They always are.
In our case this change is a big one. We’re selling our small city condo and moving to a family-sized house in a small town an hour’s drive southeast of the city.
There are boxes everywhere, a (very) few packed, but most still folded and leaned against the walls. Our possession date is the 26th of July which means packing and moving coincides with a bunch of medical and dental appointments. Since Tony can’t go out in the winter all of his appointments were scheduled for June, July and August, before the decision was made to buy now, while rates are low and the market has picked up in Calgary.
Granted we didn’t anticipate that Tony’s eye exam would reveal that he has glaucoma and cataracts which required an Ophthalmologist’s referral and followup, and which will require surgery. His Audiologist’s appointment showed that he needs hearing aids, which we have put off until after the move because they will require repeated visits for fitting and adjustments.
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All this means I’m not getting in my obligatory rest days between going out and I’m knackered, so I’m mostly looking at boxes and thinking about packing, rather than packing. It’s the pits, but there you are.
It doesn’t help that my dental checkup revealed that an old root canal has gone south and I have a roaring infection in my jaw, which may account for the way I’ve been feeling this last while (like an old dishrag hung on a barbed wire fence). There’s no pain but the infection has to be treated and then the tooth has to come out. There are no breaks to be caught here.
However there’s much to be excited about in the new house. It’s your standard issue mid-century modern on the exterior, but it has been renovated beautifully inside, so that the living and dining rooms are one large open space, with maple hardwood floors laid on the bias, a free-standing rock fireplace, big windows, a large kitchen which we can adapt to my need to sit to prepare meals, three bedrooms and a bath on the main floor. The finished basement has another bedroom and bath, a utility room and laundry, a storage room and a large rec room.
There’s also a huge fenced back garden where I can once again grow things, and a new deck right off the kitchen. We’ll be able to put up bird feeders and bird houses, grow the kinds of plants which attract butterflies and native bees, do all the things we weren’t allowed to do here.
I’ll have a place to paint without the “help” of my two furry “apprentices” who spread paint on everything, knock over the water and grab the end of my brush. Former cat members of the family were never interested in art, but these two must be reincarnations of Cézanne and Matisse, because they are convinced they can improve on my every canvas. That may well be true, but I am like the proverbial two-year-old who wants to do everything herself, including mess up perfectly good canvases.
And thank goodness, we will escape the marijuana bonfire that burns here night and day. It’s always been something of a problem but since marijuana was legalized last October it’s become intolerable. I have no objections to marijuana, but I am allergic to the smoke, and live with a perpetual migraine.
The new house is on a large corner lot, the next door neighbour is some distance away, as both driveways and garages are between the houses. None of their windows face us, their door is opposite and there is a tall solid fence between. They would have to stand on a ladder and puff over the fence for us to smell weed from them. If they do that I’ll turn the hose on them. I’ve inhaled enough marijuana to last a lifetime.
But for all my looking forward to living in the new house I cannot work up the bottle to pack or clean this little “lodge in a warren” as the Bard would have described it. What’s more I’m too tired to even worry about it.
