A Soft Place to Land

I’ve learned that as quickly as you have dismantled your life around you, you can rebuild it again. I’ve also learned how important making a home comfortable is to me. Purging our place in Douro was gratifying to a point but once it became an empty shell, I didn’t want to live there anymore. It felt hollow and cold and the fact that I was there by myself made my urge to move on even greater. It is true that a house is just a house and that it is the people, the love, the joy, and the trials and tribulations that make it home. For me, home has to be a soft place to land and as quirky as our place is in Harlow it has been a good landing so far. I am happy to have been able to move on. Quirky Manor is a three bedroom mid terrace house that was probably built in the 50’s. The walls are solid and it is difficult to hang pictures. The good news is this means that unlike our place in Dartford we can’t hear the neighbours sneeze. There is also lots of space for storage which is unusual for many British houses. I guess the good part about that is that it discourages you from being an over consumer. I think of all the things we had in Douro and in the end did we really need them? Probably not. But having adequate storage to put linens, dishes, and clothing is certainly a bonus here.

The bathroom arrangement is interesting in that there is a toilet and sink in one room and right next to it another separate room with a sink, a tub and shower. Both are quite tiny and neither have matching flooring. In fact, the one with the toilet has a sink that is so petite Rick’s hands barely fit it in when he washes them. We also tend to spill water on the floor as a result. A small mat on the floor will remedy that. There is no place to store cosmetics and shampoos so we finally found a three tiered free standing storage units that we can tuck under the pedestal sink. The Brits are very inventive when it comes to making the best use of space and it has been fun being creative with ways to do just that with our kooky water closets.

The furniture in the lounge has posed a challenge. They are rather large and surprisingly comfortable black faux leather and resemble a psychiatrist’s furniture. And interestingly enough, our landlord is just that! Things were tickyboo until we bought our tellie (an awesome 40” Sharp flat screen at a terrific price in Sainsbury which is our local grocery store) and had to put it on a stand and then scratch our heads and stand back and say gee how do we position all this now so we can actually see the screen? Well with some creative thinking and some shifting around, I think we have it figured out. Now when we watch the news I feel like I am looking up the announcer’s nostrils. I have never had such an excellent picture and it almost makes me feel boogly-eyed watching it. We are still on the hunt for a proper entertainment unit but for now the arrangement we have seems to be working just fine. Now next to the ultra modern living room furniture we have this interesting Victorian dining room furniture which has taken some getting used to. The table is round and at first glance looks like it is covered in glass but in actual fact has a plastic top (so you have to be careful putting hot dishes on the surface). The wine coloured plush chairs are comfortable enough but the style is just so formal that we chuckle whenever we sit down for a meal. We feel somewhat regal when we dine. It certainly is not the type of set we would spend our money on but they are functional and will provide for great conversation when we have guests over. I’ll tell them my Aunt Betty and Uncle Phil were cleaning out Windsor Castle and asked if I could take it off their hands. The kitchen has a lovely window that looks out onto the back garden. I like to stand at the sink and eat my breakfast as the morning sun spills into the room. There is also a little breezeway between the kitchen and the patio with doors that have big window panes and I love to open this up and let the fresh air in. There certainly are more cupboards in this kitchen compared to our last British home and I have ample space to do my food preparation. Our landlord put in a new hob and I am enjoying cooking with gas which provides a quicker and more even heat. The house is so quiet and aside from the ticking clock (gee this reminds me of Douro) the fridge every once in a while makes this funny noise that actually sounds like someone quietly farting. It would freak me out a bit when I first moved here when I would get up in the night to get a drink. The wall clock would be making its rhythmical tick and all of a sudden “perffff” and I swear to god I thought there was someone else in the room.

I’ve taken some pictures of Quirky Manor so you can see things like the tiny bathroom sink, oh yes and the interesting ventilation system in the window for when you have a shower (you pull the strings to open and then close it again), Aunt Betty and Uncle Phil’s dining set, the back yard which Rick has only just recently raked and turned up a tube of toothpaste, an ashtray, and three spoons and a fork along with the dead leaves, and has since mowed, evened out with new top soil and reseeded with grass seed. I have also taken some shots of the pub which is only 88 steps (Rick counted them out when we went for a pint last Saturday night), the houses in our area (one which caught my eye when I was out for a run on Sunday morning – such a contrast with the pink house and the autumn coloured vine and wispy tree in the yard), the hall runner which we picked up at North Weald market, and our dealio on the round coffee table from a nearby “blow your mind away with the prices and selection” charity shop.

