Ok, I've been going back and forth about writing this and have finally decided that this blog is intended to write about our move....and this greatly affects the move. I cant very well continue discussing various aspects of this major change in our life without first addressing this, so I should write. We've had a bit of a bumpy road this past few days with some news we weren't expecting. No, I'm not pregnant...gross.
James' sister is not going to be moving into our house as we had previously arranged. I was panic-stricken at hearing this, though have since channeled my panic into a "get it done now" mentality. Obviously, this requires some context: we own a home in a beautiful part of Ottawa that is hard to get into and therefore we do not want to sell. We were so lucky to get in when we did and the particular factors that made it possible won't come up again. There is also the matter of the entire contents of said home, a perky little Mazda 3 and our cat Penny (yes, Penny Lane....James loves the Beatles in a manner which I can only compare to a bingo lady and her troll dolls). So, we have gone from the comfort of knowing we had to do very minimal packing and no rearranging of the house/car/cat scenario to an entirely diametrically opposed scenario wherein we are emptying the house, selling the car and sending the cat away with the dog.
I know, right? And the app on my iPad indicates that all this must happen in the next 104 days because that's how long it is until we move.
So here's where we stand: this weekend we are going to take the cat and the dog to my parents' house. No, we're not leaving them there yet, but we need to drive the four hours to Oshawa to put our Penny face to face with my Tigger and see how much blood is shed. Tigger is my cat, who lives with my parents and is, from experience, the meanest and toughest cat I've ever met. He adores me and my father and really does detest everyone else. You can only imagine how thrilled I am that we get to send our poor, lazy Penny to the Dove Killer (literally - our neighbourhood dove population rises and falls with his moods....though, I hear he has moved on to bunnies this summer). Here's hoping that by the end of the weekend they're friends because I really can't handle the stress of having Penny live with anyone other than my family at this point.
Then there's the house. Let's just say my little T.S.P. strategy is going to have to become far more aggressive. Americans-at-Black-Friday-door-crasher-sales aggressive. Part of going to visit my folks this weekend is being there to help my mother sort our her basement and spare spaces so that she can make room for our entire house full of stuff. Raw deal for my mom, non? After we have some space cleared, it's a matter of taking everything, packing it away and moving it all to Oshawa.
Good times.
And then, of course, there's the car. Well-maintained, reliable and still in remarkable shape. It's being sold. We don't see the point in parking it for two years and since James' sister won't be needing it (our entire motivation for keeping it with the house), it goes. I'm less shattered about this - I don't even drive. It's just one of those newly added items on our to-do list that I wasn't expecting.
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, I suppose. We're still going and this is just something we have to deal with to make that happen. Besides, how nice will it be to completely pare down our life? In two years when we open those boxes and unpack what we deemed worthy to keep, we're going to have a house limited in clutter.
My biggest anxiety through all of this is the fact that we have to rent our house. I've never rented a property before and, while I know we are hiring a property management firm, I'm still horrified by what prospective tenants could do to the space I have spent three careful years crafting. I'm mentally (and physically) kissing my damask wallpaper goodbye. I can't see what surviving two years of renters and acknowledge that it will not be here when we return. That's the hardest part. Not knowing what will change and what will be worse off through this ordeal.
If I were 30 years older, I'd have adopted my family's newest slogan, "it is what it is" and have said that a thousand times in the last 48 hours. Sigh. It may be, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
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