Moving: A Late Account

A couple of weeks ago, when I was still without Internet, I wrote the following post and never ended up posting it. I thought that it was about time.

Our new house from the road.

I have a love-hate relationship with moving, as I think many people would have. You see, I love the excitement that comes with a new house, trying to decide where things will go, buying new curtains and odds and ends to make a house a home. But the act of moving itself is both stressful and exhausting. This time was no different.

Our lounge before the lounge suite arrived.

Considering the number of times that I have moved over the last couple of years, I thought that I was becoming quite the expert. I moved from Cape Town to Grahamstown, from res to my digs on Cross street, from Cross street to Grant's digs on African street (even if it was only for 12 days), from African street back to Cape Town, from Cape Town to Korea, from Korea back to Cape Town and from Cape Town back to African street. Each time boxes were packed, cars were filled and the moving took place within a few hours. There were odds and ends to buy – a computer when I moved into res, a bed when I moved into digs, etc – and then there was unpacking and settling in, which would always take a few days. I thought I had the packing up, moving and unpacking thing down to a T. I was wrong.

What is to become Grant's bar.

First of all, while you can prepare and pack in advance, there are some things that you cannot control. Take our situation for example. I had been well prepared and had arranged with the previous tenants that we could start moving in the weekend before the actual move. You know, just taking over some boxes to make things on the day a bit easier. They were moving out on the Saturday into the home that they were building for themselves, and so I had phoned a month before and arranged that someone would be there on Sunday so that we could bring in some of our stuff. Awesome planning ahead, I thought! And then the Friday rolled around. Two days before we were supposed to get moving, I phoned the tenant to make sure that everything was going according to plan. And it wasn't. Due to recent rains, their house was not finished which meant that they couldn't start moving out and we couldn't start moving in. Which meant that Thursday was going to be a busy busy day. So much for my master plan.

Our kitchen (a slightly wonky photo, I admit).

And then Thursday dawned. And due to pure laziness on all of our parts (me being no exception) we were not finished packing. Not only that, but the weather decided to play a cruel joke on us and, despite the beautifully boiling Summer day that had graced us on Wednesday, we were woken up on Thursday at 6:30am by thunder, lightning and torrential rainfall. Perfect moving weather, no? It wreaked havoc with the moving process, as things like beds needed to be move in the brief gaps between downpours. And so, as the boys (Grant and Jono) braved the weather, I was left behind in the house to finish off the packing and look after the Puddims who was most perturbed by the movement all around him and his favourite play toys (ie. Our belongings) being packed up and shipped out. By 5pm, nine hours after we started, we were ready to make a final trip with our last few bits and bobs and Puddims and were all soaked to the bone.

The bedroom that Grant and I share (Jono's was a mess and the study was where Natalie was staying, so photos of these will need to come later.)

And then the fun started as we began to explore our new home. When we made the decision to rent the house, it was on a whim. We had taken a five minute tour around the  place and decided that it was the best we were going to get, and so we said we'd take it. That was way back in August, and we hadn't seen the place since. Our vision of what it was like was starting to become blurred, and I was getting nervous that the house was not going to be all that I had imagined. And then we arrived. Now, no house is ideal, but this one is pretty close to perfect for us. Sure, the carpets are a bit grubby, sure there was a cockroach or two in the cupboard that made my skin crawl, but these were minor irritations compared to the pleasure of having a giant garden, a large lounge, a dining room/bar, a kitchen big enough to fit a dining room table and chairs and enough cupboard space for an army.

Our en-suite bathroom. 

The house is not particularly modern, and the rooms are a fair amount smaller than what we are used to, but there are other benefits to staying in this house. Benefits like a gorgeous, modern, recently renovated en-suite bathroom which may be small, but is absolutely beautiful. Benefits like a patio perfect for a braai even when it is raining (we tested it – it works!) Benefits like a garage to park our cars in. And finally, benefits like two stunning gardens – one in the front and one in the back – filled with fruit trees and flowers. I had forgotten just how big the garden was, and walking around the back of the house, I was amazed at just how much space there was. The garden at our house in African street was not particularly small, but compared to this it was piddling. We have lemon trees galore, a plum tree, a peach tree and, I suspect, an orange tree. Mike (Beans) is also fairly sure that we have a nectarine tree buried in amidst the others. On top of that we have gooseberries, chives, a small hibiscus, a strelitzia and a tree around front that has the most beautiful white flowers. We also have numerous palms and a loquat tree that reminds me of home. Oh, and did I mention that we are paying less rent here than we were before?

