If only I lived somewhere else…

The time has come – I’ve put off packing up the Albuquerque apartment long enough as if not doing it will make the need to do it go away. No, I’m not changing my mind and wishing I could stay in Albuquerque. At the same time, though, there’s a part of me that feels that if I keep putting it off it will magically be done for me. And of course there’s also a deeper part of me that feels that I can slow the passage of time by procrastinating. See, long-time readers of my writing know well and good that I am the biggest nostalgia addict that there is. Anywhere I’ve lived I’ve fondly recalled previous places. And sometimes I’ve even very actively pursued going back to previous places. At the same time a sense of adventure and a love of change keeps me moving forward to new places. A brief look at my previous history in this sense is quite revealing; [Sage adds: Before you read the following and decide that Canada is yet another flitting fancy, I want to point out that we've wanted to move there for twelve years. As early as 1995, I was calling to find out the details of their immigration policy.]

Sage and I met in 1992 and lived together in a shared house in New Hampshire. While the shared house worked great for me as a bachelor, it worked very poorly for me as the more settled (read: not partying, not drinking, hanging out with his partner) person I became. As it turns out anyway, I was actively interviewing for a job in the Boston area and within a month after Sage’s having moved in we were on or way to Framingham, Massachusetts. After dreaming through all my teenage years of living in the Boston area we were on our way.

It wasn’t long after having moved there that it began to happen. An autumn trip down Rt. 85 to Hopkinton would take me through a forest full of flame-red maples. My mind would instantly latch on to this image, build on it. Before long, while everything in Boston was what I had hoped I missed the trees. I missed the little country stores, I missed the snow, I missed the small towns. Boston sucks, I thought, and after long talks with Sage, she finally gave up on trying to convince me otherwise and I called my old employer who said that yes, they might be able to find a place for me. Fortunately, though I don’t recall why, I changed my mind. Boston was okay after all.

Within a few months, though, I got a call from a recruiter asking if I wanted to go work in New Jersey for a big pharmaceutical company. What an opportunity! And they’d pay to move us there. And I could work in a big new facility. I went down for an interview and Sage came along to check out the area and though now I’m not really sure what we based the choice on I accepted the job and we moved down. After a month in a temporary apartment we moved to our first of two apartments in Bethlehem.

And after about a year or two there I was again. Bethlehem was miserable, we thought. Everyone’s so conservative. And in retrospect, though I wouldn’t have put it this way then, I thought that the people were a bit less cosmopolitan. The answer then? Call back my recruiter and see if he can’t get me back to the Boston area. Okay – the answer was actually complain until Sage got sick of hearing how I hated Pennsylvania and then call the recruiter. It was a long battle but I finally won. And so I went on an interview. The interview went well and I even got an offer. However, pre-emptive nostalgia set in and I began to miss the ties we had made in the area. And so I turned down the offer and we stayed another 3-4 years after that. And then Paul was born and we headed for the yurt.

I won’t beat the point to death when it came to the yurt. While I had many good times there I am sure you could also find no shortage of entries where I wished we could just go back to the daily grind of the working “civilized world” And though the transition was gradual at first, indeed I got my way in this sense. We moved first to town, and then to Kalamazoo for a few weeks and then Albuquerque.

And guess what? Right – “Remeber those days in the house in town?” And I even went and looked in the local paper to see if there was any local work. But it really wasn’t an option. So we kept on moving. And no, while I have fond memories of good parts of the yurt years. I have no desire to go back. It was wonderful, it was fun, but it was also hugely difficult and terribly isolated. And maybe if things interpersonally on the land were better I might have a different feeling about it. But damn, I’m kind of glad I am not spending any energy wishing I could live there. Closest I come is thinking every once in a while that I’m going down the wrong path being in work and should be somewhere like East Wind but even that passes fairly quickly and only comes when I’m tired and morose.

So now I arrive back in Albuquerque after a long weekend in Toronto and as I drive back from the airport I find myself missing the place and our life here. Already. As in before I’m even gone. But one thing good about getting older? I am learning the tricks my mind plays. And so, when I write an entry six months from now saying how much better Albuquerque was and how you can’t get green chile in Toronto and need to move back here remind me what a fool I am, please.

