Man oh man I have been LAX about updating this blog. I keep thinking ‘hmmm I should update that blog of ours’ and then I forget. Its for legitimate reasons. We are BUSY. We are living in 2 different countries and yet we still manage to see each other almost every weekend. In addition we are both working full time in jobs that seem to get progressively busier as time goes on. Throw in the fact that we are planning a wedding and a honeymoon and we had to move countries and get to know a new city and you pretty much have us in the busiest year of our relationship. With no sign of things slowing down!
2011 is proving to be QUITE an exciting year for us!
So lets recap – As of May 31st we are no longer residents of 200 Besserer Street. We had an amazing almost 2 years in that apartment and we were very sad to see it go! Still, new adventures were just a relocation away and so the moving truck came on May 31 to collect all our stuff and ship it down to Laguna Beach, CA. It was hard to believe that 2 years ago we arrived in Ottawa with only 3 suitcases and yet we left with a truck full of furniture and knick knacks. Man oh man it is easy to accumulate stuff. After saying goodbye to our beloved apartment, we headed to my summer sublet! Yes, I am staying in Ottawa for the summer and Joep will live in Laguna. I was lucky enough to find a sublet room in a share house for the summer. However, the landlord neglected to mention that my housemates were a mix of other professionals like myself and a couple of 20yo college students. Needless to say, the college students have a different schedule to us older professionals.
Still it was only for a few months right? Yeah. That didn’t register on a Thursday night at 4am as I stood in the kitchen in my pyjama’s yelling at some very intimidated 20yo’s to turn off the music and get out of my kitchen. Yikes. I’m becoming my mother (and I have to say, I’m quite proud of it!). I made the executive decision the following morning that I didn’t want to be in that house for the entire summer. Thankfully I was heading to SoCal the following week for a MONTH and my landlord is awesome and arranged for a different house for me for the month of August. It is much nicer and quieter here!
I shouldn’t complain too much though. The housing situation has been ideal in many ways. Its central, its clean, its spacious and I’m still walking distance from all our friends. In addition I’ve been away every weekend in SoCal anyway so it’s manageable. Plus it is great to be in Ottawa for another summer!
The move to Laguna Beach however, was quite stressful. The moving company initial verbally promised Joep that the furniture would take 7 days to get to Laguna. 7 days after they collected our entire worldly belongings we found out (after having to call them a million times) that the furniture had only made it as far as TORONTO! Yikes. Another 2 weeks later, again after many calls and emails and discussions we eventually found out that our furniture had not yet left Canada! Oh goodness. In the meantime Joep was sleeping on an airbed and camping in the apartment in Laguna. It was limited fun. Thankfully, it is now all a distant memory because after a month the furniture eventually arrived in Laguna Beach!Sadly, the removal company that had promised so much not only under-delivered in regards to the time it took them to get our stuff to Laguna but also in the actual moving service. We had paid for a full service that included taking all furniture apart and putting it all back together again. When the truck arrived in Laguna Joep was greeted by 1 man. Joep was, naturally, perplexed. How on earth would 1 man carry all our furniture up 3 flights of stairs? He couldn’t. In fact, he wanted Joep to help him! I don’t think so.
The only solution was to drive to the local ‘day worker’ stall to hire some help. Confused? I was too. This is relatively depressing but basically the day worker stand is a bus stop on the side of the road where immigrants (largely Mexican) wait each day in the hope that someone has work for them. They’ll do pretty much anything. Gardening, cleaning etc. etc. There are many things about this that make Joep & I very uncomfortable. In fact, there is little about this situation that makes us feel even remotely good. These are good hard working people who don’t have access to any benefits and who have a pretty low standard of living and get totally ripped off for working super hard. Yuck. When the removal guy hired the 2 workers he had to pay a deposit for them – Guess how much? It’ll likely upset you. It was $5!! $5!! To hire 2 people! Gross. Yuck. It makes me feel icky. Joep was happy for the help however, and tipped them generously. A small consolation. Still, there’s something very wrong about that.
We’ve both made the mistake of trying to have rational conversations with Californian’s about this situation. Alas their viewpoint differs enormously from ours so the conversations are usually short lived … and sometimes Joep has to kick me under the table to get me to stop trying talking about it. What can I say? I have opinions!The end result however is that we now have all our furniture in our new home and we’re all settled! Apart from the fact that I still live in Canada, of course.
However, having this last summer in Ottawa has proven to be quite enjoyable! The month of June has been pretty glorious. We’ve enjoyed amazing food (hello Murray’s Market!), we checked out the annual Art in the Park festivities (although we couldn’t buy anything coz we’re moving) and we had incredible bbq’s with amazing people! We also checked out Oysterfest! It is exactly what the title says it is. An oyster festival. The Whalesbone in Ottawa is one of our favourite restaurants and they hold this festival annually. It was a gloriously warm Sunday afternoon spent eating oysters and enjoying beverages with good friends! Alas, it came on a Sunday after a big Saturday night out so Joep & I were feeling a bit under the weather. Oysters are less delicious when you are hungover. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone involved.
We are going to miss Ottawa so much! Every time we sit around with friends we’ll often catch each others eye across the table and have a ‘oh I am going to miss this!’ moment. Moving around the world is an amazing experience but it does mean that we are continually growing the list of ‘things we miss’ around the globe.
Oh Ottawa how we will miss you …
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