Up Front: Walking Through the Ruins
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There is a lot to be said for burning your house down and claiming the insurance. Except it is very illegal.
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I haven't, as yet, packed the matches...
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Sweetie, if you can get into his house then the thing to do is to paint the underside of all his furniture with natural yoghurt. It's a slow but insidious revenge.
If you can't get into his house, you'll just have to fill his car with Space Invader.
This is not something I advocate, I hasten to add. I'm just saying.
Well, I was going to suggest a 'Garage Sale 7am Saturday' sign in front of your noisy next-doors as a final act but I see you're an experienced hand in suburban guerilla tatics...
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Days without internet access, whatever will you do - unpack all the boxes you just packed up.
Basic rules of shifting is rather like PJ O'Rourke's travel rules
1. never run out of whisky
2. never run out of whisky -
This will include the day on which Friends in England would otherwise be sending me the QI Children in Need Special.
Oh! This reminds me - I'd better make sure my FIE send me the beta videotape of this!
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Well, I was going to suggest a 'Garage Sale 7am Saturday' sign in front of your noisy next-doors
7am is for losers. If you're not knocking on the door at 5.30am, you'll never get the good stuff.
Even better if you're drunk and coming home from the pub rather than getting up early to go garage sale-ing.
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What I don't recommend is moving house at 36 weeks pregnant (especially when the previous baby was born at 37 weeks and you are having visions of squatting amongst the packing cases). I had Very Firm Ideas about where everything needed to go and very little ability to do stuff like lifting or bending so I spent about a week in various states of impotent rage while people put things in the wrong places. Then the first day in the new house the log burner and toilet both broke.
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Oh! This reminds me - I'd better make sure my FIE send me the beta videotape of this!
I am not impressed with the Beeb's shenanigans over the scheduling of QI this year. I had to make do with Stephen 'I'm a national fucking treasure' Fry on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Basic rules of shifting is rather like PJ O'Rourke's travel rules
1. never run out of whisky
2. never run out of whiskyFor our household, you substitute 'gin'. That's not a bad rule all round.
I see you're an experienced hand in suburban guerilla tatics...
The yoghurt and Space Invader thing was the FTW from a discussion after my good friend's ex-girlfriend tried to run him over. It just seemed like she wasn't really applying herself.
I spent about a week in various states of impotent rage while people put things in the wrong places
I'm currently struggling to walk. And you know how I am with other people doing things wrong. Still, if I've had an embollism by Sunday, I won't need to work out which box has the gin in it. (It's the one labelled 'piss'.)
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...I got let off lightly by dint of being heavily pregnant to a man who wasn't my husband.
Interesting turn of phrase that.
Did you mean :
a) you were/are an unmarried mother?
b) you were/are married, but not to the father of that fetus? (possibly including father of the fetus is someone else's husband).
c) pregnancy was a result of a close encounter of the 3rd kind?
d) all of the above?
e) none of the above?
(repeat for civil union)Marriage is apparently a form of prostitution....(cue wonder if one of the churches is behind that idea as an attempt to boost the popularity of marriage...cue speculation regarding which one).
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It was probably time for an intervention there too, though: I may have more aquilegias than Danielle has pairs of shoes.
There can never be too many pairs of shoes nor too many aquilegias. My favourites, along with irises and roses and herbs. Alas, I have none in my new garden, but I can fix that...
I so hear you about the sadness of leaving gardens. I have done it too often. The one I left in December 2007 was at the stage where I knew it would look beautiful in spring 2008, right about now.
And yes. What jon_knox said.
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Wait until the movers lose your furniture, the sixteen piece dinner set becomes four hundred pieces, and you start screaming things down the phone like, "I don't care what the computer says, it's wrong. You're wrong. My life is wrong." That's always fun...
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Moving back from the US was GREAT! we gave away/threw away so much stuff - we'd moved there at 25 with a suitcase each (OK I mailed my scientific journals too) and came back with half a container's worth - that was after we'd thrown half of it away - it was so hard and in the end definitely worth it
We could never stomach holding a garage, we'd just put anything interesting out on the street - it all went - we eventually invited a couple of neighbours in to pick over the best stuff, one had been quietly setting up her college bound daughter from our footpath
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We did briefly experiment with the concept of a porpoise-driven life, where you do whatever the dolphins tell you, but something seemed a bit fishy
Mammal
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Oh and every now and again Amy decides to clear out my many 100s of t-shirts. Luckily each one has a carefully constructed reason for being kept.
