Elizabeth October 23rd, 2007

I know I made some promises a little while ago about my intentions for this blog. Most of those promises have appeared to be pretty empty until now, but I guess I got carried away with other stuff. We can put most of it down to my boyfriend finally moving to Australia and being a big distraction.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

But now that all that reunitin’ is out of my system, I’m back to give this blog some much-needed CPR.

Here’s a piece of advice that I wish somebody had given to me a few months ago: househunting without a car, in a city you don’t know, is slightly less fun than sticking burning hot needles into your retina. I don’t know how many houses I inspected in total, on foot and tram, after being drawn in by alluring photos on real estate websites. I suspect at least one of the “stylish inner-city executive residences” I visited was some sort of former meth lab, which was a good 3 hours of my day wasted and probably the agent’s too. Why do they do it?

So the entire exercise was really frustrating, but ultimately worthwhile. I ended up finding a fantastic house in the inner East, with a beautiful backyard for Harry and plenty of space for Tim & I. The house was left in a pretty shitty state, but after a few days of hard work and industrial-strength bleach I think it looks great.

This is where Harry likes to sit when he’s protecting his kingdom from robbers, UFOs and other threatening intruders. Like birdies.

Thank God the house has plenty of character of its own, or the place would look like an IKEA showroom. Again, this was a side-effect of being carless - it just made sense to get everything I needed at one place and have the whole lot delivered in one go. After several hours of assembly (ie: swearing, tantrums, tears) we now have a TV unit, bedside tables, a bunch of lamps, steps, lots of kitchen gadgets and an enormous vase that will soon be home to a little fish.

Everything else came by truck from Brisbane (after a delay of a few days, when the dodgy truck was pulled off the road by the RTA) so it’s only now that it’s really starting to feel like home. I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in the garden tidying things up, and beginning a herb and veggie garden.

It feels good to be settled. Things are really great, and I have a good feeling about things to come

• Life
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