The spare bedroom (seen here and here in varying states of spirit-killing squalor). But let’s go back to the beginning, just for full effect.

Before

As you can see, again with the beige (BEIGE). Grubby, depressing beige. Beige wallpaper, beige carpet, beige curtains. BEIGE. There is a certain efficiency to using the same non-colour for every surface of your home, BUT STILL. I’ve been over the nightmare that was that fracking wallpaper, so there’s not much fun to be had by way of a during picture, except perhaps to review this…this…STATE OF AFFAIRS THAT CAN ONLY BE SPOKEN OF IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE MY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE LIVING LIKE THAT BUT ANYWAY HERE YOU GO, I’LL STOP YELLING NOW.

During, My God, the During

And now, several months of manual labour and an untold number of boxes later, here we are!

After

What you’re looking at: walls that have been de-wallpapered, patched, and painted “Zen Green,” which doesn’t actually photograph all that well, but it’s a really pretty, soft, airy green; new flooring that, of course, matches the flooring in the rest of the house; new floaty curtains; new baseboards; our old skool TV atop our antique sideboard that has been waiting to be refinished for the last year but is just going to have to wait even longer because, you know, RENOS; and our new (to us) futon that we got off of Freecycle because we had grown quite weary of spending money on the new home and, also, free! The room in general is a little…unfinished yet, in terms of giving it any real personality or flare, but we’re getting there.

Now, about that futon. I was wary of the free futon from strangers over the Internet. I felt quite certain that cat pee would be involved. However, like I said, spending money on the new home had worn rather thin at that point, and moreover, we’d resolved that all of the renovations would be paid for in cash and buying a new piece of furniture would have been stretching our limits in that regard. So we were willing to give the free futon a shot, figuring that at least we could get a free frame and buy a new, non-urine soaked mattress if necessary. But instead of getting a musty mattress saturated with pee (or wandering into an axe-murderer’s trap, which was my other fear), we hit the freecycle jackpot and found ourselves in one of the most immaculate homes I’ve ever seen, picking up a perfectly good, stain and odour-free futon. For free. The only downside to the whole transaction was that the mattress cover was rather ugly. So, I dug our old duvet cover out of the Goodwill bag and lo! It suited the paint in the spare room quite nicely! Only. Erm, by quite nicely I mean “matched exactly.” As in, “Where’s the futon? I see two floating arm rests and then a sea of Zen Green…” And so commenced my city-wide search for some throw pillows to jazz up the room a bit and, also, to outline the location of the futon so that unwary visitors wouldn’t go bashing their shins into our cleverly camouflaged furniture. And you’ll never guess what colour of cushion is widely available everywhere, from Ikea to Urban Barn and every big box and little store in between. ZEN GREEN. Zen green cushions in every shape and size imaginable! (And don’t even get me started on what it took to come full circle to those white curtains that are exactly the same as the ones in the master bedroom because do you want to know what is very popular right now for curtains? Yes. Of course. ZEN GREEN.) (But I rather love the look of those white curtains now, so it’s all for the best.)

Some other notes on this room: I’d wanted it to feel light and airy and with the colour, the natural light, and the sheer curtains it really does. The room is perfect for sitting and reading, which I love. I also love the whole idea of having another room. We lived in one bedroom apartments for years; this tiny room has become this lovely little sanctuary and the airy feel adds to that. We don’t have to be in the living room or the bedroom…or the living room…or the bedroom. We can, if we want, have a space to ourselves. It’s…a revelation.

We also wanted to try having the TV separate from the main living area so that the focus of the living room could be more on creating a “conversation circle” with the furniture, instead of just pointing all the furniture at the TV. This has worked out quite nicely on the whole. However, the spare bedroom is small and turned out to be rather narrower than we initially thought (I think it’s really designed to be either an office or a nursery) and as you can see, our TV is rather big. So when we do watch TV or movies, we’re uncomfortably close to the screen and we end feeling a little sea sick and cross-eyed. This situation would likely be rectified by a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, but given how very little TV we watch, it just isn’t worth spending the money at this point. I feel obliged to explain that, by the way, because a surprising number of people are resistant to our hesitation to rush out an buy a new TV to the point where I find myself apologizing for how we’re not spending money on a luxury item we don’t need or use. People are weird about it is all I’m saying.

Boy, being frugal can take the wind out of the design-revelation sails, can’t it? “Ta-da! A room with a discarded futon with an old duvet cover that had been headed to charity…all of it facing another second-hand piece of furniture and a hand-me-down TV that is generally considered a mockery to middle class living! Oprah? Are you calling Nate?”

