Should We Stay or Should We Go

  There’s a place in Southern Ontario, less than an hour’s drive from Toronto, where you can feel like you’ve suddenly landed somewhere else. The landscape is so unusual that it’s hard to believe you’re still in Ontario, let alone Canada. The Cheltenham Badlands are a series of rolling red hills and deep gullies surrounded by the green countryside of Caledon. We have visited many times over the years, and even though we know what we’re going to see, I still find myself stopping to take it all in. We’ve visited by car, but we’ve also arrived by bicycle a couple of times while riding the Caledon Trailway, and taking a short detour off the trail. I really like approaching the Badlands that way. You’re cycling through the quiet countryside, and then suddenly this strange red landscape appears. It’s quite a contrast. What Exactly Are the Cheltenham Badlands? The story of the Badlands goes back a very long way. More than 450 million years ago, this area was covered by an ancient sea...

  Where did the summer go? This is the last unofficial week of summer. The kids go back to school next Tuesday. Where did the time go? I had so many plans for this summer, and somehow a lot of them just seemed to evaporate. We spent very little time at the trailer. In fact, I’ve only been down to the beach once all summer, which seems almost impossible. We did a little bike riding, but certainly not as much as we usually do. I’ve been trying to figure out what took up all the time. Then I started adding it all up. I was away for almost a week crafting with friends, which was definitely time well spent. But a big part of the summer was taken up with getting my mother moved into her new assisted living home and helping her get settled. And when I say “getting settled,” I mean everything that comes along with a move. There was cleaning out her old apartment, appointments with her old doctor and her new doctor, getting her TV and phone set up, taking her shopping multiple times, taking...

If you could eliminate one household chore from your life permanently, what would it be? Not put it off. Not hire someone to do it occasionally. Not magically make it easier.   I mean gone. You would never have to do it again. For me, this is an easy one. Grocery shopping. Hands down. I loathe grocery shopping. And it's not just the actual shopping. It's the whole process. First, I have to figure out what we need.  This sounds simple enough, except somehow the answer is always, "I don't know. What do you want to eat this week?"  How am I supposed to know what I want to eat five days from now?  I can plan, but then on the day I don’t have an appetite for that meal. (Or feel like making it). Then comes the list. Then the trip to the grocery store. Then pushing the cart up and down every aisle while trying to remember what we came for, looking at the list a hundred times, avoid buying things we don't need and figure out how to make our grocery budget str...

Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash When we retired, I had a pretty good idea of what retirement was going to look like.  Or at least I thought I did. After almost seven years of retirement, I've discovered that some of my expectations were pretty accurate, some were completely wrong, and some were just plain funny. So here are a few things I thought retirement would be, compared with what it actually is. I thought we'd travel a lot more. Turns out: We love travelling, and we do a fair bit.  But we also really love being home. I’m finding that I’m craving more home time where I can enjoy doing some of the quieter things. I thought every day would feel like Saturday. Turns out: Every day feels like Saturday, except now I sometimes have no idea what day it actually is. I thought we'd sleep until noon. Turns out: Apparently getting older has a way of interfering with that particular retirement dream.  I’m just happy to get a six hour night sleep in one go. I thoug...