“Sushi? Are you sure?” I ask again.
My fourteen-year-old son looks determined, maybe even excited.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he says. His tone has a tint of finality. He does not want to be asked again.
“What about something easy?” I say. “Like pasta, or pizza, maybe soup with grill cheese sandwiches?”
“No, I want to make sushi,” he says.
“Okay,” I say doubtfully.
Continue readingBlog
You may have noticed that I slowed down a bit in August when it comes to blogging. I have still been making posts a couple of times a week, though, and because I wrote so much in June and July, I now have a sizeable collection of things for people to read. I feel pretty okay about that.
September will likely be at the same pace as August, just a couple of entries a week. I do want to get back to writing every day in October, though. I have big plans for October!
Social media
I find social media to be frustrating. I want to write and I want people to know about my blog, but I don’t want to spend that much time marketing it on social media because it seems to take more of my time than the writing does. The YouTube channel was supposed to help promote my blog, and I do enjoy making the actual videos, but how do I get people to watch my YouTube videos? I don’t know! I just want to create stuff.
Speaking of internet videos, I think I got shadow banned on TikTok. My views dropped a lot. Before they were between 200 and 400 per video, and I know that some TikTokers will think that’s not very many, but then I had one that only got 25 views, and then one that got 12, until I was down to four views per video.
At first I was just a bit suspicious, but I thought that maybe people just didn’t like the longer videos. But then one of my friends messaged to tell me that she had to keep finding me and following me again because TikTok kept making her account unfollow mine.
But why did I get shadow banned? Was it because of my saucy cat butt videos?
After reading up on it, I thought that it might be because of my husband’s music. I had asked him to make some songs for me to use in the background of my videos so I wouldn’t have to worry about copyright issues if I used music that I found on the Internet. I think I got shadow banned because the music isn’t in TikTok’s music library so they can’t tell if I have a license for it or not.
So I deleted all of my TikTok videos that had Phil’s music. These videos had me telling my horror story, Happy Skull Camping Park. I decided to break it up into smaller videos that were around one minute each and post them in a series. I used music from the TikTok library instead of the original music that my husband made for me, and it seemed to work. My views went back up to where they were before.
So, lesson learned, right? If YouTube recognizes the music in your video, you could potentially have a problem, but TikTok is the opposite. On TikTok you’ll have issues if their software doesn’t recognize the music. It seemed that I had figured it all out.
It happened again this week. My views suddenly dropped to twelve per video. I’ve deleted my two most recent videos and I’m taking a break from TikTok for a few days, because I don’t know what’s wrong and I don’t know what to do. I’ll have a YouTube video up in the next few days, though, so hopefully my six subscribers are very excited.
Life
Summer is winding down here. My vacation is over and I’m back at work. My son is back at school so we’re working on settling back into our routine.
We finally got caught up on Stranger Things and my son has declared that it is now his favourite show. I have started watching Yellowjackets. I had been avoiding this one because I’ve heard that it’s really good and I wasn’t ready to get into a binge session. Last night I watched the first two episodes, and right now I am forcing myself to write this update instead of watching more Yellowjackets. It is excellent so far and I highly recommend it. Just be advised that there are some gory parts.
I don’t really have any plans for September. Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is in November, so I’m going to start doing some prep work for that. Do I have any friends who will also be doing Nanowrimo?
It’s my aunt’s first day of school. She is the youngest of five children and all of her siblings have already had this teacher, including my father.
My aunt sits up straight in her chair while the teacher adjusts her horn-rimmed glasses and clears her throat. She holds a yellowed paper with a list of students’ names typed on it.
The teacher reads each name clearly and loudly, until she gets to my aunt’s name. She stops reading abruptly. A range of emotions passes over her face: surprise, horror, suspicion.
“Are you related to Claude Grenier?” the teacher asks. She says my father’s name like she is pronouncing the name of the Antichrist. She glares at my aunt with anger and dread.
“It happened every year,” my aunt tells me a few decades later.
My younger sister runs up to the refrigerator when she is around two or three years old.
She feels overheated. Her scalp and neck are damp and warm and her feet are sweaty and dirty from running around outside in a pair of sneakers with no socks. She opens the fridge looking for a source of relief.
She sees a bowl of water with fresh sticks of celery floating in it. The celery looks cool and refreshing. Carefully, she uses two hands to set the bowl down on the floor.
Cool air from the open fridge caresses the crown of her head as she sits in front of the bowl. She plunges a foot into the cold, refrigerated water. A satisfying and cooling wave moves from her foot to the rest of her body. She sticks the other foot in and scoops water over both of her feet, watching the dirt drip off of her skin.
When her feet are clean and her body temperature more comfortable, she puts the bowl of celery back in the fridge and closes the door.
In third grade, I walk to school every day with a girl who is a year older than me. We walk on a dirt road with houses on one side and a field on the other.
The daily walk starts quietly, with our two voices blending with the ancient voices of the little birds in the field. Drops of dew cling to blades of grass like paper bag lunches. Other kids join us on the way until an entire group of us arrives in the schoolyard.
