I have moved house. Weeks ago actually, but i’m back in a ‘no internet at home’ stage, and loving it.
I am (gasp!) back in suburbia. No more of the above in my everyday life, the property is up for sale. And guess what? I’m loving it. I’m loving having neverending power, hot water on tap, 24/7 refrigeration, ample space and I think I could hug my automatic washing machine. I’ve never eaten so well in my life, after being limited in fresh food for over a year i’ve been gorging myself at every opportunity. Particularly on vegies and dairy. Stuff the ability to keep ice-cream, i’ve been attacking the cheese cabinet at the shops. I currently have cheddar (normal and vintage), feta, marscapone, mozzarella, parmesan…………..and lots of pastry. Oh how i’ve missed pastry. Especially with cheese. But even with this gorging i’ve actually lost a kilo, seeing as I can WALK places (I had to check the scales this morning, I was scared of the results after all the stuffing of my face). Like, every place I need to go, virtually. The quad pram is back out and in all it’s attention-attracting glory, but I don’t mind any more. Because if living like a hermit for the last year has taught me anything, it’s that I LIKE human contact. I used to think we could take off to any secluded place and be happy with each others company because we’ve never been particularly social, but I was proven completely wrong.
We used to think that having an acreage would give us freedom, and in part it did-no-one could see or hear us. We could live in a non-council approved house and build mulch pits and do lots of other things authority would have a heart attack about. But the things we had to give up proved far more important in the end. Spontaneity has always been a big part of who we are, and living so far from anything and having animals that no-one would want to travel so far to look after wrecked that. There was definitely no getting up one morning and deciding it was time for a three week road trip. And after spending so much time in the car on a regular basis I was auto-phobic anyway. If we buy a property again it will be a far tamer, and therefore far more manageable one.
So for now i’m fully embracing suburbia and all it’s benefits (and ignoring the negatives, like the stupid barking dogs). I’ve given up planning the future because we can’t, we’re too erratic. For now we can be suburban ferals, with a backyard full of pots and a vegie garden in the front, kids making bike jumps when they ‘should’ be in school, and touring around the dumpsters of the industrial estates for freebies. And ‘for now’ is seeming pretty damn good.
