A very grown up 6 year old

My eldest was still going to his old school for a few weeks after we moved, as changing schools is very complicated. Then at 2pm before they broke up for half term I got a phone call asking if he could start at the local school after half term. So I had to ring his old school and tell them he was leaving that day so he could say goodbye to everyone he had known since nursery. I was really worried how he would take it, but he was SO grown up about it bless him! He said goodbye, I got some flowers for his teacher, and that was it. After half-term he went to his new school and was absolutely fine. He looked a bit worried when we left him on the first day, but apart from that, it was like he had always gone there. I think kids deal with change better than we do!

 

His new school is lovely, it has lots of outdoor space which his old one didn't, actual grass and everything! He seems to have less homework but he's ok with that! I haven't managed to make friends with any mums yet, it's quite bizarre, the parents stand all over the playground in random groups so when the kids are let out it takes the teacher a while to spot the parents, some of whom are right at the other side of the playground. So I have no idea who is in the same class, but I'm hoping when the youngest starts at nursery in September I might meet someone to talk to!

Life in Essex

So I must be finally becoming assimilated into being an Essex mum! I found myself shouting at another mum outside the youngest ones pre-school this morning. Go me! But she had it coming. Why? Let me tell you...

 

The school has a teeny tiny car park, so parking is often a tight squeeze. She parks right in the middle of the car park blocking everyone in and no-one else can get in or out. She swans into school pushing everyone else out of the way, and then she'll take forever to get back to her car, and then sits texting for a good while. Everyone has to wait till she's finished, like no-one else has anywhere to be.

 

This morning she was doing the same. Even though there were 3 parking spaces, but nobody could get to them as she was parked in the way. Finally I managed to park, with difficulty. I got my boy out of the car and then she decided to move her car. She reversed over the pavement and nearly took us out. Which was the final straw. I gave her a mouthful about her driving and she just looked at me and drove off. I really hope she complains about me to the school, then I'll tell them exactly why I shouted at her! Stupid self-centred woman.

A lot has gone on...

So since I last wrote, we moved house, got the boys into the local school, and less than 2 weeks after we moved we got a puppy. So life has been a bit mental. Though I love our new house, it's like it was made for us and we are so much happier here. I finally have my big kitchen, and although it smells a bit doggy it's still lovely! Having a puppy (Archie the bulldog) has been very trying, I never really thought it through - that although it was the other half's dream I'd be doing all the looking after! I would have given him away in the first couple of weeks but now we're getting there, and the kids love him (when he isn't nipping them).

 

The main difference with this house and our old one is that I actually find myself actually sitting relaxing and doing sod all! Our old house always needed something doing, or maybe it was me, couldn't relax and always had to be doing something. Now we sit out in the garden listening to the birds in the forest at the back, and go for nice long walks in the forest when it's nice. We don't have to listen to sirens every 5 minutes or drunk people staggering past. I don't know why we didn't do it years ago. And the funny thing is, I wouldn't have even looked at this house if the estate agent hadn't suggested it.

 

Oh, we also had our first car crash! Woo! A farmer in a pick-up truck took the back of the car out at about 5 miles per hour, which is ridiculous. But it could have been a lot worse, and he admitted it all and it's all fixed now.

 

And now we have moved we actually have more money, the house was more expensive than our old one, but the mortgage is cheaper! So for the first time in about 7 years I have some new clothes and we can treat the boys to things like ice creams which we never could before. It's all good, fingers crossed I haven't cursed it all now!

Slow slow quick quick quick!

And the house craziness continues. After weeks of nothing much happening, yesterday my solicitor said "can you move next Monday?" You can guess the response he got...

Ebay woes

And in the midst of all this stress, I've been ebaying everything we can possibly sell in our downsizing/decluttering period. We listed some old computer games, and had a bidding war going on. As they were heavy I specified that they were for UK bidders only. Then a bloke from Italy won. Idiot. It cost £28 to post them. He said "that's very high" and refused to pay. I said "that's why I said only UK bidders!" and had to cancel his bid. Idiot!!

House buying - lessons I have learned...

So we are almost ALMOST within sight of moving house. We found a house that we all liked and that wasn't too far away from our current house, and it all seemed rosy. Then proceedings got started. These are the lessons I have learnt thus far:

1) When you make an offer on a house, don't worry about asking rude questions like "are you bankrupt and being made to sell the house?" Otherwise you'll find out when you're too far down the line to turn back. We didn't ask being silly like that. Turns out the lovely lady and her 2 kids who live in the house are being thrown out by her ex-husband who has been made bankrupt. They aren't very happy about it.

2) When the estate agent says "it's a perfect house, needs absolutely nothing doing to it" don't be surprised when the survey comes back and says otherwise.

3) Expect stress for weeks and weeks and weeks, until you start to appreciate your current house and wonder if you're doing the wrong thing. Get used to living with the stress that it could all fall apart any day. We started this journey back in September and it's still going...

4) If you want a nice peaceful afternoon, don't check your emails.

5) The one good thing about it is that you will finally get rid of all the junk you have kept in cupboards and never looked at for years. If it does all go tits up, at least you've minimised a bit!