It is like this at first, anyway, before the new subdivision begins to be built. Instead of walking next to a field, we walk through a construction site. Our voices and the birds’ voices cannot compete with the loud machines.
One morning, a section of our dirt road has disappeared and been replaced by a large hole. The excavator is still working on it, it’s long, graceful arm reaching into the hole and scooping dirt out with sharp claws as it whirs loudly.
I want to take a wide detour around the hole. My friend wants to walk to the edge of hole so the guy in the excavator can see us, and then walk carefully around the edge.
We start walking slowly towards the excavator, but I panic and run around the scary obstacle. My friend runs after me.
“Why did you do that?” she asks once we’re on the other side.
As an adult, I recount these events to my parents, but neither of them remembers me having to walk through a construction site.
“I believe you, I just don’t remember that,” my dad tells me.
Did they just not know about the construction? Is that why they still let me walk to school?
It’s my coworker’s last day of work before her retirement. We have planned a series of surprises and delights for her throughout the day, hoping to give her a special send off.
My boss calls me into her office in a business-like tone, like she wants to discuss something work-related. She really wants to go over the details of one of the surprises for my coworker.
As she speaks, I nod. I sip my coffee in between nods. I give my input and sip my coffee some more.
When the discussion is over, I look down to see how much coffee I have left. Much to my surprise, it is my boss’s coffee cup that rests casually in my hand.
Harriet Lee’s gingerbread recipe has been passed down through generations. You can taste it as Helen Oyeyemi describes it in her novel Gingerbread. The gingerbread feels real and tangible.
But is Harriet Lee real? It is difficult to find evidence of her realness in her interactions with the world around her. A friend who she has lunch with everyday has no idea who Harriet is when she receives a phone call from her. A tin of gingerbread that she tries to give to another parent at her daughter’s school somehow ends up on the floor. Even Druhástrana, the country from which the Lee family hails, has only a dubious existence; nobody can agree whether or not it is real and it does not even have a Wikipedia page.
When Harriet’s daughter, Perdita, comes to harm in an attempt to visit the country of her mother’s birth, Harriet agrees to tell her everything if Perdita will tell her about her journey. We sit with Perdita and her dolls while Harriet tells us about how she and her mother, Margot, left the terrible and wondrous country of Druhástrana and her family’s connection with the Kercheval family.
Each sentence is like another puzzle piece. Will we get enough pieces to solve the mystery? And what is the mystery?
This delightful book will definitely make you crave gingerbread, so I recommend reading it at a time of year when that substance is abundant.
Rain. When the temperatures are high and the plants are thirsty, rain is every gardener’s dream.
We want to hear the rain tapping on the roof and the windows, letting us know that it’s here. We want to go outside and look up and feel the cool water on our hot faces. We want to see raindrops glistening on our tomatoes and the delicate petals of our roses, we want to see soil dark with delicious, fresh water.
Some of us want to take our shoes off so we can sink our toes into the softened and refreshing dirt.
Too much, of course, can be a bad thing if you’re on low ground near a body of water. But when it’s not too much, why not celebrate it? Just be sure to help out any earthworms that have ended up on the pavement, because we want them in our gardens, too.
Congrats, rain, on winning Garden Star 🌟 of the week, and thank you for everything that you do.
The first band I saw in concert was the Moody Blues when I was six or seven. We saw them at Canada’s Wonderland in Toronto. Our day was spent going on the rides and walking back to the parking lot to eat sandwiches and salads from our cooler.
When the sun was getting ready to finally give us some space, my parents spread a blanket out on the grass where we could see the stage. We relaxed on the blanket and enjoyed the music.
“I want to see a show this summer,” my husband tells me many years later. I do a quick search in our vicinity, and I find one: a Sam Roberts concert in Mont-Tremblant.
“Do I know that band?” Phil asks. I list off some songs I think he knows. We listen to some on YouTube. Phil agrees that it could be a good choice.
“It’s nice up there,” I say. “We could find somewhere to stay and have a mini-vacation.”
“Can I come?” my son asks. It seems like a good setting for his first concert, so I say yes.
A couple days later, my son and I are having a video chat with my sister.
“Tell her what we’re doing this summer,” I say.
My son’s eyes light up. “We’re going to a David Bowie concert!” he says.
Even though I’m a kid and even though it’s summer time, I am riding my bike to school. My errand today is to pick up my high school report card, and it turns out to be a lovely day for a bike ride.
The country highway is straight and cuts through the flat landscape. Some of the ditches along the road are soft with fresh cut grass, some are full of weeds, and some are spongey and hidden by tall, elegant reeds. Bushy trees line fields, and as I get closer to my school, the corn crops dwindle and make way for the tobacco crops.
I arrive at my destination. As I turn into the school parking lot, my dog, Creedence, emerges from the shadows like a Viking invader. She is panting happily, and very proud of how silently she ran through the ditches and behind the trees as she followed me to school.
Raccoon Brontosaurus 