Why is it Mondays in January are more blah than Mondays in any other month?
I’m still staying at my mom’s and it looks like I’ll be here for the rest of the week. My ass is beginning to hurt because I’ve been sitting on her very nice-looking (but not super comfortable) dining room chairs for hours on end, working on edits for the next book. The hard wood squishing my butt cheeks really makes me appreciate my beloved office chair, which is packed on a massive moving truck, and which won’t arrive at the new house until Friday night.
| Our moving truck. If you see it, tell the driver to go faster, please. |
No, I’m not complaining. Life doesn’t suck (and even if it did, who’d want to hear about that, anyway?). Mainly I’m just missing my stuff. A girl can miss her stuff, can’t she? Like, a girl can be tired of wearing the same two pairs of jeans all week, can’t she? And the same four sweaters?
She can, and she is.
But gradually I am settling back into life in Canada (or “Canadia”, as my friend Economic Disconnect likes to say, bless his dead, black heart). Tim Horton’s coffee is really good coffee, which I had forgotten, and I haven’t had Starbucks once since crossing the border. And people are FREAKING NICE here! I had very nearly forgotten that, too. Not that people weren’t nice in the U.S. – they most certainly were – but after almost five years away, I can say very objectively that people are REALLY FREAKING NICE in Canada. As you may have heard. It’s not a rumor.
I’m getting used to the weight of all the extra coins in my wallet (thanks to loonies and toonies, which are our one dollar and two dollar coins), and I’m getting used to hearing a lot of Barenaked Ladies, Hedley, Avril Lavigne, and Nickelback on the radio (I don’t mind the first two, but the last two can suck it, and we will not discuss Justin Bieber), and I’m also getting used to seeing everything labelled in French as well as English. All small things, but all subtle reminders that I’m back in the country where I was born and raised, and that Canada really does distinctively have its own unique flavour. And look, I spelled ‘flavour’ the Canadian way! (Which looks totally funny to me now.)
Another reminder? I was out with friends today and they must have said “eh” about a hundred times in the span of an hour. So that rumor? Sadly true. Weird how I can hear it now, though.
It’s good to be home. And this is one of the reasons why:
| Me with my soon-to-be 12-year-old niece, Kayla. She was 7, and so little, when I left! And now she’s totally into Justin Bieber. |
So, while I continue to wait for the big truck to arrive, I am working on edits for FREAK while squirming in this very stiff chair. What are you working on? Catch me up!