Pictures of Books

 Eek, I stayed away too long again. We had the most wonderful long week-end away and it was totally worth the resulting exhaustion. I had trouble sleeping when we got back, worked and hosted book club the next day which I kind of knew would be tough but went into denial about, and then shopped for book club groceries like a drunk person but everyone rolled with it. Some people liked the book, some people didn't like the book, which is better than everyone hating the book but also better than everyone loving the book and just saying 'oh it was wonderful' and then all of us staring at each other for ten minutes and then talking about what the kids are up to .

The book: 

I loved it. I really liked All the Light We Cannot See, but I was a bit intimidated by the size and scope of this. The format is like Cloud Atlas, The Overstory and Greenwood - like tree rings, concentric layers of story that travel from the past to the future or vice-versa, and back again. I loved it the first time, and then when I read it again to refresh my memory before book club, I had tears in my eyes for most of it. 

How do you feel when someone doesn't like a book you love? I do hold the opinion that different books hit different readers differently (lol, so deep), and I try very hard not to take it personally. Also, there are ways that people can dislike a book I love that are fine and very understandable, and then there are ways that make me have to try and forget what they said so our friendship can remain unaffected. And I'm also guilty of the reverse thing, where sometimes I can see why someone liked a book I didn't and sometimes I'm like whoa, baby, noooo. It's a touchy thing, when you love talking about books but there are definite pitfalls. I used to rush to give copies of books I adored to people I love, and then I realized this is NOT the smartest thing, and now I mostly guard my most treasured books in the vault of my mind (okay, and on Goodreads and on this blog, I am bad at guarding) and just give away books I merely liked.

A couple of weeks ago my Thursday school had a Book Bonanza, which I though was just a grandiose name for a book sale but holy shit, you guys, this was a good and proper "large amount of something desirable". I went down after school with the other librarian to shop for books for the library, but then, well, the books were ONE or TWO dollars, and I was left unsupervised.

Have you read Joan Aiken? I find her name immediately recognizable, and I assumed when I looked up her list of books I would have read several, but I was wrong. I haven't even read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, so it was possibly foolish to buy this, which is the sequel, but I have a shelf of classic children's books and it seemed silly to pass this up. I am currently reading her book of short stories The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories and finding it delicious.

I often prefer older editions of classics, but I LOVE this edition of A Wrinkle in Time, and will always buy a good-condition used copy to give away to young people, preferably coupled with When You Reach Me.

I am fine with tattered books, as long as they're not stained. I read this years ago as an ebook from the library and it is lovely and haunting and bittersweet, and I am happy to own a copy and planning to reread it outside this summer.

Haven't read this yet, but Ursula Le Guin is a must-buy.

A bit surprised to find an Ann Patchett I hadn't read yet - Bel Canto is one of my Top Ten of All Time, and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is one of my favourite books of essays ever. And it wasn't 20 dollars, it was two, did I mention that?

I feel like this won an award of some kind. Oh - shortlisted for the Giller Prize (I managed to read ALL the Giller Prize shortlist books and ALL the Canada Reads books this year for the FIRST TIME EVER). It is a time travel book, and I am a whore for time travel books, even ones that are more philosophical and meditative rather than science fiction-y and plot-driven, and I found this utterly captivating, although very sad.

Every time I read a Lynn Coady book I wonder how I could have forgotten for a minute how wonderful it is to be reading a Lynn Coady book. We did Mean Boy in book club and it was the first Canadian Literature book I had read in so long that wasn't Gothic and incesty, and it felt like a moment of revitalization. I know I've read this but I don't know if I own it - if I do I'll give it away.

I had amassed a large collection of children's books before I ever had children, and I still pick up one or two every now and then. Clementine is an alias I often use on websites where I don't use my real name, and 'Mungo' struck me as amusing and odd - I thought maybe the author would be Australian (why? unsure), but she's from the Southern United States. I like children's books that are a little weird (the class I read to on Thursday is appealingly on the same page, which is gratifying), and this fits the bill.

