THE LATEST LIFE STORM

i recently hiked up cypress mountain. 

i got up at 6 AM (which, for many reasons, is a feat in and of itself), drove an hour, then hiked 3.5 hours in the pouring rain in 10 degree weather...but the view made it all worth it! not.

Vancouver is behind those clouds.

actually, what drove me up that mountain, what is driving many of my outdoor adventures, is a need to escape from a tough reality that has been a dark storm cloud hanging low and menacing on the horizon for the last several weeks.

we found out in june that our house was being listed. again. we went through this two years ago. (read about that here and here). obviously, it didn't sell back then... possibly because of the whole blue tarp of death - read about that in buyer beware lol. the story of the blue tarp and the fact that i was wearing one on my hike is totally ironic. i didn't think of it til i started writing this post. funny.

so the blue tarp of death bought us another 2 years in our home. my little dollar store blue tarp came in handy on my hike and provided a bit of shelter from the driving rain and wind of the day. but, alas, there are no more blue tarps to shield us against the driving elements of this latest howling storm -

our house has sold. we have to move. 

word came this week that the home we have called our own for the last 17 years has been sold. in our world, this is not welcome news. it's hard, disheartening, sad news.

after all, 'our home' was never really ours to begin with. it was always owned by someone else. now a new someone owns it. they bought it AND they want to live in it. the nerve!

so we will have to leave...by december 2016.

{She stood in the storm and when it did not blow her away,
 she adjusted her sails.}

i do not want to leave my home; the only home my youngest two have ever known. and i don't want to leave this city i love with all my heart. yet, the inclement conditions of the vancouver housing (rental) market and rental bidding wars may blow us clear across the country.

i don't know if i can adjust my sails to that.

this latest life storm has got a mountain of emotion to traverse. the winds of it are a howling cold front cutting an icy jagged tear through my heart. i've got a tidal wave of feelings blitzing their way through my body and a torrential downpour of sadness cascading down my cheeks. the dense, dark cloud of it all sits low and thick obliterating my view... of where to go or how to move on from here.

they say home is where the heart is... but my heart is here. in the mountains i climb. in the forests i bike. in the ocean i kayak. and in east van with the kids we work with.

it's gonna take awhile to adjust my sails to this one.

in fact, i've (we've) been grappling with this for several weeks already. and it's just been too hard to write about or speak of because that would mean i'd (we'd) have to really face the full brunt of this storm. this is hard on so many levels and for many reasons. however, we can no longer ignore or deny that a move is looming overhead and there appears to be nothing affordable on the horizon. 

where to go? or more like where can we afford to live? well isn't that the 50 million dollar question.

we've been looking for awhile now and there is nothing that compares to what we are currently in - both for size or price. pretty much anything 3 bedroom for us; even a shared living space (top floor or basement), would mean a complete redefinition of the word budget. And finding an extra grand per month is not something we can adjust the budget to. 

this is hard to share... but we're putting this out there in the hopes that you will share it or that you will know someone who knows someone who has a place we could settle in to.

HERE'S THE SPECIFICS:


we'd prefer to stay in current east richmond neighborhood (avery is starting grade 8 in sept)

or 
make a move into east van (where graham works and where we have always hoped to live.)

a 3 bedroom house or townhouse with adequate storage; (clean, bright, quiet, mold-free environment is needed as both Parker and i have significant chronic health issues)
enclosed garage/storage area as we have bikes

dog-friendly as we have a small, non-shedding dog. (harrison is almost human but you know, not everyone sees it that way, so we have to classify him as a dog.)

move-out date on or before december 1,2016. (we do not want to move at christmas time)

our current rent is $1640. there is not much room in the budget to pay a whole lot more than that. 

