So moving hell begins.

Even though the house only officially goes on the market next week, our realtor is bringing someone by to see it this evening.

Did you know that it is perfectly possible - and even fairly effective - to use a swiffer mop to clean closet doors? The thing is, you look really stupid if you're doing this when the air-conditioning repair person pokes his head round the door to have a word with you. I went with the "don't apologize, don't explain" approach; he went with the "smile and back away slowly, she's crazy and she's wielding a mop" approach.

Annoyingly, it seems that our airconditioning unit has chosen now to develop a leak. A leak which - $327.50 later - remains unfixed, because it requires some adaptor or other that has to be specially ordered. The repair person is due to return on Friday; goodness knows how much it's going to cost to get it sorted properly. It's things like this that make me happy that we'll be renting again for the next while.

The good news is that we have a place to stay when we first arrive in England. Some friends of my parents are renovating a house in a tiny village named English Bicknor, and say we are welcome to use the habitable part till we decide where we want to live long-term. So that removes a lot of the stress - at least we have a definite place to go when we arrive in the UK.