Hey, so here I am
So.
Here goes.
Emma and I have moved in with Mum. Hill End is all cleaned up and is back to being a holiday house. We're in one bedroom here, and eventually will have a second for a craft room.
Life has been so, so super busy, and so intense. Packing, moving and cleaning here took several weeks. Then, once I felt at least two thirds settled, we had to do the last frantic push to clear and clean my grandparents' house, which my uncle had turned into a full on hoarder house over the last decade. Whatever you're thinking, yeah. It was that bad, and then some. Two full days of cleaning garbage, electronics, timber, glass, and a few actual things we wanted to keep, from first thing in the morning to after dark. Tip runs, barrow loads, scrubbing walls and floors, raking up millions of screws and electrical components, breathing in dirt, mould, fibreglass insulation and god knows what else. I ended up with cuts and bruises all over and a minor head injury. Good times. And I'm not exaggerating to say that without Brother2, Mum and myself it would not have been done. Both uncles were barely helping, and at times were actually obstructive. But we did it.
So.
Mum's house ended up packed full with stuff. Three households being pushed into one house. So much sorting. Lots of charity shop runs. Lots of trying to bring some kind of order. I did a lot, on my own, but the last two days, Mum really dug in and we sorted all the remaining stuff in about twelve hours. We now have all the rooms back to looking great that were packed full. We have a walkway from the back of the garage to the front. We have all the furniture accessible and able to be used. It's amazing. I could cry - it would have taken at least three weeks to work through it on my own.
We have a house we can live in again. Now I just have to maintain it. The kitchen I've been keeping up with - it's new, well-designed, and it is SO EASY to cook in and to keep up. I've been baking bread again. Now that there aren't piles of boxes everywhere, I should be able to keep up the floors. Mum has an elderly Roomba that I can let loose, and it saves so much time even if it misses bits. The garden - I've already weeded a few beds and planted tomatoes, potatoes, nasturtium, basil, broad beans, spinach, coriander, lavender, common sage, pineapple sage and also transplanted some rhubarb and rocket from my garden at Hill End. Ta had some very healthy happy herbs and has over a dozen citrus trees btween the front and back yards, so we should have heaps of fruit this summer. Now I just have to water regularly to get things through the heat. Don't have to stress about that today - it's been raining since I woke up.
One big blow was finding out after we moved in that someone, at some point had put three crates of our books outside in the yard, in the weather. Disaster. Over 270 books lost, and amongst them most of Emma's childhood books. We're sourcing replacements, but it's shattering. We spent three days crying, cataloguing and mourning. Our books are so important to us, and they were meant to be safe. They'd been in mum's garage because we had no room for them at Hill End, been carefully stowed in the garage because I knew there they would be safe. And someone, who knows who, chose to put them outside. The tubs were clear. I was obvious what was in them. It just felt so incredibly personal. Notable losses that cannot be replaced are Emma's copy of The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, of which there are no copies anywhere online for sale at any price, and my really old copy of Anne of Green Gables, which I now know was a first edition worth about $600. I've replaced a bunch of Emma's already from ebay, abebooks and charity shops. The rest will just take time and chance - I hope I can find most of them for under $5 each second hand from charity over the next few years.
I had to bow out of the Stucky Big Bang but my Marvel Bang story is all but finished, It isn't as complex, long and rich as I would have liked, but I essentially lost two months writing time. I'm just thrilled it's going to be able to be posted at all, because I love the whole idea, even if it isn't as polished as it would have been if I hadn't had to move house in the middle. Hopefully there will be some readers out there who will love it despite its rough and hurried state.
I haven't had time to read fic eaither, hence the hiatus from my rec posts, but I hope to get back into that soon. I have so many wonderful story notifications piled up in my inbox that I haven't even loaded up, let alone read. I'm feeling starved for fandom. And I'm diving into a new one - we discovered Leverage while in the process of packing to move, and our copies of the US releases arrived in the mail last week. There are commentaries on every episode and special features and that makes me SO HAPPY. I love all that stuff. And we'll try out The Librarians next since it's more Christian Kane and the same creative team. We also have the Deadpool and Civil War extras to watch, and I also bought The Rogue Cut of X-Men: DOFP for $15 a couple of days ago that we have yet to see. Behind on everything - STILL not seen the second seasons of Agent Carter or Daredevil, or season 3 of Agents of SHIELD. Still stalled halfway through season 3 of Once Upon A Time. Haven't seen season 15 of CSI, or like the last couple of seasons of Castle, and goodness knows what else. We want to try out a bunch of new shows, too, since my friends are raving about them, and I'm feeling left out, but we just have such a huge backlog and it's hard to find time to catch up.
Yesterday was my family birthday thing, which went well. We cooked lamb with rosemary, garlic and juniper, and a roast chicken, and plenty of roasted and steamed veg. I cooked brownies for dessert, but wasn't fussed with the result, fair too oily. I'll go back to my tried and true beetroot brownies recipe in future. I'll have dinner with friends next weekend, and I hope to adapt The Muddiest Chocolate and Vodka Mud Cake to be white chocolate and raspberry flavoured for that.
I don't really have a craft project right now. I want to get back into knitting socks, but I have no idea where my sock yarn is right now, so I'm continuing the Diagonal Block Stitch Square I began in February, purely because it's mindless, and because I knew where it was. It's just a basic acrylic yarn, a wildly bright red/yellow/blue/green verigate that I'll probably border in white or another stark contrast when it's done.
I think that's maybe it for now. I'll probably think of something I meant to say later, but I can just post again. Hope you're all well.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/428997.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Here goes.
