Home Sweet Home

It's hard to believe that just two weeks ago we were still boxing up the last remaining belongings and hoping for a good move the next day. Hmmmm, I suppose there have been worse moving stories - indeed, our move 8 years ago to Old Man's Lake was horrendous - but this time the unthinkable happened and we had too much 'stuff' for the moving truck. Those who have read my previous blogs know how we struggled to cut our belongings down, giving a lot away, donating stuff to Salvation Army thrift stores, and throwing away the rest! Well, it was obviously not enough. I won't bore you with the details ... we're safely here now ... and so many times a day I get a jolt of joy with the pure pleasure our new life is giving me.

It's wonderful!! How can I explain it? Life seems simpler and easier in this smaller home. The area is quiet, the scene serene, our main living area became orderly very quickly, and we try not to think about the mountain of unopened boxes waiting for our attention in the basement (we'll get to them - eventually!) We have acres of grass to cut, and it was getting very long, so a brand new lawn tractor has joined Ray's 'man-toys'. He's thrilled with it, and cutting the grass has become great fun (Well, it's a novelty right now!) Even Darcy seems very happy here. We thought she would miss the lake and being able to go for a swim whenever she wanted to, but after a week of nervously staying within two inches of me, she has settled down well and seems quite relaxed.

Last night we had our first taste of the Ottawa "cultural" scene, and we drove the 35 mins. to downtown and attended one of the performances being staged at various venues throughout the city as part of the 'Magnetic North Theatre Festival'. Now, you have to know that Ottawa has festivals as frequently as other cities have bumps in the road - there's the tulip festival, dragon boat race festival, choir festival, dance festival, busker festival, Turkish festival, Ottawa bluefest, folk festival and so on. And that's just the summer! (The winter festival in February has enormous ice sculptures.) It's one of the reasons we moved here. Anyway, we had no idea what the Magnetic North Theatre Festival was all about, but it was live theatre, and we knew we loved that! (Actually, we found out that it is a venue for new contemporary theatre written by young Canadians.) We saw "The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan" - now, who can resist something with a title like that? It was an adult puppet show, and I have always been a huge fan of puppetry, and think it is a fantastic art form when it is in the hands of talented artists, and the Old Trout Puppet Workshop company from Calgary were just that. This production was fantastic. It demonstrated just what puppetry can be - imaginative, hugely creative, witty, and very inventive. We wondered how the group would show Don Juan's romantic antics using puppets, and they handled it with humour and finesse - hugely funny and entertaining!

So, feeling in a wonderfully adventurous mood after the performance, we stopped in at the local pub and restaurant in our nearby village for a night cap. It looked a bit seedy from the outside, so we weren't sure what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised, and have put it on our list of 'must do again'.

I have a very old 'Home Sweet Home' cross stitch sampler which I stitched almost 30 years ago, it has certainly seen better days and is getting a bit faded, but irregardless has been hung in each house we've lived in. Last week when my daughter was helping me select pictures and paintings to decorate our new walls, she pulled a face when I picked it out of it's box. "You're not putting THAT up, are you?" I certainly was!! This place really is a home sweet home!

Bye for now ...