I was busy.

So so busy.

I am not used to being busy in quite this way.

But I can’t tell anything about why I was busy and what I was busy contemplating because it’s a SECRET.   And it’s a really really really good SECRET.   And no no no, a thousand times NO, I am not pregnant.   So don’t guess that.   Every time I have a secret, someone says, “You’re pregnant!”  and they are all happy and excited as though I don’t have enough kids already and the only thing that will save our universe from certain demise is if I produce another baby and cease sleeping for ANOTHER FIVE YEARS.   O-to-the-MG, NOOOOOOooooooo.   I’m already so tired that sometimes I wake up and have no idea who or where I am, let’s not bring on the dementia any quicker, mkay?

Mkay.

For some reason, I find “mkay” more amusing than “okay”.

So there’s that bit about the good SECRET that I can’t tell you and the UnCamping and then the part about how The Bun is going to Catholic school even though we are the UnCatholics, which I didn’t tell you about but trust me, it’s a decision that I spent a lot of time agonizing about unnecessarily this week in lieu of cleaning campers, booking campsites, or writing books.    Now I’ve started typing about it though, I realize the whole discussion of it is silly, like I couldn’t POSSIBLY have any more middle-class troubles than the agonizing decision about whether to send my kid to the perfectly good local public school or the slightly better quasi-private Catholic school.    I mean, seriously.   There are oil spills.   This is not a real ‘problem’, it’s just me, spuddling.

I do love the word spuddle.   I was driving along the other day and was distracted so missed the turn to my own house and ended up looping around this other road, where I don’t normally drive, and I noticed that the big load of topsoil that these people had had delivered about three years ago has completely grown over with grass, so in the middle of this person’s lawn, there is like a giant grass molehill.   Which made me think of the word ’spuddle’, which basically means ‘making mountains out of molehills’ and I thought, I should take a picture of that and put it on my blog, but then I felt weird about taking a picture of it, so I didn’t, but I will and then will randomly post it and you’ll go, “Why is there a tiny grass mountain on that person’s lawn and why did Karen take a picture of it?”

So anyway, The Bun is pretty cross that we’re not camping and he keeps interrupting me as I’m typing this to say things like, “WHAT ABOUT PARKSVILLE?  LET’S CAMP AT PARKSVILLE.”  And then I type three more words and he says, “MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY WHAT ABOUT THE WOODS?”  So I said, “Honey, Mummy just has to type this one paragraph.  Can you please just let me type this one paragraph without interrupting?”

And he’s five, so he got all belligerent and said, “Oh YEAH?  OH YEAH?  And what’s a PARAGRAPH?  Is it your BRAIN?”

So I said, “Yes.   My brain is a paragraph.”

None of that made any sense but I thought it made a good ending to this post.

So the other day I was on one of those Twitter chat things with other YA writers and someone suggested that to write YA you have to be, you know, Y, yourself.   And if you aren’t Y, then you are… irrelevant.   IRRELEVANT!  It was like a giant hand reached out of my screen and punched me square in the nose, sort of like a sucker punch, but one that was so powerful I was knocked through the back wall of my house like a cartoon character and then run over by a passing bus.

Seriously?

Irrelevant?

And I thought I was just getting good.

For about a week, I let this bother me.  After all, I’m only in my thirties and TRUST ME when I say I remember all the thoughts and feelings of being a YA much like it was yesterday, probably because just yesterday I had a very YA feeling about how my belly folds weirdly when I sit down and if only I had a better, flatter stomach, I’d totally be invited to be on the cheerleading squad.   Well, not exactly like that, but close enough.

Seriously, peeps, I do not think I’m irrelevant.   But having someone who is younger than me and actually hasn’t been published yet, who really isn’t an authority on anything, tweeting in 140-characters or less about my lack of relevance is sitting uncomfortably in my stomach.   So what I did this week instead of finishing BOOT GIRL was to go back to my adult novel.

After all, I’m an adult.

So it wasn’t all bad, that punch in the nose and subsequent flattening, because I did get a lot done.

But now, it’s Saturday, which means that the sprogs are otherwise occupied and I am sufficiently recovered — although still a bit swollen — to go back to what I should be doing, which is writing YA, if only I can get my aged, arthritic knuckles to type out the words.

Mostly, I feel the same as I did when I started writing YA waaaaaaay  back in my 20s.

Except for the strands of grey leaping into my hair, I think I look the same.   This is because my eyes are failing at exactly the same rate as my wrinkles are formng, so I can’t really see them.    Bonus!

Anyway, can’t go having grey hair just yet and I’m too cheap/poor to pay someone else to colour my hair,  so the other day I went out and dilligently spent an hour choosing the EXACT RIGHT hair dye for my hair.  Then I brought it home and threw the instructions away, as you do, if “you” are “me” and have coloured your hair dozens of times before.   Also, apparently, I did not think it was strictly necessary to read the labels on the various tubes and bottles in the kit.   You know where this is going, right?

So after 30 minutes of sitting with the conditioner mixed with the toner on my head and saying, “Wow, this smells great!”, I went to rinse and condition in the shower.   Which is when I squirted the raw, untoned dye onto my head.   Because that other tube?  That WAS the conditioner.

After frantic rinsing to get the burning, toxic goo out of my hair,  I had really soft, still grey-highlighted hair.   Not all my hair is grey.   Just a bit.   I don’t want you to be picturing me wrong and I KNOW you are now desperately trying to imagine how awful I look with an entirely grey head.   Answer:  No idea.

Needless to say, I was pretty depressed and my hair stunk which it will do when you squirt a tube of undiluted dye on it.   So back I went to the store.   Only — gasp! — they did not have my carefully selected colour/brand.   The horror!   The horror!

