Moving Again

Lake Superior has been the first real home I’ve had in eighteen months. I’m a domestic creature (a domestic goddess, you might say) despite–or because of–all my wanderings. Here, I was happy to wake in the same terrible taco-bed every morning. I developed daily routines, ordinary but deliciously exotic after too long on the road–Red River Cereal at 8, coffee at 10. At Beaver Rock I got the kind of Huck Finn summer that everyone should have when they’re ten years old. I think I’ve grown four inches.

But the Monarchs and the geese are heading south, the obsessive and compulsive squirrels are hiding caches of nuts under the porch, and the bears are getting hungry. Those are my cues to get out before snow starts swirling through the chinks in my unheated blog cabin. It is not sensible to live in a country where “winterize” is a normal, everyday word. I am not winterized. I have no home, no job, and no residency permit, and so it’s time for this grasshopper to pack up again and give Canada a kiss goodbye. Or rather, a passionate get-a-room-for-god’s-sake snog goodbye, since I’ve come to love the place in spite of the GST(Goods and Services Tax).

Ottawa next, to play with the power-dressing MBA chick my lovely sister has become in her latest incarnation, and to play with the step-niblets, who call me “Durbla”. I will go armed with an extensive movie wishlist, and perhaps even make it to a few museums this time.

Then New York in early October to catch up with some old friends and maybe meet some new ones in a more fleshly world than this. A wedding near Toronto at the end of October. November onwards belongs to Ireland and London. I will try very hard to curb my feral ways and not pee on the sidewalks.

I’m nervous. I’m hoping for friendly faces as I start yet another new life. I think they’ll be there.

10 thoughts on “Moving Again”

  2. OnePotMeal! Dammit, I knew I’d slipped up when I moved my Blogroll over to Blogrolling. Steve, you have been restored to your rightful place.

    Thanks for the good wishes.

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  4. Dervala, I’m sorry to hear you are moving on – I would have enjoyed reading your winter adventures in the north! But, sounds like great adventures ahead and I look forward to reading them all!

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  5. It’s too bad we can’t give you a Key to the City or a Key to the Park or something as a going away present. I can’t imagine the shitter’s locked. Hmmm. And Sleeman’s doesn’t travel very well. Bear stew? A rack of moose dinner? We’ll have to think on this. You haven’t escaped our clutches yet. In Bytown do NOT eat the BeaverTails.

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  9. Ottawa is a lovely town. More Irish pubs there than maybe anywhere outside of Ireland and some great music, with homegrown Ottawa Valley fiddle styles predominating.

    Derv…there’s so much more of Canada that needs your eyes. I’d love to see what you would make of Cape Breton in the spring, Saskatchewan in the fall or Vancouver Island under the brace of a Pineapple Express.

    Thanks for the reminders of life in Nishnawbe-Aski…the Ojibway homeland.

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