2004-07-19

Phew, 9.40am and finally landed. It was such an early morning, with princesses waking up at 5.30am and deciding it was National Squealing Day. Usually I can get back to sleep in some form, but my dozing was punctuated by piercing screams of delight. What can you do?

So I got up just before 7am and started pottering in my room, shuffling papers and tidying up. But when I went out to the rest of the house, the princesses would get frustrated and give me some shit. Since it is their home, I decided just to bail and give them the space, since I am the one in the wrong place!

I went to Hamilton, and called the fella who did the building and pest inspection on my house. Oh! What house you may ask!

I am mid-way through the crap required to buy my ‘first home’. It been interesting, as, like my car, this has been a solo project, and I have been forging on and just asking questions where required. The house is a cute pink Victorian thing, and its freaking huge and on a freaking huge block and it is near Waratah Station. I saw it on the very first day of house-browsing (I wasn’t even in ‘hunting’ mode) and loved it.

I wasn’t ready to look seriously at a house, so I left it, leaving fate to decide if it should be mine. Three weeks later it was still for sale, so I just went for it. And got it. And then went and saw a mortgage broker who helped me apply for a loan. And I got it. Thanks, Fate.

I have just borrowed a freaking huge amount of money and it was an easier process than trying to get finance for a video camera! My friends ask about it a bit, which is nice of them, but I feel weird talking to them about loans, ‘first homes’, deposits and renovation. Now when the subject arises, I give basic facts and then try to move on. I do not want to become the Block and be boring and talk about my renovations!

So the (current) plan is that I will move in to the house mid-August and live there until Mum comes over in the summer. Then I am hopeful we can ‘refinance’ the ‘loan’, and buy me an oldish flat in the beach suburbs. Only then will I get ‘home’. Even this house that I am doing the hard yards on buying won’t be my ‘home’ as my mother will move in. I am 31 and desperate to finally get my own space at some time, as I have never had it, and in peace. I want rest, peace and tranquility. (This does not imply silence, rather contentment, which can be as loud as heck!)

Increasingly I have been getting angry that my life has been ruled by the moving of houses. It is to the point now that I don’t even worry about my own time and space, as I am fairly certain it will send me insane. What is the point about yearning for ‘a place of one’s own’ when it simply can’t happen? So I have decided to disregard the concept. Oh, except for my van. Fuck, I would die without that, my mobile ‘place of my own’.

Just now I am sitting in my favourite Cooks Hill café (I tried to support smaller cafes, and even go to Sunny’s but none were open), sipping peppermint tea, so it can’t be all bad, can it! And soon I will go to my van, drive to the beach, park, set up my blankets and shit in the back and try to sleep some more before tonight’s big one.