I Spinach, Therefore I Yam

Thankfully, this headline is for fun, like everything should be

It’s like the rainforest around here at 5:30 in the morning sounds like tucans everywhere especially on my windowsill maybe a couple of tucan’ts – aren’t you glad I’m back? – and then a bunch of back-up singers what I imagine look like skinny bird-Supremes, maybe The Drifters sliding awake, then a soloist chimes in here and there Mr. Tambourine Man, Aretha spelling out words in the distance, back to the windowsill it’s ELO or OMG and I hear Daisy start to gak, an earnest little squiggle of Neil Young, a long, lean shrill like Joni next thing I know Daisy’s crossing her legs at the door, “Help me…”

In the kitchen there’s pink leaning in and swipes of early fog between the trees the blue sky like some rare gemstone and I’m grateful to the birds

And that colour gemstone if it was a spray paint it’s called Blue Spruce which I got two cans of yesterday to paint my newest garage sale find, two cast iron chairs and table, all roses and so gorgeous and heavy.

Minute I saw it I rushed over and sat down and said to the surprised lady I am not leaving here without these

So I made like a million starts on this blog. I don’t know why it was so difficult maybe like getting into cold water, you know, once you’re in it’s great but if you overthink it you’re sunk and that’s a pretty dire analogy isn’t it?

Or maybe it’s a segue

I’ve been going swimming most mornings, early, with my sister who drives into the sunrise from the real beaches to my little one here feels like wilderness, just us Vim Hoff girls and man it’s so cold sometimes it’s glacial, you get an ice-cream headache most wicked at the back of your neck and any other swimmers, sometimes there are a few, are in wet suits and my sister says it’s because the lake has turned and it’s kold for a couple of days then suddenly so warm I guess it turned the other way but I don’t understand the windy weathery words of it.

They can keep the jargon, I’m not a fucking pirate

I was going to list a bunch of blog ideas that didn’t make it, lists that I had only one two or no items for, lists that make you listless, which is the opposite intention of this blog but a fucking epic bored pirate description.

But they were mostly lousy so here, without further bullshit or ado, are a just a couple, and they’re for sale because I think I want to retire

Sneaky ways to get your steps in
Eat vigorously
Rocking chair

Ice cream flavours I can do without
Spumoni

Household hints

How to stop swearing and mind your manners in general

I gotta go to work today and unfortunately that’s not a blog idea

All the campaigns start fresh in the fall and I need to be briefed, you know, get the scoop on what we’re dealing with this time if it’s billboards, transit, magazine ads, digital, all of them, anything new, get my wheels turning, and we always meet early to avoid the last-minute panic but it’s always last-minute anyway, maybe because it’s exciting like cold water keeps you busy and gasping.

My eldest daughter works in advertising although she does many other things, too, and has her own clothing line, which spellcheck wanted to minimize into clothes line, but she’s a freelance stylist and tailor and finds herself with the same team occasionally for a couple of weeks here and there and she said it’s so much fun it’s like going to camp which I can totally relate to because I loved camp with a love that was more than love.

Going to work for me is not like camp but there’s sushi for lunch and there’s Alfred who has nice campy vibes

I finished The Beatniks Next Door and am giving it some time to twinkle out of my head so I can give it a fresh read and decide what to do with it. I am now working on a new set of short stories called A Carnival Ago and it’s FUN! – strange and gypsy and carney and elephanty – like cold water it’s challenging and exciting a bit risky like I don’t know which way it’s all going to topple and then it doesn’t, it lands just perfectly.

And there’s nothing so much fun as writing a perfect landing, is there, especially if it’s from an interesting take-off and exciting middle

And when I’m in the thick of these stories, these oddball characters I wish I knew, it’s def the best show on earth and bringing these stories to the page is the most fun out of everything ever.

So here’s just the intro if you like, and if you don’t, here it isn’t

Thinking that if I get some yes you shoulds I might start adding chapters here, they’re small and fun and campesque, and you know me, I’ll prob do it anyway, tra-la.

A Carnival Ago — Intro

It’s for fun why I write about them the carneys I worked with that summer when I was young. You have whiskey and I have words so together let’s nod off here on the porch. You can occasionally holler the names of your old lovers and they will echo down the lake so all of them eventually sound the same – like Genevieve – and I will, when you’re asleep, read these stories out loud so tomorrow and forever they will be in the air. Through exquisite pine and cedar that grow on slanted rock as if gravity doesn’t exist here, I search the forest for slashes of bright, because thing about the folks in these stories, gypsy or not, they all believed the forest was their true home, and the carnival, which came to our town that single summer like a booking error, was their way back.