Category: retirement

The Moving Diaries: The Last Week

June 3, 2016

We’re now at the point where we’re basically camping at two houses. The new house has a basement full of boxes, most of the dishes, pots and pans, and non-perishable food; the old house has most of the furniture, the perishable food, and very little else. We drive between them half-a-dozen times a day, always with more boxes. Sometimes we eat there, sometimes here.

We’re both tired. It’s been six weeks of renovations, cleaning, packing, moving things, unpacking, and there’s another week to go. The movers come Wednesday, so by the end of that day the new house will be mostly set up. Then two days of cleaning and touch-ups on the old house, and it goes on the market on Saturday. We have to keep an eye on it, for insurance purposes, and keep the grass cut and the gardens weeded, until we hand over the keys to the new owners. Which, we hope, will happen sooner rather than later, of course!

Surprisingly, we’ve managed to stay good-tempered throughout this whole process, even in putting together the new gas barbecue (and, to a lesser extent, the new bedframe, which came with some of the worst instructions I’ve ever seen). In part this is because we’ve each taken responsibility for areas the other either can’t do, or dislikes doing: some of the physical work needed here was simply beyond my strength, so BD has done that, as well as a fair bit of packing, moving, and either taking things apart or putting them together; I’ve basically been project manager for all the renovations at the new house, arranged the movers, dumpster, window cleaners and wildlife removal needed here, done the hazardous waste drop-offs, kept the grass cut and the books balanced, done a lot of packing, been BD’s gofer and assistant as needed, kept the master lists of what needs doing and what’s been done – oh, and done the grocery shopping and cooking so we don’t starve.

The unpacking – much of it – can happen more leisurely. I’m thinking one or two boxes a day, no more. BD has the perfect excuse – Euro 2016 – the European Football Championships (soccer, to the uninitiated) start June 10th, and he’ll be glued to the tv. He has a brand new HD digital recorder at the new house…which means never missing a game. And since my study at the new house is a completely separate room, with a door, (unlike here, where I took over the dining room, which has two doorways onto the living room…which is where the tv is) he can watch all the games he wants and it won’t disturb me. And maybe I’ll get some writing done.

The Moving Diaries: Gardening

May 22, 2016

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Our new deck now has a line of pots, planted this morning to herbs and tomatoes. The front porch has six blue ceramic pots of flowers and foliage plants. For the first time in twenty-two years, it was a pleasure to plant these. I worked in the garage, the door open to the sun and breeze, and there wasn’t a mosquito or blackfly in sight.

Unlike here in the old house, where after about April 30 doing anything outside means repellent and long sleeves. Backing onto swamp, surrounded by trees, the bugs are just a part of the nature around us, benefiting the birds and bats, frogs and fish – but not me. I can tolerate mosquitoes, but I react very badly to blackfly, bites swelling to the size of a quarter very quickly. Getting the containers planted every spring was an endurance test…and every year I planted fewer. This year, I’ve pruned the shrubs, and the only other thing we’re doing is keeping the grass cut and edged, until it sells.

I find myself looking forward to gardening again, getting my hands in the soil, planning plantings, in a way I haven’t for some time. The new garden is smaller, and already well planted to perennials, which helps – I’m not having to decide between birding or gardening in May – there is time for both. And for sitting on the deck with a drink and a book, just relaxing. A robin is nesting in one of our trees, and the shrubs had foraging cardinals and chipping sparrows this morning. I’ve put a hummingbird feeder up, along with a couple of hanging baskets of red Calibrachoa to attract them: no luck yet (that I’ve seen), but I live hopefully.  Eighteen days until moving day!

 

The Moving Diaries: Contractors, contractors, and more contractors.

May 7, 2016

On Thursday afternoon, I was on the phone to one contractor and BD was on the phone to another, while the new fridge was being delivered. It’s been that sort of week, known to everyone who’s ever moved, I suppose.

We’ve met with the painter, the gas-fireplace installer, the landscaper, the general contractor, and had a plumber in to investigate a leak. Of all of them, we have the quote from the painter, and have given him the go-ahead. We’re still waiting to hear from the cupboard-painter (apparently this is a specialized skill, different from painting walls and trim), and are waiting for a quote for replacing the shower in the master bedroom en-suite. We’ve chosen the style for the fireplace. The two shrubs which block the human door to the garage and one of the ventilation vents are scheduled to be removed.

