4 months.  It’s been nearly 4 whole months and but we’re almost finished moving.  When last I left you, it was the beginning of July and the fun was just beginning.  The conditions on our house sale and purchase both had been removed and we were about to get down to packing in earnest.  Most of it went about how you’d expect.  We felt like there was a real time crunch (and there was) so the usual de-cluttering/donating/selling off of things didn’t happen.  Everything came with us and we plan to de-clutter over the next several months.

We’ve come to learn that the realtors, the lawyers and mortgage company are all fairly competent but the mortgage broker will almost always be the weak link.  This time around was no exception.  Once the file was in our lawyer’s hands though, it was pretty much assured we’d close on time despite non-sensical and costly delays and we did.  August 16th, we got possession and if I thought I’d been working hard before that and that we were on the way to being finished, I was about to learn how much more I could / would do after we started moving in.

This.  This was officially ours.

This move was so much more challenging than when we’d last moved in 2004 and 2005  – once to a rental because we didn’t find a new house before we gave up the old and once to the house we’d live in for “5 years or so until we found our acreage”.  LOL. Moving in your early 30s is a lot easier than in your very late 40s.  I have asked for properly functioning knees for my 50th birthday this year.

The weekend of possession was a whirlwind of moving trucks and friends and co-workers of Ryan’s and so it took me until Monday to really notice how dirty the house was and to realize the magnitude of the weevil issue.  Yeah, bugs. This city girl was quickly overwhelmed.   The gas stove looked like someone had boiled it over while making spaghetti sauce and then just closed the door behind them and left.  After the trucks, movers and friends were gone and Ryan went back to work, it took me 3 days to clean and re-season the stove grills and oven. In the end, it was an entire can of Zep heavy duty oven cleaner and about 6 bake sessions each in the BBQ to remove all traces of food from the grills because I didn’t want the cleaner in the house with the cats.  Bonus, the BBQ lights way easier now too!

The floor tiles and grout that seemed “more contrasty than I’d choose but not too bad” when we looked at the house originally turned out to be nicely neutral with 20+ years of grime ground into them.  That took me another 6 days of scrubbing and I went through an entire denture brush.

The final best solution for cleaning ended up being EZ Clean (https://www.ez-clean.com/).  I’d spray it on the floor full strength and leave it for a minute or so, then dip the brush into a bowl of water and Cinderella my way toward the opposite wall. 360 sq ft of tile between kitchen, front entry, hallway, bathroom and laundry.   Once I discovered the EZ Clean though, it was twice as fast as the baking soda and oxy clean that I started with and way less rinsing or washing the baking soda and oxy down the drain which is better for the septic system anyway. I plan to steam mop a few more times then we’ll seal the tiles and hopefully this will make them easier to maintain in the future.

By now though, the house cleaning/move in/work/weevils were out of hand.  I couldn’t see a future where I’d be able to walk our woods or quilt or spin without the guilt of knowing I still needed to unpack, etc.  I couldn’t keep up with email or work.  I was busy scrubbing and vacuuming up to 3 dozen strawberry root weevils a day.  We figured they were let in when the previous owners moved out. This is the working theory anyway since I found a couple of dead ones in the tissue box they left us when they vacated a week before we got here and likely we didn’t help during our move in.  I’ve read Strawberry root weevils are “accidental invaders” – as in they come in trying to escape the hot and dry in the summer – but this city girl still doesn’t appreciate bugs crawling up the walls.  I was assured by folks who’ve lived with them that they tend to go away once the house is being lived in and that it was fairly normal and not a sign of a dirty house nor do they carry disease.  Then one night, one dropped onto my head while I was sleeping, I woke up screaming – after my brain started yelling “bug Bug BUG!” to wake me up – as you do.

Just…. No, Thank You!

This was one of several days we both wished we’d never even seen this house let alone bought it.  Most days, Ryan would go to work and I’d get up and start scrubbing and vacuuming bugs.  He’d get home and I was doing the same and he’d join in.  I wouldn’t continue moving us in until it was clean and everywhere you looked it was a “but wait! There’s more!”.  There were finger prints and marks on walls and switch plates (including the bathrooms) that I choose to believe were that dried spaghetti sauce I mentioned above.  It’s easier on my psyche.

Please don’t burst my very fragile bubble.

There was over-spray on the wall behind the toilet where someone who should have sat in the bathroom didn’t.  The toilets themselves were horrific.  I removed the seats and hosed them off on the lawn while the porcelain got a thorough scrub . I bet the neighbours at that point were wondering who the heck had moved in.

There was more.  The washer was full of moldy sludge.  This in the tray.  The pink variety inside the door seal.

It was a carnival of filth.

At the same time, because we’d wanted time to move without being homeless, we’d done a bridge with our mortgage so we still had responsibility for the old house until August 27th.  We needed to clean it for the new owners and I wasn’t going to leave them in the same situation we found ourselves in with this house.  We spent 2 full days cleaning the old house mid-week after we had moved everything out.  Then until the new owners had it, we would go and check on the house every couple of days to make sure it was OK, i.e. no one had broken windows or broken in, no water issues, etc.  Not gonna lie, July seems to be a challenging month for that house and I lived in terror of another water apocalypse or something right at the end. The fear of broken windows isn’t as irrational as it seems either.

