The Hardest Goodbye
Posted on | November 28, 2010 | No Comments
The days are dwindling down — correction — the days are zooming by. It’s Monday (wee hours of it, anyway!) here in Australia and we have 11 days left until we leave this house.
I’ve set the engine in motion and there is no turning back, thankfully. But the hardest decision that I have made regarding this move was a goodbye that I had to make on Saturday. It was time to find a new home for our gorgeous boy — Baby Ginger — the big, beautiful, 4 and 1/2 year old sweetie that we’ve had since he was a kitten.
Baby Sitting On Front Deck
A bit of serendipity had me visiting the hairdresser after voting in the local elections so that I could make that final appointment for one last cut-and-colour on the day we leave this lovely village.
Sitting there in the chairs was a mother and daughter duo and when I showed them a picture of Baby in the flyer I was getting ready to post around, they looked at one another and then said in unison, “We’ll take him!” And I began to tremble inside as they told me that he was a clone of their own cat who had died. I had asked the universe to send me the right person or persons for our lovely boy, and this was the undeniable reply.
A mere hour later, they were at the door, the bowls and bags of food and litter were gathered, and with a thudding heart and tears streaming down my face, I handed my big-fluffy-sweetie to these two women who each had the dearest, kindest energy. And Baby — whose usual response to people he didn’t know had been known to bolt away from those strangers and hide beneath furniture — sat serenely as they drove away and the teenage daughter scratched his head and spoke quietly to him.
Just writing that was hard. More progress reports in a few days once I am in a better place about it all — promise.
Zooming along, trying not to crash
Posted on | November 22, 2010 | No Comments
OK — quick-ish catch-up. Now that we’ve sold and all the paperwork is signed, we’re down to 18 days here in this house in Australia and I am doing everything possible to stay in cool and purposeful zoom mode.
I have Ebay listings for all of the furniture now, have (thankfully!) already sold several pieces, and tonight the ride-on tractor went to a very nice man who was the first person who viewed it. Note to self — take the flyer back OUT of the Notice Board in front of the newsagent tomorrow! Replace that flyer with another one with oh-so-pretty pictures of furniture!
Still have the cars to list, the refrigerator and washer, and then lots of office electronics like the fax machine, a desktop computer and printer, and then there is all of the night-time entertainment items like television and dvd-player and so forth. That’s at LEAST another 20 listings to write! And in the middle of everything, we are having a Garage Sale the 2nd to last weekend here. Whew! Anything that doesn’t sell will just have to get donated to charity because we are getting a tiny storage unit for the books and tools we are actually keeping.
Can’t believe how much I am looking forward to getting off to Sydney on the train because we have adorable friends who have offered us their apartments to stay in during the Christmas holiday while they are out of town. How good is that? If all goes to plan, we should have 10-14 days of wind-down time with NO hotel bills. And we’ll have another one of those quiet just-us-two holidays in an urban setting like we did in the loft apartment in Melbourne that I booked last year. We’re both going to need it by then!
We depart Australia on the 29th of December — but that’s a story for another time.
More in a few days. It might be after midnight, but I might just get ONE more ebay listing written up.
Tags: exhaustion > moving > overseas move > packing > relocatiom > selling > sorting
Back out into the world!
Posted on | November 13, 2010 | No Comments
SOLD!!! After over 4 months on the market, our sweet little eco-cottage, art studio, and 7 acres of land in Central Victoria have sold and we are settling on the 10th of December. Hooray!
Soon, very soon we are being launched (quite voluntarily!) back out into the world. The plans for where to travel, who to work for (Mark), who to write for (me), what to do along the way will be an unfolding adventure. We have been so ‘land-locked’ for several years now here in Australia that we just want to let it f-l-o-w and see where the winds of change take us.
At least we have a starting point and we’ll be headed back to the UK first. But during the Christmas holidays? And with no firm flight reservations yet until we get the proceeds from the sale of our darling house in our hot little hands? We really are trusting the fates!
Mark’s family have a large and very pretty home in Norfolk, so we will go there first once we leave Australia and perhaps have a few weeks of decompression. I have a series of articles that I am pitching to several publications and I’ll keep you posted on those.
These last couple of years have been quite stressful and we’re currently in a state of tightly controlled action, selling a houseful of furniture and 2 cars and 2 trailers and a tractor. Oh yes, and did I mention packing, packing, packing and then putting what we do decide to keep into storage in the nearby town of Ballarat? Whew!
At least there will be no more leaping for the phone every time it rings and then zooming around with the vacuum and sponge because another potential buyer is on the way. Hearing the words “she signed” while we were on a 4 day getaway at the seaside last week gave me an alternating sense of butterflies in the brain from happiness and butterflies in the stomach from nerves knowing that we had to divest ourselves of 85% of our worldly goods in one month!
I’ll be back soon-ish with an update or two. But in the meantime — where is that packing tape???
Tags: Australia > England > house sale > moving > overseas move > real estate > relocation > travel
Not missing in action — just busy with impending excitement!
Posted on | October 31, 2010 | No Comments
Just a couple of lines. I am NOT missing in action, unwell, too lazy to post, in a can’t-be-bothered mood, or any other variation of why I haven’t been on here for the last 2 weeks.
Something wonderful is unfolding and I am hoping to be able to announce it in the next 7 days.
Wouldn’t want to jinx it!
Back soon… (fingers crossed)
Tiny New Zealand article
Posted on | October 13, 2010 | No Comments
There is a small article over at my other site, A Wanderful Life, on the architectural surprise inside the Auckland Museum.
Enjoy!
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