Jersey Girl in the Ovens with Travel Chests - Part I

The summer is nearly over. The last two days have been horribly cold, for August, and although it is to warm up again for the weekend when we are going CAMPING at the beautiful lake where Himself planted me a rose garden on the lakeside in front of my tent last summer (thus scoring himself an Irish woman forever, poor lad) September will be bitter sweet. Although not as bad as last year, when I totally spoiled the beautiful weather that Nova Scotia gets in that month by worrying about the impending winter.

Not realising that the winter wouldn’t arrive until mid-December.

At least I know what the winter will be like now.

Although last winter was a ‘good’ one.

Thinks about that for a while… shudders… decides not to think about it until November.

Anyways, the summer. I got caught up in domestic stuff recently and left off describing the summer of visitors. I had done the Queen Parents pretty much, and half of Polly’s visit, in other words her weekend in Bear Cove, after which we piled everything and everyone back into the car and came back to Halifax, so Polly could have some of the bright lights of the city.

Of course she had just come from New York, so they were a bit mweh, I’m sure, but she seemed to have enjoyed herself nonetheless. After we all summoned the energy to go out again, which took a few days.

Then it was the weekend all of a sudden again and time to bring her to the airport.

I hate that damned airport. I spend too much time in it crying and not enough being a happy Queenie.

Himself and I had to go down the South Shore then, to meet Jersey Girl and her BH (beloved husband), who had been cycling towards Halifax from Yarmouth all week. They had gotten as far as The Ovens, which was a good bit of the way, so Himself and I only had about ninety minutes drive ahead of us.

I spent most of it wondering how we were going to get JG&BH’s bikes and camping gear in the back of the car, which was already stuffed with our camping gear.

We were past Lunenburg and heading down the last part of the journey when we saw a sign for a yard sale and a lot of interesting stuff in a garden. We sidelonged each other, but nobody gave anybody the nod and we kept driving. After about a mile, Himself slowed down and said ‘I really wanted to go to that yard sale’.

So did I.

We did a quick U-turn and sped back, in case all the bargains were gone.

First thing I saw were three enormous travel trunks; the old square-lidded ones with the brass bindings. One of them was in pretty poor shape with paint on it, but it can be removed and the other two were fine. Two were marked $50 and $40. The smallest of the three wasn’t priced.

I wondered whether it would be totally insane to get the smallest one. I could put some of the camping gear in it I reasoned. So I asked how much.

Fifty bucks for the three of them, the guy said. He was moving to Saskatchewan to be near his grandchildren.

I’ll take them, the insane person who takes over Queenie’s body occasionally had her wallet out before Queenie could say ‘what about the biiiiikes?’

Well, didn’t Himself and I have some fun then, playing our own personal version of The Krypton Factor (note to Canadians – TKF is a long-defunct, but pretty high end game show on UK tv, which tested physical and intellectual endurance, with one round of spatial awareness challenges that I could never figure out).

"This evening’s challenge is to fit these three trunks into an already full Chevrolet Equinox. Which is not a small car."

Eventually Himself, who is genius at stuff like this, put the smallest trunk into the biggest, put all the camping gear into the mid-sized trunk, which is my favourite, and finally got them into the car.

One of them had to be put on the back seat, though.

Finally we got to The Ovens camping site and eventually we found JG&BH’s campsite despite the owners of the site telling me they weren’t there over and over for a half an hour, while I freaked out completely thinking they’d been eaten by a bear or something, and as we were putting up the tent at the site, I looked up and there they were walking towards us!

Hooray! And not a bear scratch on either of them!

We explained about the trunks, which were now unpacked and lying on the campsite. JG didn’t say anything but she had that glimmer behind her eyes she gets when she thinks I’m on one of my little trips down crazy lane.

The apple never falls far from the tree.

Her mother used to spend Saturday mornings years ago trying to teach me (and some other teenage girls) how to play golf, and would give me the exact same look when I’d be trying to explain why it took me 112 shots to get round the back nine.

No wonder JG is a CEO of an organisation, and I’m not.

I must cultivate a glimmer sometime.

Actually, I should just adopt the apple/tree analogy I was using earlier and just inherit the Queen Mother’s. It’s pretty ferocious when it wants to be.

Anyways, enough about glimmering, back to the story…

Himself calls at this point for a chat. Chatting ensues. Time passes. The humour for writing is off me now.

… except it’s late and my hands are sore today from typing, so I’ll go to bed and finish this tomorrow.