Warning: This post is Cheesy

My opinion of Ottawa is no secret. While I don't "not like" the city, it has grown on me the same way that mold grows on a piece of cheese. We've all been there. Don't pretend you haven't done it. You find your forgotten block of cheddar hidden behind the pickles. Little green fuzzy bits are clambering up Cheddar's southern wall and rather than throw the valuable block out, you cut off the fungal bits and call the rest of the cheese edible.

In this case, I'm the cheese and Ottawa is the mold, and in my two years here, parts of it have grown on me despite my best efforts to cut off the fungus and keep the cheese mold free.

Normally we think of mold as a bad thing (the analogy continues), and it's true that quantities of certain molds can harbor bacteria that makes you sick. But other types of mold are famous for saving lives. Remember penicillin? The superman of mold?

Moreover mold either is, or is essential to the creation of, some of our favorite foods: bread, cheese, yogurt, soy sauce... wouldn't be possible without our good friend mold. Give me a mold free world without yogurt, and I'll tell you to shove it. I'm staying here with yogurt on moldy planet Earth.

Turns out that the cheese (me), is actually made of mold. Trying to cut the moldy bits off is like cutting off my cheddar nose despite my mozza face. Stop trying. Accept the mold... I think?

Basically, in the process of writing this, I realized that I am moldy cheese. I'm just beginning to come to terms with that... or even understand what it means.

Sorry for the bizarre analogy. I hope you followed.

How did this obscure epiphany come about? Well, Steve and I are moving back to Winnipeg. Surprised? So are we.

What surprised me even more is how sad I am to leave a city that I didn't think I even liked. It hit me hard. The majority of people in our Ottawa posse are Winnipeg imports, which means we will see them again. But, they're a great group of friends that I only realized I had as I was saying goodbye. That's my bad. Bad cheese! Bad! Joni Mitchell had it right after all:

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."


p.s. I googled the whole cheese/mold cutting off thing before posting this to make sure that I wasn't committing some health taboo (it occurs to me that I should have done this a long time ago), and it turns out that this is a totally safe practice to engage in, as long as you cut an extra 1/2" in from the moldy bits... next time I'll use a ruler. Cheese mold ruler! There's a business idea that's doomed to fail.