At the other end, BD and the home inspector went through the current house on Friday, looking for the make-or-break flaws. Surprisingly, there were not too many: most of which BD has already repaired. It’s a quirky century house, and it’s not going to attract anyone who is looking for a new build, but there will be a buyer out there somewhere. I think up real estate ads in my head: ‘Century home, many original features. Four hundred square foot third floor with potential for private master bedroom or nanny suite. Backs on to conservation land: watch deer and foxes from the sun-room, while wild turkeys, grouse, and more come to the feeders.’ All true. Is it enough to make someone overlook the fact the original features include most of the windows, and the basement that, even with a sump pump, is on the wetter side of damp during spring thaw? Well, we did, twenty-two years ago. Someone will.

Meanwhile I cull and pack, a few boxes at a time. Today I did the bathroom, resulting in two boxes of supplies that can be moved immediately into the new house’s bathrooms, and the open shelves that support my desk. That produced two more boxes that will go to the new house’s basement for storage for now, a large bag of garbage, and eight empty wicker baskets. Yesterday I cut the grass here (a task I will NOT miss) (well, actually I finished cutting it – I started it Wednesday, and for the first time in all the years I’ve been using an electric mower, I ran over the cord. With a new plug and a slightly shorter cord, I finished it yesterday) and loaded all the garden art into my car. Today I found new places for the various pieces, at least for now: I need to see how the new garden changes over the seasons before I know if I’ve placed them correctly.

I’ve met two of our new neighbours, nice people both; waved to a lot more as I drive and bike in and out. I have, as I planned, gone birding every morning but one, biking from the house to the Arboretum. Friday I biked to the grocery store and the butcher. The move progresses, not always smoothly, but we move forward. That, I think, is the best I can ask – or hope – for.

The Moving Diaries: Phase 2: Juggling Two Houses

May 1, 2016

We took possession of the new house on April 29th. It was mid-afternoon before the lawyer’s office called to say everything was done; we immediately drove over to take another look at the house, inside and out.

It’s an opportunity that doesn’t come very often in a life, wandering around the new living space, thinking about wall colours, furniture placement, what will go in the kitchen cupboards. In our thirty-eight years together, we’ve moved five times before: three apartments, two houses. This is the first time the move is to a house that needs only cosmetic upgrades, and the first time we have enough money to make the changes before we move in.

Yesterday and today I cleaned, the kitchen, pantry and bathroom cupboards: everything else was spotless, but these needed a better cleaning than they, for the most part, had had. BD put up shelves in the basement, and took down the curtain rods and runners: we prefer blinds. We bought a couple of new light fixtures, and new knobs for the kitchen cupboards, and collected paint samples.

And now we’re kind of in holding mode. Tomorrow we meet with the person who will measure the three bay windows for blinds, and the day after with the contractor who is doing the painting and minor repairs that are needed. Thursday we meet with another contractor, this one to choose the gas fireplace we’re having installed. We’re hoping the timelines will be such that we’ll be able to move in at the beginning of June.

But until this work is done, we can only move so much stuff over. The basement is getting things that are of low priority (like boxes of Christmas things, and winter boots, and the picnic basket) and the garage is the repository for the boxes that need unpacking fairly quickly. Now the cleaning is done, we actually need to spend more time here, sorting and packing, and then making runs to town to drop off things at the charity shop or the new house. But the temptation to go to the new house is so strong!

I’m also making endless lists. Things to ask the contractors. Things to bring over – tape, magnets for the fridge, teabags. Things to consider – can we replace the track lighting near the kitchen island with a different type of fixture? We won’t know until later in the year, when it’s dark at meal preparation time. Will the north-facing deck get enough sun to need a sunshade? Again, it’s too early to know: the two trees shading it haven’t leafed out yet.

And at the other end, we’re waiting to hear if the person who wants to buy this house can get the financing. I make other lists for this house: what needs fixing, where I need to send change-of-address notices. Reminders to get the well tested, the septic tank pumped, the insurance changed.

It’s a lot of work. But yesterday, taking a break from the cleaning, I walked out the door, got on my bicycle, and biked the short distance over to the Arboretum. I locked my bike to the rack provided, and walked for an hour, listening to the birds, taking pictures of spring wildflowers, watching a raccoon (this one where it should be, and not in our chimney!) hunting through the mud at the edge of pond for food. The Canada geese nesting on a hummock in the swamp have goslings now: I stood on the boardwalk and watched them exploring their brand new world. And then I unlocked my bike, and five minutes later I was back home. It’s definitely worth the work.

