I'm drowning in boxes
May. 26th, 2009 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaThe never-ending house move saga continues.
Bank holiday weekend was gorgeous, wasn't it? Alas, I didn't get to see much of the sun, however, as I spent just about every waking moment over the weekend helping my parents with their house move. Which: no, they still haven't actually moved yet. But they are getting there. Over the weekend we moved just about all of their books from the old house to the new house, plus their entire video/DVD collection, and also moved about half of my books from the flat to the old house, as well as most of my candles and ornaments. We went through Small's cupboards and transferred all the toys she wants to keep over to the new house; the rest can stay where they are and be sorted through for charity/junk at a later date. I packed up still more of my brother's never-ending library of Japanese manga and anime (so much has been moved already, and yet the room still barely looks any emptier. It's a nightmare!). And Mum and I painstakingly wrapped and packed over 800 egg cups to transfer from the old house to the new house.
Egg cups, I hear you say? Yep, egg cups. Mum has been collecting them since she was a little girl. I must confess that I enable her in this habit quite extensively – if I see one she hasn't got, I have to buy it for her, because she is always so pleased to be given a new one, and devotes all her time, energy and money to the family and leaves so little for herself, and deserves to be treated to something she loves and will draw pleasure from. The eggs cups are a link to her mother, who she lost when she was only 9 years old and has never really got over – she has always suffered from migraine, and whenever she had one as a child her mother would get her a pretty egg cup to try and tempt her to eat. And then her mother died (in childbirth and the baby died too) and it was a pretty traumatic time, as her father then had a nervous breakdown and Mum got shuffled off to live with her grandparents for a few years, and most of her toys and stuff got lost in the move, but the egg cups survived, and so the collection began. Packing it up was a pretty laborious job, though!
Also? The wall the egg cups came off is now something of a time capsule. As each cabinet was taken down, the wall behind it turned out to be a different colour, chronicling the décor of the house at the time each one went up! It's going to be a while before I get a chance to decorate, though – chances are it will still be in patches when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
galathea_snb and nikkimisplaced are here in the summer.
Actually, chances are that I will have done little or no decorating at all beforegalathea_snb and nikkimisplaced arrive, as it seems to be taking forever just to move, never mind anything else!
I'm giving my notice to the landlord this week, though. Four weeks. That gives all of us a deadline to work toward. A scarily short deadline, considering how much there still is to do. We're getting there. Slowly but surely, we're getting there.
So, anyway. My bank holiday weekend revolved around boxes. Box after box after box: packing them, carrying them up and down stairs and to and from the car, and emptying them again. And, you know, you don't realise how much dust has accumulated on a shelf until you take everything off it and get showered in the stuff, all over your clothes and hands and up your nose and in your mouth. Great fun. I've been sneezing ever since.
Oh, but among the books that came off the shelves in my parents' bedroom was an old school notebook of my Mum's from when she was about 15, and the address she had written in it was Ferry Road, her grandparents' house, which surprised her, because she had thought she was back living with her father at that time, but seeing the book realised that she must have been back and fore for many years longer than she remembered. And then she said 'I suppose I blocked a lot of it out,' in this small, sad voice, and see – that's why I have to buy her egg cups every time I see one she hasn't got! Charity shops are lethal. I've been sorting through a lot of my junk and getting rid of as much as possible. Charity shops are excellent for disposing of anything I don't want any more but is still useable, but lately almost every time I take a bag in I see another egg cup…
Usefully enough, Small was out from under our feet for most of the weekend, having been invited to spend time with a new school friend who lives over in Barry, a couple of towns down the coast. Just why this child lives in one town but goes to school in another is beyond me, but there we go. People are odd. So anyway, Small went there on Saturday and stayed the whole day, wandering around the funfair by the beach, as the friend's mother works there.
There were several phone calls home during the day. The first was to announce with great excitement that she had won a goldfish. Cue a small amount of consternation on the part of the parents, as they already have a large tropical fish tank that they have been trying to wind down for years, but the last two fish remain stubbornly healthy and seem determined to live forever – they are being left in the old house to become my problem when I move in! So the thought of having to set up another tank for a goldfish was not hugely welcomed, especially in the middle of moving house, but they were thinking of possible locations for this tank when the second phone call came, telling us that Small was letting her friend keep the goldfish, as she had also won one, so that they could be company for one another. Excellent plan, we thought.
Then came the next phone call: in exchange for the goldfish, the friend was giving Small her pet hedgehog.
Pet hedgehog?
