Have you been to see the CHEO Dream Home? I’ve never gone to tour any of them before, but that’s because – to the best of my knowledge – none of them have had a saltwater aquarium until now.

I have wanted a saltwater aquarium for several years. I want mushrooms and brain corals and live rock and intensely coloured fish and a cleaner shrimp. (A cleaner shrimp is like a drive-through carwash for fish and other marine critters. They pull up to the cleaner shrimp, and he cleans them up and polishes them and sends them on their way. I want one.)

The CHEO Dream Home tour was pretty interesting. If you’re looking for something to do, go check it out. You take off your shoes and carry them around in a bag, and you’re free to explore the house. There were probably a hundred or so other people exploring it at the same time I was.

It’s interesting because the whole concept of Dream Home implies – to me anyway – something unique and special and personal. Yet the CHEO Dream Home, because it’s being raffled off, has to be a generic dream home. It has to be everybody’s dream home.

So apparently everybody wants a marine aquarium, a built-in wall-sized wine rack, a workshop, a sauna, 10 televisions, a home theatre, a popcorn machine, three payphones, four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a solarium, an exercise room, a games room, a three-car garage, an office, a dining room, a living room, a family room, a kitchen, a mud room, a deck, a hot tub, and a laundry room.

And everybody wants a weird blue wall sculpture.

The prize includes the house, everything in the house, $100,000 (presumably so you can pay the taxes and utilities), a year’s free housecleaning (because I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep six bathrooms clean), and a year’s groceries (because I expect I’ll have more visitors). It also includes a car, because this house is in The Middle of Nowhere. And it’s not the good Middle of Nowhere either, it’s the one out near Barrhaven.

I think they maybe messed up a bit on the location, because I don’t think anybody would build their dream house there. My dream house would be either in Centretown (generously defined as including Chinatown, Little Italy, Mechanicsville, Hintonburg, Westboro, Glebe, Ottawa South, Sandy Hill and Centretown proper) or in a clearing in the forest on the edge of a river. But it would most certainly not be on the outskirts of Barrhaven. And while I rarely attempt to speak for everybody, I find it hard to imagine that the outskirts of Barrhaven would be anybody’s ideal dream home location.

But the location I suppose is a trivial detail, because I probably won’t go out much once I move to Winding Way. For one thing, there’s nothing there except other big houses. For another thing, I’ll be so busy drinking wine in my sauna and building swap boxes in my workshop and watching my mushrooms and brain corals and cleaner shrimp that I won’t have time to go out.

You’ll all be invited to the housewarming party, just like last time I moved.

In the meantime, feel free to take the virtual tour and let me know what you think.

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Julia for a coffee the other day. Julia was one of the first three readers of this blog when I started it in 2005. She also has a number of blogging projects of her own, including Castlebrook Village’s neighbourhood blog, a sewing blog, an opinion blog, and a puppy blog (chronicling her adventures raising a future Guide Dog).

Julia had read on my blog that I was shopping for Really Warm Mittens, and she emailed to offer me a pair that she can’t wear because they are actually too warm for her. My heart did backflips at the prospect of Overly Warm Mittens.

We met at Bridgehead – the one in Westboro – and not only did she bring mittens, she brought a whole bag full of stuff, including a neckwarmer for me and a bunch of little treasures for the Swap Boxes. And then I admired her poppy (which had a clever little Canadian pin in the centre, to dress it up and keep it from falling off ), and she gave it to me. I wished I’d brought something for her. Next time!

We had fun drinking coffee and getting to know each other in person. I’m the first Internet friend she’s ever met in person. This is a photo of Julia in full cycling gear, ready to roll on home after our coffee.

I’m saving the mittens for when it gets painfully cold. I find I have to ration my warm clothing, because if I wear the warmest stuff in November, I won’t have any further protection against the cruelest assaults of January. I can’t let that happen.

The next day I went down to the Bridgehead on Third Avenue to see if Elmak’s newest Swap Box (the one with the General Patton clue) was there – and it was!

The only thing in the Swap Box was money. There was more than a dollar in there. I put one of Julia’s key chains in, along with an extra shoelace. I swapped them for a bent quarter. There wasn’t enough room for her hand-made fleece-lined glasses case, so they’ll be left in a bigger Swap Box. I wonder if it’s a Glebe thing, leaving money in the Swap Box?

Now this doesn’t warrant a whole blog post of its own, but I just had to mention that I ran into a three and a half month old Border Collie puppy yesterday morning at the Experimental Farm. His name was Charlie and he sat on my boot and leaned against my leg. I wanted that puppy more than I’ve ever wanted any other puppy in my whole entire life.

