Dealing with the loss of friends because they moved

My neighbor moved and with her my children’s best friends. It was a difficult situation. My children are a bit too young to fully understand the consequences. We watched my neighbor’s children for three days as they prepared for the move and actually moved. My kids loved spending so much time with their best friends. They cried when their best friends drove away for the last time.
My four year old daughter has been asking to visit her best friend, a month after the move. She keeps going to the door and saying, oh they are not home. When will they come home? It would be easier if our neighbor followed through with her promises to both sets of kids. She told them that she would bring her kids to visit. She did not. She sent her boyfriend to pick up their mail from us instead of bringing her kids over to play with mine.

It would also be easier if they could call each other or even do video IM with each other. My neighbor is not interested in letting her kids do that. So suddenly the children my kids have been playing with for half their lives are gone. Now as a parent I have to find some way to teach them how to deal with this loss.

And it is a loss to them. It is not like they can get into a car and visit their friends. They cannot call them or visit them. They are just gone. We have talked about it. My oldest seems to be doing ok. I know he misses his best friend but we are hoping he will make new friends when he goes to grade one. My daughter keeps expecting her best friend to come home and play with her. I am hoping that going into JK will give her the opportunity to make new friends and move on. Only time and new friends is going to make this any easier on my children. Oh, and lots of hugs from Mommy.

The funny things that happen when you move

You find out how much stuff you have and how much you don’t need. We packed every thing. We figured we would sort it all out when we got to the new place and had more time to look at every thing. It has been very easy for me to let go of some things that before I hung on to. It is the whole move thing, the changes that come with it. For the first time we have a home, not a place to live, even though we are still renting. It changes how you look at things. For the first time in my life I looked for house accessories, and bought some thing because of the way it looked. Ok it was not a big buy, but it was the first time I have ever done this. I bought oven mitts with matching hand towels that you hang of a door or some thing. For me it was a big thing. I cared about how some thing would look. Kind of wow for me. I figure it will take time but we will get a small thing here and there to get the look we want.

The other big change is having a washer and dryer. I have to change my mind set. We don’t have to worry about not having the money to do the laundry, so we don’t have to hoard clothing. I would buy lots of clothing at second hand shops, and garage sales so that my kids would always have some thing to wear even when we did not have the money to do laundry. We were spending about $60 a month, and that would be a good month. So what happened, well I can now see how much clothing my kids have. It used to be about half their stuff would be in the laundry. Now it is all clean, and as we unpack I am finding we don’t have room for it all. The good thing is that they are both growing very fast so we will not have all this extra clothing for long. I already have boxes set up so that if some thing does not fit them in it goes. Once the box is full off it goes to a clothing exchange or our kid’s daycare. It is going to be interesting to see what kind of balance happens, how much clothing is going to be the right amount to meet their ever-changing needs. The good thing is now that I don’t have to buy so much I can just concentrate on getting what they like. Mind you, I am still going to be shopping at second hand places and in the summer garage sales. Have you seen the price of kids clothing today?

Over all it has been a strange transition. It has not been just moving from one place to another. Some other change has happened. I actually care about this place and how clean it is, how it looks (buying things that actually match). It has let me feel like I have a home for the first time in my life. I even want to work in the little flower garden area under my front window. Wow, what a big change in my attitude and expectations about where and how I live.

Why our move is so stressful

I think any change is stressful, and moving is one of the most stressful changes. As we are moving on Sept. 17 it is crunch time for us. We are short boxes but will try to get some more. We have a lot packed, but even more to pack. I think that is normal as well. So what is making our move so stressful?

Well the biggest thing for us is money. We are waiting on a cheque that was to be here last week. We spent our money on things we had budgeted, expecting the check to get here in time. Now there is a question about if the cheque was even mailed. Great. One week to the move and we have used all our money and still have things to pay for. That is very stressful. We have a festival two days before the move, getting ready for both has been a lot of work. We had arranged for the use of a van for the festival about 3 months ago, and last week all of a sudden some one else is using it. We were paying for the use of the van so I am not sure what happened there.

