Oh to be a completer-finisher

Those of you who know me well will understand why packing is a nightmare time for me. Not only am I an ENFP with the attention span of a butterfly, but I also scored miserably in all the 'completer-finisher' elements of other personality and work-style tests that I've done over the years.

I need my alter-ego, my perfect complement, my lifetime work colleague - I need you now, Jude!

Cesar is very good at starting and finishing things but works in a way that is a total mystery to me and without - or so it seems to me - a sense of identifying priority jobs first. He does what he feels like doing and does it apparently in isolation from all the other things that need to be done. It drives me mad and the only consolation is that he does do a good and thorough job with everything - and I have to convince myself that his end goal is to get everything done in time! It doesn't help the harmony in our house that he also has a horrible cold and an upset stomach - but woe betide anyone who even HINTS that this might be related to our current situation....

I am only writing now because I am avoiding finishing something - it really does depress me to make those final box-closing, taping along the edges adjustments - and I always find something in a drawer that belongs to the thing I just sealed in a big box.  I have counted how many boxes we have packed already and thus far, we have 79 - not huge boxes, I must add, but that's at least 79 trips from our house to the truck and then from the truck to the barn where they'll be stored. If there are 4 of us - which there will be - that's still almost 20 trips each and that doesn't include the actual furniture!!

But joy of joys, we have a tenant for our house! I think I must thank Christine because she's been sending all sorts of positive energy our way and this solution is perfect because it helps out someone I know - they have sold their old house but not completed on their new one so need somewhere for a few months and are happy to come here. It means we won't leave our house empty and it gives us time to adjust to the idea of putting it up for rent longer term if necessary.

And in just one week, we will have waved goodbye to all our belongings as we spend our last night in our home in England....

Knitting

Not sure if I mentioned how much I love knitting yet in my blog.  Many years ago, I used to do lots and lots of it - the more complicated the pattern, the better I liked it.  Then for a long time, I stopped. I don't think I knitted for my children when they were babies - maybe just one thing for Mateo - but now, I've been rebitten by the knitting bug. Ah, just remembered I posted a picture of my first two items, which were in Noro wool, a Japanese 100% yarn that is lovely to work with. Here they are again.

I've been buying yarns from ebay and oddments from a shop in Holmfirth and discovered that I adore a Peruvian wool with alpaca called Mirasol - which is a fairtrade yarn and just gorgeous to knit with. I have just ordered some more of that!  From a Debbie Bliss SoHo wool, I made a beautiful scarf for my niece Emily, who I won't see now for ages and ages as she's gone off to travel around Europe with two friends - she's 18 and has just finished her 'A' levels. She won't be back before we leave for Spain and will goto Liverpool University to study to be a vet in October. I wanted her to have something I'd made for her though I confess to wanting the scarf for myself when I finished it - so I do hope she likes it.

  

 I have since finished a jumper for Romy, 

which has little pixie buttons along the neckline:

 

another two scarves - one in the Debbie Bliss SoHo wool like Emily's scarf but a different pattern - the other a super thick chunky wool from Germany in deep purple, looks absolutely stunning but doesn't photograph well;

and finally, a pair of 'wrist warmers' - the latter knitted in the Mirasol wool mentioned above and which look lovely on and really rather different.

And today, I ordered myself some woven labels printed with 'Annie's Lana' (- lana being Spanish for wool - ) and 'Hecho a Mano' - which is Spanish for made by hand. Guess what I plan to be spending my time doing whilst Cesar is building us a house!

Orders taken!

Remember when..

Remember when the days were long and sunny and the nights were balmy - last week, I mean.  On my list of 'things to do before you leave England' (not a long list) was one more trip to the seaside. We took the children out of school for the day and went to Bridlington where the tide was in, the sand was clean and the sea was... well, chilly!


But that didn't deter Ruy and Romy -

How brave they were and how they laughed!

 They also made these lovely pebble people.

We spent all day on the beach and the kids did all the right things, like played ball, made sandcastles, dug tunnels and made little sand cities.
And the sun shone but there were just enough clouds around to keep us from burning. And we took a picnic and ate it without too much extra sand in the sandwiches.

A real day to remember!!

4 weeks to go..

Cesar is in Spain. We wanted to make sure that the rented house that was available in La Urz was going to be OK for us to go to - and sadly, it's not. Rather damp and not suitable is Cesar's verdict. So initially, we will head for Valladolid to Cesar's parents - who very sensibly have decided to be away for the first two weeks - where we will take advantage of village life, with swimming pool around the corner and all conveniences and shops to hand. We'll get back to nature later in the year!
Cesar has found a few places that might be OK to rent for a while but feels it would be much better if we decide together, especially as none of them are perfect and compromise is going to be necessary.
In the meantime, I have had to accept that we will not sell our house before we go (though we MIGHT still find a buyer.....mightn't we?) so we will be putting it up for rent. So if you know of anyone... let me know!!
And in the meantime, I am making various forays into the attic and the garage and beginning to make arrangements with building societies and banks and utility companies as time suddenly seems to be rushing forwards at a greater pace than of late.
Our children are getting excited though I suspect Romy is still not fully grasping the situation. I have had to tell her it's a five year plan because she wouldn't accept us going 'forever' - and now she is convinced we are going for a rather long holiday and that she won't have to go 'back' to school until she's 11! Come September, she may have a rather rude awakening but hopefully by then, we'll have spent a pleasant summer in Spain and she'll be adjusting to the idea - hopefully!

