10 more days

In 10 days, we will be packing up for our journey back to Canada. We get the U-Haul truck July 30 and load up everything from our MA storage and apartment and head to Kingston. We're looking for something fun to do along the way so that when we land back in Kingston August 1, we'll have had a teeny vacation. Teeny.

Boys are excited, looking forward to seeing their friends again. Kid#1 recently quipped, "You know, when we get back, all of my friends will look the same to me because we will have all grown taller together, but all of the adults will tell me how much I've grown." Too true, too true.

Kids are at a new camp this week that involves a one-hour bus ride to get there and another one-hour bus ride to come back - their first experience with regular bussing. Kid#1, my anti-social brooder, sits by himself in the very last seat of the bus. Kid#2, my highly social would-talk-to-a-tree kid, sits up in the very front seat with the bus supervisor and a bunch of other kids. Neither of them wave goodbye out the window. Somehow, this all makes sense to me.

Also gives me much longer days for work since I am now working 8-4:30 (bus pick up is 7:45am - EEK!) instead of 9:20-3:00 which is what I was doing since I provided the transportation for the last camp. This has also been an interesting shift - a little more spare time during the day without the kids. I do email and work, of course, but also have been reading the odd magazines that come into the apartment.

We are renting from two guys who told us that they get some unusual magazines and they don't know why. I think they just told us that so we wouldn't think they were too weird. So we get Vanity Fair and Redbook, as well as Time. Variety being the spice of life and all that.

Laundry is going - invoices are awaiting. Have a great one.

Still here

We are still in Somerville. The cat is still alive. Boys just finished up two weeks of a great camp at Audubon Habitat in Belmont. We had to drive them there through four different towns - just gives you a funny idea about how the Boston area is (not) structured: we'd start in Somerville, go through Cambridge, scoot into Arlington and then head into Belmont - all in about 3.5 miles and 12 minutes. I love this place.

On the other hand, my phone's GPS has stopped working and so trying to get to a friend's place in Jamaica Plain was... well... interesting. Fortunately I have learned how to take deep breaths and just be late instead of being frustrated and late.

Two more weeks until the big move back to Kingston. I am looking forward to being back in my house with my stuff. I am not looking forward to packing, driving and unpacking. And I will miss Amazon.com (the .ca is not nearly as good) and Zappos. On the other hand, I do foresee lots of reasons to be back state-side in the near future and hey, it's not all that far anyhow!

Last thing of note - I now seem to be on Google Plus, which is like Facebook but not nearly as populated. We'll see where that goes. If you're on there, send me a note. We'll connect - or put each other into circles I guess.

Somerville MA

We are now living in Somerville for the month of July. It's a loft-style apartment, one-bedroom (which the kids are currently sharing, longer-term arrangements TBD) and we are on the main floor with the bedrooms in the basement. It's quite a change from our previous arrangement in Arlington. We managed to make the move with scarce minutes to spare in returning the U-Haul truck. Well actually we returned it late, but no one yelled at us or charged us anything extra.

Boys are just coming home from the first grocery shopping trip. We'll see what they got. In the meantime, we are also looking after a 22-yr old cat, who surprised us by still being alive the day we moved in. We'll see if she survives the month with the kids around. On the other hand, the wifi works...