Ed and I moved into Sparta in December of 2009. It’s been a great home for us, and we’ve had some excellent times here – but now that we both work from home, it’s become a bit cramped. We’ve idly been talking about looking for a bigger place for some time now (me with the “LET’S MOVE NOW” and Ed with the standard “in a year or two”), but things just sort of happened: we did some math, looked at the market, toured some neighbourhoods, and the next thing you know, our piggy banks are hella empty and we have a lot of scary, official-looking documents covered in signatures.

This all happened really fast (like, the span of maybe three weeks), but we found a place that met all of our requirements:

• Big (+765 sqft over current home)
• 3+ bedrooms (actually has four)
• Many toilets (4 of them!)
• A deck we can actually USE holy crap I will be able to go outside but stay inside
• No pedestrian-controlled crosswalks anywhere in sight
• No horrible upstairs neighbours with stompy feet and elephant offspring
• Double car garage
• Corner unit (neighbours on only one side! wooo!)
• Greenery! And a community garden!

It’s a townhouse in a new development outside of Vancouver, surrounded by green space and with a friggin’ creek running through it. We’re going to have a YARD. That someone else has to mow. It will be glorious.

As excited as I am, there are definitely things I will miss about Sparta and Vancouver. Among them:

• Being able to say “I live in a McDonald’s parking lot”
• Living above a rub n’ tug (it’s for the best – we never used it because Ed is squeamish)
• Out of milk, eggs, or $9 pints of $4 ice cream? The gas station across the street has what you need.
• Having an address that says “Vancouver”
• The mailman, because it took 8 years but we FINALLY have an understanding about the fact that I do not go outside and he will be bringing me many things and also we are always home (except when I forget to tell the post office to hold my mail, and he’s ringing me in the middle of the night because I’m halfway around the world)
• Getting free passes to the PNE each year for the inconvenience of other people
• Proximity to Deacon’s Corner, Scandalicious, and the good Dennys

There’s a list of things I WON’T miss, but I am not posting them because I need someone to buy our place. :D

I am still a little torn over the loss of my Vancouver address, but this is slowly changing. Don’t get me wrong – this is not one of those obnoxious “Dear Vancouver, I’m breaking up with you” posts. If anything, I’m taking my own advice. It’s true that this city is unsustainable, and if we want more out of our home, we had to look outside the central Vancouver area to one that actually has additional perks beyond those listed above. Yes, I will miss living a ten-minute drive from my friends, but it’s not like I’m moving to Connecticut: that ten minute drive is simply now a 30-minute drive. Oh no. We’re actually in a better position to see our friends regularly, because we’re not the only ones with a new address and the group has instituted a regular date night (which has been a smashing success and means we get to see people far more regularly than just “whenever it happens”).

Some habits die really hard, though: I try not to think too hard about the fact that we’re moving to Surrey. Not regular Surrey; nothing will stop me from stressing that we live in SOUTH Surrey. Not Stabbin’ Surrey. We’re west of the 99, like 5 blocks outside of White Rock. Totally different. I doth protest a lot.

I haven’t started packing yet, but I’ve made an excellent spreadsheet. We’re getting rid of a lot of our stuff to prepare for the move and eventual staging of Sparta (if you’re in the market for any furniture or Pac-Man lamps, let me know), and I’m going to have to pack up almost all of my stuff to made this look like a nice, normal home in which no crazy Peter Pan horders live. Should be totes easy. I have just under three months to pack, purge, sell, or donate most of my belongings. When we return from Ireland, we’ll have three weeks to deep clean the place, then stick it on the market. Ed’s confident that we won’t have an issue selling – Sparta is a corner unit with the second biggest floor plan in the building, has two bathrooms, upgraded closets, and comes with storage and two parking spots. Those are all excellent things. Hopefully someone will give us a lot of money for them, which we will give to the bank because we are responsible like that.

Okay, now I’m just rambling and stressing myself out. There’s so much to DO.

February 5th, 2015. That was the last time I felt as awful and as helpless as I do now. It was the day before I landed in the hospital and finally had a diagnosis for how I’d been feeling – I was so, so scared. I couldn’t get out of bed without almost passing out from the effort. I couldn’t do much more than cry, with the occasional break to throw up into the sink. It was hell. 

