rumours of my demise

Happily, they've been exaggerated wildly. (Thanks for the messages of concern.) We've arrived. Just barely. We have keys to a house that we love and last night, for the first time, we all slept in it. Some of us slept on floors, some on air mattresses, and some on mouldy old bits of foam. But we're here. So far, its not so bad. Our neighbours are lovely, the street is as beautiful in summer as we'd hoped it would be. Big old trees with gracefully arching green branches bowing over the road. The area teems with children. Most who can (i.e. those without roaming dogs to worry about) have popped out sections of fence so that all yards can be shared like one big park. Last night, one of our kids played hide and seek among the yards until well after dark with about a dozen other kids ranging in age from 5 to 12. Everyone got along.

We have a hot tub. When we bought the house, we thought this might be a cool thing to try. Now, the reality is sinking in about the contrast between the tub and our values. The thing is wonderful to soak away aches and cares, but it eats chemicals and it sucks electricity. Two of our neighbours have already said, with that certain tone, "so...you have a hot tub?" We love that our neighbours hate the tub (for what it says about their values) but we aren't quite ready to give it up without playing with it first. We wonder, can there be an environmentally friendly tub? Can you heat with solar and keep clean with regular salt? We'll see.

We suspect there may be other reasons for the neighbourhood angst about the tub. We've heard sad stories of deep, dark sexual secrets involving our house, the neighbourhood and, not impossibly, we think, the tub.

As far as bringing Nova Scotia back home with us, I think it is too soon (far too soon) to know how that will go. I'm tired, disoriented, and reaching out greedily for old habits that make life easy. But I tell myself that once things settle down a bit, I can think seriously about how to make a more mindful and ethical existence here. But if its this hard to monitor the footprint of a family of 8, how hard for a street, a city, a country, a planet? Back among hundreds of thousands of other people, the problem seems impossibly large and makes me feel like giving up. But I won't.

Still no internet at the house, so fewer posts here and less time to respond to emails when I'm at work, but in another week life should be on a firmer footing. My coffee maker arrives in another 2-3 days. That will help. A lot.