Brandon and Daisy Return to Canada, Part I

(originally written in April/May, before the trip)

 So in the course of everything else that's been going on, and now that I can write here with some real clarity about something other than my medical misadventures, Daisy and her mother had begun planning for all of us to return to Canada this summer at some point.

At this point, I am a Canada veteran -- not so much as my in-laws or Daisy herself, but I've now been there for two extended trips over the past decade. I am loved by and have been accepted into the family for many years over. I have memorized driving routes to and from places that even Daisy can't remember how to get to and from, even though she's been there many more times than I have and for longer durations (this may no longer be true now as she spent a full month there last summer). I know where to get the best poutine and I know the exact locations of the three closest Tim Hortons in relation to the family homestead in Nova Scotia. I've seen seals in the bay jumping and eating fish. I've helped cousins catch sand crabs and hermit crabs in the ocean shallows. I've picked fresh blueberries off of bushes so loaded down with them that they looked like they'd collapse under their own weight. I have befriended family dogs and hairless cats. My Discover card has been customized to have the Canadian flag on it for over three years now, despite the fact that almost nowhere in Nova Scotia accepts Discover except for Walmart. I am, shall we say, a big fan of Canada. I love their culture, I love their food, I love their super-dreamy, liberal Prime Minister, and I just love the Canada Experience™ as a whole.

So, when Daisy and Mom began planning for another trip this summer, I was completely aboard. However, the planning itself wasn't exactly smooth for a long time.

Daisy's grandmother -- the widow of her grandfather who died last summer, and Mom's mother -- isn't doing too well. She is very old (I believe 90, 91, something like that, though I'm not exactly sure offhand) and she's been living alone by herself for almost a full year now after her husband's death. She has a cleaning lady/caregiver come by once or twice a week to make sure she's taken care of and is eating, and one of Daisy's uncles lives right next door (as in, in the house next door, like 30 yards from the family home; we stayed in his basement upon our first visit in 2015), and he comes by to check in and help out in the afternoons or early evenings, but for the most part she's fully alone, she just lost her husband less than a year ago, and I'm sure she's not exactly happy or feeling fulfilled in life at this point. She has some health problems of her own and her health is indeed rapidly deteriorating. It is very likely that this will be our last trip to Canada to see her while she's still alive.

Mind you, I can draw some parellels here as well -- when Daisy and I went to WV in 2017, it was to see family, yes, and have Daisy meet a lot of the family members and family friends she hadn't met before and/or hadn't seen since our wedding, but the overarching reason was because my own grandmother was slowly dying and we knew she didn't have much time left. We knew then that it would be the last time I saw her alive, my own grandmother knew that as well and gave me her blessing that she would rather see me there when she was alive than to have my fly or drive back out there again for her funeral, and she was happy to finally meet Daisy -- who at that juncture I'd been married to for over three years. Because of this, when she did pass three months after our visit, I was very sad but was also very happy that I'd gotten to spend the time with her that I did, and that Daisy had gotten to meet her and spend some time with her. 

Well, the same sort of situation is presenting itself this summer with Daisy's grandmother, so I completely understand it and understand the importance of returning to Canada for the second time in less than a year. Mom is worried that she may not even make it until all of us get to see her again, which was part of her worries with her father last summer before he passed too. She did get to see her father a month or so before he died, only to turn back around and go back for the funeral when we went. 

Daisy's grandfather had been a pillar of the community for his entire life. His name was well known around the little port town of a few hundred people at most (there are probably more people living in our neighborhood and the surrounding three or four streets here in Omaha than there are in that entire town in Nova Scotia). More than that, the entire family is well known around the area and most of them are related, tangentially or closely, to many people in the town or small surrounding towns between them and say, Halifax on one end of the province or the highlands and Prince Edward Island on the other. The town is such a small maritime town that you can quite easily tell what family someone is from just by looking at them and seeing who they resemble. I like to tell the story that on our first visit up there in 2015, Daisy and I went alone to the local liquor store to get beer to bring back to the house for the family cookout -- I'd never been there before and Daisy hadn't been there in years, and the clerk looked her up and down and said "You're a [family surname], aren't you?" Yeah, that happened. 

Because Daisy's grandfather was loved, respected, and was a community figure for his entire life, on July 7 the city (or the county or what have you) is dedicating a bench to him in a park somewhere. There's a ceremony for it, and most of the family will be there. It's very important to Mom, naturally, as one of his four surviving children, to be there for the dedication ceremony. She is also the oldest of his surviving children. Our original plan was to travel together again, as we did in 2015, and have all of us be there for it -- me, Daisy, Mom, and Dad.

