It's insane, how fast the time goes between posts.
A lot has happened this last while, and I'm not sure I have either the time or the inclination to write about it all in detail, but I'll sum up the gist of it, shall I?
We moved to Kensington on 26 March. On 25 March, while we packed for the house we were originally going to move to, I got a phone call about another house that was a) closer to our school of choice and b) in a nicer part of Kensington, generally closer to everything we would be interested in. We took a drive out to have a look and made the decision pretty much on the spot when we arrived.
At the end of March, our nanny left us in search of greener pastures, adding to the chaos resulting from being a large family having just moved house.
I then spent the remainder of Megan & Michael's school term driving back and forth between Kensington & Midrand on the daily school run, trying to fit in work and simultaneously applying to schools in the area for them to attend in the new school term.
It seemed I was embarking on an endless battle, with every single school I approached telling me that they were overfull and could not accommodate us. But I applied anyway and got the call on 12 April to say that both kids had been accepted at our school of choice!
So, we have a house, we have a school at less than half the fees we were paying and we've eliminated the impending toll fee crisis and halved the cost of our travel to work. That's a whole bundle of silver linings right there.
I'm sure that, once we start seeing the effects of these changes on our quality of life, my stress levels will begin to subside.
In the meantime, that big ol' black dog and I glare at one another from our respective corners of the room each day.
Last Wednesday, on my way to work, I needed to stop at Greenstone to pick up a couple of emergency supplies, half an hour before I was due at the office to meet with the director of a hotshot architectural firm. I stopped at an intersection, turned right and then indicated and started moving to the left lane & the exit to Greenstone, when some dude in an old bakkie came zooming past me in the emergency lane to the left. I flipped him off and watched as he sped away giving me the finger.
It was only after I had followed him to his destination, confronted and engaged him in a screaming match and then proceeded to kick the front of his car and his license plate fell off that I realised what had actually happened. I won't go into the details here, but suffice it to say that no charges were laid and I emerged from the incident a friend richer.
It could so easily have gone very differently, though, and the fact that I could reach such a level of frustration as to attack a random stranger on the street sets off a few alarm bells for me.
So I've had to make a few choices once again and will be going back to working half day instead of trying to manage everything. Naturally, this means taking a pay cut, but I've managed to renegotiate a deal with an old client of mine for some copywriting, which will put me more or less on the same income scale while allowing me the flexibility to care for my kids in the afternoons. I've also written down a tentative plan - more of an ideal scene, really - for getting things moving in a direction I can see myself being reasonably satisfied taking.
Theoretically, as things begin to improve as a result of the changes we've already made, I should be able to hire a domestic worker to help with the cleaning in a couple of months' time. I guess we'll see. At present, I'm finding it difficult to trust anything.
What have you all been up to?
