Regret and self-doubt are insidious things and can cause a ridiculous level of unnecessary suffering in one’s own life. That’s why it is SO important to accept life as it’s been presented to you without the concept of regret in your heart and mind. Now bear in mind, I’m not suggesting you just lay back and let whatever happens direct your life. If you want to see change, you need to make change. But my point is that every choice, decision and incident (good or bad) that’s happened in your life has brought you to the here and now and has minded you into the person you are today.
Unless you’re a complete piece of shit, it should be difficult or impossible to regret the steps in your life that have brought you to your current state. From there, it should be a completely separate battle to forge your CURRENT existence into something other than what it is, if you so choose. That’s why I get some serious entertainment from the many social media posts I see these days where people ask the question: “What would say to the younger version of yourself?”
This is actually an interesting question and one that I’ve contemplated several times when spotting these entertainment posts. On the one hand and in keeping with my opening statements about no regret, I think it would be hard for me to try and say anything to my younger self that could potentially alter the course of my life. For example, although it would make sense for me to speak a 4-year old me and tell him to start karate right away instead of waiting until the age of 10 and it would seem to be something that could help, those actions could likely cause effects that would seriously alter and disrupt life as I’ve come to know it. I can hear Doc Brown screaming, already!
In all seriousness, I had a lot going on when I was 4-years old. I was diagnosed as a Type-1 Diabetic, my health and life were in jeopardy and our household was still in the throes of constant hospital visits and travel for my brother. I can’t see my being able to attend karate through all of that and since my mother all but hauled me out by my shirt tails from the precursor to Boy Scouts BECAUSE I was diagnosed as Diabetic, I don’t believe she would have allowed me to join and stay, in karate.
But martial arts aside, the question was what I would say to my younger self, which is a loaded and difficult question. After all, even something seemingly innocent and without future information could be damaging. If one were to tell a younger self “it gets better,” this could still prompt a lack of caution or laziness on the part of one’s past self. That being said, I often reflect on some of the joyful experiences I had in my younger years and I think that if nothing else, it might be pleasant to watch those experiences play out through my current eyes. Often in life, we don’t appreciate how easy we may have had it or how good things were and can only realize the same through reflection.
I guess the moral of the story is I, personally, wouldn’t say anything to my younger self. And you shouldn’t want to, either. Although people are likely tired of hearing that everything happens for a reason, even if you aren’t in the best place right now, NOW is when you need to make the change; not 20 years ago. Reflection and self-realization are the tools necessary for a happier life with less suffering. Food for thought… ☯️
I encountered a strange situation last week that I can honestly say I’ve never experienced before. I was making my way to work early in the morning and as I like doing on the odd occasion, I decided to go through a local eatery for a take-out coffee. For the most part, I’m partial to chugging a quick energy drink in the morning and no, don’t feel the need to fill my comments section on that! Who am I kidding? No one EVER fills my comment section. But I digress…
Since I start my morning with a can and actually have my own coffee machine at the office, I usually don’t indulge in take out coffee. Since I don’t like getting sued and I don’t need it reaching the wrong ears, I won’t name the location I attended but will simply point out that it’s a place whose primary focus is coffee. ‘Nuff said. As I mentioned, I only do this once a month or so when I’m feeling that my morning could use an added pick-me-up to get me started.
I pulled up to the drive-thru lane and was extremely pleased to see that there was only one other vehicle at the speaker. I didn’t see a line-up at the window, inciting me to believe I would have a quick, seamless experience and be able to make my way to the office without incident. Although very little that happens in the world surprises me anymore, I have to admit that the interaction with the speaker employee that ensued left me a bit taken aback.
I placed my order, which is about as simple as it gets. I ordered a medium coffee with two sweeteners. The employee’s response was to provide the total and to ask me to “Please drive up!” I loudly and clearly said thank you, as is my habit and custom. Politeness and respect cost nothing, and thanking someone who is serving you your beverage can usually go a long way towards potentially adding a bit of positivity in their day. Except in this case. In this case, it had the opposite effect.
