Playing with Time

You might wonder what Vera’s been up to this summer...


When my three months of working remotely while helping our neighbour set up his property on PEI turned into three months of unpaid leave while helping my neighbour, blah, blah, blah, I thought, “This is great; I’m going to have so much TIME!!!”

All too aware of how easily time can slip away, I set about making myself a strict schedule that would include a healthy balance of writing/blogging, studying (aviation, French and other reading), music practice and yoga, along with my agreed-to responsibilities of cooking and generally looking after my elderly neighbour, and taking care of his AirBnB guests. I had also built in some time to connect regularly with my kids, who were not coming out to PEI until later in the summer, and with whom I planned to read the Count of Monte Cristo via video conference twice a week. My colour-coded schedule was looking pretty balanced; I was impressed!


Within a month of my arrival, however, I became acutely aware that I may have failed to consider some of the challenges of country living and setting up a new build.

My twice-a-week writing time had failed to materialize, and even six weeks after driving across the bridge, I had done yoga a grand total of once!!

My daily to-do list looked more like this:

• Chase contractors
• Water trees
• Water grass seed
• Stress about why grass seed isn’t growing
• Chase contractors some more
• Drive to Canadian Tire, buy up some home shit
• Give up on grass seed and call seven places looking for sod
• Gasp at outrageous sod prices; drive to nursery and buy more grass seed (the fast growing blend)
• Buy sod after all
• Call grass cutters for help laying sod (it’s HEAVY!!!)
• Realize I don’t have enough sod, and fill in the gaps with newly purchased, fast-growing (haha) grass seed
• Water sod and seed
• Water trees some more
• Chase contractors again
• Download full season of Switched at Birth
• Drive to Canadian Tire, buy up some more household crap
• Cook supper
• Update AirBnB listings and respond to potential guests who have clearly not read through the entire listing
• Binge watch five episodes of Switched at Birth until 2 am while shivering under four blankets with warm dog body in tent
• Get up with the sunrise, marvel at sunrise, make breakfast for old man and Airbnb guests
• Deal with plumber after Airbnb guests’ kids shove 3/4 roll of toilet paper down the crapper

And that doesn’t include all the bickering with the elderly neighbour I’m supposed to be helping (turns out he’s not only old and cranky, but also super slow and indecisive, so that minor things I had not even built into the schedule, like “would you like soup, or pasta, for lunch?” turn into 20 minute debates requiring examination from all sides). Choosing meals, restaurants, where and how to walk, and what goes into which recycling bin all takes a lot longer and has to be done more frequently than I expected.

Also, we ended up buying a manual push mower, so I added about 4-5 hours a week of manual grass cutting I had not planned for, as I am now cutting the back 1/4 acre of my neighbour’s property, which is good exercise but takes a lot longer and has to be done more frequently than I expected.

And then there is the dog... one of the main goals while out here has been to train our dog-aggressive rescue mutt. We are working with a highly regarded trainer, and it’s going well, but all the exercises and homework take a lot longer and have to be done more frequently than I expected.

You get the idea.

So needless to say, my brilliant schedule has not come to fruition. Instead, I’ve been blessed with an opportunity to learn about flexibility and boundaries.

A few of the unforeseen opportunities that have arisen: A week in, I got my criminal record check (in 24 hours; unheard of in the GTA!!) and was able to volunteer in a local school for a week. It was the first time I’d been in a classroom in two years.... AND the first time I’d been in a classroom where I was not in the cultural minority. It felt very strange to be surrounded by children who looked and sounded like me. But it was fun, and I appreciated learning what a classroom experience can be like in a rural school, since the vast majority of my own teaching career was fostered in urban and suburban settings.

I also got to participate in the inaugural lighthouse beach bonfire, to celebrate the lighting of the recently restored local lighthouse lamp!

And I have been volunteering at the local library (developing and facilitating a course on how to use instagram to connect with friends and family and promote your small business).

Finally, I have availed myself of the opportunity to take a few Argentinian tango lessons in town. Milonga!

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I’m learning to set boundaries by saying no to a few things in order to make space for the things I had hoped to achieve. As a result, my musical pursuits are going better: I’ve been playing my drums 3-5 times a week, I’ve had a few lessons with a trombonist in town and am actually practising more than five minutes a day, and recently, I began working on reclaiming and further developing my xylophone skills. (The xylophone was one of the larger items we stuffed into the van when we drove out here, and it’s now living in my music cabin along with my drums and an old trombone at the back of my neighbour’s property.)

The yoga plan has NOT yet come to fruition. But, I plan to attend a weekly beach yoga class at the lighthouse starting Tuesday night.

Reading the 1944 version of Stick and Rudder is helping me refamiliarize myself with flight theory and remember, too, how angry I get every time I read an aviation text; regardless of when it was written, it seems that the 21st Century has not yet hit the aviation publishing world, as everything is still about “he” when referring to pilots.

Very annoying and distracting. But at least I’m finally reading.

Duolingo tells me that I am on a three-day streak with French... and I plan to up my 5 minutes a day to 15. Soon. :)

Sitting out front of the music cabin, writing this blog post, I finally have time to consciously enjoy the beauty around me. I’ve been doing a bit of that mornings in the tent, when the bird and the sunshine wake me up around 5 a.m. and I lie around dozing for another few hours listening to the sounds of the breeze in the leaves, the twittering of the birds, the roll of the waves in the distance... but gazing out at the fields of lupin is a little more of what I had been hoping to do, and it’s nice to finally do so!

Soon my kids and partner are coming. I hope to have enough systems and routines in place by then and I can take some actual “time off“, and really just enjoy the island for a few weeks!!!

I’m amazed... shocked, really, by how quickly a gift of three months can evaporate.