Bibliomama

Our friend group (four families) has been camping since the kids were pretty small (they're all late teens or twenties now) - other places a few times, but Sandbanks Provincial Park for about fifteen years. Before we started camping, I would sometimes take whichever kid was available and go down for a beach day or two, and stay in a hotel nearby. My family camped when I was younger, but we had a trailer, although it was small and my sister and I slept in a tent for extra space when we got older. I had lost the knack, and I couldn't wrap my head around sleeping on the ground and not having electricity. But the kids really enjoyed the beach and the campfire, so we'd pack a cooler and hang out on the beach during the day and in the evening we would illicitly drive into the campsite area that was strictly for campers (I liked to say we were stealing camping) and hang out around the fire, then drive to the hotel. We went when Eve was this little:  I can't find a picture of

 We're going camping tomorrow. We've been in hardcore prep the past two days, which means I do not want to go camping anymore, and also I might be getting a divorce. Why do we do this? How did we convince ourselves this is fun? Once when we got home I sent around this quote from the book All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews: "...my parents decided we should go camping in the Badlands of South Dakota. We spent the whole time, it seemed, setting everything up and then tearing it all down. My sister, Elfrieda, said it wasn't really life -- it was like being in a mental hospital where everyone walked around with the sole purpose of surviving and conserving energy, it was like being in a refugee camp, it was a halfway house for recovering neurotics, it was this and that, she didn't like camping -- and our mother said well, honey, it's meant to alter our perception of things. Paris would do that too, said Elf, or LSD, and our mother said c'mon, the point is we'

So Eve did NOT pass her driving test....... with flying colours. However, she DID pass it. (sorry, I'd hate you if you did that, I hate myself for doing it, I don't even know what's happening). Like with the last one (because our interminable 'graduated licensing system' means two driving tests, which I'm pretty sure is dumb) I was trying to distract myself from my own runaway anxiety and missed her driving back in to the lot, and she ran up behind me waving her arms in victory. Unlike the last time, she said "I made so many mistakes, I'm pretty sure he wanted to fail me, but he said I technically meet the industry standard, so I don't care". She delighted for a few days in saying "I PASSED! Technically!" A couple of the mistakes were obviously because of nerves. She never speeds when driving, and she knew the speed limit was 50, and then the tester said "um, it's 50 and you were up to 65 there". This meant she drove the

 I would like to thank everyone who commented on my Cocaine Post, because it sat there commentless for a couple of days which I thought was probably because it posted on a Sunday in July, but possibly was because I had mortally offended every single one of you and you had all vowed never to darken my blog door again.  Regarding Suzanne 's parents trying to Scare her Straight: I actually don't remember getting a Drug Talk from my parents. They drank a fair bit, and they were pretty relaxed about us drinking, which I think had the effect of meaning we didn't go totally insane - not to say there weren't a few blow-out nights and a few punishing hangovers, but nothing extreme. We didn't have a curfew either - we just kind of kept in contact and they trusted us not to be total idiots.  I confess to being a bit surprised that Steph has done any drugs - I'm not entirely sure why.  While I'm referring to comments, which I am sometimes bad at answering because I c

At the first Bluesfest show we were at, we were telling Zarah and Sophie about how Eve's friend Davis was proud of being one of the few students she knew who didn't succumb to the cocaine mini-epidemic at McGill in first year. Just for context, McGill is in Montreal, and there are a lot of wealthy international students who attend. Zarah confessed that, in addition to being too poor, one of the reasons she'd never wanted to try cocaine is that she knew she'd love it. Honestly, I'd never thought about it, but HELL YEAH ME TOO. I wouldn't need as much sleep. I'd be able to get up early. I'd have more energy for work. My house would probably be a lot cleaner. Is it an appetite suppressant? *googles* HOT DAMN, who really needs a septum anyway. I have never seen or been offered cocaine, to be clear, even when I was hanging with the druggie crowd. In my husband's company's heyday, they were so desperate for line workers that some people were employed f

Were you all following along in our last installment wherein Engie complimented my skin (thank-you, sweet Engie, there is no secret unless you count being oily and fat) and Suzanne basically accused me of abandoning my daughter during a tornado? Lol, jk, I adore Suzanne, but to be very very clear, by the time we left Eve at home to go downtown, the tornadoes (gotta love when multiple tornadoes are now part of the summer vernacular) were long blown away, and Eve was in no danger of being in Oz by the time we returned home. So Friday we weren't going to Bluesfest and the forecast was refreshingly clear of catastrophic weather events, so we went down to the market to shop and eat. There's an adorable little shop called Milk that we love and always visit when Zarah and Sophie are here, owned by two sisters and featuring cute sustainable clothing and fun stickers, pins, jewelry and socks. The owners are really fun and they totally let us make our daughters try everything on and

 Sometimes I don't blog because the week is too bad, and sometimes I don't blog because the week is too good. Happily, this is the latter (that means the second one. Get it? I am so funny). Zarah and I have been friends since undergrad - she moved into a house in third year with my future husband, so she can pretty much take credit for our entire relationship. She's been coming here with the kids in the summer since Sophie was a baby and Eve and Alex (Sophie's brother) would fight over whose Sophie she was ("MY Sophie!" "No, MYY Sophie!") It would be the three kids or four, depending on Angus's baseball schedule. We bought them matching shirts for as long as we could pull it off. Actually, last year Zarah sent Alex to Lululemon and told him to buy himself something he liked and buy the same thing for Angus, so we're still pulling it off. For years we would do a museum or two every trip, Children's Museum Museum of Nature Agriculture Museu