July 3, 2011
Best morning ever
Our friends Jennie and Deep have a new house within the vicinity of Trinity Bellwoods Park, so that was where we met them this morning for a splendid picnic brunch. It was a brilliant walk in the sunshine, from our house all the way down to Clafouti for the best croissants in Toronto. We had teas and coffees, and sat on a blanket under a tree, and marvelled at the goodness of life in general, in particular on a day like today. And then Harriet went to the playground and the wading pool, while Jennie and I dashed across the street for a browse in Type Books. I bought Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems and It Must Be Tall As A Lighthouse by Tabatha Southey. Jennie bought the Jack Dylan Trinity Bellwoods poster (at right). Then back to the park where we splashed around with Harriet in the pool. She was eventually bribed out of the pool with the promise of ice cream, which dripped until she was covered in it, and by then we were home. And then Harriet slept for three hours, which made this probably the very best day on record. Not a bad way to cap off a weekend of patio sitting, bbqs, and reading a big fat summer book. More about that book later…
June 24, 2011
I have had a happy birthday
3+2 candles. Have finally finished reading Great Expectations. Ice cream is the easiest cake in the world to make. We had five kids under three (and their moms) over to eat the ice cream cake this morning, and the kids were delightful. Their moms are some of the best company I know. And now I’m going out for dinner with my little family, tomorrow we’ll celebrate birthdays, Father’s Day and my mom’s retirement with our extended family, and then piece de resistance is Sunday, when we have afternoon tea at the Windsor Arms Hotel. When, I guess, we will finally have to declare my birthday over. But until then…
Happy Weekend!
June 23, 2011
Penguins in the Post
Oh, there are words to describe yesterday, but they’re not very polite ones. They’re the words I was thinking as I hauled my hysterically tantrumming toddler home from a drop-in we visited in the morning, one that was so nice that apparently Harriet never wanted to go home. She was able to contort her body to become completely rigid (this kid would rock at planking) or to become a wet noodle, therefore rendering stroller get-her-inning completely impossible. She wanted me to carry her, and it was raining, and I couldn’t push a stroller, hold Harriet and an umbrella, so we got soaked. And then I could no longer carry Harriet at all, and that was all she wrote. It was horrid. And we won’t even get started on the whole “leaving the farmer’s market” meltdown in the afternoon, which was even worse, totally embarrassing and annoying. By the time Stuart came home from work, I was totally broken, and once again, considering putting Harriet up for adoption. “But tomorrow will be better,” I told myself, believing this to be somewhat naive, but it is June, mind you, and life is good in June, and indeed, better today has definitely been.
And it still would have been better had I not received this incredible surprise from my pal at Penguin Canada. A Penguin tote bag (which would be enough in itself) packed with 24 Mini Moderns. But it would not be possible to receive a package like this, and for a day not to be made. And yes, partly because we’re in our third week of a mail strike and I’ve been missing surprises at my door, and partly because these books are so brilliantly Penguinesque in their design and because I can’t wait to find a place where I can line them all up in a row, and because there are authors I love here, and others still yet to be discovered. But mostly because now I am totally assured that there is such brilliant possibility in never knowing what a new day might deliver.
June 19, 2011
Our work in progress
I do have a feeling that happiness is as much about being content with what you’ve got as ensuring that what you’ve got is of extraordinary quality, workmanship, durability– even if it’s not all that much to look at it. Or at least that’s how it’s worked out for us over the last six years, since our beautiful wedding beside the sea and later that night when we danced to Flowers in the Window (which was always about possibility, and it still is, and the song’s still true).
For me, another key to our happiness has been this: we spent April and May ready to spend the summer living on absolutely nothing, and so we instituted severe austerity measures, squirreled our money away, and made the best of things. And then things worked out better than we hoped, and now our usual meagre income feels like extraordinary wealth– we can buy books, and ice cream cones, and I can get my hair cut. This kind of relative thinking does wonders for the perspective. The year we 
moved back to Canada, I was in grad. school, Stuart was in immigration limbo, and we budgeted for $50 a week for groceries from No Frills, and after that year, I promise you, I have never, ever complained about money (or lack of it). Because from these experiences, we learned what enough is, and we’ve been able to tailor our lives accordingly. Mostly because I would hate to think of a life in which books and ice cream were no longer extravagances.