The Moving Diaries: Clearing the Attic

April 24, 2016

This was the weekend of the attic. Fairly typical of American Foursquare houses, our attic is large, a big square space with two dormers front and back. With a total floor space of about 400 square feet, and a ten-foot ceiling, it’s a space with promise. We always thought we might turn it into a studio for me…but it never happened. So it became a place to store things, as attics do.

Friday I spent a couple of hours sorting: garbage, thrift store, keep. Three piles. Then I lugged boxes and bins and bags up the steep stairs and consigned the piles to containers. And that was enough, for one day.

Saturday, I brought the containers holding the ‘keep’ items down one floor to the spare bedroom, which is becoming the box repository. Then I left BD watching soccer and went to a friend’s open barn day,

kid
Adorable Angora Kid

where she shows off her spring crop of angora goat babies, and gives tours of her woolen mill and shop. Angora kids are adorable, and the colours she dyes the wool are enough to make me want to start knitting again. After we move.

 

 

 

 

Sunday – today – I started the day with a good two hour walk, birding the woodlands and open spaces of the university arboretum. Spring migration is just starting, resident birds are defending territory and building nests, and the air was loud with song and the drumming of woodpeckers. I needed scarf and gloves for most of the walk, but by ten it was warm enough to shed both – but it was also time to head for home and finish the attic.

I surveyed the spare room, and realized my first step was to move the ‘keep’ items – or most of them – from the blue plastic bins to boxes. The plastic bins are meant for taking items to the new house that we’ll unpack immediately, the bins returning to the car for another trip. So I packed boxes, carefully labelling them: “Board game, desk lamp, miscellaneous” one box says. “Various winter things,” another says. Sometimes what goes into a box is determined by the size of the items and the box, not the relatedness of the items. But since this was all in the attic, none of it is needed immediately we move, and these boxes will be relegated to the basement shelves.

Then I took the boxes back up to the attic, and packed up the items for the thrift store, carrying them all to the attic stairs landing. Now, the stairs are narrow, steep, and have a bend part way down, and I’m not what you might call agile. BD was out birding. So I carefully stepped backward down the stairs, bumping a box from one step to the next, until I was on the bedroom floor landing and could stand up with the box in my arms. Eight times. Then down the next flight of stairs, and out to the car, where I put the boxes in the back seat.

That left about eight largish pictures in frames, and two large mirrors that were in the attic when we moved in twenty-two years ago. Plus two portable baseboard heaters. These were beyond me. When BD came home, he, much more agile, carried them down the stairs and stowed them in the trunk of my car. The thrift store has a nice young man of about twenty who will take them (and the boxes) out of my car tomorrow.

What is left up there? Six garbage bags, which we’ll bring down in stages for curbside pickup – we’re limited to three bags every second week. A desk and a bookshelf which will wait for the professional movers. The painting equipment that is still in use. I think that’s it. BD will finish painting the space in the next week or two….and then the people that view the house, and the eventual buyer(s), can dream about what they will do with it: a studio? A nanny flat? A playroom? The wide pine boards under the carpet could be sanded and finished. A skylight or two could be installed, along with a spiral staircase to replace the awkward existing stairs. All things I thought about. But I went to Antarctica and Tibet and the Himalayas, to the Amazon and the Serengeti and the jungles of Borneo instead, leaving the promise of the attic space to someone else, in the end.

The Moving Diaries: April 20th

April 21, 2016

I started on the bedroom this week, sorting out the two drawers full of toiletries, travel miscellany, jewellery, make-up, and OTC remedies. This generated a lot of garbage – more than I would have liked, but there is nothing else to do with dried-up eye makeup or solidified hand cream. The expired OTC drugs are going back to the pharmacy, and the thrift store will be getting a few things.

Tomorrow I’ll start packing clothes into boxes. We’re in the in-between season here – it was 25 C the other day (77 F), but it’s supposed to snow on Monday, so it’s not as simple as packing away all my winter clothes, but instead trying to second-guess what I’ll need, and gamble on the long-range weather forecast approaching reality. If I’m sensible, I’ll label the boxes precisely, for the day it’s ten degrees hotter than it was supposed to be and I need my shorts.

