Bibliomama

 1. Remember my post on my chaotic medication set-up? Yeah, some pictures have disappeared like they keep doing because Blogger sucks but I'm still too scared to move to Wordpress, but you get the idea. Well I bought some cute pill organizers and fixed it up, and for the most part it's working very well. Throwing the pill organizers in my ziploc bag of medication for the week was not a good plan, however, and half a minute's thought would have confirmed this, but I was stressed about camping and didn't think about it, so here we were. So the very first night I pulled out the nighttime pill organizer and it fell apart and there were pills everywhere on the ground. I gave a 'it's camping' shrug and picked most of them up and put them back in the organizer, figuring I would have forgotten that they were dirty by the next time I had to swallow them. Fortunately they're all pretty distinctive in appearance so they were easy to sort back into proper order. My...

 This is what everyone was reading on the beach. I would take a picture of them and then tell them whether I had read their book or not, which was super fun for everyone and not obnoxious at all. Rachel with The Lord of the Rings, which I have not read. Here she is vexed that she finally got through the Appendix and found...another Appendix. Also Rachel: Fahrenheit 451, which I have read, and had brought the same book with me. Eve found it as a used book at the cute little bookstore down the street from her house at school, and asked me if she should read it. Out of that one, Brave New World and 1984 she liked Fahrenheit 451 the best - it had the least casual racism. Vivian: The Secret History. I have read it, and didn't really like it, but I didn't mention that until after she said that she wasn't really liking it either. I liked The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's next book, much better. Both books seem to be pretty polarizing, so if you're thinking I'm nuts for eith...

 Eve made a shocking realization on this camping trip. We had always assumed that Matt had a map of the park in his head, because he has a really good sense of direction and we generally can't find our way out of a paper bag. But while they were walking back to our site after a campfire, he took them the completely wrong way, and at some point she realized that "he doesn't actually really know his way around - he just doesn't care!" This didn't make me feel entirely okay about the fact that he explained to me where the water tap was multiple times and then drew me a literal picture in the dirt and I still kept not being able to find it, but it made it a little better. Also, when he was telling Eve how to get to Margot and Michael's site I told her a better way and told him his way was dumb because it goes further than you have to and then doubles back (you can tell the one person in our family who doesn't get shredded feet at camp). Of course, then he ...

 So a few things that were different this year that made camping better: POWER For years, I've been renting a battery pack from my CPAP supplier to power my CPAP while camping. I've tried going without a couple of times, and it's terrible - I wake up multiple times, my mouth is sandpaper-dry, I nearly fall asleep trying to drive home. The battery pack was okay, not awesome - I could get a couple of nights out of it and then we'd have to go charge it at our friends' electrical site (the ones who had a trailer and then a tent with an air conditioner - someone said how did they not know about tents with air conditioners and I QUITE CONCUR. The funny thing is, they didn't bring it this year because the mom thought it wouldn't be that hot, and the daughter (who is like me thermo-regulatorily) was very not impressed. This year, I had gotten a new CPAP in June. When I called my supplier to book the battery backup, they informed me regretfully that the battery backu...

 Before more camping notes, I wanted to report back on having to take my mom to her colonoscopy Thursday morning. Some of you may remember how it went when I took her for bloodwork  last November and understand my trepidation. My mother does not enjoy fasting, and this was a whole order of magnitude over bloodwork fasting.  Naturally everything went swimmingly and she only criticized my driving once, and not even when I sort of almost got us hit by a bus (to be fair, she may not have noticed that). The last time I got colonoscoped I went to a small hospital. The last time I took my mom it was a bigger hospital. This was a small, very shiny, state-of-the-art seeming clinic. Everything was clean and bright. There was a big screen tv flashing all the impressive statistics about the place. The only note I had was about saying something like "We find adenomas in 54% more patients than other clinics", which I assume means they have better equipment and find things that are smal...

The place we've been camping for ten years is Sandbanks Provincial Park . It's in Ontario, but a lot of people from Quebec camp there, because it has the best beach for miles (kilometers) around. Any time we're there, probably eighty percent of the other campers are Francophone.  And my goodness, I am not down with cultural stereotyping, but by all accounts (not all, my account and my friends', so, like, a couple dozen accounts at best) they are a surly bunch. I smile at everyone I walk by at most times, but even more when we're at camp, out in a beautiful natural setting, and united by our messy beach hair and loads of lawn chairs and coolers -- should we not perhaps exchange a fraternal glance? Apparently not. I would be left feeling kind of dumb, slightly hurt, but mostly just confused. No one is obligated to smile back, of course. At a certain point, though, it just became compulsive to see if the pattern would be maintained. The few people who smiled and said g...

 Every year for a few years now we say "this might be our last year". This statement becomes more and more likely to be true - the kids are older and have their own stuff going on, we're older and less amenable to sleeping in a tent, Matt's traveling EVEN MORE in the summer now. So of course this might have been the year I loved camping the most (apart from missing Angus terribly). We stayed five nights, the longest by one that we've ever managed before being chased home by weather, and while usually I'm amply ready to head home, this time I felt like I could have stayed days longer. Partly it was because it wasn't sweltering hot all the time. Partly it was my glorious new double-height air mattress and the battery pack we had to buy. Partly I had improved the footwear situation somewhat.  We got there Tuesday, the same day as one other family and the one single person, with two other families arriving the day after us and the last family two days later. W...

We keep going because I love the parts I love more than I loathe and fear the parts I loathe and fear. I hate being hot and sweaty. I hate going to bed dirty (at camp I get a basin of water and wash as much as I can in the dark, but I have to just go into denial about my feet and lower shins because there is no way to get those clean until we get home. I mean, I guess I could keep a bottle of water and a foot towel by the door of the tent, but even I'm not that anal. Hmm, now that I think of it, maybe I am that anal and just never came up with this solution before - making a note for next year. I hate not being able to do my hair. In past years I would shower every day and wash my hair every second day and dry it in the comfort station. This was cumbersome and didn't generate great results anyway. The stupid-hot year I realized there was no point showering because the showers are a set temperature that isn't hot enough for hot water lovers and isn't cool enough for heat...