Zombiebelle wants people to blog, so why not? In between the 100 loads of washing I need to do today. Can't wait until I own my own machine again. Anyway...

Canada.

~*~*~
Tuesday? I think. Anyway, Bestman and SIL were over to play board games and SIL gets a call from her boyfriend, informing her that Paul's dad had let himself into their flat while they were gone, took half the loaf of banana bread she baked that morning and two of their bottles of wine. This old dude calls her at least once a day to chat - but didn't bother to call and ask if he could take her stuff. Now, he has a key to their place because he and Paul own it together - excepting for the fact that Paul doesn't work (and I'm not sure he ever actually has, even though he's 33) and the dad is paying all the mortgage + bills.
Anyway, Amanda was pretty upset over that because he didn't ask. And because what if she had been baking that for someone (like her mum's bakesale for the next Mexico trip)?

Anyway we drove her home that evening and went in because she wanted to show us her new place. It's a good size for a studio, the kitchen is huge compared to what I have here. But that's beside the point.

Paul brings up the thing with his dad taking stuff (in a tone that tells us he thinks it's a good thing) and Amanda is like "we'll talk about that later" (hopefully sparing us from having to witness it.) Well he goes "There's nothing to talk about" and later was forgotten. So Obi and I stand there awkwardly while they argue about it a bit. Paul's talking down to her like a three year old going "Oh, don't be like that, don't be like that" man how I wish you could hear how he said it! and then he goes "This is part of my culture. I have to absorb into your family, so you have to absorb into mine too" - which would be all good and fine if he actually made an effort with her family, but he doesn't. As Obi put it "He absorbs into our family like a rubber ball in a glass of water."

So yeah. Awkward. After that we were happy to just label him as an arsehole and close the topic.

Wednesday night.
We visited Obi's uncle, his two adult kids and new girlfriend (Random intense Linda as mentioned in a previous blog). Linda was great, we're mates now. She's just as intense in person though and stares right into your soul with 100% focus if you're speaking to her.
Anyway, the remarkable thing about this visit (other than the awesome toy Craig gave Isis that I'm still having loads of fun playing with - but you don't care about that) was that everyone was just busting at the seams wanting to gossip about Paul. Finally one of the cousins goes "So have you met Amanda's new boyfriend?" and the other young man yells from the kitchen "No! Wait! I need to be there to hear this! Wait for meeee!" Haha
And we finally found out what their issues were on the subject. Mostly for obvious reasons, but also because he feels her up in front of her family (I hadn't noticed, but then I'm a touchy person too. I don't care about PDA) and blames absolutely everything on his culture. Apparently being Greek means he's allowed to be an arsehat.

End time warp
~*~*~

So the day after Breakaway, Mum takes the day off work so we can all hang out as a family, which I thought was a nice effort. (She used three holiday-days while we were there ) We decided to go for a hike and see this little suspension bridge. Canada is crazy on bridges. Or they seem to be anyway! And then while we were in the city we'd try this new "Japadog" thing and poutine, seeming I'd never tried that. Yay cultural food experience.

Well their idea of hiking and ours differed somewhat. I was all set to get some exercise, had Isis in the sling - and she gets restless very fast if you stop walking - The bridge was... a bridge. Now we did Capilano in 2010, and that terrified me. Compared to that this other little bridge was nothing, so I managed to not embarras the shit out of myself in front of the in laws, go me.
The hiking trails are across the bridge, off we go. Except, that's how it's supposed to work. Instead we spent more time standing around discussing how far things were rather than actually going there. Ugh. I thought Obi was going to lose his plot with his olds at one point. We walked down to these falls (which you couldn't see from the lookout ) which was 15 minutes and then waited another 10 for mum to get back, but before she did, dad went off exploring (expecting that we'd keep hiking) so mum was back but dad was no where to be found and mum wasn't sure we should continue hiking down that direction, so we waited some more. Eventually dad doubles back and there's a bigger discussion, and mum keeps asking ME what we should do. Except every time I actually gave my opinion it was the wrong one. In the end I was fed up. It was cold, Isis's little talons were freezing off and she was cracking a shit with all the nothing we were doing. I'm like "Who cares what we do, but let's do it now!" So it was decided we'd take trail option 3 and Obi and I started off. 20 meters later, mum is calling our names, so we double back. "We've decided that hike will take too long, it's almost an hour. We're going to take option 2 back to the carpark"
The hike back to the carpark was just stairs. Nothing else. Just ten odd minutes of stairs. I thought I was going to die lol. So at least I got some exercise And the area was lovely, I could have spent hours there. Loved it!