The employee came back on the speaker and asked if I needed to order something else. I had started rolling by that point and jammed the brakes and explained that no, I was simply saying thank you. This person went on to say that it wasn’t necessary to say thank you and that speaking AFTER they say “please drive up” triggers them to assume the next order is at the speaker. I’m not sure I understood that logic, either when it happened or even now. Since I had him on the speaker, I explained that I was simply trying to be polite and showing respect to someone working towards providing me with my beverage.
I got no response to that, so I drove up to the window. I was perplexed. Confused beyond reason. I started looking around for television cameras because I assumed I was on some sort of prank show… I have occasionally been called out for neglecting to say thank you when I likely should have. Never in my LIFE have I had someone take me to take on actually SAYING thank you. Not wanting to create unnecessary conflicts and simply wanting my coffee, I didn’t plan on addressing this issue at the window. After all, I don‘t know this person. Perhaps they’re having a bad morning, themselves. Maybe it’s simply their personality. Maybe, just maybe, they subscribe to an abstract belief that having someone thank them is offensive. Who knows? It’s 2022, people!
I had someone different at the window and as I mentioned, I had no plans on addressing the matter. I simply paid for my coffee and went on my way. It left me with a strange feeling. I try to start my mornings off on a positive note so that it sets the tone for the remainder. This doesn’t always work, but politeness and respect plays a role in that. But if someone had told me that this type of response COULD happen, I likely would have laughed at the absurdity of it. telling someone NOT to say thank you? Strange, indeed. But in a world where people eat laundry detergent pods and snort condoms on a dare, I suppose I really should stop being surprised at the things I see. ☯️
I had an interesting Sunday, last weekend. Although I usually make a reasonable attempt at pushing myself, I can admit that there are almost as many times where I succumb to flopping down in a comfy chair with a cigar on the weekends as opposed to getting at some of the things I should be accomplishing, like, oh, I don’t know… WORKING OUT! But when we arrived from our trip to the East Coast almost two weeks ago, I was taken aback at the state of my back yard.
The back yard is where the majority of our daily sunlight strikes, with very little impacting the front yard. This means that growth, both for lawns and weeds, is at least two-fold in the back yard. It can make weekends challenging, since I usually prefer my Sundays to be a time of relaxation before getting back into the work week with maybe a workout thrown in. Since I was kind enough to ignore the yard the previous weekend, I knew I would have to attack it last weekend or face some significant difficulties in bring the weeds a and lawn growth under control before the autumn struck.
Cue last Sunday morning. My well-meaning intentions included waking at 5 or 6 so that I could get started on the yard before the Sun rose high enough to turn it into a proverbial frying pan. Given that my toddler had us up at about 4:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, my body fiercely objected to waking at such an hour. So I rolls out of bed just shy before 9:00 a.m. Okay, not such a great start. I started my morning by sitting down with some caffeine and watching an episode of Star Wars: obi-Wan Kenobi. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.
I stepped outside in the morning heat and my oldest son, Nathan decided to join me. He actually wanted to help, so I had him grab his gardening gloves and gave him a weed-pulling job on the promise of letting him use the weed whacked later on. I started by mowing all the overgrown grass while Nathan plucked all then weeds from the Stoney path we have on the west side of the back yard. by the time I had mowed the lawn, he had finished pulling every weed. I mean, that area was immaculate. I was reasonably impressed and a deal is a deal, so he got the weed whacked out and I instructed him on where and how he was to use it. he went to work.
I wound up weeding the large, concrete circle planter that used to house an actual tree while Nathan finished whacking the weeds, as it were. He worked hard and followed instructions. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was quite impressed at the work acumen he was showing this morning. Once he had been using the weed whacked for a while, he asked to take a break and go inside, which made sense since the Sun was starting to make things unbearable. I was soaked myself, having toiled in the back yard for about two hours at that point.
