Freezers full of joy

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I spent wide swathes of my life being in places where I was the sharpest knife in the drawer, or at least where I could believe I was, and now I'm not, or at least am no longer capable of believing I am. Fine. I'm making my peace with that. Also periodically there're big reminders I'm not that bright, such as on Friday night, when I went out to the big grocery store to get some other things along with the obligatory beer, saw that it was closed, and went around the corner to the Polish store (and here's where I'm not so bright) for the first time in the 2.4 years I've lived in Brussels.

First of all and obviously they had beer, and being the lightweight new worlder I am I like Polish beer better than Belgian beer, because it's more refreshing and less alcoholic. So good. But then and much more importantly, they had two freezers full of different kind of perogies. After I whine for years - literally, for years - about how I haven't had perogies for years, I go to a fucking store a fucking ten minute walk away from my house and they have two fucking freezers full of perogies. And they have kefir. Poles drink kefir. I knew that, in some shady semi-conscious tranche of my brain, but not being that bright the connections hadn't been made between that tranche of my brain and the tranche that decides where to go to try to buy some fucking kefir, so I've been going to Turkish shops and health food shops and big groceterias and wondering why I couldn't find anything full-fat. Well no more.

Anyways, going to the Polish store and such things are all part of my quest to take the hell of the advantage out of the eleven months we have left here, Brussels as well as the surrounds. I really don't know when or if I'll be back in Europe after we leave. It's hard to believe I'll never be back, but not impossible; we'll never be rich, and I'll want to spend my long-haul vacations in Canada, for obvious reasons. So I'm bearing in mind that this may be my swansong, and bearing in mind that there will almost certainly be a time in the next few years when I look back with nostalgia on my time in Europe, and I'll want the absolute minimum of regrets about whatever in that nostalgia, and the maximum self-congratulation in terms of all the awesomeness.

Still . . . yesterday La New Yorkaise flagged she'd be moving back to the New World before Christmas and I got really jealous.