I commenced looking for something similar.   It took ages, peeps, because every time I found one, there was only one box and I need two because I have long hair.   Such are my bourgeois problems.   FINALLY I found THE ONE!   Hidden!  Behind some other ones!   I was on my knees looking for the second box which I knew would be hiding back there somewhere when an ELDERLY WOMAN SNATCHED THE FIRST BOX FROM MY HAND.

The hell?   Aren’t elderly people supposed to be kindly and gentle?   Instead of chasing her down, wrestling her to the ground, and grabbing it back, I just watched in shock as she hobbled/ran to the counter to pay.  FOR MY PERFECT COLOUR!   In my defense, she was very wiry and moved fast.  I probably couldn’t have caught her anyway.

The whole thing sapped the life force out of me and instead of continuing to care what my hair looked like, I grabbed two boxes of a colour called Coffee Cream because it was on sale for six dollars.

ON SALE, for the record, is not a reason to buy hair colour that will be on your head, oh, FOREVER.   But the elderly woman sapped my spirit!   She did!  I blame the elderly!   ALL OF THEM!

Then I brought it home, followed the instructions and turned my brown hair…

entirely black.

That’s right.

And what’s WORSE than the fact that I look like Morticia Adams is that NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON HAS NOTICED.   That’s right, I went from mid-brown with reddish tint hair to BLACK HAIR and no one, not one single person, noticed.

Which brings me back to the person who suggested that thirty-somethings were irrelevant to YA writing.   Hey, not only are we IRRELEVANT, but we are also INVISIBLE!   Which is actually totally awesome, so take THAT, young person.    THAT doesn’t happen when you are sub-20.

Oh, and next time I see you purchasing hair dye in Zellers?  I’m totally going to snatch it from your hand and make a run for the counter.   That’s the kind of privilege we old folk get to enjoy.   It’s true.   Ask anyone.

To make a long story a minimum of 1000 words, every single rack of clothing at Zellers had a big huge sign affixed to it that said, BUY ONE, GET ONE HALF OFF.   Why they didn’t just say 25% off, I have no idea.   (The math became complicated later in the story, i.e. when the till did the math and made half off the same as 1/3 off and the subsequent correcting calculation caused the cashier’s head to actually implode.)   After much humming and hawing during which time The Birdy frantically flung everything pink that she could find into the shopping cart and The Bun screamed about how pink made him VOMIT, YES REALLY VOMIT, HE WAS GOING TO BE SICK, we chose a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of tights for ballet.   She also selected four new tutus (who knew they sold these at Zellers?) and several new leotards and multiple pairs of (pink) tights.   The Bun chose a Hannah Montana necklace for reasons that still escape me (it wasn’t pink) and cried hot tears of pain when told he couldn’t have it.   Both kids are starting dance classes this week and The Birdy already has a dance outfit and The Bun has more dance shoes than you can shake a stick at, although you could easily shake a stick at them, because there are only two pairs, but still it seems like a lot if you consider that up until now, his dancing life has consisted of crumping during movie credits, in bare feet.

After what felt like six hours of painful negotiation with the children over what they could and could not have, I took four things to the till.   Buy one, get one half off.   Two should be full price, two should be half price.  Right?   RIGHT?   Well, no.   Because one of them was a t-shirt which was not on sale even though it was on a table of identical shirts with a sign ATTACHED that said BUY ONE GET ONE HALF OFF.    The jeans were “pants” and therefore exempted.   The plain shirts were “underwear” so did not count as “apparel”.   Underwear is not apparel apparently.  Because you don’t wear it?  Oh, wait, yes you do.   Well, NOT APPAREL according to the Laws of Zellers, Where We Overprice Everything And Misrepresent The Price On The Tag.    Everything in my pile was an exception even though none of the things in the pile actually matched the two exception categories (Cherokee t-shirts and sweatpants).    I could have let it go, but I did not.   I hissed and snarled.   I was bitchy and unforgiving.  I was not going to relent.   And you’ll be happy to know, I got the $8 in discounts THAT I WAS ENTITLED TO after nearly leaping over the counter to throttle the clerk.  And yes, I know it’s not her fault, she does not make the rules.  But at Zellers, NOTHING IS ANYONE’S FAULT, management is hidden and cannot be addressed directly unless you are wearing a police badge, and nothing gets rung through at the price it is marked at.    Someone had to take a stand, and that someone was me.   Yes, indeedy.   So I’m like practically a SUPERHERO now, right?  No? YES I AM.  No shopping trip should require so much legalese.   I may as well have been in a courtroom arguing in front of a judge instead of what I was actually doing which was arm-wrestling a 16-year-old girl into Doing The Right Thing.

To shake off the annoyance, I drove the kids through the MacDonald’s drive thru for a nutritious meal.  I’M KIDDING.   I know it’s crap, but I was desperate.  That started going badly when it became apparent that the speaker in the drive thru was broken and the person on the other end was embroiled in a conversation with at least 8 other MacDonald’s employees about the fry oil.   We waited and waited.   The line snaked around the parking lot.   We have probably developed tumors from inhaling all that exhaust.   I shouted into the speaker, something about Happy Meals.   The speaker murmured back in a completely indecipherable code.   I began to weep.   Other cars honked.   The kids screeched about apple slices.   They really really like apples from MacDonald’s.   Don’t ask, it doesn’t make sense to me either.   They don’t do that well with regular apples.   I don’t think they understand that apples are apples, whether or not they come in plastic packaging.