BUYER BEWARE

so some peeps have been inquiring about our housing situation...

there has been a sort of interesting development so i thought i would update you all here. 

but first, i just want to say thank you for asking about this and letting us know that you are praying! its encouraging & comforting to hear that. i'm finding the prospect of a move still really hard - i still don't want to move. not at all. i really don't want to let go of our home, our neighborhood, or our community. it's my comfort zone and leaving that feels really scary. given that i'm still struggling with a social anxiety disorder and the other residual damage the strep infection did to my brain (this is my brave post), moving feels even bigger and scarier than it ordinarily would. 

my girl is still struggling with anxiety over an impending move as well - (i blogged about this at letting go & moving on). we have told her that if we move before the end of the school year, that we will endeavor (if at all possible) to keep her in her current school. this helped relieve some of her angst.

our home is still for sale, so a move is inevitable. its just the timing that is in question. as far as what the property manager and owner have communicated to us is that for the interim, we can stay living in our home until it sells.

i guess the burning questions of the moment is WHEN will the house sell - today, tomorrow, or 3 months from now? and WHERE will we go when it does? 

as the unknown answer to these questions burn like a wild fire in my head, i find my thoughts around the whole sordid matter are getting increasingly melodramatic... 
(cue epically mournful background music)

with head bowed & hands clasped to bosom, me to myself:
"this is the last summer in this house."
"this is the last fall in this house."
"this is the last winter in this house."
"this is the last christmas in this house." 

and on and on and on i go... bubbling over with these odd arrays of sentiments and then frantically photographing every precious memory or mundane detail in a desperate attempt to preserve every "last" whatever moment

15 years of growth recorded on the wall

and so it goes. 
and so must we... eventually. apparently once the house sells, the landlord is legally obligated to give us 2-3 months notice. it is now the beginning of december and there have been no offers yet - so i figure its safe to say that we will get one last new years and one last valentine's day in this house.

while, we may have a 2-3 month buffer period between when the house sells and when we need to find a new place to rent, it is kinda sorta stressful to live with the unknown hanging over your head. so we have been actively looking for a new place to move to. for the last several months, we have been scouring the rental ads. 

we even placed our own want add on craigslist and put the dog to work soliciting offers... 

****************************************************************

Hello! We are a family of 4 looking to rent a home in East Van. We've been renting a townhouse in Richmond for the past 14 years and have to move because the owners have put it on the market. 

I work full-time with a local youth organization that provides care to high school age students and their families. We've been doing this work for 25 years and believe it's important to be close to our church, available to those we care about, and in the neighborhood. 

My wife and I have a grown son who lives on his own and 2 children living with us. Our boy is 15 and our girl is 11. We have a super-chill dog named Harrison. He's a four year old Bijon Shi Tzu mix and is fixed (just don't tell him that he's fixed!).

What we wish for: 

*4 bedrooms (I'd like a study/office at home)

*at least two bathrooms 

*An enclosed garage or space in the basement

* Big bonus would be a yard so we can put in a garden 

We are non-smokers and don't do drugs (and neither does the dog!).

If you have something for us, I'd love to chat with you. My name is Graham.

****************************************************************but we've not been able to find anything. nope. nada. nothing. not even any remote possibilities in our budget. we are beginning to believe that finding affordable housing in vancouver is simply not possible.

the worst thing is that every time the hubster and i start some sort of intensive search for a new place the prospects are so dismal that we kinda, sorta, get totally stressed out. all the house hunting kinda, sorta transforms us into the grumpiest, grouchiest desperados of all time. that state of mind is not good for anyone. i certainly don't want our last days in our home to be filled with dark and gloomy moods.

so for the last couple weeks, we have kinda, sorta been trying to just ignore the whole thing as much as possible. denial is bliss.

good plan goertzens.

of course, about the best thing we can do is continuing praying about this. and ask you all to continue to pray too. 

here's where the interesting development comes into play...

shortly after i blogged about our housing situation (letting go & moving on) and asked you all to pray about this our house kinda, sorta started falling apart.
i kid you not. well, to be exact, it's the front deck - and the support beam holding it up suddenly was literally dangling at a precarious angle by one lousy screw...

so the hubster emailed the property manager. 

a few days later, i noticed some bob the builder looking guys milling around under the deck pointing their fingers, waving their arms and generally, just standing around gawking up at the exposed underpinnings of the deck. i even overheard an expletive or two.

i went out to investigate. 

they were freaking out.
the builder bob guys told me that the deck is not structurally sound and the whole thing could come down at any time. it is rotten. absolutely rotten. it is an accident waiting to happen and we must not, should not, cannot go out onto it.

i asked them if they could fix it. in my head i sang it. (i couldn't resist)
"bob the builder, can you fix it?"

