House

The sellers' bank finally got all their ducks in a row, and it looks like we'll be taking possession of the house on May 15th.  (Yay!) We've lots to do before then--well and septic and house inspection, lining up painters and choosing colors, figuring out what goes where before the moving truck shows up, and so on.

In the meantime, here are the promised pictures:

The first view of the house as you drive up the driveway.

A closer look at the front door.

The view from the front door back down the driveway to the road.

And, last but not least, the current fenced backyard.  It will be the puppies' haven until we learn about acre fencing.

That's it for now.  I don't feel comfortable posting pics of the inside until we actually take possession.  Not to mention until it gets painted--right now it's a truly disturbing gray color.

One of the many things that we love about it is that it sits on just under three acres at the end of a cul-de-sac.  (Plenty of privacy for outdoor rituals!)  We also love the main floor owners' suite with french doors out to the back yard.  (Great for letting the dogs out early in the morning.)  The stonework fireplaces in both the family room and the owners' suite are fabulous, despite the fact they won't get much use here in Central Texas.  And the kitchen has recently been upgraded, so we won't have to do it ourselves.  (This would be the FOURTH house in which we'd have had to do that.)

That's not to say that we don't already have plenty of plans for improvements!  Besides fencing the entire property and paining the interior, we want to add a larger deck, pool, and outdoor kitchen, since so much of life down here takes place outdoors!

I can't wait to get started!

Whole Lotta Stuff

I just realized I haven't posted anything here since I had the flu back in January (VERY sick for almost two weeks), followed almost immediately by the packing up of our household.   Since then DH and I have said goodbye to lots and lots of people we love in Ontario, taken the dogs, and moved back to Austin, Texas.  We had to give up the cats, a topic which is almost too painful to even mention.  We're in temporary housing now, waiting to hear on an offer we've made on a house, and are busy reconnecting with people and a city that was very hard to leave in the first place, some fourteen years ago.

I was worried about the puppies and the heat, given their thick winter undercoats, but we've been extremely lucky to actually have Spring here this year.  Temperatures are hovering around 60F (16C), occasionally dipping down to freezing or soaring close to 90F (32C).  The guys have started blowing their winter coats, which is messy, but otherwise seem to be doing okay.  They (and we) participated in the Mighty Texas Dog Walk this past weekend, a charity event to benefit service dogs.  Next weekend, they're going to Snake Aversion Training, to keep them safe from rattlesnakes and copperheads.  Later they will participate in more training involving coral snakes and maybe cottonmouths.

The drive down was mostly a lot of fun, though finding truly pet-friendly hotels on-the-fly was sometimes challenging.  We took time out to visit the Wild Turkey distillery in Kentucky and walk barefoot (in February!) in Northern Texas.  Kai took an extreme dislike to a statue of Abe Lincoln in Cincinnati, and had to bark at it, a lot, every time he stepped outside of the hotel where we were staying.

DH and I, as I mentioned, are reconnecting with family and friends, exploring old haunts and new attractions, and enjoying the food WAY too much.  It's a bit disconcerting that Austin has literally doubled in size since we left, but we're adjusting to it.  We've spent the last month or so searching for a house.  We found one we absolutely loved, but apparently the owner didn't really want to sell, so our offer went ignored.  We've found another house we like almost as much, and should know by tomorrow whether our offer was accepted or not.

That's the last ten weeks or so in a nutshell.  I'll post pictures of the house if we get it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

Wish us luck!

STRESS

I've felt totally uninspired lately.  Even my pagan blog stuff has left me blank.  Luckily, last night the universe and my own subconscious conspired to give me something interesting about which to write.

Sometime around 3:30 this morning I had one of my infamous laughing mental breakdowns, therefore ensuring neither DH or I got any appreciable amount of sleep whatsoever.  What happens is I find something totally boring and mundane just hilarious.  Maybe it's funny in some dark and twisted way.  Or maybe it just causes that extra little bit of stress that sends me over the edge.  Either way, I start laughing.  And keep laughing.  I literally can't stop.  I eventually start to cry as well, but I don't stop laughing.  Oh, no.  I'm told by those who have observed it that the laughter is tinged with hysteria, and that the episodes are pretty darn frightening to watch.

