Monica said i should blog more so I am : )

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Doesn't time fly?! I always thought when i was younger making that statement was a sign of getting old but looking back Christmas seems just like yesterday which sounds even more cliché. My diary is full of lunches, dinners, drinks and reminders to see, eat with, call and e-mail friends prior to our leaving date which catch me unawares even if they have been in there for months. Recently the Brides (three wonderful ladies who all got married within the same year as me) took a trip to London. For the first time ever I actually did something in London other than shopped!

Mark and i are living in what can only be described as a pigsty. I've never seen our house look so terrible it's like in one of those programmes you watch on the TV and expect a long lost relative to come climbing out from under a pile of clothes. Every room has taken on its own job; the dining room has become the Ebay office where Mark immerses his head in the many hundreds of over ordered Jiffy bags, packing tape and label printing. The bedroom is the Chinese laundry, the piles are clothes are for washing, boot sale or recycle with a few added items of necessity like my new cowboy hat, new fleece with waterproof jacket combo and new shorts. The kitchen is the Party room which has an astonishingly large pile of paper plates, plastic cutlery and platters for our leaving party. Which just leaves our lounge, once was a place of relaxation but now has paperwork strewn everywhere whilst we attempt to communicate with every non English speaking call centre to try and notify them that we are leaving. No easy task.

I have three days left in my job, i will be sad to leave because I actually enjoy it but I hope that I will then have time to complete my ever increasing to do list. To complement that list I appear to have ever decreasing weeks and hours, someone put the clocks forward last weekend and took one precious golden hour away. Cheek! There really aren’t enough hours in the day, yet another cliché saying but it is so true. If I was working up until we left I really do not know how we would get this house ready to rent and our 100L rucksacks filled with our only possessions for travel. On the subject of renting we found a wonderful lady named Jayne to rent our house along with her partner and son. They came over in February and loved everything about the house including our furniture. It just so happened that Jayne also sells furniture for a living and would love to buy most of our stuff, too good to be true??? We exchanged contact details with the promise that the house was theirs and we would be in contact nearer to our leaving date. Just before the weekend I went to the fridge to get Jaynes details so I could e-mail her the list of all our worldly possessions from the American fridge freezer to the bed side tables and it was gone. I called her mobile (USA readers that’s a cell phone) but it wouldn’t connect. She’s changed her number and I have no other information. I searched everywhere; Everything else that has been attached to the fridge, some items for a year or more are still there staring back from under a Mr. Men magnet apart from the very vital details belonging to our new too good to be true tenants.

A quick search on Faceache and I’ve sent her a friend request, just have to wait. Days of agonising waiting and at night all I can think about is what will we do if Jayne has rented somewhere else? Where will we get rid of all of our furniture? How will we clear this house and possibly have to find a new tenant? The endless hours of laying in bed brainstorming the best way to get good money for your much loved belongings were driving Mark mad. Men seem to have a built in answering phone in a crisis, whenever their wife shows signs of stress they answer with “don’t worry it will be fine” or “you’re worrying about nothing”. Men know that even when they say these words that their wife will instantly turn around and say “but how?” in the whiney voice that we have when we are in despair. Arrive home this evening and a message from Jayne on my e-mail, she is still interested and sends me her new information, relief. Mark of course chalks this up as one of his ‘I told you so moments’ my response “Yes dear”.

All is well again. I have just 14 days to bid a teary farewell to my much loved job in my most hated location, pack my bags and set off for 9 days in the Florida sunshine. At which point the start of the most painful goodbyes begin, my parents. I plan to spend my 9 days lazing around the pool with them and getting stuck into my Lonely Planet Guide to Australia. I try on a daily basis not to think about goodbyes as I know I will see them again but just not for a long time. On the plus side I have Princess Pat and the other crazy Floridians to keep my mind off the inevitable and I at least get another opportunity to say farewell to The Tiki Bar. For those of you who don’t know this is my favourite place in Florida and where Mark proposed. I’ll make sure that my final $5 pitcher of beer is one to remember.

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