And finally, what do you think of this story about the United States Bridge Federation freaking out over a hand-lettered anti-Bush sign? There’s all this talk of sanctions and punishments, as if these women had committed some kind of crime or something.

I may have mentioned before I’m not a shopper. After about half an hour of shopping, I get Mall Fever: a combination of lethargy, options paralysis, depression, and a feeling of being both overwhelmed and underwhelmed simultaneously. I don’t like to leave empty-handed, though, because then I will have subjected myself to Mall Fever for nothing.

So it might seem odd that I went cross-border shopping this weekend. And in fact it IS odd. I think I’ve only done it once before, years ago with my sister, and we were unimpressed with the prices and came back almost empty-handed.

I’m not sure what inspired me to go shopping this time. Something to do with the dollar surpassing the US dollar, something to do with learning Christmas is only six weeks away, something to do with getting swept along with the crowd.

I was able to pursuade a friend to join me, even though he is even less of a shopper than me. We had both read Kelly Egan’s cross-border shopping column and took to heart his advice about not arriving at the border mid-morning on a Saturday.

He picked me up bright and early Saturday morning, and we arrived at the Hill Island crossing well before mid-morning. It was a 40-minute wait to get through the border. I liked the “No Guns” and “No Smoking” pictograms.

“How long are you staying?” asked the guard.

“Just till tomorrow,” we said.

“Do you have a reservation somewhere?”

“No.”

“Good luck,” said the guard, “All these other people are going to the same place as you, and there’s only so many rooms in Syracuse. People are telling me they had trouble making reservations because the hotels were booked solid.”

The first thing we did when we got to Syracuse was find accommondations, which turned out to be no problem at all.

Then we went shopping!

So apparently this Carousel Mall is supposed to be really hot shit shopping. And judging by the throngs of shoppers who were there, you’d almost believe it. All these people can’t be wrong! It’s gotta be a shopping paradise!

Well, three hours later, after dragging ourselves from store to store and asking ourselves “Is there anything here we even kind of want to buy?” we were burnt out and discouraged. I had purchased five bars of glycerin soap from The Body Shop for $12.50. My friend hadn’t bought anything. The soap was marginally cheaper than it was in Canada, but once you factored in the price of gas and accommodations and meals, this soap was working out to about $50 a bar.

We knew we had to buy more stuff to bring down the cost of the soap. But we couldn’t find anything worth buying. The Syracuse Mall was filled with crap. All the clothes were made of acrylic, which is not designed to withstand laundering. There were almost no books in the bookstores – just calendars and CDs and greeting cards and Christmas ornaments. Most of the merchandise in all the stores seemed cheap, ugly and poorly made in China. The prices weren’t impressive either.

There were a couple of interesting stores that we don’t have here. There was a creepy beauty salon/merchandising mecca for little princess girls, called Libby Lu. Everything was pink and acrylic and celebrity-inspired. I went in and took pictures, which made my friend a little uneasy because if a man were to go in there and take pictures of little girls, someone would probably call security. And he was only one step removed from that, being a man with a woman who was taking pictures of little girls.

Eventually we got exhausted and thirsty and some of us got a little bit cranky. We decided to go to the food court for a bottle of water, then hit the Bath & Body store for some things I had been considering buying, and then go to the other mall in the hopes it might be better. Which is what we did.

The other mall was a carbon copy of the first mall, except it had fewer stores (the same stores though) and fewer shoppers. We wandered aimlessly about, didn’t buy anything, and left.

Over dinner at Tully’s (where we had a charmingly slow-witted waiter named Kenny) we pondered the great mysteries of the universe, like why does everybody else think Syracuse is such a wonderful place to shop? And is Cross-Border Shopping one of those Naked Emporer things? And could shopping be considered a legitimate hobby, since some people do it recreationally every single weekend?

We decided that we could not bring ourselves to return to the Carousel mall the next day, so we would drive to Waterloo, 50 miles away, home of the famous Waterloo Outlet Mall. I was re-energized by this decision, since there is a Coldwater Creek at the Waterloo Outlet Mall.

Cross Border Shopping, Day 2

We ate the hotel’s icky complimentary breakfast then hit the road. After a little bit of getting lost in Waterloo (which is the birthplace of both Women’s Rights and Memorial Day), we found the Outlet Mall. Interestingly, it’s kind of a gigantic strip mall – you have to go outside to get from one store to the next. But there are an awful lot of stores, and most of them are huge.

The first thing I bought was a little food processor for $10. I’ve been meaning to replace mine since it broke about five years ago. I also bought a kitchen timer in the same store.

Then I bought underwear.

I started loosening up at Eddie Bauer’s and got into a bit of a shopping groove: I bought two pairs of jeans ($39 each; they’re $75 here in Ottawa) and a bunch of shirts and stuff for $7.99 each.

