little bitty girl

Last Monday, Stefan and I bought a house. Yes, we are becoming renown for our abrupt announcements about important matters in our lives.

What can I say? Underneath my propensity to be honest and open about everything in my life, I also tend to be quite secretive about certain things about my life with Stefan. He's a fairly private person so the things that are really important or big to us, we tend to keep close until we're ready.

I don't know why it's such a huge shock to everyone. Surely, no one would seriously think Mr. Very Responsible With His Money would let us rent forever. We were simply waiting for the right time to do it.

We had discussed buying in the Fall but thought to start looking just to see what was out there. Let me tell you, for all they are saying about the real estate bust down south, it simply is not really happening in Toronto. The real estate market here is as crazy as ever. But we found something that fit, so it seemed prudent to jump on the opportunity while we could.

I have to say, I am still slightly in shock over the whole thing. And now it's finally sunk in. According to Stefan, we're not shopping for the next 30 years or so.

We're moving to the east side of the city. The thought of this has been such a sticking point for me while we were looking. After all, both of us had either lived or worked in the West Queen West area for about 12 years of our lives. You know how it is...when you become acclimatized to your life in your neighbourhood, it's so hard to fathom starting a new routine? Where would I go to get my Parisian style croissants at 8 am in the morning? How could I move so far from the Japanese Paper Place (my all time favourite store)/Type Books/Chippys? How could we move so far from our friends?

But then I realized Leslieville has a lot of its own charm as well. Lots of great independent shops, design stores, and restaurants. In fact, it very much reminds me of how West Queen West used to be about 8 years ago. At the end of the day, we also would get more house for our money. It also helped that Erin, a girlfriend called shortly after hearing the news, screaming in my ear that we will now only live a mere 15 minutes away from each other and Che (a former roomate of Stef's who pretends to hate him...and him and I get along really well) sent an email saying that we can finally rekindle our love as he also lives a couple of streets away. I realize that it's all going to be okay after all.