i've obviously pressed two buttons at once to get it but i'll be darned if I know which ones and without wanting to delete my blog I will just continue with it looking well, weird!


So boxes were packed, cupboards were cleaned and the two most feared rooms were left till last my sons room (more about that in next blogs) and the kitchen. 


Please try and remember of course that we also had no heating so spent entire time packing in wonderfully hot, sweaty (very sweaty by friday) fleece trousers. I can't recommend them highly enough, even my son brought/wore a pair and some electric fires which couldn't stay on overnight thats when the putting as many duvets onto the bed came into force.

List of things achieved in 3 days (just to big up my head of course but also will be used in arguments for the rest of my life with hubby if he ever says i'm lazy).


Did all redirection letters
Contacted suppliers/tv/telephone etc
packed up 3 bedrooms / 1 office / 1 bathroom, 1 Living room (well almost tv was still on until the end to entertain little man) 1 kitchen, 1 shed, 1 garage (well part of).
Tidied up outside area, garden, paths, windows inside and out.
Cleaned bathroom thoroughly.
Cleaned kitchen, cupboards, floor, oven (yuk) fridge/freezer (particularly hard with food but managed).
Emptied wardrobes, packed clothes.
Total of over 50 boxes packed in the end and possibly more as on the day more things were thrown into boxes.
Sorted out boys schooling.
Still cooked dinner everyday (no takeaways close by remember), still had to wash and dry clothes, still had to entertain little man and he needs a LOT of entertaining.
Trillions of phone calls to various people???????????
and i'm sure there's more ????? next argument I might come up with more as that doesn't seem too much :(.


and before I knew it Friday night had arrived, moving day eve!!

TTFN!!!