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We moved house last weekend so now have the regulation living room piled high with full boxes and garage chockers full of empty ones but considering the event it all went smoothly. Naturally many people will be asking why so soon and some may now just think we like the practice. We’re certainly very good at it and although it always unsettles me the family takes it in their stride but we will be doing everything in our power to try and make sure that’s it on the moving front for as long as possible.
It’s not actually the move that’s brought about this week’s pandemonium but the combination of facts that Lindsay also started work on Monday and we’re a very long walk from the station at the new place with only one car. Incidentally the Rocket’s blown a hole in its exhaust up near the engine end and so sounds something like a Sherman tank on tick-over, minus the squeaky tracks of course. One thing the old Benz does not do is squeak. So the morning routine, that can take anything up to forty minutes or more, has been getting everyone up, sorting Archie’s quick garden visit, sitting down to breakfast together with the usual morning chatter and then clearing up, dressing them all (except Lindsay), making the sandwiches and packed lunches, loading them into the car and finally rocking up at the crowded station in the Sherman. We do know how to make an entrance. My part in the palaver was then finished while Lindsay carried on to drop off the Little People at school, playgroup and day care before arriving at the new job.
We don’t really stop and think about stress as it seems there’s always too much going on.
As soon as we moved into this particular house this time round (we stayed here back in November ’06) it felt just like home and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
Until this morning.
The pyjama-ed girls had finished breakfast and were not getting dressed but squawking around playing with the dog, while ‘stay-in-bed-Ted’ had an extra ten minutes and then appeared waiting for his toast to pop up and Lindsay ironed the day’s outfit. Realising we were still at best forty-five minutes from even seeing the station I clicked on the kettle for a second cuppa. With the tumble dryer whirring away in the laundry, the small electric heater in the kitchen, the iron racing up and down the board, the toaster straining at the circuit it was just too much to whack another load of amps down the line for a kettle of boiling water. It was at this point that the short length of sixteen amp fuse wire in the main power box decided enough was enough and to prevent serious damage on the wiring altered its molecular structure forever and melted away taking the current with it and leaving only false hopes of half-toasted toast, a half-ironed shirt and a lukewarm cup of coffee.
Bugger!
The ensuing chase around the house for fuse boxes amid questioning children and scampering dog tracked down the blown fuse which is now replaced with a circuit breaker and the whole episode left me in no doubt as to why this place feels just like our home.
First question is bound to be – who is he?
Well, he’s not some long lost seafaring relative who’s been sailing the high seas and settled here in Australia years ago only for us to bump into him, befriend him and stand to inherit his fortune. More’s the pity there then. Nor is he a special investigator from the crime squad. He’s an addition to the family as the name would suggest and before everyone recoils in shock at the secret nine month pregnancy that never was – or help me put together a case to sue a certain Swiss hospital for negligence whilst carrying out a sensitive operation to prevent such pregnancies let me explain.
Archie, as he is affectionately known is a twelve week old terrier cross who happened to be sitting in our local pet shop with apparently no home to go to, so I was told. He’s the result of a cross in part with a Jack Russell and in the other part with a dog from Malta (sic) and he joined us just last week. It’s not taken long for him to settle in and he seems to be favoring Ted’s company of an evening with curl-ups on the settee nestled into the cosy space that Ted makes. That said, he’s awfully fond of the girls too and just the right size for Lottie to get the better of. Whether he continues to favour Ted after he was accidentally struck over the back with a rake remains to be seen. As I said it was an accident. Any addition to this family will need to take the rough (of which there’ll be plenty) with the smooth (of which there’ll be even more). Lindsay of course is besotted with the little fella but I will have to remain unflustered by his charms and beardy little face if we are to keep some sense of discipline. Unflustered that is until there’s no-one about.
He didn’t come with the name but such a charming little waif could not be without a proper handle, especially when you see some of the monikers our lot has. In his first week with us he’s learnt to bark, at least it will be a bark when his voice breaks, he’s happy enough to sleep alone downstairs next to the sloshing of the dishwasher and he’s even managing more toilet visits outside than in. Instinctively that age-old male (and female) necessity to reproduce has already surfaced and a colourful soft toy hippo has been taken prisoner in his bed for regular humping sessions. I can’t help chuckling at him because in my mind I always picture him having a go at a real hippo. I suppose we should discourage it really. As yet though he can only climb off the settee, not up onto it and stairs are still off limits. Won’t be long though.
Puppy training’s next; you’ll be reading about it…
