Two week progress report

We have been in our new house for two weeks. We're still surrounded by stacks of boxes but now, instead of being of tsunami magnitude, the stacks are more on the scale of the wake of a BC Ferry - enough to cause trouble should you get caught out but not enough to bring about your demise.

So we are making progress.  We finally have all of our stuff from the moving company. No, they did not deliver. Instead we had to rent a van and Mike had to make a day trip to Vancouver to retrieve the final bits and pieces of our belongings. As well, we had to rope in the assistance of some friends who happened to be coming over for a visit and who also happen to own a minivan. But, no matter. We have our things. And, joy! We have our barbeque, for what is summer without a barbeque at least one a week.

Unfortunately, when we fired up the barbeque to get that warm, summertime feeling going, we had a hotter experience than expected. Halfway through cooking our halibut steaks, flames started spewing out from underneath the barbeque. So, fire down the barbeque and flip the the steaks into the fry pan on the stovetop. Somehow, it just wasn't quite the same thing. Another project for the list - if we ever get around to putting the list to paper, which we really don't want to do since we'd have to slay a small forest to produce enough paper to accommodate all the items on our project list.

Other items underway that we can check off that non-existent list?

Our team of manual labourers (Mike and Liam) have been out working on the septic system.  You'd be surprised how much dirt an almost-four-year-old can move when he think it's play. Our front yard cum septic field is now full of a bunch of 18 inch deep holes with which we are going to monitor septic field "activity." I think that when it comes time to do the actual monitoring which involves measuring liquid levels, I'll be busy indoors alphabetizing my spice rack. Don't laugh! When you're in the middle of cooking and the crucial moment to add spices is upon you, you don't want to be caught out unable to find your turmeric or cardamom.

Our new dishwasher has arrived and thanks to a generous offer from my brother-in-law to assist with the installation (okay, I admit it - do the installation) we now have the quietest dishwasher I've ever had the pleasure to not hear. When it's running you actually have to put your ear up to it before you can tell that it's on.

We've enlisted the services of a neighbour to come and cut our dandelion field for a small fee until we have a chance to do a comparative analysis of John Deere versus Husqvarna.

Garbage collection has been arranged. Yes, we must arrange private garbage collection. No city collection here. Up until now, our method of dealing with garbage has been to stash our bags in an old, defunct chest freezer outside by the sheds. Seems the perfect set-up. No hungry animals can get at it and any smell is contained. As I said, perfect. That is, until the chest fills up.

To do?  Get rid of the old dishwasher. Although, it kind of makes a nice set with the old chest freezer. And with our dandelion fields, all we're missing is an old, rusted car parked up on blocks in the yard to make us look like some kind of junkyard hillbillies. There's been a bit of a problem with home break-ins around here recently, so maybe cultivating the junkyard look isn't such a bad idea. Really, what are the chances that we'd have anything worth stealing?

Those are the highlights of the last two weeks. Stay tuned for a cultural experience report.

Perhaps we could get used to this place...

This morning I woke at 5:15, just as light was entering the sky. I got up to look out the bedroom windows and saw three brown rabbits sitting in the grass on their haunches, noses to the wind. Later on, in the full light of morning, Liam and I walked up the road to see the cows at a neighbouring farm. The sun was shining and the sky was that post-card perfect bottomless blue. Blackberry bushes stretched out their prickly arms towards us, showing off a profusion of hard, green berries, a promise of the harvest to come. Overhead some hawks rode a thermal updraft in lazy circles. An afternoon exploration of our property revealed several apple and plum trees in fruit. Tonight, we had dinner sitting on the back deck, from which all we can see are shades of green melting one into another as the sun sets behind the trees. I think we could get used to this place.

Irony of ironies

We received a delivery early today, an event almost unheard of in the world of large household purchases and cartage companies.

Let me explain.

For a variety of reasons (well, two mostly - Liam and Kai) we decided that we would invest in a new bed once we moved to our new home.  Our old bed was fine, just a tad crowded in the early morning hours once everyone had migrated from their own beds into ours. Throw a cat into the mix and we were in need of a bit more bed real estate.  But, to accommodate more bed real estate we needed more house real estate and, so, the decision to invest in a king size bed was taken.

And oh, we found a beauty. Upon my first test flop in the store in Vancouver, I knew I had reached sleep nirvana. Organic latex with an organic wool and cotton covering. Probably manufactured in the shade of a protected rain forest by indigenous peoples still wearing their traditional costume. When it wears out in 25 years time we can toss it on the compost pile. But I digress. It was a bit on the pricey side, but when we divided the total cost by the anticipated number of nights sleeping on it, we convinced ourselves that it's almost a bargain. Certainly a thrifty purchase. The only problem was taking delivery. Could we get it before we left Vancouver? Nope. But the sales rep assured us that deliver to Metchosin would be no problem. We could expect it to arrive a few days after our move.

