Moving is a trial sent to try us!

[blamebrampton]

We have moved.

Empires have been lost in less time and with fewer aching arms, I am convinced. If you live in Sydney and would like old cooking magazines, New Scientists or New Yorkers, do let me know, I apparently own a ridiculous amount. Let us not speak of the books. And the plants in heavy pots. Nor the actual weights, which I foolishly failed to factor into my thinking … 'Why does this box feel as though it weighs 30kg?? Oh. Because it has 30kg of iron. And a pillow. And a note saying "weights, heavy".'

Many things are still in boxes, which means I cannot find my spare wax for my Barbour, and after being thoroughly soaked several times while lugging heavy objects, it is in desperate need and I am a sulky cold grump, because the weather has turned awful again and it is my favourite coat and all the house is organised differently and there are no good local cafes and the one bus that I can get to work or anywhere really is simply a disaster.

On the upside, there is more actual room, the neighbours are lovely, and the natural environment is a massive improvement on Erskineville, with a lovely rock scree for scrambling up and down just a street back alongside a nice park with reading trees and a 'castle' and then the river with its long cycleways and huge parks only a quarter mile more down the road. There is a good cafe in one of the parks, only a mile and a bit away, and they sell jaffles and hot chocolate in winter, which is a very fine combination. And the organic market is on at the other end of Marrickville every Sunday, with delicious broadbeans and heritage carrots and salmon last week, and I will ride there this week to drop out the horror of the bus. There is a neighbourhood spare cat and we had a kingfisher sitting in the back garden, and all my hellebores and dendrobium orchids have bloomed to cheer me up, which is very thoughtful of them.

Cookie and Monster keep giving us the look of 'Well, this has been fun, but when are we putting everything back in our normal house and getting the cat run back?' Oh cats, I hear you. Building a new cat run is a high priority! And a garden. This house has a single cypress and 'lawn'. I'm thinking of viburnum for a hedge, but may need something faster growing if Mr Brammers wishes to continue his lifetime habit of no trousers unless there's company. Or, just wait till summer and let the neighbours opposite plant a hedge instead …

We have the big bookshelf in the bedroom in this house, it's about 2.5m at the top shelf, and I've not yet found all the history books that are meant to go on it, so Rusketus the kitten/cat keeps leaping onto it from the top of the giant dresser beside it and using it as a Place To Survey His Minions. This is all well and good when he goes back the same way, but last night we were lying in bed and watched him look at the dresser, look at the bed, then jump out into empty space.

I tell you, I have never been so grateful for the fact that I am often too slovenly to put away the spare duvet – he used it and the pile of clean blankets that I had carefully washed, dried and folded then not been arsed to get the stepladder to put away in the top drawers of the dresser as a crashmat and landed without a problem.

Why we decided to get the kitten whose life mission is to understand the workings of gravity is something I have never been clear on. 

Comments

[bk7brokemybrain.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it's (mostly) over except for the sorting.
Helpful hint: try to become fascinated by small things, so when you have to shift your hobby collection from one home to another, it's albums of stamps or teeny feathers, not kitchenalia full of cast iron. You really find out who your friends are, then.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Working in magazines and books is NOT a good idea when it comes to taking your life to a new place. I wonder if it's too late to retrain as a feather sorter?

Thank goodness for our friends, I say :-)

[excentric397.livejournal.com]

I'm going to keep this handy for the next time I think I want to move. Made me laugh, too.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I am really not fond of the house, nor of the actual neighbourhood (neighbours, rocks and river aside, they're all lovely), but I fear I will stay for longer than I want simply because moving is SO AWFUL. Or I'll just save up heaps and pay someone lots for the next one …

[excentric397.livejournal.com]

Why did you move to it if you don't like it? My husband and I moved ourselves, but since it has been just me, I have hired movers. Believe me, if you can find decent ones, it makes things soooo much easier. Worth it, if you can afford it.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Our old house was very small, so there was no room to pack things into, which meant we had to move two rooms out before we had enough space to pack up the rest of it. Getting people in to do that and manage the cats at the same time was just all too hard, so we did it ourselves. This house is bigger!

