View from my window

My week was very boring this week because I kept having to come home and pack; and also frequently wail, 'Whyyyy do I have so much STUFF?'

Then, yesterday, a beautiful sunny windless hot day, I continued to pack until 3.30pm when a truck and two men arrived and helped me shift. While I am very grateful to my Dad for the five times he has travelled over the hill with a trailer, parked in awkward places, and carried my things up and down stairs, from now on, I am always gettings movers. It took less than an hour from when they arrived at my Newtown/Berhampore house until they were closing up the truck and I was paying the money at the Aro Valley house. They didn't have to share the carrying of anything, unlike Dad and I: 'Okay, stop! I need a rest for a minute!' (that's me, halfway up or down a flight of stairs, trying to help carry a bed). One guy carried my BED on his SHOULDER. And then my bookcase! Although he did say, 'What kind of wood is this? It's really heavy.'

Anyway, all the packing and lugging of boxes (I did still help, I was just so happy not to have to carry really heavy things) was worth it because I love my new room. It has the best bay window ever (with cute latticework on the inside) and a view of trees and old houses. It also has a FIREPLACE. It's black with red tiles, but it currently has a whole lot of boxes in front of it, so I will take a photo when it's all pretty and I have things arranged on the mantlepiece.

The house itself is a classic old Aro Valley house, so it's going to be cold in the winter. But I like it, old houses are always so much more interesting than shiny new ones. There's a big white hydrangea bush right outside the front door, and one of the flatmates has put little vases of hydrangeas throughout the house. This is very fortuitous, because I decided the other week hydrangeas were one of my favourite flowers. Remember this?

This morning, while I was getting milk out of the fridge for my cup of tea, I looked up and saw this! A skylight! Skylights remind me of Room, a very good but very disturbing book.

Then, I had breakfast sitting out in the little back courtyard. Dream! The people next door have a lovely terraced garden behind their house which ends with beehives up the very top. I'd never thought about whether people could keep bees in what is essentially the central city. It doesn't feel like the city though, we're down the end of a dead end street, surrounded by trees and hills. Yet Aro Video, Aro Cafe, Arobake and all those other good Aro things are less than five minutes walk away. I love Wellington.

Anyway, now I'd better keep unpacking (I am determined not to end up with boxes still sitting around in my room three months after moving in, which is what happened last time) and then go do some cleaning at the old house. Oh moving, I hate you.