mousme | Entries tagged with moving

Not in the sense of fewer daylight hours, but rather in the sense of "this was a very long day." I'm so flipping tired.

I was up at 5:30 in order to be up and dressed and with everything sorted out so I could go to U-Haul and get the van I reserved to bring garbage to the dump. I had actually reserved a pick-up truck, but it turns out U-Haul doesn't have those in Ottawa anymore. So instead I was given a van, and that actually turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise, since I'm not sure the pick-up truck would have had enough room in the bed for everything I tossed in there.

There was so. much. garbage, friends. I tossed a ton of KK's junk (mostly broken shit from her past two or possibly three cars that she apparently just tossed in the garage rather than throwing out), and a bunch of stuff that had just been sitting in the basement for a remarkably long time, plus two broken office chairs that KK has been hanging onto this entire time. I drove to the local dump, got the van weighed, tossed everything into the container that was there, and was paid up and out of there all inside of about twenty minutes. I was actually really impressed with how efficient it all was.

KK and H surprised me by actually showing up to the house at 10:00. KK had said in a message the night before that they'd aim for 9:00, so I wasn't expecting them until the afternoon, but they showed up a lot earlier than I thought! H was actually pretty great and helped KK pack up about 90% of the books in the cat room as well as breaking down the mini greenhouse full of dead plants KK had in there. They managed to get most of it done while I was cleaning out part of the basement and then dragging stuff to the dump.

I am not entirely sure what bug crawled up KK's butt today, but she was snide and snippy to me both verbally and via Signal messages all day, accusing me of "rushing" to get out of the house, among other things. I don't know if she's feeling self-conscious because her friend is visiting and suddenly thinks I am making her look bad (this has happened to me with friends in the past, where I am acceptable as long as I am not in public view of others), or if she was just having an off day, but if she continues to be like that tomorrow I am going to have to talk to her about it. I am not here to be anyone's verbal punching bag anymore. I've had that in enough relationships, thank you.

We took the dogs and H to the new house in the late afternoon and evening, and the dogs had an absolute blast zooming around the property again while I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I also spotted a black and white cat prowling around the property, and I'm really hoping that it's a barn cat from the farm next door and that the previous owners didn't abandon their cat on the property. If they have we'll take the poor thing in, of course, but I really hope that's not the case.

KK and H drove to Rockin' Rhonda's diner, which is about 15 minutes away. It's a 50s-themed diner that's right across the street from another house on which we made an offer last year, and we were pretty sad that we didn't get that house because the diner has really good food. They have garlic bread that is absolutely to die for, it's so good. Once we were stuffed full of food I loaded up all the dogs in my car again, came home, got them fed and medicated and crated as needed, and now all that's left is to send out the announcements for Quaker Meeting tomorrow and prepare to be the online greeter. It's already very late, so I need to get right on that.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: cranky

I really do not like being the SitRep writer at work. It's so much more work than just doing my regular job, and none of it can be done on "autopilot" the way a lot of my regular work can. I have one more day left of this role, and next week I can go back to my little routine and be left alone. Thank goodness.

I could complain more about moving, but I won't. :P

I am not usually a True Crime Girlie, as the youths call it these days, but last year I fell down a very specific rabbit hole in the form of the Karen Read murder case. It's being covered on YouTube by (well, by a million people approximately) a lawyer from Alberta that I started following for a completely unrelated reason, and the whole case is absolutely wild. Like, if it was written as a novel or as an episode of a police procedural you would dismiss it as being too unrealistic. I've had the videos on in the background rather like a podcast, and it has very much helped speed the days along lately. I have reached the end of the videos for now, but the trial is still going on, so I assume there will be more videos. I like the YouTuber I follow for several reasons, but most of all I love the name he picked for himself: Runkle of the Bailey. His actual name is Ian Runkle, and of course it's a nod to Rumpole of the Bailey, which was a favourite of mine when I was growing up. I think he leans far more conservative than I do, but I appreciate his legal analysis and breakdown of what's been going on in the trial.

It is weird to be following a "true crime" case. I was more interested in these things when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but I have grown to mostly find consuming these stories to be distasteful and weirdly prurient. I think it's because this case isn't so much about the horrible thing that happened to the victim, but rather the elaborate "conspiracy" and the extraordinary incompetence and corruption of the police force(s) involved in the case. We are likely never going to know what happened, because the facts have been so thoroughly obfuscated, but on that basis alone it seems to me that the accused, Karen Read, should be acquitted simply due to lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have my own idea of what may have plausibly happened, but I am watching from Canada and the incident took place in Massachusetts in 2022, so my idea is basically fiction carefully woven around what few "facts" I have picked up from watching YouTube videos, so it is worth precisely nothing. I just like making up stories to help the world make sense, and I have no illusion that I have any great insight into what "really" happened. The only thing I know for sure is that it is a tragedy that has left two kids twice orphaned, and has ruined the life of a young woman who is already struggling with several chronic health conditions. Everything about this case is terrible.

So, yeah, that's been my mental escape for the past few days. I will have to find something else to keep me distracted until new videos get uploaded.

As of tomorrow after work I will be on my own for the foreseeable future, since KK will be going to pick up H at the airport, and I assume they'll be going directly to H's hotel after that, leaving me alone with the dogs. I am planning to take advantage of her absence to get as much shit done as I can. I actually find it difficult to get chores done when KK is home, because I always feel as though I'm bothering her or in her way or both. With her gone I will hopefully be able to get a bunch more packing done, and I might also bring the dogs to the dog park after work so they can get some of the crazies out.

If I buckle down hard I might be able to get my bedroom completely packed except for the stuff I immediately need for the next two-ish weeks, which will free me up to pack up the basement and the cat room over the weekend. I have rented another U-Haul van (I wanted to rent a pick-up truck, but apparently they don't have those anymore in Ottawa) so that I can take a bunch of stuff to the local dump on Saturday. KK had agreed to help me with this, but I get the feeling she won't be early enough on Saturday to really help with anything. Still, it will be good to get all this garbage out of the house. I have reserved the van for six hours starting at 07:00, and I think that should be plenty of time to get everything loaded up and brought to the dump. That will clear out enough space for me to keep packing without tripping over even more stuff.

In other news, it looks like I may run out of feed for the quail before we move, which is really unfortunate. I really didn't want to have to schlep a large quantity of feed with me the whole way when we finally do move. It's very heavy and therefore very inconvenient. Alas.

Okay. Time for bed.

Current Mood: calm

I am having a bit of a Woe Is Me kind of day (or possibly week, or month), because it feels a little like death by a thousand paper cuts. Or corrugated cardboard cuts, maybe (yes, I have cut myself with corrugated cardboard in the past--it sucked).

