Come on now, breathe - one more big push!

Moving out of a house is a lot like giving birth.

Once the blessed event is confirmed, preparations begin: attend pre-natal classes and buy a crib; get passports and find a house.

But even with the best-laid plans, it all really comes down to that last day or two. Then the waters break, the moving truck pulls up, and the hard work begins.

(To push the childbirth metaphor as far as it will go, I'd have to say that the housekeeping equivalent to crowning is cleaning the oven. Worst. Job. Ever. And a can of Easy-Off ain't no epidural.)

Then suddenly, it's all done. The mess has been cleared away, and you are in that transitory stage between pregnancy and new motherhood, between old house and new. While you are excited (and a bit overwhlemed) by the new adventure ahead, you can't help but be a bit nostalgic about the phase you are leaving.

You remember the first time your belly really looked pregnant and not just fat. The first time you heard the heartbeat.

You remember reading beside a cozy fireplace. Walking to go get gelati. Rushing off to school because you are late. Again. Losing a first tooth. Choosing a park.

Dear house, we will miss you. (Except for the heating bills.)

All things being equal, I think I prefer labour and delivery to moving out of a house. For one thing, it's short (for me, anyway). Someone else does all the clean-up**. Nice people shout encouraging things at you and bring you ice cream when it's all done.

But then again, I'll sleep through the night tonight. So there are some positives.

(**Note: I have not forgotten all those kind offers to help me clean my house. However, it's such a nasty job, I figured I'd spare you all.)

Moving update: We're at the eleventh hour and every item on my very long list has been crossed off. I've got passports, TD visas, and enough airplane children's programming to last for a flight twice the length of our scheduled time. Which, of course, means that we'll run out of stuff to do about half an hour before we land. Please pray for us - this upcoming flight has caused me the most anxiety of anything we've faced so far!

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Phew!

It's been a busy couple of days. So busy, in fact, that I could not even squeeze in the time to post my tirade against the powers-that-be who seem to have decided that I am a legal nonentity as far as this move is concerned. No worries - I'll get to it another day - there is no shortage of righteous anger for this girl.

Right now the packers are encasing our life's possessions into boxes. (The boxes are actually my favourite part of this move - who doesn't need a household's worth of good quality boxes?!) The kids have been taken to the park by a very, very kind friend.

Things continue to move along relatively smoothly. The Husband had his first and second days at his job and it seems to have gone well. This morning he had to get up at the crack of dawn in order to attend an off-site meeting - ah, the working world. He spent last night driving around our new neighbourhood to see if it really is as good as it looked on our quick run-through - yup, it is, hooray!

Whilst my partner is taking leisurely drives, I am working like someone on a chain gang. Well, without the chain. One would think that having other people pack would leave little to do - au contraire. I was up until 2:00 am last night prepping the house, and up again at 6:00 to finish up. And there's still more, but there's only two of them, so I've got a bit of breathing room.

My car got picked up today. Shipping my car has become a small nightmare (a night-foal, if you will). We are still waiting on necessary documentation and the paperwork we have completed has been declared no good. Plus it has to go to Minneapolis by rail via Edmonton (I have no idea why), so by the time I get it, I'll be glad that I didn't take my winter tires off last spring.

Sorry, this is a shortie and lacking in insight. But we're alive and well, and soon I'll have looooooots of time to post on my blog. And organize my recipes. And clean out the vents on my car with a cotton swab.

P.S. A big shout-out to "finchcramer" - thanks for the unsecured wireless internet!

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The Goodbye Girl

I loathe saying goodbye. That has made this past weekend somewhat difficult given that we have had several close encounters of the farewell kind.

There is, of course, the obvious - I am sad when I know that I am encountering a person for the final time in this particular version of our relationship. Even if we keep in close contact, even if we visit one another frequently, even if we become more intimate due to more frequent communication, the relationship as I have come to know it will change irrevocably. Saying goodbye to church friends has been particularly difficult in this regard; so many of the ties that bind us are woven by the rhythm of church community: chatting in the foyer, waiting for our kids outside their Sunday School classrooms, meeting in home groups, etc. We will no longer be a part of this rhythm, which is in turn yet another loss.

But there is another facet to my desire to escape the goodbyes, one I only realized this afternoon. We spent time with one of The Girl's best friends from this past school year, and the friend's mother commented that she had cried when she heard we were leaving, as she herself had experienced a friend moving away in kindergarten, had found it difficult, and was now sad for her son.

