Juxtapositioning

I totally moved here for the dollar coins

Last week I was in Washington, in that country that wanted me back so badly that at the border the Drug Dog took a shine to the rear end of my car and the three border guards standing around there with nothing better to do started peering through the back windows at the two boxes in the back of my vehicle and asking me questions like, “So, have you run over any animals lately?”

I thought the prudent course was deny-deny-deny, so I put on my most innocent, shocked expression and feigned innocent shock. “N-n-no! I don’t think so!” I managed to stutter, innocently.

That was the wrong answer.

This was what I figured out as I sat inside the border station on a hard chair, having left my keys with the Border Valets outside who were now in the process of ripping apart the inside of my vehicle while the guy in a uniform on the other side of the counter glared menacingly at me and asked insinuating and sarcastic questions like, “They pay people to blog”? and “What drugs have you taken today?”

The right answer would have been to lie and make up some story about the poor poor squirrel and the thump-thump sound that was the last you heard of him. Because the fucking Drug Dog didn’t actually “indicate” drugs oozing from the pores of my vehicle, he only “expressed interest” in my car. Which meant that he could have been “expressing interest” in the pee left there by a dozen other dogs that walk by my car daily.

In Washington I procured a cup of coffee. I received change for the $5 that I handed the perky barista girl to pay for my coffee. The change included several coins I had never seen before. $1 coins. WTF? Since when did the US start stamping out $1 coins, and why haven’t I heard of this before?

And more importantly, how am I going to tell anymore which country I am in?

When I came to Canada I was embarrassed paying cash for things because I couldn’t figure out the money thing.  There were all these coins, and some were $1 coins and some were $2 coins. WTF? $2 coins? Whatever for? And why do some have this filled-in hole-thing in the center? I would pay for the smallest item with a credit card, telling myself it was because of the advantage in exchange rates, just to avoid having to figure out the Canadian coinage.

And now America has become a frigging copycat. And all the fecking $1 coins look ALIKE.

Home

I have a home again. At least, I left a deposit check and a lot of information about myself, and it’s my hope that it will mean picking up keys in a couple of weeks and then trying valiantly to fill a space that I already know is too big, but what the hell?

Shopping for places to live has consumed me for weeks.  Several times a day I’d comb through the offerings on Craigslist, looking for treasure. The perfect place, summed up in a paragraph and, if I was lucky, a couple of blurry photos. I hunted down property management companies and sifted through their inventory.  I saw, after a few days and certainly after seeing some places (and smelling them) in person, that my price expectations were unrealistic. That, or my taste was too expensive, but at any rate I reconnoitered and moved into a new eschelon. The hunt continued. Relentlessly. Unceasingly.

What I really wanted was to set foot in a place and feel, with all of me, the “this is it!” feeling.

Today I felt that. The place is twice the size I need and half again the price I wanted to pay, but it felt like home. I figure the rest will take care of itself.