Tuesday 27 March 2012

Moving On

Monday, March 26
1:00am
My last day in Calgary began when I woke up filled with nervous energy. I was exhausted after a weekend of moving every last one of our belongings and cleaning our apartment. Literally my muscles were aching as if it was the day after running a marathon and I was covered in little cuts and bruises that, thanks to my insanely slow healing process, I will have for months to remind me of all the painstaking work that went into packing up a life that was over 5 years in the making. I milled around my empty apartment at 1am with literally nothing to entertain myself with, I moved from empty room to empty room thinking of how long it had taken to fill them with such good memories. Finally I convinced myself to return to bed and attempt to get so much needed sleep.
4:00am
Yup, awake again. Now that we had said all our goodbyes and everything had been packed away, I just wanted to leave and apparently so did my body because it was not interesting in the sleep that I so desperately needed! I roamed around the empty apartment again, this time I picked up a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and randomly wipe away at any kind of discoloration on the wall... This is what I don't understand about cleaning an apartment when you move out - they're going to paint the walls, why do I have to clean them? I swear half of the stuff on those lists is intended just to justify not giving you back the full amount of your damage deposit. That thought made me a little angry, so I went back to bed to get a couple more hours until it was time to get up and complete the final touches.
7:30
The alarm on Dan's Blackberry is probably the most annoying alarm of all time. This is probably partly because I had finally managed to sleep into a good sleep and also because for the last two years that alarm had incidentally woke me up at ridiculously early times in the morning, especially since most of the time I had only gotten to bed a few hours beforehand. The morning's event had been laid out the evening beforehand, wake up, move the bed, vacuum the bedroom and clean the baseboards, pack the vacuum and cleaning supplies in the POD and then finally bring down the bed and hope that Dan actually does know how to use a measuring tape and the bed is going to fit. It's amazing how two people that generally lead very unstructured lives turn into Type A personalities when faced with certain situations; you would have thought Dan was a former military man with the precision he expected out of the move. Of course, we had forgotten all about the bikes that we had in the bike storage room downstairs - there was no way they were going to fit anywhere. So, we went down and unlocked our bikes, wheeled them out onto the sidewalk and left them there - if you're in need of a bike you may want to check out 14 Ave and 5th St in case they haven't already been scooped up. We then made our final touches on the cleaning of the apartment, jammed our bed into the POD (it fit!) and then it was a mad dash to finish line as Dan returned the "No Parking" signs used for the POD and I went through the walk-through of our apartment all while we became increasingly short-tempered with each other and anyone who dared to cross our exhausted paths. Apartment walk-throughs are kind of a load of crap if you ask me, just as I was getting mad about cleaning the walls, there are a number of completely insane tasks on those lists that were probably never completed when you moved in but you never thought to check. One such thing was the top of the kitchen counters - when has anyone ever done this? I remember doing it at our last apartment and this time I wasn't having any of it. I know it wasn't done when I moved in and it certainly wasn't getting down now. My biggest pet peeve, however, is the oven. I used the oven's self-clean feature, and then I scrubbed the inside of that thing for a good 45 minutes. Seriously, when I was done with that thing my finger tips had completely pruned and yet there was still burnt on particles of some dinner from three years ago. Sure enough, in the walk-through the oven was pointed as being insufficiently cleaned... garbage! I felt like Sylvia Plath I had my head in that oven for so long (that was a little English major joke for Rachel). At this point I didn't care enough to argue, I just wanted to be on our way. So finally the inspection was done and I headed downstairs to wait for Dan. When he came back, we handed over our keys and said goodbye. We sat and had our last breakfast at the Lazy Loaf and Kettle which I am slightly depressed to say was kind of terrible since the eggs were that pale yellow that you know indicates that the poor chicken that laid them was probably stuffed into a cage - look at that I am already talking like a British Columbian! After breakfast we drove until COP where we filled up on gas and Dan checked under the hood for stuff and then we took our last picture in Calgary in front of COP which you can't see in the picture from all the snow... it was the perfect weather to drive away from Calgary in. As we drove I started to cry thinking about all the people that we were leaving behind. As much as you may be ready for something new, a new place to live, new people to meet... I don't know that you can ever be ready to leave everyone behind. For me the hardest people to leave were those that I work with, for the last three years I have been blessed to work with some of the best people that I have ever met. I had made a family at Cilantro, filled with wonderful people who I looked forward to seeing everyday when I went to work. Like any family it wasn't all sunshine and lollipops but those people were worth putting up with each and every one of the disagreements or dissatisfactions that ever happened to arise. I never could have left any other way, I couldn't have left to work at another restaurant, I couldn't have left to pursue some other career; this is the only way I could have ever left - to move on to somewhere else that I had always wanted to be. As I cried, I realised I had my family right there behind me - in a tree that they had made for me to remember them, but I would never forget them with or without a tree. And then Dan did what Dan does best for me and made me laugh and smile as he pointed out that he was going to miss a lot of people but not Ryan M yet... because every time Dan shoulder-checked the whole way from Calgary to Vancouver he was looking at a picture of Ryan. I needed that, I needed all those people wishing us well and knowing that I will have their love and support no matter where I am, just like they'll have mine...

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