It definitely worked

I’m sleeping loads better than I have been for months!

I’m also confining my clutter to one room, and one room only! The kitchen, for various reasons, had become a semi-transit camp for many things until I’d found homes for them, and for my work stuff that wanders between work and home. Everything now has a home, and I’m making sure I dump my work bag in the right place when I come in and change out of work clothes, and not just by the kitchen table, and ignoring it until time to check I’ve got the correct folders/files for the next day just before I go to bed, as I’ve been doing.

It would seem I do really rather like my kitchen, and living room to be clear, clean calm places, but have no qualms about living with the mess and chaos of a work room, as long as I can shut the door on it when I want to ignore it! So, restoring my kitchen to tidiness, as well as cleanliness, and having all the untidy work stuff in one place has helped my sense of well being enormously.

Which, given this has been a week at work where I’ve needed to be at my best emotionally to help others through a very difficult time, has all been very good.

It seems strange to admit, but this is the first time in my life I’ve been living on my own, in my own space, and going out to work five days a week. I’ve spent almost all of my adult life living along side other people, and in unusual circumstances… I’ve always worked, and often much, much hard than I do now. (I’m out five days a week, with three different jobs, which don’t add up to full time hours or pay… but that is about to change, I hope!) My tiredness is more to do with the excessive amount of travel I’m doing. But, I’ve mainly worked in and from home, and fitting in and around other, complex needs, with occasional part time jobs.

I’m having to think about so many things I’ve never really had to think about before! Decide which matters are things that have been inflicted on me, or things that really are part of who I am and that I would choose to do regardless of whether it affects only me, or twenty others. Big things like jobs, and little things like buying a mop.

And, getting more sleep is definitely good!

Rearranging Furniture

and I am now only fit for bath, supper, and sleep!

In my new bedroom.

The upstairs of my little house is unusual. To get to the bathroom, you have to go through what was described to me as the second bedroom. The main bedroom is the only room in the house it’s possible to close the door on, and not have visitors see it, as you come straight from street to front room, straight through to the kitchen, and up the stairs which lead off the kitchen  to the upstairs rooms.

There is a little outhouse kind of offshoot from the kitchen, which houses a toilet, and a little area for a washing machine, and the gardening equipment. (Um, best we don’t discuss the fact I now have a garden, and gardening equipment, and no clue whatsoever.) Oh, and the recycling boxes and rubbish bags. I really should get the council to bring me a wheelie bin.

Anyway, when I moved in I dutifully put myself into the main bedroom for sleeping purposes, and made the second bedroom a study space. Now I don’t have to keep everything I possess in one room, my bedroom became the tidiest room in the house! The living room isn’t bad, to be fair, and I’ve always been clean if not that tidy in a kitchen, but my work-type space…. oh dear. And, it’s way too cold to expect visitors to go to what in effect is an outside toilet!

So, in between dealing with the toughest week ever at work, and my growing dissatisfaction with the room I was sleeping in, and the lack of tidiness in the places people could see, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually mind people walking through my tidy bedroom to get to the bathroom, but I was minding them walking through a seriously messy work area. Which wasn’t actually working as a work area either.

So, today I’ve moved everything work and music related into the main bedroom, and created a more conducive working space.  Means I can have my keyboard out more of the time, too.  I’ve left the wardrobe in that room, mostly because I couldn’t face moving it, then probably moving it back because I couldn’t get it through to my new bedroom.

If I have overnight visitors, I will still put them in the second bedroom, and move myself back into the main bedroom! Mostly so they can have better access to the bathroom, and I am less likely to fall down the stairs in the middle of the night on my way to the other toilet than a visitor is. But also because I don’t see why I should inflict my mess on anyone but me.

So, I’m going to make my supper and eat, pack my work bag, have a bath and go to bed!! Cos, I’m very tired now.

There are how many men in the house?!

I’ve lost track. Which give how teeny my house is, is a bit worrysome. However, I do not really care as a working boiler is well on it’s way, I have felt heat coming from the radiators, which hasn’t happened since the morning of the boiler’s demise, and I am so, so, so looking forwards to a Hot Bath, and getting some laundry done. The latter would have been possible, as it’s a cold water feed machine, but drying the results would have been a nightmare.

I have done all the important phone calls I should’ve done a fortnight ago…

I have finished this term’s work.

Apart from an appointment with the organ stool, and a requirement for me to play some more Christmas Carols, I am not required to do anything else until 2nd January, other than relax and enjoy myself. Though, I am a tad concerned Life might take this as some kind of challenge to throw something else interesting at me to deal with.

Ah, the happy, joyful sound of water gurgling through the radiators!! Here’s hoping I will soon be called upon to be instructed in how the dear new boiler and it’s control panel works.

It’s all happening

Looks like my preferred plan for work after Christmas may be possible, after all. I’m pleased for me, but also very sad, because other friends in the same field of work are losing their jobs very suddenly, just before Christmas. I was also offered more work at the other place as well this week. Which, if Plan A really doesn’t happen, I will accept, and resign myself to the nasty commute four days a week, rather than only once, or twice.

Then, I came home to no heat, no hot water, and when I went to investigate, and gingerly turned a tap or two, water poured from places water shouldn’t have been pouring from. Various taps have been turned off, hastily, and Nice Mr Gas Installation Man will come and see what’s what tomorrow. And, I’ve now dried out.