Packing

I’m definitely getting in to the swing of packing now. You can tell by the fact that I’m sitting in front of the computer drinking coffee and writing an entry. Yesterday, though, I was really good I spent the better part of the day packing and cleaning the Albuquerque apartment. Most of the things we’re donating to charity are already at Goodwill. Most of the things that aren’t worth keeping have been tossed out. What remains now is to go to the store and get some boxes when they open in an hour and then pack the rest of our things up. And then clean like crazy. Unfortunately our vacuum here died and the apartment rental folks haven’t gotten around to delivering another one. Which wouldn’t be bad if we weren’t so bad about vacuuming before the vacuum died.

Meanwhile, Sage and I have had just about enough of this being apart thing. No, not for that reason. Okay not just for that reason anyway. It seems that when we’re apart for too long and out of our normal routine we both turn into seperate halves of Richard Lewis. So now we’re both going through huge bouts of worry. Sage about health – hers and Paul’s. With very little reason to worry. Worries like “If I drink too much caffeine and don’t eat enough I get dizzy and shaky.” abound. As if it isn’t something that hasn’t been happening since at least 1995! (searching the archives is really helpful for things like this – like your own memory but better)

Me, my worries are financial and automotive (now that I haven’t my tonsils to worry about anyway. So now I worry that we’re not really making enough money to get by in Toronto. And worrying that our Mercedes will have a catastrophic failure and I won’t be able to get to work and we might not be able to afford repairs. See? Just putting those two sentences together makes the worry seem silly (though if you do know a good and inexpensive Mercedes mechanic in Toronto I’d love to hear about them). Seriously. It’s an eye opening thing. When Sage and I are in the same room and one of us starts worrying the other is right on it with reassurances and usually a reminder that they haven’t eaten more than a small pastry and a pot of coffee in the past eight hours. And we get through it. But with half your brain 1,000 miles away and facing what I would probably say was one of the top five changes in our lives together it is easy to forget to take care of yourself. And I think in a strange way worry is some sort of sick entertainment for the mind. Can’t you see it? If you’re lazy (like we are) and are sitting somewhere procrastinating and you don’t have a TV you can get into brood fests that are not unlike channel surfing.

“Hmmm….Let’s see what’s on…
(click)
Plans for move? Too much thought required…move on
(click)
That time you embarassed yourself in 8th grade? No – too painful…move on
(click)
That time you were wronged at the yurt? Too much potential to generate bad karma and likely break the car…move on
(click)
OOH – a Lifetime movie about a woman with health problems…Let’s watch this!”

And so it goes…At least for Sage – I tend to watch the Financial News Network. I think in many ways it is more nervewracking than the Lifetime Movie. After all, not only do I get the feature program on professionals who can’t pay their bills, I get the lovely newsticker underneath showing estimated bills and income. Unfortunately the sources that FNN uses, in my mind at least, aren’t very reliable and when not fed can make things up out of whole cloth just for ratings.

In these past weeks alone in the apartment I’ve been trying to figure out a social life. Not that I had time for it until the past week or so. What I’ve determined is that there are precious few options for married (but not physically together) people in a city to find things to do with others. Sure there are churches and lectures but for conversation? Not so much. It’s not like you can ask that really cool person at work to dinner or a movie – too complicated whether they’re a man or a woman as in my experience there really isn’t a historical social precedent. What we really need is a revival of the Salon. Cities should have several of them for various types of people. A place where you could just go, pick up a coffee and just jump right into a conversation with people without getting a strange look from them.

So today’s to do list looks like this:

- Drop off toys/clothes at Goodwill (done!)
- Pick up boxes
- Pick up cleaning supplies
- Clean
- Pack
- Ship some of the packed boxes back to Sage, take the rest in the car
- Take a drive to Santa Fe to give the car highway driving to ensure that the last major repair (oil leak) was successful
- Stop at the audiobook store

This last one is hugely overwhelming though it should be the easiest. See, Sage rented a bunch of audiobooks back in September. She didn’t bring them back and took a few home with her on the drive to the Ozarks. Meanwhile they’ve been calling and I’ve been placating them while trying first to get the ones back from the Ozarks (finally picked them up on my last trip) and then procrastinating. I imagine the fines will be huge. And rightfully so. But that isn’t why I don’t want to go. The reason why I don’t want to go lies totally in the fact that the owner there is very stern. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the reason she has an audiobook store is that the library she used to work at let her go for being too stern with the patrons. Anyone want to go in my place?