These breakdowns have only happened a handful of times in my life, but they're pretty memorable.   They only occur when I've been under large amounts of stress for extended periods, and I guess I just hadn't realized just how stressed I've been.  Maybe that's why I've been so unable to be creative in any way. 

After I finally stopped laugh/crying, after I don't know how much time, I started thinking about what's stressing me out.  I came up with a short but distressing list, and I thought I'd share.

1. The sale of the house a few months ago.  And maybe the stress of NOT selling it the three years before that.
2. The moves, both the one out of that house and especially the one to Texas in a month or two. (And do I count leaving Canada, which I desperately do NOT want to do, here or as a separate entry?)
3. The vacation coming up (in a good way) and all the prep and planning and stuff to do before then.
4. The trouble shipping some art stuff to my mom.  (Loooong story.)
5. The upcoming citizenship stuff--waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Immigration Canada to move forward with it, waiting to take the test, finding all the old paperwork again, etc.
6. REALLY disliking the house we're temporarily renting while trying to be glad we have it (after the two we wanted to rent fell through.)
7. Slowly saying goodbye to all our friends here in Ontario.
8. Absolute lack of creativity.

And, on top of all that, yesterday we discovered some kind of lump on Kai's shoulder.  (Don't worry.  He's going to the vet in an hour.)

I'd already started trying to make myself journal again, due to some depression issues.  Now I need to push harder and get back into meditation and exercise before I start having anxiety attacks (which trnaslate as crying and pain in my chest) again.

Surprisingly, writing this post has actually made me feel better.

[Pagan Blog Project] H is for Home Cleansing

Since we just moved into a new house (I need to change the picture on this blog), I thought sharing the house cleansing I plan to do would be appropriate.  It’s a fairly simple process, and it should have been done before we moved in here, but after will work, too. 

Start by cleaning EVERYTHING (floors, walls, counters, windows, etc.) with some form of lavender in order to purify and to attract positive energies.  It can be simple lavender water, it can be powdered lavender, whatever you prefer will work.  Move widdershins as you do this, and perform this chant:

Negative energy be gone from here

Only positive and good come near.

Now that you have cleaned the house, the next step is to sweep negative energy away.  Weather permitting, open all your doors and windows.  After you do so, take your besom, thoroughly “sweep” out every room, even the closets, even the garage!  Again, move widdershins.  While you do so, continue to repeat the chant. 

Close the doors and windows.  Light a sage bundle (VERY lightly, you don’t want problems with smoke inhalation!).  Once again, moving widdershins and repeating the chant, walk through the house, stopping at every door, every window, and in every room to describe a pentagram with your sage.  Repeat the above chant if you feel it is necessary.  This last step will finish the cleansing and protect against the return of negative energy.

After you have finished, do whatever you can to keep negative energy away and encourage positive energy to fill the space.  Burn rosemary incense, laugh a lot, perform a House Blessing—anything you feel will keep the balance in the positive.

The house should now feel light and airy.

Bittersweet, Part 3

(This is the third in a series of three moments during which I realized that leaving here is not completely without poignant sentiment.)

The third time came Tuesday, as the kitchen was being packed around me.  I was sitting at the kitchen table while half a dozen or so movers (packers?) were moving all over the house, packing and organizing and labeling.  The house is no longer ours, for all intents and purposes.  I typed this on Tuesday, and it doesn’t actually change hands until Friday, but the terms and conditions were met long ago, and with all our belongings slowly disappearing into clouds of paper and mounds of cardboard, we’re all but gone from here.

We plan to sleep here until they actually load our belongings on Thursday, and we won’t be moving into the new place until Friday.  As of today, we can no longer cook here and will be forced to rely on either the microwave or restaurants for our meals until we’re actually unloaded in the new place next Monday.  Because of all this, there is soon to be very little of “us” here.  Once again, there’s that bittersweet feeling.

