Red Cedar

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 🙂

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….

i’m super spazzy today – not only am i scrambling to get all this house-buying stuff arranged, but the new person working for me started this morning as well! thus, i’m a bit strung out and have all the symptoms of adhd i could ever want (can’t sit still, can’t complete tasks, can’t settle down)….. not to mention my folks have got involved in this house-process (they have decided to guarantee the mortgage so i can get a cheaper rate) and somehow our family is never able to do anything together without generating a lot of stress for each other. now, having said that, i am very appreciative that they are showing some willingness to help out in this way because it means lower payments for me and less money to the banks….

so yes, financing at a decent rate has become an option, i have an inspector scheduled for thursday morning, and have requested all the appropriate paperwork from banks, employers and revenue canada). i am taking thursday off work to deal with the inspection and go through the house – i will remember to take my camera this time and get some more pictures of things (i forgot to take it the first time i viewed – the pics came from the realtor). this is all happening really fast – it’s hard to believe that if it all continues as planned i will be moving april 30.

what’s really odd about the whole process is that while it’s this big, stressful, momentous occasion for me – the buying-selling house process is mundane to all the folks i’m dealing with (mortgagers, realtors, inspectors)….. it’s like half their job is just in assuring you that you’re okay and that it’s all going to work out.

and my fingers are crossed that it is (all going to work out)….