Finally we got home.   I’ve forgotten why I started this post, much like I forget most things when I’m interrupted every ten seconds with shrieks and wails about how someone LOOKED AT SOMEONE ELSE THE WRONG WAY and I HAVE TO PEE and THE BIRDY TOUCHED MY CAMERA SO I PUSHED HER INTO THE BATHTUB and that sort of thing, but I think my point was going to be that no one gives a red hot poker about the customer any more.   Er, that was about it, really.   In between starting this post and finishing it, I’ve had to make dinner so now my concentration is shot and it’s only 5:35 although I told the kids it was bed-time.   Is that wrong?   No, I don’t think so either.   I’ll pay for it in the morning, but for now a blissful alone-type evening filled with reality TV and even some (gasp!) work is ahead of me.

So that’s that then.    God, don’t you hate it when a post just peters out without any real point showing up at the end?  Me, too.   Sorry.   My bad.

To make a long story shorter than 1000 words, yesterday we went downtown to buy The Stepson’s birthday present.   We parked the car, got out, walked a few blocks, did a bunch of shopping, bought something really incredibly unique that I’ll tell you about after his birthday that we think he’ll either triple-whammy LOVE or he’ll loathe so intensely that if his loathing could be bottled it would be sold by Monsanto to kill unwanted weeds and also most wildlife in the vicinity — including some really cute and waterproof sneakers for yours truly for only $17 (regular $70!).   But when we went to pay, I realized my wallet was not in my purse.  What?  Where was it?   Suddenly with absolute crystal-clear clarity — the same kind of clarity that I have right before I get a speeding ticket — I realized that it was on my lap when I got out of the car and likely fell off and into the gutter beside the car and was probably stolen and all my credit cards would be rung up to the top and my i.d. would be used to transport terrorists to North America who would then perform deeds so outlandishly awful under my name that for the rest of my life I’d be outcast and universally abhorred EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T MY FAULT.   I mean, obviously.   We wandered back to the car, because “sprinting” is not an option when you have hungry, tired toddlers, and lo THERE WAS MY WALLET IN THE GUTTER BESIDE THE CAR.   It was wet, but otherwise unharmed.

I should add that this is the second time I’ve dropped my wallet in a crowd and had it NOT GET STOLEN.   That is some serious luck.   But… am I wasting all my good luck on the fact that I’m somehow incapable of holding on to my money?   Why could my good luck not be applied elsewhere, like in my career and my bank account?   For example?   I’m just wondering out loud here, Universe.    JUST THINKING OUT LOUD.   I’m willing to bet that James Patterson does not drop his wallet, like EVER, and now he has a 17-book deal with Hachette.   Which is not just good luck or good karma, I know I KNOW, it’s hard work and talent and marketing genius and also, yes, ALSO there is some kind of dollop of luck involved.   There has to be.

Every once in a while, I think that maybe in my last life (and no, I don’t really believe in that except when I do), I just wasn’t that nice, or I WAS nice but then every once in a while I’d randomly punch someone softly on the nose or maybe kick them ever so gently on the belly and not really hurt them, but startle them enough that maybe they’d cry or even pee a little.   So now, in this life, I can be wandering along and pretty OK and mostly happy and finding my wallet in the gutter and then BAM, the Universe goes, “OK, enough of that, take this unpleasant and not-damaging but still-shocking poke between the ribs with the blunt end of a pencil.   Have a nice day!”

Hey, look at that, it’s a short post.    Well, back to work.   After all, luck does not come along without a big push from a whole lot of hard work.   Well, unless it’s a lottery win and it can’t be considered work to just go BUY A TICKET, right?   So actually, I take it back, sometimes luck is just sitting there and if you happen to come along, you can just pluck it up.   But that’s a whole different thing.

Anyway, “preschool picnic” is basically just a recipe for me to say something similarly idiotic that people will remember their entire lives and so I spent the night before listening to the rain, sporadically dreaming about trains and having nightmares of exhuming bodies in my mum’s backyard, and also practicing NOT saying anything stupid and hoping the whole thing would be off.

By 11 this morning, the weather was fine.   There was no excuse not to go and the kids were mad excited, as though perhaps we were going to visit Mickey Mouse AND Santa at the North Pole by way of Disneyland.    So we went.   But something happened the very second we left the house.   I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT WAS, PEOPLE.   The Bun immediately turtled, and by “turtled”, I mean he stuffed his hands into the inside of his vest such that he looked like he’d lost his arms in the wars.   The Birdy’s mood turned from upbeat (as it ALWAYS IS) to miserable.    I dragged them down the sidewalk, offering a bribe of CANDY once we arrived if they would STEP IT UP.    What was I thinking?

I.

Am.

An.

Idiot.

The kids indeed hurried to get to the park.    We recognized our group right away, mostly because no one else was there.   Making introductions, I concentrated hard on not saying anything too stupid.   But it wouldn’t have mattered what I was saying, because no one could hear me.   This was because out of a crowd of twenty or so kids, MY KIDS were standing at my feet, hopping up and down and screaming “CANDY!”  but not in voices that sweetly said, “Please Mummy may we have some candy” but in screams that said, “LADY, GIVE US CANDY OR WE’RE GONNA TAKE OUT THE WHOLE PARK.”   I gave them ONE CANDY each, as promised, but it was not enough.   They screamed.   I said, “No more candy, go play”.   They screamed more.   I said “NO” more forcefully.   I forgot everything I knew about how kids mirror your mood and when they see you starting to lose it, they go EVEN MORE INSANE.

“CANDY!” they bellowed.  They began — as a team — clawing at my purse like tiny prehistoric dinosaurs trying to claw open a coconut.   Did they have coconuts back then?   Either way, you know what I mean.   There was reptilian clawing.

All around us, kids played and laughed.   Parents chatted and introduced themselves.   I held off the two screaming, slobbering monsters that I vaguely recognized as my kids.

