In short - back at square one. Lost our buyer just as the school holidays started, which means the housing market has ground to a halt. Had to reduce the price as comparable properties have come new on the market at a lower price, making us uncompetitively overpriced. This in turn made our perfect house recede out of our reach - which may well be for the best, as the house turned out to be a repossession - which we were not too impressed about - not an issue necessarily if we knew it from the off, just do not like being lied to - and seeing as that house would have been uncomfortably stretching our finances from the outset.... Don't want history repeating itself, now do we ?
Anyway. The time went on, the energy flowed sluggishly at best, the stress became just a tad too much, the fibromyalgia flared up. Pulled myself through that, then the weather changed, another flare.
In the meantime, the house is getting decidedly grubby around the edges, and my life is seriously starting to lack focus. Oh, it's only temporary, I know that.... But it's hard to avoid the whole "we should have been packed by now" "by now we would have been exchanging contracts" "this could have been our completion date" trap.
So, yesterday I gave myself a good talking to, and wrote out a list of all the massive deep-cleaning jobs that needed to be done - one I day, I reckoned, I'd be done by the end of the week.
Wrrrrong. Breaking news, we have a viewer, next day at high noon. So the evening, instead of our regular stroll down the fields, becomes a cleaning frenzy. The house sparkles, how lovely.
Eleven o'clock today, and guess what ? Viewing cancelled.
But hey, at least we have a nice clean house, right ?
I am also feeling the effect of my decision not to plant much in the way of veg this summer, but to give over what growing space there is mostly to pretty flowers. That means that I now have to buy courgettes.... But hey, we still have runner beans galore, thanks to a neighbour donating surplus plants - shame no one really likes them all that much. What yellow French beans there were, we've eaten already.
It does mean though that the pretty bouquet (top given to me by my former colleagues on leaving has since been replaced with a number of home-grown, more modest, but equally pretty posies (example below).
Next year, I shall have a bigger garden - and I shall grow both cut flowers and veg.
I can hardly wait :o)
