We are now in Stratford, having rolled into town last Wednesday afternoon ten minutes before the lawyer's office closed. He gave us a key that turned out to work only on the side door into the garage. We found key that worked on the back patio door in the kitchen, but the key to the front door was missing. It finally arrived on Saturday, after much texting to real estate agents and some bitter carping from me; it had been sculling around in the glove box of the seller's boyfriend's truck.

The furniture and boxes arrived on Thursday. All day Friday and Saturday were spent unpacking, searching for critical kitchen traps and repacking everything else. Despite our inability to turn on the oven, we made a good dinner on Saturday night, marking the achievement of what the Canadian Forces calls "initial operating capability".

The garage looks as if a paper bomb went off in it, with four-cube boxes stacked almost to the ceiling and a solid wall of two-cubes full of books on each side, waiting for the floors to be done so we can haul in the bookcases.

On Sunday, we unpacked and stowed our wardrobes, hung curtains in the enormous windows in the bedroom, and finally achieved laundry. I was supposed to rest, but did not. Mistake.

Himself has done all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking so far, and he recce'd the farmers' market on Saturday. My only excursions from the house since Wednesday have been to visit Canadian Tire and to go to church, the latter expedition being my only non-move-related activity.

We had no Internet until yesterday afternoon, after no fewer than three Bell Canada technicians invested something like ten man-hours of work to locate the correct cable pair in the correct junction box in the correct neighbour's back yard. All three critical data points were incorrectly recorded at the local Bell office. I finally got the computer assembled and running last night at about ten o'clock, and fell into bed, there to stay asleep all night for the first time since last Monday.

I'm meeting many technicians, all nice guys (at least to me) with vigorous work ethics and many tattoos.

Yesterday afternoon was spent in consultation with the cabinetmaker who has accepted the commission to rip out our irritating kitchen and do better. We are beyond tired of the wide variety of things that are broken, defective, badly designed or just plain bad -- the broken refrigerator drawers that drop out onto your feet when you open them, the rolling pantry shelves that jammed because the little wheels at the back kept falling off the tracks where the stoppers have failed. I fixed the pantry problem by stuffing the back of the cabinet with sheets of cardboard from a china barrel, but the fridge is just going to drive us nuts until we can relegate it to beer status and buy a new one for the kitchen.

Flooring began today. The house resounds with the hammering of the flooring crew at work in the cellar and the zing of the table saw on the front lawn. Himself is with the insurance agent, who wants documents we don't have, while I catch up on household administration. Lo and behold, Enercare (the company that does furnace and air-conditioner maintenance) neglected to record our move, despite the hour I spent on the phone with them back at the beginning of June, so we have a swingeing bill for maintenance plans that I am now convinced I do not want to continue with. Stratford has local companies that clean furnaces and air-conditioners; why put up with call-centre agony and employees with no authority to do anything useful?

I hear work boots on the stairs. Time to be bossy.