Doing the Filing, or, The Downside of Being an Adult

Thank you to everyone who texted, emailed and left messages after my bike accident. I’m very touched. And I’m also very pleased to hear that Junior Sis reads my blog – hello! (Junior Bro is not, of course, married to Junior Sis, unlike the other Bros. That would be both weird and illegal). Apologies to Munchkin parentals who may have been alarmed to read about it – I promise I will never tell you any serious news via my blog! Both the bike and I are now fine – The Scientist hugged me better, and straightened out my handlebars, and I have sent him off to visit his friends this weekend with both oatmeal and raisin cookies and chocolate biscuit cake to say thank you.

I’m hoping that Kiwi Family’s belongings have finally arrived in New Zealand this week, and so they might actually have some furniture some time soon. They have been without it for months, both here after it shipped, and there while it made its way over. I’m worried that they might need to go through some sort of re-civilizing process to reacquaint themselves with it. Perhaps there are night classes you can take on sofa etiquette. The Scientist firmly believes in what his old housemates called ‘The Five Nanosecond Rule’, which was the amount of time someone could expect to keep their vacated space on the sofa for before someone else nabbed it. Fortunately we’re all a bit older now, and probably have more chairs (although the piggle cat has recently been perfecting this rule as far as my desk chair is concerned. She leaps up the second I get up, which really shoots down my theory that it’s my lap she wants).

Anyway, the other exciting thing about Kiwi Family’s stuff arriving is that it means they will have their computer, and so we can all be properly in touch again. I really hope, however, that they did a better job of sorting out their admin before they left than we did when we moved. We moved house nearly six months ago, but did the classic thing of sorting all the rooms out except one (my study) which ended up housing piles of paper and vital although possibly at the same time useless things. Eco Sis, Munchkin Granny and Granny T are coming to visit this weekend though, and I am too embarrassed to let anyone sleep in the study in exactly the same state it was in at Christmas (probably worse, given the amount of paper two academics manage to generate). So, last night, I set to, and filed everything. The cats are just lucky that there wasn’t a space marked ‘pooks’ anywhere. I shredded a whole bag’s worth of junk with our personal details on it, and put out a tonne of paper and cardboard for recycling. I found notes and forms I had given up all hope of finding (and others I didn’t know I’d lost), and lots of photos and mementoes, which are now in a box waiting for the next fit of energy. I’m typing this sitting at my desk surrounded by happy photos: Kiwi Sis and Kiwi Bro at their wedding; Eco Sis and I hula-hooping in our bridesmaids’ dresses at a random funfair outside the registry office; Eco Sis at her wedding; Kiwi Sis and The Munchkin, in a pocked-sized photo I got done to put in a keyring for her when she went back to work; The Scientist and I after our PhD graduation; The Munchkin looking singularly unimpressed with the world, wearing a bib marked ‘Wednesday’ (if only it said ‘Monday’…); and a picture of Brighton beach at sunset.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, except that I am now feeling cleansed and purified, and smug at the state of the filing cabinet. I hope that having all your stuff will do the same for you, Kiwi Family. I know you’ve got lots of the same photos: put them out somewhere where you sit, and think of us. Perhaps the other reason I’m telling you this is that it’s putting off hoovering the upstairs floor - my other excuse being that pooky is comfortably on the bed, and he HATES the vacuum cleaner. Junior Sis: hang on to not being responsible for household admin for as long as you can. Piggle is eying my deskchair; I think she’s ready to start counting the nanoseconds.