We have direction

Finally, I have decided where we are going. Now that I am sure I laugh at myself, as it's what I have been saying all along. I think I just had to be really sure, by tormenting myself with all the other possible options. I love the Sunshine Coast, I love my friend who lives there, I love that it is closer to most things in Australia, I love that the Vipassana Centre is there. But it's not me.

Mostly because it's a busy place. I really want to live by the sea, and being by the sea there would be manic, so I would retreat to the hinterland and hideaway. Nice for a couple of weeks' holiday now and again, but not for a lifetime. I just don't think it would be healthy for me mentally in the long term. I thrive in wide-open spaces.

Western Australia is the place I fell in love with. It's vast, open, stunningly beautiful, and massively underpopulated. It is my Australian home, it's where I belong. Albany has all the things I said I wanted all along, the ocean, the views, the right size town to have everything you need, but not too big, access along the coast each way for holidays and camping, the city within reach, a climate that allows you to be outdoors all year round, and the vast, wide-open, energising space that I love. I do have a lot of friends in the state too. Now that I have decided, I can't believe I have tormented myself so much about this when I knew it all along. It's the distance from everything else, and my friends in the east that gave me the dilemma. I think I just had to really test myself and my feelings - it is a big decision after all.

Anyway - now that I know where I am going it feels good.

I have started packing. I'm not really sure when our house sale will complete. Sometime in July I expect, but to make this time in my life just a little crazier I have also begun IVF treatment. In case you missed a previous post I have decided to go for double donor IVF. In Spain. If all goes to plan I could be having my first embryo transfer in about three weeks. That gives me three possible tries before we leave the country. I promise that if it doesn't work in that time I will give up and get a dog instead.

The time schedule does, however, mean that I really want to get the entire contents of our house either packed sold, or given away within the next couple of weeks, so that I am not lugging around furniture and boxes of books, etc after the transfer. The house looks like a bomb site. I keep thinking that soon it is going to look better - so many loads have gone to the charity shop already, and a bed and a wardrobe have already gone to new homes... but it just seems to look fuller as I turn out more things for sorting. Ah well

So, busy times ahead - then hopefully plenty of time to relax and enjoy time with family and friends in the UK before we head off.