Stressorama

Do you ever have times in your life where you do the same things day in, day out, and you end up a little bored, thinking "I wish there was some excitement in my life - nothing bad, just something to DO other than watch Star Trek DVDs and the Apprentice..."? And then suddenly wish you'd bitten your tongue because all of a sudden there are TWELVITY MILLION things to do and you're mentally standing in the wasteground of your thoughts surrounded by all this STUFF and you're all helpless and don't know where to start and are all "meep!"? Or is it just me?

You may have gathered from this that I'm a tad stressed out at the minute. I still don't quite understand my job for one thing - it's one of those jobs that's so varied that to even start to understand it will take about a year so you've experienced everything at least once; I've been here 3 months. 'Nuff said. Also? Any other non-public-facing civil service places I've worked have let their staff leave early on the last day at work before things like Easter or Christmas, just as a sort of unofficial thank you for being bothered to show up unlike 90% of the workforce. And yet here I am at 3.30pm still at my desk. Bah. At least now I have da powa to let my staff go early, which is great except it means I'm definitely stuck here til 5pm. Bah again.

My second rant of the day is that we've decided to move house (which is a good, nice thing that I feel very positive about) but my other half has decide that WOE AND DOOM WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEEEEEEEE because it involves packing stuff, cleaning and touching up some scuffs on the wall, etc. Seriously man, chill the f00k out! You see, to understand his dilema you must understand two things. Firstly, that we live in (and are moving to) a teeny weeny wee tiny house. Secondly, we have a whole lotta loadsa stuff. Getting it all to fit in (never mind looking tidy) is like playing Tetris and as you gather more stuff, suddenly you start to lose control and all the oddly shaped and sized guff is piling up on your metaphorical screen and it takes a massive, concentrated effort to get it all back in check again. Unfortunately we've been neglecting the controls of late and we're just waiting for the line of doom to come down and declare that is GAME OVER. But (BUT!) the (very significant) thing is that we've done this all before. This will be my 5th house move in my life and 2 of those were across the frickin' sea, so excuse me if I don't get all stressed out about moving to a house we can literally throw a stone at from where we are now!

Besides (and this is another point of contention), with our impending marriage (another source of stress!) and consequent gifts, we NEED to move into this new place with NO EXTRANEOUS GUFF. This is now my motto. Step one of this process was to go round and collect random unused guff we could sell on eBay and to shove some bigger but valueless things on Freecycle. Except now the former is opening a big oul' can of worms because Yawksha Boy is SO FREAKING COMPETITIVE about EVERYTHING that he wants us to sit down and word every item's description perfectly and post it at exactly the right time of day, etc to attract more bids. My thoughts on this? BIG WHOOP DUDE! I just want to get rid of all our guff - so what if it goes for 50p less than it could have because some potentially more generous bidder is asleep at 11pm? At this point my dreams of a clutter-free house are so vivid and within grasp that I would gladly just put it all out on the lawn with a sign saying "free stuff". So because of this we still have like 1/3 of the items still to list, which we'll probably get round to this weekend some time. But after this there are still some heavy or bulky or fragile things we want to get some money for rather than giving them away... so I suggested going to a car boot sale. But Yawksha Boy's stance on this? Ha! "We have so much to do alreadyyyyyyyyy - why don't we do it after we move insteaaaaaaad?". BECAUSE THAT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF GETTING RID OF EVERYTHING BEFORE WE MOVE - DUH!

I don't think he understand how much I am craving a lovely, clean, uncluttered house. You know, the sort where you come in at night and you put the post on the coffee table, rather than on top of a pile of junk, which is sitting on top of some more junk, which is hiding something very important that will probably end up going missing or being thrown away by accident, which is on top of another pile of junk, which is on top of the coffee table (which has some more junk underneath of course). How I would love to be able to fill my wardrobe with duvet covers and sheets and towels without having to jam them in around the bulkiest computer monitor ever made! And wouldn't it be brilliant to be able to put fruit in a fruit bowl, rather than look perplexed as to why we have 3 fruit bowls of varying types, all stacked up, with lightbulbs and pens in the top one and, rather importantly, no room for fruit? *Sigh*

I have the image in my head and I am determined that it shall be done. This is our CHANCE! We have to literally pick up everything in our house anyway to move it to the new one, so if we don't actually need it and aren't ever going to use it, why not just chuck it in the bin instead? Or, as I want to do, but it in a bin bag and sell it to some other schmuck who will take it home to clutter up THEIR house with? I am even prepared to get rid of about half my chick lit books and half my shoes, which doesn't sound like a lot unless you know me and then you'd be like "but that will free up about a quarter of the house anyway!". Cheeky head voices… why I oughta! But Yawksha man, he say no! I even offered to do it by myself - he can stay and "pack" in that boy way (where they look at everything one by one for about 10 agonising seconds and say "oh I forgot I had that!" before placing it carefully in a box, unless it's fragile or clothing in which case it just gets chucked in whichever way it lands) but he was having none of it. Which now leaves me with 2 alternatives:

A) My way, i.e. do it anyway and ignore him. This approach caused a fight yesterday when I dared list 2 of the same cuddly toy within 12 hours of each other on eBay in spite of his pernickerty advice that this would "half our money on each" (see "BIG WHOOP DUDE!" paragraphs for my feelings on this). In the end I got tired of the nagging and took it off.

B) His way, i.e. move EVERYTHING (even all the stupid useless guff I can't wait to get rid of) and sort it out once we move in. I have several issues with this approach. Firstly - why bother to schlep half a tonne of stuff across roads and upstairs and into cupboards or under beds if we're just going to have to drag them all out again, schlep them downstairs and to some form of car boot sale when we do have the time (according to Yawksha Boy) to sell them? Secondly, there is less storage in the new house - where is all the guff going to go? I refuse to have one of "those" back bedrooms which is just full of guff stacked in precarious piles against the wall. I HAVE one of "those" at the minute and I want to scream every time I venture in there. Thirdly, we could get shiny pennies if we sell this stuff - it is just going to get older, dustier and worth less the longer we leave it sitting. Fourthly, THE MOTTO THE MOTTO THE MOTTO! Tidy! Calming! No clutter! GAH!

However, as the Carlsberg ad says, there's probably an option C. I suppose the halfway point would be to put everything we want to get rid of in bin bags, then leave them so they're the last thing in the old house. Then if we have time to take them to a car boot sale, great - just load 'em in the car and off we go. If we run out of time, well then we just need to schlep the bags across the road where they will be stored BRIEFLY until we have more time. Hmmm… intriguing this compromise malarky! Apparently we should get used to it; one of my favourite books (Diary of a Mad Mother To Be by Laura Wolf) says, "in marriage you compromise five times more than you get your way and three times more than you have sex". See, apparently marriage is a collective state of mind rather than a piece of paper - we're well ahead of the game!

But anyways, with only 20 minutes to go until hometime and the promise of a lift home from one of my colleagues, the Easter holidays are imminent. Hopefully we'll have some time over the weekend to make a start on all the packing, cleaning and painting that is stressing him the f00k out and upon my return to work on Wednesday, Yawksha Boy and I shall have started compromising rather than quarrelling! Have a good weekend all and don't eat too much chocolate or ye shall be sickly!

PS: Big boss just rang (from outside the building, having left already!) to say that I could go on if I wanted. It's 4.37pm. Gee, thanks boss. You're so freaking generous!