For a long while I have lusted after one of these:

I love it. It is pretty, it comes in a range of lovely colours but this is my fave. It is limey green, green makes me happy and peaceful and serene. The thing about it is, it’s not got the most powerful motor. It’s a bit of a baby motor, if truth be told. Although I love it and would love someone to be willing to spend that amount of money on buying one for me (by that amount I mean lots of dollars by the by), I wondered if there were not something better out there.

It turns out that in Australia we get a bit of a raw deal actually. There are a shit ton of fabulous stand mixers made by Kitchenaid that have tougher motors and better features. The artisan (above) has plastic dough hook and paddle, it is a tilt arm mixer and the motor is a touch pathetic (for the price). I’m a little bit torn. The artisan comes in an array of pretty colours that make me go “oooooooh shiny!” but I just feel they lack substance.

This, does not lack substance:

This is the Professional 600 series. It has a much bigger motor and is a bowl lift mixer, which I have read would be better for my arthritis (grasping at straws much?). It has a stainless steel dough hook and paddle.  It does not come in the same array of pretty enamels but I like the one pictured here or there is a super glossy black or slightly matte black that are both very appealing.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky. You cannot buy this in Australia. You cannot buy it in the UK. You can only buy this baby in the US, with their 110v power. Cue long and very confusing discussions and research of stepdown voltage converters (which cost eleventy seven billion dollars) and may or may not address the issue of frequency as well, which may or may not burn out the motor if it is not addressed correctly.

The problem is that now I have want. Very much want.

I also have such a thing as a dangerously irresponsible and sweetly indulgent husband. It is not often that I get true want. Just occasionally I become so obsessed with an object that I think about it night and day and want, want, want! Truthfully I usually worry about buying myself a new mascara or replacements for my holey undies.

Beefcake has told me to buy it when we get paid. I have told him no, we should save and maybe he could get it for my birthday.

The thing is, it’s a big investment for something that may ultimately not work properly ever or may end up needing a new motor to make it work here but………want?

I have written three or four beginnings to this post and deleted them.

I do not have my creative flow. My blogging mojo is absent.

I shall put a brave face on it, though and bravely push on with a bullet pointy type post that requires very little of my brain to be functional.

To make it interesting, let us divide the bullet points into two categories. “Awesome things that are great and happy and light up my life or are just funny” and “Whingey things that I could spare you but will not because I am selfish like that”

Awesome things that are great and happy and light up my life or are just funny:

• Grub has decided to cut me some small slack. She has cut down her overnight breastfeeding to between 0 and 3 feeds overnight – yes you read that correctly, she had her first ever night without a feed during the night – and she has agreed to sometimes sleep for several hours in her own bed. I will admit that this is a very new trend -  she has only done it twice – but I declare it to be the new norm. I will shortly be  the proud owner of one of those modern, new-fangled sleeping-through-the-night-and-putting-themselves-to-sleep children I have heard about. I can feel it in my waters.
• Spring has sprung. There is sunshine, there are butterflies, there are flowers (unfortunately with sniffle-making pollen to make my eyes water but let us not dwell on that). I feel as though a great grey shroud has been lifted from my person. Sunshine makes me happy.
• Beefcake has been working very hard this month, doing a bunch of very long days in order to haul some projects at work towards their deadlines. This may sound like it is not such an awesome thing but what it does mean is that the slight overspend that we had with the original kitchen renovation, which has been hanging over each month and making me feel stressed and depressed, will be taken care of. We will be back in fine shape. It hasn’t really been a big deal but it would be nice to have a month where I do not have to plan our spending down to the very cent. It will be lovely to be able to purchase one or two things I have been putting off for myself because they were not 100% strictly speaking necessary. I feel much relieved.
• The few extra dollars we might have will mean that I can perhaps paint the bathroom or re-tile the shower recess or re-enamel the very old bath. A bath should not have a rough abrasive surface. It will only be a minor bathroom refresh as opposed to a proper bathroom renovation as we will one day demolish this bathroom and it would be wasteful to replace it now but I am sure I can get it looking quite nice. I should show you what it looks like now – remind me to do that.
• Beefcake and I bought a rare and much appreciated coffee to get us through playgroup on Friday morning. In the cafe where we purchased our take-away beverages, there was a family (two older parents and an adult son) eating fish and chips. It was nine thirty in the morning. We thought maybe they were tourists, they had the look of being not quite local about them. We thought perhaps they had just arrived and it was dinner time where they come from, or maybe fish and chips is a breakfast food in their country. I don’t know but I thought it was a bit odd. Would you go the deep fried seafood and chips for brekkie?
• It is Poss’ birthday in less than two weeks and she has requested a shopping spree to redecorate her room with nice things. New bedding and cushions and such. Beefcake is completely puzzled that someone would want this as a birthday gift but I am excited  because it will actually be quite a fun thing to do. She has already chosen a new quilt cover and is planning a colour scheme she wants to work on – cute! I shouldn’t say that, she’s going to be eleven, that’s practically a teenager.
• Also on the topic of Poss’ burgeoning adolescence. The other day she was excitedly telling me about a school project when, to my delight, she threw in the tweeny term “totally random”. I have been unable to resist taunting her. She hates me. What fun.

