It's been 35 years since our family moved into a condo in Ft McMurray. Today the transaction completes that will sell my childhood home to someone new. All those memories that are tied up in that home are safely tucked away in my noggin', but I don't think I'll ever be back there to visit again in my lifetime. My mom, the only occupant for the last 2 years, has just finished moving out to her house in St Albert. Today begins a new stage of her life, and I can't begin to imagine how scary this is for a widowed woman of 68. She will be living with my sister (and her husband) for a while, but mom's intent is to sell the place in St Albert and find a more suitable retirement location before the end of 2012.
Moving to St Albert was no small feat mind you, and last week I spent some time in McMurray helping her pack, clean, dispose of garbage and move all her worldly possessions to St Albert. It is quite a task to reconcile two different philosophies of how to decide what stays and what goes during a move. I personally go by the rule of thumb that "if I haven't used it in a year, then it can probably be tossed". Of course that rule doesn't necessarily apply to items that carry a large sentimental value or to other items that just can't be replaced anymore. My mom however, has a hard time throwing out anything that is still in good working condition or that might be useful again in the future. I can understand that, but given the time crunch we were facing, it definitely made things challenging. Now I should clarify that she did turf a great deal of stuff, so she did make great strides in reducing what needed to be moved to St Albert. It just meant that we ended up moving a lot of boxes that might have been left behind if it had been my move. What is really scary to think about is the fact that over the last 2 years we had already started purging and moving stuff down to St Albert in advance of the sale of her condo.
Something you should know about my mom is that she is an extremely generous and kind woman. She wants to make sure that everyone around her is comfortable. She is also a stickler for detail and frets over little things that you and I might not give a second thought to. One of the things I found amusing during this move was my mom's desire to bring in cleaners to make the move a little easier. Of course their help would save us a bit of time when it came to the point that we had loaded the truck and were ready to head down the highway. It shouldn't have surprised me that mom wanted to make the life of the hired cleaning staff a tad easier as well to make sure that things were relatively clean before the cleaners actually arrived.... who were there... to do cleaning.
The thing about cleaners is that they need something to clean in order for their services to be a practical investment. If it had been up to me, I would have leveraged their time to tackle all the hard messy jobs that I'd rather have someone else take care of. Not my mom. Together we tackled things like - cleaning the stove and fridge. We did touch up painting on the concrete basement floor (which by the way - the basement is unfinished). Mom also had my sister doing touch up painting on the baseboards. The bathroom was another task my mom tackled and she made sure she had the shower cleaned prior to the cleaners arrival. My sister brought her "steam cleaner" and so between the two of them, they vacuumed and steamed the carpets prior to departure. This left things for the cleaners like... dusting, wiping down the walls, sweeping and mopping floors. Fairly easy stuff if you ask me. They were booked for 4 hours (2 people) and I'm pretty sure they only had about 1 hour and 45mins worth of tasks to do. In the end I think my mom might have saved a bit of money by having most of the tasks done before the cleaners came in, but considering the last minute change in U-Haul vehicles and the extra $$ that was spent there, I don't think the savings really balanced out some of the other expenses.
She's my mom though, and I love her, so if she wants to hire cleaners to "tidy up" then who am I to argue?
We did have other challenges through out the week though. The toilet seat in the bathroom finally gave up the ghost. It is not normally a big deal when that happens, except that my mom had a custom low flow toilet installed many years ago, and parts are hard to find for the model she picked up. We did manage to find something at Canadian Tire that would work.
We also had to change out the light switch in the bathroom too. It appeared at first that the switch was broken since after changing light bulbs we couldn't get the lights to go on. So we bought replacement bulbs - just some cheap 60 watt soft white bulbs. After replacing the bulbs it seems that we still had some issues though. The darn sockets seemed to have a short in them, and if you screwed in the bulb and moved the socket in any way, the lights would go out again.
Something I found personally amusing about the new bulbs (once we got them working) was that they provided less light than the old 100 watt bulbs, and the new bulbs threw a yellow light instead of a bright white light. We had 4 days left to go before move day, and mom had to get the proper "soft white" bulbs for the fixtures so that she could do her makeup properly. Crazy, I know, but when someone is under a lot of stress they tend to make decisions that are just off the beaten path.
That wasn't our only setback during the week either. On Monday we had gone to Shaw to arrange for disconnection, and new hook ups to be added to the St Albert house this week. Phone, cable and internet were all to be disconnected on Aug 15th. We could return equipment early if we wanted though and did so considering that we were leaving the condo on the 12th. This created some hoops that we had to jump through at Shaw though and as a result moms services were cut off on the 11th - 4 days early. We really needed the phone for at least 2 more days which meant that I had to go back to Shaw on Thursday last week to get them to reconnect everything - only to have them disconnect them again today (Aug 15).
Nothing ever goes smoothly during a move but I am grateful that those were the only setbacks that we suffered. In the big scheme of things, they were pretty minor. No one died which I am really happy about. Considering all the grief that I gave my mom over some of her decisions, I half expected to wake up to a pillow being thrust into my face.
I also was able to keep from re-injuring my leg. My torn calf muscle is healing nicely and I was able to be quite helpful even though I couldn't assist with the big furniture pieces. There were a couple of twinges, but nothing that made me think I'd over done it. The leg continues to heal and hopefully by the weekend it will be in tip top shape.
My diet did suffer a bit though. I tried to be good - honest I did. My moms birthday was on the 9th and I think that was the beginning of the end of my discipline. We went out to a really nice buffet diner on Tuesday and I partook in roast, mashed potatoes, chicken cutlets, and veggies with melted cheese on them. I even had some desert to honor my moms birthday too, even though she declined to have anything sweet at the end of her meal. To her, an extra helping of mashed potatoes was the perfect type of desert. I offered to throw a candle in them but that never really panned out. :o)
The next morning I was back to diet breakfast but by the evening I was enjoying my last plate of "Moms Kitchen" fries and gravy. When my sister and her husband came up on Wed/Thurs I was back to eating MacDonald's breakfast, Burger King lunch, and Montana's supper. Damn it was good but definitely not part of the "plan". Don't even get me started on the food we ate at the diners along the way back to St Albert.
Still, I only managed to add 3lbs at the end of the week. Considering that I usually loose 2 lbs on average I guess that means I'm probably up a net gain of 5lbs. over the last 10 days. I'm back to the diet today, but I think it will be a few days before I notice any changes again.
I did take time to say some goodbyes while I was in McMurray. After all this would be my last trip up that highway to this remote city of 80,000+ people. I did a memory lane trip around the city and visited old hangouts, and places from my childhood. There were a few places I didn't get a chance to stop in at before leaving but for the most part I'm happy with the places I did get to see before leaving one last time. I also managed to stop in to visit with my good friends Lee and Verlayne. Hopefully when next they are in Edmonton or Calgary I'll get a chance to visit with them again.
Despite the emotions and physical trials of the last week, I was still really happy to spend time with my mom. She's the only parent I have left and I really cherish the moments I still get to spend with her. Make sure you spend some time with your folks before you no longer have that option. I'm a grown ass adult, but I still like the comfort that comes from knowing that my mom is still there for me if I need her. With that in mind, I'm really glad that she is now closer and living in St Albert. She is near family and I no longer have to worry so much when she doesn't pick up her phone when I call. At least now I can get a hold of someone else who will be able to check in on her for me. The peace of mind is really priceless.
I hope mom enjoys the next year or so in the house she owns in St Albert. Retirement should help her to relax and should give her more opportunities to smile. Then, before you know it, we'll be doing this all over again into a new house in her dream location - wherever that may be.
Until then, I'm just going to enjoy what is.
