On Moving and Pumpkin Carving
Moving is one of those things in life that’s an oddly chaotic necessity. It stops us from being stagnant for too long, which in turns forces us to look at change as a positive thing. The process of getting ready to move from one place to another always brings some sort of uncertainty alongside the comfort of knowing you’re onto somewhere better (at last that’s what I hope for all of us who are moving somewhere different).
Sometimes we move by choice, by force, or because it’s part of our nature. For lots of people, moving is therapeutic. It gives people a chance to reset their lives. For those who are semi-resistant to change like I am, getting through the move is the hardest hurdle to overcome mentally. Once I can sit down in the new place and take a breath and the unpacking is finally done, there will definitely be a sense of peace.
For now, it’s just all chaos mixed with a bit of insanity. There’s some fleeting moments of happiness in the fact that we’re finally getting to be homeowners for the first time, but of course, there’s a level of stress that comes with that too. However, with every choice in life, you have to weigh the levels of stress and chaos and see what is most manageable.
For me personally, I’m moving by choice (at least I think I am). However, I could say the universe has a strange way of forcing us out of a place that has been toxic for way too long.
We grew a family extremely quickly in a two bedroom apartment. None of it was planned. It all happened the way it was supposed to. Spontaneous, and full of love, magic, and the occasional struggle. The area we live in now currently is beautiful. I can see the foothills along my bedroom window. It’s generally pretty quiet, peaceful, safe, serene. I can’t say the same about the neighbor we had for almost a year. We had pretty good neighbors for the first two years here until this older man and woman moved in.
I’ll never forget seeing them move into their apartment across from mine. They came around the back and dropped everything over their balcony and hopped over the fence like they weren’t supposed to be there. They didn’t move in like normal people. Every time I opened the door to take the dogs for a walk, the lady was always cursing at the man using profanities to the highest degree, and they’d always be arguing. I never knew why they were together. I guess it was a necessary evil for their dynamic. Listening to them made me grateful for how much I loved my husband and the life we built.
The management here became extremely greedy, from the last year raising our rent up to $300 in a state where there is no rent cap, or renters rights. It was becoming extremely difficult to live. Living paycheck by paycheck was never in the cards for us, but it was the cards we were dealt until we decided that things needed to change.
It would be so easy to stay here, especially since we are so comfortable. We are 15 minutes away from the city, but 15 minutes away into the wilderness in the mountains, which made it the dream place to live in. Unfortunately, the state of Colorado’s housing market made it feel like we could never afford to be homeowners even though it was our dream.
Staying here made our lives inherently worse somehow even though I was happy (or at least I thought I was). I loved the view, the amenities here, but bad things kept happening to us, one thing after another. I felt like in the moments of stress, the only thing I was holding onto was hope that something better would happen to us in the future.
Much of this year had been a blur, but a memorable blur considering just how many hospital visits we had gone to in the last year and a half of living here with a mystery illness my husband had. To this day, we don’t know what happened or what caused it. I’m just grateful that now that we’ve made the conscious decision to move, we can both see the end of the tunnel. I ended up gaining 40lbs since we moved here too, (most likely from the stress) even though the first year of living here was actually perfect. The last two years is where we started to see that our lives were becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
Again, life is generally full of ups and downs, but how much of your life is supposed to be in a downward spiral until you get to see straight again?
That was the question that was always in the back of mind. I didn’t know why any of this was happening to us and why it always had to happen during the worst times.
But alas, we began to search for a home — a dream that doesn’t even seem possible to many other elder millennials and even younger generations anymore.
I really was convinced we were going to have to move out of state. In the area we live in, an old rusty home with 1 bedroom and 1 bath without a backyard is about half a million dollars. Growing up, a 500K property looked HUGE at least in Illinois. Now it seems to be the median price just to be able to afford anything nice in certain areas, especially in this beautiful state. I would be dammed if I gave up on my mountain dreams so easily. I worked so hard to get here, I couldn’t live with myself if my dreams would fall apart due to inflation, greed and late stage capitalism in the housing market.
We looked to see where the most affordable city in Colorado was, and it ended up being Pueblo. It was two hours south of Denver, and not as close to the mountains, but we could still be within 45 minutes of Colorado Springs which is surrounded by mountains! We finally could see 2 bed, 2 bath houses for under 300K without HOAs. It was a miracle to actually see these prices here.
The struggle to be a homeowner in today’s society is real, but not impossible if you have help. The key is, being fortunate enough to get that help.
It took a lot just to get us to be able to even be pre-approved. We thought for sure this wouldn’t happen for us after the first rejection. Thankfully, we didn’t give up. My husband’s family had agreed to help us co-sign so we could get our dream.
We wouldn’t get our dream house in my dream location, but at this point, we just wanted to get our first house. The apartment life for us had run it’s course. All that mattered was giving our babies the best life with a backyard to run in, and more space to move around instead of being cramped in a 840 square ft apartment. We toured to find our future house in late August and early September.
When we were getting ready to put the offer down on the first house, that house became contingent. The next house we wanted, someone had offered 20K above asking, and finally, better late than never our third choice house that we liked, the sellers were willing to work with us as first time homebuyers. We made the best decision to go under contract.