The lawyer called me and told me they forgot to bill me for the Title Insurance, so I had to e-transfer them another $415.16. *sigh*

At work the workstation I was assigned had been reset, and so I spent much longer than I wanted to setting up all my accounts all over again, and then Outlook spent the entire day being an absolute pile of shit that refused to update. The only way I could get new emails was to close the application and re-open it, so in order not to miss any crucial updates on the wildfires I had to do that every ten minutes. It was extraordinarily annoying.

I drove to work with KK this morning, since she also had a later start to her day, and we drove home together and stopped by Canadian Tire so I could pick up a small box of kitchen garbage bags and compost bags, since ours are packed away in an unfindable box. *sob* I made another small grocery order which will hopefully see us through to next week, and we tentatively talked about weekend plans.

KK's friend H is coming by this weekend for a visit from Alberta. This has been planned for many months, and originally we were going to be reasonably settled in the new house, so it wasn't as big of a deal. Since we're now not remotely settled, I was hoping to get some help with packing up what's left of the house, but now that's not looking promising. KK and H are going on Sunday to a place called Parc Omega, which is a wildlife preserve/safari park in Québec, about an hour's drive away from here, and although I was originally meant to go with them, it's obvious that if I don't spend the weekend packing the house, we will never be ready in time, so they've given my ticket to a friend instead.

KK has informed me that she has decided to stay in H's hotel room because we don't have air conditioning in our bedrooms and it's too hot for her to sleep here. She says that H has volunteered to help us pack on Saturday, but I am not going to count on them for that, to be honest, because at this point KK's track record speaks for itself. I assume she and H will be sleeping in, so at least half the day will be gone, and then KK has promised to show H the new house, so that's several more hours that will be taken up in the afternoon and maybe the evening. So I think it's a fairly safe bet to say that I will, in fact, be packing up the house on my own. I can only hope that at some point in the next two weeks KK will actually pack up her own room and bathroom, but I am not her mother and I will not be nagging her about it.

I am starting to wonder if KK is secretly resenting me these days. Today I discovered that when she packed away the contents of one of the freezers into the freezing cooler for easier transportation, she didn't check to see whether it was properly plugged in/powered up, so all of the contents melted, mostly meat that I had packaged earlier as well as several packages of stuffed pasta (tortellini, ravioli, etc.). Naturally it was all mush and had to be thrown away, and that was several hundred dollars' worth of food that got wasted right there for no good reason. I also had to clean out the whole thing and disinfect it, because the meat had leaked blood that had pooled in a big puddle of grossness at the bottom of the cooler. KK is usually so careful about things that I'm having trouble seeing how this wasn't at least partly deliberate, or at least some form of weaponized incompetence. It's like everything she does lately is calculated to cost me as much money as possible, or force me to clean up her messes, or both. I probably should have checked the cooler myself to make sure it was properly plugged in, but it never occurred to me that I couldn't trust her to check it herself. She did say "sorry," but that was it, and I won't lie, I was at least hoping she'd help with the cleanup, but no. I had to do all of it by myself.

Anyway, I am frustrated and having a bit of a pity party. I will likely get over it in a day or two, because it's a very ugly side of my personality that I don't like at all.

It's time to call it a night and go to bed. I have another in-office day tomorrow, and since KK is working from home and I don't want to pay exorbitant parking fees, I'm going to take public transit to work, which means I need to get up early enough to get the bus.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: grumpy

Well, last week was certainly a fucking gong show.

For a second I thought we were going to make it, albeit highly imperfectly. I had managed to pack up the whole garage, most of the basement and the entire main floor (the latter thanks to the help from our friends), and I was willing to just leave the "cat room" to be a problem for future me, since it just contains mostly books and bookcases. I quite simply ran out of time, even with help, to pack up the house, and I was willing to take that one on the chin and figure it out later.

But then Friday morning came and KK was too sick to move. She was dizzy and seeing double as a result of overextending herself (her words), and couldn't even stand up. I had gone to bed around midnight and had gotten up around 3:30 in order to keep packing and to get the dogs to PetSmart for the day, so I found this out when I got home around 7:30. I mentally debated my options, since KK hadn't even come close to finishing up with packing her room and had decided to ask the movers to finish up her packing for her (which was NOT our initial agreement!), and I decided it was better to just cancel the whole thing and try again. Our moving plan involved her driving the cats and a lot of the food in her car to the new place, so if she was too dizzy to stand, she was obviously in no condition to drive.

I had to pay a cancellation fee, of course, and the moving company was rather put out, but they agreed to reschedule for June 18th. I paid another months' rent, made sure our utilities wouldn't be shut off, and then went to pick up the dogs from PetSmart. We'd moved a bunch of loose stuff (garden equipment, plants, etc.) on Thursday, including the fruit flies that we use to feed the dart frogs, so I had to drive out to the new place to retrieve the bugs so the frogs wouldn't starve. I figured it would be a fun time for the dogs if I brought them with me and allowed them to run around the property and get some of the excess energy out of their systems, and I was absolutely right: they had a BLAST. They zoomed around every single inch of the four acres, found the pond (which I discovered is pretty much completely dried up) and rolled around in some delicious mud and pond scum, and came out reeking of said pond scum. They were thrilled, and slept hard in the car the entire way home.

In the meantime, all the kitchen stuff is packed, so I went to the dollar store yesterday and picked up some cheap dishes and a cheap pot, pan, and a couple of mugs, and some kitchen utensils just to see us through the next two weeks. I am sad to report the dishes did not last a day, because KK accidentally knocked them onto the floor and broke one of the two plates I bought. I have informed her that I am not buying more. If she wants dishes she can fucking buy them herself at this point. This move is already wildly expensive, and I'm having to shoulder the financial burden of the extra month in this house. If she's going to break the shit I just bought, even if it's an accident (and I'm sure it was), she can fucking well replace it. I suspect this just means I'm going to find that plate constantly used and in the sink for me to wash, but whatever, I will take that up with her when it happens. We're pretty much going to be living off frozen dinners and easy to eat/no preparation required foods until we move. I don't particularly have the wherewithal to cook, all my spices, pots, pans, oils, etc. are completely packed, and I refuse to unpack and repack the kitchen. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.