O Canada

Well, for those of you who have missed the obvious hints [Sage adds and for those of you who have been patient in a saintlike way with my all-consuming crush on Canada] it’s official. Sage, Paul, the cats and I are pulling up stakes and in about four weeks (Shit. Let me rephrase that. In only four weeks.) we’ll be on our way to our new home in Canada. Having had enough of US foreign and domestic policy in general and enough of George W. Bush’s administration in particular, we decided that we weren’t getting any younger and needed to go right now. The dream that we both held since we first met of living in Canada had to become a reality. And so I began the daily browsing of the web searching for jobs that would be appropriate. In the middle of October, I got a response to one of my resumes and now, two months later, here we are. On our way to Toronto.

Last weekend was my first true weekend spent exploring the city. Sure, I’d been there once for a job interview, and in the past I made a few short trips there to work but never did I get to actually see the city itself having spent all my time just outside of town.

The househunting trip started last Friday when I woke up to find the ground outside my apartment in Albuquerque covered in snow. Well, not covered by most people’s standards, but covered by Albuquerque standards anyway. After a quick backgammon match with Sage I raced around madly packing for the trip having spent the previous night playing backgammon when I should’ve been packing. It was absolutely beautiful driving to the airport. Snow everywhere and no sign of it stopping. Shows what I know – shortly after I checked in it was nothing but blue skies. Aside from the fact that I had to go through a full security screening (probably as a result of my last-minute ticket purchase – had to go through it on the return trip too) the flight to Atlanta was basically uneventful. In fact, the more I fly without Sage, the more I recall how much I enjoy air travel. This is, of course, nothing against Sage. Because unfortunately even when Sage’s body goes on the plane with me her mind doesn’t. Her mind teleports ahead to our destination where it meets us at the arrivals gate. Instead I am forced to sit next to Sage’s body which now harbours the mind of this person instead.

The first day I looked at several different apartments and in fact saw the apartment we ended up applying for that first day. Driving around Toronto was a total blast. It was really fun just driving down streets and watching the storefront signs and even street signs change languages and character sets. By the end of the day I had decided that the High Park neighbourhood was definitely where we needed to be – but couldn’t really find anything big enough and at the same time inexpensive enough to live in. Finally, after only being able to see three apartments I headed to a suburb to have dinner with a friend whom I met on Relay where I later went on to meet Sage. We had met in person a few years before but still it was really odd in a “long strange trip” sort of way to actually be there hanging out with her.

The next day I woke up and…Yes, you guessed it – I played backgammon with Sage. In fact, if you ever want to guess what I did on any particular morning, backgammon with Sage would be a safe bet. And as to what I did before I went to bed? Likely the same thing! After playing a bunch of backgammon and drinking lots of coffee I went to the lobby for breakfast where I found out that Saddam Hussein had been captured. And rather than chime in with everyone else let me just say that while I am glad that he’s been caught and all. I don’t think it was worth the losses on both sides. I’m also hugely disappointed that this will likely be used by the Bush administration to help George W. get re-elected. I think he’s an idiot and anything that helps him get elected is a bad thing. This is more my speed.

More newsworthy in my personal life on Sunday was the fact that the ground was rapidly being covered in snow. And as fast as the snow was falling I was making appointments for the day’s apartment visits. And while we ended up really deliberating between two apartments I looked at the first day, I found Sunday’s apartments much more full of character either in the apartment or the landlord or both.

