Monday the 17th was one of the few rainy days we've had since we got here. We spent most of the day here at the house and in the afternoon decided to go to the second-hand store down the street. The book section there is so large it looks like a library and seemed like a good place to hang out on a rainy day.
We each found a couple of books and my second-hand store killing of the year, (drumroll please) a five-foot-long real sheepskin rug! I saw it sitting on a chair in the book room like someone had just dumped it there to get it out of the way and suspecting it might be the real deal I hopped over right away. Sure enough, it was genuine sheepskin. And the best part? We only ended up paying seventeen dollars for it! I'm still feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about it:)
Tuesday, we wandered in the direction of Mount Royal, stopping in at the shops that looked interesting. By the time we reached the foot of the mountain, I was feeling rather poorly so we decided to sit on a bench for a while and rest.
The sun was so warm, and Gary's lap was such a comfortable place for my head I just ended up falling asleep. I guess I was pretty worn out. Once Gary woke me up to tell me I was breathing pretty shallowly (I've been trying to be more mindful of how I breathe after reading the book, Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It will change your outlook on life), but otherwise I didn't wake up for quite a while.
We have come to notice more and more bakeries around here that we like but a lot of the time we end up entering in the afternoon sometime and miss the morning round of baked goods. On Wednesday we decided to get up earlier than usual and do some bakery hopping.
We went to the bakery on the corner of our street and met Keenan hard at work there. Also, we stopped in at a very interesting shop\bakery we had noticed some time before that is below street level, the only natural light coming from skylights up by the sidewalk.
The rest of the day we devoted to our work and our usual walk around town.
Have you ever read the poem, "What a Day" by Shel Silverstein? When I have a particularly bad day, I call it a what a day. This Thursday was kind of our what a day.
At eight in the morning construction workers were packing the ground in the alley directly under our windows. Even up here on the top floor, the whole house was vibrating. If there is one thing through this whole sickness, I haven't been able to stand, its vibrations. When my head was troubling me particularly, I felt like someone was holding a vibrating toy to the back of my head at all times. So actual vibrations make me feel like I am experiencing this all over again. The vibration in the apartment was bad enough that Gary was also willing to leave as soon as possible.
Hence, we didn't eat any breakfast before we left, so we had to go looking for some. I wasn't too keen on eating gluten first thing in the morning (it doesn't agree with me if I eat a lot of it) so Gary got his breakfast at a bakery not too far down the street and then we grabbed some Bixi bikes and rode in another direction to get gluten-free croissants.
By the time I had made my purchases at the bakery, the dull grey sky had begun to leak on us. We started off in the direction of a cafe and were soon biking through much wind and rain. So much wind at times that I could barely peddle my bike!
When we got to the cafe Gary sent me inside to get warm and went to dock the bikes. I felt like a drowned rat. We ordered drinks and found a spot in the crowd. It was very full in there with the morning crowd.
Things continued to go somewhat awry until it actually became funny. There were no plugs for the computer so Gary couldn't work, I couldn't work because I was completely worn out from the bike episode not having been active this last year due to this rotten sickness, I couldn't eat my breakfast anywhere but the bathroom because I hadn't purchased it there and by the time, I had gotten it scarfed down and came back to our table, my drink was cold. We were damp and chilled and kind of in a bad way but at least we could still laugh a little.
In the end, Gary did find a plug to plug in the computer, I got another drink and also got some work done, and after some hours of this, we went home.
Unfortunately, when we got home, they were still packing the ground in the alley behind our house. Fortunately, they stopped about ten minutes after we got back, and we holed up in the house with blankets and the heater for the rest of the day.
Friday morning started a lot like Thursday morning. At seven-thirty they were shaking up the house and prodding us out of bed with the noise and vibration. Neither of us was feeling overly happy. But the day was sunny and beautiful and that was already an improvement from the day before.
We decided to walk down to the Old Port and started a meandering way in that direction.
We each picked out our respective lunches of choice, wandered in and out of little shops on Saint-Laurent, stopped at Palais des congrès, admired the beautiful Notre Dame Basilica, and finally ended up in Jacques Cartier square. It felt so much like home to be back. We picked our way over the narrow cobblestone streets and in amongst the picturesque building until we popped out down on the port. One thing that impressed me was a life-sized tyrannosaurus rex that the science center had set up for one of their exhibits. It moved, roared, and blinked its eyes at the passersby and was creepily convincing. And really cool!
As evening approached, we headed home grabbing some Bixis part of the way there and almost getting swept up in some sort of protest along the street. A note to protesters everywhere; if you have a protest, make sure people know what it's for, otherwise your protest will be in vain!
It was pretty hard to tell what this protest was about. It seemed a lot more like a parade than a protest, with a huge group of people being led by a girl band. So, we never did find out what it was all about...
Saturday dawned beautiful and sunny. Gary took me out on a date for tea at one of our favourite tea houses. I love to go there. The decor is so quaint it takes you back many years and makes you feel like you're having tea in an old mansion and that you should be wearing a long white gown and a beautiful hat.
After this, we wandered through Little Italy and then had a walk and lunch at the Jean-Talon market. We might have stayed longer but I was so tired out and wasn't feeling my best, so we decided to go home.
In the end, we ended up taking a blanket and snacks to the park and sitting together. I must be getting really good at the power napping in public thing because for the third time this week I fell asleep while out and about. Actually, we both did!
When we woke up a lady was feeding the squirrels (there are thousands of very fat ones in La Fontaine), and she offered us the leftovers of her bag of food. We declined (I guess she hadn't seen me take a swing at an extra bold squirrel with my pillow moment earlier. They might look cute, but they will rob you blind of any kind of food you might have on hand!) so, she gave the bag to a nearby lady who had been watching. For a while, she fed the squirrel with no mishap. She happily fed while the squirrel happily ate. But then she started to take too long for his liking, so he jumped on her leg and began to slowly climb her.
She stood squeaking, making the helpless girl in distress noises while slowly, slowly he crept up her pantleg... But prince charming happened to be standing only feet away and taking in the situation at a glance, he jumped to her aid and reaching out was just about to grab the little beggar when he jumped free and ran away.
The whole episode happened pretty quickly and once the crisis was over the two people who had once been strangers now stood chatting like old friends. At one point I heard her wish him goodnight, but he detained her with some more questions (obviously reluctant to let the princess in distress go now that he had saved her), and eventually, they walked off together. I told Gary it was the perfect book or movie scene. The squirrel jumps her, he saves her, they become friends and then lovers and eventually live happily ever after. The end. I am a little curious if this was the start of a friendship for them.
There is a small-looking restaurant called La Banquise that we often drive past on the days we deliver Gary's foraged products to Montreal in the summer. One of the reasons we have noticed it is that it often has a line from the door extending far down the sidewalk. Must be good food, right?
Sunday afternoon we decided to go get some poutine there and take it to Parc La Fontaine for our lunch. When we arrived, there was the telltale line sprawling out onto the sidewalk and down the street. I guess it must be kind of famous in its way because there were a lot of people from out of town and country standing in that line. After about thirty minutes or so we finally managed to squeeze inside and place our order. And fifteen or twenty minutes after that, we were on our way to the park with one very large poutine!
We spent our afternoon in the park and in the evening, we had some friends over and went out walking and then eventually rented some Bixis and peddled down to Old Port. We got down there just in time to see the light show the Jaques Cartier bridge puts on every half hour. It's such a beautiful bridge, especially with all those sparkly lights on it.
The evening ended in a sweet way when we noticed a man with a bucket of roses for sale. Both of us girls each got one from our sweethearts amid the ohs and ahs of onlooking strangers. Weren't our husbands sweet?
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