It is after school and I have the 3 year old with me. I am moving boxes from my car to the house and unpacking. The husband is doing yet another run in the van.

Our new landlady decided to give us a surprise visit with her 3 children. The dog greeted her with a pretend vicious dog bark and the proceeded to lick her. All the while I’m thinking in my head ‘please don’t do that hideous crotch sniffing thing’ which thankfully she didn’t.

She extended her hand and I had to shake with my sweaty palm. How utterly embarrassing.

She was very nice, she told me where everything was and gave me a lesson in working the boiler. She even brought me flowers … from Booths no less. Posh supermarket flowers.

We went to the kitchen and looked out at the yard. She told me about the bins and how she’d never felt the need for a bottle wheelie bin like the neighbours … “We’re not big drinkers, we never felt the need”. It was one of those moments … she made a statement but then looked to me for an answer … silence. The tumbleweed rolled through the kitchen and I did a sort of false laugh and said “No, neither are we” then more false laughing.

As she was leaving one of her children mentioned the word Disney … I was off … wittering away like a crazy woman about this here blogging malarkey. Out of nervousness more than anything and because the dog was following us round, probably hoping for some crotch sniffing and my 3 year old was teaching her children to launch themselves out of trees.

As I sit here now I am wonder if she has gone home and googled me … and read this and this.

I have a large glass of wine by my side and a great sense of relief that this weekend is over.  After 3 days of moving, today we had the 4 year old’s party (she is 5 on Wednesday) at the church hall.  It was a great party and Fairy Ellie kept control of 30 kids for the duration … even some boys who didn’t want sprinkling with fairy dust.

Teacher Friend Mother of 3 brought a lasagne round after the party.  The kids played and we ate.  As they left I announced it was bedtime, school tomorrow, what a lovely day we’ve had, hasn’t it been great? blah blah blah.  Clearly they though differently and hell arrived on the last train to willyoufeckingstopwhining. Realising they were incredibly tired and had consumed more sugar than they normally would in a month I ushered them into the bath which is when they stepped it up a gear and decided the next stop was bed, no story.

They took it in turns to make our new neighbours believe that we beat our children with sticks.  Sticks with rusty nails protruding out of the end of them.  We now live in a terrace so are surrounded by people, people who were enjoying the evening sunshine in the tranquillity of their gardens.  The silence was broken by the 4 year old screaming ‘I HATE YOU, THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE’ 30 or so times next to an open window.  The 3 year old was the back up singer who managed to cry ‘I WANT A BISCUIT, I WANT LULU, I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED’ out of the other window.

Note to self: when banishing children to bedrooms close all windows and gag children.

When the 4 year old had decided she would come and apologise for being an ungrateful little shit, all I heard was more screaming and shouting.  When I got upstairs to her room to unleash a tirade of motherly advice it became apparent that her new bedroom door has a faulty handle and she was in fact locked in her room and therefore now distressed and not actually continuing her tantrum.

Note to self : Point out door problem to husband so that daughter isn’t further traumatised by bedroom being turned into a cell with self locking door.

On our first night in the house the dog decided to puke on the living room carpet … a cream carpet.  She is now banished at night to rooms with tiled flooring for ease of puke removal.

Don’t even get me started on Virgin on Demand.   We spent last week catching up with 3 episodes of ‘The Take’ on Sky 1 only to find we can’t watch the final episode on Wednesday because we don’t have that channel.  Look at what we could have won.  Children?  They can watch CBeebies and only CBeebies.  No Sportacus for the 3 year old.  It’s OK thought because we have every sport channel going and several channels dedicated to freeview porn that they can watch at their leisure.

To end on a good note, the dishwasher is more than wonderful, I had a leisurely Sunday soak this morning in our tall person bath, after 3 years I have finally got a bookshelf which accommodates all of our books, our friends and family have been outstanding with their help, we have tall ceilings and HOWJ windows and I think I love this house more than pear cider.

I have taken some pictures which will have to wait until I find the camera charger … hmm could be a while.

In next weeks blogging …

I can’t decide … Do I like the chandelier or not?

When the landlady visited … and I held out a sweaty hand … and told her we weren’t big drinkers so it was OK that we don’t have a bottle bin

I have an itch in the middle of my head.  Have I got late onset hayfever or am I allergic to the house?

My big little girl who hates me is 5!

We ordered the almost 5 year old’s birthday present yesterday, a trampoline. In the notes section of checkout I asked for it to be delivered to our new house the day after we move in, which is a few days before her birthday. The company took no notice of my request, which I also emailed to them and tried to deliver the MASSIVE box to the new, empty house today, 10 days early. The pillocks. I got a call at work and had to direct them to the house we are in now where the husband was not best pleased and might have sworn a bit delighted to have to clear a space in our overflowing garage. He had to do a run to the tip to make room, which meant he had to text me to ask if it was OK to get rid of the pushchair, which we fondly refer to as Geoff which isn’t at all strange. I said of course we could, we hadn’t used it in over 18 months and it has a faulty brake. I then spent all afternoon feeling great sadness. A sense of loss of everything baby that we once had.

So,  I shall grieve for Geoff too.

RIP Sky+ and Geoff.

Of course as one door shuts another opens so I am still excited to the point of exhaustion at the prospect of a dishwasher for the first time in three years.

Then there’s the dog – When we moved to this house we had to tell a multicoloured whopper white lie that we had no pets. We have a huge lolloping seven year old chocolate Labrador, called Peanut.  I like to tell people that the teenager named her but in fact it was all my doing.  My Dad is so embarrassed when he walks her he refuses to shout her name.  Although she moults 364 days a year she’s a good dog and well trained. Our landlady never visits so we’ve been fine. This is probably the moment that I find out that somehow my landlady reads the blog and we get evicted 10 days before we move.

Anyway, we thought she’d have to be banished when we moved into the new house, it’s another rental but the owners are more involved and have known the neighbours for 12 years. We had arranged for her to go on a holiday to Auntie K’s, for a year, but as the date has got closer we have all started to get upset about the dog’s extended holiday even though she licks her own arse and her breath stinks. The husband has spoken to the landlord who has said that she can come too, adding that ‘She’d better be careful on the tiled floor, it’s a bit slippy, wouldn’t want her to hurt her hips’.

Hooray for the kind landlord. and his dishwasher.

Of course Sky+ never lost it’s appeal.  I can only imagine that filling and emptying a dishwasher will.