Last night I found four outrageously filthy plastic IKEA chairs on the curb, took them home and lovingly drenched them in bleach. Now we have four blindingly white "dining" chairs and can have people over for dinner. Hooray! They don't reeeally go with our mid-century living room (including a very fancy credenza and bookcase I picked up the other night for hundreds and hundreds of dollars below value, gloat gloat) but they are a vast improvement on the one plastic lawn chair left behind by the painter. Cozy times call for cozy measures, people. Expect invitations for pie and more pie.
Toronto is a fair amount of amazing. Here are some of my favourite things, so far.
Neighbourhoods. For every village or enclave Vancouver has, Toronto has ten, it seems. Every day while I'm tootling around looking for a dowel or a mug or some other thing desperately absent from the house, I manage to get lost and find myself in yet another neighbourhood. Somehow this always manages to be Monday, when all the shops are closed.
Literary friendlies. Everyone is just so
nice, here. And there's so many of them, the writers. And more events than you can shake a stick at! (Shake shake shake.)
Macrobiotic vegan salad at
Hibiscus in Kensington Market. So many little bits of antioxidanty things piled into a bowl! Much needed after nightly encounters with two types of pie.
Club sandwich and onion rings at the
Lakeview. HCHOM!
Okonomiyaki from
Okonomi House.
Leafy trees!
Here are some things that are less awesome (lawsome?).
Parking tickets. I think Toronto has a 1:1 ratio of meter maids per capita. I never get away with anything, ever.
Traffic. Where are all these people
going? These two quibbles are my fault, I know, being a bad, bad driver.
Water? There is so little to remind one that Toronto is on a lake, since it's cut off by an expressway and another busy road thingummy, Lakeshore Drive. We looked at a place on King Street West and while the view of the lake was very appealing, the eight lanes of zooming trucks between the house and the water were not. I daydream often of Montague Harbour on Galiano (aka Snug) Island, my gorgeous white-shelled midden and its gnarled Arbutus where I spent many a happy morning heaving logs for Juniper into the clearclearclear water or helping Judah build Art out of pebbles and driftwood. Or Jericho at low tide with my sandals left miles behind me on a log, toes squishing pleasingly into the flat sand with just the right amount of give. Or wading into the water with my dog at the Kits dog beach and eventually just throwing myself in. Or seals spying on me beyond the rocks at Lighthouse Park. Or, or, or.
Absence of sushi. Heaving, petulant, Vancouver-spoiled sigh. Although, rather uncooly, I am sort of in love with the chicken katsu bento at
Sushi on Bloor. During lunch it's $6, and they will give you a vat of tonkatsu for the dip-dippy if you ask. But order salmon anywhere and it's the pale, flabby Atlantic variety, always, and the rolls are big choking mouthfuls of badly dressed rice with little bits of non-rice items buried inside.
In short, it's not Vancouver. It's entirely itself, which takes some getting used to but I find myself being daily rewarded for living here. I am quite happy I'll be back on the west coast in two weeks for some class visits and readings and things, though, and then again for Christmas! But I'm enjoying myself here. Yis.
I'm Sachiko Murakami and snugness is all around me.
Posts