"yes, we can!" came their confident reply
(i tried not to show my disappointment after all, i figure a house in obvious disrepair may be a bit slow to sell.)

the following day, we received 3 notices yes, THREE) from the townhouse strata stating that we could not go on the deck. i don't think this is particulary because the strata is concerned for our safety so much as they are concerned about a potential lawsuit. but the over kill with letters made be think the deck must be even worse than it looked.

no wonder i overheard the bob the builder guys using some not so rated-G language.

so the whole rotting and falling apart thing on the front deck began in september... and so far it hasn't been fixed. (happy dance) the deck itself has not tumbled to the earth but the beam finally made its decent last week.

so where on earth are the concerned bob the builder guys? and what happened to "yes, we can fix it!"?

you are not going to believe it - they showed up on my BACK deck a few weeks ago. we had NO IDEA there was anything wrong with the BACK deck too. 

of course, then we got to remembering how last summer we noticed a bit of dry rot here and there. shortly there after, we noticed guys doing repair work on those areas - if you can call it "repair" as all they did was caulk it and then paint over it all.

are you kidding me? caulking rot? good luck with that. at the time, we just heaved a sigh of relief that we don't own this place.

as renters, we are not privy to strata council meetings and stuff but we figure that the back deck must be a lot worse off than the front deck if work has been started there first..

and here's the thing, its not just our unit...suddenly, there seem to be rotting decks EVERYWHERE

right in our little vicinity of the complex, there were 4 other decks resplendent in blue tented drapery. i recently took a stroll around the entire complex and much to my delight, i found that there has been a sudden explosion of blue tarps. they were everywhere. i nearly jumped with glee.

its like a blue tarp baby boom!
i should hand out cigars or something.

those blue tarps are like having a buyer beware sticker slapped right across our home. after all, what vancouverite can ever forgot the leaky condo scandal that erupted in the 1980s! and, what potential buyer in their right mind is going to consider purchasing a place that is this under wraps? seriously!

is it bad that i'm a little bit gleeful? after all, i assume this must be causing owners a pretty penny to fix... and i do feel really bad about that. i do! honest! for pete's sake, i almost feel like somehow, in a weird way, i'm sorta responsible for it - after all, it was i that asked people to pray about our housing situation - and within a few days of that, the blue tents of doom appeared! - 

our complex sorta, kinda, looks a bit like a little tent city.
i'm a happy camper.

keep praying peeps.

REFLECTIONS FROM A DIE-HARD FAN

Dear Canucks and world at large,

it is hard to believe that only a week ago, we were nervously counting down the hours to the BIG game 7 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. we were bursting with pride, excited beyond reason and nearly faint with nervous anticipation. and then we lost...


fast forward a mere 7 days, and we are still reeling - not so much from the loss (albeit that is still keenly felt) but rather from the aftermath of that loss. the horror of watching that unfold on my TV screen still leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.


i felt compelled to write to you - both my dearly beloved team and the world at large. i don't expect that you'll ever see or read this and most likely only a few folks in the worldwide web will stumble across this and read it ~ but i just felt the need to share. to focus on some of my great canuck memories - in an effort to ease the sting of our loss but more importantly, to squelch the sting of sadness that the diabolical hours after the game have left me with.

i think it is safe to say that every canadian boy (and ahem, girl, for that matter)

avery, avid cheerleader at age 5

grows up dreaming of playing in the NHL. my kids are no exception.

taylor, goalie extraordinaire at age 5

over the years, my 2 sons, taylor and parker, have spent many hours engaged in make believe hockey games. true die hard canadian boys loving the game and often engrossed in epic make believe battles for the stanley cup.

parker, already an intense street hockey aficionado at the age of 3

my 2 sons as well as another canadian boy are now fighting a devastating disease. they are such die hard fans that their AMERICAN doctor cheered for you on behalf of them. his practice is in california, just outside of San Jose. it was during your playoff battle with San Jose Sharks that he declared himself a "Canuck" on behalf of my boys and our canadian friend riley lindberg (you can read more about riley's battle here) the boys, along with many other canadians, myself included, are fighting a devastating illness called lyme disease. it is a bacterial borne infection contracted through the bite of an infected tick that invades and attacks every part of the body and mind.

