Take a shower, shine your shoes, you've got no time to lose

CAMP!

...was amazing. The campers were chatty and my group, not so good, but it was so fun being a skillbuilder. The other skillbuilders (camp counsellors, if you will) were perfect and I loved hanging out with them. We were completely insane, and I'm sure the kids were a little freaked out. Whenever we weren't doing a session with our groups, we would hang out in the corner, sitting on the extra tables that we'd piled high with our mattresses. We were the kings of the castle and it was a good time. Mr Hum kept walking past us and just shaking his head.

All day, the skillbuilders would do our thing, working in our groups, keeping the kids entertained and under control, making sure they didn't kill each other. After the kids went to bed, that was when the real fun started.

The camp happenned in this one big cabin. There was a main room, with the kitchen off it at one end and two bunk rooms at the other. Boys went in one room, girls in the other. The teachers slept upstairs in their rooms and the skillbuilders slept in the main room, outside the campers' rooms, on about a million mattresses, co-ed. Which was quite shocking in of itself, because usually at camp, the boys sleep with the boy campers and the girls get a skillbuilder cabin. But this year, Mr Hum didn't really care. In fact, nobody cared what the skillbuilders did. After the campers went to sleep, we'd stay up until all hours, having a camp fire, telling scary stories ("Just so you know guys, I will scream.") and generally having a good time. And then the next morning we'd all look like death and ask each other "Hey... Lina? Why was it a good idea to stay up until 3? WHY?".

Oh camp. How I miss you. Even though I was smelly and greasy and never got a second alone, I miss you so much. As Lina said when she signed on yesterday, "You know what sucks? SLEEPING ALONE."

*******

Best Camp moment: At camp, if you say something mean to someone, someone else can tell you to "Validate that!" and say something nice about the person. Here is a conversation between one of my campers and I:

Camper: Hey, Evey, what's that V word?

Evey: Umm... Vagina?

Camper: Uhhh... no. Validate! That's the one.

Evey: OH. Sorry.

Skilbuilder: This is the sad side-effect of Insight Theatre.

you know that your conversation is dying when this is the only thing said in half an hour:

LuckEdc: i have elbows.
ewings73: wow
ewings73: you know what? I think I have those too
ewings73: let me check
LuckEdc: do you?
ewings73: yes!
LuckEdc: amazing!
ewings73: what a coincidence!
LuckEdc: who knew?
ewings73: we're practically twins!
LuckEdc: :D

It's a two post kind of a day.

And now, in other news...

A couple weeks ago, I went to see the Vagina Monologues for the first time with Insight Theatre (Aidan came too -- he was already planning on going. He did remarkably well, I thought).
I didn't really know what to expect when I went, but I figured my Insight Theatre time had prepared me for almost anything. It was an amazing, even more so because Eve Ensler herself was there, playing the part of herself. I don't know how many of you have seen this show, but if you haven't, you should go see it. And if you have seen it, go again. It has powerful stories with powerful messages and it's a really good time. It changed how I thought about some things (like the word "cunt") and made me laugh a lot. Everyone should see this show.

Once you've seen the Vagina Monologues, in some ways, there's no going back. You are suddenly extremely pro-vaginas. Not that you weren't before (especially for those of us who own one) but just more. Which is why I was so angry when I read this story. Honestly, it's a quick read, go read it. Ok, back? How angry are you? #1, that they would suspend them for saying VAGINA which is a body part (elbow! knee! hip! vagina!) and #2 that they would say it was ok because there were no young children in the audience. The fact that young children don't hear vagina is why it's such a big deal now. Honestly. I was ready to kick some major school board ass when I read this follow-up and discovered that Eve Ensler felt much the same way and went to give them a good ole' talking to.

I hope she said vagina a lot when she did.

In dreams I try to take you far away/ But you never stay

I'm booooored. I haven't left my house since I got home from Cuba (yeah, I know, cry me a river and all that, but it's a stark contrast, and I'm taking to it not at all) and gosh darn it, I want something to do. Here is how bored I was today: I ventured to do what I haven't done in a good six months. The smarter (lazier?) part of my brain has kept me away from it. Sometimes my mother gets fed up with me and does it for me (this is, as Dr Phil would say, enabling my lazy behaviour.) But today, I was so incredibly bored, that I bit the bullet.

I cleaned my room.

Here's the thing about my room. It's a very nice room. My bed is a wierd size and is a little short for me, but it's cozy, so who cares. I have no bedside table, but my dresser pushed up against the bed holds up my iHome and reading material just find, so I'm not complaining. I don't even so much mind the fuzzy pink blanket on the end of my bed that clashes with my bedspread that I can't move due to certain wrath from my controling cat. No, the main problem with my room is me. I am an obsessive, incurable, complete and utter pack rat. I keep everything. The shelf is overflowing with books that I a)Have read and will never touch again b) Recieved from distant relations/family friends and will never touch, period or c) Love and like to read over and over again, but the latter ones are the minority by far(1.5 shelves out of 7). I've got a drawer full of general crap that people have given me, a drawer full of general scarf-type crap, a drawer of card-type crap... really it's too much.