Which brought home to me what is (I think) the larger reason for my attitude towards goodbyes: I dislike being the cause of another's pain. I prefer to minimize the extent of the damage by cheerfully pointing out we will be back to visit often and that email will connect us through our fingertips. I underestimate my place in the lives of others and reassure myself that I and my family will hardly be missed.

Then I look into the eyes of people to whom I say farewell and am forced to confront their sadness as they, too, feel the pain of this last meeting. It takes tremendous strength to accept that pain and accept that I am part of its cause, and it is often easier to avoid that acceptance.

So to those to whom I have seemed cavalier in my leavetaking, my apologies - it is personal weakness and not disregard that is to blame.

Moving update: The TD visas were successfully secured yesterday, so the kids and I are all set for our travel next Saturday. The Husband left by car at 2:00 today, and, as he has not returned, I can only assume that he made the border crossing equally successfully. Which is good, as he is bringing over my spices which the moving company has refused to transport. My husband, the coriander-runner.

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Our Soon-to-Be Humble Abode

A few more pictures of our new house:

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Adventures in House Hunting

Remember that Friends episode where Phoebe announced that she would no longer purchase anything that didn't have "a history"? Mass-produced consumer goods were out and heirlooms were in. (And then Rachael discovered that the Pottery Barn coffee table she was trying to pass off as a handed-down-for-generations-one-of-a-kind piece of furniture had also been bought by Ross and then predictable and increasingly hilarious attempts were made to hide the truth from Phoebe?)

That's what I was thinking of today as I thought about the house we have just rented. It was the first house we saw, by far the best, and it feels all the more valuable since we had to fight a bit to get it.

All in all we saw five houses yesterday. The first was one I had found on the internet; we both fell in love with it at first sight. (More about it later.) But, of course, one must ensure that all the options are considered, so we proceeded to the second house. This one had a heee-oooooge yard (fortunately maintained by the owners who lived next door) and was a basic 50s bungalow. The third "bedroom" was a walled-off concrete slab in the basement just off the "large recreation room" (another concrete slab).

The third house looked promising, but we couldn't see it right then because no one was available to show it until the evening. Plus the cone-wearing dog inside was barking quite ferociously.

The fourth house was also unavailable to get into, and came equipped with more ferocious dogs.

The fifth house was accessible, but the attempts to flip this 50s bungalow were, alas, confined to the kitchen. The bathroom was an overwhelming confusion of pale pink and blue tiles and the brand-new stainless steel appliances only temporarily distracted one from the plywood cupboards.

We left our agent at that point and decided that while we were both in love with the first one, we would go back to the third house for the evening showing just to make sure. Full of carpet and dog/cat smells (always ominous when the landlord says, "hmm, smells a bit more than when I lived here - I haven't been here for awhile) and the downstairs "half bath" was a toilet in the middle of the laundry room - it helped make our decision much, much easier.

To our dismay, our early-the-next-morning phone call about the first house revealed that another couple had beat us to it. But there was a glimmer of hope - they only wanted the house for December. We offered to pay more than the asking rent and confirmed our availability for immediate rental and trotted out our life's history as we filled out the forms.

(I was rather harried when I filled out the forms and made a few mistakes. One was forgetting to double my biweekly paycheque and erroneously affirming that I earn a pittance of my actual salary. The other was filling in the personal information box marked "Sex" with the word "NO." The Husband does not think this is as funny as I do.)

In the end, we won the day due to a combination of immediate availability, a bit of sweet-talking from our agent, and (we hope) a good connection with our landlord. Here is a picture of the outside:

The house is all hardwood floors, has a great kitchen (gas stove!), three bedrooms and beautiful windows. Another bonus is that the huge trees block all light so there is no grass. The only downsides are no dishwasher, only one bathroom and no extra room for guests, but these are all surmountable. It is located in an absolutely amazing neighbourhood. Oh, and it has a history - it has been in the owner's family since it was built in 1921 and it has a wall hand-painted in 1944 by his mother with characters representing his family.

So all in all, a productive and successful trip. We also visited The Girl's school, but that will have to be saved for a later post.

Moving tasks for tomorrow: head to the border and get TD visas for me and the kids and try to get a handle on the basement junk before The Husband leaves on Sunday.

