Home at last - at least for now!

I'm sitting in the den in my parents house in Ottawa, pretty much in exactly the same spot that I was in way back in September when I wrote the first entry for this blog. It feels kinda strange to be home after so long! Well, sort of home. I mean, I'm still officially "homeless" for now... I won't have my own place in Toronto for at least another month, if not more, and even then I won't really be living in Toronto until September because of summer camp. But yeah, for now, I'm home. Strange, but still good!

My travels across the country went well. On my very last day on Gabriola Island, Dave, Aylan and I went out to Drumbeg, a park at the far end of the island, and enjoyed a picnic lunch. Aylan is definitely related to me. She spent most of her time either picking flowers and grasses to give to me, or turning over rocks and exclaiming "eeew!" at the crabs and other critters underneath. We went on a quest to find an anemone a(I'm pretty sure she has no idea what an anemone is) but didn't find any in the rock pools. But all too soon the afternoon came to an end and we had to head back to the house so I could grab my stuff and Dave could take me to the ferry.

I'm pretty sure Aylan didn't quite understand that I wasn't living with them now. She wasn't too happy that I was leaving, but to give her credit, she's not quite three yet and she was very tired. Apparently she's been asking for me over the past few days, which I take it means I fulfilled my job as an auntie well. :-)

Dave drove me back to Nanaimo and dropped me off at the Duke Point ferry terminal and said goodbye. Once I made it on board, my job was to find Bill Hawke, my dad's friend who earlier in the week had driven me from the Vancouver Airport to the Tsawassen ferry terminal on the mainlaind side. He'd spent the week also on Vancouver Island with his wife Gail and a bunch of family friends, and we'd coordinated our return trips to the mainland to coincide so that I could hitch a ride back with him. Well we must've missed each other a number of times as we wandered around on the ferry (these boats are HUGE and can hold hundreds of people!), so I eventually gave up on looking and bought myself dinner from the onboard cafeteria instead. Of course that's when Gail finally did find me! Figures.

Bill and Gail and their friends had driven onto the ferry with their big camper van, but I had been a walk on passenger. This meant I also had to walk off on the far side and collect my checked baggage before I could rejoin the crew in the camper for the next part of the ride. Once we were all together, we headed for Bill and Gail's condo in South Vancouver. I hadn't realized that all of Bill and Gail's friends were also staying with them at the condo, so it was pretty full! There were five other guests in the camper van besides me, so we were jokingly calling it "Bill's bus". Ha ha!

It took a bit of coordinating once we got to the condo to get everyone's gear inside and set up in the various spare rooms. Since I was a last minute addition, and I was only staying overnight, I slept on the couch. (And a very comfy couch it was, too!). Bill was kind enough to get up with me at 4:45 in the morning (yuck) to take me to the airport. I actually bought a ticket for this leg of the journey - I wanted to make sure that my friends who were kind enough to pick me up in Toronto didn't miss any more of their long weekend than absolutely necessary.

Jen was right. That last flight from Vancouver to Toronto was waaaaay longer than the flight from Sydney to Vancouver! I guess it was because I was really finally at the end of the journey. It seemed to me that the last couple of hours took simply forever. But of course eventually I was back on the ground and collecting my stuff from the baggage carousel (which also seemed to take forever) and searching for my friends. Cat met me just outside the security zone and greeted me with a big hug! Then she called for Andy, our chauffeur for the weekend, who was waiting near the airport, and she picked us up. By 3pm on Saturday we were on our way to the cottage at last!

We got a wee bit too involved with yakking in the car and completely missed the exit off the 401 for Bowmanville, where I usually turn north to head towards the cottage. Ah well! We turned north at Norwood instead and took the back route. We got there in time for dinner with my folks, which was of course great. And it's funny - although it was cooler at the cottage than it has been in Melbourne recently, I swear I didn't feel the cold in the way I had when I was Down Under! Maybe my body was just happy to be home. :-)

Cat, Andy and I spent the rest of the weekend at the cottage, bumming around, eating various unhealthy items like swedish berries and skittles, burning things in the bonfire pit, and helping Dad put in the docks. This is the first year that we've had the new dock system, so it was a bit of an experimental procedure to get them in the water without getting wet. The individual dock segments are made of aluminum so they aren't all that heavy, but it was still a challenge to remain dry. We ended up floating the deep-end sections on the end of our paddle boat, with Cat steering the boat, while Dad and Uncle Ron and I attached stuff near the shore. In the end Cat did get a little wet but we got the silly thing in place!

My grandma owns the cottage next door to ours, and she and her sister (my great-aunt Marcelle) and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Kenna and my parents and my friends and I all got together for a great big gigantic feast on Sunday night, which was great. Well, except for the weather... it was possibly a high of 5C and raining and windy! So much for enjoying Victoria Day fireworks. We'll just have to save the pyrotechnics for Canada Day, I guess.

Today I said goodbye to Andy and Cat as they headed back to Toronto, and I drove with my parents to Ottawa. There's a new Tim Horton's open in Havelock now, and the lineup was out the door! (I have been to Timmy's four times in the past four days... well if that isn't a sign that I'm definitely home, I don't know what is!) We got home about 6pm and after unloading the car went straight out to dinner. I was originally supposed to go out to dinner with my best friend Vicky, but due to an unfortunate game of phone tag we missed each other until I was already out with my folks! Vicky and I did manage to meet up for desert, though. I've missed her SO MUCH these past eight months - it was GREAT to see her again.

So, all my faithful blog readers, we are nearing the end of my writings. I do have one more entry I want to make - but I'll do it tomorrow. Once again it appears to be way past my bedtime, and I'm pooped!