Camping Report

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 Angus from camping that year, but this is from the same summer, and these are also camping kids:

After a couple of years doing this, our friends pointed out that I was going through a lot of the pain in the butt part of camping anyway, and then having to leave the campfire and drive somewhere to go to sleep, so I should consider just, you know, camping. I pushed back a little, and then decided what the hell, I have kids now, comfort and dignity are always negotiable. We bought a tent, and some air mattresses, and got up at 6:50 a.m. to participate in the Hunger Games that is trying to book a site five months ahead of your preferred date. It was ON.

Then Angus's baseball team made it to the Little League World Series. Which takes place right when camping happens (early August). Like, rude, am I right?

So we went to Williamsport, Pennsylvania instead, and went camping for real the next year, which was nine years ago. 

Hiking the dunes, almost getting lost in the dunes and being found dead in the dunes many years hence

That last picture was for my sister, who needed photographic evidence of me in an actual tent. 

Let's Cook Our Weiners

 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're all together, let's cook our weiners."

(We started this when we were in our late thirties. I'm 53. Maybe next year we'll just try LSD)

The comments on my post about Eve passing her driving test were awesome - Suzanne, I LITERALLY used that "what do you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his medical class" adage at least a dozen times throughout this process. She is not the least bit perturbed about the less-than-glowing report - everything that went wrong was due to being nervous about the test, not nervous about driving. Now she can drive like your average fully-licensed person who makes stupid mistakes on the regular. 

ccr in MA, we have the same thing with our weather network, with ingredients for tacos and we're having tacos NOW!, but this is why I was confused about how we had a watch and a warning at the same time. So many tacos flying around! Lettuce and salsa everywhere! 

Engie - what. WHAT. No. Driving. Test. If we had found that out earlier, Eve might be mid-immigration, so I guess it's good that we didn't?

Swistle, it was exceedingly rash of me to say Eve and I had a mini-crash after her driving test without specifying it was a crash of the existential sort. In point of fact, Eve is rather of the opinion that passing the test means she never has to drive again (she did drive Jackson home last night).

Angus is driving back to Ithaca tomorrow to move into his new apartment before heading to Rochester for the wedding (the friend is a couple years older than him, at least, but I agree, HOW ARE WE AT THIS POINT). We are awash in boxes and coolers and bags, and will have to move carefully to make sure we don't end up at Sandbanks with a bunch of athletic wear and texbooks and Angus doesn't end up in Ithaca with a tent and sleeping bags. 

Scheduled camping posts about years past to begin tomorrow. Will report on this year's experience next week. Happy beginning of August, everyone. Please enjoy this picture of my parents, and Eve about to clobber Angus.

Baby You Can Drive My Car 2.0

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 rest of the test wondering if she'd already automatically failed. Also, the ramp to the highway (because the second test involves highway driving) was very short, so she didn't get up to speed before merging, which she always has with me, because the ramp speed was 30 and she was afraid of speeding.

One mistake she felt sort of cruelly deceived about, because everything online said do not, under any circumstances, try to rush through a yellow light, because the test considers a yellow a red. So she stopped a little more abruptly than she would normally, and the tester told her she couldn't do that because she'd get rear-ended, and the yellow does NOT mean stop, it just means caution. She said it didn't really seem appropriate to say "my dude, it's just because I'm driving MUCH DIFFERENTLY for the test than I do in real life. Do you think I make a full and complete stop at a stop sign every time too??" 

So anyway, she passed. And in one of the Reddit posts, she saw someone say "I"m doing my G test in Brockville (where she did it) - any tips?", obviously meaning about the test, but the only response was "...go to Don's fish and chips after?"

So we did. 

The t-shirt she stole from me is nearly forty years old, and she calls it "wearing my ladies", which she did for moral support, and is half-convinced that she passed because "the dude couldn't fail my ladies". It is called "Many Strong and Beautiful Women" and Eve and her friend looked it up online and found that the same shirt goes for like a hundred bucks now. 

