What doesn't kill us makes us stronger

They warned me. So many people warned me that moving house is the most stressful thing you can ever do. At this stage, I can concur with all those people and completely and utterly add my voice to those warning ones. Don't do it. Just don't. 

I think it was March when we started all this. To be honest, the time has just blurred to this sort of cloudy vision far off into the distance. So since March we've been living this pared down existence, where we removed all the things that made our house personal and altered it to be this house that other people would want to move into. Weeks went by, viewing after viewing, and nothing happened. Until we got the offer, which we deliberated over, and finally decided to accept. At this point I hoped for plain sailing. HA! Oh what a naive fool I was.

To cut down what has turned into possibly the longest saga ever known in all of house moving, we thought it was all finishing on 29th August. We'd be done, we'd be dusted, we'd be living in our next house, all would be fine and dandy. The first thing was that the people who we were buying from decided that they didn't want to move anymore. 2 days before we were due to complete on our house sale. Oh (polite understatement). We were pissed, we were disappointed, but we didn't throw our toys out of the pram, we carried on as normal adults and set to planning our next search. 

In the meantime, the sale of our house is bubbling away under the service. We hire a van. We move some stuff into storage. Surprise surprise, the proposed date didn't happen. Van remains parked outside. We chalk it up to more experience. 

Then skirting-board-gate happened. 

Then tree-survey-gate happened. 

In another meantime we find a flat that we think we can live in for a few months, and good news! We find another house that we really like. We offer, they accept, yippee-do-dah, let the happy jigging commence. 

Then we thought we were completing on Friday 26th September. 4 whole weeks later than the original date. Surprise, surprise, with no sign of Cilla Black, we didn't complete. Somewhere way up in a chain, that wasn't even supposed to exist (but that's a whole other tale) a vital piece of paper was missing and solicitors were not going to play nice. At this stage our house buyer was halfway up the M5 with her house contents travelling behind her. I think there might have been tears. 

Then compost bin-gate happened. 

This was yesterday. First time we had ever heard of this, but contracts would only be exchanged on the condition that we removed the compost bin from the garden. Erm, excuse me (polite understatement #2). I think Wavey might have turned the colour of beetroot. I got so stressed, I literally could have laid down under my desk, cried, and then gone to sleep. 

Seriously. 

Tonight Wavey is going to sort out compost bin-gate. 

In the meantime we've both knackered our left arm by hauling furniture around, we have so many boxes in the spare room of the flat that we've lovingly named it the 'box room', we have no washing machine and have to come up to my mam's house to wash our undies, we have no internet (first world problems) which we are not coping with at all, we only have the free channels on the tv and are already missing vital television watching, the big sink in our flat leaks, there's a hole in the bath panel, and our landlord only gave us one set of keys so sometimes one of us has to sit in the car park until the other one gets home. 

Which brings me around to the title of this blog post. This year has thrown up numerous challenges in our lives, my mam reckons someone (who is this person and why are they picking on us) is testing our relationship to see what we can cope with. We get it! We can cope! Trust us, please end your testing now. We've passed, like A***

Tuesday is the newly proposed date for completion. Contracts are exchanged, the compost bin is almost empty. Will it all go ahead, or will Dizz be sending a message from the grave? Watch this space...