living life Archives - Page 13 of 22 -

New House and New Traditions

November 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

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So, we bought a house yesterday.

<– That’s it. Pretty good, eh?

We jogged into town on Wednesday afternoon, bought an iPhone (because, obviously) and started looking at houses yesterday at 10 am. The deal was done about 10:00 last night.

We are totally thrilled with how this worked out. It’s almost miraculous. We got a house we love and – get this – the possession date we wanted. We’ve agreed to be out of our house by the 26th and will be into the new one on the 28th. Of November.

So that means we’ll be in our new house for Christmas.

I’m not actually sure what our Christmas plans will be this year, but I think it’s going to be a little odd. We’ve spent every Christmas except two at home with my parents and other assorted family. We’ve picked out a tree at the same nursery every year. We’ve done the same lights tour. We’ve eaten Christmas dinner at the same table and hung our stockings from the same fireplace. Those things will change and it will be okay, though I’m feeling a bit sentimentally sad about it.

What we will have, however, is this, which we woke up to this morning:

There’s actually no guarantee we’ll have a white Christmas but if we do I will be a very happy girl. Despite many years on the coast, it never feels like Christmas without snow. And I think this little dude will like it too:

We’ll be in town for good just in time to gear up for Christmas, which will involve my sister and her husband, and my parents are planning to come out too. My mother-in-law lives here, so we won’t be short on family.

And it will be kind of fun to start new traditions and find new holiday comforts. We’ll go visit the great light display they do in a park here and actually enjoy hot chocolate in the car without being too warm. I’ll prove to Connor that I do, in fact, know how to build a snowman. We’ll bake my mom’s Christmas cookies in our new oven in our totally awesome new kitchen, and then we’ll sit by our new fireplace and eat them. (Or maybe I’ll leave the boys downstairs and eat mine upstairs because our new bedroom has a fireplace in it. Squee!) We’ll introduce our stockings to their new home and make sure Santa knows we’ve moved.

And we’ll enjoy the snow. Until we’re sick of it.

***

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Filed Under: Happy things, Stuff I like · Tagged With: family, favourite activities, firsts, hope, living life, The Universe

30 gifts for 30 strangers [video]

November 2, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

This is just happy – 2 minutes and 45 seconds of happy – and I wanted to share it with you.

Filed Under: Better world, Happy things, Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: community, gratitude, living life, spreading the love

The Truth

October 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Just before 4:30 on Friday, I left my afternoon meeting and got into my car. I drove a few blocks and then pulled over to an empty parking spot on the side of the road, pulled out my BlackBerry, and wrote my resignation.

And hit send.

As of November 19, I will no longer be employed at the organization I have worked at for almost six years. I will no longer be employed at all, in fact.

The truth is this causes me a slightly-larger-than-small amount of anxiety.

The truth is it’s more freeing than scary.

When we started talking about making this move I presumed I’d get a job and then move. I applied for some, interviewed, and then sat there waiting for the phone to ring. And one afternoon I realized I was waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it didn’t.

That realization was freeing too.

By all normal logic, I should have a job. My husband is a stay-at-home dad and I have a preschooler who’s growing so fast I’m starting to hope capris become a hot style for three-year-old boys.

We intend to buy a house in Calgary, but with the equity in our current house we’ll be able to do that. We sold that house on Friday – the papers have been signed, the for-sale sign has been flipped, and less than a month from now we’re going to hit the road.

I’ve busted out of the golden handcuffs before and it’s not easy. (One of these days I’ll have to tell you the story about how spending a weekend at an alternative treatment centre with my mom when she had cancer ultimately led me to leave a totally secure job and take a pay cut to do the kind of work I wanted to do.) It hasn’t been easy this time around either. But I have never once doubted it’s the right thing to do, and after all that’s happened over the last few months I’m not prepared to take the wrong job just so I have a job. Sometimes I think you have to just GO. The right job will find me.

“Aren’t you scared?” a good friend of mine asked a few weeks ago. “Shitless,” I answered truthfully. But I’d rather be full of fear for a short time than full of regret forever. (And then last week, for similar reasons, that friend quit his job too. The truth is out there, people. It’s spreading, and it’s AWESOME.)

The truth is we spend too much time being scared. We think “scary” equals “wrong” so we stay scared and we do nothing. We stay the course.

The truth is I think I’d die if I stayed the course. Physically, I already came as close as I care to. I’m not letting what I “should” do steal my soul.

Image credit: kxlly on Flickr

There’s a whole other layer to what’s happening in my work environment right now and, while I decided to move on before that begun, it’s been, frankly, awful. There are things I want to pour on this page, but I can’t. That’s one truth I can’t tell. So I don’t have this outlet and my emotion and frustration and grief over a difficult situation have overflowed elsewhere.

Truth: It’s affecting people I care about, and that’s hard.

Truth: It’s damaged a relationship, possibly irreparably, and I regret that while at the same time feel like I can’t do anything about it.

Truth: It feels like I’m leaving part of me behind in this process. Not just the part I have intentionally ditched, but a good part. A stable part. A rational part.

It’s the truth. But it has consequences.

