moved!

first of all, a huge thanks to everyone who helped us move. we couldn't have done it without you. i think i would have gone crazy. read on....

today i'm on holidays. for the first time ALL summer, i feel like i'm on holidays. this is great since school starts again in 2 days. our computer is hooked up again and i'm taking a break from unpacking. these have been some really crazy days since i last posted anything.

our last week of camp went really well. but that seems like it was years ago already. i spent the next full week packing and cleaning and getting ready to move. oh and i did go in to work for a few days to clean up, do evaluations and to tie up all the loose ends. so needless to say, that "week off" wasn't exactly a holiday. R and i have been in our wonderfully cozy little 1 bedroom apartment for 4 years and it makes me sad to leave. it was our first home. its decor went through a lot of changes as we found ourselves growing out of the crazy "dorm-room" style and into what will hopefully one day be something a little nicer, yet still screaming "R&J"!
as we packed, i realized just how much junk we have. yes, i knew that we had a lot of stuff, but really... is this all ours? since it was out first move as a married couple, we still had a lot of stuff from our combined households, as well as all the junk that came from R's closet that his parents mailed to us throughout the years, as well as all the wedding and shower gifts that we scored four years ago. too much! it felt really good to fill box after box labelled "for MCC" and bag after bag that headed out to the dumpster and recycling bins.

my mom came over to help clean my kitchen. and we had quite the adventure. when she arrived, i went downstairs to open the door for her and noticed that the hallway smelled of smoke. now this is not uncommon as we always have a new smell wafting down the hall of the apartment block that houses many first year university students and a large number of immigrant families cooking up some exotic and pungent meals. but mom told me that she noticed that there was smoke coming from the windows of our neighbours across the hall. sure enough. not billowing out, mind you, but enough to tell us that there indeed was something burning inside. we run to the neighbour's door and start banging on it. the tv is on, but no answer. i'm starting to think that they've passed out from the smoke. the door's not hot, and the smoke not billowing so instead of calling 911 right away, i try the landlord's number to see if we can get inside. no answer. i call their emergency pager, but get nothing. hmmm. just then the neighbours come home. they were at the store and that's when she remembered that she left meat boiling on the stove (oh so that's what the horrible smell was!). she opened the door and her and mom jump back and start yelling "call 911! call 911!" of course, before i do, i want to see for myself so i know what to tell them. so i look in the apartment and see, thankfully, no flames, just a whole lot o' grey smoke. the neighbour lady ran inside to turn off the stove and i ran in with her, to make sure that everything was off. no flames, just a whole lot of nasty, noxious smoke. we run outside again and of course with her apartment door being opened, the fire alarm in the building starts going off. once again, this is not an unusual occurrence so it takes awhile for people to exit their apartments. but once they smell the smoke, they start to hurry and ask a lot of questions. so i'm reassuring the other neighbours that there's no more fire and all of their worldly possessions are not going up in flames. then i go back inside our apartment and start pushing towels under the all doors to keep our boxes of packed-up possessions from reeking like smoke later. from experience, i know that the fire alarm will continue to ring until someone calls the fire department and they arrive to turn it off. well, it's not really an emergency anymore... is it? i don't know, but i don't want to call 911 and then have to pay the big bucks since there's technically no fire and the stove has stopped smoking. so i continue to try to get a hold of the landlord and eventually i do get a hold of the property people who will page the landlords. within a few minutes the landlord shows up and so do the firetrucks. when they come inside i point them to the right apartment and they set up giant fans to blow smoke from the building. i felt like a somehow saved the day. i was the one who took control of the situation and i kept a cool head the whole time. this, along with some minor medical situations at camp where others were unnecessarily freaking out for no reason, has made me think that perhaps i should consider being a nurse in the ER one day. hmm. who knows?
then mom and i went back inside and continued on with our cleaning and packing.

R was gone during this time at an overnight staff retreat, which you can read about here, so he missed all the excitement, but of course all evening i kept thinking about how i wanted to tell him everything.

this was on wednesday. and at this point we knew that we had to move out on friday but we didn't know if we'd be able to move in on friday. in fact, on friday, we still didn't know what time we could move in. the girl moving out of our new place was waiting to move into a smaller place within the same building. so she was waiting for that guy to move out and clean his place.

friday was a terrible day. i have decided that i hate moving. i've always liked it until now, but not any more. with all the craziness of the past week, and the past summer, i had had enough. i was so tired from camp and then i went straight into moving. and R's been so busy with getting ready for his first year of teaching, that i wanted to make sure that he didn't need to worry about moving, so i did most of it. so by the time friday came, i was beat. it was one of the worst days of my life. right up there with that day 2 summers ago when we tried to fly stand-by to vancouver, via toronto, which usually works, but then there was a crazy thunderstorm in toronto and all flights were delayed and then the air france plane crashed (yes, we were there and saw all the smoke) and so all flights were cancelled and we were stuck in toronto overnight with thousand and thousands of people.... and so on.

and now it's friday afternoon, our stuff is all packed away in a uhaul, and we're waiting for this girl to finish moving. we talked to the landlord who said that she just went in there and told the girl that she needed to do more cleaning. oh great. we just spent hours and hours cleaning the tiniest little spot on the wall or rug, and now we're moving into a dirty apartment. we started moving in at 8 pm once she was finally "done" and even though i specifically asked the girl if she vacuumed and she said yes, mom went through with the vacuum cleaner and had to empty the vacuum twice in each room that she vacuumed because it was too full. gross! afterwords, the carpet looked SO much lighter!! we're getting the carpets shampooed tomorrow morning and i'm glad, because my feet are dirty by the end of every day. it's pretty gross.

but the apartment itself is really nice and i'm starting to like it even more as the days go on. there's a fireplace in our sunken living room, in-suite laundry, a dishwasher, and 2 bedrooms so that means that we now have an office! and we'll be getting all new appliances in the next few weeks. this kitchen feels bigger than our old place but i've realized that it has fewer cupboards and drawers. but it's good. we have more space.

i think i have my kitchen almost sorted out by now. it's been the biggest and most frustrating job so far (in our new place). but i'm starting to enjoy this new place. i think once the kitchen is done i'm going to reward myself by baking some cookies.