I am trying very hard not to be mad at KK for the things that aren't in her control, but I am annoyed at her for the things that are in her control. She literally only had to pack up her bedroom, bathroom, office, and her china cabinet, while I took on the rest of the house, and she didn't even get that done. Her bathroom is untouched and her bedroom is only halfway packed. Yes, while our friends were here she stayed downstairs and helped with boxes, but she honestly could have used that time to go upstairs and work on her stuff. The main reason she didn't was because it was hot upstairs (we don't have air conditioning), and I will confess that I have less sympathy than usual for that. I did have help with my part of the house and I also ran out of time, but in my defense I worked for two and a half weeks straight after having Covid and after an emergency trip to Montreal to care for my sick parents, so I think maybe I am allowed a tiny bit of slack, here. KK also had Covid, so I totally get that that time was a write-off, but she had all the time before that, the weekends when I was working and she wasn't, and a fair bit more time in general than I did, with a much smaller workload. How hard would it have been to try to pack one box a day in her bedroom? *bangs head on desk*

I really, really hope she doesn't plan on pulling the same bullshit for the next two weeks. If she does, we are going to have fucking words about it, and I am not confident in my ability to keep a civil tongue in my head about it.

At least we were able to dig out our work equipment, so we'll be able to work for the next couple of weeks. I'm scheduled for day shifts this week and next week, and there is some work from home time for me, so I need to have my work computer all set up, which I did today. So at least that part is set and organized.

I have ordered the Murphy bed for the new place, and unfortunately it seems like I don't get to have any control over the delivery date and time, and it seems like they might not even deliver into the house, but are just going to dump it in my driveway? Which honestly seems kind of shitty to me, especially since they only mentioned that AFTER I had ordered and paid for it. Argh. I will have to keep an eye on the tracking number so that I can figure out how to be at the house on the delivery date in order to accept said delivery, and maybe bat my eyelashes at the delivery guy(s) to at least put the boxes inside my house.

Okay. It's time for me to go to bed. I have a slightly later start at work tomorrow, thank goodness. This week I am what's called the SitRep writer, meaning it's my job to collate information about ongoing and emergent events, like wildfires and flooding and other stuff, write up a Situation Report (or SitRep) and send that out for approval before the end of the day. Since the reports start rolling in a bit later in the day, my schedule gets shifted up accordingly, and it means I can take my time getting ready for work tomorrow morning. What I think I will try to do is get up at the usual time and take the dogs out to the dog park for a long run so that they will be nice and tired and calm for the rest of the day.

That's it for me for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: frustrated

KK got very ill this morning at the very last minute. Nothing life threatening, but it was clear we wouldn’t be able to move with her in that condition. So everything is canceled, I’ve paid the cancellation fee and rescheduled for June 18th. I have to dig out my computer and other work stuff before Monday, and figure out how we’re going to make the next two and a half weeks work.

Now I’m going to bed to pass out until tomorrow morning.

Current Mood: exhausted

You’re getting a symbolic post from my phone, because I’m up to my eyeballs in packing and I will never get it done in time.

The good news is that there is electricity and internet at the new place, so I will be able to provide an update tomorrow, although it will likely also be very short because I assume I will be absolutely wrecked by then.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

What the subject line says: 0/10, do not recommend.

We are 36 hours away from moving time, and we are still nowhere near ready, although we have made a lot of progress, thanks in great part to our friends who helped us to pack yesterday and today. Two of the three came back today, and between the four of us we got the main floor almost completely packed.

I have realized a few things during this process

1- Very few people know how to pack properly for a move.
2- KK is fucking terrible at packing.
3- KK has a very different definition of "finished" than I do.

KK had the bright idea to pack up some of the packing supplies over the weekend, specifically the box cutters and markers, so that there was only one box cutter and one marker for the entire house. I may have lost my shit at her just a little bit when I found this out yesterday. I have no idea what she was thinking, and honestly neither does she. I also had to give her instructions on how to label boxes when I found that she had labelled all of the boxes she'd packed "desk stuff." Now, I don't care what she labels her own stuff, but I wasn't about to put up with poorly labelled boxes that we all know I am going to have to unpack.

I am grateful that she stayed to help pack up the downstairs, but she is very far behind on packing up her bedroom, as am I. At one point today she looked around the living room and declared us finished, and my jaw just about hit the floor, because there was loose stuff everywhere--at least three boxes' worth. I have no idea why she thought we were finished when we very clearly weren't.

Also, bless her socks, she is CONSTANTLY interrupting me when I'm packing, or when I'm doing anything at all. I can't get through a single box without her asking me to fetch her something or do something or answer a question, and it's driving me CRAZY. I have a hard enough time keeping my thoughts together without constant interruptions, and my patience has worn so thin that it is basically nonexistent so it's taking every ounce of my willpower not to constantly snap at her. She has a real knack for interrupting me right as I'm getting into a state of flow, too. I know that a huge part of this is just that I am very tired and very stressed, and under normal circumstances I wouldn't mind this nearly as much. Right now, though, it feels like trying to pack up the entire house with a very demanding pre-teen: old enough to be helpful, not old enough to do anything truly independently. She's also going through ALL of the boxes we bought to pack up both our bedrooms. I thought she was going to do a bit of a triage of her clothes and not keep everything, but apparently I was wrong. She is keeping it all, and God only knows where she thinks it's all going to fit. So tomorrow I will have to buy more boxes for my bedroom, because there will be none left.

In the meantime, I still have a lot of stuff to pack up in the basement, the entire cat room (books, office supplies, etc.), and my bedroom and bathroom. Tomorrow morning we're grabbing a small truck from U-Haul to bring as much stuff over there as possible that would be too fiddly or time-consuming for the movers to move on their own.

The plan is then for KK to stay at the house and wait for the internet service provider to come, and I just had a horrifying realization that we may not have electricity at the new house if the previous owners shut off their account the minute they moved. I completely forgot to contact the local electrical company to set up an account for us, so I just did that online, but it's very unlikely they will hook us up tomorrow. Fuck. At least we have a gas generator so we can at least power the fridge and freezers while we're there, but it's going to suck if we don't have electricity for however long it takes for us to get connected.

I am exhausted. I've been responsible for 90% of this move by default: switching all the service providers, dealing with all the mortgage paperwork, buying most of the packing supplies, making arrangements for the packing, and my brain isn't good for juggling that much information even on a good day, let alone after the past six weeks of hospitalized parents, Covid, night shifts at work, and everything else.

*pauses journal entry to go make a service request online*

Okay. I will ask KK to call them tomorrow while she's waiting at the house for the internet provider and see if they can rush the connection request. They already service the address, so hopefully it just means flipping a switch long-distance and doesn't require a technician come out.

I want to go to bed because I can barely see straight, but if I do that instead of packing up the basement I don't know if I'll be able to get everything done. Fuckity fucking fuck.