taylor and parker, 2009

in much the same way that the Boston series was, in our humble opinion, riddled with "one-sided reffing" and controversy, the diagnosis and treatment of lyme disease is tainted. in our experience, it is literally non-existent. so much so, that the disease, in it's advanced stages is not recognized nor treated in canada. our family, as well as the lindberg family (& many other canadians for that matter) are forced to seek treatment outside of canada for our desperately ill children (& other family members) ...but enough about politics, unfairness, controversy and all that crap. after all, that is not the purpose of this letter. rather just wanted to give a bit of background as to why or how there happens to be an american doctor who cheered you on and is even driving around with a johnny canuck sticker proudly displayed on his truck.

johnny canuck on DR H's truck

furthermore, what we have always strived to instill in our kids in regards to the debacle called lyme is on par for how we are choosing to view the mayhem that ravaged our city in the hours after the big loss - indifference in our canadian system nearly cost our son Parker his life yet the criminal actions of those who abdicated responsibility for his care does not in any way, shape or form define his worth nor will we allow their diabolical in-action to overshadow the rest of his and our life - we will not allow this devastating disease nor the nonsensical denial of it to define who we are or what we believe in.

"one bad nite doesn't erase an entire season of great memories"
~our family's message
written on the plywood wall of well wishes in downtown vancouver

in much the same way, we will not allow the senseless actions propagated by a few morons define our city nor will we allow it to loot our memories of what has been an incredible season of hockey. after all, we are die-hard fans. and for this reason, despite great pain and fatigue, parker insisted on journeying downtown in order to be part of the post riot clean up and give voice to his love of our city and you, our canucks. (several of the pictures contained in this post are from that day)

parker signing the plywood wall of good will and wishes

by the time, our son parker was rushed down to the USA for treatment, he was on death's door.
riley's life still hangs in the balance. his mother and him forced to move to and live in the USA now in order to be close to our american doctor. riley's world has grown very small. this disease has ravaged his body and mind...and in it's devastating wake, it has left him cocooned away from the rest of the world. sound and light wreak havoc on his taxed nervous system. he is far too sick and too weak to even watch that which he loves so much - canuck hockey. even the sound of voices wreak havoc on his body - yet he has bravely tolerated whispered updates of each and every one of your games.
why?
because he is a die hard fan
and
in honor of that, we signed the wall for him too...



parker's fervor for the 'nucks is deeply ingrained. he's no bandwagon fan. he has been a canuck forever and a day. from the time he could barely speak, he was a fan. our memories run deep. and they give us reason to smile.


when you were in the playoffs 8 years ago (like i need remind you) i was in labor with my daughter, avery. it was may 2. canucks vs. wild. game 5. round 2. and labor or not, i was not willing to miss the game. there were no TV's allowed in the delivery room, but, along with arriving in full makeup and heels, i was accompanied by a radio. and yes, it was on during my entire labor. you can hear it loud and clear in the background of our birth video.

that game went into overtime. when the game went into overtime, and i still had not given birth but i was bound and determined not to miss watching it. the radio just would not suffice...therefore, on the intermission, between the end of the 3rd and the start of OT, i gave birth, showered and made it into the hospital lounge in order to watch the OT on TV. that is no lie and absolutely not exaggerated for the purpose of making this letter more entertaining.

avery, parker, taylor

may 2, 2003

both of our sons were in the delivery room. upon their sister's arrival into the world, the first words she heard was parker's enthusiastic,

"welcome to the world, avery. guess what? the canucks are in the stanley cup playoffs!"

he was 3 years old. and she? roughly 3 seconds old.
we were all in the hospital lounge watching the OT, when brent sopel scored the winning goal..
parker suggested that we name avery "sopel".
i drew the line at that.
but
that doesn't diminish the fact that i am still a die hard fan.

i have a multitude of incredible canuck memories. time does not allow me to delve into them in depth but a few highlights over the years...like way back when kirk maclean was residing in goal and our high school class won a contest that sent us to a game. i remember we screamed A LOT at that game. most likely because we were teenagers and more than a few of us girls had very big crushes on kirk and trevor. speaking of crushes, my big one was todd bertuzzi - abashedly i admit this was during my adult years. in fact, so vocal was i about that crush, that he was known has "hottie toddy" in our home. i've since moved on to bieksa. love that guy.

