To say that our lives have been somewhat upside down since we decided on this big life change is a huge understatement. Our house is in utter chaos, and it's all I can do to make myself pack, instead of hiding in bed with Dawson's Creek reruns, in a fruitless attempt at procrastination. Am I dreading our departure date? No. Am I super excited to leave? Absolutely. Am I in total denial about what is left to be done? Clearly.

This past weekend, I had lofty ambitions to clear out the green room, otherwise known as our office. Otherwise known as the room where we have dumped the "we're not sure what to do with this yet" stuff that we've collected as we've emptied other rooms. It's very simple to make yourself look organized if you have a place to dump all your crap which happens to have a door that closes. Open the door and you are treated to an array of old magazines, paid bills, art supplies, jigsaw puzzles, mountains of schoolbooks from both of us, photos waiting to be framed, random homeless wires and cables from various electronic things that we most likely no longer own...the word "mess" doesn't even begin to describe what I'm dealing with here. And when you're faced with such a dizzying array of crap, it's hard to know where to start.

Tomorrow, salvation arrives. My mother, in all of her label-making, expert-packing glory, flies in tomorrow afternoon to help with these final stages. As her plane descends, the clouds will part, sun rays will fall on us, and an angelic choir will sing. She'll set us straight in no time, I'm sure, but I'm not sure that Kurt is ready for what's about to hit.

The last time I experienced this phenomenon was in August of 2002, when her and I tackled my apartment, cleaning it out and packing it up for my move to Ottawa. Oh. My. God. It was really something. I hated every second of it, but when it was over, my entire existence had been reduced to a neat stack of carefully packed bins, each marked appropriately with labels such as "Kris - Rock Collection" or "Kris - Knick-Knacks" (it actually says this) or, my personal favorite: "Kris - High School Yearbooks, documents, ect." Facebook would LOVE what I have in that bin. What isn't stored in bins in their basement was shipped out to Ottawa with me, where, as I mentioned in a previous post, most of it remained until just a few weeks ago. In short, the packing whirlwind that is my mother is a force to be reckoned with. She is ruthless...and thank God for that, because I have a slight tendency to hoard, apparently. As evidenced by numerous useless, forgotten items strewn about our house.

One of the best aspects about the move is that we are going there with only the items that we actually need. It costs some pretty serious duty dollars to bring things in, so we're not going to be wasting money and bringing in things that we're not 100% positive we'll need and use while we're there. In fact, the only things that we don't have to pay to bring in are used clothes, books and golf clubs (how appropriate). Everything else gets a hefty duty tax stamped on it and we'll have to cough it up at the airport when we land. To reduce the sting, we have to pare way back, and that's actually going to feel pretty good.

They say that the state of your home is a reflection of the state of your life, and I definitely find that to be true. When we're in our normal state of meal-planning, grocery shopping and cleaning, life is generally stress free. It's just our routine, and we do it well. However, we currently have no schedule, we haven't bought groceries since July, I haven't cooked a meal since June, and we don't know where anything is. Worse, we don't have any motivation to restart our routines now that we're about to leave. It's definitely taking it's toll. It spirals outwards too - my normally somewhat organized workstation is a mess, I haven't been drinking my normal 3 litres of water each day, and I've actually chosen muffins for breakfast, which I would find gross otherwise.

In short - order is important to me. I like bringing my lunch to work, and knowing what we're making for dinner each night. One of the things I'm most looking forward to is settling into our new routine once we get our feet on the ground. It's going to be like the "new us", just a little warmer year-round and hopefully a lot more relaxed!

Yesterday, Kurt and I spent our afternoon sifting through the boxes we've been harbouring in our storage room. Our house came equipped with a fair sized storage area, and we've packed it full of our "really important" boxes full of things, as we have claimed for the past 2.5 years, were crucial to our very existence.

Well. Let me tell you a little something about the things we have kept in that room.

99.95% of it was crap. Useless, pointless crap.

When I moved to Ottawa in 2002, I mailed 13 boxes out ahead of me via Canada Post. This cost a couple hundred bucks but hey...it's stuff I needed. Leaving it behind was simply not an option. Obviously, I could not have lived without my tribal sarong (makes a good curtain), empty perfume boxes (as in, the boxes moved to Ottawa, but the perfume did not), or my 2001 Britney Spears calendar. (Again, I moved to Ottawa in August of 2002). Funny enough, many of those original 13 boxes remained unpacked, moved from my downtown apartment to my ghetto apartment and then to our house, and largely ignored until yesterday.