Anyway, I’d also wanted the spare bedroom to serve as an office/space where I can write, which it may well do yet, with a little rearranging of the furniture to accommodate a desk. Although it would have to be creative rearranging once a new piece of furniture was added, wouldn’t it? It’s a small, small space…albeit a small, small space that’s somehow added a whole new dimension to our living space in general. If it came down to it, I’d give up the en suite bathroom (as handy as it is) in a heart beat before I’d give up having a second bedroom.

Life is kicking my ass right now.  I…I wish that I had some stunning “after” pictures indicating our triumphant completion of the renovations and unpacking, but no. Things don’t look especially different from the last set of pictures. There are still boxes everywhere, only now the boxes have disheartening tufts of cat hair collecting around their bases. In short, everything is a mess.

It’s not for lack of trying, you see. We unpack. Constantly. AND YET. The boxes, with all the boxes, with all the stuff, everywhere. I also make dispirited attempts to quell the cat hair with the vacuum, but it never fails that just as I turn the machine off, a new cat hair tumbleweed will come billowing out of some corner I couldn’t reach. ON ACCOUNT OF ALL THE BOXES.

If there’s one thing that will crush my spirit, it’s actions with no countering measurable outcomes. This is what the unpacking has become. Someone (JG!) very aptly compared moving into an apartment to those tile games that have the one missing tile. You know the ones, where you have to move a bunch of tiles out of the way in order to put one tile in its right place. But this creates a cascade of tile moving and shuffling and you end up having to remove that tile from where you put it in order to move around another two tiles, but then you can’t get that original tile BACK because there’s now FOUR tiles in its way. AND SO ON.

Well, anyway. I won’t keep you. I’m just saying. I’m not enjoying this. I know one day it’ll be done—probably quite soon, actually.  (Ever notice how when you get to the point of being all “ZOMG I hate this and I can’t STAND IT ANYMORE and I’m so upset I’m going to COMPLAIN ABOUT IT to the INTERNET” it’s usually when you’re about to crest the hill, only you don’t realize it yet, mostly because you’re just feeling the whole lotta hill behind you.)

So, I’ll be seeing you soon, BBs. With pictures. AFTER PICTURES. Dammit.

**Nothing like whining publicly to light a fire under one’s ass. I…well, I never quite feel comfortable after I post about my frustration with something. Although it certainly helps me to vent (better living through sarcasm!), I’m not entirely sure it makes for the best read. But! Anyway! You wouldn’t believe how much better things are right now. We busted through the log jam of boxes and we’re getting close to living like normal humans again. I’m very excited! And—AND!—we scored a free futon for our spare bedroom! And—AND!—we found out that we were grossly misinformed about the cost of replacing our bathroom counter. Like, the lady we initially talked to must have taken a long, burbling hit off of her Home Depot bong before talking to us, because what we thought would cost, oh, $1000 plus change will ACTUALLY cost us $60. Sixty bucks. That’s it. That? We can afford. On with the renovations!

Anyway, it was a good weekend, a productive weekend, and it was AWESOME. And I’m feeling much better because, hey, I can walk from one end of the spare bedroom to the other. Now, isn’t that something?

Life lessons learned from the last two months: a) Moving is hard. Use sparingly. (Starting…nnnnnnnnnnoooow.) b) Clutter: I can’t. I CAN’T. It makes me want to PEEL MY FACE OFF, but whether that’s before or after my stabbing spree, I can’t decide. In short, I need a clean, peaceful space and I need to STAY THERE.**

Well, you’ve seen the before shots of the contentious spare bedroom and here we are, a few weeks later, annnnd:

Ta da! Just like in the design shows! (Sigh.)

Anyway, in the spirit of not curling up dispiritedly amidst the rubble of my belongings, let’s focus on the positives of the past week. First, a rather triumphant beginning to the bathroom renovations, with new tiles that look smashing and, even better, that didn’t involve our ripping down or putting up anything. The tiles before in, you guessed it, grimy beige:

And the tiles now, in gleaming white. And also aren’t they cool and funky all big and rectangular like that? Why, yes they are, if I do say so myself thankyouverymuch:

We also got the surround tiled all the way to the ceiling, which makes the room look bigger to a ridiculous degree. When we finally get to the point of putting up curtains*, I’m going to try to see what I can do to achieve something similar with extra long curtains that go to the ceiling or something.

