battered bruised scarred tenacious beautiful Inspired by a butterfly.
February was a difficult month. We moved, which is always stressful, and then there was all the homework for school, and all that was compounded by my illness and two hospitalizations during the month. My mom ended up coming out for a couple weeks, and that was a big help. Now, we are completely out of the old place now, and I just have to unpack at the new place. I’ll be tackling that chore at a much slower pace.
In the meantime, I’m feeling much better now, and we love love love our new Seattle neighborhood. We’ve had a blast spending the last few days exploring. Now that we survived the move, I can see that this new place will be a good change for us. We’ve already made a few new friends 🙂
We are moving. We found a place we love in a neighborhood we love and two blocks from a school that seems like it will be perfect for Gem. We signed the lease a few days ago, and we move in a few weeks.
Now comes the hard part.
The new home we have chosen is small. Tiny. Less than 3/4 the size of our already small apartment. That means that rather than just packing up, every single item we own will have to be considered, judged, and a large portion of them will not be accompanying us in this move. Will the Christmas tree travel with us to our new home? If so, where will it live the other 11 months of the year? We have a total of 2.5 small closets with which to work.
This will be a learning curve.
I’ve been enjoying a number of posts on the tiny house movement; perhaps we could talk the landlord into allowing us to make some modifications to make better use of the space.
In the meantime, Gem is getting excited about the move.
Her jaguar is all packed up and ready to go.
She’s been helping with our packing, as well. If something is missing, there’s a good chance she already packed it for us.
I can’t say goodbye to the cancer experience just yet, I’m still dealing with some residual complications, but I am in the process of moving on. I did so much more than deal with cancer in 2011, but it featured prominently in my life.
Before we get to the rest of my life, I did write up a post detailing what a day of radiation treatment is like, which has been quite a popular post over the past year. I hope it helps people who are facing this treatment, and a little nervous about what they are in for. (I also wrote a similar post about chemotherapy.)
Random act of kindness:Â I received an amazing gift that still brings a smile to my face and checks my attitude every time I use it
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Looking Forward
I am so ready to get on with 2012.
I’m not doing resolutions this year, instead I’m picking a couple of words on which to focus as a kind of guiding principle for the year.
I picked “habit” and “kaizen”
The two are related. By habit, I mean I’m going to be intentional about creating healthy habits, slowly and gradually, the same way my bad habits get their start. For instance, I’m gradually improving my diet instead of going on a crash diet cutting out everything at once. Kaizen was a new term to me, meaning small improvements made every day will lead to massive improvements overall. This year is going to be all about incremental, sustainable change.
Do you have any plans, resolutions, or words of the year for 2012?
cardboard,
tape, knife
sharpie;
colorful life
packed
in brown boxes
Not that I didn’t have enough going on what with the pregnancy and sinus issues and papers due at school, but I just thought I’d let you know that we’re moving this weekend.
Yay! Really, it is a good move, I just don’t want to do all that work.
Just so ya know, I may not be posting much for a while. I’ve got my hands full.
After the fiasco of transporting Mom’s stuff to Seattle from Alaska via the ill-maintained U-Haul (see this post for the back story – we’re still fighting U-Haul on getting a refund), my brother Tim decided to hang around for a couple days and see if there are any good job opportunities for him around the Seattle area. Wouldn’t you know it, House of Harley needed a parts guy and my brother happens to be a Harley Davidson parts guy. Match made in heaven.
The new job starts on April 21, so Timmy has three weeks to give notice at his old job and pack up his house and drive his truck, his Harley, and the rest of his junk back down the Alcan. I’m hoping this time he wont go with U-Haul again. Is there any other option out there?
Slowly but surely my whole family is making their way to the Seattle area. Of course this is good news.
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