In Which Defeat is Only the Tiniest Bit Agonizing

I have a friend who posted her engagement on Facebook a few years ago, and then confided that she felt stupid for having done so when it fell through. I told her she shouldn't feel that way at all, because her real friends wouldn't feel anything but sympathy and she had nothing to be embarrassed about. But I confess that I felt slightly the same way about broadcasting my first job interview attempt in twenty or so years in serene confidence that it would go positively and then.... well....

True, I could have slunk away and licked my wounds in private then. But in all honesty, people, is that ever how I roll? Let's see: depression posts; period posts; condom posts.... NOPE.

It's all very well to say that clearly I was overqualified and they were just afraid I wouldn't stay long. The bottom line is that I put myself out there and they said no thanks. And that stings a little. But it was still a good experience. Before I whipped that application together I was paralyzed at the thought of trying to put together a resumé after so much time. Now I know I can, and I can get a response, even if it's ultimately not the response I want.

Plus, now I can go to my friends' cottage this week-end instead of working. We all went to the bar last night (we do most Tuesdays, I wasn't deciding to chuck the employment idea and just become a barfly) and when they invited us to the cottage I said I would only come if I could get drunk and belligerent and tear up Indigo bookmarks. One of the hosts looked concerned and said I should bring my own because they don't have that many. (Silly. I wasn't really going to do it. One does not rip up a perfectly good bookmark even in the face of cruel rejection).

Also, I was going to have to call Zarah and say, in a good news/bad news kind of way, I can't do our girls' week-end this fall because I have a job. Now it's a bad news/ good news kind of thing. Which is good, because somehow circumstances have evolved to the point where I can only buy bras at this little shop in Barrie, and I need a new one. So, Zarah... call me.

A couple more things that happened this summer:

Zarah and the kids came for Bluesfest:

We all fell even more in love with Melissa Etheridge:

There was a lot of reading:




Oh, and Eve and Alex got haircuts.

Then we got ice cream. Obviously. 

Some Things That Happened This Summer

I applied to Indigo and got an invitation to submit a video interview the next day. I keep trying to feel anxious about going back to work, but I keep realizing that I'm really looking forward to getting out of the house a few times a week, hanging out around books and contributing a little to the family finances. I think I'm really ready. One might argue that it's way past time for me to be ready, but one could then be cordially invited to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I refuse to get nervous about an interview, because I think they'd be daft not to hire me, so I'm willing to let things unfold as they may.

My reading mood was weird over the summer. I couldn't read anything dense or challenging, and I read overall much less than usual. A few weeks ago I did what I always say I never do and put a bunch of holds on at the library that all came in at once. Then I read eleven books in eight days, so I'm feeling better about that whole end of things. It's like the reset button has been hit on a few things, which gives me hope that last year wasn't actually the start of a giant downward slide ending in death.

The summer was good. Really good. One thing that happened was that we got one of those picnic blankets that's soft on the top and waterproof and slippery on the bottom and folds up neatly with built-in carrying straps. It comes in a perfect bundled-up package, and you bring it somewhere and unfold it and experience its lovely soft waterproofness:



Then you spend the rest of your life trying to get it back into that state of pristine perfection, (which is not helped by the fact that one side is insanely slippery),











....with very occasional success.

Fifteen Times Around the Sun

Angus is fifteen years old today.

Fifteen. Three whole hands.

So much has changed.

Wait. What?

2014 - Year in Review

1. What did you do in 2014 that you've never done before? Oh! Oh! I fired a gun! We went to a shooting range for our friend Dave's birthday and fired shotguns (I was surprisingly good at it), and then we went to his father-in-law's house and fired rifles and handguns (I didn't like holding a handgun at all). It was interesting, but it didn't give me a taste for it. Way too loud, for one thing. Also, I made a terrine. 

2. Did you keep your resolutions for 2014 and will you make more for next year? I don't make resolutions. I try continually to suck less. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No, and you should probably stop asking me that question now until I get some younger friends or some older kids. 

4. Did anyone close to you die? Grandpa. Matt's Grandpa, but he was the only Grandpa left in my life. I miss him. 

5. What countries did you visit? The Dominican Republic, in January, with the whole family for my mother's seventieth birthday. I had the usual reservations about spending a decadent week in a poor country. It was still a really great week for the family. 