Stop with the detail...

Inappropriate relative was here again this weekend. Within 10 minutes she had let slip that she was ill the week before. Without even being asked why, she told us that she had a cough and a stomach bug: "So everytime I coughed it was coming out of both ends".

Lovely. Really lovely. And then I heard her recounting the story to another relative 2 hours later. Have some pride woman, we don't want to hear about your nether regions every single time we see you!!!

More houses...

Tell me if I'm boring you yet! This house malarkey is taking over my entire life. Hours on the net searching for my perfect house, only to go and view them and find out they are half the size of my current house, are built on a fly tip, or are 10 miles from the station. Photos are very deceiving, estate agents have the use of the wide angle lens down to a fine art. And I learnt after last week to read the room dimensions, so many 3 bed houses have less floor space than ours, it isn't worth it for an extra bedroom.

But in positive news, even if we don't sell, we'll hopefully be getting an extension so I can have my lovely kitchen diner that I dream about. Even if I have to build it myself!

Kids

Sometimes my kids surprise me in a good way. At Christmas we got my eldest a Nintendo DS, got it off Ebay as they are really hard to get hold of these days, and 10 days after Christmas it stopped working. Then it turned out it was fake, Ebay were shit, and the seller had done a bunk. The boy was upset, but came up to me and said "don't worry mummy, I can get another one next Christmas". It broke my heart bless him! Luckily we managed to get a replacement, and everything is rosy, but I never expected him to be so grown up about it.

Houses

So 4 months on and LOTS of viewers on, WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!! Well, this is all subject to the survey so I'm holding my breath and preparing a big bung for the chap who comes and does the survey to ignore our dodgy wiring. Selling a house is SO stressful, you spend weeks constantly tidying and cleaning, for strangers to tramp through your home and then turn it down over some stupid thing like the roof tiles being the wrong colour. And it was only when I shouted at our estate agents, told them they were rubbish, and we were instructing someone else that they actually got their arses in gear and sold it a week before we were changing! Ha! The threat of losing 3 grand in fees works wonders I find.

Now we have to find somewhere. And I am finding it quite stressful too. I quite enjoyed the weeks of surfing the net looking at people's kitchens and scoffing at their green bathrooms. Now we have to actually narrow them down and go and look at them I've hit a brick wall. You would think the option of tramping round other people's houses and moaning about the colour of their kettle would be fun, we could look at all the houses around and have some fun. I don't know why I'm worrying!

And the thing I am really worrying about?! Moving day. How do I make the house nice and clean for the new owners while moving out all our stuff, moving it to another house which will probably also need cleaning, and then find the kettle?! The stupid things we worry about, honestly.

Viewer #8

Seemed to like the house, but then I heard myself telling him about the ghosts. Haven't heard anything since...

Very spooky goings on...

So I have been selling things on ebay that belonged to a relative that passed away recently. It's weird, but the stuff needs to go and the family told me to do it. And a few items finished at the weekend, and when I went to get the buyer's details they had the exact same name as my relative, and came from the place where she was cremated. That is a very strange coincidence isn't it?! I would have told the buyer how strange it was, but I didn't want them to think they were buying a dead person's stuff!

House still for sale...

Oh, and no we haven't sold the bloomin' house yet. All that's happened this week is that a different estate agent at the firm of monkeys we hired insisted we redo all the photos. They do look better minus the toys everywhere but it annoyed me as originally the girl who took the photos said I didn't need to move them after I offered. And we paid for a fancy brochure that now has old shitty photos in. We were broke for 2 months after that, and it was only after I paid it I realised it wasn't compulsory! Damn them all.

Pft!

A relative asked for a list of what the boys wanted for Christmas and birthday presents, as they are very close together. So I spent a lot of time considering it, asked the boys what they would like, and sent a list of 2 items. One for birthday, one for Christmas. Job done. You would have thought.

Then I get a phone call telling me they got something completely different. At half the price. Not that the original present idea was expensive. And Littl'un thinks he is getting what he asked for! I give up.

Trick or treat...

I took the boys trick or treating for the first time this year. It wasn't altogether successful. First of all it was bloody freezing and the youngest spent all his time shivering and saying he wanted to go home. But we went to the neighbours we knew, and most of them were lovely, pretending to be scared of the monsters at the door, and giving them sweets. One old lady we knew had lovely prepared bags of sweets that looked really posh. Until we got home. They were chocolates from at LEAST last Christmas, and some were caramels and nuts which I had to take away, and then when they opened the ones they had left they had gone all white and manky and had to be thrown away too! But she did give them 50p with it too so it wasn't all bad! Then I decided to help the boys with the sweets they could eat and ended up at the dentist the next day! That was an expensive Halloween for sure...

