…before your husband leaves on a trip he fills the fridge and stocks the freezer with casseroles. If I’m lucky he’ll leave me a little stash of cash and some take-out menus too. We don’t want the children to get scurvy now, do we?
Archive for July, 2009
July 20th, 2009
His next great adventure
People who meet us now, after 12 years of marriage, invariably like to say, “Opposites attract!” But it wasn’t always this way.
When we first met, we both shared a love of nature. Not a love from afar, a love that compelled us to trek deep into its midst. As far as we could go, to places where you really felt no other human had ever stepped before. The peace. The quiet. The conquest.
My husband’s thirst for adventure has only continued to deepen over the years. Whereas, mine? Well, let’s just say that while he’s grown more heavily into a hard-core outdoorsman, I’ve gotten soft – both in mind and body. I like to blame it on having children, but the truth is that I can’t really explain my radical shift. I just no longer do insects and pit toilets.
Yet, the excitement bubbling in our house lately is palable. My husband is like a kid waiting for Christmas. And that can only mean one thing: his next great adventure is on the horizon.
I’ll admit that I’ve taken a sort of “uh, huh, yeah, that’s great honey,” sort of interest as of late to these adventures. I don’t feel bad about this though, I consider it a basic survival mechanism. Much the same way he responds to hearing about scrapbooking or even blogging for that matter. And we are undoubtedly both guilty of doing this with my daughter’s non-stop chatter about Pokemons and DS games.
This morning, though, I found an article on the breakfast table. It was an opinion piece authored by Backpacks Premier. Hubby, my father and my two brothers are heading out to climb Mt. Robson. And here is how the area is described in this article:
“It’s the stick that stirs the drink: so high it creates its own weather. It’s the loftiest peak in the Canadian Rockies, towering 528 m (1732 ft) above its nearest challenger. And it looms more than 3000 m (9840 ft) above the trailhead, which is in one of the lowest valleys in the entire range. It’s 3954-m (12,970-ft) Mt. Robson, a preposterously vertical, staggeringly atmospheric summit. If not veiled by swirling mist or shrouded by sodden clouds, its gleaming white, glacier-laden immensity is a jaw-dropping spectacle.”
Um, do you think it’s too late for me to increase his life insurance coverage?
July 19th, 2009
Sweet Spot
Looking for a sweet spot to just hang out and have a coffee? Or perhaps you’d like a coffee but your partner for the afternoon would rather a cold beer? Well, hello Raw Sugar cafe!
In the way that Ottawa is always such a funny, small-world-sort-of-place, I told my neighbour Kim that I’d be reading at BOLO (Blog Out Loud Ottawa), being hosted at the new(ish) Raw Sugar. She then pointed me to an article written by her sister, Shannon Beahen, on this very same Chinatown-cafe.
Shannon’s article is published in Dharma Arts, an online magazine devoted to showcasing Ottawa’s artistic talents. I hadn’t come across Dharma Arts before and after making its discovery, I quickly consumed all of its online archives in addition to the current edition. If you have any interest in the arts scene, I think you’ll be as smitten as I am.
The article itself really evokes a feel for this cafe – the prose and images overlapping — and has heightened my anticipation for this Thursday’s event. The owner of Raw Sugar really seems to have successfully created something much more than a cafe … a destination, a lively gathering spot where one feels connected to a community. And it is undeniably a place where the artistic act is supported and embraced — art in all its broadest, most vivid and exciting forms.
These two photos were sourced from: Watawa life
July 17th, 2009
I'm going to blog out loud
Despite being a complete neophyte, Lynn has warmly welcomed me to BOLO 2009 (Blog Out Loud Ottawa). It’s an event where a group of Ottawa bloggers and readers get together and, over coffee (my favourite thing!), read/listen to favourite posts.
Click on the icon to the right to get all the deets! I’ve been lurking around in the blogosphere for a while now, so I’m really looking forward to meeting all these awesome Ottawa bloggers in person.
If you’d like to listen in, come along! There’s no charge and I hear that the Raw Sugar Cafe is a groovy little spot.
July 15th, 2009
The 40-year-old virgin (gets laid)
He can surf, play cricket and kick a footie. But, softball? That’s just not part of an Australian boy’s childhood.
And yet, this year, at the friendly urging of a mate, my husband joined a softball team. To them, this group of Canadian men, my husband, the Australian, must seem like an innocuous mascot that they’ve good-naturedly adopted onto the team.
My husband, for his part, can’t think of a better way to spend a summer evening than with a good group of guys who never fails to share a beer at the end of the game. Despite this, the sport still holds its curiosities for him.
The first, and most undeniable, being baseball pants. Polyester and tight-fitting along the legs, then meeting at the inseam to form an enormous spout-shape, these pants seem styled specifically for Fred Flintstone himself. “I guess it’s to fit in the beer belly,” shrugs my lanky husband.
As a newbie to the sport, he’s made his share of embarrassing firsts. Like sliding into first plate, and running on a fly ball. He’s also had his first sports injury – a twisted ankle, which he immediately feared might keep him away from his true love — mountain climbing. But fortunately, has not.
He’s quickly returned to the team and the weekly games. This week, he admitted a bit bashfully before heading out to the game that he’s still hoping to finally catch his first ball as an outfielder. “I feel like a 40-year-old virgin,” he laughed, “I’ve built up the experience so much now that I think I’ve created a psychological barrier.”
Having been relegated to the right outfield countless times as a kid, I could immediately relate to that heart-thumping feeling when the hard thwack of a bat sent the ball sailing in the air right towards – gulp! — me. It’s like the world is in slow-motion, with all eyes trained on you as you grapple from left to right, and back again, desperately aiming your glove to be directly underneath the ball as it loses its air.
During that same night’s game, their informal coach nodded him out to the left field. The hits had been landing mostly right field, so it was a safer spot to place the Australian. I can just picture my husband at this moment, good naturedly chuckling at this suggestion as he jogged out to take his place.
When he got home though, he looked jubilant. “You got one?” I asked. “Not just one, but TWO,” he replied. Really, the man looked so pleased with himself that he should have been smoking a cigarette.
I asked for the play-by-play and we howled as he described the whole team rising up from the bench, desperately shouting out instructions to their Aussie left- fielder, and then breaking out in a loud, joyful cheer when he caught the ball – his very first one. “You could tell the other team couldn’t understand what all the big fuss was about,” he spluttered between our bouts of laughter.
After regaining my breath, I say, “I have the perfect title for my next blog post. I’ll call it ‘the 40-year-old virgin.’”
“No,” he corrects me, “it should be ‘the 40-year-old-virgin gets laid.’”
