Are You Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Since I got here, it has been one beautiful day after another; summer here is absolutely gorgeous. If I had even one day like this in Calgary – warm and sunny, windless and without storms – I would be frantically spending every possible second outside, carpe diem, not wanting to waste a beautiful day. Weather there is always so volatile – one of my girlfriends texted me last week to say it was 13 degrees and pouring rain – so I’m ever so grateful to be living in a place where I can predict what the day will bring. Summer weather in the summer, what a novel concept!

I was a bit concerned, moving here, how Rex would do in the heat. He’s definitely a cold-weather dog, and I was worried that the temperatures would be too hot for him, but so far it has not been a problem. I walk him at 8:00 at the latest, and our walking route is a beautiful trail that is almost entirely shaded. It winds along a creek, which he enjoys drinking from and also is the reason his white paws are completely grubby all the time now. Attached to this path is an offleash park, which is also shaded and has water taps, bowls, and kiddie pools. It also had, one day, Rex’s doppelgänger.

As an aside, one of the first days I was at the offleash a very attractive young man was chatting with me and told me not to worry about the water in the bowls, he had just filled them, adding, ominously, You know, I don’t trust the old water, because of that woman. Wait, what woman? I told him I just moved here and he explained that there was a woman who would came to dog parks, with no dog, and poisoned the water in the bowls. Several dogs got sick and one actually DIED. I listened to this story with wide, horrified eyes, and was reminded of my days at the playground, how the young mothers would warily eye men without children, sitting on the benches. In any case, now that Rex has discovered the giant water bowl that is in the creek, he is completely uninterested in the water at the offleash.

I do love our morning walk route, but I have had to adjust to driving to get to the trail, rather than just strolling out the door, as I was used to doing. The first morning I was here I decided I WOULD walk to the trail; it was only about two kilometres, and I had used it as a running route before, so I was sure it would be just fine. Well. I had grossly misjudged how stressful it would be to walk down a busy road with no sidewalks, only a bike lane, with an enormous and excited dog bounding around, while cars zipped past. It took all my strength to keep the leash short and Rex on the inside, which backfired completely when he excitedly discovered not only a dead raccoon, but several squashed birds, at which point my soul briefly left my body. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like driving five minutes was such a hardship to be avoided.

International Costco Woman of Mystery

I have been slowly getting used to the grocery stores here. Sure, Superstore is Superstore, and Costco is Costco, but there are differences from what I’m used to. I think the biggest difference is that because Kelowna is just over a tenth of the size of Calgary, there is only one of each of those stores, and hence they are very busy. I made the mistake of going to Costco on a day that was a bit cooler and overcast – but still, temperature-wise, would have been considered a hot day in Calgary – and it was INSANE. It reminded me of the Costco in Maui, and just writing that makes me feel like I am a fancy world-Costco-traveller. Nicole: The International Costco Woman of Mystery could be the name of my memoir. Anyway, the layout was the same as the one in Maui and opposite of that in Calgary, which made it tricky to find everything on my list, and also it was so busy as to be almost impossible to maneuver through the aisles. It was literal bumper-to-bumper cart traffic. Perhaps it will be easier when tourist season is over.

The biggest difference for me, grocery-wise, is Superstore. It’s not just the layout, it’s the actual products that are available. Calgary in general and the part of the city in which I lived in particular is much more multicultural than here, and so the international foods aisle was always a cornucopia of fun and interesting items. Here, this is not the case. A quarter of the international aisle is filled with British products, like spotted dick, which I am not in the market for, culinary or otherwise, and the selection of Asian, Indian, and African items is pretty limited. I’m finding it hard to find noodles I like, is what I’m saying.

Hi Neighbourino

Probably the largest adjustment I have had to make has to do with my next-door neighbour. Before I get into that, a little context: my husband grew up on his family-owned vineyard, and about twenty years ago his family sold it and the attached winery, keeping two acres of it. The house in which we are living was originally his grandparents’; we added a second floor to it and took the existing house down to the studs, renovating it completely. It is such an incredibly fortunate thing to be able to live in a beautiful new house on a vineyard, overlooking the lake and the city. Every morning I wake up and look out the windows and feel so very lucky.

There is one thing that I feel you should know, and I’m mentioning it in a very casual, value-neutral way, and that is that there is another house on this two acre property, and that house belongs to my mother-in-law. While you absorb that information, I will hasten to assure you that my mother-in-law and I have a good relationship, albeit one that has been cultivated long-distance over the past twenty-five years. She is not one of those women who think that No One Is Good Enough For Her Precious Son; in fact, she thinks everything I do and every decision I make is Just Wonderful, Dear, which is lovely and, I think, rare. She is not a person who insists on having every meal together; in fact, I can’t even remember the last time we had a dinner together, it might have been Thanksgiving 2020.

But still, living next door is a lot different from twice-or-thrice annual visits, and so this is an adjustment to be sure, mostly a mental one. My main concern is maintaining boundaries and protecting personal privacy, for both of us, and mostly it’s been fine. We had an open and honest conversation about this prior to the move, which was INCREDIBLY difficult for me, because I don’t know how you grew up in the 80s and 90s, but open and honest conversation was not part of the story for me. In any case, there have been a few gentle bumps, but mostly it’s been fairly smooth sailing.

Bye Bye Birdie

In eighteen days, my older son is moving on campus for his first year at university. He’s so excited, and I’m so excited for him, and also, landslide. The university is close to us, so this feels like a very soft landing, but it’s still going to be a big change. In the meantime, I’m really cherishing having four faces at the dinner table. When he was working shift work this past year, I found myself thinking that the nights he was home for dinner was a real treat; this past month I feel spoiled having both the boys here all the time. What I am going to say is nothing new or original or earth-shattering, but I just love my boys so much; I am so proud of them both and I think they are incredible people, and I can hardly believe my luck that the universe gave them to me. It’s been so wonderful having them both here this summer, and of course it’s going to change very soon, and, like everything else, I will adjust to the changes. All you who have been through this know what it is.

Weekly Reading

First of all, thank you all for your very kind comments of understanding and stories of hope, with regards to Bookmarkgate. So far they have not been recovered, but there are some boxes with garage items and gardening implements that I have not yet gone through, and although I’m not very hopeful, I’m not COMPLETELY hopeless. It’s more like 90% hopeless, as opposed to 100% before your lovely comments. We hosted our first dinner party this weekend and my sweet friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) brought me bookmarks as a housewarming, to “tide me over until the others were found.” I have such lovely friends!

Prep. When I was a kid I was obsessed with the idea of boarding school. It just seemed so fun and cool. Is it just me or does everyone think this? Anyway, this book is a very realistic portrait of a girl from Indiana who goes to a New England boarding school on scholarship; it shows her evolution from freshman to senior, and I really liked it. It showed an insular and privileged world, with all the angst of a teen in the 90s. I thought it was such a true picture of what it was to be a teen at that time, albeit in a very different life than the one I had.

Here we are at the end of a long weekend, and I hope yours was great. Have a lovely week, everyone! xo