Heal the world (on Michael Jackson and the cool police)

One afternoon, shortly after we moved to Norway, I got into the car to drive to the supermarket for our weekly groceries. Indulging in the luxury of actually being On My Own in the car, without kids requesting to listen to the same audiobook yet again, I cranked the radio to full power. After another incomprehensible commercial on Radio Norge, a new song started. Heal the world. By Michael Jackson.

And that's where it started. Listening to Michael Jackson's 90's voice, I started to cry. I cried for my internet-friend who was making memories with her daughter who was terminally ill (talk about healing the world, hunh?). I cried for my friend whom I had talked to on the phone that week. Her family had come out on the losing side of a power struggle in their church. A power struggle that they had worked so hard at to defuse, sharing love and compassion to counteract the power play. I cried for the world being on fire, so desperately in need of a 2016 version of the song that was playing. And I cried over Michael Jackson.

Halfway through the song, the crying had turned into a chest clenching, throat catching, snot pouring blubberfest. At that point I should have pulled over and wait for my breakdown to pass. Instead I plowed on along the deserted mountain road, kindly asking the herd of moose lurking in the forest to please not cross the road! At that stage, I would not have known what hit me until me and my cute little yellow car had been turned into a giant tin of Norwegian liverpostei. I cried and cried and sang along at the top of my voice, wishing somehow that just singing about healing the world would actually do some good.

Of course another song came on after that and, as usually happens when something hits you that hard out of the blue, there is nothing like a Lady Gaga song to make you wonder why on earth you let such a tear-jerky-song get to you in the first place. However, this time that rhetorical question kept begging for an answer. In particular the part of me crying over Michael Jackson. And although I usually just write about all the trouble I get into just leading my day-to-day life, I feel compelled to share with you the outcome of my weeks of soul searching following this particular car ride.

The reason I cried over Michael Jackson, was because I felt I had not given him the credits he deserved for the artist he was. And yes, I know, he could not have cared less about my opinion of him. Yet in my own personal sphere, the acknowledgment of Michael Jackson being truly the King of Pop, was a biggie. It traced right back to my high school years and all the coming-of-age anxiety that came with that.

Although I had already encountered the power of the masses during my elementary school years (oh the bullying...), it wasn't until high school that something cracked and I became aware of how my own behaviour, style, thoughts, music I listened to, clothes I wore, books I read and boys I fancied shaped my image and thus how people perceived me. Or even what they could hold me accountable for. Looking back, I wish that crack had never happened. And not just because I would have allowed myself to appreciate Michael Jackson's music.

I realized that from that "crack" onwards, I had been worried about the cool police. The entity that I have never been able to put my finger on, but who spoke through my peers and sometimes even my friends. The one that made me feel stupid and shallow for liking something. And out of that came the fear of being associated with something. Because pretty soon I figured that the cool police did not only care for the direct implications of taste-in-whatever, but also about what that taste would mean for the group I belonged in. Try explaining your love for "Heal the world" to a 15-year-old who is desperately trying to be an alternative rock chick that lives for Pearl Jam and Sylvia Plath. It just doesn't fit. Because the realm of Heal the world would at best be the nerdy cousin who still had posters lining his wall of Michael Jackson. With Bubbles, for crying out loud!

The only person who was apparently immune to this kind of teenage-angst was my dear friend from high school who grew up to be the only erudite person my generation ever produced (and in this erudite is a compliment and only used for lack of a better word). I still love him dearly for fostering my spirit and mind in that godforsaken period that was my high school years.

One would hope that the cool police is a figment of a teenager's imagination. Or that I was/am just particularly vulnerable for "what other people think of me". That hardly anybody else cares to judge themselves by the mere standard of "what other people think".

But somehow, I doubt that.

For in the years after leaving high school, the cool police was still there. Even if it branched out into different departments. Such as the department of Slutty-and-Prude for example. Boy, there was just no winning there.

The force of the whatever-police hit me hard again once I became pregnant. Holy smokes! I think parenting has been by far the most deeply entrenched pissing contest I have ever been in. From the moment my daughter was born it seems I have been playing defence. Between the sleep-training-formula-feeding-police and the attachment-parenting-police there is just no middle ground to be a vulnerable mom looking for a way to deal with this amazingly scary new life you are given. Why do we do this to ourselves?! Why do some people feel the need to play the parenting-police and tell me that I should follow the rules (of whatever parenting craze this person belongs to) instead of looking at me and my child and just TALK with me. And for goodness sake share their stories of not-knowing-what-to-do with me...

It took me weeks to turn the above into a slightly coherent story. To make up my mind about why I cried so hard that afternoon. Thinking about "the police" has made me realize that "the police" is omnipresent and comes in many different shapes and sizes. My dear friend clearly ran in to the God police at church, a group of people who apparently thought they could speak for the lord and hurt my friend in the process. I know I have run into the Organic-Produce-police, the education-police and the body-image police more times than I can count. And I am just tired of weighing my own feelings against what I think other people will think of me. And I realize that as much as I would like to blame the police, I can only blame myself.

