Corner of Bourbon & Division

All that's left now is the unpacking, and working out all the details I probably missed, because there are always details.

Housewarming is set for October 31st, to coincide with my annual Hallowe'en party. That gives me a little under two weeks to unpack and get my ducks in a row. :)

Here is a slightly crooked picture of the house, taken with my iPhone.



The move itself went about as well as I could have hoped, but between work and running around and getting far too little sleep all week and then spending all of Saturday with not enough food/water and with boatloads of stress trying to coordinate movers, my parents, and extra furniture delivery, I managed to make myself physically ill by Sunday morning. (TMI FOLLOWS) Let's just say that I am a driving rockstar, because I managed to get violently sick to my stomach in the middle of Highway 20 with no place to pull over and yet did NOT crash my car or otherwise provoke an accident. I gotta say those 20 minutes rank in the Top Ten Most Unpleasant Moments of My Life™, though. And then I had to spend 20 minutes cleaning out the car at my parents', in the street. Blech. Luckily my mother was a star and put my clothes in the laundry right off and so we were able to continue with the day afterward.

I am short four curtain rods and short even more curtains. Also, a holder-thing for toilet paper. I can't believe the former owner took that with her. Who even does that? :P

I am excited, though. I have already hung one painting, and after today's trip to Canadian Tire, I will be unpacking and arranging more furniture.

Happy as a clam, here. :)

So it's looking good for a house. Going to see my agent tomorrow morning, and we will be accepting the counter-offer to the offer I made today on a nice little place in Île Perrot.

It's an almost brand-new house (built in 2009) with a nice, if entirely unused, garden and a really awesome semi-finished basement. It's essentially perfect for my needs right now, nice and accessible, not so far from the city as to be unmanageable in terms of a commute, and there's a fresh fruit & veggie market at the end of my street.

In short, it's a good fit, and I am excited. I hope everything else works out so that, come this time in October, I will be moving into my very own house. :)


This is what the house looks like on the outside.

So the gorgeous house with acreage is, in fact, really close to what turned out to be a really active train yard. Not just the tracks, but the actual loading yard and what have you, and the amount of noise on a weekday was quite simply appalling. The roof is also due to be replaced sooner rather than later, and all in all, in spite of being absolutely gorgeous, it's going on the back burner.

I will keep looking. I'm disappointed, but the more I think about it, the more I think that not buying this is a good decision.

*sigh*

Onward and upward, I guess!

My landlords are selling my building. No exact date, since the place just went on the market, but my lease is up August 31st.

I found out about ten days ago, and after my initial reaction of oh my God holy shit I don't wanna! I stopped freaking out and started considering my options. Prompted by a couple of people, and reassured that the Régie du Logement rules state that I can't be kicked out of my apartment with no notice, I decided to go poke at my bank and see if I'm still the credit-score equivalent of the Black Plague.

As it turns out, I'm not anymore. So I got pre-approved for a mortgage, and I am now in the market for a house. Those of you unfortunate enough to be following me on Twitter already know about this, but I figured I haven't been around on this LJ in a really long time and so it behooved me to give a little news.

So I spent this afternoon looking at houses, and telling myself that it's ridiculous to fall in love with the very first house you see. That's what happened, of course, but I'm trying to be objective about it. The other places ranged from "okay" to "Sure, I'd buy that if I wanted to become a serial killer and needed a nice wooded area in which to bury the bodies of my victims." In short, I'm kind of starry-eyed about that first place, in spite of the fact that it has a couple of obvious drawbacks.

There will be more house visiting this week, and I'm hoping that if no other, even more awesome houses turn up in my price range, that that first house won't get snapped right up.


So how's everyone else doing? What have I missed? I know that scads of babies have been born and that we're still waiting on a couple more, but is there anything else going on? :)

Busy busy busy, same as yesterday. This entry is STILL all about domestic stuff, so feel free to skip it if you don't want to hear about dishes and furniture. ;)

I actually got the dishes done today. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my dishwasher? I've had it for ten months and it *still* hasn't gotten old.

I went on a scouting trip to IKEA yesterday. It was originally going to be a proper shopping trip, but then I realized once I was there that I had a much longer list than my current budget would permit, and that making a decision would put me over my time limit. To explain: I can't spend more than 45 minutes to an hour inside IKEA before I go insane and my whole body starts screaming "Get OUT! Get out NOW!" I get this in a lot of large stores, but IKEA especially is overwhelming to me, and it's worse when there are lots of people around.

So I wandered around the store with paper, pencil and measuring tape, found all the useful items that I want, and came home to make up a budget for myself. Today I will be going back and picking up said useful items and bringing them home. Then I have to set it all up and put out the boxes and things for recycling. My timing is off, really, as today was the recycling pick-up, but I think if I'd tried to do it all yesterday I would have lost my mind.

In other domestic news, I got the cats' new water fountain set up. It's the schmancier model (to steal a term from luvenditti, but at least this one works as opposed to the last one, which refused to reassemble once I put in the motor. I also got the new microwave set up (I think I mentioned that yesterday), and it looks very nice indeed.

