Every time I do it, I swear it will never happen again. The pain and sense of loss is too great. This time, I tell myself, I will just be happy with what I have. But in the end, the itch to change comes over me, and I have to face it again.
Moving house.
Anyone that's done it is intimately familiar with the sense of dread. How, how, how do you accumulate so much stuff? Stuff you like, stuff you need, stuff you neither like nor need...yes, the broken lamps, ripped bags and cables you haven't the faintest idea what to plug into are still somewhere in your living space, although if someone asked you why on earth you still have this rubbish, the only response you can offer is a baffled expression.
Usually, when I have moved house, I have either a) only brought one rucksack full of stuff (like when I moved to Dublin) or b) had help as was moving with other people. This time I have a house full of crap (two people's crap, to be exact) and my loving partner has just departed to Ulan Baator for a six week road trip with three other guys (i.e. 24/7 toilet humour, burping, and talking about boobs). So I am on my own with this one. While this may sound like I got a bit of a crappy deal, let me point out some highlights of this arrangement:
1) I have the house to myself for the first five weeks, which means I get to decide what goes where. When Erik gets back he will be too tired to complain and after that it will be TOO LATE to change anything! Bwahahahaha!
2) I can be absolutely sure all the 500 page hardback cookbooks are not packed in the same box.
3) An across the board reduction of 85% of the nagging involved in the whole operation.
4) Possibly the best part: when I get home from work in the afternoons to pack boxes, I can blast my iTunes at top volume - think Katrina and the Waves, Robbie Williams, Hanson, S Club 7, the B 52's, Jennifer Lopez, the Bay City Rollers, Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. I wish I was kidding. I'm sorry, but La Copa De La Vida is the best World Cup song there has ever been and probably will ever be. It's physically impossible to stay on your butt when that song comes on. It should be a new Natural Law: "Any inanimate sentient being, when 'La Copa de la Vida' is applied to it, will gain chemical energy and subsequently expend kinetic energy". So when the iTunes flips to Ricky, I can interrupt stuffing crap into boxes to dance scantily clad (it's a million degrees!) around my living room without any eye rolling or the sound of hands being clapped forcefully over ears. And when I have packed and danced until the sweat is dripping (it's a million degrees, remember) I can go to the fridge and crack open an ice cold Quilmes without anyone giving me an "it's a bit early in the afternoon to be skulling weak Argentinian beer, isn't it?" eyebrow.
So, although moving is a right royal pain in the derrière, I don't have a driving license for the right side of the road (thank god I have friends) and Erik has vanished in a puff of smoke (let it be said, for the record, that this is Not His Fault, it is just bad timing), so far I am actually enjoying it. I will probably amend this viewpoint after I have lugged all the boxes up five flights of stairs with no elevator, but for now, I'm having a fabulous time.
