Brandon and Daisy Return to Canada, Part IV: Family

 As I'm writing down this long, involved travel narrative almost a full month after returning home from Canada, I know there's some stuff that I'm likely glossing over or not exactly writing about in chronological order as it happened. I'm working with memories at this point, old data in my head from a trip long over. So, reader, please forgive me if anything sounds out of place, because it probably is. 

I mentioned briefly before that before we left Omaha, we set up no less than five security cameras both inside and outside the house at various vantage points that covered the vast majority of the house. We had one in the backyard, one looking out the front window, a third at the door (our Ring doorbell), one in the living room that we could make swivel/pan across the room any time we wanted, one in the kitchen, and finally, one in our bedroom upstairs that looked down on the bed and out the door into the hallway.

I just counted -- that's six, counting the Ring as well.

Most of the time we didn't see much on them -- we could pull up a live feed at any time, from any of the cameras. We'd also get motion sensor notifications for them, stuff like "Animal movement captured on Living Room Cam, x:xx" with the "x:xx" being the timestamp. We could then pull up the app and watch the 15 or so seconds of recorded video of one of the cats walking through the living room or kitchen to drink water, etc. These cameras were on, continuously, the entire time we were gone. 

We noticed a pattern, though. For one, the bedroom camera never worked, or at least it never worked properly while we were gone. It would (only very occasionally) record one of the cats getting up or down from the bed, and it sent us a notification when Dad went upstairs to refill the food and water bowls up there, but we could never get the camera to display the live feed and could not reboot or power-cycle it remotely, so it remained a brick for most of the time we were gone. 

The second thing that we noticed is that my little gray shadow-cat, Sadie, was never seen on the cameras, ever. 

Sadie, as I've always said, is the absolute definition of my cat. She is my shadow, follows me everywhere, will sit outside my office when I'm in here with the door shut, will follow me into the bathroom or sit and cry outside the door if she can't, will get off the couch and be right on my heels when I go into another room, etc. She sleeps with me on my foot every night while I'm working, and when I go to bed in the morning she is usually eager to get into bed first, get "her spot" right between the pillows, and cuddle up with me. She lets me hold her like a baby, she gets mad if she can't sit with me on the couch, and occasionally wants me to pick her up and hold her on my lap, her paws resting on my desk, while I'm working at night. She is my cat. She loves Daisy too, and she will do when I'm not around or not available, but she is absolutely my cat.

Sadie is also extremely skittish, doesn't like people other than us, while being at the same time incredibly co-dependent on us. When we have friends over (rare, but it does happen), she runs and hides. When we leave on vacations, she gets scared and hides. When the parents come over to make sure the cats have food and litter and to check on the house, she hides. The parents have gone as far as to say she's a myth, that they're not sure she actually exists because she'll bolt and hide as soon as she knows there's someone in the house who isn't me or Daisy, and they've never once seen her when they've come over to take care of the cats.

But, when they were not here, and the cats were in the house alone? I never saw Sadie pop up on the cameras past the first day we were gone; there was a recording of her that morning jumping up on the bed, before the bedroom camera died. All of the other cameras inside the house were working fine; I'd get notifications showing me the other two cats moving around, going to the food or water dishes, or jumping up and down from the couch. Sadie? Nope. Disappeared.

I'd pull up the cameras and scan them via live view -- it was generally always the same. Maggie, our old fat white girl, sleeping on the couch, sometimes with Pete next to her or on the opposite side of the room in the cat bed. No Sadie. I'd check the kitchen cam, which had their water fountain in view, no Sadie. 

This went on for days, until one afternoon when Dad was over here, we called him and I asked him if he'd just look for her around the house, because I was beginning to get very worried. Our cats are not young; the girls had their 16th birthday while we were on the trip (both of them, yes, because they're sisters from the same litter). Granted, there was food, water, and a litter box upstairs outside of the view of the single camera we had in the bedroom that wasn't properly working, but for Sadie to not be on any of the camera footage for the entire downstairs? At all? That was highly peculiar, especially given that she loves sleeping on the couch. 

Dad searched the house and couldn't find her. I told him she was likely hiding under the guest bed in Daisy's horribly cluttered office, and it wasn't worth him going in there and laying flat on the floor trying to find her/corner her in the room as that probably wouldn't go well for anyone involved. I saw on a camera notification that Dad entered our bedroom, walked around it, looked under the bed (where she apparently was not hiding) and exited the room -- from the camera that apparently only worked when it wanted to. 

"I can't find her," he said. "But it doesn't smell like dead cat in here, like decay or anything like that."

Thanks, Dad.

That night, while laying in bed worried about the cat who loved me the most, I got a notification on my phone for movement on the camera in the kitchen. I pulled it up, and it was Sadie, drinking water from their water fountain. I was immediately relieved. She would only pop up on camera two or three more times while we were gone, always for brief mouthfuls of water or food, before retreating back into the shadows to once more remain unseen for the duration of our trip. 

During probably the second or third visit the parents made to the house, Mom remarked that it was so dark and smoky outside that our dusk light had kicked on in the middle of the afternoon while they were there. The smoke was coming down from wildfires in Alberta that had just started up and were raging; you may recall that I got some wild photos of the sun from our trip to South Dakota in 2021, when the fires were blocking everything out:

Yeah, that is not photoshop, that is what the sun looked like as it was setting while we were driving up to Deadwood/Sturgis. It was due to wildfire smoke in the same areas of Alberta that had, while we were in Nova Scotia this time around, caught fire again and the smoke was flowing freely, and strongly, right down into Omaha on the jet stream. 

This had affected us for a day or two before we'd left; the town had gotten smoky and you could very heavily smell it in the air. Omaha had been put under an air pollution warning for it. Well, after we left, it apparently got way worse for several days before it all slowly cleared out. We did not know, at the time, how much wildfires in general would affect the rest of our trip -- because, of course, we were in Atlantic Canada with ocean on all sides of us at any given time, and it's not like we were in an area that would be affected by wildfire activity, right?

Hah. Ha ha ha. Think again.

But I'll get to that. 

We were well into our vacation, maybe around halfway or so, and I'd been telling Daisy every day that I wanted my poutine. We were literally a five-minute drive from the truck stop where I've eaten the best poutines I've ever had on this planet -- it was closer to us than Tim Hortons was -- and we had not gone there so that I could get poutine, not once, over the course of the entire first half of our vacation. I stressed the importance of this to her and how it was a very big deal to me, possibly the most important part of the Canada Experience™ to me. I don't know how serious she actually realized I was when I said that, or if she mostly brushed me off as if I were being dramatic (I was, but it doesn't change the facts). 

I'd also told Daisy's aunt and uncle that I wanted to take them out to dinner while we were in town because we loved them and they've been so good to us over the years. This is the aunt and uncle who live next door, who let us sleep in their basement bedrooms on our first trip up there in 2015, who made sure we were comfortable and had bagged milk and a giant box of Tim Hortons K-cups in the house for me while we stayed there. The aunt and uncle who bought us the best possible wireless router off our wedding registry for our wedding gift, a router we used for many years and is still the best router I've ever owned. They are important to us. Daisy has been very close with her uncle since she was a very young child, and his sons and daughters are some of my favorite people in the family. I told them that it was important to me personally that we take them out to dinner and spend time with them once they got back from the lake, so we set a tentative date at that time for Thursday evening before what, in the states, would be Memorial Day weekend. 

Daisy's aunt and uncle also know how seriously I take my poutine.

It ended up, as it was, being their anniversary. Which I honestly did not know beforehand, as they'd said what day worked best for them. I finally got my poutine, and I got an omelet and hashbrowns on the side (I was hungry, okay?) that I ended up only eating half of and took the rest home...to eventually throw out in a few days because I never got around to finishing it. We paid for everything. I wasn't about to let them pay for their own meal on their anniversary, especially not when I'd told them beforehand that I wanted us to take them out to dinner -- with the implication even then that we'd be paying for all of it. That was my overall plan. 

Over the course of the week we did a few more things of note; Daisy and I went to get her hair cut at a local shop she visited last year, and they gave her the most radiant haircut she's had in all the time I've known her. Even now, almost a month after returning home and with the growing-out her hair has done since then, she still looks absolutely gorgeous.

As predicted, Daisy's aunt and uncle -- the ones who live outside Halifax -- arrived for the weekend to see us. Their daughter, who is a few years younger than Daisy, hit town shortly thereafter (she arrived separately). In the states, this was Memorial Day weekend, but in Canada, they don't really have a Memorial Day weekend -- their holiday weekend was the weekend prior when we arrived, Victoria Day, which was the Monday before.

