Longest post evaaaaa! (For realz!) Oh, and my house!

Good evening ladies,

This weekend was rather a big one for me. It’s strange because at the same time as realizing that this should be such an enormous moment in my life I find I experience it much like any other of those important things you’re supposed to remember, very much one moment at a time.

First I would like to point out that this whole moving process was planned earlier to occur on Friday and the only thing that was supposed to be done on Thursday (by me that is) was picking up the keys for the house. My parents were to sign all the paperwork with the lawyers and all the other people in Peterborough and then come up on Friday to help me move.

Needless to say, it didn’t really happen that way.

My mom came down on Tuesday for the pre-delivery inspection and stayed the entire week. My dad drove up very early Thursday morning. They signed and did all that stuff during the morning and beginning of the afternoon. Later in the afternoon my dad went over to my old place and cleaned it out of absolutely everything. Most of that stuff, as well as everything that my parents had brought up from home base, made it into the new house that afternoon. I didn’t get there until seven at night when it was all done. When I walked into my house for the first time most of my stuff was already in there, even if it wasn’t set up properly.

Yes, when I walked into my house for the very first time I was wearing the pants.

It was so bizarre to me that there were all these people and all this stuff in my house. It almost didn’t seem real. Those people and that stuff filled up that space more than me; does it make sense when I say that because of that it seemed that the space belonged to them too?

I could only take a few steps in a first because there was so much stuff in my kitchen. I think I helped more a few things inside before actually walking around inside. After that I plopped myself down on the one available place for sitting in the midst of the mess and had myself a few cold slices of pizza which was what was left of my parents’ dinner while they told me about the little things that had been happening during the day. It consisted of a lot of “…and then we went there”, “we signed this with so-and-so…”, “he took one look at the paint and…” , “in the middle of the room because…”, “we’ll need to do that sometime of course but first…” and so on.

I smiled and nodded a lot during that conversation. It was a bit one sided. Basically what it came down to was my mom was frustrated because the house was getting painted and while it was getting painted she could not move any of the things she wanted to move. The mess of all the packed items was getting to her and she wanted it all to be cleaned up and put away in proper places.

Quite frankly I was exhausted. The night before I had been up until 1:00am, I’d gotten up again at 6:30am that morning, I’d had class at 8:30 followed by a lab in which the learning and remembering of the names of most of the bones in four separate species of vertebrates was required, and I’d just come from an intense biochemistry midterm at school. It had been a busy day to say the least.

While I was quite happy to make the trek to my new home instead of the old one it has got to be one of the most bizarre feelings. I’ve taken the trip from the university to the house once before at this point. I’d used my GPS because I had an appointment and really didn’t want to be late and had no idea where I was going. I wasn’t using the GPS this time because I was all like “It’s my house now! I have to know how to get to my own house!”

I don’t really know how to describe the feeling I was having while I was driving. There was a little “Oh dear God, a hill. Please change light so I don’t have to stop! Yes! Success!” There was a little “Holy Salmon on a cracker I am so tired I will crash (as in sleep, not in my car) on the nearest horizontal surface I find when I get there.” There was some more “Hurray for parents and hugs”, some “What if I get lost”, and some “OMG EXCITED!!!”

All of those together make for a rather strange thought process.

When I got to the house I parked in the driveway and waited for my parents because my mom had sent me a text saying “We’re just picking up the last of your stuff. Head for the house and wait for us there.” I was a bit confused because the lights were on but she had said wait. About eight minutes later the parents pull up with the truck and trailer making a lot of noise (apparently the muffler on the truck went on the way past Toronto) and my mom’s first words to me were “Silly goose! Why didn’t you go inside?” to which I mumbled something about “waiting” and “didn’t know” and “you said” which made me sound like I was five years old again.

Did I mention I was really tired?

It turns out that the house had been open because the dude was repainting inside and I could have just walked in but it didn’t feel right to try and do it without them. I’m only 19 for crying out loud! I still need some room for a few more baby steps.

(Side note: Can you believe that we’re turning 20 this year?!)

After stepping inside things are a little bit of a blur but, as I mentioned before, it involved pizza. It also involved discovering some house warming gifts from my dad—a periodic table shower curtain and a Bazinga shirt! I had a little squee moment upon seeing both of these. They are serious awesomeness!

When things were settled a bit, and by settled I mean that the people in the house who were not my family had left and the kitchen disaster had some sort of a path doing through it, I went up to my room where my mattress was lying in the middle surrounded by boxes. This prompted a bit of a sigh because there were no blankets in the room. I found my comforter and blanket for my bed downstairs, through them on my bad, did the usual teeth and face things and then promptly buried myself in blankets and tried to ignore the street light shining directly in my eye in favour of falling asleep.

