clearbluecup

we're moving into our new house this morning!

it may be a few days before we have an internet connection there though, so it may be a while before the next update.....

we are so close to having our own place again - I can't wait.

We have arrived in our new house, and all our stuff arrived the day after we did! Yesterday was exhausting but at least we don’t have to wait a few more days eating off paper plates while standing at the kitchen counter.

It is 100% moving chaos mode around here at the moment. We are still trying to decide what furniture we need to get and where our existing furniture should go. We drove out to Ikea the day we got the keys and wandered around in a progressively deepening fog until 9pm. Do we want to get a $500 reclining armchair? A $300 dining room table? Or the $30 kitchen table with the $20 chairs? After spending a hefty chunk on the best mattress we’ve ever owned it seemed easy to drop more cash on furniture, but we restrained ourselves. I think part of the consume-consume-consume instinct comes from being back in the land of North American shopping. It’s like TV; because I’m not exposed to it on a regular basis I haven’t developed any tolerance to it.

Anyway, there is so much house stuff to be done that I should probably get going on that and pry myself away from the computer. Pics will follow as soon as we get our broadband connected...

Broadband arrives tomorrow, but since it has been so long since the last photo of Bea I thought I'd upload one to tide us over.

We're slowly, slowly getting unpacked and exploring our new neighbourhood. I think we're living in the right place for us - there is an interesting mix of young hipster types, lots of parents with kids in strollers and the odd crazy guy wandering down the road. I'm ok with the odd crazy guy since the rest of the neighbourhood has so much going for it, and the crazy guys aren't really that threatening. We went for brunch at Cafe Deux Soleil on sunday, and it reminded me of all the things I loved about the Sugarbowl in Edmonton before it went all upmarket and got rid of the cool tiny tables and beaten up couch and started scaring away the students who wanted to sit and study all day. The food was tasty and veggie and the place was packed with a huge range of people from middle-agers to punks to babies in highchairs. I had a beautiful chai latte, served in a big cup without a handle. And today I found a yoga studio around the corner that offers Satyananda classes instead of the standard hatha/power that is everywhere here. Piece by piece things are falling into place.

So, still no broadband. I'm sure when it does finally arrive I will glut out on surfing and uploading photos and have the equivalent of a sugar-binge headache from all the data-transfer going on.

We spent most of last weekend either at Ikea, driving to or from Ikea or assembling Ikea flat-pack furniture. Our house is now full of empty cardboard boxes and some more furniture, which makes it feel more like home. Tom and I noticed a strange phenomenon when we moved in here - furniture that looked great in our last house just didn't work at all in our new one, like our really bright and colourful tablecloth that went on our kitchen table. Our new kitchen is too small for the table, the table is too small for the new dining room and the tablecloth just doesn't work at all.

We're also in the phase of madly joining things - food co-op, car co-op, family centre, library, yoga studio. When I arrived at my first yoga class on saturday morning I discovered that I am their first and only satyananda student, and they are the first and only yoga studio to offer a satyananda class in vancouver. So it sounds like I need to recruit some friends to come with me so that they can stay in business and I can keep going to my favourite kind of yoga. I signed up to take a baby signing workshop that starts next week, and I have bought a didymos which makes me part of another kind of group, a group of people called "babywearers". We're still perfecting the art of wrapping, but it's pretty groovy and way more comfortable than the Bjorn we were using before.

I am slowly, slowly getting a hang of the rhythm of the stay at home mom lifestyle. It's all about catching the right activity for the moment, and making the most of the moments you get. That and not getting too hung up on having to leave things half-finished. It's surprisingly hard to get laundry done, but overall we're doing ok. Bea is sleeping great. I'm almost afraid to say it in case I jinx it, but she falls asleep between 6-9pm every night and sleeps through to about 1:30, then sleeps again to 4 and is up at 7. I'm having a lot of doubts about starting a course again in January though. If the house is sorted and everything is unpacked by then, then I might be able to manage it. But what if it's not? And will I use up all my time on the course and not have any downtime? Will that make me a more unpleasant mom? Is it worth it? Is now the right time, or should I wait another few months, another few years? What will I get from doing a course now that I won't get if I wait? I know nobody can answer these questions but me, but somehow writing them down helps me get some perspective.

One thing I would like to have more time to do is writing. If I actually wrote down every idea that I had for a post here I'd have a much more interesting blog. I've totally stopped writing elsewhere as well - my paper journal hasn't had an entry for months and months, and I have to admit that I'm a little intimidated by the writing and researching involved in a course. Will I have the time and mental energy required? Maybe writing more in general would help knock off some of the rust that has accumulated and get those gears running at my regular speed again.

Somewhere in the past week the switch has been flicked. That switch labelled WINTER, which means that the beginning of the Long, Hard Slog Through the Darkness has begun.

Maybe it was the first big winter storm that did it. It didn't seem like it was a terribly severe storm from our snug upstairs bedroom where the rain beat against the skylight in sheets and waves. But it was severe enough to bring landslides of silt and clay into the resevoirs that feed the city its water supply and now we aren't supposed to drink the brown, cloudy water that comes out of the tap.

Maybe it's the fact that I've only seen the mountains that surround the city once since we moved in here, and when I did there was snow on them.

Maybe it's the pressure I am putting on myself to get christmas cards in the mail, get presents chosen and bought, get airline tickets booked and get the house in order so that I can start putting decorations up.

Maybe I should just look into getting one of those full-spectrum SAD lights.

It's not all bad though. Look at how Beatrice lets her hand just hover there while she sleeps!

"It's really mild in Vancouver," I told everyone. "It's just like Ireland."

Not quite.

Weather warning - 20-30cm of snow expected by Sunday evening. There's about an inch or two at the moment and it's still coming down in huge clumps. I'd forgotten about snow, the way it goes "skrunk" when you walk on it and the sensation of butterfy feet when it lands on your skin. Louis is outside creeping around the garden at the moment, exploring snow for the first time.

I just spent an hour reading Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess, all curled up under a quilt on the couch. I took it out from the library as a half-joke; now that I am fully employed in the care and maintenance of a home I suppose I am in a position to see being a Domestic Goddess as a promotion. Sitting around reading cookbooks is not a usual pastime of mine, but this one is like having a chat over a cup of tea with a lady who has done a lot of cooking and knows what she likes, and what is easy and rewarding to make. It is delightful, and has lots of gorgeous pictures to drool over too. In her introduction to Blueberry Muffins she describes store-bought muffins as a "dry mass of aerated wodge" and I thought to myself - "that's exactly it. dry, aerated wodge. there is no better way to describe store bought muffins."

Baking is comforting to me. I was getting all stressed out over unpacking and cleaning and making this house feel like our home, and when I felt myself getting upset about not having all the stuff that I wanted, bookcases, shelves, armchairs, etc, etc, I decided to bake some banana bread. And when the house filled with the warm, beautiful smell it suddenly felt a lot more like home. I've yet to bake yeast bread, but I'm working up to it.

And yes, it's still snowing. I look out the window and can't believe what I see. It's like we've been transported to another world, a land of iced gingerbread houses and reindeers and sleighs. It's completely magical. When I remember back through the years that I lived in Vancouver as a child, I can remember only one other time when we got as much snow as we have now. I can remember a lot more years hoping desperately for a white christmas and ending up with a wet, brown one. Louis is not quite so enchanted with the new snowy landscape.

The view from our front porch this morning...