moved

 well, that was an intense week. gd, my mother and i were all terribly misaligned when it came to our visions of how we would leave the apartment. the root cause being that until very recently, we thought we were going to pack up our lives into a container and meet them on the other side... but then we got a bunch of quotes in and learned that it would cost us more to ship our things than to put them up for auction and buy them again on the other side*.

* as opposed to how we moved from montréal, where we just left most of our stuff and had to buy everything again. that took years (and one delores umbridge) to recover from.

so *i* thought that come tuesday morning (the 25th), we'd have everything cleared out except for a few pieces of luggage and we'd either take that luggage to my mother's, or to the airport.

on monday we confirmed that we would not be going to the airport. the consulate is being obstructive and treating us really badly, and they really aren't interested in providing any sort of assistance. on tuesday, we started moving. we moved every day. we moved multiple trips every day. we had the auction house come in on thursday to take all the furniture, and realize that we hadn't agreed on what wasn't going to be sold just yet :(

finally, a week after displacing my mom (again) and sleeping here, we grabbed the very last of the things and handed over the keys and said goodbye to our home of three and a half years - just as long as i lived in montréal in total. and now we're here. the place is still strewn with black bags and boxes and tons of stuff that needs triage, but slowly but surely things are coming together and making sense, and in a weird way we're almost grateful for the unwanted delay...

speaking of which, after some uncomfortable negotiating we've engaged a lawyer and are now attempting to get the consulate to let us sign documents before a notary...

in the meanwhile, mr smear is loving his first weeks in grade 1. my mom's place is getting a little more TLC than it's used to. i'm finally able to focus on work again after weeks of feeling like i was making a fool of myself (anxiety matters, y'all). i'm starting to consistently beat sudoku at the expert level without guessing. and the next pages of the graphic novel are looking really good.

deep breaths.