And the most exciting find of all:

It is tiny and perfect and I love Frida Kahlo, one of the bad-assest badasses of all time.

It is whimsically illustrated but also surprisingly packed with information

Yesterday I finished a book outside and remembered I was halfway through a book I had gotten from the library as an ebook that had then expired, and I needed it immediately so I bought the Kindle version, and the life got busy and I wanted to savour it, so I let it be for the time. I started reading it again and was as enchanted as before, but I kind of wished I had a paper copy to read outside.

Then I thought, wait - didn't I order a paper copy, because Indigo had that big sale? 

Then I looked all over and couldn't find it.

Then I went on the Indigo website and found it still in my cart, so I thought I hadn't clicked submit, and was about to.

Then I checked my order history and saw that I HAD ordered it, so not sure why it was still in my cart.

Then I looked some more and finally found it.

Don't judge a book by its cover and all, but I fucking love this cover

And finally.... I started getting offers of review copies pretty soon after I started this blog. Early on, I accepted most of the offers because free books is a thrilling thing. This was largely a mistake. There was an overwhelming amount of dross. Drivel. Dreck, even. The first time a publisher hounded me for a review I was like "I'm happy to review it, but the review will be 'this sucked', and they were like, okay, don't rush." For a while I had a great contact at a Canadian publisher and she would just tell me to look at the catalogue and say what I wanted, but she moved on. So I mostly started skimming the pitch emails and not answering them.

But today, friends, today it is all worth it:

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Random Day-Off Thoughts

 I don't usually work Tuesdays, but this is my first one off in a while because I was covering for my lovely colleague to go to Paris for family weddings for a few weeks. I'm headed back to Hamilton this weekend, so I was doing errands and going to the chiropractor and just generally getting my ducks in a row (ducks in a row is kind of like balls in the air, in that two balls is one too many for me and two ducks is probably one more than I ever actually have in a row). These are some thoughts that I thought.

1. A few days ago I was having a day where I was going around the house doing annoying little things I had been noticing needed to be done but kept getting missed. Taking Matt's Christmas socks and underwear from Eve out of the package and washing them and putting them in the drawer, moving stuff that had been sitting on the dining room table for weeks, ironing a couple of things. I was tidying the powder room and the toothpaste tube cap had been caked with toothpaste for weeks and bothering me, and I kept trying to wipe it off and making no headway, so I boiled the kettle, threw the cap in a cup and boiled it. It came clean and I was bizarrely happy. This morning I went to brush my teeth and the cap flew off and rolled behind the toilet, so I threw it in a cup and poured boiling water over it again.

I used to think I might work in the foreign service or live out of a van for a while. I am now a person who has boiled a toothpaste cap more than once.

2. How does one get into the anatomical chart business?

3. I know this might not seem like a problem to most people, but the placement of two structures with very similar-looking slots so near to each other might have the capacity to prove confusing to people low on sleep, new mothers maybe, or, let's say, hypothetically, people in perimenopause dealing with a certain level of brain fog, precipitating an unfortunate incident.

4. When I was putting the garbage cans out last night I was trying to decide which way would be the easiest for the sanitation workers. The handle of the green bin should be facing them so they can grab it, right? Also, I think it has less to do with assigned gender roles and more with me being a germaphobic wimp, but I really hate when Matt is away on garbage day.

5. If you're ordering Indian food for 14 people, how much butter chicken do you need to make sure everyone's covered?

6. Did you know flour could go bad? The answer from people I've asked tends to go two ways: "No", or "Yes, found that out the hard way." I found out the hard way.

7. I then emptied out my flour container. I had not given much thought to the state of the container until Matt, after making bread a few months ago, said "maybe we can get a new flour container?" I've had it as long as I can remember, which means it is frightfully old, which would be one thing if it was still serviceable, but...

Usually I would be all over the opportunity to buy a pretty new kitchen container, but I am finding myself unable to find anything suitable or stuck in infinite deferral, depending on the day. What do you keep your flour in? 