First apartment was part of a gorgeous colonial apartment on a tree-lined main street. It was roomy and really pretty. However, it was in a renovated house with people above and below, had a shared laundry [Sage adds Not so likely to work for the people who had their own washer/dryer in the Southwest and were constantly battling mildew after putting the clothes in to wash and then forgetting they were there for a week.] and on-street parking. The on-street parking was a recurring theme throughout the day that I was glad to have had to think about on a day with snow-covered streets. I had a fairly nimble, small, front-wheel drive car to get around and had trouble parking. The idea of a finding parking on the street for a large rear-wheel drive car drove me crazy just thinking about it. [Sage adds: Not to mention, when we lived in Pennsylvania, we were right behind a high school. Almost every Friday night the entire town would turn out for a football game filling up all the parking spaces surrounding the school, and almost every Friday night, Todd would drive around for sometimes half an hour looking for a parking place, finally coming inside with wild eyes and mussed hair. I think it scarred him for life. Balconies make me neurotic, parking makes Todd neurotic.] The landlord’s wife, a very sweet older Irish woman showed me the apartment and we had a lovely chat about homeschooling after I looked about the place.

Second apartment was back in the High Park neighbourhood again. This one was the one with Henry Rollins as the landlord. The apartment itself was very cool. I wish I could’ve lived there in my early post-college years when I didn’t have much stuff. While it was a 2BR apartment it spanned two floors and had a rooftop deck off of the kitchen. The downside was that the only way to get anything that wasn’t flexible (like most couches, chairs, tables, etc) we’d have to have them hoisted up to the rooftop deck and carry them in over the stove and maybe we could get up to the upstairs with things we needed to get up there. But wow. If it were still the days of just Sage and I living together with only a futon, a computer, and a pile of clothes between us? I’d have moved in in a minute.

By this point in the day not only was I starving (only had a bagel and about 18 cups of coffee and it was already 1:00) I was cold having managed to get my feet wet in all the snow. Fortunately I had a few minutes before my next appointment and was already near the next place I was scheduled to look at. So I parked the car on Ossington just south of Dundas (for those of you interested in the area) and found a fantastic Vietnamese noodle house. They instantly endeared me to them by bringing over a tall milkshake-glass full of steaming-hot jasmine tea in the place of the usual water. But still being extremely cold I was very bad and instead of looking for a vegetarian option, I had Bun Bo Hue – about as non-veg as one can get. But it was so spicy and so warming that I couldn’t pass it up. I ate it as quickly as I could and headed for my next stop.

The next apartment would have been perfect but for one thing. While the location was good (right in the middle of everything and only a few blocks from the noodle shop where I had lunch!) and the apartment was large enough wi
th even an outdoor storage shed for our extra stuff, the parking was on-street only. And after only a few inches of snow the street was a mess and parking was nearly impossible. And this in a small car that’s good in the snow. When we get our big car there that’s not so good in the snow the last thing I need is to try to parallel park it in the snow then walk four blocks to the apartment through the snow and cold. Thanks but no thanks.

After this apartment I went to look at a three bedroom above a family of five the mom of which we met online. The apartment itself was very nice and the neighbourhood was also quite nice. However, the sound insulation wasn’t so good and living in a building with children would be difficult when we could hear them no matter how they were treated or how they were behaving. Too bad, though, as this was the most inexpensive place of them all.

So as it was getting dark and I was out of apartments I headed back to the hotel where I chatted with Sage and (you guessed it), played backgammon. The more we played the more worried I got about all that we needed to do and began to wonder if we could afford the whole move. Fortunately Sage was on the ball and pointed out that I was very likely hungry. [Sage adds: What I actually said was, "You're irrational. Go eat, then I will talk to you about this.] Right she was. So I headed out for dinner. I found my way to the Verandah Restaurant and ordered a dosa, salt lassi and gulab jamun. All of this cost only a little more than $10. And the food was fantastic. As I ate, I looked around outside at my surroundings. The diversity of the greater Toronto area was laid out for me to see right there. As I ate in a south Indian restaurant I was next door to a 24 hour Vietnamese noodle shop, which was next door to an Indian grocery which was across the street from another Indian grocery which was next door to an African/Carribean grocery. After I ate I drove back to the hotel and felt a bit more sane. Sage and I chatted some more and resolved to go with the second place I looked at on day one. But to complicate things, just as Sage signed off, I got a phone call from another landlord in High Park. He had a 2BR close to public transport in a really cool part of town. So I scheduled an appointment to look at the place the next morning.

