a warm house

The housewarming party went really well yesterday. Most people were able to attend despite the poxy child, and in a fortuitous combination of good weather and me just not being up to trying to otherwise entertain said poxy child, basically the adults spent the entire afternoon and evening outside in the vast, beautiful back garden while the kids alternated between watching TV, running around, and reading graphic novels. Normally I wouldn’t let them have the TV on, but…yeah. This time they got to, and so basically the Long Room was…

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insult to injury

You know how in the last blog post I said there was insult added to injury regarding the bookcase? It got worse. I thought, well, I can’t possibly finish anything if I don’t put the new bookcase together, so I got ready to do that and I opened the first box and…both the long sides were broken clean through, a foot from the end. I had noticed when we collected it at the store that one end of the box was floppy, but c’mon, it’s flat-pack. There’s weird packing in…

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getting there

I’m down to about a dozen Moving Guys boxes, which all need to be emptied out so the Moving Guys can come get them again. Actually, we have quite a few left over from the last move, so the goal is now to give them not only the ones they brought this time, but also all the others. Technically I only have to empty 3 more small boxes and we’ve got enough to send back. But dammit, this time I am Unpacking All The Boxes. I found the PERFECT SHELVES…

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Kitchen Illusion

So the thing about Irish houses is they mostly have laundry facilities in the kitchen. This is because even up until about five years ago, “all mod cons” — all modern conveniences, including, say, a washing machine (but not a tumble dryer; those are more than Modern Conveniences) — were stil fancy enough to be mentioned in house ads, and most of those Mod Cons ended up in the kitchen because it’s where the running water was. We spent the first 3 days in this house with our 6′ butcher…

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Home Sweet Home

The movers called at 10 and said they were running about half an hour late. They arrived and began work at half ten, worked with admirable and somewhat depressing speed (it took them SO LITTLE time to pack up a giant room full of book boxes that had taken me weeks to fill), threw the last things we hadn’t quite managed to get into boxes, into boxes, got everything including the trees and the barbeque into the truck, and hied themselves off to Drogheda where they got lost trying to…

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