That was not to be, due to airline timing and pricing and the fact that someone would need to take care of not only our own cats, but the parents' cats as well while we were all gone. So, we started coming up with alternate plans to where all of us wouldn't be there at once (and thus, whoever wasn't there could take care of the others' cats and watch the house, etc). Daisy originally plotted us going in August, just after Mom and Dad came back, in order for some family to have some near-seamless time with the grandmother (one group leaves, and a few days later the next group arrives, etc). Airfare prices were ludicrous in the few weeks leading up to Labor Day.

Daisy then looked at prices for July and different times in June. Prices were better but still outlandishly expensive. She looked at options for us flying into Bangor and driving across the border again (as we did last summer, which would have also left a window open to have a day or two in Maine together) versus flying directly into Halifax -- well, directly meaning a few stopovers of course, but flying across the border instead of driving. It was marginally cheaper or relatively the same cost, depending on days, to fly into Maine and drive up as we had before, but it would also add two days to the trip that were nothing but travel -- meaning, two less days we'd actually have with the family that we could actually spend having the Canadian Experience™. It would also add to the amount of PTO I'd have to save up and spend.

I have said here before, and it's completely true -- when it comes to big trips like this, I let Daisy take the wheel. I am go-with-the-flow on very few things in life, as I'm generally a huge control freak. But when it comes to travel and arrangements, Daisy is a whiz at it and can plot everything, plan everything, far better than I can. It would overwhelm me and I'd be very stressed out about it, but it is Daisy's element and I am always impressed with her ability to work things out. So, my role is always pretty much the same -- "tell me what you want to do, my love, and I'll make it work. I'm along for the ride." I have planned but one singular vacation for us over the entirety of our eleven-year relationship and almost-nine-year marriage, and that was our trip to Deadwood in 2019 for our fifth wedding anniversary. I paid for that on my credit card, I plotted the days, I booked the room at the lodge, and I made sure she had to worry about nothing except us getting there and home. 

Anyway.

The dates in June before the parents were planning to go weren't working, nor were the ones after they'd return. They were either too cost-prohibitive to plan and book tickets for, and/or we wouldn't be able to stay as long as we wanted because I have limited PTO. While I would earn a substantial amount between now and those dates, it wouldn't be enough to cover a full two weeks there without going into negative time for me, as we did the math -- and if I were to somehow get Covid again, or get another kidney stone or have to miss work for anything else in the interim, my job would be at risk.

"What if we go soon," Daisy finally asked. "Like, sometime in May?"

"Well, I'd have even less PTO saved up for a trip that fast," I said. 

"How much would you have?"

At the time I had something like 24 hours of PTO saved. That's three days. Even if we stretched a weekend on both ends, the maximum time I could be gone from work were three days total when I work five-day weeks. We did the math to plot what time I could/would accrue from that point to say, mid-to-late May, and by the time we returned to Omaha at the end of the trip, I would still only have something in the ballpark of 50 hours. Total. That's six eight-hour days and two hours left over.

But. But.

Memorial Day is Monday, May 29th. And I work shifts of 10pm to 7am. Memorial Day is a paid holiday, meaning I don't have to work it if I don't want to and I could use those two spare hours to put in from 10pm to midnight the night before. That gave me eight full days of time off if our trip fell over the holiday. 

And then my job gives me something called a "floating holiday." Basically, on January 1st every year, we get a free 8-hour day of "flex" time added to our PTO banks (well, us salaried people do anyhow). That's a ninth day. 

We did the math. If Daisy plotted the trip between May 20 and 30 -- me working the full week beforehand up to the 18th, resting on the 19th to turn around my sleep schedule, and then flying out on the 20th (two days I'd normally have off anyhow) -- we'd have nine days of family time, fly back on the 30th, and return to work on the 31st -- and it would be just enough PTO for me to cover it all. 

Of course, that also meant flying directly into and out of Halifax, with numerous transfers and layovers to get there and back. 

I've only ever been through two Canadian provinces before -- New Brunswick and, of course, Nova Scotia. New Brunswick is full of trees and French people, and having gone across the entire province and back a few times via car at this point, it just seems to be a lot of wilderness with a small town or small city dotted here and there. Maybe I'm vastly underrating the province (and I probably am) but...I can only really go off of what I know.

Our flights are set to fly into Toronto on the way there as a layover stop and into Montreal on the way home, as another layover stop (I think; Daisy set up the flights and I go along for the ride). That means by the time the trip is over, I will have been to at least four different Canadian provinces -- five, if we get to go to Prince Edward Island, which is technically a province of its own. 