Goodbye My Friend

Three more sleeps. Only three more sleeps left in the house until it closes this Friday. The kids are all away at school now and Rick has been in the UK for three almost four weeks. The house is mostly empty and there are only a few items left to tuck into our new Ontario home which incidentally is 10' x 15'. Now that's downsizing! The stairs sound hollow when I clunk up and back down again. The kids' rooms are all empty. I wander from room to room and picture Keaton with his head buried in a sports game on his PSP, a rhythmic thumping comes from Channing's room as he listens to dubstep, and the blow dryer whirs in Molly's and above she sings along to Michelle Branch or Taylor Swift. The house is silent now. It has become a shell. I cry mostly because it is hard to let go and say goodbye but also because I am grateful for what we had here as a blended family. We beat the odds in these rooms. We meshed together and raised our children like a traditional family. Not many kids from split families had the benefits of stability, strong values, and mutual love and respect. And yet as difficult as the last three weeks without Rick have been I am anxious to move on. He has settled nicely in his new school and so amazed at the difference in not only the behaviour of the students but the general positive and supportive nature that permeates the building. I am so happy that he has found a place where he will thrive as a teacher. Goodness knows he deserves this. He is such a dedicated and talented teacher and I want nothing more than to see him content and appreciated as an outstanding professional. Working for two years at the Leigh in Dartford was his bootcamp and now is the time to reap the benefits of his labour. Just writing about him makes me realize how strange it has been being here without him. We have never been apart for more than a week and this has been a true test and testament to the strength of our marriage. He has been busy making our new house in Harlow a home and each day he writes an email so I have this to read when I wake in the morning. I miss his laugh and I miss his arms around me. Life carries on, no doubt, but there is just something odd about closing out the house, our house, without him. Having said that, I am almost there. There is such a sense of relief when I come home and see the "sold" sign at the end of the drive.

This means we can turn the page on this chapter of our lives and see what the next one brings. I am so proud of what I have been able to accomplish in order to make this all possible. It is a time that I am most grateful for being focused and organized and my daily lists and weekly planning have proved to be invaluable. There has certainly been no time for being flaky or scattered. But there has been time for tears, catching up with good friends, tying up loose ends, and taking stock of what I have and what I have had. So the next time I write I will be settled back in England. The house will be sold and I will have said my last goodbyes. Goodbye, my friend. We got off to a bumpy start but you grew on me over the years and I was able to call you home. Now it's time to say farewell. Goodbye, my friend. xo

In All Things Be Grateful

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.

The Reality of it all

It’s true that sometimes you need to step away from something in order to have a good look at it and being away from Peterborough for two years and returning a week ago has certainly offered me a new perspective on my hometown. My first reaction to the city was just how large everything seemed. Cars are larger, houses are larger (and mostly detached), gardens, streets, and unfortunately, the woman seem larger than in the UK. I am still finding it odd catching the Canadian accent when we are out shopping and I feel as though I am hearing my voice through a recorded message for the first time. Is that really how I sound? No wonder the Brits would mistake me for American. We really do sound a lot alike (except for the southern states or the Midwest that is

It seems funny to be using the Canadian dollar again with the coloured bills all in the same size. British notes were certainly not as colourful but they varied in size depending on the denomination (a fiver was smaller than a twenty) which aided in identification, I thought. Canadian flags posted on buildings, sitting on car antennas, or hanging as curtains are further reminders that I am not in the UK anymore.

We are getting a kick out of (or should I say quickly irritated by) the slow rate at which Peterborough residents drive compared to Dartford. A green light here means let me think about this for a second, gee what colour is that light, well I guess I should go now and I can feel Rick’s skin crawling as we sit only three car lengths behind and still waiting for our turn to go left. Gone are the roundabouts and being able to whiz around town, weaving in and out of the streets, and squeezing into ridiculously narrow parking spaces. Here the drivers like to travel at a snail’s pace and cautiously manoeuvre their massive Buicks into parking lots built for caravans. Even the way shoppers walk in the mall seems slower to us and it is as though we have been transported into a Valium-filled bubble and we can’t decipher if this is the dream and UK is the reality or vice versa.