6. What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014? Confidence. Focus. Abs. 

7. What date(s) from 2014 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? I don't remember the dates of ANYTHING. I remember hearing that Grandpa died while poolside in the Dominican Republic, but I don't know what the date was. I remember Eve and I threw a Sleepover of Awesome this summer, and I remember her first day of the last year in her elementary school, and Angus's first day of grade nine, and our first family camping trip EVER, and when Eve's Glee class performed and she sang the first line of the whole night solo and looked so pale I thought she might faint, and I was sympathetic and proud, but don't ask me when any of it actually happened. The date-etching tool in my memory is broken.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Did you not hear me say "family camping trip"? Like, with tents, and outhouses?

9. What was your biggest failure? Well, I still haven't managed teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? There was the tiresome fact that every time I tried to stop taking my antidepressant it was all "you can't quit me!" I also think I came to terms more fully than I have in the past with the fact that I just have really poorly controlled depression and anxiety and I don't respond well to most of the usually prescribed drugs, and that's just going to be a thing in my life. I have an appointment next week at the Royal Ottawa Hospital Mood Disorder Clinic to discuss how to proceed. I'm feeling terrified and hopeful about this. 

11. What was the best thing you bought? Really, really comfortable air mattresses. 

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? I can't think of anyone offhand.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Gamergaters, Men's Rights Advocates and mansplainers of all type and description, basically. 

14. Where did most of your money go? Food, shelter, clothing (although not, unfortunately, these - wait, can I go back to what I didn't have last year that I want to have this year?)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Blissdom with Hannah and Nicole. The last book in this trilogy. Realizing I could put the Kindle app on my ipad. Going to Suzi Q with Pam. My kids coming home from school. It's really a twenty-four hour party in my head. 

16. What songs will always remind you of 2014? Anything about the female posterior - was this not the year everyone was singing about the ass? I don't get it. Also, Shake it Off, mostly because at the Blissdom pajama party when I actually did know a lot of the songs, this one song came on and everybody was clapping and then singing along and dancing and I was standing there like a lump thinking what the hell is this and WHY DOES EVERYONE KNOW IT BUT ME, and then the Monday I got home I heard Eve singing it and basically attacked her - WHAT IS THAT YOU'RE SINGING? WHAT IS IT?? And then Eve's Glee class did it, and it was adorable. 

17. Compared to this time last year you are: Three courses closer to finishing my library tech diploma. About 150 books smarter (debatable). Just as in love with my goofy, hilarious, wonderful family and friends. A little closer to getting my house decluttered and organized (a very little).

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Exercising. Writing. Gardening.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Worrying. Self-loathing. Reading things that didn't challenge or delight or enrich.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? Once the kids were off school and Matt was off work, we had three days off to pack for Thunder Bay and see The Hobbit and hot tub with our friends. Then we went to Thunder Bay for five days and stayed with my mother-in-law and her husband for Christmas, joined by my brother-in-law and his girlfriend. We also visited my father-in-law and his wife. Then we came home and had a day with my sister and her family. Then we had a New Year's party. In between, we played some video games (Angus), watched some overwrought fraught-with-nudity-and-violence historical fiction television series (Matt), read some books (me) and loafed around in an elephant onesie (Matt again - ha, just kidding, it was Eve). It was a good mix of people and stuff and non-people and rest. 

21. Did you fall in love in 2014? Only with Mindy, and my husband thinks that's kind of hot, so it's all good. 

22. How many one-night stands? Only with Mindy, and my husband was usually out of town, so it's all good.

23. What was your favourite tv program? DUH. Eve's teacher sidled up to me in the library yesterday morning while I was shelving books and said "so I let slip that I was a fan of The Mindy Project and Eve said you and I should talk" and we had an absurd jumping-up-and-down-shrieking-and-giggling fellow fangirl moment. Although there's also a really fun new show on Space called - get this - THE LIBRARIANS. 

24. Do you hate anyone now that you don't hate last year? I try not to hate anyone, not for more than a second or two at a time anyway. 

25. What was the best book you read? Working on that post right now. 

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? I don't make great musical discoveries. I have appalling taste in music. I have to hide my ipod when guests come over. My biggest claim to fame in our group was when I accidentally introduced a couple of friends to an R.E.M song they'd never heard before because it was on a soundtrack of an obscure Wim Wenders film that I liked. I was cool for the five seconds before an old Backstreet Boys song started playing.  

27. What did you want and get? An iphone - okay, I didn't actually know I wanted it, but my husband got me one for my birthday and it turned out much like it did with the ipad - "What the hell made you think this was OH MY GOD WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE MY PRECIOUSSSSS."