In an effort to break up the screaming/NO cycle, I took the kids into the woman’s changeroom.   It was the only place where a) no one else was and b) I could give them a “little talk”.    While in there, I noticed The Birdy’s jeans were a bit wet.   Ah ha!  I thought.   She needs new pants!  If I change her, her mood will improve and all will be well with the world!   I whipped off her pants and found — to my horror — what can only be described as the biggest most foul-smelling disgusting poop of all time.    (Sorry, I’m not really a mummy blogger but I’m a mummy and I blog so POOP is unavoidable).   I lay her gingerly on a wooden bench, holding her feet up to keep them out of the mire, and dug through my purse for wipes.   Which I did not have.   Kleenex.   Which I did not have.   The room we were in had no toilets, so no toilet paper.   No sink, so no paper towel.    All I had was… an Always maxipad.   With wings.

I know what you’re thinking, but I will say this:  I was desperate.  AND I DID SO.   Now wiping a child’s very filthy bum with a maxipad designed to wick moisture away into its magical core is obviously EXACTLY THE SAME as wiping the same kid’s bum with sandpaper.    The Birdy screamed.   I consoled.  I begged her to stop.   Eventually, she stopped.   I suggested to them that we return to the party and have FUN and actually, you know, PLAY WITH SOME PLAYGROUND STUFF.   The Bun said, “What about CANDY?”   The candy whining began again.   I may or may not have done some shouting.   Or some crying.   Or both.

There was also no garbage can in the change room.

Carrying the dripping diaper and sodden maxipad, we re-entered the outside world.  I looked for a garbage bin, hoping not to have to even begin to explain the poop encrusted maxipad.   The Bun began demanding that I help him climb onto a thing I cannot help him climb on to (see: Back, broken).    I explained that I could not.   The Bun melted down into a miniature incredible hulk, rending his clothing and screaming and turning green and throwing refrigerators.    The other kids watched in amazement.    I contemplated pretending to be the nanny, or better yet, just a passer by who happened to have a handful of HUMAN WASTE.    I was about to scream, “WHOSE CHILD IS THIS?”   and act appalled and maybe slap him*, a la the Walmart slapper, when The Birdy started climbing up to the slide.    At the top, she paused.

“Bird poop!”  she yelled, pointing to some unidentifiable slime on the top.

“It’s fine!” I encouraged.   “Just slide!”
“BIRD POOP!”  she screamed.

For twenty minutes, she stood at the top of the slide sreaming BIRD POOP and refusing to go either back down or to slide.   People tried to help.    Kids lined up behind her, many of the saying, “JUST GO!”

“BIRD POOP!” she sobbed.

Someone wiped the slide with a towel.  To no avail.   Finally, I pulled her down by her feet while she screamed.

We crossed the park and tried to remember that breathing involved “inhaling” and “exhaling” calmly and evenly.   The Birdy began to climb the little kid structure.    She’s good at it, we’re at that park EVERY DAY and she’s done it a million times.    The Bun was still unwilling (or unable) to talk to any of the kids that he was so excited to meet, but at least he’d stopped screaming.

I started to relax.    I casually chatted with the woman next to me.   She said, “I didn’t bring my baby because he’s too little to climb alone like that.”   I said, “Oh, she’s been doing it for ages!   She never falls!”   There was a silence.   She raised her eyebrows.   I laughed.   I said, “Of course, now that I’ve said that, she’ll probably fall backwards on her head in the gravel!”

I swear to God, the words were still out there, floating in front of my head like a balloon emblazoned with the words: “YOU ARE AN IDIOT!” when The Birdy leaned backwards, fell off, and smashed her head in the gravel.

So then we went home.

How was your morning?

* I’m totally kidding.  I would never really slap my own kid.   Someone else’s kid, maybe, but not my own.

I’ve been thinking about camping because we just were camping and I’m like that, i.e. capable of thinking of a thing when I’m actually doing it.   (Cool, dontcha think?) Here’s what I was thinking:   When I was a kid, I thought camping was something that it is really, really not.    I’ll admit it.   I was wrong.   Super, extra wrong.   Wrong to the wrong-squared, times a million.   And when I say “when I was a kid”, I mean “up until a few years ago when I actually went camping for the first time”.*    So really, I should change that to “for my entire life even when I was old enough to know better”, but I’m too lazy to backspace, which apparently takes up more energy than typing an extra paragraph for no reason.   Anyway,  I thought that camping was dangerous and, you know, involved the actual woods of the deep and dark variety.   And, if I’m being honest, a buck knife.    I don’t even know what a buck knife  is, or if that’s a word that I just made up, but I’m pretty sure that I strongly associated knives with camping, along with the usage of knives to perhaps skin animals, and/or hack trails through the undergrowth.   No, I’m not  kidding.   I also thought there was canoeing, cliff diving, and sing-songs around the campfire, in addition to classes to teach you how to make a wallet and quirky ploys to reunite your divorced parents.    In other words, I took every camping image I’d ever absorbed from TV or books and made the rest up.   I was a kid.  Oh, OK, also an adult.   But it is possible for a kid (and an adult) to hold two (or more) entirely conflicting stories in their head and believe both to be true, I know that it is because I did.

Then we bought a camper.   I know, I know.   “Real” camping involves a tent!    What kind of sissy expects to have “danger” and “excitement” from the confines of the Starcraft Antigua Hybrid Trailer?   Um, well, me?   I was pregnant at the time and the idea of sleeping on the ground was too much for me.   (I am sort of prissy, at the same time as being the sort of person who likes to be lost in the woods with no other people around, as long as it’s reasonably safe and I’m not likely to be killed by an axe murderer or a grizzly bear with an attitude.)   AND I have a bad back, and was under the illusion that sleeping in a camper would be better for my back, which it isn’t, if only because the mattresses are made from the cheapest available foam rubber such that they look like mattresses but really compress down to wafers when any weight is applied to them, i.e. me.    Needless to say, I now can’t feel my right lower-leg (See:  irritated disc).    (See also:  Mysterious Medical Maladies), but that’s another story for another day because this “quick post” is now anything but.

