Last Holiday, Sans Peanut, Days 16 + 17

Day 16

Over to Cousin Jane's (after Coronation Street, of course) to say goodbye to Deb and Steve and Miranda. Then I put up a bat box (?!) on the side of the cottage and caulk windows for a few hours. Then Catherine brings the girls over to complain about being spoiled and make fun of my underwear. Since I'm busy, C makes her own lunch, which is the same lunch she always makes when left to her own devices: Kraft dinner. Did you say you were having a baby or a tapeworm? Little Graeme drops by, asks C to stop telling him about her 'fantasy projects' (if C had her way, the cottage would be nothing but a concrete slab with sliding glass doors). We go to Cap Pele for supper, after handing the French electrician a cheque for his kid's first year of college.

Day 17

Up early, drawing, breakfast, then I mow the lawn. Swim, lunch, nap. This state of perfection is ruined by some production artist at the Kingston Whig Standard who needs artwork for an article they're running on my cigar-tin stories. I gave the artwork to the interviewer, I say into the cellphone, which for me is still like talking into a potato. He says it's corrupted or no good or something, even though I know it's fine, because a million years ago I used to do his job at another paper. Can you send me some more stuff? he asks. Are you near a computer? Meanwhile, I'm looking out on the Northumberland Strait, thinking very cold thoughts.

I try to keep my day together, spending a large part of the afternoon towing C around the ocean in an inflatable raft, but the old disheartenment is settling in about this article ... so much of these things, at this bottom rung especially, are no more than vapour, than ghosts, and the whole enterprise is made that much more dispiriting by how easily it all slips away. How many manuscripts requested and then forgotten? How many simply lost? How much bullshit and bravado involved? How much of it is just a game, amongst the same circle of friends? Emails not returned, letters ignored, names misspelled, opportunities dropped, no promotion, no real idea. Anyway, I find myself scrambling to take pictures, and then up the shore to a friend's place, to frantically email the damn artwork.

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glamour, by extension

C is friends with the fashion stylist Rebekah Roy (left in both pics above) ... one of those people who personify calm and smiling success. On her blog she presents glamour in this very sincere, straightforward way ... whether she's taking pictures of people on the street , talking about stain removers , her favourite videos , or attending some glittering party . One minute she's ruminating on hair extensions, and in the next she reveals how she's been featured on the Vogue UK site. A real disarmer and charmer (and this without meeting her yet, although I feel like I know her because we both did our time in Winnipeg). * * * * * Coming home from Russia, we did many bad things. ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. In my own life, the glamour is wholly imagined. * * * * * witches, smoke ; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 10 inches. My second go at this one, and for some reason I'm painting a lot of smoke lately (note to self: tell C that I want to be cremated). *

the indisputable weight of the ocean

People are always telling me that my work is too dark. So I've put up this sunnier story, but even it has a shadow, as its original publisher – a fine Atlantic Canadian literary magazine called the Gaspereau Review – is no longer in business. ---------------- It was a simple enough thing and that thing was simply this: Edmund Kelley was a gentleman. Of course his mom called him her 'little gentleman', as in 'Oh Edmund, you are my perfect little gentleman,' which did seem to hold to a certain logic that these type of things often follow, considering her affection for him and the fact that he was, after all, only ten years old. Still, Edmund himself was not particularly fond of the diminutive aspect of that title. Gentleman was enough; gentleman summed up the whole thing rather nicely, thank you. He was definitely a more refined version of your average child. He lived in a state of perpetual Sunday m

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail. Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on . * * * * * C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK ( Whatever , I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and

red-handed

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