On vanity plates, big cars and road rage

[In which I offend 'all' of my readers who drive enormous luxury SUVs with vanity plates]

Several years ago, the professor and I were driving around Minneapolis. Because that was where we were living at the time. If memory serves, we were merging onto westbound I-94 from Washington street when I spotted a Lincoln Navigator in front of us. It was the biggest car I’d ever seen.

It was, in fact, so big that I actually made up a song (Phoebe-style) right there in our comparatively tiny Jeep Cherokee. ‘Is your car big enough, Mr. Lincoln Navigator…Mr. Lincoln Navigator is your car big enough?’ Paired with some ill-timed guitar strumming and a wobbly voice, it could have been a great song.

Fast forward eight or so years and I’m living in Range Rover land (aka southwest Calgary) and can’t help but gawk when a Cadillac Escalade, Infiniti QX56 or GMC Yukon XL skulks past my humble Venture. ‘How big do you need a car to be?’ I inevitably mutter….to myself.

My objection to such gargantuan vehicles isn’t based on anything virtuous like the environment, though 14 miles per gallon is not exactly ‘green’. I think it’s the extravagance (a nearly six-figure-price-tag here in Canada) and the seeming need to have the biggest car on the road. [Which, if you care, is the Yukon XL 2500 SLT or the Suburban 2500 LTI. Though the no-longer-in-production Ford Excursion was bigger, still.]

Speaking of pointless extravagance, and maybe all extravagance is pointless, I seem to have a beef with vanity plates, too. I think it goes back to 1994 and a young man named Chris (pronounced Cree-yus if you’re a Hoosier) who drove a thoroughly pimped out Chevy something or other with the vanity plate I C U Looking. I don’t remember how he spelled ‘looking’ to make it fit on his Indiana license plate. But the message was clear.

And I’d walk down the main drag of the University and ‘hear’ Chris drive by in his pimped out ride with his presumptuous vanity plate, and it made me chuckle. Every time. Which is more or less the same reaction I have when a Prussian blue Maserati slinks past me with the word ‘IMAGE’ on the back. Or the Jaguar with ‘WALLSTRT$’. It’s not about the money, or the seeming need to draw attention to one’s own awesomeness, I just think if you’re going to put something on the back of your car, it should be clever. Not obvious.

BOBANDSUE is not clever. Neither is JONES or JOE N JEN. RXGOLF borders on cleverness, but it also smacks of ‘hey, look at me, I’m a doctor!’ Which is just too long for a vanity plate.

I was waiting at a red light a couple of days ago with the Hen and the baby sitting in the back of the car. I noticed a red pick up truck pull up beside me and, even though my windows were rolled up, I could hear the guy shouting ‘F___ You!’ My first thought  was about the scene in Modern Family where Mitchell is yelling about his inconsiderate boss while talking to Cameron on his cell phone. All while said boss is sitting in the car next to him, waiting for the light to change. When Mitchell realizes this, he freaks out, wondering if his boss had overheard the conversation.

‘His boss did hear him,’ I thought to myself after listening to the man next to me yell ‘F… you’ at the top of his lungs. (I can’t remember what happened in the episode.) And then I had to know. Who was this guy yelling at? The car in front of him? Or was he yelling at someone on his hands-free-cell phone device?

He yelled the phrase 3 or 4 times during the short time we waited at the light. When the light changed, I watched him slowly raise his hand….to the car in front of him….and flip off the totally unaware 60-ish year old lady in front of him.

Watching this relatively normal-looking guy thoroughly and repeatedly curse at a completely oblivious woman, I got it. People are buying gynormous vehicles as a means of self-protection. So I will be buying a Suburban….. just as soon as I can find a buyer for my kidneys.

The End of Allen Tipper

I left for a brief, solitary walk on Tuesday morning. When I returned I ventured into the office where the professor was putting away laundry or something like that. I can’t recall.

‘So,’ he looked at me, ‘it’s the end of Allen Tipper. Done.’

I consulted my (miniature, mental) sports rolodex for any clue about who Allen Tipper might be. I had to do the same thing when my better half phoned me from DC a couple of weeks ago: ‘Do you know who Jerry Rice is?’ It seemed like a sporty kind of name, but I honestly had no clue. I confessed as much and the professor muttered something about him being a great quarterback or linebacker or neither of those two and told me he’d seen him in the hotel lobby. (I ended up googling him.)

‘Um, who’s Allen Tipper?’ I asked after about three seconds of pretending I might know.

‘You know…Al and Tipper….the Vice President?’