I've always had a kinship with this particular aunt and uncle; Daisy's uncle worked in telecommunications for many, many years for one of the biggest companies in Canada (and a company I work with as a carrier very frequently in my own line of work), and recently retired, so he and I have a lot of common ground and things to talk about. We can talk shop about the telecommunications business as well as the intricacies of networking (meaning, computer networking, not building connections with powerful people) and understand/empathize with what each other is saying. He very clearly knows far more about telecom than I do, but he also knows what I do and understands it. He's also a musician, like my dad, and we can connect there as well on a much more personal, almost spiritual level. He's Daisy's youngest uncle and the "baby" of the family, even though he's still much older than me. I really like him and respect him as a person. He has always been very kind to me and is first to crack a joke or find the subtle humor in something small. 

Last summer, when we were there for his father's funeral, he had been put in charge of some of the arrangements -- I believe he was in charge of making sure the cremation happened on time, the urn was ready on time, etc -- and he had been calling different people within the funerary industry multiple times a day to help ensure everything was in order, and kept getting the run-around or the cold shoulder. He was visibly frustrated, even though he hid it well.

"Do you want me to call them?" I said. "I can whip some 'asshole American' at them and get them to give me a straight answer or ensure they provide progressive updates. The people who get the loudest get their shit taken care of the fastest."

Yes, dear reader, I offered to escalate on a crematorium.

Can you imagine how that call could have gone? Stop wasting our time, we have a deadline on this, no pun intended. Put him in the goddamn furnace already and let us know when the ashes and box are ready. You have two days.

Jesus, that would've been a bit too morbid and glib even for me, and I've got a pretty dark sense of humor as-is. 

He declined my offer, but it did get the smallest, brief smile out of him. That's the kind of relationship I have with Daisy's uncle, and her family in general.

Daisy's aunt -- her uncle's wife -- is almost a polar opposite person. Her uncle, while fun and sweet, has (by most accounts) seriously mellowed out as he's gotten older. But the aunt, she is a spitfire. She may quietly, secretly, be my favorite person in the family and she's not even blood-related. I see Daisy's aunt almost as another mother-like figure. She has a take-charge, no-bullshit, not-taking-shit-from-anyone attitude, a biting wit and sarcasm, and she is never afraid to speak her mind or call someone out, bark an order, etc. But she is also one of the kindest, most loving and inclusive people I've ever met in the family. She was the one who gave me a giant hug last summer when we arrived late at night, tired and sweaty from our trip, and told me "welcome home." She said the same to me during this visit, too. I adore her.

Their daughter, who arrived later, is fairly close in age to Daisy. Daisy denies this and says she's a lot younger (Daisy turned 35 yesterday), but doesn't know her exact age. When she arrived, she was wearing a sweatshirt that said "1992" on it in big, collegiate block letters, and I can only assume she was wearing that shirt with a year on it to signify the year she was born -- which would make her 30 or 31 depending on when her birthday is. She and Daisy spent a lot of time together in their formative years when they were kids, and they had not really gotten a lot of one-on-one time since as they grew up and their life paths slowly diverged.

I first met this cousin last year during our trip there in August, and when I did my first thought was that she was basically Daisy from a parallel universe -- a parallel universe where Daisy had straight hair and slightly different genetics and a slightly different personality, because the two of them are very similar in many ways, even if they don't see it in one another. Daisy, in most social situations, is very outspoken, loud, and has a laugh and a smile that can light up any room. Her cousin is much more reserved and quiet, but extremely observant. She has her mother's biting wit and her aunt's (read: Daisy's mother) sarcasm and attitude. Both of them are big girls, and very amusingly to me, she and Daisy both share the same taste in men -- apparently -- because her fiance is almost a mirror image of me -- down to the fact that we both vape, have similar hairstyles, both wear glasses, both have tattoos and dress very similarly, and both of us have beards and an amazingly similar sense of humor. Our body builds are even very similar, save for the fact that he has muscles where I have, well, dad bod and fat. Her fiance is a boatswain in the Royal Navy and was -- at the time of our visit last month -- sailing his way to Singapore. 

Daisy's cousin arrived late in the evening that night, just as her parents were leaving, and sat up with us in the sunroom, talking. Eventually, Grams went to bed -- late, far later than she normally would have stayed awake, and by 1am or so I told the two girls that I needed to go crash too. I went back to the bedroom and eventually crashed out, leaving Daisy and her cousin to catch up.

I awoke a few hours later, in the early morning hours, to realize I was still in bed alone. I didn't think much of it -- I figured maybe Daisy had gone downstairs into the basement to sleep again because she was hot, or that she'd gone to the bathroom or something. 

Oh no, that wasn't the case. When I got up for the day, I found that both girls had been up all night talking until after the sun came up. They both slept fast in the early morning hours and were both up again by midday. Daisy's cousin got up first and I had some nice one-on-one conversation time with her for a while before Daisy herself got up eventually. She is a very sweet girl and reminds me so much of my wife. Maybe it's a family thing, I don't know. 

All of the extended family had left town once more by the evening hours, and we were once again at the house alone with Grams. I think this was a relief to Grams, because she has high anxiety when family visit (though she never really had that with us, perhaps because Daisy and Mom stayed there last summer far longer than Dad and I did). 

As an aside, I've been told so many times by Mom since our return how much Grams likes me, and how enamored she was with me. I had many long, intricate conversations with the woman while we were there, and she was very engaged and wanted to talk to me. Mom says she isn't like that with anyone, that she doesn't like people -- doesn't trust them, doesn't want to be around them, etc. If that's true, I never saw it in my interactions with her. She was very kind, very funny, would tell me stories about the old days, about growing up in the area, about the house and the property the family owned, etc. I think it's because she knew I was genuinely curious and that I actually cared about what she had to say. I am intensely fascinated with the family history, especially since that seems to be cornerstone knowledge in Daisy's family to know their heritage, know where they came from, to trace it back and remember it and hold space for it -- and most of my own family couldn't care less about those things. I know very little about my own family history aside from the most basic things, because nobody in my family ever seemed to care about keeping records, telling stories about the family history, or recording names and places lived. I've had to piece together the bulk of the information I know secondhand or from census records and other online resources. 

We went to visit Daisy's grandfather's grave on a cold, misty morning a few days before we left. It looked much like it did in August, when they buried his wooden urn containing his ashes, but there was nobody around on the day we were there. Well, there was one guy sitting in a truck, but he drove off as soon as we entered the graveyard. I don't know if he was a groundskeeper or what, but he looked sort of sketchy.

Next to the grave of her grandfather was the grave of his daughter -- Mom's sister -- the only member of that generation of the family who had died young. She had died of cancer a few years before I met Daisy, so I never got to know her. The cancer was aggressive and it was a brutal, painful death for everyone in the family to experience. I lost a sister young too, but I never knew her -- it was much different for Mom, Daisy, and the rest of the family, who was close with Daisy's aunt. 

There are many family/long extended family graves in that graveyard -- people related down the line, tangentially or through marriage, who died generations ago. There are entire swaths of gravestones in family plots, all of them with the same last names, all of those last names British, Scottish, or Irish. You'll see that a lot in Atlantic Canada, I'd assume, and even more so in Nova Scotia. Cemeteries are always a peaceful place for me; despite being what some people would call "sensitive" to the denizens of the other side -- I've seen or been haunted by many ghosts in my life, but those are stories for another time -- I've never experienced anything in a cemetery that has made me feel uneasy. 

The same can't be said for some churches, which is something else I'd learn over the course of this trip and I'll cover in the next, and final, part of this series. 

Brandon and Daisy Return to Canada, Part III: The Frigid Waters of the Atlantic

 We were told by Daisy's uncle, before we left Omaha, "bring your winter coat."

We were later told, by Daisy's other uncle, that the beaches weren't exactly "open" yet in Nova Scotia because they -- as a province -- were only "about a week and a half past seeing snow" on a fairly regular basis.

We had checked the weather for the area numerous times on almost a daily basis for the week or two up until the day we left. Highs in the 50s-60s, with one or two days maybe hitting 70 or higher, and lows in the 40s at night (Fahrenheit, of course, as we Americans don't do the Celsius thing). 

We had tried to pack our suitcases accordingly for this weather -- I'd packed my boonie hat, a few sweatshirts, some sweatpants, some actual pants (in the event I'd need them), and a zip-up hoodie -- and Daisy had packed similar garb, including leggings and a hoodie and her old, beat up military-style jacket.

