Smokey the Magnificent

I like packing books. With the exception of the theology books I keep mine uncategorised, so stacking them in boxes reveals a delightful cross-section of personality that would probably intrigue posterity if I became a sculptor or blew up a bus or something. The Silence of the Lambs nestling next to Winnie-the-Pooh, for instance; Reader, I Married Him cheek-by-jowl with a misshelved copy of a tome boldly entitled PREDESTINATION.

Kitchen items are less fun to pack. They are asymmetrical, breakable and require much thought. How many baking dishes can I live without for the next two weeks? Will I suddenly burn with the desire for a lemon yoghurt cake if I pack my bundt tin? (I chanced it.) What about my mini-muffin tins? No, too risky, I’ll want to use up a lot of lemons before we leave, so I might make lemon muffins. Should I get rid of my dodgy-bottomed springform cake tins, even though I used the bottoms several times this month to shape pizza and pavlovas on?

Worst of all are the contents of the bathroom cupboard, which I have started packing in self-defense as the snortlepig likes to unhaul them from the cupboard anyway. I was on a skincare kick for awhile, exacerbated by a free-samples kick, which left me with dozens of sample bottles and wax strips currently made obsolete by my anti-chemical/eco/natural kick. Part of me cynically wishes to keep them for when I backslide, but the other half views them as cancer in a tube… so you see the dilemma. Had fun seeing if I could make one half of my lips bigger than the other using Sally Hansen’s Lip Inflating Cream, though. I couldn’t. They just went tingly. With the tingles of cancer.

Last night’s dinner with Helpdesk Man’s family was a success, incidentally. I made a huge basket of flatbreads and grissini which we had for starters with dukkah, pesto and olives and such foibles. Then dinner was creamy sundried tomato chicken strips on a bed of corn risotto, with roasted carrot and kumara spears cooked in brown sugar. Sister-in-law made milktart for dessert and I added pecan tartlets and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. During dessert the snortlepig disappeared and was discovered in the living room with the remains of the bread basket, diligently and enthusiastically dipping all the breads and licking them. She is a sweetcheeks.

Those of my Gentle Readers who have pull with the Almighty might want to make mention of my dear sister-in-law, who is 41+3 pregnant and scheduled for an induction on Sunday, which she does not want. I’m encouraging her to bully her midwife into letting her do frequent non-stress tests and biophysical profiles instead of automatic induction, as there doesn’t seem to be any indication of post-maturity; but you can never tell with midwives. Tricksy bunch. So if she could have the baby on her own before Sunday, that would be super. Kthx.

Anyway, while she remains conveniently baby-free I’m taking her mind off it by letting her help me cater for a dinner for her and her parents tonight. Aren’t I nice? Helpdesk Man was supposed to invite his parents over for supper so we could give his mother her birthday present (you know, supper, tea and a biscuit); but hailing from strange and exotic climes as he does, he misinterpreted and invited them for dinner instead (you know, a sit-down meal with food). So sister-in-law and I have a day in which to prepare a birthday feast for six. Woot.

Had a productive day yesterday, at least. The snortlepig, with whom I have frequent battles royale regarding the pulling of books out of the bookshelf, turned her talents to good use and helped me pack the lower three shelves’ worth of books into boxes. Packed some hooks off the wall, shelves, decorative mugs and extra glasses… the house is going to look pretty bare for the next few weeks. Then last night Dad helped me pick up a desk we’d bought off TradeMe. Helpdesk Man and I also managed to scrounge enough boxes from Liquorland to pack an army, at the expense of looking like raging lushes.

Well, duh. To do a third of the things required to move house.

I’ve made a list, three pages long and counting, of tasks ranging from “scrape paint off the bathroom floor” to “check if Tia Maria has gone off and throw out bottle if so”. Actually Helpdesk Man has to do the Tia Maria thing, all alcohol tastes like the sputum of Satan to me, wouldn’t know if it was good or bad. Does Tia Maria even go bad? Anyway. I was going to give myself Points for each task, but alas - the spirit is willing, but the funds are gone. All my Suite101 money has been amassed into the common fund, like a pure riverlet being swallowed by the roaring ocean. Bear in mind that analogy says more about the size of the riverlet than the ocean. But still though. Frivolous spending is on hold for the time being. Just as well I got that fabric before we found the house, no? :p Then again, I suppose I could still amass the points and hope my Suite income will start skyrocketing enough for me to make good on the debt one day. It’d certainly make moving house seem cheerier.

