Domestic Bliss on Beaufort

Friday evening. I am sitting on the smallest deck in the world as usual. We have had a barbeque. Himself cooked steaks and baked sweet potatoes. I did the fresh corn, drizzled with oil and wrapped in tinfoil. The Queen Mother made a salad. The Queen Father was driven by Queenie to the Liquor Store and bought an eight pack of Keith’s (for the Queen Parents), an eight pack of Olands for Himself, and an eight pack of Schooner for me. He had also been to the nice wine shop in Bishop’s Landing and bought a couple of bottles of Knife and Fork, the great wine we found which comes in litre bottles with screw tops but which is very drinkable and a reasonable price.

Then we had mangoes and ice cream.

As you can see, everyone has found their role and is doing their bit to make it work. It’s all very domesticated. We had a nice meal and sat around talking about Belgium and Holland and the second World War and what the Canadian role was. And what they did in Bosnia. And Rwanda. We circled around Afghanistan a bit but didn’t go there tonight. It’s too depressing.

I find myself reading voraciously every time a Canadian is killed. Trying to remember their names. Trying to remember where they’re from and what their girlfriend or wife said at the memorial. A lot of it is to do with the fact that I can only remember one or two of the thousands of people who died in the Troubles. That has always bothered me.

Canada’s role in Afghanistan is troubling. For many Canadians too. You forget how much combat this country has seen. Most of it against the will of most ordinary Canadians.

However, it was too nice an evening to spoil it with war talk. We are all feeling very relaxed at the moment. For different reasons, I suppose. Himself and Queenie are thrilled because we’ve found somewhere to live. A really gorgeous two-bedroomed place with a kitchen that you could have a party in, a dining room and a living room, out on Herring Cove Road, which is a lovely part of the city. It has a really nice big garden, with a gate in the back fence that leads to a path through the woods, that ends at a sandy beach on a swimming lake. Steeped we are. We signed the lease today and take possession in mid-August.

I spent a lot of time this evening discussing the possibility of getting a kayak for the lake until Himself not unreasonably pointed out that we needed some furniture first.

Spoilsport.

I cannot believe that I am finally going to live in a wonderful, light-filled, large, two-bedroomed apartment in a house with just two other apartments, with parking and heating included, on the edge of a lake surrounded by a maple tree wood, for six hundred euros a month.

This is why I came to Canada.

You are all invited of course. The options are: come in the summer and swim in the lake, or come in the winter and skate on the lake, or come in the autumn and admire the trees. Or come in the spring, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

Queenie will be hosting skating parties. Imagine that! So long as she doesn’t have to skate.

We alternate eating in with going out with the Queen Parents and it is working well. The Queen Father is astounded at Queenie’s ability to cook. It just sort of happened this year once I had a bit of time and a nice kitchen. And we’ve been eating a lot of really wonderful in season Maritime food – squash and sweet potatoes and fresh corn and blueberries and freshly picked raspberries and lobster, and crab, and wonderful haddock fresh off the boat. So it is a pleasure to cook and to eat. And the kitchen is big enough for two women to work in without killing each other. And then it’s time to watch the CBC news and moan about how terrible it is compared to RTE (it’s not really – one of the things I love about the CBC is that they have the young funky presenters doing the main news, and the old arses are relegated to the second channel late news, in direct contrast to RTE).

I’ve been working three day weeks for the last little while, so I can spend some time with the folks. And Himself. He has a job now, hauling logs in Nova Scotia, but his hours are crazy and his schedule is not a five day week, so we can go eight or ten days without spending any quality time together, so I have been trying to make sure we have at least two days every ten where we get to converse enough that we can get down to the mundane. Which is of course extremely important for the smooth running of a relationship that has recently moved from being together to living together.

So far so good. Queenie has a bit of work to do on a couple of issues but is determined to try. So has Himself of course. But that’s up to him.

Work is finally calming down. That’s one of the reasons why I have not been blogging. Well, crazy work, followed by visitors, followed by domestic chores, followed by time with Himself, followed by sleep. Takes up pretty much all the time. Anyways, this is the first night for a while everyone has had enough of everyone else and is off doing their own thing.

The Queen Mother is cleaning up in my kitchen. She’s not been too bad actually, for a mother staying in her daughter’s house for the first time. The only hiatus was the evening I came home from work exhausted and she had gone to clean the green bin and realised there were maggots in it, which could turn into bluebottles, which therefore needed to be exterminated. She had soaked them in water and something or other, but still the hose needed to be found, and a scrubby thing, and then it needed to be washed out and rinsed and bleached and etc, and Queenie had to act like she knew/ cared about what she was doing when really she just wanted a gin and tonic and bed, but we got it done.

The Queen Father is reading The Colony of Unrequited Love and grumbling at the news. Himself is looking for cheap furniture in this week’s issue of Bargain Hunter. And Queenie is updating, because Luke is sick of checking in.

Consider yourself updated until tomorrow. There will be another post tomorrow.