Vendredi V - Guess Who Doesn't Need Packing Tape This Year! Edition

Observant readers of my little home sweet home on the Internets are no doubt wondering where The Announcement is. Every year at this time, we give everyone a heads up that they're going to have to get out their wee address books and update our entry.

Again.

We (well, at least one of us - it hasn't always been a simultaneous thing) have moved every summer for the past six years. When most people are enjoying the cooler evenings of August and feeling summer ripen into its last glorious days, we're slogging through real estate ads and trying on prospective neighbourhoods for size.

BUT!!

Not.

This.

Year.

Nope, the PM clan has decided to remain exactly where it is. The housing market being what it is (steals of deals, to be sure, but once bought, you won't resell it for 25 years) and our bank account being what it is (that is, not conducive to a house downpayment in this brave new world of actually needing to have a good chunk of cash down), we've elected to stay put.

[Cue thunderous applause from those Canucks who head down to visit us and are tired of having to print out a different Google map again.]

This? Excites me very much. For many reasons, including:

Top 5 Reasons I Am Glad We Are Not Moving

1. No address changes. It gets very annoying to have to call the customer service department for every credit card, alumni association, magazine subscription, bank, friend, student loan office, former employer, Canada Revenue Association, insurance company, utility, etc. every summer. Even worse are the infrequently-used bits of red tape, where you don't realize for a few months that you haven't seen any documentation come through and then you have to call them and they're all chipper and say, "and if you could just provide me with the phone number we have on file" and then you can't remember which house you were living in over the past four years when you opened the account and then they get extremely suspicious that you're Identity Theft.

2. Same school. The Girl has been to a new school for every single grade. Every fall I have to figure out new lunch and absentee policies and find the office where I have to drop off the forms. Every year we all have to make new friends, and I have to introduce myself a hundred times to the Other Moms. This year? I even know their school bus number! (38, whoop!)

3. No NGSTSD. "New grocery store traumatic stress disorder" that is. I hate trying a new grocery store. Even if it's just a different location of the same chain. I need to know where everything is because I write my grocery list grouped by category and location and if I don't know if the health food aisle comes before or after the snack food aisle, I won't know in which order to put organic sour cream, onion soup mix, and Old Dutch Ripple Chips.

4. Blissful ignorance about dust bunnies. Oh, you can think your house is clean. You can even do spring cleaning or clear out in anticipation of a garage sale. But until you actually pick up and remove every sweater, every book, every piece of lego, every dish, and every piece of very-heavy-because-we-can-only-afford-MDF furniture, you don't realize how much crud is in your house. Most houses (even the most well-kept) have at least 40 garbage bags of crap in them. And, every summer before this one, I've had to fill every one of them. Not this year!

5. My oven can remain crusty. And, the real reason why I don't want to move. I hate cleaning ovens with my whole heart. And the only time I do it is for the annual move. No Easy-Off for this girl in 2009, hooray!