I have never flown through a foreign airport. I've only ever been to one, technically, when we picked up Daisy's sister in the middle of the night from Halifax when she flew out for her grandfather's funeral and we were already there. It appears I'm going to be getting intimate with at least three different ones this time around. I'm okay with this. For the most part, I like airports. They're a little microcosm of the life and tourism that the city has to offer. I've flown through some airports I really liked (La Guardia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Bangor) and some that I have absolutely hated (Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, Charlotte, and the most hated -- Chicago O'Hare). I've also been told that Toronto is terrible to fly through, that it's so busy and horrible to get from point A to point B in -- and it may be, I'll see when I get there. I'm not sure it could be much worse than O'Hare, which has been miserable every time I've flown through it, or Dallas, which is the size of a goddamned city and no, I am not exaggerating. Montreal...well, I don't speak French and I do not plan to learn it over the course of the next three weeks or so, so I'm just hoping it's laid out in a logical way and I can pick up a Habs shirt from the gift shop on my way to the next terminal:

Anyway.

The overall plan is to be there for ten days, eight of which will be spent with the family and doing Nova Scotia things and the other two being travel days to and from. We will both have to return to work the day after we get home, regardless of whether we want to or not.

Accommodations are taken care of for the trip; we'll be staying in the spare room of the Nova Scotia homestead -- which is where Daisy's parents sleep when they're there -- and have access to the washer and dryer in the house so that we can do our laundry. As such, we save about a grand in hotel costs and can pack far less clothing than we normally would, since we can wash what we have while we're there. Transportation, as it always is when we're there, will be via a rental car that we've already arranged in advance. Daisy specifically requested a "full size car," which per the rental website could be anything from a Camry or Impala to -- and this was mentioned -- a Dodge Charger.

Oh, can we please, please get a Charger, rental car company? I made the joke with a few friends that if we got the Charger, I would be hard pressed not to go Smokey and the Bandit, Canadian style, whenever I'm behind the wheel. And you bet your ass if we end up getting a Charger as our rental, I will be behind the wheel of it, at least sometimes. I just need a red shirt and a cowboy hat.

I can grow the mustache myself.

So we'll see, I guess.

Our rough itinerary is to get into Halifax, decide whether we want to crash at the airport hotel (a room has been booked in advance for that night, if we're exhausted and don't want to drive the two hours to the homestead, but we can also cancel it if we want) and once we gather our luggages and the rental car, to make our way to the homestead.

We're flying in over a holiday weekend in Canada -- Queen Victoria's birthday, or something like that -- which is sort of ironic since we'll also be spending Memorial Day up there too (it's our last full day before we start our travels back home). Because of that holiday weekend, a good chunk of the family will be able to come see us, spend some time with us, and generally just get some good family time on the clock -- whether it's for a day or two, or for longer. But, once they leave, it's just us and grandma for the rest of the week, and it's not like she's a spring chicken who wants to go on adventures or anything like that. She is social for a bit but tires out quickly and retreats to her bedroom or sewing room. This means that we'll have a fair amount of time to ourselves to actually have a vacation.

Daisy has a short list of things she'd like to do while we're there, including:

• Go back to her favorite beach, regardless of weather
• Possibly get her hair cut, short, for the summer
• Cook and clean for her grandmother as much as we're able
• 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)
• Spend a day in Halifax doing Halifax things -- seeing the harbor, going to eat at the local vegan places, etc.

I, meanwhile, have a much longer list consisting of many much smaller and less grandiose things, but things that are important to me to do while I'm there to get the entire Canada Experience™:

• Visit a Canadian Tire and purchase something there, doesn't really matter what
• Find a Tim Hortons that sells merch and obtain a Tim Hortons t-shirt
• Obtain as many of the Canada-exclusive candy bars as I can, diabetes be damned because I cannot get them here in the states
• Return to Giant Tiger and Dollarama for shopping purposes
• Obtain not only Habs stuff, but Toronto Blue Jays/Maple Leafs stuff too -- shirts, mugs, hats, 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)
• 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)
• Take Daisy's aunt and uncle out to dinner at said truck stop
• Visit surrounding small cities and towns I haven't been to before, in search of groceries and other souvenir items
• Get some real Diet Pepsi, since Canada still uses the original formula
• Get some Fruitopia, as it is still available/sold in Canada 
• 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
• Catch a bunch of Nova Scotia Pokemon in Pokemon Go and see how many gyms I can rule for the time we're there
• 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
• Go whale-watching or dolphin-watching at the Bay of Fundy
• Visit several tourist shops (yeah, there are some good ones in Nova Scotia)
• See a goddamn lighthouse in person
• See a goddamn moose that's not just on the side of the road in New Brunswick, but actually in the wild somewhere

Amongst other things, of course.

Over the course of the few weeks leading up to the trip, we got our collective affairs in order. Leaving the house for ten days is not exactly a long time, but I am always surprised about the amount of things that need to be done before a trip -- from the big things to the very small. Being gone for ten days means that the trash won't be taken out, some food in the fridge will go bad, bills have to be paid before we leave, the cats have to have food/water/litter readily available to them (they do and will, and the parents will help with this part while we're gone, thankfully). Those are just some of the bigger things. Some of the smaller things include a hold needing to be put on the mail, making sure we have all of the house security cameras set up and functional, making sure all of the necessary laundry is washed and making sure we have our medications packed and have enough for the entire trip. It seems like a nearly endless list of things to do, and because of the timeframes we have to focus on a lot of it during the actual work week when we're both working and stressed/tired. 

