Hi.

It’s… ah… been a while, yeah?

My last entry on this thing was just five months before COVID decided to make the world burn. In that time I managed to get myself overseas (Europe, thank you very much) for the last time for the foreseeable future and also adopted a new kitten.

And yeah… then COVID happened.

I managed to get through the first few waves before finally contracting the virus in December of 2021. After two years of being house-bound with rolling lockdowns, including the last one which was 111 days straight, I just wanted to go OUT and see a film. I took all the precautions but it was no use. I caught it. Was West Side Story worth the ‘Rona? Not as much as I had hoped.

Sadly 2022 started off as crappy as 2021 ended. The ceiling of the townhouse we were renting fell in due to a very bad leak. We then had an inside water feature every time it rained for the next three. fucking. months. The owners took their sweet time in getting onto their insurance about it, who in turn decided that, no, they weren’t going to do anything about it either and cancelled the job. Of course, it took weeks of us calling to find out just what was going on whilst dodging buckets in our stairwell.

And, after all of that, the owners then decided they’d had enough and wanted to sell. It was such a kick in the teeth after struggling to ensure rent and bills were paid during a time where the Greybeard’s job dropped his hours and then dropped him altogether because of the covid closures. I had to spend months begging for my bosses to take him on again while trying to maintain everything for a while, including my sanity.

I hate renting. The lack of control over my own life and belongings and the constant feeling that there’s no permanence to anything is a significant cause of depression. We are caught in the rental trap with no way out unless we have a huge windfall of money somehow – or ya girl starts an Only Fans page. And I tell you what… the Only Fans thing is becoming more and more tempting as time progresses. The Greybeard and I had tried to buy a place last year and were set to go but, yet again, bad luck befell and we had to step away from that dream. Now of course the housing market has exploded and I just cannot afford to buy house anymore. Not when the median price in my area alone has already hit $615K.

So we began the process of looking for a new rental property – and faced knock-back after knock-back. We didn’t know why. We had good references and stellar rental history. I could only put it down to the cats being an issue or the Greybeard’s finances not looking as healthy as mine, regardless of the fact that he is the one who pays the rent. We got there eventually but it was a slightly scary rush to the finish line.

So now we’re a lovely little house that is sort of in the middle of our suburb. It’s cozy and has a nice big yard that the cats love. It’s the sort of house I would like to buy one day.

Of course, other stuff has happened around the moving house shenanigans but I might leave that for another post.

I am still trying to figure out what to do with this little corner of the interwebs that I have had for so long. I’ve taken up reading again and have been going mental buying books. Perhaps I might change it to a book review thing. We’ll see. I still need to post pictures of all my colouring stuff as well.

Ugh.

Until next time…