Author: featherdavis

It’s hard to be neat when you have no furniture. I am thankful for every built-in shelf and counter. I am especially thankful for the fridge that we’ll be leaving here and the washer and dryer that are still functioning in the basement. After putting everything in the cubes, we ran off to Drummondville to visit Ghis’s family. We treated ourself to a night in a hotel and spent the next rainy morning swimming in the well-heated pool.

Coming back to the mess was a bit depressing, but it’s still home. Today we’ve been organizing our stuff in the leftover boxes and we realized that there’s still a load of stuff to take to Drummondville. Luckily for us, Ghis’s Dad has agreed to come again with his van.

This is still one humid city. It gets so hot here that I become unable to imagine anything else. In past years, I arrived in Vancouver and realized I hadn’t even packed a sweater or a jacket.

Right now I feel like I could sleep for a week. But only with air conditioning!

After two days of constantly raining sweat, I was happy to see these cubes go. Ghis and I don’t feel like we’re going to miss any of this stuff over the next year. We had the hottest, most humid weather for moving, but at least it didn’t rain. Now the house is a real mess of leftovers. There is food which we are going to give away. There is stuff to drop off at the Sally Ann and furniture to leave by the side of the road to be scavenged. And there are clothes piled on top of bags lying here and there. I have to sort through it all and decide what I want to bring to Vancouver and what I want to put aside for the long trip.

We’ve been packing like people with a deadline. We want to move everything into the cubes starting tomorrow at noon. The cube company will come and take the cubes away Friday morning. We are hoping to use only two of the three cubes, not so that Morgane can keep inhabiting one, but so we don’t have to pay another $50 a month all year.

We will travel to far and not-so-far away lands. People keep asking, “Where are you going?” and “Are you all packed?” These are both questions that annoy me. The first because it’s a bit long to answer and I answer it many times every day. We don’t have one destination and I always want to explain the WOOFing part. As for the second: NO, WE ARE NOT ALL PACKED! Okay, so we might be a little stressed about it. I think we have packed a lot, but the rule of moving is that there is always ten times more stuff than you think. Tomorrow I’ll finish emptying the kitchen and then clear out the last of my desk. Ghis is piling up the furniture in one room – the boxes are already neatly piled in another.

Ghis says don’t let the house become a mess. Choose one spot to pile all the packed boxes. I say, when the packing frenzy begins, don’t forget to eat properly – lots of fruits and vegetables.

The couches are sold and gone and now our big TV is gone to Ghis’s sister’s. Both our dog and our daughter are anticipating the move. Carmanah (our dog) has noticed the boxes and looks at us with big eyes that say, “Don’t leave me behind.” Morgane looks at me with the same eyes whenever I get too close to the door. “You’re not going out, are you?”

One of the problems with packing is getting lost in your stuff. I’m talking about memorabilia. “Look,” Ghis confided last night, “these are the notes I wrote at school when I was bored 25 years ago. On my side, I find a million little things I think Morgane might like to play with or see and then I have to clean them up before I can pack them. No more time for this kind of packing now. Since the cubes are arriving in our driveway tomorrow and we want to fill them on Thursday, we will soon be at the point of blindly launching mismatched items into unlabelled boxes.

And then there’s the stuff we’d like to give away rather than huck. Anyone want an opened bag of oat bran? Well, neither did we apparently. Anyone want a pile of half-used cleaning supplies? A giraffe that acts as a coatrack? An assortment of marbles and beads and pieces from various board games? If you come visit this week, we’ll be busy, but happy to see you. And one thing is certain; you won’t leave empty-handed.

We can’t keep our move a secret any longer – not that we were trying. Today we got three cubes dropped off in our driveway. The cubes are large plywood storage containers that will be picked up and taken to the storage facility once we’re done filling them. Morgane promptly moved her stuff into one and begged me to let her sleep there. She was upset when we refused to let her. She was a little less upset when Ghis told her that raccoons would probably come and lick her nose or nibble her toes in the night. We are happy to see her adventurous spirit since we’ll be going lots of camping soon enough.

We’ve been packing a lot and it doesn’t seem that far from being done. Ghis has gone through his tools and packed what he calls his ‘manly’ toolbox just in case we need to fix something during our trip. What he thinks he might fix, I have no idea. The car?!?

We have a lot of work to do. In the next ten days, we have to vacate our apartment and put everything we want to keep into storage. We have to decide what to bring on our trip. We have to do something with all the food in our kitchen – eat it or give it away or throw it in the garbage. We have to say goodbye to friends and family. We have to give away unwanted items.

To get through the challenge of these ten days, it helps to remember our positive experience last summer. We felt very free without all these extra belongings to be responsible for. We also spent time in so many wonderful places and saw so much beauty.

Sometimes now I am afraid. I wake up in the morning afraid that I am jumping off a cliff and will fall into nothingness. Occasionally, I question my sanity.

I have to remind myself that I may be jumping, but there will be somewhere to land. Even if we are not home, we will always be somewhere. I think when people imagine being on a trip for a long time, they think they won’t feel grounded or safe without their home. But there will always be places where we can feel the sand under our feet or touch the blades of grass with our hands or close our eyes and hear the birds chirping in the trees.

Our reward, once we are all packed and ready to go, will be that we will be more present in these moments than we are in our daily, comfortable lives at home.

Actually, I didn’t even pack anything today. I was at work conducting job interviews (for my replacement), so I am too tired to pack. And I am suddenly realizing just how much there is to pack.

Time is moving too quickly, now there are so many good-byes. Today, good-bye to work (College Andre-Grasset) and good-bye to our friend Gillian and her kids (they are flying to London). Tonight we had a good-bye dinner for our Mexican student, Rodrigo. He finishes school this Friday. M finishes next Tuesday.

The cubes are coming. They are going to show up in our driveway and we have to be packed and ready!

I have to admit that there are moments when I get nervous. I think this is the hardest time – just before packing up our house and putting it all in storage. I think this is why a lot of people choose not to do it. But what I learned last year is that once all the stuff is away, there is an incredible sense of freedom. So for now, I am enjoying these last minutes in our home and am packing boxes, even if it feels a bit unnatural.

We were in Ottawa yesterday walking around downtown and it felt like a small practice for when we’ll be on the road. The hardest thing was that we all have different paces. M likes to stay and look at everything for a long time. I like to move when it’s time to move, but take breaks and sit for awhile and just appreciate being wherever I am. Ghis wanted to be in nature, so he wanted to hurry through downtown.

We realized that it will be a question of communication and that travelling together requires some compromises. All in all, we’re not really worried. Well, maybe just a little. Travelling with a six-year-old is fun, but has its own challenges. If anything, kids remind you to take care of yourself – to stop and eat and rest and, especially, play.

One of the goals of our trip is to connect with people in different places and learn from observing their lifestyles. Another goal is to not spend much money. With this in mind, we have decided to do Woofing. WWOOF is an organization that connects people who want to work on organic farms with hosts. We have already joined WWOOF-Canada and arranged a few 2-week stays in the Maritimes. In exchange for five hours of work a day, our hosts will provide meals and accommodations.

A few times, we have stayed with friends who’ve had a big impression on us – their lifestyle, pace, environmental habits, etc. I think the best way to learn is to experience these different lifestyles and see: how do they really work day to day? I want to use this blog to share this information with all the people who don’t have this opportunity to be on the road right now. And maybe, just maybe, I’m out to convince you that it’s possible – that you could do it, too.