8. I went to a birthday party on the weekend where there was a pinata filled with chocolate and also miniature booze bottles. Because it wasn't Christmas, the selection had been limited, so there was a lot of Fireball Whiskey. I threw three bottles in my purse to put in the stuff I'm taking to Eve in Hamilton this weekend. Given what you know of my memory, and the fact that the bottles are very small, I'm sure you can probably guess what happened when I got to work yesterday and opened my purse to get my reading glasses out. Having been lucky enough not to get fired, one would think that I would have come home and immediately removed the Fireball bottles from my purse, and not had another (well, the same) rude surprise when I opened my purse to pay at the chiropractor today. One would, unfortunately, be wrong.

9. I put out two oranges to eat after my yogurt while I was eating my yogurt this morning, then forgot to eat them. I am now going to eat the oranges. Tomorrow I will be back at work and the random thoughts will be somewhat safer from me. 

Time-Share Dog Addendum

 I realized after I posted that I had completely forgotten two other very important Other Lucy Homes, one because it's so familiar and one because since Eve's BFF Marianna had the nerve to get into a really great drama school in B.C. has become infrequent.

I assume I've mentioned that Lucy's sister from the previous litter lives next door, and is in fact that reason we got Lucy. We used to take them out to play in the front yard a few times a week, but we had a fence in the back yard. Eventually the fence got really broken down, and at some point a board in the side separating Paul and Yvonne's yard from ours fell over completely. The dogs were thrilled - instant doggie door! We were fine with it - Paul and Yvonne are awesome neighbours (awesome like have a glass of wine and end up killing four bottles in the backyard, forget my shoes on their front step at 4 a.m., shovel each other's driveway awesome) and now the dogs could frolic at will.

Then the turbo-charged windstorm came through and knocked down another part of fence, and we decided we couldn't keep ignoring the embarrassing state of it, so we (and by "we" I mean backyard neighbour guy, Matt and Paul) replaced most of it - there's still one section of the back that is missing entirely, filled in by the fence built by the across-the-back-yard-to-the-left neighbours. It doesn't match, and it reveals that we are still, at heart, disordered and messy people, but it keeps things in and out.

Except Riley. Paul and Matt left a door for them because there was no going back.

They come and call on each other, and woe betide the person who tries to ignore the call.

Lucy finagles her way inside Paul and Yvonne's house constantly, even when we're in lockdown.

When we have people over, sometimes we open the sliding door without thinking, and then someone yelps "there's another dog!"

Yvonne dog-sat Lucy when we were going on our yearly camping trip and my parents were unavailable, even though we just missed scheduling her operation before her first heat, and that was a lot to deal with. The first time we had Riley overnight the dogs were very young and we couldn't figure out how to get them to go to sleep because they wouldn't stop playing, but things have calmed down since then.

When we go over for parties, Lucy comes, and the dogs run around and play and beg for snacks all night and are completely exhausted afterwards. 

(The chocolate lab is Riley's older brother Jersey and he is a sweetheart, even though he has a disturbing habit of coming up behind you in the summer when you're sitting down and ramming his cold wet nose into your armpit.

And then there's Di, Marianna's mom - Marianna, best friend since JK Day One.

 

There are some people Lucy just flat-out adores - like her eyes turn into hearts when she's looking at them. Who can blame her, I mean, Di is gorgeous and warm and sweet and generous and literally took my daughter to Greece for three weeks, my eyes kind of turn into hearts when I look at her too.

When Lucy and Riley hang out, Riley harasses Lucy. When Lucy and Piper (Marianna's dog) hang out, Lucy harasses Piper. I guess it's an older dog thing. Di retaliated by getting them matching hideous outfits.

So this one time last summer we're all over lounging on the giant living room couch, and Lucy is at the extreme other end of it from Di, sleeping. She suddenly gets up and clumsily navigates over every single person and cushion to get to Di for some loving.

 

And then Di (a dental hygenist) decides to get her tooth scraper thing and attend to Lucy's teeth, and LUCY LETS HER. 

