The Kids Are Alright Even if the Librarian is Dumb

 We had an amazing weekend visiting Angus in Ithaca. We didn't get there at all last year for various reasons, so even though we knew Matt's travel schedule was going to be insane, we picked one weekend he was here and booked the hotel in late August or we knew it wouldn't happen. Also it was our anniversary, which we realized we had forgotten yet again after my old professor texted me happy anniversary completely planned for.

Happy Anniversary to this pair of dumbasses

The joke is we stay in Marriotts whenever at all possible because Matt is currently a Platinum-level customer and they practically genuflect when we show up. The tv welcomes him by name and it's all spectacularly silly. We haven't paid for a hotel room in months, but we weren't able to use points this time because it's a hotel right on Ithaca commons and I guess everybody wants to be in Ithaca. We still got the gold-star treatment and extra points for staying. The next level is Titanium (I audibly snorted when Matt told me this), and apparently it means they literally cannot deny you a room, even if they have to bump someone else. Of all the levels of privilege I feel bad about, I don't think I could actually use this one. I do like the thought of being bulletproof-nothing-to-lose with David Guetta though.

Friday night Angus was coaching in Elmira so we got settled and then wandered out looking for a place to have dinner. We found a little place a few steps away that looked nice and had a drink and ordered appetizers while waiting for Angus. While he was driving home I told him to text when he was walking down and I could order him a cheeseburger or two lobster tails. He sometimes balks at us spending money on him, so I was kind of glad he texted back "lobster". 

After dinner we walked to his apartment, which is very close by the hotel and the Commons, but pretty much straight up, which everything is in Ithaca unless it's straight down. I said if I lived there my ass would be rock-hard and then we learned about #ithacalves (Ithaca is Cornell-adjacent).

Saturday morning Angus was coaching again so we wandered the Commons, which is fun - restaurants, fun shops, weird shops, the most gorgeous little paper store I could have spent all day and hundreds of dollars in, and a super-woke (in the best way) used bookstore. I bought an Ursula LeGuin book, which seemed appropriate.

When Angus got home we had lunch and then he showed us around campus, mainly the buildings his classes are in and the motion analysis lab where he'll be doing his thesis work. He said earlier in the year he'd forgotten how much better year two is than year one at a university, and he seems to have settled in nicely. He had terrible college-assigned roommates last year who were slobs, and this year he's living with a friend who's on the basketball team and in his same program, which is much better. One of their physiology profs even called them one night saying he had Covid and asking them to show up and do his GSTs the next morning (Graded Exercise/Stress Tests). 

After campus we had a beer in a sports bar, then grabbed some dinner and Angus headed home to work on an assignment and we had an early night - Matt's been traveling a lot and I've been working extra and we were exhausted. Sunday we had breakfast with Angus and headed home. Ithaca is almost an hour closer to home than Elmira was, and a much easier drive than the southern Ontario route to see Eve, so it was a nice drive and we were home early. It was amazing to see him thriving in his current situation, and next week I go pick up Eve for her fall break, which will also be fun.

Work is going well also. My new school is busy but fun. I have four kindergarten classes and one grade one, and then a grade six class. I talked about how the kinders can be adorably clueless in my last post, but I was the less-than-intelligent element with my grade one class. For the kinders I just ask them their name and scan their barcode on the class list, but all the grades have cards that I lay out so they can find their own card and give it to me with their books. On their first library visit, one week into the school year, one little girl unerringly picked her own card. The girl beside her seemed confused so I asked the first girl if she could help her friend find her card, not really being cognizant enough of the fact that these kids are only six and it's the beginning of the year in the new class. She nodded agreeably and said "oh, except I don't know her name. And I can't read." Fair enough then. 

Five For Friday: Early September By Numbers

 I have never done a Five for Friday. Do they have to match? I don't know why I'm asking, they're not going to.

1. Okay, let's do the first day of school pics I still coerce my kids into sending me. Angus sent his with the caption "Angus's last first day of school ever", and if that wasn't sufficiently heart-piercing, he.... *whimpers*... has a moustache in it.

Never mind, I said I wouldn't complain about it (too much). Here is Eve's. If she ever insists on sporting a moustache, I will endeavour not to be ungracious about it for her too.