Anyway, camping.    We bought the camper.   We booked exotic-sounding campsites.   We went camping.

Shockingly, there was no need for a buck knife, except maybe for those times when we forgot a can opener and needed desperately to get into a can of Zoodles, ASAP.   In fact, the reality of “camping” is more like “parking”.    Why they don’t call it “parking”, I have no idea.   But it isn’t “camping”, really, is it?   You take your camper, replete with beds and a toilet and a stove and a sink, and you drive it to a place where you pay about $30/night or thereabouts to park in a spot of varying size (sometimes only barely bigger than the periphery of your camper itself) next to a whole bunch of other campers and occasionally also tents, depending on the campiste.   Sometimes you get to plug your camper in so you can use your microwave and sometimes, when you’re roughing it, there are some trees between you and the other campers, but not enough such that you can’t SEE them or HEAR every word that they say, just enough to remind you that you are in the woods and ergo, are “camping”!   Except it isn’t camping, is it, people?   I mean, really?    WHERE ARE THE BEARS?   This is not the deep dark woods, it’s a parking lot.    And it’s not CAMPING.  It’s PARKING!   It’s PARKING, I tell you.

Sometimes it’s parking next to a gorgeous beach or lake, but mostly, let’s face it, it’s parking.

Seriously.   Without referencing the nearest highway or shoreline, I cannot tell the difference between one provincial campsite and another, although some of them have flush toilets and showers and some of them do not.    Trees.   Dirt parking pads.   Picnic tables with concrete bases on which The Bun removed all the skin from his nose when he was two.    No wildlife.    No trails through the undergrowth.    No actual “adventure” or “danger”.   Just… parking.    After a few trips, you learn to bring along bikes for the kids to ride in circles around the driveway,  plastic toys to entertain them while you’re sitting and — let’s face it — drinking, and pretty soon your site looks like everyone else’s site and you can see why Walmart is such a successful shop.    Heaps of plastic toys, cheap folding chairs, and the occasional wading pool.   Not a single animal in sight, unless you count the requisite over-sized and under-trained large dogs that seem to be de rigeur this year as a camping accessory, but don’t get me started about THAT unless you want me to go on and on and on and on and keep you from your work that you really should be doing.

So, dogs.  And mosquitoes the size of your head, fat and drunk from sipping the heavily beer-diluted blood of your average camper.

When I was a kid, instead of going camping at these exotic (and dangerous!) campsites that my friends frequented with their families, we went to our summer cabin.   Our cabin was on an island with no services, no roads, no electricity, no plumbing, no phones, and no real access outside of a private boat.   I LOVED the cabin and still love it, but I always thought that it was the cushy alternative to camping.    Then my sister saw a cougar in the woods.   An animal!   In the woods!   Which sounds much more like camping than CAMPING, doesn’t it?   YES, IT DOES.    Not that I want to see a cougar.   I am — and this will surprise you, I’m sure — really, really scared of cougars.

I have to admit that the only reason why we camp now is because the kids love it, not having any preconceived notions of cliff-diving or cutting down trees to make shelter.   They really really love it.   Obsessively.   Which is making me start to like it more.  This last week, we even forgoed (forwent?) the woods in favour of the dreaded “RV Park” because the RV Park in question was right on the beach and next to the most awesome playground on Vancouver Island.    And the kids were thrilled.    And so we were thrilled, too.    Although a little friendly, non-scary wildlife and maybe a couple more feet between us and the next RV wouldn’t have hurt, it was made up for by the helicopter-shaped playground thing and the beach with the low-tide zone a mile wide.

*For the sake of this story, the first time doesn’t really count because the first time I went camping as an adult, we did take an actual tent into the woods near a beach that wasn’t a campsite and we did hack a site out of the woods and half-way through the night a bear did rub himself on our tent and we were scared and vowed to never camp again without, say, a buck knife handy or at least a burly friend who would be happy to wrestle the bear while we ran, crying like babies, to the safety of our car.

Here’s my story: I woke up yesterday morning with that funny little chest pain that you get when you inhale. You know the one, where you breathe more deeply to test it and then you double over, screaming in pain and contemplate WHY NOW? WHY AM I GOING TO DIE? I DO NOT WANT TO DIE! And you think about all the ways in which you’d prefer to die, meaning “of old age and in your sleep”, not say, “in the mouth of a tiger shark while enjoying some snorkelling off the coast of Oahu”. Then you start worrying about which girl your husband will likely marry TO REPLACE YOU (the bastard) and NOT ONE FEMALE (sluts! all of them!) that you know seems good enough for the role of Mummy to your precious angels, so you stoically sit up and take another breath because THE KIDS NEED YOU, so help you God. (I actually typed “Todd” there instead of “God”. I don’t even know a “Todd”. What is wrong with my brain?) Then the kids do stuff like scream at random intervals for no reason and scare the crap out of you (The Stepson), scream at random intervals because they’ve dropped a toy, book, stick, rock, piece of lego, themselves (The Bun) or scream at random intervals because NEMO LIVES IN THE POTTY AND HE’S GOING TO DIE IF YOU FLUSH IT DO NOT FLUSH IT YOU CAN’T FLUSH IT NEEEEEEEEMOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AND DORY! WHAT ABOUT DORY? DORY IS DEAD!!!! DEAD! IN THE TOILET! All loud noises designed to make you think that maybe that barrista from the coffee shop where your husband gets his daily brew might be better at this than you are anyway, so what the hell, you may as well die, the kids will be better off and overall dying in bed from chest pain is better than being attacked from behind by a cougar while taking an innocent stroll through the underground parking lot at The Empress and bleeding to death in a pool left by someone’s dripping oil pan. Probably. Although the cougar-thing would likely get you in the local paper and stuff, whereas dying of some kind of lung embolism is a bit less newsworthy.

