Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
is this the twilight zone or what?
to answer the question of the day: yes, i am now a homeowner. i handed over my deposit last night and the next few days are to be spent dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. i will be moving at the end of april and then will plan a sleep-over housewarming for all you city folks to come and see.
now i have to start packing.
no, i don't want a free newspaper
the last three weeks have seen a free newspaper blitz during the commuting hours of the downtown core – promotions for the regular papers (the province, the sun) are all well and good, but what has spurred the whole rush is the introduction of two new free news dailies aimed at the “younger” market (that would be gen-x and under) – the metro and 24 hours. supposedly i would fit into this market, given that 32 is apparently considered within the target range for these rags – but if so, i would like to know why i’m being spoken to like a 12-year old?
both the metro and 24 hours contain news stories pared down into an infotainment format, with all journalistic pretenses removed (including the very basic standard of spelling and grammar). it’s not like the average canadian newspaper holds these standards very high in the first place…. but come one – page two of the first edition of 24 hours boasts an article (with photos of supermodels) titled “sexy: more than skin deep” while page six amounts to nothing more than an advertisement for condos in the downtown core. almost every news story is simply pulled off the reuters newswire (tip to editor – learn how to spell reuters) and there is almost no local substance beyond the advertisements.
it seems these new freebies are a product of corporate worries that younger readers aren’t buying newspapers. while it may be true the purchasing of newspapers is on the decline, i believe the introduction of these dailies misses the mark entirely and fails to recognize that those of the computer-saavy generation tend to get our information primarily online. the reality is, if i want reuters news stories, i will just go to the website or to another news aggregate such as google and select from the topics i am interested in rather participate in the cutting of old-growth forests to get material more expediently tranferred via digital media. it’s a shame to see more environmental destruction (and more clutter on our urban streets) with no actual purpose beyond making the rich men more money.
so no, i don’t want a free newspaper – i want good journalism free of advertising even if it means paying a nominal sum – but i guess i don’t fit into the sterotypical target market, so who would listen to me?
(an interesting side-note is that glen clark, former ndp-premier of bc is the president of the pattison-owned 24-hours which may explain why ndp-apologist bill tieleman has got a column in the new daily… after all, he was clark’s campaign advisor for many years. now clark and tieleman cozying up with staunch socred-turned-liberal jim pattison? ick.)
exhaustion
according to the woman who reads tarot for my mother this is a good time for me to buy a house and making a good investment – it’s in the cards she says. i suspect this positive reading had some influence on my parent’s decision to guarantee the mortgage i signed the papers on yesterday. this afternoon i removed the subjects from the conditions of sale and moved my deposit from the savings account into the chequing so i can hand that over tonight.
in the past ten days i found a house & moved forward with that, told the story of my divorce at least eight times to various creditors and bank people, drove to chilliwack to see my lover, went to victoria to see old friends and party, met a new person with whom i spent two days, started a new employee at work, visited my parents, and gone many nights without sleep. today i am coming down with a cold and i think i know why – total exhaustion on every front. good exhaustion – yes – very good – but becoming ill nonetheless…..
if i catch up on my sleep, i’m sure i will get better in no time – at least i need that to be the case as work needs me this week.
remarkable
it is midnight and i am blogging, a little slow on the uptake this evening, kinda shaky from lack of sleep….. but still in victoria, leaving tomorrow.
on thursday after the inspection, i drove to chilliwack to visit a friend, and on my way received a phone call from the bank informing me cmhc has approved my application for mortgage insurance and i’m clear to go. that means i am pretty much in the home stretch – needing to finalize details this week and give notice on my house for may 1st. i still have lots of paperwork to sign starting tomorrow morning at the bank where i will be signing myself into a purgatory of debt — realizing too late the only change is instead of paying rent to a landlord, interest is really just a form of rent to the bank (but really, i’m too excited about owning my first home to really be at all cynical).
in any case, i left for victoria on friday morning on three hours of sleep (plagued with a fit of insomnia) realizing (again) while on the tswassen-swartz bay ferry that dozens of screaming children are the reason i try not to travel holiday weekends… crowded and late are two more reasons i generally try to time my travels better.
fortunately the party at anna & kyla’s on friday night made up for all of that by shaking me out of my drowsed stupor and reminding me that there are still cool people out there i haven’t met yet – amazing, but true! turned out to be a bit of a mix of music and ecstasy, wine and chatter – with a roaring fire in the fireplace and a lot of friend-making going on by the wee hours of the morning. while i stayed relatively sober (consuming a few glasses of wine), i amused myself by hanging out with the happy people chilling around the fire. needless to say, i got no sleep all night, and only managed to catch a couple of hours in the morning beside another fitful sleeper with whom i spent the rest of the weekend curled up with.
which just is a way of saying i met someone very cool on the weekend, and the best part about it was the reminder that the possibility of connecting with new people always exists even when i feel i have already used all my romance chances at the age of 32… and there are no more to be dealt from the deck. i don’t know yet what this new connection is, but i feel liberated by my lack of need for definition, my lack of desire to pick it apart or explore it too much just yet. what i know is it will unfold in some fashion, in the way it is supposed to, and my strongest feeling about that is curiosity.
the last two months has been a re-opening of my own creative heart, self-respect and joy – so much so that every interaction feels like a first, feels like the best and most ecstatic… making the process so much more enjoyable than any need to predict the future no matter what it is i am doing. i feel the need to catch this feeling here in words only so i can draw upon it again in the future when this phase has worn off somewhat.
after much postponing, i made it to my parent’s house early this afternoon where i have been pleasantly surprised by our visit which has been better than many of our phone conversations as of late. it seems the ship here has righted to some degree and while the underlying tension still exists (it always has and i’m sure always will), it is unlikely to devolve badly on this visit.
so hooray for my friends who invited me this weekend and to the lovely person i met, and to my folks for helping me by acting as guarantors, and for the woman at the bank for being so helpful. i feel remarkably blessed at the moment despite the fact i have had a grand total of 9 hours sleep in the past 72 hour period. i am going to crash now i have un-neglected my blog 🙂
3 steps forward…..
my horoscope today reads thus:
a bit of permanence and stability is about to find its way into that game plan you’ve been working on forever. and just in the nick of time, too. one more day of this and who knows what you might have decided?
interesting – very interesting… not that i think daily horoscopes are anything more than general advice giving – but since i just came back from my house inspection (which went well), this seems well-timed. as far as it all goes things are moving ahead inch by inch on the house purchase – the home is in good shape (albeit needing minor work done, most of which i can do myself), the bank approved the mortgage yesterday (with stipulations that i have met this morning) and i am basically now awaiting cmhc to approve and insure the mortgage the bank has agreed to. i have an appointment with the bank on monday at 9:30 to finalize that end of things and if all goes well, i will be able to remove the subjects and move to close by tuesday of next week.
the only thing that could go wrong now is if the bank doesn’t think i have met the stipulations (which included proof of having paid off my creditors, which i believe i have supplied to the best of my ability), or if cmhc doesn’t want to risk insuring it (though with guarantors who own property outright, i don’t see why they wouldn’t). i am still fairly tense, and having to remind myself hourly to breathe – just breathe….. but am not climbing the walls at this moment which is big plus. i could have never imagined how intense buying a place to live would be…. but i’m almost there. once i get the mortgage/cmhc stuff worked out and have signed the paperwork i will be breathing much easier.
i’m off for the weekend to victoria, will try to blog while i’m gone….
Red Cedar 