Blue Yon Belly

xoxo
jeci

Anyway, I’m going to rewrite the damn post because it’s important to me. I hope I can bring it back to life. Certainly, if the Great Lost Term Paper Debacle of 1996 has taught me anything it’s that sometimes a whole new draft is even better the second time around AND, against all odds, I might even get the highest mark in the class. So, if my New Year’s post seems a little belated, it’s only appropriately so, since my new year doesn’t start until the fifth.

As an aside you’ll note that I have three decorative jars on the counter. They’re old honey jars from the farm. What should I do with them? Flowers? Sea shells? Nothing? Design mavens can leave their ideas in the comments.

Also? We have in-suite laundry. BELIEVE IT BABY. Dreams can come true! (At this point–what with all the links to my housekeeping disasters–I feel compelled to say that we don’t live in squalor. Honestly.)

And, well…OK. I’ll tell you the truth. When we first moved in here, I hated this apartment. A lot of things about this move–indeed, our lives–were a logistical nightmare and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. It was a logistical nightmare that seemed to gather speed and snowball on an almost daily basis until it culminated in the moment when I realized there was no cutlery drawer in the kitchen and I wanted to use a dozen drawerless butter knives to kill somebody. And really, a murderous rampage with the butter knives wouldn’t have been that messy because, since there’s no linen closet here, all the towels that were spilling out of garbage bags and strewn about the floor were just waiting to helpfully sop up a mess for me.

You see, (part of) what happened was that Kieran and I didn’t pick our apartment. Right around the time that Kieran and I were beginning to realize that the always (incredibly) expensive Vancouver has become retardedly so* and our options were to a) live in the asshole of hell** b) not live in Vancouver c) have some kind of incredible stroke of luck, we got a call from my uncle. My uncle’s retiring in two years and he and my aunt will be wintering in Vancouver! They were buying a condo downtown and would we be interested in renting it from them for the next two years at a rate that we could afford? Um, let me think about that for a sec–OK! So it was Option C that ended up choosing us, and us that ended up not choosing our home. Because, obviously, when your generous uncle offers to rent you an apartment in a really nice neighourbood at almost half the rate of what he could get from someone who could actually afford to live in this part of town, you just internalize your need for control over certain details (like cupboard space and linen closets) and thank your lucky stars. And your uncle.

Then, as we neared my uncle’s/our possession date, a bunch of really stressful and unpleasant things happened and our temporary living arrangement came to an abrupt and unforeseen end and we ended up homeless for a brief stretch, shuffling between a hostel, my brother’s living room floor, and an assortment of couches and spare bedrooms across the Lower Mainland. Then I returned to Alberta for our stuff and orchestrated the Worst Move in History and we found ourselves all but buried in boxes in our new apartment, feeling…shell-shocked and numb. Did I mention that the Holidays is a really bad time for both homelessness and moving? Because you have to, like, do stuff for the Holidays. Organize things. Which is hard when you’re packing up your suitcase for the fourth time in a week and have to put all your organizational energy into making sure you have somewhere to sleep the next day. And when THAT’S all over and you’re just exhausted, it’s time for all the family events and Holiday parties and work parties when what you want to do is crouch in a corner of your new apartment, eyeing the towers of boxes and rocking back and forth while eating your hair.

So when there was nowhere to put my cutlery? Well, obviously, the Universe hated me.

Of course, for every problem there is a solution, which for us, because we were burnt out and just needed things to be nice and peaceful as quickly as possible, amounted to throwing money at everything that didn’t work. And there were a lot of things that didn’t work. Because, while this apartment is actually bigger than our last place, it is so dramatically different. Everything is…on a different plane of existence and lots of our stuff just didn’t have anywhere to go. And every time we came up with a solution to one problem, it created another problem. For example, to amend the cupboard/drawer problem, we bought a pretty antique buffet for the dining room, which in turn displaced our bookshelf because the bookshelf doesn’t fit on any other walls. So then we had to go furniture shopping AGAIN to buy two skinny bookshelves. And so on. As a result, the whole unpacking ordeal seemed to take forever. And regardless of how it seemed, it took much, much longer than we anticipated.