It was supposed to be 85 or higher in Omaha every day we were gone.

When we left the hotel on that Sunday morning, May 21 -- and actually got outside to breathe the fresh air of the Maritimes, it was 43 degrees in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was also dark, dull grey and overcast. I am sure I made a joke about it always sort of looking like that in Nova Scotia when we were there, because more often than not, it does. On our first trip up there together in 2015, the family joked that we brought the heat with us, because when we'd expected it to be in the 60s-70s most days, Nova Scotia underwent an unexpected heat wave of temps in the high 80s and 90s, and heavy thunderstorms followed almost every day in the evening and overnight.

Last summer when we were there, it was cool, rainy and misty more often than it was not, and on the day of Daisy's grandfather's funeral/burial, it was the kind of cold/wet weather you see for funerals in movies...followed by a thunderstorm in the afternoon and evening that turned the entire day into a washout. And that was in mid-August.

Our drive from Halifax to the homestead -- about two and a half hours, roughly, via the Trans-Canada highway -- was crisp and gray. Early spring weather in Nova Scotia. We stopped in a town called Antigonish on the way there in order to get some groceries and other necessities from Walmart and one of the two big food store chains in the area, Atlantic Superstore. We called Daisy's grandmother to let her know our rough ETA and to ask her if she needed us to pick up anything.

By the time we got to Walmart, where we went first, it was simply overcast and dark. By the time we finished there and went to the Superstore next door, it was pouring cold rain and a very cold wind was whipping. Daisy's grandmother told us we'd likely be driving through storms between Antigonish and the house. I thought about how in Omaha, it was likely in the 80s and perfectly sunny.

We didn't need to get a lot of groceries; we just needed the minimums for survival for a few days as we knew we'd have plenty of opportunities to go out and pick up other items from various places. Daisy had also gone to Whole Foods and had gotten multiple containers of vegan croissants and muffins that she had wrapped in clothing to protect them and had packed in her suitcase for the family to enjoy. To my knowledge, Canada does not have Whole Foods or any equivalent chain (well, they may, but in mainland Nova Scotia, they absolutely don't). My goal overall was to get some snack stuff, some sandwich materials, some nuts, etc -- stuff I could subsist on, even if it wasn't completely ideal, throughout most of the trip. I'd long eschewed any sort of "stick to a healthier diet" sort of mentality for the trip because I knew that wouldn't exactly be feasible. I knew from day one that most of my diet for the trip was going to consist of sandwiches of various types, Canadian candy bars and chips of various types, and seltzer water. 

Daisy, however, wanted to cook for her grandmother as much as possible while we were there, not only to make her life easier but also because she loves to cook and she wanted to make sure her grandmother actually ate something. The woman is 89 and is very tiny, has some consistent health issues, and eats like a bird. So, Daisy focused on getting essentials for cooking meals, and I focused on getting essentials for my own survival, basically. 

We eventually got to the house in the late afternoon/evening hours, after taking our time getting there driving through, yes, rain and storms. We set up shop in the spare/guest room upstairs and were finally able to stop moving and relax. I also realized, very quickly, that we were the only ones there with grandma.

Daisy had started a group text the month before we left, letting the family know when we'd be in. Our arrival was during a holiday weekend in Canada (Victoria Day), and I'd assumed that since we'd been able to garner excitement about our arrival, there would be people there in town when we got there. Well, that was not the case. Daisy's aunt and uncle who lived next door were away at the lake for the holiday weekend, camping. One of his daughters (Daisy's cousin) and her family, who adore us, let us know that one of the kids was sick and they wouldn't be coming into town. Daisy's other aunt and uncle who lived in the Halifax area would be coming in to see us, but wouldn't get there until the following weekend. Most of the other family was scattered around the country or province somewhere and either didn't know we were going to be there or weren't exactly able to hop in the car and drive for hours to see the Americans  (which, honestly, I completely understand and don't hold against any of them). 

So we were there alone. When I was under the assumption that we would not be. 

I suddenly felt very dissatisfied and bored. I felt indignant and like an entitled American to an extent -- all that travel time, all the money spent, all of the running we'd been doing to get there and suddenly we were just there and nobody was there to greet us or spend time with us but grandma. It was a holiday weekend and nobody could come see us? Internally I was very frustrated because I'd assumed that people would be in town. Daisy knew there wouldn't be anyone there and thought that I'd known that as well. I had not.

I could not vent my frustrations with Grams around. Grams was, to be fair, very happy to see us and was glad we had made it in safely, which was very sweet of her and much appreciated, because it's not like she's a party animal or particularly social. But aside from that, everything stopped. Daisy was in the mindset of finally, vacation! and I was very much well, we're here, nobody else is, what can we do? Where can we go?

It is very difficult for me to, as they say, turn myself off. I don't have the ability to just shut down and do nothing most of the time. I always have to be kept occupied in one way or another, always must be entertained, have a plan of action, or be executing a plan of action -- especially when it comes to vacations. Nebraska is fucking boring; if I wanted to sleep long hours, or play on my phone or bum around the house, I could take the time off work and do that at home for free. On a vacation that I'm putting time, money, and a lot of social effort into...I expect events. I expect places to go, people to see, planned activities, and other things of that nature. Otherwise, I very quickly get frustrated and incredibly bored. 

Daisy is the exact opposite. Vacation to her is when everything stops and she can be a bum with no responsibilities and no real cares for the duration of the vacation. I envy that mindset in her but don't (and likely, physically/mentally can't) have it myself. It's just not who I am as a person; I'm not wired that way at all. It's why the idea of a vacation to Vegas (which yes, we will be doing soon-ish) thrills me because of all the things to do there, places to see, lights, sound, shows, etc. -- and the thought of it overwhelms her -- to an extent, at least.

I also admit that when I'm out of my element, so to speak, I don't function well. I don't like not having anyone's rules but my own, I don't like having schedules made for me instead of making them myself, and I don't like responsibilities and expectations except for ones of my own design. I also don't function well when I'm intensely physically uncomfortable or feel like I'm being boxed in. 

Grams is very old-fashioned and conditioned to her own lifestyle, and expects people to follow it when they're in her house -- because it's what you should do, it's the only right way to do things. She is set in her patterns, and if you don't do things her way, she'll get cross and cantankerous (her words, not mine). This includes:

1. You sleep at night and get up early in the morning, and when you do get up you are expected to sit at the table and immediately eat breakfast.

2. You have all meals together at the table as a family -- no exceptions, you don't eat meals away from the table, and you must wait until everyone sits down at the table with their food before you begin eating. Supper is anywhere between 3-5pm at the latest, and if you're not at the table she'll make something and eat it herself and will not wait for you.

3. The bed must be made every day, as soon as you're up for the day.

4. A new towel must be used for every shower and laundered quickly thereafter.

5. Things are not to be left on counters anywhere, including the bathroom, no matter if what's being left there belongs in that room/the bathroom.

6. The shower must be wiped down/scrubbed down and dried after each use.

7. Laundry cannot be left in the washer or dryer, finished or otherwise -- it must be promptly removed and switched from one machine to the other as soon as it finishes, and once it's done it must immediately be brought upstairs and put away.

8. All shoes must be removed and sat in a specific place on specific old newspapers next to the door.

9. It is okay for Grams to nap or go to bed at pretty much any time, but if you do so you're laughed at like you're a bum (not in a mean way, a joking way, but still).

10. Snacking of any sort is frowned upon, if not outright chastized.

11. A sandwich is not a meal.

12. Broadcast TV time in the evenings to watch the news, Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, and then newsmagazine programs like Dateline is practically mandatory.

None of these are things I do at home. I don't eat breakfasts. I don't eat at the table, ever, and there's never a set timeframe for "supper." Our bed is never made. I wash/change out my bath towel about once a week and never wipe down the shower. Our kitchen counters and bathroom counters are lined with -- you guessed it -- kitchen and bathroom things. I sometimes leave laundry in the dryer for days, and I almost always have shoes or flip-flops on in my own home unless I am asleep, as I hate walking barefoot. Naps and snacks exist for reasons. Sandwiches are sometimes the only thing I'll eat on any given day, and I can't remember the last time I watched broadcast television outside of a football game. 

A lot of this is traditional, relics-of-the-past stuff, and a lot of it is Grams being set in her ways. My own grandmother, when she was still alive, had a lot of her own patterns and quirks like this as well, though I don't think she necessarily expected others to follow them when they visited.

