Change of Scenery

Thanks to those of you who commented and encouraged me. It means a lot. I'm still super stressed and feeling anxious (which is always unpleasant) but I feel confident that no matter what happens, we will get through it. Whether the visa is denied or approved, we will have each other.

Aside from the immigration news, we moved. Saturday was the big day and with the help of two friends, we packed all our stuff into a rental truck and moved it 200m up the street. It's amazing that even at such a short distance it can still take hours to move.

The move was relatively un-notable except that Jeremy and our rental truck did not get along. He was so mad and a bit shaken up when he came home with it at 6 am after a near collision due to the shear size of this beast and the difficult gears. It was a constant struggle all day which culminated in an epic battle of berth: Jeremy hit a tree with the truck.

He was trying to back in to a parking spot in front of our apartment at the edge of a roundabout... in the middle of a construction zone. Obviously, the conditions weren't ideal. In order to back up, he had to block traffic which meant high stress and lots of horns. Ditching his plan and over reacting to the situation meant that he sped around the roundabout a little too quickly as he attempted to park on the other side of our street. Consequently, he wasn't able to judge the clearance under the tree very well. He did get the truck into it's spot but took off a 6 ft limb in the process.

It was particularly funny because he knew he hit the tree but didn't know he tore of a limb of it, even though it was hanging over the front of the truck. He just looked at me, shrugged with his hands in the air and mouthed “what?” from the truck cabin. Owen and I were doubled over laughing and the two traffic controllers were also laughing hysterically in disbelief. We had a good time laughing about it all day. :)

Thankfully the truck bore no marks from the collision and would therefore not cost us anything, but it did make Jeremy even MORE nervous about driving and he nearly flat out refused to make a second trip. Long after Owen and Jim were gone, we had to make one more trip because there were still a few pieces of light furniture left. Jeremy insisted that we should just return the truck and carry everything by hand which became a very drawn out argument which I ultimately won (luckily).

With one more trip to our new place, it still took us another 5 hours to load and unload everything. I hadn't been so tired in months.

With us and all our belongings are in the new apartment, we still had to clean our old place which took 9 hours on Sunday. It's crazy how time consuming cleaning can be—even if it's an already clean apartment. Most of our time cleaning was eaten up by scrubbing the glass blocks and scrubbing the tiles stained with grease where Jeremy kept his bike. But it's all clean now and looks awesome which stands only to piss me off more that our new apartment is so gross.

It's hard to clean at the moment not just because our place is so cluttered but also because also because it seems like all I've been doing is cleaning! I'm so tired of doing it which makes me feel guilty because there is still so much to do. It'll take us weeks to unpack and clean up here...

On a side note, it's strange going back to your old place when it's empty. It kinda makes you feel homeless and like your life is empty. It's a sad feeling. Particularly sad if the place you are moving to isn't clean and doesn't give you that warm heart-hug feeling that makes everything feel like home. I know in my head that it's only a matter of time before we make new memories in our new apartment—then it'll feel like home.

Maybe we need to just break in the new house? How should we celebrate? (Keep in mind that it's probably only big enough for five guests maximum.)