a better life
The galloping housewife moved house yesterday. For the first time in 6 months she is no longer of ‘no fixed abode’. It’s all very exciting. And stressful. And such hard work!
As she types this, her eldest child is currently somewhere over the Timor Sea, flying home from New Zealand where they stayed on to sit their A levels after the UK system went to shit. Again.
Mr galloping housewife is driving to Swindon to pick up another load of our stuff, and said eldest child, and said eldest child’s best friend, and said eldest child’s worm farm. The galloping housewife has been left with youngest child and cat and dog and half a house lot of stuff to unpack and no furniture to put it in.
Alongside all of this one horse is worryingly ill and the other horse is needing a scope for strangles before the galloping housewife returns to Wiltshire to ship him north.
Suffice to say that things are a little… busy. This is why the galloping housewife has been a little on the q----* side lately.
Yet a wee insight that flashed by her yesterday needs sharing while it’s fresh in her mind. Like all good plays it’s a three part act.
Act 1. The galloping housewife pulls into a service station, fills her car up from empty and drives away. 10 minutes up the road she realises that she has absolutely zero idea what she paid for the fuel. Nada. Not an inkling.
Act 2. As the guys delivering and installing the white goods (are they still called that when they’re mostly silver?) Mr galloping housewife muses that it’s difficult figuring where to put stuff when the new house is so much smaller than the previous house. The delivery guy responds with a shocked exclamation.
Act 3. The galloping housewife’s eldest child messages the family group chat to let us know that they have checked in. They also declare that they are the only passenger in the premium economy section.
The insight? Just how fucking privileged she is. The reason she didn’t pay attention to the price of petrol is that it didn’t really matter. She knew that she could afford to pay for it, and she needed the fuel to make the trip. The amount wasn’t a concern. The family housewife are having issues fitting their belongings into a lovely 4brm new build. Cry me a river. And finally, not only did she have an option for the eldest child stay on the other side of the world to sit the exams they needed to, she could afford for them to travel back in a seat that wouldn’t make the 26 hour flight time even more hideous that it needed to be.
Sometimes it’s worth the reminder in all the striving for a better life and desiring the things we can’t have right now that in this world, right now, we could do to be grateful for all that we have.
*after a decade working in emergency medicine the galloping housewife is pathologically unable to utter the ‘q’ word for fear of hell being unleashed.