As I’ve already explained to Dawn, I was up at her crack on Friday because there were no light blocking devices in the house. It was a good thing anyways because I got to spend a bit of time with my parents before they took off to do some more house things that I didn’t really know about.

That was the first time I was in my house alone and I was a bit unnerved. There was so much to do that I couldn’t do and it was so quiet without anyone in it so I promptly bolted out the door and ended up at school an hour early. It was just me and all the stragglers of the earliest class on campus and that was a bit weird too. I promptly took out my Blackberry and started asking for updates on everything that was happening. That had pretty much been my state during the entire previous day when I was stuck at school so it was a pretty good fall back. This time though, it was only my parents I could talk to because, let’s face it, only people that have to be up that early are up that early at our age.

I must add at this point that I was wearing a rather awesome outfit that day which I was very proud of and which got me a few much appreciated compliments. I will have to wear it again for some other function where it can be properly admired.

A lot of things got done on Friday. Most of the kitchen mess migrated into various areas upstairs. A bunch of it got put into very proper places where it will most likely stay. More walls were painted and avoided while they were wet. There’s still being avoided really. Nothing is supposed to be put against them for any amount of time until at least a week has past. This seems simple at first but I’ve come to realize over the last few days that I’m a lot clutzier than I usually think I am and have a habit of bumping into things and knocking them against walls.

I learned how to put up towel rods and hooks on Friday, too. It was interesting. The next day I realized how lucky I had been to have a drill to do it but more on that later. I really enjoyed these little bits that you stuck through the drywall which you them poked with a special poker to make them open behind the wall and stay there. You know what they say about simple things and simple minds? Yes…

Besides the nerdtasticness of my periodic table shower curtain, another edition of nerdiness was added to my house on Friday—my wireless internet connection named “Evenstar”. It makes me immensely happy every time I see it.

Since I won’t get most of my appliances until the end of the week, my parents and I went out to the “family restaurant” that the guy we’d talked to at the post office had told us about. It was definitely worth a trip because it was super good! The food was delicious and most of the sauces are made actually in the restaurant instead of getting there in cans like some larger chain restaurants. The portions were also massive! I’m definitely going back. Noms…

On the way back from dinner we stopped at the LCBO and the parents stocked up on a bit of wine. When we got home they promptly tried to get me drunk which is frightfully easy because of my lack of experience. (Microsoft Word thinks that I should put “am frightfully easy” but I certainly am not!) It was around this time that I gave Valerie the virtual (via Skype) tour of the new house. I can’t wait to give the actual tour next weekend! It’s gonna be fun!

Saturday saw my dad leaving for home because he had a few funerals to attend. (Yes, a few. How morbid is that?) My mom and I went out and got some light blockers, aka blinds, for the house. Unfortunately, the place we got them didn’t have all the sizes we needed so they had to order some of them. More unfortunately, one of the ones we did take home was cut incorrectly and didn’t actually fit in the window. I have to take that back to the place to be re-cut sometime this week which is a pain.

The purchasing of blinds brought with it another learning experience, which is putting them up. Not so complicated either unless you want to be obsessive compulsive about it, which I almost was. I got over that pretty fast and they got up. I have a lovely blister and a bit of a sprained wrist to show for the labour I put in but now I have sun blockers which hopefully mean more sleep! Hurray!

I don’t know about where you ladies were but here on Saturday it started snowing like bad in the evening even though the weather forecast had said we’d get less than a centimetre. Liars! We had at least four inches! It was craziness! Cue the third thing I learned this weekend—how to drive Lyra in extreme snow! I made it out of my subdivision this weekend which was almost a miracle with how much snow there was.

The reason we had to leave the subdivision this morning at all was that we were going to get my food out of the fridge at the roommates’ place. When we pulled up to the house they were using the snow blower to clear the driveway… Oh, the snow blower works now does it? (Insert massive eyeroll here.) It was all civilized and we’ve broken the lease and all is good.

On an a happier note and also really nerdy note, I found a super awesome Harry Potter book at Wal-Mart today which has, among other things, a Marauder’s Map, a Yule Ball programme and a bunch of Educational Decrees. Like I said, it’s super awesome! I can’t wait to read it!

This post is already enormously large so I’ll stop here. I hope at least some of you read all of this but you should know that I would still love you even if you didn’t.

Ciao,

Dina