So I have decided to stop. Coming to a new country has given me an excellent opportunity to shake off the police once and for all. I am no longer going to assume that anything I do will immediately result in a cascade of opinion forming in another person's head, thus placing me in a cubicle that I may not belong in. They will find out soon enough that I probably don't fit anyway ;-) But what is more, I have decided to switch of my own police as well. I will no longer let my ideas of what it means to wear/buy/like/read something cloud my impression of someone. From now on, I will try to appreciate people at face value. Because the other option has left me bitter and scared. And if there is any possibility of me starting to save at least part of my little world, it is by embracing people, rather than trying to make sense of them using "the police".

Now the only thing I have to be vigilant about is that I do not turn into the "give-no-heed-to-the-police"police myself...

Welcome home

So, my last blog post ended with us seeing our new country from the deck of the ferry. However, we were still a long way from home!

Some people hardly make the same mistake twixe. I am not one of those people. Twixe is considered a pretty good score when it comes to making mistakes in my book! In this case, I already had made the mistake once that Norway = home. It's not. Our home is still about a day's drive from wherever you enter Norway. And since we arrived a couple of days before Midsummer's Night, a day's drive is a rather stretchy concept...

On the plus side, though, the girls had definitely stretched their legs on the ferry. And Julie, well, poor Julie just had to hang in there for a little longer! In any case, she should relish the fact that she was in the back of the claustrovan, rather than cooped up in quarantine at Norwegian customs. You know, with my form-filling-capabilities, being banned from entering Norway was a very plausible scenario for our fur baby!

The first obstacle on our route was Oslo. When Menno and I drove to Trondheim, we got to Oslo around 5pm and made it past Oslo at 7.30pm (that's right, 2.5 hours for 25km). This time around, we got to Oslo at least an hour before that! And, again, made it past Oslo at 7.30pm. I will have to look it up, but I think in Norse mythology Oslo is the God of Congested Traffic...

It is after tedious Oslo, however, that the truly "fun" part of the journey begins. Because between Oslo and Trondheim lies a 500km stretch of pristine 2-lane highway (yeah right...) that winds its way between the mountains and valleys. Glorious vista's await you. If you dare take your eyes off the road for 2 milliseconds that is. I never dared. Because to me, 2-lane highways, with trucks, are my worst nightmare.

I consider myself to be a cautious driver. My friends refer to me as a senior driver. In fact, some have suggested my driving style could use a little cayenne pepper. And, I know, I should drive faster. But I am too darn scared of ending up in a car crash. Plus, I need to be a cautious driver, since my girls are relentless at getting my attention while I am driving. Not a good situation (and I truly need to work on that!).

So, driving 2-lane traffic in a country that I have never been in before, with humongous trucks all around has me sending prayers to whatever deity cares to protect my family from imminent death. I try to stick to the speed limit, but usually I drive just a tad slower than that. Resulting in angry trucks driving up so closely behind me that I can almost hear the driver cursing this blasted tourist car that is blocking their way. The trucks coming from the opposite direction are obviously not hindered by my lack of speed, so they give a new meaning to the expression "trundling down the hill". My teeth rattle every time a truck passes us.

Luckily for me (and the girls) I am not the only driver and my dad is about as experienced a driver as one can possibly be. Still, it took a looooooong time on those winding roads. We took a different route when driving up with the girls than I did with Menno, so the promise of perhaps seeing a moose to the girls proved to be an empty one. Insert grumpy girls here. For the most part, though, the girls were great! They read their books, listened to their audiobooks, chatted incessantly (Eluin) and happily accepted all the goodies grandpa offered them (oh, the novelty of a bag of mars/snickers/bounty/twix mini's!).

But of course no trip with young kids, and Ms. E in particular, is without incidents. She waited until we were about 2 hours away from our final destination to work her magic. We had been driving for a very long time through Norway's endless forests when we all desperately needed to pee. Unfortunately, gas stations, or rest areas with a washroom, were few and far between. In this particular case too far between. I saw a sign for a gas station and took the exit off the highway. Alas...the gasstation proved to be for farm vehicles only and there was NO washroom. But, as the gas station was in the middle of the forest, we decided to embrace our inner forest girls and go au naturel!

Jura and Nori still need a little help when it comes to peeing in the woods and I was rather pre-occupied with my own pelvic floor muscles to pay sufficient attention to the danger that has just climbed out of the van. It was only after I got out of the woods myself that I saw Eluin in getting ready to make a big mistake. She was standing at the edge of the road with her pants around her ankles, her hands on her hips and a determined look on her face.

