Jacob has been home sick the past couple of days. Welcome to back to school time- suddenly we are around a lot more people, add in some personal stress on his part about starting a new school – and voila! Cold virus enters our house. I knew he was really sick today because he had to miss 3 blocks of phys ed, making it his absolute favourite day of the week.

Towards the end of the afternoon he seemed to perk up a bit and wanted to watch a movie with me. I pulled out one that I’d PVR’d a while ago just hoping someone would want to watch with me. An old classic (in my mind), Canadian Bacon. As someone who has lived in both the States and Canada I love the stereotypes in this movie. Add in John Candy, Alan Alda, and Dan Aykroyd, as the Canadian cast actors and it is just that much sweeter. I miss John Candy – he made me laugh. They all make me laugh.

It was awesome that Jacob also got a lot of the double entendres of the movie. He remembers living in Quebec and having the language police checking to make sure things were in both English and French. He knows how many people think that Toronto is the capital of Canada. Often when we are out in public I’ll turn to the kids and say “be normal… not normal for you, normal for everyone else”. He now knows that line comes from this movie. And oh my… the scenes in the RCMP detachment, I could watch them over and over.

My happiness moment today was sharing a movie that I love with him. In the 25+ years I’ve been watching it, I’ve never found anyone who would watch it with me. It was wonderful to have someone to laugh at it with. Someone who got it in many of the same ways I do.

Today as I was driving home from the morning school drop off I came across someone else who drives the same way I do on my road. This road I drive as fast as I can and right down the middle. I have to – the pot holes are so bad you have to know exactly where to drive to keep the car in one piece. I was flying in the middle going one way and a big white truck was booting it down the middle going the other way. As we moved to our own sides we waved, braked, and backed up so we were window to window. It was my cousin-in-law. We sat on the middle of the road having a morning chat, giving each other heck for being on “our road”and  in the “middle of the road”. When we were done and had each pulled away, Jacob started laughing. He was looking in the rearview mirror and said “and here you guys go again, right down the middle of the road as fast as you can”.

It’s good to be home.