The Parental Units recently visited their storage locker, and I scored a whole bunch of artwork from the loot. Now I have to figure out where I want to put it all, and how I'm going to hang it. I have wall space to spare, so that's not a problem. The problem, of course, is that Phnee has to make a *decision*, and we all know how good I am with those. Life-and-death decisions I can do no problem. Deciding where to eat or where to hang a painting? I will angst for days.

I am having a lot of trouble with my need for instant gratification with this place. I *know* that making a home is a process and won't happen overnight, but a lot of the stuff I thought I would have finished by now is in many cases not even started. A rational person would realize that I have too many projects on the go and expect far too much of myself given the nature of my work and the fact that I live by myself and have no car. Luckily, I am not a rational person, and so I don't have to realize any such thing. ;)

Still, my frustration at how slowly I'm moving aside, this place really is starting to come together. The new paint job is still gorgeous, and makes me happy to look at it. I am looking forward to having proper artwork on my walls. I will eventually be getting the books onto their shelves, which is all to the good. After today I will be able to organize my craft supplies as well as my pantry and eventually my canning stuff.

Most importantly, the place is almost always in a state where I can throw open the door and let people in to visit. Even when it's not "perfect" I am never in fear of being utterly humiliated if someone steps through the door. This was not always the case, especially when the cats were having "accidents" everywhere in my previous places. I don't know what's happened to them, but apart from Pan-Pan (who seems to think that the bathtub is a giant empty litter box), they all use the litter boxes with no exceptions.

Having people over regularly has always been one of my dreams. I like having my friends stop by, and I love being able to say "Take a seat. Would you like a drink?" and just be able to produce said drink without worrying too much about it.

This place is the first apartment I've had that really feels like "home," in which I want to settle down and fill it with nesting materials, in a way that I've never felt before. I don't know if it's my age, or the fact that having two floors makes it feel like a house (or maybe the first-floor entrance), or if the stars aligned just right or what, but I'm not complaining.

The only "complaint" I have, really, is that I'm not moving fast enough for my own liking, and that's just a question of coming to grips with my own limitations.

I am home early once again, as Den!Mother very kindly drove me home once more. This time it's because ADD!Supervisor brought in the three cases of maple syrup I ordered (one for me, two for ai731), and they are much too heavy to carry home on the metro. Normally I just would have left them there and come back for them with a car, but she offered to drive me, so YAY!


Now I am heading to bed. If I get up early enough I may tackled setting up at least one of my new bookcases. I am nesting in a very big way these days. Dunno if that's because I'm at the age where nesting becomes a bit of an instinct, or if it's because spring is here and I'm just enjoying the extra energy, or what.

Either way, I am not complaining. I am enjoying getting excited about colours and furniture and storage p0rn. I am still sad about my missing camera cable. I am going to make a more concerted effort to find it once I get up, because I miss not being able to post photos... wait. I have a sudden thought.

*dashes off to check something*

...


Nope. I thought I might have packed the cable when I took the camera to Halifax and promptly forgot to take any pictures. I didn't, though, so I'm back to square one.

Anyway, I will look for it properly when I get up this afternoon.

It occurs to me that I may have to find myself a "Forgetful Jones" icon from Sesame Street. So many icons, so little space and time. *sigh*


I am not sure whether I should be writing about this. It seems, well, kind of premature. Not to mention it feels a little bit like I'm exposing part of myself that I've always kept a little sheltered from the cold wide world. But then again, I think that may just be my paranoia talking.

I had a little bit of a crisis in May of 2005, directly after coming back from the Rural Wastelands, better known as the home of prolixfootle (*waves* Miss you, sweetie! Start posting again!), and detouring by the Godforsaken Howling Wilderness to visit with wultabat and looking4wings. It wasn't a bad crisis. Nothing crazy-making or anything like that. Just a... I don't know. A panicky realization that I was 26 years old and was nowhere near doing anything with my life that made sense.

While I was out there, I remembered quite suddenly a whole lot of things that were important to me: my friends, my family, and being out in nature. It's not that I didn't know any of these things before, it's just that I had let all of my priorities get out of whack for, oh, three or four years while I sorted out the crazy in my head. Once that was sorted out, everything else came swooshing back in with a vengeance.

I have to admit to wanting to be involved in social and ecological activism for purely selfish reasons. I've always, since I was a little girl, wanted to live in the country. The city, for all that I love it in its own way, makes me feel trapped and claustrophobic after a while. So I want the whole world to collaborate so that I can live my little dream in a small house, unencumbered by pollution and socio-political wank.

In essence, for the past two years, I've been fighting off an ever-growing nesting instinct. I want to have a house, and I want to fill it with pets and children. Two years ago I had no money. I was in debt, in a dead-end job with no prospects of anything ever getting better. Things have changed since then, obviously. I'm still not well off, but I'm better off than I was. Still, at best I will have to be content with delayed gratification when it comes to having a house. At worst, and this is what I see on bad days, I will be stuck renting a three-room apartment for the rest of my life.

I know things could be much, much worse. I am grateful for what I do have. But occasionally I do feel the lack of a home filled with family and friends, quite keenly. It's a gnawing, aching void, and there are moments when I wonder if it isn't going to tear me apart.