The move....and the imminent arrival of a Hitcat

Last Friday the move finally happened, sort of.

I have NO IDEA why the removals firm scheduled 3 whole days to move our stuff just less than 2 miles. Unless it was health and safety, worrying about the amount of carrying the heavy furniture...that could be it.

So Wednesday - they packed our stuff. They arrived at 8 and finished by 11.30. This was the day we took possession of the new house but as none of the utilities were connected yet, we just made do with the opening of the new house ceremony...

 

Of course the girls couldn't do the usual thing of using scissors to cut the ribbon and had to karate chop it instead...

Thursday - the removal men loaded the stuff onto the very big lorry...

 

...and they were finished by half 12, but very kindly came and dropped off our mattresses so we could spend our first night in the new house.

Friday, they brought the lorry to the house and unloaded it...and were finished by one o'clock. Plus all of our stuff only filled about half of that lorry. That would sound good if you didn't know that all the rest of our furniture was on it's way across the Atlantic heading towards Los Angeles...actually it's arrived there now and will be heading across land to Phoenix to arrive next Wednesday.

Although the house isn't anywhere near as open plan as the world's brownest house that we've been living in for the past year and four months...it was still a little more open plan than we liked. So since the move we've had numerous contractors coming in and putting right all the little things that happen to a foreclosed house that need fixing and putting in some extra doors to make more separate rooms. Like here...

 

So we're in.

But me being the social phobic that I am, I'm finding it massively hard having numerous workmen in the house constantly and having to talk to people is taking it's toll. I'm sleeping really badly...especially when a certain burglar alarm technician failed to reset the alarm system already installed in the house and it went off about 2am and as we didn't have a manual nor had he warned us what to do when the control panel shows a zone number that doesn't actually exist.............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, he's been back and fixed it and charged me $80 for the priviledge.

The kids go back to school on Tuesday, although this I think will make me being alone in the house with strangers even more difficult. At least the kids are starting points to start conversations. 

The works on the house are going to go on for a couple of weeks, and then I'll be able to settle and make this place my new sanctuary...and paint some colour into the house - it's not as bad as the world's brownest house, but it's all the same colour light brown carpets and mid brown walls. I need to make some of the rooms more colourful.

So here's what you're really waiting for - some initial pics of the house before we start Devyne-ing it (the downstairs loo is going to become a tongue-in-cheek trophy room/faux shooting lodge/reading room....watch this space for pics of it's development; Tempest's Creative Lair is going to become a home to pink flamingo curtains, with a similarly reupholstered armchair....and very possibly white picket fence around the walls; and much, much more).

But here's some befores for you:

 

 

(large wall where I hope to have a large blown-up pic of this eventually)

BUT more importantly than all that, currently as we speak, my beautiful cat, Luca Brasi is coming to America. (We gave her a Godfather mafia name in the hope that other cats would be afraid of her....plus she dreams of sleeping with fishes and sings like Cerys Matthews (we sing this with changed lyrics - I am the Mog)....that last one is a lie.....the second last one probably was too....but she did once put a horse's head in my bed...well ok, it was a run-over rabbit...and she didn't manage to pull it all the way through the cat-flap...)

Look I'm tracking her as we speak (or I type):

 

My Luca, she's coming! The hitcat :)

(I think we can probably guess what my Silent Sunday pic will be of....)