The Gores?! ‘Are you serious?’ I confirmed this most unexpected piece of information. I mean the Enquirer has predicted the demise of most political marriages – Bill and Hillary, George and Laura, John and Elizabeth. Even Barack and Michelle. But I couldn’t recall any sensationalist headlines regarding the Gores.

‘Yup,’ he nodded as if he was privy to some exclusive insider information. Intrigued, I lunged towards the computer and found an article on CNN. Sure enough, ’twas true.

It seems…odd…for lack of a better word, to spend forty years of your life with someone and THEN decide that you’d prefer to go it alone. (Or try your luck with someone else.) The article points to longer lifespans as a contributing factor, saying there is ‘much life to be lived’ when you’re in your sixties. Or seventies.

Sure, true. But doesn’t it seem like a waste of your time – to spend so many years being married to one person and then when you get to be 60 or 70 conclude you’re not actually happy and you want to ‘live it up’ for the last few years of your life?

I looked at the professor. ‘So, if you’re thinking you’re probably going to want to pack it in down the road can you give me a heads up?’ Sooner rather than later. Because I’m guessing ‘fading looks’ and ‘mother of three insane boys’ aren’t big pluses in the dating scene. I’ll need to become really wealthy or at least improve my appalling general knowledge if I’m going to be a contender. Though maybe the 60 and over dating scene is less ambitious than the 20 to 35 dating scene.

It has to be said I’m not sure where the professor will find another with a (shared) fondness for Richard Clayderman. (Maybe France’s 60 and over dating scene?)

Insomnia

I’m pretty sure I have some sort of sleep disorder. But I don’t want to go to a sleep clinic, or take medication, so I suffer through the nights when I wake up at 3am. And watch the clock strike 4, 4.30, 5, 5.30 and 6.

I used to lie there, panicking that it was getting later and later. And that I was going to have to face three kids on as many hours of sleep. Now I’m just resigned. ‘I bet I’ve been awake for an hour already,’ I’ll think to myself. And I’ll look over at the clock. Sure enough. An hour.

Usually I’ll lie in bed until I fall asleep again. But this morning, as 3 turned into 5, I decided to get up. It was 7am in parts of America. Maybe something interesting had happened.

Nothing had.

I logged onto facebook. To see if any of my friends had witty status updates.

Nobody did.

Several of my friends have closed their facebook accounts. And I haven’t understood why. Did they not enjoy a bit of benign spying as much as the next person? Did they not enjoy pointless banter about library fines or children who empty whole bottles of liquid laundry detergent…on the floor?

But I get it now.

They closed their accounts because they grew tired of hearing how awesome other people’s lives are. It’s one thing to suspect that others are having more fun than you are. It’s another thing entirely to have confirmation – in the form of status updates. And photo albums.

One of my facebook friends seems to do nothing but go on vacation. One month it’s a skiing vacation. The next it’s a Caribbean cruise. Actually, it was less than a month between the two trips. But who’s keeping track?

Oh, yeah, ME.

Unless you count the awesome driving trips between Indiana and Calgary, (and I don’t) my last vacation was in 2007.

I was still in the middle of my pity party when the baby summoned me back upstairs. As if to say, ‘hey, I slept from 10.30-5.30, I’m starving up here!’

Since I was still awake, and he was too, I let him lie on our bed for a while. Playing a little pacifier dropping game. While inhaling his sour milk/neck lint smell. And being doused by two enormous baby sneezes.

Eventually the piglet tired of my attention, as if to say ‘this snuggling is fun and all, but I’m sleepy and want to go back to bed.’

So I deposited him in his crib. And, sometime after 6, I drifted off to the sweet sounds of two Johnson men snoring their hearts out.

It’s a pretty swell life. With a negligible chance of breaking a leg, or contracting food poisoning from a midnight buffet.

On having a big family

We were at the mall last week, trying to find some snowboots for the boys. On our way out of one store, we walked by a woman and her son. Instead of the usual cursory nod and semi-smile, she stopped to talk to us.

To tell us that one of the children’s clothing stores was having a big sale.

Even though I wasn’t planning on buying the boys any clothes, I appreciated her passing along the good news of a sale. I mean if there are shirts and pants on sale for $5.99, I like to be in the know.

I thanked her for the information and kept walking, trying to keep the contingent moving before tears erupted or store property got damaged. Or the new truck we were buying our oldest got dropped on the floor…again.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the woman was still going on about the sale to the professor. Apparently she really sensed we needed to know about this event because, in her words, ‘I see you have a big family.’

