They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you will encounter in your lifetime. From experience I can confirm that it ranks quite highly on the list of things that make me sob and utter such gibberish as “You just don’t understand my feelings” while disagreeing on what classifies as genre specific packing. “Why are you putting DVDs in with the cutlery? That makes no sense!”
I am 30 years old and I think I have accumulated a similar amount of addresses to match my failing youth. Some places I have stayed a while and made my home while others have been a transient stop along the way while I tried to figure out where I was trying to get to.
Since meeting Mr Awesome we have moved a few times in our 18 months together. The actual count is a bit hazy as there was a period of time when we were technically homeless after the earthquake so in a sense, if we were sleeping in a particular house of an evening, it was easier to call it home.
Our first move together involved packing up our individual apartments in order to move in together. I was packing weeks in advance yet I was still in a panic at the last minute trying to squeeze objects into boxes. Mr Awesome was to join me in a few months so he still hadn’t started his packing which I wasn’t too worried about. Each weekend however, I would make the 180km commute to see him and try to gauge were he was at with the packing. The weekend before he was due to arrive, I noticed one box in the dining room filled with random miscellaneous goods but other than that, everything was still in it’s place. I knew it would end it tears but after several weeks of what I like to call “progressive nagging” I decided to forgo my well earned “I told you so” and headed back to the city and left him with his mess. The poor bastard ended up working solidly for a few days trying to pack up the house in time for the removal van showing up but he did it..somehow!
Our second move together was not planned. We were settled in our little abode when the big quake struck Christchurch and instantly made our home feel strange and foreign to us. We lived in the central city which was hit the worst so we both decided that this would bring and end to our Christchurch adventure. We’d had our first quake within two weeks of moving in so after six months of aftershocks, we’d had enough. After escaping 200km to my parent’s house and staying there for a couple of weeks we had to deal with packing up our house. Getting access to the property required showing ID to the army who then escorted us through the debris. Our landlord had called the day before and given us 2 days to vacate the premises. Technically the house was still livable but without sewage or water we did not agree. By the time we managed to organise a lift up we had lost a day so here we were in a house that was cracked at the foundations and on a lean, trying to figure out where we should start.
The next 18 or so hours were exhausting. The aftershocks were frequent and still quite sharp so our nerves were gone. We packed like lunatics. We flung things in boxes. We taped them up and threw them in the corner and moved on to the next. The care and effort that I usually put into labeling went out the window. “You want to put my shampoo in with the electronics? Go right ahead. I just don’t care!”
Lack of sleep, stress and nerves will eventually cause you to descend into madness Thankfully, we lost of minds in a very positive way. We began to giggle uncontrollably and everything seemed hilarious. This peaked for me at around 2am when we were finally ready to call it a night. While Mr Awesome went upstairs to get into bed, I lingered downstairs with mischief in mind. I grabbed a jar of chocolate spread from the cupboard and opened it up. I dipped my unwashed index finger into the jar and covered it with chocolate. I then proceeded to use my finger to write the words “FUCK PIG” in huge writing across the doors of the cupboard. Satisfied with my handy work, I wiped my finger in my clothes and followed my man up to bed. The giddy hyperactivity wore off as we climbed into bed as we both felt instantly vulnerable. The intensity of the aftershocks was worst at night and as we were on the top floor they felt more intense. Neither of us slept much that night. Mr Awesome woke in the morning and went down stairs to continue the packing while I snoozed. I had forgotten all about my artistic exclamatory work until I heard him react, at first sounding a little confused and possibly a little frightened followed by an explosion of laughter. Another job well done I thought. To this day when we talk about the horror of leaving Christchurch it is always overshadowed by the “FUCK PIG” incident. The fact that he still wanted to marry me after that sometimes puzzles me. I’m obviously disturbed. He must really love me.
It’s been just over 4 months since we left the shaky city behind. Until recently we were still living out of our suitcases. We moved to the opposite end of the country to Mr Awesome’s hometown and stayed with kind relatives while we tried to get back on our feet. At the end of May we moved our few bags into a temporary house share were we stayed until the constant noise from the landlord’s renovations combined with the smell of an incontinent boxer dog who liked to sleep on the sofa forced us to get ourselves sorted with something a little more luxurious!
We found a beautiful house within a few hundred metres of the sea and the centre of town, sharing with just two flat mates, both of whom are civilised human beings that don’t feel the need to throw your shoes out in the garden if you leave them under the coffee table overnight yet seem to think it is acceptable to leave a towel soaking up dog urine in the middle of the lounge for two days.
After viewing the house, we agreed to move in the following day. We skipped back to our old flat and backed our bags and were sitting enjoying a glass of wine within a half hour. As neither of us drive, we had organised for Mr Awesome’s dad to give us a hand with the trailer the following day. We’d bought ourselves a brand new bed when we moved into the flat which upgraded us from hobo status as we could no longer carry all our belongings. Unfortunately, illness struck Papa Awesome so Mama Awesome came to the rescue with her Ford Mondeo. The theory was the mattress would fit in the car. After dragging the mattress out in a wild storm (thankfully it was wrapped in plastic) and reversing it into the boot we realised quickly that a queen size mattress does not fit into a Mondeo, regardless of the angle or the determination.
Mama Awesome dropped the rest of the stuff to the new house and went off to work and we decided to brain storm under the heading “How to get a mattress across town”. We rang the local taxi company and asked them if we could hire a mini van to move the mattress. They adopted their best Bones McCoy attitude and reminded us that they were a taxi company and not furniture movers before hanging up. Mr Awesome rang his aunt who suggested we hire a trailer from the petrol station and she would pop over and grab the trailer and the mattress. It sounded so easy. Why didn’t we think of that? As Mr Awesome was on the phone confirming prices for hiring the trailer for the hour, Auntie Awesome pulled up in the car. She hopped out of the car and began pointing and shouting at us through the window. We told the guy on the phone we’d call him back. We opened the door to be greeted with “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU CALL THAT?”. On the lawn, in our own garden stood a large trailer. Ooops.
We hooked up the blatantly obvious solution to her car and got our mattress to it’s new home. It seems the secret to a non stressful move is simply not engaging your brain. Thank goodness for family.
Mrs A xxx
Check out the video below from The League of Gentlemen's latest BBC show called Psychoville for the origin of Fuck Pig!
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