We assumed at first they must be part of some wildlife rescue scheme – people can foster injured or orphaned hedgehogs and nurse them back to health ready to be released back into the wild. But no, it turns out, nothing so simple. This is an African pygmy hedgehog, bred as a domestic pet, which would not survive in the wild, certainly not in this country. Apparently they are fairly well known as pets in America, which I had never heard of before! Evidently this girl's former neighbour bred them and gave the family three, which they have been giving away to anyone who will take them ever since, as they already have quite a sizeable menagerie and they aren't the easiest pets ever.
So this hedgehog is now our problem. He is about 6 months old, and unfortunately hasn't been terrible well cared for, so is fairly anti-social. He hisses a lot, which hasty research tells us is a sign of fear, also clicks (a sign of aggression) if anyone goes near him, and although research tells us hedgehogs can be trained to use a small litter tray in a corner of the cage, he certainly hasn't been trained in that way. The cage he came in looked like it hadn't been cleaned out in a long time and was absolutely filthy. So, after Sunday lunch a chunk of packing time had to be diverted into a quick trip down to Pets at Home to invest in supplies for him, and then cleaning out his cage. He found it all pretty traumatic, but was given a bit of parsnip as a treat afterward, which delighted him – eating that and exploring his newly cleaned and equipped cage was the most relaxed he's been yet.
His name is Woody, and when he is out and about and not curled up hissing, he is pretty cute:
It looks as though settling him into the family is going to be hard work, though.
In other news, my brother heard at the end of last week that his job is to be made redundant in the autumn – Fujitsu are closing the call centre he has worked at for the last six years. Great, just what he needed – and the local economy! So he is now searching for a new job, but unfortunately so is everyone else he works with, so it's going to be tough.
Then this morning I went to the dentist to get the results of the x-ray he took of my impacted wisdom tooth the other week. He said it is going to have to come out, either at his surgery or the dental hospital. I asked him to refer me to the dental hospital. My last experience of tooth extraction was when I had that awful infection in my jaw and ended up in hospital, and the tooth fell apart when it was removed and fragments went into the back of my throat and I almost choked. I really do not want to go through that again. I've always known that this wisdom tooth was impacted and would have to come out sooner or later, but I really, really want to be unconscious when it happens!
So. All in all it was a pretty damn exhausting weekend. But luckily there is no one in my office at all today – usually there are six people up in this attic, but for various reasons they none of them are here today. This means I get to take things a little easy, and perhaps go home a bit early – to sleep would be nice, but it'll actually probably be more packing!
Roll on removal day.
Bank holiday weekend was gorgeous, wasn't it? Alas, I didn't get to see much of the sun, however, as I spent just about every waking moment over the weekend helping my parents with their house move. Which: no, they still haven't actually moved yet. But they are getting there. Over the weekend we moved just about all of their books from the old house to the new house, plus their entire video/DVD collection, and also moved about half of my books from the flat to the old house, as well as most of my candles and ornaments. We went through Small's cupboards and transferred all the toys she wants to keep over to the new house; the rest can stay where they are and be sorted through for charity/junk at a later date. I packed up still more of my brother's never-ending library of Japanese manga and anime (so much has been moved already, and yet the room still barely looks any emptier. It's a nightmare!). And Mum and I painstakingly wrapped and packed over 800 egg cups to transfer from the old house to the new house.
Egg cups, I hear you say? Yep, egg cups. Mum has been collecting them since she was a little girl. I must confess that I enable her in this habit quite extensively – if I see one she hasn't got, I have to buy it for her, because she is always so pleased to be given a new one, and devotes all her time, energy and money to the family and leaves so little for herself, and deserves to be treated to something she loves and will draw pleasure from. The eggs cups are a link to her mother, who she lost when she was only 9 years old and has never really got over – she has always suffered from migraine, and whenever she had one as a child her mother would get her a pretty egg cup to try and tempt her to eat. And then her mother died (in childbirth and the baby died too) and it was a pretty traumatic time, as her father then had a nervous breakdown and Mum got shuffled off to live with her grandparents for a few years, and most of her toys and stuff got lost in the move, but the egg cups survived, and so the collection began. Packing it up was a pretty laborious job, though!
Also? The wall the egg cups came off is now something of a time capsule. As each cabinet was taken down, the wall behind it turned out to be a different colour, chronicling the décor of the house at the time each one went up! It's going to be a while before I get a chance to decorate, though – chances are it will still be in patches when
galathea_snb and nikkimisplaced are here in the summer.Actually, chances are that I will have done little or no decorating at all before
galathea_snb and nikkimisplaced arrive, as it seems to be taking forever just to move, never mind anything else!I'm giving my notice to the landlord this week, though. Four weeks. That gives all of us a deadline to work toward. A scarily short deadline, considering how much there still is to do. We're getting there. Slowly but surely, we're getting there.
