Here's Looking at You, Montreal

I was thinking about being something else. I thought that, if it were an option, I would either want to be a bird or a large-scale artist. Someone who could fly or someone who could paint really big pictures. Both of those things seem pretty magical to me.

But if I were made to choose between the two (no one has ever presented me with this choice as of yet, but I'll let you know if/when it happens), I guess I'd probably pick artist. Because artists, though not feathered or especially aerodynamic, can fly with the help of pilots and planes. Birds cannot, no matter how hard they try, paint a picture.

So, yes. An artist. An artist who goes on airplanes very often.

I love murals. I love graffiti. I love colourful cities with pictures and paint instead of plain brick and cement. I love the feeling of being in an art gallery without having to pay money or worry about keeping my voice down.

Montreal satisfied that in me. There were pictures on everything. Art everywhere.

I kept saying, "This one is my favourite."

I said it about every one.




The next best thing to feeling like you're in an art museum when you're not is actually being in an art museum. Especially if no one makes you pay any money for it.

Which brings me to my next point: if you hit up Montreal and you're 30 or under, you can go inside the Musee de Beaux Arts for free. And you should. (This is the last year Barclay and I can go in for free together. He turned 30 the day we were at the museum, actually. Fun facts.)

Back in Town

And we're back.

We've actually been back since Tuesday or Wednesday or something (who knows? I never do), but I've been catching up on sleep and catching up on work and, honestly, playing video games with Barclay.

I don't know, guys. Sometimes, we dig out the Super Nintendo in the evenings and stay up until two in the morning playing Yoshi's Island together. It's quality shoulder-to-shoulder time.

Anyway.



Montreal was so nice! I liked it. I'd actually been once before, back when I was 17, but apparently I might as well have not because I couldn't remember any of it. It was funny though; I'd have moments where we'd be walking down a street and I'd stop and scrunch my face up and go, "Oh! I've been here before..." And I'd look all around trying to figure out what it was that was familiar, but it always eluded me. I felt like a character in a movie who'd lost their memory and was trying to figure out who they were. Like Jason Bourne or...oh, or Jim Carrey's character in the Majestic. Peter Appleton? Or Michelle in that one episode of Full House where she falls off the horse?

It was like that.

Anyway.

I'm at the part of the trip where you think about the trip a lot and look at all your pictures of the trip and romanticize the trip, even the parts where your kid wouldn't sleep past four in the morning and you spent a week in a heat wave without air conditioning and your feet hurt so much from walking that you had to ice them down every evening. I'm like, "Mmmm that was so cozy. And how nice to get such a head start on the day! And it doesn't even matter that I ate whatever I felt like because I got so much walking in! Ah, vacation."

 

But that thing about home being so humble and there being no place like it? That's true. I'm also at the part of the trip where I really appreciate the home and people I get to come back to. That's a very good part of every trip.

Stay tuned for one billion pictures of neat old buildings and quaint coffee shops. I'd be a terrible blogger if I spared you that.

Je T'aime Chat et Pomme!

We're on vacation!

I'm writing this from a bench on Jean-Talon Street in Montreal. Barclay's in the store buying toothpaste and I'm drinking a coffee and Sullivan is having an uncomfortable-looking nap in his umbrella stroller. Every once in a while, someone will walk past and say something to me in French with a big smile on their face. I don't know French, though. I took a few years of French class in high school, so maybe I should. But I don't. Sorry, Mrs. Legge. Sorry, people of Jean-Talon street. 

(I mean. I know a few words that I could roughly string together into a sentence. So, like, if someone were to come up to me and say, "J'aime le chat et le four a micro-ondes et le supermarche et manger a pomme! Ferme le bouche! Est que je peux allez a le salle de bains?" I would understand that. But I don't think anyone will say that to me. Today, but probably also ever.)

So far, we're having a straight-up lovely time - thanks for asking. We're staying in a brick walk-up apartment in this sweet little neighborhood. The Jean-Talon market is a few blocks that way and Little Italy is just over there. We might stay here forever. We might! I'm serious!

Just kidding, though.

But seriously.

(A lady just rode by on a little red bicycle with a baguette in the basket.)

Waiting Room

I'm back at the heart specialist today. In the waiting room. I come here regularly enough to know that I will wait for hours to see the doctor for less than five minutes so he can tell me that that one valve in my heart that doesn't work exactly right is still working right enough to keep blood flowing.

I get a kick out of the receptionist. She is a middle-aged lady with a flat, mumbling voice. Like she doesn't care enough about this job to even open her mouth when she talks. When I come up to the counter, she always says, "I see you, have a seat." Like I should not be wasting her time by standing in front of her. But the one time I came and didn't go up to the counter, she said, with what could be considered a frown if she'd put any effort into it, "You have to come up and let me know you're here." Both times, she spoke to me like I was an idiot. But I think that's how she speaks to everyone. 

Except for one person.

She got a phone call a few minutes ago, answered it the way that she always does, and then squealed, literally squealed like a thirteen year old girl. She opened her mouth, the way that normal people do when they talk, and shrieked, "OH!! Hello! It is so good to hear your voice, sweetheart!...Of course I miss you...mmhm...the sun isn't shining here either, Boo." 

But the sun is, in fact, shining here. So I can only assume that this was meant to be some kind of lovey metaphor.

When she hung up the phone, her mouth pressed back into a straight line and she went back to talking like her lips were sewn shut.

I have been here for almost two hours.

Angels in the Grainfield

We went to my parents' farm this weekend. It'd been a while since the last time we did. These weekends are the best because we mostly just hang out and play games and eat and run around outside in our pyjamas. Barclay helps my dad with farm work sometimes, but it's mostly chill.

So we were all sitting around in the porch on Saturday night being chill and my sister was there too and I said to her, "Sunset? In the field?" and she was like, "Yeah."

Because we both live in cities now and don't often get to see sunsets in fields anymore.

So we headed out, the two of us, wading through the golden stalks like we were walking through a pool of water - it sounded like water, too, when the wind went through it. It looked more like fire though, especially in the evening sun. Or like gold.

We had a good farm kid field heart-to-heart - mostly about how much we hoped we wouldn't get mauled by a cougar. Because sometimes, we have heard, there are cougars. And this field would've made an excellent hiding place for a predatory animal. And our dog is dead now so he's no help to anyone. We decided that if we came across a cougar, we'd stand back to back and throw things at it. Honestly, though, I don't think we would've stood a chance. My sister is not a mighty warrior, no offence, Ceese, and I am even less so.

(The closest thing we saw to a cougar, however, was a black farm cat who looked grouchy but not dangerous.)

We found a place where nothing would obstruct our view (an easy feat to accomplish in southern Saskatchewan) and we stood there and waited for the sun to touch down on the hill before us. I'm sure you know how sunsets work, so I won't belabour it. Just picture the sun, and then picture less and less of it, until you're not picturing it at all anymore.

But then, picture this:

As the sun disappeared from view, angels started singing.

No, I'm serious, this happened.

Angels started singing - and playing violins. And cellos. And also electric guitars.

In that moment, all of the hairs on my arms stood straight up. I thought, "Something incredible is happening." I thought, "Maybe the end of the world." And then I thought, "Maybe I'm just going crazy." And then I thought, "Yeah, no, definitely that's it."

But going crazy wasn't as scary as I'd always imagined it might be.

But then I found out, from my sister, that the angels and the violins and the cellos and the electric guitars were actually an alarm that she'd set on her iPhone.

Instead of turning it off she let it play for a bit, and we stood there in the field and watched the sky change colours and I pretended that it was angels.