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We received suprise notice to move from our rental when I was 7 months pregnant (owner moving back in). The advice from the property manager was obviously backdated to avoid the 42 day rule and we ended up with 30 days to find somewhere new and move. To top it all off, my husband was opening a new business in the same month so wasn't available to help with packing or moving. On moving day, the movers arrived late. The driveway at our new place is very narrow with high walls on either side. The moving truck took 45 minutes to get from the gate to the house (only 10 metres distance). My folks were helping out, but after 12 hours of stress (the movers were still there at 8pm - it took them over an hour to get from our old house to the new house, which is at most a 10 minute drive - they stopped off for fish and chips on the way) I just wanted everyone to go home and leave me quietly in the house with my boxes. My folks couldn't leave though because the truck was blocking the drive.
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It's possible our new neighbours are all ninjas, which would, quite frankly, be unbelievably ace.
Would it what.
You'd have the best Neighbourhood Watch committee, that's for sure...
And re "fibre up your driveway" (my that sounds faintly rude), you can check this out to see just how close it is. According to that I LITERALLY have fibre up my driveway... I'm off to plug my kettle into it to see what happens -
Interesting turn of phrase that.
At the time of the pregnancy I was married, but not to the child's father. My husband and I officially separated about six months before I got pregnant, and about eight months after my relationship with the child's father started.
It was complicated. Given my family didn't know the two relationships had a substantial overlap, they were a bit freaked about the abrupt pregnancy. (I really wish we'd had the term 'polyamorous' at the time. As we didn't, we had to make do with 'bitch slut from hell'.)
We divorced while I was pregnant with my second. My ex-husband is a lovely man who's remarried and has a gorgeous little girl. Child's father and I are still together after nearly fifteen years, and we underwent civil unification nearly three years ago. I think.
and you start screaming things down the phone like, "I don't care what the computer says, it's wrong. You're wrong. My life is wrong."
My partner's call to the power company yesterday involved the phrase 'wait a minute, why do you need to know who my next of kin are?'.
I so hear you about the sadness of leaving gardens. I have done it too often. The one I left in December 2007 was at the stage where I knew it would look beautiful in spring 2008, right about now.
*sigh* My poppies have just come out. They're exactly the same vibrant red as the huge climbing rose I planted them under. Going into that bit of the garden right now makes me cry.
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Oh and every now and again Amy decides to clear out my many 100s of t-shirts. Luckily each one has a carefully constructed reason for being kept.
If you're sentimentally attached to them, but not in a will-actually-wear-them kind of way, you could try cutting them up to construct curtains or a duvet cover or similar large furnishing-type objects.
(I have never actually done this, although I am planning to turn all my retired trousers into a crocheted rug which is arguably even more demented.)
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My partner's call to the power company yesterday involved the phrase 'wait a minute, why do you need to know who my next of kin are?'.
I love that, I need to try that some time - perhaps ask them if there's something wrong with their power that causes them to need to call next of kin a lot
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'wait a minute, why do you need to know who my next of kin are?'.
They clearly know about the ninjas...
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"Remember when we thought ten gig was unimaginably huge?"
I remember when my first computer in the 80's had 64k; thats right "kilobytes". It was great too. -
The one benefit of moving at least every two years is the reduced accumulation.
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Mammal
Yes, but a fishy mammal.
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Oh and every now and again Amy decides to clear out my many 100s of t-shirts. Luckily each one has a carefully constructed reason for being kept.
If you're sentimentally attached to them, but not in a will-actually-wear-them kind of way, you could try cutting them up to construct curtains or a duvet cover or similar large furnishing-type objects.
I have plans to frame a few of the older ones with cool prints on them.
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The one benefit of moving at least every two years is the reduced accumulation.
I know someone whose job requires shifting house every nine months or so, and I kind of admire the kind of person who can shove their minimalist (mammalist? porpose-driven?) life in two suitcases and a backpack and leave everything else behind. But it's kind of sad too.
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