Living on the Edge

Hey, it's been a while. Every time stuff is happening in life I have no time for blog writing and every time nothing interesting is happening I have nothing to write about. It's a wonder anyone writes anything.

Not that anything massively major has been going on, we've just been doing A LOT of diy, like almost every evening. We've been in the house a month now and only between 2 and 9 weeks till the baby is here. I'm going to guess most likely we have 4 weeks left. It takes a bit of explaining: So the baby is due on 9th May (7 weeks time). The most you can realistically go over is 2 weeks (9 weeks time), but the baby is a bit small so they are thinking about inducing me, which according to them could happen "around 37 weeks or before". I have another scan on 4th April so they will probably make a decision then.

You're probably thinking "why are they getting it out early? If it's small, thats like getting a bread out of the oven because it's not done properly." Correct, but the baby might be small because the "oven"(placenta) is not working well, in which case it might rise better in the "microwave", which I think in this metaphor represents being attached to my boob where he can get nutrition in a different way. Theres also a small chance the baby has a more serious problem such as no yeast (genetic abnormalities) in which case taking it out of the oven won't help. This was a terrible way of explaining the baby is small and so I might be induced.

So back to the house... We now live on the border between Belle Vale (a bit rough in places) and Gateacre (quite posh) but officially on our address it's Belle Vale, that's why a 4 bed house with a garden was affordable to us. (£132K if you're wondering, I'm really just including that for the Londoners.)

So our house is in walking distance from houses like this:

and people with Cath Kidston bags, and a specialist cheese shop.

It's also in walking distance of this:

The beautiful Belle vale shopping centre. Just what the french had in mind when they invented the word "belle"

and people who wear false eyelashes as everyday eyewear.

I met one of these false eyelash wearers on a trip to Morrisons. It was my first ever time there and I was signing up for a Morrisons loyalty card at the customer service desk. The woman who worked there was a very pleasant false eyelash wearer: she told me all about how you could earn points. Then she told me she saved up all of hers and spent them on vodka, but that I could spend mine on whatever I liked. While having this conversation an old woman with just one tooth in the middle came over and said "haven't you even got a "M" card?!" She was disgusted with me. I said "I've just moved to the area, this is the first time I've ever shopped here and I'm signing up for one now." She still looked disgusted.

So we've invented a game, it's not very nice, we look at people and guess if they're from Belle Vale or Gatacre based entirely on what they're wearing. We'll never know for sure. We've met our neighbours both sides and they're really lovely, proper scouse but super nice. One side told us where all the local stuff was and things that you can do with kids in the area and said come round if you need anything at all. The other side brought round a plant and a huge box of Thornton's chocolates.

At the end of our road is a tree thats been made into a memorial. It always has fresh flowers and lit candles, theres a chair there and sometimes you see a guy spending time there, usually smoking weed. I said to Dan "If I die please don't attach tacky decorations to a tree and smoke a spliff next to me."

Here's some photos of the house progress:

I finally have a studio room after 3 years. 

We painted it, laid laminate, and got those ikea boxes everyone has.

The bedroom is still a work in progress, we're still sleeping on the floor but the woodchip is gone!

We wanted to get rid of the woodchip because a) woodchip is horrible and b) I once watched a documentary about prostitutes who were also drug users and they moved into a council house which had wood chip and they got it off strait away, so if they can have the self respect to remove woodchip from their home then so can I.

There's no place like home

After 3 years of searching for a family sized house we finally moved in a week and a half ago! Hooray! Its so nice to have our own place. Its so nice to not have a pram in our lounge, and have a garden, and be able to open the boxes that we haven't seen in the 9 months that we were homeless, and to be able to decorate things how we like, and not be still in the process of buying a house.

We moved our stuff in over a long weekend. We're lucky that, because we were living with a family, we could move out over a few days and didn't have that annoying thing you have when you're buying and selling a house, where you have to do the whole move on one day.

So, Friday afternoon me and Percy picked up the keys. I didn't go and see the house straight away because Percy was a bit confused by seeing an empty house. He's worried we're just going to live with nothing: he kept asking if we were taking his bed. And then, when I went to look round charity shops for a sofa for the new house, he said "we need to buy jumpers for the new house".

Lola and Percy settling in to the garden

In the evening, when Percy was asleep at the Langston's, me and Dan headed over to the new house which was just an empty blank canvas of anaglypta and dreams, and had a celebratory Orangina, in a little bottle all the way from our France holiday in the summer. I know, we're pretty rock and roll. The last 2 bottles are saved to celebrate baby number 2 making an appearance. Then we set to work making Percy's room look like a bedroom, so he could see it in a relatively finished state.

All of Saturday was spent moving things with the van we hired. I mainly stayed with Percy because as a pregnant woman I'm not a useful lifter. We had help from a few friends and family.

Then, on Sunday morning had a really hectic start. The van had to be returned for 10:30 am and we still had a wardrobe, masses of boxes and a rabbit to move, and no helpers. Dan managed to collect this wardrobe from a friend get it into the van get it in the house, a long with a load of boxes and just get back to the van hire place with seconds to spare. The rest of the day was a lot more relaxed, we had a nice family car journey over, all 5 of us (me and Dan, Percy, lola the rabbit and the bump). Lola got to enjoy some grass again for the first time in a while, and then Percy went to see his new room. He was really happy he said "all my toys are here" and then just started naming all his toys and he ran around the garden a bit. We had lunch with Katie who then babysat Percy while we went on a hunt for a fridge and washing machine.

It turns out fridges and washing machines are expensive, so we decided to try and hold out for a second hand one. We had a few days of eating vegetarian, and leaving our milk outside, before finding a fridge freezer and washer dryer on gumtree and therefore making modern life sustainable. Hurrah!

On the Monday I went food shopping, while Dan and Mike made several attempts at getting a wardrobe upstairs before completely taking it apart and putting it back together again. Percy watched a lot of Peppa Pig.

Then this weekend my parents came up and I managed to survive a trip to Ikea with my mum. I went through the 7 stages of an ikea shop, they're universal right?

1) woo isn't this exciting look at all the pretty stuff, oooh we could get this!
2) we need to get dull stuff like shelves too.
3) mum- "ooh look at these knobs, do you need a knob, you said you wanted a knob? shall we got back to the knobs" - stop saying knobs mum.
4) I'm so tired when will this maze end
5) Yay meatballs, yum yum.
6) ok lets just collect the furniture and go "but you haven't looked at frames and curtain rails" I DON'T CARE, I NEED TO LEAVE
7) I'll just buy some frozen meatballs on the way out here *puts in trolley* oh wait I forgot to pay for them. I'm so tired, lets just go (I put them back, I didn't shoplift)

The whole house needs decorating but we're going to start with the studio, which just needs a paint and some laminate flooring so it's more art friendly. When mum first saw it she said "it just needs a paint". It was the only room I'd painted. I've bought the laminate flooring and watched a youtube video on how to lay it. They use something called spacers which look like dominos. I don't have spacers so I'm guessing dominos will do.

Then we're going to do the bedroom. We've left that pretty much empty apart from a mattress as a motivational tactic to get in done, but I had a huge revelation: "BEDS ARE POINTLESS!" They're just something that our consumeristic society has made up. Sleeping on a mattress on the floor is just as comfy. And then, when you aren't sleeping and you want the space to make a box fort, you can just flip the mattress up.

Percy managed to cue himself of his hoover fear overnight

3rd on our list is the lounge, which is going to be tropical themed!

And if theres anymore time before baby number 2 pops out we'll do the dining room.

30 weeks

Thanks to everyone who has helped out with the move!