Of course, what you didn’t know is that when I said “so dramatically different,” I meant “so very pretty.” And that the different plane of existence? Is a very pretty plane. With floor to ceiling windows. And a view of False Creek. A pretty, pretty view that includes the Granville Island ferry and sometimes, at night, boats that are all lit up with Holiday lights! And…I LOVE MY APARTMENT. I love it! I L-O-V-E LOVE it! Never have I done such a complete 180. And next post? I’m gonna post pictures and rave some more so that you can love it too! Whee!

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*Dear City of Vancouver: Ever wonder why there’s an ever-growing population of people living in tents in the middle of downtown? YEAH. That would be because even two educated professionals with no children can’t afford to live here. Ever hear of afforable housing? Rent control? No? Well…DUH. (Jerks.)

**Again, two words: AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

The calendar is even more delightful when you open it. Each month has a picture of someone’s beloved cat, and the pictures will have captions such as “Create Paws-itive Resolutions,” or “Kitty in the Clover Contemplates Real Security,” and, my favourite, “Tabbies Detest Wiretapping.” The cycles of the moon are denoted by a cat’s face, which will appear as half white and half black for the half moon and so on. And the calendar days are a dense hodge podge of world history and cat trivia. For example, on January 2, two dates appear: “1972: Scottish cat turns 43*,” and “1992: UN established first Conventional Arms Registry.” Again, these juxtapositions just…they just…well, they make me laugh. (Although, I do take peace seriously.)

I am posting this embarrassing glimpse into my sometimes disorganized life as something of a public service. For all the other non-Type-A personalities out there. So that when you, dear readers, next move and find you can’t unpack and decorate everything within the space of a week because you need to eat and sleep and even relax instead of orchestrating the details of your life with military precision, you will hopefully remember this picture and realize that perhaps we non-anal freaks are the normal ones. Because, while things are sometimes dustier or more cluttered than one might hope, we are the ones who can sit back, have a beer, and enjoy life while the Type-As bustle off to alphabetize the soup cans and arrange their sock drawers according to the colours of the spectrum.

So that part sucked. All the sitting and waiting for…something.

Because I am not, in fact, physically or mentally handicapped, I no longer wanted to live in a world where I considered it a triumph to brush my teeth. Because hey, brushing your teeth is something. And brushing my teeth meant I didn’t technically do nothing for yet another entire day*. I wanted to return to a world where I could focus on a bigger picture, where success was measured in terms of being able to achieve things beyond the range of activities I’d mastered as a toddler. So I found work in an office and promptly realized that working from home was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

It was the best thing to happen to me because…for a million reasons because. First and foremost, because I got enough sleep. Every. Day. I really can’t emphasize this enough. I have a tricky biorhythm that simply doesn’t conform to the 9-5 world and when I am forced to live in the 9-5 world, I am hopelessly and chronically fatigued, prone to migraines and illness, and generally miserable. I also got to be chronically fatigued and miserable in a toxic workplace. That was fun. When you work from home? You have complete control over with whom you come into contact, which can have a resounding positive effect on your mental health.

And, oh…I could go on and on. So I will just for a minute. When you work from home, you don’t have to invest any energy into maintaining the ridiculous facades we’re required to maintain in an office environment. If there’s no work to do, you can just leave; you don’t have to find inane busy-work projects to fill your time until you can be released according to the arbitrary schedule. If you work better listening to really loud music, you can do that. If you can perform perfectly well with the TV on, you can do that too. You can swear and snack and wear sweats instead of pantyhose and talk to your friends when you’re feeling uninspired or you can get up and leave for two hours if you’re too frustrated to continue. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just as long as you do it. In other words, you’re freed up to do whatever you need to do to improve your own well-being and productivity. (The Man has yet to figure that whole well-being to productivity ratio.)

And, fool that I was, I flushed the whole thing down the toilet.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want a job working from home. I’m writing it down, putting it Out There, making it official. I heard that this works. (Besides, isn’t that what that book Oprah went nutty for says to do?) So, Universe? I want a job working from home. And this time I’m gonna rock it.

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* It should be noted that I never, ever, missed a deadline during this time. I did do work, and did it well, despite the fact that what I mostly remember from those days is all the sitting. The latent over-achiever in me never allowed my work to suffer, just my life. BECAUSE I AM A FOOL.