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… ☯️
Yes folks, two posts in one day! Actually, I’m only throwing this one in to let everyone know that we made it home to Regina, safe and sound. It was actually a pretty uneventful day. We left the seedy motel in Dryden shortly after I posted this morning and grabbed coffees at Tim Hortons before cracking west on the highway. I could go on about the various issues on the road, such as slow semi trucks and Nathan randomly pissing in empty bottles instead of having us stop (in addition to having us stop often, I might add), but in all reality, it was likely the smoothest of the four days back.
We crossed two time zones, ultimately putting us back in Regina at just shortly after 3 pm, local time. A quick stop at our local grocery store for a few items to get us through the night and I am now shaved, showered and have several loads of laundry on the go. Nathan isolated himself in his room as soon as he was through the door. I had to threaten the continued use of his device in order for him to come out and have supper. That boy is going to have some problems when school starts. Regardless, it’s been a semi-quiet couple of hours with the boys separated and my wife and mother-in-law doing their own thing.
Our total mileage since July 30th…
it’s been a long two weeks and I’m certain that those of you who come here to read about health & fitness, Diabetes, martial arts or the Buddha Dharma have had their fill of reading about my vacation. But if y’all will indulge me for a moment, there will be one more post tomorrow, covering the week between the trip out and the trip back. I took a bunch of beautiful photos of the area, so hopefully some of you will enjoy that, at least. But I’ll draft that post tomorrow, after a solid night’s sleep in my own bed at home. ☯️
Honestly, there’s a special place in hell for whoever designed Ontario’s highway infrastructure! I mean, seriously… Why is the largest Province with the longest length to cross, the only fucking Province without twin-lane highways? How does that happen??? We took to the road yesterday morning and grabbed our Tim Horton’s coffee and ventured out onto the highway. Within minutes, I was competing with campers, RV’s and semi trucks for space on the highway and to try and make up some time for the extremely long day we had ahead.
I know I’ve been complaining about the boys a lot during this trip and there’ll likely be more of that when I write up the singular post covering the actual time IN New Brunswick, but today I’m going to focus on Ontario and how its highways are trying to kill my family and I. At one point, a semi truck was trying to pass another one and came straight at us… IN MY LANE! I only had a moment to pull off onto the shoulder in order to avoid a head-on collision. This is why we need twinned highways through this Province, people!
Although I am certainly not trying to promote breaking any speed laws, there’s something to be said about the country’s largest Province being the only one with adequate highways. Unless you happen to be in close proximity to the Ottawa/Toronto areas, you’re pretty much screwed. Not to mention that the motel we had stayed in the previous night was grungy, smelly and the towels looked like they hadn’t been laundered since the same decade as their patterned carpet came from. Despite all these difficulties in trying to get from one end of Ontario to the other, I was somewhat entertained by something I found in a bathroom stall at a truck stop…
This totally made me laugh, which in retrospect probably wasn’t;’t the best thing for a random person to be doing in a bathroom stall with people on the other side of the door. I’m sure some of them were wondering why a guy was giggling while using the washroom. But I digress… We did have a fun stop where we fuelled up, grabbed some snacks and Nathan had time to ham it up for the camera outside of a lighthouse we were visiting…
All he’s missing is a sword and he could bathe in the blood of his enemies…
My wife and I had calculated the mileage and distance and determined that in order to successfully reach Regina today without arriving in the wee hours of the night, we had to reach Dryden yesterday. This would leave a little over 900 kilometres to cover today, give or take, which amounts to roughly ten hours of travel. This made sense on paper but we were all pretty spent and cranky when we reached Dryden and ready to end our day.
We had some issues with obtaining accommodation in Sault Ste. Marie on Wednesday night, which is why we ended up stuck in that light-awful motel. For last night, I was looking forward to staying in an actual large-chain hotel so that the wifi would actually work, there’d be complimentary breakfast and, oh yeah… I could actually shower and come out clean as opposed to dirtier than when I went in! Feeling safe and in a secure environment also played a big role.
After visiting four different big chain hotels and being told everywhere that they were fully booked, I was flabbergasted. One clerk actually told me that I should have booked ahead and I wouldn’t find anything anywhere, this time of year. I explained that we were cross-country travellers and couldn’t plan and reserve ahead as we didn’t always know where we would be staying, so what were hotels doing to accommodate guests such as us? She had no answer…
We once again found ourselves in a grungy, rundown motel with doors that could barely be secured, wifi that successfully kicked me off of work in the middle of an email and incompetent staff. We booked two rooms and while the family was out getting supper, someone tried to open my room door. When I opened the door to see if it was my wife, some guy was next door trying to open my mother-in-law’s door. I asked him what he was doing and he became confrontational. Even after I explained that room was booked, he argued. I spent the night on guard.
