33 in Guelph, ON.

It's 3pm on Friday afternoon and I am sitting in the Red Brick Cafe in Downtown Guelph. Get this - the place has FREE WIRELESS!! Can you believe it??!! Wahooo!

I feel like I've just won the jackpot.

So, I thought I'd try and give a more thorough update on my life since I've been so lackadaisical about it as of late. I have to defend myself though, by saying that not having the Internet has made me lazy about many things, not just blogging. Hopefully I will get my butt in gear and get it soon.

So the first news of the day is....that I turned the dreaded...get ready for it...33 years old this week!! Sweet Mother of God!! 33 years old. Holy Crap. I would put some expletives in here as well...but I think y'all get the point. How can I be nearing my mid thirties when in many ways I still feel like I'm twelve??? What the?! Will I always feel like I'm twelve?? Reminds me of when I was holding a 3 month old infant on my knee yesterday, and he was all slumped over having just fallen straight to sleep, and I was struck with how much he reminded me of an old man. Life is so unreal that way...we return just as we came: bald, tiny, dependant, diapered and slumped over. I wonder if it's God's funny little joke to him/herself.
And on that happy note.....I just spilt my coffee over my keyboard. Arg.

Guelph: small city or mid-sized town?

My answer: Mid sized town.
Maybe I'm a bigg(er) city snob, but there is no way that this place can be classified as a "city". Yes, it's a fun town that has a decent bookstore - two actually, a few good coffee shops, some great restaurants, a library, a little downtown and cool stuff going on....but it is most definitely NOT a city. My guess is they call it a city because of the suburb sprawl that has accumulated at a very fast rate over the past ten years. But that's what it is: suburb - not city. I don;t care if it has 115,000 people living here. Most of them live in a suburb. And the downtown core where I live, is the center of a mid-sized town with a University - not a city. Doesn't the word "city" conotate "urban"?? Why do the miles and miles of suburb classify as "city"? I'm not sure why this distinction gets to me...it just does. But I guess the same can be said for a lot of other places in the GTA, namely, BRAMPTON (God, what a horrible horrible place). I think that there should be a rule that suburbs should be called something else...like...."Lego pre-fab ugly as sin housing next to (insert name of mid-sized town here)". Yeah.

Sorry for the tangent. It's hard to put into words in a blog what has been happening to me since I moved to Guelph. Some of the most obvious things are the feelings of being surrounded by the natural world. Tree's seem so generous and all pervasive here. And birds are tweeting everywhere and so much more noticeably then anywhere I have lived before. You drive or ride your bike a little ways in a certain direction and you are literally surrounded by fields and forests. It's amazing to me and has been slowly shifting my way of being. I have been commuting many weekends into Toronto to work and am always jarred by the difference and have trouble adjusting back into the slowed, more natural pace of life after a weekend in the city. I feel a bit like I'm still in between places and look forward to when that will not be the case.

On a deeper level, the sudden removal of all that is familiar has been unsettling and it has been hard feeling like the 'newbie' in a place again. I also feel like I have been on a "prolonged retreat" in a way...not so many distractions....so things just surface I guess. I think it has been a good thing, but not always so easy.

One major perk has been the steady stream of friends and family coming in and out. I have really enjoyed offering people a little break from city life....

Tonight hopefully I will plant my herb garden, finally!

So this has been long. I will try and post some pics of life soon.

That's it that's all.
peaceo,
-jc