How to survive everything happening at once
Last Wednesday, we moved house. Actually, that doesn’t really give the action much justice. Let me start again. Last Wednesday, we moved house and thanks to some renovation delays, the place resembled a building site. We didn’t have a kitchen sink for the first three days. And for a large part of the moving day, we didn’t even have anywhere to sit. There were boxes everywhere. Dust was flying about. And it was completely overwhelming.
Not only is moving and taking on house renovations incredibly stressful, intense and hectic, but it’s more so when you’re 6 months pregnant and have a 7-month-old puppy running around and onto the streets desperate to explore. But that was the situation. Meanwhile, the ongoing blinking pandemic continues to take place in the background.
On the day after we moved in, the joiners and kitchen fitters were back in early doors and thankfully made some quick progress. By Saturday, we had a working kitchen (worktops and some units still pending) and we’d cleared the living room to make it more liveable. Our bed’s still not up as we’re waiting on our delayed wardrobes to arrive and be fitted (does everything get delayed with house moves?) but we’re sleeping on a mattress and I can just about roll in and out of it just fine.
I’ve been super busy with work over the last few weeks (though I did take last week off for the move) so I’m incredibly grateful to my boyfriend who was able to juggle work and decorating the house prior to moving in. I’m also thankful to one of Richie’s close friends for helping with the physical lifting of things and my mum for also helping out physically and providing much-needed moral support.
There has been so much work to do—from ripping out kitchens and putting in baths to sanding floors and painting walls, but we’re nearly there. We just have a few more things to do on the bathroom, the kitchen needs finalising, floors need putting in and various carpets need fitting. But we’re hoping that everything falls into place in a month or so. Then, we can start finalising the nursery and properly preparing ourselves for parenthood. Wow.
We’re both back to work today and we feel like completely different people to who we were last week and the weeks before that. Slowly we’re settling in. And after an anxious first couple of nights of little sleep and lots of wails, Cocoa is too. She was probably thinking, ‘What the hell have we moved into?’. Looking back, it was all a bit of a blur but we got there. Or we’re nearly there, rather. And everything’s all good.
In the midst of these ultra hectic few weeks, I also turned 30. A milestone birthday that I’d been thinking would feel like a huge deal. But with restrictions in place, I was just happy to be taking a day off and spending it on the beach with Richie, Cocoa and bump. It was incredibly simple and completely lovely.
So to acknowledge this blog post title, I’m not sure how to survive when everything happens at once. For me, it was a case of muddling through, crying (many times—thanks hormones) and taking it day by day, or hour by hour rather. We got there eventually. And in the grand scheme of what needs to be done overall, there’s not much left to do.
I’m now really happy to be in the house and settling in. I have a dedicated office space again and I’m looking forward to being busy at work. And now that lockdown’s slowly easing, I can’t wait to see more of friends and family.
Things are slowly getting to where they need to be.
Speak soon x