All day the pain got more and more intense until it hurt all the time, on both sides, and also randomly in my hip. I spent at least half of my babysitter-time — i.e. the time when I pay someone else to look after the kids (who NEVER scream when she is here) so I can write my latest book, which is totally awesome by the way and I use the words “totally awesome” to mean “please please please let me live long enough to finish it and then for a long time after that, too, because damn it, I DON’T WANT TO DIE” — Googling variations on “OMFG MY CHEST HURTS SO BAD (BUT ONLY WHEN I BREATHE) AM I GOING TO LIVE SYMPTOMS HIP PAIN” and things like that. At random intervals, the pain would be so severe that I’d be pushed back into my chair by it, like a giant hand shoving me and a loud voice — something British maybe, or German — shouting, “SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW AND DON’T YOU DARE INHALE”. But I like inhaling. It goes so well with exhaling, sort of like a nice zinfandel with a barbecued steak. By 8 pm, I’d had enough. I went to the clinic. Because I’m like that. Inhaling roolz, old skool.

At the clinic, the doctor became alarmed about a mole on my back, which was approximately the last thing that I needed, because, you know, I was busy worrying about the crushing chest pain and did not want to in any way dilute my worry pool with worry about skin cancer. I do that most of the rest of the time, when nothing significant is hurting. Dr. Clinic (I can’t remember his name) correctly diagnosed my problem as a chest wall injury incurred by intense sneezing, which he recommended that I stop doing.

Here’s the problem: I have to sneeze in this certain way, which is to say explosively and in a way that terrifies dogs, the elderly, and small children. If I do not sneeze in this specific way, I a) pee my pants and b) throw my back out. Both of these things suck, especially when you are at a playground with your kids. The KIDS are allowed to pee their pants, but in another illustration of how kids are right and life is NOT fair, adults are not supposed to do it. I know, crazy, right? So as a result of all this excitable, strange, frightening sneezing, I pulled or tore and otherwise damaged some kind of intercostal something or other and this means that for days or weeks or hours or no one actually knows how long, every time I inhale, it feels like someone is thrusting a sharp stick intended for marshmallow roasting into my chest, just above my right boob, and then TWISTING it and stabbing it again and then removing it, dipping it in lighter fluid, igniting it, and doing it again. It ain’t fun. Needless to say, my mood is poor-ish.

You can only imagine how joyful I was when I returned from my chest Xray to find an “informative” brochure in my mailbox from a by-law officer informing me that it was HIGHLY ILLEGAL to park our camper in our driveway. That’s right, in Oak Bay, where I live, you are not permitted to PARK YOUR OWN VEHICLE in YOUR OWN DRIVEWAY in front of the house that you spent EVERY PENNY YOU HAD AND EVERY PENNY YOU WILL EVER EARN on. It is not your driveway. Not really. Your driveway belongs to Oak Bay. The things you are not allowed to put in your driveway include: Campers, Trailers, Boats, Motor Homes, and yes, even CARS if they are not insured, even though insurance laws state that you are, in fact, allowed to store uninsured vehicles on your property. NOT IN OAK BAY. (I don’t care about that, I just hate that Oak Bay can override other laws with their tight-arsed stupidity. See how I said “arse” instead of “ass”? This is because I write books for young adults and I can’t be corrupting them with words like “ass” on my blog. “Arse” sounds much more correct, as I’m sure the Oak Bay council would concur, being a sort of pseudo British enclave of elderly people who abhor both change and recreational vehicles.)

After a brief back and forth with the bylaw officer (no, I don’t mean fistfight, but that may have been more fun because I suspect I could have taken him, the average age of anyone on staff in Oak Bay is 97), it was concluded that I was allowed to have the camper on the property for two days for packing and unpacking, so really what it comes down to is that I cannot have the camper IN MY OWN DRIVEWAY on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. The other days are exceptions because we can have Monday to unpack and Thursday to pack.

I don’t really know why I’m blogging about this or why I’m so annoyed about it, I think it’s the smug little drawings included with the information that have labelled and colour-coded areas marked where storage of these outlandish vehicles that the lower classes insist upon owning IS verily permitted, and areas where such storage is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, which include camper pads and driveways. I mean, obviously.

Now today’s babysitter time has been fully consumed by me twittering about the whole camper-in-the-driveway thing and compiling lists of things that I plan to store in my driveway that are not on the “restricted items” list (which, lest we forget, only includes vehicles) (I mean, what kind of jackass — sorry, jackarse — would keep a vehicle in their DRIVEWAY?). I think we can blame Oak Bay for the fact that I did not get my 2000 words done today and am in fact stuck in some kind of morass where I have an extra character that I can’t quite fit into the scene, but nor can I remove entirely without the scene falling apart. Such is my life.

Anyway, here is my list so far. Feel free to add your own suggestions.

