My life in 5 places - Cuba

If you had to describe your life in five places, which sites would you choose and why?

First, I described my childhood home and what it meant to me.  Second, I told you about my summer getaway.  Third, about my very first home I ever owned.

I thought it was fitting that my fourth post would be about the wonderful place where I am currently sipping pina coladas.  (Well, okay, not as I write this.  I'm sitting on my couch with the dog, but when you read this? Pina Coladas.) 

Our home for the next two weeks

This is my third trip to Cuba.  It has become a place of escape for The Guy and I.  We love it and would go back a hundred more times except that I have told The Guy that I would like to explore a bit more of the world first.  

Downtown Varedero

Cuba is a wonderful place.  I know, I have extolled it's virtues here before, but I could do so every day.  It is a place full of history and beauty, of dancing and music, of architecture and colour.  I have done amazing things in this country -- I swam with dolphins and almost drowned The Guy, I went snorkelling and almost drowned myself, I walked up the stairs of a 200 year old church, and I held a menagerie of cool animals.

Cuba has also been a place where The Guy and I have been able to reconnect.  When you have two people who work ridiculous hours, it is often hard to spend the kind of time necessary to maintain a good relationship.  When you are running from here to there and back again, it is hard to remember to stop and say "Oh, hey.  There you are."  Two weeks in a place where we have no expectations, but to eventually roll out of bed and hit the beach,  makes it a bit easier to get back to where we were.

Twue Wove

But the best part of Cuba is the people.  They are kind and happy and fun.  They always have a smile and will do whatever it takes to help you out.  They work harder than any people I've seen and the women are always wearing panty hose despite the 30 degree (celcius, of course) heat.

How can you not love a people like this?

I'm somewhere awesome and you are not

The beach in Cuba

Right now, I am arriving in Cuba. Two weeks of heaven.

Jealous?

My life in 5 places - my first home

If you had to describe your life in five places, which sites would you choose and why?

First, I described my childhood home and what it meant to me.  Then, I told you about my summer home.  Now, it's about my very first home I ever owned.

Chinook Road

For most of my life. the only thing I ever really wanted was a house of my own.  My mom and I spent hours going through magazines and the Sears catalogue cutting out pictures of things we could decorate with if we only had the money.  For both of us, having a home where people could come and be themselves was top on our lists.  Let the rest of my family travel.  I want my own bed.

When my mom died, I used my inheritance for one thing I knew she would understand.  A BRAND NEW CAR!!!!!!!  No, wait.  That's Price is Right.  

What I did was use a big chunk of it for a downpayment on a house.  There were two reasons for this.  First, my dad did what they always tell people not to do in the first few months of grief -- he made major life decisions.  He sold the house where he, my mother, and my sister lived and bought a condo.  My sister was suddenly homeless and our family had no centre.

I spent a long time looking for the house of my dreams.  I'm sure we looked at 20 before I walked into the house on Chinook.  It was very 70s (and not the good retro kind) but I knew it could be home.  I bought it and less than two months later was in the doors.

My very first house.  It had a ton of hydrengeas which I happily tore out.

Much to the dismay of everyone else in the neighbourhood.

My sister, Lyn, was going to move in with me and we went to town picking out paint chips, deciding on room layout, painting, and deorating.  When the time came, I had a house that was almost totally me.  However, being the procrastinators we were (are), we decided to wait until we moved in to paint the kitchen.  In 3 years, it never got done.  I left the paint for the next owners.

My living room: Eggplant on the main wall, Lilac on the other.  

I bought the blue furniture brand new and won a trip to Mexico.

I loved that house.  Everyroom had my touch (except Lyn's... I wouldn't touch that if you paid me.) and it all meant a lot to me.  I scoured books to learn how to do electrical work and I changed every outlet on my own.  I fixed things and built things and hung shelves and pictures.  It was exactly how I wanted it to be.

It broke my heart that my mom couldn't see it.  But, I was doing what she couldn't anymore -- I was trying to create a home for my family to migrate to.  

My bedroom displaying my paintings and the plant I kept alive for 3 years.  

Thanks to Ky.  She watered it everytime she came to visit.  Once a month.

Despite all the trouble there was in that place -- a ever-renewing lake in the basement, an entire yard of weeds that were supposed to be a garden, the biggest lawn known to man-kind -- it was my home.  I loved it.  I have a lot of great memories in that place.

When Ky moved in with Lyn and I, we were the happiest bunch of happies that ever happed.  We watched a lot of So You Think You Can Dance and ate a lot of take out, but we had a great time.  It was then the neighbours mentioned how great it was to see the place as it was meant to be.  They then explained how three spinsters had moved there in the 70s and they lived there until the last one of them died just before I bought the house. 

I joined Lava Life the next day.  The rest is history.

My life in 5 places - North Battleford

If you had to describe your life in five places, which sites would you choose and why?

Yesterday, I described my childhood home and what it meant to me.  Today, I want to tell you about my home away from home.

North Battleford, Saskatchewan

I have to admit, when you think of a great place that impacted every moment of your life, North Battleford is not the place you normally go to first.  It is a small city (two small cities, really) on the road to nowhere.  It is a beautiful community with lots of greenery, a river flowing through it, and the worse options of restaurants in the province.  I mean, unless Pizza Hut and A&W are your thing.  Then you're golden.

For my family, North Battleford was the epicentre of our summers.  But not so much the town itself.  It was the little section of land off Airport Road where we grew up.  Sharon Schools. 

