It's been a while...

Sorry, folks, I know it's been an eternity since my last post, but life's been busy. How busy? you might ask. House-buying busy!

You are looking at the proud owner of a 12-year-old home in Central Park (Ottawa, not NYC). It only took a bidding war, dealing with out-of-country sellers, and a mortgage fiasco (what do you mean I have $35,000 in credit lines?) to get to the "sign here, please" moment.

And though it hasn't been downhill since, it hasn't been easy. Our carpet was supposed to be installed last week; it's still not here. We need to be out of our apartment in 3 days but we don't have a second floor to move furniture to because it's all exposed nails and plywood right now. We ran out of paint before finishing the second coat with only a single 20sqft wall beneath the stairs left. We ripped the carpet out ourselves, but cracked a couple stairs and ripped a piece right out of another; we subsequently through that little piece out and had to go through the nail-and-staple-filled trash to find it.


But our parents have been A-MA-ZING and we have never felt more blessed. They have graciously handed over cheques, painted our walls, ripped carpet, patched holes, packed our apartmet, moved boxes, and laughed off laneway fender-benders. Shout-outs to select friends and family who actually came over to wash walls the day we got keys or cleaned and painted the following day. We couldn't have done this without you -- at least not in this year.

This was the biggest shopping high of my life. Remember how you felt when you plopped down your student Visa for your first designer bag? This felt like that but a thousand times more exciting. And nauseating. Especially when I saw my bank account drop $20k -- a far cry from the then-heart-pounding $240 for my first Dooney and Bourke!

The strangest thing about all this is that I've started dressing up for work. I got a promotion aa week after buying the house, so maybe that plays into it; but I think it's more that I feel grown-up. I feel like this is it; it's time to act my age. My mother always said, "Dress for the job you want, not the job you already have." Suddenly that feels like an idea I need to hold on to: the next promotion! After all, a raise sure would make this house-owning thing easier on my personal spending budget ;)