He went inside and I soon discovered WHY he wanted to take a break… he had used the weed whacked too close to his play structure and busted both sides of the cord the weed whacked uses. And easy fix but to a 7-year old, he was likely done because it would trim weeds anymore. It was a good idea for him to cool off and get some water in him at that point anyway. I finished up what I was doing, followed by a 1-litre bottle of cold water, some fruit/veggie juice and a nice cigar. My Sunday had finally arrived…
I decided to spare all of you from the dampness showing through the lower part of that Superman shirt but as you can clearly see from the damp sheen on my forehead, it took quite a while for me to cool down and in fact, it didn’t happen until I got back inside. I performed a quick, 30-minute marine workout and once I cleaned myself up, I had to run to the grocery store to grab a few essentials And spent the rest of my day inside the cool sanctuary of my home while doing start-of-week laundry.
The only unfortunate part is that between the heat, the yard work, the workout and everything else, my blood sugars played a fun game they like to call “roller coaster.” I bounced low and high a number of times throughout the day, proving yet again that just about everything affects blood sugars. I had it under control by the time I crashed into bed, but it added to the overall exhaustion. Looking forward to the coming weekend to see what activities can potentially be done with the kids instead of focused on yard work. ☯️
A short while back, I treated myself to some moderately-priced media equipment, which allows me to more effectively make videos for my YouTube page. And by the way, if you aren’t a follower on my YouTube page, please take a few moments to jump over there and click the follow button. thirty seconds for you, great deal of help for me. You can find my page by searching “The Blogging Buddhist” in the search bar. But I’m getting off track here…
I had thrown a post up on my Facebook page (yes, I also have a Facebook page, which you guys can follow as well. Find it by searching, you guessed it, “The Blogging Buddhist”) asking if anyone would have any interest in having me do a live event where I could answer questions and chat about various topics I write about, such as health & fitness, Diabetes and martial arts. I said I’d base whether I tried it or not on how many like I got and I also posted something similar on here.
To my unfortunate surprise, the response had no pulse. I got a couple of likes through facebook, which was nice but I otherwise had no show of interest, whatsoever on either platform. While this is disappointing, to say the least, I’m still interested in trying it out and have friends who have made it work and look interesting (Thanks, Ricky!) so I’m tempted to try it, despite the lukewarm response. In all reality, many if not most people may not necessarily respond to some thing that requires their interaction with a posting, so I kind of get it. Maybe if they come across the Live event, they’ll be tempted to jump in.
With all of that in mind, I’ve decided that I will go live on Facebook this evening at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (Saskatchewan time). The event will last somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes, depending on attendance and interest, and will cover various topics including what’s mentioned above: martial arts, Diabetes management, health & fitness (from the Diabetic perspective, especially). Come join me and throw out any questions you may have been wondering about. Hopefully, it’ll be entertaining for all. See you there! ☯️
The world is a pretty complex place to navigate and anyone who’s tried to accomplish anything real within their own lives can attest to that. one of the big problems is that the world has developed into a place where society as a whole seems to believe that they’re entitled, rather than have to work for things. It can be frustrating on both fronts; frustrating for the poor bastards who think they’re entitled and frustrating for the ones who have to deal with them. But life has a way of squashing those who don’t at least TRY when pushing towards a desired outcome.
As one of the best examples I can think of, let’s take employment. Now for the most part, most people don’t envision themselves working a minimum wage job for their entire lives. Many people do, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The whole point of a job is to earn enough income to get by and if minimum wage does that and the work satisfies you, I know a lot of people who do that very thing. But I mean the solid majority; who have goals, ambitions, wants needs and expectations from their lives outside of just making ends meet.
The thing is, the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing. If you sit back and complain about not getting ahead or reaching your goals but you do nothing to contribute to making them happen, the only person to blame is you. Accomplishment doesn’t happen on it’s own and the efforts required to make it happen can often seem (to the modern person) as though it should be a given. The unfortunate reality is that employers care about your previous work experience only to a certain degree. It’s your work ethic, your efforts and how hard you’re willing to push and work towards something greater that will ultimately make a difference.