Eventually, Ryan suggested that we needed to get some house cleaners in to help us get on top of it and in the end, it was more for the mental house cleaning than anything.  When they arrived a couple of weeks later, I was asked a few times why they were there.  They thought the house looked very clean but in my head it was still filthy.   They spent the morning doing a deep clean and when they left, I finally felt like the house was ours and I could start moving us in.  I could finally see a path toward being able to enjoy our new home and go back to work and crafting.  By now, it was September 10th.  We’d been here a full 3 1/2  weeks and a basic unpacking of kitchen, living room and bedroom was all that had really been done – and all of that in the first couple of days in an attempt to have us basically functional – other than scrubbing every surface.  I say “all that had been done” – but at the same time we were scrubbing and scraping and cleaning, we were also trying to seal up the house from the weevils so weatherstripping the doors, sealing up cracks, putting screen in the vents, etc.  Calling in the vacuum truck to empty the full septic tank that we’d been left with, and doing other overdue maintenance.  I also had Ryan pull all of the hostas out of the flower beds against the house because strawberry root weevils love them and these ones were infested.

We’d only taken one day off the whole time and that was to meet my aunt and uncle half way between Calgary and our new house for a long overdue and sorely needed afternoon visit. We met in Sylvan Lake for lunch and a wander around the lake.

Eventually, our work paid off though and the weevils decreased and all we tend to deal with now is the occasional spider and fly. Even those will decrease even more as winter sets in.  Thank goodness!

It was time to get back to getting settled.  You’d think that the house finally being clean would mean that I’d be energized and unpack the house in record time but the whole experience up until that day had so demoralized me that the only thing keeping me unpacking was the looming surgery date for my thumb.  I couldn’t be unpacking or looking for things while healing.  The surgery date was finalized not long after the cleaners were in for October 4th.  That was a hard date I needed to be finished by.

As we unpacked and marched steadily on toward that date, I started to realize something.  My thumb didn’t hurt any more than the rest of me.  What had been excruciating to hold a camera and had forced me to change how I held a pen wasn’t causing me pain anymore.

While we’d been moving, I’d been on one end of some heavy piece of furniture and not in a position to put it down.  It was pressing very hard and painfully on the growth the surgeon was to remove. Then, I felt a crack right around there and a slight shift and by the time I put the furniture down, the pain was starting to dissipate and it slipped from my mind in all the chaos.

I called the surgeon and explained what had happened and asked if we wanted new imaging to see what happened and if surgery was needed.  We did and it wasn’t.  It turns out I’d broken the growth off and it was held in place so it couldn’t get into the joint.  If there was no significant pain, the smartest thing to do was to forego surgery and monitor it.  What are the odds I’d have broken it in just the right way that it’s for all intents and purposes “fixed”?  So with surgery cancelled, all panic momentum ground to a halt on the house.

Part of the reason for that is the cats.  This past several months was a lot of stress in their home and lives.  They handled it like champs but it was a lot. Both Grey and Bandit all this past month have been pinning us in our chairs / bed whenever possible for cuddles and with Ryan and I both in serious need of some downtime, we’ve been indulging them (and us) whenever the opportunity arises.  Especially with Bandit’s health crisis back in December of 2021, we feel like their mental health is important to their physical health as much as it is for us.  Certainly, his sensitive tummy seems to be less of an issue when he’s happy. As I’m writing this (Oct 29), it’s been 4 weeks of casual unpacking and beginning to live in our home and he’s on my lap snoozing.

The only things I’ve kept up is Bandit’s daily “outside” after he has lunch and taking my camera out.  The night sky views have been amazing because we’ve re-located during a period of solar maximum which is giving us the most amazing Aurora Borealis shows in the fabulous dark of the acreage and the diversity of birds is so wonderful.  We have so many woodpeckers – Pileated, downy, hairy, white breasted nuthatches.  There are black capped chickadees, crows, ravens and Blue Jays everywhere and I hear but don’t see so many others but not one single house sparrow.  We even had a thunder chicken (Ruffed Grouse) in our cherry tree.  It’s so peaceful.  The quiet has been a real balm on my soul especially after the drama at the old house for the last couple of months we were there.  I’ll write about that in the next post.  Then hopefully, that phase of our lives is put to rest permanently.

By Oct 20th, the final room I was mainly responsible for setting up was basically done.  We switched focus to winterizing cars and house.

Today, only Ryan’s man cave and part of the utility room are left to finish. On top of that are a few things I want to do, like changing out switches and outlets.  A number of outlets are worn and so they have intermittent contact. At the same time, I plan to change the switches out to decora because they’re easier to keep clean. There’s also some silicone to remove and replace in both kitchen and bathrooms.  Regular stuff to deal with in a 25 year old house.

But first, I plan to doodle on the windows this weekend.

Wait, WHAT?

Where we’re located – in the forest – as mentioned above, we have a lot of birds and there are windows in line with each other which has been confusing them.  When we met the previous owners of this house (yeah, we met them and they left the house like this!), they mentioned that a bird had hit the window in the past.  This had to have been downplaying because since we’ve been here, 3 have hit the windows – that I know of.   It’s too late in the year for the feather friendly stickers.  The windows are too cold.  So instead, I’ll doodle with some paint pens to discourage them and we’ll do something more permanent in the Spring because hearing a thump and finding a stunned Black Capped Chickadee lying on the deck is a terrible experience and knowing that even though it flew away, its prognosis wasn’t good means I must do something about it.

The house will still be in flux for a couple of years, I suspect as we find the exact setup that works best for us but for now – the bugs are gone, I can find most things and I’m not surrounded by boxes any longer. I’m back to servicing machines – slowly because my elbow tendons have suffered more during this move and they burn after a day of servicing – and IT work and things are starting to feel more normal.  Most days, I don’t wake up anymore wondering where I am for the first few seconds.  Slowly but surely, a sense of peace and calm seems to be descending on the house as we begin to make it ours.

At the end of the day, even though it was filthy when we moved in,  the infrastructure we bought is sound and that’s what’s important. At the time, it felt like I was tearing down and rebuilding but all of it – dirt and all – have all been minor hurdles and not major flaws.

Today’s post title: Life to Fix – The Record Company