Friday, December 30, 2005

sanity

I gave notice at the end of the November long weekend. This really didn't give me much time to find a new apartment or a new roommate for December. Luckily Rach's little sister was looking to leave home so that solved problem number one. For many people it is confusing that I now live with my best friend's little sister (including their family), but it works quite well. Now to find a place.

I looked at lots of places and they were all "OK." Blah. There wouldn't be any trouble living in any of them, but nothing really great. Considering how many times I've moved over the years, I was hoping to do a little better than just ok. I was hoping to finally move somewhere I could stay and love until I bought something. Something that felt like my home. Just as I was giving up hope and getting ready to settle for the least blah of the blahs, I found it. A townhouse in City Park, end unit, nice size and layout, newly rennovated. It's selling feature - paint! The owners have a hatred for eggshell white that rivals my own! Our kitchen and hallways are a nice shade of yellow with blue/turquoise cubboards, our living room is a very nice shade of green, Dani's bedroom is a blue and mine is a brown. It's wonderful to live somewhere that's not white and sterile. Yay to having a home.

We moved in December first and a few days later I realised exactly how unhappy I'd been with my previous living arrangements. Magically I was back to my old self again. My short temper with poor Sean-o and my students all but dissapeared. I started laughing again. Regular customers at work commented on how happy I seemed. I started sleeping and relaxing more. I should have started blogging more, but Christmas was right around the corner and there was so much to be done!

the stress

So, I know I am a terrible blogger and email updater. But at least there is some explanation, mainly the stress that was my old house.

I believe I mentioned earlier that I moved. I have since moved again. Why so much moving you ask? I have learnt that I need to live in a clean environment to be happy.

You see, the first move involved me moving in with a very swell girl I met at work at the Odeon. She's also a teacher with a couple side jobs, and she was looking for a roommate to help pay her mortgage. When I viewed her house in the summer when I was thinking of moving, yes it was a disaster, but she spoke of cleaning, finishing renovation, and it was (and is) a very cute house. Added bonus being I liked her enough to think we'd make good roommates. To help fix the first two problems, it was decided I'd move in in October instead of September to give her a little extra cleaning time. I gave my notice, my landlady was sad to be losing me as a tenant and I was looking forward to living with my new roommate and doing roommate-y things. Eating supper that wasn't popcorn, watching girly tv shows etc.

The end of September came and I started moving my stuff in. It was very obvious that no progress had been made in the way of cleaning or renovation. It would appear "some things came up." Not really having any options, I moved in anyway. Thus commenced a two month decent into hell.

You see, this was no ordinary kind of mess. This was a super mess. A house eating kind of mess. This kind of mess would make the people on that TLC show about organizing rooms want to eat babies. There really is no was to describe the utter madness that was to be my new home. Imagine if you took the contents of 4 homes and then jammed them into one small wartime house. Now buy new furniture for the house, but have nowhere to put it, so randomly keep it in boxes where it will fit. Now flood the basement so you have to throw everything around to get it out of the way. Add an argument between yourself and the house so the house decides to vomit it's contents up at you to prove a point. Create one path to walk through the house and clean one chair off so one person may sit. Voila! That's about the best description I can muster. I'm speaking very literally when I say the entire house except the one path,chair and folding table beside the chair was stacked a minimum of 3 feet high in stuff.

Stress mounted. My bedroom and a small area around my desk were the only Oasi of "clean." I spent my days trying to spend as little time as possible at home. My home stressed Rach out and that says a lot. Sean-o was very concerned. The stress got to a point where I couldn't even recognize it as stress anymore. An ultimatum to the roommate was made - progress on the house must be made, or I would be moving out. She seemed to understand, you really can't be in denial about something like that. I was hopeful for change. The agreed cleaning date came and went. A desk was cleaned. Much anger ensued. Frustration hit an all time high. I gave my notice.

I could go into detail on the frustration, but I have a feeling this is a long post already. My ex-roommate and I still get along very well, she is still a great person, however we have very different opinions on what an acceptable living arrangement is. I think I've done a pretty good job of not taking out my frustrations of spending 2 months in hell on her. Considering everything, I think that's pretty amazing.

the conclusion

So before I make a proper update I think I should end the mmm bop story.

While being the part time home of many hooligans, ruffians and future low life of Saskatoon, Feehan also houses some very ambitious, motivated and creative kids. Many of these students find themselves in a young, trendy, opinionated and challenging teacher's law 30 class. This class just so happens to occur in period 3, the class in which our Christmas hampers are put together. What does this have to do with mmm bop, well at first not much.

Said teacher's creative students really wanted to go the distance this year for their Christmas hamper. These are generous folk, the kind who make us all wish we were better people. They brainstormed ways to raise as much money as possible for their family. And then, they came up with a goal. They made a deal with their teacher that is they raised $400 dollars for their Christmas hamper that he in turn would let them wax his legs. A contract was signed. Work commeneced. These kids went all the way - bake sales, asking families, allowances and precious work money was all collected for 2 weeks. The goal was met, an appointment with an esthetician was made.

Would these crafty students let it stop there however? No! $400 was not enough for these gianormous hearted gr 12 students. They devised a second money making scheme, this time the profits being donated to the stop the bop charity. The deal? To view the waxing of the very popular teacher's legs you would have to pay $1. A pretty good deal considering it's rumoured he screamed like a little girl... These wonderful students raised another $400 in admission fees that was donated to stop the bop - meaning for the last week of school we could all enjoy Christmas carols instead of the mindless spasms of the Hanson brother's vocal chords. Thank you Law 30 students.

On a final note, said teacher has girlier legs than I.