Where Do I Even Start?

It’s now the end of August. I have well and truly lost all concept of time and space, and although I’ve thought a lot about writing more for this blog, thoughts are as far as I’ve gotten. I’ve also been without a laptop for about a month so I really couldn’t write for a while. My 2013 MacBook Pro needed replacing because, well, Apple. Enough said. I was tired of being trapped in the Apple cycle and decided I was going to move into the PC world. I was nervous. I’ve been a Mac user my entire adult life and have had a love hate relationship with Apple over the years. There are many things that annoyed me about being in the cult and I finally snapped after looking at the specs for the new MacBooks. As pretty as they are, they just aren’t worth the money. I knew Windows had come a long way and I started a deep dive into the PC world. I watched a boat load of videos and read a ton of articles on making the switch and finally after months of research I pulled the trigger and purchased an Asus Zenbook. I had backed up all my files to the cloud and to external drives. I was ready. It turns out that as of yet (12 days) everything has been smooth sailing. Well except for a little question mark issue.

After typing out the heading for this section, Where Do I Even Start?, I found that my question mark key was not actually producing a question mark. So apparently the answer to my heading was that I should start with figuring out how to type a question mark on my new laptop. Turns out that I had my keyboard set to multilingual and my question mark key was creating an aigu, the french accent mark. After a quick correction in keyboard settings I was good to go. I love my new little laptop. It’s super light, easy to use, has a beautiful 14″ display and I’ve been able to sync and import everything I’ve needed from my other devices. I am so happy to be free from Apple! Now, let’s get to what’s been going on since we decided we had to get out of the basement.

Daylight

So much time has passed since my last post. I need to back up a bit before I jump into where I am now and what I’m doing. So let’s return to April 27th. We had spent 6 weeks with my parents, living in the basement, doing our best to stay sane. We had gone from eight months of travel, moving to a new location pretty much every four days, to going nowhere. It was time to make a break for it. We made calls to ensure we were allowed to make the trips we had planned and were given the green light by the BC government. But first, Calgary.

We have a great friend in Calgary and he invited us to come spend some time with him. Kevin had been working from home and had plenty of space for us. He also had two new cats, Scottish Folds, that were unbelievably cute. Added bonus. I took way too many photos of them.

Just driving to Calgary was delightful. Freedom on the open road. We arrived and found our beautiful room waiting for us, complete with a cinema light box reading “Quarantine Living”. It was exciting to see a new face even if we couldn’t hug. 

 

Craft Time With Kevin

We really enjoyed our time with Kevin and the cats. We spent time visiting, hot tubbing, watching movies, and crafting. Kev is a handy guy and has recently started making custom frames for friends. Since we had thousands of beautiful photos from our trip Kevin decided that we should choose a few and he would frame them. During our visit Kev and I also made squirrel picnic tables. We know how to have a good time.

The cats also provided hours of entertainment. They had a feather wand toy that they went mental over and I spent a lot of time running around the house with it. You know you’re losing it when you catch yourself in a moment of manic laughter while running laps around a kitchen island being chased by cats. I also enjoyed whipping the feather wand back and forth so fast that I thought their tiny heads would snap off trying to keep their eyes on it. I know it sounds cruel but they loved it, and more importantly, it brought me joy. Oh, and they also like to play fetch and wrestle. The wrestling they do with each other, not me, just to be clear. My job was to throw the pom poms for fetch, sadly they just don’t have the manual dexterity to effectively launch them for each other.

Around Calgary

We did venture outside for some lovely walks and happened upon some unique things around Calgary. Not to crap all over Edmonton but I’ve always found Calgary to be a much prettier city. There are just so many little things that add to its esthetic. I think Edmonton is starting to improve in this respect but we still have a ways to go. It just seemed that everywhere we went there were interesting art installations, or simply something to beautify the ordinary, like art on city utility boxes.

If you scroll down in this link you can take a look at many of them. Such a great idea. Why can’t Edmonton do this?

https://www.calgary.ca/csps/recreation/public-art/utility-box-public-art-program.html

There were plenty of random home made installations that we found while wandering the streets, like the tree house in the photo above. Kevin’s neighbors also had a very creative front yard, complete with a book exchange box.