The plan was that dad would txt the SIL before we left the park, and we'd meet her at this Japadog place for lunch. We'd spilt Japadogs between couples and then still be hungry enough to go a few streets over for poutine. So we find the Japadog and I'm amazed to discover that it's a street vendor. Just a little cart on a corner. I almost never buy food from these places, figuring I'm either going to get food poisoning, or it's going to be ridiculously unhealthy, so I was dubious... but they had some pretty interesting stuff on the sign, so I was up for giving this a go. Especially since we never eat hotdogs at home. If you ever come to Australia and try a hot dog, you'll know why. *Shudder*
So there we are, at the street vendor... just waiting. And waiting. We stood around for 45 minutes before Amanda showed up (doing circles with the pram because Isis didn't want to wait patiently after the first ten minutes) and Paul is with her. Joy.

Oh, this reminds me, I missed a bit! I'll go back and put it at the top to keep this in chronological order. *Time warp*

We all get Japadogs, not splitting them because we're freaking starving by this point, (they were fanfreakingtastic) we eat together for a whole ten minutes (including cooking time) and then we head off to poutine... without SIL + Asshat. And I'm like WTF? Did we just wait 45 minutes for a 10 minute visit?! Yes, yes we did.

On to poutine. Well, they'd raved about this poutine restaurant that does all different kinds of specialty poutine with the proper cheese curds not mozzarella so I was anticipating it far more than Japadog. But when we got there I realized my expectations of a "specialty restaurant" were not the same. It was more of a run-down 50s diner than an actual restaurant. The food came in those tinfoil lasagna containers regardless of if you chose to eat in or take away. Of course there was a big discussion on what we should get and a part of my soul died when I realised they fully intended to just buy one pig serve and everyone eats out of it.

I eat food off Obi's plate, no worries. But then, I put his dick in my mouth too, so it would be dumb to worry about sharing. But I don't share food with anyone else. When someone groaks me, I either just leave them some, or give them all of what I have. I don't eat off other people's cutlery. I don't take bites from other people's hotdogs or offer any of mine. Yuck. If it goes in your face, I don't put it in my face, and that's that.
Now, sharing a plate of chips/fries I wouldn't care so much about... except in poutine it's all one mass of gravy and cheese and it's not 100 small shareable pieces in a pile - it's a meal. I don't know why but it's just different ok? and I didn't want to do it.

I tried to convey this to Obi, because I knew outright saying to his folks "I don't want to eat from the same pile of sludge as you" would be offensive to them but although he picked up my unease he didn't recall that I don't share food, so he didn't do anything about it. So I just sat there and tried not to have a massive embarrassing panic attack.
When the food came I ate from my tiny corner and I only needed about three mouthfuls to confirm that this shit is disgusting and I'm not eating it. It might have been nice if the chips didn't taste like they were reheated from three days ago, but I'll never know. So in the end I was glad they just bought one dish, because I wouldn't have been able to help Obi with one if we had it to ourselves.

I went home very hungry. Wish I'd had a second Japadog. Mmmm seaweed on hotdog.

I felt bad for Obi at the end of the day. He was in a pretty foul mood, just really disappointed by all the stuffing around. He opened up to me about a lot of the things that were getting to him and I managed to snap him out of it, which was good. I feel like a good little wifey when I manage to make his day better.

So there you go, another pointless blog. My work here is done.