Word by Word

So Sunday was Blogging Out Loud Ottawa at the Writers Festival, probably the last one ever. I'm kind of sad that there's no chance Lynn will be emailing me to say "I'm so sorry, but you have to read at BOLO again" next year. I wore my new Docs because I wore my old Docs the very first time I read, and it seemed like a full-circle kind of thing. I had brunch with a group of people so fabulous that I kept pinching myself and everybody else just to confirm that I wasn't dreaming, until everyone said stop pinching me or I will pelt you with Tater Tots.

Photo credit Jennifer Bennett

And here's a really bad photo of my cute dress.

 I got to the venue and saw even more fabulous people and I thought I might actually be in heaven, except a few key people were missing. Also, in the one picture of me reading I look as big as a house (not inaccurate, but sobering). But I kind of like this picture of me laughing at Joe Boughner's hilariousness.

And the pictures of me smiling so hard I can't keep my eyes open because I'm standing next to someone delicious. 

Would it have been a more magical day if my tummy stuck out a little less? I guess I'll never know for sure, but I'm guessing probably not by much. Would it have been better if I was less drunk with joy and remembered to keep my eyes open and smile a little less manically? I don't think so.

I read fifth. I didn't print my post out in a big enough font, and it was a little dark at the podium, so I was kind of straining to read, and people laughed at the right parts but the funny parts seemed really far apart, so the whole thing felt very long. I was too nervous to even notice if everyone clapped after, but they probably did. As usual, the other posts were amazing and being included in that lineup felt like it required more pinching (I looked like someone had used me for a dart board the next day).

I came home exhausted and elated. Angus asked me to help me edit his rant for English. I usually don't do too much to edit him because I want it to be his work, so I just point out the most obvious mistakes. But his previous English teacher who he liked was off on mat leave, and the new teacher seems to be a much harder marker, so he wanted me to really be stringent on grammar. I reworked it with him until it seemed beyond reproach to me and then I said "now if she marks it badly we'll know she just doesn't like jocks". And then I started laughing and he asked me why I was laughing, and I said I had just remembered this guy I knew in University who was extremely smart and well-read and a tiny bit stuffy. He had a huge crush on this black-haired girl named Sophie with a Russian last name - she was tiny and beautiful but not very smart or well-read, and he was furious that she had gotten a bad mark on an English essay, and I asked him why, because Sophie getting a bad mark on an English paper didn't seem like a big shock to me, and he said "because I WROTE the damned thing!" (Actually he probably said 'blasted thing' or 'cursed thing' - he really was kind of pretentious). Which is not a great argument for the professor, as it turns out.

Then I went to work on Monday and spent long delirious moments in the supply room trying to decide between saffron, salmon and goldenrod paper for my Book Fair memo. I lifted the papers warm from the photocopier and giggled as I thought of the phrase "hot off the presses". I hurt my shoulder using the paper cutter to slice them all into thirds. I risked repetitive strain injury stapling three hundred memos to three hundred flyers (and that's only half of them). And I thought again about how happy I am there, and how stupid it is that it took me as long as it did to realize I belong in a library job. And how lucky I am that I spend a good part of my life now surrounded by wonderful people, and words.

The Giving of the Thanks

It's hard not to be thankful when your sister (who poses for pictures so much more gracefully than her daughter)

Turns her kick-ass attic into a Hogwarts dormitory

for this motley crew;

and a visit to the shoe outlet results in this kind of entertainment; 

I mean, seriously?

Yep, seriously. (My sister is tall. My niece has really good balance).

AND it's warm enough for Eve to handily beat Angus at 21 (several times) in short sleeves;

and there's a schoolyard next door where she can practice being a badass (a touch more practice might be in order);

and when I say 'oh wait, we need a turkey-carving picture', my ever-gracious brother-in-law gives me this:

and, well, in the spirit of full disclosure....

and, of course,

So full. On so many levels. 

The Sky is So Very Blue

Just before Labour Day Week-end, I started on a nice little hyper-manic upward slope. Even if I didn't HAVE to be early, I popped out of bed first thing in the morning with no brain fog, I got some organizing done that I've been putting off for months, I walked the dog four times a day and never felt too tired to do one more thing in the day if it occurred to me. 

Along with this, as usual, came some less awesome stuff: a sort of hardened mental glaze over my mind, obsessive thoughts that wouldn't clear for more than a few seconds at a time, and that uncomfortable sense that the air around me is crowded with screaming or crying. 