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Oprah makes me angry

For lots of reasons. Not the least of which is her glossy monthly narcissistic ode to self-aggrandisement that assaults my senses at the supermarket checkout (I mean, really, there's *nothing* else you could put on the front cover? You don't see Terry Smith on the cover of every Messenger).

But what really gets my proverbial goat is her frequent assurance that being a mother is the hardest job in the world, pronounced with all possible smugness from whichever leather chair is the height of style for this television season. And that she knows she could never do it, so she chooses not to be one.

Now there are lots of jobs that I know I could never do, or at least, could not likely ever do well. Warehouse forklift operator, for one. Slaughterhouse inspector, for another. But I do hope that I would say so without that same sense of "there but for the grace of God go I" that seems to accompany Ms. Winfrey's condescending platitudes.

Why the rant, you ask? (As if one needs a reason to protest the juggernaut that is O.) Because today I once again joined the ranks of those exclusively occupied - for no pay, mind you - with the "hardest job in the world." And it is precisely because of this singling out of motherhood as some sort of saintly vocation (as opposed to occupation) that has suddenly made my life very different. Now I again get to struggle with feeling like "just a mom." And then feel guilty for insisting that I am only "between jobs" as though staying at home with my kids is like some prison spell one tries to bury in one's resume.

Perhaps my ire is simply the result of being very sad today. I loved my job and I loved my coworkers even more. I revelled in the anal retentiveness of it all, the petty political games, the agonizing over comma placement or to bold or not to bold.

But I know that there are equally meticulous people in offices in Minneapolis, and that I will find myself there eventually. I also know that even though mothering *is* one of the harder jobs around, this interim will be a good time for me to shore up my foundational relationships with my kids and that I'll one day look back fondly at my child-centred "holiday."

Moving update: tomorrow we head down to look for houses - if you're praying, pray for a nice one (and a fireplace wouldn't hurt). We return Friday, and I'll post details as soon as I can!

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The Eagle Has Landed

Today marked a momentous day in our move. The Husband drove to the border, clutching the third version of the offer letter. He strode manfully up to the window, brimming with confidence, and meekly requested his TN-1 visa. Fortunately, the wind was from the north, the earth was tilted ever so slightly, the Fates were busy unravelling threads over in Newfoundland, and a butterfly flapped its wings in Uzbekistan - the visa was granted.

This document, worth its fibrous weight in gold, unlocks so many doors for us. The biggest, of course, is the ability to work in the States. It also grants the holder the right to apply for a social security number (the appropriate forms filled out an hour later in Grand Forks) which in turn leads to bank accounts, leases and that hallowed American institution - credit.

Tonight was spent taking munchkin passport photos and booking airline tickets (in order to prove the need for expedited passports). Tomorrow morning I'll be up far too early so I can wait in line before the passport office opens to ensure I get processed in an express (i.e. leisurely) fashion so as to hopefully guarantee that I am only one hour late for work on my very last day.


Wish me luck!

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Welcome to My New Home on the Internets (or, When Luddites Blog)

For the record, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with blogs. There are some I love (and there are a few) which keep me coming back for their provoking and accurate commentaries on aspects of life I consider important.

Then there are the rest - I've often wondered what compels people to expose the minutiae of their lives in all their mundane glory. I've always had the suspicion that, were I to stop hiding behind my potentially inaccurate view that bloggers are losers who think that their insipid musings deserve world-wide exposure (all friends and smart bloggers excepted, of course) and throw my own hat into the ring, my blog would be no more interesting than your run-of-the-mill Facebook site.

And that may prove true. But if you're here, then it means that these particular run-of-the-mill musings are important to you because you are interested in our family and our upcoming moving adventure. In which case, welcome.

A couple of notes before we get going: I lack follow-through. I am committed to new things for a period of time inversely proportional to the amount of effort required. Which means there will likely be a lot of posts for the first while, a dearth as my attention wanders like one of my English Composition students in a lesson on comma splices, and then a flurry as guilt poisons any newer-and-therefore-more-exciting pursuit until I catch up. Please bear with me.

In addition, I am a slow poster because I tend to self-edit to an excrutiating degree. Plus I have to look up words like "minutiae"

Finally, I am adverse to new technology. It is a miracle this blog exists; please do not expect further miracles. Like fancy fonts. Or links. I will try to figure out pictures and movies.

Until next time.

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