So we moved to Calgary, found a decent little house central to the main highways that crossed through the city. We lived across from a closed school, our view was the school field with a playground so we had that going for us.
I remember receiving some advice from a friend who had been married for nearly 10 years. They thought the best thing they ever did was make a big move together. To be taken out of your comfort zone, to go on a great adventure together and experience the joys, trials and tribulations that come with that can either forge a relationship or strengthen it. We were lucky in that Calgary definitely did all of that for us.
It wasn't easy; we worked hard at overcoming schedules, distances, and disagreements. The winter was horrible, made doubly so because of our jobs driving to and from appointments or home visits. We both worked in family services in some way; Jaime helped families work on plans to reunite, I was predominantly shuttling children to and from family visits and/or schools and foster homes. I put a lot of mileage on my little PT Cruiser and soon learned a lot of the back ways to avoid traffic congestion the Deerfoot or #1. But it was still a lot of time on the road. I was involved in only one accident, with minimal damage to my car when someone ran a light. I got three speeding tickets in a month (2 were those sneaky ones, where the cops hide about 30 yards down from where the zone goes from 60 to 50 km/h and another was a photo trap. Not cool.).
It wasn't easy; we worked hard at overcoming schedules, distances, and disagreements. The winter was horrible, made doubly so because of our jobs driving to and from appointments or home visits. We both worked in family services in some way; Jaime helped families work on plans to reunite, I was predominantly shuttling children to and from family visits and/or schools and foster homes. I put a lot of mileage on my little PT Cruiser and soon learned a lot of the back ways to avoid traffic congestion the Deerfoot or #1. But it was still a lot of time on the road. I was involved in only one accident, with minimal damage to my car when someone ran a light. I got three speeding tickets in a month (2 were those sneaky ones, where the cops hide about 30 yards down from where the zone goes from 60 to 50 km/h and another was a photo trap. Not cool.).
By late Spring we had enough. We were shuttling Jordan over by plane from Vancouver 2x a month and I was steadily paying for that via credit cards. The winter was long and traffic awful on those mornings when snow was in the forecast. We would never be able to afford a house. If we stayed where we were, Avery would never have had a baby brother. All our friends lived too far away for a simple 'let's just pop over and visit X'. It was an all-day excursion if we were to attempt that. I really missed the mountains and trees and native Calgarians would say 'Oh, you can just take a short drive to Banff.' But if we couldn't find the time, money and energy to go to visit friends, we sure weren't going to drive for an hour just to look at trees. But we did take a few trips up north to Mike and Sonia's which gave us the opportunity to catch up on some lost years where we only saw each other at Christmas dinners at our parents' homes so that was nice.
Calgary was amazing for other things though - wind being one of them. We did go to a cool piano bar once and it was a lot more multicultural than you would have thought. But maybe that was the area of town we lived in.
Oh, and there was an Olive Garden.
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