I had the best weekend. It was such a delightful time! I spent the weekend watching my boys play together and chatting with friends and enjoying the beautiful weather and also moving! It seems so funny to declare a moving weekend completely delightful but it certainly was--from start to finish. Oh well, minus the cat pee incident, but I’ll get to that shortly.
We thankfully had a bit of relocation money socked away unspent. So we hired a ‘removal company.’ They came and packed everything Thursday. Extremely efficient and polite. We used Casey’s Removals--in case you’ll be ‘moving house’ in the Kent/Croydon area any time soon. I cleaned and directed and picked up keys to the new house and then freaked out about cat pee. Oh man.
We have the cutest new little house, but the previous tenants had cats. Nice enough cats. We met them. But goodness me, those suckers can really get their stink on. Specifically on the carpets and curtains. So we came over Thursday night to check out the new digs and I had a hissy fit about pee stains. ‘Wasn’t the carpet supposed to be cleaned? Maybe it was and it didn’t come out! What gets cat smell out of carpets. Probably nothing. Maybe it’ll never come out! Maybe we’re destined to be in toilet-smell land for the rest of our lives! Call the management company right now. What do you mean they’re closed?!? In the morning then! Wait, the movers will be to our house before they open! Oh no! The movers come tomorrow to load in all of our furniture and there’s nothing to be done. It’s hopeless. All is lost! Someone shoot me! Just shoot me now and put me out of my stinking misery!” The words ‘blithering idiot’ come to mind. Oh dear. Scott just sort of looked at me with that half-cocked grin that can SOMETIMES be so charming and politely mentioned that I may have lost my mind. I think the implication was that I was being a little high-maintenance. I think that everything else was going so smoothly with the move that I was grasping for something to freak out about. That’s what one does when one is moving, right? Oh well and...it really stank.
Anyway the efficient, polite movers came Friday morning and moved everything in. The management company said the carpets were cleaned and suggested Febreeze. I politely declined to mention it smells like ass and gives my youngest son croup. I don’t want the smell covered up! I want it GONE! But on to the pleasant, delightful part.
The weather Friday morning was absolutely gorgeous. Bright, sun-shiney, warm. I wished my flops weren’t packed. The boys ran like wild men in and out of the empty house, around and around the back garden and the front driveway. They decided the movers were bad gangsters and they were Batman and Robin faithfully defending Gotham. Sunshine does something to people--especially when one is deprived of it for so much of the time. Those stodgy, reserved English men played along! The four of them had just a ball. My favorite moment of the day though was leaning out the windows I was cleaning to see Bridger and Caid sitting in the sun on the back patio. Each with a sandwich in hand, Bridger reading Caid a magazine. So sweet!
One of the huge blessings of the weekend was the friends that helped out. That can be one of the best parts of a move. The sort of ‘barn-raising’ atmosphere. Folks around packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, cleaning, patching walls, and eating pizza together at the end of the day. Our move over here lacked all of that. Movers one day to bring everything to Montana for storage. A week later another set to bring everything to England. Us alone with the boys in an empty house wondering when and if we’d ever see our stuff again and what in the world we’d gotten ourselves into. Then living in an empty house (that we moved into sight-unseen) for almost 3 months. Learning to live without and wondering why in the world we’d shipped so much stuff when it did finally arrive. It was all very lonely and surreal.
This weekend was so different though! My friend Victoria picked the boys up at lunch time Friday and they had a blast playing at her house all day long. We finished up the day eating dinner with her and her hubby at their flat around 10:30 pm. It was such a great night! Then Saturday afternoon John and Paul showed up and helped put shelves together, and put things up on walls and unpack and play light-saber fights with the boys. We finished the evening with beers and yummy dinner and a great time talking. By the end of the day Sunday we had all but 1 box unpacked. Unheard of!
Somehow it feels like we’ve finally moved here. We spent six obligatory months in moving purgatory and we’ve finally paid our penance and can get out. Last week our house in Denver finally went under contract, we leased the condo for the next 12 months, and we moved to England. It feels like our life here is finally beginning. Now if I can just get the cat smell out of the carpets...
