Moving Day – Part Deux!

We arrived back at the house bright, early, and thoroughly knackered the next morning for what should be our final day at the house if the movers were to be believed! Our friends who were putting us up were amazing hosts the previous night and kept us plied with food, drink and great company which was the distraction we needed.

Once we finally got to bed that night, we expected to fall into a deep slumber through sheer physical and emotional exhaustion but instead lay there looking at the ceiling contemplating the enormity of what we were about to embark on and marvelling at the enormity of space in a bed when you did not have to share it with a dog and three cats.

First, they steal your heart. Then they steal your bed.

It did not make for a sound night’s sleep, it was not the same if you did not have a cat snoring in your ear, chewing your hair or trying to amputate your toes with its jellybeans of death or a Boxer dog sleeping with its butt in your face letting off dirty bombs through the night (Boxer owners will understand what I am talking about, Boxer guff’s are a smell I cannot even begin to put into words), we missed our pets guff’s and all!

The bone deep fatigue was nothing that a quadruple espresso could not fix (temporarily I might add), and we were ever hopeful that today would be less taxing physically and emotionally and that we would not be at the house too long, we figured it would not take much to load the container especially as so much of the contents had been packed and taped up to within an inch of its life the previous day.

We had planned a small get together with our friends early that evening to celebrate the sale of the house, to say goodbye to our home of 8 years and to toast the future, the champagne was on ice, and we wanted to close this chapter of our life, the time was finally here! So, we needed an early finish.

As promised Jetpets got back to us that morning with an update on Ray to say his temperature had decreased slightly since the previous day, this was a good sign, and it was hoped that the delay in the flights would give him time to settle down and he would be cleared to travel along with the rest of the pets come March.

Jetpets also sent us the above photos of Lola at the kennel, she was clearly terribly upset and missing us dearly! Okay she was not missing us one little bit, but this was good and reassured us that our fur babies were going to make it through everything that was to come, we could not have coped knowing they were stressed or upset.

I love moving, said nobody ever!

Within no time at all the Moving Company had arrived and true to their word they were mob handed and had brought the shipping container as well as the trusty transit van, hallelujah we were going to do this!

The team got to work loading up the container and finishing some packing whilst we continued cleaning the house around them, the weather had changed from the blue skied, blistering heat of the previous day and was now hot, humid, and interspersed with showers, which was not helpful when you were trying to keep things clean and tidy and feet were tracking water, mud, greenery and even the odd slug around the house.

By the time the afternoon had rolled around we had been so engrossed in our work that we had not noticed firstly the time which was well after the yard arm and secondly that it had been a long time since we had last seen the movers pottering around the house. Hopeful that they had almost finished, and we could all stop for the day we set out to track them down and get a progress report.

In true Friday fashion we found the movers in our garage which was still frustratingly full sat on packing boxes listening to music, singing, chatting, and having a lovely time doing anything but load our container …. Strike two!

As soon as we appeared the team quickly jumped to work hiding their cigarettes behind their backs and waving away the evidence of smoke like kids caught smoking behind the bike sheds. With some careful words of encouragement and a motivational speech by Martin, and some supportive supervision from me the rest of the clearing of the garage and loading of the container happened at record speed and the movers, transit van and shipping container all disappeared down the drive so fast leaving us with nothing but an empty house, the sound of wheels spinning in gravel and dust in our eyes!

It was eerily quiet walking around the empty house for the final time with nothing but the sound of our foot falls echoing in the empty space that used to be our home, we thought that we would feel sad at this point about what we were letting go of or that doubts would start to creep in, but those feelings were not there. Whilst the scenery of the Onewhero peaks will be a view that we will commit to memory we were filled with an overwhelming sense of achievement to have finally reached this point and were excitedly looking to our new future in Canada.

If all goes to plan in a little over four days, we will be sitting on our flight ready to start our Canadian adventure, but what we have all learnt by now is that that nothing in our story ever goes to plan! I guess it would be a very dull blog if it did!