moving day

Well I am leaving in the morning.

I feel that I have been moving for months now, even years. We are not sure we ever really moved into the Bandon house. We built it, lived in an RV while it was being built, our 2 sons lived in smaller RVs next to ours, and we had a year of living in our own private RV park.

We moved in when it was finished, but somehow we never really moved in. Your whole perspective changes after living in an RV for a year.

You no longer have an affinity for souvenirs and trinkets, they are the first things to go when you are downsizing.

The really depressing part is that I really thought we had downsized a lot as we have gotten rid of a lot of stuff, and children (so to speak).

When you move to another country, you have to itemize everything you own, so you can provide a list to the customs person when you move. The way we have done this (now we are about to do IT for a second time) is that we have a book that we list everything that is in the boxes. Each cardboard box is assigned a number and the number goes in the book and the book lists what is in the box. Heaven help us should we lose the book. We are now making copies of the book so the moving company has a copy.

The last time we spent weeks packing and making note of everything and when we got to the border, the moving van had already crossed with out stuff and they seemed TOTALLY uninterested in our book.

(hard to pump yourself up once again to "itemize" everything you own)

However we have done that, and looking back, when we were at box 50, Ken was smug, saying that we have had over 200 boxes when we moved to the US ( as it we have so much less now)

Now we are well over 200 b0xes.

In 2003, we planned on moving back to Canada. We had taken a strong public stance against the war and had been "publicly" reminded we were Canadians and to mind our own affairs..

so to speak.

There were letters to the editor about us, we received what I would consider hate mail, and one day I felt extremely alone, I wrote a song called "Time to go". The

I feel it whenever the wind blows

I feel it deep in my soul

I feel it when the night is upon me

it's time for me to go

CHORUS

I Feel so far from home

I feel I don't belong

I feel like a stranger here

it's time for me to go

the tide will only get higher

the waves will start crashing in

my life will only get harder to bear

it's time for me to go

voices constantly calling

they question why I am here

they say whenever the wind blows

they say it's time to go

I yearn to be where the sun shines

my heart longs to be free

my heart will go where the wind goes

and I will go away

The song has always been one of my most popular songs and has been on two of my CDs. It has always been my families favourite song as well. For some odd reason there were several people who considered it an assisted suicide song, being written in Oregon, me being a doctor...

However it was an interesting journey into the realm of music, and all that goes on there.

It did feel odd playing the song after my diagnosis with the cancer though.

Today we did a video in our back yard, and if it is not at the end of this blog, it will be on one soon.

My health is... stable. My "twin" has just been diagnosed with possible recurrence of her cancer in the lymph nodes around the heart and lungs. When I say twin, .. she is someone who had exactly the same grade and stage or cancer and she received exactly the same treatments as me. Only thing is that she was 6 months ahead of me. I guess we were both thinking that we were out of the woods.

I am looking forward to "establishing" with the BC cancer agency for my follow up. I have more pain with time, and though it has been established that the pain is related to the radiation damage, it is hard some times, not to worry about the cancer..... but I don't... too often.

Well NOW it is moving day, I had a very rough night with nausea and pain, so I have opted to wait for Ken and drive up with him after the moving van leaves. We have to be at border before 3:30 to get the cars "imported".

The van is here...sooo

gotta go

love Janet

janken b @ gmail.com

where we are going

I have sat down to write now several times, but something seems to keep getting in the way.

So I will start all over.

The moving van is coming a week tomorrow to load our things and I will likely leave that day for Canada. Ken likely the day after.

I cancelled my health insurance for the end of January (what was I thinking)(it WAS a big deal though). I do have interim private health insurance in Canada, until the regular government insurance kicks in.(there is a 3 month waiting period)

Interesting though that the private insurance there costs less than a quarter of the monthly premiums we are paying here.

It was hard saying goodbye to everyone last weekend, such wonderful friends. The term "end of an era" was brought up about our leaving and I echoed the term in my comments of leaving. The wonderful people of the peace movement there really kept us there ......... perhaps longer than we should have stayed. We feel that all the conflict at the hospital really did me in.

However it was a time that I will always hold as a very special part of my life. To put it into a sentence.... It was the time I realized that even when all those around you disagree with you, you are not necessarily wrong.

