Three weeks have passed since we moved back into our home. We had our homecoming party last weekend and it felt amazing to see all our good friends again and we enjoyed hosting in our expansive house. It really is ideal for entertaining and when I think of our tiny spot in Britain, I am reminded of how fortunate we are to have such a fabulous home in which to live. The tunes were cranked and we didn’t have to worry about offending our neighbours, folks mingled and wandered without feeling crowded, the drinks and food flowed, and at one point I felt as though I was dreaming.
It is still all so surreal being in England one day and then back here in Canada living our old life but being two very different people. It is as though body and spirit were in different locations. Not sure if this makes sense to any of you but oddly enough it also got me thinking about if I felt like this only after two years living in a relatively similar country how might it feel for someone that has lived in a third world country for an extended period of time, fighting in Afghanistan, or in captivity. How on earth did I make this correlation, you are probably asking? Well, I think it speaks to the awakening that one experiences when they step outside of the box of their regular lives. Again, our lives in England were comfortable and interesting but we were separated from our families, long-time friends and our home and for me it was that time apart that made me reflective and being reunited I feel grateful. Be grateful. Now there is a good motto.
And speaking of grateful, having a steady income again (vs. the unpredictable pay as a temp) is certainly handy especially since Rick is unemployed. Although the first few days when he was dropping me off at work, I would whine, “No, Daddy, don’t make me go to school. I don’t want to go.” And he would shove me off with a “there, there” and I‘d walk in half happy to be with friends (and taking tap dance lessons again) and half irritated by what I was missing back in London at EY. Gosh, I loved working there. The job was challenging and fun and the folks were great. They worked hard and partied harder and I had no problems fitting in. And now that I have worked in the private sector where results are the order of the day, being stuck in a process driven environment is not what I can truthfully see myself in for a long time to come. But for now, it is meeting the purpose of giving us time at home and time to reassess how we truly do want to move forward particularly since teaching jobs in our area are just not happening for Rick.
And on the note of moving forward Rick has certainly not been idle. Every day he makes a list of things to do for the day such as clean windows (and gosh we have a LOT of them), cut the grass, fix the furnace, unpack boxes we had stored upstairs, and he is literally working from the time I leave for work at 8:00 am until I return again at the end of the day. The place is looking so tidy and a marked improvement on what we first encountered in August when our tenant was on the end of his lease. What a relief, by the way, to get him out of the house. And as a side note, we are still trying to recover several of our missing kitchen items from him. Rick seems more patient with the man that I am. Personally, I would still like to find that ugly dog I had requested in my previous blog entry to come and chew his butt off (or a few fingers for taking things that clearly don’t belong to him). Speaking of grateful, I should be that he didn't trash the place. And as Rick would say, “are you still carrying that woman on your back” which means I am hanging onto something that I should be letting go. So I’ll move on. Okay, I’ll try to move on and be grateful as well that our move back to Canada was quite seamless and void of major challenges.
