You guys, we are so tired. So tired.
I thought moving to Vanuatu would spawn a whole series of new blog posts. After all, novelty is often fuel for creativity for me, since I usually need to write about things to process them fully. When we moved to Laos five years ago, I posted three times a week without fail. But you know what I neglected to factor into the picture? The two children we’ve acquired since then. That, and buying a house. Oh, and the fact that novelty might be good creative fuel, but the tax of novelty is fatigue.
In Laos, the fact that I was extra tired from learning so many new people, locations, facts, and how-to’s all at once was less of an issue. For the first two months that we were in country—before we found a house and our shipment arrived—I mostly spent my mornings in a café working on the memoir and my afternoons reading in an air-conditioned room (or maybe venturing out to the Mekong in search of a fruit shake). I didn’t have to cook or shop, since we ate out every night for two months. Sure, there was no good wine or ice cream in town (and a whole host of other much more significant hassles to learn to navigate) but I had time and space.
Here, it’s all hit at once. We arrived in Vanuatu two weeks ago, on the same day that we took possession of the house. The unloading of our shipment (all 280+ boxes of it) began on Monday—the same day we took possession of our new (oldish) car. I am very grateful for the help the moving crew gave us assembling beds and the like, but in case you can’t picture it… eight men with box cutters ripping into hundreds of boxes and two little kids in the midst of it all creates mind-melting bedlam.
As we’ve started to dig ourselves out from under a mountain of boxes (we are definitely leaving this country with fewer possessions than we bought here—on that I am completely resolved) we’ve encountered a whole host of new experiences.
Dominic started at his new school on Monday. It goes from 7:30-11:30am, so everyone has to be up by 6am or the mathematics of the morning just do not work. Dominic started out well, but as the week progressed there were more and more tears and protestations at droo-off. Now, on Saturday morning, he is a fractious, demanding mess.
Also on Monday we discovered that our water never heated above lukewarm, the pool pump seemed broken, and we probably had at least one major water leak somewhere on the property.
While Mike has been hard at work this week, I’ve been unpacking boxes, learning how to light the gas stove with matches, finding a French physiotherapist to help with my lymphedema, figuring out where and how to get petrol for the car, supervising plumbers, and wondering where the guy is that we contracted to build a wire fence around of the pool.
To be fair, though, I’ve also been swimming with the kids every day. And watched them shriek with laughter on the trampoline we bought just before leaving Laos. And the view? Well, that’s one novelty that’s not taxing…
We’re all falling into bed before 9pm every night.
Now, if only the kids would both stay asleep through the dark hours.
Maybe next week. At least once?