2. Wednesday was my first day doing two schools in one day with classes in. I made an unintentionally vague reference to a job interview in a post in June, because it was just the same job interview I always have, just for yet another school - I'm at four now, I never know where the hell I'm going when I leave the house in the morning. The first couple of weeks there are no classes because we're waiting to get all the student information and print out class bar codes. In a way it's okay to have a few days of quiet getting things organized, but in a way it's... I don't know, weird? Or I am? I'm trying to make peace with the my strange mood cycle - January until June is tough, going into summer is hard but then summer is good, and then I'm expecting my fall upswing and it wasn't happening and wasn't happening, and I was kind of drumming my mental fingers impatiently because fall isn't that long and I have shit to get done. I feel like my mental health has become a washing machine repairman who says he'll show up between twelve and five and then leaves you sitting there until five-seventeen like an absolute unit, but then he shows up and you kind of feel like tongue-kissing him anyway. 

So Wednesday the classes came in and my new job means I do one school Wednesday morning and another Wednesday afternoon and I honestly kind of felt like I was crushing it, even though I had like five junior kindergarten classes - so cute. So dumb. So impossible to coax into saying their names with any degree of audibility. It was fun, and the day went fast, and I felt like my hair was good, which matters much more than it should.

3. Before Eve's friend Marianna flew back to Vancouver I took them and Jackson to the art gallery. More on this later, but this is my favourite picture from the day.

4. Indigo had a 'buy three get one free' sale in store last week. I wouldn't have made a special trip, even though the lure was strong, but Matt and I had made an appointment at the Telus store to finally update my ancient phone and then he had to go back to work and there I was right across the parking lot from Indigo so what was I going to do? As I was going in a pretty blonde girl was coming out carrying a stack of exactly four books and we beamed at each other delightedly.

The Ann Patchett because Bel Canto is in my Top Ten of All Time and she's an automatic read. Lute by Jennifer Thorne because it's one of my favourite recent reads and I was pleasantly surprised that they had a copy. The Sleeping Car Porter because I put it on our book club list this year and it's nice to have a hard copy to lend. The Chill because I saw it on an earlier store visit and tried to get it from the library - they didn't have it but I got another Scott Carson and it was excellent, so trying this one.

5. I've run out of anything vaguely related numerically. Last Tuesday bar night, everyone showed up. This is a relatively rare occurrence - someone isn't up to it, someone has somewhere else to be, someone is in frigging Italy or Bolivia (okay, just Matt). We almost can't all fit when we have a full complement. We got a celebratory picture.

Nineteen minutes until Saturday. Have a great weekend everyone. 

Liminal Spaces

 I feel like I'm in-between in a variety of ways right now. The kids are back at school, but I'm not a true empty-nester, any more than I was a true single parent when Matt was traveling for weeks at a time. Eve will be home in five weeks and they'll both be here for extended breaks at Christmas. I'm not cleaning out their rooms and they both still have dirty clothes in my laundry. This strikes me as a kind of gentle transition period for when they actually have their own places. Right now I can enjoy cooking for just two (or one, more often) for a few weeks and look forward to them coming home.

I'm not working full-time, but I'm working more than I have for quite a few years. This is fine from every point of view except physical. I have a variety of chronic pain/auto-immune issues of which each on their own would be manageable, but all together I'm done in by the end of a work week, sometimes by the end of a work day. I'm doing a few things to try to address most of them, and feeling less panicky than I was by forcing myself to take one day at a time. Sometimes I worry about feeling worse before I actually do, and forget that 1) I only have to do this if I want to and 2) I can do hard things, especially short term. There's a distinct possibility of a strike this school year, in which case I will have the opposite, arguably worse, problem, so I'm going to dig in and try to enjoy the good aspects while I can. 

It's September, but it's hotter this week than it's been for more than August. It was an absolutely terrible time for everyone to have to go back to school - the air conditioning, if there is any, is not remotely equal to combating this kind of heat and humidity. If there is no air conditioning? Inhumane. The libraries have been surprisingly cool, when all winter I'm dying - I guess maybe whatever is happening with the air system happens extra in the library. We've been letting teachers and whole classes come in to escape portables or upstairs classrooms. One poor teacher came in from the portable looking like she'd been swimming. 

We had an inexpressibly (fear not, I will still take a crack at expressing it) lovely Labour Day weekend with Matt's family. Eve had a fantastic last week with friends when her BFF came back from Greece a week before they both headed back to school. It was a wonderful summer and I'm generally ready to try to establish some fall routines (working, cooking, more yoga, writing, attacking house issues, never seeing my husband). I felt much less ready for summer, even though I was looking forward to it, so my traditional fall mood and energy upswing seems to have engaged. Maybe if I force myself to make a doctor's appointment I can work on trying to extend it for more than four months. 

My Facebook memory from this day in 2017 said I didn't find a job but did write this blog post. Now I have four little jobs (the same job at four schools, but I like calling them baby jobs) and am still blogging. Facebook memories have also reminded me that I tend to spin out and question all my life choices and feel terrible about myself at this time of year, which I NEVER REMEMBER. Who'd have thought that after all, something as simple as Facebook Memories would save us all? Well, just me, really. 