Now I love Grams, and she knows it, but I wasn't down for any of this. I need a lot of personal space and quiet time in a comfortable environment, or I'll go goddamned batty. And the family house, though I like its quaint charms, is incredibly small and incredibly hot and stuffy. I'm not kidding about that last part. 40 degrees outside? Doesn't matter, it's 80 in the house whether you want it to be or not. When it was actually summer-like weather outside one of the days we were there, Daisy found the wall thermometer to read 83.2 degrees (translated from Celsius). The spare room that Daisy and were staying in is on the opposite wall of the dining room and was one of the tiniest bedrooms I've ever been in, but its best feature was that the window could be opened wide and the ceiling fan above the bed had a really good motor.

So, over the course of our ten days in Canada, I would spend a lot of time in that room, reading, playing on my phone, and vaping -- always breathing right out the open window four feet to the right of me. Because, of course, Grams also frowns on vaping. 

I want to state for the record that I made it sound miserable based on the above, and it really wasn't at all. I just have a predisposition to bitch and moan about anything and everything I can, and I feel lost and frazzled when I'm completely out of my comfort zone. Rest assured that I had a wonderful time on the trip and was, fairly quickly, able to relax and settle in without issue -- but the first 24-36 hours were really rough on me -- and I wanted to fully explain my mindset in order to be transparent about this entire experience. 

Anyway. Onward.

The one thing I always have to get used to when visiting Nova Scotia is that time there seems to stand still. It sometimes feels as if I've hopped in the Delorean and set the time circuits for the late 80s or early 90s at best (while I was there, I pinpointed 1991, 1992ish as the timeframe it felt like we were staying in for ten days). Life there is far slower and more simple. People go to work at factories, fisheries, or quarrys, come home, eat dinner, and do it all over again for forty years until they retire, buy a boat, and spend weekends at one of the many lake campgrounds around the area. This is the same environment every time I've been there. It always feels as if I've just left when I return, because time has no real meaning there.

As an aside, why camping at a lake would be appealing when the literal ocean can be seen from the backyard of the family home is beyond me. 

The family home is on the very eastern tip of mainland Nova Scotia, because there are indeed two parts of the province -- the mainland, and Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton Island is truly an island; it is only connected to the mainland by a man-made, half-mile long, narrow two-lane causeway built in the 50s, with a bridge at one end that opens (a swing bridge, at that) so ships can go through. That is, yes, open ocean on each side, even though it's wrapped a bit by some land.

I did try to find a better picture, but it isn't easy. This is from the mainland side, looking out towards the island. Likely taken in the 70s or 80s.

The causeway, and gateway to Cape Breton, is about a mile or two from the family home (technically in "Port Hastings"). The very little town where all of Daisy's mother's family is from, that the causeway is at the end of, is called Mulgrave. It is a former industry town. A port town. Once upon a time, it was a big railway town. To be fair, there is still industry there -- there is a gigantic quarry on the cliffside and there are at least two factories of some sort or another on the winding back roads that take you into Mulgrave proper. It is, really, a seaside village steeped in history, most of which has been slowly forgotten and left behind since the causeway was put in. Mulgrave had, as of 2021, a population of 627 people. I'm not sure many, if any of them, are under sixty years old. Daisy and I stick out like sore thumbs when we're out in public there because a.) it is very clear we're not locals, and b.) we're not senior citizens.

Mulgrave could be a hell of a great tourist town if it wanted to be. It's the last real town on the way up to Cape Breton -- the town that stands between the rest of the mainland and the island, or if you're coming down south off the island, the first real town you'll hit. However, you do have to aim for it, so to speak. The highway comes across the causeway and down through Port Hastings, Auld's Cove, and onward through the mainland towards Antigonish and New Glasgow. There's a blink-and-you'll miss it turn (right across the street from where I get my truckstop poutines, in fact) that takes you into Mulgrave proper...so it's highway-adjacent but not on the highway itself.

Across the causeway from the mainland, once you're up onto Cape Breton Island, you run into two things almost immediately -- an amazing little souvenir shop, and the town of Port Hawkesbury. Port Hawkesbury isn't large, but it is spread out pretty widely, and has a population of over 6,000. It is very much a port city, but is also an actual city -- it has the area's closest Walmart, Canadian Tire, two different Tim Hortons locations (one a sit-down restaurant and the other basically a kiosk drive-thru), multiple banks, churches, hotels/motels, drugstores, and the two big grocery store chains -- Sobey's and Atlantic Superstore. It also contains a mostly defunct mall next to the Walmart (previously connected to the Walmart, but they closed off the interior mall entrance years ago) with a Giant Tiger and a Dollarama. In Atlantic Canada, that's all you really need to classify yourself as a city.

For those of you who are uninitiated, Giant Tiger is basically Canada's version of Kmart. It's not Walmart or Target, it's solidly Kmart. Most stores aren't gigantic (ironically given the name) but they have clothing, housewares, dry goods, and refrigerator/freezer groceries. It's not exactly what Kmart was in the states, but that's really the closest reasonable facsimile I can provide -- Kmart without an electronics section or garden center. Dollarama, on the other hand, is like Big Lots, Dollar General, and the Dollar Tree all had a drunken orgy and the child produced from it was Dollarama. Everything in the store ranges from $1 to $5 maximum, and the amount of items they cram into their stores is stunning -- everything from food to clothing/shoes to housewares, seasonal decorations, lighting, batteries, books, etc. 

I became a fan of Giant Tiger last summer when we were up there; it wasn't there in 2015 on our first trip. During the course of our trip we'd visit two different Giant Tiger stores, one of them (the one in Port Hawksbury, of course) multiple times. Over the ten days we were there, we easily spent over $500 total in those stores alone, most of it on clothing.

You see, Canadian clothing is...different. I don't know what it is and I've never been able to explain it, but whatever Canada's standard sizes are, they're bigger and more comfortable than the same sizes in the states. 2XL shorts, in Canada, fall off me unless I tie the drawstring as tight as possible and cinch it closed. In the states, 2XL anything is generally tighter on me than spandex. Dresses, skirts, and leggings for Daisy fit so much better than in the states, the fabric quality is higher, and they have expanded sizes to be all-inclusive when stores in the states do not. Shirt sizes, with button-ups being no exception, are more accurate to the size I'd expect them to be, and also fit better. All of this extends to pretty much every place we went that sold clothing -- we had no concerns about whether stuff would fit, because if anything, it might be a little too big, not too small. Trips to Canada let us update and refresh our wardrobe as much as our suitcases will allow, and we planned for this. 

I did get a number of new pairs of shorts, both sweatpant-like shorts and of the cargo variety. I got multiple Canadian souvenir shirts that had "Canada" written on them somewhere. I got a really nice, button up white shirt with little blue palm trees all over it. I got a giant, discounted pack of boxers that once I got them back to the house, I realized I'd misread and they were actually briefs (I haven't worn briefs in 25+ years; guess who's wearing briefs again?). I got a souvenir mug, some keychains and stickers, a full-size Nova Scotia provincial flag, a metal Moose Crossing sign, and some other Canada-specific items, like a Cape Breton "CAPERS" shirt that the painted letters washed off of the first time I washed it. 

Daisy, on the other hand, I'm not sure got any of the more souvenir-y clothing as she had in the past, but she did get a number of dresses and skirts/shorts/skorts, a few different tops, and even picked up some extra stuff for her mother. Daisy, perhaps not surprisingly, got far more clothing on this trip than I did, and I was even trying to get stuff I wanted, even if it was more expensive in some cases than others.

That's really what we did for a lot of the trip -- shopping. Little adventures while we waited for the family who would be coming in to town to see us to arrive. Sometimes we had a goal in mind and a place we wanted to go -- for example, Grams asked us to pick up a bottle of salad dressing for her, as well as her medications, so we drove up to the island to do that. We briefly considered getting matching tattoos, but decided against it. One day we went to Antigonish (during a nasty rainstorm) and went to a very specific general store/souvenir shop so that Daisy could get stuff there to give to a family friend in the area, as well as to bring back home. Daisy also stopped while we were in Antigonish at the public library, where boxes upon boxes of Covid tests were still freely available for anyone to take. 

We went to visit the 101-year-old sister of Daisy's grandfather one day, and she allowed me to use my voice recorder for the visit (I believe her answer to whether I could record her was something along the lines of "I'm 101, why would I care?"). I got about 20 minutes of us talking to her and talking with her son and her live-in caretaker, but have not yet reviewed the audio file. It's likely not that great of a recording, but it is a recording. It's the only time I'd get to use the recorder while I was there.