In other news, Octavia and Juno had their dental surgery today, and it went very well and was very expensive. They are both tired but doing well and have already had food and the first dose of their antibiotics for the next four days.

Okay. Time to go feed and water the quail, and then, I don't know, I may go to bed and force myself to get up way earlier than I want to in order to get some packing done before I go to U-Haul. I didn't manage to get up early enough today, but tomorrow the panic may set in and help with getting up early, I don't know. Mostly I can't see straight, and I don't know that I have it in me to pack another box tonight.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: stressed

Three friends very generously came over to help us pack today, and we didn't even finish the main floor. The kitchen is mostly finished, at least, and mostly what's left is small bits and bobs, but we are nowhere close to done. Two of said friends offered to come again tomorrow, and we are definitely not going to refuse.

Tomorrow I have to bring the cats to the vet for their dental surgery (yay), and pick up more packing paper (between the five of us, we went through a TON of the stuff today--so many breakable things in a kitchen!).

I am SO tired, and there is still so much left to do. I should probably stay up and try to do more packing, but honestly I just want to go to bed. I will set my alarm for some stupid hour tomorrow morning and try to get an early start on the day. Tomorrow is the last full day of packing before we move, because half of Thursday will be taken up with bringing stuff to the new house.

My realtor called and told me the sellers want to send a furnace guy to the house tomorrow, so I guess they left that until well past the last minute, since they were supposed to repair the furnace (there is some rust damage on the inside) as part of the conditions of the sale. I am currently living in a glass house, so I won't throw too many stones, but I am side-eyeing them more than a little bit.

Okay. Time to feed and water the quail, and then lapse into a coma.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: drained

WE MADE IT.

The sellers got us the necessary paperwork so that I am not legally responsible for their financial shenanigans. Wafik was not in the office today, but I was able to get hold of Peggy, the person who got my mortgage approved a couple of months ago, and after a nerve-wracking five hours I was finally able to go to the downtown branch of the credit union and get the bank draft I needed.

I then drove like a bat out of hell to Alexandria in an attempt to get the thing to my lawyer. She told me she needed it by 2:30pm or 3:00pm at the very latest, and unfortunately I was not able to bend the laws of space and time to get there on time, but I did get there at 3:15, which is honestly a fucking miracle.

Then my lawyer pulled a miracle out of her ass and managed to register everything at 4:59pm (you can't register anything past 5pm) and joked that I was the record-holder for that.

So I now own a house! Or, rather, I now am responsible for a mortgage that allows me to live in a house! YAY! There is a lockbox on the door, apparently, where I can get the house keys, so we will be checking that on Thursday when we start bringing stuff to the house ahead of the movers. I want to bring a lot of my gardening equipment (the loose stuff that's hard to pack), all of our plants, and a bunch of the loose stuff that's in the basement.

KK finally started packing over the weekend, and I am trying super hard not to micromanage her, but it is so hard to resist. For all that she is super organized about a ton of things in life, she is absolute dogshit at packing. She actually packed up most of the packing supplies! Like, WHY. We aren't even close to done, why would you pack up all but one Sharpie and one boxcutter? Bonkers. Her method of packing is also super haphazard, AND she hasn't been properly labelling the boxes. Yes, she's identifying which room they go in, but she hasn't been listing the contents on the outside like a normal person. Right now she has something like five boxes labelled "desk stuff." Not only that, but she is using up so much money's worth of packing supplies (paper and bubble wrap and the like) that we ran out after she packed fewer than four boxes of dishes from her china cabinet. I was honestly flummoxed when she said we'd run out this morning. I expected her to use some of it before I came home, but ALL of it? Good fucking Lord. *screams in frustration*

At least she has agreed to buy more packing supplies for us tomorrow and picked up more bubble wrap and paper today (she also went through half of that, which is mind-boggling to me), because so far I have paid for everything in this move: the supplies, the movers, and the professional organizer, not to mention the house itself and the lawyer's fees. So it's nice that she's finally contributing a bit. She has plans to pitch in for moving costs using her tax return, which she still hasn't submitted for last year's taxes (she is also terrible at filing her taxes on time), but that won't happen until at least next week, so I'm not counting on that.

In short, I am trying to stay out of her way while she packs, and am concentrating on other areas of the house. I lost a lot of packing time to all of the legal and financial shenanigans over the past few days, but I have very generous friends coming tomorrow to help, so I am going to ask them to help KK pack up the kitchen, and I am going to give explicit instructions on how to label the boxes so that I know what's in them when we move. Then while they're working on the main floor I will tackle my bedroom and the "cat room.," which is mostly books and my office supplies. If I work very hard I might be able to get the "cat room" completely done and put a significant dent in my bedroom. I really hope so, because otherwise I basically only have Wednesday to get everything else packed up, because Thursday we'll be loading up the U-Haul truck I rented to bring the aforementioned stuff to the property, and Friday is moving day, so 99% of the packing needs to be done before Friday morning hits.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that, while I was gone today, Pixie busted out of her collar in the back yard and took off after a rabbit. KK messaged me to let me know it happened, and of course I was still 30 minutes away and could do fuck-all about it. Luckily KK was able to find her pretty quickly and entice her into the car once she'd run herself ragged. That shaved another few years off my life too, stupid dog. It would have been just our luck for her to be hit by a car and killed mere days before she gets a whole four acres to romp around. Christ.

I am going to stop here. I was so stressed out last night that I didn't fall asleep until nearly 1:00am, and as a result I am completely fried today. So I'm going to try to be asleep before 11:00pm. That's not super early by my standards anyway, but it's nearly 10:00pm now, so I can't expect miracles.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: stressed

The house buying nightmares continue.

I have my financial ducks almost in a row. Almost. And now, the ducks are scattering again.

I spoke to my mortgage/credit union guy (Wafik) on Thursday. He was very understanding while I panicked at him, and he promised that if I could get all the money transferred to my new checking account by Monday, he would personally oversee getting the transfer expedited/waiving the usual hold on funds, and ensure I get the bank draft I need to give the lawyer on Monday.

So I moved heaven and earth to get everything done, and I did. I got the last of the money transferred on Friday evening, and received the usual warnings about the time it could take to get it all done. In light of this, I decided to send Wafik an email today (originally I was going to wait until tomorrow but then I worried I'd forget or send it too late or something) as a follow-up about our conversation and to confirm that all was well. And that's how I discovered he has an out of office message saying he'll be back on Wednesday.

Notice how Wednesday is not Monday? Yeah, me too.

