Next Tuesday, my Mom and I are heading out east to visit some family. This will help Christopher and I to keep our new-found "we only see each other every other week" routine going. You see, he went to Curaçao for a week. A week later, I went to BC for a week. A week later, he went to Dublin and London for a week. He just got back, and now I'm going to Nova Scotia next week. Fate is conspiring to make it impossible for us to get sick of each other!

Anyways, this will be a good trip. My mom grew up in Nova Scotia, and I haven't been back for a while. We have some relatives and friends out there who we can stay with, and the airfare is relatively cheap ($550 for two return tickets, not bad). I'll get to play in the Bay of Fundy, which means that I will have touched both oceans in the span of a month! Also, we're renting a car, which means that I get to drive. I haven't driven in a long time. You see, back when I lived in rural Ontario, far outside the bounds of the subway, I drove my parents' car and pickup truck fairly regularly. And then one day, during the first snowfall that year, I took a corner too fast and ended up spinning out, going through a ditch, hitting a friend's fence, and breaking the front axle. With my youngest sister in the car. We were fine though, just a minor case of whiplash and a major case of "holy shit I just totalled the car!!!!" Then, a few years later (during which my driving was fine!), I was driving the truck and I pulled into an intersection too early and got hit by a car.

So, my parents took me off the insurance and bought my sister a car, lest we put a third accident on their insurance and send their rates skyrocketing. Never let Melissa say I never did anything for her!

I haven't driven much since then. And I don't need to at all in my day-to-day life here in downtown Toronto, so it's not that big a deal. It's easy to live without a vehicle here. I've walked everywhere I've needed to go this summer, using the TTC pretty rarely. But I do miss driving. I miss driving my Dad's old Dodge Ram pickup truck, an old beast of a truck with a button on the floor that you had to press with your left foot to turn the high-beams on and off. I don't miss the passenger side door, which would fly open if you turned left too fast, but I do miss driving that truck. Chris always stares at me in horror when I say that, but really... Can't a girl reminisce about driving a beat-up pickup truck down dirt roads on a beautiful summer afternoon?