As an aside, eagle-eyed readers will note that our tub is, like, the shallowest tub possible. We’d wanted to replace it with a soaker tub or, at least, a non-stunted tub that doesn’t look like the tub version of a creature missing a few chromosomes. Then we found out what was involved in getting a new tub: first RIPPING OUT THE WALLS (this is where they lost me, to be honest), next shutting off the water for the ENTIRE BUILDING, then cutting off pipes and sautering pipes, etc., etc., THEN putting in the new tub, and finally new walls and new tiles. HAHAHAHA. Not happening. Stunty, shallow tub it is! And that makes me sound more bitter than I actually am, since I’m basically too exhausted to be bitter and am quite simply pleased to be relieved of having to take on another project. I’ve also managed to retain a certain amount of rationality and that whole gong show just for the sake of an entirely unnecessary, (thoroughly and blatant) luxury item? It’s just laughable, really, up there with  complaints along the lines of Chandler’s “My diamond shoes are too tight!”

Anyway, where was I? Positive things. The move that I was so dreading was, indeed, dreadful, and we were inevitably up until the wee hours of the morning frantically throwing things in boxes the way you always are the night before you move. All the same, the cats did cute things that warmed our cold heart cockles. For example, Logan took the time to demonstrate how bookshelves are better off sans books, since they make such nice, cozy sleeping nooks that way:

And all three cats made us feel loved by going to great lengths to ensure we wouldn’t leave without them, namely by climbing into our suitcases at every available opportunity (again modeled by Logan):

Finally, our friends and my tireless mother-in-law gave up their Sunday on the first day of perfect beach weather to help us haul furniture and boxes. And somehow our friends ended up with our camera and between the old place and the new place, they took the liberty of snapping pictures so that we would have surprise shots to ponder, successfully cracking my shit up. To wit:

And that’s all I can muster at this point, lambs. I’m off to bed because, weirdly enough, even though my life is upside down and rather squalid and chaotic right now, I still have to go do that whole job thing.

*Our current window treatments are garbage bags artfully tacked up with painter’s tape.

It turns out a highly effective cure for a fairly serious case of The Sads over having to move is to get yanked out of your malaise by a rip tide of DIY renovations on your new home. We took possession of our new place on the 15th (the same day, naturally, that we had house guests arriving from out of town, because isn’t that always the way?). And since roughly the moment our guests left until, well, just now, I/we have been scraping, spackling, repairing, priming, or painting something…with the exception of hauling things in and out, of course.

While this would seem the perfect place for some “Before and After” shots, what I can offer you are some “Before and What Things Look Like Right Now” shots. There were certain things that needed to be done before we could move in and, so long as all goes well, they should all be done sometime today. The rest, namely the bathroom renovations, but also a small number of fussy little things like, say, installing doorknobs or putting up baseboards have all been put on ice so that we can pack and, you know, MOVE IN. On Sunday. (Glack.) But first, indulge me in a brief word on the new digs?

The good:

• We’re moving across False Creek, from Yaletown to Mount Pleasant. Another way of putting this is: We lead a charmed life and we’re moving from one awesome neighbourhood to another.
• My 15 minute walking commute will be replaced by a 15 minute cycle commute that takes me along the sea wall. Ditto Kieran (see above re: charmed life).
• We live right on the bike route.
• We’re on the top floor and we have a stunning view of the Lions and the North Shore mountains. I would attach a photo, but unfortunately that’s not possible right now (see below).
• We’ll have a nice roomy balcony again to enjoy said view.
• There’s a sky light in the dining room that lets in an unbelievable amount of natural light.
• We will have two (2) bedrooms. [Ed note: I am not pregnant. Please stop surreptitiously trying to eye my belly when I announce that. Thank you.] [You wouldn't believe how often I get that.] And two (2) bathrooms. Well, 1.5 bathrooms, if we’re going to be technical. This is the most space we’ll have had, like, ever.
• The kitchen has already been nicely renovated and some rather lovely flooring was put in the kitchen, dining room, living room and hall. Which, in addition to making it a lovely space, might I add THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE TO DO IT. (So over renos.)

The bad(ish):

• The balconies are under repair and the entire place is enshrouded in scaffolding, suffocating our stunning view. This situation will persist for a few months yet. It’s a bummer, but it’s actually a really good thing in terms of rain screening and other important, grown-up details one has to care about when one is getting a mortgage. And, also, the seller had to pay for the totally expensive repairs. Heh.
• That’s pretty much it, actually.