Originally grounds housing a bible school and orphanage, this quiet little community made up of old airplane hangers and pilot barracks holds church camps at least twice a year.  My grandparents moved there in the 60s to take over supervising the orphanage and never left.  Grandma stayed nearly 50 years until we had to move her to a care home last spring.

My mother grew up here.  My grandparents adopted my two uncles and all but adopted my auntie.  My grandpa built the hockey rink every winter and tended flowers every summer.  Every hug my grandfather every gave me is here.  Every piece of advice my grandma gave is here. My mother's childhood is here.

My family spent a lot of time there and it is where my heart feels at peace.

The church at Sharon Schools.  Where my mom and dad got married.

As I planned to write this piece, I looked through all my photos for pictures to show.  I have none.  I went online and found some a friend had taken and he graciously allowed me to use them here.  Of course, he has none of my Grandparent's home, but he's looking through his files for me.  Sometimes, you are in a place so long, you forget that you might want to see pictures of it in the future.

Every year for a weekend at Easter and a week in July, between 300 - 500 people arrive to go to church meetings.  Everyone stays in the dorms that boast retro decor -- everything is from the 40s.  Not much has changed except the mattresses are no longer stuffed with straw.  We all go to church twice a day, eat together at the dining hall, play sports on one of the many areas dedicated to it, sit around the campfire, snack at the canteen, and soak up as much time with each other as possible.

The H building (it's built in the shape of an H -- clever) and the men's dorm.

The girls all stayed in the girl's dorm at the far east end of the grounds.  From 13 years to married, we all crowded into 6 rooms with two plug ins and one mirror each.  One large bathroom to share and a furnace room that held all late night conferences.  I have so many great memories of that place -- staying up all night talking, singing as loud as we could, exchanging clothes, and laughing past lights out until the dorm mother came to yell at us.

Once I was too old for the dorm but not yet married (stupid old person biases on the importance of having a man in your life bollox) I returned to my grandma's home during those weeks.  It was then I got to rekindle my relationship with Grandma.  She has provided me with a lot of amusement, wonder, frustration and love.  

The main road from the centre of the grounds looking west.

This small area outside of the little city has been where I have experienced so much.  I have met life long friends, most of my old boyfriends, and people who have been my mentors and guides.  It has been a part of my life before I had life and will continue to be important to me for many years to come.  I know every inch of this land and have spent hours exploring every building and piece of grass.  

It is the home of my family.  The home of my friends.  

It is where I know I belong.

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Please note: all photos used here have been genourously provided by my friend Dale.  He's a good chap.

Second note: This stupid post deleted itself twice.  The first time it was awesome.  The second time it was almost finished.  This last version will have to do or I am going to go postal.

My life in 5 places - Sunset Drive

I joined this one website on the off chance I would win a free prize. I didn't win and I find the site creepy. It wants to creat a time line of pictures of you from birth to present including stories and stuff. It's like a one-stop-shop for stalkers. However, one thing I did like was this question:

If you had to describe your life in five places, which sites would you choose and why?

I love questions with that kind of history and depth to them. Also, I like when someone or something else tells me what to do. Also, I can take this to mean anything -- cities, locations, houses, etc.  That is why I've decided to show you the 5 most important places that have shaped my life. 

This is the first in a five part series:  

Sunset Drive

We moved to Regina the fall I turned 7 years old.  The house on Sunset Drive is the house in my memory when I think of being a child. 

Shaped like a milk carton and decorated with bits of stone and glass, it was a perfect house for small kids: three houses from the school, a huge backyard, near tons of other kids, and close enough to walk to the library.   This house is the background for my favourite memories. 

It is the place where my playhouse was built.  The place where I soaked my neighbour's birthday party with the garden hose.  It's where we tied my little sister to the tree and where she ran away to Canadian Tire before anyone noticed she was gone.  It's where my brother broke the window playing baseball and where my Mom watched us play out the kitchen window while she baked bread.  It is the house where Dad and I would put lights on the huge fir tree in front during the coldest blizzard in November using two long sticks nailed together with a T bar on the top.

Front of our house on Sunset Drive.

It is the backyard that holds the most importance for me here.  This is where we spent most of our time.  It's where the neighbourhood kids congregated and where I felt the safest.  It was also where I spent a lot of time being grounded for doing stupid things outside the yard, but that's a different story.  

The left quarter was where Mom's little garden was and our playhouse was built on top of the sandbox once we outgrew it.  Three lilic trees grew along the back fence and created a perfect hideaway for scented excursions.  But the piece that meant the most was the playset.

The centre of my childhood. The swingset my Dad built for us.

Dad installed this shortly after we moved in.  We spent hours climbing the rope, swinging the swing as high as it would go, trying to make the entire structure sway.  

It was part of the set up in our elaborate game of K!ll the Russians (can you tell we knew all about the Cold War?) where you had to climb the rope, jump down, climb the fence, run around the house, climb the gate, climb the tree, jump off the playhouse, and get back to the swing set.  I'm not sure what the rules of this game was, but I know we didn't actually kill anyone.  And, honestly, we like Russians now. (Hi Russian Step-Mom!)

We moved from this house when I turned 12.  My sisters remember the house, but don't have the same attachment to it that I did.  They have childhood memories in the house on Pasqua whereas I was a surly teen and stayed in my room for 4 years.  

I drove past the house the other day when I was in the neighbour hood.  They have cut the huge Christmas tree down from the front yard.  They removed the playset from the backyard and painted all the trim on the house blue.  It is no longer the same home I knew and has likely seen many other families since ours roamed it's narrow halls.

I loved that house and the time we spent there.  And, while it's true you can't go home again, it will always be one of my favourite places.