I Am Not A Raving Narcissist, I Just Act Like One

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This is a picture of my grandmother's hollyhocks, because we're talking about friends and stuff, and that's girly, so here's a picture of flowers or something. Also I think they're pretty, and I like the green shutters. The end.

On Wednesday I ran into the mother of two of Norah's kindergarten classmates, and she asked me how our trip to Manitoulin went.

I was so confused. So utterly, unbearably confused. And embarrassed, because you know what happened inside my head as soon as she asked me, right? C'mon, you know exactly what happened:

She reads The Mrs! She found out about me somehow, probably by googling me because I'm so interesting and SHE THINKS I'M OKAY AND NOT AS WEIRD AS I SEEM AND WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND.

This is not why Robin knows I went to Manitoulin.

This is why she knows: I ran into her at the grocery store before we left and Lucy told her. I know, I was physically present at the time. Unfortunately, it appears that my higher brain functions were not, which is how I found myself thinking wildly vain thoughts while looking quizzically at her and asking how she knew.

Bless that gentle woman's heart. She reminded me - very sweetly - and then proceeded to continue conversing with me.

Writing is easier than conversing. When I write, I'm only interrupting myself to tell stupid jokes. I'm thinking and talking about MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! and don't have to stop and command myself to BE SILENT AND REALLY LISTEN to the other person, because there is no other person.

Other people are hard. Even without (probably especially without) the benefit of reading all this nonsense about me, Robin might still want me to know the names of her kids who I've seen approximately three hundred times by now, ask her how she's doing (for real), and remember that she talked to me a week ago. She might even want to be my friend.

I like friends. I'm not very good at them, but I really, really like them and want to be one to lots of people, even if it means being silent more, leaving my house more, and not-sounding-like-an-ass more.

It's the being silent thing that I have trouble with. When I meet silence that's not of the "the kids aren't awake yet" or "I have a good book to read and am ignoring the entire world" variety, I need to fill it up. I gabble. I get kind of flail-y. And it ends up being all about me - again - when really all I want to do, socially inappropriate as it may seem, is ask Robin what she's worried about, or what her days are like, or what she used to be like as a teenager.

Actually, that's probably why I get flail-y. My subconscious tries to take over my mouth to ask the inappropriate questions and then shut up and listen, already, and the rest of my body throws itself into the battle and all hell breaks loose and I sound (and look) like a raving narcissist.

The next time I see you - any of you, even those of you I haven't met yet (or avoided meeting at a certain wedding three years ago because I was too embarrassed, ahem), can you just tell me to shut up and be silent for a minute already? And then proceed to tell me things about you that are important to you, whatever those things happen to be?

How To Explain A Whole Island?

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I've spent the last two days* trying to think of a way to explain Manitoulin Island to you.

I'm not really sure that I can. In fact, I'm fairly certain that I can't. But I'm going to try really, really hard.

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First, a warning: My parents grew up there. I grew up going there. I have the rosiest of memories, and can really only think of two bad(ish)** things that happened to me in 35 years of going to the Island. So what I'm about to describe in no way resembles reality.

---

The Island is about a five hour drive from us - five hours of slowly moving back through time, until you reach approximately 1962. That's where you stop, before JFK was assassinated, before the FLQ, before all sorts of initials, actually. It's the largest freshwater island in the world (so I've been told. I haven't bothered to ask Wikipedia, who surely knows better than me), and it's the most astonishing mix of farm land, bare limestone slabs, and cedar trees so thick that you can't possibly push through them without losing a(nother) eye. It's full of it's own lakes, some of which have their own islands.

I realized something on the trip home Monday, and if you've never read any L.M. Montgomery this won't make any sense to you...but nothing about me has ever screamed sense, so here goes: when Rilla Blythe or Jane Stuart or Patricia Gardiner**** talk about how special the Island is, and how the people of the Island collectively have a character that seems all intertwined with the character of the Island itself, I've always unconsciously imagined Manitoulin (not Prince Edward) and agreed.

I've never been there without my parents. I'm not sure I'd know where I was without them - every house and barn and field and pond has either a story, a relative, or a nickname. It's to the point now where I've heard the stories, relatives' names, and nicknames so many times that I think I could take over and orient myself in the landscape, but when I try it all slips away.

When I run into people here in the real world who come from the Island, or who've been there, I get inordinately excited and start babbling like a fool (stop acting surprised), but when we get to the part of the conversation where they say they're from the so-and-so family in Gore Bay or wherever I realize that - while my parents could immediately connect the dots - I'm hopelessly lost.

I'm thirty-five. My parents are sixty-two. If I don't do something to write those stories down, or - better - follow them around with my phone and get the real, honest-to-goodness verbal accounts, cadence and all - I'm going to be hopelessly lost forever. Woe, etc.