So I have been quietly having a panic attack at my desk all morning. I am not prone to panic attacks, but I am pretty sure the chest pain and palpitations are exactly that, because there's no other good reason for it (and it started the minute I got the out of office message, so it's not a coincidence). I am accustomed to a constant low-level buzz of anxiety, but it doesn't usually manifest in this kind of physical symptoms. I cannot say I am enjoying the experience.

There is absolutely fuck-all I can do about this situation today, because it is Sunday, and nothing is open. My deadline is tomorrow, and if Wafik is not in the office to do the thing he promised he'd do, then I am fucked six ways to next Sunday. So the only thing I can do for the next 19 hours or so is panic quietly. Tomorrow I plan to call him first thing in the morning, and if he doesn't pick up his phone, my backup plan is to call my original mortgage advisor (I don't think that's her actual title, but I don't know it so this will suffice) Peggy and very politely weep at her until she finds someone local to help me. See, Peggy, unlike Wafik, is NOT local, but lives somewhere around Barrie, ON, so it means that even if she wanted to help me, she cannot physically place a bank draft in my hands.

*rips out hair*

*internal screaming*

I honestly thought that the financial part of the nightmare was over and that I just had to deal with the sellers' shenanigans, for which my lawyer has a plan. But now the person who committed to helping me has just swanned off without even the courtesy of letting me know, so fuck me, I guess. I have already spent so much money on this move on packing supplies and on the packing help, the house is halfway packed up, and I have abandoned my plot in the community garden so that if we don't move, I can't grow vegetables this summer and all the plants I ordered are going to die. Not to mention the crushing disappointment of losing out on a dream property literally five days before we're meant to move in.

FUCK.

Current Mood: stressed

Well, the good-ish news is that I think I've got a good chance of getting all my financial ducks in a row by Monday. A whole bunch of people have pulled together at various financial institutions to help me make this happen, and so while it's not guaranteed/a done deal, I have done everything within my power to make it a reality. I am reasonably confident it will work out.

So, yay for that!

Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends. I went to see my real estate lawyer to sign all the paperwork for the closing on Monday, and got some more bad news.

It turns out that the sellers are leveraged up to their eyeballs. They have two mortgages on the property, neither of which have been paid at all, and they conveniently did not disclose that the central A/C unit they supposedly own is not actually paid for, and the property has a lien on it as a result. None of this is a problem per se, because the sale agreement stipulates that I am not responsible for any liens on the property. However, they and/or their lawyer have not provided all the proper legal documentation that stipulates that they are taking responsibility for the lien and all of the debt. Without those documents, I can't sign the closing on the house because I'd run the chance of taking on the liability, which I do not want at all, no thank you.

The sellers have until Monday (the official closing date) to produce said documentation. If they don't, we're in a bit of trouble. My lawyer has said we can close on Tuesday at the latest. Otherwise, she will petition for occupancy if they don't cough up the paperwork, meaning KK and I can move in on Friday as planned, but we will not own the house until such time as all the paperwork is in order. If we don't get occupancy, in theory the sellers would be on the hook for any expenses we incur while we don't move (like needing to live in a hotel, putting our stuff in storage, etc.), but my lawyer rightfully pointed out that, given the sellers' financial status, "you can't get water from a stone."

Blargh.

It feels like the universe is trying to shave several decades out of my life from sheer anxiety. Weirdly, I am less stressed out about this than I was about the financial bullshit that happened yesterday. Finances are a big red panic button issue for me, but legal documentation doesn't appear to fall into the same category. I won't know until Monday if the sellers have produced all the necessary documentation, so I guess I get to worry about it all weekend. Hurray.

Okay. Time to go feed and water the quail, and then head to bed, since I'm working all weekend. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: anxious

I'm not even going to attempt a full post today, because I am tired but mostly frustrated. Here is a list, in some semblance of order.

1- Brittany the professional organizer only stayed half a day due to not feeling well. Not a huge problem, and I'm not going to force someone to work when they're sick. It turned out to have a silver lining, too, as you will see.

2- The real estate lawyer finally contacted me, and told me my appointment to get everything signed, sealed, and delivered is tomorrow afternoon.

3- The lawyer casually informed me that I'd need a bank draft ready by tomorrow (less than 24 hours' notice). If she'd answered any of my emails last week or earlier this week I might have had a snowball's chance in hell of getting the money out of my various accounts, but as it stands, 24 is not nearly enough time.

4- I forfeited my afternoon chasing after all my bank stuff, and have only sort of managed to get it sorted. It took hours and an in-person visit to one of the branches, and I most likely still won't be able to get everything by tomorrow. It's like the lawyer who specializes in real estate has no idea how banks work.

5- I spent the remaining time on the phone with insurance companies, because my current insurer wanted to charge me nearly $800 a month for my home insurance, which is WILD. It's more than a mortgage payment! Just bonkers.

6- My mortgage person called and needs more documents signed.

7- My internet provider called to let me know that, contrary to what they told us, they do NOT service the area we're moving to, so I won't have internet service starting next Friday.

I am wiped out. I have no idea if the lawyers will accept the situation as it is, and if they don't I may end up with no house, after spending a lot of time and energy and getting emotionally invested, and I just don't know how to feel about it all right now. I am tired and frustrated and filled with anxiety because there is nothing I can do beyond what I've already done and hope for the best.

So that was today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: numb

I am less impressed with Brittany the professional organizer this time around. She did mention feeling a little under the weather today, so maybe I can chalk it up to that. When she was here organizing the kitchen with me she had lots of good ideas and helped corral my ADHD self so I wasn't spinning off in fourteen different directions. But both yesterday and today it felt more like I had to use a cattle prod to get her to do anything. I asked for suggestions a few times, and she made vaguely helpless noises and commiserated about it all being overwhelming. I not only had to tell her what to do at every step, but I also did most of the work while she watched unless I explicitly told her to do things. I won't lie, that's not what I was hoping for, at the price I'm paying for her services.

She was a little better today once we started tackling the basement, at least. I am hoping that tomorrow goes better too. There's more to pack and organize in the basement, and since we still had a little work to do in the garage we didn't get as far as I would have liked in the basement. We still managed to pack up about six boxes, filled four garbage bags, broke down two shelving units, and filled a giant Rubbermaid bin with stuff to donate. There are two bins full of KK's stuff that I've brought to the living room so she can go through them, because I honestly think that most of it is stuff she can likely get rid of. Whether she does or not will be up to her, I guess, but there won't be enough room in the house for them. She's taken next week off work, but she told me she has a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, so that will be at least half the day gone for her. I'm not confident she can pack up all her stuff in three and a half days, but I am trying not to stress about that. Her stuff is her responsibility, and I don't think it's fair for me to have to pack up my stuff, all the common areas, *and* her stuff too.

