Home Sweet Home

 
In the past six months, I have had five addresses. That's six moves, each one with a display of slightly less 'character' and patience than I would have liked to see in myself; each box increasingly disorganized. Last month I made one last move to a house that I bought in the country. It was a rocky road (known internally as the Housing Crisis) that involved the near-purchase of a quirky old farmhouse with a rotten foundation - gulp - a short-lived stay in a house where the mouse population exceeded that of humans and the monthly use of my family's fleet of vans to haul boxes from one address to the next.

So here I am, home sweet home, on a country road just outside of Kingston. My neighbours are old and sweet (I recently watched Young & the Restless with one neighbour in his kitchen), the yard has enough space for my biggest garden yet. But the best part of living in the country? Mailboxes. I have a real life mailbox-on-a-post, with a little red flag.

My bedroom window looks out over the front yard, and from my bed I have a clear view of said mailbox. The other morning while attempting to sleep in, an unfamiliar sound caught my ear. A car had pulled up to my mailbox, and stopped. I rolled over and peered out the window to see a creaky old man inching over to the row of four mailboxes. In his hand was a large white package. What could it be? and more importantly who was it for?!? Ever so slowly, he reached out his shaky arm and inserted it into MY MAILBOX. I nearly lost my mind. A package!! By now Josh was wide awake and equally excited. We stared, drooling on our pillows while the old man inched back to his car, reached over to the passenger seat, scrawled something down on a clipboard, fiddled with his seatbelt, paused for what felt like an hour, and finally drove away.

Seconds later I was walking back to the house with the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalogue in my hands. A large package indeed.