28. What was your favourite film of this year? Oh, "film", aren't we grand. My favourite movies that I saw with the kids were Big Hero 6 and Guardians of the Galaxy (so fun!). Then there was that blissful night alone in a hotel room with X-Men: Days of Future Past. But for flat-out nostalgic wish-fulfillment awesomeness? Veronica Mars.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I was 44. I had just helped throw a big party for Collette's 45th in April and then gone shooting for Dave's in May and I didn't feel like a big bash, so Matt and I went with a couple of friends to Play with a very generous gift card (a Christmas present from my brother-in-law and his girlfriend) and had a really nice dinner in the market on a lovely June evening. 

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? I find this question silly, self-defeating and impossible to answer and I would just remove it from the list if I wasn't too lazy to renumber the rest. 

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2014? Occasionally fabulous, with a weekday option on stretchy and wrinkly. Zarah did get me to buy these, so at least my boobs are well-dressed.

32. What kept you sane? My family and friends, as usual. Pam just now offered to take me out on Wednesday and do something that involves eating and laughing at other people (two of my favourite things!) to distract me from my scary appointment on Thursday. Hannah and Nicole and the other friends in my Writing Goals Facebook group are invariably supportive and comforting. Beck made me feel better about my whole entire life earlier this week. And my children have said on numerous occasions that they're really glad I've been home with them, which helps to moderate my regular fits of what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life despair and ennui. 

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I'm going to go with Chris Evans, because he's a couple of years older than Chris Hemsworth and it feels marginally less cougary. 

34. Which political issue stirred you the most? It varied, but refer back to the Gamergate answer. Although I'm deep into thoughts about free speech and radical fundamentalism at the moment. 

35. Who did you miss? My sister. My friends who live in the computer and are not easily smushable on a regular basis. 

36. Who was the best new person you met? I don't see how I can go with any answer but Kate. 

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2014? Sometimes there isn't a cure for what ails you. You just have to learn how to live with it as gracefully as possible.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year? I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Or maybe Working too hard can give you a heart attack ack ack ack ack ack. Sorry. I haven't been allowed to listen to anything but Billy Joel since summer. 

IN YOUR FACE, November.

When we were at Sandbanks this summer, we rotated campsites for dinner. The night it was at our campsite, I offered to walk Collette next door to her campsite with a flashlight at the end of the night since she didn't have one. We went to the comfort station together, then we got to my campsite and she said "I'll be fine getting to mine". So I turned away with the flashlight, she walked three or four steps and said "HOLY CRAP, get back over here, it's WAY too dark." I thought this was hilarious.

Back at the beginning of November when I was starting NaBloPoMo, and trying to wean off my antidepressant, I felt sort of the same way - like I'd set off without a light and I'd completely forgotten how dark the dark was.

So this is a most fervent and heartfelt thanks to everyone who stopped by this month and walked with me for a bit. Nicole and Hannah, the best computer friends a girl could ask for; Mary Lynn and Julie - World Trivia Night is not quite as awesome without you; Clara, who once sent me a springtime card that was exactly like a ray of sunshine in paper form; Sarah, who decided to stick with quality over quantity AND I'M FINE WITH THAT; Brandy who I met at Blissdom; Laureen who is indeed very kind; Courtney, my book blogger bestie; Shan, who always makes me smile; Jodi, the first person I met through NaBloPoMo who I'm certain that I will keep; Jenny who lives a life I can't even imagine, but I'm enjoying the experience of trying; Pam, who is so nice to me even though I'm often a whiny drag; Collette, without whom my life would be so much less filled with laughter (often inappropriate) and hang-overs; Steph, who I think may have commented every freaking day again, meaning I owe a Starbucks card and a serious catch-up with her blog; Amy who is so buried in obligations right now I can't believe she found time to read a single post; Maggie, who fairly often knows the exact right thing that I need to hear; Lynn, the very first blog friend I met in real life; Alex, who made my first dinner at Blissdom this year SO MUCH FUN; Shoshana, who I'm going to call next time I get lost looking for the mall; Magpie - funny, acerbic and wise, and the only one I can send a picture of a sinking building to who really gets it; The Queen, who makes me laugh at things that should not be funny; Swistle, whose luckiness/suckiness tagline I have stolen shamelessly; Laurel, my favourite stalker with whom I will now go to empty movie theatres in the middle of the day; Sasha, who I need to get my ass over to visit while she's convalescing; Alison, who I need to get my ass over to have a drink with WHY IS IT SO HARD TO SEE PEOPLE MORE THAN ONCE EVERY SIX MONTHS?; Alexandra who comments on my blog every now and then, probably because she knows it gives me a little fangirl freak-out fun; another Jenny, sister in self-loathing and hating decision-making; Di, Eve's Crazy Greek Way-More-Fun Other Mother; Helen - miss you!; and Sarah and Zarah - because I always know they're reading.

