Nothing without a fight

Some things in life arrive smoothly and without much fuss. Other things come when you least expect it and bring either trouble or fortune.

Then there's those situations in life that you have to work towards, those experiences that stretch you and pull you apart, that make you feel as if you're going crazy.  You may work towards your goal and then it falls flat, you don't get what you thought you deserve. Even worse, someone else gets 'it' sooner and without much work and gratitude.

And the hardest thing for you to do is accept that your path is a different one, and perhaps your reward is just around the corner.

The real lesson is in the journey, not the destination.

But, it's always good to have a destination in mind.

Life is a funny thing, it usually balances out when you least expect it.

But it's always worth the fight.

Moths

We have a mini-moth infestation of sorts.

It seems to be mating season, right inside our pantry cupboard - the bedroom? Pasta and rice of course.

In the process of throwing out stuff that we didn't even know existed in the pantry shelf, we again discover so many unused things that we haven't used in eons.

How did it get there? why is it there? Empty bottles, old seasonings, cake mixes, etc.

We've started putting things to give away in bags and some stuff we leave on our wall. I'm sure the neighbours think we have lost it by now.

The amount of clothes we've given away, the amount of bottles we've recycled, it's crazy.

Makes you wonder, had we not sold, we would've lived with all this unwanted stuff forever.

We really accumulate too many things in this life.

Unwitttingly diving in the deep end

So in this on-going saga (I'm calling it a saga) about our house move, we're learning the rules the hard way -

- Please check out the house throughly before buying, i.e. go through ALL the rooms, open ALL the cupboards, visit the house at least twice and walk through thoroughly, check the floors, the tiling
- Get a proper valuation BEFORE making an offer
- Take a general contractor to the house to see what might need doing BEFORE making an offer
- Inspect the roof and electricity (the latter is good in this place, NOT the former)
- Check the plumbing, inspect the ceiling for leaks
- Talk to the neighbours about possible natural disasters, safety, crime, traffic (flooding, earthquake)

Of course, you're probably guessing by now that we didn't do most of these things until it was too late, and now we are learning the hard way.

We dove in the deep end first. Seems to the story of my family's life. We always learn by doing, even if it means making terrible mistakes.

My only silver-lining of hope is that when the house is renovated, we will have a very nice, fairly modern home on a quiet street.

And that little peace of mine may be worth all the expense.

Almost all packed up and nowhere to go

If it there was ever a JOINT POP song I thoroughly miss hearing whenever they play live is 'Nice Shirt'. I was addicted to that song. There was a line in it where Gary Hector would say rather casually  'Now I'm all dressed up and nowhere to go.'

Oh! how I loved that line. I always scream for that song whenever they gig out, but they don't perform it, they haven't since 1999. Ah! those were the days.

But now here, back on the home front, we're almost packed up our home, and now we can't move. Ha! isn't life funny. We're all packed up and nowhere to go.

We've sold our home of almost 50 years and bought another house. And we foolishly thought that after the previous owners had moved out, that we'd move right in. But we forgot to cater for renovations.

And now that our new home is empty, we see where we can change a few things and there are repairs needed, especially to the roof. That's the thing when buying a home, you always inherit the previously unattended repairs. That's just how it is in the real estate biz.

So here we are, almost packed up and unable to move for a bit till the new place is fixed up, might take a few months. And it's a bit overwhelming - renovations, all these unforeseen expenses when moving houses. It's definitely an experience. Perhaps we'll look back on all of this in a few months time and laugh.

But one thing has occurred to me since most of our belongings - clothes, bed sheets, cutlery and pots are packed up in boxes.

How much of this stuff do we really need to exist comfortably?

Probably not much.