Books at Camp (like Pigs in Space, but Different) Addendum

Books at Camp Addendum (Like Pigs in Space, But Different)

Bibliomama / August 26, 2023 at 03:05PM

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First, about my last post, OH MY GOD you guys, I'm chaotic but not THAT chaotic. I explained it badly, though. My morning pills were spilled inside the med bag, so I'd reach to the bottom and scoop up some loose pills, see what kind of handful I got and then AMEND IT to the proper medication. Not that it would have been a huge deal anyway, we're talking allergy pill, acid blocker, vitamin D and magnesium, but I am not that fun and free-wheeling with medication. 

On my Reading at Camp post, Tudor asked if everybody had print books. I think the only person who had an ereader (he also had prints books) was Dave.

Oh, Tudor is my fabulous author/narcoleptic horse-rider friend. Check out her books here. 

I'm trying to figure out if I find it funny that Tudor only reads ebooks - I think I've heard people say they will only read paper books, because of various reasons, more or less Luddite-like. I had a touch of that feeling myself when ereaders were first a thing. I've gone way to the other side of that, mostly because of my failing sight and the fact that I can read on my ipad without a light on at night, which is kinder to my husband. I don't have an ereader, though, I just have the Kindle app and the Libby app (for library ebooks) on my ipad. I think this is because I wasn't sure if an ereader would be for me, so I just tried the apps, and then that worked well enough that I didn't feel the need for a dedicated device. I can only read on the ipad somewhere I can prop it up, though, with my vicious carpal tunnel - I had never seen the thing Hks recommended, but I sort of jury-rig the same kind of thing with pillows or throw cushions. I guess a normal ereader isn't that hard to read in the sun? Would you worry about it getting sandy? 

Every now and then I feel inexplicably out of sorts reading on the ipad, and I can't decide what to read next, and then I have to read a paper book or two. I have no idea what that's all about. 

I will admit that every now and then I have trouble getting my app to connect to the library, or it acts up, and I can't access the books, which makes me feel panicky and angry and like this is all a terrible idea and this would NEVER HAPPEN with paper books etc. etc. Then it settles down and I forget about it. Plus it's not like I don't always have five or six hundred paper books around if that happens, but you know, when you want to read a certain book you REALLY WANT to read that certain book. 

I have been a long-time fan of Miriam Toews, a Canadian writer from Manitoba. One of Eve's university friends lent her Fight Night, and from then she was also a fan. Some of the editions have these fun stripy spines, and she's had amazing luck finding them in Little Free Libraries and in the used section at her adorable neighbourhood bookstore. She also stole some of mine, but in return she gave me a copy of Fight Night last Christmas. I love Toews because she writes about people who are often in dire circumstances, but she also finds a deep, loving, sometimes screwball humour in everything. Eve brought home Summer of My Amazing Luck and Women Talking for me to read over the summer, which of course I didn't because I always have library ebooks that have an expiration date. I realized last week that I was probably out of time to read them before she took them back to Hamilton (they need to live together on her shelf, those are the rules and I respect them). Then I remembered that I am me, so have powered through the one and am about to slam back the other. 

This also became The Summer of Ray Bradbury for Eve. When I was down picking her up we did our customary bookstore pilgrimage and Fahrenheit 451 was on the used book shelf outside, so I bought it for her. Then my friend Nat (HI NAT) was getting rid of some books and gave me a copy of The Illustrated Man. Just to keep the streak going, I then gave Eve Something Wicked This Way Comes. She was familiar with Bradbury from a short story she studied in high school, and I had then given her a collected short stories volume. 

Sharing books with my daughter is one of those things that I dreamed about but never really believed would be a thing - it seemed too magical and unreal. What a gift. 

Random Stuff in Probably - Not Definitely - the Last Camping Post

 1. Remember my post on my chaotic medication set-up? Yeah, some pictures have disappeared like they keep doing because Blogger sucks but I'm still too scared to move to Wordpress, but you get the idea. Well I bought some cute pill organizers and fixed it up, and for the most part it's working very well. Throwing the pill organizers in my ziploc bag of medication for the week was not a good plan, however, and half a minute's thought would have confirmed this, but I was stressed about camping and didn't think about it, so here we were.