The front garden from our patio

The back garden, with Natalie reading a book on the steps. Some of the flowers that were found in the back garden are below. From left to right a hibiscus, a strelitzia and a passion fruit flower.

Anyway, enough of the bragging and on to the stories. After a stressful day of moving, packing and unpacking I had a nice early night since, unlike the boys, I had to be at work on Friday morning. It was the last thing that I wanted to do, but I made my way into the office and sat down to the longest day of work ever. It was almost impossible to concentrate as in between answering phone calls and emails, there were the phone calls from Grant himself, first in excitement that Puddims had used his catbox (we had been worried that he had found somewhere in the house when we woke  up on Friday morning to find the litter untouched), and then to ask about phone numbers and furniture. At lunch I met up with the boys for a bit of furniture shopping. One aspect of the house that can be considered as a downfall is that we have to buy all of our furniture as the house is completely unfurnished and has only come with a stove/oven that does not work very well. This does mean that we get to pick the furniture and move it with us when we move houses, but it is also incredibly expensive decking a house out, and my photography studio is going to have to wait a few months until we can afford to start work on it. After picking out a dining room set, a coffee table, outdoor furniture, a cabinet for the lounge and new curtains, it was time to head back to work where I finished off the day watching the clock and waiting for the stroke of five.

 (Above: Mike and Danika enjoying the relaxing weekend braai)

Saturday started early with unpacking the last big boxes and picking the necessities from the small ones before packing them away in cupboards and making the house presentable for our friends who were coming over to help us put things up. We bribed them with a braai, which Vicky and I ended up making and cooking on while the boys (Grant, Jono, Enzo and Mike) ran cabling through the roof and hung (skew) mirrors on the walls. By the time work was done, food was ready and we ate way too much as is the tendency at braais before settling in to watch some TV and play some board games.

(Above: Danika chasing Piddles around the golf course and Puddims enjoying a hard-earned golf ball).

On Sunday, we woke up a little later only to find that the electricity was out. This, of course, led to us freaking out. Had the municipality cut us off? We hadn't received our final electricity bill for November, so we suspected that they might have and, because it was early morning and the sun was shining rather brightly, there was no way of telling if the neighbours were having the same problem. This utterly flummoxed Grant whose first action of the morning was to go and turn on the kettle and looked at us as though we were crazy when we told him he couldn't have his coffee. By lunchtime, there was still no power and, thanks to a number of phonecalls, we found out that this was not a localised problem – the whole of town was out. Which meant that another braai was in order. We brought out the leftovers and bought a little more to add to it, and invited people round for yet another braai, which was made by the boys (Grant and Mike with Tom putting in his two cents worth every now and then) this time around. It was, once again, followed by board games and, when the electricity had still not returning at 4:30, a walk on the golf course with Mike and Vicky's appropriately named puppy, Piddle. A light dinner was in order as, by 7:30 we were feeling peckish again (not having gone overboard with the braai like the last time) and Natalie, Jono's visiting sister, suggested sushi. We all jumped at the opportunity and the weekend came to an abrupt halt with a final meal of sushi and a movie that Natalie and I picked out.

 (Above: Puddims helping to pack and making his first escape).

And so the weekend of moving came to an end with all of us feeling that this house was more of a home. It certainly feels like more of a home to me than the house on African street did, as that always had the air of men around it, Grant and Jono having lived there for over a year before I moved in. Even Puddims has made himself at home and has started being let out for walk abouts. The first time this happened, we kept a watchful eye on him, until he wandered too close to the neigbour's garden, not noticing their dog, and got the fright of his life when it approached him. Off he sped, straight back into the house, and from that moment, we knew that he had decided this was his safe spot. I think we’ve decided that it’s ours too.

November Life

So as many of you may have noticed, I have been quite quiet recently. This is because, as I suspected would happen, I have been crazy busy! But, there are a couple of aspects to this busyness that I had not expected.

So Lara, what have you been doing?

There have been three things taking up most of my time over the last month. The most obvious one is work, and the less obvious are writing and photography. I have stuck to my NaNoWriMo plans, and am 33240 words into my novel. I still have 8 days left to write, and I think that I can make it if I buck up and start writing a little more than 2000 words each day. Which is totally possible, considering that I got to 25k by the 10^th of the month and have just been slacking since then.