Work has not been a pleasure cruise for either of us over the course of the past few weeks, either. I have had a few soul-crushing weeks and have been getting figuratively killed every night I've been on shift, and Daisy's job hasn't really stopped either. We've both been exhausted both mentally and physically, to the point where some nights she'll come home and almost go straight to bed, and some mornings I'll log off my machine and be asleep in my chair upstairs before 8am. 

Our jobs know we're going to be in Canada, and believe me I took great glee in making sure all of our overnight staff and agents know that they're on their own until June, basically. It's not that I want my team to dread me being gone, but I do want all of them to know that I am gone, don't bother me as I won't even be in the same country and can't/won't be assisting in any problems or crises that arise while I'm gone. Deal with it yourself, etc.

We've also had a lot of stuff come up that have thrown wrenches into our daily routines, like the need to remove our other giant silver maple tree from the front yard -- it was full of carpenter ants and the next big storm we would get could have blown the rest of it (because half of it came down in 2021 in a storm just like that) down onto our house, one of the neighbors' houses, or one of the neighbors' cars. That was $1200 I didn't want to spend, but gave us peace of mind. 

I have been looking forward to the trip, greatly so, for several weeks. The amount of work that's gone into it though has left me weary, and the amount of work still to come makes me tired just thinking about it. The past few weeks have been going nonstop for me -- meaning I haven't really had any downtime because there's always something else to be done, so I always feel like I'm constantly running even if I'm not busy every single second of every day. Last week we had a bowling tournament, a play to go see, and Mother's Day all in a row, plus work, plus trying to get adequate sleep, plus trying to pack and prepare for the trip. So...it's a lot. Even the trip itself (while a vacation it may be) I don't really count as "downtime" because we'll be doing activities and the like every day we're there, whether they're family-based or adventures together to new places doing new things. 

"Downtime" for me, as I've mentioned before here on this site, is time with no responsibilities or pressing tasks. It's a weekend where we have nothing planned where I can veg in my lounge chair, take a nap or two, play on my Switch or my phone, read, watch TV, eat something I want to eat, etc. It's reset time. I don't get enough of it. Neither does Daisy. 

Anyway.

In my excitement for the trip and foreseeing that it's Canada in May, where it's not completely warm for the summer yet (that generally happens in June and July), I got a few light sweatshirts for me to wear while I'm there -- temperatures are generally in the 50s and low 60s during the daytime hours and in the 40s or high 30s at night, so it's not quite summer there yet. In contrast, as I type this, it is 84 degrees in Omaha. It is currently 43 degrees where we're going to be next week in Nova Scotia. Sooo...yeah, it's important to have a bit of warmer clothing packed. To those ends I've packed a hoodie, some sweatpants and actual pants, socks and actual shoes, etc. I told Daisy that Canada always gets some sort of heat wave when we're there, as if we're bringing the American temperatures north with us. When we were there in 2015, it was hitting 85 every day (which is almost unheard of for that area in late August/early September) and when we were there last year it did much the same, except for the days it was cold and rainy/stormy. Maritimes weather, I suppose -- from what I've seen when I'm there it's pretty unpredictable, so prepare for nearly anything. 

In that vein, I also purchased a boonie hat and multi-pocketed, lightweight vest (like a fishing vest, but more like a cargo vest) to wear while we're out adventuring. I have new sandals and a new pair of Hey Dude slip-on sneakers too. While I'm traveling pretty light compared to other trips, I've still made sure to cover the essentials I'll need every day, and stuffed my suitcase full of vegan jerky. I got a Fitbit, finally, so that I can track my activity levels. I left ample space in my big canvas backpack to carry back as many souvenirs and Canadian foodstuffs as I can, and packed everything in both the backpack and suitcase mindfully to be able to maximize that carry-stuff-back-home space. There's a science to all of it, and it's sort of a survivalist mentality -- take only what you need, what can be left there or discarded while you're there before you leave makes more space on the way home, and most consumables (toiletries, etc) can be purchased/used there and left there or discarded before the return trip.

Daisy hasn't even started packing yet, but she has made a list of what she needs to take. I reminded her again that it's a bare essentials sort of thing clothing-wise since we will have access to a washer/dryer and most of what toiletries and essentials we'd otherwise pack, we can get there and use there with relative ease. We don't need four or five outfits of our Sunday best, we need comfortable clothing we can move around in and be okay with wearing a couple of times. My goal for my stuff is to have a lighter suitcase coming back home than when we left, even with everything I'd be bringing back.

So, once all of our stuff was prepared and everything was set, we set off for Canada.

How did that go? Well....