So, we are now halfway through May. I think the last countdown I did, we had 10 and a half months until we began our new chapter in life. I've just counted again and now there are 7 and a half months left - which is 34 weeks!
I think it's time I started a countdown list. I did a similar list when we sold our house in Westport to shift to Nelson. I had everything that needed to be done planned right down to the last phone call on the last day and it worked a treat. I knew if we did what was planned on a particular day it would all come together at the end. And it did! Plus it took a whole lot of stress away.
So my list begins.
- Going through our storage (and bare in mind we have 2 house loads of stuff that need sorting!)
- Selling things we won't take with us
- Giving things away to the Salvation Army
- Storing some things we really do need to keep e.g. photos
- Sorting the storage room out with adequate shelving
- Finishing the room off beside the garage
- Getting a shed made for the back of the truck
- Finding a joiner to make a pantry in the rig, after changing fridges
- Storing some of the larger furniture,
- Finding suitable tenants to rent our house
Lots to do. But we do have seven plus months to get there...
So far this year I've completed two courses with 'Shaw Academy' (which is an online educator in Ireland). The first course I did was learning about "Photoshop." After that, I was super keen to learn about "Lightroom" so I enrolled to do that course next. It was definitely worth doing! I learnt a lot about processing photos.
Even though I enjoyed the extra study, I decided not to take on any other courses until I had finished the 'Magazine Journalism course" that I started in February. It's such a great course, but with teaching full time, I really think one course is enough.
However...I just couldn't help myself when I read about a course on 'Mobile App Development'. So I have enrolled and I'll begin learning about this at the end of this month (May).
You may remember in a previous post that we decided to change our fridge to a smaller and more economical one. We advertised the fridge on Trademe and within a couple of days it was bought by a lady named 'Chrissie' in Taranaki. It was arranged for us to store it in our garage until she came to collect it when she was in the South Island on holiday.
One evening just on dusk we got a text from Chrissie to say she would be around in 20 minutes to collect it. She assured us she had enough room on the back of her house truck to put it so it could be transported to the North Island. As our house is down a long narrow drive Chrissie parked her house truck on the road. It was an older truck and without power steering it would have been almost impossible to manoeuvre it.
Fortunately Chrissie had her daughter's partner with her as the fridge is incredibly heavy! Between the four of us we staggered and stumbled up the drive, having to stop every ten feet or so to gain a better grip. Eventually we made it to the road, and with someone stopping traffic we got it to the house-truck.
Bernie was dubious as to whether it would fit through the door but Chrissie assured us she had googled it's measurements and measured and re-measured everything. It would be a tight squeeze but it would (in theory) fit!
Ha! Famous last words. No it didn't fit. Even though we altered angles, removed rugs, and furniture and tried in all directions. So the next step was to remove the thin wooden edging on the inside of the door as this would give us the few extra millimetres we were just short of. By this time it was pitch black, no street lights and the moon was behind clouds. So Bernie carefully removed the edging under torch light. Once that was removed we tried again. And again we were short by fractions of a millimetre.
Not wanting to call it quits we decided to remove the truck door and hopefully gain those precious millimetres without the door hinges. The thought of carrying that heavy beast back down the drive in the darkness, while trying to avoid potholes was making us more determined.
When the door was removed, we gave it a big heave ho.....and even that failed! After removing one of the freezer doors and then realising the actual fridge doors couldn't be removed, we eventually admitted defeat!
So, back down the drive we all went. And, again the fridge is securely stored in the garage, now waiting for Mainland Freight to collect it. I'm sure they'll have better luck!
