To say life has been hectic is a bit of an understatement. I’ve been meaning to write this post since oh . . . April maybe? It was going to talk about how our never ending winter had zapped all the energy out of me and how I wasn’t feeling particularly creative. I was still walking to work everyday at an attempt to spend time being active outdoors in the daylight, and I was snapping pictures of just how bleak things were. Here are some of them:
And then, right when never ending winter was ending, our landlord started doing masonry work on the facade of our building. It was much needed work so I’m not debating the fact that it had to be done, but from a tenant impact situation . . . it sucked. What it meant was that the facade was covered in scaffolding, and the windows covered in plastic. When we were at home, it felt like the never ending winter never ended, because all we saw was a slightly translucent white plastic through our windows, which let in a sort of filtered light.
Then, I got really excited because Bixi season began in mid April! The first day was great, I zipped along to work. Then the next morning, it was a teensy bit icy out but I felt I would be just fine to ride to work. WRONG!!! Coming down a turn in the bikepath I hit a small patch of ice and spun out, landing right on my shoulder with the bixi on top of me. It hurt like mad and I thought I was going to either puke or pass out, so I sat down on the (very very cold) curb and called Dave to come meet me. He docked the bixi for me and came with me to the ER. The verdict: I broke my shoulder! Yikes!
The pain of a broken shoulder is bad enough, but on top of that it meant 1) no more biking and 2) our upcoming trip to Italy and Istanbul was at stake. #1 I could deal with. #2 made me extremely anxious. Several years ago we had planned a family trip over Christmas to Jamaica. The week before we were supposed to leave my mom slipped on ice and broke her wrist in several places. She required surgery, and needed to stay home. My sister and I went anyways, and that was probably the saddest trip I have ever taken. It’s hard to believe someone could be sad while in a Carribean island, with all you can eat and drink, but when you’re surrounded by families celebrating Christmas, and you’re anxiously awaiting an email from your dad to tell you how your mom’s surgery went, well, it’s pretty darn sad. But did this happen to me? Nope! My ortho appointment a week later confirmed I was fine to go on my trip, so off to Italy and Istanbul we went!
So if that wasn’t enough excitement, towards the end of the never ending winter WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! That was a complicated time of figuring out dates (since we’d be gone for just over two weeks, and then a week later Dave would leave on a close to two week business trip), frantic phone calls and emails to the bank to make sure we were able to meet all the conditions of our offer (we needed to get financing through a different bank than the one we got preapproved by, a peculiarity of buying an undivided condo, something I may revisit in the future, because I found that there was a lack of resources explaining how this worked on the web, from a personal experience point of view), extreme long distance and roaming charges contacting our insurance while in Italy, to be able to get on to the building’s common fire insurance policy, and then the power of attorney process (because in the end I had to sign the deed of sale for both of us because the closing date was when Dave was on vacation). Oh and pack up our apartment with only a semi functional left arm (I wasn’t yet cleared to lift anything of significant weight with it). Fun times!
But now, life is pretty good. We’re moved in, it’s hot and sunny outside, my arm is more or less healed, and I’ve got great memories from our trip. Not much more I could ask for!
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