 

The Cracks Are Showing

As wonderful as it was spending two weeks with Kevin, we were still pretty much house bound. As entertaining as Kevin was he hadn’t been doing much either. There are only so many old stories you can tell before you run out of material. Andre and I had now spent over ten straight months together. Every. Single. Day. Together. So we REALLY had no stories to share with each other at this point. It’s a bloody good thing we can just enjoy each other’s presence without words. But Andre does love to talk and so he continued to try to create narratives. I believe the following story will very clearly demonstrate just how dire things had gotten.

It was around 11pm and I was in bed playing solitaire on my phone. Andre comes in and breaks out into a big grin. I can see by the look on his face that he’s got something funny to tell me. He proceeds to elaborately set the scene of the story… basically it was the bedroom the night before, but he really dragged it out somehow. He had been having trouble sleeping and had been tossing and turning and flipping his pillow around. This sounded like nothing new as he always has to muck around with the bedding like a puppy, but I feel I kept a fairly believable “I’m interested” face. He continued on like it was a tale as old as time, an epic battle of man versus duvet. The expressions on his face were way to animated for his narrative but I stuck with him because that’s what you do when you love someone.  Anyway, then the story got really dramatic and took a twist because it turns out that the duvet wasn’t really the culprit. Low and behold the pillowcase was slightly too small for the pillow and… wait for it… he moved around so much that when he woke up he found the pillow was no longer in its case.

Let me just repeat that for you. His pillow was without pillowcase upon waking.

It was a snory that rivaled anything I’d recently heard and after several minutes of trying desperately to keep up with this page turner I must have looked stunned when it became obvious to me that the caseless pillow was the end of the tale. As he absorbed the look on my face, part confusion (like I was concerned he’d sustained a head trauma), and part amazement at how shitty the story was, he too realized that he’d officially gone off the rails. I bust into hysterical laughter to the point of tears. I couldn’t contain it. I couldn’t stop. Through my tears and laughter I think I may have said something to the effect of, “Is this how our life is going to be now?”, and “Did you actually feel like that was going to make a great story when you started it?” We both laughed for way too long and eventually I was told to shut up about it or risk being smothered in my sleep.

Looking back on it months later the pillow case story is now the best story I’d heard since returning to Canada.

Andre’s face at the end of the story. So pleased with himself.

My face at the end of the story. What the hell just happened here?

Time for some new adventures. Off to see Morgan.

 

Two Weeks In Victoria

It was a beautiful drive to Victoria and I was beyond excited that we saw a grizzly on our way. Andre was already pulling off to the side of the road by the time I started yelling for him to stop like I was a small crazed child. I lose my mind when I see animals. He threw the car into reverse and I had my camera out and zoomed to the max. I could have sat there forever watching him meander down the road but Andre sensibly pulled away after a few moments.

We arrived at the ferry terminal with about an hour to kill and cued up in our lane for the final stretch of our journey. The vehicle in front of us provided some reading material during the wait.

On the ferry ride to the island people were advised to remain in their vehicles. It was dark by then so it really didn’t matter. Morgan was in Edmonton visiting Joeleen for the week so we had the place to ourselves for the first half of our stay. As much time as we had spent together over the last year it was still super nice to have a place just for the two of us. It wasn’t our home, but it was the second best and I was grateful for Morgan’s generosity.

Morgan and Jo had been doing the long distance thing since meeting at our farewell party last June and they took turns driving back and forth across the boarder. We hadn’t seen either of them since Croatia and Montenegro and we were really looking forward to catching up with Morgan. He had continued to work during the last few months but hadn’t been seeing anyone other than Jo and his folks. If you have read the blog throughout our travels you will recall my photo collage of Morgan’s various hair styles over the years, both organic and contrived.

If you haven’t, to sum things up, Morgan is not afraid to take a fashion risk. He is willing to do a lot of things for a good laugh. Years ago, on the morning of a friend’s wedding he had Andre shave his head to look like he had major hair loss. He shaved it all off after a few days but he owned it while he sported it. Then he had let it go completely before meeting us in Croatia.