I'm grateful at least that packing up the basement is proving less back-breaking than the garage. Given how limited my remaining packing time is, I think I'll try to start packing up my room tonight after I put the dogs to bed. I need to do several loads of laundry, and after I've done that I will be sorting out my clothing in order to pare down my wardrobe to the bare essentials. KK pointed out a detail that I missed, namely that my bedroom doesn't have a full closet but only a sort of cubby in the wall, so it will be even more important now to have as few clothes as possible. Otherwise my stuff simply won't fit in my bedroom, because there's nowhere else to put it, unless I hang it from the ceiling somehow. I'm going to have to investigate ways to expand that space: it might be just a question of cutting out a bit of drywall, or it might be more complicated than that. We shall see.

God, there is still so much to do. *lies on the floor* It will get done, but my God, I wish there were less to do, or maybe a bit more time in which to do it.

Current Mood: sore

I'm writing from the future! *ooOooOooh* *spooky future noises*

I was so exhausted after yesterday's packing session that I could barely string two words together. I had to have a guy come in and replace the water meter first, and that was a whole ordeal of trying to corral the dogs and run the water and supervise the guy while he was in my basement. He took longer than I thought he would, so I had to request that Brittany, the professional organizer, delay her start time by half an hour.

We cleared out a huge chunk of the garage yesterday. There was so much recycling and garbage, it was actually pretty shocking. I think a lot of stuff had just gotten tossed in there to be dealt with later and then just never got dealt with. Also KK has a tendency to squirrel away garbage and recycling in various unexpected containers and then not tell me about it, so that I get a garbage-y surprise when I open said container months (or in this case, years) later. None of it was perishable, luckily, so it was just a matter of getting rid of it.

Yesterday was garbage day, but we have a three-item limit for garbage pickup, otherwise you have to buy very expensive city-produced yellow garbage bags, and I did have some on hand, which I bought knowing we'd likely need them for the move. I had bought two packs of four, and we filled five bags, which are annoyingly difficult to tie, incidentally. There's also a bunch of larger things that wouldn't fit in a garbage can and therefore count as "large" items. Each "large" item counts against your three-item limit for pickup, and you can't arrange for extra pickup for those, so I will be taking all this stuff to the dump, probably on Friday.

I thought there would be more packing involved with the garage, but it turned out that once I cleared out all the garbage and recycling, what was left was already mostly packed up or not the kind of thing to be boxed up anyway. So that was a bit of a relief. There's still some work to be done: I have to empty the small pantry and also empty and defrost the freezer, but that will be a job for next week, especially the freezer. The small pantry can be packed into a couple of boxes pretty easily.

I wanted to take a very hot shower after I was done, but KK left to go to the pharmacy and decided to run the dishwasher, which meant I couldn't take a shower until well after she was back. I must say, the hot water felt glorious after the day spent clearing out the garage. I collapsed into a puddle in my bed after dinner, and that was the end of it. I did remember that I should post an update, but I decided it wasn't worth losing more sleep, and that I would backdate an entry today once Brittany was gone, which is what I have done!

Current Mood: sore

I have one of those twice-weekly reports to write for work tonight, and it's time-consuming and annoying, so I can't spend too long updating this journal just in case work gets busy later and I don't have time to get the report done. I do not want to have to explain that I didn't get my work done because I was blogging. That would look bad. ;)

I probably shouldn't stress too hard about it, because I routinely take, like, five hours or longer at work to update because I keep getting interrupted anyway. So I'm sure I'll get it all done. This report in particular stresses me out because there are no explicit instructions for how to prepare it, but it's somehow still extremely important to get it done exactly right. *headdesk* Also, I only write one once every four months or because it's specifically a night shift duty and my shift partner and I take turns to do it, so I am woefully lacking in practice. Nothing stresses me out more at work than being asked to do something I'm not familiar with AND for which I have no reliable blueprint. It is objectively the worst.

Tonight is my last night shift, and then I am off until my day shifts next weekend. So far no coworkers have agreed to a shift trade, although I am waiting for that one coworker to get back to me tomorrow (he won't be in until 3pm, though, so I won't find out until late in the day if he's accepted the trade). If he says no, which he likely will, because going from an evening shift directly to a 12 hour day shift with no break is goddamned brutal, I will simply have to suck it up and go to work next weekend.

That give me five days this week and four days next week to get everything packed. Normally I would spend the Monday after my night shifts sleeping, but obviously I can't waste all those precious packing hours on something as silly as sleep, so I'm going to take a brief nap when I get home and then get up and start packing. I have asked KK to help me with packing tomorrow because it's a statutory holiday, but I'm not sure how much help she will actually be. Tomorrow being a stat holiday means that I won't be able to go to U-Haul to buy more boxes, because I'm 99% sure they'll be closed for everyday purchases (albeit likely not for van rentals and that sort of thing), and rightly so. Employees deserve their statutory holidays, and should have the day off like everyone else.

So, yeah. I should probably make some aspirational packing goals for this week, so I'll know how hard I failed by the time the weekend rolls around. ;)

Okay. Report writing time! Wish me luck. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: stressed

I am very grumpy about having to get up early to go to the credit union to sign all my mortgage paperwork. The experience wasn't terrible, but it didn't have much going for it. First I got caught in long weekend rush hour traffic on my way there, and arrived exactly on the nose, only to get very turned around because not a single solitary door had a number or a label on it. It turned out the office wasn't even accessible from the main building lobby, it had a separate entrance at the back of the building. I had to call the representative for directions, and he came to get me.

The representative was very nice, but he had not anticipated having the kind of client who carefully reads all documentation before signing it, so it took a lot longer to get through the appointment than the time he'd budgeted. I regret nothing. ;) However, there was a glitch in the computer system when it came time to sign up for the insurance portion of the mortgage, and there was no way to fix it, since the automated system had gone into "weekend mode" (his term) and there was no one from IT available outside of office hours. So in order not to delay the payout of the mortgage I had to waive the insurance portion, which makes me very uncomfy, but the representative assured me that we can fix that next week.

All in all, I did not enjoy the process.

I've been mostly talking about my own problems here lately, but the world continues to be on fire. Carney, our new Prime Minister, went on an official visit to the White House last week, and to all appearances held his own with a fair bit of aplomb. There was an entertaining amount of Canadian passive-aggressiveness, some very amusing side-eyes at the camera, and lots of backhanded compliments that Trump took completely at face value.

