I am so.....

.... not handling this waiting well!

I feel like somebody at the beginning of a race just after the guy says 'Ready'.... 'Steady'....... and then just doesn't say 'GO'!

It is only 3 weeks to go now.. today 3 weeks from now we will be on the boat in Hull waiting for take off.. or erhm..is that float off? To arrive in Holland at 8 o'clock, then at 10 we will get a tour of our house to make sure it is in the state I expect it to be in after which at 11 the signing and key transferring will happen.

I almost said 'should happen' but since I have this new motto of 'I expect good things to happen to me' I changed it to will happen...

I suppose our traumatic experience in Spain doesnt help my peace of mind a lot... there we were... no place to stay, just a rental car with loads of stuff in our suitcases all ready to sign all our money over to this guy selling the house. And imagine we are sitting all around a table, our solicitor, our bankmanager and his friend, the seller, his solicitor, the notary all talking to eachother in Spanish. Oh and this was half hour after everybody got really irritated because our bankmanager didn't arrive when he said he would. So.. all talking Spanish, John and I holding hands and waiting for the moment someone would tell us 'please sign here' but that moment never came, instead a lot of excitement seemed to happen until someone said that if we didn't pay part of the money in cash that we wouldn't get the key. WHAT!!!! Being a proper dramaqueen I exclaimed 'NOOOOOOOO' and burst into tears. It all ended well though, because of my outburst and the seller being Dutch as well and we had bonded before the meeting he let us go into the house anyway because it was Friday and there was no bank open anywhere until Monday. Anyway, looking back on it it was all good fun but living through it wasn't fun at all so part of me is a tiny bit apprehensive about this signing with the notary business.


So, onto more positive things..

I have already decided on what I want from Ikea.. isn't that nice.. globalisation is good for something I tell ya! I went to Ikea Glasgow and could try out the couches, look for a bed and other stuff I didn't think I needed. So much fun.. of course.. they have the exact same things in Holland so all I need to do is take my list of things to buy and somehow get them home.

John and I have it all worked out, first we are going to go and try out the keys :-), then we are going to take all stuff out of Golfie and into the house, then leave it all lying around, measure a few things and drive to a white goods store and buy a washingmachine, fridge, microwave and vacuuming thing and hope they can delivery next day, then we will drive to Ikea and attempt to buy a bed (called Hopen), 2 nighttables, a mattress and slattedthingies so we have at least something to sleep on. I have a lot more things on my Ikea wishlist but we don't have a hope in hell to put all that in poor Golfie ;)

Then when night has come we are going to zonk out on the mattress and open the bottle of champagne BAC gave me for good behaviour and get drunk.

I think in between the bed in Golfie and the champagne there is probably going to be a dinner with Sateh involved.

Oh joy!

If only 3 weeks wasn't so ridiculously far away :-D

It has started....

... officially counting down now.. T minus 26

Noticeable only really by the feeling of stress that is building in me and the simple fact that the 'doing things for the last time in Scotland' are getting more frequent.

Made my last hairdresser appointment for Saturday 2nd of June which is also the last Saturday I make Johns mother her lunch (because she does it all the other weeks in the month except for the 1st Saturday of the month.. this family likes structure I tell you!)

It will be interesting to see how much of this structure I will keep.. for me.. my M.O. has always been doing things on the spur of the moment (I think I can honestly say my life was one big spur of the moment experience!).

It was REALLY strange for me to meet John who wouldn't do things because he felt like it at the time but for instance because it was a certain day of the week.

Many times I would say 'shall we have ' which he would love so much that after the last bite he would say 'that was great, shall we do that every Friday' (Or any day of the week it was on the moment we had that .

Of course he would never understand why I looked at him in strange disbelief because for me the whole object of junkfood is that you can use it like a joker, a trump card, to use on those moments you can't be bothered to be sensible but just want a quick fix. Planning junkfood is like terminus contradictus in my mind but I must say I have changed a lot in that area.

Holidays for instance.. for me that was always about waiting long enough for everything to be either full or too expensive so therefore just staying at home and live in and around the bed and kitchen, suited me fine-ish but there was always this niggle that I did want a holiday like other people seem to enjoy.

Well.. John has introduced me to the 'book your holiday 9 months in advance'. And of course, lets not forget, lets throw spur of the moment holidays out of the window completely and buy a house in Spain which is a nice warm place and then at least we know where to go to. :-)

Being a spur of the moment person I am also always game to try new things so I thought I would! And to my surprise.. it is fantastic to have an Excel spreadsheet John made which will show me exactly how many days to wait until our next holiday (109), it is great to know that we can travel light because everything we could possible want or need on our holiday destination is already there. Home away from home we call it and it is, I am sure we will love to use it as a rendez vous pied a terre and at least I KNOW what to do for my holidays because basically, all I ever wanted from a holiday is read books and books and books and get wet in the pool, burn to blisters on getting out and have fun with any neighbours that are around drinking endless glasses of red wine. No problems with having to wait what sort of neighbours you're going to get in your rented apartment, no worries if the place will be littered with cockroaches or the pool will be closed or not being able to find it. And cheap.. did you know that if you book your flights early enough you can fly so much cheaper? And not only that, since you pay it in February and only go in September, by that time you will have completely forgotten about the money you paid for the holiday. Brilliant..

