Not long to go

Two more nights and I’m off to Whanganui for what I’m sure is going to be a big adventure.

It’s strange to think I’ll be moving there – it’s never a place I thought I’d end up living. Life is funny, though. With any luck, I’ll be able to see my boyfriend often enough that I don’t go insane. I’ve already informed his best friend (who lives there) that we’re going Christmas shopping together, and that I’ll start playing squash with him to work up my fitness. Seriously, I felt puffed after walking up a flight of stairs the other day, I am in dire need of some exercise and healthy food.

On that note, wow, squash is good exercise! I played it when I was last in Whanganui, and was so tired by the end of it I nearly felt like throwing up. The next day I had aches and pains in places I didn’t realise I was even working out.

It won’t feel like I’ve truly moved away from everyone for a couple of months though. I’ll be back in two weeks for Christmas, and then a week or two after that I’ll be back here again for my birthday. After my birthday, though, that’s when it will start feeling real. That’s when the uncertainty kicks in – how long do I go without seeing Sam? Family? Sacha?

I’ve already promised Sacha I’d come back to Hamilton when her pregnant horse gives birth, but that’s a while away still. By the way, I saw a horse ultrasound the other day. Interesting experience. (I got horse poop on my leg.)

So, anyway, adventure time. Bring it on.

Dear Sacha

After living together for two years, we’re finally going our separate ways. It feels like not very long ago we were running around with baseball bats warning people of the impending zombie apocalypse for a class presentation. That was fun. It’s strange to think that after a hug and some almost-tears (you know, the kind that collect on your bottom eyelid but never actually fall, and eventually mysteriously disappear), it’s all over.

We’ve had our fights and annoyances, but we’ve also weathered a fair few storms together, helped each other cope with the stress and dramas of flatmates with suspected personality disorders, and we’ve stuck by one another when it felt like we had nobody else. It’s certainly felt a lot like that lately, and you were the best person to have by my side through all of that. I’ve never had a friend like you before.

Here’s a few things I will and won’t miss.

WILL MISS: The conversations. We could start chatting about something meaningless and eventually branch off into a zillion different philosophical topics, and we’d only stop talking until we realised several hours had passed. I love that we can disagree on something and have a really mature, well-rounded debate about it.

WON’T MISS: The shoes. The shoes everywhere. I wasn’t really allowed to keep shoes in the doorway as a kid, but you seem to think it’s necessary to have them there. In your defense, you’ve definitely shrunk the pile of shoes you keep by the door.

WILL MISS: The stupidity. Like chasing each other down the street in our togs with buckets of water even though we’re in our twenties.

WON’T MISS: Flooding the house. How many times have we managed that? Four times in two years? Granted, most of the time it wasn’t our fault. At least we have a well-established system now whenever it happens.

WILL MISS: Being able to grab the cat, a couple of towels, and a bottle of wine and go sit down in the gully making daisy chains.

WON’T MISS: The tissues that seem to accumulate in various places on the floor.

WILL MISS: Cooking new meals together when we had no idea how to make them, but would wing it anyway and come up with something delicious.

WON’T MISS: Your washing machine and vacuum cleaner. They’re terrible and I hate them.

WILL MISS: Sharing cool songs we found on the internet.

WON’T MISS: . . . I’ve run out of things I won’t miss.

WILL MISS: Seeing your family and your boyfriend, who has fluffy hair.

I could probably list a lot more things that I wish I didn’t have to leave behind, but I’m getting bored of the list format. I just want to say thank you for sharing these last three years with me. We’re keeping in touch, no buts about it.

Love, Melissa.

(Please take all the “won’t miss” parts as tongue in cheek. I’m probably going to start piling shoes in the doorway to feel like you’re still here . . . )

We may never know

One of the funny things I have now discovered about moving house is that we haven’t really had many of those moments where we fight over something because we both think it’s ours. There seems to be a lot more of this:

‘Is this yours?’

‘No, I thought it was yours . . .?’

‘It’s not mine . . . ‘

‘Huh.’

‘Wonder where that came from then.’

 

Blonde moments and stupid accidents

Yesterday when we were moving furniture to our new house, my flatmate got her finger jammed in the couch and, after screaming, swearing and crying for a bit, settled on laughing through the pain. I, somewhat awkwardly, didn’t know what to do with myself, so wandered off to carry on packing things into the car.

Today, we were unpacking things in our new house. I was in the kitchen, she was in her bedroom, down the hallway. As I unpacked cups and plates and put them away in the cupboard, I heard a noise from the end of the hall. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, because I’d been thumping around with boxes. I paused for a moment to listen, and from her bedroom I heard the faint sound of hysterical laughter, and knew that my flatmate had hurt herself once more.

The day didn’t end until we’d each been hurt several times. For me, most of the times I hurt myself involved banging my head on my car boot. For my flatmate, it was a variety of things. She even cut her finger trying to pick up a pile of blankets that I’d accidentally put down on some broken glass. Whoops.

We each had our blonde moments too. My flatmate spent about five minutes hunting for her car keys and starting to sound as if she were stressing about it, only to find them in the lock on her car boot. I found a big puddle on the laundry floor and tried to dry it with a bathmat, and then said that I didn’t have anything else to mop it up with, completely forgetting that right in front of my very eyes, there was an actual mop sitting in the laundry, just waiting to be used.

Moving is fun.

Moving mishaps

Tomorrow we move into our new house, and I am probably more excited than a normal person would be.

We shifted a few things over today from the flat we’re in at the moment, and I’m getting overly pumped about the fact that I’ll have a marginally bigger bedroom. I mean, I’ve spent the last year and half awkwardly trying to fit all my bedroom furniture into my room and failing miserably, and it seems like my prayers may finally be answered.

Sacha and I tried shifting my couch over to the house, because it’s in pieces. It’s a little weird to describe, but here’s a terrible (and I mean terrible) photo of it. 

Each of those little sections is its own piece, so we can move them all separately. We thought that meant we could load them into the backs of our cars and take them over in one trip, but as we discovered after Sacha got her finger jammed by one and ran away screaming, they’re not easy to move, and they’re not easy to fit into cars. As a result, we’ve moved over about three pieces of the couch and have another three to go.

I now have a sore back and a tired body. Still, excited for tomorrow!

The fun part of packing

I always manage to amuse myself when I’m packing to move house, because of the way I label my boxes.

My flatmate is nice and categorical with hers. Clothes go in the clothes box, everything else she has goes into another box, because let’s face it, about 90% of Sacha’s possessions are clothes. My point is that she likes things to go in the right boxes, and not get mixed up. I, on the other hand, repeat my mantra of ‘YOLO’ while haphazardly throwing random items into boxes willy nilly.

I just packed a box and labeled it: ‘electrically stuff but also a few books, a morphsuit, and a comb. But mostly wires and whatnot.’

When moving house earlier this year I had boxes with a bunch of coat hangers, a cup, CD cases and some deodorant spray cans chucked in there, or boxes with a mixture of photo frames, socks and ornaments from overseas trips.

I’ll be the first to admit there is not a shred of method to my madness. It starts out alright, I pack the contents of a draw into a box. But then I realise I still have room in the box, and I start raiding all my other draws to see what else will fit. By the end of it I have packing chaos. Well, no, that’s not true. The packing was easy. The chaos only begins when it’s time to UNpack.

Now I’m off to wreak more havoc on future me’s life.