I so enjoyed yesterday evening just chatting to friends I’ve not spoken to properly for ages… I am hopeful the slight phone phobia I was developing may well be cured.

I was going to be brave and investigate a new church tomorrow, but I think staying in for Nice Mr Gas Installation Man tomorrow is more important.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

Phone line is working.

Engineer was definitely required.

Essay detailing the inanities of this process being composed for the Telephone Company’s edification.

Whilst I’m waiting patiently

I will put my enforced waiting in for the Telephone Engineer to good use, and tell, for your amusement, the saga.

I was beautifully organised, and arranged for BT to come and do the needful for getting me my phone line (so I could then organise my internet as soon as I could) before I moved, and was quite content that it would not happen for a week after I’d moved, as a week without being bombarded with phone calls sounded like a Good Idea when I had just moved.

Come the appointed morning and hour, I was stood in my kitchen making a cup of coffee, and walked back through to the sitting room, to find a note from the Engineer, “We could not contact you, please arrange another appointment.” I checked my mobile phone, nothing. I then looked at the note – the engineer had the number written wrongly. So, of course, if he’d tried that, he would’ve got some random person that wasn’t me. And, um, given the front door opens straight into the sitting room, then you go straight into the kitchen, and the door bell rings in the kitchen – loudly…. Also, the letter box clatters, normally, so they must have tried very hard to be quiet as they put the note through, as I heard nothing.

I was incandescent with rage. Oh, was I cross!! And the Telephone Company got the full force of my opinion… politely, calmly, but they were left in no doubt what so ever I was seriously angry. But they were still adamant that nothing could be done now for another two and a bit weeks and another Telephone Engineer would come by today instead..

I had my polite, calm, but angry say again. Nothing doing.

Then, I received an e-mail telling me the phone would be activated today but that I wouldn’t need an engineer…. I rang again, asking did I or did I not need an engineer, and if I didn’t, why would my phone not work until the 18th? “That’s strange,” said the very nice woman the other end of the phone, “I’ll just phone the Engineers.”

Yes, apparently I do need an engineer, no, there is no way they can bring an appointment forwards, even if it’s their fault, and somehow I seem to have slipped through various nets as they had an appointment down for me, which had been cancelled.

I received a letter three days later, repeating the words of the e-mail… activation on 18th, no engineer needed. I phone again! “Oh, the letter gets generated with the e-mail – ignore it.”

In the meantime, I’ve invested in a pay as you go dongle, so I can at least send e-mails and do a bit of blogging, and hopefully this evening, I will be able to phone various people and reassure them that I am still alive. (Though, as I will point out to one or two people, they could’ve phoned my mobile to check that! Especially as they are the people who complained all the years I didn’t have a mobile that they would keep in touch better if I did have one. Right.)

Here’s hoping there are no further chapters to this saga.

Oh, and I sport a most splendiferous scab on my right knee, but it’s much less painful, and more willing to do its job as I need it to. Thank you to those who enquired.

How very peculiar…

I got some news about work yesterday that I was pretty stunned by, though not entirely surprised about. It does put huge question marks over any long term employment in a field I was hoping I could move into….

But, after feeling really stunned all day, and coming home emotionally drained at all we’d been dealing with and the mere thought of having to deal with job hunting again, I find myself today feeling quite liberated, and even cheerful about the prospect of having a rethink. (Just remind me about this when I’m be-wailing my lot in life in a few weeks time, and when the travelling to the work I thought I could stop at the end of term is continuing….)

I also did The Right and Generous Thing by someone who has caused me a lot of stress and difficulty in the last few weeks, and feel a lot better about that situation, too. I know I’ve done my best to put it right, I can’t make anyone else see my point of view, but I’ve stated it clearly, I will be making an official complaint to the correct person to deal with the fall out, and after that it’s not mine to fret about.

This could also be that I will be moving to my own little home, all by myself, for the first time ever, and I’m getting very excited.

Calm, patience, coolness of temper…

are going to be required in vast quantities over the next few weeks! I think I can cautiously be certain I am going to stay put for at least the next year, and probably more.

But… we have to get through the moving process first. I say “we” because I’m renting a dear little house from someone who I know through church, and it’s become a whole church project. I am assured that this is the case every time there’s a new tenant in this house, but for numerous reasons, because there has been some more major work done this time, and what with One Thing and Another, it seems to have caused far more stress than the last time I remember this happening

I’m genuinely pleased with this agreement, and really like the house. It’s quirky, Japes-friendly, and incredibly well placed for loads of things – transport, shopping, but just off the beaten track enough to be relatively quiet. It is very basic – and I’m content with that. I will use the kitchen utensils that are there to start with, and as I can afford it will gradually put them away and use my own. (You have no idea how excited about that I am getting!)

However, I can see if you are someone who is relatively house proud, and likes everything to be just so, it’s so not good. It probably wouldn’t meet any letting agency standards, and it certainly is stressing the person sorting out the practical details of it. I’ve spent much time today reassuring her it’s really, really OK.

For me, this represents a massive, massive step towards completely implementing the Big Decision I’ve been either thinking about, or sorting out for what is seeming like forever and several days now. Whilst completion can’t happen for a few more months yet, it’s so nearly there. I’ve not regretted the baby steps I’ve made towards it over the last four months or so, the staying with friends, then this temporary address, but I am so looking forwards to being in my own home properly.