Whingey things that I could spare you but will not because I am selfish like that:

• My body is an unpredictable and vile hell-monster with it’s own independent and beastly identity. I was feeling fab on Friday and went to the park with the small kids and the friend that used to come to playgroup (you remember) and her two girls. I had a spring in my step. It was great. I felt as though things were on the up and up. As some sort of cosmic punishment for feeling good (yes, I am melodramatic) I dislocated my wrist when I picked Grub up off of the slide. No odd movements or anything. Just picked her up. I couldn’t bear to tell my friend. I feel like a hyperchondriac so I grabbed my wrist and we walked home – lucky the park is around two minutes away. My wirst was very swollen and purple that night but is beginning to feel better now. My pelvis has arced up again quite badly. I am on a neverending merry-go-round of crap.
• Beefcake is working insane amounts. It will not stop this week. He will not be being paid extra for anything he does now either and he is mostly picking up the slack for other, slackarse people. Very frustating but at the same time I must remember that he is here, at home with us and we are actually extremely luck – so shut up Ali.
• I have been comfort eating. It is a pain/depression thing. I am usually pretty good but I have dropped the ball with my eating and I feel quite grumpy with myself. It is made worse by the fact that I am still carrying the vast majority of my baby weight from Grub and I can not exercise at all really. I feel really guilty about it and sometimes that seems to actually make it worse. It is a whole self-perpetuating cycle of self-loathing. I need to take control of it but some days having to be really careful about what I eat seems like a step too far. Like it will just be the thing to push me over the edge. I need to get a grip.
• Also, my foot hurts.

There you have it people. You’ree lucky I don’t blog more often really, aren’t you?

So, um, we agreed on a price with the vendors.

The house is ours.

This is fantastic, fantastic news except that the banks are all very brow furrowy and head shakey when it comes to considering Beefcake’s foreign income.

We are pushing ahead regardless. We have  a three week finance clause in our contract. We are convinced that if we wish hard enough our mortgage broker will be able to pull it off. The reality is that he may be able to pull it off with a few tweaks here and there that will leave us utterly poverty stricken for the next 35 years.

I’m sure it will work out, right?

Yes.

Look.

A baby.

A baby who can now walk quite well by the way. She’ll be ten months old next week and she is scarily mobile. Also falls over a lot. She got her last central incisor on Easter Sunday. She now has six toothy teeth. And a cute topknot tuft of hair at her crown. Such a big girl. Beefcake tells me several times a day that she is actually a toddler now but he is a moron. She is a baby.

At least, no matter what happens with the house, we have her*.

*And the others of course, I wasn’t meaning to discount them but you know, the photo is of her – and mmmmmm babies.

Still no word on the house.

I am trying to remain calm.

The agent called again last night to say that we would definitely have an answer tonight. I can’t help but wonder what is happening at their end of things. Do they have another offer on the table? Are they negotiating with someone else to try and better our offer or the terms of the contract? If they are doing that, why not play us off against each other? I mean, not that we have any more money to offer them but still. We could negotiate on terms of the contract. I just can’t stand the fact that we have no power in this situation. No control.