Thank-you to all of you for being my flashlight this month.

Mondays on the Margins: Growing a Rainbow by Lesley Donaldson-Reid

I met Lesley briefly at Blissdom 2013 - I apologized for getting between her and someone taking her picture at the outside party and she hollered at me to get in the picture with her. Afterwards, we became Twitter friends and I started reading her blog, Real Women Drive Stick (so according to Lesley I'm a fake woman, but it's okay, I'm coping). When I learned some of the details of her son's birth, I was sort of struck by the strangeness of the fact that people can endure the most cataclysmic of events and walk around without the effects permanently stamped on their faces.

Lesley is an emergency nurse and special-needs parent, and Blissdom completely lit an author fire under her, leading her to reduce her nursing hours and write and self-publish a book about her son Torran, who was a micro-preemie, born at just 26 weeks and 6 days gestation, due to oligohydramnios, a lack of amniotic fluid. Lesley and her husband Bruce were asked on more than one occasion if they wished to withdraw life support for their son.

I've known two or three people who had babies born prematurely, even extremely prematurely, but I only met them when the children were safely out of the woods, and none of these children's conditions were as grave as Torran's. Lesley's account felt incredibly raw and real and much of it was hard to read - I can't imagine how hard it must have been to live. The number of life-threatening conditions and taxing medical interventions would be heartwrenching if a full-grown adult was involved; imagining it happening to a two-pound baby, tiny and unimaginably thin-skinned and fragile, who should rightfully still be safely tucked in his mother's womb, is horrifying. The tubes he needs to breathe and eat wear away the skin of his face. At one point a doctor says that he needs new sutures in his head, but worries that the tissue is too macerated to even hold them.

Much of Lesley's account feels almost shockingly intimate - confessions of guilt and hopelessness, the inevitable toll taken on her relationship with her husband, and feelings of resentment directed at the rest of the world, particularly people taking home healthy babies. At times when she holds Torran and his oxygen levels drop, it feels like her love is doing actual harm to him. There are also flashes of spiky humour, revolving around the physical indignities of breast-pumping and baby poop, and moments of rare beauty, such as the first time she gets to hold her son, swaddled and then skin to skin, and (this one made me tear up) the moment when she gives a mother's day card to the nurse who has been as ardent an advocate and caregiver for her son as his own parents. I also love her letter at the end of the book, addressed to other preemie parents, with love, empathy and permission to rage and grieve and hope.

Growing a Rainbow is available through the website Growing a Rainbow, and a portion of the proceeds will support the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation.

Torran came home five months after his birth, and is now a monster-hunting six-year-old who likes roller coasters and Mike Wazowski (I heartily approve). He is not without his challenges.

Some time between my first Blissdom and my second, I read Lesley's story Line of Sacrifice. I thought it was an amazing rendering of a mother's selfless love for a child. I feel like I know more now about why Lesley understands that so well.

Remembrance

It's funny, reading this post from 2010, because I was in the middle of solo parenting and NaBloPoMo then as I am now. It's sad, because Grandpa was alive then, and he's not now. I like to think he's drinking scotch and raising hell in some place that looks just like his sprawling, riotously-blooming backyard garden, sitting in a brightly painted Muskoka chair under a giant maple tree.

Chicken Soup for the Cranky Sleep-Deprived Soul

I went to bed early last night to start my solo-parenting stretch with enough sleep. At 6:30 I felt like the day had gone on forever, and I took a sleeping pill, so I figured eleven wasn't an unreasonable time to expect my body to cooperate.

Have I mentioned my body is kind of an asshole?

So this morning I dragged my ass out of bed after not nearly enough sleep, and instead of seven feeling like eight it felt like five, and packed lunches and got ready to go to the gym and grocery store with Pam. I was sleepy and stuffy and dopey and I did not feel good at all.

We went to the gym (third time in a row with no excuses obstacles or unforeseeable events preventing us from getting there). We walked on the treadmill. We watched that debt show that's almost as good as I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant for snarky schadenfreude ("We can hardly pay our rent and we buy a new turnip dehydrator every season and I only wear silk and we never do our taxes, but we're half a million in debt? HUGE surprise!"). We did weights, even the ones we don't usually do and we have to read the instructions and keep doing them wrong.