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Eve and I have both had a mini-crash after the anxious build-up to the test and the exhilarating aftermath. I have been doing really well at getting out of bed and getting some stuff done before sitting down to read, because I have figured out that it feels so much better that way, even if I think I just want a relaxing day - I've passed this on to Eve and she agreed. Yesterday I just couldn't muster the energy, so I read most of the day, which was lovely up to a point and then suddenly I remembered why it's a bad idea. I was about to do some yoga and start some camping prep and then we had another tornado warning - not even kidding. And then it was over, and then we had ANOTHER another tornado warning, plus a severe thunderstorm watch and a severe thunderstorm warning - at least one of those seems superfluous, but I'm not a meteorologist.

So I wandered around worrying and picking up stuff and putting it down and being sad again that Angus isn't coming camping this year (he has a friend's wedding at the same time - a FRIEND'S WEDDING), and then it rolled through without anything major happened (although some friends got some gnarly hail in the earlier rain).

I wrote a camping report after last year and never managed to post it. I am going to schedule it to post while we're camping, with the understanding that it's not in any kind of triumphant finished form and the pictures will probably be random and out of order. Usually I hope that it cools down at night enough to sleep. This year I guess I should hope there are no tornadoes.

Drugs and Driving (Not While On Drugs) and Dolls (Because Barbie Doesn't Start with D)

 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 can't figure out the best way to do it - Eve did not buy the creepy doll dress, I thought it looked adorable on her but she said she'd only really use it as a costume. 

Was there anything else? Oh, on D thinking I was pregnant for a second - AAAAAAHHHHHHH, the hilarity and horror. I would be less aghast at the prospect of a grandchild at this point than another child, and I'm just going to skip ahead to avoid feeling the feelings I probably should feel about THAT realization.

Sort of ironically, none of my close friends did any drugs - the only reason I ended up trying anything as a teenager was because of my parents' close friends' daughter who I was sort of forced to hang out with when my parents went to their house. Her crowd was way more into drugs than mine, and it was going out with her that led to my first marijuana experience and ... hold on.... okay, hot knives is also marijuana, I thought it was hash, for some reason. What the heck is hash then, and have I tried it? Oh, hash is just pot in another form, and it probably was hash between the hot knives. Anyway. 

I don't think I actually did any drugs in university, or again until after I'd had my kids and was on a girls' weekend. And then when it was nearly legal and then legal I started trying stuff, and have honestly not found a sweet spot, other than the weed pen I possibly-placebo myself with. 

For years, my friend Collette's plan when she got old was heroin and Virtual Reality, until she found out that heroin makes you itchy, and Collette breaks out in a full-body rash if poison ivy is within half a kilometer of her, so now she needs an alternate plan, or an alternate drug for her plan. 

I can't think of a graceful segue, so a propos of nothing I've mentioned so far, Eve's final driving test in the graduated licensing program we have here in Ontario is tomorrow and she is extremely nervous, not about the driving so much as about the being tested. She's a good driver - way better than any of us thought she would be based on how slow she went in a go-kart and in the golf cart at my mother-in-law's summer house. She's already done one driving test (for the G2, which follows the G1 but then goes to the G, which makes zero sense to me and I can never keep it straight). We were out parallel parking yesterday and she moaned indignantly "HOW can they make me drive on the highway and parallel park ON THE SAME DAY? Those are two completely different skill sets!" I promise I will come back and be honest about whether she passed or not - one of the suggestions we saw about how to be less nervous for the test was "keep it a secret" but, well, we are bad secret-keepers, so agony or ecstasy shall be trumpeted equally.

Angus is only home for one more week, so I am trying to maximize my time with him. Last night we watched Dune, and today when I got home from driving with Eve he was getting ready to walk to Starbucks so I went with him and we had a really great talk about his thesis and his professors and his past few years away. The three of us went to see Mission Impossible (part one, wtf) last week and Wednesday we're going to have lunch on a patio, which will be a celebration or a consolation meal, I guess.

And yesterday Eve and I went with Jody (HI JODY) and Jackson (HI JACKSON) to The Barbie Movie! Eve said we had to wear pink. So we did. 

She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie

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 for more than one shift under different names, and there was apparently a lot of coke-snorting going on in the bathrooms (see? more energy for work!)

