Settling In

So, I've been here at Steve's house for about a week now. Technically it is also my home too now, but I'm still having trouble getting my head around that. My clothes are all hung and folded in my designated wardrobe, my makeup and toiletries are on the dressing table, a couple of my family photos are stuck to the fridge, my shoes are lined up by the door, I've even had one or two bits of post arrive addressed to me here. But it still feels very much like Steve's House. If all of my stuff was removed from it, the difference would not be noticeable.

Next week, Steve and his friend should be going in a van to get the rest of my stuff from the flat, like my bed, my sofa, my boxes of books and so on. I'm hoping that having my things here might make Steve's House feel more like My Home too, but at the moment there's nowhere to put any of it. Hopefully by next week we'll have cleared enough space at one end of the lounge so that we can stack up my stuff indoors where at least it won't get rained on... but to me there doesn't seem much difference between having my bits and pieces packed up in a load of boxes at one end of one room in the same house I sleep in, and having my bits and pieces packed up in a load of boxes a couple of hundred miles away. I want books on shelves and ornaments on windowsills, you know?

Sorry this post sounds so negative. I am happy, I am glad I've moved, and I am sure everything will get sorted out. I'm just also intensely tired and sore, which in turn is making me irritable. I'm at that point that most readers will probably identify with from their own long or short-term spells of illness: the bit where there's SO much that needs to be done, but you have to push and push and push yourself just to cover the minimum activities, and pushing yourself becomes an exhausting activity in itself. But there's so much that's important so you keep pushing just as long as you can stand on two legs and when you fall, you rest on the floor, as you are, trying to figure out what things you can usefully do while crawling... On top of which, the "minimum" here and now is very different to the minimum, say, a month ago at the flat. There are a number of things that have to be sorted out ASAP, some mountainous things which need to be chipped away at steadily if any sort of dent is to be made, and other things which aren't that urgent or daunting but are accumulating at an alarming rate.

Happily, one of the things which I have classified as "important" is an attempt at a social life. I went to see my friend Carie on Sunday, and I went to the knitting group at Web of Wool on Tuesday. I had a great time on both these occasions. I have finally finished giving myself blue fingers with Littlun's Jumper (just waiting for that to dry so that I can finish sewing it together) and I've made a start on my next project, which is this lovely pair of mitts, slightly modified for my stepdad. Everyone was very helpful as usual - especially Carie, for suggesting and discussing how to modify the particular pattern, and the ever-patient Anna (who owns Web of Wool) who rescued me when I had a brain-blank and gazed at my cast-on stitches for the mitt for several minutes before saying in a small voice "I've forgotten how to knit in the round." Not a laugh, not a snigger, just a gentle reminder and then my brain clicked in again and everything was fine.

Okay. Not a dazzling social calendar there. But it's still Getting Out and Seeing People and Doing Things, and in my own right rather than as Steve's hanger-on.

Also on the plus side, I am enjoying Cuddles On Tap, as well as copious provision of tea and chocolate. It's also really nice having all of my clothes in one place, rather than opening the wardrobe and realising that the top I want to wear is in a different county.

I'm sure things will get a lot more normal soon enough.