The thought crossed my mind that she was about to pee, but surely she knew she needed my help...or at least squat. I picked up my pace, told Eluin that she had to wait for me. To no avail, of course. As I was clambering out of the bushes, she assured me that she was fine. "I can do this mom!" And she started to pee. Standing upright. All over her pants and shoes. I yelled: "What on earth are you doing, you need to wait for me so I can pick you up!" She looked at me angrily and said: "I don't need you to pick me up, because I can pee just like him!" (at which she pointed at grandpa). Pee like grandpa. That's right. That's what she did. In fact, the phrase "pee like grandpa" has become an expression in our household to explain the kind of "I can do this" plans that can only end badly ;-)

With relatively empty bladders and dry pants for Eluin we made it HOME! Menno was waiting for us and although it was well after midnight, it was still light enough to unload the van. I still need to bake a cake for the entire neighbourhood to make up for the racket we made that night. We put up a bed in the playroom, grandpa had a bed in the basement that was left by the previous tenants and we were all asleep within minutes!

The next day, me and the girls had to go to the police station to get our "personal number". Menno had picked June 16th a couple of weeks before as a random date. And although it was through factors which were outside of our scope of influence that we ended up in Norway on June 15th, I still take pride in making it to that particular appointment! I mean, it is the first and foremost thing we had to do when entering Norway, it takes about 3 weeks before you can get an appointment, and we managed to that on our first day home. How's that for efficient planning?

The rest of the days that my dad was in town we unscrupulously used his added benefits (huge van, lifelong experience with assembling IKEA furniture, great cook and grandpa-pur-sang) to whip our home into liveable shape! And I have to say, we managed quite nicely! Our shipment from Canada arrived on June 16th as well. And so the great unpacking could begin, and the girls were finally reunited with all their pretty stuff that they had missed for so many months.

All good things must come to an end, though, and before I knew it, I had to go and pick up my brother from the airport. I am forever grateful to my dad for driving us up to Norway, but I am equally grateful for my brother flying all the way out to Trondheim, just to have a cup of coffee at our newly assembled kitchen table, before driving back to Holland as my dad's co-pilot.

And now we're here. Without family and no friends. We have met some acquaintances with serious potential in the friendship department, though, so that's good news. Nevertheless, I have felt lost now and again. And I have lost my kids now and again. Our living space has almost tripled in comparison to Canada, so I am not always completely sure where my kids reside. Especially when they have sneaked off with an iPad ;-)

Norway is our home and I will work my way through these awkward first months, just like I did in Canada. Trying very hard not to compare these first months with my first months in Canada, though...'cause that would still just hurt too much.

On our way to Norway

Spoiler alert: We made it safely to Norway and have been living here quite happily for almost 3 weeks now :-)

After moving from our apartment in Vancouver, to our friend's basement suite, Menno moved out to Norway in March. The girls and me moved to Holland in mid-March. Poor Julie had to stay  behind for a couple of weeks until I came back to Vancouver for 5 days of absolute kid-free bliss and picked her up.

One would imagine that between moving from Vancouver to Holland and moving from Holland to Norway, the girls and I would experience a little lull in the moving hustle and bustle. The opposite was true. Because I refused to turn our home in Haarlem into our homebase for our time in Holland, we decided to stay at relatives and house sit where possible. The benefit of this was that I did not have to refurbish our home in Haarlem to accommodate 4 people and a dog, nor that I had to work my behind off to keep the home in semi-respectable state for possible viewings of the property. The downside to this plan was that we never slept in one place for more than five nights in a row. Which also meant that I had to squeeze every drop of nomadic spirit out of my wannabe-Gypsy-genes to keep things fun (for the girls) and slightly organized (for me).

It probably does not come as a surprise that after a couple of months of this trooping around, things started to fray a little around the edges. However, at the end of May, things started to look up! The sale of our home was approaching it's final stages and Menno had managed to find a great family home in Spongdal, a small town in the countryside that surrounds Trondheim. It was my dad (who will be the guest star in this particular junovancouver episode) who hatched a plan to make our start in Norway a little more easy.

He suggested that we could borrow his car for the first months in Norway, so we had a means of getting around town. He also suggested that Menno and me would drive said car to Norway and that I would stay there for a couple of days to get to know our future place of residence. Thankfully our family, yet again, offered to provide the necessary child care to make this trip a possibility.

So, off we went. In a cute, little, yellow Kia Picanto. We left the Netherlands at 5pm and quickly sped through Northern Germany on our way to Denmark. We planned to cross the bridge connecting Denmark to Sweden and drive up to Norway (and then up to Trondheim). Added bonus of our trip was, that our little car doubled as a relationship pressure cooker. When you have a relationship where one talks too much and one talks too little, and you keep those two apart for an extended period of time, things can grow askew. Good thing that it took us close to 24 hours of solid driving to get to our destination! By the time we reached the outskirts of Trondheim city, we had managed to reach a new equilibrium.

Trondheim took me by a storm, a beautiful old (and cold!!!) city on the coast.  After seeing our future home (and meeting the amazing people who were the tenants!), I could totally imagine us having a great time there! It was during those days in Trondheim that we received the news that the people who had placed the highest bid on our home had had a positive outcome of their talk with their financial advisor*. Thus, in a matter of days, we had a timeframe for our move to Norway. We would start driving up to Norway only 2.5 weeks after I left Trondheim!

