Spring is FINALLY here

Trees blooming

This winter has been a very long one. Not being able to spend much time outside has definitely brought upon some serious seasonal depression. So now that it's actually dress weather (eee!) we're outside as much as possible. And it's beautiful. I've had two consecutive days off this week (woah) and we took advantage of them! 


Yesterday we went on a walk downtown and stopped to look at all the flower shops. I have my eye on a particularly large echeveria and might have to snag one up soon. We stopped at a restaurant on Dundas that has the best nachos and patio in London. After a pitcher of beer we headed home and had dinner on the back porch. Our bistro lights are back up and with the solar lights dotted around the yard it truly is magical at night.

Beauty

Pretty

I woke up early this morning and after a chai tea smoothie and some iced coffee I was raring to go! We didn't actually get out the door until around noon but we took Molly with us for a nice long walk and picnic by the river. Now Molly isn't the most in shape dog..we decided to follow her wherever she lead us and at one point she plopped down in the shade mid-walk, so we followed her lead and took a break. We ended up under a bridge by the river surrounded by canadian geese. Molly surprisingly didn't bother them but they made their position know and kept an eye on her the whole time. We didn't get back to the house until around 4pm. 

Handsome Husband

We had such a great two days off. The trees and flowers are blooming, the serotonin levels of the general population are high and everything is active. For it being such a long winter we're all so excited to see the sun and warmth again. Being from Florida we never had winters and I know that we've never appreciated feeling the sun's warm rays on our skin as much as we do now. Spring and fall are my favorite seasons. In the spirit of my favorite book coming out as a movie next Friday I'll end this with F. Scott Fitzgerald's analysis of fall and spring/summer in The Great Gatsby: “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” & “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” 

Doing myself good

       My husband is a very big part of who I am and who I'm becoming. When we met I was on a bit of a downward spiral and with the help of him and his beloved best friend, Bruce, I was able to pull out of it. However, as any woman, I have issues with self image and worth. But no matter how many times I disagree with him when he tells me I'm beautiful he never stops, and that is one of the many wonderful things about him. He gets frustrated of course but he prevails and every time he does I feel a little bit better about myself. It's not even just about my physical appearance it's the accomplishments I've made in my life. When I was younger I envisioned myself as successful by 21. My definition of success at that time was a bachelor's degree and an admission to grad school. Well folks, I've been in college for three years and have changed my mind so many times that I don't even have my Associates. I've been watching my friends get into the grad schools of their dreams and have been feeling a bit low about that. Today will be the beginning of me changing my definitions of "self worth/image" and "success".

      Starting today I will view my success as having found my husband and love of my life at the ripe age of 18. As having accomplished so many different subjects in college (psychology, finance, biology). As being alive and healthy. As knowing that we may never have a matching dinner set but we worked for everything we own. As never giving up. On anything. Some may view my constant changing in subjects as failures but I excelled in all of them. They weren't failures. They just weren't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I couldn't see myself sitting at a desk, helping other people work out budgets, dissecting insects, or talking through other people's issues for the rest of my life. When I graduate from school, I will do what I love doing. I may be thirty but I will not be one of those people groaning through everyday just to pay off their mounds of student loans. And I think coming to that realization, is definitely a success. Let me finish this paragraph by saying this is MY definition of my own success. Not anyone else's. I am so proud of what all of my friends have accomplished. These are just my accomplishments : )

      When I talk about other's people I often incorporate their souls as well as their outside appearance. Actually I focus almost entirely on the person they are on the inside. But I've never been able to afford myself the same benefit. There are times when I don't even want to look in a mirror. Starting today I will afford myself the same right I give everyone else. I am a good person, I do good things for people and my friends and family mean the world to me. So if personality reflects beauty than I'd say I'm doing alright in that regard.

     Finally, beginning on this day, April 19, 2013 I will do my best to not ever disagree with my husband when he tells me I'm beautiful and worthy of everything life has to offer me. Putting this in writing is a sort of contract to both me and him. I may break it every once in a while but I will think of this every time I want to and will deter myself from doing so. Watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk  has made me suddenly realize that I am my own worst critic.

      I will end this by saying something nice about myself. I love my eyes. Ah! There, I did it! The first step to being completely happy with myself has been achieved and I already feel better. Thanks for reading!

Montreal

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My bouquet from my mum 

Inside the Basilica

The street outside our Inn

Our inn

Montreal Trip

Written on April 5th, 2013

I should preface this piece of writing but mentioning that I have had about 10 hours of sleep in the past two nights. 4 of those hours were spent on a bus. As I want this to be true of my thoughts at the time I’m writing it, I will not be editing this. No matter how anal retentive I can be about my writing after more and more reads.