I use the example of work because it’s the example that almost most people can genuinely relate to. But this concept applies to almost every sector of life, whether it’s diet, health & fitness, your martial arts or sports training… It’s all the same. Life doesn’t care about your plan. If you sit back and do nothing, nothing is what you’ll get. Only a fool holds a piece of steel hoping it will become a sword. It needs to be worked and forged, strength and effort need to be put into the steel in order to reach one’s goals. The same can be said of life.
There will always be people there to help you and guide you along the way but the genuine effort and steps will ALWAYS need to be taken by you. You, and no one else. I often think about where I’d be right now, if I’d listened to family and doctors way back in the day when they told me I had to take it easy, not get involved in sports and try not to tax my body too much. I’ll tell you where I’d LIKELY be is in a grave. Good things in life don’t happen on their own. No one is entitled. No one words you a thing. You’ll only get what you give. Food for thought… ☯️
I’ve almost finished my first full week back to work since coming back from vacation. Unlike most people, I chose to drag my work laptop with me and complete certain tasks while I was away. I’ve received mixed comments for various people on this practice… Some, believing I should completely shut out work while I’m gone and others admiring my tenacity and loyalty to the work. For myself, my OCD just wouldn’t allow certain tasks to go a full two weeks without my hands on it so there I went.
Despite having had my computer and access to emails, one of the things that surprised me the most upon my return was the accumulation and piling of work that continued to happen. It’s made this week somewhat hectic, especially in light of specific issues I’ve had to deal with. One of those issues, as one could well imagine, is my lack of fitness. I’ve fallen into the same precipice as most people who go on vacation; I never exercised.
Don’t get me wrong; I went swimming a couple of times with Nathan and had several reasonably long-distance walks. But in terms of working up a sweat for something other than the New Brunswick humidity, I was found significantly lacking. This is why, once we were safely back home, I decided to knuckle down and push myself to include a number of steps in my daily routine. My job is very sedentary, seeing me at a desk for several hours a day. Even with the occasional health break to get up, stretch and take short walks, this style of work can be detrimental on the body, especially if you aren’t exercising outside of work hours.
If you’ve my blog for even a short period of time, there’s no need to remind you that just about EVERYTHING affects Type-1 Diabetes, especially the blood sugar levels. Working at a desk all day, followed by a carb-heavy supper and flopping on the couch for a couple of hours before staggering your way to bed in a half-awake stupor is not conducive to good blood sugar levels. Hence, the need for some fuckin’ exercise in one’s down time.
I decided to incorporate a few easy changes into my daily routine. As I mentioned above. I promise I’ll stop repeating myself. Carrying on. I’m starting my morning with a smoothie. This doesn’t seem like a big change but the reality is that starting your morning off with some form of breakfast is important. although there are different schools of thought behind this, starting your day with a positive boost of nutrition is integral to having the kind of energy you need to reach the end of your day. I also still have a BlendJet and I never use it, so this justifies my purchase. But I digress…
Next, is a daily workout. This one is a bit more difficult, especially since I have a tendency of overdoing it and injuring myself. For example, I did a short, body-weight and dumbbell only workout on Sunday evening before starting back to work. My goal had been to wake up early on Monday morning and do some light cardio before work but my legs refused to function and basically stuck a middle finger up at me (or is it middle toe, since it has feet?). The goal is to start small and work one’s way back up. Here’s the workout I did…
On its face, it’s nothing out of this world and I should have been able to do it with ease… Such was my mistake. Even simple workouts will require some easing into after a hiatus of any length, even a short one. But staying active is important. I don’t have the space to post all the benefits of exercise, honestly. But doing so helps with cardiac health, weight management, blood pressure, blood sugar levels… The list goes on and on. Karate classes also start up again next month, so that should be fun.
Last but not least, which has also elicited some mixed comments from folks, is I’m doing an alcohol-free month. I should have waited until I made it to the end of the month to include this or write about it but who am I kidding? I’m too stubborn NOT to stay off the hooch for another two weeks. It’s not that there’s a problem with my alcohol consumption, per se… But sometimes I get a bit too comfortable sipping wine or a straight whiskey when I’m writing. But I I’ll write a more comprehensive post on THAT aspect next month, once we hit September.