Last summer when Zarah and Sophie came, Zarah brought her pot stash and we sat out in the backyard with the girls - Sophie hadn't ever smoked, Eve had a few times. We had my weed pen and Zarah rolled a joint and we lit the pretty citronella candle Zarah brought me and it was a beautiful day. Sophie never managed to get high (I didn't either the first time), Zarah was happy, Eve got mellow, and I can never tell until I'm tripping balls, but it was fun. We all hit the weed pen really hard, so I was surprised that it still hadn't run out just before they got here this year (I don't use it all that often, obviously).

The day we went downtown was hot and humid and we walked a lot. By the time we went to check out the new store in the Rideau Center we were all tired and sweaty and our feet hurt (or maybe that's just me). One by one we all left the store to go sit on the benches where the husbands wait (this is an enormous generalization that Eve made, but it amused me). Zarah came out after she paid and sat down with us and we tried to decide if we should do more stuff, and I said not unless we could get a drink and some cocaine first. We came home instead.

At the Pitbull show, he would occasionally go backstage and leave the DJ to fill in the space. Eve said he either had to take a knee every time he did a few dance steps instead of just rapping and slapping his dancers' asses, or possibly he was doing cocaine. But then he came out and gave a mini-lecture about drugs, so maybe he was just re-hydrating, or maybe he's a massive hypocrite, who can say.

Before Pitbull we were going to meet our friends at the restaurant, and Sophie said she was having a bit of anxiety about going downtown and then going to the show, and I was too, to I took out the weed pen and Sophie and Eve and I took a couple of puffs - it's half CBD so it was just for a very mild, possibly placebo-ish, anti-anxiety effect. The next night after they left, I sucked on it before bed and only one little light strip blinked, meaning it was empty.

It was kind of a nice full-circle moment. 

In conclusion, stay in school kids, say no to drugs say yes to life, don't fry your brain over-easy, just say cocaine. I mean no. 

Summertime Visit Continued OR WHAT THE HECK, SUZANNE

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 run around the store showing it, along with reading all the sweary stickers at full volume.

Eve grabbed this dress and said "ooh cool, this will give me a creepy doll vibe"

Eve and I bought Crocs flip-flops for camping - my feet were absolutely shredded by the end of last time, and Eve couldn't find traditional crocs in the right size, and we figured out we could buy the same size flip-flops and were enchanted by the ridiculous twinning possibilities. 

We had lunch on a patio and also went to the paper place we love - Eve was on the hunt for the perfect journal, which she still wasn't able to find, but it's a fun place to wander around anyway, even if I did manage to resist the Frida Kahlo wrapping paper book Zarah waved seductively in front of me.

Friday we went for a walk and then went to meet friends for dinner before Pitbull. This led to my first time taking Ottawa transit in many, many years, due to getting a car and being too much of a zero-sense-of-direction-having wuss to take transit usually. We drove down to our parking lot and parked, then walked to the LRT station halfway down the hill we walk down to to get to Lebreton Flats, where Bluesfest happens.

It was surprisingly easy and efficient (surprising because Ottawa transit is notoriously um, not great). 

I made them pose like this for my friends who make fun of me for being afraid of public transit (look, I lived in Toronto, I took the subway daily and hardly ever got lost, I've just lost the habit).

Our friends made the reservation and we coincidentally ended up at the same place I had had lunch with my friend Janis the week before on our yearly market date.

I like it because the food is good, but also it's so pretty you feel fancy even if you just have the tacos.

I mean look, I took this photo of Sophie with her mocktail and it looks like it should be in a resort brochure.

Then we got back on the LRT. We accidentally sat in the 'inclusive seating', but the car was empty so we didn't have to move, and spent some time trying to figure out what all the icons for people who should be given preference meant.

The blind guy with the dog and the woman with the cane were easy enough, but the second one looked to me like someone with two heads. I mean, yeah, I would give the dude preferential seating because clearly he's got some stuff going on. Zarah stood up and looked more closely and figured out that it was someone carrying a baby in a backpack. Fair enough, but I think the illustration could use some work.

