My Christmas mood has been all over the shop this year, I normally love this time and by mid December I'm in full on captain Christmas mode. But we've had so many stress points leading up to it this year that I'm just not getting the feeling yet.
We were supposed to be moving house two weeks ago, we'd sold our place for a good price, agreed a price on the new place and all was looking grand - in for Christmas, kids swapping school for the new year, nice little pot of money from the sale to start doing up the new house, happy days. Then we had a water leak and the boiler broke just as the cold snap arrived, so £3000 up the wazzoo to sort that out and a freezing cold house for two weeks.
Then the car failed the MOT and had to be scrapped, queue a mad dash to get a replacement and another wad of cash out of the moving fund. then the oven broke, then the tumble dryer broke.
Don't worry I thought, we can still manage the house move, just have to take a bit more time over the work we wanted to do on it after moving, annoying but not the end of the world. Then the move gets pushed back two weeks until the start of January, meaning the kids are not only going to be starting a new school, but they'll be starting it late as we won't have moved in time - not the best start to a new school, especially as we thought we would have a few weeks to settle them in to their new house and surroundings before jumping back into the school.
So we're going to be moving late and won't have any cash left over for renovation, that okay we'll work it out I think. Then last week the mortgage lender contacts us and says "this house was overvalued so we're not prepared to lend you the amount you need, soz". Merry strawberry floating Christmas.
So now the last week has been a desperate scramble to try and find a way to keep the move happening otherwise we're heading into the new year with the likelihood of losing our buyer at a time when the market is probably about to tank, the kids have not got a school place here anymore because we thought we were moving, and any financial gain we thought we might have got from all of this is left in the dust from a sequence of bad luck over the course of a few short weeks that would have felt bad if it had happened over the whole year!
Throughout all this my son, who has an undiagnosed heart condition which causes him to have odd "episodes" with his health and means he has always struggled to sleep properly, has developed to a point where he basically cannot sleep at all. He's now been prescribed sleeping drugs that are supposed to be restricted to adults and result in him looking and behaving essentially like he's been under heavy sedation, he often wakes up not understanding where he is or what's happened to him. All the while the consultant still has no real idea what the problem is and so we're worried like hell (on top of being incredibly overtired all the time!). Again, not the ideal recipe for Christmas cheer.
Despite all that, there's still something about this time of year that's bringing me hope and a feeling that it's all going to work out. It's impossible to not have this time remind you that, yeah it's been a gooseberry fool few weeks for me, but there are so many people our there who would kill for what I've got and not to get so lost in my comparatively mediocre troubles and forget to both appreciate what I've got and do what I can for those less fortunate.
Merry Christmas folks.