We have had our share of sticker shock with a visit to the grocery store and dropped 50 bucks for one dinner for the family. You may think well that isn’t a big deal but when we are so used to hitting the market in Dartford on a Saturday and loading up on avocados, bananas, apples, onions, tomatoes, you name it, for a pound a bowl, we croaked when saw the price of produce here. Even since returning we have had our friends ask us if we found it expensive to live in the UK. Generally that is the opinion Canadians have about the country (as did we before moving) but the truth of the matter is that as I mentioned food is certainly less expensive as are toiletry items like shampoo (2 pounds as opposed to 7 dollars), clothing (endless good quality items found in charity shops for under 5 pounds), household items and furniture, and the list goes on. I am sure that as the weeks go by and we continue to reacquaint ourselves with life in Ontario, we will be battling it out with the cost of living and doing our best to budget effectively.

I think the greatest disappointment we have faced since coming home is the state of our house. The overgrown gardens were one thing (it was our responsibility as the owner to maintain this) but when I think of how tidy we kept our place in Dartford, the flowers we planted, and the lovely vegetable garden Rick tended, I just couldn’t imagine renting a place for a year and not so much as pulling a blade of grass. The inside of the house was another story. How frustrating to see the place looking so dirty and dishes chipped, broken, and things missing. And this was from a tenant that kicked up such a stink when he moved in claiming it was filthy, the cupboards were messy, flies were in the light over the stove, and tissue was left in the garbage in the bathroom (really insignificant things to be honest) and he wasn't sure if he wanted to move in after all.

This was the same person that claimed he was “freakishly clean due to the nature of his profession (a chef)” and he “would be the best tenant you have ever had”. So even though we questioned the state of the house when he moved in since family had lived there before hand, we dished out the cash to get the place professionally cleaned in order to keep what we thought was a fussy clean freak chap happy. How ironic that he turns out to be a slob and the state of the kitchen was such that there would be no way I would want to prepare food in it. So this started me thinking about what else he could have lied about to us and suddenly I didn’t trust him. How unsettling to have someone living in your house and mistreating it and all I can think is that I want him out.

Thank goodness we came home when we did. If he had rented the house any longer, heaven knows what further damage he could have done. So when we meet with him on Wednesday the 31st to conduct our inspection with our inventory sheet (and probably a video camera), I can honestly say that I will most certainly let the door hit him in the ass (his sorry Canadian ass, that is) when he leaves. This is when I wished we owned a big ugly dog to chew at his heels and chase him off of the property. Anyone willing to loan us such a beast on Wednesday, feel free to give us a call.

Hello my Friend...

We have just returned from our two week camping trip in France and northern Spain and are now in the thick of packing up the house. We fly home on the 19th of August and there is much to do before we leave on Friday.

We have loaned out our camping equipment and delivered most of the items we sold at our “Going out of Business” party in June. The car (aka Sticky Vicky Vauxhall) is tidy and ready to be packed with the things we want to keep here. She will be covered and stored at our friend’s place down the street and we are happy that we won’t be parting with her as a result of the move. It’s amazing when I think that we only paid 450 pounds which included 200 pounds worth of licensing and all the places that she has taken us since we bought her last year. Why we must have put at least 3,000 km on her this summer alone. Sounds odd, but I feel as though the car has been our friend; and a faithful and reliable friend at that. How many times have we pulled out our map of the UK, and most recently the European one, and took to the road for another adventure?

And this summer’s travels were particularly memorable. Firstly, Rick did a terrific job of driving back “on the other side” and despite a couple of wrong turns, we really didn’t get lost. I enjoyed being the navigator and reading the maps, watching for signs, and being the one to tell Rick “where to go”. We did find that the European map we purchased was not entirely accurate and there were times that we were relying on Rick’s keen sense of direction to get us where we needed to go. My personal favourite was when we were just outside of Caen, France on a ring road round the city and it wasn’t until we passed the IKEA under construction twice that we realized we had made a complete loop. Never mind, we managed to take the correct exit on our second attempt. And this was generally how things went for us. If we messed up, it wasn’t long and we were back on track again. The sign of a seasoned traveler, perhaps?

