With the new season of Game of Thrones coming out, I knew I would need to commit to watching the previous season that I hadn’t seen yet. We had been putting it off because the Man had seen it and knew I would not recall anything from the previous seasons I had seen and it would drive him crazy. It was precisely what happened when we started it. I needed synopsis and clarification on every character that come onto the screen. It was like oh that guy from that movie I just saw at the Mayfair, Oh my god Snowdon is dead?, Dinklage! and yes, my favourite Beth of Targ! He just sat there shaking his head and I concurred that yes, watching this season with me would indeed be painful it might be best to do it on my own. Rude.

At the cottaaaaage. (Please watch Baroness Von Sketch show immediately for cottage reference). Through some amazing luck we managed to book a cottage in the valley this weekend after we had pretty much giving up because everything was booked or crazy expensive. I feel like there are a thousand people with cottages they don’t use all the time so it feels weird to rent one because people should just share the bloody thing. If I had one I would let people rock out there whenever we weren’t. No maybe I would rent it out to make money – dammit!

Anyways, everyone knows I am no city girl but when we packed up the car to go to the cottage for 2 nights, it looked like we were moving all of our earthy belongings in the world. I wondered how we got to this point. Sure we needed lot’s of bags of chips, no carbs be damned…it’s the cottaaaaage. We also needed enough booze that we would never run out…it’s the cottaaaaaage. We also brought our own pillows, enough TP that if the diarrhoea apocalypse happened, we would survive, our own pour over coffee gadget because I refuse to use a Keurig (I swear I am not a snob!) and only important vitamins to maintain our cottage life health facade…at the cottaaaage. I also stopped at Strawberry Blonde Bakery on the way out of town, my favourite special occasion gluten free treat. I bought 2 scones and a doughnut for my cottage breakfasts but ate all of them before we even got there (we skipped lunch?). I also demanded we make smores which got a little stupid when the only places we picked up groceries were Whole Foods and Farm Boy. I, of course, required gluten free graham crackers so I bought that at WF but I figured on the way out of town I would pick up garbage no name marshmallows and cheap ass Hershey chocolate (the way God intended a smore to be made). But we ran out of time and went to Farm Boy and bought artisan square marshmallows (that obviously had a lower heat threshold than regular marshmallows) and fancy Farm Boy Callebaut chocolate. Sure I could make a fire in the woods without any effort because I’m a fucking Girl Guide people, but here I was with the most snobby of smore ingredients, I felt embarrassed. Then our Saturday guests said it was the best fucking smore they had ever had and everything was ok. We all laughed our asses off at these gentrified marshmallows jizzing all over us as we tried to make the final product. Good times.

I forgot about mosquitos. I have this romantic, completely scrubbed clean view of the country as being this tranquil, magic place that is beautiful and perfect. Within 3 minutes of being in the cottage I looked down to see a giant welt on my leg. I had already got my first mosquito bite and we had not even put down our bags yet. I also forget about country folk. I used to totally the shun the valley local. I was never a valley gal that drove a truck, or bought smokes for her Dad at Beckers or drove an ATV or loved to Ski Doo. I was the only person in my group of friends ALWAYS that had never listened to country music. I was not related to anyone else that lived in the valley (unheard of) and my parents were not born there (not even born in Ontario!). So I never understood the country folk but as I sat there on the back deck of this cottage listening to a group of ol’ lads, each with their individual cooler next to them full of Bud Lights, discussing, what it sounded like was, politics with the thickest valley accent you could put on, I felt a warmth in the cockles of my soul. Sure my family was not from the valley, but the valley life I knew. And I appreciated its sincerity and its simplicity. My Man noted that I told everyone I met while cottaging that I was from Almonte and it oddly made us immediate friends. If you are from the valley you are trustworthy. We met the lady who was renting us the cottage and after a minute of talking she said we seemed very trustworthy and she was great at reading people and then I told her I was from Almonte and she just laughed and handed us the keys because she knew everything would be fine. Their is a valley badge of honour, you will be trusted, you will work hard, you will not take shit for granted, you can drive any vehicle you encounter because you have been driving since you were 14 and you can probably survive at least one night in the wilderness because you camped, lived in the woods or was a girl guide (or all 3 in my case). I used to be a bit embarrassed or awkward about my small town roots but I gave grown to love and respect it as a badge of honour. So eff ya valley – keep on shinin’ eh!

I have booked my vacation for the summer! And when I mean booked vacation, I mean I am taking an unheard of 9 days off in a row. No major plans yet except for trying my absolute best not to think about work for 9 WHOLE DAYS! In the spirit of budgeting, this is what it’s come down to – we either buy my dream vacuum or we go to Wonderland. I shit you not. These are the dilemmas I face. I feel like this is fairly representative of my life. But alas, no decision needed to be made, the car crapped out. So instead of wonderland I bought a ball bearing or something or other. Lame.