2018 Retrospective
People on Facebook are writing meaningful entries on their experiences in the past year, so I suddenly started thinking. What have I done?
Nothing! And that's the best thing!
In 2015, we moved countries and I left my job in the process. I was pregnant, we found a rental home in Wimbledon, London after a month or purgatory in a serviced apartment in Richmond. We decluttered all our possessions to fit into said rental home. We completely changed our lifestyle from the relaxed sunny Aussie way to the urban London style. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. I found a nursery for Ruth (who was 2.5 years) and enrolled her in a few classes. I found a doctor and a physio and we welcomed Eoin into the world in Q4. After a few months of motherhood, new mothers group friends, dealing with two kids etc, I started house hunting for something to buy. Eoin was a superstar, sitting nicely in his maxicosi while we moved him from one viewing to another.
In 2016, we completed on our new home and I (it was mostly me, with Paraic commuting 2 hrs a day) packed up the rental house, organising the move, and sorted out some decoration of the new place with a builder. A lowlight of that period was trying to carry the heaviest carpet in the world down the street to my new home with Paraic. Ruth started attending nursery and i was thrown into school gate politics and responsibilities. At some point I started exercising again and we were able to go skiing. Meanwhile I made plans to renovate this new home as after the initial gloss of moving into a lovely and bigger place wore out, we realised the layout was not working and there were pinch points everywhere. We started making building plans.
2017 was all about designing the house extension, tendering for builders, and work started in July. Thence began a truly stressful period of my life. Living in dust is no fun. Ruth started school proper in September and i was thrown into the whole boring routine of school life where i had to wake up at the same time everyday and be all responsible despite not having a job! Grrr! In addition to living in a building site, i had the whole school admin, homework, school uniform laundering, cooking with 3 appliances and doing dishes in the bathtub. My close friends took me in for weeks at a time to escape the dust. The kids were flexible and loving, at 4 and 2 years old. I developed serious pains in my back and shoulders from the extra physical labour and stress. Paraic had his back operation in the middle of the renovations and i was left to deal with everything. After that my husband took on a fly in -fly out role that meant that he left us for 4 weeks at a time to work. How fantastic it was to be in my in laws' place on Christmas and not have my own husband there (he was back for new years though).
And in 2018... the renovations finished. I love my new place. We have friends and people stay over all the time. I started baking bread in my new kitchen and I am a proper expert at Sourdough. I started doing yoga 3-4 times a week and I stopped yelling at people. Eoin is toilet trained and parenting has moved to the next level of fun! I started investing in my swing dancing again and my dance partner and i shall be starting classes in 2019. My sister moved nearby. The point is: nothing really happened. Silence, routine, contentment, love. No country moves, no house moves, no new kids, no major operations...
So here's to an uneventful 2019. More yoga, more swing dancing, more theatre and stand up comedy and just being happy.
Happy new year.