What a day!

Ikea came today with our furniture. The one thing I like about Ikea home delivery is that as soon as the van is loaded, the delivery drivers call all the customers to say where on the delivery route you are and then again as they complete the delivery before yours. The thing I hate about this is that they make the first call somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30 am. So just before 8:30 we got a phone call to say that we were the first delivery on the list and that they'd be with us in about half an hour. Cue mild panic. Since we moved into the new place we have been stacking the unpacked boxes in the hallway, these all had to be moved so that they stuff can get through the door. No probs my husband got up and started moving all that whilst I had another five mins in bed. Of course, five minutes turned into ten, so it was with slightly more of a panic that I surfaced and got ready. We were ready for the furniture just as the van parked up outside. Phew!

I have spent the day assembling various cupboards and bookcases, with a little help from a friendly Italian who called round. Hubby helped with some of the furniture building but he spent most of the day in the kitchen, sorting stuff in there, making cups of tea on demand, and also coming over occasionally to pass me a hammer or screwdriver that I couldn't reach because I had things balanced precariously. Moving books from the old half height bookcases happened at some point, only to be followed by putting them on the brand new bookcases. Most of this was done by the time we had a visit from Charlotte who helped with the ritual stomping on flat pack packaging aimed at getting it folded to a size that was easy to carry to the bin store. [peeve: our bin store has only one recycling bin which is for waste paper (not cardboard or packaging). Does anyone know the nearest recycling point to Haymarket station?]

After all the hard work was done I slobbed on the sofa whilst hubby made a super meal for us, and later we had some of the cake that Charlotte bought for us. All in all we had a successful day challenging the validity of gender based stereotypes.

By the way, we are pretty much settled in now so it's okay to visit.