Yesterday we did our 2nd annual March break trip to Niagara Falls. We thought last year’s visit was the wettest you could get without rain; we were wrong! You can’t see from the photo, but Jon’s hair is soaking wet. You could barely see the falls for the mist.

Afterwards we stopped in at the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory (or as Jon calls it, the “Butterfly Museum”) and admired the lovely butterflies including this huge fellow:

Then we dropped in at Olson Foods & Bakery in St. Catharines; partly to see if they carried cocoa nibs (haven’t come across them within walking distance and I’m too lazy to do a protracted Toronto search), but mostly to give Jon a thrill. No Anna Olson, alas, but he was quite happy when given a promotional recipe card from Sugar.

Jon was chattering about all the great things he did that day, but for his creative writing project on Tuesday (see above), all he wanted to write about was the Wallace and Gromit DVD he watched Monday evening. C’est la vie!

A neighbour who lives across and down the street approached me the other day. He glanced around and leaned forward and dropped his voice, “Do you guys have a car?”

Slightly surprised, I paused. “Yes.” It was his turn to be stunned.

“We see you guys always go out walking for your groceries. We were concerned. I was going to offer to lend you our van.” He explained that since his family lives opposite the only entrance to our laneway, they generally note the comings and goings of all of the neighbours, and they never see us driving. And they see us walking back with groceries, even with Jon, even in the winter.

It felt kind of weird trying to explain. There are three grocery stores within a kilometre and a half of our house, and one of them is only about three hundred metres away. I’d feel quite odd driving there. We don’t eat a lot of pre-packaged foods, and have learned from experience that you can’t stock up on veggies for two weeks, lest they get fuzzy. So generally every day or two, one of us is whipping to the store for some ingredient or other. Given the working at home thing, it’s a great excuse to get out, take a break. Haul along a backpack and you can bring home 10 kilos of stuff. And Jon loves being outside and going for walks, even in the winter. And many of our within city trips without Jon can be covered by transit. No worry about parking, etc.

I don’t mean to say it isn’t also a product of poor planning and our inabilities to set a menu farther than one day hence. There is that too. 🙂

And it isn’t to say that we don’t need a car. Rest assured, when you’ve got a kid with a wheelchair, needs must. Public transit just doesn’t cover it. But the car’s really for medium-to-long distance trips. I just figure that if you don’t have to use it, don’t.

Are we that weird when it comes to walking in the city?

Jon’s home again, having come home all and stuffy and runny of nose…that flu that persists, showing a variety of symptons in all of us. The entire household is still off our respective games.

Jon went to bed sounding like we had carefully packed his sinuses with cheeses from around the world. But I don’t think he’s terribly contagious, he’s quite alert, and he’s goin’ back tomorrow, barring unforeseen major illness.

And then March Break will start on Friday.