To top it off, the mortgage broker informed us yesterday that there has been a change (as of this week) to lending conditions, which means we could not access the loan we were going to get. Cue scrambling about trying to gather more money together so we can still possibly buy this house.

We managed to do it.

Just.

Although we won’t be making any of the changes we had planned for soon after we moved in, if everything goes well and the wind blows in the right direction and the planets align, we will be homeowners again. Kind of. In that the bank will mostly own it but, you know.

I have things crossed left right. I can’t bear to think about not getting it.

Can.

Not.

When we first moved into this house I was heavily pregnant with Grub. We were arriving home from a stint living in London and we just needed to find a rental that could be home – quickly. I was planning to (and did) have a homebirth so I needed it to feel right. We were lucky to find this place and we have enjoyed living here.

It was always the plan that we would wait a year or so and then buy a house again. A year has drifted by now and we are not ready. We have been a little free with the money that we should have been saving. We have kind of taken a break from the relentless grind of being careful and counting every cent. We definitely could have been a lot smarter but I think that we needed to do this before diving back into the mortgage thing again.

We have just gotten our act together and are taking the saving thing seriously when, wouldn’t you know it?

The landlord wants his house back.

He called this afternoon to say that he has decided to move back in himself and do some renovations ready to sell it. He had been planning to demolish and build a couple of cheap and nasty numbers to make a quick buck but he has decided against it.

He was very nice and apologetic but we now have two months to be out.

This is at least a decent amount of time.

I am anxiety.

I am distress.

I am fine with a bit of a change. I was the instigator behind the “let’’s up and move the whole family to the UK” thing. My feet are as itchy as the next person. – itchier.

I just would like to do it on my own terms.

My terms are as follows:

• That it happen in 6 to 8 months time.
• That we have won some money in the lottery, which I never remember to buy a ticket in.
• That we will find the house of our dreams and nobody else will be interested and we will be able to buy it for next to nothing.
• The dream house will be located in ideal position close to Rhubarb’s school in a nice, tree-lined street.

What do you think? Reasonable, yes?

Here is the reality of what will happen:

• Find a cheap rental that will accept a family with four children and a dog.
• Find that’s impossible and locate somewhere for the dog to board and cram children into two bedroom unit.
• Save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save, save.
• Buy ordinary house in bad location for the absolute maximum we can afford.
• Spend rest of life ferrying children to and from school.

I am unhappiness.

Well, I did it. I bought the handbag of my dreams. In my defense, the internets insisted that I do it. I had to purchase it from the designer in the end. I am waiting for it to arrive. Every time I think about it I feel a little glow of pleasure flush through me. I feel a little bit guilty and also, a little bit not. I usually  have an aversion to spending large amounts of money on myself. This handbag cost more than my wedding dress when I married Beefcake. We didn’t really do a traditional white meringue and matching bridesmaids number.This bag though, it is too beautiful. I was having dreams about it. It is so out of character for me to buy something like this and yet I am okay with it. It helps that Beefcake is okay with it, in fact, he actively encouraged me to splurge.

It is true, I have not been in the best of moods of late. I have been suffering a lot with my pelvis. Chronic pain is very hard. It makes me grumpy. It makes me grumpy that the children think that I am lazy and that they roll their eyes when they are asked to lift or carry something for me. That they moan when they are asked to help out. Then I feel guilty because they are children. They have a right to expect a normal functional mother. I don’t expect them to see that every step that I take hurts, that to stand and cook their meals and to bend to lift a basket full of their washing causes me to wince with the pain. They are just children, egocentric and grouchy little pixies, they are.

So Beefcake knows that I am buying myself a little bit of pain relief, a little bit of happy indulgence. He knows I will treasure it. I don’t feel that guilty about the bag but I do feel guilty about making him feel he has to keep me happy. I don’t want to be the sadsack that he is trying to keep on an even keel. He said to me today that he remembers this time from when Pudding was small. He tells me it was very bad, I was in lots of pain then too but I did get  better over time. I don’t remember being pain-free. My brain is not cooperative all of the time. He tells me I will get there again and in the meantime we can all manage. I wonder why he is so nice to me. It must be a bit of a bore to have a foul-tempered invalid for a wife.

