Life's a Beach!

We survived the move! Hurrah!

I've been busier than a one-armed paperhanger since April, making trips to find and buy us a house and then arranging for and going through the move. The move itself was fairly traumatic--it was the first time I've paid for "professional" help. I wasn't ready (there wasn't enough time)and the movers were rough with my furniture and boxes, no matter that I paid them a LOT of money to load, transport and unload it. I hope to never move again, but if I end up having to move it certainly will not be with the "help" of this moving company. Moving day was pretty much a nightmare. I had to leave a few hours after the movers left in an attempt to get to the house before they arrived. I couldn't make it in time (one driver vs. two), and so they were here about three hours before me--long enough to unload the furniture and place it fairly randomly in the house and throw clothes and loose stuff all over the place. As our realtor said when she arrived that evening to see me, "What a shitty job!" I had them unload most of the boxes into a storage unit I rented about six miles from the house so that we would have room to move around in the house and get some painting and floor work done before bringing home and unpacking the boxes.

I stayed at the house, exhausted, for a few days (during which it rained the whole time) before heading back to Ontario to pick up Toad and our creatures, and to deal with things that didn't make it onto the moving van. The hot weather in Ontario made doing anything more difficult, but we did our best to clear the house of our stuff and get what we wanted stored in the car, which I left with a friend and will retrieve in a few weeks. With the help of our good neighbors, who we were sad to leave, we got Dudley, six hens, four roosters, three degus, six doves, two cockatiels, one lovebird, two frogs, two turtles, seven cats, one dog, one desktop computer and monitor, one laptop computer, sundry tools and miscellaneous items, one purse, one bag of important papers, one exhausted Toad and one beyond exhausted driver (me) into the truck and on the road by 6:43pm eastern time. And off we went on our great adventure!

It took me 29 hours to drive Toad and our family of animals here from Ontario--29 sleepless hours, since we had to keep the air moving through the truck at all times in order to keep the animals alive. Everyone lived, thank goodness, and we arrived at our new home in New Brunswick on July 1st--Canada Day. Since then we have been recuperating and getting some necessary paperwork and renovations done. We're too exhausted to paint and fix the flooring, which needs to be done before we unpack very much, but eventually we'll get it done. I figure that I have the rest of my life to unpack. Now it's time to relax and recover from the trauma of the move.

We've explored a bit but not as much as we would like. We love the beaches here and living near the ocean where the air is fresh and clean. I still can't believe that we live so close to the ocean now and can be there in two minutes whenever the mood strikes to go! Sadie really enjoys the beach, too. She romps in the water like a little child! Here she is:













And then she found a Frisbee! Oh, joy!







The amount and variety of seafood up here is amazing. The people are very friendly and open. This was a good move for us. Our animals are happy. Like us, they have all settled in and are enjoying life here. Dudley roams about the backyard or lies by the shed, happy as a pig in you-know-what. We are keeping the roosters separate from the hens, so some days the hens roam the yard and other days Foghorn is free to roam. Eventually we'll arrange for all of them to have yards with chicken wire to protect them from predators, but for now this arrangement is working. Peedy and Tula are in a cage in the shed, and Popper is in his own cage in the shed, as we don't have the house arranged to provide a place for them where the cats can't get at them. They enjoy the fresh air and being outside in this glorious weather.

So far we have had a new roof and trim put on the house (all but the eavestroughs, which will be put on any day now), a 6' x 10' back deck built, and had an antenna installed on the new roof to provide Internet access. We were without Internet for a month and suffered some withdrawal, but not as much as I thought we would. We were just too tired to even miss being able to go online. The only problem I had was with trying to do online banking and bill-paying, but the library Internet served for that until we got online at home. Our Internet is actually faster here than it was in Mattawa, which is great.

We are getting more work (including lots of insulation!) done on the house soon. Toad has done a bit of plumbing inside and is working on making the closets more functional. We have made many trips to the hardware store already, and are just getting started. I'm monkeying around in the house, doing little things and getting ready to start painting, starting with the living room floor. After I paint I can get serious about unpacking, but I can't push myself too hard.

After I recuperate a bit more and get more settled into the house I plan to apply for work. I don't know what I'll find, if anything, due to the economy tanking so badly. I've gotten so used to not working that I sort of dread doing it again. Maybe if it's the right job for me I'll feel better about working. I could certainly use the money--the move was expensive and just about maxed out my credit card. So I do need to find a job, unfortunately. Otherwise I just might turn into a beach bum, ha ha.