For now, it's packing and preparing - I will have to be very patient for a while until we can start looking at houses, land, barns and corners of foreign fields where we can plant ourselves, grow tomatoes, keep goats and put up yurts.

Wish us luck!!

Moving on..

We've booked a removal van, we've booked our ferry crossing to Spain, we are going on 4th August.  Where to in Spain is still not quite confirmed but we've got 5 weeks to sort it and Cesar is off next week to go check out our options, pay deposits and finalise arrangements at the Spanish end. It's very exciting.
And in the meantime, yesterday was my birthday, today is our 9th wedding anniversary - what a lovely day we had nine years ago - next week is Cesar's birthday and the week after that is Mateo's. Then another week or so of school.. then finished for the children.
This week, Cesar has started clearing out the garage - though from the picture it's hard to see just how much he's done!

The house arrangements remain flexible - I still feel we could find a buyer before we go - it only takes the right one to come. I guess eventually, we might have to rent it out for a period, which would be better than it being empty over the winter. But I really do remain optimistic.

Today is Ruy and Romy's school summer fair and we are going in a little while to throw wet sponges at the poor teachers there, who give and give and then have to take and take! It's a glorious day but very hot so plenty of suntan lotion and hats all round.

I am feeling very nostalgic because I spent the day yesterday with a friend I haven't seen for 6 years, whose own life could fill a book and probably should, and with whom I spent a lot of time in my late twenties and early thirties - pre-Cesar and children - when we did countless wild and really rather wonderful things. Helen is a woman who deserves several medals - and who is dealing with her increasing blindness with more courage, humour and sense than most people deal with headaches. I am sure this comes from her incredible 'inner vision' and empathy and intelligence. But she's a naughty, naughty girl and extremely funny!! 

Don't panic, don't panic!

OK, I feel like panicking but I am trying very hard not to.  We've had a silly offer on the house - totally unacceptable - after weeks of waiting for a decision. I don't know if they will come back with an improvement but there is too big a gap between their offer was and what we would accept for it to be filled this time. And whilst I thought I wasn't counting on it, I find now, that deep down - I was!! Big sigh and preparation for starting all over again with fingers crossed for the right viewer to come soon.

In the meantime, FR and I have been trying very hard to decide on the best way of getting our things over to Spain - we have both been very trying, particularly to each other! And now we've decided to do it the least troublesome way, which is to get someone to bring a big van, load everything in and take it to Spain for us. You might wonder why there was any discussion... you don't want to hear the many different ways we COULD move!! (Or who it was that was coming up with them.) Anyhow, I know we've made the right decision in the end. Without wanting to risk tempting fate and although I haven't actually booked the ferry yet, I feel I should commit to saying that we are planning to leave the country on 4th August.... I can't tell you how scary it is to actually write it down, but I feel I must. As I said in an earlier blog, as an ENFP and an activist, I really just want to get on with it!  I will now need to accept those offers of help from my friends who are good at packing because I think I am pretty rubbish at it. Mateo and I have spent all day going 'aw, look at this' and 'hey, remember when you did that' as we've started to clear some of his things up. I'd forgotten just how prolific his drawing has been - tomorrow, I will have to photograph some of his creations as they are really superb. But he is as bad as I am at clearing things out.

FR is going back to Spain on 1st July to finalise arrangements for renting. We decided we'd feel better if he did that because we do want to be in La Urz, but need to know that the family will be OK there, of course. The alternative would be to either go to Valladolid and stay at FR's parent's house - where there is room and we know what it would be like - or to start over looking for rented accommodation as near La Urz as we could find. There is very little available in the village, so if the house that Israel has found us is OK then that will be excellent. It does feel a bit like we're about to jump into a very big void and not know exactly where we'll land. Interestingly, it's only Romy who is asking me difficult questions about 'what will happen' as Mateo and Ruy seem to be accepting of the situation. Romy does want to know quite a lot of detail!
Must stop - am extremely tired and despite the house situation - at both ends of our plans - I am optimistic for the coming weeks and looking forward more and more to our starting out in Spain.

Feeling tranquil

Cesar has just left with the children to go to the cinema to see 'How to train your dragon' - a book Mateo has read many times and was last heard muttering in inimitable Mateo-style that a film can't be as good as a book but he'd go anyway.

And I am left in utter peace for about 2 hours and then, joy of joys, I am going for a wonderful session at Titanic Spa, which is based in converted mill in Linthwaite. I was bought a voucher for this pleasure almost a year ago by my lovely work colleagues when it was my 50th birthday. We celebrated on the day by going to the Temujin in Milnsbridge, which is a Mongolian-style restaurant, again in a converted mill - there are lots of these in Huddersfield obviously - and where some very spectacular stir-frying goes on! We went there again on my leaving do, so fond memories being 'stirred'. Both of these were lovely evenings, though I think the meal out that will forever stick in my memory is when we went into Bradford to the Mumtaz and laughed so much it almost hurt. Despite not having drunk a drop of alcohol as none is served here, we were all as giddy and giggly as it's possible to be without obvious cause. And whilst the story of the chicken and the egg may potentially feature as another posting...(or may be not) ... it is now permanently linked to the Mumtaz in my memory.

So today, I am in reminiscent mood again and will continue to think of all my lovely colleagues as I relax in style this afternoon.