Emma and I have moved in with Mum. Hill End is all cleaned up and is back to being a holiday house. We're in one bedroom here, and eventually will have a second for a craft room.
Life has been so, so super busy, and so intense. Packing, moving and cleaning here took several weeks. Then, once I felt at least two thirds settled, we had to do the last frantic push to clear and clean my grandparents' house, which my uncle had turned into a full on hoarder house over the last decade. Whatever you're thinking, yeah. It was that bad, and then some. Two full days of cleaning garbage, electronics, timber, glass, and a few actual things we wanted to keep, from first thing in the morning to after dark. Tip runs, barrow loads, scrubbing walls and floors, raking up millions of screws and electrical components, breathing in dirt, mould, fibreglass insulation and god knows what else. I ended up with cuts and bruises all over and a minor head injury. Good times. And I'm not exaggerating to say that without Brother2, Mum and myself it would not have been done. Both uncles were barely helping, and at times were actually obstructive. But we did it.
So.
Mum's house ended up packed full with stuff. Three households being pushed into one house. So much sorting. Lots of charity shop runs. Lots of trying to bring some kind of order. I did a lot, on my own, but the last two days, Mum really dug in and we sorted all the remaining stuff in about twelve hours. We now have all the rooms back to looking great that were packed full. We have a walkway from the back of the garage to the front. We have all the furniture accessible and able to be used. It's amazing. I could cry - it would have taken at least three weeks to work through it on my own.
We have a house we can live in again. Now I just have to maintain it. The kitchen I've been keeping up with - it's new, well-designed, and it is SO EASY to cook in and to keep up. I've been baking bread again. Now that there aren't piles of boxes everywhere, I should be able to keep up the floors. Mum has an elderly Roomba that I can let loose, and it saves so much time even if it misses bits. The garden - I've already weeded a few beds and planted tomatoes, potatoes, nasturtium, basil, broad beans, spinach, coriander, lavender, common sage, pineapple sage and also transplanted some rhubarb and rocket from my garden at Hill End. Ta had some very healthy happy herbs and has over a dozen citrus trees btween the front and back yards, so we should have heaps of fruit this summer. Now I just have to water regularly to get things through the heat. Don't have to stress about that today - it's been raining since I woke up.
One big blow was finding out after we moved in that someone, at some point had put three crates of our books outside in the yard, in the weather. Disaster. Over 270 books lost, and amongst them most of Emma's childhood books. We're sourcing replacements, but it's shattering. We spent three days crying, cataloguing and mourning. Our books are so important to us, and they were meant to be safe. They'd been in mum's garage because we had no room for them at Hill End, been carefully stowed in the garage because I knew there they would be safe. And someone, who knows who, chose to put them outside. The tubs were clear. I was obvious what was in them. It just felt so incredibly personal. Notable losses that cannot be replaced are Emma's copy of The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, of which there are no copies anywhere online for sale at any price, and my really old copy of Anne of Green Gables, which I now know was a first edition worth about $600. I've replaced a bunch of Emma's already from ebay, abebooks and charity shops. The rest will just take time and chance - I hope I can find most of them for under $5 each second hand from charity over the next few years.
I had to bow out of the Stucky Big Bang but my Marvel Bang story is all but finished, It isn't as complex, long and rich as I would have liked, but I essentially lost two months writing time. I'm just thrilled it's going to be able to be posted at all, because I love the whole idea, even if it isn't as polished as it would have been if I hadn't had to move house in the middle. Hopefully there will be some readers out there who will love it despite its rough and hurried state.
I haven't had time to read fic eaither, hence the hiatus from my rec posts, but I hope to get back into that soon. I have so many wonderful story notifications piled up in my inbox that I haven't even loaded up, let alone read. I'm feeling starved for fandom. And I'm diving into a new one - we discovered Leverage while in the process of packing to move, and our copies of the US releases arrived in the mail last week. There are commentaries on every episode and special features and that makes me SO HAPPY. I love all that stuff. And we'll try out The Librarians next since it's more Christian Kane and the same creative team. We also have the Deadpool and Civil War extras to watch, and I also bought The Rogue Cut of X-Men: DOFP for $15 a couple of days ago that we have yet to see. Behind on everything - STILL not seen the second seasons of Agent Carter or Daredevil, or season 3 of Agents of SHIELD. Still stalled halfway through season 3 of Once Upon A Time. Haven't seen season 15 of CSI, or like the last couple of seasons of Castle, and goodness knows what else. We want to try out a bunch of new shows, too, since my friends are raving about them, and I'm feeling left out, but we just have such a huge backlog and it's hard to find time to catch up.
Yesterday was my family birthday thing, which went well. We cooked lamb with rosemary, garlic and juniper, and a roast chicken, and plenty of roasted and steamed veg. I cooked brownies for dessert, but wasn't fussed with the result, fair too oily. I'll go back to my tried and true beetroot brownies recipe in future. I'll have dinner with friends next weekend, and I hope to adapt The Muddiest Chocolate and Vodka Mud Cake to be white chocolate and raspberry flavoured for that.
I don't really have a craft project right now. I want to get back into knitting socks, but I have no idea where my sock yarn is right now, so I'm continuing the Diagonal Block Stitch Square I began in February, purely because it's mindless, and because I knew where it was. It's just a basic acrylic yarn, a wildly bright red/yellow/blue/green verigate that I'll probably border in white or another stark contrast when it's done.
I think that's maybe it for now. I'll probably think of something I meant to say later, but I can just post again. Hope you're all well.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/428997.html. Please comment there using OpenID.