Filed Under: Be enough me, Happy things, Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, anxiety, Be enough me, hope, living life, telling the truth, The Universe

Signs It’s Too Long Since You Ran

October 27, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Until Wednesday I hadn’t been for a run for a while, despite very good intentions. Then a couple of weeks ago we went to the beach and I ended up in my running shoes in the water thanks to a certain 3-year-old who wasn’t listening very well, but that was a perfect excuse to replace my way-too-old runners and kickstart the process. Which I did, and thus I present you with:

10 signs it’s been too long since your last run:

Your sports bra is so well buried you practically have to excavate your underwear drawer to find it.
Your dog doesn’t even look up when you get your runners out, because he certainly wouldn’t think to expect he might be getting a run.
Your dog also doesn’t get up from the couch when you actually put your runners on because, well, see #2.
You have come to associate your running hat with covering up (bad) weekend hair.
You put your running vest on and it’s a little, um, tight around the hips. (Stupid vest.)
When getting your running vest out of the closet, you notice that your running jacket looks awfully clean, as though it had been hanging there for a while without being worn (or something).
You can’t find the shorter leash you usually use when running with your dog, so you take the retractable one instead. Meh, it works.
When you get to the trail, your dog goes absolutely berserk. (Yes, all right, it’s been awhile. Noted.)
Running hurts.
Despite the hurt, when you get going at a decent pace your thought process goes like this: “Hey, look at me! Not bad. This is practically a tempo run! WOO HOO! I OWN THIS TRAIL! Except… Gosh, it kind of hurts to breathe. What’s that, dog? Oh, you have to pee? Okay, let’s pause for a minute. I don’t mind. In fact, let’s just walk the rest of the route. It will be good for me to properly cool down. Yeah, that’s it…”

And then, possibly, when you get to the end of the trail you’ll feel like a bit of a wuss for having quit early because, despite the pain – and the pouring rain – the run felt pretty damn great.

Lesson learned. I can’t wait to go again.

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: lists, living life, running

Rich in Love Trumps Rich in Money

October 17, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I have a new bloggy friend who feels like a kindred spirit, though I haven’t known her long at all. I met Dwija from House Unseen. Life Unscripted. through a bloggers’ group on Facebook, and if I hadn’t noticed her because of her name I certainly would have because of her blog. “We bought a house in rural Michigan sight-unseen off the internet,” reads her header. “My husband quit his job in California and we moved our four kids across the country.”

Heck yeah, I want to read this woman’s blog.

Then she friended me on Facebook and holy canoli is this woman funny. As in don’t-miss-her-status-updates funny.

Her story, as it turns out, is even richer than it sounds. (No pun intended.) My heart latched on to her history when she wrote Where I’m From. Several people, including me, asked her to share more about her background. Her response to that request – her humility, her hesitancy, her hilarious vernacular – captures so much about why I totally dig this woman already. (Plus, the post included a giant picture of a musk ox.)

She has started writing those stories, so go read part 1 and tell me you’re not hooked already. (And because you’re going to want them, here are the links to part 2 and part 3.)

So, um, anyway…before I spend a whole post rambling on about my new friend (and I could) I’ll tell you why this is important: She’s here today! And I’m at her place.

We’re doing a post exchange as part of the Friends You Love blog hop. I asked her if she’d play with me, she said yes, so here’s Dwija!

***

Five years ago I was still in my twenties. My skin looked great, I ran five days a week, I had two healthy little girls in pre-school and decent job.

And I was miserable.

Oh, we had money. We owned a charming little condo in Southern California and had two cars. I went out with my friends at least once, maybe twice a month.

And he was miserable.

We had everything “they” say you need to be happy and we just…weren’t. We weren’t happy. Because the one thing we didn’t have was each other.

I’ve read articles and “studies” lately that suggest the secret to a happy, or rather just bearable, marriage is to spend as much time apart as possible. Go on vacations alone. Talk badly behind each other’s backs. Drink a little too much. And then get some better meds.

My friends, if you are willing to endure that kind of painful existence, milquetoast at best, desperately depressing at worst, you are selling yourself short. You are cheating yourself out of the joy that everyone deserves.

When we had money and a house and perfect children in the Land of Fun, we rarely saw each other. We shared no hobbies. We went on no adventures together. He worked nights as a police officer, I worked days in an office. His days off were during the week, mine were on the weekend.

We stopped knowing each other.

So we stopped loving each other.

And you know what? That is not good enough. Not. Good. Enough. I wanted more, demanded more, because I deserved more. You deserve more.

And then the best terrible thing that could have happened to us happened – we foreclosed on our condo. Suddenly we had something in common again: a crisis.

In managing that crisis, we had to lean on one another. We had to make tough decisions and remind ourselves of what our priorities were. Or ought to be. We clung to one another and our relationship and the love we shared for our children and suddenly our lives BLOSSOMED again. Into a two-bedroom apartment just 6 days before baby number three was born and we were filled with JOY.

The peace that washed over our hearts and lit up our days once we prioritized each other over money or “fun” or stuff was nothing short of miraculous.

And now we’re here, in a house we bought for $27K cash sight-unseen off the internet, not knowing when Tommy will get another job or if we’ll ever be able to fix those holes in the ceiling, and we are happy.

You are worth more than tolerable. You are worth more than it-could-be-worse. Believe that. Live that. Make your life and your marriage and your family your hobby. Your adventure. You won’t regret it.

***

Sigh. I love her.

So now that I’ve introduced (some of) you to a fabulous new blogger, please head over to Dwija’s to read my (not nearly so deep) post about the time we were moving my husband out to live with me and ended up giving all his worldly possessions to some strangers.