The ugly: Picture time! I will stick to the areas we’ve tackled so far, namely the two bedrooms. First, and most contentious, is the spare bedroom. The drab, dreary, and grimy spare bedroom.

Grimy beige carpet, grimy beige wallpaper, and a grimy beige curtain. Beeeeeeige. I hate beige. Pardon the poor lighting, by the way—I’m not sure what happened with the flash. Anyhoo, Our plan was to tear down the wallpaper (Hahahahaha. HA. HA.), paint with a pretty colour, rip out the carpet, and put in flooring that matches the rest of the place.

Is the phrase “tear down the wallpaper” echoing in your head, perhaps hissed by a menacing voice that sounds suspiciously like a scary clown? Yes? Then I would say you have an accurate grasp of what tearing down wallpaper is like. In short, three days (or 40 hours) of three of us doing this:

And this:

I literally had nightmares (or at least weird, Sisyphean dreams) about it wherein I was ripping down wallpaper in a never ending room—wait, OR WAS THAT REALITY?—with recurring images such as this:

Annnnnd, I’m out of time. To be continued…

So! Let’s go back to that time I had competing deadlines. Funny story! I waited my whole entire life to get published and it finally happened. I raced home with several copies of, well, let’s call it Small Time Cycling Magazine, and giddily flipped to the tiny little piece I’d been asked to write on cycling in Québec and for one perfect moment I basked in the all-over glow of seeing something I’d written appear on the pages of a real magazine that is run by a real editor and printed on glossy paper and distributed to people not directly related to me and everything. I was (am!) a published writer. Something I wrote was published. And then I flipped the page over and discovered…something I did NOT write was ALSO published.

Yeah. How does something you didn’t write get published? THE THINGS I WANT TO SAY WOULD APPEAR IN ALL CAPS RIGHT NOW BUT…I fear the burning of bridges. So I will spare my commentary as much as possible and just give you the facts.

Shall we?

Yadda, yadda, yadda: My sister-in-law’s sister is somehow or other vaguely connected to the assistant editor of Small Time Cycling Magazine and kindly offered to put me in touch with the assistant editor of STCM, since I’d just returned from cycling across Canada and, you know, it seemed like a no-brainer. Next thing I know, my sister-in-law’s sister has emailed the assistant editor and has set us up on a phone date during which I’m expected to pitch some stories. Which: HA. HAHAHA. HA. Because I am a grown-up writer lady WHO KNOWS HOW TO DO THAT. [Proceeds to swallow tongue.]

My first order of business is to promise myself I won’t jam out of the story-pitching phone date with some lame excuse just because the idea is terrifying and, also, I don’t know how to do that. Pitch a story over the phone. Like…Peter Parker or…something. In fact, I’m not entirely sure to this date that pitching stories over the phone is really how it’s done ever, but that’s what the editor lady asked for and she would know what she’s looking for. Right?

My second order of business is to frantically comb the Writer’s Market for clues/rules of etiquette about pitching stories over the phone but there is NOTHING on this particular subject, in the Writer’s Market or anywhere. I am on my own. (See previously stated suspicion.)

My third order of business is to come up with some stories to pitch. Which: WHAT. “I Biked Across Canada: Do You Care?” “I Biked Across Canada But I Don’t Really Give a Tiny Rat’s Ass About Equipment: Do You Think Your Sponsors Will Care For That Angle?” Two hours before the phone date story pitch thing, I still had no story ideas to pitch, so I did the only thing left to do: I phoned one of my girlfriends and freaked out. Through the healing power of sarcasm and venting, we came up with some story ideas and before I could lose my nerve, I phoned the editor lady to pitch them.

And so commenced the most socially awkward experience of my professional life.

I don’t know how much I can write about that particular conversation but, um, it wasn’t…pleasant? I got very sweaty? I honestly considered cutting my losses and hanging up? So, long story short, no, (no!) they weren’t interested in a first-person account of cycling across Canada or cycling La Route Verte or cycling anywhere for that matter…WHICH about kills all I had to offer. Is now a good time to point out that one of the reasons I am a writer/editor type is because I cannot verbalize my thoughts so much with the talking and that and am not so much with the thinking on my feet either? Yeah. Anyhoo, the assistant editor goes on to tell me that they WOULD BE interested in a history of La Route Verte, and would I be interested in researching that and writing it? Of course I was. (Let’s be honest here readers: if they asked me to research and write a 1200 word piece on the merits of toilet paper, I would have done it. I wanted to get published. The end.) I asked if she wanted me to send her a query letter (because that is what the Writer’s Market says you do and who am I to disagree and have I mentioned that I’m floundering here?). She says that’s not necessary, but asks me to instead send her an outline of my piece once I’ve researched it. SURE. AN OUTLINE. OF COURSE.

