Moving out, moving in, but moving on?

I made it.  I actually got all of my stuff out of my former flat, cleaned the whole flat on the Friday following the final box-exodus and even went to Šumava for the weekend, just to do what the cowboy wanted to do after a long period of him having to help me with tedious stuff.  But I'll have to make up for being utterly useless that weekend because I had period pain of epic proportions and had to stay in bed, drugged up to the eyeballs on painkillers just to survive, by going there again this weekend and being a good Czech-girlfriend substitute and going on a long walk in the mountains.  And then I'm done.  

Then, universe, let it be known, I need a big change.  I need enough income to flood in that I can realistically look for a new flat.  I need enough income to cover getting an iPad because I need access to publications and books without having to rely on the incompetent Czech postal system, which is fractionally worse than the UK postal system.  But only fractionally, and I've been away from the UK now for so long that in the meantime, for all I know, the UK postal system could have become even more incompetent.  Maybe there aren't Saturday deliveries anymore?  If there are, that's the one thing that makes the UK postal system that tiny bit better than it is here.  That's all.

On a lighter note, I've so far survived being in the depths of suburbia out of a sense of novelty, I suppose, although the cowboy is currently in his teenager mode of pointing out how this is what marriage is, boring and hum-drum and pointless.  And he's right.  If it's with someone you don't have enough in common with and if you live together in a flat you both don't particularly like.  But I never expected this to be anything but hum-drum and mildly, if not spectacularly, irritating for all concerned.

I know not to expect sweet little post-it notes left for me, nor random acts of kindness such as  a cup of tea brought to me on a day when I have to wake up early.  The cowboy seems not to appreciate things like this even when they do happen, though.  He didn't even see the little note I left stuck to the lock on the door yesterday.  Which is hard to believe.  But I guess he just shut the door behind him and didn't look in the direction of his hand as he was doing so.

I imagine this is exactly what marriage is like if you marry someone you don't love with a passion.  And it's clear that the cowboy and I have affection for each other, and even at times, a deep connection with regard to our backgrounds and the things we've been through but we don't have enough in common to enjoy each other's company for any great length of time, nor for day-to-day comings and goings.  

Here's a list of ways in which we do not match:

1) I hate watching TV without knowing what programme it is that I want to watch.  Most of it is rubbish anyway, and here it's rubbish dubbed into Czech, which has some small entertainment value and is fun when watching something like 'The Simpsons' but beyond that, I can totally do without the background drone of a TV.  The cowboy, however, always has the TV on.

2) I have two parts to my morning/breakfast routine.  First, a cup of tea and cereal.  Then, after showering and getting dressed, I like to have a cup of coffee and a croissant or pain au chocolat or just a yoghurt and fruit.  The coffee bit is essential though.  The cowboy scoffs down any breakfast all in one go, and doesn't like coffee.

3) I like reading.  Books, magazines, newspapers.  The cowboy hates reading anything except the National Geographic and a plethora of car magazines.

4) I like taking care of my own fitness routine and being disciplined about sticking to it, doing it on my own, in the privacy of my own home preferably.  The cowboy never gets round to planning an exercise routine, yet complains about having developed rather a big tummy and moans about the idea of going on walks in the woods on his own because, "people in the Czech Republic don't go for walks on their own."

5) I like to eat a few squares of a bar of chocolate in one go, then put it back in the fridge for another day.  The cowboy prefers to eat it all in one sitting, in big bites.

This does not bode well, obviously, for a future together.  

On the other hand, here are some important things we do have in common:

1) We both hate corruption and the politicians who make a living telling poor people they need to work harder, while keeping quiet about the bribe they just took.

2) We both know what it's like to grow up in scuzzy working class / communist (very similar, believe me) accommodation with thin walls you can hear everything through, eating cheap food that has never come across the word Mediterranean or, in my case even, 'garlic'. 

3) We both like action films for a laugh and a bit of welcome distraction from the bureaucracy of day-to-day living.

4) We both have an innate perception of others and sensitivity to people's feelings to the point of being able to predict what they're thinking.  We both also need to be careful not to take this too far and start telling people what they think, because that's robbing people of their own opinion.  (I'm working hard to get rid of this bad habit.  The cowboy is not.)

5) We both like nature documentaries.  Especially ones about the wildlife in parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.

So, there you have it.  Is that a relationship?  Of sorts, I suppose.  Isn't it statistically researched that men benefit more from marriage and/or cohabitation than women?  So why is the cowboy moaning about how bad this temporary set-up is?  Especially as I've just done the washing up.  Again.

Banks, boxes (yes, again) and other bothersome things

A whole day of packing.  Oh joy.  My break from it all is aerobics and Pilates.  Hmm.   That's not strictly speaking what I'd put in the 'fun' category...  Well, on Monday night I did have the luxury of going out for a meal with the cowboy.  Even though it felt as hot as Las Vegas that day.  Reports say it was something stupid like 38 degrees..!  No wonder I made pretty slow progress with packing that day.

