Chapter 2 - Across Canada - dying of boredom!

We crossed the Saskatchewan border today. It’s still hot and it’s still flat. I wonder what living here would be like. Incredibly boring I bet. I feel so small with this big sky just pressing down on me with nowhere to hide. Normally I like to lie down on the grass and let my eyes move slowly up to see sky patterns through the trees, or let them wander down to see bugs cross the pavement crack to crack. But here my eyes just go directly up to that big sky. I can’t even try to look anywhere else. That sky is like an eye magnet.Dad likes it here, but that only confirms how boring it must be. The road is so straight he hardly has to turn the steering wheel. My atlas says there were a lot of famous battles on the prairies. How could you lose a battle against anyone here? You’d see them coming for about a week and a half. Maybe the settlers got so bored out here looking at nothing they fell asleep and the Indians snuck up from behind and creamed them. Sam took my altas when I wasn’t looking and got mustard on it. I got so mad at her I wanted to scream. The only thing good is that the mustard got on the part of Africa that was mostly coloured yellow so it doesn’t show so much. But I know it’s there.

I can’t remember the name of the place where we’re staying. It’s in the middle of nowhere and the size of a nickel. We’re in a motel that’s falling apart and is full of dust. Everything is full of dust, even the inside of the oven. We went out for Chinese food. I wonder what it’s like to be Chinese in a place where there are no other Chinese people. When we were at the buffet getting second helpings of chicken balls in red sweet and sour sauce, Sidney and I made a bet about when Sam’s clothing scam will be discovered, as Mom hadn’t cared what we wore tonight. Sidney never makes bets with me, only with Sam, so it felt pretty good. I say as long as we are in the prairies we will never find any restaurant Mom would call ‘nice’. So my guess is Toronto. Sidney says that’s too far ahead and thinks it will be in Winnipeg when we visit Auntie Winnie and Uncle Bert. I tried to make a joke about her hoping to ‘win’ with Auntie ‘Win’-nie in ‘Win’-nipeg, but she didn’t get it. Or she didn’t want to get it. Sam can always make Sidney laugh but I never can. I hope I win the bet. Sidney said she’d do a makeover on me if I do. But if I lose I have to be her slave for the rest of the trip.