So, back in Holland, it was time to get serious about packing! My dad had offered to drive us, and our belongings, to Norway. He pretty much went as far as to buy a new 7-seater-cargo-van for this adventure! The prospect of having a lot of cargo space had made me quite greedy... Not only were we planning to bring some furniture from our home in Haarlem (dining room table, chairs, queensize bed + mattress), we also had to accommodate all 10 suitcases that we brought in from Canada. Not to mention the books, tableware, blankets and bikes for all three girls that I had acquired during our time in Holland...yikes.

After packing, repacking, leaving some things behind and packing again, we managed to get our little moving van ready for departure. We had booked a ferry from Hirtshals, Denmark, to Langesund, Norway. Because we were not sure how the first leg of our journey would go, my dad came up with the idea to use the mattress we were bringing and turn our moving van into a makeshift campervan.

Do you see that mattress? On top of it, barely visible, we stacked Jura and Nori's bikes and a stepladder to allow me to climb on top of it. After the rather uneventful drive to Hirtshals, Denmark, we decided to forego the pricey option of sleeping in a hotel and try out the claustrovan!

So, after dinner we drove around town to find a good place to park. On our way to the ferry harbour, we encountered a rather eerie scene. A large grassy field, on which several RV's were parked in a circle. Behind virtually every RV's window, one could see the flickering of TV's playing inside. We arrived rather late and we are, of course, a travelling circus without a tent. Which means we are loud. Always. First off, we had to unload the stepladder, then unload the bikes and lock them beside the van. I had to unearth the pillows and duvet from the rubble in the back of the van. Nori took one look at the space available on the mattress and decided to sleep in the front seat. So, I had to take out all the car seats in order for my dad to have a place to sleep in the backseat, too. Oh, and to add to all the clamour, Julie was incessantly barking, too stressed out after being locked up in a crate for hours at a time.

However...

There was no sign of life from any of the RV's. No one pulled back their curtains, no one even peeked out their window! Throughout the night, we made more racket than I had hoped we would. Eluin had a rash on her back that had gotten infected, so she tossed and turned like the dough hook on a kitchenaid. Nori and my dad got cold halfway through the night, so my dad decided to use the van's independent vehicle heater... In order to start that, though, he had to get out of the van (zzzzhhhjingggg-klunk of the sliding door), open the driver's door, start the heater, shut the driver's door (schklunk!) and close the sliding door again (zzzzhhhhjingggg-schluck-zzzzhhhhjinggggg-zhhhhhhhhjing-schluck-zzzzzzzhhhhhjingggggg-zzzzzzzzhhhhhhhjinggggg-KLUNCK). Yup. That sliding door never closed properly the first 2 times around. Oh, and the heater shut off after 20 minutes again. So yes, we were loud. Yet, the next morning, NO ONE told us off. No one even showed their face!

When we left the RV-campsite, I realized something... Back in Canada, I thought RV's were the most glamorous, and safest, way to enjoy camping. On many a camping trip, I lay in my tent, softly whimpering while keeping a close ear on the sounds outside my tent. In my mind, it would only be a matter of minutes before a bloodthirsty bear or cougar would jump onto our tent and devour us all. I remember cursing our hubris for not dishing out the dough needed to rent an RV, a fortress of steel and convenience. In Europe, however, bears are scarce. One can camp in a tent and worry about little more than mosquitoes and whether the neighbours can hear your farts. One does not need a fortress of steel and convenience to survive. In Europe, RV's are kinda lame. And, judging by our experience at the RV campsite, I would say there is a high probability that RV's are the preferred mode of transportation for the undead...

Anyhow, I ramble. The night in the claustrovan passed without much ado and soon we were on our way to the ferry terminal. In line for the ferry, Nori gave a snore-by-snort account of the difference in snoring techniques of Menno and my dad ;-) Soon we boarded the ferry and we spent 4.5 hours stretching our legs, eating Danish pastries and "storming" (a verb Jura and I invented for chasing of seasickness by standing on the windiest, rainiest spot on deck :-) ).

And there it was... Our new country, the place we get to call home! Rainy, cold, foggy, but nonetheless, THERE! We made it!

To Norway, that is. The story of the rest of the trip and our first impression of Norway will have to wait 'till some other time!

* Unfortunately, the buyers were unable after all to get a mortgage, so our house is back on the market. To be continued, for sure!

Can I see some ID, please?

The other day, I was in a contest with Jura. It was a rather silly contest. We were trying to see who was most successful at using their toes to touch their lips, pick their nose and brush their hair. This used to be a circus trick that I was proud of. No matter how un-athletic my body is, at least I had the flexibility to do that. Had... Because I can no longer do it as well as I used to. And it made me realize that, thankfully, I am growing old! No matter how quickly my body deteriorates, though, I know my heart will be a couple of years behind. That's right, I take pride in being young at heart! Which is a euphemistic way of saying I have the mental and emotional maturity of a 17-year old...

Having been a mental 17-year old for a good 20 years now, I have mastered the art of making a complete and utter fool out of myself (there is a reason why I take pride in literally being able to stick my foot in my mouth ;-) ). No one can car-boogie the way I do! I can get entire traffic jams to boogie along on the tunes playing in my car. I still sing loud and proud, even when I am not in the shower. Awkward situations (or good looking guys) can still make me blush ferociously. And I think my young heart makes me a nice person to hang out with. If only for the reason that I will make you feel much more mature and sophisticated!

