Skip to main content

last word on last holiday

Cigar-tin story number 39.

A few final thoughts on my cottage vacation, in the form of a lexicon.

Summer at the Shore, Definition of Terms

Rain: Arriving in waves. Welcome to the inside of the cottage. The real struggle is just staying awake ... the rain sounds like pebbles poured over paper towel, and the wind in the chimney like some distant, erratic hand dryer.

Naps: Will always be interrupted by three-foot Chinese gangsters.

Sun: Distant, uncooperative, then suddenly looming and radioactive. Smearing on sunblock is both necessary and slightly distasteful.

Mosquitoes: Love the smell of sunblock. Will arrive in swarms, just behind your head.

Wind: Drives the clothes that C is constantly putting out on the line. Can laundry be an addiction? Provides some temporary relief from the mosquitoes but, like kamikazes, many still get through.

Ocean: Deceptively warm up to your knees, then cold enough to take your breath away. Full of crabs, star fish, jelly fish, tickle fish, flounder, mackerel ... and the bones/corpses of all of the above. At times it feels like you're stepping on piles of chicken bones. Still, the ocean is really just for tourists, as locals are very reluctant to "get dunked". The cool salt water is the only effective relief for mosquito bites.

Beer: Constantly running out.

Wine: A poor substitute, unless your tastes run to the stretchy-neck.

Food: C enjoys vegetables because she likes the smell of rotting food in the nether regions of the fridge. Otherwise it's freezies, oreos and kraft dinner.

Driving: Just take a plane for Christ's sake.

Comments

  1. Now that you have relived your vacation in prose form, I bet you realise what a great time you really had!
    Except maybe for the mozzies!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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