Finally!!! I'm back.....

Is there no end to the torture of relocating?

The different stages of emotion - excitement, enthusiasm, exhaustion and lastly, the I’m so over it stage, working its way into the mix and as is so typical of my life – It’s always all or nothing with me.

Firstly we had a cleaning dilemma, which ended in tears and yes, they were mine! It just felt like the whole process of packing and cleaning was dragging on forever.
This morning, we got up feeling really good about not having to stress about the house anymore, it was all taken care of (or so we stupidly thought). We drove over there and I did a walk through just to check out what they had done and was horrified to see that it had been a very slap happy job!! There were too many things that hadn't been done to even mention.
Joe got on the phone to the woman who had come out to quote and she virtually told us that we were lying and that they had never had anyone complain before. After arguing back and forth for a while, I realised that she wasn't listening to us and she ultimately told us if she got the cleaner to come back out, that there would be an extra charge. FOR WHAT?? - NOT HAPPY!
We soon realised, we had no leg to stand on, we had paid them when they left - in cash - and we still haven't received a receipt and on top of that we were running out of time and we couldn’t afford to waste another day just waiting around for them to be good and ready to come back.
On top of it all, I started to feel a little fluey – of course I did, now that I don’t have any ‘sick leave’!! Sure enough within a couple of days, the bad sore throat had turned into full-blown flu.
Like the little trooper I am though, I soldiered on.

Since we were officially homeless by Sunday 29th, we were very grateful to be given the invitation to be roomies with Jo, Andy, Aaron and Madison for the next few days. We couldn’t have felt more welcome or loved.
Aaron is our 12-year-old godson and a really special kid; we love him a lot and I know the feeling is mutual. He is very independent and manages household chores amazingly well (he would put my 20 yr old to shame).
He even cooked us pizza for tea on our last night there, he didn’t want or need any help and rightly so, he very confidently made peperoni & cheese and ham & pineapple pizzas and they were very yummy – good job Aaron!
We’re looking forward to lots of visits from them while we are up here and Aaron has already told us that he wants to be put to work and earn some money. We’re thinking maybe next school holidays he could come up and stay with us. Kids keep you young and help you to stay in touch with the ever changing, fast paced world we live in.

So it’s three o’clock am, Thursday 3rd July and all I’m hearing is this high pitch, beep – beep – beep!! The alarm! It’s now officially the start of our new life. We we’re really careful not to make too much noise – didn’t want to wake the roomies- then have to say our goodbyes all over again (I hate goodbyes)!! So at around four o’clock we just slipped away into the darkness without any fanfare, just the way I like it.

It wasn’t a very comfortable trip, feeling as lousy as I did. We stopped in at Eight Mile Plains (one of Joe’s old ‘Freedom’ haunts) for some water so I could take my cold & flu tablets. Our next stop was around 6am for brekky and a toilet break at Maccas in Gympie. As we were walking back to the car, I noticed that I had what felt like part of one of my back teeth missing. I had a look in the mirror on my sun visor and saw that I had lost a filling – Eww!! What next?? The rest of our road trip was uneventful and we were blessed with beautiful travelling weather. We did get stuck behind some wide load trucks a couple of times, but we were in no hurry, so sitting behind them for a few k’s didn’t matter too much.

We arrived at our new life in Calliope at around 11.30am and hit the ground running, we’ve hardly stopped since. We got stuck straight into unpacking and trying to organise our new ‘home’.
It didn’t look like much when we started but four days later and I’m really happy with the end result. It’s really cosy and it has all our favourite things displayed, especially beautiful family photos, so everyone we love are all around us all the time, you can’t help but think about them when you see their precious faces that we already miss so much.

We we’re supposed to officially start tomorrow (Monday) 7th July 2008, but of course Joe hasn’t been able to help himself and has spent a lot of the weekend downstairs, making himself known to staff and customers, learning the layout of the place and marking his territory. Because I have been so ill, I haven’t ventured downstairs at all since we’ve been here, so I’m sure the staff here think that I am merely a myth and don’t believe that I actually exist.
Tomorrow for me is a very daunting consideration but unless I take the steps, literally, towards the beginning of whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing here and for however the length of time we are here for, the entire expedition will be without value.

And of course the story continues….

These are some photos of my farewell from Konica Minolta night out on the 27th June. It unfortunately wasn't a great night having had some dramas attached to it (of course - but that's a whole other story) these photos were taken before all the unpleasantness began. Believe me, it was all down hill after that!