And everything will work out fine.

I’ve tried to not rant about everything that has gone wrong in our moving process, about the hassle it was to change our cell phone plans, about our $425 monthly power bills, about our upstairs neighbour who tokes out on our front porch every morning at 7:30 while I’m walking the dog, about… ok nevermind, now I’m ranting about everything.

But there are two things that warrant a full-out bitchfest blog post: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours and Fredericton residents’ lack of common sense when driving.

First: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours. Get this, in New Brunswick, if I want to pick up some groceries on a Sunday night, you know, because I need food to live, I can’t. Why? Because grocery stores are only open from 12 to 5 on Sundays here. Do you know what kind of chaos only being open for five hours on a Sunday causes in grocery stores? The massive kind, that’s what kind. As someone who was a frequent Hartman’s-walker-to-er for some Sunday evening pantry replenishing action whist living in Ottawa, this is really, really hard to get used to. But it’s not just grocery stores, ohhh no!

A few weeks ago I was in Moncton for some training and on Tuesday night upon my arrival I figured “Hey, I’ll go for a stroll to The Bay” (since we don’t have one in Fredericton *sad panda*) only to show up and find out that Highfield Square mall closes at 7 from Monday to Wednesday. Like, what?! What mall closes at 7? To console myself, on my lonely walk back to the hotel I thought “Hey, I know what’ll cheer me up! A Caramel Latte Bene from Timothy’s!” (since I have yet to solve Fredericton’s Timothy’s mystery [I see people walking around downtown with Timothy's cups all the time, yet no one can tell me where the Timothy's actually is - it's all very strange]), but nooooo, the Timothy’s on Main street closed at 8! It’s a coffee shop people – it’s where people go at night! But it doesn’t even end here!

The other week, I got word that some liquidation store in town had bought the stock of a gone-out-of-business wedding dress shop and had really nice wedding dresses on sale for $50, so I rushed there right after work, only to get there at 5:50 and find the doors already locked because they closed at 6. Who closes at 6? Gah! What I don’t get with this whole “closing early” thing is that all of these places are retail-type businesses. How do you expect to get any customers who have day jobs come into your place of business? Sometimes I’d like to know what goes through people’s minds here.

Second: Drivers here are too nice or possibly sometimes just plain old misinformed (I haven’t really figured out which one it is yet). I can hear you saying “Too nice? How could that be?”. Let me tell you how that can be. There are certain rules and conventions, when driving, that make things go smoothly for everyone. A perfect example is a left-hand turn: if I’m waiting to turn left at an intersection and there is a car waiting to turn right directly across from me, he has the right of way as soon as there is a break in traffic due to his proximity to our common desired lane. Last month a motorist kept giving me exasperated hand signals because I didn’t “get” that he wasn’t turning like his signal light indicated because he was letting me go. Dude, it’s your turn, just be on your merry way and I’ll resume looking out for my break in traffic, mmmkay? Another good example of this behaviour is at four-way stops (although with this one I would have to lean towards ignorance as the cause of my frustration and not so much niceness). At a four-way stop whoever gets there first gets to go, right? WRONG! People just don’t seem to “get” the concept of four way/all way stops here. They’re like free-for-alls. Get with the times people! I would really hate to see a roundabout anywhere near Fredericton; it’d be such a gong-show.

To end on a positive note, I will list a few of things that I do love about being back in New Brunswick (because there are lots). Perhaps they’ll get their own blog post some day.
- Being able to say “Good morning!” to people while walking to work in the morning and not get dirty looks.
- Housing prices.
- Seeing our family all the time.
- Fredericton’s so-far awesome restaurants.
- Northumberland Dairy’s various products.
- Being able to buy a house “in the country” and still take the bus to work/drive to work in 7 minutes. (More to come on this house-purchasing business at a later date!)

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