Thursday 27 March 2014

Hoping....



We have the agent coming over tonight to give us the last bit of details before the home photographer comes in tomorrow.  I see me working on some stuff tomorrow morning after the DH heads off to work.  I hope that the agent comes back on Saturday and plunks the sign in the front flower bed.

I was hoping that we would be the only house on the block when it came time to put the sign up in but it turns out that we will be the 3rd one.

The house on the main road is the same floor plan as ours but they are asking $5,000 less than what we are planning.  Also if you looking on the realtor website they only have a picture of the front of the house.  I am thinking that if it was a newer listing that they won't have time to load them up.  But I have noticed the sign out front for almost 2 weeks so that makes me think that the place might need work and they don't want to post pictures.

The second house is further down our street and they are a different floor plan that is over 3 stories.  I sometimes an envious of these floor plans since their garage makes a wall to put the television up against where our stairs going up are on the garage wall.  They are asking the same price that we are offering.  They have been on the market for less than a week and they have an open house on Saturday. 

Then there is us. I am hoping that the Realtor can work quickly and perhaps have an open house on Saturday for us too.  I would like to let folks know that there is an option out there in case they don't like the 3 floors for a townhouse.

I guess I won't really know until he comes over tonight.

Monday 24 March 2014

Meeting of the minds


And it was very interesting!

Last week I had 3 appointments that were all about me.  I felt a little selfish but hey, I took a fill day off from work for it.
 
When I saw Susanne last week she asked me to keep track of my eating again.  I am to see if I am eating because the clock tells me to or am I honestly hungry.  The reasoning for this is to see if I can keep to the schedule that the surgery will have me on.  Apparently RNY patients will lose the ability to feel hunger because of the loss of the peristaltic wave action in the tummy.  So since we are to "graze" and I am already eating like that throughout the week I am curious to see what the clock has it at.

Then I was off to see Dr. Sarah about changing up my meds.  With the surgery my tummy won't be able to absorb anything that needs to sit in the body for a while including meds.  So that means my happy pills that are XR (extended release) will be pretty much useless in my tummy.  So we talked about reducing the dose to the minimum levels and then eventually getting off of them entirely.  In all honesty this kind of scares me.  As the DH can tell you, for me to miss a dose causes a dramatic change that is noticeable. I know I have Nikki for this but I guess it something I have to think about.

Next up was getting to Toronto (just north of the CN Tower) for my meeting with the Social Worker for the surgery. She is to see if I have things in place to have the surgery and the preliminary history write up for the following doctors and specialists.  I was there for an hour and in the beginning she was very cookie cutter with questions that required a yes or a no.  By the time I needed to leave she was giving me hints and tips on how to proceed.  She gave me a suggestion for my happy pills that she is going to send to Dr. Sarah.  The SW suggested that I go to the half dosage I am on but taking it twice a day opened up over food.  I would have never thought of that!  She also noticed that the next step that I have to take is to see their nurse.  The reason for seeing this nurse in particular is to see if my body can handle the surgery.  I guess I will get blood work done and poked with a bit of prodding in there.  Anyway, the SW noticed that my appointment was in late May and she resonated what Tim and HerderInTheSunshine said about seeing if there was a cancellation coming up so I could get in sooner to see the nurse.  Well lo an behold, there was!  So now I am back to Toronto for 4 pm on the 7th of May!  Whee!  Now I just need to see if I can get a few hours off early or will I have to work a full day.

Tuesday 18 March 2014

A piece of the past.....

I was out on the other job and ended up driving past my old skating arena, or what should have been the old skating arena.  It is now a flat, grated lot with a view right to the back of the row of houses that looked down on it.

I was shocked to see that it had been gone, that I don't remember reading anywhere in the paper that it was going to be gone and how fast it was taken down.

The reason that it hits so close to home is that this is where I learned how to skate all through public school right into high school.  When you couldn't find me at home I was at the arena either working on patch pattern, learning a waltz or was in a skating carnival with my little brother.  Mind you, my brother only survived one year but I was bitten by the bug.

Things that I will always remember about that place is:
-picked up sharpened skates with masking tape on the blades so we wouldn't cut ourselves
-the popcorn vending machine that had the stale, orange popcorn in it.  It was a treat after skating if we were there over the dinner hour.
-watching my brother being a terrorist in our version of Back to the Future skating carnival
-being able to sit after our skating lesson and watch the next level up power skate to warm up.  Once I made it to this level I used to wave at the on lookers just like someone did to me.
-and who could forget warming up to Donald Duck and the gang!

As the DH said "nothing is static and things change"  I guess the rink was supposed to be there forever.

This is my golden playing in the snow that was left by the Zamboni that had emptied its hold during the summer at a charity walk behind the arena.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Wow what whirl wind!

Orientation went well in my mind.  I took the DH as my +1 and we had to pay for parking downtown that worked out to the tune of $24.  I would have taken the subway but the levelled parking at the mall was under construction so I told the DH to drive straight down.
We got there early and I got into line to register and I could hear setting up the chairs for the seminar.  The DH and I grabbed the near to last row and on an end since I had Nikki and settled into the “plus sized” chairs and waited.
We had a nurse give us the orientation and pretty much verified everything that was in the booklet that I got from Tim at the support group.  What I took away from the session (besides a file folder of papers that I have to fill out) was the reasoning behind the yeasty bread products not being allowed and also that Guelph isn’t an option for my surgery.  If I was to take the orientation at Guelph, I would be having my surgery at Guelph. So since my orientation was at TWH, I will be at one of the three that is included in their group of hospitals.  As I left they had my next 2 appointments set up so I have the social worker on March the 20th and the nurse in May.  I thought that I could skip the social worker since I am seeing Susanne, but since all the people that I see through this all get together and decide if I can handle the surgery.  So there is no fast tracking and I guess I just have to be patient and wait it all out.
Group was fun this month.  It was at the usual hang out but we had new face that just had surgery 6 weeks ago.  She was actually the same date as Marvin and she was there because he told her about the group.  It is amazing how something as simple as side effects from surgery could bring out such candid chatter.  The room was still full of ladies and there were topics that I never thought might be linked to the surgery.  Well that all ceased to exist as soon as Marvin arrived but that is okay since he took the conversation in a whole new direction.   I think I am going to have to set an alarm for next time since no one has a sense of time when start chatting and there isn’t a clock in the area we sit.  I am sure that if the DH didn’t text me ask if I was taking Mel out we still would be sitting there.
The house is painted from top to bottom, the repairs are all fixed up and we have had enough trips to the storage locker the house sounds empty.  Now the only thing left is to steam clean the carpets and have the pictures taken so that we can have the agent put it on the market.  I have had a nanosecond of a thought about staying and then I think about this summer and I don’t think it is fair to the girls not to have any grass to roll in or the fact I would love to sit outside to read and not deal with onlookers trying to park or the trains. 
We have an appraiser coming in to see if the house is really worth the new mortgage that we have to temporarily need to hold us over to the new house.  According to the DH she is a bit of flake so I am hoping that she doesn’t undercut the value.  At least in my mind this will let me know that all the painting and stuff will be worth it and it translated into a dollar amount.  So I am hoping that we can have the house up on the market in a few weeks so that I can plan my first bbq J