The biggest challenge we faced with camping was actually being able to get an undisturbed night’s sleep. What is it about camping that encourages folks to sit outside, drink, and talk until the wee hours of the morning with little or no consideration for other fellow campers? In fact, our first night in France had us listening to a group of chaps laughing and talking literally until the sun came up. And then as the daylight emerged, they packed up their cars and left the camp ground! Gee, thanks for that. What could you possibly have to say that requires you to talk all night? Anyhow, we did bring ear plugs but that didn’t do the trick with drowning out their laughter so we just had to rely on extra coffee to keep us vertical the next day.

We found the travelling through Western France pretty boring, to be honest. It was very much like driving in northern Ontario with miles and miles of forest and a monochromatic and flat landscape. It reminded me of the times that my family would be loaded in the car and made the journey between Nipigon and Thunder Bay and how you would just want to shoot yourself if you saw yet another ever green tree or rock cliff! The good news is that once we made it south of Bordeaux and headed towards San Sebastian, the Pyrenees emerged and the scenery suddenly got interesting (actually it was spectacular). As well, the cost of tolls to travel on the major highways along with the higher gas prices also meant that we were pretty pleased to have made it to Spain (the home of all things cheap).

Once in Spain, I did find, however, that unlike French, I struggled a bit with Spanish. A highlight for me, when we spent the day checking out San Sebastian, was when Ricky confidently ordered us dos cafe Americanos con leche. Where did that come from, I thought? As a result, I crowned Rick “The King of Spain”. It is funny how your partner’s strengths (and or weaknesses) can be revealed when you travel. I guess what I am trying to say here is that travelling can put you out of your comfort zone particularly when there are language barriers to overcome. But what I learned on our European vacation is that you can’t be afraid to give it a go even if you think you may not say things just right. It is more important to make the effort and surprise yourself (and your partner). I also found most French people to be very receptive to our efforts and in turn they would take a stab at some English as well. It is also interesting how hand gestures and facial expressions also play a big part in being able to interpret what someone is saying and I learned to pay attention to these as well.

So when we made our loop past Pamplona and then north ward again toward France, I was studying our French guidebook and reacquainting myself with the language. I was fortunate to have studied French in Elementary School all through Secondary School and again in College so I was feeling eager to try out such things as “Il vous reste des place?” and “Combien pour une nuit?” all in order to secure us a camp site but more so to show Rick that I could contribute too. It did render me the title of the “Queen of France” and that’s what I’m talking about!

And even though we are looking forward to returning home, I can’t help but reflect (fondly oddly enough) on what we encountered throughout the course of our two week road trip. We survived a stomach virus while in Paris (poor Rick), heat rash (the sunscreen didn’t agree with me), an infestation of slugs in the tent (okay there were only 8 of them but it felt like an invasion), midnight mariachi bands doing a Spanish rendition of Achy, Breaky Heart (why why why start playing at midnight when everyone is already asleep?), a tumble in a pot hole and a sprained ankle (Rick again), and finally more inconsiderate late night partiers (at a very expensive 30 Euros a night camp site, by the way) and a rude receptionist that shrugged when we asked about their alleged no noise policy the next day (“Hello my friend, give me your money now ef off” was the motto from that stay). Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all about sleepless night, freaks of nature, and dashing to the loo. It was also about climbing up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower and looking out over the city of Paris, driving through the Pyrenees mountains, wine tasting in Chablis, walking the same streets as my son Keaton did in San Sebastian, entering a magnificent Spanish church that was centuries old and having the

breath snatched from my chest.

Just think of the stories we now have to share not only as a result of this recent trip but all the other adventures we have had over the course of our two years here. It is sad at times to think that it is coming to an end but won’t it be fabulous to be with our families and friends again? So much has happened in their lives too and like us they are just as eager to get caught up. And my guess is that our kids will be more self sufficient as a result of our absence and what a great opportunity this has been for them to have grown into adulthood and find their own way. Will they appreciate and value our relationships more, do you think? I am sure all parents ultimately hope for this, don’t they?

Well, I feel as though I should be ending this blog entry with saying something really inspirational or thought provoking but what more is there to say other than I have no regrets, the two years flew by, my family and our house is waiting and they need us and it is time to go home.