I still have a lot of doubts about Carney. His focus has been mostly on the economy and fixing the housing crisis, and he's pledged to massively increase defense spending and car manufacturing, and needless to say, I don't share those priorities, especially not car manufacturing. Given the current climate change crisis, we should be moving well away from cars and investing in robust public transit and 15-minute accessible cities. But noooo, cars uber alles, I guess. Ugh. He's also eliminated the cabinet positions devoted to people with disabilities and women and gender equality issues, which is a huge step back for the country, especially given the meagre progress we've made on that front to begin with. I am really unimpressed with that.

At least India and Pakistan appear to have backed off plunging the entire world into nuclear winter. The USA continues its horrendous slide into fascism, with the firing of the Librarian of Congress (the first black woman to ever occupy the post, appointed by Obama, back when the world still seemed sane), ICE grabbing people off the streets and leaving their minor children stranded there, and DOGE continuing to wreak havoc across all government departments.

Watching the USA go down like this feels a little like watching a friend who was always a little unstable succumb to a drug addiction. You always worried about them in the past, and now you're worried that not only are they going to self-destruct, they're going to take you down with them and burn your house down too for good measure.

*sigh*

I am really looking forward to my bed. I have about four and a half hours before my shift is over, and I do want to stop at the local U-Haul store (luckily a five-minute drive from my house) and pick up more boxes, because Monday is a statutory holiday and I won't be able to get them then. And then I plan to do all the sleeping.

I think that's it for now. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: tired

You know, if all that was required of me to be successful in life was making plans, I would be acing this whole "being a successful human" thing. I love making plans, the more detailed, the better. The problem, of course, is that to actually succeed at things, you have to enact said plans, and that is where everything kind of falls apart for me.

KK kind of falls into the same category as me, and we are pretty terrible about enabling each other at making plans and then following through on maybe 10% of them. To be fair, it's a lot of fun to make plans, and I don't mind too much if all the low-stakes, castles-in-Spain plans don't come to fruition. It's actually really fun to talk about these things and throw ideas back and forth and build it up in our imaginations. I don't know if she is quite as aware as I am that our reach might exceed our grasp in a lot of cases, but I suspect she is.

I am also well aware of my propensity to make grand plans to completely turn my life around while I'm working night shifts (I talked about in in a previous post a few weeks ago, during another round of night shifts), and I have just come to accept it as one of my brain's quirky little ways of generating dopamine, so I just let it happen now and try not to convince myself that this time will totally be different, no, really! As long as I can accept that this is just an exercise in making my brain go *brrrt*, and that I have no expectations of actually doing anything about it, then it's a harmless little pastime during slower night shifts.

Right now I am trying to make sensible plans for packing up the house next week. Working 12-hour shifts this weekend means I won't get anything done, and there is no sense in deluding myself into thinking that I will somehow manage to do anything other than sleep and go to work. My current ambitious plan is to try to get a lot of packing done on Monday, when normally I'd spend a chunk of the day sleeping after my night shift. Don't get me wrong, I will still sleep when I get home, but it will be more of a two-hour power nap and then I'll aim to go to bed very early as a way of shifting over my sleep schedule as quickly as possible.

Tuesday through Thursday I've hired the professional organizer I had hired back in... March? I think? *checks calendar* Nope, first week of April. ANYWAY. I have hired her to come for six hours a day to help me pack up the garage and, if there's enough time, the basement. I am reasonably confident that I can pack up the upstairs on my own (minus KK's room and bathroom), and if I have friends able and willing to help pack the kitchen and dining room, that will also be really helpful. I might be able to do it on my own, but only time will tell.

So far most of the coworkers I have asked for a shift switch have said no, which is sad but not unexpected. I have two coworkers left who might be able to help me out. One is coming in for a shift today, and the other won't be in until Monday, so if the first one says no I'll just have to log into my email account from home to see if the second is willing to take one for the team. He very well might, since I agreed to swap weekends with him back in November so he could take his wife to go see Taylor Swift in Toronto, but it will of course be dependent on whether he has other commitments lined up already. Getting the weekend off to pack would be ideal, but if I can't get it, I will cope.

I have set one boundary with regards to the packing with KK, and that's that I expect her to pack up her own shit. I am by far the more able-bodied of the two of us, so I don't mind that I'm probably going to end up packing up most of the house on my own. I need her to still be physically functional by the time moving day arrives, so I'm perfectly willing to take that on. What I am not willing to take on, however, is packing up her office or her bedroom or her bathroom. Those three rooms are all on her, and I told her that many weeks ago. Like me, she hasn't started packing yet, but I don't plan on bailing her out at the last minute. Whatever she hasn't packed is just going to get left behind, and she can figure out how to get it delivered to the house. The chances of her not being ready in time are not super high, but they're also not zero, either. But I can't be responsible for myself, the whole house, the pets, AND her stuff. So she gets to be responsible for that.

Somewhere in the next ten days I am going to lose at least half a day to attend the closing for the house. I haven't heard from the lawyer, come to think of it, so I'll shoot them an email to make sure everything is still good on that front, or if they need more information from me or something. Great. Another thing to be paranoid about. Well, at least it should be a relatively easy fix, and it's 10 days before my official closing date (and more than one business week), so hopefully there's nothing to worry about. Anyway, I assume the closing will be done at the lawyer's office in Cornwall, so I'll have to drive out there and back, and even if it takes an hour or less to sign all the paperwork, it means at least a three hour trip, possibly longer.

I think it's still doable, God help me. I may just be deluding myself, but I am an incurable optimist when it comes to these things. I guess we'll find out!

All right, time to close out this night shift. I have a little over two hours left before I can go home and get some sleep. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: optimistic

The panic hasn't set in yet. I'm moving in two weeks, have got absolutely nothing done, and am fighting against a rising tide of mystery tired. The panic is supposed to trigger adrenaline which in turn will lead to packing, but right now all I've managed to do is go to work, sleep, and put food in my body. I haven't even been eating particularly healthy lately, because I haven't had the wherewithal to cook. I'm not eating absolute junk, but there's been a lot of frozen meals and snack foods.

I don't know if the current amount of tired I'm feeling is the remnants of Covid, or the result of working a fuckton of shifts in a row including evenings, weekends, and now nights, or the result of being stressed and out of shape, or if I'm just one of the unlucky people who don't ever get to feel better when using a CPAP. Or an unholy combination of any or all of it.

*screams into the void*

Yes, I am being melodramatic. It will pass, I promise. ;) Right now, though, all of my feelings are "Woe, and darkness, and teh sad." I really, really wish that my brain's reaction to stress wasn't to go directly into overwhelm and shutdown. It would be so nice if I had socially acceptable dysfunctional coping mechanisms, you know? I could be a compulsive cleaner, or a compulsive exerciser, but noooooo. I stress eat and procrastinate and doomscroll or play video games. The closest I've come to a "productive" coping mechanism is occasionally baking cookies or making soup.

