1574: Oh, to Click One’s Fingers

In case you missed the news, Andie and I now own a house. This is exciting and etc. etc. but it’s also a big ol’ pain.

To give credit where credit is due, Andie has been working a whole lot harder on the house than I have been. This is at least partly because I am woefully incompetent at DIY and will normally end up hammering a nail into myself rather than a wall… and that’s when I’m supposed to be painting it. Oh ho ho ho.

No, but seriously, I suck balls at DIY. I wouldn’t want to put anything on a shelf that I put up, I’m afraid of climbing ladders beyond the second step, I don’t know how most tools work and I’m the sort of person that will stand in the paint tray, flip it over so it splatters all over the carpet, then fall on my arse, bringing the curtain rails down with it and smashing the TV in the process.

I hasten to add: thankfully, none of that has happened, and I successfully managed to apply a coat of paint to our new living room earlier without anyone dying. It is quite satisfying to know that I am at least capable of this.

Where the frustration comes from, though — and this isn’t by any means exclusive to residences — is when you walk in the front door and it doesn’t look like a habitable place to live. (Because it isn’t, usually.) The only things lying around are paint pots and various tools, the fridge is empty, there’s rubbish everywhere and regardless of where you try to get to in the property, you’ll trip over something. It’s demoralising to see, and it’s something that doesn’t really go away until you stop dicking around with paint and start putting furniture in there. Only then does it start to feel like a home; a process that really comes to a head once you get your TV installed. I sometimes just wish I could click my fingers and it all be done.

Things are going quite well, though. The painting is proceeding apace — since Andie has this week off work, she’ll undoubtedly be doing some more of that without me over the course of the week — and I’m starting to get a mental picture of what goes where. Of course, there still comes the part I’m really not looking forward to — packing up all the shit in the flat I’m writing this in and transferring it to our new house — but at least this time around we’re hiring professional removal people to do all the really hard work. We just have to stick it all in boxes.

I am excited about having a place to call our own, I really am; the trouble is that with the bad news I had regarding my job recently, it’s taken the edge off the excitement somewhat. It’s hard to be super-excited and positive about it all when you’re not sure where your next paycheque is going to be coming from after June.

But I have to remember that I have a few irons in the fire and it’s possible that any of them could come to something. The next few months may not end up being particularly easy, but they’re probably going to be interesting, if nothing else.

Oh, and did I mention how much I appreciate the hard work Andie’s putting in to the new house while I mope around being miserable? I do. A lot. And now the Internet knows it. So there. <3