New Skills

At the end of 2019 G bought his dream car. A beautiful, Mazda 3 Hatchback - super sporty looking. Only one issue (for me): it’s a manual. G specifically wanted a manual vehicle and it was hard to find one he liked. He was frustrated that companies are going away from these sort of cars, opting to only have automatic for a lot of their lines. I, on the other hand, completely understand. When he first got the car I had a few short lessons around our little town. Stalled a lot, got frustrated at the car (it’s the car’s fault after all) and got the car home, parking outside and not in the garage.

Flash forward to last week when we are organizing ourselves for friends who are coming to visit with their two little ones. G needs to take the automatic SUV to the city to pick them up from the airport but I need to go to work (which is a 30 min drive in the opposite direction). The leaves me two options: 1. Get a ride to work or 2. Learn to drive the Mazda.

This weekend I had two lessons. There was lots of stalling, lots of “your too fast off the clutch” or “your too slow off the clutch” and I learned terms like “blip” when I go to downshift. Yeah, my anxiety was thru the roof all weekend because I already said I would drive myself to work on Monday.

This morning I woke up way before my alarm and couldn’t sleep anymore. I got ready, made sure G had his phone off silent (he’s coming off night shifts) in case I needed rescue, reviewed my notes (yes I made myself notes) and left for work. 

And guess what: I didn’t stall once! My first downshift was a bit jerky but my second one went better. I was nervous around a Stop sign at a railroad crossing, so there is a bit of a hill, and although I almost stalled there I caught it before it happened. (If you can’t tell my big issue is with the lower gears, 3-6th gears I’m good). 

I’m hoping my way home tonight will go just as well, and although I’m still a little nervous, I can feel my confidence building. 

Wish me luck & pray I don’t ruin G’s dream car, lol

- M 

House Declutter Weekend Extravaganza

This post’s title is exactly what I had in our shared family calendar for this weekend. And extravaganza it was! 

We spent +12 hours Saturday and Sunday organizing, decluttering, deep cleaning, packing up (some) of our house. G and I went room by room and decluttered all the little odds and ends we had gathered. Dusted really good, put a few select items back. We edited down each room A LOT, trying to take away personal things and items we didn’t want displayed when we show our house. G had picked up some nice stacking bins from Canadian Tire when he was in the city for an appointment, so we utilized those to put the items we were keeping away for now. The house seems very minimal right now, lol. But I know some of those loved items are just being stored for safekeeping and can be displayed again once we sell our house. 

We gave the house a really good clean too: dusting, washing walls and baseboards. Everything looks so clean! Sunday night after dinner we tackled the garage. Putting away items that had gathered/not put away properly over winter. I wiped down all the work table tops and swept the floors. G had gotten these really giant bins on wheels that were perfect for camping supplies so that was nice to organize. Our label maker got a workout, labeling the outside of the bins as we put things away. 

Overall, we had two boxes of shredding, quite a few items to donate and a few trips to the garbage dump to finish off this week. I’ll stage the house properly next weekend and we can take listing photos. G biggest pet peeve with real estate listings is when they have shitty smudged lens photos, so he always prefers to take the photos himself, lol. 

We are a little ahead of the game here but mid-April we have company from Ontario coming to visit so the house will look a little different temporarily, so it’s this weekend or not until the end of the month. Hopefully during the two weeks our company is here we can meet with our relocation rep, the appraiser, real estate agent and (fingers crossed) have the house listed for the end of the April. We ourselves are going back home to Ontario for two weeks in May, so that would be ideal to show the house. I hope everything falls perfectly into place - haha yeah right… 

- M