So we had to book a rental truck, and now because the cheque has not arrived the money we need to pay for the truck we don’t have. If we don’t have the truck, we cannot do the festival and there goes the money we were expecting to use for the move. We are lucky that we already paid for 1 trip with the moving people, however if a second trip is needed we have to pay another $100.00. If the cheque does not get here in time we are going to have to leave some big things behind like our couch and chair so we can make sure the important stuff gets to the new place. We expected to have to do this in two trips so we are expecting to have to figure out some thing. If some thing can be taken apart and made smaller, we are doing that. If we had known this was going to happen we would have gone threw our clothing before packing it, and got ride of any thing that did not fit, or clothing our kids had almost outgrown. I figure if worse comes to worse we will leave some of the smaller stuff behind and use the bundle buggy and walk it over. That is just going to take a lot of time. I hope that cheque shows up in the next day or so. It is killing us having things up in the air like this.

We had a stove all ready, and then last week we found out that some one else got the stove. It was given to them in error, but that does not help us. Now we are going to be ok because at Canadian Tire we bought a BBQ for $16:00 and tax and the adapter for $15:00 so we can use full size propane tanks with it. That will do for the next month or so. The big expense was the two-burner hot plate we picked up from Canadian Tire. As I am used to only being able to use one burner it is not going to be to bad. We already use our little toaster oven to do roasts and such, trying to keep the heat down. So not having an oven is not going to be too big of a deal. I will miss Pizza though. We tend to do a lot of pasta casseroles, and I gave away our slow cooker last year so we are going to look at getting an inexpensive slow cooker to do casseroles in. We will work around this. We have survived worse then not having a stove.



What we don’t have is a fridge. And let me tell you after all the problems we had over the last three years with the fridge here we want a new fridge. We are suppose to get a small bar fridge to do us until we get a full sized fridge. However, seeing as this is from the same people who gave the stove away I am not expecting it. It is a good thing we have our own freezer and some coolers. It will work out no matter what happens. We had budgeted for the fridge, out of the cheque that has not shown up. Sears is having a big sale on fridges and we are waiting for some coupons from Sears for even more savings. James has a Sears card, so we will just try to get the 24-month payment plan so we can get a fridge soon. Mind you we are waiting for the coupons to show up in the mail, like the cheque.

We don’t have a washer and dryer and I don’t think we are going to have the money for them any time soon, even used. We had expected to be able to get them, or at least a washer but that is just not going to happen. I was hopping for a dishwasher, even a used one for Christmas but I think that will be some thing for next Christmas. Things like a fridge and a washer have to come first.



We also got a call from FedEx; we have to pay the $387.00 for the Indonesian Customs from when our ring was stolen. So they want us to pay $90.00 for the next 4 months. It is going to be hard as that is 1/3 of our spending money. We are just going to have to cut back a lot and hit the food banks for the next few months. We just cannot afford to have this bill go to collections. So that kills most of our plans for the next few months.

We have been stressed out to the max and it is having a bad effect on our kids. We are short tempered and well we are just not a lot of fun to live with right now. Our kids are stuck dealing with us. They are starting to act out in response to our stress and their own stress about the move. It is just making things harder. I just want the move to be over and done with for every ones sakes. It has not helped that both kids have been sick on and off the last few weeks so they have been home most of the time we have been trying to pack. We expected them to be at daycare and we could just spend days packing. That has not happened. We have all been fighting a flue. And to top it all off, I have lost the use of my right arm/hand due to a repetitive stress injury two weeks before the move. I could not use the computer for a bit, or type one handed, the hen peck method. I am not suppose to be using it right now. So now James has to do the packing, the cleaning and well most every thing as I am very right handed and have a hard time using my left hand. To top it all off my son and I both came down with pink eye on Sat. morning. What fun we are having.



The point of this blog. To get it off my chest. I am so stressed I had to do some thing and some how running down the street screaming and pulling my hair out did not seem to be a productive thing to do. I need to distress so I don’t get so upset with my kids and hubby and I am hopping it helps. So far it has in one way, but at the same time it just makes me want to cry. So if any one can send us good vibes or well wishes please do so.

Why we are happy to be moving stress and all

We are moving to a three-bedroom townhouse on Sept. 17 and it has been very hard dealing with every thing. We are very excited about the move, but it is hard work getting every thing ready. Boxes are hard to find and now we are in the crunch time and we don’t have enough boxes. We will keep looking.

