Sunday, July 24, 2016

Datestravaganza weekend

You guys, we have had a weekend. One of the things I console myself with when I'm mourning Saskatoon and sad-texting Josie is that now, not only do I get to live near family, I get to routinely abandon my children with people who are significantly less annoyed with them than I am. Which we did with élan this weekend!

Joel's mom offered to babysit on Friday, and we had a gift card from The Keg, which is a place we don't frequent due to MONIES and it not being all that interesting, food-wise. But gift cards wait for no man, so we went and ate like some snails and some baked cheese and some tuna tacos and some ribs. 


We were gonna get dessert but lol do you see all that food and also we ate the bread that comes out first with the whipped butter.


And then we saw Ghostbusters! It was great. Super fun medium-good movie that everyone should go see because there are ladies in it kicking asses but in like baggy jumpsuits as though sometimes function triumphs over form and you don't have to see a lady's boobs all the time to know she's good at stuff.

And then, Saturday morning we drove in to the aquarium!


Dem jellyfishes forever.


It's so magical, and the girls love it so much, and Eleanor and I have passes and we got Joel in on my guest pass so it was free, basically.


And then we dropped the girls off at my parents' house and walked up to this sushi place we love


and then we hopped on the bus down to the Granville Island Market, and got some donuts from Lee's


and had a beer and met a skeleton


and went into little shops and I had the pleasure of telling Joel how much le crueset actually costs and LAUGHING and laughing, and we went on a virtual reality roller coaster and it was INCREDIBLE because it felt so real, because your body has memory of what roller coasters feel like and so it accepts the visuals even though there are like dragons flying at you and people shouting in terrified Japanese, and because it isn't real, there are no safety constraints and you can just go, like, straight down or whatever, and I had to keep re-anchoring myself, reminding myself that I was sitting in an egg on the second floor of the Children's Market and not soaring over lava. It was a blast.

And then we hopped on some more busses down to the Richmond Night Market, where we at first balked at paying $20 for the 'express pass' (good for 7 visits!) but after waiting in the mile-long regular line for a few minutes, we bought an express pass and Joel was like, Who wants to chip in a few bucks and come along with us! So we and our new family (a young couple in their early 20s and two middle-aged Korean ladies with their 12-year-old son) jumped to the front of the line! Oh and also, the night market has dinosaurs now!


Ha haaaaa, what are you doing there, pterodactyl. That green apple bubble tea was easily the best thing we had all day because we were so hot and thirsty and it was refreshing af and also had a light-up ice cube inside because night market. It's hard to be hungry when you're still half-full of sushi and donuts and beer (and now bubble tea), so we walked around for an hour to buy socks and get our appetites up. Hee hee hee, look at this rice ball riding a dinosaur!


Also look at these sweet and spicy boneless wings.


ALSO look at this raindrop cake, which I obviously wasn't going to pass up the chance to taste, but which I probably would not get again.


It's so beautiful! But is just plain gelatin, and then you sprinkle the black sugar syrup and roasted soybean flour over it and it's kind of sweet and kind of savory and it is a thing that exists. You know what ELSE is a thing that exists, is this egglet parfait.


A++ would eat again, several of.

And then we staggered home to my parents' house and crashed in their basement and it was super weird to be away from my kids for so long because I sort of forgot I had them! And then my mom texted me a picture of what they were up to and it came back to me with a jolt that I had kids and they were somewhere doing a thing and I wasn't doing it with them. Being a parent is a trip.

Anyway, speaking of parents. We woke up Sunday morning and had brunch with my parents and my sister and her husband and kid and my brother and his wife and my kids like them SO MUCH and Geneva ate like four yogurt parfaits and then we drove home and Eleanor fell asleep on the way even though it wasn't even noon and she's like fifteen now.


Socializing is WORK. What's not work, though, is just hanging out with Joel and talking but not like over a thousand other voices, and going wherever the hell and doing whatever the hell and not factoring anything in except whether we want to get up and walk to the bus stop now or sit here under the trees for a few more minutes because the breeze is so nice.


Thursday, July 21, 2016

Digging in (metaphorically)

So part of the problem in those first ten days was the weather. It rained every day, and I knew that about BC, I'm from BC, but I expected it to rain in fall when I had tea and boots, not in July when I had only a suitcase full of tank tops and shorts and one pair of canvas shoes. So it rained, and we didn't know what to do with ourselves, and camping out in your house and only eating what you can cook with a borrowed pot and a pan, washing dishes after every meal because you only have four plates, it's fun for less than a week and then it becomes a drain on your emotional resources, which are already at a low because you don't know where anything IS.


So all the stuff we did that first week, we did in the rain. And on top of that, we go places and I'm just like, The fuck are these people. Which I know takes time, and we didn't start out in Saskatoon knowing all the librarians and which vendors at the farmer's market would give the girls cucumbers just for waiting in line. I miss the chocolate girls, who would read out to Eleanor all the options, every week, before she would pick her sample. I miss the ginger lady, the donut girl. I miss getting pekoras from the truck for the walk home. I miss the walk home!


But ok, so we live here now, and we are digging in roots. We have been doing the Chilliwackianest things we can think of. We've hiked Teapot Hill twice.


We've been to Cultus Lake, which we can get to in less than ten minutes. 


And then obviously we have been hanging out with family like all the time.


And the weather is looking up.


We are looking up. (Also, Josie is coming to visit. We are counting the days.)

Friday, July 15, 2016

WE HAVE LANDED

We are alive and living in Chilliwack. We were without internet for the first like ten days and I for one am glad there is no record of that long dark week of the soul (aside from the many dozens of tear-soaked texts I sent Josie about how sad I was) and frankly I do not really want to talk about it because it's only the last few days that I don't cry all the time and I'd like to keep that streak going. ACK! I am crying now. Let's talk about something else.

Me rn
Let's talk about how the day we left was Eleanor's half-birthday, and half-birthdays are kind of a thing around here because of how close Eleanor's actual birthday is to Christmas, and because Celebrate All The Things is how we do. So on Eleanor's half-birthday, we celebrated by leaving a city we loved and driving like seven hours, it was so fun. We had our lunch in the back of the car, a picnic made of like cucumbers and chunks of cheese and some granola bars. Things we hadn't been able to finish off before we moved.


EVENTUALLY we got to the hotel, and walked next door to the Boston Pizza. My mom had a present for Eleanor, and there was a random balloon guy! He made Eleanor a balloon mermaid!


And we got these little ice cream burgers for dessert!


And the hotel had a pool!


'This is the best day of my LIFE,' she said.


Friday, July 01, 2016

We are moving (real time version)

We are moving! We are mid-move. We are in Calgary. All our stuff is in a bin...somewhere. See you in like two weeks, stuff!


I am feeling (and this might be the period talking, great timing, body!) the maximum amount of all possible feelings right now, I cannot believe my body is containing them and I am not exploding all over the inside of this car. I had a minor meltdown our last full day because it was supposed to rain so I sent my mom with the girls to an indoor play place and then it ended up being a BEAUTIFUL MORNING and I couldn't get a hold of them to reroute them to the splash park and it was our last day and I felt like an ABJECT FAILURE and I knew it was the crazy talking but I could not reign it in. 


(I finally got them and sent them to the park and then I found my ereader, which had been lost for weeks and then I felt completely overwhelmed with gratitude and good fortune. Like I said. All possible feelings.)

Onward and upward. G'bye, flats. You've been real.