With that said, I will begin. We started our trip in London, ON at 8:30pm on Thursday night, April 4th, 2013. We arrived at the bus station about 45 minutes early but as we are still very out of the loop of how to ride the bus we didn’t actually get into line until most of the bus was already waiting to board. We were forced to sit in the back, right next to the toilet. Literally, my shoulder was squished against the wall of the bathroom. There should be no such seat. This first bus took us to Toronto and we wound up being about half an hour early which did not help our wait time of already 1 hour and 40 minutes a bit. 

We decided that we would get something full to eat as snacks are very delicious but not often filling. So we walked around downtown Toronto and found a Pizza Pizza to hang out in for a little while before we headed back to the bus station. The Toronto Greyhound station has never ceased to confuse me. How people know what gate their bus is coming to is beyond me but after asking a few people in line we eventually found our spot, much closer to the front of the line this time. We spent about 5 hours on this bus. This was a surreal ride for me. Maybe because I was shocked at the amount of people who would choose to ride the Greyhound at 12:45am on a Friday morning or the places we stopped in the middle of nowhere that people actually got off at. I think it was more that I felt a sort of camaraderie with these people; a vampires of the Greyhound secret society or something. I’ve also never been more impressed with the way people can fold themselves into chairs to try to get some sleep. 

The Ottawa bus station was very small, thus much more manageable than Toronto’s. We found the bus to Montreal just fine and started the last leg of our Greyhound journey.

Basilica

Basilica Doors

Written on April 7th-8th, 2013

We arrived in Montreal right on time and quickly after found a taxi to take us to our hotel. Well, he dropped us off at Rue St Paul East, not West so we walked around a bit on the street until we finally found our destination. We didn’t complain much as the street was beautiful but Scott found that dragging the duffel bag on the cobblestone streets wasn’t an easy task. When we walked into the hotel 4 hours early for check-in, we didn’t expect to have a bed to sleep in, just wanted to drop our bags off and get a coffee. However the inn owner, Daniel, told us that our room would be ready at 11am so we walked to the nearest cafe for a croissant and a coffee and waited out the half hour or so there. Walking up the stairs we didn’t know what to expect from our room since my mum (ever so nicely) paid for it as my birthday present. We opened the door to two big windows, turquoise trim, wooden rafters, and most importantly a nice comfy bed. It was a beautiful room and we couldn’t have gotten nicer at a much more expensive hotel. We were also greeted by a bouquet of beautiful flowers from my mum. There were tulips, daisies, berries, lilies and more tulips. It was wonderful and smelled amazing the entire trip. We decided to take a nap that ended up lasting a couple hours more than we expected but when we woke we felt much better. We went to the Basilica. There are truly no words and the pictures don’t even begin to describe the beauty that is that place. Neither of us are very faithful people but we were both overwhelmed by the quiet, peaceful beauty of all the details, candles, statues and carvings. It was something we’ll never forget. We walked around old town and parts of downtown for a few hours before getting dinner and heading back to our room around 8pm. Shortly after we fell asleep and didn’t wake up until around 7am on my birthday to the smell of baking croissants downstairs. 

Monkeys from the Biodome!

Scott had planned on waking up early and surprising me with flowers but none of the floral shops were open so instead he handed me a  beautiful handmade card and we walked downstairs to enjoy an early breakfast to begin our day. Scott ordered a parmesan and tomato omelette and I got the smoked salmon omelette. We were given croissants with chocolate chips and mouth watering butter croissants as well. The coffee was fantastic but pastries and coffee are the Frenchies specialty so I should’ve expected greatness. For some reason we thought that walking to the exhibits we had planned on visiting that day would be a good idea so we started our day with that. It was a five mile walk on a cold but sunny day and it lasted a lot longer than we imagined. The pay off getting there without paying for a taxi or getting lost on the metro was worth it though so we prevailed. We started the day of exhibits with the Biodome. We weren’t sure what to expect from this because all of the explanations were in French but it was incredible. There were different parts of the dome that displayed different ecosystems of parts of Canada and the world. The first was the rainforest in which we saw monkeys, parrots and a blob that was supposedly a sloth! There was also the Gulf of St Lawrence with some disgusting looking fish, the mountains with river otters and porcupines and the Arctic with playful (and mostly lazy) penguins. 

