In our heads, we’ve resigned to stay

Remember we were all ready to move?

Well, the move is off.

Fate was, in her indomitable way, against us. In sum, let’s just say:

1. We made an offer to the real estate.
2. They rejected it.
3. Then two days before the set sale date they rang me back and said, “Well, HANG ON. Maybe we do want your money after all?”
4. Then I said, “Sod off. Who do you think you are, screwing us around like that? Like we could turn around in 48 hours – one being Good Friday and a public holiday anyway – and organise it?! Like we’d want that stress in our lives.” (Especially as I wasn’t 100% sure in my heart the house was what I wanted anyway.)
5. Then I found out later that it eventually sold for LESS than what we were prepared to bid up to, because of the current lacklustre market.

All that said, you think I’m bummed?

No.

I am one of those fatalists who believe everything happens for a reason. So, the universe wanted us to stay put for a while? I can dig that.

What’s harder to manage now though is the state of flux the household now exists in. I did pack up 95% of our books. And within those boxes of books, filling space or acting as buffering, are life’s incidentals which I thought I could do with, but it turns out I can’t.

Like a leather satchel I remember taking last into the city to meet the Director of this; the contents being some quite relevant spreadsheets and budgets for Surprise! it also includes a very special picture of mine which was the inspiration for the book to start with (more on that in the months to come, when I can reveal the plot more).

This disorientation is contaminating (my) very normality. The other day, because I am a food pornographer and only buy cooking magazines to peek into the culinary lives of normal people who eat normal food (as opposed to me), I could not find the latest edition of Super Food Ideas. I turned the house upside-down looking for it, only to find it after 24 hours in the laundry, on top of the dryer.

Adam watched bemusedly from the sidelines. “Go buy a new one!” he said before I found it.

But that wasn’t the point.

Anxiety is a temperamental bitch, and if my brain decides that at that moment I needed that magazine then I bloody well had to have it. No substitutes were acceptable.

So I’m starting to think I need to unpack the boxes we’ve got stacked high in the hall cupboards and in the garage.

I’m getting twitchy about them being there. Waiting. For God know’s what. But, something.

[Plus, I really want to find this book. Don’t ask me why I wanted to pack it up in the first place!]