Hurricane Summer makes way for hurricane season

So, Himself and the Little 'Un have gone mackerel fishing. Kitty has been dispatched to the mall to buy some clothes for the autumn. Low is blaring out of the speakers. Hurricane Hanna has announced her imminent arrival with some rain.

Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.

That's what she said anyway.

PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They fell for it.

Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.

It takes forever but.

"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."

"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."

"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"

No.

No.

No.

Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.

Housework, schmousework.

Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.

The old Queenie.

She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.

This is the new Queenie.

All growed up.

About time, I hear some people say.

Probably.

Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!

One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.

So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?

Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.

Let me see.

Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.

Then we drove back.

We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.

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Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.

That was fun.

Not.

Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.

I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I nearly did.

I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.

Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.

So I had to stay.

Until Sunday.

Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.

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I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.

My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.

But they're all fixed now.

It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.

And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.

I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.

But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.

And the hygienist started to cry.

Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.

She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.

Good.

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Himself got divorced in the middle of July.

And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.

And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.

As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.

So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.

So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.

But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.

Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.

But we are getting there, piece by piece.

Himself is better at this stuff than me.

Of course, he's had more practice.

Haha.

Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.

And the kids too.

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Speaking of.

Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.

At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.

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We went camping to Bear Cove.

We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.

And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.

Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.

Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.

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We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.

Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.

They work on a building crew together.

Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.

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I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.

I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.

That's about 5,000 kilometres.

Man, that tired me out.

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Then Ammonite arrived for a week.

Shopping ensued.

And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.

She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.

"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."

I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.

Funny.

Not often he's dumbstruck.

We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.

A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.

There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.

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My big mouth got me in trouble at work.

No change there.

Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.

Really.

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We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.

That's when I found my centre again.

Just us and the loons.

And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.

What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?

Anyways, it's all over for another year.

Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.

As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.

But she changed her mind.