Feeding the butterflies

We then hurried over to the Botanical Gardens before our Planetarium showing was to begin. We should have allowed for more time at the Gardens but we didn’t expect the massive amounts of people who would be pushing strollers through a three foot wide path and never moving out of the way. Either way the greenhouses were stuffed with flowers and plants and they were out-of-this world beautiful. The last greenhouse was filled with butterflies and flowers. There were many different kinds and it was an amazing experience. They would fly by our faces with such freedom I think we all envied them. 

One of the greenhouses

Greenhouse succulents

After the gardens we barely made it to our first showing at the planetarium, that opened that day, on my birthday! The first show was in a dome like room filled with bean bags and lawn chairs. The colors and music of the show were beautiful and we had a great experience here, even if I did get quite dizzy!  The next show was informational and looking back we should have been able to do this one before the first one as we didn’t quite know what was going on in that show. We were in a dome room again and were taught how to identify different constellations and stars. We learned about the galaxy and star clusters. It was actually very interesting! By this time we we had been at the museums for about five hours and were really achy from the walk so we decided to take a cab back to the hotel. Coming back we could really see just how far we walked!

A giant moth

All showered up and ready to go out for a fancy birthday dinner, I look in my bag and find no going out shoes! I had a black dress with black tights and all I had for footwear were brown elf boots and snow boots. So we took to the streets and found a boutique that imported all of their shoes from France, London and Italy. Needless to say, they were gorgeous. I found the perfect pair of little red heels to go with my black outfit and we were ready to head out! We went to Gibby’s where Scott got a Heineken to compliment his filet mignon and I got a MacAllen aged 12 to pair with my broiled lobster tails. Yummy! For dessert we got some sort of chocolate pie that we ate back at the hotel. It was quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten and I’m certain I had a mouthgasm. We were pooped from the long day we had and stayed in watching SNL until falling asleep shortly before my day of birth ended. So strange being 21!

Our night out and my new red shoes!

On our last day in Montreal we woke up quite early to pick up our things and clean up the room a bit before heading down to breakfast which was, as always, impeccable. Wanting to go to Mont Royal to see the view of the city from the height we left right after breakfast. On our way we picked up a masque for myself which was imported from an artist who handmade it out of paper mache in Italy. It’s beautiful! Up at the top we wanted to reenact my grandfather’s proposal so Scott asked someone to take our picture and we surprised them when he got on one knee and asked me to marry him. They had no idea we were already married and were so very excited for us. A note, if you ever want someone to take a lot of cute pictures of you, pretend you are proposing and they will take plenty.

The beautiful mask I bought

We walked to the Latin Quarter where we stumbled across a very strange vintage thrift store that I’m not even sure how to explain. It was filled with many clothes, mannequins and just overall strange things. I bought a vintage scarf and a gargoyle for Scott’s friend Kevin. We found a Chinese bakery that was incredible and got a pizza for dinner before heading to the bus station.

It was the perfect birthday weekend. I really couldn’t have asked for anything better. The food was amazing, the city was beautiful and of course, the company was incredible. I realized just how patient, kind, and loving my husband truly is. I knew all this about him but after many shops, having to read a lot of different menus before finding English ones and stopping to look at all the flowers he never once grumped. In fact he even encouraged me to go find a pair of shoes for our night out. He is truly an amazing human being.

Scott pretending to propose 

Our ride home was stranger than the ride to Montreal. The bus to Ottawa was normal. Well, filled with normal looking people. I felt rather ill and sweaty the entire duration because the bus was so hot and I had two pairs of pants on from the day. When we got to Ottawa I took off my jeans and felt much better in my leggings. The ride to Toronto was interesting. Something must have happened over the weekend because there was security checking our belongings and making sure we weren’t bringing weapons on board. The man ahead of us reeked of weed and he gave us a strained look as she was swiping the metal detector over him and looking through his things. As everyone was getting on the bus I saw a boob. The woman in front of me had a loose fitting shirt on and apparently to stay comfortable had taken off her bra because when she lifted up her bag, I saw right down the armhole to her boob. Rather strange. Last to get on was a man who looked a bit out of it. He had a strange bobbish haircut that made him look like a cartoon and shortly after we departed he put on a cave hiking light to read that practically illuminated the entire front of the bus. The bus had a strange menagerie of smells that ranged from at first a smell of mold and bleach to the stench of a hot glue gun burning somewhere, to the smell of body odor lingering in the air. We weren’t sure what to make of the changing smells and tried not to think about it.

Arriving in Toronto we had about a two and a half hour wait before boarding our last bus to London. I went to get a bagel and coffee before sitting down to survey our surroundings and the people who could end up in the seats next to us. . This was a long wait and we were fairly anxious and ready to be home in bed with our Molly puppy.