New Beginnings

Last week after 27 years of going to work at the same office 5mins (and one street light) from my house, my department has been relocated to the Downtown Mall...all of the IS and IT departments from the Union Gas Head Office have been relocated to the mall, all 170 of us were moved over two weekends. It's strange and different, but not horrible...just VERY different. I feel like we have invaded their space.

No longer can i saunter into the cafeteria and ask one of the gals to make me a 'sunrise on an english muffin'. Or have one of Brandon's fab soups for lunch if I didn't want to go home...(at HO we always had AT LEAST 2 soup of the days to choose from and no matter what you chose it was guaranteed to be good). Now I have no impromptu sunrise sandwiches to enjoy and I have to drive through NO LESS than 5 street lights to get to the office.  My commute from my house to my desk has stretched from 6mins to between 10 and 13 mins....which probably doesn't seem like a lot to someone who lives in a big city, but for me, this has doubled my travel time. And since I go home for lunch most days that equates to approx 25mins out of my day where I could be doing other stuff.

What it boils down to is that it took me a lot of years to appreciate it, but now, I do like small town living. I LIKE not having to commute to work. If I want a day in 'the city' (Windsor, London, Toronto) I can do it, but if I just want to hunker down in my small city of Chatham I'm totally happy to do so.

Our boys are home this week from school because it is 'reading week' and the other night I didn't have dinner ready till 7pm...I told them it was because I now have to 'commute' to work so dinner will be later than what they were used to! They got a good chuckle out of that one, because having grown up in Chatham, they now attend schools in much larger cities and can appreciate the difference.

While I was thinking about these new beginnings I was admiring my new My Minds Eye paper while flipping through some of my newer Stamping Bella Stamps. When I came upon Jamie with that little butterfly on her finger I knew I had to do this one....from a caterpillar to butterfly it is like a new beginning.

I don't think I could ever give this card away. Actually, I think I'm gonna have to smashbook it along with some other special memorabilia that I just can't part with. Union Gas celebrated its 100 anniversary in 2011, hopefully my smashbook page with my memorabilia will be kept preserved through the generations and maybe displayed with pride on their 150th anniversary and forward!

This is crazy...and SO not like me, but there could be a moral here! Let's remember the past, but not dwell on it, and move forward and enjoy the future no matter how weird and strange it may seem at the moment..

Moving on to something comfortable, let's talk about next weeks Bellarific Friday...it's all about dots...POLKA DOTS! ....use polka dots somewhere...like ANYWHERE....in your card and upload your card to our SCS forum, and/or email to Emily to see it up in lights on her blog and be eligible to win some bella bucks! 

Next post I'll keep you up to date on my life 'at the mall' and I promise to be more upbeat and less sentimental about my last 27 years of a 6 min commute and less whiney about my new 13 minute commute and try to find the 'up side' of working downtown.. I know those upsides are there...I just gotta find them!

Linda.