The bright lights of Navan

The final day of Grade 5 for Ottawacker Jr. God, where has it gone? The morning was spent panicking about a dinner we are hosting for Canada Day – which makes it sound awfully grand, doesn’t it, when in fact it is a barbecue-style get-together for a few friends – and the realization that sooner or later we were going to have to go to Navan. Duh-duh… duuuuuh. So at 10:30am, I waltzed into Mrs. Ottawacker’s office and dragged her to Navan.
 
Navan, for the uninitiated, is a small village just outside Ottawa, and is home to Lavergne’s butcher and various market gardens; reasonably priced and excellent quality. I can’t be trusted to go there alone, as I fill up the freezer with beef and lamb, and forget to buy fripperies such as vegetables. This, according to her, is why Mrs. Ottawacker wants to come with me. I’ll ignore the fact that she is taking an extended lunch to do it.
 
Several hundred dollars later, we were stacked up for a month or so and had plenty of options for the Canada Day dinner. Back home, I spent the next couple of hours putting chicken into bags of a manageable quantity; splitting up the pork chops into batches of 3 or 4; cutting joints in half, etc. You get the picture. Then I went back to work, waited for the conquering hero to return, and pretended that I, too, wasn’t excited for the unofficial start to summer.
 
In the evening, I took Ottawacker Jr. to his football, where once again OISC managed a glorious defeat (2-1) against a Toronto FC Academy side. It’s football, captain, but not as we know it.