Greetings from the magical land where milk comes in bags and tea (oh rapture) in boxes of 200+. We’re here. We moved.

Actually, it still feels like we’re moving at this point, despite having been here for about a week. We’re still living in box land, still learning the city, still running around to stores and government service centres and post offices, and all the rest. But at any rate, we’re cleaning and unpacking and arranging, slowly working our way towards our new normal. Anselm and Perpetua are probably adjusting better than the adults at the moment!

I have been a little perturbed to find how many things I have forgotten about living in my own country — not quite an immigrant experience, of course, but disconcerting nonetheless. Like the mail that’s shown up for the previous tenant: if I write “return to sender” and stick it in my mailbox, will Canada Post take it from there the way USPS does, or do I have to drop it in an actual postbox? I don’t know! I should know! (I just looked it up: I have to take it to a letter box. But now I have to find one, since I don’t know the neighbourhood yet. Oh help!) I know about how much milk we drink in a week in gallons (1.5) which is… six bags of milk? Maybe? And let’s not even talk about the relative cost of groceries. All I can say is — I miss Aldi already.

For my move-reading I’ve been working my way through Dorothy L. Sayers’s collected short stories (all of the Lord Peter Wimsey, all of the Montague Egg, and all the one-offs besides). Despite the 700+ page count it’s been the perfect choice for this season, since most of the stories are only a handful of pages long and they all stand alone. It’s great for picking up and putting down, and the tidiness of detective/mystery stories is appealing in this time of relative personal chaos.

… I started this post without any idea of how I was going to end it. Suffice it to say that things are settling down, we are acclimating, and I hope that regular posts here will soon resume. Next up is March’s reading round-up — as soon as I figure out which box my reading log ended up in!