Having this behind the main building of our motel doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence…
We obviously made it through the night but there’s no breakfast and this whole town feels quite dirty. I can’t wait to get on the last stretch of our journey and make our way back into the Prairies, where there are twinned highways, overnight accommodations make sense and our home is just around the corner. Today should be our last day of travel before getting home and getting prepped for my return to work on Monday. Work will ironically be the much-needed break from travelling that I need. It will be glorious! ☯️
Our second day on the road was by far the worst. Although it was only the second, I can easily predict it will be the worst when held up against the two days to come, as well. This is likely because we crossed through that bullshit part of Ontario where none of the highways are twinned, the speed limits are lowered to 90 km/h and there’s a fucking construction zone every few miles. We actually had a very decent start of day, eating a wonderful, hot continental breakfast at Best Western “Glo.” Those bastards do free breakfast right!
The entire day was a nightmare of trying to pass slow-moving vehicles and staying still for long periods at construction zones. Luckily, there was plenty of caffeine to get me through the day but there’s no denying that this leg of the trip had me testing every tool in my Zen belt. One of the things I try to remind people is that I’m not usually calm BECAUSE I study Zen… I started studying Zen to help me FIND that calm. And it works pretty well. Most of the time. But like an overwhelmed dam, eventually my temper gets the better of me and overflows, regardless of my ability to practice waking meditation.
Our goal was Sault Ste. Marie and by the light, we made it. If you recall from a previous post, this city’s hotels were all booked up because of some bullshit bicycle event. Considering yesterday was a Wednesday, so I assumed that things would be much smoother. We checked three different large-chain hotels, which turned out to be all booked up. My temper got deeper with every refusal. Although it must be great for business for them to be fully booked, it says very little about them as a business for their fellow Canadian guests.
We ended up booking into a seedy, piece of shit motel where the rooms smell like old factory closets that had wet clothing stuffed into them before the place was abandoned. My morning is starting with some leftover pizza and caffeine. Our goal is to hit Ignace or Dryden today. Hopefully, things will start looking up as we get farther west. ☯️
So the first day of our return trip to Saskatchewan started surprisingly well. Although I had assumed we were setting alarms for 6:30 in the morning, my wife’s went off at 6:00, effectively waking me up. I started sipping caffeine and leapt out of bed (yes, in that order) got dressed and started loading my things into the car. My wife, mother-in-law and kids were surprisingly swift and efficient and we were all loaded in the car at 6:50, despite our departure time being scheduled for 7:00. This is both miraculous and appreciated, as there is usually SOMETHING that delays us.
Hell, even the local Tim Horton’s had no lineup in the drive-thru, allowing us to quickly grab some hot liquid joe without delay. We were on the road and heading west before we were fully awake. We reached Campbellton and crossed over to the Quebec side relatively smoothly and without issue. The streets were quiet and once we crossed into Quebec, we automatically gained an hour on our day. An hour as far as the clock is concerned; our time in the car would remain unchanged. But I digress…
We encountered the usual bullshit along the way; light rain, semi trucks slowing us down, etc. We reached Mont Joli and stopped in at the next Tim Horton’s and grabbed further coffees as well as apple juice and snacks. It was shaping up to be a reasonably good day, making good time and crossing the Province reasonably quickly. Then, the toddler fell asleep. Then he woke up. Then the issues started. I’m not really certain why I was surprised; this is basically what he did on the way out, as well. It’s rough for a tangy Cook male to be strapped into anything for any long period of time.
We made such good time that by about 4:30 in the afternoon, we had crossed into Ontario and reached Ottawa. Since we had no chance to do so on the way in, I chose to have us eat dinner at Zak’s Diner, which is one of my favourite diners in the country. When we reached the Byward Market, the boys made their presence known by being rambunctious, running across streets without looking and being all-around pains in the ass. Kids, am I right? We ordered food and as we waited, it dawned on me to go check the Asian shop where I usually buy my prayer beads.
My mother-in-law and toddler joined for the short, five-minute walk that ensued and I was sorely disappointed to find that the shop carried none of the beads I typically purchased from there. I returned and ate my meal, which depressed me as it was almost literally twice the price of what I had paid for it in 2007 when I would have eaten there last. My two kids were being noisy, knocking things over and generally ruining the experience. Am I bitching about my kids too much? TOO BAD, IT’S MY BLOG!!! But seriously, I love them to death but kids and road trips don’t agree. With me. They don’t agree with me.
My goal had been to have us spend our first night heading home at the Chateau Laurier, right in the heart of downtown Ottawa. When the price of an individual room caused rapid breathing and random chest pains followed by profuse sweating and my left arm going numb, I chose to drive us out of town to Kanata, where I found a subsidiary of best Western called “Glo.” A chic looking, clean-cut little hotel, it was a comfortable night’s stay, after some screwing around to get the wifi to work.
There is apparently some free continental breakfast downstairs, so we’re going to go see what’s up with that before hitting the road again. Although we’re already in Ontario, the safe bet is that we’ll be spending a second night in this Province, given how long of a transit it is. Hopefully but the end of today, we’ll be close enough that there third day will carry us back into the Prairies and closer to home. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for some caffeine… ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 