As I realized this, I decided I needed to make note of these emotions while I was feeling them.  I had planned to write in my BOS about this move, but it was nowhere near me.  Neither was this computer, so I wrote it in our “Moving Notebook,” an inexpensive spiral notebook in which we made notes when we were leaving Vancouver.  We used it on the trip from BC to California, and again when on the move from California to Ontario. 

It probably fits better there than anywhere else.

[Update:  The movers did not finish on Thursday, as was planned.  They need an extra day.  But that's alright, because the buyers ran into a glitch with their paperwork, so they won't actually be taking possession until Monday.  I write this update in an exhausted condition in a hotel.  We still plan to be out tomorrow, move cats to their new home, pick up the boys for a weekend visit in said new home, and collapse in exhaustion.

Wish us luck.]

Bittersweet, Part 2

(This is the second in a series of three moments during which I realized that leaving here is not completely without poignant sentiment.)

The second time was Monday, the first day the movers were here to start the packing and moving process.  I meandered into the living room after it had been packed, and there it was--my spot.  The spot where I sat in this house seven years ago, when it was still empty, waiting for a snow-blower delivery that couldn’t be done any other day.  It was cold that day, but I didn’t want to turn on the heat because I was only going to be there for a short while.  I was a bit early, though, so I wandered through the house, enjoying the space of its emptiness, planning where furniture would go, admiring the snow-covered scenes out the windows, and reveling in the fact that this gorgeous, classic house was now ours.  And I did love it then, despite how I eventually came to feel about it.  (I’d forgotten that.)  Eventually, the time for the delivery came close, and I went down to the living room.  From that room you can see both the street and the driveway.  I lit the gas fireplace for warmth (and for the sheer joy of needing it—we’d just moved here from California, after all.)  I sat there on the floor, listening to my iPod (This was way, way before my iPhone, or even my Touch.  This was one of the original ones with the wheel, the one that only played music.) and trying to read while watching for the delivery truck.  It turned out to be late, so I probably spent close to forty-five minutes there on that spot, leaning against the wall next to the fireplace.  The snow-blower eventually arrived (the same one that we sold to our neighbor last week.)

We placed a storage chest in that spot, so I never really saw it or even thought about it again.  Until yesterday, when I remembered that once upon a time, on a cold, lonely morning, I knew it well.

Remembering it is…bittersweet.

Bittersweet – Part 1

I didn’t think THIS move would be bittersweet.  After all, we’ve been waiting to sell this house for close to three years now.  And we’re just basically moving down the road.  We’re still staying here in Ontario, still staying in Canada.  We’re not particularly close to any of our neighbors, or to the area.  There’s no reason to not want to move forward.  But it’s still just a bit sad.  This is the third time I’ve actually slowed down enough to realize that. 

(I started writing this and realized that it was getting too long, so I’ve decided to split it into three parts.  Today I’ll cover the first instance.)

The first time I felt it was when our “puppies” left to go to Dogs in the Park this past Sunday.  (They’re enjoying a week-long vacation there to help alleviate moving stress, for them and for us.)  As we were getting ready to leave that morning, I realized they wouldn’t ever see this house, and especially this yard, again.  Now, they have no idea.  They’ve never REALLY moved before.  But I knew, and I was sad for them.  This is where we brought them home.  This is where they grew up, where they met each other, where Lance both met and said goodbye to Merly.  This is where they learned to love the cold and snow of winter, savor the cooling winds of autumn, and hate the humid heat of summer.   This is where they learned to enjoy wading pools, sprinklers, and hoses, and where Lance taught Kai to chase him.  This is where they always came back to after a long day of play, a day of training, or after a stressful stay at temporary quarters.  This is the only place they’ve ever known as home. 

At the same time, they’ll be going on to new homes and new adventures, and they’ll still be with their peeps. They’ll meet new people who will love them, and they’ll expand their horizons. They’ll be exposed to new things, which is good for them.  Perhaps most importantly, this is good practice for the BIG move coming next fall.  They’re gaining many, many good things at the same time they’re losing some.

 So this is, as the title reads, bittersweet.