Here be Madness

So, we've sold our house. Which is 'A Good Thing' given the current climate. But we now have to actually move out of the damn thing which is 'A Bad Thing'. Chiefly because of ALL THE STUFF.

We have alot of stuff and most of it is in boxes, completely unsorted in the loft. We are going to rent a house for a while before buying and I am determined not to pay removal men to move boxes of crap from one house into another house and then another. I will banish the crap first I tell you!

But Lord it's hard. I'm very busy at work and more than a little stressed so coming home to fab evening spent sorting through boxes containing such delights as rock-hard play-dough and a 20-year-old ceramic pig collection (don't ask) doesn't rock my world.

Unfortunately I just have to keep my head down, put one foot in front of the other and get through the next 8 months or so.

Why are you moving I hear you ask? Because of schools I reply. Yes, we are those people. We are moving because of schools.

Fuck - just writing that sentence has depressed me.

But it has to be done. We always knew we might need to and so we're just going to do it. We're not moving to get into some top-notch grammar school or anything. We're just aiming for a good comprehensive which seems to share our values. The alternative is to stay where we are, get allocated a tough, failing school and send Thing 1 there until we can get him into the reasonable local high school.

But I can' t do it. I can't spend a summer worrying about which school he will start at. Whether he'll be ok in the really tough school we'll almost certainly get allocated. Whether he'll cope well with moving schools at some point in the future.

I just can't.

The move to high school is tough enough without adding all that into the mix so we're moving to make sure we get something we're happy with. And then we can get on with the rest of our lives which will be such a HUGE relief I can't tell you.

And actually, moving will be good I think - for all that I'm down about the process. We can enjoy the hunt for our next home knowing that it will be somewhere we're going to stay.

It may also work out well in that we can probably get more for our money where we're going so we don't have to have such a big mortgage. That would go a long way to reducing my stress levels for several reasons chief of which is the insecurity of my husband's job coupled with his long term depression.

Living with a depressed partner is a whole other post that I don't have the energy for right now.

I have to say that I'm lucky in that my husband usually suffers fairly mildly and has worked pretty constantly for the last eight years. However, he has had long periods of time on sick leave in the past and I'm always worried that the next down episode he experiences will The One. The One where he just stops getting up, ever, and sleeps for days at a time. The One where his boss eventually fires him.

And moving has triggered a set of behaviours that have sounded alarm bells both our brains.

It spoils the good life we have now, this background worry. We've had some shit times in the past, chiefly when our first child was a baby and I felt like a single parent because his depression made him physically present - and therefore in need of food and clean clothes, but emotionally insular and absent. This caused me to feel a huge amount of resentment and we both withdrew from each other. The following years were equally tough with another baby and the death of both my parents.

But the recent past has been so much better. We're happier now than we've been for a long time. We've re-connected and become a team again and it feels so much better. Which is why the spectre of that black dog returning is so scary.

I think I will just keep my head down and keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's what I do. It's worked up till now.

But any good karma you could throw my way? That would be very welcome.