Archive for June, 2009

• One Year And One Month

  Date: 2009.06.29 | Category: sometimes I ramble | Response: 5

  It was one year and one month ago that I moved to Ottawa.

  As many of you know I’ve moved a lot in the last five years. Montreal to North York. North York to Toronto proper (near the Beaches). Toronto back to Montreal. Montreal to Ottawa.

  But this was the first time that I moved because of someone else. After Lee and I got together we did discuss where to live. Montreal was a possibility but realistically, Ottawa was the better choice. Better job options, better taxes, no language police.

  It wasn’t without its issues though. Ottawa is Lee’s city. He lived here most of his life. Went to university here. Everything was old hat to him, and more or less, he continued doing things “they way they’ve always been done.”  Things continued to fairly normal for him while absolutely everything was different for me. Overall it hasn’t been as big of a deal as it could have be (you know, the occasional blow-up aside).

  A friend’s mother once told me that she believes it takes three years to truly make a new city your home. Moving to a new city with someone who is from that city makes it both easier and more difficult. It’s easier because I don’t have to figure out the best routes to the grocery store or wonder where “x” is.  But sometimes it’s harder because people assume you know where everything is because Lee does. Sometimes it’s harder because I don’t need to make as much effort to get to know the city.

  I like Ottawa. I do. I’m not in love with it the way I instantly fell in love with Montreal (which honestly did wane as the years went on). I didn’t feel the same rush of excitement moving here that I did when I moved to Toronto. I’m older and more cautious now.

  Ottawa moves at a slower pace and my settling in is slower. This city and I are getting to know each other carefully. We haven’t fully decided what we think of each other yet. I don’t feel like I’ve put down real roots in the city yet. I’ve planted seeds but they haven’t quite sprouted.

• The number one rule in our house

  Date: 2009.06.18 | Category: sometimes I ramble | Response: 4

  So, at some point about a year ago I started taking daily allergy pills. I think it was when we were moving and there was dust everywhere and I was the crankiest person you ever met because dust! sneeze! misery! Somehow I never really got around to going off of them.

  Well, ok. I tried in October. By the third day I was ready to kill something and gouge out my own itchy eyes so I went back on them. And now I’m trying to go off of them again. It’s the second day and I feel Miserable. I’m starring in my own very sneezy red-eyed version of Les Mis.

  I’ve been told that the first two weeks will suck. A lot. I’ve been told after that it gets much, much better. And that’s what I keep telling myself. It will get better. In the meantime it feels like someone’s used brillo pads on my eyes. My sinuses are threatening to burst out of my forehead. And Lee woke me up from a nap.

  The number one rule in our house is, “You do not wake Karen up from a nap.” Lee created this rule after he made the mistake of waking me up from a nap once shortly after we started living together and I burst into tears. I do not nap well. I only nap when I’m really tired or sick and when I nap the average nap time is three hours. At 2pm I send him and email that said I was going to nap. At 4pm he called and while I didn’t answer I couldn’t get back to sleep. So at 4:20 I called him back to ask him why the hell he woke me up. He did not have a good excuse. Which means that for the next few days (weeks, whatever) anytime he says something it will be greeted with, “You woke me up from a nap.”

• So…

  Date: 2009.06.11 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 2

  Do you ever do that thing where you write a post and then you think, “I’m going to write about X next?” And then X comes along and then you don’t write about it and then it becomes this thing because you haven’t written about it yet and OMG you have to write about it before you write about anything else but instead of writing about it you don’t write about anything at all?

  Hi! Welcome to my life for the last oh, five to six weeks.

  Really. I mean to write. I did. But I was going to write about this thing you see. And then it didn’t get written. I kept thinking that I’d write about it and then I didn’t and well, just blah.

  But I will say this. I just went to the Ottawa Women Bloggers meet up and spent a lot of time talking about mommyblogs. But now my ovaries hurt. Mommybloggers I love you. My ovaries? Not so much. You scare them.