I did truly love the hospital work as well, funny how a few bad apples can ruin the whole box.

Ken and I have decided that we are leaving SO MUCH behind, that at this point it is best we just look forward, lest we go crazy.

We ...kind of, sort of like, maybe have an offer on our house.. well you know how it goes.

AND we have had lots of interest in our Eugene house. It is all very painful, especially seeing the Bandon house go for what it is going for. Its like we spent 3 full years paying for the half of the house that someone is getting for free. Just isn't fair.

Looking forward. We have a furnished house to rent the first of February, in Chase. I am hoping to start work the first week of February. Joshes car is still registered, and insured in the US because he is a student and in looking into it, we cannot take it officially into Canada, so will have to drive it back into Washington and just sell it to a car dealer in Bellingham. (surely we are not going to come out on top of that deal) His car is a Kia and the year it was made 2006, it did not meet the standards required to be licensed in Canada.

Our Van will cost us a lot to take over as well.

Since we have lived in the US all these years we can bring our vehicles over "duty free", up to 10,000 and the rest we have to pay duty and tax on.

The Mini cooper will be fine, and it has winter tires on it, how cool is that?

We will be working at a clinic in Chase which has
View Larger Map

a satellite clinic over in scotch creek which you can see on this map where the two are, just zoom out and you will see Scotch creek on the north side of the bigger lake

We are looking at an older house on 3 acres half way between the two. I wish I was better with google earth and I would show you in more detail where we were going to be.

Well back to packing, will keep you updated. Love Janet

move date january 31

Hi there

Well Ken and I are definitely on the move. We have a moving date of January 31st and theoretically starting work in Chase BC on Feb 14th.

I might possibly begin before that date.

The Chase clinic is in a small town 2500 people on the little Shuswap Lake, which is right next to the Shuswap lake, which is huge. A real summer destination spot.

Chase itself is not so much of a destination as the points beyond Chase. We are looking at working in Chase and possibly eventually living at a place called Scotch Creek, which is a very small spot along the north Shuswap lake, as there are many small acreages up above the lake.

Moving and starting up this month will prevent us from sinking too much further into debt (whilst waiting for house to sell)

Ken has this (clever) ad running in the Bandon paper this week, advertising a half price sale on our house, with the price being about half of what it cost us to build.

We are trying to focus on being very unemotional about it all, after all its just money and we have our health.

Giving up the Eugene house is also very hard for us after all of our dreams of this little hobby farm. ( we have planted SO many fruit trees in the past and just left them). I worked SO hard last summer on this garden. However I am very thankful that I had such a great gardening summer and hope that soon we can have another garden.

So we try to keep looking forward instead of back and being up in Canada makes that easier. I just got back from yet another trip up to Canada yesterday. I went up to look for a house for us to rent to begin with.

Snowed the whole time I was there it seems. The mayor of Chase found us a house to rent that is fully furnished (the owners come just for the summers so we will have to be out by end of June) We figure we will have a better idea of where we want to live by then, and hopefully our properties down here will have sold by then and we can afford to buy up there.

Ken and I will work in a clinic that is next to a medical center. The medical center has lab, xray, and an emergency dept. The emergency dept is only open from 9 am until 3 pm each day.

There is a clinic in Scotch Creek that is sort of a satelite of the chase clinic.

Currently no doctors are going out to Scotch Creek clinic, there is a nurse practitioner that goes every 2 weeks. I am hoping to start going weekly to get that clinic going again. (there are 5000 full time residents on the north side of the lake and this would be their nearest medical clinic)

Ken and I have both signed a contract with Ken working full time and me working .5 time (half time)

Our two sons live in Kamloops (40 mins away)(as well as my sister)

My parents live about 3.5 hours away and Kens are about the same in the other direction.

We are having a big "leaving" party at our Bandon house on January 15th for anyone who wants to come, it may well be the last time we are in Bandon for a long while.

It will be a potluck dinner and I am encouraging people to bring lawn chairs (our couch and kitchen chairs are still there, so there is some seating.

So thats what we are up to, though leaving is very hard, we are trying to only look ahead.

Love Janet

jankenb @ gmail.com