live in cohousing

Our welcoming was lovely. A beautiful potluck, and the world premiere of a bassoon duet (written specifically for the two people performing it, who are visiting from Portugal). Afterwards, a meeting of the team looking at Concensus training (a team which I am now a part of).

We still have a few boxes to unpack, but the final milestone I’d set for being settled into WindSong was us having things in a state where we felt we could bring the kittens home. As of this moment, they are slowly settling into their new home, hopefully to not move again (unless it’s down the glass covered street). It has been a path more than 10 years in the making, but I am finally, FINALLY living in an intentional community, and an extraordinary one.

Hopefully over the next few days we can get the last few things settled in, and the next chapter can begin. I can’t wait to start video journalling the Cohousing experience!

Hopefully we’ll be able to get a few of the other potentially interested folks in, or use this as a great home base from which our group can figure out the details of what our own Cohousing community would look like, with Aimée and myself as the in situ guinea pigs. Either way,

Tonight is our WindSong welcome dinner: essentially a Pot Luck except that we don’t have to bring anything. It’s nice to be able to celebrate joining the community, and hang out with our new neighbours. By Monday night things should have slowed down enough for us to plan our housewarming, and send out invites shortly thereafter.

Many thanks to Kathie and a standing ovation for Markus for making this move possible, and in good time! In 7 or so hours we got everything packed up, moved in, and the truck returned (pictures to arrive shortly). It is so incredibly exciting to have all our stuff in.

After vegging out tonight, Aimée and I made a list of all the sundries we now need to do, and prioritized it. We’ve still got days of work to do before the place is actually habitable, but the major moving is done, and now it’s the devil in the details that we will grapple with.

And there was much rejoicing.

Zounds, the last few days have been BUSY BUSY BUSY. Organizing painting, finishing flooring with a friend, trying to do baseboards on my own, organizing folks for the move day tomorrow, etc. etc.

I will be VERY glad when this phase of things is done, and we can actually settle in. Until then…. vroom!

Myself and my good friend Pascal, who’s agreed to do our new flooring with me, spent a good 6 or so hours yesterday working on the project.

We had a long and very useful discussion with “Jim”, one of the folks at RONA, (and in truth the best RONA employee I’ve ever talked to… frequently their help is none too helpful, but this gentleman was just extraordinary, a veritable font of knowledge and good humour. The end result was us deciding that it was going to be a lot more cost effective (not to mention easy to install) to do Laminate, even though Aimée and I had picked out a Bamboo hardwood that we loved. After confirming this change of plans with Aimée, we grabbed 20 of the 48 boxes of laminate that we had as a backup plan (we have to pick up the remaining 28 boxes from a different RONA today. the alternative was a wait of 2 weeks for it to be shipped in), plenty of underlay, and a few tools we needed.

The most handy of the tools we picked up was a good floor scraper with a long handle. The amount of time that has saved us is amazing. It took a long time to get the parquet up, as it had been thoroughly glued to the underlying vinyl. Thankfully, the vinyl peeled well, and the top half came away with the parquet, so we were able to develop a good system of peeling it back in large chunks and ripping them away. We’ve still got a little destruction to do, but by Tuesday evening, we should be starting in on the construction.

Yesterday’s experience was a great reaffirmation of the community spirit at WindSong: we had half a dozen or more people stop by to chat, to offer their advice, and to say hello. One of the 12 year olds came in and helped for a good bit of time.

It was also a reaffirmation of something Pascal and I have discussed in the past: how close our group of friends is, and essentially like family. It’s amazing to have folks who you can rely on when you need to get stuff done, or when the chips are down, and who are there to celebrate the victories. Pascal is definitely one of those folks. Thanks bro!

We’re off to the lawyers’ to give them our downpayment, and sign everything. So exciting: As of tomorrow, we own our unit at WindSong!

Next step…. flooring!

Amidst the hurly burly of getting our temporary set-up in White Rock done, it’s been nice to find moments to just be. I spent a lovely bit of time playing piano two nights ago (it’s a weird fusion being here: some of the things from Aimée and my house mixed with things from my childhood and my parent’s house, all together in a totally different building), and played guitar on the patio last night. Later that night, we turned out the lights, and watched the lightning.

It hit me today as we were driving back from various errands (flooring to buy, groceries to get, cable-modems to return…) that we’ve bought a house. It keeps periodically hitting, but still seems somewhat surreal as we’ve only been to it a handful of times, and won’t be living in it for a while yet.

At times I let myself get overly stressed about all the details, but at times I can just sit back and enjoy the adventure. This moment is one of those times.

The move to my folks’ place for the month or so before we take possession of our new Cohousing home is finally done.

We BIG TIME OWE Pascal and Darcy for helping us out! Aimée pinched a nerve in her back a right before the move, and so was unable to do any heavy lifting, and much of our furniture requires two people, so there’s no way we could have done it without them.

The cats are slowly acclimatizing to the new place (Mo, our portly beige fella is still growling at the other cats a bit, and trying to settle in, the other two are in pretty good spirits (though still a bit scared), and curiously poking around.

It feels wonderful to be in limbo: All our real stuff is in boxes and stored in the garage, so once the massive clean we have to do tomorrow is done, we get to just hang out for a month out here pretty much, and get used to be this much further out from the city (far enough South that if you take a wrong turn trying to get onto the highway, you can very easily end up at the border crossing by accident).

Once the cleaning is done, I think it will be wonderfully fun setting up shop here, and getting my write on, as well as finally getting some video work done.

A day of boxing, cleaning, packing, and er….. a lot of waiting around. Tomorrow the massive move to my folks’ place, then a month living out of boxes before we move into our place at WindSong. I can not WAIT for the moving and cleaning to be done, and to settle in for the month.

Our house is a mass of boxes, with a sporadic flurry of empties coming in and fulls going out to my folks’ place for the month that we’ll be house-sitting before moving into WindSong. A week from today we’ll be getting a van and the next chapter of the adventure will begin.

The cats are already leery, and know that a move is coming up. Poor things: I’m sorry they’re going to have to move twice in a little over one month! Hopefully it’ll be the last move for a while, and the next move will simply be from one WindSong unit to another.