Why Am I Renovating?

It’s been 11 DAYS since our renovation started and my builder is now my new best friend. We talk everyday. We have so much to discuss and share many of the same hopes, dreams and fears – at least for the coming four or five weeks.

Meanwhile we’re living like gypsies. We all have colds and the other day in the frantic rush of school pickup, I squashed my toddler’s fingers in the car door. Even worse, I couldn’t get the door to shut (obviously because her fingers were in the way) so I gave it few strong slams before I realised what was causing the resistance.

Then my five-year-old decided to do a magic trick for her News at school. At the last minute. Just before we were running out the door. I quickly tried to decipher the very badly written instructions from the box of magic tricks that Santa delivered last Christmas. But when I tried to talk it through with my daughter and suggest that she should possibly run through it a few times, she was far from interested.

“But I’m not going to do it like that Mum.”

“Oh,” I said with genuine interest. “How are you going to do it?”

“With magic of course.”

Well, I thought to myself, good luck with that one.

Needless to say, by the time the afternoon arrived when my daughter does her News, she’d forgotten how the trick worked.

Maybe if you had practiced…,” I started to say but stopped as I reminded myself that she’s only in kindy and is probably feeling confused and displaced what with her life being upturned and her house semi demolished.

Speaking of which, the toddler is all over the place what with the changes to the house and staying at my parents. I tried to prepare her in the weeks approaching the renovation but unlike my five year-old she didn’t take it in.

She’d only just got her head around the fact that Daddy leaves for work each day and comes home juts before bed. That was enough to take in. Now there are no walls in the house and we practically live in the car.

And I have to say, for me too, it’s all a bit daunting. Last Thursday, I nearly had my first meltdown when the builder needed the hot water system by 7am. And not only did he have two plumbers there twiddling their thumbs waiting for the hot water system, he also had the electrician wanting to know exactly where each power point needed to be.

So after racing through peak hour traffic with no breakfast and only minimal showering, I arrived with the hot water system and two impatient children that ran precariously around power tools, broken floorboards and random electrical wires while I had to make major decisions that would affect the rest of our lives.

Maybe this week, things will pick up. People ask me how it’s going and I say, "Great!!" – except really it’s just a dusty, dirty mess with no ceilings or internal walls.

I feel like getting out the wand from my daughter’s Christmas magic set. I still can’t understand the instructions but the way things are going, a little bit of magic might be extremely helpful.