We went down to the grocery store and I told Pam to remind me that I had to get chicken soup for Angus because it wasn't on my list. We backtracked several times because we forgot that mascarpone would be with the fancy cheese, not the Cracker Barrel in the last aisle, and I didn't believe Pam about where the pineapple was (sorry Pam) and then we saw the bakery wall of doughnuts that was self-serve. I thought to myself "Angus is home sick" and I thought to myself "Eve is so sweet and helpful when Matt's away", and I thought to myself  "consoling and/or rewarding your kids with food is a recipe for disaster" and then I thought to myself "don't be such a judgy bitch" and bought them each a cookies and cream doughnut for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON.

Pam and I agreed that it would have been better if we had never noticed the bakery wall of self-serve doughnuts. On the plus side, we do both have very bad memories. For example, I still forgot the fucking chicken soup, and Pam forgot to remind me. So she took me to the drug store on the way home, for chicken soup AND Angus's prescription, which I managed to remember was there.

Our check-out girl at the grocery store was hilarious - she gave me a plastic bag for the doughnuts, and then while I was trying to bag the rest of my stuff and Pam's, every time there was a bread item she would bark "pastry bag!" so I had to bag all of our bread together even though we were going to different houses - okay, she was hilarious AND a little scary.

I bought a poppy and stuck it on my gym bag, because I am patriotic, but I never wear a damned coat. I've already poked myself in the side and the leg while swinging the bag around. Also, in a few weeks when I'm wondering where the hell the restaurant gift cards that I bought Angus for Christmas went, somebody remind them they're in my gym bag, kay?

Our check-out guy at the Bulk Barn was funny too. And we noticed that we were getting a really good return-smile ratio for all the people we smiled at. And I got home and drank some green juice and it wasn't too gingery, which it sometimes is.

And I feel pretty good.

Soylent Blissdom: It's People! Peeeeeople!

Yes, it's been a couple of weeks since Blissdom. Yes, I've taken my sweet time assembling this post. Yes, I'm a little conflicted about what to write.

I love the enthusiastic, fired-wired-inspired posts from people who have discovered their Inner Writer, or Inner Entrepreneur, or Inner Brand Spokesperson. I love hearing about people who had their creative potential unlocked by a panel or a microsession. I love Lesley, who is now practically the Blissdom Poster Child, or should be, and I love seeing what Blissdom started for her.

Lesley, rocking the Jack Skellington look

But I'm not young, or fired-up, or especially unlocked. I've looked into my Neighbourhood of Inners, and let me tell you, it's full of assholes. And I'd like to say that Blissdom stuffed a gag in the gob of my Inner Name-Caller, or obliterated my Inner Confidence-Sucker, or shouted down my Inner You-Can't-Do-Anything Reaffirmer. But I'd be lying.

I still haven't figured out how to move my blog to Wordpress. I still haven't found a way to make money writing that doesn't make me feel like I'm losing or corrupting or selling out my voice - the voice I finally felt like I'd found with blogging. I've seen other people do it, and I'm happy for them, but I'm not there yet; I might not ever be there.

And that's okay. Blissdom is a sprawling, wide-ranging animal, and not everyone will get the same thing from it.

What I get from Blissdom, is free, unfettered, week-end-long access to some wholly kick-ass people.

Like Nicole, who texts me telling me I'm wonderful and sends me chocolate-covered fruit when I'm sad and introduced me to Erica Ehm as if I was the famous person. She is the most delightful combination of sweet and salty (rarely has an unkind word for everyone, worked tirelessly for the Yummy Mummy Club and still had time for me and Hannah, and every once in a while comes out with a well-timed "Tell him to eat your dick!" just to keep things interesting) and I love her. 

And Hannah, who has the same stupid no-one-is-going-to-be-happy-to-see-me anxiety I do and is smart and witty and funny and lovely and pretends it's not weird that I can't let people eat on my bed and when she got there we were so excited that she screamed and I think I hit her in the face with my phone trying to hug her and when they played My Humps at the P.J. Party she yelled"Oh, fuck off - if I don't wear a two hundred and fifty dollar bra, my humps are ON THE FLOOR!" And I love her. 

