So, not so bad. Or is it?

We got the keys to the next house. ( is it me or are just those 2 words frightening all on their own? Next. House. simple words yet holding so much meaning and work and STRESS and moving and cleaning and .......) We went and had a good old wander around without anyone else there.

So, good that it isn't as filthy as I first saw, painted magnolia and not too many dints and holes.

Bad that it is still filthy.

Good that it isn't so huge that it will take way too much to run.
Bad that the bedrooms are smaller than I am used to and our bed is BIG and COMFY and nothing, absolutely nothing will make me get a smaller bed. We may have our bed scrunched in the bedroom without anything else, or it will be under a window ( good in summer, can cope with that).

Good that, um.........hmmmmmm, er, let me see.......

Bad that the cooker has probably never been cleaned and has been used a LOT to cook saucy and dribbling and oozing and black things. Also is very close to the floor, in fact when you open the door, it rests on the floor, how extraordinary and stupid.

Very bad that the shower seems not to work and bizarre in its similarity to the cooker in that it appears to have many dribbley, oozing and black things in it, black is the colour scheme for kitchen and bathroom in a dirty, slimy sort of way.

You know ( and a whine coming here, brace yourselves, I am weeping, it could get depressing) I get moments where looking on the bright side is so bloody hard.
I CAN see the potential this house has and if we were moving there forever, if it was ours or long term, I would scarcely blink at the work that is ahead of us but we will be there just long enough to do the work for someone else and then we have to move to a house that I would never choose in a million years. Another house that is being trashed by the madman that lives there right now. That will need work, that we will inevitably have to do because we have no choice.
We walked around and enthused to the boys and I won't lie, I did see the good and it has a pretty nice feel to it, the cleaning and the scrubbing will be a bugger but we can get help and it will be done before we move in.
Repairs have been made in true our landlady fashion, walloping lumps of wood stuck over gaping holes in doors, a bit of a wipe over with some cheap paint, or not, and we're good to go.
I want, for once in my life, to feel worth something.
When we moved here I felt that.
Look at me!!
I can have something nice and even better than nice.
12 days. That's how long that lasted and it cost us £1.000 to move here, has cost a lot to live here but it has been worth every penny, just to have the feeling that we are indeed deserving of the niceties of life.
I am ill again and that makes me sad. Being sad makes me sad. I have medicines to take and we hope that I can feel better and be able to deal with the enormous load that I feel I am having to bear right now.
I am so proud of Sophie, it is such early days and she is doing so well. The proof that she is doing well is tough for me though. For example...today she called and was steaming mad.

" I HAVE HAD IT. ENOUGH.
IWANNASCREAMINHERFACEFUCKYOU!ANDGETTHEHELLOUTOFHERE...
but then, I would get the sack."

CONSEQUENCES, she GETS IT! She is learning but my poor heart when my ears here that screaming and ranting and temper. She was tired and had been working a long day, her immediate boss had taken her back to some rooms to show her what she hadn't done ( uh oh).

~*breathe in*~
I explained that if she were to walk into a room and think to herself " if this was my room , if I had just arrived for a stay and paid £90 for a night, what would I want it to be like?" and then make the room look like that. To try and remember that these people were paying a considerable sum to stay there and that every one of them wanted to walk into a room and be wowed. If the free shampoo is missing, if the bin doesn't have a bag in it.....well it does matter to that guest.
I wonder if she heard me. I called her back later and she was happier.
~*exhale*~

My blood pressure is 135/115, my skin is one big itching welt, with a few blisters thrown in.
I have been having what the Dr thinks are Esophageal spasms. Not fun, sudden, tight pains in my chest that make me retch and my head goes light ( if only it would work on my arse and hips) my hands go numb and when that happens at 70 miles per hour on a motorway......bit scary really. She ( my doctor) held my hands today and scooted her chair so that her knees were touching mine and she said, " Please, will you please look after yourself" and you know, I really would, except when should I do that? What can I put down, so that I can be kind to myself and make me all better? It isn't as though I don't want to look after myself. I really do, but if I let one thing go, we could have that domino effect and then life would really be a barrel of laughs.
I did book the holiday ( did I tell you that? I would go and check but really......can't be bothered) so I did, and I paid everything stupid girl quoted me, trouble is she did her sums all wrong and darn it if she shouldn't have said £3265 plus insurance ( £228) not £2450. I still booked it because it is the one single thing that is keeping me this side of plucking my hair out with clenched fingers and humming with my lips pinched together.
So now I have to find that extra £1043, minus insurance ( £228) because I paid that ( Happy birthday H) and pay back mum, which is fine, I can do it and don't tell too many people, but I already squirreled some of that way already. It will all be paid and paid back, I hope by the middle of October. It will be very hard but somehow, I think that will make the holiday even more glorious.
Lets face it, by the time we have moved again, twice, faced whatever the next 4 months has to throw at us, the very idea of 3 weeks of sunshine, having my bed made every day, no cooking, no dull shopping for bread and toilet paper....the holiday will be glorious. I absolutely plan on holding my doctors hand and having her understand how terrified I am of flying and watching her print off a script for lovely, mellowing, don't give a monkeys nuts drugs, that I will hug and not share and take 30 minutes before we board. Fly me.

Oh, I have stopped weeping by the way, just in case you were worrying, I have cleaned my glasses that were spotty from tears and am feeling fuzzy and relaxed ( medicine, prescribed and quite marvellous, even itching has stopped. H and I have our meds in a plastic ice cream tub, up high in a cupboard even Eli the ape can't reach. I told him with not a little pride that if I am prescribed one more drug, I shall need my very own ice cream tub.)
Ha. Giddy heights at the age of 45.
At least I don't have one of those weekly meds deals that you have to sit and dole all your tablets into so you don't forget any ( H does, but he is so much older than me, 48 today, although he says he doesn't go in for all that birthday malarky anymore, which is handy because he means it, as long as he has a nice dinner he is birthdayed and happy, ideal especially as Isaac is 6 tomorrow, we saved all our singing and cards for him. Hooray.)
I think the new tablets might be a good thing, I called the boys little shits yesterday and said if they stood on the bloody table once more I would have to break their legs.
Not good in itself, the fact that they looked at me as if I was a perfidious headcase and carried on about their business ( standing on the table and making fart noises) made me realise that perhaps I have been making too many idle threats lately and should work on getting with some programme or other ( nanny 911 or super nanny? who can tell, much of a muchness in my honest opinion, wonder what Nanny Deb would make of me and my empty threats of extreme violence? Jo from super nanny would, I strongly suspect, sit me in a corner, get down on my level and tell me that this is not asseptable behaviour, to which I would have to reply that when she had actually given birth to 6 kids, stayed at home with them 24 hours a day for 22 years, without ever tasting an alcoholic drink and then learned to say ACCEPTABLE, instead of asseptable I might listen to her so shut up. Thankyou. )

Oh blast, forgot to have some toast with tablets, now feel a bit sick and heartburny. Always something to spoil the fun.
Still, not so bad after all. Is it?