Bacon and beavers

Blog time again!

I hope this entry finds you all happy and healthy and soaking up the rays in the northern hemisphere. It’s jolly cold down here. As Joy can attest, it’s unbelievably cold for the weather that we generally associate with Australia. It beats the stifling humidity of summer here though, and so I won’t complain much more. Speaking of Joy, she was a great guest and we miss her lots! Edie picked up a particular fondness for Joy while she was here. She often gazes into the guest room longingly and also points at the empty space at the dinner table where Joy used to sit. I also miss Joys fondness for homemade soup…Tim’s getting tired of my soup offerings. I argue that it’s such a good time for soup, it’s the best warmer-upper there is! But alas, we move back to the more solid meals that the rest of our seasons are full of. And speaking of seasons and food, when we first arrived in Brisbane, Tim’s parents had an order of organic (and seasonal) produce shipped to our house from an online company here in Australia. We’ve finally got our act together and have been ordering our groceries from the same company for the past few months. Not to be a salesperson here, but the food just tastes so darn good! And delivered? I can’t tell you how much easier that makes our lives. So once again I’ll say “here here! Australia, you have lovely produce and that you deliver it to our door??? We will miss you greatly when we go back to our less tropical homeland”.

And this brings me to something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. So, if one were to search back through our archives, they’d find that we’ve definitely had our ups and downs with this whole move across the planet. We’re happy, we sad, we’re grateful, we’re complaining…The whole spectrum has been covered I think. Way back in the early days of our arrival in Brisbane, we were invited to morning tea with our neighbor. Her daughter-in-law and granddaughter had spent a year in Fredericton on an exchange a year or two prior, and they wanted to reminisce with us about their memories of Canada. It was a fun meal. We, insanely enough, had friends in common, and it was nice to hear things from their perspective. But I distinctly remember feeling that the longer we talked with these two, the more negative their descriptions of Canada and Canadians became. In the end, I remember feeling a bit defensive about things that they were describing as ‘weird’ (the way we pronounced ‘house’ for example). It certainly didn’t turn into a brawl or anything, but I remember coming away from that gathering wondering if they really had enjoyed their time in Canada. I can distinctly remember the lady telling us that the one thing that Canada had up on Australia was our bacon (and it well should…Australian bacon is a sloppy mess compared to Canada’s crispy goodness). But ya. I just remember thinking to myself that their enjoyment in Canada was hampered by the fact that things were different than Australia, and that was sad…I’m always inclined to being rather harsh on people who see things differently than I do, and I’ll admit that I felt that they had a narrow outlook on things. A year and a half later, I’m finding myself in the same seemingly narrow boat as they were.

Tim describes it as bizarro world, a place where things are just different enough from what we’re used to that it’s extremely noticeable. I’ll give you one example. ‘Cream soda’ is called ‘creaming soda’ here. The fact that if I were speaking in the past tense I would say “I spelled the word incorrectly”, here, the proper thing to say would be “I spelt the word incorrectly”. You wouldn’t think that these things are anything to make a fuss about, but I tell you, when little things like that are in your face all of the time, agitation creeps up. Such small, dumb things have a tendency to grate on a person. Or maybe just people like me. So I now find myself comparing things like Canadian and Australian bacon and feeling like the fact that Canadian bacon is more crispy makes Canada a more livable place. And I wonder if this patriotism runs as deep in others as it does me. The general feeling I get is that it does. All of the ex-pats that we know here in Brisbane (and we know a lot) seem to have their little gripes as well, despite the fact that we all like living here and choose to do it! I’m reminded of a Stompin’ Tom song about patriotism which went something like “if you don’t believe your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by living somewhere else.” Such wise words from Stompin’ Tom. So, since we actively decided to leave our homeland, maybe we should just shut up about how different things are in this different land (the phrase no-duuuhhhh (popular in my teenage years) comes to mind). It all comes down to this for me, I’m quite sure that no matter where we lived on the planet, if it wasn’t our home (i.e. our Canadian home), we wouldn’t be ‘at home’ there. So yes, we should just shut our yaps about the things that are different that drive us crazy every now and then…Or move back home…where I’m sure that we’d find lots more to complain about.

Speaking of Stompin’ Tom, his Australian equivalent has been found. Slim Dusty is his name and he was a true-blue Aussie who traveled the land singing songs of the folks he met and the places he saw. His most popular song here is called “A pub with no beer” but he’s had many other hits such as “G’day G’day” and “Cunnamulla fella”..y’heard ‘em? He passed away recently and was given a state funeral. Quite a big deal. Tim brought home a greatest hits CD the other day and I must say, it evokes the same sentiment in me that Stompin’ Tom does…somewhere between ‘turn that off!’ and ‘oh! The good ol’ hockey game, is the best game you can name…’ Ya. Makes me feel warm inside. Just like warm homemade soup on a cold day.

Well, Edie and I are preparing to head back to Canada for the month of August. I’ll say that I’m looking forward to being home, but am not at all looking forward to the trip to get there and back. I’m so wishing that a supersonic jet or warp-speed travel were real options (that is, if they bore no ill side-effects). It’s going to be tough, but worth it. Miss Edie is a very well-traveled gal!

Miss Edie is also keeping us well entertained these days with her new favorite pastime of pulling everything out of where it should be. Drawers, laundry baskets, coffee table, toybox, wallets, etc. It’s a very fun time. Both Edie and I are over our respective colds, and things are a lot happier around here. She and I have been getting out quite a bit for hikes lately and we’re having a blast spotting lots of wildlife, including wallaby and our very first koala in the wild. It’s pretty awesome! Enjoy the new pictures, I’ve got lots more on the way.

Love to everyone,

Laura

PS. A big shout-out to Team Beaver! Our great friend Rach G. Parker got hitched this past week to a great baritone named Paul (Beaver, hence, Team Beaver). We're bummed that we missed that party, but we'll make it up somehow quite creatively. Congratulations! We love you lots!