Honestly, it's not the worst trade-off in the world. Going to bed every night knowing that the morning is going to be either a battle-slog out of a pit of quicksand or another dismal failure is really demoralizing. A bit of mental glitchiness isn't too high a price to pay for some time above water. 

Yesterday, I suddenly felt a strange puncturing and it was like a balloon inside my head had popped. Obsessive thoughts - gone. Vague feeling of doom - gone. It was sort of like my mind had been slightly short-winded, and suddenly it could take a deep, lovely breath.

Okay, I thought. It was nice (ish) while it lasted. I fully expected to be back to business as usual today - stabbing the snooze button and dreaming about getting up five times before actually managing it.

Woke up fine, early, no brain fog. Had dinner for a friend in the crock pot by nine. Coursework, gardening, dog walked by eleven. I had lunch at regular lunch time. I'm going to have to go clean out a closet or something because the kids aren't home yet and suddenly there's more DAY in my day. I went outside and sat in the swinging chair in my weedy back yard and looked up at the sky and laughed because, holy shit, this might be one day's grace, and it might not last, but for the moment I'm so purely grateful I could weep. 

Not a Sponsored Post

I don't really want to become a one-post-a-week blogger, but I'm not feeling inspired, so I'm going to just tell you some stuff that may or may not be of any interest.

We had friends over on Sunday of the long week-end, had a non-barbecue barbecue (I did everything in the slow cooker because Angus and Matt were in town but were at double-headers on Saturday and Sunday and I still think I'm going to blow myself up every time I light the barbecue). We played board games, which some of our friends do regularly but I almost never do because I hate most of them. Games that involve strategy, like this one, or this one? Hate them - I suck at them and find them tedious. Card games? Hate them - they make me wonder why everyone doesn't just read more. But I like trivia games and silly word games. My brother-in-law and his wife gave us this game for Christmas.

This was extra funny, because I had already bought this game for our New Year's Eve party.

We didn't even end up breaking open the Drunk one, Smart Ass was such a hit. We played it at Christmas...

Then the kids kicked us out and played it at Christmas....

We played it at New Year's. 

We played it on the May long week-end. 

We played it at other random times in other people's houses. Here we have Smart Ass with a cat's ass. 

Oh wait, actually that's Clue (hated it) with a cat's ass  but we played Smart Ass later and the cat's ass probably made an appearance then too.

It's a simple trivia game with a few categories (Who Am I, What Am I, Where Am I), a question and then a series of clues that make it successively easier to guess the answer. If you guess wrong once, you're out for the duration of the question. This is why the kids can play it - they just need more clues. You have to strike a balance between guessing too early and waiting too long (three guesses which I have a bigger problem with). 

We played Drunk Ass on our last get-together too. It's not actually a drinking game (yeah, okay, it's totally a drinking game, but you don't have to play it that way). The trivia just involves questions about various types of alcohol and cocktails, and then there are sobriety tests that, at this point in our lives, are just as funny to do while sober, or mostly.

So apparently I love board games, as long as they involve trivia. Or booze.

Nurturing-Good-Thoughts Thursday

Does it sound weird if I say I think of myself generally as a happy person? I know I complain a lot. I know my serotonin and dopamine levels are frequently recalcitrant. But I also know I have a really great life. Parents, sister, husband, kids, friends - all pretty much beyond reproach (not that I don't reproach the heck out of all of them on occasion). Food, shelter, clothing, more books than you can shake a stick at.

So if I'm feeling a little flat this week, and I can feel the cancer-thoughts sparking like malevolent little fireflies in my head every time I feel an ache or pain, and everything I'm reading seems dumb, and things are just kind of lustreless and wearying, I know it will pass. And so as not to let the whole week go by post-less, I'm concentrating on the things that have made me happy instead of surly recently:

My Dad and Lucy: "I always said I didn't like little dogs. Guess I have to eat my words." Happily, the words taste like puppy snuggles.

Walking around the arboretum with Pam, watching people and dogs and the odd woman dressed as  a Flower Fairy for a photo shoot, and an old man on a rock in Dow's Lake who I thought was peeing but was actually fishing. Whew.

Having a baseball-playing birthday boy who just wants hot dogs for dinner.

These. Duh.

Watching Eve and the school basketball team win six straight games, including the final...

with two of her best friends since birth.

Convertible ride! With Swiss Chalet and Paddington on the other end!