We generally had a pattern of what would happen every day, and it roughly went as such:

1. We'd be in bed relatively early (for us) the night before; Nova Scotia operates on Atlantic Time, whatever it's called -- it's two hours later than the Central Time we have here in Nebraska. Our watches/phones adjust automatically but our bodies generally have a harder time doing so -- yet most nights we were in bed or asleep by 10-11pm -- which would be 8-9pm back home. 

2. I would generally fall asleep first, and wake up in the middle of the night either a) sweating like a pig because Daisy is a living furnace and the bed/bedroom is small, or b) wake up alone because Daisy was too hot and had gone downstairs to the basement to sleep the rest of the night, and I'd never noticed.

3. When I would wake up for the day, Daisy would usually have been up far longer than me and had already had breakfast with Grams, who herself would always be up by 6 or 7 at the latest -- usually long before. 

4. I'd get dressed, make the bed, and sit at the table with them for a bit -- sometimes I would eat something but more often than not, I wouldn't. 

5. If Daisy's uncle was home (again, he lives next door) he'd come over and spend some time with us.

6. Around 11 or 12, we'd make our plans for the day -- where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do. Sometimes this would be little to nothing, sometimes it was a grand adventure (depending on the weather and the time we had), but when we left the house, always -- and I mean, always, every day -- started with....

7. A trip to Tim Hortons in Auld's Cove to get giant coffees and (more often than not) a donut or pastry of some sort for me. The donuts and pastries aren't vegan, so Daisy sadly could not partake. Sometimes we'd sit there in the restaurant and just take it in, sometimes we'd grab it and go shortly thereafter, sometimes we'd hit the drive-thru.

8. After the coffee we'd go do whatever we'd planned for the day, and would return home around 4 or 5. More often than not, Grams had already eaten her "supper" by this time and did not want Daisy/us to cook for her. 

9. Both of us would shower, sit in the sun room or in the living room while Grams watched the news, Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, or whatever else she wanted on the TV -- sometimes I'd join both her and Daisy, and other times I'd retreat back to the room to read.

10. Daisy would eventually join me in bed and the process would begin again from step 1. 

There are some highlights I want to talk about here before we move forward, because they need some further explanation/exposition.

Tim Hortons (yes, no apostrophe, that's just how they have it) coffee is some of the greatest coffee available anywhere. I've talked about Timmies before and it's not a secret that I've been a fan of it for well over a decade -- for several years before I went to Canada for the first time, even. The ground coffee and K-cups are readily available in the states, and on Amazon, and if I'm buying a name-brand coffee for the house or for my Keurig, it's been my go-to for a long time. However, the stuff you can get at home is not the same as getting it fresh in-store. It's similar to how you can get the White Castle cheeseburgers from the freezer case in the grocery store, but actually going to a White Castle and getting it fresh and hot is so much better. That's what Tim Hortons is for me in Canada, as much as visiting actual White Castles were on road trips here in the states, it's as much as pilgrimage for me to visit Timmies in Canada.

The appeal of Tim Hortons is not a distinctly Canadian one; they do have stores in the states, mostly in the northeast/New England area (there's actually one in my hometown of Morgantown now, though it was put in long after my last visit back home). However, IN Canada it is a very distinctly Canadian thing -- as in, there's a sort of "Canada Pride" vibe when you're there. I wouldn't say, exactly, that Starbucks has a "American Pride" sort of vibe for any of them I've visited, for example. Maybe McDonald's or Walmart if we're talking about restaurants/institutions.

Anyway, I've gotten off track.

The best part about Tim Hortons is its regularity, and again I'll compare it briefly to McDonald's here -- you can go to McDonald's virtually anywhere and know what you're getting every time. You know it will be the same food every time, prepared the same way, and of the same expected quality and wait time. Prices may slightly differ from state to state or some locations may have local specialties -- i.e. the ones in Maine sell McLobster rolls and the one in WV a few miles from my high school sold baskets of cheese fries -- but generally you know what to expect in a broad sense from any McDonald's location. It's the same with Tim Hortons. You can order a large double double (translation: double cream, double sugar) and it'll be the same every single time from every location. Daisy, hilariously enough, did not have this experience every time she ordered an "Americano," as almost every time she ordered it, no matter which location we were visiting, it was different every time. 

Also, #1 way to point out that you're an American when visiting Tim Hortons? Order an Americano and watch the looks they give you at the register.

The first day we went to Timmies I ordered the large, iced caramel toffee coffee that I was such a fan of last summer when we were there. It's still good. The second day I tried some other iced cappuccino, it was supposed to have chocolate chips or Oreo pieces in it or something, I can't remember. It wasn't memorable. Third day, I needed something strong to wake me up fully and keep me going, and I got a large Dark Roast (easily their best base coffee, honestly).

After that, and for every subsequent visit -- shop, kiosk, drive-thru, airport, etc -- I got a large double double. It very quickly became my go-to, precisely for the reasons I mentioned above: it's the same every time, and it's great. Daisy would experiment with a few variations of different things there, even ordering some sort of frozen lemonade one day from the drive-thru, but I stuck to my guns on the double double throughout the rest of the trip. 

Tim Hortons is also an actual restaurant, similar to how Starbucks has actual food here in the states. At Timmies you can get sandwiches, wraps, soups, salads, etc. They all look great, too. I did not partake, but apparently their soup is so good/popular that they sell it in cans in stores too:

I did try their "savory pastries," which were cheese and herb stuffed scones, basically, and wasn't that impressed, but their donuts are on another level entirely. Tim Hortons may have perfected the mass-produced, fresh-baked, coffee-shop donut. When I say perfected I don't say it lightly -- I'm saying that I've had a lot of donuts over the years and have gone to many a specialty donut shop (including Voodoo Doughnut in Denver) and...sorry to say, Tim blows them all out of the water on price and taste.

If you have a Tim Hortons near you, or plan to be near or in one in the future, I strongly implore you to drop any preconceived notions and get at least two honey crullers. I say at least two because you'll eat one and be like holy shit, how can a coffee shop donut be that amazing? and you'll want another. 

The other great thing about Timmies is that, well, coming from a Starbucks culture in the states, Tim Hortons is cheap for what is far superior product overall. Daisy and I would each get a large coffee (sometimes she got the medium, to be fair) and usually I got 1-2 donuts, and the total was always well under $10. Most of the time it was $6 to $8, depending on whether a specialty drink was involved. You'll spend $6 to $8 on one large (excuse me, venti) coffee at Starbucks here in the states. I think the most we ever spent on a single trip to Tim Hortons throughout the entire trip was $11, and that was with two large specialty coffees and two donuts/pastries. A normal large coffee at Timmies is under $2, tax included, cup-in-hand. It's mind-boggling to see that compared to Starbucks prices.

To be fair, there are Starbucks in Canada, but they're few and far between, which tells me they're nowhere near as popular or beloved as Tim Hortons. I saw a few of them when we were there. I'm also sure that Canadians likely don't want to pay $5-6 for a single cup of coffee, either, and they're getting business based solely on novelty or from traveling tourists.

The other highlight I wanted to mention before moving forward is the downtime that Daisy and I had together. Downtime in Canada is very different for us when we're in Nova Scotia versus what it is when we're home. At home, it generally involves cuddles, Netflix, comfort food, naps, lazy mornings and afternoons, laundry, and ahem...romantic time. In Canada it's very different for us because we're not always awake at the same time at home. There will be weekends where I am asleep when Daisy is awake, and vice versa. But in Canada, as we were staying in the spare room in Grams' house, it's not like we could effectively really operate on different schedules. So, the downtime we had, together and peacefully, was reading together in bed -- in the nighttime hours, after Grams had gone to sleep, we could break out the gummy candies and ketchup chips, and just sit there in each other's presence while reading. Daisy generally read books on her phone; over the course I was there, I read two novels cover-to-cover -- Stephen King's Pet Sematary and Michael Crichton's Timeline -- over the course of three days. Lounging together in bed and reading would be what Daisy later told me was her favorite part of the trip -- just us there, together, existing. And to be fair, it was good. It was very nice, peaceful, relaxing. It allowed me to finally loosen up and just be. I was at my most calm and stress-free in those times. 

Anyway, onward.

Finally, around mid-week, the temperatures slowly began to climb out of the 40s and 50s, and the rain/mist finally lifted to show the beauty of Nova Scotia beneath it. Daisy had long told me that she'd wanted us to drive up to the island and visit Inverness Beach, which she said was one of the prettiest beaches in all of Nova Scotia, and that she would be getting into the water regardless of temperature. She picked the day that it was supposed to be the warmest while we were there (we would learn later that was not the case) and it was sunny, so we made our plans to go. 