A big family?

The thought hadn’t occurred to me. Nor had it been uttered by a complete stranger. Until now.

Is a family with three kids – a five person family – big?

I guess I’ve been operating on the assumption that it’s not. Because when people ask if we’re going to have a fourth, I usually answer ‘no….because four kids….that’s a LOT!’

Three kids….is sort of middle of the road isn’t it -the 21st century version of the 20th century’s two parents-two kids configuration? I mean, (in my best Carrie Bradshaw voiceover) isn’t three the new two?

I’d assumed that the Johnson party of five was still within the parameters of a small-ish family. But the woman’s comment put us in Duggar territory, practically.

Curious, I conducted a very scientific poll. I made a list of the names of families I know reasonably well. Of the fifty-five names that came to mind, twenty-one (21!) are families with three children. And twenty-five (25) are two-kid families. That’s a fairly even split.

Either that or I’m hanging around with a bunch of Duggar-wannabes.

I will say the grocery cart is a lot fuller than it used to be. With kids – not food. Now, when I do the shopping with all three in tow, the cart is entirely filled with boys. I barely have room for groceries. Yes, the alternative is to insist my oldest boy-child walk through the store instead of ride in the cart. But then his brother will want to walk as well. And I’ll end up with more mysterious, unwanted food items in my grocery bags.

Like the large can of ‘fruit cocktail’ that made it all the way from the shelf to my grocery bag without my noticing.

I mean I’m used to the professor filling the cart on the sly with things like sweetened condensed milk or butterscotch ice cream topping. Or pop-tarts. But now the children, too?

As I was pushing my cart in the Superstore parking lot last week, a chicly dressed woman whizzed by me. Not a difficult feat by any means, since I was moving at a pace of roughly one mile per hour: trying to push the cart while corralling the oblivious-to-traffic-children focusing on their respective candy bars (bribes).

‘You’re my hero!’ she called to me over her shoulder. ‘I have one at home, and don’t even bring him….you have three!‘

We made breakfast at home last weekend: eggs, bacon, french bread. Jason was in the kitchen manning the stove and when he finally came over to the dining table, where the two bigger boys and I were sitting, munching on bread, the baguette was nearly gone.

He picked up the remaining crust and gave me a look. ‘What?’ I pseudo-apologized ‘I’ve hardly had any.’

Which was true. The blondies had eaten about eight pieces…each. Dejected, the professor walked back to the kitchen for a slice of loaf bread.

Big or small, one thing is certain. We are no longer a one-baguette family.

Parenthood is a Platitude

While I was in the shower this morning (a necessity since I skipped yesterday’s), I heard my oldest say something to the effect of: ‘Henners has the laundry stuff,’ in a tattletale singsongy kind of voice.

By ‘laundry stuff’, I assumed he meant…..the bottle of Tide liquid detergent. Which I store in the laundry basket. Because there’s really not another easily accessed place to store it.

I’d scarcely processed the remark; had just begun to utter the commands of the momentarily immobile parent: ‘take it away from him’ or ‘tell him not to touch it’ when the next news bulletin was delivered.

‘Henners has dumped the laundry stuff on the floor.’

And with that bulletin my three minute shower was over.

I stepped into the hallway just in time to see the Tide bottle lying on its side. With the lid off. Clear liquid (I use Tide ‘free’) crawling all over the wood floor. My only recourse: to use my towel in an effort to stop the liquid from traveling to another city.

When your morning starts off like that, it’s hard to regroup; to retain any sense of optimism about how the day is going to go.

I’d managed to get the big boys to the front door on time for our 9.30 departure, both wearing socks and shoes and coats. When we discovered the Hen had lost his ‘da’. His pacifier. The only pacifier he will put in his mouth. The pacifier he insists on taking with him everywhere he goes.

Upstairs, downstairs, bedrooms and bathrooms were searched in an effort to find the pacifier. With no luck.Ten minutes of searching yielded nothing, and at that point I was considerably late. So we had to depart with his ‘ba’ (the infamous ubiquitous white pillowcase) but not his ‘da’. I braced myself for the inevitable tantrum in the car when he realized one of his ‘comforts’ was gone.

We arrived at our destination and I got everyone settled. The tension in my body started to fade as I held the baby on my lap. The only person who had not caused me any trouble. Yet.

His eyes closed, and his face turned a dull red from the strain. Sure enough, the exertion paid off with several loud noises two and three minutes apart. After five or so squirts I decided it was time to investigate.