The only thing I purge with any regularity is my closet(/dressers). This is because I actually have somewhere to put the stuff I get rid of (thank you mom, for taking that job at the Clothes Secret). Because here is why I'm a pack rat: I can't bear the thought of my stuff being chucked out. I mean, sure, I don't want it, but what has the poor little [insert name of doodad here] ever done to me? I can't handle it. I would love to dispense with all those books I don't want -- but I need to find a used book store to take them, and give them new life in someone else's happy home, otherwise, I'll be afraid the purging will leave me wth lingering guilt and/or bad karma (although probably what it will leave me with is a sense of freedom and more shelf space). Same for my general crap, although there's probably a great deal less hope there.

I had the wierdest dream the other night.

I dreamt that it was about two weeks ago, I think. What happenned is that this guy who goes to my school, who I've barely talked to since grade school, was coming over for dinner, because apparently we were thinking about dating. I said to Davis "I'm just going to see how things go... I mean, I like Aidan, but we'll see how this goes."

So this guy came over and kept saying things about my house like "Oh, I don't like this." or "This isn't very good." and he had all kinds of problems with the food I served. At the end of it he said "If we're going to date, a lot of things are going to have to change."

That's when Aidan showed up and I felt so happy and I knew at that moment that I didn't give a shit about this other guy, I was crazy about Aidan. He apparently didn't care about my trial run with this other guy and we went off together, while I felt blissfully happy.

Ok, here's my self analysis: I am somewhat stressed about how different Aidan and I are, in some ways. He is a vegetarian, and I am not, which stresses me out. Is it ok for me to eat, like, a hamburger when I'm with him? Will he care? Will he kiss me if I've eaten meat? What if I brush my teeth? Yes, I do overthink. Also, Aidan spends substantial amounts of time on homework (2 hours a night only on latin!) and I almost never do homework, unless it's a project. The first week we were dating, we spent a total of about 3 hours on the phone over 2 nights. Three hours he didn't spend on homework. I'm afraid that could eventually piss his parents off...

So my theory is that in my dream, I'm thinking about how none of the problems matter when I'm with Aidan because me makes me happy. The whole, random guy from my childhood showing up? I have no clue. Your guess is as good as mine. Theories?

Quail in Rose Petal Sauce was the first really bad sign.

I am in the midst of a very delightful book, called "Julie & Julia : My Year of Cooking Dangerously" by Julie Powell. It's a non-fictional account of Julie Powell's project to make all five hundred and something recipe's of Julia Childs' from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol 1. Which is referred to ask "MtAoFC" in the book. It's definitely not just about cooking. I find myself laughing out loud and pulling for poor Julie as she convinces herself to eat eggs, contemplates her ticking biological clock and scoops black shit out of her bathroom taps in her crappy New York loft where she lives with her husband and old high school sweetheart, Eric. Everyone should read this book. It has the pacing and feel of one of those diary type books but much wittier and less dumb. A lot of this book is the story of a blog, which is fun to read, especially for a blogger and bleader (read the book to find out) such as myself.

So, I'm sorry for the blog silence. I'm going to try to stop that. Most recently, I was in Cuba for a week, which is a terrible excuse except that it's a perfect excuse as the internet cost money and who the hell really wants to be on the internet when they can be hanging out in their wonderful resort by the ocean, sipping Cuba Libres or Mojitos or whatever while procuring a marvelous tan to bring home to Canada. Exactly.

I will be using Cuba material for a while, as there was a lot of good stuff to blog about. Stay tuned for such wonderful stories as "The Highlighted Couple" and "How you know you're in communist Cuba" and "My week hanging out with Hip Young Moderns". But that is not for tonight.

Tonight, dear bleaders I have other news to share. (Ok, ok, bleaders = blog readers. I stole it from Julie Powell.) Another blog silence reason is due to The Boy. I have contemplated giving The Boy a nickname, to be like one of those bloggers who protect their anonymity with codewords. But I am not such a blogger, and see little reason to refer to The Boy as anything except his real name: Aidan. (Another blogger recently came to the novel conclusion of using her former "paramour"'s real name. I say the nicknames add a nice air of mystery.)

Most of you know about Aidan. I could hardly keep quiet about it, I know. But a new relationship is one of those things that is so hard to keep quiet about, especially for me, since I talk about Everything to Everyone (/Anyone who will listen). It's one of the perks of my extrovertedness. And something like this... I can't and don't want to keep it on the downlow. So.

His name is Aidan. He's in my drama class. We've both liked each other for a while, but both being the partial cynics we are, we tried to push it away and convince ourselves that "He/She could never like me." But somehow... we did. And do. And it just came together like magic... Ok, ok, I'm sounding sappy, but it's so true. The way everything just fit together. We'll see how this continues to unfold, but I have semi-cautious high hopes. He makes me very happy, and he tells me I'm beautiful, among other things. This would make any girl happy, and I must say, I am no different.