In terms of photography, I have been participating in a mentorship programme as the mentee. My mentor is a Photography professor in the States, and I have been chatting with him over Skype 3 days of the week. I am given assignments to do and am learning how to use PhotoShop, and the experience has been great (Sausi, my tutor, is AWESOME), but it is also extremely tiring and leaves little time for other things, like writing.

Oh, and I have been packing. Not as much as I should be since I have had other things taking up my time on the weekends that I plan to pack (things like photo shoots or trips to PE or no packing tape being in the house). But there are a good number of boxes taking up the area under the stairs and we intend to move a lot of them to the new house this weekend. The move really is around the corner and it is uber-exciting, especially since I GET A PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO IN MY GARAGE! Plus, two giant gardens, plus a house-warming party where people bring gifts and things. Can you tell how excited I am? I don’t think you can. SQUEE!!!!!!!!!!

What have you been reading?

Oh yeah, I haven’t given up on reading completely. Though most of my books have, at this point, been packed into boxes, I left one out for my reading pleasure, and that one is the book that I recently received from Loot – “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” by Jose Saramago. I first heard of the book when I was doing my post-grad diploma and have been intrigued and wanting to read it since then. Unfortunately, it is not the most popular of Saramago’s work and has proved difficult to come across. But I found it on Loot and ordered it a couple of weeks ago. It arrived last week and I have been reading it (slowly but surely) since. It is definitely interesting, but not the easiest read. I will let you know what I think of it when I’ve finished, which will not be this month considering everything else that is going on.

What have you been watching?

Not very much – one movie and a couple of series when I am going to bed at night. The movie that I watched was Easy A, which I LOVED and will be writing a review of later this week (probably). The series that I have been watching are Dollhouse (I didn’t get into it when it started, but am loving it now) Misfits (during my lunch breaks at work – another review around the corner) and Castle (uber-awesome!)

What about that uber-awesome cat of yours with the incredibly lame name?

Oy! No being mean to Puddims L He’ll totally kick your ass! He is a superhero after all! He has been saving me from 8-legged monsters left, right and centre, occasionally jumping on my head at 4am to do so and attempting to do the same to Grant (though I stopped him). He is also LOVING the boxes that are around the house and thinks that they are there just for him. I think he is not going to be such a happy kitty in 9 days time, however, when he finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings. But there will be boxes (and spiders I’m sure) to keep him company, so he will survive.

And so my life over the last few weeks has pretty much been explained. What’s going on in your lives?

Moving On Up

As some of you may already have gathered from my Facebook status, I am not going to be living in my current house too much longer. Some people have been asking why, and it is not the easiest of questions to answer.

When I moved out of my first Grahamstown house, there was a slight aspect of relief. There were a number of reasons for this. Part of it was living with four other people, all of whom had their own vices, myself included. Living with other people is always hard, and living with four of them, trying to juggle five personalities and keep everyone sane, was a job in itself. I think that we managed quite well. The fact that four of us were Journalism students helped, as it meant that we had a common ground that we could connect on. The fact that I spent a large amount of my time at my Grant's house meant that I was out of the way most of the time and not getting into too many arguments, which helped a great deal as well - one of my vices is my terrible temper which I struggle to keep in check, so having somewhere else to go when I got irritated was handy. Another part of the relief that I felt was that I would no longer be dealing with Homelet.
From the first month we started having problems with our rental agency. It all started when we asked for our washing machine to be fixed. It took them a month to send someone, it then took that someone two weeks to admit that there was a problem and it then took another full month for the machine to be replaced, all this while having five people doing washing in one bath. We were not impressed. When we next had an electrical issue, we therefore didn't bother going through the agency, a mistake that we soon realised as they refused to pay for the bill and it had to be split amongst us. One of the agents was incredibly rude throughout the washing machine ordeal (as was the electrician supplied by the agency) and by the end of the year, was refusing to speak to two of my housemates, preferring to deal with myself and Mike instead. Not wanting to shuffle things around too much, and with most of our ordeals settled, three of us decided to stay in the house for a second year while two of our housemates were replaced.
In our second year at the house there were also a number of ordeals including, but not limited to, having to pay for an alarm battery which I believe should never have died and having a break-in which we were blamed for because the alarm wasn't on at the time. Of course, these seem like nothing when compared to the drama that was faced when we left the house and were refused our deposits. Deposits are supposed to be given within twenty days of the tenants leaving the house. So, when over a month later nothing had been received, I decided to send them an email asking what was happening. No, they told us. We weren't getting them back. See, when one of the housemates left, it had been difficult to find a replacement, and though we eventually did manage to find one (and told her that she would need to pay for the full 12 months rent rather than the 10 that she would be living there, which she and her family accepted) our agency insisted on keeping our deposits to cover her first two months rent. As you can imagine, I was thoroughly unimpressed with this - the lease that I had signed was for a single bedroom, not a bedroom and part of another - and having a lawyer friend, threatened legal action. It took awhile, but I eventually got my deposit back, and I was not very happy with the agency. These days, if anyone asks me which agency they should go to when looking for a house, my only answer is "Not Homelet."