Here's the thing about Nova Scotia beaches -- while there are some really nice, sandy beaches with crashing waves and gorgeous views, they're not as prevalent as you would think. Most of Nova Scotia's coastline, including up on Cape Breton Island, are made up of rocky shores and aren't exactly conducive to long walks on the beach or sunbathing. Inverness, however, is one of the beautiful beaches of the area, with lots of sand on which you can, if so inclined, take walks on and sunbathe, work on your tan, etc. It is, though, about a 90 minute drive from the family homestead, basically right up and along the coast of the island on the way up to the Cape Breton Highlands. 

And it was closed.

Well, let me rephrase that, as you can't really "close" a beach -- all of the facilities were still locked up from the winter. The docks had not yet been put out or attached to the piers. All normal entrances to the beach area were roped off, so if you wanted to go down to the actual beach, you basically had to hop a fence or hop the ropes. But, if you did, well....

You will notice from these photos, taken on that gorgeous day, one thing that should immediately stick out.

No people. No vehicles. No intrusion from the outside world at all. It was just me, Daisy, our rental car in the parking lot behind us, and the ocean. 

Now, mind you, remember what Daisy's uncle had told us earlier in the week -- that Nova Scotia was only about a week and a half out of seeing snow on a pretty regular basis. 

It was wonderful in the sun, but the wind was whipping something fierce -- to the point where we'd shake sand out of our hair and pockets because it was being blown by the wind. The temperature, according to Daisy's smartwatch, said it was 45. I don't think that was entirely accurate, because to me it felt like it was at least 60, and the high for the day was predicted to be 70. 

The ocean seen in the photos is indeed the open ocean, even though we were on the "inside" of the island facing mainland Canada. Inverness Beach is, to this point of my life, the furthest north I've ever been on this planet:

It was a beautiful, gorgeous experience. We found more sea glass than I've ever seen in my life, anywhere. Daisy scooped it up almost by the handfuls. Multiple clear jellyfish washed up on the shores in front of us -- a quick google search tells me that they were likely "skeletal remains" of dead moon jellyfish, though there was one that was clearly alive that Daisy helped get back into the ocean with a piece of driftwood.

As for the water itself, the weather was beautiful and warm in the sun but the water absolutely was not. Do you remember the ice-bucket challenge from a few years back? Yeah, imagine doing that feet-first. It felt like we were stepping into a tub filled with water from the refrigerator dispenser. As soon as I stepped in, up to my ankles, my toes began to ache with cold and then go numb. Daisy had a similar experience and got right the hell back out just as I did. 

So, we could say that we successfully let the ocean touch our toes on this vacation...the ocean just didn't touch anything else. To be fair, even if it were super-warm and the water was warm, there were all of the jellyfish that were washing up, and the last thing either of us wanted to deal with was a jellyfish sting when we were 90 minutes from our home base (and who knows how far from a hospital or urgent-care/doctor's office, etc). 

To be fair, we were at the beach for some time, and in that time some other people had come to have a beach day too. There were a few other couples, what looked like an older woman and her daughter that we had a brief conversation with (to warn them of the jellyfish scattered around, mostly) and a family of middle-eastern folks who were dancing to very middle-eastern music from their boombox(!) on the beach. In the parking lot, a car pulled up right next to our rental while we sat inside it eating picnic-packed sandwiches from home (my wife really does think of everything) and the wind caught their door, bashing it hard into our rental car's mirror. 

"I am so sorry!" the driver, a young woman in her mid-twenties, told us as soon as we rolled down the window.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "It's a rental."

Their door slightly chipped the paint, very minimally, on our rented Elantra. Their car was fine. Daisy wasn't happy. 

"We got the insurance," I said. "You can barely see it, and it's right on the very edge. I doubt the rental company will even notice."

They didn't, as far as I know. If they did, I/we never heard about it and never got any shit from them for it. All rental cars are supposed to be "smoke free" too, including vapes, and I've vaped in literally every rental car we've ever been in without us ever getting shit for it. The same goes for hotels, too. Down with the man and all that, I guess.

We came back to the house that evening and showered off. I shook all the sand out of my pockets and my hair, and washed it all off my flip-flops I'd worn to the beach. I don't really remember the rest of the evening as we were tired from our beach excursion, but I remember being stress-free and satisfied with the day.

During the rest of the week, the family that was coming would slowly filter into the town, and we'd finally get that familial social interaction I'd looked forward to since we touched down in Halifax. However, that is not the end of the story...

Brandon and Daisy Return to Canada, Part II: Except We Almost Didn't

So we have gone to and returned from Canada safe and sound (almost a week ago now, as I write this). Before I tell the story, however, let's go down the list of things I mentioned in part I that I wanted to accomplish while there, and see what I was actually able to do:

• Visit a Canadian Tire and purchase something there, doesn't really matter what
  We did visit a Canadian Tire, but we didn't purchase anything there. Daisy almost bought a cowboy hat, though.
  
  
• Find a Tim Hortons that sells merch and obtain a Tim Hortons t-shirt
  Tim Hortons doesn't sell any real "merch," per se, at least not in the Nova Scotia locations we (frequently) visited. I know because I specifically asked. The barista(s) there didn't know which, if any locations nearby, sold anything of this sort.
  
  
• Obtain as many of the Canada-exclusive candy bars as I can, diabetes be damned because I cannot get them here in the states
  I did purchase a large number of Big Turk candy bars (five of which I brought home), plus a few other odds-and-ends like "buttered popcorn" flavored Kit Kats. Canada has really stepped up its Kit Kat game.
  
  
• Return to Giant Tiger and Dollarama for shopping purposes
  We visited two different Giant Tigers and purchased hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. However, we went to Dollarama once and didn't find a whole lot there, sadly. I think we only spent about $50 or so on various odds and ends and were relatively disappointed.
  
  
• Obtain not only Habs stuff, but Toronto Blue Jays/Maple Leafs stuff too -- shirts, mugs, hats, etc.
  On the last day I was there before flying out, I found an (ill-fitting, falling-apart-after-two-washes) Toronto Blue Jays tank top and a pair of Habs socks in the Giant Tiger in New Glasgow, NS. But that's it. For a country whose clothing is VERY fat-people-friendly across the board for the most part, any other Jays/Habs stuff I found in stores, or even Leafs stuff, was WAY too small for me -- like size XL at best in most places, sometimes only kids' sizes, etc.
  
  
• Find the elusive pair of sandals that I was looking for last summer but could not find in my size (I wear a 13, and the largest size the store had in stock was 11)
  They still eluded me. The lady running the store said they were "on order" in size 13 but couldn't tell me when the order would arrive or in what shipment, or even on what day of the week.
  
  
• Eat as many truck stop poutines as I can (you may laugh at this, but the local truck stop there in town has the best poutine I've ever had, and it's relatively cheap)
  I had ONE truck stop poutine while I was there, and yes, it was as good as expected.
  
  
• Take Daisy's aunt and uncle out to dinner at said truck stop
  We did this; it was even on their anniversary, so it was like an anniversary present for them.
  
  
• Visit surrounding small cities and towns I haven't been to before, in search of groceries and other souvenir items
  We did a LOT of this. We hit up two exclusive souvenir shops, and went to muliple grocery stores, Walmarts, and drugstores all around the province. I visited multiple small cities and towns I'd never been to before on previous trips.
  
  
• Get some real Diet Pepsi, since Canada still uses the original formula
  Canada still uses the original formula in fountain machines only, which we did get some of. Bottled Diet Pepsi in Canada is the same as the states, we found.
  
  
• Get some Fruitopia, as it is still available/sold in Canada 
  I did not get any, but we did go to a grocery store where they sold FOUR different flavors of it in cartons, and I did get a picture. Based on our lodging situation while we were there, we would not have had enough room in the fridge for a carton of it, nor did I want to give myself that sugar bomb when I would already be eating like an asshole for most of the trip. 
  
  
• Have at least one dinner at the fancy restaurant in the hotel we stayed in the last time we were there -- we were there for over a week and I didn't so much as walk down the hallway to the restaurant while I was there
  We did not do this.
  
  
• Catch a bunch of Nova Scotia Pokemon in Pokemon Go and see how many gyms I can rule for the time we're there
  I did do this. Community Day was the Saturday we arrived, and I caught a shiny Fennekin in Antigonish, NS, fully evolved it and named it Antigonish, and it ruled several gyms for a few days while we were there -- along with multiple other Pokemon I caught in the area ruling other various gyms in airports or any parks I was close enough to.
  
