I'm here! I'm back! I'm not dead!

Hey there, all...one of you. One Blue Tree is back in business. I can't even begin to tell you how stressful the past couple of months have been, but they are over now. Thank goodness. We are now firmly ensconced in our new semi-detached in Markham, Ontario. It has taken an incredibly large amount of spray cleaner and cardboard box removal, but it is starting to feel like our house. Wait, I hear you cry, last time we heard you were planning a move! How is it that you are now moved and we have heard nothing? I have a great answer for you. I...just haven't written anything. I know. Incredible. But here is a short synopsis, with approximate dates:

May 20thish...House hunting trip. Originally planning to rent, we spend four days looking at lease properties. The final day, our real estate agent convinces us to look at houses to buy. We make an offer. It doesn't go through. We resign ourselves to living in a hotel for a month once we get there until we find something. Meanwhile, our amazing American real estate agent sells our house in two weeks for full asking price with no hitches. We think this means the rest of our move with be problemlos, as they say in Germany.

May 21stish....We make an offer on another property we saw the day previously. We get it. Mild panic.

May twenty-somethingish....Packing people come three days before we were expecting. Medium panic. Much garbage and unneeded crap is subsequently wrapped carefully in paper and placed in large, unhelpfully labeled boxes, like "Living Room--Misc." The woman coordinating our move will soon prove to be incredibly unhelpful and incompetent. Ah well.


May 27thish....We drive to my ma's for a little r and r before the final push to Toronto. This comes after three days of living in a house full of boxes, and packing the car to the roof with all the stuff left over after the boxes were finally removed. Once again, I am shocked at how incredibly long it takes to empty a house, even when trained professionals do the big stuff. Each subsequent bag of crap placed in the car takes a little piece of my soul with it until I am a raving lunatic leaving half empty detergent bottles as "presents" for the new owners, just so I don't have to walk to the car one more damn time.

May 31st...The drive to Toronto. Goes relatively smoothly. Immigration takes an hour. Immigration agent lady causes heart palpitations by repeatedly muttering things like "Well that doesn't make sense!" and "This can NOT be right," before telling us not to listen to her, and that everything is fine, only it's been prepared by a lawyer and so is completely unreadable. We understand completely.

June 1st...Henning's first day of work. My first day of living in a luxury downtown hotel, complete with spa-quality shampoos and, my favorite, complimentary incense service and delivery of healing stones to put under your pillow. Not as fun as you might think, seeing as how I am accompanied by a 17 month old and a dog. I would have preferred complimentary diapering service.

June 3rd...I get the heck out of town to visit my (very pregnant) college roommate in Napanee. Anything to get away from my zen inspired, incense stinking hotel suite is an improvement, but the three days I spend in Napanee are incredibly wonderful, and I love my college roommate with a deep and abiding love for her hospitality and patience with dog and baby and me invading her idyllic country retreat. Thank you a million times over, Julie! Just remember, don't catch the knife.

June 7th...Closing. Hot, spicy panic. I won't go into it, just know that we had to write an additional check we didn't know we were going to have to write, in order to finally get the keys for a house we had only seen once a month ago. Terrifying? Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. With keys finally in hand, I troop off to our new home.

June 8th...How, oh how could someone leave their house like this? Did they think cat poop in the basement would be a nice present to leave? Rotting food in the deep freezer? The roll out garbage can full of mold and covered in cigarette ash? The spilled...something on the carpet in the bedroom? I am generally not an anal person, but I was down on my knees with a scrubber for about twenty four hours straight. We rented a carpet cleaner, and after my husband shampooed every single square inch of carpet, the house began to smell like...nothing, which was an improvement of gargantuan proportions.

June 9th...Boxes, boxes, more boxes, some furniture, and a few more boxes are finally delivered. (Do I need to go into the details about how our closing was originally on the 9th, until the moving company told us the furniture would be here by the seventh, so we moved the closing to the seventh, only to have the moving company tell us, oh, wait, the furniture won't be there until the ninth? Do I? No? Thank you.)

June 10th to the present....Unpacking. Painting. More unpacking. Hanging things. Enjoying our new awesome neighborhood full of children Gavin's age. My Ma came last weekend, and the final boxes still located in the middle of our living space were emptied, and we painted my shit-brown bedroom a very soothing blue. The original color of our bedroom inspired some hilarity, when I commented how paint colors are always named pleasant sounding things. "Beach House". "Coffee with Cream". "Sunrise". I suggested naming paint colors after what they actually resemble, in which case my bedroom was painted in "Runny Stool". Our powder room? "Wet Newspaper". The room which was to be the boy's room? "Pepto and Robitussin".

Anyway, that is the saga of our second international move in three years. So now I live in Canada. Crazy, eh?