We had a house!!!! But we couldn't get into it until the end of January! And it was the end of November! That's a long time to live in a van down by the river. And Katr's brother Drtr was coming up for a month over the holidays for the first time since COVID began and we were excited to see him.
Also, while Katr and I work from home, we're not like those remote workers on stock photos who can perch on a barstool and peck at their laptop while sipping a macchiato and looking hot (unless by hot, you mean sweaty and mad). Katr and I both have pretty specific work needs, so wherever we were staying had to accommodate our work set up, i.e. our two big-ass office chairs and our dual screen monitor/laptop situation.
And it had to be pet-friendly, because, once again, fourth time in a row, we'd adopted an unkennel-able dog.
So when the movers came, they took *most* of our stuff, but I had conned my brother Jaro and father Biro into renting a U-Haul van in Victoria, bringing it over on the ferry, loading up our "interim stuff" and driving it back to Victoria. Because FAMILY. We stored a bunch of this stuff in my parents' walk-out basement and then headed over to invade my Aunt Suki's.
My very kind and generous Aunt Suki had offered to take us in for the two weeks until Drtr arrived and it was an EXTREMELY soft place to land. This woman completely rearranged her upstairs AND gave up her room so that we could set up our office and sleep in a glorious king bed (she moved down to her lovely guest suite, a sanctuary which Pumbaa immediately violated). She allowed Pumbaa to frolic in her awesome yard, seen here from our "office" window.
Suki introduced us to her many fabulous friends. She put up with our loud conference calls. And she wrote out a MENU and cooked us gourmet meals EVERY DAY. A truly five-star experience, HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
I don't have a photo of her during this time but this pic of her spice drawer should give you an idea of the kind of goddess Suki is.
When Drtr arrived, we reluctantly decamped from the luxury and pampering of Suki's for an Air BnB in Esquimalt that Drtr affectionately dubbed "the murder house".
I'm not 100% sure why Drtr called it the murder house but I AM 100% sure that it was DISGUSTING. The first night, I spilled some water on the carpeted stairs and when I paper-towelled up the spill, the paper towel was covered in HAIR. Pretty much any time you cooked or used the toaster, the smoke alarm would go off. Between the decor and the lack of cleanliness, it was like living at grandma's house but like...grandma's not doing too good.
It was a spacious two bedroom but in the primary bedroom bed had a rickety queen that was not safe for multiple creampuffs. So I spent the month sleeping on a pile of four foam mattresses I had borrowed from my parents. Let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more alive in your late forties than waking up having to whiz real bad and knowing that first, you have to roll fatly off your mattress-pile and push your way up onto your feet like a drunken toddler (the worst kind of toddler).
We had some lovely family togetherness time with Drtr and I have to say, the murder house was in a GREAT location, practically ocean-front, so Pumbaa and I had some epic walks, except for the week when it was frozen solid and so slippery that I woke everyone on the block screeching "Don't pull mummy! DON'T PULL MUMMY!" at Pumbaa whenever we crossed the street.
My fondest memory of the murder house is probably the evening the fire alarm went off. Not the smoke alarm, which, to be fair, did its actual job the day that we brought some groceries in and a bag got left on the glass cooktop and somehow the cooktop dial got turned on and I was in the other room like "Smells like something's burning" and I go back to the kitchen and there was a big ol' plastic bag and pints of ice cream fire, which I promptly left Katr and Drtr to deal with because of my smoke alarm noise issues HAHAHA I AM TAKEN, LADIES.
The smoke alarm was bad enough but it was nothing compared the *fire* alarm for the whole townhouse complex. It was loud like when a firetruck drives by you with the sirens blaring but then stops inside your fucking house. I had myself and the dog out the door in seconds and Drtr and Katr were kind enough not to point out later that I basically left them to die A SECOND TIME.
It was freezing and apparently the fire alarm system had frozen in the "on" position, so it was a couple of hours before the firefighters could get it to shut off. And they warned that it might come on again. HA ha!
It DID come on again, this time at about 1 a.m. But I was ready. I had taken a pot gummy, made some makeshift earplugs out of torn-apart, wadded-up tampons and was wearing my noise-canceling headphones, huddled on my mattress pile. This time, it was turned off much faster. But I basically never slept again until we moved out of that place a week later.
After Drtr left, we still had three weeks until move-in and I wanted my aunt to still love me, so we found a third rental. This place was much nicer and had a little fenced yard for Pumbaa, plus it was close to a beach featuring whatever the fuck this is:
And some great walks around UVic.
Once again, there was a rickety queen bed but this time, the bedroom was too small, so I slept on my mattress pile out in the hall, really regretting that we'd never gotten into dom/sub stuff because then at least sleeping on my pallet on the floor outside milady's door would be sexy.
And then, one glorious day, it was time. To move in. To our NEW HOUSE!!! Woooo!
To recap, in order to get to this point, we'd had to hire movers 6 times:
1. Moving stuff for staging
2. Moving our Vancouver stuff to storage
3. Moving our interim stuff from Vancouver to Victoria (this was the heroic U-Haul adventure)
4. Moving our interim stuff from Suki's to the murder house
5. Moving our interim stuff from the murder house to Octopus Beach house
6. Moving our interim stuff from OBH to our house
7. Moving the rest of our stuff from Vancouver storage to our house
All this to say...we are never moving again.
And now, a select 50x50 update:
- 5km walks: 6
- French lessons: 4
- Board game plays: 2
- Air fryer uses: 4
- Hours of knitting: 2
