The morning after

I have been going through Diaryland withdrawal and, even though I posted quite a lengthy entry last night, I am still feeling the need to spill words out my fingertips. I brought along a notebook, as I always do on trips, but I never actually wrote in it. There was too much activity and not enough privacy for me to confide any of my inner thoughts to paper. There was a free internet computer in the office of the motel we stayed at in Antig0nish for the use of guests, and I did take advantage of it twice to check my email, but that was all. I was rather put out that my mother-in-law made some crack about me �chatting� when all I had been doing was logging in, reading my mail, answering what was absolutely urgent, and logging out. I didn�t even read diaries! Actually, my mother-in-law put me out more than once with her incredibly narrow-minded remarks. But there will no doubt be more on that later.

One of the places we visited was the house where my father-in-law grew up on Beaver Mead0w Road in Antig0nish County. My husband�s family only has the most common surname in Nova Scotia, and the one-room schoolhouse where his dad attended school had 28 out of 35 students with the same last name. So they had to differentiate them by other means, and my father-in-law and his brother were known as D0nald Beaver and Johnny Beaver respectively. The house is no longer in the family and no one appeared to be home when we were there, so we wandered around the yard and took pictures. It overlooks a ski-hill and a meadow, and the view is spectacular.

I mentioned yesterday that we were at the cemetery where many of my husband�s ancestors are buried. There are so many tombstones with the family name thereon, and it�s kind of freaky when you come across one with a name you recognize. We found one, a double headstone, the husband having predeceased the wife and the wife not yet dead, with an actual photograph of the couple taken in the classic older-couple pose between their two names, and the husband looked like an older version of my husband�s cousin from Michigan. The family resemblance is that strong.

There were wild blackberries growing beside the perimeter road and the kids and I took advantage of them. Buddy Boy was wearing his wedding duds to make the short video that his uncle filmed, and I was concerned that he would a) get blackberry juice on his jacket and shirt, and b) snag the threads of the silk jacket with the prickles on the bushes. Fortunately neither of those things happened, but his jacket has to go to the dry cleaner�s anyway because he got it so dirty at the wedding itself.

At the tourism centre when you cross the border from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia you are greeted by an attractive young person dressed in a kilt playing bagpipes. We purposely stopped there on our trip east and were regaled with The Road to the Isles by a sweet blonde thing, probably a highschool student, whose drones were so out of tune that my teeth were on edge. Still, that was the only bagpiping we heard all weekend. It brought back memories of the first time I went east, on my honeymoon, and the piper was actually on the highway where the road goes around where the tourist centre used to be. Even though there is no Scottish ancestry in my background whatsoever, I felt like I was coming home.

My daughter did manage to embarrass me in the restaurant where we ate breakfast the morning of our departure with my in-laws. She had ordered the special (two eggs any style, two slices of toast and bacon) and was eating it when she somehow knocked a slice of bacon off her plate onto the floor. She picked it up and replaced it on her plate, but in the process knocked a piece of toast onto the floor, which she also retrieved and ate. I looked on absolutely horrified. First of all, she has always been a slob. When she was very little and made her messes, we used to joke that some day when she was grown up and at a fancy dinner party, wearing an elegant evening gown with flowing sleeves, she would end up putting her elbows in her food, totally oblivious to the disaster in progress. But to pick food off the floor in a restaurant and continue eating it as though nothing had happened, when we all witnessed it, was a little too much. For her, though, anything we say is like water off the proverbial duck�s back. Ew.

I tried very hard to moderate my eating and not overdo it. But the scale this morning informed me that I have gained weight (some of it could be water retention, which happens at this time of month and could also be partially due to sitting in a car for two days, no make that four days). My dress was a little tight at the wedding, but still all right (in other words, I could still breathe), but there�s another weekend of excess (and sitting in the car) coming up, so I think I will take the next few days very easy when it comes to calorie consumption.

There are more things to relate, more stories to tell, but I�ll stop here for now.

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