Once a week or so I go over to the new house to take pictures of the gardens, so I know what early spring bulbs are planted where. The house is empty, so no-one minds this. I almost missed the early species iris – it was so hot the week they bloomed they only flowered for a couple of days. The daffodils are just starting, and the lawn is full of violets. I think about the new plantings – scilla, snowdrops, species Narcissus – I’ll put in come the autumn.

In-between, I make the necessary arrangements with the utility companies, the lawyer, arrange for a real estate agent to come to value this house….reassuringly, his estimate and the financial institution’s assessment are nearly identical. I’ve also booked appointments with the renovator and the HVAC company that will install our new gas fireplace.

You will note that it’s “I” that does all this. BD’s Aperger’s-related anxiety is showing itself in subtle ways, mostly by retreat to things he can control – his detailed TV recording/watching schedule, his even-more-detailed bird records, his daily walks and cycling. He’ll be fine in the new house: he’s spent hours and hours looking at the 360-degree visuals of each room on the internet; he’s done schematics for furniture layout, he’s planned his new cycling routes and walks with the help of Google Maps. But the actual work of arranging the move has too many details, too many people to talk to, too many periods of uncertainty for him. If he could do things one at a time, he’d probably be ok….but that isn’t how it works. So it falls to me.

We’re off this afternoon to Home Depot to look at window treatments, having decided that the north-facing bay window in the living room and the sliders in the family room will need something in the winter months – originally we were going to leave them without blinds, but have reconsidered. After lunch: my number one rule for this sort of shopping is never on an empty stomach!

Eating (semi)well on the road.

April 9, 2016

We’ve just returned from a two-week road trip through California and southern Arizona, a trip booked long before the idea of buying a new house entered our minds. Nothing was going to happen with the house purchase in those weeks anyway, so there was no reason not to go.

Since the days of our six-and-seven week road trips, where we mostly camped, took a cooler with us, and bought groceries, several things have changed. One, of course, is that we were flying and renting a car. Secondly – and most importantly – are the food allergies/sensitivities BD has developed. It’s really difficult to find food he can eat, and even more difficult to find restaurants he can eat at. His allergy is to a specific fatty acid – lauric acid – which is found in red meats, most fats, coconut and palm products, all dairy, and some spices. It makes him break out in hives, big nasty hives which even extra-strength Benadryl only somewhat controls. So we need to be very careful about what he eats.

We could have bought a cooler in California, shopped for groceries, and eaten at parks and picnic stops. But there were a couple of strikes against this: one is that, for the most part, it was too cold to do this comfortably – we had snow in the foothills in Arizona! – and the second strike was just that we wanted more ease. We’ve done our share – more than our share – of eating in wind, rain, cold, searing heat and annoying insects, or perched on the side of the bed in a hotel room. Frankly, I’ve had enough of that.

Subway is one chain we know is safe for BD, if he sticks to chicken or turkey, but a constant diet of Subway grows old quickly, plus the sodium content is pretty high. We decided to try Denny’s, the classic diner chain: their available nutrition information is good, and they have something extremely difficult to find in US restaurant chains: reasonably sized meals, if you order carefully.

For dinners, we mostly stuck to the 55+ meals, eating a salad (with no cheese or dressing for BD), fish or chicken with broccoli and another vegetable – corn for me, squash for BD – every night. With unsweetened iced tea, the calorie count was around 650, the sodium, fat, and sugar content low for restaurant food, and there was nothing in the spices or preparation that triggered BD’s allergies. Breakfasts were fairly easy too: ordering a la carte, BD ate poached eggs on dry toast, oatmeal, and fresh fruit every morning; I had the same, or sometimes yogurt instead of the oatmeal. Again, the meals ran in the 650 calorie range, and it was easy to avoid the dairy and oil that would have been a problem. And we both appreciated comfortable booths and table service, especially after a long day, and in the morning when I’m not human before that first coffee.

It was also quite a bit of food. Neither of us were terribly hungry at lunch time, even after hikes of several hours most days. We’d found an energy bar by KIND that BD could eat without problems, so lunches tended to be an energy bar and an apple. BD would add a handful or almonds or peanuts; I’d add a latte if there was one to be had. If we walked a lot, sometimes we had a second energy bar, or more nuts.

