21 January 2009: A 5 Piece Bedroom Set

I woke up Tuesday with 2 things on my mind. First I REALLY need to start this roommate search, and second I REALLY need to pick up my 5 piece bedroom set. I guess with petal moving out I now knew the larger room was mine! However I would now need to move the bed currently in the room and my 5 piece bedroom set without the help of Petal. I also had scheduled to pick up the bedroom set from the woman selling it on Thursday and had booked a van for my mission. During my panic the night before after learning of my flatmate performing a "runner" as they say here, I did something I said I wouldn’t, at least not for a month, I texted Neil. Now without going into too much detail as this could be the subject of a full novel, I met Neil last year in Mahia, the location of my friend Faye and Niall's wedding, while traveling around New Zealand for 3 Weeks. What happened was a New Zealand Summer vacation romance, the kind of which you only see in movies or read about in books. Certainly not something that happens to me...but it did. Being too good to be true and with typical Kristen Neri relationship luck he later divulged that he had a long term girlfriend with whom he wanted to work things out with. After receiving 3 songs, 2 poems, and countless emails, I spent the spring and summer in a emotional rollercoaster while trying to transform all of those feelings into a friendship. The decision came in August or September that we should end our emailing and texting and that once I moved to Wellington I wanted to give myself a month to set my new life up, make my own friends. Then we could get together for a beer and see if this friendship would really work.

The only other person I knew in Wellington other than Petal was Neil and so he was the obvious choice to ask to help me move my furniture. He agreed. The last time I had seen him it was an extremely emotional Wellington goodbye, but weirdly enough when the time came I wasn’t nervous to see him again but extremely excited to catch up with a good friend. Seeing Neil again was like a breath of fresh air…all of my concerns went out the window and I actually had fun moving furniture, chatting, and laughing. After getting the bed, 2 dressers, and two side tables inside the flat and set up, we returned the rental van. I accidently left my CD in the van and the radio at FULL volume, realizing it only when I was about to leave and the rental car guy turned on the car to check the mileage, or I guess here kilometerage???, and out came blasting a song from my CD. I quickly turned around and screamed “OH MY CD” in typical Neri fashion, ran and got my CD back… Phew. We then went to get a beer by the harbor, chatted about everything and anything, and discussed how awesome it was to have this, to be able to get back to a friendship after all. Next step would be to meet the girlfriend, something I was now able and ready to do.