So that was my first house. When Grant moved out of his first house, it was simply because he wanted a little more privacy. He was no longer a student and living in a "digs" with six people was getting a bit much for him. So he moved into our current house was Jono, who had been one of the six from the original house, and when I returned from Korea, I joined them to make a house of three. When I first moved in, it did have a slight bachelor-pad feeling to it, but I soon made myself at home and made the place feel more home-like.

So, down to the real question: If it feels so much like home, why are we moving? Is it the people? Is it the agent or the landlady? Well, the landlady does have a little to do with it, but she is not the real reason. She is a little slow at getting things done, which is why it took a month to get our oven fixed, and she is a little stubborn about some things that tend to get on our nerves (ie. the burglar bars the jut into our driveway making it a hazard to drive through), but we love Peta overall and she is not the reason for our move. In fact, we felt terrible telling her that we were moving.
The fact is that we are now a little more grown up and are looking for a house that is not a digs but a home. We are looking for something a little more private than the semi-detached that we stay in at the moment. I, for one, am not so fond of waking up in the morning to a barking dog, or listening to banging as pictures are hung on the wall, or listening to children running up and down the stairs. While it was fine when Kim was staying next door, a single woman with one cat and one dog and one son who came to visit on occasion, having a full, growing family next door has become a pain in my neck.
We also wanted to find something in a better neighbourhood. African Street is not the safest in Grahamstown, and the area that we are staying in is close to what used to be the railroad. Three years ago, you couldn't have paid me to live here, and while the neighbourhood has cleared up a little, I still don't feel particularly safe climbing out of my car in the middle of the night to open up the gate.
And so, we started looking for something that was a little more private, a little more quiet, a little more grown up and a little more calm.
And we found it!

When I saw a picture of the house, I jumped on the phone to the rental agency and made a booking to see it. It wasn't a particularly good picture of the house - in fact it was mostly of the garden - but it looked nicer than anything we had seen so far. Being curious and not wanting to wait until the next day, I convinced Grant that we should drive past and have a look. And we liked what we saw. It is in a very nice area, near Graeme College which is a little far from the University (a slight problem for Jono who will still be living with us and will need to invest in a bicycle) but pretty close to work. The area also tends to be safer as most of the houses are bigger and the area is more secluded than African Street.
When we arrived at the house for the booking, it was with the mindset that if we liked it, we weren't going to hesitate. We walked up the driveway, at the end of which was a double garage (something new in itself considering that both of our cars have been parked outside for as long as we've had them), through the front garden (another first for me in Grahamstown) and into the house itself. We were greeted by a large lounge with a big fireplace - a good first impression. Off the lounge was a dining room (in a separate area, another first) and past that was a nice, big kitchen - room for a table and all. The kitchen also had a backdoor which led to the back garden, which was huge with steps going up to different layers of garden and the perfect braai area. Back inside the house, we were shown into the three rooms, all of which were a little smaller than we were used to, one with a newly redone en-suite bathroom (our room). That didn't deter us, however. Even with the smaller rooms, the house itself was much bigger, much nicer and much more private than the one that we were staying in, and it didn't take much for us to fall in love with it.

An hour later, the lease was signed, the deposit paid and we were the proud lessees-to-be of the house at 5 MacGowen. As many of you may have guessed, I am uber excited about the move and am already trying to convince Grant to go furniture shopping (one of the drawbacks of the house is that it doesn't come ready furnished as most houses in Grahamstown do) to no avail. I suppose I will just have to wait for 01 December. It can't come soon enough!