Mother's Day was low-key (boys were away) but nice. Eve and I went to my mom and dad's and I thought while we were there how nice it is to have a family where everyone just really enjoys hanging out together. 

And I took my first bathroom mirror selfie, and it didn't suck.

Fifteen Times Around the Sun

Angus is fifteen years old today.

Fifteen. Three whole hands.

So much has changed.

Wait. What?

Blissed-Out Love Orgy 2015 (With MANY UPPER CASE LETTERS)

So I read at Blogging Out Loud Ottawa (HI LYNN) on Tuesday night and now it's Thursday and THIS is why I can't be a current-events blogger.

My friend Patti (HI PATTI) said about BOLO three (!!) years ago that reading there was a "small jump into a very soft landing", and that being nervous was silly. And I agree, but I was still nervous. But Pam picked me up so I didn't have to find the church or the parking lot or not down two gin and tonics for courage. We had dinner with Nat and Jennifer and Amanda, with so much laughter and loudness (and an incredibly patient waitress) that much of the nervousness drained away (and not just because of the gin), although a big part of me (and Nat) was saying "OR, we could just sit here and while the evening away in beer and idle chatter...."

Then we walked over to the church and tried to wander through the halls quietly and respectfully, looking for the right room. Then a small child bolted out in front of Jennifer and she said (ejaculated, really) "OH JESUS!", so we chucked the quiet part and a woman at the door remarked that we were really putting the Loud in Blogging Out Loud. She had curly gray hair and was wearing pearls all church-lady-ish, and I thought she might have meant it disapprovingly, but she totally dropped the f-bomb on me and Pam later while we were buying drinks from her, so it's all good.

Five - FIVE - of my non-blogging (NON-BLOGGING) friends (HI COLLETTE) drove DOWNTOWN, from BARRHAVEN, to watch me read. I feel like it really needs to be emphasized that they didn't know the event was licensed UNTIL THEY GOT THERE. Helen, my dance-mom friend who, come to think of it, is really just a friend since our daughters haven't danced together - or at all, in any organized capacity- for about four years - drove DOWNTOWN from KANATA, ALL ALONE, and she has driving anxiety just like me, and her GPS crapped out on her so she panicked and had to park in a garage which she hates. Did I mention she was ALL ALONE? I can't draw, I can't dance, I'm bad at math and my sense of direction is for shit, but I ROCK at picking friends.

I had to scan the room to see if enough people would get the part of the post that's only funny if you know me. I thought enough people probably would, so I left it in. And a bunch of people laughed, THANK GOD.

On the way out, a woman told me she loved my post and my hair. Of course, we all know intelligence and creativity is so much more important than hair, so the compliment on the post meant much more. Of course. (I am a sad, vain, petty creature).

Photo credit: Nat Hanson

I'm pretty sure that last year the podium covered everything from the boobs down, so I really just worked on looking good from the boobs up. I'm trying really hard (and mostly succeeding) not to let the 'oops-I-forgot-I-need-to-stop-being-so-fat' part of the evening overshadow the fizzy ginger-ale bubble joy.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. BOLO is awesome. And the waitresses at the Black Bear Pub are hot. The end.

I Have Drunk Deep From the Well of Culture. And Rum. With a Bourbon Chaser.

Saturdays around here don't tend to be a beehive of activity. There's usually some kind of sporting event, for one kid if not both, early in the day, and then some down time and we catch up on Modern Family (Matt and Eve and me), Person of Interest (Matt and Angus and me) and/or House of Cards (Matt and me - Angus hung around for part of one hoping for some kind of salaciousness and almost died of boredom; not a future politician, I guess). Saturdays after Matt has just returned home from a week overseas are usually reserved for stumbling through the required activity and then adjourning to the couch (him) and the reading chair (me) for some recovery time.

As things shook out, he was scheduled to get home from France Friday night, after a week in California and a week in Asia not long ago, but Eve's spring Glee recital was on Saturday morning and I had NAC tickets for Saturday night, AND then we found out that Collette's birthday dinner was reserved for Saturday night also. So I took Collette out for dinner last week, and figured that Saturday I would go to the Glee recital, the NAC event, then stop by Collette's for a civilized drink before heading home to sleep the sleep of the virtuous and well-rounded.

I bet you can guess how well THAT worked out for me.

First, Matt's flight got cancelled. He was rebooked on one that was scheduled to land in Ottawa at 11:30. The recital was at 12:30. We figured it was going to be a Disney-movie-type-thing, except he would probably arrive seconds AFTER Eve performed, not before. Eve was fine - she felt bad that he felt bad, and I said I would try to record it. My mom was coming with us, and Eve's teacher, because she is just that awesome.

