The changes keep on coming!

They say that change is inevitable, and while I completely agree with that sentiment, a steady stream of changes can foster some trepidation, to say the least. Most of you know that Joyce and I recently sold our home of 30 years, loaded up the truck, and downsized our way to the condo life, but what you may not know is that two type-A personalities with severe cases of non-clinical OCD like ourselves find the seemingly endless series of adaptations exciting and vexing at the same time.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the downsizing of a 3 bedroom detached house to a 2 bedroom condo with all the decluttering that 30 years of living large can accumulate. While I feel that we have done Yeoman's work on sifting and sorting, choosing and chucking, it has certainly not come without some furrowing of our collective brows. We really balk at creating more than our share of contributions to the landfill, working diligently to steer unwanted items to a charity or new owner, but that's sometimes difficult to do in a new-to-you neighbourhood. 

That change is most definitely negative.

While on the topic of condo life, it is taking us a little time to adapt to things that we took for granted while living in our home in Barrie. I wouldn't say that we are passionate "hug the earth" types, but we certainly try very hard to do the right thing, reduce our footprint as much as we can, recycle everything possible, and divert everything that can be diverted. We're not yet sure if it's a difference between Barrie and Guelph, or (more likely) a difference between house and condo living. Easily the most annoying for us is the apparent lack of organics collection for our building. It was completely feasible to go a full month with less than a regular green garbage bag of trash thanks to a concerted food waste diversion, but we have noticed a weekly garbage chute drop is the norm here. Combine that with limitations on what can go in the recycling, and we find ourselves perplexed. We are asking questions to find solutions, but nothing at this time.

That is certainly a negative change.

Something that was unexpected was the consternation surrounding how to proceed with the proceeds of the house sale since we have rarely found ourselves in that particular situation. Once we inked the contract for the sale, we made a conscious decision to find a rental for 12 months so that we could "test the waters" of a new neighbourhood and a different style of home. We knew that we would eventually be faced with choosing to purchase our own space, be it property or condo, but had to seek counsel from our financial advisor how to best invest the lump safely while also looking for some growth. We were extremely fortunate that the sale price of our home was significantly more than we had planned for when contemplating retirement, so we were eager to do some things that seemed like dreams not so long ago:
(1) We wished an upgrade from our pickup to an SUV like a RAV4 or something akin.
(2) We wished to give our two children a gift to spoil themselves with something they would never consider to buy on their own.
(3) We wished to spoil ourselves with something fanciful ... mine will be DEF bike related!
(4) We knew we needed to create a "nest egg" with real estate prices steadily rising.
All of this lead to some pretty serious book keeping and decision making, the discussions surrounding the redistribution of funds being pretty ominous, considering it was a financial future in the lurch. 

While it's exciting to have the money, the change is closer to the negative pole than the positive.

When we finally agreed that Guelph would be the destination, I reached out to a couple of people that we were already acquainted with that lived there, looking to connect and hopefully foster our friendship. One couple in particular that we were eager to meet up with was Bill Price and Megan Reid, basketball buddies from our Camp Olympia days and high school games. We were flattered when they treated us to most delicious Earth to Table pizza, a local popular restaurant near the downtown core along the banks of the river that flows through the middle of Guelph. We had a great catch-up lunch!

It was most assuredly a positive change.

One intriguing modification was the discovery that the Guelph area is a nature lover's paradise, what with numerous green spaces, hiking trails, and preservation areas within a few minutes drive of our condo. On one recent hike, we were approaching a threesome with a dog that was significantly far in front of it's owner. We slowed to make sure that the pooch heeded the calls to return, and on approaching the group, discovered that it was an old Queen's Football team mate Paul Barsanti who was out enjoying nature's beauty with his partner and step-son. Small world, but to make it even weirder, it turned out that Paul lived a 5 minute walk from our condo. We had a great catch-up and promises were made to get together in the near future as the pandemic restrictions eased.

Linking up with old friends like Paul is absolutely a welcomed change!

I guess if you treat this post like a report card, we are faced with two negatives, a so-so, and two positives, so in the end it's a "push", using cards lingo. We pride ourselves on being "glass half full" types so we will see this all as a learning process with anticipation of better things to come.

Embrace the changes!