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Having a voice in Canada
The Canadian and I are fortunate that we don’t fight very often but things tend to get a little heated come election time. It’s odd because I would say we both have similar values and political ideals but every now and then a subject will come up where we are polar opposites. The great thing about the modern age is that you no longer need to risk ending up in the spare room after an argument with your spouse about politics. Just head straight to social media, vent your frustrations in the facebook comments on a news article about politics and argue to your heart’s content with random strangers. Last…
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This Old House
If you have been a long-time follower of the blog you would have followed our move from Australia to Canada and our first 12 months in Toronto. Before I took a break from the blog, the last post I wrote back in November 2016 was about our living arrangements. In a nutshell, we had been living and renting a condo in downtown Toronto for our first 12 months and we needed to make a decision when our lease was up for renewal. Should we continue to rent or buy? Stay in a condo or move back into a house? Stay in Toronto or move elsewhere? The housing market at the time…
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Things to do in the fall to get ready for winter in Canada
Last week it was a big week for birthdays for friends and family back home in Australia so plenty of Facetime and phone calls. I was asked a couple of times if we had plans for the weekend and I found myself replying with my usual September to April response that we had the 12-year-old’s ice hockey game. You see last week we transitioned into two seasons in one week. Summer to Autumn and the 5th season here in Canada, “Hockey Season”. Summer is short in Canada, far too short, however, the 5th season, Ice Hockey is the longest and seems to go on and on forever. I noticed I…
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Living in Marijuanaville
If you follow me on Instagram (and if you aren’t, then why aren’t you?) you will be aware that over the last 12 months I have become obsessed with gardening. When I’m not in the garden, I am reading about gardening, visiting garden centres and making plans for my garden. My neighbours on either side have beautiful gardens and a combination of over 250 years of life and garden experience between them (basically they are impressively old). They are my garden Wikipedia. Having moved from Australia to Canada I’m gardening in a different planting zone. A dramatically different planting zone. Instead of drought-tolerant or tropical plants, they need…
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Back to the drawing board
When we moved to Toronto we thought we would give condo living in the downtown core a trial. At the end of next month, our 1-year lease is up and it’s time to make some decisions about our housing future.
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Spinal Tap? I’m still not sure!
Don’t you just love an unplanned, spontaneous, last minute night out? Especially when you have no expectations or idea what is ahead. Late Wednesday afternoon The Canadian sent me a cryptic text message
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Where did the year go?
Last week was our one-year anniversary since we arrived in Canada. I thought I might do a bit of a blog post about my thoughts on our first year as I am trying to distract myself. You see someone is coming to inspect something in our apartment and I have been told this will happen between the hours of 9 and 12, they will be accompanied by one of the security guards in our building so if I don’t answer the door they will just let themselves in, naturally this means an alarm clock has gone off in my bowels and I need to use the toilet as it always…
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Algonquin Park in the Fall
Do you ever take a good hard look at yourself from the outside and come to the conclusion you are bonkers? As in nuts?? I do often and I had one of these revelations last weekend.
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I’m Back …..
It has been so long since I last blogged that I had almost forgotten how to log in and use WordPress. It has been 3 months since I last updated the blog and it turns out people other than my mum (Hi, Mum!) actually, read the blog as I received a few messages asking if everything is ok or if I have given the blog the flick. (very sweet) So what happened?
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Schools out for summer …..
Yesterday was the last day of the school year for The-9-year-old and with mixed feelings, we have summer break …. Mixed feelings because they are off school for what seems like FOREVER! Well, 10 weeks to be precise, not that I’m counting or anything (1 morning down and only 68 days to go).