So, upon arrival in Metchosin, we decided to set up our old bed (or perhaps I should still refer to it as our current bed?) in our guest room. No point in setting it up in our room only to have to disassemble it in a matter of days and move it downstairs to make room for the new, majestic King size bed. Besides, we needed the guest bed for my father who agreed to cat sit for us while we moved and would be arriving soon after our move date to deliver said cat and visit for a couple of nights. A few nights on a foamy on the floor of our bedroom wouldn't kill us.

Five days after moving we had taken delivery of our cat, Dad had been and gone and my hips and shoulders were starting to ache. And then the phone call came from the bed store. The bed would be a few days late in arriving. We were looking at sleeping on the foamy for another four nights.

Next thing, we were stripping the bedding off of the foamy and hauling the mattress from the guest room up the back stairs and into our bedroom. That was yesterday. Laughingly, I said to Mike as we flopped the mattress onto the floor, "I bet the new bed comes early."

This morning the phone rang at about 7:00 am. Considering that very few people have our new number yet, and that even fewer of them would call us so early, this was quite an event. So much so that we even answered the call. It turned out to be the delivery company for the bed store. They had our bed and would be delivering it today. Today! At 11:00 am. Tonight we could be sleeping on our new bed!

First task after breakfast was to clear out our bedroom to make way for the masterpiece. As we were about the haul our old mattress back downstairs Mike stopped us. "What if the new one doesn't arrive for some reason?" he asked. "What reason?" I said. Mike shrugged, but he suggested that we leave the old mattress in the living room until the new one was delivered and in our bedroom. Just in case. Very wise. I knew there was a reason that I married him.

Our new bed did arrive today. Not at 11:00 am, as predicted, but at 3:00 pm. By this time, I had gone out to do some laundry and order our new washer and dryer and dishwasher (we'll see when they get delivered!)

This new bed is latex, as I mentioned. As a consequence, it is heavy and floppy. Nothing like a conventional mattress.  And did I mention heavy?  It's got to be two hundred pounds. Two hundred very floppy pounds. The delivery man was, apparently, a nice guy but had his limits. Fighting two hundred floppy pounds up the stairs was not in his day planner. We need more bodies to move this beast. Friends are coming over later in the week for a visit so we'll do things the country way. Instead of having a barn raising party, we'll have a bed raising party. We'll play a little folk music to set the mood, I'll make potato salad to feed the crowd, and we'll herd that bed up the stairs. And, eventually, we'll get horizontal on our new bed and float off to sleep nirvana.

In the meantime, we've shuffled the old mattress back onto the floor of our bedroom while the new mattress is safely stored away on the floor of the guest room. Irony of ironies. A major purchase actually arrived early and we're still sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our room. At least Mike had the foresight to suggest that we wait to move the old mattress back downstairs.

One leaky faucet at a time, one bed at a time.

It take 18 minutes to get to Rona

Here we are, finally deposited in our new home. 

Okay, it doesn't quite feel like home yet, but we're working on it. The movers haven't delivered all of our belongings yet (they estimate they'll have our things delivered to us by August 3rd, but that's another story); we're surrounded by a jumble of boxes that defy my logical packing plan (kitchen boxes are stacked in the mud room; Liam's things are spread between his room and the living room and my clothes are in the dining room); we have no oven apart from a small countertop convection oven that's probably 15 years old, holds nothing larger than an 8x8 pan and has it's own ideas about the value of heat in the cooking process; and the list of "projects" grows exponentially each day.

But not all is bad. It's comforting to know that some things are reliably consistent, no matter where you go. For example, a Big Mac in Paris tastes exactly the same as a Big Mac in Prague and The Gap and Starbucks Coffee can be found in every city in the world. I'm not suggesting that these are necessarily good things, just that consistency has it's merits. Closer to our immediate needs, we've discovered an amazing consistency with Home Depot. On our second day here we began the inevitable parade to the home improvement stores and found that the staff at Home Depot in Langford are as woefully inadequate in their knowledge of home improvement projects as the Home Depot staff in Vancouver. So, really, we felt quite at home. All that orange shelving and not a soul who knew anything about the issues at hand. 

