Eyes on the Prize

Thank you everyone who has got in touch since my last, long-ago post, to say they were looking forward to the next one. It inevitably surprises me that anyone would be interested enough to do so, but in a comforting way. It may not surprise you to know that I have been looking forward to my next post as well! Not just because I usually have some sort of idea that I could write about buzzing around my head, but because the ability to pin that thought down on (virtual) paper would be an indicator that life had stopped spinning long enough to allow it.

Here is a groundbreaking piece of news for you: Moving House Is Stressful! Of course it is good stress, not least for us because it represented finally being able to move forward after five years of being stuck by the housing market. And I am a natural nester, so the process of making our house into a cosy home was something I had been desperate to start. Part of the reason we chose our house was that the kitchen, while technically functional, was so awful that we would want to change it straight away. And when we moved in, it was worse than we realised. The oven blew the lights in the entire house when we turned it on because the previous owner had sprayed so much oven cleaner inside that it short circuited. Ironically, the oven must have been the only thing in the house she did clean before leaving – the joining strips on the worktop were stuck down with encrustations of grease, which also appeared inside the detergent drawer of the washing machine. But no matter: this gave us the perfect excuse to design my our (my) dream kitchen. Great, you might think. But do you have any idea how many decisions you have to make when designing a kitchen? Taking in and analysing information, comparing options and whittling them down reach a decision are tasks that Chronic-Fatigue-Brain does not cope well with. There were so many options that at certain moments last spring I felt like jacking it all in and keeping our wobbly kitchen that wasn’t screwed onto the wall properly, and whose legs fell off when you hoovered underneath the cabinets. But we persevered through the decisions, and through six weeks of fitting during which we had to wash dishes in the bath, and now have a kitchen that makes me smile every time I walk into it.

This has been the biggest of the changes we have wrought upon our home so far but smaller things are still ongoing. I had been hoping that this constant process of imagining and decision-making might operate, a bit like physical graded exercise therapy, gradually to increase my poor brain’s stamina. Unfortunately not, and I have therefore spent the year in a bit of a daze, but at least I can say I have managed it, and have a comfortable home that feels really ours to show for it. As Husband wisely points out, our home is my world for much of the time, and it is well worth a bit of pain to make it into a place where I can feel truly safe and at ease. This furry little fellow certainly seems to agree – as long as the effort isn’t his!