Bibliomama

I've always felt like campgrounds were a tiny bit like Disneyworld, in that you drive through the entrance and it sort of feels like you're in a semi-magical place where nothing bad can happen. We camped a lot when I was a kid, and we always had the run of the place, and I remember my parents meeting and conversing with people who were set up near us, holding babies we didn't know, sharing food. I still have vivid memories of a Greek woman and a man with a stutter, which I had never heard before. I asked my dad about it later and he said it was good that I hadn't asked in front of the man. Even before I started camping overnight, when I would take the kids to Sandbanks to hang with our camping friends, I let them run around the park with the other kids and paid less attention than I would have at home. I'm not really defending this as intelligent or safe, but nothing bad did happen, so it's a moot point. Camping there has generally been a convivial experience.…

HA ha,  no, of course it isn't, I never promised not to lie to you, Radical Honesty is bunk, lies are the WD-40 that grease the machinery of human interaction. Among other things, my blog interface suddenly looks totally different. Do I LOOK like I need a fun new challenge right now, Blogger? DO I? Lucy just scratched at the back door and when I opened it she snatched my gardening gloves off the table and ran outside with them, wtf? The whole world is against me.  You know which very important movie I totally forgot about when I made my sort-of list of my sort-of top ten favourite movies? The Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm a fake fan. *hides head in shame*Angus left. We were all so stressed about whether he'd be able to get over the border that we went next door and got totally trashed with our neighbours. Angus - who, over the course of the summer, has had A beer with us, sometimes two - drank most of a bottle of red wine by himself, among other drinks, and was very funny…

Before: aqua and purple, painted by my dad many years ago:



During:

After: Sherwin Williams Sockeye and Nearly Peach, painted by Eve, two weeks ago:

I've been crap at jotting down things to write about which means I have nothing to write about and also that I clearly don't know myself at all. Let's talk about how I keep thinking that Eve is five instead of seventeen and assuming she can't do stuff when she most certainly can do stuff. I mean, I'm not necessarily the type of mom that tells her kids "you can do anything you want if you just believe in yourself!" (My friend Collette (HI COLLETTE) has a funny story about this that happened at her daughter's diving competition - the mom behind her said to her daughter "I KNEW you'd come in first if you just BELIEVED" - she came in first because she was the only one in her age class). I mean, I knew my kids were smart and I tried to teach them critical thinking and I figured they could do a lot of things, but not, like, fly (or even ride a bike, in Eve's case - sorry babe, my fault you were born without balance), or do magic, or ride a…

A couple of weeks ago I went over to my friend Kerry's (HI KERRY) house for a socially-distanced movie date, after we got talking about Steel Magnolias. While I was there I told her my Steel Magnolias origin story. I was in first-year university and my boyfriend broke up with me. It had been my first serious relationship and we had dated for years at home and then he went to university the year before I did. I didn't exactly go to the same place because of him - I went with my best friend, and it was a great school for the program I wanted, and I have no regrets - but I didn't exactly NOT go there because of him either. I was devastated. I didn't know what to do with myself. After dinner, I left my residence and just started wandering around. I went to the chapel and sat down and realized I really wasn't very religious anymore, and even if I was this seemed like a really embarrassing problem to go to any deity with. I wandered towards the woods trail and then reali…

I am not thriving - not lamenting, or asking for sympathy, just stating the facts. I am almost dreading going to bed because trying to sleep has been a torturous exercise. I'm in pain. I am not loving my weight and I have zero inclination to exercise. I'm too hot everywhere all the time, even with AC and multiple fans. I am in that meme where you're riding a bike and the bike is on fire and everything is on fire because you're in hell. I am in the centre of a fiery triangle of grief, perimenopause and pandemic - feel more like a pentagram. I'm not a lover of summer weather at the best of times - right now it's making me feel even more claustrophobic. I want out of the heat and out of my skin and out of my life for a few seconds.

Oh well.

So gardening. How do you feel about gardening? I have a similar love/hate relationship dynamic going on with gardening to the one I have with air conditioning. Basically when we started lockdown I threw open our bedroom windows…