  
• Do some sort of wilderness activity with Daisy, whether that's going to a national park/hiking area up there or going to some sort of monument or historic place
  The weather was fairly shitty while we were there with the exception of about two days, but we did go to two different beaches and drive up through a significant portion of Cape Breton Island wilderness along the coast, and I think that should count.
  
  
• Go whale-watching or dolphin-watching at the Bay of Fundy
  We did not do this. There was not really time for it and the weather was, again, shitty for us to have made such a trip. I did, however, see what could have been a shark fin or a whale out in the water off Cape Breton Island, though. It was too far out to accurately ascertain what it could have been.
  
  
• Visit several tourist shops (yeah, there are some good ones in Nova Scotia)
  Yes, as mentioned above, we did this.
  
  
• See a goddamn lighthouse in person
  I still did not do this. We'd had roughly planned a trip to Sydney, NS for one of the middle days of the week, but we didn't end up going for one reason or another -- I can't remember why.
  
  
• See a goddamn moose that's not just on the side of the road in New Brunswick, but actually in the wild somewhere
  I did NOT see another moose, but I did purchase a big metal "moose crossing" sign that is currently hanging in my office.

To be fair and balanced, let's go over Daisy's list too:

• Go back to her favorite beach, regardless of weather
  We did indeed do this, even though it was 45 degrees and so windy I had sand in my hair and in my pockets when we left -- and another beachgoer banged the hell out of the door of our rental car with their own
  
  
• Possibly get her hair cut, short, for the summer
  Daisy did do this, and it's the cutest haircut I've ever seen on her in the eleven years we've been together
  
  
• Cook and clean for her grandmother as much as we're able
  Cooking, yes. Some light cleaning and dishes, yes. Most everything else her grandmother wouldn't really let us do and/or it was covered by her once-a-week visiting caregiver/cleaning lady.
  
  
• Possibly spend a day or two in Prince Edward Island (she's been there before, and it's expensive, but I've never seen it and this will be my third trip to Canada)
  We did not do this, primarily because of time, money, and weather.
  
  
• Spend a day in Halifax doing Halifax things -- seeing the harbor, going to eat at the local vegan places, etc.
  We planned on this, but then the wildfires started up around Halifax and people started getting evacuated, and many places started closing down/shutting down, etc. We spent the day in New Glasgow instead and spent $300 at Giant Tiger.

So.

The night we left (in the overnight hours of Friday, May 19) I scheduled an Uber to pick us up and take us to the airport. I scheduled it for 3:15am, as our flight out was supposed to lift off at 6:20-something. Our flights would take us from Omaha to Denver, Denver to Toronto, and Toronto to Halifax. Aside from Omaha, I'd never been in any of the other airports, so I didn't know what to expect. We'd driven the loop around Halifax's airport last summer when we'd picked up Daisy's sister when she flew in for her grandfather's funeral, but that's about it.

The Uber arrived at around 2:50 -- early -- and said to take our time, he'd wait for us. That made all of our last-minute stuff that much more stressful than expected (or wanted), as I hadn't slept at all since the previous afternoon and Daisy hadn't slept enough to be completely functional, so we were frazzled and tired. The cats didn't know what to make of us and didn't understand why we were awake and running around in the middle of the night when I was usually working or in my office and Daisy was normally asleep. The cats can usually sense when we're leaving, but even as I gave them extra food and water they seemed strangely aloof and mostly unaware. I wasn't greatly concerned as we'd set up our cameras all over the interior of the house to keep an eye on them, and we knew the parents would be coming over every day or two in order to check on them, clean the pans, refill the food and water bowls, etc. Our cats are pretty chill and self-sustaining in their old ages, so while a decade ago they would've all been howling with anxiety and would have known the instant we were planning to leave on any sort of trip, this time around they were pretty quiet about it. It was as if they were like "Oh, you're going somewhere again. Whatever, we know you'll be back eventually."

We locked up the house and loaded our stuff into the giant Toyota SUV our Uber driver was driving. As I got into the backseat, I smashed my big toe of my left foot, hard, into the sliding seat rails of the cabin seat in front of me. It hurt a lot, and thankfully I'd been wearing shoes and not sandals or it would have been worse (Daisy later directly stepped on that toe in the airport, and the pain returned for a while). It was not until we were on the ground and in the hotel in Halifax that I was able to take off said shoe and see that I had ripped a big chunk of the nail off my toe and that it had been bleeding in my shoe for a decent amount of time. It is still healing now, almost two weeks later, but it is much better.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway.

We arrived at the airport in Omaha with no issues, and aside from an Asian family with what had to be 30 giant boxes they were taking/shipping to Vietnam with them, we were the first folks at the United counter, well before they opened up shop for the day.

United? Yes, well...Air Canada does not have a designated terminal in Omaha anymore. All of their flights with a US domestic leg to them operate through United as their carrier, as they're both part of the "Star Alliance" network (think of the Federation, but for airplanes). Therefore, some of our flights, especially the US domestic ones, were all through United.

I have not had a great experience with United over the years, but I've not had a truly bad experience with them either that I can recall. There are several airlines I never want or need to fly on again, ever, and I don't even know how many of them still exist. American Airlines does, and they're horrible -- we'll never fly American Airlines ever again if we can possibly avoid it. Frontier too. US Airways was just as bad, but I think they got absorbed by some other company at some point. Anyway, I didn't have anything but mediocre experiences with United and never really thought much of them one way or the other.

Now, before I get into this story further, I'll note that a few weeks before we left, we got an email that said that one of our flight numbers had changed and that the arrival/departure time was slightly different (I believe it was our flight from Denver into Toronto). It didn't affect our overall travel times or anything like that, it was just something to make a note of and information provided to us for our own benefit as a heads up. Similarly, we didn't think much about it.

When the check-in counter opened at the Omaha airport, we tried to check in. 

We were denied.

We tried again. We were denied again. 

We talked to the lady at the counter, who said there was something wrong with the way our flights were booked and that she'd have to call Air Canada, which she did and was immediately put on hold. Meanwhile, we were shuffled off to the side while everyone else who arrived well after us scanned their passes, checked in, checked their luggage and had it weighed and whisked away on the belt, and we waited.

For over an hour.

Me there with my busted foot (that Daisy stepped on during this process) on no sleep, Daisy there on very little sleep and nauseous because of it on the phone with Priceline -- who we'd booked the tickets through -- trying to get some clarification as to what the issue was, with the clock ticking in the middle of a very busy crowded entry point to the airport. 

The very helpful counter lady had her supervisor and another associate check into it, but they weren't able to figure out why we couldn't check in either. Priceline told Daisy via phone that our confirmation number was correct, but it wouldn't pull up in United's systems (because it was an Air Canada confirmation number, not United). The counter lady came back and told us that we had about half an hour left before they couldn't check our bags and we wouldn't be able to board that flight, but if necessary she would attempt to re-book us and make sure we had seats -- when the Air Canada people finally picked up the phone after an hour's hold time.

Whatever they told the United people seemed to work, and we were immediately brought back to the counter where we were issued boarding passes and our luggage was weighed and checked. My suitcase was 28ish pounds, and Daisy's was 32. The max is 50. Remember this as it'll become more important later. 

Our boarding passes did not have seats listed on them and we were told to go through security and the same lady who helped us would be upstairs at the gate counter shortly to make sure we got in and on the plane. At this point there was about 40 minutes before the plane would lift off.

Throughout the entire process I was far calmer than I expected myself to be. I had long decided that "what will be will be," and whatever was necessary to be done would be done. It wasn't as if we were gonna have to turn around and would be back in our house in Omaha -- we would get to Nova Scotia eventually, this was vacation time and my sights were set on the end goal, the big picture.

We basically ran through the terminal to get to the security line, which was....quite possibly the longest security line I've ever seen in an airport. Before 6am, at that. It stretched back through the airport way past the coffee shops and souvenir shops for probably 200 yards total. We had 30 minutes to get through it and get on the plane before wheels up. By the time we were in the line they were already beginning to board our flight. 

Surprisingly, the line moved relatively quickly, and we were completely through security without a hitch, with a blink of the eye, and were headed to our gate -- where we met up with the same United lady at the counter.

"I can get you two seats," she said, "but they won't be together." 

"Go for it," we said. At this point it didn't matter if the seats were together or not, we'd still get to where we were going and that was what was important.

