There are things we shouldn't talk about.

Blogging honestly is hard. There are certain things people aren't supposed to talk about in public. When I told my husband I was starting a new blog he wasn't particularly excited. He suggested I try writing fiction instead. He's not the type of husband who tries to control what I do and say and I'm not the type of wife to let my spouse be the boss of me so his worries didn't deter me.  Still, I understand my family's reservations about being reduced to characters in my narrative. Some stories aren't mine to tell and it's difficult to straddle the line between protecting someone else's privacy and sharing my own perspective. It's even harder since I have no friends or family close by to confide in. There's social media, but that's more for recording the good parts - the smiling family pics, like-worthy statuses, artsy photos, and cat videos.

I'm not supposed to talk about the company that left our family stranded in another country because they made my husband sign an agreement stating he wouldn't tell anyone how inept they were. I'm not supposed to talk about consultations with lawyers and how we pursued suing them and how in the end the company promised to give us money to go away quietly. This is an integral part of how we ended up here, but I'm legally obligated not to talk about it. 

I shouldn't talk about how upset I am at my husband for bringing us here.
I shouldn't talk about how guilty I feel for uprooting the kids... again. 
I shouldn't talk about how my son is struggling with anxiety and depression.
I shouldn't talk about how I am too. 
I shouldn't talk about how much I hate Toronto.

On my old blog a patchwork world I chronicled kokoleo and my kids early childhood in Los Angeles. I often showed pictures and told stories about how fun and cute they were and photographed them in the clothes I made for them. They're still funny and cute, but they're older now and they don't need me as much. They've outgrown those handmade clothes and are less willing to let their lives to be my blog fodder. When we moved to Seattle my blog posts, few and far between, focused more on the things I made for kokoleo. I started a new blog called Out and About Around Seattle that documented our adventures around the city and camping trips in the Pacific Northwest. Now that that time in our lives is over I wish I would have recorded more. I don't feel up to writing an Out and About Around Toronto-type blog. The endless city blocks and restaurants and shops don't bring me the joy that canoe trips and mountains and the Pacific coast once did.

Of course, all of this angst could be avoided if I was like most people who don't have blogs.  It's a lot easier to let life go unrecorded - there's no struggling to put stories into grammatically correct well-punctuated paragraphs, no feeling guilty for skipping days and weeks and months not writing, and no spending weeks revising one simple post (this one) that few people will ever read. But also, there will be no photos to look back on, no random days saved for posterity's sake, no vague thoughts and feelings and struggles worked out through the act of writing them down, and nothing to look back on when life is better and say, "Whew! I'm glad we made it through that time in our lives. It wasn't so bad after all." (I'm still not there yet.)

Blizzard Envy

Truth is, I'm jealous of my east coast friends who got the blizzard. All weekend long I saw photos on facebook of snow covered decks and pets in the snow and sledding and shoveled walkways and warm fires and comfort food. I have nothing to show but brown dead plants and a few patches of dirty ice. We were hermits in our own house too this weekend but we had no excuse. We moved to Canada fer chrissakes, we should be the ones waist-deep in snow, tapping trees to get our maple syrup and riding sled dogs to school. I haven't even seen real snow here yet. There was that one morning where we had to walk to school in a snowstorm, but by the end of the day the roads and sky were clear. All we're left with are grimy piles on the side of the road and they're no fun.

Snow in Seattle happens so rarely that when it does, it's magical. Everyone comes out and marvels at the ankle deep dusting and evergreens encased in ice. School is canceled and the neighborhood families meet on the hill and share sleds. Within a week it's all gone and life carries on.

My college town - Shepherdstown, West Virginia - made national news for getting the most snow this weekend - 40.5 inches. Everyone was sharing this photo of main street (though the actual snowfall was 3 times as much):

 Across the street from those historic buildings is the house I lived in when I was 20. Immediately my mind went back to the blizzard of '96 when we woke up to 6 feet of snow blanketing the town. No one had to work because none of the restaurants and shops in town could open. We had a pot of chili and bread and whiskey any friend who could dig their way to us was welcome at our house/party. At one point, my guy friends were jumping out of my bedroom window, doing flips, and landing in 6 feet of snow on the sidewalk. I put on my skis and skiied down main street. Man, I miss that town. That town knows how to appreciate their snow.

Where is your magical snow, Toronto?

Free Skate!

I found Canada's closet! It's at Play It Again Sports. I heard they had used skates but I wasn't expecting this many. This wasn't even half of them.

Last week we noticed that someone had filled the ravine in our neighborhood with a garden hose so people could skate. We had heard this was a perk of our neighborhood and were excited to see it. Is it a homeowner's association that does it? Or the city? Whoever it is, I would like to thank them. The notion of skating for free is new to us so we couldn't wait to take advantage. Driving up, we thought it might be packed but we were the only ones there (at first, other people soon arrived).