As of September of 2024, we began packing every week. We did a little bit each day while we were under contract. We’re about 75% of the way packed with just a week until closing.
Packing is the stressful part. We knew for the next few months we’d just be living in absolute chaos being surrounded by boxes, bags, and packing materials.
As someone with ADHD, living in the constant chaos may seem normal to my brain, but it also became extremely stressful. I like to work in a clean workspace. Having the chaos surrounding me is something I just surrendered to. This is a temporary transition. Soon, I will be typing again from this same computer, but in a new living space: my own home.
I can’t wait to be able to be done with moving and just say “We made it”. Moving isn’t just packing and unpacking — it’s EVERYTHING in between. It’s creating a Trello board to stay organized and sane somehow. A board of things to do from getting under contract, to all the millions of things we have to do after we close. All the packing, the unpacking, the driving two hours south to a new part of this state, the organizing and making the new house our home.
So, when will the move be over? Probably a week after Nov 1st logistically. Mentally, it might be where I can just breathe, knowing the mortgage and bills are paid, and seeing all of us in good health just thriving.
During the process of moving, I’ve had to learn to give myself grace, something I’ve always had a hard time doing. It’s extremely hard working a full time job, being a wife, a fur mama, counting my calories, exercising, cleaning what parts of the house I can, budgeting, paying the bills, walking the dogs, doing partnerships for my dog’s Instagram page, feeding the cats, helping the snakes shed when their skin gets stuck, trying to lose weight, trying to pack, trying to manage my hobbies (trying to play World of Warcraft on two characters in two different guilds, trying to gear up, trying to raid), all while trying to keep sane, trying to deal with home insurance shopping, first time homebuyers class we had to take, working with the lender, the realtor, asking questions along the way, and making sure I don’t forget anything in the process.
Insert internal scream here.
How do neurotypical people even do this normally without losing their mind? It just feels like the pressure is all too much. But somehow, I’m doing it. Everyday, I’m doing a little something that is getting us closer to moving and that’s all I can think of.
I was extremely sad the other day since October is my favorite month because of Halloween, and every year since my angel Zoey’s birth, I had always carved at least one pumpkin carving a year during this month. When she passed in 2016, I told her I would always live life in the best way possible. The way she would live, happy and carefree, reminding myself that life slips away too quickly, and somehow you have to make memories where you can instead of letting stress consume you.
A memory came up on Facebook about last year’s carving and I made a post how it wasn’t going to happen this year due to moving.
I lied to myself.
I felt so sad and empty and realized that even in the chaos of everything happening, I had to do something for myself.
Something that wasn’t part of my Trello board of all the things to manage.
It was something that was actually happiness.
From the sadness I felt, I turned it into happiness by realizing I needed to do a carving.
I told Zoey and myself that the only way I’d stop carving is if I broke my arm, my wrist, or was physically unable to do so.
So, I went to the store, got one pumpkin, new carving tools (since I had packed my usual tools away already) and I printed out a carving that I would do this year. I decided to make the angel Castiel from Supernatural since I just started watching the series this year since it was my husband’s favorite show. Needless to say I became addicted.
Castiel as an angel reminded me of Zoey. She was my angel, but she was also with me ALL the time. Her energy of playfulness and chaos equally intertwined was all part of the transition of moving from one place to another. I just spent the first 9 months of the year in chaos, I realized that I needed to allow some joy, and inner child energy to come out for once. I deserved that.
It was the first time this whole year that I felt like I could actually be myself. I was in a safe place inside my head where nothing else mattered but the pumpkin in front of me and the design that I was going to make.
My mind generally isn’t always the safest place to hide, but inside the memories of Zoey, Halloween, doing my first pumpkin carving 14 years ago every October in her memory, I had consciously decided I wasn’t going to make an excuse for happiness to enter my life anymore. I deserved to feel like I could enjoy life and not focus on all the negative that has happened.
I told myself I was going to make a meaningful carving this year despite how much of 2024 was emotionally unavailable for me to really get to process.
In this moment, I knew that it was okay for me to take a break from “moving” and allow myself the grace to be happy because there was going to be a lot to look forward for. There is a lot to manage in the meantime between my family, work, hobbies, and moving responsibilities, but happiness should always be added to that.
I had forgotten the entire reason that I named my angel cat Zoey. Her name meant “life”, and when her life was stolen from her due to cancer, I made a vow that I would truly LIVE doing the little things that make me happy. When a lot of bad things happen, it’s hard to separate yourself from the things that happen to you, that sometimes you end up believing that you don’t deserve the best that life has to offer you. It’s a lie that the demons in your head tell you so you don’t move ahead.
Again, moving has a way to force that stagnant energy out. And sometimes in the whole process of “moving”, whether you’re moving out of your own way, to moving into a new house, it allows open channels of energy because your own energy is no longer stagnant anymore.
You get to decide what you make of the cards that life deals you. You get to decide to be happy. You get to decide to take a break. You get to decide that you can do whatever you need to do, just to feel like yourself, even if you have to slip back into the chaos.
After all, isn’t change, chaos, and fleeting moments of joy just part of this human existence?