And we're renting, the owners wanted to renovate. Otherwise we would have stayed in TinyHouse and just kept being a bit squished ;-)

[excentric397.livejournal.com]

I only have two rooms, plus a teeny kitchen and a bathroom, so I think I would definitely need to hire movers. I recently learned this is called a maisonette, in England. Ooooo, French. Yay, me. Croissant, and all that. :)

[shocolate.livejournal.com]

Oh, the skydiving cat is stressfull!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I told you about his escape the other week, didn't I? One of our friends came round to help with the move and she said 'I was cycling down the street behind here the other Sunday and I saw a kitten that looked exactly like Rusketus!' to which I could only say, 'Because it was!!'

He has also discovered running up the screen door to balance on top of the wooden door. In the new house, he can leap from their onto the top of a bookshelf, and then do a dropbear impersonation. I may have to start filming him …

[shocolate.livejournal.com]

Oh, please do - he's quite the mountaineer.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Mountaineer, homicidal maniac …

Right now he is asleep curled into a ball with his tail over his nose. His evil is very stealth!

[lokifan]

What is a jaffle? *intrigued*

Cats, man. Rusketus sounds like he'd be an excellent Robin - there's this great line in one of the Batman comics about "my love/hate relationship with gravity".

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

It's just a toastie, but it's such fun to say! These ones were slow roasted lamb with caramelised onion and tomato relish. Yum!

He definitely wants to be a sidekick, Cookie, alas, has no desire to be his superhero and Mon wants him to sit quietly in the corner. Forever.

[illereyn.livejournal.com]

Hehehe! Well, they do say cats have nine lives... It sounds like a nice area and jaffles are heavenly in this weather! Glad your moving is mostly over - it sounds really stressful!

What kind of recipes are in your cooking magazines? I live in Sydney and I'm starting to be bored of my own cooking. I'm not a good cook though, and I don't have an oven, so the recipes have to be fairly simple and not oven-based.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of a mix: mostly delicious. and Donna Hay, most of them about 10-15 years old from when I worked more in food mags. A whole boxful, if you can pick em up, you can have them. Very accessible cooking, lots of one-pot things and weekday meals, especially Valli's stuff in deliious. She generally aimed to have a mix, so every issue would see a few that could be done by a drunk 20-year-old male student, a few that would stretch a busy mum and a few that were good for dinner parties, so you could work your way up!

IT WAS HORRIBLE!!! And I suspect Ruus is trying to see what it will take to give one of us a heart attack. Little bugger!

[nenne.livejournal.com]

But it's over and done with, right?The moving that is. From here on it will only get better. :)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I confess that I am looking forward to realphabetising my books ;-) So far they are by genre and by initial for the most part (I am thinking of doing history by year of interest), but soon I can make them perfect, bwahahahaha! Oh, and the garden …

[incandescent.livejournal.com]

Oh, it sounds like such an epic! But it is done, right? Did you at least get a lot of cleaning done?

[valkyrie17.livejournal.com]

I think I am going to read your trials and tribulations to my husband...who wants us to move out of the home we have occupied/filled to the gunnels for the past 22 years. i do NOT want to move.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Moving always makes me think of D.H. Lawrence's The Things and then; my container that still exists near the Polish border containing all my things (from life before France). 95 percent of the boxes are marked: books & clothes, obviously distinguishing one important thing from another ditto. Here's an idea: there ought to be an exchange service for moving boxes so one could pick new ones at random and have a surprise moment at unpacking, like picking up someone else's luggage, imagine the cultural and so forth exchange! Tastes could be improved by way of force, memories of other lives evoked, it'd be boundless, the imagination boggles. I think, I'd like to have yours but am not sure you'd recipôcrate: any use for Zsa Zsa Gabor's book on Men, by any chance? I own it! I think...it's full of Thought and then some, highly recommended!

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Oh and Rusketus' Adventures (a book you need to write) made me think of my brother hurling my cat through the living room, it was their fav. game called (you guessed it) Cats in Space. By both; my cat was a loudmouthed half-siamese who lived his life under the impression of being a giant Dobermann dog.
Their Game went like this: brother would hold the cat, who'd sit in an attentive Buddha position, in one of his hands and then throw the eager cat in a high ballistic curve through open space onto the sofa whereupon the cat immediately rushed back to Brotherheart for more for he loved my brother more than me, even more than my father and our neighbour, even; in that order.