Not every meal was eaten at Denny’s or Subway. We ate a couple of breakfasts at little cafes at Morro Bay and Cayucas. We drove to Oxnard (twice) specifically for fish and chips at Sea Fresh, which fries in peanut oil (BD had a double order of chips, it was such a treat.) Only something at Olive Garden triggered any reaction in BD, and it was mild, so a trace of oil or spice, most likely.

I celebrated my 58th birthday while on this trip. We debated a special dinner, but I didn’t particularly want that: what I did want was ice cream, as it was an unseasonably hot day (the only one of the trip) at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. I usually avoid eating ice cream in front of BD – it seems cruel, when he can’t eat it any more – but I made an exception for my birthday. And in the little general store in Inverness, California, not only did I find my favourite Haagen-Daas chocolate-coffee-almond bar, but a lime gelato bar with no dairy that BD could eat (and he loves lime). We sat at a picnic table overlooking the bay and ate our treats, enjoying every frozen bite.

We were pleased with the trip – not only did we find the two birds we went to see around San Francisco, ones that have been eluding us for thirty years (because they are found by call, and they only call during breeding season, and that was always while we were working) – but we ate fairly nutritious food and didn’t trigger BD’s allergies. We went for long walks, watched dolphins and sea otters and seals along Highway 1, heard coyotes singing in the dusk at Yuma and watched the sun rise over the mountains. A good holiday. Now back to the realities of packing up this house for the move. Stay tuned!

The Moving Diary: the preface.

March 24, 2016

I’ve started to plan the packing. We’ll have both houses for a while, so we’re not pressed for time – yet I know that if I don’t have a plan, chaos will take over.

This is what I’m planning. I want to go through each room in this house to do two things: cull unwanted items, for donation or for landfill, and pack up things not needed immediately: winter clothes, books, rarely-used kitchen equipment, ornaments. That should take about three weeks of intermittent work, the time ranging from a couple of hours at the most for the bathroom to six-to-eight hours for the kitchen. We can get most of that done before the possession date of April 29th. In much of May, when the new house is having its gas fireplace installed, and the interior painted, I’ll need to be there to let the workers in and out and answer questions. I can take a carload of boxed items over every day; they can sit in the garage if nowhere else, while I ensure cupboards are clean and determine what goes where in the kitchen.

After that, we’ll spend a day packing the last of the fragile items, move the cats to the new house – they can have the run of the basement – and let the professionals take over. We have detailed floor plans of the new house and have spent the last couple of weeks playing with furniture placements. We may move things a few inches here and there, but basically we know what is going where, which will be easier for the movers. We’ll have those plans with us, printed and on our ipads, the day of the move.

I’m making lists: we need boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, scotch tape. I’ll need to contact the charity that will come to pick up the boxes of donated items, saving me endless trips to their drop-off location. I have to book a mover, arrange another viewing of the house to measure windows for blinds, look at kitchen cupboard size and arrangements, and think about paint colours. Then arrange to meet with the gas-fireplace installers and the painters. And all the hundred other little things – the utilities, the change-of-addresses, the insurance – at least we’ll be keeping our cell phone numbers.

You’ll note I haven’t even begun to think about prepping this current house for sale. We decided we wouldn’t do that yet. We can afford, thank goodness, to carry both for a while. It will cost us a bit in the bridge financing, but it will be worth it in reduced stress. When this one is empty, it too can be cleaned and patched-painted-and-polished. I’m not going to try to do both at the same time. Because, among other things, this is all happening in May. Migration month. The best birding of the entire year. We bought a house expressly because it adjoins excellent birding habitat: we can walk out the front door into an area with an impressive migration bird list. We don’t plan to miss May birding, moving or no – it’s just a compromise: birding in the early mornings, moving chores later in the day.

We figure we can just about handle birding, new-house-prep, and old-house-cull-and-pack (although we’re going to try to do most of that in April)  in that time but we can’t add any more. Meals may be a bit ad hoc, laundry will get done at odd hours, and I certainly won’t get much writing done. Organized chaos is the best I can hope for.

Tell me about your moving experiences…what lessons can you pass on? Am I completely crazy?

Butter Curlers and Junk Drawers.

March 16, 2016

Our new house passed its inspection with flying colours, so now we’re just waiting for the results of the appraisal on our current house. The actual appraisal occurred yesterday; when the credit union will get back to us with the approval for the bridge-financing I’m not sure, but somewhere in the next few days. We’re 99.9% sure the house is worth more than the amount we need, so we’re pretty safe to go ahead with the planning.