"I wanted cuddles, not curettage!"

Eve will bring Lucy over for a sleepover, and she plays with Piper for a bit and ends up sleeping with Di. It's adorable. 



There. I think I've covered all of the people we co-parent Lucy with, but my memory is so bad these days that who really knows? 

Can I Offer You a Time Share in a ....

 I had a couple of Very Bad Days followed by a Quite Good One, but in order to fully describe the good one I have to write this post about the next thing I'm a little embarrassed about (getting less so) first.

So we have a dog. More to the point these days, I have a dog. She's always been principally my dog, even though we got her as a birthday present for Eve and she came home on Eve's 12th birthday and Eve participated fully and enthusiastically in her care as much as she was able. But now Eve is not here. She kind of SHOULD be here, except she's doing a stupid Chemistry and Biology course in term one of summer school so she's in stupid Hamilton for a few more stupid weeks. Angus is likewise Not Here, and my husband, Matt? Well, a whole bunch of the time he's remarkably NOT HERE right now. Well, right NOW he's here, which thank goodness because it's garbage night, but lately he's been in Tokyo and Singapore and Vietnam and California and Friday he's leaving for Korea.

This adds up to a whole bunch of me being home alone with a dog. I love the dog, she's a really nice dog, I love reading with her snuggled up to me and walking with her and sleeping with her. But she is my dog not just in that she considers me the alpha, but in that she is quite needy and anxious. When we're both home, she'll sleep until six. When Matt is away, she frequently gets me up at four. Also, I am an introvert, so sometimes I look forward to being alone for a few days, but then I am never completely alone. 

This was fine, I was managing, we were hanging, things were fine. Then my friend Sonia (HI SONIA) asked if maybe she could take Lucy for a play date because her 8 year old daughter Avani loves dogs but her husband and other daughter aren't huge dog fans, and they were going to be away that day. So they took her for a Sunday afternoon and it was perfect - Sonia and Avani had a blast, Lucy had a blast, and I had some blissful completely alone time.

At some point I mentioned this at bar night, and Collette, whose family doesn't have a dog anymore and who also loves Lucy, volunteered that she would also be in for some Lucy time (I'm paraphrasing - I think more accurately the quote was "what the fuck, when do I get Lucy, I loved her first, she's mine, drop her off at six.")

I had to get comfortable with having someone else have Lucy while I wasn't away or at work. This seemed sort of like cheating? She's a tiny adorable animal who adores me, what was my problem? 

This kind of thinking is super dumb. Honestly, who cares if it's ...wait, it's not cheating, because there are no rules. Who cares what my problem is? I have so many widely varied and many-hued problems. Collette has a house of five people - often seven, including girlfriends - who all love dogs. Avani gives Lucy the exuberant, effusive eight-year-old attention she hasn't had in recent years on account of Eve not being eight years old anymore. Sometimes Sonia takes her to work at the seniors center, and then she's kind of a therapy dog. Then she comes home and is happy as heck to sleep on the couch while I read or amble around the park. She gets tons of attentions and some people who want a dog not full time get a dog part time. It's a situation full of massive win. 

The aforementioned husband and daughter who don't love dogs are slowly being won over by Lucy's winning personality. It's pretty fun rocking up to someone's door with her carrier and saying "someone order a dog?" 

So yes, counting when she goes to my parents' house a couple of days a week while I work, Lucy has four homes now - her main one and three satellite sites. Sometimes she goes to Collette's when we're all away. Sometimes she goes to Sonia's when I have work and book club and don't want to leave her twice in one day. And sometimes someone takes her when I'm at home and being entirely shiftless and lazy, and then I don't have to get up at four to let her out or worry about her if I want to run multiple errands, or do yoga with her sniffing my face anxiously or sticking her tongue in my ear when I'm in downward dog. 

And that's awesome.

