Locked Out

Day 2

The kids and I ventured out today on our own. We took a drive around town. The Fort is definitely bigger than I first thought. I think I must have fallen asleep last night when Art took us on a tour, I thought I just had my eyes closed for a moment. I told mom this place was comparable to Truro, well that's not accurate. It's like a small city. A multicultural mecca in the middle of nowhere.

The first role of business was to locate a latte. I had asked Art, jokingly, if there was a Starbucks in town and he said no of course. I checked the phonebook and there was an interesting sounding coffee shop listed called The Tattered Book and Coffee Shop. Sounded promising. I had the address in hand as well as a list of things to pick up for the house so our first stop was Zellers. The night before we had made a quick stop at WalMart and Zellers turned out to be just as bad. Everything in disarray. The town is so busy and everyone so understaffed that in the stores it looks like the shelves are always in need of restocking. I couldn't find everything on the list and the kids started getting restless so I headed for the cash. Lineups of course and only one cashier. Great! Hannah begged me for everything on the shelf and Josiah, who I had taken out of the cart because he kept standing up due to broken safety belts in all the carts, was having a tantrum. I got out of there and got directions to the coffee shop. We had to head north a bit where I found myself in suburbia. I can only compare it to the suburbs of Toronto. Million dollar homes, condos and upscale strip malls. There were no addresses on anything so I stopped and asked for directions but no one had heard of the coffee shop. I asked a taxi driver who told me to try the next intersection. No sign of it there either but OMG, a Starbucks!!! Hannah was as excited as I was. She enjoyed a cookie and a hot chocolate and I had my usual. And no inflated prices!

Josiah still had not slept and I had run out of diapers, 3 more poops today, so I thought we had better get home. The traffic was unbelievable but it didn't seem to matter what time of day it was--shift workers working lots of different shifts, coming and going all the time. Josiah was still awake when we got home and getting crankier. I got everyone out of the van and dragged our bags to the door, put the key in the lock and...nothing. It wouldn't turn. What the hell!!! Apparently, there was something about the key that Art forgot to mention. It was the key to our house...at home in Dartmouth! It was still almost 3 hours before he would be getting off work and it was a 40 minute drive to Long Lake. I was exhausted and so were the children, it was 8:00 pm our time. I tried Art at work but my cell phone indicated the call failed. I tried again...call failed! OK, so maybe it was a weak signal thing. I got the stroller out of the van and loaded Josiah into it and we began walking. No luck, call failed again. Je$#@! There was a signal although not as strong as it probably could be. I left him a message on his personal cell phone which he doesn't use at work and tried to calm down. No diapers, no food and too hot to sleep in the van. What now? We found a park and after a few minutes my phone rang. Art had checked his messages because the phone in his office was on the fritz. He was sure he had told me to take Lee's key. Oh well, the woman across the street had a spare. There is no woman across the street. Turns out she had left that morning on vacation. He phoned the wife of one of the guys he works with, a friend from our Northern Ontario and Cold Lake days. She called a few minutes later and gave me directions to her place, only 5 minutes away as luck would have it.