On the upside, we've found that Rona has more knowledgeable staff than Home Depot and is about 4 minutes closer to home. In fact, it takes about 18 minutes door to door. Result? We now own an impressive array of wrenches and have a functioning bathroom faucet (rather utilitarian looking, but it works) and a functioning kitchen faucet (looks fantastic but highlights the dismal state of the rest of the kitchen). Check two projects from the list.

Tomorrow we'll be deciding on a new washer and dryer and dishwasher. The laundry is starting to stack up so it's either buy new appliances or buy more socks and underwear. The dishes we're managing to stay on top of the old-fashioned way but we don't really need any more chores than we could, instead, automate. So soon we will be able to apply three more check marks to our list.

One day at a time. One box at a time. One leaky faucet at a time.

Out with the tide

This is it. Our last night in Kitsilano, our lovely neighbourhood by the beach. Tomorrow the movers will arrive and start loading our boxes into their truck to be hauled off and deposited at our new life. Our new life, as if we're off to conquer some new world.  As if it should be capitalized. Our New Life.

I must admit, though, that this doesn't seem real. Oh sure, there's plenty of physical evidence around me should I choose to look at the towers of boxes rising up like waves on all sides of me, ready to crash down on my head and drag me under.  In fact, I've filled and stacked a good deal of these boxes, carefully wedging in the jars of dried beans and rice next to the crackers and dry pasta so that nothing shifts around during transport.  I've debated over the wisdom of packing lampshades and towels together, wine glasses and plastic plates. So yes, I know that we are leaving here. 

But it still doesn't feel real. In fact, I have a hard time envisioning life after Tuesday, July 15. That's when this tide that we're riding will roll up to our house and leave us there in the driveway, stranded on dry ground.  That's when we will be faced with our boxes of flotsam. That's when we will have to reconcile all of our familiar belongings with our new, unfamiliar space.  And, I wonder, at what point will we realize what we've done, that we've landed on these shores and there is no going back? Will we have regrets? And if we do, will we be able to admit it to ourselves?

Big questions, but perhaps these are just momentary jitters, to be expected before tsunami-magnitude change. Truthfully, I know that we are ready for this and that in the long run, this will be a good change. But until that 'long run' kicks in, if I see a rat treading those waters beside me, I can't guarantee that I won't be checking out the ferry schedule for the next boat back to Vancouver.

We are land barons!

Yesterday we took possession of our new digs, so now we are land barons, the owners of two fine properties.  Granted, this is a short lived state.  Soon we will return to our regular status of one small fiefdom when the sale or our current home closes on the 15th of July.  But, temporarily, we can refer to our "properties."

The possession of the newest landholding was heralded with much signing of forms, first at the lawyers office and then the bank.  We collected about a pound worth of papers for our files, the sort that you keep forever but never actually look at again. So, it's real. We are going.

I'm discovering, though, that the logistics of moving to a new town is quite different than moving within the same town. The movers will be around to collect all of our goods on the 14th of July and will deliver them to our new house on the 15th. EVERYTHING must be ready to go on the 14th.  There will be no running back to the house to pick up the last few things, so all those odd-shaped, awkward items which would usually be carted over to the new abode in our car have to be packed in protective boxes, ready for stacking in a moving truck. But, there are a few items which we will transport ourselves:

• two small boys with car seats
• one playpen that doubles as a bed for smallest boy
• diapers and other necessaries for smaller boy
• overnight bags with toiletries and two days worth of clothes for two adults and two small boys
• one stroller
• two coolers stocked with ice, fridge items and snacks for two days
• cleaning supplies to be used at new house
• hand-held vacuum for use at new house
• one cat, bag of kitty litter, litter box and cat food

Is all this going to fit in the back of our Subaru Outback?  And if it doesn't, what do we ditch?  We may need to make alternate arrangements for the cat.  She's been hanging around at the neighbours a fair bit lately, so Mike suggested that we might want to leave under cover of darkness while she's over there visiting.  An idea, definitely, but I think we'll have to come up with another Plan B for her.

Luckily, though, we have reservations at the Hotel Merriam for the night of the 14th, so we don't have to worry about transporting sleeping bags and foamies for ourselves, which would definitely put the car on overload.  The Hotel Merriam, located in lovely Langford and a quick 15 minute drive from our new house, has been our regular accommodation on our various forays to the Island over the last few months.  The proprietors are lovely folk but very choosey about the guests they accept.  I'm not sure how we made the cut but it must have something to do with the long history I have with one of the proprietors. We go back to grade one.

So, ten days left to complete our packing, do our final round of visits with friends and perhaps fit in a day excursion or two that would be to Liam's liking.  And then we'll be taking our last ferry trip for awhile and eating our last round of deep-fried ferry food.  Organic eating, here we come!