NICOLE! I am SHOOK

 So last night I was trying to sleep again and finding it stupidly difficult again, and picked up my phone out of frustration and went on to one of my message groups and several other people were on complaining about not being able to sleep. What the heck is going on? I took a sleeping pill even (over the counter, but still, it usually knocks me out). I did eventually fall asleep for a few hours, which is better than the night before, but I laid down feeling sleepy and comfortable and within ten minutes I was twitchy, prickly and thrashing around trying to find a good position and finding all the positions terrible.

Eve Facetimed me last night from her living room, and later coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel, just to revel in the newfound freedom of living in an empty house - a couple of her housemates live nearby and will be in and out throughout the summer, but for now she's enjoying having the fridge all to herself and being able to clean her bathroom and have nobody else use it. 

So Wednesday is usually my least taxing work day - the fewest classes, the fewest books to put away, time to tidy and organize. HOWEVER, there was an art gallery thing happening at the school in the evening  and as part of the Education Week activities, there was a Scholastic Book Fair happening starting at four.

The other librarian asked if it was okay if classes came in for viewing and filling out wish lists during my work time. And obviously I said yes because what else was I going to do? But it's been a few years since a Book Fair could happen the way it used to, and I had sort of forgotten that having kids to come in for a viewing period was going to, well, suck.

First of all, it's a big school, and because the book fair proper is happening tomorrow and Friday during the school day, I had double classes for most of the day. And while during the actual book fair there would be a few volunteers circulating and I would usually be manning the cash register, at this point it was only me, the teacher and a bunch of jacked-up kids running around with sharpened pencils. Also, the younger grades have never seen a Scholastic Book Fair, and explaining how everything works was, well, a touch challenging.

Nicole and I have both written numerous posts about the book fair, including the numerous times we have to answer the same questions. No, you can't eat the cupcake eraser. Yes, the sticker price is the actual price. Yes, you can buy the UV spy pen but it's probably a piece of crap that will work for two days at most and is a giant waste of money. And the posters? The posters are five dollars each.

THIS book fair, for something wild and crazy, is a 'buy one get one' deal. Yes, this means you buy one thing, you get a second thing of equal or lesser value for free. This is unprecedented in all my many many years of helping at and running book fairs, and it's really cool. You know what else it is? Surprisingly difficult to explain to six-to-12-year olds.

"Wait, so.... you buy one thing and you get a thing free?" yes

"If you get a poster you get another poster free?" yes

"Where are the free books?" They are whatever second book you buy.

"What if it's a poster and a book?" The cheaper thing is still free.

"What if it's a book and an eraser?" The. Cheaper. Thing. Is. Still. Free.

For the first couple of periods, I was extremely tense - I guess the kids weren't the only ones who had lost their muscle memory for the book fair. It was so loud. There were so many children. They weren't supposed to put their wish lists on top of the books to write. Many of them still did. If I asked them not to, many of them looked unrepentant when I restated the rule, but one little boy gasped and said "Oh! Sorry. Just a little bit of an accident". Him I liked. I caught one little girl ripping open a flap on a book when I had SPECIFICALLY said no opening any of the flaps or compartments on the books. I was very angry for a second, until I remembered that six-year-olds are largely strangers to impulse control and, let's be honest, bringing them in for a viewing period was maybe not the brightest move.

After that, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that really, the worst that could happen was not very bad. A little bit of damage, which is the cost of doing this business. A few misplaced books that I would pick up and wander around like an idiot with, unable to find their pile even though the entire display was not that big. Where ARE you, eight other Bad Guys books? I swear to the heavens I JUST saw the Third Grade Mermaid and the Narwhal, where did they GO? And where the heck are the....OMG, there's a Fly GIRL in this Fly Guy book?

And then things were better, although still very loud, and very hot, and very not-chill. There was a sixth-grade girl in the last class that was really fun to talk about books with and she said Goodbye and Thank-you when they left. There was a funny teacher who said "NEXT year I might have the most well-behaved class in the school" when his class wouldn't line up. 

The only real traumatic thunderbolt came early on, and I'm still not sure I believe it. Like I said, one of the major touchstones of the Scholastic Book Fair has always been that, yesterday, today and tomorrow and from time immemorial, the posters are five dollars each. But now, NOW...

