Back online sort-of - and rant

Well the week has come and gone and I'm back on-line sort of.

Just before moving last week I had a horrible health scare! A truly frightening experience. We still don;t know the cause - I've taken sooo many tests ... anyway the doctor sidelined me from lifting bending or carrying anything heavy. So my friends all pitched in and moved all of my stuff for me.

According to my schedule, I was going to collect the keys to the new place on Wednesday, move as much stuff as I could over the next few days by myself in my car and then have the friends move all the large bulky furniture for me on Saturday. I had also re-jigged my finances and planned on buying some new furniture so there would probably only be one load of the fridge, two metal futon frames and my dining room set to be moved.

Life doesn't work that way! After I was sidelined my mum came up and basically finished the packing for me. The real estate for the new house didn't give me the keys to the new place until Friday and even then I couldn't move a thing in until Saturday because the carpet cleaners were there late Friday afternoon.

The previous tenants moved out on the 11th. Why had the real estate agents not gotten the place properly cleaned within the intervening two weeks? Why did they have to get so-called professional cleaners in the Thursday and Friday *after* I was supposed to have started moving in? And yes their so-called professional cleaning company was worse than useless. They mopped the floors and wiped down the outsides of the cupboards drawers etc, by did not touch the insides. Even after all of my stuff turned up, it could not be unpacked until each drawer had been cleaned first!

Anyway my fiends turned up early on Saturday and worked like troopers all day and got *all* of my stuff moved on that one day! All my friends except Paul. He turned up half way through, hungover and in a really ugly mood. Why go on a bender on the Friday night? He knew the hassles I was having getting moved and that I needed him. He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to pick fights with everybody there, getting very jealous of the the two teenagers who were doing most of the muscle work and basically running me down to each of my friends. It was a relief to all when he finally went home!

On Sunday I woke in a great deal of pain. I hadn't done much at all on Saturday but feel useless and direct people as to what furniture to put in what room. On Sunday I was supposed to clean the old place. Paul was coming over and helping mum move the rest of my old furniture out to the front kerb for the garbage collectors and mow my lawns. He rang me on Saturday morning, five minutes before he was due at my place saying that he wouldn't be coming over. He had pulled a muscle and didn't feel like doing anything. He would come over and do it in a few days.

I didn't have a few days. I asked if I could borrow his lawnmower so I could do it myself. I went over to collect it and received a rant about how bad my selection of houses was. How I had abused my friendship and used my friends. How yesterday was a debacle and he wouldn;t be putting up with my attention-seeking antics anymore. I took the mower and left.

A few seconds later a work colleague rang and asked how everything was. I blurted the whole conversation out to her. She came straight over. She and mum sent me off to work where I sat in a chair for five hours and loaned books out to people and popped pain killers.

When I got back to the old place mum and my friend had moved out all of the furniture, mowed the lawns and got most of the house cleaned for me. I took mum home, fed her dinner and put her to bed. She was exhausted!

Monday morning we finished off the house together, got the carpet cleaners in and went home to move some of the boxes around so we could start assembling my new furniture. It was all flat-pack Ikea style self-assemble units.

Tuesday I had the final inspection at the old place, handed back the keys and said goodbye to the neighbourhood forever. Went to the docs and had more tests done. Mum helped me assemble more furniture that afternoon and Wednesday and she went home Thursday morning. Thursday night the phone company finally got around to connecting my line (it was supposed to have been done Wednesday!) and I still don't have my broadband up and running - that will take another week or two yet.

I'm still unpacking and assembling furniture. Very carefully. I went to work yesterday for the morning then did some retail therapy with a hair appointment and buying some shoes and a DVD afterwards. Spent last night curled up on my couch doing some stitching on Mystery IX.

Still have more to unpack and assemble - its very slow working on your own and not being able to lift much at a time. Paul has rung a couple of time to tell me how busy his is and how his pulled muscle was self-inflicted. A few weeks ago he helped me by packing some of my non-fiction books and he started packing some in a box that was about 3 feel long, 1 foot wide and 1 foot high. I told him not to.

The phone conversation went along the lines of: You remember that box you told me not to pack with books and I still did. Remember how you told me not to move it by myself - well I did. That;s how I hurt myself.

He hasn't asked to visit, he hasn't apologised for the unkind words. He hasn't asked after my health except to say "it was probably stress and you;ll get over it".

And this morning, Sunday morning, the teenager next door had a fight with his parents at the top of his lungs, slammed the door and took off. So now I'm awake and typing :)

Its a gorgeously cold and raining day here today. I might go back to bed with a nice cup of tea and a good book. I finally got around to picking up book 1 of the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series yesterday from the library. I've never read it, but I notice most people either love or hate it - there are no ambivalent feelings - so I thought I'd see what I thought.

Happy stitching all.