It’s amazing how just a few small changes can help with any aspect of one’s health. Whether you’re goal is to increase you cardio/stamina, lose some weight, manage your blood sugars or just become stronger, healthier and live longer, you can’t lose. You just have to keep moving. After all, no one ever won a race by sitting still. Food for thought…☯️
Despite how I may have been giving off a negative connotation about my trip out East, there were some good aspects to it. The best was getting a briefcase from my father. Although getting a briefcase doesn’t sound like a big deal, it’s what was contained inside that caught me by surprise. Watch the following YouTube video to see some of what was passed on to me by my father on this last visit. Enjoy! ☯️
I haven’t posted to my YouTube page in what feels like forever and I treated myself to some new media equipment, so I thought I’d cover off some of the insights I gained from travelling to New Brunswick. You know, the insights I was supposed to cover on that long-ass post I wrote the day before yesterday? Yeah, that one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video and I’d be forever grateful if all my followers reading this post would take the time to follow my YouTube channel, as well. ☯️
I recently read something about how one’s heart and mind are a little bit like an attic. It tends to gather and accumulate a lot of stuff that not only will one never use again but it takes up space and can increase the overall weight one is carrying. This can be tedious and can cause a lot of hardship, especially if you’re the type of person who tends to dwell and focus on these old dusty memories and feelings.
Much like a dusty attic, we sometimes need to clean said dust off and eliminate the weight of the hard feelings and bad memories that hold us back. This can be easier said than done, and shouldn’t be mistaken with forgetting the memories in question. After all, those who forget the past will often be condemned to repeat it. But by eliminating the excess pain and emotion and retaining the memories, one can begin to remove the pain and sadness that take up the most place in our heart and mound. And once that clutter is removed, it will amaze you how much farther you can run.
Old quarrels no longer matter. Confrontation, arguments, whether you were right or wrong and painful memories will do very little else than cause further pain. This is why it’s so important to let them go. Like so much sand between your fingers, let these negative memories wash away with the current, free to flow through your fingertips and off into non-existence. Once you reach this level of freedom, it will go a significant way towards eliminating the suffering in your life, which will in turn make it easier for you to help reduce the suffering in the lives of others. Food for thought… ☯️
As promised, here is a post detailing some of our activities during our vacation in New Brunswick. I’d like to premise this post by pointing out that some of it may come off sounding somewhat… shall we say, negative? This trip brought out a significant amount of enlightenment and opened my eyes to a significant fact. Bon Jovi once wrote a song called “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Well, Jon, the answer to that is me. I can’t go home. Or should I say, I’m home in Regina. And as I recount my time in Dalhousie, I’m going to explain that statement. Here we go…
We arrived in Dalhousie at a little after 4 o’clock local time after several days of hard travel, which you’ve all read about. I made a courtesy call to my mother to let her know that we had arrived, which prompted her quick arrival at our hotel. That was actually kind of nice and she got to meet Alexander in person for the first time. Once we checked in and unloaded the vehicle, she joined us in our rooms for a brief visit until the boys got to be insufferable. We decided to hit up a local restaurant called Pizza Delight for supper. We would come to dine here often during our stay and would soon realize it was one of our only options. But more on that later.
Supper was exactly what one might expect when dining with two small children; noisy, chaotic and neither kid wanted to eat the food in front of them. Luckily, no dishes were broken and no children were harmed in the having of this meal. All jokes aside, we briefly discussed our plans for the week, which was meant to include an overnight in Moncton to see various sights. Little did we know that any and all of those plans would soon go out the window. That being said, we planned a visit to my father immediately the following morning as I didn’t see any reason to wait.
Together outside my father’s nursing home
Since it was still a bit early when we returned to the hotel from supper, I opted to take a short trip to the cemetery to visit my brother. I think I may have posted in one of my travel updates that my folks got a headstone that has my name on it. Besides being intensely creepy, this was a somber reminder of my own mortality and where i currently exist in life. Not bad for my first day back to New Brunswick, eh? Nathan opted to spend the night at my mother’s, which made for a smoother night since the boys can never seem to be in the same room without destroying everything.
