In the last six weeks or so, I have listened to approximately one million podcasts, as I have been packing and cleaning and unpacking and DRIVING. It’s gotten to the point where I am wondering if I am in an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the hosts of my favourite ones, because I am relating to them so much. Several weeks ago, Kim from Everything Is Fine spoke about her recent move between Brooklyn apartments, and she said you just have to accept that everything is just going to suck for a while, and then one day you’ll feel like this is home, and when she said that, my ears perked up. I think at the time I was just in the beginning of the process, and those words stuck with me. It’s just going to suck for a while! And then it will feel like home!

The day the movers came – ten days ago now, already – was 37 degrees, RIP the movers and the guys, who were helping. It was such a busy and crazy day, and at the end of it, the guys were having a beer with the movers on the deck. I declined as I really just wanted to get the kitchen at least semi-unpacked, as it looked like this at the time:

My friend Tara (HI TARA) had warned me about what would happen, using the moving company to pack our things. She said you would find something packed super well and unwind all the packing paper, and it would be, like, a single pencil. I did not find any single pencils wrapped as such, but many times I did unwind enormous swaths of packing paper to reveal a single shot glass. Well, it was worth it since nothing was broken, but there was a lot of paper to be recycled.

Anyway, the guys were out having a beer and I was unpacking and arranging shot glasses and other kitchen-related items in the cupboards, when I saw the moving van drive away. At that point my sons burst into the house to tell me that I was desperately needed for One Last Box. By then, I had politely directed people where to put random boxes and pieces of furniture for HOURS, the doors were naturally opened the whole time and so the air conditioning was negated by the 37 degree heat, I had a pile of paper up to my knees JUST from shot glasses, and I was starving and wondering how to cobble together a dinner in such a mess. I did NOT want to go on the deck to make a decision about One Last Box, but the boys were laughing and smiling, and they just seemed so excited, and I didn’t want to be Bitchy Mom with everything going on. Also, I had just read the parenting chapters in Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal, which I do not recommend you do, unless you want to feel like you have done everything wrong and have ruined your children for life. The rest of the book is good, just, maybe skip that part? Anyway, I put down my shot glass and followed them out on the deck, where they had an exacto knife for opening a wide, narrow box that was labeled “Gnomes.”

I don’t yet have a garden to call my own, so the gnomes have been on the deck, and have been moved around magically during the night. Here they are in a conga line:

It reminds me of when I first got Salvadore and it was too wintry for him to be outside, and his position in the house would change every day, like a garden version of Elf on a Shelf.

Even though I have become increasingly unsentimental about My Things, there are a few things that really have made Our House feel like Our Home, and I will say that gnomes are a huge part of it. I haven’t mentioned Julio and Jorge, who are plant pot gnomes acquired at the same time as Gustaf, but they are adorable little things. I do not have plant pots yet for this house, and so right now they are hanging out with the wooden flower I bought 24 years ago from IKEA to decorate our very first apartment, a tiny place 30 floors up in downtown Calgary.

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

Of course the Girls are enjoying their new spots in the kitchen as well.

The yoga frogs – and bunnies – have rounded out my kitchen decor nicely, which is making it feel very homey.

We are still in the process of hanging up the artwork, a process that will probably take a few weeks to figure out where things will look best, but my husband immediately put up my Desiderata beside my piano, which was the finishing touch on Things That Are Important To Me.

Speaking of things that are important to me, and circling back to podcasts, the incredible Alie Ward of Ologies said that her daily practice for mental, physical, and emotional health is represented by the mnemonic REM REM. The first REM stands for Reading, Exercise, and Meditation, and the second REM refers simply to sleep. I heard this and it cemented my parasocial relationship with her; it was all I could do not to send an email saying Me too, meeeee toooooo, we are besties now! In order to be at my best, every day I need to read, exercise, and meditate – I include yoga in the meditation part or, OR, I could escribo en espanol and say REM Y REM – and to get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep. I have been squeezing in all of those things every day over the past little while, even whilst in Work Camp Mode. Sure, sometimes it’s just a little of each, and some days I did have less sleep than optimal, but for the most part I have adhered to this.

Now that all the major work has been done, I was able to spend the weekend in a more pleasurable way than being on my feet for fourteen hours and going through insane amounts of cleaning products. Saturday morning my older son and I went exploring on our bikes and it was so much fun. We rode up a grinder of a hill through the orchards, and then rode an absolutely terrifying – for me, not for him – downhill with no shoulder or bike lane, a curving, huge, steep hill; we rode down through the sun-baked creek valley and along the creek until we hit Lakeshore Road, and then circled back up a less-strenuous, but it was at the end of our ride so it FELT strenuous, hill home. I never rode my bike in Calgary as I was terrified of traffic, but there are bike lanes everywhere here – except, of course, on the giant scary hill – and I look forward to doing much more of it in the weeks and months to come. I mean, apparently it often doesn’t snow here until DECEMBER, which is such a foreign idea to me, I cannot even.

I have so many books to tell you about that I have managed to read in the past few weeks, but it will have to wait. Can you believe that it’s the end of July already? This month has flown by; I kind of feel like it should still be MAY. Well, here we are! I hope you have a wonderful week, and Happy August, my friends! xo