It has been a very strange thing this move. We fought for a year for the transfer; we had 8 weeks to get ready for the move and like every thing in our lives it has not gone smoothly. It has been very stressful. I think a large part of it is that the building we are in has been under construction for the last year. We finally get our balcony back and then they start on the windows, right in the middle of us packing. So we had to stop packing so they could get to the windows. Then we start again. Then they tell us that they have to do more work, so we stop again. It turns out that the balconies are not safe. Go figure. So they come back twice to do repairs. Oh and they finally put locks on the doors so little kids cannot open the doors and fall off the unsafe balconies. What a joke. They replaced all the doors with ones that had no locks so there was no way to keep your kids from opening the doors. Then they put out a notice telling people they could not put their own locks on and that they would be charged if they did. Then weeks latter they get around to putting locks on.

This whole construction thing has been a headache from day one. Of course we are getting out just as they are done. One year of unsafe volumes of sound as they ripped out the balconies, with a year wait for them to put them back and then they are not safe. Just think about having some one with a jackhammer working outside your window not two feet away. They have ear protection, we did not. Also with the way the building is the sound and vibration went threw out the building. It never ended for a year. Add the window and door replacements and you have a lot of unhappy people. Also, since the construction started most of the people in the building have been getting sick, it is thought that the assault of sound and dust and who knows what else has a lot to do with it. Now they are going to replace the kid’s park in the next few weeks, if they ever get started. The non-stop construction has been stressful all by itself, but add in the loss of our air conditioner because of the construction and us moving, well stress is a good word to use.

Then we have all the fun with the people we have here. Not all are bad neighbours, most people I have never met but expect they are just like us, hardworking and just trying to live out their lives the best they can for themselves and their kids. But like any low-income housing, or any large apartment building you get some bad apples. Just a few weeks ago we has some stooped people (men, drink, drugs and guns, babysitting not a good combo) who got video taped shooting guns in the building. They got charged and the baby they were babysitting was removed from the mom. Sad for her, but unsafe for every one else.

There is always some thing like that going on around here. People go around at night and see if doors are open so they can break in. We have had that happen to many times to count, people trying our door in the middle of the night. The last one was two weeks ago. Then we get the kids pulling the fire alarm at lest once every week or so, usually in the middle of the night. What fun. Only this last time it was not a kid pulling the alarm, it was some one building a fire in one of the stairwells. Nice, thanks for trying to hurt every one. They built up a pile of flammables and then lit it. That was about three weeks ago.

Then you add to the mix a super that has just been moved down to janitor because she was letting herself into people’s apartments with out 24-hour notices and no reason to be in the apartment. How do we know this, well we are one of the people who told city housing we did not want her having access to our apartment any more. She kept forgetting that we work from home and usually one of us is home. She tried to many times to come into the apartment, surprise we are home, why are you opening our door. They also just put in a camera in the laundry room, because there was to many thefts of peoples clothing. Guess who got caught going into the washer where other peoples clothing was in. Yep, the super that is now the janitor. She was complaining that they don’t have access to the hard drive the video camera is being saved on. Strange how the thefts went away, but she still has a job.

Our fridge has not worked for the last three years, and they will not replace it. Why, because there is nothing wrong with it we just have the settings wrong. They set the settings and it is still freezing the food in the fridge. Oh and you cannot even keep ice cream in the freezer, it is soft. We have had food poisoning several times now. Food freezes, unfreezes over and over again. You never know when it happens, or what food is ok. Thank goodness we have a little freezer of our own. That does not help with the food we have lost from the fridge part that froze. It is very hard when you are on a tight budget to have to throw out fresh food because it froze and then unfroze in your fridge and is bad. Our stove only has one good burner and they will not replace it or have it fixed. Last word was that they would not fix any thing for us since we asked for the transfer; they will just replace it all once we have moved. Thanks a lot. Lets just say we are happy we are moving now, and wishing we could have moved a year ago when we first tried to.

The funny thing is we have been happy here. It is better then the place we left. We are only moving so our kids can each have a bedroom. Having them both in the bedroom has caused them to have sleeping issues, and well they just need their own space like any one else.