The apartment was fantastic, and I liked the landlord, too. It was a small 2BR apartment in a 3 story house shared by five tenants. There would be no difficulty getting the furniture in and I had all but told the landlord we would like to move in. As if it were an omen, in the kitchen window was a stained glass turtle with a big star hanging from its tail. All was well. And then I called Sage and we talked some. And the more we talked the more it dawned upon me that we couldn’t live in that apartment. While we could get all our stuff in there we had nowhere to put it. There were only two bedrooms and a small room that could be used as a living room. No room for a kitchen table and no room for a computer desk. So this place was out.

After that, though [Sage adds: After that, though, Todd was hungry and dithering again. So I told him to go eat. He was campaigning for High Park Village, I was campaigning for Giant Highrise. I mean, you can be Harriet the Spy in High Park Village, but there are balconies. And balconies plus cats plus children turn me into a trembling screeching harpy. Giant Highrise? No balconies. And twice the size of High Park Village. But I really thought about our past househunting trips, which turn out very similarly to our trips to the movie theater - in twelve years, Todd has picked exactly one movie dud. My track record is so bad that Todd has to read at least three reviews before consenting to go with me. So I called and left a message, saying, "Okay, I trust your judgement. Let's go with High Park Village."] I went to look at one of the apartments I looked at on the first day of my search. I really loved the neighbourhood but no matter what I did I couldn’t see how it would work. These apartments were about 865 square feet each (a little more than half the size of the place we ended up applying for) and most didn’t include hydro and none included parking. Our monthly outlay in any of those would be in the $1550-1650/month price range.

So finally, with only a few hours to spare before my return flight – we made our decision. [Sage adds: Giant Highrise! YES!]

I drove back up to the second place I looked at on day one. [Sage adds: That is in fact a photo of the First Canadian Place building, but it gives you an idea of the size the actual Giant Highrise building.] A huge highrise apartment and looked at the three types of 2BR apartments they had available. And while it was still rather high priced (more than we ever dreamed of spending on anywhere to live). It did give us a few advantages. It’s close to public transportation, it’s close to shopping and things to do, it is over 1,400 square feet, the rent includes all expenses including parking, and as it is in the top 1/4 of the building it has a great view of downtown and the lake. It sounds almost too good to be true. And still it is cheaper than most of the High Park apartments.So the only challenge was trying to actually get our application in before I had to leave for the airport. The tricky part was that while we had the money, they would only take cheques in certified Canadian funds. So sending up a cheque when I got home wouldn’t work. Finally we determined that I could go to an ATM, get out a bunch of money (partial last-month’s rent) and get a money order. Then take that back to the rental office and get them the rest of the money later this week. Sounds easy, right? Not as easy as I thought.

I left for the ATM and found it fairly quickly. While I was there at the bank I figured I could ask the teller about getting an account and perhaps eliminate the need for a money order. I explained that I didn’t have an address yet and was working on that part which was why I needed the bank account. She explained that I needed a Canadian address to get a bank account and that I could come back the next day to set it up once I had the address. I explained that I was going back to the states that day and wouldn’t be back until my apartment was ready. I thanked her and left the bank. A 40-something Indian woman chased me outside and stopped me. She wanted to make sure that I was okay and that I did have money because if I didn’t have any money she could certainly give me some. I was really touched by her generosity but reassured her that I was fine and actually did have money just no bank account yet. Reassured, she went back in to do her business.

Once I had cash, though, it wasn’t over. I had to go track down the place to get the money order. Finally, I gave up and walked back to the rental office to ask them. They directed me to a shopping centre nearby and so I walked there. Along the way I took stock of my neighbourhood-to-be. Like the neighbourhood I went to dinner in the night before it was hugely diverse. It would almost be safe to say that there was no majority. Everyone there, myself included, was a minority. All nations, all religions seemed to be represented. Just walking a few blocks took me past people speaking several languages. It was really exciting to think of Paul getting to grow up in a place like this.

So now, in the space of a little over two years we’ll have gone from living in a yurt in the woods to l
iving in a small town to living in a place where our apartment building has a greater population than our small Ozarks town. A little shocking to think about. But at the same time really exciting.