I woke up earlier than my alarm the following morning, which was odd since New Brunswick is three hours ahead from Saskatchewan. We started our day with caffeine and made our way to the nursing home were my father lives. Since Alexander is under five years old, he wasn’t permitted in the home so the only option for my father to meet his new-to-him grandson was to come outside. The photo above shows all of us posing right before both boys started whining they wanted to leave. Part of me understood that they’re kids and they had nothing to entertain them. Another part of me was pissed that they couldn’t accommodate my parents for more than half an hour.
We decided to go hang out, down at the beach. This particular stretch is called Inch Arran and I spent a significant amount of my childhood there. It’s changed quite a bit since that time, though. One change is the ice cream shop that I was standing in when I took the photo above. Alexander had some ice cream and Nathan had a small slushy. We continued on by watching the boys play on the park structures you see in the background. Nathan evidently got curious and wanted to go dip his feet in the ocean. I laughed and tried to explain that the water would be too cold for him.
He pestered me ad nauseam until I finally relented and told him to go ahead and change into his swim gear and to go ahead. I predicted that his sensitive, never-swam-in-anything-but-a-heated-pool flesh would last all of about thirty seconds… Long enough to submerge his feet and realize the error of his ways. You see, it was incredibly hot and muggy, especially with the humidity. But the ocean don’t care. it stays cold, especially to someone born and raised elsewhere.
My prediction proved accurate. He stepped into the water JUST long enough for his feet to become submerged and he commented on how the water was too cold. Then he jumped and freaked because he saw a crab. Classic Nathan… he played in the splash pad a bit but dried off and was done with water within a half hour. We made our way down to a truck stop restaurant called the Osprey for dinner that night. Unfortunately, the location has a play structure outside the main doors so there was no dining for the boys that night either. You’d think they’d get hungry at some point. Go figure…
My wife had cross stitched a beautiful design for my mother, which she presented to her when we visited my father. We agreed to have it framed in Campbellton, which is the town up the coast from Dalhousie. On the Thursday morning I brought it up to a specialized framing place that was only open to the public from 10 am to noon. They agreed to have the design stretched, framed and ready for pickup the following morning. The issue is that we were planning on driving up to Moncton the following morning and spending the night. I paid for the frame in full and made my way back to Dalhousie.
While we were spending yet another meal at Pizza Delight, I commented to my mother that her frame would be ready for pick-up the following morning. Since we would be leaving for Moncton in the morning and the location would be closed on Sunday and Monday and we would be leaving on the Tuesday morning, I asked my mother to drive up to Campbellton and pick it up. She refused… She explained that she no longer goes up to Campbellton and she wasn’t comfortable driving up there and told me I would have to get it myself. This rather pissed me off, because it would throw a wrench into our plans.
My alternative was to have us go to Moncton on the Saturday/Sunday instead of Friday/Saturday. No one wanted to do that, so I drove up to Campbellton on Friday morning with the intention of getting back and we’d drive down. By the time I made my way back to Dalhousie, we determined that we’d get to Moncton too late for one of the key attractions we planned on seeing; Hopewell Rocks. Therefore, we now had the afternoon freed up. I should point out that not only had I messaged a certain number of individuals that we would be in Dalhousie during the first two weeks of August, i also posted and blogged about it.
Despite that fact, I found myself with a significant lack of people to see and visit with. My mother was being stand-offish, declining to join us for our activities, even when it was only a few minutes from her apartment. This was disheartening, because the entire point of the trip was so that she could visit with her grandsons. I explained to her that we had no way of knowing when the next time would be that we’d return and Alexander would no longer be a baby, so she should be soaking that shit up while she could. It didn’t really seem to faze her.
On Saturday morning we got up at the absolute ass-crack of dawn because it’s a vacation and that’s what people do, right? No? Just us? In all seriousness, the goal was to reach Moncton for the noon hour when the tide would be low at Hopewell Rocks so we could “walk on the ocean floor.” Everyone was tired and cranky and it was blisteringly hot out. We travelled for four hours to reach the site and were slapped in the face by a $50 entrance fee. I was pissed. The last time I was there, I hadn’t paid anything to go in.
