Day 2: House
I've been cleaning today. I also registered the cats at the vet, bought the toothpaste and litter tray I forgot, plus more feliway and cystease. Also got the first estimate for making the garden cat secure and ordered a little tree and cat grass. This move is costing so much. It stresses me out to spend any significant money, even though I'm actually going to have a well paid job this year for the very first time in my life and will be able to rebuild some savings. Just got to get through till then!
So here's my house. It's a 2 bed terrace with a small yard that is mostly enclosed, but I'm paying to get mesh put up where the cats might be able to get out. I'm pretty sure they can't go vertically up PVC drainpipes, right? There's no purchase. Anyway I'll be out there with them to begin with. Any signs of progress up the pipe will be halted by more amendments. It's just concrete right now but will have cat grass, plants, etc. Maybe an outdoor shelving unit for climbing purposes.
Here's the entrance and staircase, the he living room (needs a fireguard. The first thing Zara did on arriving was go up a chimney so not chancing that again); the little room that will be my office (needs plaster on one wall); The kitchen; my bedroom; the spare bedroom and the bathroom. Ignore the random photo of a gas meter. That was for my old house and I don't know how to delete it on Imgur.
That's pretty much all, apart from the upstairs landing which is small. I'll add a photo of the little yard once it's sorted and has some plants and things. I've really been too busy to feel lonely today, and everyone I've talked to (i.e. shop people, the builder guy and the vet secretary) has been super nice and welcoming so that helps. Bibi is doing well and seems to be getting over her cystitis, though she has taken to being a fierce house cat and growling at anyone who walks past in the street. I'm listening to some bandom podfic as I work and reading some on my kindle (as you can see from my A03 that's what I've been reading and writing lately). Tomorrow I'm going to pick up my university staff card, get a quote from the other builder, and then I guess I'll start some actual work. I'm writing up the last main chapter of my book, then I need to edit the sections that are to be adapted from my PhD. So shameless plug: Fanfiction and the Author: How Fanfic Changes Popular Cultural Texts, to be published by Amsterdam University Press in 2016. The USP is it's a way of reading fic that can measure in fairly demonstrable ways how fandom changes cultural discourse, using the methodology I developed for my thesis. The main chapters are on Sherlock (which I have written), Game of Thrones (which I have all the notes for and am writing up) and Supernatural (which I have written as part of the PhD but will need to edit). Anyway, time to give dem kitties some playtime. More soon.