So, anyway. My bank holiday weekend revolved around boxes. Box after box after box: packing them, carrying them up and down stairs and to and from the car, and emptying them again. And, you know, you don't realise how much dust has accumulated on a shelf until you take everything off it and get showered in the stuff, all over your clothes and hands and up your nose and in your mouth. Great fun. I've been sneezing ever since.
Oh, but among the books that came off the shelves in my parents' bedroom was an old school notebook of my Mum's from when she was about 15, and the address she had written in it was Ferry Road, her grandparents' house, which surprised her, because she had thought she was back living with her father at that time, but seeing the book realised that she must have been back and fore for many years longer than she remembered. And then she said 'I suppose I blocked a lot of it out,' in this small, sad voice, and see – that's why I have to buy her egg cups every time I see one she hasn't got! Charity shops are lethal. I've been sorting through a lot of my junk and getting rid of as much as possible. Charity shops are excellent for disposing of anything I don't want any more but is still useable, but lately almost every time I take a bag in I see another egg cup…
Usefully enough, Small was out from under our feet for most of the weekend, having been invited to spend time with a new school friend who lives over in Barry, a couple of towns down the coast. Just why this child lives in one town but goes to school in another is beyond me, but there we go. People are odd. So anyway, Small went there on Saturday and stayed the whole day, wandering around the funfair by the beach, as the friend's mother works there.
There were several phone calls home during the day. The first was to announce with great excitement that she had won a goldfish. Cue a small amount of consternation on the part of the parents, as they already have a large tropical fish tank that they have been trying to wind down for years, but the last two fish remain stubbornly healthy and seem determined to live forever – they are being left in the old house to become my problem when I move in! So the thought of having to set up another tank for a goldfish was not hugely welcomed, especially in the middle of moving house, but they were thinking of possible locations for this tank when the second phone call came, telling us that Small was letting her friend keep the goldfish, as she had also won one, so that they could be company for one another. Excellent plan, we thought.
Then came the next phone call: in exchange for the goldfish, the friend was giving Small her pet hedgehog.
Pet hedgehog?
We assumed at first they must be part of some wildlife rescue scheme – people can foster injured or orphaned hedgehogs and nurse them back to health ready to be released back into the wild. But no, it turns out, nothing so simple. This is an African pygmy hedgehog, bred as a domestic pet, which would not survive in the wild, certainly not in this country. Apparently they are fairly well known as pets in America, which I had never heard of before! Evidently this girl's former neighbour bred them and gave the family three, which they have been giving away to anyone who will take them ever since, as they already have quite a sizeable menagerie and they aren't the easiest pets ever.
So this hedgehog is now our problem. He is about 6 months old, and unfortunately hasn't been terrible well cared for, so is fairly anti-social. He hisses a lot, which hasty research tells us is a sign of fear, also clicks (a sign of aggression) if anyone goes near him, and although research tells us hedgehogs can be trained to use a small litter tray in a corner of the cage, he certainly hasn't been trained in that way. The cage he came in looked like it hadn't been cleaned out in a long time and was absolutely filthy. So, after Sunday lunch a chunk of packing time had to be diverted into a quick trip down to Pets at Home to invest in supplies for him, and then cleaning out his cage. He found it all pretty traumatic, but was given a bit of parsnip as a treat afterward, which delighted him – eating that and exploring his newly cleaned and equipped cage was the most relaxed he's been yet.
His name is Woody, and when he is out and about and not curled up hissing, he is pretty cute:
It looks as though settling him into the family is going to be hard work, though.
In other news, my brother heard at the end of last week that his job is to be made redundant in the autumn – Fujitsu are closing the call centre he has worked at for the last six years. Great, just what he needed – and the local economy! So he is now searching for a new job, but unfortunately so is everyone else he works with, so it's going to be tough.
Then this morning I went to the dentist to get the results of the x-ray he took of my impacted wisdom tooth the other week. He said it is going to have to come out, either at his surgery or the dental hospital. I asked him to refer me to the dental hospital. My last experience of tooth extraction was when I had that awful infection in my jaw and ended up in hospital, and the tooth fell apart when it was removed and fragments went into the back of my throat and I almost choked. I really do not want to go through that again. I've always known that this wisdom tooth was impacted and would have to come out sooner or later, but I really, really want to be unconscious when it happens!
So. All in all it was a pretty damn exhausting weekend. But luckily there is no one in my office at all today – usually there are six people up in this attic, but for various reasons they none of them are here today. This means I get to take things a little easy, and perhaps go home a bit early – to sleep would be nice, but it'll actually probably be more packing!
Roll on removal day.
