Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? So much has happened, moving house after over twenty years was just a tad time-consuming. Overwhelming. Exhausting. Frustrating. Infuriating. Saddening. Repeat.
The relief is just setting in, now.
And now, I have a house I actually like walking into. I can invite people over again. The house is no Taj Mahal, but after enduring what we did for the last two decades or so, it's pretty dang close.
We found a rental house in town, a place that Icubed *(Husband, that's my new acroynym for him, and yes, our ship of relation got a tad acrimonius through the slow, painful denouement of the farm life)* could abide moving to. As you all know, if you've stuck with me through these past weird years, I was moved a lot as a kid, so moving wasn't the end of the world for me. I've known all along that this farm life/place was temporary. Sad that the house on the farm became such a nightmare, and not even just due to immediate, bizarro neighbour, which story is even harder to believe. Have I lost you?
I know. I do that alot.
Anyway, we moved to town. What I consider the "city", although I know it's just barely four corners on the way to cottage country. Fine by me. The road noise is tough, and so is the fact that I HAVE to remember what I'm wearing when I go out the front door. There are kids on this street, and other people's husbands. I tend to look either outlandish, or uh, scantily covered, depending on the time of year.
THAt will change too, I can now wear clothes that I actually like, as opposed to clothes that need decontamination after each wearing.
"New" house is about 40? years old, same type of house, bungalow, but get this, the basement??
It's....
DRY...
Sigh. My bathroom?
Tiny, only one, who CARES!!!!! It's CLEAN, and easy to KEEP clean.
I had no idea how much I missed keeping a house clean. Farm house seemed to grow dirt, of course thanks to the lake beneath the house. And of course, a failed roof, thank you again, EX landlords from hell. When water is coming from below, AND above, you know the house may have dampness issues. This seems to be hard for certain people to understand. Mould growth in the house was epic. I mean, for a Microbiologist, it was a wet dream. Talk about bio-films, this was a bio-panorama. Very organic :)
AND, new appliances.. I haven't even seen one run for over 20 years, really. The technological advances in domestic appliances are a bit bewildering. My new washing machine goes "rur-rur-rur" slowly like. I haven't heard a new one run EVER. I wouldn't know if it was broken or bent. Clothes do seem to come out clean, so, for the first time in 15? years, I can do my own laundry at my "own" house. My Dad's dear house keeper used to do our laundry. I felt like a freakin' college kid, every single week, thanks to old house from hell. You can't do laundry in a stinking wet basement, trust me on this.
I am so digging it. My aversion to cleaning at old place stemmed from the knowledge that it would only grow a new layer of crud in a matter of hours. I do NOT smoke in this new house, and Icubed has restrained his chain-smoking to his office. So, not nearly as much toxic sludge permeates the air. Last time I went to the old place, about a month after we moved, the stench could still knock you over when you walked in. How on earth we ever put up with it, I do know. Those 50 acres of land, two ponds, and for the first time since nutso was ejected, utter, total peace and quiet. (Well, except for the "usual". A visit from York Regional's finest, looking for nutso. A lawyers' lettter to nutso, stuck in our mail slot. Nutso had probably stiffed someone, again. )
When we found out we were going to be ejected, we stopped doing anything at all. It was solemnly agreed that the Landlord wouldn't do any maintenance, which was hysterically funny, because that's why we'd started the whole darned thing. So, we stopped our maintenance too. I stopped weeding, Icubed stopped cutting grass. An extraordinary hay crop developed, but sadly, no-one was allowed to harvest it, as idiot LL's had also decreed no farming on the land.
Long before this, (foresightedly) I stopped cleaning ANYTHING in the house. I just didn't want to waste that much energy on such an utterly lost cause. Vacuuming was an experiment to see how much longer the ancient stinking carpet would last, before carpet beetles and assorted enthusiastic vermin disintegrated its' warped weave to dust.
So, although I'm sad at the loss of the old place, I am completely relieved to be out of it. The wild creatures have taken it over for now, and since there is a conservation easement around the two ponds, I doubt they'll be able to turn that part of the land into condos. I doubt it, but that's my hope talking.
For this summer, the birds and bugs and critters have free run of the place. This makes me happy. I used to hate cutting the acres of grass, so many frogs and snakes and other critters sliced and diced for Flip to roll in, once they'd rotted well enough.
Very few untouched places like that are left here in Torontario.
The dogs are doing great, Blaze misses her pond, and being able to do long, far away zoomies without running into a fence (thank DOG for the fence!!) and being able to have a poop in private.
Flip misses free choice dog poop to dine on. I keep our back yard clean. It isn't five acres, but it's a good size for town life. Manageable for us old farts.
The girls have stopped sneezing and shaking their heads when they walk in the door. They did that every.single.time at old stink-hole. Flips' chronic vomiting has almost disappeared. The air is breathable. And maybe now, I can breathe too.
I have to use the title in another post, I went way off on a tangent on this one.
As usual.
