To Be or Not To Be?

That is the question.

It’s hard to give something up when whatever it is you’re trying to wean yourself off of is right in front of you all the time. For me, this usually means sweets. Even though—in my mind—I really want to forego things like chocolate forever, I always find myself coming back to it, especially when it sits around in my house, staring me right in the face. Call me a weakling: I just can’t resist the old temptation.

This time around, even though I’m not faring so well with the crates of sweets sent here by Marty’s mom (thanks!), I find myself also struggling with trying to give up something else entirely: a nomadic lifestyle. This time around, it’s our damn van that keeps watching me intently; taunting me—are you tough enough? Do you really think you can settle down?


Our van is emblematic of a wandering lifestyle—hell, it’s even called a Nomad. It’s been with us to Montreal and back, on many camping trips, and now, out to Victoria. We had even planned to spend a whole year in it, wandering the country like a bunch of migrants. (A little thing called money is the only thing that prevented that plan from coming to fruition in October, but I’ll save that story for another time.) So when the Nomad came back from a recent tune-up officially diagnosed as unsafe to drive, I thought to myself ‘This is it. We really are settling down this time.’ It didn’t seem worth it to invest the necessary dollars into fixing it, so as our van festered in the back parking lot, with it withered my wandering desires. I was ready to settle down, and there was nothing standing in my way anymore…

Life unfolds in mysterious ways, though. You see, we have a 12’ x 6’ mural to get back to Calgary in the new year (It’s done!!!), and now we’re faced with the choice: spend our dollars on renting van after van (to get the mural back and then to retrieve our furniture from storage), or invest those same dollars into resurrecting our own van… Hmm…



Will the Nomad come back to thwart our plans to settle down? Can we stay strong and settled in the full-sized face of temptation to roam? On another note entirely, can I (please?) forget about having the last of the shortbread cookies for breakfast? Find out tomorrow (or thereabouts): same bat time, same bat channel!