1. A heap of old appliances, the rustier the better, with a sign tacked to the top that says “FREE”.
2. A rotting deer carcass, with a warning “informative brochure” attached to let other deer know that deer are not welcome in Oak Bay.
3. A miniature horse (real or stuffed, haven’t decided yet) — or better yet, an entire hobby farm of animals.
4. A life-sized model of Santa’s sleigh, replete with eight tiny reindeer, or maybe even nine, made from illuminated plastic that flashes at uneven intervals, giving all passers-by immediate seizures.
5. A huge still, in which to make grain alcohol, that we’ll sell at a lemonade stand (also on the driveway).
6. A guillotine, labelled “Danger! Sharp blade! Do not stick your head on blade!”
7. A large collection of brightly painted ladders (which we could refer to as an “artistic statement” and then sue the by-law enforcers for infringing on our creative rights when they tell us that we can’t do that).
8. All our living room furniture, arranged to look exactly like our living room, where we will commence to live.
9. The giant, red octopus play-structure that we could steal from Cadboro Bay Gyro Park. (Which is in Saanich, where it’s probably legal to own — or even steal — one.)
10. Cardboard cut-outs of every member of Oak Bay’s enforcement squad, arranged on our living room furniture, with glasses of our fresh distillery drinks in their hands, moustaches drawn on each and every one of them
11. A large cardboard re-creation of the camper itself. This would technically be legal because it is not a camper, per se.
12. A bear. Like a real one. Probably a brown one because bears mostly come in brown and not a grizzly because they are terrifying. Which we could get from somewhere, I’m not sure where. I’m also afraid of bears, so this is my least favourite idea, but I’m just brainstorming here.
13. 47 beehives. Beehives have recently been given the A-OK from council, so why not?
14. That really big frightening clown/gnome statue from that gas station on the highway where there used to be a bumper car place.
15. A troupe of gypsies and their caravans. Caravans are not on the list, obviously just an oversight, but let’s exploit that loophole!
16. Six rottweilers in a chainlink pen, sandwiched between the remains of four Camaros. (All insured, of course.) (I don’t know how to spell Camaro.)
17. A wading pool in which we could keep a seal from the marina so that people waiting at the bus stop could feed it frozen herring for $2/bag, all profits going to charity, of course. We know how Oak Bay feels about businesses.
18. A number of yurts which we could rent out by the night, billing it as a healing community on the sea. Of course, that would be a business, too. Oh, Oak Bay, you got me again. Just when I think I can outsmart you, there you are, being all Righty McRighteous Rule-Enforcerson. Drat.

I don’t know how to wind up this post, so I’m just going to go ahead and stop typing, go upstairs and get more Tylenol, and contemplate how if I’d used up these 1970 words on the novel instead of the blog, I’d be a good deal closer to finishing the book, wouldn’t I? Thanks a LOT, Oak Bay.

But back to my Random Story Of The Day.

I used to have this doctor, let’s call her Dr. K., because that is actually her name.    I’d write her whole name but I’d have to look up how to spell it and I’m far too lazy to go to that degree of trouble over accuracy.   This is a blog, not the news, which thankfully I don’t write.   Dr. K. was (well, presumably she still is) from somewhere in Eastern Europe, which means she had a glamorous accent, nice clothes and inexplicable behaviours which can only be written off to cultural differences.   For example, if I went to see her about back pain, she’d look me up and down and say something along the lines of, “Your skin looks horrible.  TERRIBLE!   You have the worst skin I’ve ever seen.   You have to do something about your FACE.”   Only she was dressed so beautifully and she’d say it with a smile and an Eastern European accent, such that it made her summation seem extra dramatic and also intensely accurate.   Every time I left her office, I’d have no idea what was wrong with my back or any of my other body parts, but I’d certainly feel self-conscious about my FACE.   My horrible, terrible face.

Then one day, The Birdy started screaming for no apparent reason.   Real, full-on, intense-pain kind of screaming, with no break between screams.   I let it go on for a bit thinking she’d wear herself out or whatever was causing the screaming would become apparent, but it didn’t, so I rushed her in to the doctor’s office and because The Birdy was only one at the time, Dr. K. agreed to see her even though generally she’d be too booked up to see anyone at the last minute.    By the time I got to the office, about two hours later, the screaming had stopped because that is The Rule:   Your child will appear absolutely fine when rushed to any emergency medical appointment.  (Once I took her to ER for a head injury — a giant enormous melon-sized lump on her forehead — and by the time it was our turn to see a doctor, she was energetically playing peek-a-boo with the other patients and actually climbed up onto the examining table herself, screamed “JUMP!” and leapt into the doctor’s arms.  In other words, totally normal.  For a monkey.)   Dr. K. gave her the cursory once over, laughed (at me, I suspect, as opposed to with me because I actually wasn’t laughing) and then closed the appointment by saying, “She’s fine!  But look, you’ve given her your AWFUL SKIN.”   In all fairness, The Birdy’s face was red from crying and she has PERFECT SKIN but I was so trained to simply hate myself for the disgraceful state of my face that I wordlessly took the proffered cream to fix my baby’s WRETCHED COMPLEXION and left still not knowing what caused the screaming but understanding that whatever I took in to see this woman was going to result in a skin-related complex and some cream and a whole whack of self-esteem bruising.

But I still went back.   I don’t know why.   I think her brusque European-ness made her seem like she was really smart and perhaps always right.   I am apparently intimidated by accents and good dress-sense.  It was like being treated by Stacey London only she didn’t buy me a new wardrobe or make me feel good about myself.  I still had a completely scuppered back but she assured me that it wasn’t my disc because she had bad discs and I obviously didn’t because I wasn’t in as much pain as she was.*   Why I accepted this, I have no idea.   I think it’s because I was feeling so otherwise shell-shocked about the TERRIBLE STATE of my skin.

Isn’t this a long story?   Somehow it isn’t as amusing in the telling as I thought it would be.    In any event, I’ve started and I’m not one to waste words that I’ve written.   It’s all gold, people.    Savour it.   Or at least pretend to savour it because I need constant applause and validation even when my hilarious anecdotes turn out to be just straight-up, drink-inducing depressing.    This one gets better, I promise, if by “better”, I mean “worse”.