The recital was fantastic. Not in the way that Glee the television show is fantastic, because they're all professional singers and actors who are just playing regular kids. These were regular kids who had the balls to sing in public. They weren't all great, but they were mostly quite good (my kid was the best, duh). And their two songs (Break Away and Price Tag) were bookended by ballet and tap performances by five-year-olds, and how better to be bookended than by a dozen little pink-gowned blissed-out darling children reveling in the sheer joy of being small and pink and dancing on a stage? And then at the end we found out that Matt had (by breaking a land-speed record and three traffic laws) actually made it seconds before Eve's class went on. So that was awesome.

Then I went to see Shane Koyczan with a couple of book club friends. Honestly, I bought the ticket in the spirit of trying something a little new, and I wasn't sure how into it I would be, especially given that I was exhausted. I wasn't sure if it would be too earnest, or if I would find it like the symphony where my mind drifts and I can't stay focused on the performance, or if, as my friend Carolyn said, we might get trampled in a mob of besotted hipsters.

It was phenomenal. It was spectacular. It was fantastic, and I say this from the bottom of my cynical, middle-aged, shriveled little heart. It was earnest in the very best way, but the emotional intensity was liberally sprinkled with profane hilarity, and my ears couldn't look away. I can't find most of the poems online either because I can't remember what they were called, or because they're new, but he did this one (without music, which I actually prefer), and don't feel bad if you don't feel like watching it because I almost never watch videos embedded in blogs either, but it's very good. And I have to say, everything he said rang so true, except that he still doesn't go to beaches or public places and hasn't had many relationships, because I have to think that this dude gets so much ass flung at him he must not be able to catch it with both hands and a net.

Then I went to Collette's. Matt had gone to the birthday dinner, which was heroic in the extreme since he had probably been awake for over twenty-four hours now, so he kissed me and went home. And I had a beer. And then the whole night turns into a hazy haze of WTF punctuated by flashes of OH DEAR GOD, and there was a bottle of rum with a kraken on it and some kind of weird hop-flavoured bourbon, and a lengthy, serious discussion about elbows. Then I was towed home like a salvaged galleon through the streets of Barrhaven by three friends who wouldn't let me lie down on someone's lawn for a rest no matter how much I begged. And I slept the sleep of the debauched and repentant.

How was your week-end?

Christmas Part Two

At one point in late November or early December, I was wandering around Bed Bath & Beyond looking for something. I was mildly depressed and not feeling holiday-ish at all, and I was thinking about when we gave Angus an Xbox for his birthday a few years ago and got that classic reaction - surprise and joy and loud exclamations - and feeling a little sad because he's always grateful and happy with whatever we get him, but the days of that reaction are gone.

Still, there are flashes of that little-boy enthusiasm. Matt took him out to get some bloodwork done just before we left for Thunder Bay, and then they went to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. Angus badgered Matt until he bought me a juicer, because he said I really wanted one (I did), and then when they got home and wrapped it, he insisted they give it to me right away.

The smile for his new catcher's mitt was pretty good too.

Then there's the new fun stuff that comes with teen-agery smartassness. Such as when he decided to wear everything he got as a gift all at once.


Like, everything.


I'm sparing you the part where he put on his UnderArmour underwear. You're welcome.


Naturally, Eve was getting in on this action.


We still get the classic reactions from her, though.






My strategy of buying ninety percent of my gifts from Indigo and Redbubble was mostly successful.

"Aleph-Bet Soup"

Although I broke Bill by giving him The Martian. "I'll never forgive you", my mother-in-law said. "He didn't say a single word to me for all of Boxing Day. (It's not true. I heard him say "Seventy pages left" at one point.)


We went straight from the airport to my mom and dad's house on the 27th so the kids could see their cousins...


...and partake in classic Christmas activities such as crokinole


and hand-sock fighting.


There was also the Christmas miracle of Angus sharing his Big League Chew with Eve on the way home. 


My son. So handsome.


Also, on that day in Bed Bath & Beyond, when I had no idea what I was going to get Angus for Christmas? I happened upon this Boston Red Sox Tervis cup. I bought it as a stocking stuffer with this "crap, I shouldn't be buying something just to buy it, he probably won't even use it, Christmas SUCKS" feeling.

Guess what hasn't been out of his big silly mitt ever since?