Greetings from the Great White North
03.05.2008 at 9:01 PM
Well, we have arrived in Canada safe and sound. Been here for a week already and I haven�t even had time to look for work yet.
But let�s start with first things first. The drive across most of America went well. There were a few glitches with the uhaul before we even left Utah (reservation screw-ups etc), but once on the road there were no issues. We had a little bit of snow the first day but after that we had dry roads and no weather problems. The cats mostly hid out in the car under our seats and we had to pull them out to go into the hotel.
The second and third nights were spent at Bethany�s which was really nice in so many ways. Nice to have a break from driving after two looooong days of driving; nice to let the cats chill a little instead of dragging them into different hotels every night; nice to finally meet my nephew William. He�s 2 � and I feel like such a bad aunt for not meeting him before this. He really is such a sweetie! It was nice to see the other boys too, it�s obviously been a long time since I hadn�t even met their younger brother. It was also nice to have Bethany meet Evan.
After we left their place we made it all the way to buffalo, which is only about 20 minutes from our new place, but since I had to go through customs during business hours we had already planned on being in the road that one last night.
Customs was interesting. I had to stop at US and Canadian sides because I am exporting and importing my vehicle. What a pain in the ass. The American side never did confirm that they got my paperwork for exporting and so now I still have to deal with that. I have to get more documentation but I am getting the runaround from the people I need to get the documentation from. We might just have to do some scraping and pay the car off. All of the extra problems are caused by the fact that I don�t own the car straight out, am still making payments and therefore I don�t have the title. However that didn�t stop me from getting in the country. I also had to stop at the Canadian side and got through the whole ordeal with them but they also let me over the border so at least I got to breath for a bit. But I guess the plan now is to somehow come up with $8000 to just pay it off and then I will have the original title and can clear up the mess. Anyone got a spare eight grand? I would have had that much except for that I had to use money for the actual move and getting our place all set up. I still have a few thousand but nowhere near 8.
Anyway, the house is a cute little bungalow and as soon as we get the rest of these boxes out of the way I will be taking pictures and posting on flickr I�m sure. I haven�t even been on there for weeks! Crazy. The house is south-facing with a little sunroom/enclosed porch which is still full of boxes and crap. Even though it�s the middle of winter on sunny days that room gets pretty warm. The rest of the house has 2 bedrooms, kitchen, bath, and full basement. The basement isn�t finished but it is weatherproofed to it�s great for storing all those things we aren�t unpacking anytime soon. And there it LOTS of that. I spent months sorting through all my stuff and ended up bringing only 2 or 3 boxes that weren�t completely organized and sorted. Evan sorted nothing, so once we got through unloading my stuff we had to turn around and move Evan out of his place in Toronto. I traveled across the continent and to a different country with one 10X5 trailer of stuff. It took three loads in the same trailer to get all his stuff. If he had sorted it would have at least been only two trailers. Anyway, that means the house is full of these piles of boxes of his stuff that neither of us knows what to do with. But at least we are making progress. Actually, he is tackling some of it while I am sitting here typing.
Anyway, so things are progressing smoothly now. There were several bumps right about this time two weeks ago that made me wonder if I was going to make it through. Evan called me from the airport that morning to tell me he thought he would not be getting on his flight (one of the risks of travelling on a buddy pass I guess) and I had learned just an hour earlier that Nathan, my older brother had had a stroke the might before. WTF?!? He�s only 36! Anyway, Britta was a peach and sought him out at the hospitals over the phone so I didn�t have to deal with that. I was so freaked that I burst into tears about every 20 minutes or so. Anyway, the good news is it wasn�t a �normal� stroke as we think of it. There was no blood clot, it was a collapsed artery in his brain stem. I went and saw him at the hospital that afternoon and was happy to see that he is still his same self. He was having a hard time speaking, but not because of any language lost like some stroke victims, but because the artery and muscles directly affected were in his throat so it was sort of like talking to someone after they got their tonsils out. he was released from the hospital Thursday or Friday and then was taken back within 24 hours. I think he just pushed himself too hard. For someone who is always doing something and keeping very busy I think he underestimated how much rest was required for recovery. But the good news is that he has been home again for I guess a week now and they expect a full recovery.
So with the stress of Nathan�s stroke, Evan possibly not making it (which he did) and uhaul screwing up as well as the pending customs issues i was a mess. But that was 2 weeks ago and most of the issues have been resolved.
Anyway, I guess that�s my update for now. I�m going to try to keep up on this a bit more and of course get back to documenting things on flickr
bEfOrE ~ AftEr
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