Poster-flation!

Tuesday's Child is All Hopped Up on Caffeine

I'm filling in a few days in the next few weeks for my partner librarian at my Monday school who is overseas for two family weddings. I was totally cool with this even though it meant a long day on Tuesday which is usually my day off. I wore a super comfortable t-shirt dress and my running shoes. I packed two little fans instead of one. I never drink pop at school but I put in a Diet Pepsi for an afternoon boost. I went to bed early to read and get a good night's sleep. I didn't take anything because Monday was my early day and I thought I'd be tired enough.

Did I then have the absolute wretchedest, brokenest, vexingest, stupidest, coughingest, hot-flashingest sleep (such as it was) EVER? Why yes, yes I did. For my afternoon boost I should have packed COCAINE.

The day was actually totally fine and fun and satisfying. I had a ton of classes so it went by fast, they were all kind of grooving on the novelty of having a different librarian, three girls said they loved my hair and one said she liked my dress. One girl who had forgotten her books offered to organize returned books on the carts for me. I said sure and thanked her, and she seemed so capable and confident I assumed they'd all be perfectly sorted, and then when I looked, they were all very carefully placed, but half of them were facing page out instead of spine and their placement bore no relation to the labels on the cart shelves. I wasn't upset at all, just amused at her self assuredness. 

I saw quite a few students - and some teachers - that I used to see in the library way back pre-Covid, all so much bigger now (the students, not the teachers) and some of them actually remembered me, which was very cool. 

Oh, about the pill set-up. First of all, I neglected to mention one of my very favourite parts of the embarrassingness of my system. It's that pills frequently get dropped on the floor, and then either I or my cleaning lady find them and put them on top of the armoire or in the little pill pocket of this bin (that's what it's for, right?). Then I use the very scientific method of putting it beside one of all my other meds to figure out what it is, if it's blank, like most of them are just to keep things exciting. 

BUT, I was hoping that finally blogging about the whole hilarious mess would prompt me to make some changes and it DID, which is shocking now that I think about it. My friend Jody (HI JODY) came over that night to watch Dead to Me but first she stood over me until I bought pill organizers because she's a good friend. They won't be here for a couple of weeks, so I cleaned out the CDs, straightened up the books (there's only so much I can do, there are too many books) and filled my utilitarian travel pill organizer, and immediately felt better about the whole thing. 

Last night while I was in bed reading and being blissfully unaware of the idiotic shit-show that the night would become, my ipad served up one of those little picture slideshows it likes to generate, mostly for purposes of reducing me to a sobbing mess. Look what it presented me with, mere hours after my daughter was parted from her soulmates: (Will it work? I suck at technology. I need my assertive fifth-grade queen to help, or at least pretend do)

I texted it to everyone with the caption "fucks sake, Ipad, read the room". I say if it's going to pull this bullshit, it might as well literally play Landslide over it and also Amazon me some tissues and vodka at the same time. 

Going upstairs to drug myself (from my scrupulously organized array of medications) to sleep. Because tomorrow is a Scholastic Book Fair viewing day and I have to be at the top of my game. 

I Will Not Have Time to Finish This Post

I did not, as it happens, but I wanted you all to know that I DID start it.

It was a bit of a nutty week with a lot of balls in the air (which, to be clear, for me means more than one or two balls in the air). Work on Monday, which was fine. I was sleepy, but the day still went really fast, which is counter-intuitive. Tuesday I already can't remember what happened. Wednesday I drove to the car dealership with my dad following me, drove him home and borrowed his car, and went home, got ready for work, went to work, came home, picked up my dad to go back to pick up the car, went home, went to book club, came home - that is a LOT OF TIMES to go out and come home.

Thursday I went to work and then drove a couple of hours to Kingston and stopped for dinner with Matt's brother's family who live a few provinces away but are closer by on sabbatical for a few months - we had a really fun day with them in a small town halfway between us a couple of weeks ago, and I'm trying to see them as much as possible why they're here.

