I’m so tired. It’s partially the post-vacation Fibro Strikes Back effect, and partly the horribly oppressive weather. It takes so much energy to think, let alone move.

Right. So we left for Nova Scotia on Saturday August 1, on the highway out of the city around 9:00. I have to say that the drives at either end of the trip were spectacular. Excellent weather, a minimum of traffic, and the very best kind of company in the car itself. There was almost (almost!) enough room for the cello in the trunk. There very well might have been if I already had the 7/8 soft case my luthier has on back order for me (we’re switching the current 4/4 case for it).

I’d have to check my Twitter feed for details about the drives, but really, it’s enough to say that they were remarkably smooth and quick. Well, except for the horrendous traffic around Drummondville. There had been some kind of accident, bad enough that three sets of flares had burned down by the time we passed the location, and we drove at 10 kph for an hour along with countless other people. (I’m not kidding. I wish I was.) We live in a stunningly beautiful country, and I am reminded of this every time we drive through the Saguenay region on the way to the New Brunswick border. The highway travels right along the river, and there are small mountains that look like sleeping dragons (and yes, every time we drive through the area I think there must be a story in that somehow, “The Sleeping Dragons of the Saguenay”).

We tried to stop in Grand Falls for the night but the hotels were full, so we called ahead to Woodstock and stayed there. The boy was enchanted with the motel room we got, which had a small room off the main room. “This is my room?” he said as we walked in, “It’s… aweshome.” This was his first experience with hotels, and we were prepared for it to go badly, but he slept very well indeed. I brought my laptop and we watched some Animaniacs before bed, which he thought very exciting too. All along the trip he told people that he was headed for the ocean, to put his feet in it.

We drove to Mahone Bay the next day and got there around 3:30. My mother had called while we were on the road and said that all the cousins were down and there would be fifteen people for dinner at the cottage that night. I said, “Um, sure.” (My mother was also down on vacation, staying with my aunt.) When we arrived the cottage was empty, thank goodness, and so HRH unloaded while I took the boy right down to the ocean. We took off our shoes and without any hesitation he waded right in and kept going, soaking his clothes. We leaned over and dipped our fingers in and then touched them to our tongues, and he paused for a moment and said critically, “Not bad… I like it!” (We’d already warned him about not drinking it, but tasting was important.) The air was so fresh.

Everyone showed up (and I mean everyone: all my cousins but one, everyone’s progeny, three generations of people) and it was so much fun. I was slightly leery of that many people at once right at the beginning of the stay, but it was fabulous. We all picked up right where we left off the summer we went down for Ceri and Scott’s wedding eight years ago, all at ease with one another and parenting everyone else’s kids in the ocean from the deck, and drinking and nibbling and laughing. The boy threw himself into his generation of cousins with great glee, running around in the ocean and climbing on rocks with them. I always forget how much I love this branch of my family, how at ease I am with them. My cousin currently located in Hamilton came down with his family too, and he took all the kids out in the fishing boat. The boy was a bit traumatized when the boat turned and passed the cottage, as he thought they were coming back, but he heroically held on and didn’t burst into tears till we lifted him out of the boat and he clung to me, sobbing, “I missed you! I wanted you there!”

The next morning it rained, but that was fine; the boy got to explore the cottage. Over the week it rained mostly at night, with lovely clear days; absolutely perfect vacation weather. The boy went into the ocean every single day. When the rain cleared a bit we picked my mother up and drove to Lunenburg to see the ships and the fisheries museum, and we had lunch (a nice mix of seafood appetizers for Mum and I, fish and chips for HRH; the boy had chicken, as he had pretty much everywhere). I think we went to my aunt’s house to have dinner with my aunt and mother that evening, and the boy got to spend time with a ten-year-old cousin visiting from Ottawa to do a two-week sailing course. (Yeah; lots of family in and out and about. There were logistic problems a couple of days before we arrived, we heard.)

Tuesday was our in-town day, where we parked in the middle of the village and walked to all the shops we wanted to visit, then stocked up on groceries for the stay. We went to the candy store to buy fudge (the creamiest fudge I have had from any shop, ever!), sighed over Birdsall-Worthington Pottery, visited Amos Pewter where the boy watched a craftsman make a beautiful spun bowl (we bought a triple maple leaf ornament for the Yule tree, and I bought a lovely pair of earrings), and I went into Have a Yarn, which was an absolutely lovely shop. The salesgirl gave me a card for someone in Lunenburg who spins and sells stuff but we’d already made our trip to Lunenburg; next time, I guess. I finally cracked and bought fibre to spin, even though my wheel hasn’t arrived yet: two 50gm braids of mulberry/heather Blue-Face Leicester sliver and one of green/brown merino. I also picked up a couple of packages of wool fibre seconds from Brigg & Little to mess about with, as they were only three dollars each. It’s clean but it still has a bit of vegetable matter in it and noils here and there. I tried to comb it yesterday, but I need cards because it’s shorter than I thought. (I has a stash! Oh noe!)

Wednesday we went to Ross Farm, a place I’d visited often as a child. The biggest attraction for the boy was the litter of barn kittens who were pouncing around, although he did climb on the fence to talk to the horse, talked to the chickens for a while, ran around the barn with the carriages and wagons with interest, and showed me a spinning wheel in the main house with great enthusiasm. That night we had my mother over for dinner, and we prepped and ate five pounds of mussels and six pounds of local lobster. It was delicious, and dirt cheap. The boy was very interested in the lobsters while they were alive and in the process of boiling them on a fire HRH made on the beach, but wasn’t as enthusiastic about eating them. We roasted marshmallows over the coals once the rest of us had eaten our fill, though, and that was very exciting. It was wonderful to have my mother there while we were in Nova Scotia.

I’d wibbled about buying the pewter pendant that matched my earrings, and so I went back on Thursday evening to buy it on our way to meet my aunt at the pub. I stopped wearing a necklace when the boy was born and lately I’ve wanted to start wearing one again, but none of my symbolic jewelery has felt right, my amber is all too big for everyday wear, and my more expensive stuff isn’t practical. I’ve strung the pendant on my short white gold chain, and it feels lovely.

A coupe of days into the stay I poked through the CDs in the basket by the resident CD player, and wondered if someone had stocked them just for me. Among them were a Joshua Bell album, an early Yo-Yo Ma/Emmanuel Ax recording of the first two Beethoven cello sonatas, and a three-disc set of Jacqueline du Pre material. The third (called ‘Recital’) saw a lot of play. And because it was so damn quiet at the cottage, we could leave all the windows and doors open and hear the music drifting down to the beach. Heaven. I really missed the cello; I spent most of my cottage time reading instead. (HRH has promised to build me a Prakitcello for future trips!)

The drive home was even shorter than the drive there somehow, even accounting for the hour delay due to the accident at Drummondville on the way. We made it all the way to Edmunston the first day by four-thirty, and were home early afternoon on Saturday August 8.

The boy loved it all. He happily spent hours standing in the water, relocating handfuls of seaweed or rocks to different places. He played with sticks, water pistols, and the hammock. We saw little fish, all manner of waterfowl and shore birds, crabs, plenty of winkles and snails. HRH took him out in the canoe a couple of times. He slept hard and well every night, was awesome in the car, and was one of the reasons this trip was such a success. He has already decided that we’re going back next year, and has told us several stories where he packs up his friends and extended family and takes them all to Newfoundland (“You mean Nova Scotia,” we correct him every time) to put their toes in the ocean. And really? It’s not to hard to twist our arms. If we don’t go back next year, then certainly the year after that.