I set myself up on the couch, in front of a PVR'd movie ("You've Got Mail"...thank you, Women's Television Network), two empty garbage bags, and got to work. By the end of the day, I had filled 7 garbage bags of clothing for goodwill, three huge bins of clothing for consignment, and 4 garbage bags of garbage/recycling/shredding. It was finally time to say goodbye to lipsticks with no caps, half-empty bottles of cold medication from my first miserable Ottawa winter, Captain Morgan's swag from various unmentionable university bar nights, half-burnt tealights...I never knew I was such a hoarder. I really don't know how I will live without this stuff.

Kurt's boxes were no better. Amongst every single bank statement and Rogers offer that he has received since the mid-90's, we came across every single birthday, Christmas and thank-you card he has recieved...in his entire life (he is 33...do the math). As well as letters from bored high school girlfriends working at summer camp (I got the distinct impression that Kurt did not write back), photos of Kurt with an afro-mullet (definitely in the "keep" pile), and his smurf house. Avec smurfs. One of them has a kayak.

After 5 hours amongst our messy pasts, we finally called it a night and left the basement...somehow knowing eachother just a little bit better. Tonight we head back down for Round 2...and since I know that somewhere, Kurt has a ziploc bag full of his foot-long chopped off braided ponytail (with beads), I'm a little bit scared.

We have big news.

And no, before you steal a not-so-subtle glance at my naked left ring finger, we are not engaged.

And no, we are not bestowing upon the world any glorious offspring.

Instead, we have rented our house, are in the process of selling and/or packing everything we own and we're moving to a tiny chunk of rock in the middle of the Atlantic.

Holy crap. Seriously? Even as I type this, I can't quite believe it.

The whole story happened pretty quickly...from an innocent job search back in June to booking our one-way plane tickets last week for our flights on September 24th. Actually, that's pretty much the whole story, minus a few details.

It was a random Sunday afternoon and I was wasting some time before we headed out for coffee (actually, I made that part up, but since there is not much else to do on the weekends, it is probably pretty accurate) and I came across a job posting for a position offshore. I remember calling up the stairs to ask Kurt if he thought it was worth my time to apply for and watching his face light up like a cat being offered sushi-grade tuna. Ding, ding, ding. I applied for the job, which turned out to be an ad for a staffing agency who put me through a few skills tests and preliminary interviews before putting me forward to firms. A couple of them nipped and then one bit with an offer at the beginning of July. Kurt is actually a citizen, which means he can get off the plane and go anywhere he wants, apply for any job, wear pink shorts, drive a scooter, buy us a pink house with his spare millions...whatever. I, on the other hand, was somewhat undesireable until I found an employer who would sponsor my work permit application. Kurt being a citizen has made the whole process about 4000% easier for us. Thank you, useful bloodlines.

Once we found out that yes, this was actually, really, going to happen and stopped thinking about it in "wouldn't that be fun if..." terms, we realized that we had to get our shit together...and fast. My job starts on October 1. Most people would take at least 6 months to plan and execute a move like this and we were doing it in only 2 and a half. Ouch. We moved ahead and found a property manager to keep an eye on things and find us good tenants, which she did in record time. We're still in the process of selling our stuff, which is hard. We only just finished furnishing our house and now we're turning around and selling all of our practically brand-new stuff. Watching the gorgeous dining room set drive away in the back of a Ford Ranger was heart-wrenching, especially when the truck went over the curb and all of the chairs lurched to the side. I nearly vomited on the lawn.

The saddest part for me, without a doubt, is the fact that because of rampant flea reasons, Harley can't come with us. Instead, he is enjoying the many luxuries that come with being a feline in my parent's house in Victoria. Leaving him behind was really difficult, but I know he's enjoying a privileged life full of daily grooming, treats and lots of attention, so that makes me feel a lot better. Life is sad without my little buddy and I miss him terribly every time I walk in the front door and he's not standing on the stairs to meet me. Which is every time, now. Sniff.

But sad parts aside, this is an overwhelmingly exciting time for us. We have been needing a change for awhile now and even though moving even further away from my family and friends was originally NOT the plan, this plan is a much better one to give ourselves a great headstart and put ourselves into a position to go anywhere, really. We're going to get a chance to save some money, and Kurt is going to get a chance to kickstart a whole new career - one that actually excites him and has great opportunities.

In short, we have a lot to do but we can't wait to get on that plane and start our new adventure. Sounds cheesy, but it really is the adventure of a lifetime. If we don't do this now, we will never do it. So...we're going.

I've started this blog to keep everyone up-to-date on what we're up to while we're away, share pictures, etc. I will be posting over the course of Operation: Leave as well...mostly as a way to procrastinate packing. Enjoy!