*lies on the floor*

*screams into the void some more*

I had my meeting with the two M&C folks today, and they were so nice and so sweet to me, and even suggested that I have a "packing party" to get the house packed up. I will see how I get on with packing until the end of next week, and if I'm still in as much trouble as I think I'm in now, I will put up a plea for help on Facebook.

I think part of it is that I haven't had enough sleep this week. I got no sleep on Monday, then only six hours of sleep on Tuesday, and barely scraped together five non-consecutive hours yesterday (because of the aforementioned meeting). I am going to sleep as much as I can today because I have to get up early again tomorrow to go to the credit union. It has also been ungodly hot the past few days, thank you climate change.

Current Mood: stressed

I didn't get a nap in before I had to go to work, and now I am extremely tired and my head hurts. My back also hurts, but that's because I changed out the quail enclosures and then wrangled cats and dogs to the vet, not because I didn't nap. I wish napping fixed back pain, honestly, it would make my life so much easier. I am very sad that I didn't get to nap. I feel like a nap would have made everything a lot more tolerable.

I didn't get any packing done, either. I know: surprise, surprise. I am my own worst enemy these days. Even if I get some packing done this week while I'm on night shifts, I'm definitely going to have to rely on adrenaline-fueled panic in the two weeks before we move. I think I can get it done, but it's going to be a stressful time, for sure.

I am still torn about whether or not to bring some of my furniture with me. I think there simply isn't enough room for most of my bedroom furniture, even with a Murphy bed installed. Part of me wants to bring it anyway and store it in the garage, because eventually I want to tear down the garage (the home inspector said it will need to come down in a few years no matter what) and build what would essentially be an extension to the house. More to the point, I want to build out some extra independent living space just in case one or both of my parents ends up needing to come live with us. So I was thinking an extra bedroom or two, a bathroom, and either a kitchenette or a kitchen, depending on space and how much it would all cost. I obviously don't have the money now (especially not now that my cats need dental surgery), but I am being given a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) to accompany the house, and I might be able to use it for the construction costs. I definitely can't afford to build an entire new house, but something simple might well be doable. I'll have to look into what permits I'd need and what is and isn't allowed on the property, of course, but I like this plan. Of course, we all know what happens to the best-laid plans of mice and men...

Speaking of the cats' dental surgery, I have a sneaking suspicion that we're going to have to switch all the cats over to wet food, at least in part. The vet said he wouldn't make recommendations for food until after the surgery, since we don't know how many teeth are going to need to come out, but even so, adding wet food is probably a good idea. Of course, that is going to be wildly expensive, so I am thinking of starting some rabbit breeding ahead of schedule (I was going to start next year) and use the meat and organs as a base to make my own raw/wet food for the cats. I'll have to consult with my vet to see how complicated the nutrition aspect is for cats (I have heard horror stories about people feeding their pets inadequate "raw food" diets) so that I don't accidentally deprive them of essential nutrients.

I feel like I had more I wanted to post about, but my brain is kind of mush right now, so I guess I'll call it here and hope I remember whatever it was later on today.

Catch you on the flip side, folks!

Current Mood: tired

I am too old for this little sleep in a night. KK was still awake when I got home, so we ended up chatting for a while before I went to bed, so I only got about three hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready for work again. Blaaaaargh.

The connectivity issue at work is resolved, at least, and the night shift surprised us by Jerry-rigging things together a bit and managing to log a bunch of the calls and emails from yesterday, thus sparing my current shift partner and I having to go through the entire backlog. So, yay for amazing colleagues! I have been mopping up the rest of the issues all morning with the help of my intrepid shift partner, and now we're back to our regular baseline.

I am hoping that the next few hours go by reasonably smoothly. I am very tired and I have very little desire to do a bunch of metaphorical heavy lifting. So far so good, so we shall see how it goes.

I have a few things to do when I get home, like send out Quaker announcements and feed and water the quail, but I plan on swan diving into my bed at the earliest opportunity otherwise. Hopefully I can "catch up" on some sleep that way. I know that technically there is no such thing as catching up on sleep, but I can't think of a better way to to describe it.

I have an appointment to take all four of my pets to the vet on Monday for their shots, so that's going to be a very expensive endeavour, but at least it will be done. We have plans to put all the pets in daycare at PetSmart on moving day so that they don't get traumatized and also so that they don't get underfoot or, in the case of the cats, get unduly traumatized by all of the goings-on. PetSmart won't take any pets that aren't fully up to date on their vaccinations (and rightly so!), so this is an expensive but necessary step.

I have been researching fencing for the new property, and Dylan and Sarah recommended against putting in chain link fence, especially if I want to try doing it myself. Apparently you need a specific piece of equipment to stretch chain link fencing, and it's a pain in the ass to install correctly. They suggested I get rolls of welded wire fencing and t-posts instead, which is much easier for a beginner to install. I looked up the prices, and it looks like I might be able to get it all done for about $1,000, rather than the $3,000 to $9,000 that it would cost to pay someone to put up the roughly 300 feet of fencing I'll be needing. I do need to figure out how to build a gate for that kind of fence, since I'd want at least one or maybe two access points (one at the front, one toward the back so I can easily get to the rest of the property), but I'm sure that can be managed. My main fear is that it will prove to be beyond my ability and then I'll have wasted a bunch of money for nothing, but I figure nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The fence will have to be a weekend project, and in the meantime I will be keeping the dogs contained (I hope) by the expedient means of a clotheline and tie-outs. It seems to work pretty well for Dylan and Sarah, but their dogs are not nearly as prone to escaping as mine. We shall see. They definitely won't be allowed outside unsupervised until such time as I am confident they won't go careening onto the neighbours' property or permanently vanish into the wilderness chasing after the wildlife.

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Current Mood: busy

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Corner of Bourbon & Division

Her Words of Wisdom Scratched Into The Door

Entries tagged with moving

I am looking forward to my days getting shorter

SitReps and True Crime and Stuff

I am not allowed nice things

Where do I start?

The move that wasn’t

A not-update update

Moving is terrible

A very quick update

Habemus Domum!

On today's agenda: only screaming

Meet the new stress, a little different from the old stress

Today is FIRED

And today's post, right on time

A backdated post, just because

A very quick update

The most annoying appointment

I am so much better at planning than executing

Waiting for the panic to set in

I am filled with mild regret

flops