Monday, December 4, 2017

Gratitude Monday: en compagnie de tous saints

A few weeks ago, I woke up and decided I wanted to step away. From work, from going to-and-from, from my life, basically. As of this week, I’ve been at my job two years, and I’ve taken a grand total of seven days off; two of those were to go house hunting and three more were to move house. The world has been closing in around me, and I felt like I should give it a good shove.

Seeing as to how I got my Global Entry status last month, I thought I ought to take it for a ride. This meant, at a minimum, that I would have to get on a plane, preferably to somewhere not in the United States. (This was a way of preventing me from just staying at home, sleeping in and mooching around. Doing that would not help WRT pushing back the world.) I didn’t feel up to a trans-Atlantic flight, but Canada I could handle. I used to work for a company headquartered outside of Ottawa, so I’d been there, and to Toronto, but never to Francophone Canada. Ergo Québec City.

To get there from The District They Call Columbia, I had to take two flights, the second on a teeny prop plane. I speak French, but I was reminded of an expression one of my professors used about impure pronunciation: il parle comme une vache espagnole. It makes sense: Québecois:Français::American:UK English. But as I eavesdropped on my fellow passengers I thought to myself: man—québecois: je suis croque madame.

Still, people do appreciate that one makes the effort, and surrounding myself with a species of French helped with the stepping away. I had constant reminders of my mission, walking along rue Saint-Pierre, rue Saint-Joseph, rue Saint-Roch, rue Saint-Antoine; I was surrounded by saints. Also, the fact that the temperatures hovered on either side of 0ºC, with snow on the ground did, too.

I won’t bore you with all the details here, and I’ll spread out the photos, too. But let me say: mission accomplished. I left behind the idiocy of US politics, work and quotidian struggles, breathed totally different air, drank bowls of café au lait with my breakfast and wandered where I liked, when I liked. I’m grateful for having the opportunity and the wherewithal—and for screwing my courage to the sticking place—to do it.

Oh, alright, then—just one photo.


I was able to get a little Christmas shopping done.



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