She printed out our boarding passes with seats that were a few rows apart -- and printed out the boarding passes for our other flights as well -- handed them to us, and off we went. We were some of the very last people to board this flight to Denver before the doors were shut, and got two of the very last seats on this very full plane. The seats were surprisingly comfortable and I probably had six inches of legroom in front of me between me and the next seat.

It would be the only comfortable flight I was on for the entire trip.

We had the shortest layover in Denver I have ever had for any flight I've ever made, anywhere -- 41 minutes. That meant that if the flight into Denver was delayed, or if there were any complications whatsoever, we'd almost certainly miss the flight to Toronto because we would not be able to board it in time. Luckily, the weather was great and the flight into Denver arrived slightly earlier than expected, though we still had to run to get to the gate and get on the flight to Toronto. As a result, I spent maybe 15 minutes total within the actual Denver airport, didn't pay attention to anything but the gates, and we were again on a plane and into the air -- this time out of the country. 

On the flight to Toronto, Daisy pulled up a movie on the screen on the back of the seat in front of her, and with my neck pillow securely on me and around my shoulders, I slept off and on. There's something about airplanes for me -- I don't know if it's the loud drone of the engines or the boredom of not being able to move or really look anywhere but the back of the seat in front of you or what, but on almost every flight now I will sleep for most, if not all of it. Back in the day when I would travel alone, before Daisy, I'd just take my mp3 player and listen to podcasts the entire time (which I would also, generally, fall asleep to as well). 

The flight to Toronto was the longest of the entire trip -- something like three hours. I slept for most of it, only vaguely aware of the passage of time, as throughout all of this, time had been relative. We'd gone back an hour flying into Denver, and had gone forward two hours flying from Denver to Toronto. My body clock was still telling me it was time to be asleep, as while we were in relative "time limbo" that didn't make a whole lot of sense based on the actual clocks, our body clocks were still running normally.  

When we touched down in Toronto we got off the plane and were immediately locked into the area for international arrivals, which didn't allow access to the outer airport areas until we'd gone through customs. I was surprised by the fact that our plane had been full of people, yet it seemed like us and only a few others were actually in the interior ramps/hallways leading to the customs area -- like less than ten or fifteen people total. Did everyone else go through them before us? Were we slow? Or were they all behind us? We didn't know. 

After going through what seemed like endless corridors and hallways, we arrived at the customs room -- a giant auditorium-looking room with what seemed to be hundreds of computer kiosks and two guards at the other end. You scanned your passports at the kiosk (if you have a passport, at the bottom of your ID page there's a bunch of scannable letters/numbers, take a look) and you answer about five or six questions on the touchscreen for each passenger. They're simple questions too, questions that don't really apply to many people -- "are you carrying more than $10,000 in cash?" etc. Then once you're done, you go to the other end of the room and the security guards look at the screen to confirm that yes, it's you who scanned in, and they wave you through.

That's it. That's all customs is in Toronto. We were officially cleared to move about the country in less than five minutes from kiosk to door. 

As mentioned previously, I've been told for years by multiple people how terrible of an airport Toronto was, and how difficult it was to move through it to get from point A to point B. I will now tell you that for us, this was wholly inaccurate. Toronto was by far the easiest, smoothest airport to travel through for the entirety of our trip. It was large, gorgeously designed, and everything was clearly marked. 

We got to our gate to Halifax and found that with the boarding passes we'd been given waaaay back in Omaha, that Daisy and I would not be sitting together again -- she was seated in the row behind me, directly behind me. Eh. No biggie. I was seated next to a war historian on one side who said he flew in and out of Halifax all the time, and on the other side by a thin, gorgeous blonde girl who curled up into a ball in her window seat and passed out for the entire flight. I again dozed off and on myself for the entire flight.

We finally touched down in Halifax in the late afternoon hours. We'd left the house over twelve hours before (by our body clocks, anyway) but by the clock on the wall, it was more like 16 hours or so. And, of course, we didn't know at that juncture if our luggage would arrive as expected, given the rush we were in to get it checked correctly in Omaha. 

As an aside, when I was telling a work colleague, one who had lived in Canada for several years, this whole story earlier this week, she said that the running joke with Air Canada was that if you wanted to dispose of a body, check it as Air Canada luggage because it would never be found again. However, our luggage arrived just as we did, with no issues. We grabbed it from the baggage claim and immediately went to get our rental car. 

Remember how I mentioned before we'd left that we'd reserved a "full size car" and that it would possibly end up being a Dodge Charger?

It was not a Dodge Charger.

When we got to the rental counter, it was almost a replay of scenes from last summer. They did not have a full size car for us, and the lady at the counter wanted to give us an upgrade to a larger vehicle. Daisy stopped that shit dead in its tracks.

"No," she said. "Give us the next smaller size down if you have it. It only has to fit us and the luggage."

There was a discount for that, because of the price difference between the full size and whatever the size down from that was. Normal? I don't know. We were given an orangey-red, new Hyundai Elantra. This delighted Daisy to an extent because before we'd met, she'd owned a purple Elantra (obviously much older) for several years before it was destroyed in a hailstorm while parked at the airport -- ironically on a trip to Canada much like the one we were currently on. She loved her Elantra when she had it. The equivalent glee would be akin to me renting a car and the rental people giving me a jazzed-up Monte Carlo. 

The Elantra was....fine. It wasn't a spectacular vehicle, but it wasn't bad at all. I rather liked it for the most part. Its design cues on the interior left a lot to be desired, though. I liked the seats, but it was much lower to the ground than our car at home, and it was sort of a pain to reach for the console controls, which were also somewhat confusing to learn. We checked it out, made sure it would be adequate for our usage while we were there, and left it there in its parking spot where we knew we'd be able to access it the next morning.

For the night, to avoid a three-hour drive from Halifax to the family homestead, we'd booked a room in the airport hotel, The Alt. The Alt is a fancy, new-ish 15-story hotel physically attached to the airport. Its design is ingenius -- aside from the parking garage itself, and that's only if you have a car in there, you can go directly from your gate to the baggage claim, and from the baggage claim to the hotel lobby/restaurant and up to your room, without having to step outside anywhere. You can do the same if you're flying out, too (we'd find this out again a week later). My guess is that the hotel was constructed this way because of the brutal winters in the Great White North™ -- no need to go outside in that unless you have to. 

Anyway.

We checked into the hotel and they asked us if we had a preference for floor or room. 

"Not at all," we said. "We're just here for the overnight and there's an elevator."

They put us in a corner room on the 11th floor, a room that had giant windows from floor to ceiling that looked directly out onto the control tower and the runways of the airport -- so we could see all of the flights coming in and taking off maybe 300 yards from us. It was a gorgeous view, a view that looked to what I assumed was the north-northwest, given that the airport is a decent bit north of the city of Halifax proper and all I could see from window to horizon past the airport was wilderness. If we were facing the city, we would likely have seen all of the buildings, lights, and maybe even the ocean on the horizon (given that we were on the 11th floor and pretty high in the air). 

The room itself was sparse but adequate. It was much smaller than I expected, but had a high-tech bathroom and a built-in Nespresso coffee maker in a little nook behind the headboard of the bed and to the side. I did not enjoy the styling of the bathroom, and it had a stall shower with no hand-held sprayer. Showers without separate hand-held sprayers are the bane of my existence, and stall showers even more so. 

Once we'd gotten into the room and I was finally able to stop running, I took off my shoes and collapsed into the oversized leather lounge chair situated in the corner in front of the windows, and my body physically did not want to move. I tried to move it and it refused. 

The lobby restaurant of the hotel had a bar with pizza and other boutique bar foods (cheese sticks, mac and cheese, soups, seafood things, etc) and we'd been told by the car rental checkstand lady that the pizza in that hotel restaurant was to die for. Daisy and I hadn't eaten anything all day, and the kitchen of the restaurant would close in an hour at that point -- the bar would be open for several hours afterwards, but I guess they stopped serving actual food at a certain point. Daisy called down to the restaurant and asked if they had vegan options, or if they could otherwise veganize the normal menu items. They said they could (our first example of seeing, again, how vegan/vegetarian-friendly Canada really is compared to the States).

What we ended up getting was, arguably, the best margherita pizzas we'd ever had and easily the best pizza sauce we've ever had on any pizza from anywhere. With that, a bag of ketchup chips and two bottles of water from the attached hotel shop, it was $80 and worth every single penny. 

Returning to the room, we both showered one after another and finally passed out a short while later, at the equivalent of what was like 8pm for our own body clocks but was 10pm Nova Scotia time. We were there, we had arrived safely, we had all of our luggage and rental car, and we had full stomachs. We could finally relax, sleep, and let our vacation begin.