My immaturity starts to be a problem, though, whenever people expect me to do grown-up things. Like, say, be a mom. Or sell a house. And not only do I lack the mental maturity to deal with these matters, I also have a severe problem with red tape. Anything slightly reeking of bureaucracy will have my brain switch to a state of well-practiced procrastination. Nothing will make my home sparkle with cleanliness the way a passport application that's due the next day does!

Nevertheless, life got the me in the situation I am in right now. A mom of 3 kids with her husband already at work in another country, blessed with the task of trying to sell our house we still "own" in Holland asap for a reasonable price. While still making sure said kids and dog stay alive as well. Yup. That's me. No matter how many people boogie along with me in their cars, at the start, I knew this would look like a very sloooooooowwww car crash happening right in front of me.

I hoped though, that with some expert steering manoeuvres, I could reduce the damage of the car crash to a minimum. Fortunately for my kids, my metaphorical car is equipped with the most sophisticated airbags available, called FAMILY. Throughout this ordeal, I knew I could rely on our family to provide support and to mitigate the impact this part of life's road has on our kids. For that alone, I am eternally grateful. Luckily, my car is also equipped with state of the art intelligence, like the interweb and direct phone lines to "people who have sold houses before" to ask for support, ideas and how they would proceed.

The actual steering, though, had to come from me. I say had, because it seems the car has almost stopped spinning and it is almost time to look what damage, if any, has been done. Tomorrow I hope to sign the initial real estate buying agreement, or whatever that is called in English, with the prospective buyers of our house. Almost there.

So, with our house almost sold, in a little over a month, one would think this car crash can't have been that bad. Hah. Lemme just fill you in what scenes can unfold when you allow me, with 3 kids, to do a job this big!

First off, for financial reasons, which I have questioned numerous times over the past few weeks, we decided we would not get a "proper" real estate agent. Instead, we would use a new format. An internet real estate agent. They provide the seller with the appropriate information and support and put the listing for the house online on the big search engine that all Dutch people use to look for a new house. The pictures and text for the listing would come from my hand and in case of anyone wanting a tour of the house...I would be the one giving the tour. Sounds like an easy job, right?

Right. Well, let me paint you some pictures of what happens when a lady who lacks basic maturity in the company of 3 children with a high go-getter mentality are left in charge of a job like this.

Let's start with the fact that in order to even start the process of listing real estate, there is a incredible stack of Very Important Papers (VIP's) that need to be gathered. These VIP's are generally not found in 1 place. Especially if you have left for Canada 5 years before. After collecting these VIP's from various relatives' attics, I just had to digitally send them to the internet real estate agent. No biggie. Except, at that point I was in my mom's home. She has a scanner, but I am digitally clueless and had no idea how to get that darn thing to work. So instead, I tried using my iPad as a scanner. Of course my iPad's battery needed to be charged, because my girls had been binge watching Netflix on my iPad. 'Cause that's the kind of parent I am these days.

So there I am, sitting on the floor, with my iPad plugged into the only socket I could find, surrounded by stacks of VIP's. By now, I am already late for having dinner with my brother. I'm trying to get this blasted app to work on my iPad, to scan the gazillion VIP's that I need to send in. It's a Friday afternoon and I know traffic to my brother will be bad. Just when I finally get the hang of this new app, my iPad informs me that I have by now exhausted the number of free scans you get with the free app and I now have to upgrade to the "professional" app. I grumble something that my 4-year old sitting next to me should not be hearing. My credit card fails. As I am looking for my wallet, to change my credit card number on my apple-id, I see that my dear 4-year old is FOLDING A PAPER AIRPLANE out of our proof of ownership papers!!! Let's just say we did make it to my brother for dinner that evening...

Or how about that afternoon I got a bid on our home for the first time! So exciting! Not in the least because I was in a playground with my 3 girls and my aunt. Imagine getting calls from your real estate agent, trying frantically to text your husband in Norway and trying to make up your mind about Important Financial Decisions, while making sure that your 4-year old slides down the slide and not the stairs to the slide. Or make sure that your 2 big girls do not take off there clothes to go swimming in the little pond this playground has. One would have thought that spending part of their childhood in North America would make them more prudish...well, the opposite happened to my girls!

I learned important causal effects, too. Like the correlation between me receiving an important phone call and Ms. E's digestive tract. As soon as she hears me use my grown-up voice on the phone, her bowels switch to immediate evacuation mode. I cannot count the times these past weeks that I have stood hunched over Eluin, trying not to drop my phone in the toilet while simultaneously hushing Eluin that not everybody needed to hear about "the surprise" she had for me AND keeping track of the conversation that was happening at the other end of the line. I basically have felt a lot like Houdini these past weeks...if Houdini had been a clown.