I don't think the cowboy really realises what's involved in packing your things up and putting them all into boxes.  Especially when you're self-employed.  I'm not just packing up my home.  I'm packing up my office too.  Which means reams and reams of papers to sort through and files to organise as well as books and photo albums and clothes and stationery things to put into boxes.  (Preferably labelled boxes so I can find it all again.)  Thankfully, it was a stormy night last night and the temperature in Prague has dropped a bit, but it's still very hard work to get through the day with no air-conditioning.

It's hard to deal with all of the bits and pieces from the past as well and I don't like having to decide which letters and cards and things to keep.  By and large I'm being quite ruthless and just chucking everything out unless I really use it, but I'm not so good at being ruthless with pictures.  I have a big box of pictures alone.  I need to cut back on those.  My trouble is, I haven't grown out of the teenage habit of sticking pictures up on the wall with blu-tack.  So I can hang on to pictures easily, knowing I will indeed put them up on the wall again and change them over every few months.  I'm also somewhat disheartened by the number of files of boring admin type stuff like bank account info, tax forms and accounting things in general.  How is it possible that these things can take up so much room when I've got virtually no money in those damned accounts anyway?  Isn't it preposterous?

I actually had a very funny letter from the bank here the other week.  My Czech bank has decided that I am a "valued customer" because I have been with them two years and so they want to invite me to come into a branch and...collect a free photo frame.  Wow.  That's got to be one of the lamest rewards a bank could give out.  This is a bank who charge me a fee for every little transaction I have to make including standing orders and direct debits, cash machine withdrawals, phone top-ups and so on.  And the best they can do is a free photo frame that I actually have to go in to collect?  What is the world coming to?  I know the Czech Republic isn't exactly renowned for its customer service skills but this is just ridiculous.  I would feel less disgusted with them if they hadn't offered me a measly photo frame but had announced instead that they were stopping all the fees on my current standing orders.  Obviously, I am not that "valued" a customer afterall.  

I'm wondering why I'm bothering to carefully pack my things up anyway.  I fear the cowboy will either have a heart attack when he sees how much stuff I have or will have an almighty fit of rage at me at some point that this is all too much and just throw it out of the window.  He's never had to do this, so is unfamiliar with the concept that moving house is incredibly stressful, fraught with emotional consequences and generally takes a long time to do.  He was hoping we could take the majority of boxes over to his tomorrow night so that I would be free to help him finish putting up some doors on cupboards in his flat in the mountains for him this weekend.  When I mentioned that this was the last weekend I would actually have before having to officially be out of my flat, he said, "What, you're STILL going to be packing things?"  As though during the final weekend before moving out it is actually possible not to still be packing things. 

I don't know what planet he was born on, but it's obviously not the same one as me.  I come from a place where if something is an ongoing problem, you just grit your teeth and see it through to the end.  You don't try to pretend it's not happening and run off for a weekend in the mountains.  You might run off round the corner for a much needed frappuccino and chocolate muffin from time to time, but that's different.  The good news there though is that I just got a voucher for a free frappuccino whenever I next fancy one for filling out a questionnaire online about the behaviour and service of the staff on my most recent 'visit'.  

I don't think I was particularly complimentary about the staff because in fact, that day I had not had a particularly great experience with them, because they've got into that habit of asking your name and writing it on the cup (which I find a bit irritating) and I insisted on checking her spelling of my name, because I told her in Czech and I wanted to be sure that she'd understood my pronunciation, and she looked at me like I was wasting time.  But I figured it was already wasting time to write everyone's name on the damned cups in the first place, so you may as well spell it right, you know?  But anyway, it doesn't matter.  I still have a freebie waiting for me thanks to my diligence as a customer who fills in questionnaires.  Hmm.  I should become a customer service advisor.  Or consultant.  A customer service consultant.  That sounds better.  More scope to be an arrogant arse with the title, 'consultant'.  I'm sure I'd be ever so good at it and I'd at least give people actual value for money rewards for their custom.  Free coffees from cafes.  And, accordingly, free money from banks.  Not photo frames.

The choice that wasn't

I just re-read a bit of one of my posts and had to correct a really stupid spelling mistake.  I had written, 'a line or too', when I of course meant, 'a line or two'.  There I was, feeling pleased that even if my content is boring, it's at least well written and a high standard of English, but no.

I am writing this on the eve of a trip on the cowboy's new motorbike to stay in his flat 'in the mountains' (or rather, in that tiny town near the mountains - believe me, if you live in the Czech Republic for a couple of years, you get sick to death of hearing the expression, "in the mountains") and celebrate his birthday.  I'm quite pleased with myself for the presents I've managed to get him, including one or two extra special surprises, so I hope he'll be pleased.  

He helped me by taking some boxes of things last night, in anticipation of the big move.  Having seen places that have only made my heart sink, and nothing else coming up that's a good fit for me and my bank balance, I think by default I've decided I have to move in with him.  Some could argue this is a choice, but I still feel the "choice" between spending money I don't have to move back to stay with family in a small town in the UK or spending money I also don't have to move in with family in the US versus staying here and spending no money isn't so much a "choice" as a realisation that this is what my budget will allow and that's that.

As A A Milne so delightfully put it, when it comes to my money in my bank account and my so-called 'choice' about where to live, "the more [she] looked, the more [it] wasn't there."