This was the original photo set I posted at that time. Well, during the first weeks of the COVID shut down Morgan had been sent a link on Facebook about doing your own COVID haircuts. A few people jumped on the comments and dared him to do it. Morgan requires no daring. A few days later he had done it. He posted the horrifying photos. I had to create a new photo collage.

 

 

 

Lazy Days

We spent the first week out exploring nature. It was so nice to be back on beaches soaking up some sun. Victoria is simply beautiful and I loved exploring it. Andre had another friend in Vic, Loryn, and we met up with her and her two kiddos on a couple of occasions and went adventuring. The kids loved investigating all the little tidal pools and poking around at the tiny creatures residing in them.  We even happened upon a crazy looking creature which we think may have been a long-nosed chimaera, a deep water species that can be found up to 3,000 meters below the ocean’s surface.

 

The other highlight for me was hanging out in Beacon Hill Park. I loved chilling out with the ducks and squirrels and peacocks. This guy hung out with me for about 20 minutes.

The “Moss Lady” was just one of many fantastic installations we happened upon.

Another cool thing we discovered during one of our many walks were these crochet hearts that were strung up in trees for miles along part of a coastal trail.

A Legitimately Good Story

Although the pillowcase story will always have a special place in my heart, when Morgan arrived home he had a truly entertaining narrative about a trip to Dairy Queen. Apparently he and Joeleen had been hitting up the DQ regularly. So one evening they were on the phone chatting and Jo starting talking about DQ. Morgan said that after hearing her talk about sweets he got the craving and decided he had to go make a run for a treat. He had already been home for hours after working all day and had showered and was in his robe. In typical Morgan fashion he figured he would just go through the drive through, so he threw on his flip flops and walked out the door nonchalantly in his robe. As you do when you’re Morgan. When he arrived at Dairy Queen he realized that there was in fact no drive through. Morgan, never the quitter, paused for a brief moment to weigh out his option. The choice was obvious. He would simply have to go into to DQ in his robe. He wasn’t going to leave empty handed.

Morgan’s confidence allows him to get away with things that most people couldn’t so I wasn’t entirely surprised when he told us that nobody in the place really even paid him much attention, and the person behind the register basically said that anything was acceptable during COVID. I just love the image of him sauntering into DQ in his terry cloth robe and flip flops with zero fucks given. He’s kind of my hero.

Andre’s Birthday

Not much to say here. We celebrated Andre’s birthday with Morgan. They went golfing for the day. We had a meal. Minus cake. I had wanted to go pick up an assortment of treats from the local bakery and had been online the day before picking things out. What I failed to notice was that because of COVID they were only open for a few hours each day and by the time I got there they were closed. I had ONE job. What a lousy girlfriend. I told Andre that Thursday was a lame day for a birthday anyway and that we were moving it to Friday. Problem solved.

So Over Drifting

I had hit my breaking point. As wonderful as Victoria was and even though I was thrilled to spend time with a few of our friends, I was ready to be home. Our real home. Our tenant was officially going to be out of our place on the 31st of May and I couldn’t wait. We left Victoria on May 26th and headed back to Edmonton through Blind Bay. One last stop to visit my cousin, his wife, and their kids for a couple nights, then back to the basement for 3 nights, then home sweet home.

Blind Bay is another magic spot and it was great to see my cousin and his family. My cousin Thomas and his wife Rebecca are insanely fun and funny. I love them like crazy and I threw my no hugging rule out the window when I saw them. I couldn’t help myself.

I didn’t know my cousin when we were growing up and when we finally hung out later in life it was as though he were my long lost brother. I have a brother. He’s great. But we are very different. Thomas and I are just the same kind of weird, and his wife is as well. They are some of my favorite people. Oh, and they own a massage chair, so not only was it a super entertaining visit, it was also relaxing. This chair was out of control. If I owned one I would be in it every night. The first evening I think I did 3 one-hour cycles back to back.

72 days back in Canada… Next stop, Renaissance Place, our real home.