The curly haired, pimple-faced teeny bopper working the kiosk claimed there had always been a charge to visit the site but what did he know? I had leftovers in my fridge that were older than this fucker and he was arguing with me. We paid all of this money to walk for fifteen minutes and make our way down to the ocean floor. I was soaked in sweat by this point and you could almost see through my shirt. Nathan managed to get himself all muddy and insisted on leaving because he was bored. Never mind the fact we paid the cost of half a tank of gas and travelled all morning just to have him ignore the sights and want to leave.
Since he was filthy and obviously uncomfortable, I took Nathan back up the stairwell to the walking path where there were foot-washing stations. My wife, mother-in-law and Alexander stayed behind to view more of the site. I walked Nathan back to the trail entrance where he played on a play structure until everyone else joined us. I was fast realizing that I had shelled out thousands to travel to New Brunswick just to have my kids play at parks. Total fucking bullshit.
We left Hopewell Rocks and made our way to Champlain Place with the expectation of doing some shopping. No one did any shopping and everyone but me got some food at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. There goes my idea of bringing everyone for a nice seafood dinner in a few hours! It was unlikely the boys would eat any of it, anyway. We looked up a few of the attractions that we planned on visiting, saw all the inflated, ridiculous prices for entry and decided finally that there was no point in staying in Moncton for the night as we wouldn’t be doing anything we had planned on and were already paying for the rooms we had in Dalhousie. We piled in the car and drove back to Dalhousie. Almost 8 hours of driving for an hour of blistering heat and sweat that the kids ignored and we paid for.
On Sunday morning we basically hung around Dalhousie and there was very little else to do. I took Nathan to the indoor swimming pool on a couple of occasions throughout our stay but we really didn’t do anything besides that. Nathan spent a final night at my mother’s house, since we would be departing on Tuesday morning. On the Monday morning, we went back to the nursing home to say goodbye to my father and spend some time with him before going to lunch, doing fuck all for the day besides pack, clean and try to figure out supper, since Pizza Delight was closed on Monday. To be honest, I’ve never heard of a restaurant closed on a Monday.
It was a serious problem as we searched Dalhousie AND Campbellton and came to realize that almost every restaurant was closed. McDonald’s was obviously open but we had eaten enough of that on the way there to last us a lifetime. We ended up ordering from an out-of-town pizzeria called Greco and having a bite to eat at my mothers until about 7 o’clock. We said our goodbyes and hugged and piled into the car, intent on getting back on the road the following morning, which y’all have read the posts about. Right? if you haven’t, get on that shit…
All in all, it was a disappointing trip. Normally when I go home, I barely have a free minute from the people I meet up with and the things I do. This time, I came to realize that no one was reaching out, no one contacted me and everything was either closed or out of business. And it’s supposed to be the “busy” time of year… As I mentioned in a previous post, I got the chance to see a few dear friends and I’m totally grateful that I had the chance to do that. But this visit just wasn’t the same. Despite having not seen them in two years, my parents’ hearts just weren’t in it despite meeting their second grandchild.
I left Dalhousie feeling empty and as though for the first time, it was non longer my home. Dalhousie, and the Maritimes in general, will always hold a special place in my heart. So many firsts that I’ve experienced there… It’s where I’m from and that will never change. But I’ve come to realize that it isn’t my home anymore. The sharpest knife was the fact that this was the first visit to New Brunswick where I didn’t get to see Sensei. Not only did he know I was there and when I was leaving, he told me he’d get back to me and let me know when he was free. But he never did. I’m sure he has a reason but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s never happened before.
Ultimately, I’m not sorry we went. It gave my mother-in-law the chance to visit New Brunswick and meet my parents. My parents got to see Alexander and Nathan and spend some time with them (albeit very little) and I got to see a few people I hadn’t in years. I’ve been considering that the irony is that my wife and I are finally in a position of life where we can afford to take a vacation but we still used up my vacation time to go home to my mother and father. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate and make some different decisions. Some food for thought for myself… ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 