March started innocently enough this year and then it snowballed into a month from hell. A month where what could go wrong, did and has gone wrong. After two weeks away from our empty house, I returned to find a defrosted freezer, a warped floor, a whole rotten trout (there was other rotten stuff too, but the trout really stood out) and a smell like nothing you would like to imagine. I learned the only way to get rid of the smell of rotten trout is to soak everything from the fridge-freezer in a bath of bleach overnight. I learned that just when you think you have regained some control, something else will go wrong, like the silencer in your car will suddenly throw in the towel, causing you to drive around sounding like a boy racer. I want to hide when I am driving my car, not that I can, as I need to look at where I am going. Moving country is not turning out to be very easy for me. It was easy for the huzband, but the this country has me in its tenticle like embrace. It doesn’t want to let me go I don’t think. I am back where I grew up, living with my father while my huzband and all our furniture (mine and the huzband’s) sits in an apartment in Vienna, waiting for me to arrive to start life there.
Archive for March, 2010
reflection
Sunday, March 7th, 2010The huzband flew back to Wien this morning. He’ll be back again next weekend to help with the last bit of the clear out, but it just occured to me, that our breakfast of pancakes this morning was the last meal we will ever cook and share in the first home we purchased together. In my head, I have thoughts that I should feel more emotional about this, and I don’t feel very emotional at all. I only feel excitement and I am only looking forward. That surprises me. Because I can get very attached to things. Like shopping bags. I hoard nice paper shopping bags and loathe parting with them. But our current home? Get me out of here already! Truth be told, because I have been here on my own for the last two months and because the huzband has been living in limbo in Wien, I’m looking forward to joining him there and settling in, just in the nick of time before the new member of our family arrives. The lack of sentimentality surprises me. As I cleared our fridge of magnets and four years of postcards, I didn’t feel a smidgen of regret. As I look at blinds hanging in the window that I painstakingly stiched together on my sewing machine, I feel no regret. As I look at our nice floor coverings, I feel no regret. It’s just timber and marble and we can buy more of it for our next house purchase. It is strangely liberating, to feel absolutely no attachment to this house. It speaks volumes to me. Home is actually where S is. Home is where I live with him, where ever that may be. For the immediate future, that is in a rented apartment in Wien, with a roof terrace, to sit on and sip Austrian reisling in the summer.
packing
Sunday, March 7th, 2010The moving company is coming tomorrow. So today is a frantic rush to pile everything into “move to new country” and “put into storage” bundles. After nearly four years living in our current abode, I’m excited about the prospect of an empty house with all our belongings en route to our new life or in storage. Not that empty houses don’t come with their own list of chores. Empty houses need cleaning and then painting to make them ready for renting. Which brings me to the subject of tenants. I am familiar with the state some tenants leave properties in after they move out having had to help clean up after them and it never ceases to amaze me how people can rent a property and move into its pristine, freshly painted niceness and move out leaving filthy kitchens, bathrooms, wardrobes etc. It is so ignorant, I also think, these people have no shame, as I have never done anything other than scrub every wardrobe, kitchen surface and bathroom surface and left it squeaky clean when I have moved out of rented accomodation. The reason why - I wouldn’t want anyone to think of me as a filthy pig. A “rateyourtenant” website would be an excellent idea. Most landlords have their tenants RSI numbers and names, which would make it very easy to create a “rateyourtenant” website so you can post references of tenants and check RSI numbers for filty pig ratings. SK and I are hoping to find tenants of our ilk for the property we are vacating. i.e. ones who won’t trash the place and ones who will clean up their filth when they leave. That said, neither of us forsee coming back to live here, it is just two steppy a property for a small baby or toddler. But, it’s a great property for a couple or a family with slightly older children. With unbelievably low heating bills.