One year in the blink of an eye

I feel bad.  Not generally, life is pretty great in Barbieland at the moment, but I feel bad for being so absent. 

So, I thought I'd catch up a little...it's been one hell of a year!...but in good ways.

Last October, I changed jobs.  Even before then life was pretty hectic, but typical of me, I do like to give myself a challenge...The new job was in another city.  Great....so a commute was my only available option.  Mr B was still gainfully employed in our current city, but (thankfully!) was willing to look for a new job so we could relocate.

Just as I started my new job, another employee mentioned the magic word...kittens.  We had been looking to get a new kitten to keep Tori company since our lovely Sasha had passed.  My new contact volunteered for cats protection and had just rescued two kittens to re-home!  We had only planned on taking just one...but how could we separate them?

So, we had two new arrivals...

It took a few months of 3 hours on the train before I heard the wonderful words 'I have an interview!' of course, B being B, he aced it and was offered the job.  It wasn't just any job either, it was a job in his desired field and all the other wants we have when hoping for the right job to come up....Excellent!

Then came the panic.   I'd been looking online at places to move to for a while, trying to prepare for the time ahead, immediately, I started booking viewings and doing more research on areas and all the other important stuff when relocating.  It was time consuming, and due to work schedules (and the distance) I did all of these by myself.  That wasn't a problem at all, thankfully Mr B trusts my judgement!   Most of the flats were not making me particularly happy, and we were on a time limit.  So when a flat came back on the market that I had previously been quite taken with I pounced.  booked a viewing and took the flat without B ever seeing it.  Thankfully, on moving day a couple of weeks later he did like it!

Since then, life has started to calm down.  I can't say I miss the commute, I'm doing well in my new job as is Mr B, and we are starting to settle into our new city.  The cats seem to love the space and regularly use the hallway as a racetrack.

We are still trying to fill the new flat up, there are a few less boxes and a few more seats so its going in the right direction. 

So that's been it....1 year, 2 jobs, 2 flats and 3 cats. 

Attack of the boxes...

I've just moved house.  I don't really like the experience..Don't get me wrong, the first bit - looking at places on-line and going on viewings - is fun, but the actual moving bit is a total pain. 

It's been a fairly big move, into a different city that I have only known for 6 months.  (My main excuse for no posts of late has been an eternal commute across the country everyday for work which took me out of the house for at least 12 hours a day) I'm still learning my way around and getting used to the different rules that come with a new city.  For one, people here don't queue.  I'm so used to the (generally) ultra polite ways of both Norwich and Edinburgh that this fact has been a little hard to get used to.  On the positive side however, the majority of people here are very friendly, and the standard of customer service in general is far higher...it's nice not to just receive a grunt from checkout operators in supermarkets! I'm certainly enjoying living in Glasgow so far, the reputation that puts people off visiting doesn't appear to be well earned...I've yet to witness anything that I wouldn't have seen on the streets of every other city in the UK.

We have been lucky enough to land ourselves a much larger flat than before, the same number of rooms, but better proportions and less wasted space than our last place.  The only downside to that is that all of our furniture (or what we have at the moment) now looks very small and doesn't really fill many of the rooms...I'm a fan of minimalist living but this is a little extreme!  The boxes were making up for it but as we empty them the place is...emptying.  I can see some shopping in our future in the months ahead.  (The cats on the other hand are loving their new spacious playground and have been in box overload...whenever you open a box...there's a cat.)

You never seen to realise quite how much junk you accumulate until you have to pack it all up and then unpack it again into a different place, the books that came off a bookshelf should all fit back on right?  Not according to the laws of physics on my bookshelf! I've even removed several large books and there still doesn't seem to be enough room...


I've unpacked a vast amount of boxes and have now officially entered "home making mode"....my desire to hang pictures and place furniture is overwhelming but making my new place feel like my home is an important stage of the whole moving process for me...I can be very territorial and get rather antsy if I don't have recognisable objects around.   I have spent hours today wandering around the house armed with various pictures and other objects trying to figure out where I want them...B Man gracefully lets me have free reign of this part of the decoration, provided that I leave control of his man cave to him.  I can handle that.   I still have many hours of wandering ahead before I get all the pictures I have up (never mind the ones that I'm sure to find on my travels and add to the collection!)

Once I've finished with the boxes, and I stop getting lost on my way to work, I'm looking forward to life settling back into a nice easy routine...one with evenings and weekends when I actually have some spare time!   I'll let you know how that goes....