Things not going so well
Jun. 12th, 2007 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyesetzI'm sorry to have offended y'all with my frequent carping about what a crappy country the USA is these days, but I gotta "keep my hate up" until I complete my Northward relocation. It's not easy to change one's nationality, though Canada is perhaps the least-difficult new country for a USAian to get used to. Nothing about this move has ever been easy for me (some people are just lucky, I guess). I have to keep reminding myself what a horrible Sovietesque place the USA has *usually* been, for most of its history, except for brief periods like the one I grew up in. American historians like to end each of their stories of US atrocity by saying, "and then we learned our lesson!" No, we didn't, at least not the right lesson. Like the child who is spanked after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the lesson we learned was "don't get caught" rather than "don't steal". What we learned from Japanese internment during WWII wasn't that discrimination based on ethnic origin is bad government, but that we should try harder not to get caught engaging in such blatant racism. I'd like to say that what we learned from the Spanish-American War was not to get caught creating a fake casus belli, but these days it seems we didn't even learn that. I would like my taxes to go to a country that actually is what the USA merely pretends to be: a liberal democracy. I would like to have a government that often seems to be at least *trying* to do the reasonable thing, rather than one whose last reasonable act (that I can recall) was ordering the National Guard stationed at the airports in Fall '01 to keep their guns unloaded.
After five years of trying, I have managed to clear only one of the roadblocks on the way to my new life as a Canadian. For some people this would be enough: now I should just emigrate, get an apartment in Toronto like all the other immigrants, then start looking for a job and the other pieces of my new life. But otiose pride gets in the way. Some people get their new jobs lined up before they go; why can't I? Some people find housing that's just perfect for them, why can't I? When I bought my current house, it met every criterion we could think of, so it was "just perfect". Our criteria are different now, but I can't find anything in all of Ontario that's perfect enough to justify jumping in the car and driving 600 miles to go look at it.
Things aren't all bad, of course. Company 𝔾 is willing to continue employing me as a telecommuter to get me through the dark and cold of my first Canadian winter. My neighbors tell me that housing prices in our area have stabilized somewhat, so things look good as far as getting the price I had hoped for on my current house (about $50,000 less than the going rate around here, since it's somewhat dilapidated). But with no good news coming in from the new-house search, it's hard to get motivated to prepare this house for sale, or even make it presentable to a house-flipper. I'd like to pre-sell the house, locking in a price so I know for real how much I can spend. Then I can say to the kids, as I sign on the dotted line, "Look, kids! I'm selling the house! You'd better get started on cleaning your rooms." But I'm nowhere near ready to do that. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking. My visa (once I get it!) will probably expire in mid-October. If I can land some academic job then I'll probably have to move in late August. This is my last summer as an American. But somehow the move doesn't seem real yet.
After five years of trying, I have managed to clear only one of the roadblocks on the way to my new life as a Canadian. For some people this would be enough: now I should just emigrate, get an apartment in Toronto like all the other immigrants, then start looking for a job and the other pieces of my new life. But otiose pride gets in the way. Some people get their new jobs lined up before they go; why can't I? Some people find housing that's just perfect for them, why can't I? When I bought my current house, it met every criterion we could think of, so it was "just perfect". Our criteria are different now, but I can't find anything in all of Ontario that's perfect enough to justify jumping in the car and driving 600 miles to go look at it.
Things aren't all bad, of course. Company 𝔾 is willing to continue employing me as a telecommuter to get me through the dark and cold of my first Canadian winter. My neighbors tell me that housing prices in our area have stabilized somewhat, so things look good as far as getting the price I had hoped for on my current house (about $50,000 less than the going rate around here, since it's somewhat dilapidated). But with no good news coming in from the new-house search, it's hard to get motivated to prepare this house for sale, or even make it presentable to a house-flipper. I'd like to pre-sell the house, locking in a price so I know for real how much I can spend. Then I can say to the kids, as I sign on the dotted line, "Look, kids! I'm selling the house! You'd better get started on cleaning your rooms." But I'm nowhere near ready to do that. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking. My visa (once I get it!) will probably expire in mid-October. If I can land some academic job then I'll probably have to move in late August. This is my last summer as an American. But somehow the move doesn't seem real yet.
