Moving In Fun!

 

Maybe Loch Ness' little relative?

 

 

 

It’s been a while since my last installment but it was for a good reason. Everything finally came together for the rental on the semi detached house and we have been very busy getting things up and running. You would think that you just rent the place and move your stuff in, but it is not that simple here. First of all, even though we signed the contract for the first and the landlord assured us all was done, things were not finished. We had two scheduled deliveries of furniture and appliances for a date way beyond the date of the promised completion. In fact, the date we scheduled was way past the initial promised date because the delivery people were booked for all the days before it. So we really didn’t have much choice unless we wanted to get back in line and spend more time in the B&B. By the time we discovered that the house wasn’t ready it was too late to rebook the delivery anyway. It had to be done that day, even though the carpeting installation was not complete. In fact, it was barely started. Landlord’s response was,  “they said that they would be finished, so it is their fault. Go ahead and bring the furniture in and they will have to deal with it.”      So we did just that. Next morning the workers showed up to find our stuff in their way and complained. Now it came back to us that we had furniture everywhere and it would really slow things down. It was almost laughable.  It all turned out fine.We met the workers the next day and they were very pleasant. Once the carpeting was in, it took Susi and I half a day to get all the furniture in place and we were able to spend our first night in our home.

 

From that point on, it was almost fun arranging things, cleaning up from the construction and ordering things from Amazon. Almost every day we get a delivery of things we discover that we need or want. Combine that with ordering Christmas gifts and things we can’t find locally, it has been very busy. Interestingly enough, even though it is all ordered through Amazon, the orders can be delivered by several different services. I don’t think we have had one actual Amazon delivery truck come to our house. Things are coming together nicely as far as the house is concerned.

 

Flynn was not excited about staying in b&b and has settled in nicely here in the house. He has lots of places to explore and approve. Unfortunately, he brought uninvited guests with him from the B&B in the form of fleas. We knew he had found them in the rooms at our former residence, but had gotten the cream that was supposed to get rid of them. It did execute most of them, but he still seems to be trying to scrape them off by scratching. We have another week to go before we can try another application of the cream. It can only be applied every 4 weeks. If that doesn’t work, we will take him to the vet for a shot. Don’t let him know about that as he absolutely hates going to the vets.

 

As for other things pertaining to becoming real settlers here, I was thinking last night of a way to describe our progress and came up with the analogy of a cyclone of bricks. Everything is needed to be done asap, but progress is moving at the speed of that brick tornado. If you don’t get it done in a timely manner, that slow moving menace could leave some ugly bruises. Ok, that is my paranoia speaking. I’m sure many others have gone through this process without being bonked on the head. 

 

We have made progress. We have applied for and have gotten approved for our Senior Freedom Passes. It allows us to use most public transportation free of charge. It has other benefits as well but I don’t have all the information on that yet.

 

 It looks like we have also been approved for an online bank account and are just waiting for the card to come in the mail. Once we have the account number we can transfer some money into it. The significance of that is it will allow us to set up accounts to pay the council tax, broadband account and utilities. Sure, that doesn’t sound like lots of fun for those of us who have been volunteers and didn’t have to pay for most of that, but it sure is nice to be able to have a reliable source of those utilities without having to put in 20-32 hours to get them. 

 

I will cut this short as I see I have used up a reasonable number of vowels and consonants and should stop before most readers stop. I just want to say that even with the slow pace of our progress we are so happy to be here. The people, the scenery and the calm lifestyle are just fantastic. We have been in the house a little over a week and have already gotten a Christmas card from our next door neighbors.