It was Saturday and Bluesfest was sold out for Pitbull, and the moment we walked in the gates I was a bit tense because oh, the humanity. The mostly young, mostly drunk, very excited and boisterous humanity. We managed to find a place to put our chairs and then Zarah and Sophie and I went to the bathroom and oh lord, that was an adventure all on its own (a young girl did say she really liked my dress, so there was that). Eve was pretty tense by the time I got back, but then the show started and even though the lawn chair section was more crowded than usual there was plenty of breathing room, and we made friends with the people beside us it was a really fun show.

And the next day Zarah and Sophie went home, and Eve and I did some non-traumatizing highway driving and took Lucy for a walk and then Eve had a friend over to watch Too Hot to Handle (if nothing else does, this should convince you that I don't alter facts to make my family look better on this blog), and I accidentally took a three-hour nap, got up for two hours and fell asleep again. In other words, it was a really great week. 

Summertime and the Bloggin' is Breezy

 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 Museum


(Look how YOUNG we are)

along with walking, cooking, playing in the sandbox, putting on plays, and going to bookstores. 

This was after a particularly horrendous play, in which many people got shot, possibly (and justifiably) for overacting

 At some point the kids confessed that they could take a break on the museums,so we pivoted to getting ice cream every day, which worked well for everyone, along with hiking, baking, go-karting, mini-golf, pedicures and going to bookstores.













Now they're practically all lactose intolerant, so a few years back we switched to Bluesfest, after I started going again and taking Eve and we both realized we loved it, despite hating crowds and loud noises and outdoor bathrooms. Oh wait, we ate a ton of grilled cheese sandwiches the first few years, so they must not all have been lactose intolerant yet. Anyway. Also a lot of eating, going downtown for gelato/sorbet, and going to bookstores.













So Alex hasn't been able to come the last couple of years because of school or work, and Sophie is in university in BC now and might not come home next summer, so last week was bittersweet but still awesome.

I am not the greatest with normal houseguests, but these houseguests don't care if I stay up late and sleep late, and they unload my dishwasher and walk my dog while I'm still sleeping, showering or wandering around in a daze, and we have a blast even if we're just grocery shopping or sitting around the kitchen table, and it's always the best, loudest, funniest, talkingest week.

So Zarah and Sophie got here Wednesday, and were going to see the Foo Fighters at Bluesfest that night as part of their pick-3 package. Eve and I weren't going to go because we had seen the Foo Fighters at Bluesfest a few years ago and it's always sold out and very crowded, which pushes our comfort level. I knew, thought that once Zarah and Sophie were here there was a good chance we would decide to go just to hang out with them, and we did. Zarah drove so I didn't have driving anxiety, and we got practically the last spot in my special parking lot (see last post), and had a really good time.



 It helps that we mostly do what Eve calls 'old people Bluesfest' now - take lawn chairs and don't bother going in the smushy crowd closest to the stage. There are a few bands I would still do this for, but none of them were here this year.

Sophie and Eve were prepared to guard our little patch



But we sat in roughly the same area every night and the crowd was super friendly and fun.





Thursday we were doing coffee and bookstore before going to Bluesfest that night. Now, some weather background: we have had two tornados in the past five or so years that knocked out our power for three days (first one) and knocked down our fence (second one). For a while after that I was on extreme edge every time there was a tornado watch, to the point where Matt was slightly exasperated, and nothing ever happened. One might say that I then overcorrected.



Our phones did broadcast an emergency alert while we were in the Starbucks drive-through, but it only said to take cover if threatening weather approached, and nothing looked that threatening, and we weren't the only car out, so we blithely drove to Indigo and wandered around in a book-happy stupor. Then we headed over to the library because I had a book to return and a hold to pick up. As we got near the library we started to see trees blown down and garbage scattered everywhere and started to think that maybe we had chosen poorly. Eve said "dad just asked if we have power. Do I tell him we're not home?" (to be clear, I am not making light of the fact that some people sustained house damage and lost power, just the fact that we were so mind-bogglingly oblivious).

We got home and the phone alerts went off AGAIN, and we watched some scary videos of funnel clouds very nearby and looked around at each other sheepishly, and then got ready and went downtown (minus Eve, who wasn't feeling up to it) and watched Mumford and Sons in cloudless perfect summer weather. It was a strange day.

To be continued