To Live and Die in Picton,

What is a weekend? On Thursday, we drove out to Picton to visit father-in-law and his wife (had we really not been since July?), given Rose's fever had subsided, finally. She'd been Wednesday in bed passed out cold until early afternoon, and the remainder of the two days recovering. Once collecting Aoife from school, we made our way into the car (slowly) and over to Picton the three hours or so south, and then west along that Highway 401. We made a stop, but the young ladies wanted nothing to do with a selfie.

A weekend, in which I spent most of Friday moving through the full manuscript of "the green notebook," the journal/day-book I've been working on since last April. I'd always aimed for a calendar year, and its now more than two hundred pages, the first I've sat down with the full manuscript-to-date since last fall, I suspect. I think I'm pretty much finished adding entries, although there are some scattered notes still to find themselves at the end. I am working now to hone the thing into something publishable, finished. I had sent a draft of such out for potential publication back in January, but I'm not quite sure if I should see that process through, or start prodding at someone else, also. How best to approach? And I'm sure you've been watching as I've posted excerpts-in-progress over at my substack, naturally. There will probably be further along there for some time.

A weekend-ish away, in which father-in-law and his wife could take the young ladies to a bookstore, a movie; in which they could celebrate Aoife's recent ninth birthday (it had been a while since they'd seen our young ladies, so we knew that important). Of course, I aimed for at least part of a day with a mound of books, tackling a morning of notes towards potential reviews on Saturday, prior to our scheduled return home, given Rose's choir was performing on Sunday. So much that I've yet to get to, but a bunch of pages of rough notes, which I'll attempt to craft into reviews over the next week or two.

Aoife had fallen to a slight fever prior to Rose, but had felt better, neither of them slowing down until they finally began to, slowly, do exactly that. By Friday evening, both lapsing back into slight fevers, but a quiet morning before an Easter Egg Hunt, in North Port, a small village some twenty minutes or so drive north of Picton, some distance west of the south landing of the big scary bridge. The whole village and environs, it would seem, had landed, with dozens of cars lining the main road, with easily one hundred scattered children with baskets seeking treasure from the park and various yards. The whole town, and the fire department, with trucks and equipment and snacks and a mascot. And every child left there with a basket of plenty of somethings.

By mid-afternoon, everyone was low energy, home. Rose and Aoife with fevers, Christine and I with sore throats. Low moving, so Sunday was, what? Laundry, each of us in quiet corners. So, Rose's participation in her choir performance was cancelled. But Aoife and I did colour more than a dozen or so eggs, dye staining our fingers, nearly impossible to remove. Beyond that, I think I wrote some letters. Not much more.

what we did on our summer staycation, (part one,

Okay, not entirely. We had been aiming for a genealogical drive across New England for a few days, attending sites for either Christine or myself (as much as the young ladies might have tolerated), but my broken foot (my driving foot) threw a wrench into that, which was frustrating (although I'll admit I don't mind that we aren't in the United States right now, given all the stress). We’d actually been originally planning for summer 2020 to do this same drive, but then the onset of the Covid-era delayed that plan. We will get there, I’m sure.

Instead of a New England drive, we spent three days in Picton with father-in-law and his wife, as our young ladies spent their days in the pool. Our original plan had us another two nights at Great Wolf Lodge [just like last year], so that didn’t change. What were we to do? A couple of days not moving in Picton wasn't necessarily the worst of ideas, honestly. Christine sat and read her book, I sat with notebook and pen and a mound of my usual reading. The kids in the pool. I am sketching out notes towards further sections of "the green notebook," as well as editing the larger manuscript. I'm also travelling with my novel-in-progress manuscript and recent short story manuscript, to get some editing/scribbling done on that, but I haven't quite made it there yet. I've made notes on about a dozen books (poetry and memoir and essays and short stories) and gone through "the green notebook" twice.

Tuesday we made for Great Wolf, Christine having to do the driving, which knocked her out a bit. Her energy isn't what it once was, after all. Mother-in-law met us there with a nephew, so the young ladies had a cousin to play with, which everyone appreciated. They adore each other but also wear on each other, as you might imagine. I with broken foot spent much time in the lobby with notebook and reading etcetera as the wee children ran around on quests, so that worked out quite well. Thursday we head back to Picton, and hopefully get there in time to catch the evening reading at the local bookstore (Sneha Madhavan-Reese and Spencer Gordon and Matthew Tierney).

Oh, and at the Newcastle 401 en route rest stop, heading out this way, I ended up seeing my former mid-1990s roommate Rob Haller? I honestly hadn't seen him in fifteen years or so, so that was absolutely great. I've always been fond of that guy, and we just lost track of each other once he married and moved outside the city limits. The kids were indifferent, their father "talking to some random guy," as they told their mother. Well, then.

Before I knew him, Rob was apparently the tour manager for the band Fluid Waffle, his main job keeping four of the members of the band from killing the other guy in the band they thought was irritating. Once that other guy left the band, the remaining four changed their name to Furnaceface, and became 1980s/90s Ottawa indie darlings. Back when Rob and I were hanging out, his girlfriend at the time (who was my roommate) was irritated (and did not think it was appropriate) that we turned the 1995 Quebec Referendum into a drinking game. I mean, what else were we to do?

what we talk about when we talk about picton,

Breath, I suppose. We speak of breath. Attempting a space of time in-between all the other things. Christine and our young ladies headed to Picton to father-in-law's on Friday, where I joined them on Saturday, although back home by Sunday, given Monday morning was swimming lessons for the young ladies. Is this a long weekend?

The kids in the pool the whole time. Or so it seemed.