I was prepared for his soiled clothing. I wasn’t prepared for mine. The kid had literally pooped on me. Through his clothes. It’s the quirky thing about parenthood, I suppose, that someone can defecate upon you and you’ll still talk to them.

Especially if they’re cute and smiley. With a half dimple hidden in their left cheek.

Being a savvy, third-time mom, I had an extra outfit for him. I did not have any extra pants for myself. Charmed, I’m sure.

Fast forward another twenty minutes or so to where my boys were running around in circles with some friends. I’d turned my back to gather my belongings in preparation for exit when I heard giggles and the word ‘banana’.

Sure enough. Someone had found two bananas and had thrown them on the floor and stomped on them. Mushed banana on carpet? Fan-freaking-tastic. ‘Who did this?’ I asked the group of five boys. Fingers pointed in five different directions. I had to assume, since two-fifths of the group belonged to me, at least one Johnson boychild was involved in the banana massacre.

Many pieces of paper towel later I’d removed the biggest chunks of banana from the carpet and the boys’ shoes. And, for the second time, tried to gather my belongings and children for exit. A process that took thirty minutes….from start to finish.

Naturally we got in the car and the Hen, upon realizing he had no ‘da’, started wailing. Right as the baby, who hadn’t been able to take an uninterrupted nap, started wailing from hunger and fatigue. Right as the Gort said: ‘when are we going to have lunch? Are we going to have lunch now?’ Over and over.

It’s days like these that I wonder about people who spout airy platitudes (about children and parenthood) like: ‘don’t blink…it goes so fast’, ‘soak it all in’, ‘it’s the greatest thing ever.’ Etcetera.

Did they somehow end up with the world’s only perfect children?

Have they just forgotten the days when they wanted to send their children to boarding schools…in other countries? The days when it seemed like the only words they uttered were: ‘no’, ‘timeout’, ‘go to your room ‘and ‘no candy, presents, toys or television for you until you turn eighteen.’ The days when their kids took hot pink tissue paper, shredded it into nano-particles and dumped it all over the house. All while laughing hysterically. Right before guests were due to arrive

I read a snippet of an interview with a celebrity-who-shall-not-be-named who said , about motherhood, ‘there’s nothing I don’t love, even the sleepless nights believe it or not!’

I’ll file that one in my ‘gems’ folder.

How to be a domestic goddess

There are books and magazines aplenty detailing the ins and outs of creating your very own spic and span sanctuary. Line your drawers with perfumed paper. Sprinkle flower petals on your pillow. Line your lampshades with pink silk so that the light will have a soft, pink glow.

But really, the people who come up with these lovely ideas either don’t have small children, or they have more disposable income than they know what to do with and possibly a housekeeper.

As I was scouring the caked on spots of toothpaste on the upstairs sink today, I thought of some practical ‘tips’ for achieving domestic nirvana.

• Store a toothbrush for each family member in every bathroom in the house. That way, if your two year old runs off with your red toothbrush, you don’t have to try and find it when you finally remember to brush your teeth. You can just reach for the downstairs toothbrush, instead of having to (a) use your spouse’s or (b) skip the brushing altogether.

• Keep a set of cleaning supplies in every bathroom, so when the sink is laden with dried chunks of toothpaste and other nastiness, and you can’t stand it another minute…. you can start cleaning right away. No need to procrastinate because you don’t have the energy to walk downstairs to find the cleaning stuff.

• Wear a watch. This will help you know what time it is..at all times. It will keep you from having to ‘guess’ what time it is when you’re at other people’s houses and don’t want to rudely interrupt conversations by asking ‘what time is it?’ It will also keep you from having to squint at clocks that are far away in order to guess what time it is. However, if your watch is an hour and three minutes ‘behind’ the actual time this may present a challenge to your sleep-starved brain, resulting in continued lateness for things like kindergarten pick-up.

• If you still struggle with being on-time for kindergarten pick-up, put your two year old son down for a nap wearing his jacket and shoes. That way, you can whisk him out of the crib and into the car without wasting precious minutes trying to squish too small shoes onto his feet, and pushing his unyielding arms into jacket sleeves.

• Limit every family member to five outfits and two pairs of shoes per season. This will drastically reduce the size of your laundry pile. Not to mention the pile of shoes discarded by the front door.

• Let your kids watch television or movies for hours every day. This way they don’t play with any toys or use any art supplies. And your house stays remarkably tidy.