The time rolled around for my annual physical.  Apart from the rosacea and the back pain and the numb leg and inexplicable electric-shock feelings in the base of my neck and occasional migraine, I was muddling along OK.    Or so I thought.   But actually, that wasn’t the case, as you’ll soon see.   I prepared for the appointment by practicing insulting my skin in the mirror, which wasn’t hard, as I pretty much did that every day anyway.   So I was braced for a few insults about my complexion, I was.   I knew it was coming.

But that is not what I got.

This was a different sort of appointment.   It was the sort that involves stirrups.   Then I was weighed and measured.   I weighed less than I thought, so I was pretty happy with that.  My BMI was 20 or something pretty low, so that was good.

Or was it?

“Well,” she said.  “Your weight is technically good.   It’s fine.”

“Thanks,” I said.   “I’ve been working out.”

“No, you haven’t,” she said.

“Er, yes I have,” I said.   Then I said, “Well, I’ve been rowing on the erg.”

“No, you haven’t,” she said.

“I haven’t?”  I said.   I was pretty sure I had, so I was confused.   Didn’t she want to insult my skin?

“No,” she said.  “I row, and you would have muscles in your back if you rowed.   You don’t row.    Actually, you don’t have any muscles whatsoever.”

“I do so!” I said.   Then I flexed.  “I do the rowing machine three times a week.   And I do the Total Gym!  And sometimes the Stairmaster!   Basically any exercise equipment that has ever been featured on an infomercial!”   My pipes were pretty impressive.   Or so I thought.

“See?” she said.   “That’s not muscle.   Everyone has that.”

“OK,” I said.  “This is ridiculous.  I work out.  I’ve lost all the baby weight, and I did that by walking and rowing and infomercial stuff, like that sit-up thing.   OK, I’ll admit, the rowing I only do when my back isn’t too scuppered.”   [When I talk about my back, I always use the word "scuppered".   I have no idea why.   It's just one of those things.   When else can you say "scuppered", really?] [I like the word "scupper" because for some reason it makes me think of a tiny, silver fish, like a herring.   I have no explanation for this but somehow contrasting back pain with a tiny, silver fish is amusing to me.]

“You are thin,” she said, smiling in her European sophisticated way.    A smile that said, “But wait, I’m going to somehow insult you now.”

“Thank you,” I hissed.  “It’s from working out.”  (Like I said, I swear, at the time, I WAS actually working out.  I’ve since stopped.  Because seriously, what is the point?) (Also, I don’t have time.)

“But,” she added.  (And this IS the punchline of this post, FYI.) “It’s what we doctors, in fact, call…”

At this moment, I would have paid a million dollars for her to have said, “a tiger”.   If you watch Monty Python, you’ll know what I’m talking about.   It’s my favourite Monty Python line EVER from The Meaning of War skit in The Meaning of Life, only up until I looked it up to write this post, I thought it was “It’s what we in the medical profession, in fact, call a ‘tiger’.”   I was wrong.   So I may have edited my actual conversation with Dr. K. in order to fit the line, because if it doesn’t fit with that, this post is much less funny.   (I know what you’re thinking.   You’re thinking, really, it couldn’t get less funny.   But it could.  If those lines didn’t match.  MUCH less funny.)

Anyway, that’s not what she said.

What she actually said was:

“It’s what we doctors, in fact, call a ‘Fat Thin’.   You are a Fat Thin person.   Which means that although you appear thin, you are really, technically, fat.”

“?” I said which is my standard response to information that I cannot process.   Sometimes I say “?” in French, which is also “?”  Canada is, after all, a bilingual country, which means nothing in terms of my ability to speak French.  “Quoi the hell are you talking about?”  I said.

“You have no muscle tone,” she said.  “You are all flab.   Soft.   You have cellulite on your arms.   You are completely unfit.”

“Oh,” I said.  As though that explained anything.  “I like your shoes.”   She was wearing really nice shoes.   She was always very well dressed, as I mentioned.   And I always like to counter horrible insults with compliments.  It’s a defense mechanism, albeit a very ineffective one.

“Thanks,” she said.  “I’m going to give you some cream for your face.   It looks terrible.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I’d like to say that I fired her as my doctor at that exact moment, but I didn’t, I waited about a year and I went to her about a Girl Issue, an issue for the record that she had diagnosed in the same appointment as the whole Fat Thin business.   I wanted a referral to an OB GYN to fix my Girl Issue because she had said that we had to wait until I was sure I didn’t want more kids before having my Girl Issue fixed and in the space of that year I’d become very very sure that we didn’t want more kids and I was ready for the fixin’ to begin.

“You don’t have that Girl Issue,” she said.  “I would have written it on your chart.   All I wrote was, ‘Early Menopause’.”

“?” I said.  “QUOI?”

“Early menopause,” she enunciated slowly.  “You know, with all your hot flashes.”

“?”  I said.   “?”  Then I said it a whole bunch of times, so there was like an entire school of not-very bilingual “?”s (or “scuppers”, as I prefer to think of them as) swimming around in the air between me and her nice dress, splashing us with their confusion and poorly accented French.

“I would have written Girl Issues on your chart if you actually had Girl Issues,” she said.  “That’s a serious issue.  I wouldn’t have written Early Menopause if your actual problem was Girl Issues.”

“Did you write Fat Thin?” I asked.

“What?” she said.  “Why would I have written that?  You need something for your skin, by the way, it looks worse than ever.”

“OK,” I said.  “Well, thanks for your time.  I like your dress.”

Then I left and I never went back.   I have a new doctor now, who speaks LOL unintentionally and doesn’t really register the state of my skin, which is OK because it’s really cleared up in the last little while, and I really have bigger things to worry about, like how to lose the Fat part of my Fat Thinness.

Is there a cream for that?

* She was completely wrong, and I do actually have a disc issue.   So there, Dr. McWrong Wronginess Wrongperson.