How do you return to your dear blog after so much time has passed? A new template and an update ought to do it.

The past two years have been a heck of a ride. Here’s a few updates in the world of me:

My niece, last depicted here at two weeks old, came to life as a real little person. Then her sister Emma arrived almost exactly two years later. I’ve become the kind of Auntie I always wanted to be. Yesterday I read Jordyn Where the Wild Things Are … eight times … on the way up to my Uncle’s Farm where we played with baby animals all morning. Not ready for my own, but I definitely love kids.

This post, which was also my last post, was written when I had first started working as an editor for a Toronto-based marketing agency. This was my new job at a workplace that I still was getting to know, a job I understood at surface level and the entry-level timidity that makes you lose sleep over missing day’s work. 

I'd started Want Cookies, my fledgling cookie business that is very dear to my heart. I’ve got a cookie portfolio somewhere. Later I’ll talk about Want. I haven’t decided if I’ll join the ranks of the many talented food bloggers out there. I may already have. Remember the Red Fork? How young I was.

I worked at the aforementioned agency for just over two years. I got to be part of really, really cool ideation and brainstorming sessions. I took planes out of town on business trips -- twice! It was the pace and the pressure job that I needed to feel pride and responsibility in my work. But the stress, the sleepless nights, the stakes – and I wasn’t even high up on the food chain. It got to me. It was the best move I'd ever made, and it was time for a change.

I now work at RBC Dominion Securities as a writer and editor. At first I found myself apologizing for it – like the 60- and 70-hour workweeks were kind of professional atonement I’d skipped out on. Work is fulfilling. I have a great team. I don’t mean to sound smug, but this was also the best move I’ve ever made, given the circumstances.

I’ve done a lot of traveling in the past three years: Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, the U.S. South (some of it), Portugal and most recently Amsterdam. All of it backpacking on my alone, except the South trip that I road-tripped with my boyfriend David. Travel is my fitness. The only exercise I like is hiking. You can’t get me into a gym anymore. But you can get me to the climb to the top of a mountain -- and I'll race you to the top. In Switzerland I tasted the freshest air in the world at the top of some ‘horn or another. In Norway I was stampeded by reindeers at the top of a mountain fjord. I went to Ä, a town on the southern edge of the Arctic circle, and hiked foggy mountains that looked like obsidian. The sun did not set the entire time I was there. I hated Portugal. So I went to Amsterdam instead.

There’s an aforementioned boyfriend in there. David and I met about a year ago. We cook and watch stuff and shop and steal horses together. He’s pretty super. Neither one of us drives. So we walk.

Yep, I still can’t freaking drive. Not legally. I’m a good driver, I think – if it wasn’t for the nerves. I’m considering moving to Montreal for a month so I can get through the Quebec licensing system and transfer it here. Scooters don’t count, however. Vespa was on my client list at the previous job, and partly because of that I took the prez’s scooter out for a supervised spin. I promptly crashed it and flew to Norway that night with a knee the size of a basketball.

People, I can’t promise to post often. But I can promise to post honestly. Reading through the post archives makes me think, what got me so crabby? I definitely needed to work on the complainey-pants theme that coursed through this blog’s veins. 

And that said, it’s going to be time for a name change. Still thinking about it. Suggestions are welcome.

I missed you all. Glad to be back in the world of ‘blog.