I’ll probably have to spend a good chunk of tomorrow taking the snortlepig back to the doctor, too. The nail failed to make its appearance, so she’ll need another X-ray to see what it’s up to. (Probably been assimilated, which means it will take only the mildest of electric shocks to transform her into Iron Pig, snortliest superdude of them all. Good reason not to get a trampoline, at least until she’s past the terrible twos.)

Oh yeah, and… anyone want to help us move house? *beams* Not this week, obviously. When the time comes. Sure you do. You promised you would, at Lent.

It is dis one. (Drat. Classified just expired.)

Now we just have to…

• try to coerce some poor homestay student into staying with us
• break the news to our current landlords, who were hoping we wouldn’t need to move until nearly November
• switch over Internet
• redirect our mail
• pack up all our belongings, decluttering as needed
• buy (preferably through bartering loaves of bread or Helpdesk Man’s soul or summat, being a bit strapped for cash) a mattress, some bookshelves, a desk lamp, two desks, three chests of drawers and a drier in order to accomodate our new arrangements and the homestay student
• come up with the dosh for 3 week’s bond plus 1 week’s rent (see above and cash-strappedness)
• clean the house
• scrape paint off various windows and floors from dodgy paint jobs
• get someone in to clean the carpet to erase the presence of the snortlepig
• find someone to babysit the chickens, as Mother (who kindly agreed to adopt them if the landlord didn’t fancy the idea, which he doesn’t) is away for moving week
• empty the garage, oh my

and… am I missing anything? All before October 2.

But still. A house. Yay. Better than a dose of swine flu, I always say… with conviction and fervor these days, as it happens.

Yesterday I prepared for moving house by cleaning under the spare bed and donating a bunch of old nappies to the op shop, thus clearing out half my glory box. Today I’m planning to go through clothes and toys in an effort to donate a bunch more stuff; and, following the suggestion of a woman on MDC, start packing some non-seasonal clothes. Which is tricky given the weird weather we’ve been having lately, but I’m sure there’s something I can put in a box. My Eowyn costume, for instance.

…is to do at least one thing every day that will make moving house easier when the fateful day comes. I was thinking of cleaning under the spare bed today, for example: the snortlepig hid a potato under there some weeks ago and I’m curious to see how it’s coming along.

Well, yes, if you count house-hunting as productive. And personally I can think of few things more soul-gratingly fruitless.

What is it, for example, with people who lie about the state of their house on the phone? I’ve taken to being staunch!, direct! and no-nonsense! in an effort to sift the wheat from the chaff, and I’m constantly being sabotaged by optimists. “Tell me about your kitchen,” I say. “We’re looking for a house with a nice big kitchen. We don’t want a house with a small kitchen, and - ” light laugh - “some of the houses I’ve seen have had kitchens with just one small bench. That is too small for us. How big is your kitchen?”

Pause on the other end of the line while the house-owner scratches his nose thoughtfully. After the first three dozen of these calls you can begin to hear the wheels turning in his head. How can I make it sound bigger? he thinks. If I could just get them in the house, maybe the splendor of the seventies carpet would dazzle them and they wouldn’t notice! Maybe if I threw another bucket of water on the bathroom wall it would create an optical illusion and cause the kitchen space to expand! Maybe a few more benches will magically sprout from the floor while they’re driving here! At any rate, I must not let this woman know the size of the kitchen. Because although she thinks she wants a house with a big kitchen, what she really wants is my dank flea-ridden hovel out in the wops with the tetanus-inducing broken railing and the pit bull next door. And if she could only lay her eyes on the glory of the peeling paint and non-functional backyard pool, she would know this. In the meantime, I must protect her from the truth.

“Aww, yeah?” he says hopefully. “It’s not a bad kitchen. We just repainted the bedr-”

“So, one bench, two benches?” I press, inexorably, ruthlessly, like a shark.

“Aww - ” He becomes suddenly vague. Coy, even: as if his native tongue is Swahili and “two benches” translates to some personal question about his charitable giving. “It’s pretty big, yeah.” He gains confidence, possibly remembering a cubit foot of space under the sink. “It’s got - yeah, you’d have to see the layout. Come by and take a look at it.”

“Are you sure?” I say. “Because let me tell you, mister, I have no car and it will take me three hours in total to walk with the pram in the scorching heat to your home, which we nearly passed on in the first place because it was eighteen miles from town at the bottom of a ‘gator-infested bayou. The only reason, in fact, we would consider living next to the sewage plant is if the house itself were impeccable beyond reproach, with - and I stress - a really nice big kitchen. Because that’s what we want. A big kitchen. The sort of kitchen that makes guests walk in and go “Ooh, I like your nice big kitchen”. The sort where if said guests were asked on a game show “Name the size of Smokey the Magnificent’s kitchen”, they wouldn’t hem and haw and call a friend. They’d say “Oh, she has a big kitchen”. That’s the kind of kitchen I expect to find in your house. A big one. A nice one. And if, upon rafting up to your front door with my shoe leather worn down to parchment, I find you skulking about in a kitchen large enough to comfortably make a piece of toast and no more, I will not be held accountable for my actions - and they will be bloody. So in view of this information, is there anything you could like to clarify about the size or state of your kitchen before I hang up the phone?”