Yesterday, we had the most wonderful day. We had lunch at Dessert Trends, which was amazing because Harriet decided to behave like an adorable toddler instead of a feral creature (or rather she behaved as a creature who eats her lunch instead of one who spits it all over the floor). It was also a good day because I bought the game Bananagrams, a toy accordion, and Olive Kitteridge at a yard sale for $5. After nap time, we walked off our decadent desserts with a walk in the heat to Dufferin Grove Park, which wasn’t hot at all, and Harriet played in the fountains for over an hour, and we sat on a park bench and watched her go. Harriet, the child who wakes up in the morning screaming, “More fun!” and goes 
to bed at night screaming, “More Day!”, and who intermittently screeches, “More water!” in more contexts than you’d ever imagine possible– it was her ideal way to spend an afternoon, and for once she got tired of an activity before having to be dragged away from it screaming, and we managed to talk her out of the swings by bribing her with ice cream. Which we picked up in Little Italy at the street festival, admidst throngs of happy people (only some of whom were drenched in cologne), and then we walked the rest of the way home in the sunshine, Harriet shoeless and sticky, and all of us happy with the way we’d spent our afternoon. Evening involved Mad Men (we’re rewatching Season 1. I still understand why I doubted the show’s goodness then, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong to ever do so). Sunny Saturdays in June are pretty much all a person requires in this life…
I do look forward to June 18 every year, mostly because it’s an excuse to post pictures from my wedding, which was the most wonderful day and everything I ever dreamed of it being (and thank you once again to whoever was responsible for that gorgeous sunshine). It was just 6 years ago, but
we’ve come a long way since then, learning so much and changing our minds about a lot of things, but everything really important I believed in then, I still believe in now (except that James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” was a good song. I do not know what I was thinking). That there is love without compromise (to one’s self, I mean, not between one another), that marriage is a project that you mutually envisage and build up together, and that it’s forever a work-in-progress is wherein lies the beauty and possibility.
May 30, 2011
Today I went to the bookstore
Today I went to the bookstore and purchased these fine volumes: Margaret Drabble’s A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, Carolyn Black’s The Odious Child, and Granta 115. The occasion? Well, after finishing up his contract on Friday, Stuart was offered a new job this afternoon, and starts on Monday. We are thrilled. Further celebrations were had via ice cream cones and sushi take-out. What a lovely, lovely day.
May 2, 2011
One good thing about today
One good thing about today was that my essay “Love is a Let-Down” was nominated for a National Magazine Award for “Personal Journalism”, which is wonderful. This is the little essay that really could… (and now I really have to publish something new and excellent just to prove it wasn’t a fluke). So pleased The New Quarterly saw its worth last year, and gave it a home in its pages. I’m also looking forward to having it appear (edited into an altogether different kind of creature, but still a useful one) in Readers’ Digest next month.
The New Quarterly is all sold out of their issue 116, but it’s available here in digital form through Magazines Canada (and at a very reasonable price as well). You’ll be able to read the abridged version in RD too, but I urge you to get a copy of the original if you’re interested.
September 24, 2010
People in real life
I am an enormous fan of people in real life, which was why I was very glad to welcome Nathalie and Julia to my house yesterday as part of the “people around in the daytime” collective. We met for the purposes of pie, a date set ages ago, and it did not disappoint. Neither guest argued (to my face) with my pie’s alleged status as “best in Toronto”, which was kind of them (and maybe even genuine? Seriously. I make good pie. It is the one thing I’m pretty much 100% confident about). There was also cheese, and wine, (and Lesley Stowe crackers— I could eat these until I died) which pretty much certified the afternoon as the very best ever, and we talked about books, and writing, and blogging, and Harriet fell in love with Nathalie’s five-year old.
It’s nice that somebody in my family goes to work so I can have this kind of life, and I was kind enough to save him leftovers.
August 22, 2010
Eden Mills Festival Fringe!
Today’s exciting news was that my story “You Can’t Run a Show on Stage Management Alone” was accepted as part of the Fringe Stage at the Eden Mills Writers Festival. This will be my third year attending the festival, and I was looking forward to it anyway, but that I’ll actually now be (a small) part of the event is overwhelming and really lovely. Hope some of you can make it out on Sunday September 19th, and we’ll start crossing our fingers for sunshine.
July 30, 2010
The Proust Questionnaire
For my entire life, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me The Proust Questionnaire, and so you can imagine my joy when Open Book Toronto came calling. Read my answers here!
July 28, 2010
You've got to court delight
You’ve got to court delight, I think. By which I mean that things don’t just turn up in the post. You’ve got to send small gifts across the country to get a thank-you note in return, and subscribe to literary journals and magazines, and have a friend who lives in Antarctica who sends a postcard from time to time. Or rather, you have to go out of your way to buy a red teapot so that you can be a person who has a red teapot (unless you’re a particular fortunate person for whom red teapots arrive in the post).
Anyway, the point is that I received two letters in the post today upon whose envelopes my name was inscribed by hand. (And it wasn’t even that deceptively handwriting-like font that Bell Canada puts on all their envelopes when they send missives begging for the return of my custom.) Two handwritten envelopes is practically unheard of! I tore them open in a hurry and was not the least bit disappointed by what I found inside.
But let me backtrack. I joined The Barbara Pym Society earlier this year, because it seemed a strange, funny and Pymian thing to do. (I was inspired by this article.) And I also made friends with a brilliant writer/almost birdwatcher, and had her over for tea last week. As a result of these two things, I today received a lovely letter from a fellow Pym Society member who is looking for a Canadian meet-up*, and an absolutely beautiful thank you note from my birder-writer friend (who is truly as master of the form). Both of which made me exquisitely happy.
So you do have to court delight, I think. Though there’s also the point that if you wish to be perpetually delighted, just look for the pleasure of tiny, wonderful things. (Or perhaps I need to get out more…)
*Fascinatingly enough, the Pym Society member had sent me this letter unknowing that we’d corresponded in the past! Three years ago, she published a beautiful essay in The Globe, and sent me a note after I’d mentioned it on my blog. And now we find ourselves two of the very small population of Canadian Barbara Pym Society members! How marvelously tiny the world truly is…