At Coldwater Creek I really hit my shopping stride. I was touching things and trying things on and even trying on things I wasn’t sure about. The “keep” pile was pretty big. Everything was on sale – 20 to 70% off the lowest marked price. I bought tons of stuff and it came to $168.

Next stop: Liz Claiborne. Everything in the store was on sale for $9.99, except blazers, which were $19.99. But the place was a nuthouse. There were clothes all over the floor and huge lineups, and I just wasn’t in the mood for the kind of fast fierce shopping that was going on in there. We didn’t stay long (but I did get a pair of jeans for $9.99).

Then there was Reebok, Rockport, Nike, Geoffrey Beene, and on and on and on and on. Until finally, after five hours of shopping, we were spent and we figured we’d sufficiently lowered the unit cost of the five bars of soap, so we left.

It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get through the border and customs – 30 minutes in the car, and 45 minutes in the tax lineup. The customs office seemed like a model of inefficiency. First you have to line up to have your receipts tallied and your total taxes calculated. Then you have to line up to pay your taxes. Why can’t the agent who calculates your taxes also take your tax payment?

I spent about $500. My friend spent $13 on a cast iron frying pan. When you take into consideration the cost of accommodations and gas and meals, I doubt very much that our cross-border shopping trip was cheaper than shopping here in Ottawa.

But if you’re going to do it, here are my recommendations:

1. If you don’t like malls, stay out of the malls. A mall is a mall is a mall, no matter how far you travel to get to it.
2. But Outlet malls are better than regular malls.
3. If you’re going to stay overnight, shop around and book ahead.
4. If you’re boycotting China, don’t go shopping. Everything is made in China. There are no exceptions.

Elmaks*, the Swap Box Artist, visited this blog again and left another clue in the comments about the location of the latest Swap Box: “What did Gen. Patton get at Remagen?”

My history’s a bit sketchy, so I googled General Patton and Remagen, and learned that he got a bridge there. I somehow managed to completely convince myself that the new Swap Box was at the Corkstown Footbridge, and hastened down there on my lunch hour today. I checked all the trees and posts on the bridge, under the bridge, around the bridge, and near the bridge, but couldn’t find the Swap Box anywhere. On the bright side though, I’ve been meaning to check out the bridge ever since it opened, and now I finally have. Thoroughly.

So. Maybe the Swap Box is at a different bridge. There are an awful lot of bridges here, given that we have two rivers and two cities. And those are just the major bridges – we have lots of lesser bridges too. My favourite is the old stone one that crosses the Rideau Canal at around Lees or Main Street. I forget what it’s called.

Maybe General Patton got something else at Remagen, and the Swap Box is nowhere near a bridge. Or maybe General Patton and Remagen are red herrings. You never know. It could happen.

Anyway, the clue’s up for grabs! It’s anyone’s game now. Go find that Swap Box, and take a picture of it!

Speaking of Swap Boxes, I visited the Primrose Street Swap Box on Sunday. The Keeper of the Primrose Swap Box left a lovely comment on the blog the other day, so I made a point of visiting. I really like two things about this Swap Box: the way it opens (upwards) and the height at which it’s mounted. It’s at about my chest level, which means children can use it too. And I imagine children would be the very best Swap Box users.

Inside the Primrose Swap Box there was an owl, a big mouse and a small rat. I took the big mouse. I held it in my hand for quite some time, and it started to feel really good – warm and smooth and soothing. I’ve decided it’s a meditation mouse. I didn’t actually know I needed a meditation mouse until now, but now I know it’s exactly what I’ve needed all along. So thank you very much to the Keeper of the Primrose Swap Box, and to whomever put the meditation mouse in there. I left a Halloween necklace in its place. I’ll definitely be visiting again.

Oh, and on Friday I stopped by the Cambridge Street Swap Box, just north of Somerset, which Ciaochow mentioned in a comment last week. It’s cool because it’s self-sufficient and not attached to anything. I got Spongebob out of it. I meant to carry a pocketful of swappables from now on, as suggested by RealGrouchy, but I forgot, so I didn’t have anything good to swap. I left a loonie. I know that’s not really within the spirit of the Swap Box tradition, but you never know, it might be exactly what someone else needs at that particular moment. (By the way, I see a striking resemblance between the Bridgehead Swap Box and the Cambridge Swap Box. I think they were made by the same artist, but not Elmaks.)

The Bridgehead Swap Box:

Oh! I almost forgot! On the way to work this morning, I found a giant swap box for giant things, and there was something special for Aggie sitting right on top. It’s right outside Pizza Pizza at Bronson and Somerset, Aggie!

(*By the way, Elmaks, in case you don’t know yet, RealGrouchy is becoming quite creative in his attempts to establish communications with you.)