I hate moving. As I wrote in 2010, the last time we moved, moving involves the four things I hate the most:
THINKING
PLANNING
BENDING
DOING
When COVID hit, it wasn't a huge lifestyle change for us (aside from the stomach-churning anxiety, obvs). We'd been working from home and avoiding most people since 2007 anyway. It's like we'd been training for this. I had even (weirdly) stocked up on toilet paper in December because there was a huge sale on my favourite toilet paper (I HAVE A FAVOURITE TOILET PAPER) at Safeway and I made Drtr go through the checkout separately so we could both max out our bumwad allotments. I was so excited I TOOK A PHOTO.
So when IT BEGAN, we hunkered down, missed seeing our friends and family in person, told ourselves we were "helping small business" by ordering in food (and tipping extravagantly) and followed all the rules. It's fine. We're fine.
My family (my parents, my brother Jaro and his partner Trsm and my aunt Suki) all live in Victoria. Even though we lived just a ferry ride away, we were all pretty busy and only saw each other 3-4 times a year in the Before Times. But in the During Times, we didn't see them at ALL because we weren't supposed to non-essentially travel and we are rule followers who follow rules.
Pretty much since we moved to Vancouver, we've made noises about moving to Vancouver Island EVENTUALLY. And when the vaccines started rolling out in the spring of 2021, I hadn't seen my family in almost a year and a half and we started idly talking about whether we should move NOW. And we came to the conclusion that we... should not.
We were still comfortable our townhouse. Six months after losing Effie, we'd adopted a one-eyed warthog from Korea.
Real estate prices seemed insane, because EVERYONE was moving. We decided that instead, we'd focus on feathering our current nest.
We installed a very handsome fence to keep inquisitive Pumbaa from escaping our tiny yard. We had big talks about making the laundry closet more functional. We both felt relieved. We weren't going to move. Thank fucking god.
At the beginning of August, we were all vaxxed up and one weekend Jaro and Trsm were in Vancouver! And my folks were going to swing by a day or two later! And we were SO EXCITED to see them IN 3D!
Our visit with Jaro and Trsm reminded us of how much we had missed seeing them. Because they're awesome and fun. They mentioned that they had been thinking of moving to somewhere else in their general neighbourhood and we were all just chatting away about real estate and moving. And suddenly, I had this moment where I was like "Oh. Shit. We're fucking moving. Now, like it's going to start now."
I kept this knowledge to myself. I thought perhaps it would pass. Maybe this sudden urge to go through the shitty shitty process of moving had been brought on by the delirium of seeing two of my favourite people after so long! After Jaro and Trsm had left that evening, Katr and I didn't talk about it.
But at 4am the following morning, Pumbaa woke us up with a loud puke-fest (she was fine) and in the aftermath, Katr and I were laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling fan and I said:
"So...I guess we're moving to Victoria."
And Katr said "Yep."
TO BE CONTINUED. LIKE ENDLESSLY, I HAVE 48 POSTS TO WRITE.
And now, a select 50x50 update:
- 5km walks: 1
- Vegetarian meals: 1
- Pillows touched: 16
- French lessons: 1
- Blog posts: 2
