It was a dark and rainy night..

I think I might finally have emotionally recovered from the incredibly traumatic move from Melbourne to Albury.

I knew it was going to be hard. A week of brunches called ‘Fanksgiving’ helped a lot. But saying goodbye to my two favourite people on a dark and rainy night after I’d been savaged by an equally traumatised Schroddy was.not.fun.

Neither was the drive to Albury rattling along in the car with the trailer behind with all our worldly possessions and two drugged up cats. All I can say is..

Thank you Gus.

Thankyou for so much for giving up weekends to help us move, thankyou for looking after the man, thankyou for helping me pack up the cats and hug me when I was in tears after Schroddy bit me. Thankyou for singing Toto’s ‘Africa’ with me on the drive to Albury.

My last day in Melbourne started with my last paddle with the Vigor crew, breakfast and some tears with Rach, home to do handover with the real estate agent, pack up the rest of the house, clean, drug the cats, get bitten by Schroddy, cry, ring Matt and tell him I can’t drug the cats, toughen up, pin cats down and drug them, cry, video drugged cat hilarity, laugh, cry, hug Gus, say bye to our beautiful house, drive to Vigor, say bye to Liam and Rach, cry, drive to Albury, arrive to new house in the dark with cats with eyes like saucers, sleep.

All in all not a great day, I guess the paddle was fun.

Since then things have picked up. The very next day the man took me down to ‘our local’ brand new cafe just down the hill. We had brekkie and a coffee there (alright I did) and bumped into two of our friends there.

The next couple of weeks was spent at Bunnings. I think. It felt like we lived there anyway. Not too much has been done around the house, but the man is happy with where we are at. We’ve got the washing machine going and a new hot water system, have had an engineer around to tell us what we can and can’t do structurally, builder is coming back this week, just hoping now we have enough money to do the kitchen too.

We had a very cold month without heating and I guess its true what they say “what doesn’t kill you, makes you want to kill your husband  makes you stronger”. Now we have heating, I’ve made some friends, and got re-acquainted with some old ones.

I’m loving being so close to my family and friends. I didn’t realise how lacking in a social life ‘we’ were in Melbourne. My social life was fine, but it only revolved around sport (which I don’t have a problem with) but it was definitely to the exclusion of the man.

Yesterday I was out riding all day with a friend (more on that later) and the man was helping a friend. Last night we went to his cousin Sam’s confirmation and a family dinner. This morning I had a sleep in and the man went out for a ride with his mates and this afternoon I had coffee with Mum and went and saw Dad in hospital. Now the man is playing the wii and I’m blogging. See, plenty social together and apart.

I’m still working on a ‘group’ to do sport with, but I don’t think such a thing exists. I’ve made so many new friends already, but they are all different because none of them all do the same thing. Oh well.

Work is not great at the moment, but its not because of the move so can’t complain about that.

What else?

Coffee! Coffee in Albury is great! Its the food I’m struggling with, its not like Melbourne where I could just go downstairs at work and have any kind of food you could think of available. Here….not so much! We’re also challenged in the kitchen. The electric cooktop is a nightmare to cook with, the oven only works on the ‘patisserie’ setting (whatever that means) so we’ve been pretty slack. Hopefully as we settle in more we will get back to cooking properly…or renovate the kitchen quicker!

All in all, that’s about it. It’s dinner time and we’re off to get take-away from ‘Carv’n it up’ (take away roast dinners..don’t knock it til you’ve tried it!).

– Jen