So the very first night I pulled out the nighttime pill organizer and it fell apart and there were pills everywhere on the ground. I gave a 'it's camping' shrug and picked most of them up and put them back in the organizer, figuring I would have forgotten that they were dirty by the next time I had to swallow them. Fortunately they're all pretty distinctive in appearance so they were easy to sort back into proper order. My one med I take one and a half pills, and a couple of the half pills were too ground into the dirt to bother with. It wouldn't be a big deal to miss the half for a couple of nights, and Eve and I speculated that we could just end up with an anti-depressed raccoon or two wandering around - like Cocaine Bear, but different.

The morning one only spilled inside the bag. Every morning I would dig my hand in to the bottom of the bag and see what kind of handful I came up with. Once it was the exact pills I needed. If we go next year I will bring my old, less-cute, more-securely-closing organizer.

2. We often play bocce ball on the beach. Each team of people throws three balls, and whoever is closest to the placer ball gets a point. We played three girls against three guys, and with the guys we had to measure who was closest by centimeters. With the girls it was by three feet or more. Oh well, we have other talents. 

3. We often play Washers at campfire. Collette started thinking that we'd played so much that it was getting too easy, so she changed it to Backwards Washers. It was extremely exciting when one went in.

4. I used up the last piece of ham making lunch on the last beach day, and it was inexpressibly satisfying.

5. This was a first - the first night we went to the beach, we couldn't see the stars, but the moon was so crazy bright it was almost like daylight.

6. On our first beach day, Eve saw a pair of sunglasses buried in the sand at the bottom of the lake. I dug them out and they were good quality and looked great on her (we went out swimming again and she said 'can you hold these so I don't lose them while I dunk? Ha, that's what the last person should have said') The next day I was walking to the beach and found a t-shirt a little ways back in the trees that was covered with sand and looked like it had been there a while. I washed it and it fits her perfectly. If we'd stayed a few days longer we figure Sandbanks would have provided an entire outfit.

7. We ate a fuckton of Pringles and Twizzlers, two things that I have found only taste good on the beach. Usually I try to get a family picture of everyone. This year I think I only got one of the Walshes, and only because they all had Twizzlers.

8. My little washstand set-up worked really well for the most part, but the thing I loved most about getting home was not having to balance my contact case on the water jug.

9. We don't take Lucy camping. This is admittedly because it would be stressful for us, but I think it would also be stressful for her - we took her to a cottage once and when I went in the water she whined and paced on the dock the whole time. She would bark her head off any time she wasn't with all of us, and it would be a bad scene. But our friends brought their dog Lynzi, and Eve loves her, but she's a little more standoffish than Lucy, except now and then when she is feeling more friendly.

10. The first night I was awake for hours. The bright moon through the tent window made it a little more bearable. 

The second-last night I crawled in the tent, got onto my air mattress - usually a time when I felt the most dissatisfied with camping, while being too hot, too dirty and too uncomfortable compared to how I usually go to bed. But on this night I suddenly had this immense feeling of contentment, sleeping basically outside, a little out of my comfort zone, with so many people I love close by. But I still couldn't fall asleep for another hour - I am who I am. 

Reading at Camp

 This is what everyone was reading on the beach. I would take a picture of them and then tell them whether I had read their book or not, which was super fun for everyone and not obnoxious at all.

Rachel with The Lord of the Rings, which I have not read. Here she is vexed that she finally got through the Appendix and found...another Appendix.

Also Rachel: Fahrenheit 451, which I have read, and had brought the same book with me. Eve found it as a used book at the cute little bookstore down the street from her house at school, and asked me if she should read it. Out of that one, Brave New World and 1984 she liked Fahrenheit 451 the best - it had the least casual racism.

Vivian: The Secret History. I have read it, and didn't really like it, but I didn't mention that until after she said that she wasn't really liking it either. I liked The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's next book, much better. Both books seem to be pretty polarizing, so if you're thinking I'm nuts for either of those opinions you're not alone. You're wrong, but not alone (hee hee).

Logan: Something by Brandon Sanderson, which I have not read. I have a vague memory of Brandon Sanderson being a dick online at some point, but only vague.

Melanie: John Dies at the End, which I have read and loved, but it is extremely bizarre and I have never met anyone else reading it that I didn't recommend it too, so I may have squealed a little. 

Ben: Gardens of the Moon, which I have not read. Apparently it has high magic, which doesn't really interest me, and an unusual plot structure, which does.

Janet: The Wall of ...what? Does that say Winnipeg? It does. The Wall of Winnipeg and Me. Obviously I haven't read it. What does that title even mean? Oh, the Wall of Winnipeg is a football player. Okay then.

Dave: The Reluctant Barbarian, which he picked up because it's by a local author. I have not read it.