After dinner I drove a couple more hours to Oshawa, just this side of Toronto to spend the night so I could drive into Hamilton (the other side of Toronto, the busiest traffic part that I didn't want to tackle at night after working and driving) to grab Eve. She only had a weekend between her last exam and her summer courses, and I was determined to give her a couple of days in her bed and with her friends so it didn't just feel like winter term never ended. 

I got to her house and most of her roommates were hanging around waiting to say goodbye to her. They weren't going to wake up the one who was asleep, but she got up and I got my first picture of all of them, although there was a lot of "I just got up!" and "I haven't showered yet" and "I'm still wearing my retainer", but look at them all, they're all so awesome and I love them. I promised I wouldn't put the photo on Facebook, but this isn't Facebook.

Road tripping

Her last exam was actually Friday night, but she could do it online. We got home, I warmed her up some dinner,
Oh wait, we got home, Lucy had to say hi to her



THEN I warmed her up some dinner, and she retreated to her room to do the exam - Social and Political Thought, taught by a professor I had for Critical Theory thirty years ago. He's quite the character, and quite the thinker and QUITE the talker (it was a three-hour course every Wednesday for her, which was entirely taken up by him talking. Occasionally they missed a class and he would try to make it up the night of the next course, which meant SIX HOURS of talking.) I think he's very smart, and he's mellowed a bit, and over all Eve liked him and found a lot of the course material interesting, but she didn't love all the writing and was looking forward to having the exam done. 

When she came out of her room, Matt said "now both women in my life have survived Dr. Clarke. Once the first one was done I wasn't really thinking, great, let's make a kid to do this all over again, but here we are.". It was 9:30 a.m. after a full day of travel and exam-ing for her and driving and, I don't know, sitting in a chair waiting for her to be done for me, and we still had to go directly to her BFF's house.



...and then immediately leave to pick up other BFF who is really smart but still forgot to ask for a ride one of the eighteen times Eve talked to him that day



Then sangria



And mini eggs 



Long long into the night

Saturday I was worse than useless. I slept in but still felt like I was half asleep when I got up. It's been pouring rain for days here, which means my hair gives big Monica from Friends and her Barbados hair, the towels perpetually feel damp, and I can't do anything without falling asleep.

It's big

Eve went back to Marianna's and the three of them spent about ten hours in Marianna's bed playing Stardew Valley (don't ask me, I don't know). I read six pages of my book and then started wandering around complaining that I couldn't sleep in and then have a nap after two hours and Matt said "actually..." so I had a nap. Then I watched some Law and Order and I think maybe unloaded the dishwasher.

Sunday we went to my mom and dad's. Eve delivered a letter from her housemates thanking my mom for the box loads of baking delivered at various points throughout the year, which began "Dear Mrs. Evie's Grandma"



As a result, we might have to rent a transport truck for the resultant baking next year.

Then we went to the Quickie for train snacks for Monday.



She picked up a bag of mini Starburst and I noted the "unwrapped" label. She said "don't worry, I'm a big fan of the wrapped" and I said "what?" and she said "I thought you were making a condom joke" and I said "I was, but I didn't think you'd get it, plus I kind of forgot in the intervening two and a half seconds". 

Then back to Marianna's. For games


 
and vibing



and more mini eggs (say what you want, the dude pours mini eggs like a boss)



I went home around ten because I had stupid work in the morning, and Eve stayed late to maximize her friend time. 

She took the train back this morning while I was at work, and we were all anxious about it because she had been assigned a rear-facing seat and she has enough motion sickness problems on a forward-facing one. My Monday school library is a freaking bunker that lets no signal in, and I really wanted to know how things turned out. I couldn't get a text out, but she ended up getting her seat switched and it all went well - it was her first time going back on her own, and she got off in Toronto and managed to find a bus to Hamilton.

Three weird, glorious days where I got to treat my twenty-year-old like a child because this year she gets a Slay Plus in Adulting. Totally worth driving ten hours in two days with my hair looking super dumb for most of it.