It has taught me that instant gratification is not always a good thing...

Reminds me of this test...

4 year olds are confronted with a marshmellow and told that if they wait with eating it for 5 minutes that they will get 2. It is amazing how many 4 year olds can't wait that enormous amount of time and scoff the thing immediately.

And now of course you expect me to say that I could now easily wait those 5 minutes to get the 2 marshmellows?

Well.. sorry.. holidays ok, but food? That marshmellow would be only in my mouth long enough to say FIVE!! minutes ???????!!!!!

Getting there!

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Stolen...

.... but hilarious (sooooo Norunn....)

Note line 29

Out with the old, in with the new

Very stressful day today..

So.. I had only 2 conference calls for the BAC planned today, one I had to run myself at 11 and one just for listening in at 1500. I on purpose blocked out the rest of my calendar because today was the day THE PLUMBERS would arrive.. Pom pom pom..

Also.. today was the day that Carpetright would come to measure up a few rooms for vinyl we want to put down, they said that at about 09:30 someone would call me to make an appointment.

I considered cancelling my calls but thought it wouldn't be professional to say 'need to cancel since I am 'working' from home today instead of properly WORKING as I am supposed to do' so I thought 'how big is the chance of any of this interfering with my 2 calls'?

Hah!

So plumbers were supposed to arrive at 09:30 (of course that was a lie, it was almost 10) but at least I was relieved I got them in before my call and got them to go to work all coffeed up and things like a good housewife. (Even made them tomatosoup for lunch, homemade, I hope he remembers that when he gives us the bill!)

In between doing coffee etc. some people called me for work related things and of course the carpetright guy ended up on my voicemail saying 'hello there, I will be around at 11'

MUTTER MUMBLE

I really so hoped he would either be early (I only needed 2 minutes to tell him what to do) or a bit late so I would have at least done the pre-ambling bit in the call which generally means you can let the participants talk amongst themselves while you nip out to do whatever is asking attention, be it postmen with packages, the electricity guy to check the meter or someone wanting money for some charity.

Of course.. no chance... JUST when the most important person on the call started his 'Tanja, thank you for arranging this call, this is very important blah blah' the bell rang so I asked for a moment and told them that I would have to go on mute for a little while.

This didn't deter him.. while he was nattering on in my wireless headset I opened the door to mister carpetright trying to tell this high guy on the call to please wait with his important bit, forgetting I was on mute and of course him going on and on thinking it was so nice for a change not to be interrupted (yeah I know I do that, it is enthusiasm, please forgive me) all the while confusing the hell out of the carpet guy when I said 'hold on a minute' to my headset and he went 'yes, no problem' and I had to explain I wasn't talking to him

Pffff.. it was all very embarrassing for all parties involved.. in the end I managed to go off mute long enough to tell mr important to please wait a few minutes and talk amongst themselves and tell mr carpetright what we wanted and that I hoped he could call me tomorrow with the quote.
The poor guy just did his thing and just waved on his way out while I was trying to desperately remember what the important thing was I wanted to achieve with this call!

Man.. how MURPHY was that!!!!!

Anyway, plumbers worked really hard, got all the old stuff out and installed the new bits almost, they will be back tomorrow to finish and start on the cloakroom, it looks lovely doesn't it?

If mr. Carpetright manages to get a quote in which we like we will have laminate look vinyl in all rooms that don't have proper laminate yet.

We should SO have done this 5 years ago, that shows... all you need is to apply the JFDI model. :-)

Out with the old:


In with the new:

The BIG revamp

Long time no see!!

It has JUST been too busy... for me anyway.. When John was on his trip to Denmark a week or so ago I decided that thinking about the daunting task of making our current house sale ready was almost becoming more daunting than actually getting my finger out. So I did!

You have to understand that our entire house has been taken over by eBay stock.. it got a bit crazy really but that was because it was slowly build by just adding bit by bit until you suddenly feel you are buried by it all. Every nook and cranny was filled with STUFF, amongst other things the guest room was full of it (guests would have to sort of dig their way through the bed). My brother took a picture of a bit of it when he was visiting but even photographing it was almost impossible because there was too much stuff... this is his impression:


In the right hand corner you can sort of see where the bed was squashed in :)

Now.. it took me about 3 days but I did it, I got every last bit of eBay STUFF into the loft, reclaiming our house for the original intended purpose! Today we put laminate in the guest room and as you can see from the photo below.. it is liveable in again!



Wednesday the plumber comes to swap our old (very very awful looking) bathroom for a new shiny one with cute taps (see here) and a matching cloakroom in the same design. Cheap as chips.. the suite that is.. the plumber is a different story, he is probably 2 times as expensive as the price we paid for the sets but.. for under 1500 quid we will have a new cloakroom and a new bathroom.

Wednesday as well the carpetright guy will come to measure the kitchen, bathroom, cloakroom and hall up and give us a quote for pretend laminate vinyl that he will come and lay soon as well and then all we need to do is a lot of cleaning and touch uppering, this process is going so quickly.

All I am doing now is distracting myself with all this since all I can do is wait now until it is the 15th of June!