We have stacked our bed frame in the garage. The garage is like a giantastic game of tetris and John has played a winning game.  It’s like a vacuum inside. All the air has been displaced by furniture. You can’t breathe if you go in there – there’s no oxygen. It’s like space. So I hope next door’s cat got out before John slammed the door down. Or we’ll go in there and find it stuck to the ceiling like a fly trapped on flypaper.

But the bed – we are sleeping our final night, the final night of 2009, on a mattress on the floor of our bedroom. This creates a crazy visual disturbance for my brain because I’m expecting to swing my legs over the edge and hop down (shuttup I’m short) but now I’m only 3 inches from the floor.  The first time I did this I fell backwards with head spin. It’s cheaper than getting drunk I guess. Not that that has stopped me.

So this is our last night in the house. The place where I’ve lived since I was 17. Though back then it was just my dad and me. I’ve lived almost half my life here and it feels more than a little weird to be leaving. It holds a lot of memories – and still a lot of crap – entombed now in the loft until we have a new address to send it to.  In memorium,  I’m trying to aggragate my top memories of living here:

1. Bringing Lula home from the hospital. (Ahhhh it’s a baby – WTF do we do with it).
2. John moving in (and moving into the study where he lived 24/7 trying to finish his Masters dissertation).
3. That Christmas with all sets of parents (yeah, that was a good idea.)
4. That crazy tenant with the porn obsession who never left his room (In case you happen to read this we keep being sent your porn brochures – is that what they’re called?  – please could you let them know your change of address? They have entertained us – especially the last one with the b&w pictures of mannacled 50 year old grandmothers from Newcastle showcasing the Kama Sutra but we’re not sure the new tennants will like).
5. That other crazy tenant who had a psychotic episode in the living room (If you’re reading this, and yes, you know who you are, you’re CRAZY. I only didn’t tell you at the time because I didn’t have a lock on my bedroom door).
6. The time Lula fell down the stairs (crash bang wallop).
7. The time I fell off a chair on top of Lula (sorry sorry sorry).
8. The residents association meetings (yeah, not really).
9. The time John told me he was ‘just hot’ and one thing led to another and we ended up with a baby and married and packing up a house. Life’s funny huh?

Surprisingly I have no top memories of the last 6 months, probably because it’s been hellish. Want some advice? Think long and hard before deciding to pack up your lives. Actually don’t think. Because if you think about it, you won’t do it. Just do it. Rich keeps telling us that it’ll all be worth it like he’s some poster child for L’Oreal.

In the hope that he’s right and it will be worth it, we just toasted the new year with champagne in the last of our unpacked tea cups. We toasted to  2010 – a year of ‘outrageous potential’ (quoting John’s wedding vow).  Here’s to the new year. Hope yours is as exciting as ours.