Only…is that normal? To send an outline I mean? It seems a little…not like what anyone else has ever done for a magazine. That I know of. But then, what DO I know? And who am I to turn my nose up at an opportunity just because it seems a little ODD. So, I do the research. After fretting over how to format the outline (FOR GOD’S SAKE WHY AN OUTLINE? BECAUSE THAT IS ALSO NOT COVERED IN THE WRITER’S MARKET), I do one up in good old bullet points and send it off. Annnnd…I never hear back. I tactfully follow up at what seems to be a reasonable juncture and then, to my mixed relief and disappointment, I decide to let sleeping dogs lie.

Several months later, I get an email from the editor in chief of STCM. They are running a feature on La Route Verte and, while the feature piece is going to be a first-person account of cycling La Route (AHEM) and they  no longer need me to develop the piece on La Route’s history, he is impressed by my research (yay!) and would like to use some of the bullets in my outline in a sidebar (credited to me) (double yay!). He’s also wondering if I would be interested in writing up a small piece about the man who founded the organization behind La Route. Which: OF COURSE I AM. And can I have it to them in five days? OF COURSE I CAN.*

And I do. I research. I go to the library. I Google. I make urgent phone calls to Québec. I dust off my French and wade through Québecois periodicals. And then I sit down at my MacBook all Carrie Bradshaw-like and I type out an article while occasionally gazing off into space. I feel like the piece is good. It’s nothing like I imagined my first published piece of work would be like, but I’m still proud. It’s tight and clean and I pulled it together quickly in manner of a real writer and no one needs to know that typing out “First publication rights” in the corner feels exactly like riding a roller coaster because you are THAT much of a newbie. I send it in (on time!) (of course!) and the response is positive. The editor in chief says, AND I QUOTE, “Why haven’t we heard of you before?”** Which: squee!

Fast forward several months to the moment where I have the STCM in my hands, marvelling at the fact that it is, in fact, a real magazine made of paper! With words printed on it! And there’s my piece! My words are printed on the paper! And…there’s the feature piece? Not so much the first-person account of cycling La Route written by someone who is not me (although that’s there too somewhere) but no. The feature piece is…is MY OUTLINE. With the bullets removed and no longer in list format. But still. AN OUTLINE. No, no…FLOW. No connecting words. NO WRITING. AN OUT. LINE.

I am horrified.

I scream.

I writhe face-down on the couch while Kieran confirms that I am not having a terrible nightmare wherein my lifelong dream of getting published is being marred by something that came barreling out of left field and blindsided me. No, this is real. Publicly real. In print.

Kieran finally manages to soothe me by pointing out that I should be proud that my outline…thing was chosen as the feature piece over the intended feature piece, even though that piece had been, well, written. I brighten and attempt to read my outline thing. How bad can it be if it was the chosen piece?

Annnd…I promptly resume writhing face-down on the couch. (I still haven’t read it. It makes my cheeks burn.)

So, now, readers. I have, somewhat inadvertently, two published pieces. One of which may or may not be categorically awful. I want to get published again. Often, even. (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) Riddle me this: do I a) refer only to the good piece in future queries and try to pretend the bad piece never happened (and hope that, somehow, editors do not have access to Google because for some reason the bad piece is ALL OVER Google) b) use both pieces, because two is always better than one or c) pretend neither piece happened and move on from the unnerving Google presence of the bad piece by starting over and going by my birth name and not my nickname in all future queries (I recognize that this is a little crazy and, yes, it’s the option I came up with while writhing on the couch). I know some of y’all have been published and are true freelance writer like types. Please advise.

———————–

*In other words, getting published turns out to be pretty much exactly like losing your virginity. There’s all these expectations about perfection and glowing wonderfulness and waiting for the Right One, when in reality, it comes down to growing weary of languishing on the boring side of the equation and one day saying “Oh, sod it. Take it. TAKE IT. Somebody just TAKE IT. We’ll make it pretty on the 300th try.” (And, Hi there, Dad! Great Aunt Margaret.)

**Oh, just a small matter of raging neuroses preventing me from making too much of an effort to do that of which I’ve always dreamed. Tralala.