The Fellas have flown back to Newfoundland for the weekend - Mr.Fella is "crossing the stage" for his Masters and he brought the little man with him. I couldn't go because I was unable to get the time off work (one of the down-sides of working with very few co-workers - no one to cover for you.)

I'm normally a pretty independent person, and for the longest while I thought "awesome! I'll have the apartment all to myself! I'll do all kinds of fun stuff around the city!".

So far, I've ordered Chinese and watched a couple of episodes of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares".

And I'm very sleepy, but I don't want to go to bed. I'm not really sure why, but my brain is screaming "no bed!". Maybe it thinks I've gone back in time and I'm a 19 year old university student, so this is just what I should do.

Tomorrow I'll do something interesting!

I got a call from the student loan people saying I didn't make a payment last month.

"That's funny", I thought. I was sure that I had.

Then I looked at my account online and realized that I had made a payment, but it was to the other "payee" listed  in my accounts. Newfoundland Power.

Only, I haven't actually had a Newfoundland Power account for over a year now. Oops.

Sooo, I've spent my morning on the phone.

We've been here over a month now, so I guess we're pretty officially "settled in"

Little Fella started day care today, which was surreal. It's strange to take your baby and just leave him at a stranger's house for the whole day. I felt a little guilty and a little relived. He did very well. So I hear, he was in bed by the time I got home.

My current job (I work as a receptionist at a vet clinic) hasn't been offering me many hours, so I've been scrambling to find other work. I was just hired on with a company who has a contract with the city of Ottawa to count cars. That's it! Counting cars. It's pretty random and it starts at 5:30 am, but since having a baby the prospect of sleep deprivation and early rises doesn't scare me much.

I'm trying to ride my bike as much as possible because it's hard to justify $94 a month (plus tax!) on a bus pass, which I'm sure is a reasonable sum, but still seems to be a lot to me. I haven't taken a picture of my actually bike, yet, but this is what she looks like:

Ottawa is far more level than St.John's, so I haven't come across a hill yet that I haven't been able to handle in the lowest gear. It's starting to feel fallish and riding a bike feels like a particularly fallish activity, so I enjoy my commutes each day.

And that's pretty much it! We work and come home. Sometimes I have acute moments where I realize that we don't have any friends here and I get very lonely, but it normally passes. I have been plotting "future life plans" but I have so many life plans, and I usually change my mind about them, so I'm determined not to get myself too worked up about something until things are actually, really in motion.

The first month is down. Approximately 60 more to go!

Before I left Newfoundland, I had a distant relative who moved to the St.John's for the first time. I've never met her, but my uncle asked that I add her to Facebook so that she'd know someone in the city. I did, and she spent nearly every day complaining about how awful Newfoundland was and how much she hated it there.

It's weird to hear someone talk about your home, a place you love, like it's alien. You always want outsiders to see things the way you see them. Maybe slightly better.

Since we've moved here, I keep telling myself that this is someone's home. There are people who love this city more than any other location on Earth. There are people missing Ottawa, thinking about Ottawa, planning trips back to Ottawa for Christmas. I keep telling myself that maybe, someday, I'll be one of those people. Little Fella, our son, might be one of those people. He'll remember it here. His first little friend will probably be here.

So, I'm trying to give it a chance.

 I've moved a lot, and when I was a kid I developed the theory that it takes a full year in a strange place to really feel acclimatized. After a year you'll have some friends and you'll know your way around and when you think "oh, a year ago..." you'll be thinking about where you are.

So you have to expect to be a little lonely and feel a little out of place for at least a year. That's the rule.

It still makes sense to me.

Soooo, as for the boring stuff: I have a job, though it's not giving me nearly as many hours as would be helpful. I'll likely have to find a second job, and that's probably going to suck. Mr.Fella started his Ph.d program and he's enjoying it, I knew he would. Today he took me around his campus and showed me his office (he's so proud that he gets an office - despite the fact that it doesn't have any windows and he shares it with 6 other Graduate students).

He has to read an insane number of books for his coursework, but he's getting through it. Sometimes he talks to me about what he's reading and I find it reassuring that I can keep up. It's sort of silly, but I always worry that one day he's going to wake up and he's just going to be "too" smart; like he'll just start speaking another language or something.  Something beyond me that I won't be able to understand because I stopped going to university three years ago and they developed a new mode of communication since I've been away. Special "academic-top-secret" talk or something. I don't know. My mind goes weird places.

I bought a bike today. She's a beautiful "commuter" bike (which I didn't even know existed until I started googling about bikes yesterday). She's perfect and will, hopefully, cut my commute time in half. I've named her "Amelia". I'll have to take a picture of her.

Other than that, we're settled in. I'd like to make some friends, but I'm not even sure how you go about making new friends when you're in your mid-to-late 20s.

Okay, if you're reading this, and you're from Ottawa and are kind of cool, look me up. No stalkers/serial killers please. Decent sense of humour preferable.

Let's see if that works.

I have a habit of moving to strange cities.

When I was thirteen, my father pulled us onto a ferry and brought us to Corner Brook. I had never set foot in the province before.

Thirteen years later, and I'm a week away from moving to Ottawa.

Some things change. I have a husband, a son, some cats.
Some things don't change.
I feel like I'm on the edge of another big cross road. The next week there'll be hurdles and bumps and frustrations.

And then a new life.