Rhino hide

We had yet another visit from our thick-skinned relative last week, man it was hard work. Still, after all these years. I will now present you with the reasons why I turn to alcohol while they are here:

• They drive a good 4/5 hours at least to get here. Then spend the majority of the time on the sofa with a cob on as "something" unspecified is wrong with them. Every single time.
• They ignore the kids apart from to tell them off or force feed them sweets (then later they will announce that they have had too many, hence their excitable behaviour).
• They fall asleep on the sofa.
• They force everyone else to watch rubbish tv they like, despite the fact that they are taping it at home.
• They help themselves to drinks, without offering one to anyone else, including their partner.
• They announce when they arrive that they are spending an extra night, without warning. 
• They only come to life after a drink, which they like A LOT. 
• They spend a lot of time complaining that they are on a diet and that they can't eat fat. They poo poo every meal suggestion I make as it "upsets them", so we have very bland meals. When we go out for a meal they pick something healthy and sit there with a face like a slapped arse. Then proceed to spend the rest of the weekend eating sweets, fried food from the takeaway, crisps, and snacks aplenty, and then 2 hours later moaning about their gut.

And I could go on. It is getting beyond me why I put up with it. I do make the occasional sly dig here and there but as with everything else, it goes over their head! Pass me the gin...

Viewers #6 and #7

No. We haven't sold the house yet. But I've never cleaned it as much! #6 was a friendly man who came to view with about 20 minutes notice. He seemed to like it even with mess everywhere, but was undecided where he wanted to live, he had our area and somewhere about an hour away. So he wasn't that serious in my opinion. Then #7 was at the weekend and I had high hopes for him. He was a single bloke, seemed to really like it, and won the award for the first viewer to open the cupboards (and nothing fell out on him!). I was convinced he would make an offer, but silence. Our estate agents are supposed to ring with feedback, but they haven't bothered. As I am doing all the tours, I fail to see exactly what they are doing to earn £3000 if they manage to sell the blessed house. People can find the details online, and all the agents have to do is ring up and check I am in. They are not doing a lot more. I should have just put the house online myself, I might as well have!

Viewers #4 and #5

So we had a busy weekend. Cleaning for no apparent reason that is! The first lot of viewers were a young couple, looking to buy their first house. They were lovely and seemed to like the house, I was very positive about them. But then I asked what else they were looking at and they showed me a picture of a new build house which was pristine and very very shiny. So that's that then! The next viewer turned up with half an hour's notice, an Eastern European, very tall gentleman. He wanted a buy-to-let, and he looked at my bedroom as if he was figuring out exactly how many families he could fit into it. He also asked if the loft was high. I said "not high enough to live in" but I fear he thought otherwise!

And now I am being doorstepped by all the other estate agents in town. Which is positive as apparently there are lots more people registering to buy. But we are trapped in with our current agents for a few more weeks, but I have lots of promises of reduced fees and am getting lots of free advice just in case we decide to change agents when the time comes.

Even if we don't sell, I am actually starting to enjoy it now! I'm treating tours of my house like I used to do library tours, though I fear buyers aren't really interested in the book collections and size of my bed. Which I have managed to point out to every one so far. But it IS big :)

Viewer #3

Today's viewer didn't like the garden. It's too long and needs too much maintenance. I said he could always concrete it over :) I am getting more laid back and cynical with every viewer we get. We have another one tomorrow, she'll probably not like the fact that the carpets are green. But one day, one day far off in the distant future, someone will come in and like it. I hope!

Selling houses

Ah, I knew there was a reason we decided to put our house on the market. It is so I have a fresh batch of material to blog about, raising kids isn't really that exciting/rage-inducing. House selling/buying is. You think I would have remembered all this from last time round, when I accused our solicitors of being trained by monkeys.

But no, after 5 years of solicitor and estate agent free bliss we signed up for the rollercoaster again. And I have to say it's going marvellously! No, really! First of all, the valuation. The estate agent we picked to sell the house was super lovely, SO enthusiastic about the house, she had "at least 5 viewers lined up already", was positive about what we could get for it, and how quickly we could sell it. For definite. It would be sold in about a day. Then we signed on the dotted line. And it all changed. In the 3 weeks it has been on the market they have got us the grand total of 2 viewings. The first lot didn't like the fact we didn't have a proper hallway. And they didn't have a deposit. And the second was a doctor who basically wanted a crash pad for when he was doing long shifts at the local hospital and couldn't get to his Hertfordshire mansion. Which begs the question: "DID NEITHER OF YOU EVEN LOOK AT THE DETAILS??". The details clearly show the lack of hallway, and the fact that we have a 100ft garden. I don't suppose a doctor on 12 hour shifts is going to want to start on that when he gets in. And he didn't like the car garage on the corner. Honestly.

I am cleaning like a thing possessed before we have viewings, just in case the dust on the lightshades puts people off. But it is turning out that people are weird. Bloody weird. And they walk around with poker faces and don't say much, and I wish they were just honest and said what they did or didn't like at the time. When it is our time (ha I saw "when", this may never happen) to look at houses I am going to sniffily say that the lack of helicopter pad put me off, or the fact that it had a front door. There is no rhyme or reason to people, but at least my house is super tidy at the moment!

And I haven't even got to any serious dealings with any solicitors yet.

I''m starting to think it would be easier to just get an extension on our house. Then I can do a blog on "dodgy builders" instead! Or just sell one of the kids...