• Throw toys away. I’m not talking about ‘good toys’. I’m talking about things like plastic spiders and ten-cent cars they get at the dentist’s office – that type of thing. Sure, they’re really excited about it for the first forty-eight hours, but after that, the allure of the cheap, smelly toy wears off. Throw it away. If they ask for it, distract them with a cookie. Or, a movie.

Clutter, part 2

My good intention to make 2009 the year of ‘no clutter’ got off to a slow start. I vowed to be ruthless, but it took about a week for the ruthlessness to kick in. It’s in full effect now. Or, at least pseudo effect.

Rummaging through the detritus that covered our dining room, the other day, I found the main culprits of my clutter problem. It was as I previously suspected: receipts, child art, bills and account statements and then the miscellaneous junk pile. Which consists of random screws, and ‘parts’ to things, broken toys or toys that no one should play with, business cards/ticket stubs, paper clips and other office minutiae. And of course, tools and bits of tools….everywhere.

For some reason I’ve got it in my head that I have to save every single receipt of every single purchase I make. For an infinite period of time. When I told someone this over coffee, she looked at me like I was crazy. ‘You must have a lot of receipts,’ she commented. Yeah. Bowls and bags and boxes full, actually.

I thought the IRS wanted you to keep this stuff?

Strategy 1: research IRS receipt requirements, locate our shredder…and use it.

But aside from the receipts, the main culprit is my husband. Who likes to leave little CD Roms lying all around the house – and flash drives, and notes scribbled on scraps of paper – usually with important phone numbers or contact details that he will inevitably request the day after I threw it away.

I dumped out the contents of a bowl yesterday and handed him a few ‘choice’ items…which he promptly placed in his jeans pockets. The jeans he would be sure to leave on the floor at the end of the night. Which I will wash…finding the aforementioned items in the washing machine or the dryer. It’s a bad cycle that must be broken.

Strategy 2: remove all vessels (i.e decorative bowls) for stuff from eye level…so that there is no place to dump whatever is in one’s pocket at the end of the day.

After tackling the dining room, I moved on to the kitchen where we have two thin wires suspended above the art tables. The wires are so laden with art, they’ve started to sag. What started out as a creative way to display art, has turned into a poor storage solution. I pulled all the papers down and started sifting through them. And the pile of art I found in the office. I’m not exaggerating – I easily flipped through a couple of hundred pieces paper containing scribbles and paints and pastels.

I threw away about half….nondescript scribbles whose artist I couldn’t accurately name….was it big brother or little brother? Or was it me? I’d just finished sifting through the pile and hung up the remaining artwork when G asked: ‘can we paint?’ (You’ve got to be kidding me!) Which he did. No fewer than 4 paintings. Which I kept, of course.

Strategy 3: Unless particularly special or awesome, throw art away. Right away. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go straight to the trash can – don’t even bother recycling. [Alternate strategy....ban art making at home...tell boys it's something only girls do.]

The other big clutter culprit is recycling. This is partly my fault – I could purchase recycling bins but I’m too cheap to do so. Also, I’m not sure where I’d store said recycling bins. So the tables in the kitchen (the outdoor tables in my indoor kitchen) are laden with cardboard, and plastic bottles, and aluminum food cans etc. And it seems wasteful to go all the way to the recycling center more than once every two weeks.

Strategy 4: Stop recycling and throw everything away. Forget the environment and clogged up landfills. Or, spend the money and buy some bins….(and maybe a laundry basket, too).

Then there are the toys and books that cover the house from top to bottom…but unless Supernanny herself has some bright ideas, I think that will just be my cross to bear for the next seventeen years.

Or I could hide everything and allow each kid to pick one book and toy per week. And be the kind of mom my children will remember fondly in years to come.

Kicking it grocery-style

I wouldn’t say we are coffee fanatics, but we do like to drink good coffee at home. For the past four years we’ve bought our coffee from Alliance World Coffees, which also happened to be located in our church. So every other week, we’d pick up a pound of freshly-roasted-reasonably-priced beans.

But then we moved to Calgary. And found ourselves without our trusty coffee supplier. We’d brought along a couple of extra bags to see us through the first month, but the last of the Decaf Sidamo ran out this week. I’d checked at the Farmer’s Market where the artisanal roaster ‘Phil and Sebastian’ has set up shop. But their price tags ranged from $15-18 for 3/4lb bags. And the Vancouver-based Caffe Artigiano wanted me to part with $19 for a pound of beans. That was a little more than I’d envisioned spending.

So I hit the Canadian Superstore thinking we could maybe, dare-I-say, Starbucks it for a while. Just until we could find our new coffee beans of choice. But the only Starbucks at the store was already ground which, I believe, makes it only slightly better than Folgers crystals. So I decided to go with an enormous bag of Italian Espresso beans with an interesting font.