aside from the silliness of these unrequited crushes, i remember the many games i was able to attend with my eldest son, taylor. stand out memories from those times include the time i was asked by a girl in the seat next to us if i was taylor's SISTER! i will never forget that nor will i let him! another thing about die hard fans is they are at games well before the official puck drop. during one pre-game skate, bertuzzi skated over to the boards, pointed at taylor and tossed the puck over the glass to him. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven! we fought over that coveted puck for years. ultimately, taylor won and 9 years later, it is still in his room.

i could go on and on and on...after all, in this house, we are all die hard fans! even our dog, harrison is pretty hardcore. he proudly dons his canuck's attire and

harrison's away jersey

even though he is still a puppy and therefore has a limited attention span, he still keenly watches each and every game.

harrison's home jersey

as i reflect on all my canuck memories, the one most burned into my mind is of parker receiving his first tickets ever...
oh how he wanted and dreamed and begged to go to see you play in person.
on his 7th birthday, thanks to the generosity of a friend, that dream became reality.
we creatively wrapped the tickets in an old box of lego. when he found the tickets he was so shocked he was practically speechless...it was so beyond his dreams that he just could not wrap his brain around it.
it is one of my favorite memories. glad we captured it on video.



hard to believe that in a few short years, his young life would end up so radically altered. yet, he remains a witty, funny, empathetic and joy filled kid. and he is brave. so very brave. he has endured so much pain and has been wheelchair bound for most of the past 22 months. no kid should have to live thru what he has lived thru - his childhood stolen in the blink of an eye - this struggle succinctly put in an update of sorts my husband recently wrote,

" much of parker's day is regimented around medications and medical therapies and doctor's appointments. in spite of this, he remains a funny, sarcastic yet tender hearted, caring and witty kid. he enjoys watching hockey and basketball, phineas and ferb, and saturday morning cartoons. he's also developing a keen interest and skill at making stop motion videos. we are overjoyed to see small steps of progress in his condition but i am heartbroken for what he is missing out on as his young life barrels on...in my heart, i curse the disease that is keeping him from shooting hoops, taking slap shots and scoring goals, shut away from neighborhood street hockey games, out of school, off the court, off the mountain bike trails, the ski slopes and all the other crazy and reckless stuff 11 year old boys should be doing. he is much improved but remains significantly disabled. we don't really have a time line as far as him being completely well again...but we remain hopeful."

in the fall of 2009, parker's disease progressed to the point where it became necessary for him to be put on IV treatment in order to fight it. this required a surgery, done in the USA, to have a PICC inserted. a PICC line is a permanent line that runs from an external insertion point on the arm, into a vein and is threaded internally in the vein in his arm all the way up to his heart. it was a scary thing for a 10 year old to face. but face it he did. and with the same finesse and sense of humor with which he has handled all of the curve balls life and lyme have thrown at him, he "named" his PICC line.

his PICC's name is raymond... as in mason raymond his fave canuck. why? because die hard fans always name their medical devices after their favorite player. duh.

parker's PICC raymond with "standard" PICC dressing

parker and PICC raymond in their canuck attire

why?
because die hard fans always ensure their medical devices are attired in team colors

our thoughts and well wishes go out to mason raymond...not the PICC but the actual player.


mason raymond sustained several broken vertebra after a questionable hit from a bruin's player in game 6. parker was crushed and in tears at the sight of his favorite player laying in a crumpled heap on the ice. and obviously incredibly outraged. his emotions run deep and wide. his love for this team evident in how intensely personal he takes every win and every loss. intense. part from passion and part from that beast of an infection that has invaded his brain and nervous system. his health always hangs in a precarious balance; the scales easily tipped by too much stimulation. at times, the emotion of the game, the stimulus of the noise, the nervous anticipation, the "way too many over time minutes" are all too much for his brain to digest and can overwhelm his body and trigger an avalanche of intense and frightening symptoms. the fervor of it all, whether it be a crushing loss or a triumphant win have provoked tears, tremors, migraines, hallucinations, delirium and many unspeakable symptoms too painful to utter.

so why let him watch?

the answer is simple.

he is a die hard fan -
through the good times, bad times and even during the downright ugly times.

die hard fans have the courage to stay strong and keep cheering - even in the face of crushing loss, and in the wake of the aftermath, they find victory...


die hard fans don't riot
and
they never give up
and
we never, ever, ever lose hope that one day victory will be ours.