In so many ways, my perception of the Island last weekend and every other time I've thought about it or been back as an adult is coloured through and through by by my own happy memories of childhood visits, my parents, and their stories, and - like everything else in life - trying to recapture that exact feeling is silly and impossible.

I think where I'm going with this is that this trip was particularly meaningful to me, because it's the first time I've been there with my kids, and as we all know, travelling with kids - no matter how idyllic the destination - is about the furthest thing from the halcyon golden memories of past visits as one can possibly get.

(The potty breaks alone...)

And here's the thing: Manitoulin (experienced) stands up to Manitoulin (remembered, even idealized). I have experiential proof that it does. Because it rained, Lucy got sick, the kids had very little sleep, and I slept in a tent, on a couch, and in a tent again - a tent built for two very small people, mind you, and occupied by one large and two small bodies - and still had a perfect time.

That's the Island.

*A few minutes here or there, mostly thinking "I should write about Manitoulin" before lying back down again because tired.

**I broke the branch off my Grandpa's apple tree*** by swinging on it after he told me not to, and I ripped a leaf that my brother found and thought was cool. Both times my Grandpa said my name like he was a little disappointed in me, and both times his disappointment was The Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Me.

***The apple tree that now produces so many apples that they multiply overnight even after you pick them. You're welcome, Grandpa.

****But not Valancy Stirling - she's from Muskoka, and I'm from Muskoka, and my ironic, sarcastic little soul still gets a ridiculous thrill from all the sincerity and whole-heartedness of it. Also, these footnotes are getting ludicrous.

You Don't Need It, But I'll Give It To You Anyway

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Proof that I'm not completely all there:

1. I don't have a house cleaner anymore. 
We are so hip-deep in renovations and uncertainty about the total funding of said renovations that to pay someone else to clean when I have perfectly good hands and at least thirteen seconds every other week or so of free time between kids and clients in which to clean the entire house is silly.

That sounds like complaining. It's not - in fact, my house feels cleaner because I was physically present when the cleaning was being done, so it's a win for everyone*. Right? Right.

As God is my witness, I'll have a house cleaner again!

2. I'm leaving today for Manitoulin Island.
With all the kids but not the husband.

3. Norah and Oscar and I are sleeping in a tent in the back yard of my grandmother's house.
Norah is six. Oscar is four. I AM THIRTY-FIVE AND HAVEN'T SLEPT IN A TENT FOR THIRTEEN YEARS.


*Also because the house actually is cleaner. Discuss.

So Many Questions

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1. Why does he keep buying Lucky Charms?

2. No, seriously. Why does he keep buying Lucky Charms?!

Hockney Kitchen

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Seems about right.

I suppose the time has come to bring up the barfing (see what I did there?)

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Where were we?

Oh, right. The leak. Well, look. We called our insurance company on Tuesday, March 11th - the same day we had our dear Sarah over for dinner, which she ended up mostly preparing because I was busy showing the insurance guy around. I'm a great hostess like that, which means when I say "you have an open invitation to our house", you should hear "because someone needs to cook around here."

A week later, our house looked like this:

"Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us"

Second verse, same as the first

As the recovery contractor's team was wheeling in their giant de-humidifiers, pulling down drywall, and discovering knob-and-tube wiring (heh, heh) cleverly hidden* in every wall of the house, as the electricians moved in and started cutting holes in the drywall of any of the rooms the recovery team hadn't touched, as my kitchen became useless (owing to the orange tarp bisecting the room right at the stove), and as all of the power except the feed to one or two outlets was turned off (for the next six weeks), my children started barfing.

And lest you shy delicately away from imagining just what it was like, I will re-enact it faithfully for you:

Sandi: No, don't--

Oscar: BLEARGHALLOVERTHEFLOOR!

[whole family moves to a hotel room]

This hotel room, singular

Norah: I feel sic--BLEARGHALLOVERTHECARPETATMIDNIGHT!

Lucy: BLEARGHJUSTBLEARGHBECAUSEHOWMUCHWORSECOULDITGET?!

So innocent. So full of barf.

The coolest thing about the hotel room was that the tv was on a swivel, so Seth and I could "put the kids to bed" and still have some time to ourselves. The worst thing about the room was that it was all one room, so while Seth and I were "having some time to ourselves" (read: watching International House Hunters Modern Family), Lucy was doing this:

In case you can't tell from this well-lit and expertly-focused photograph, this is my darling cherub peeking around the tv for the seven-hundred-and-thirty-ninth time after being put back to bed for the seven-hundred-and-thirty-eighth time.