Unfortunately for me, I cannot blame all the mishaps of the past few weeks on my kids being there with me. Thanks (huge thanks!) to the FAMILY airbag, I was able to do some things without the little buggers interfering, too. Like sharing some of my plentiful awkwardness when I gave a tour to prospective buyers. Imagine explaining all the highlights of your beautiful home. And the potential it has for even more greatness! Like turning our storage attic into actual living space by insulating the roof and placing a couple of skylights. And then imagine me explaining that you could use that room for practically everything, from extra bedroom to sewing room. Now, I dream of one day having a sewing room in my home. However, as the words left my mouth, I realized "sewing room" is a Dutch slang word for the little rooms the prostitutes in Amsterdam have where they conduct their business with their clients. Whoops...

All's well that ends well, though. And I am glad we made it this far. I am glad we dodged a bullet by finding a different buyer than the one who made us a low ball offer and when we informed him we got a better offer, kept on pestering me with text messages, even in the middle of the night (how's that for maturity?!). I am happy that we got to stay with so many amazing family members that I have missed so dearly while staying in Canada. I am happy that Menno has been able to find us a formidable place to stay in Trondheim!

And I am happy that no-one, so far, has asked me: "Can I see some ID, please?" Even though I still feel I am still too young for this kind of grown-up stuff...

Step by step

It's 2.33 am and I am still awake. Life has been eventful, these past couple of months and as apparently my mind is reeling, I figured it might be a good idea to jot some things down. Just so I can keep track of what has been going on. With the added bonus of keeping all those people that I am desperate to stay in touch with, but lack the time to do so, just a little more up to date.

So, let's start at the beginning. As you know, our family moved to Vancouver a little over 5 years ago. That was the start of one of the most amazing, and contradictory phases in my life so far. Vancouver had everything to offer, but only so much we could afford.

Vancouver was, without a doubt, the most expensive place both Menno and I had ever lived. But despite the penny pinching, I have never felt richer in my entire life. I did not have a job during our stay in Vancouver, yet the volunteer work I did at school was more rewarding than any paid job I have ever held. Me, the girl who was always awkward in friendships, was all of a sudden surrounded by extremely inspiring people who were surprisingly easy to hang out with! Far away from what we used to call home, our roots dug deeper than expected and made our family tree grow strong and healthy.

And yet... Life in Vancouver was not sustainable. And we knew that. Yes, we knew that from the start. It would only be a temporary position for Menno. We managed to stretch those 2 years into 5, but we knew, deep down, all along, that settling in Vancouver would simply be too high a price to pay. Literally.

And so it began. Taking the glacial pace of the academic job application process into account, Menno started applying for a new job about 2 years ago. We knew competition would be fierce. I could write an entire blog post about the highly stressful tedium of watching someone dear to you (and relatively crucial to your family's income ;-) ) go through job application hell. I doubt, though, that it would be fun to read ;-) So let me just say that we all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we got the news that the NTNU had recognized Menno for the budding scientific genius he is!

This great news had the rather unexpected consequence of our family moving back to Europe. You see, all through the process of applying for jobs, I had relied on the fact that our family would at least get to stay in Canada! And although I obviously knew that the position in "Trondheim" that Menno applied for was indeed in "Trondheim, Norway", I still had to shift a few gears in my head to prepare myself for the challenge that lay ahead.

Not only did we have to move, we had to do another transcontinental move (YIKES!). Not only did we have to move out of Vancouver, we would also have to say goodbye to Canada. The first part meant I needed to organize a lot more, the second part meant that, well, saying goodbye would be even harder and would feel more permanent.

Nonetheless, we started off great! We hatched a plan to move out of our apartment a month before Menno would leave for Trondheim. That would allow us to send our belongings to Norway ahead of us, plus we would not have to spend our last weeks in Vancouver in utter moving frenzy. Those last few weeks in Vancouver we would spend in the basement of our amazing friends. Which turned out to be so much fun, I actually considered numerous times to just forget about the whole moving-to-Norway-plan until the end of the school year. Dang, it sucks to be the responsible adult, let me tell ya!

So off we went. To embark a new adventure in a new country. Although, almost 2 months into the adventure, it actually feels less like an adventure and more like I'm following a rather convoluted and time consuming recipe.

Anyone who has ever had dinner at my place, knows cooking is not my forte. Probably because I am not too good at actually following a recipe. Yet the current situation I am in, requires a lot of step-by-steps. A lot of finicky conditions that need to be met. A lot of things that have to simmer for a while under just the right circumstances, with little guarantee that they will taste good in the end.

Right now I am "stuck" in Holland. In order for us to start our lives in Norway, and to be reunited with Menno, I have to sell the house we still "own" in Holland. Ever since we boarded the plane in Vancouver, I have been working on all the little steps it takes to put a house on the market and deal with what follows after your house gets listed. My mantra of taking it one step at a time, has resulted in me humming the lyrics to a really old New Kids on the Block song for a while now. It was only after finally looking up the lyrics that I realized the song was by the New Kids on the Block, rather than Take That, which made me feel even more tired and a lot older at that particular moment ;-)

Right... I just realized I should go to sleep. And that I should leave the details of my cooking for some other time. I promise that post will be a lot more fun to read. Because these past few weeks have been anything but boring!