 

The kids had only skated one time before at a rink in our former city. This ice was a little rougher, but they got the hang of it. 

They also saw their first puck. 

Afterward we want down to Queen Street and the kids played this game at Mastermind Toys.

 

 I think we may be turning into cliche' Canadians.

What's next?

Something is different now.  I don't know what it is but I know what it's not. It's not the way I felt in September. Or October or November or December. The ache in my heart is gone along with the lump in my throat. I'm not dissolving into heaving sobs on a daily basis anymore. The phrase "I hate it here" is no longer repeating like a broken record in my brain. 

It's not that our situation has changed. It hasn't. We're still stuck. But I know we'll get unstuck soon. How can we not? When have we ever given up? Never. I'm not devastated anymore. I'm kind of excited to see what happens next.

A winter's day...

I am a rock.

 

I am an island.

 

Date night on Queen Street

We left the kids home tonight and headed down the street for our first date night since we moved here. Living in suburbia for the last 5 years we didn't have the luxury of restaurants and shops within walking distance, so this is still a novelty for us. 

We went to Skwish, a gastropub at 2252 Queen Street East. We were huuungry. We ordered appetizers - a Bao Bun for me and Polpette (meatballs) for my husband, and entrees - Brickworks Cider Poached Stuffed Ontario Trout for me and Black & Blue Salad for him, plus butter chicken poutine to share (which I just now remembered is still in a box in my purse). It was all very good and artfully presented and unlike anything we'd eaten before. We also ordered the signature Skwish Brew Pale Ale which was very good. We asked where it was brewed and our waitress told us it was made in the Granville Island Brewery in Vancouver, BC. No wonder we liked it; we've been to that brewery before. It was nice to have a little taste of the PNW again.   j2252 Queen Street East 2kllj252 Queen Street East

 

Then we went to the Fox Theater to see the Martian. It's so nice to have an oldschool theater (that serves beer and wine) in our neighborhood. The Martian is about an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and has to come up with creative ways to survive until he's rescued. Being stranded in Toronto is probably better than being stranded on Mars.

A guy wearing a Seahawks jersey sat down beside us at the movie. I could hardly contain my excitement. I was like "#24! Marshawn Lynch! How about that game last week? How excited are you for Sunday?" and instantly we had a new best friend. I should have invited him over to watch Sunday's game against the Panthers with us. It's hard being the only people in this city geeking out on the Seahawks right now.

On the way home we stopped in the Fill Station for one more beer.

I got Canadian brand beer and we watched curling on the TVs hung on the wall amid hockey jerseys. Apparently USA and Canada were on a team together against a team composed of several other countries. Go us!

 

Then we walked back up our steep hill toward home on Scarborough Rd. Make no mistake, Toronto is mostly FLAT, but we picked the steepest street in the city to live on. It's a pain to climb sometimes but it's good exercise.

 

The struggle makes us stronger.

Going home.

We have no reason to be here. So why don't we go home? Because we don't know where that is yet. Even if we did we would go broke getting there. The company that brought us here paid for all the gas, food, lodging, moving van costs, car shipment, and work permit fees involved in moving a family of 4 from Seattle to Toronto. We never would have undertaken such a difficult journey otherwise. Still, we ended up draining our savings account to cover the extra costs that added up along the way. We looked at it as an investment in our future.

In October we sold our house. It broke my heart to let it go but we got very close to our asking price and made a profit. We replaced the money we depleted in savings, paid off my car, and had a little left over. Things were looking up!

In November, the company said they didn't need my husband after all. Oops! They overhired and had to let some people go. The ones who did the firing were not the ones who did the hiring so they had no clue they just wasted $30K of the company's money to bring us here. Oops! I guess financial mishaps like this are just part of the job at big companies. It must be fun to throw that much money around willy-nilly.

But I digress. And my bitterness is showing. (I'm trying to get over this.) The point I'm trying to make is that even if we wanted to go back to our old life in Seattle the cost to move back would leave us broke. Plus, someone else owns our house now. And we gave up our jobs.

So where is home?

Is it in West Virginia, where we grew up and went to college? Unfortunately there isn't a booming animation industry there. Maybe we should start one. Lord knows West Virginia could use a better industry than coal and fracking.

Should we return to a city we've lived in before? Savannah? Los Angeles? Seattle? We already have friends and connections in these places and I wouldn't have to learn how to navigate brand new neighborhoods. That's more than we have here.

Should we stay here? All signs are pointing to NO. When we told the kids their dad lost his job their immediate reaction was "Yay! Can we move back to America now?"

Should we go somewhere new and different and start over from scratch? It's not that daunting of a notion anymore. I'm not at liberty to discuss it, but options are arising. With each one I research the city (housing, schools, geography, etc.) and try to envision us there. We are proceeding with a bit more caution than we did last time.

For now, home is wherever the four of us are, with our dog and our cat and our fish and bunny and hamster, and that's enough.