My First Week Back Home

We have been so busy in the past four days trying to get set up in our new apartment. Furniture has not arrived yet so we had to make do.

Sunday we went out and bought a plastic lawn table and two chairs, some plastic plates, forks, knives and spoons;  a couple of phones. One was not what we wanted. So we had to return it to Canadian Tire and brought a second phone home only to find out it was a plug-in one, not the type we wanted that just plugs into the phone jack.

Saturday and Sunday we used McDonald’s wi-fi to do our emails, morning and evening. After eating our meals there for two days we soon not only found it expensive but the food gets to tasting somewhat bland, and not to mention the place was as frigid as an Ice box from their air conditioning.

Monday night we decided to use the wi-fi at Tim Horton’s, at least the air-conditioning was much more reasonable there

That night our air mattress decided to spring a slow leak so that by morning time we found ourselves sleeping partially on the hard floor. Went back again to Canadian Tire and bought a 4 by 6 strip of 3-inch thick strip of foam rubber to put on top of the leaky air bed.  Monday Paula spent part of the day looking for a car insurance company with no results as yet.

But then on Tuesday we lucked out at least with my former doctor who took us both back in as patients and have an appointment with him for the 9 of July. Then we received word the furniture would not be here on the 6^th of July. The truck had been held up by a highway 1 in Calgary being washed out by storms.  That gave us 11 more days of living with a leaky air bed, the clothes we packed for the drive out here, makeshift meals, and no household goods.

For the rest of that day I busied myself emptying the few boxes we had and the suitcase, putting clothes away in the closets and cleaning up scraps of paper and flattening out the boxes to take to recycling while Paula was doing business on the phone. Tuesday afternoon we went out and bought a few groceries and a couple of pots and a frying pan.

Back to Monday evening:  All residents park their cars in the underground garage.  Our parking space was next to that of some guy who drives a long, yellow pickup truck.  On Monday evening he scraped its back fender driving into his parking space and tried to claim it was because we were parked too close to his parking space. Luckily the resident manager took a picture of our car and it was parked well within our parking space.

Tuesday at around 2:00pm we got the internet connection set up with a wi-fi modem, that was a wonderful break as I not only have a website I also have a blog which I like to use as an escape when this reality gets to be too much for me. Wednesday afternoon at about 1:30pm the modem just quit working, no internet again.  This past four days was just too much for me, with all the previous problems I did not need or deserve to lose the internet again as well.

It was bright and sunny out and about 82 F. I decided to go for a walk. I put on a sun dress and my sandals and headed down the dirt road in front of the building here and headed towards the lake.

It was wonderful listening to the birds singing in the woods to my right. I stopped momentarily to admire the first real woods I had seen for a long time. This was not just the groomed wood of a park, it was real woods. I saw something or at least I thought I had seen something bright sparkle in the dark woods. I wanted to go in to investigate but I was not dressed properly to be trudging through the bushes along the road that may and may not have contained something unwanted like poison ivy. I resumed walking down the gravel road which came out to a place where they were playing lawn bowling and outdoor shuffle board and some other kind of game.

I walked past the parking lot and parked cars and picked up a trail that went through the woods and came out to a place close to the lake where they had these little cabins, just like the kind I remember my dad used to rent when we were on vacation. It brought pleasant memories of those days. Except these had been boarded up and unused for some time by their appearance.

A little bit farther down the trail I saw this creek. I sat in the grass for a bit to take the scene in.  Suddenly I remembered what it reminded me of. The creek that Jamie and I swam in in my dream! That sent a tingling sensation through me. I looked at the water at my feet and noticed there were hundreds of water beetles, and water striders swimming around, and the prettiest tiny blue dragon flies. I also noticed little fish swimming around near the bottom and every now and again they would swim up to the surface then splash down again, attempts at catching the water beetles and striders I supposed.

Again I saw a sparkle at the edge of my vision near the woods on the left bank of the creek. Then two and three. “The sparklies!” I thought aloud and smiled. They would disappear for a moment or two then again sparkle here and there. I sat there for some time in wonderment, and thought how nice if life was as enchanted as this creek was.

I got up again and resumed walking towards the main part of the beach. The sun was hot on my back and I decided to go for a walk in the water to cool off. I had braced myself for the water to be cold but to my surprise the water was warm but soothing.

I then walked up the beach a little further to where there was a patch of grass within a small grove of trees. I remembered this spot! This was the place where Paula had taken a picture of me when we first met. I sat on the grass in the shade of the trees for a short time then got up and made my way back towards the apartment building, stopping momentarily again at the creek. The water beetles and the tiny blue dragon flies and the fish were still there but the sparklies were nowhere to be seen.   

Today Wednesday June 27th Paula and I went to the licence bureau to get our drives licences renewed only to find out we had to travel all the way to Barrie, 30 miles away, to get that job done. Came back home and did a bit of grocery shoping then went to a service station to make an appointment for a safety check up on the car before we can apply for insurance then came back home. Finally the new modem had arrived for us in the mail. Paula set the new modem up only to find out it would only worked hard wired from the computer to the modem.

After two hours on the phone to no avail the techie told Paula to give him a couple of hours to work on it. Finally at about 8:00pm we got the call and got the Y-fi working and now here I sit finally online with a prayer and my fingers crossed it doesn't fail again. I am getting weary of having to run to Tim Horton's donuts to have to get online