It’s ninety-four days since the movers carted our belongings off to a warehouse in Calgary and we headed for the west coast on our way to Ontario. And now we’re in North Bay. We’ve unpacked almost everything and, except for the disaster in the basement, the place is in pretty good shape. There’s very little in our pile of stuff to which I’m particularly attached, but as we reassembled it in our new location it somehow created that mysteriously comforting quality called “home”.
We’ve been here two months and we’re discovering that North Bay is a very nice place to live. It’s relatively small, only about 56,000, situated on the north shore of Lake Nipissing. – In Ontario it’s hard not to be situated on the shores of a lake as there are 3,899 of them, counting only those of 3 sq km or more. In fact, we actually live in a district of North Bay called Trout Lake, because that’s the name of the lake we’re closest to.
Apart from mugginess, which I remember disliking from my Kentucky days, the weather has been beautiful. There are more than enough stores for nonshoppers like us, and enough nice restaurants to keep us till we can get away to Toronto. Regardless where you live in North Bay you’re within a twenty minute walk of a Tim Hortons, and if you want a better cup of coffee Twiggs is a nice Starbucky place just a five minute drive away. (Nothing in North Bay is much more than a five minute drive away.)
We live in a three bedroom, “semi-detached” town house ( it’s on the end of the row). Not a high class place. But, as in Kansas City, you can walk to the privy on a rainy day and not get your feet wet, so we’re not complaining. And, best of all, it’s an eight minute walk from our front door to Maggie and Esther’s front door. We came here to be a full time grandparents and it looks like we’re perfectly situated for the job.
And it’s a great job too. For example, at the beginning of July Maggie had her 4th birthday and her mother made her a monkey-face cake. We were all wondering what 
fifteen month old Esther would say when she saw it. She loves monkeys so we figured she’d laps into monkey sounds or something of the sort. Well, her daddy picked her up and showed her the cake. “What’s that?, he asked. She pointed, laughed, and squealed “Grampa!”
To quote Simeon, “Now, Lord, you can let your servant depart in peace.” I mean, does it really get any better than that?
