Perspective

First things first...

Rowie was scheduled for surgery 7th August, however thanks to Swine Flu the hospitals are overflowing with patients and so the operation has been put off until "sometime in September"... exactly when in September we don't know yet. Obviously will keep all posted.

We have now finally moved into our new place - address and 'phone number will follow via email shortly.

Our move could best be described as an exercise in proving that whatever could go wrong, went wrong...

Firstly, two days prior to settlement on the new house, we were enjoying a night with some friends when we noticed a hissing noise coming from the guest bathroom. On investigation, we identified that one of the pipes in the roof had burst... On further investigation (by Rowie), we found the source of the "burst" - alarmingly, the break in the pipe had a definite rodent-y feel about it, like a mouse (or more likely rat) had chewed through the pipe (it's a vinyl pipe - nothing but the cheapest for these new houses!).

Naturally, I panicked - firstly I HATE mice/rats, and secondly I HATE having to go into the roof... could be anything up there! However, friend Chris is one of those people who will have a go at anything, so the next day we headed down to Bunnings (Hardware store) and bought what we thought were the required bits and pieces... It seemed like a good idea at the time, and after all, how hard can plumbing be?? Turns out, it was quite hard - mostly because the bloody vermin hadn't stopped at the one area, and "fixing" (well we came close!) the obvious leak only weakened the other leaks (never did find out how many there actually were). Essentially, a critical and total failure of the (cheap and nasty) plumbing throughout the house... at this point, I called a plumber and went into emergency mode.

We are very lucky, we have good friends who offered us a place to stay so that problem (at least in the short term) was solved. I went into planning mode. Firstly, since the whole point of this was to get our Beresford place ready to rent, it seemed logical to focus on fixing the plumbing "issue", so I posted myself at Bereford and waited for the trusty plumber to appear... and waited... and waited. 10.00am he said he'd be at there - he turned up at 4.00pm. We expected to go through settlement at 4.45pm that day, so the best outcome seemed to be to get our beds and essentials up to the new house, bringing the move-in date to the Monday, and then go back to plan 'A' and move the rest of our gear on the weekend...

So we got the keys at 5.00pm (after a major drama with the so-called solicitors), and in we walked... into a sticky mess of a house very recently vacated. Rookie mistake was to not specify a requirement to have the new place cleaned prior to settlement... won't make that mistake again. We stayed another night at Chris/Carolines...

A few frantic 'phone calls Tuesday morning had us a cleaner. I must have upset a few people as I started calling at 6.00am! We had our cleaner secured by 6.45am, so the new house was on track again. The old house however, was not going quite so smoothly. The initial repair done by the plumber had been attacked by whatever had holed up in our roof and had destroyed it, resulting in the work needing to be re-done... this was not good, as we all know plumbers costs quickly get out of hand... At this stage, I put the plumber on hold as obviously this appeared to be a vicious circle. Time for the exterminator. I called around and found the exterminator that would "guarantee" removal of the offending whatever-it-was-in-my-roof and got him to guarantee next-day... which he didn't do. I swear, these tradespeople think we're all happy to sit around waiting for them for hours on end!

Anyhoo, with the vermin problem taken care of, the plumber was back on. The urgency was apparent, at least to me - however the plumber didn't share my urgency... 12 days it took him to finally fix it!

In short, it was the typical nightmare move... but we're in our new home now and it's been worth it I think. Writing it down now, it seems that everything that happened was fairly trivial, although at the time I was close to breaking point on a number of occasions. Rowie's impending surgery seems to put it all in perspective really... it's just stuff that happens, nothing more.