This is, of course, a wonderful opportunity to cull yet again. We’re not significantly (ok, not at all) downsizing, so we could take everything. But I don’t want to: I may not have yet disposed of a dozen flower vases and the same number of cookie tins from simple inertia, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pack them up and move them, because then I’d have to unpack them and put them away again. I have four major areas to cull: kitchen stuff, clothes, books, and knick-knacks.

Clothes, I think, will be the simplest. I did dispose of quite a lot when I stopped working almost a year ago, but now I have a much better idea of what I actually wear: jeans or khakis, cotton shirts, and sweatshirts, depending on the time of year. I’m going to choose from the rest a few mix-and-match pieces that will take me to a wedding, a funeral, or a nice dinner, and donate the rest. I can always buy it back (or something similar) from the thrift store if I make a mistake.

Kitchen stuff should also be fairly easy: if I haven’t used it in the past year, why do I have it? I bake frequently, and cook for dinner parties often, so I should have a good idea of what I do and don’t use. In fact, I know I own things like a butter curler (to slice off little curls of butter for a fancy butter arrangement for a fancy dinner party, in case you’re wondering). I have never, ever, used it. BD is allergic to butter. We dip bread in olive oil. It’s not moving with us. I’m guessing I’ll need to label it for the thrift store, though.

Books. Hmmm. Actually not as bad as it might be: we’ve become pretty good in the last years about culling the books, because otherwise they would take over the house. We’re likely down to fewer than two hundred, and we rarely buy new ones. So not too bad. Except every so often I do give a book away, and then want to read it again a year later. But we both have library cards.

Knick-knacks. I have to say I am NOT a collector of things that gather dust, but inevitably we have a lot we were given. I have trouble giving away something someone gave me, unless they live on the other side of the world and will never know. They chose it for me and gave it to me thinking I’d like it. This will be my biggest problem. Although we did get away with ‘oh, it’s still unpacked in the attic, we’re waiting to put up more shelves’ for a very long time in the current house, so perhaps I can try that? It worked very well, now I think of it.

And then there are things like the filing cabinet with twenty-four years worth of records of everything from oil bills to credit card purchases to the warranties on the well pump and the inspection records for the septic system that have to be sorted through. And a cupboard full of gift bags, and a garage full of wood scraps BD thought might be useful some day. And the junk drawer. The junk drawer is scary.

I’ll report on how this all goes over the next few weeks. If I maintain my sanity, that is. Any hints on how to do that will be gladly received. Anyone want a butter curler, by the way?

Changes

March 12, 2016

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and that’s because life has moved very quickly in the last three weeks.

One of the things our two months in England confirmed for us was that we want to live somewhere where we’re less dependent on the car to run errands.  The second thing was that we could quite happily live in a bungalow, and the third was that we really liked not being responsible for the lawn and garden.  We’d thought it was time to leave this old two-storey rural house, with its quarter-acre of lawn and garden, 10 miles from anywhere: what England told us is that we were right.

We always said we’d move before it was too late, when we could make the choice. We came home, spent some time wandering around neighbourhoods in the university town north of us that we know well and love.  We narrowed it down to two, and then to one.  And yesterday, we bought a house.

It’s not quite a bungalow, in that it has a bedroom and ensuite on a second floor, but we don’t need to use those except for guests, or, for the foreseeable future, as BD’s study.  It’s a 10 minute walk to the university’s arboretum, for walking and birding; a 15 minute walk (or 5  minutes on the bike) to the university library, where I like to work, a ten-minute walk to a grocery store, on quiet back roads. We can bike downtown, to movies, to lunch, to the arts centre, to the bookstore, to the summer outdoor concerts.

While we own the house, and can do what we like with it, indoors and out, we don’t own the land it sits on: the university does.  So we pay, effectively, condo fees – and for that we get the lawn and garden taken care of, the snow ploughed and shovelled to our front steps, and the use of a large and well-equipped recreation centre. Or, as BD put it yesterday, to be permanently on vacation.

It’s ours in just less than two months, assuming all goes well with the inspection and the bridge financing – we have to get the existing house on the market, but there’s a bit of work to be done yet.  The new house needs its interior walls painted and a few other cosmetic bits and pieces.  One thing for sure, this adventure over the next couple of months – as we try to do this as mindfully as possible, fitting what we already own into the new house, figuring out what we really need (like a new bed), disposing of what we don’t – will give me plenty to write about!