I have this theory about font. Call me a ‘font-snob’ but I often make decisions about supporting businesses or products based on the font of their signage or packaging. It may seem random, but it’s helpful in many traveling situations when you don’t know one restaurant from another. Go with the one that has a nice sign in the front, or a classy looking menu. It seems like whenever I’ve compromised this deeply rational standard, I’ve had to suffer the consequences.

So I picked up the bag of Caffe Gioia; tastefully presented in a silver bag with bold red and black font and bonafide Italian text. It cost $10.99 for a kilogram – less than $5 a pound. The saying ‘you get what you pay for’ flashed through my mind, but, I held out hope that I’d secretly stumbled upon the dark horse of the coffee industry. The unknown, future Illy, if you will.

And then I brewed the first pot. The lingering taste of cigarettes in my mouth suggested my frugality and aesthetic preferences had let me down. And Jason, pleading after the second day: ‘can we please buy some different coffee? I almost threw up a little in my mouth just now.’

Two weeks of learnin’

In the book Vernon God Little, the main character, Vernon, frequently says ‘I got me a learnin’. For him, ‘learnin’s’ are life-truths.

I’ve been amassing my own set of ‘truths’ over the last few weeks.

• A 37 minute flight to Chicago can feel like an eternity when you’ve got a nearly one year old crawling and standing on your person.
• A twenty minute screaming fit by an exhausted child on an airplane feels like an hour when you’re surrounded by 66 passengers.
• Twenty-one pounds of sleeping child distributed across your thighs for an hour or so, will cause numbness.
• Ninety-three degrees of ‘dry heat’ is still very hot,
• If your child pees on you, immigration officials tend to wave you through.
• Six and a half foot ceilings in a basement apartment will induce a feeling of claustrophobia even in those who are seemingly immune. Low ceilings, combined with taupe colored walls and the absence of natural light will only exacerbate said feeling.
• It is possible to walk uphill both ways, particularly when you’re carrying groceries.
• Don’t shop at Costco on a Saturday.
• Kids and carpet do not go together. At all. Unless vacuuming several times a day is your idea of fun.
• The lines at Wal-Mart in Canada are just as long as in the States
• A dishwasher is almost as important as potable drinking water.
• Designating a space as a ‘playroom’ will not keep toys from traveling beyond its boundaries. In fact it may encourage the spread of toys.
• Consuming 3lbs of grapes or m&ms in three days is a bad idea. Also, the grapes don’t cancel out the m&m’s. Your jeans will still be tight.
• As with all dryer, higher climes….don’t leave home without lip balm, water and hand lotion.

The wall. Warning: unfunny

I felt it coming on Friday.  The realtor had scheduled a showing of our house at 3pm and I was trying to muster up the desire/energy/courage to thoroughly clean the house again so that someone could look at it for ten or twenty minutes and decide they don’t want to buy it.

If I sound a tad cynical or fatalistic it’s because I’ve been cleaning my house to this end for three months now (ten times in the past 4 weeks alone) and this weekend I reached the breaking point.  The point where I feel like if I have to put all the toys away and clean the house like the President-himself-is-coming-for-dinner one more time, I might snap.  Ditto for if I have to look at that Calgary housing website or send more emails to random people just to see if their advertised house is still available.

The facts are that any way you slice it, moving house pretty much sucks.  I guess there’s a reason it’s considered a stressful-life-event.  And is probably why a lot of people try to avoid it like the plague. Stupidly I thought that since we didn’t have to put our junk in boxes and load a van this time, the move would be comparatively easy.  I guess I glossed over the remaining minor details like trying to sell a house in a stank economy; finding housing in an overpriced city; re-finding housing in an overpriced city once you learn the pension nazis absconded with more of your new paycheck than you expected.  And then having to find temporary housing until you can move into the new-new housing. And customs and unresponsive movers and new car titles and..and…and…

But there was a tiny silver lining to the cloud which came to me late Saturday night as I was preparing for Sunday’s Open House.  This situation will resolve itself.  Just not in an obvious, timely or cost-effective way.  So if I can hang on for the ride and relinquish this desire for a tidy ending, I just might survive. 

Either way, Sunday was (probably!) the last Open House with us living here.  From here on out the realtor can swiffer away the dust bunnies blowing around en mi casa vida. 

Mmh, does vida mean ’empty’ or just ‘life’?

Calling my resident Spaniard….