How to Get Through a Gong Show & this Month’s Masterclass

I’m sitting here in our lovely, spacious, luxurious, bright, modern new home, reflecting on what an absolute gong show it was to move in here. Let me tell you why and then I’ll share some learnings and some photos of our new place, along with this month’s Self-Care Masterclass topic.

Last Tuesday, we started our exodus from our amazing little lifestyle condo. We had scheduled three days for our move to our new place. The way we like to move is sans boxes, meaning that we have a bunch of rubbermaid containers that we fill up, drive over and empty to go back and do more of the same.

Most of Tuesday was spent making trips back and forth using our car, along with a borrowed vehicle from my mother-in-law. It worked quite well, apart from the heat wave and a 3 hour delay in being let into our new place. My husband, Paul, managed to teach a number of hours of summer school along with packing, driving and unpacking, and the kids and I worked around his schedule.

On Wednesday (Day 2 of crazy heat wave) we spent the morning shuttling more stuff to our new place, as Paul did another few hours of summer school online teaching and marking, along with finishing up his regular teaching job. In the afternoon, he and his dad went to pick up our moving truck.

He called me from the moving truck place with the interesting news that they didn’t actually have a moving truck for us. Apparently they had called and left a message that Paul didn’t get. It was unfortunate, because we had booked another moving truck with a different company but hadn’t heard back from them, so Paul booked with this new place, only to discover they had no trucks on the day of our move. Huh.

Being solution oriented, he worked a little magic to get us a truck for a few hours for that afternoon. Here’s where it got really interesting. Once we got the truck back to our place, we learned that if we moved even a single item out of our place into a moving truck without one of the building employees supervising the door, we would be fined $1000. The kicker was that there was an employee still available, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t willing to supervise that day. (We had him booked for the next day.)

Essentially, we were trapped in our place with all our big items ready to go and no way to get them out. All we could do was laugh (and sweat, because by that time, it was around 38C/100F).

“Alright,” I said. “There’s got to be a solution here. There must be something we can do.”

The solution we came up with was to park the moving truck 2 blocks away and then Paul and 13 year old Oakley carried as many of our big items down the block as they could. Like I said… gong show.

Sadly, we only filled up the moving truck to about a quarter of its capacity, but Paul thought that one of the building council members was spying on us and we sure didn’t want to pay $1000 for our move, so we took one trip with the truck, emptied it out and returned it. 

By that time, it was about 8:00pm and we were pretty hungry. (We realized that we kind of didn’t really eat lunch.) We decided on a great pizza restaurant, drove over and found out that it had closed 7 minutes prior to our arrival.

Trying to keep our spirits high, we chose another place and drove over. Also closed. Apparently people don’t need dinner past 8:00pm. After some serious brainstorming, we ended up at a different pizza restaurant that was serving take out on its patio. Dinner was served by 9:30pm, as we continued to swelter.

Paul spent a good 3 hours that night trying to find some sort of vehicle we could use the following day to move the rest of our big stuff. Late into the night, he found what was likely the only van left in the city. We crossed our fingers, hoping it would be big enough. 

The next day, we woke up bright and early to more record highs, managed to get the van and even got some help for the rest of the move. The van turned out to be exactly the perfect size for the remainder of our larger items. Woohoo!

There were a couple of other “moments” that day. One was when a bin with three of my favourite bowls fell off the dolly. They didn’t make it. Another one was when a jar of our beloved Glory Bowl dressing smashed on the tile floor as we were emptying our fridge. That was messy. 

Once we got everything out of the old place and into the new one, we realized that it was going to be way too hot to sleep. We set out to find some fans, but they were sold out in every place we checked. 

Meanwhile, I had a call to run that evening and our new wifi still wasn’t working. (Why I thought doing a call on moving day was a good idea eludes me, but hey, who doesn’t love additional time pressure?)

With about an hour to go before I had to be on the call and me on the phone with an internet guy who had me test every outlet I could find to no avail, I decided I would have to find another solution.

I drove across the city to my parents’ house and got all set up with just minutes to spare. The call went brilliantly, we had another late night dinner (realizing that, again, we had forgotten to eat lunch and feed our kids) and we set out back to our new place that felt like the inside of an oven.

My comment to my husband was: I know we’re only given what we can handle, so this is really a compliment, because, apparently, we can handle A LOT! 

It’s now a week later, we’re mostly moved in, we’ve got a whole bunch of fans, and I’m feeling more organized than ever with all our new closet space. (We went from 3 closets to 8! It’s heaven, I tell you; HEAVEN!!!)

So, here’s what I learned:

>it’s so important to go with the flow, especially when the unexpected happens

>there’s always a solution and to access it, deep breaths are needed 

>moving during the week is not recommended when teaching summer school and finishing up regular school at the same time

>don’t host calls for 600 people on moving day

>eat lunch when doing heavy manual labour

>when a heat wave is predicted, make sure you get fans before said heat wave arrives

>a positive attitude and a sense of humour can make even the most challenging experiences feel like an adventure

So that’s that. Thanks for reading about our move!

Here are some photos. Although there are clearly still some things that need to find homes and our table, desk and chairs are temporary solutions, I think we're doing pretty well.

How about that stylish vinyl picnic table cloth?!?

Now, a quick little bit of info about this month’s Self-Care Masterclass, happening on Friday, July 23 at 1:00pm.

Things are opening up again and many people are just going to plunge right back into regular life without making a plan, or reflecting on what they learned through the pandemic. My invitation is to get mindful about reintegration so that you leave behind what no longer serves you, as well as carry forward what was really working in your life before things shut down.

Join me for: 

Creating an Inspired Action Plan for Reintegration aka Consciously Crafting a New Normal that Works for You

It will be a done-with-you experience, meaning that I’ll guide you through some powerful reflections and processes to help you contemplate and make a plan, right during the masterclass. Most people aren’t going to take the time to do this exercise, and they’re going to struggle and suffer to find a new normal that works for them.

By taking 90 minutes to get clear on how you want to move forward, you’ll save yourself so much time and effort. 

To register for the masterclass, click here. Even if you can’t attend live, you’ll get permanent access to the recording so you can follow along at your convenience.

As always, thank you for tuning in. I appreciate you and send you a big high five for taking time to inform yourself about self-care that works.

With uplifting love and adventurous courage,

Christina

Creator of Courageous Self-Care

Proud owner of 5 oscillating fans

Avid cupboard organizer