This summer has just flown by and I can’t believe I’ve already finished the first week of my second year of medical school! I wanted to take some time to share what I’ve been up to this summer.
We’ve moved into the house!
Finally. I’m using the term “moved into” loosely here. We’re living in the house, but it’s far from finished.
When I was talking to my mom back in January about my older brother moving back into my parents’ house temporarily [before moving into our upstairs apartment], I was confident that we would be moved into our house by June. How could we not be? Oh, how my expectations were way off. [And my mom still makes fun of me for this]. Skip over to July and we finally took the leap and decided to give it a go [with the help of an airbed cot for our temporary bed].
On July 8th, we made the decision to just move in and spent our first night in the house. We told ourselves we would test the waters, see how it is, and go from there.
We never turned back.
As we spent more time in the house, we figured out what we needed and slowly moved more of our stuff in. With the majority of the house still being a reno zone, we don’t have much room. So, we’re figuring out our new normal and making the most it.
Some things are meant to be.
With all the hustle and bustle of life, it’s nice to take some time to appreciate when things just seem to work out for the best. To be honest, we got into an awkward situation when we bought our 2-family house.
Our tenants had been in the apartment for around 8 years and gone through 3 previous landlords. When we took on their tenancy, they were in the process of looking for a house. Since they were planning on leaving within a couple months of us taking ownership of the house, we didn’t put a new, written lease in place. That time came and went and come June, they were still in the apartment.
With a few headaches and lots of lessons learned, they moved out the first of July. While their move-out was delayed and a few issues arose, it happened to line up with the time my brother’s lease was up on his old apartment. He plans on looking for a house this year, so he’ll be living with us until he buys his own. Afterwards, even with all the stress, it just seemed that this was how things were supposed to work out all along.
Summer can mean a break, even from a renovation.
I’ve spent the majority of my summer doing my lab rotation [9/10 weeks]. I ended up at school more often this summer than did throughout the school year. [Thanks to recorded lectures.] One downside to this, however, was that I wasn’t able to do as much work on the house as I thought I would. We’ve come to accept our progress for what it is and chalk this summer up to having some time to regroup. We’ve worked hard and it’s healthy to take some time for ourselves. We completed the most important part and we’re able to live in the house together comfortably. Currently we’re sleeping in what will be our living room while we finish up work on our bedroom. The next steps will be the living room and dining room, which will involve mostly fixing and painting the walls.
In the beginning of August, we took a week to go up to Maine with my family. This has been our yearly summer vacation since my mom was young. I remember spending all summer counting down the days until we packed up the car. Then, when it was time to pack up again, begging my parents if we could stay for just one more day. [One year I did stay up there, with my grandma, until just a few days before school started.] I still have this same feeling, it’s my absolute favorite place to be. Spending time hanging out in the lake and reading in a hammock is just what I needed to decompress before yet another busy year.
Moving into the school year I feel in a much better place than I have been. I’ve figured out my study schedule and I’m getting back into the medical school routine. I’m exciting to see what this year has in store.