I don’t say that, actually. It wouldn’t be seemly. Instead I utter a vaguely threatening “OK, well, that sounds good, see you soon” and hang up meekly. Two hours later, with flies sucking the sweat from my shirt and the snortlepig covered in newts, we show up at the house. And in fact, I do not find the owner of the house skulking in the kitchen. The owner of the house has deemed it to be the better part of valor to scarper, and made off. It doesn’t matter. As I knew upon entering the dank and greasy street ten minutes ago, I didn’t want the house. But for the sake of things I peer through the fly-specked lace curtains and see the kitchen. It is comprised of a single bench, taken up almost entirely by sink, and a small jutting promonotory to one side of a remarkably convenient width for balancing a Saltine. The whole affair is painted sea green, and someone appears to have been sick in the microwave. As I stare glumly at the chaos, the windowsill comes off in my hand.

Repeat until filled with a sick depair admixed with psychopathic rage, and you have a fairly good picture of my week.

Not tooooo bad yesterday. I got inspired by the thought of our imminent chucking-out and cleaned under the bed. Many were the dead hankies that I unearthed, and their countenances grimy. I also took the snortlepig on a long and rambling walk around our area in the hopes of finding “For Rent” signs, but nothing appealed.

And Helpdesk Man isn’t dead keen on 10 Fzzzfphht St (or more accurately, what of 10 Fzzzfphht St he could see through its windows). We’re being shown around again on Friday, but Helpdesk Man thinks we could do better - and knowing that I tend to panic and settle and leap at the first place I see, I feel I should heed his warning. It would be a slight downgrade in niceness for more money, and that’s always depressing.

So having thunk it over for a bit, here are our options, bearing in mind we want to start saving for a house as renting is a Piffle and a Scam:

1. Downgrade in size. The snortlepig doesn’t need her own bedroom just yet, as we’re still cosleeping; so Helpdesk Man could use the other bedroom or the living space, if it was decent-sized, for his study. Thus, we could (hopefully) get a house all to ourselves and still maintain the Style of Living to Which we are Accustomed.

2. Downgrade in quality, ie. rent a smeggy three-bedroom home on the cheap, infested with roaches and with the corpses of rodents decomposing in the hot water cupboard. Then save like mad to scrape together a down payment, spurred on by the fungus on the fridge. Not a v. appealing option, as the quality in homes tends to decline first and most dramatically in the kitchen.

3. Upgrade in quality, renting a nice attractive place, and take on a homestay student to pay the extra rent. This may be the way to go. Neither of us is uber-keen on the idea of sharing a house with a stranger, but it would probably be good for our characters. And the extra income would be more than the difference in rent (assuming we didn’t go for an incredibly fancy place), so we could put it towards Teh Deposit and thus get out from under the thumb of Teh Man sooner. Or something. Plus, the pig likes having people round. And it would force me to become a more organised housewife, which as this blog so amply demonstrates would be no bad thing.

The only trouble with that is if we moved within the next few months, I’m not sure it’s a good season for homestayers. They probably migrate North for the summer once Uni finishes, and I doubt we could afford to pay fancy-house rent for months while waiting for them to return. Although I suppose there’s summer school. But still.

4. Upgrade in quality but find some other way of making extra money to pay for it. Which doesn’t really appeal. Any not-at-home job I could get would be hugely disruptive to the family, and I don’t really fancy in-home childcare. Or drug trafficking. Besides, if we did have extra money I’d want to put it towards the down payment, not the rent.

Any other options I’m missing?

Soooo, apparently we’ve been given 90 days’ notice. Our landlords, bless their entrepreneurial little hearts, want to sell the house. Right out from under the snortlepig, who with typical fortitude is coping with the situation by having the milks.

To the landlords I say: Is it. To the snortlepig I say: Stop thrusting your fingers up my nose while you drink, it isn’t Nice.

Then, being of a calm and sunny nature, I turn tranquilly to TradeMe and start browsing through the houses. Whether I am calm because I’ve never been a fan of this house in the first place, or because the snortlepig thrust too far and lobotomised me, I cannot say. But hoo boy, there are some ugly houses out there.