I Need Home For a Rest

I miss that town, I miss the faces.

You can't erase, you can't repalce it.

I miss it now, I can't believe it.

So hard to stay, too hard to leave it.

--Nickelback, "Photograph"

Well, it's been a busy few weeks for us here...Annie and I had two of our best friends from Edmonton come for a visit two weeks ago, and now two of her friends from Montreal are here for the weekend. It's nice having people from Canada come to visit, since it reminds me of all the things I love about home. Even Annie's Quebecois friends are making me miss home, but more in an "I-miss-all-things-Canadian" way than when Scott and Jen were here, which was an "I-miss-Edmonton" kind of thing. Home (at least for me) is a funny thing when you think about it...Edmonton is a city of less than a million people in the middle of absolutely nowhere, where it's so cold in the winter that you will likely die if you stay outside for an hour, where there is none of the bustle or atmosphere or history of other places I've lived, but the longer I'm away the more I realize that I want to eventually end up back there.

I know a lot of the reason why I want to eventually move back is because my family and friends are there (except for my little sister who will hopefully one day stop being crazy and move back from Toronto), and because I grew up there. And as Annie put it, "your mom would totally love to be our free daycare service!" This is definitely true. But there are other reasons too...I like the relative isolation of the city, for one thing. I think it's great that you can drive for 20 minutes and be in the middle of nature, even if "nature" is densely populated with cattle. I like the small size of the population...there's no traffic, no crowds (except for WEM on Boxing Day), and you can buy more than a 500 sq ft condo with your $400,000 25-year mortgage. And when the Americans invade Canada because of our covert nucelar weapons program, you KNOW that Alberta is the place they'll shock-and-awe the least because that's where the oil is!

Yup, Edmonton is always going to be home...all the other places I've lived are great for their own reasons, and it would certianly be easier for me to find a job in Ottawa or Vancouver or Toronto (hahahah, oh wait, no, I'm never gonna live in Toronto!). But you can't see the northern lights in Ottawa and you can't learn to skate on a pond in Vancouver, and those are both things that I want my as-yet-to-exist children to experience.

PS: damn I can't believe I had to use Nickelback lyrics for this post...

The government, they promised me a measly little sum,
But I've got too much pride to end up just another bum.
Then I thought "who gives a damn if all the jobs are gone?"
I'm gonna be a pirate on the river Saskatchewan!

--Captain Tractor, "Pirates of Saskatchewan"