I’m in that hell again. It’s day five after starting new medication to deal with my blood sugar, and the day the dosage doubled. I’m nauseous all the time. I have no energy. I had to go downstairs to get the mail today, and the effort made me throw up. Ed keeps imploring me to eat and I’m *trying*, but I can barely choke things down (and usually throw them up again shortly afterward). I know there’s an adjustment period to lifestyle changes, but this. fucking. sucks. It feels like I’m dying all over again, and that isn’t hyperbole – I know what almost dying feels like. It feels like this. 

My blood sugar is down almost 11 points, though – instead of the danger zone, I’m high normal. Yippee. Totally worth feeling like death for a week. Can’t wait for this to be my entire life: feeling awful, sobbing and vomiting (sometimes at the same time!), and no potatoes. Or rice. I’m fucking Asian and Irish. This is so racist. 

I just want to feel like I did a week ago, before I made all these changes for the “better”. 

I cleaned out the pantry tonight. This was actually scheduled before I learned that all food will kill me dead, but because of that the cleaning had extra gravity. I filled three large garbage bags with expired food, partially eaten snacks, and sauces of questionable quality. Any food that was still good but unopened will be donated.

I’m slowly but surely making my way around the house, purging as much as I can in preparation for the move. The condo will go on the market when we return from Ireland, and I’m a little concerned about how the hell we’re going to stage it when everything I own is chaos. Part of my summer plans will be to clean out my storage locker, then start packing away some of the items that scream “unspeakable horrors happened here” as opposed to “raise your babies in my Lady Cave!”. I’m still trying to figure out how to hold a garage sale – Ed suggested I post everything I have for sale, then hold an open house for anyone who might be interested in stuff. I could do that. Remember when I gave away all those bags? Yeah, there’s a lot more where that came from.

I’ve posted before about my tendency to hoard food. I’m still doing it, and my brain still works the same way – if there are no snacks in the house, all I want to do is stuff my face with them. If they’re everywhere, I don’t need them. They just have to be available. It was surprisingly easy to empty out the pantry of 90% of the bad food (the only pang of regret I felt was for the unopened bag of sea salt caramels but even then I’ve had the bag for over a year and never ate them), but I kept a few things to ward off my cravings. They’ll likely get tossed out untouched when it’s time to clean the pantry again, but that’s okay. They’re there, and that’s all I need.

Before I became some sort of hunched, pantless hermit, I worked in an office with other people. I used to frequently ply them with candy: I’d buy a bag of something I wanted, eat one or two, then give the rest away. I brought home my stash of candy when I left the office, and put everything into a drawer and forgot about it other than to add to the stash every now and again. Part of the pantry purge included bagging up all the candy hidden around the house to give to my friends, because someone might as well enjoy the stuff I can’t. Even with my hoarding habit, I was a little shocked at the final almost final roundup:

one cat + one cat butt + a metric shit ton of candy

The loose, wrapped candy filled 3/4 of the bag Dilly is sitting in and is heavy as hell. What the fuck. The people who visit my house have failed me: why did you not eat all this? You’re going to sit there until you clean your plate, young lady. Diabetes for everyone!

I found two more small stashes after I took this picture. They’ve been added to the bag. Is this normal behaviour? I can’t tell.

We’re supposed to be in Edmonton right now, but we canceled our road trip at the last minute. The interior of BC (and much of our driving route) is under severe landslide warnings and we would both prefer not to be washed away in mud. That, coupled with the fire alarm testing going on at Sparta today, caused us to postpone – we’ll go later next month. Safety eventually and all, but I’m kind of bummed to be missing out on the Astronautalis show in Edmonton this Friday. It was a conveniently-timed coincidence, but then mud. Boo.

I’m sort of glad we’re home for the fire alarms, though. Poor Hobbes goes catatonic with fear when they go off, so at least we’re here to keep the cats company. When the alarms start, I’ll hide in my bathroom with them for a few hours. In fact, last night I deep-cleaned my bathroom so we’d have a nice place to hang out while loud noises are happening. I am so considerate! Plus, I have to work in there all morning. Might as well be comfortable.

So, instead of leisurely driving through the mountains looking for elk this upcoming long weekend, I will be at home, cleaning out our pantry. I look forward to taking inventory of all my creamed corn and disposing of expired sauces. Yes, I lead an enviable life. I totally wish I was me.

seriously, this weather sucks.