We lived in that hotel room for a week; a week that should have been longer but wasn't because insurance companies are The Worst.

Needless to say, we ate mucho mucho hot dogs, and very little work of the non-barf-cleaning variety was done.

This picture is a lie

*No, really: hidden. As in, on purpose.

20 Seconds: Lego

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Friday., so naturally:

The Post That You Totally Missed Out On

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...because I haven't written it.

...because it's going to be legendary. Or - at least - legendarily mortifying.

...because the diary I kept in my most awkward, dramatic years still exists, and I am going to show it to you.

(But it is buried deep in the bowels of my basement, under layers of Renovationally Displaced Stuff, so you will have to wait).

Budding Super Villain

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This is Bumbossetti. She's a super-villian of the giant-gold-bar-stealing variety, and she was my first Lego set, some (cough) twenty-five (25) years ago. My brother's Lego men were all the boring characters in our stories.

Her instructions are very, very old. Some of her house is missing (no doubt pressed into the service of some dastardly plot or another), and she herself has been in a bag in a box (in another box) for quite some time.

Yesterday, she met her newest fellow Lego men victims for the very first time.

Maniacal laugh.

What To Eat When You Don't Have A Kitchen

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First of all, the title is an outright lie. I do have a kitchen.

Behold, Great-Grandma Sarah's* hoosier:

Also behold: a laundry sink, an oven we got for free, an oven we paid for that isn't hooked up to the gas line anymore, the corner of an old table we found in the garage when we moved in, and - completely relevant to the story - Lucy's crazy hair and a bonus bottle of Manitoulin Island maple syrup. We may not have a proper kitchen, but we're not barbarians.

So, in reality, we do have a kitchen. What we don't have is most of the stuff that comes with a kitchen, like storage for things you use in a kitchen, owing to the surprising permanence of this "temporary" solution.

Back to the question: what do we eat? Rice and beans. These ones, with lime zest and cheddar cheese wrapped up in a tortilla. I admit, I haven't been at the top of my cooking game since March. The last awesome thing I made was...um...

I don't remember. My totally reliable and not unscientific at all statistical analysis tells me we've eaten takeout approximately three times more often than we used to and eat 51% fewer vegetables. Fatigue and overload have combined to make me not only an even more indifferent cook than I was before, but have made the comforts of junk food even more...erm...comforting.

So to answer your question, Katfish, yeah, pretty much ramen noodles.

Just imagine how exciting cooking (and eating) real food will be.

*Remind me to tell you the story of Great-Grandma Sarah someday. It's full of old-timey scandal and what-not.

In Which All (Or Possibly Some) Is Revealed

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Okay, close your eyes and dream of my kitchen. Let your (imaginary) gaze wander over the black linoleum, the ludicrously deep cupboards, the sink - not in front of the window, who'd want that? - and the inexplicably high (island? island-ish?) counter.

Got it? Or, like normal people, do you not use up valuable memory space on some random internet stranger's long-ago mentioned kitchen and need a reminder?

Thought so. You know, I'm really starting to question our relationship.*

And since we're lolling around in the past anyway, perhaps I'll let you eavesdrop on the first conversation Seth and I ever had about this house, here in the middle of this ugly kitchen:

Seth: "Isn't it--"

Sandi: "We're not buying it."

In fact - if you can believe it - the kitchen wasn't the worst thing going for the house. This was:

But by the time we (inevitably - I can't resist his handsome face) moved in, the bathroom looked like this:

 And as for the kitchen, well...

Yeah.

So you'll understand me when I say that when the drip-drop of water leaking through our roof, through our cupboards (among many - MANY - other places) and onto our counter, turned out to be not quite as minor as we first thought, and resulted in this:

And, eventually, this:

You'll understand my excitement over the prospect of a new kitchen.

But, wait! There's more!

The side porch started to crumble. We found knob and tube wiring, like a cancer, entwined in every room and infecting every switch, plug, and outlet. The back room turned out to be sitting on dirt instead of, you know, a foundation. And - did I mention? - the roof leaked. 

I'm exhausted just typing it out. Stay tuned, this soap opera ain't nearly done.

*This is a lie. I questioned it long, looong ago, and have come to the inescapable conclusion that you're my people, you adorable weirdos.

Take It When You Can Get It

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It's Friday, which means my cleaning lady is here [fans herself languidly, sneezes,  falls from chaise-longue, jumps up, tries to look dignified and important, fails], and I have a report due to a client that is breaking my brain.

For both reasons (and because I have it on my camera card, let's not kid ourselves), I'm leaving you with only this today:

Twenty seconds (exactly) of bliss in which my children are occupied in their various pursuits and not trying to A) grab something, or B) tell me that one of their siblings grabbed something.