All is well that ends well...

That's right, we made it! Despite all the stress, the sleepless nights and the house-and-soul-searching episodes, we were able to find a suitable suite in time. No sleeping in the woods for this family, except when we go on a planned camping trip this summer, phew! And with the move already dealt with (watch for a blogpost on that topic soon!), it is time to look back at the whole process and savour some of the sweeter moments.

Having lost most of the anxiety I experienced before signing our lease, I can actually appreciate the fun, and at times even inspiring, parts of our quest. Typically, our house hunt would go like this:
1) we looked on craigslist to find available suites
2) we would contact the one who posted the ad and set a date for viewing
3) the whole gang would view the apartment
4) we filled in the application form
5) we got notified that someone else got the place

Now, in general, things started to get interesting from point 3 onwards. As with all craigslist-ads, there is the expected discrepancy between what is written in the ad and what reality looks like. Being an experienced craigslist-scrounger, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the scope of this discrepancy. Boy, was I wrong.

Our best/worst experience in this respect was the following: We found a basement suite on campus, for "only" $1600 a month. Aside from the excellent location, it offered ample square footage, natural light and luxurious carpets...at least, that was what it said in the ad. We met the realtor on site. He waited for us in the living room of the main house, peaking from behind the veil curtains like a nosy 85-year-old. He took us to the basement suite and immediately I understood why he had preferred to wait upstairs.

The place was damp, moldy and smelly. True enough, the bedrooms were big. The carpet was luxurious, especially if you took the generous serving of mouse-droppings in the corner as a sign of "welcome home" from the rodent family you were apparently sharing the suite with. After the 2 bedrooms, there was a lot of square footage left. Which was great...except for the fact that there were no suitable living areas left to assign these square feet to! The only part of the house that could possibly be the "living room" was a rectangular box-like space with concrete walls and floors, without any windows, heating or wall sockets. But the kitchen was the real seller on this one! It was big and spacious and the only part of the house that actually got some natural light. Too bad the view was blocked by a ginormous boiler that was placed smack in the middle of the space. The heating vents and pipes were all exposed and several power cords were crisscrossing the concrete floor. Overall it had the welcoming atmosphere of a prison kitchen. Oh, how I was looking forward to hosting dinner parties in such a cozy place! Then again, to prepare any kind of dinner, one would need at least a stove...which was missing...as well as a hood, a sink, any kind of countertop space or cupboards. Perhaps the truly inventive way to cook here would be to create a short-circuit in the exposed wiring and electrocute a steak until it was done.

Meanwhile, the stench got to Nori and she voiced our collective opinion by continuously shouting: "Peeeeehhhjjjooooooowwwwww, it STINKS in here! (waves her hand in front of her nose) Urngh, I really hope we are not going to live here because it is SMEEEEEELLLLLLYYYYYY! (pinches her nose shut and does a massive eyeroll) Yuck yuck yuck!" Now, usually I try to keep Nori from offending people, but this time I felt rather smug with my opinionated girl ;-)

Which brings me to the second fun part of looking for a new house; looking for a new house with 3 children in tow, our children in particular. Now, taking the Vancouver housing market into account, looking for a house is almost like a talent show. You want to impress the owner and make him consider you as a tenant. Right... Now, try looking your best while dealing with a stubborn toddler, a can-I-climb-this?-Nori and a let's-ask-some-frank-questions-Jura.

I still cringe at the memory of standing in the kitchen of a nice 2-bedroom basement with an owner that was just explaining how he liked his peace and quiet...with Jura and Nori in the backyard yelling at the top of their voices: "THIS IS AWESOME!!! THIS IS THE BEST YARD EVER!!!" Turns out the use of the yard was not included in the rent anyway, so no losses there. Another prime example of the embarrassment I had to endure was Jura asking each and every suite owner whether we would be allowed to have pets there. Including the suites that clearly stated in their ads that they were not pet-friendly. Or Jura trying out all the beds in a house and commenting on how comfy they were...or Jura snuggling up to every student, male or female, that showed us the suites they had been living in and sharing her day, and her biggest secrets, with them.

Nevertheless, we must be doing something right. Or maybe I am once again simply struck by the generosity of Canadians. Because although step 5 should have been the worst part of the house hunting process, it turned out not to be that bad. And this was due to the way the news was brought to us. Just some examples of what we read in our emails, hearing we did not get the place:

"It was great to meet you and your wonderful family, your kids have touched my heart"

"You have an amazing family and nothing short of wonderful will be in your future"

"I don't know much about children, but your daughters are very, very sweet" (from a Mathematics PhD student ;-) )

"It is so difficult for young families to find housing in Vancouver and it pains me to see a family like yours having to go through this ordeal"

Now, this may sound like bragging about how nice our kids are. But truth be told, it has puzzled me why people would take the effort to write something like this. It's not as if these people owed me anything or would ever have anything to do with me again. The last remark I quoted was even made by a lady that I had only emailed with and never met in real life! Perhaps it is just home-owner etiquette to write rejection emails like this. But it sure as hell made receiving those "sorry-we-picked-another-applicant" a lot easier to bear. It made me feel as if there is a human side to the crazy housing market in Vancouver. That people understand how frustrating it can be. And that some kind words can go a long way. Either that, or we are just good at making first impressions as a family...