Caitlin: The God of Endings, which I have read, and recently, and I found it randomly by circuitous means, so I was a little freaked out when I saw it on the picnic table. I loved it, and Caitlin is liking it as well.

Eve: Brackenbeast, the second in a trilogy by Kate Alice Marshall that I loved and gave to her because it involves palindromes, and Eve is my favourite palindrome. It is for young readers but is not simplistic or shallow. She's going to take the third with her to save for an October read.

What did I read at camp? Nothing, basically. It's a little weird - many people take a vacation to read, and I seem to take a vacation from reading, except not really because I love reading, and at home I read for at the very least an hour a day. Maybe it's the ADHD - when there are people around I can't focus enough. I read a few pages of a library ebook in the tent one night on my ipad, but I have terrible carpal tunnel and it hurts my hands to hold it up. I read a few pages of the first story in The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fourteen edited by Ellen Datlow. I read a few pages of Fahrenheit 451. But mostly on the beach I talked to people or went in the water or watched the water, and around the campfire I talked to people and stared at the fire. 

The campfire readers:

I've read eight books since we got home, so... at least I remember how? 

Go Confidently in the Direction of the Comfort Station

 Eve made a shocking realization on this camping trip. We had always assumed that Matt had a map of the park in his head, because he has a really good sense of direction and we generally can't find our way out of a paper bag. But while they were walking back to our site after a campfire, he took them the completely wrong way, and at some point she realized that "he doesn't actually really know his way around - he just doesn't care!"

This didn't make me feel entirely okay about the fact that he explained to me where the water tap was multiple times and then drew me a literal picture in the dirt and I still kept not being able to find it, but it made it a little better. Also, when he was telling Eve how to get to Margot and Michael's site I told her a better way and told him his way was dumb because it goes further than you have to and then doubles back (you can tell the one person in our family who doesn't get shredded feet at camp). Of course, then he said "talk to me when you can find the water tap", which was fair.

We don't have a group picture for every year we've camped, but we have one for most. When we started, it was taken with an actual camera. Since we have phones and have discovered that Eve has freakishly long arms or something else that makes it possible for her to take really good selfies, Eve is the designated Group Picture-Taker. This year the picture had to be taken the night after Ben and Melanie got there and the night before Michelle left - the one night everyone was there and it wasn't thunderstorming. Eve had come back from the beach and showered and was having some quiet time in her tent and I had to summon her to the Dinner and Campfire Site to take the picture. This, in turn, put into play the time when everyone has to be corralled for the picture - people start shouting NO ONE GO TO THE BATHROOM and NO YOU CAN'T GO PLAY D&D YET and TRY TO LEAVE THIS SITE AND WE'LL TAKE YOU OUT AT THE KNEES. Then it takes an ungodly amount of time to get everyone situated so you can see everyone and Eve starts shooting.

Eve was a total trouper this trip. She has gut issues and skin issues and doesn't really drink (not opposed to it, but the gut issues mean she might get a nice buzz from one drink or just feel immediately nauseous for six hours). She reacts hugely to bug bites, had the same insomnia I did the first night but in her it precipitated a panic attack and we had to go for a little walk at 3 a.m. She was probably extremely ready to go home after night three or four but she said she was fine because she knew I wanted to stay. And, like me, one of the reason she likes camping is how camping makes you fucking LOVE your house when you get home. Like, this amazing house! So roof-ish, and wall-having. So indoor plumbing-ful. She said "I love my room. It's so ... inside."

She's so much fun to have around. We have two heavier fancier folding chairs and two lighter less-fancy ones. One night I said I might take a less-fancy one because carrying the heavy one the night before had hurt my shoulder. One of the lighter ones was set up in the kitchen shelter with towels drying over it, and Eve said I should just take the other one, which didn't make sense because she always takes a lighter one so I knew she wouldn't want me to take her chair. I looked at her weirdly and she said "what? Dad doesn't care." I kept looking at her weirdly and she finally said "oh, ME. Forgot about her."

We had a completely vegetarian group meal one night, which I think is a first. Ratatouille, potatoes, corn, Impossible Ground Beef meatloaf and cherry crumble. Matt mentioned to Mark, who was cooking the crumble, that the fire was going to be really hot under where the pie plates were. Mark looked undecided for a minute and Eve said "don't listen to him. He's just trying to plant a doubt in your mind that you'll be unable to shake". 

Tony is our group sommelier and cocktail expert, so he eschewed the classless Giant Plastic Jug O Booze we all went with and mixed classy glass bottles of Paloma, Mojito, Old Fashioned and Negroni, which you poured over ice and added Club Soda to. 

Without Tony we would just be beasts in the wilderness.