If there had been nothing good about Blissdom except Hannah and Nicole, it still would have been well worth the trip and the admission price. But I also got to see Courtney, a fellow book-blogger I met at Blissdom last year and became blog friends with - she ran a microsession on blogging for mobile technology. She also wore a poodle skirt to the Throwback Thursday party, which, hello, insanely cool.

She was afraid no one would show up for her session, so Hannah and I said "We will! We will show up! Even if we are slightly hung over from a fabulously strange lentil carnival." Okay, we didn't really say that, but we were, and we did, and the session was was full of stuff that I didn't know and really should know, and Courtney is a great teacher, and we had fun.

And Schmutzie. Schmutzie is wise and kind and a national treasure and I love to read her writing but it's nice to hear her voice now and then, and plead for my yearly pity hug, which she claims is not a pity hug, so I should probably stop calling them pity hugs, because honesty is kind of Schmutzie's thing. 

Then there was my extra-special sparkly prize at the bottom of the Blissdom box this year.....

Kate! My Kate! She's a well-established blogger and Ambassador of Chill and she spoke at the Power Hour, so she's kind of a big deal, but I still persist in thinking of her as My Kate, and she's generally pretty gracious about it. . She came up to me and Alex and Jolene when we were having dinner (after I had already crashed Alex and Jolene's dinner) and said mind if I join you, and who could mind being joined by the quintessence of grace and charm with an effervescent sprinkling of goofiness? 

This was Kate's first Blissdom, so she didn't know about the dance-til-you-sweat-your-ass-off part of the Pajama Party. "I thought we'd be laying around on pillows" she said plaintively. It's okay, My Kate. Lots of people wear flannel their first year.

I spend so much time in the world feeling like a round peg in a square hole. There's something magical about walking around in a crowd of people who get that a computer screen can actually be a portal to a deep, wide, comforting and supportive and uplifting community (I just made the blogosphere sound like a really expensive bra, and I'm okay with that - presumably Hannah is too). 

So no, I probably won't turn up next year all fired up about SEO optimization (I like to stick quirky, cryptic titles on my blog post and rely on fate to lead people to them), or pitching brands for sponsored posts, or if I'll start writing in shorter paragraphs with the important information near the beginning. Some people would say I'm doing it all wrong. And maybe I am, but at least I'm doing it. Before I started blogging, I was hardly writing at all. I couldn't find a voice, I couldn't see a path. In a million years I wouldn't have shown up at a conference for people who write and called myself one of those people. 

Do I call myself one of those people now?

You bet your ass I do. (Yes, I wish this was my ass. It's Nicole's. It's kind of a tradition for Nicole's fabulous ass to show up in my Blissdom post). 

After the pajama party on the last night, when Hannah and Nicole had gone to bed, Courtney knocked on my hotel room door and invited me down the hall to hang out with some friends. I wandered in and, within a few minutes, realized I was in a room with two people I knew and four I didn't, and that I had gotten ready for bed before leaving my room, so instead of party pajamas I was now wearing non-party pajamas, and a smear of zit cream on my chin, and no underwear. 

Yeah, I might have been a little TOO comfortable at that point. I will endeavour to restore some standards for next year. 

Thank-you, Blissdom people. If I never make a cent from blogging, I feel like meeting all of you is an embarrassment of riches. 

What I've Been Doing While I'm Not Blogging: Part Three

Driving downtown on a HOLIDAY MONDAY with Collette and our daughters.

Eve said "OMG, these tulips are so Amity and the white one is so Divergent"

*GASP* "And look inside, it's Dauntless!"

Looking at Parliament buildings.

And gargoyles.

Eve being freaked out by the Whispering Wall (although if I'd pointed out that her head was directly below a boob, it probably would have generated a similar expression)

Letting our daughters pose with statues of political figures...

...with increasing levels of disrespect.



Having fancy drinks in a perfectly shaded patio spot.



Eve was adamant that she didn't need help cutting her pizza. It was entertaining.

Then we had gelato and drove home along the canal. I had the dubious pleasure of hearing Jason Derulo's Talk Dirty song for the first time. I said "did he seriously just say 'your booty don't need explaining'?" Everyone assured me that he had. Collette said "I kind of feel like mine does, though - you know, something like 'I've had three kids, I can't stay away from ice cream'". Things devolved from there. 

What I've Been Doing While I'm Not Blogging: Part Two

Looking at things I love. 

Tulips.

More tulips.

Really cool tulips that look like they'd glow in the dark.

Dandelions (yeah, they're annoying, but they have such cheerful tenacity, the little bastards)

The canal.

Pam. And my beer.