Day 4: History and Homesickness
Today we walked through a small farmers market in James Bay. No fruit and very few vegetables. These things are surprisingly sparse and expensive here when one is accustomed to life in California's central valley. It never occurred to me that one might have difficulty locating ripe bananas or oranges. The local grocery store here has California strawberries for $4/lb. I can get them for $0.99/lb at home from the stand in front of the strawberry field.
Mostly the farmer's market was quilts and crocheted dish towels by nice, little, old ladies. We did manage to acquire some meat pies for dinner.
We had a little breakfast up the block at the James Bay Book and Coffee Company. It's also an internet cafe, which Shawn and I both noted in a wistful but stubborn way. It's been awhile since I've gone 4 days without logging on to a computer. I've been "blogging" all this while on Ramada notepads from the hotel. That old dent where the pencil lays against my finger is back. (Little known Shannon factoid: I write against my ring finger and not my middle. At my elementary school they taught us this way in kindergarden with the idea of changing us over later when manual dexterity had improved. Lots of teachers later attempted to teach me to do it proper way. I'm a little stubborn.)
We went to the Royal British Columbia Museum today. They had a historic exhibit that kicked ass. They basically built a whole little town that you could run around in. In reminded me of Disneyland. It was rad.
We has a late-ish lunch at a little pizzeria called "The Joint" which was very good but my stomach start to turn somersaults after that. No offense to the pizzeria. My stomach's just been doing that lately, right after I eat. (And no, I'm not pregnant. Give it up.)
We walked around a bit more before my stomach and I retreated to the hotel.
Shawn went off in search of hiking trails with his camera and I changed into my comfortable jeans and favorite t-shirt and made a cup of tea. I took my tea and a novel outside to a park bench and read for awhile.
I'm reading a book called Red Mars by a local Davis Sci-Fi writer, Kim Stanley Robinson. Engaging if not a little over descriptive of mechanics for my taste.
Eventually I lifted my head up to look out at the harbor and realized that it was growing late. Time flies when you're on Mars I guess. My tea was cold. The smell of steak floating out of the hotel restaurant informed me that my stomach had sorted itself out and that I was actually hungry.
I'm back in my hotel room now with a fresh hot cup of tea and a piece of chocolate.
It's been nice to hold still for a bit today. We've been doing a lot of adventuring and something about the whole trip had felt a miss to me until I sat down with a book for a few hours.
Now I'm sitting here debating (for the umpteenth time) whether or not I ought to call Jenny and check on my cats. I'm reminding myself that they're fine, that they're in good hands, and if anything were even slightly amiss Jenny would have called me instantaneously. I'm also reminding myself that it will cost me a bloody fortune to call the states from the hotel.
This worrying may strike you as obsessive. And perhaps it is. But here's the thing: I like my cats better than most people. And I know that at least one of them and probably both are fairly well miserable without us at home. Meeko is my own personal satellite revolving around me everyday and her orbit is radically altered when I disappear for any length of time. . . say, about 20 minutes. Ben at least has hobbies and friends. Nonetheless, his nightly routine has been altered and I can't help but picture him meowing around the bedroom every night at 11 p.m. wondering where his evening scratches have run off to and what he might do to fix the situation, which is very clearly broken.
Silly or not, I'm missing my cats and my house and even (dear god) my job. I'll be glad to be heading home tomorrow.