And so our quest continues...

I recently wrote about our search for a place to stay. I wish I could tell you we found that one needle-in-a-haystack-pet-friendly-place. I wish I could tell you we found a place with 3 bedrooms. I wish I could tell you that we found a little house at the beach.

Truth is, we saw pretty much all three. But for reasons that I will explain later in this post, we have as of yet not found a suitable place for our family. And the more houses we visit and apply for, the more I start to realize that it may turn out to be a much greater endeavour than I had anticipated. Because the way it looks like right now, all assumptions I had about finding a place to live in Vancouver are wrong...and we basically have a hand filled with short sticks wherever we go.

As a former scientist, I find that when things don't add up the way you anticipated them to add up, it is always a good idea to look at some numbers. Numbers are pretty important. What with square footage, monthly rent and the numbered avenues around here, looking at a housing add can make you feel as if you are looking at a halfway filled bingo ticket. And right away, something else struck me as well. On craigslist, the place where I have been looking for rentals, you can set a number of search filters. At first, we only ticked the box for 2+ bedrooms. And I found that only 1 in 10 ads actually had a rent that started with a 1 (followed by 3 digits...I have seen 1's that were followed by 4 digits.). Menno quickly taught me to set the max. for rent at $2000 so as to make my searches on craigslist slightly less depressing.

Still, the high costs for rentals kept bugging me. How could it be that there basically was no suitable housing for us in our price range? I mean, I know that a scientific career is not the most lucrative one, but it's also not a minimum wage kind of job. But, my assumption that we would be able to easily live of Menno's wage, heck, even easily find a place to live, proved to be wrong. And, when a former scientist says "proved to be wrong", it means she has got the numbers to back it up!

Browsing the "for rent" adds, I found a rental property that was part of a subsidized housing community of Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation. I clicked the link to their website and quickly came to a pdf showing me EXACTLY how wrong I was in thinking that I could easily find a place for our family. Take a look at this page. See if you can find where things don't add up...

http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/2013_HILs.pdf

Don't feel like reading it all? Well, I'll help you out. This page contains information on Housing Income Limits. A HIL "represents the income required to pay the average market rent for an appropriately
sized unit in the private market." Now, you see, for an average market 2 bedroom apartment, the HIL is $45,500.-. For a 3 bedroom, it is a whopping $55,500.-. So, where Menno's wage might just meet the HIL for a 2 bedroom, a 3 bedroom is clearly out of our league.

But hey, we got that portion covered, right? Remember how I wrote in a post not too long ago about my new found asceticism in relation to worldly goods and housing requirements in particular? By now, I can easily envision us living in even closer quarters than we do now, especially if we have to pay less rent. However, it seems it may not be as simple as that...and, again, I have some data to back up that hunch.

Below the HIL-rates, is a little list of the federal/provincial occupancy standards. The list is very short, so I will copy it here.

Occupancy Standards:
1. There shall be no more than 2 or less than 1 person per bedroom.
2. Spouses and couples share a bedroom.
3. Parents do not share a bedroom with children.
4. Dependants aged 18 or more do not share a bedroom.
5. Dependants aged 5 or more of opposite sex do not share a bedroom.

Although short, I find the implications of these standards to our situation pretty, erm, strong. Let me break it down for you:

1. Aha, so, should we ever manage to find an affordable 3-bedroom place, my daydreams about putting all three kids in one room to sleep in order to have a playroom-annex-guestroom go bye-bye.

2. No more marital feuds for us! What if an inspector came by that one morning a year when I have decided to sleep on the couch. Or what if Menno or myself would ever develop sleep-apnea?! 

3. Yeah right...explain that to my children! Right now, all 3 sleep in one room, which is out of the question because of point 1 anyway, but for sleep deprivation issues, I am still very happy that Eluin slept in our room for as long as she did!

4. HA! Our family is still way to young for that!

5. HA again! No boys!!! *sticks out tongue to the person that came up with these standards* 

Anyway, I feel like I am breaking the rules, or at least know of people that break the rules, which would probably make me an accomplice to that crime. Even more so, I realize that these "occupancy standards" give every rental agency or property owner the right to deny us a 2-bedroom place. Which is exactly what happened with the housing corporation here at UBC which would not allow us to rent a 2-bedroom unit. 

Looking at the evidence, I start to feel pretty desperate about finding a place to live for our family. And yet I can't help but feel that we can by no means be the only family in Vancouver struggling with this issue. I don't know what the solution is. Except for us either moving away or me finding a job. Both seem quite out of reach at the moment. So for now we stick with our strategy of applying to cheap, crappy houses and hope that one day a house owner will favour our family of 5 over 2 UBC students.