I suppose he must love me a bit.

Today was just a whole pile of arse. Allow me to explain.

This month, my ever so nerdy and heroically hard-working Beefcake, earned a little bit of extra cash doing overtime. This was fortuitous as our two couches had both died in the last week or two. I don’t mean they were getting a bit old and scuzzy. Seams had come apart left, right and centre. The zips that held the cushion covers on had all broken, and, to top it off, Pudding had a little accident when he fell asleep one afternoon on the couch. As hard as I tried, I COULD NOT GET THE SMELL OUT!!!

So, on Sunday, we did the rounds of the furniture stores and found some seriously good options. We decided on leather for wipeability because, apart from the accidents, the children seem to make frequent small deposits of crapulence and scuzz. We were trying to decide between two options that were reasonably priced but thought we would check one last store……

…and there it was.

I spotted it as soon as I walked in. Angels sang. It was the perfect couch. Not just the perfect couch but two ONE OF A KIND couches and a beautiful oversized armchair, which would be mine. The perfect couches (and armchair) also happened to be less than half price, way better than everything else we had looked at and available to be delivered to us NOW!! I have to say, it was quite the exciting time.

We organised for the ONE OF A KIND suite to be delivered Wednesday as that was what suited us. We paid. We went home and measured. We planned, we giggled with glee and expectation.

This morning they called to say that our purchase would be with us between 10 an 12 . We cleared out the room, vaccumed, mopped, dusted, tidied the whole house and waited anxiously.

At 12:05 we got the call. They are very sorry, the perfect ONE OF A KIND couches (and armchair) were accidentally DOUBLE SOLD. They were delivered to someone else already. They are gone.

Needless to say, we went through a range of emotions. Most notably feeling regally pissed off.

They were prepared to offer us:

1. A refund.
2. A replacement from their store, which they would discount to a similar level.
3. The same couches, at the same price, ordered from fucking Timbuktu or something because if we chose this option, we would recieve them in March. March people.

So obviously we didn’t choose option 3. At first we just asked for our money back, but you know what, if we get our money refunded to our account (cos we paid with card) it will take time for our bank to process that. Our bank has been known to take up to a week in some cases. If we don’t order something soon, we’ll never have it before christmas. We had already seen some things that were sold out until after christmas.

We called back. The long and the short is we went to their store and, while everything there made me gag, turns out they had another ONE OF A KIND perfect couch. Two in fact. In a different leather and a different colour. That we liked. Both of us.

They also gave it to us for far less than we had originally paid and presented us with a refund cheque.

Here’s the truly awful part though. NO ARMCHAIR. I’m gutted. I’ve been dreaming of my armchair for days now. We got an ottoman instead but it’s not the same.

Beefcake says I can buy another armchair with all the money we got back from them. I’ll be trying to pull the mismatched couches and armchair look. I’m not sure about that. What if I fail to pull it off??

I’m kind of excited. We got to take the ottoman home with us. The rest will be delivered tomorrow.

I’m checking out armchairs.

The thing is, all this crap has really taken the gloss of the purchase for me. I mean, Beefcake and I went and found furniture we BOTH liked and we bought it. I got to spend money. Money we don’t normally have to spend.

It was meant to be an extra-special foray into consumerism. A chance to indulge my materialistic side.

Those arsehats ruined it. Now I’ll always have the almost perfect extra specially cheap couch, instead of the ONE OF A KIND perfect couch which was a super-indulgent once in a lifetime (ok realistically maybe decade??) purchase.

Arsehats.

To top it off, Pudding became ill this afternoon and we spent so much time stuffing around with furniture today that Beefcake will be working all night.

(I know, this is a really self-indulgent, shallow post, oh well)

Edited to add: Beefcake just entered the room and said “Hmmm, I wonder what this feels like on a naked arse”, pulled his pants down at the back and bounced playfully on the ottoman a coupla times. I just stared in jaw-dropped, open mouthed horror. Eewwww.