Tag Archives: Fun

We Will Go on a Cruise

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“We will go on a cruise, when we have the time!”  This pronouncement from my mother made me frustrated and even more impatient than my 18-year-old self could actually handle, which is to say, I began to whine.  i must say that the whining did pay off, as within six months we were on a massive ship in the Caribbean visiting 3 or 4 ports of call, including Jamaica.

At eighteen, this is not only a vacation, but on the best adventures.  I was “officially” graduated from Disney rides, and allowed to sip Bloody Mary’s and have a bottle of Corona.  I almost had a room to myself–I shared a cabin with my sister.

Every day was get up late day…  And because the late I preferred was noon–lunchtime, I missed being in the main dining room, which was only open to any public for breakfast.  For lunch, I often wandered into the buffet, as well as one of the cafes on a few of the other decks.  I welcomed getting up late as the feeling that the sun is always shining is absolutely the one feeling I wan, especially if I am on vacation.  This made it possible to run out to the pool deck for the afternoon, if there wasn’t some show or movie on.  My sister and I would share a cocktail, just before meeting our parents and a couple of other friends who had come with our parents.  Sometimes, it was easier to pay for a bottle of Corona and avoid the late afternoon nagging that would come from Mom and Dad…  especially in one of the several bars and lounges that were open.  This happened a few times in our two week cruise, sine the traffic continually changed, sometimes making the outdoor sundecks too crowded.  My sister and I didn’t have the money to go  to the ones with the dress code, but we made an effort to get together with the grown-ups at one of the karaoke bars anyway.

This was one of the best vacations I had ever been on, and I am young, so, you know that if I had the perspective of a more experienced cruiser, that probably this business is a good one.  To always have a water bed to sleep on is one of the luxuries I always thought belonged to the ultra-rich.  To have an experience that is related to having a lot of money and a lot of taste is like an adventure at Disney Land, for adults who love this feeling.

The fun thing about a cruise is that the fun of Disney Land and Disney World doesn’t end.  If you get bored of gambling onboard ship, you can always disembark and on land at one of the ports and go for something fun and interesting.  There are bars and restaurants and sites to see as well.  And you get to see all those buildings that could only be seen in unreal ways.

After that first trip, I have fallen in love with cruising.  It has a cult following that attracts people who like to travel, which in the past, was not as easy as getting aboard ship.  I’ve also been on the road trip…., which requires nerves of steel, if you have them.  You go and you stop and stay at absolutely any time you wish, going as far as you want, but just get back home within three weeks!

As this summer ends, we are getting ready again fro the regular business of school, and the changing of season, again.  After a break like the two months in the summer, it almost seems fun to get out big coats and sets of boots, and start to think about the fun of Halloween and Christmas.  I feel lucky to have “things” despite those people who are minimalists, who want to have very few interior decoration or things to carry  around with them.  I am not so attuned to having luck or no luck decide my life. I am very focused on having “my things” with me, when I get them.  So, in this pack rat style, I now have to clean my room.  I still have university text books, and my favorite doll from childhood.  Things that I own, and with a growing family, I must now decide, “text books” versus “daughter and son.”

I almost feel as if I am letting people cruise through my life…  Experiencing it through these objects that i have collected.  But where else, what else, can I do with these things?  Sometimes some of the things are still very useful.  My sister, in one of her “cleaning moods,” got together with her friends and made a three week yard sale, and made over  a thousand dollars. “On junk.”  At this point, even if people were to cruise through my life, like this, I am more willing to get rid of the junk than to care about being nakedly exposed.

So, welcome, please, and join the cruise.  It is an adventure of things and experiences.  Welcome!  Come All, Come One!  WE will have fun!

My Memory of the Most Fun

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The most fun I have ever had was a very, very long time ago.  We were at the theme park, not for the first time that summer… probably it was our third or fourth time there.  The fun was that I had the whole map of the park in my head… Not just where the front entrance was of where the Smurf Village was… but detailed locations of each ride and the direction of the water rides and the baby rides too.  It was amazing, to command such personal power.  I felt I could go anywhere, without feeling like I was guessing and getting myself lost.

I still remember that day.  I traveled the whole park and had fun knowing where I was going to meet up with so-and-so, or him, or her.  We did not have cells phones, and no one actually bought walkie-talkies.  After playing with toys like connected phones, batteried walkie-talkies, and anything as fun and futuristic, we knew the real thing was worth waiting for.  So, in this dark age, we had our maps, our watches to tell time, and the promise to be back at the main gates, if, God forbid, we were to get lost.

What mad this “routine day at the park” the most fun, was that our parents let us run free.  Nowadays, with cell phones, there is no way to recreate the “free feeling” coupled with the “a sense of fear and excitement” from the possibility of becoming lost and never found again except as a chopped up corpse at the back of the theme park where a swampy forest grew.

The real fun, of course, was being out of sight and getting on the “best” rides, again and again, if we were so enamored.  We could also buy all the funnel cakes with double ice cream and strawberry sauce with nuts and pieces of chocolate cookies as well… Without our parents warning that we would never be able to eat dinner.  For some reason, this was before my first job (I got one as soon as I could lawfully be paid), and I think my mom was generous on this day.  So, with what I thought was enough money to ransom a mouse from a cat, I had fun all day…  Getting lost, buying everything I wanted, and staying until the sky got dark and the crickets and the stars came out.

I feel lucky that I have a memory of fun that is actually officially sanctioned by adults and by the law.  I now look for fun things with a mind much more attentive to how slow things go rather than how fast things go.  I wander the liquor stores to find “Vintage” rather than “50 Proof.”  I pay money to watch athletes, professional acrobats, and other people pushing the limits of living, so that I can laugh at them.  And sometimes, the laughs don’t come until the final score is made.

So,  as the height of summer approaches, I am going to slowly sit in my Muskoka Chair by the lake, and sip a cocktail that I hand make from several bottles of beer and liquor, and enjoy the fact that it will take the sun several hours to set. I won’t go back into the cottage until I hear the lonely, forlorn, cry of the loon for its mate.

My Favorite Friends

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Daisies have white petals and yellow centres.  Much like the Cadbury Eggs, a filling of white and yellow surrounded by chocolate.

The field and the hill are scattered with them, growing in small bunches, and, swaying in the wind.  They are the most beautiful weed, and if you encourage them, they will cover the lawn.

When this happened in our backyard, in the summer, I stood with a lollipop in my mouth, sucking, and gazing at all the daisies.  I felt as if I had a daisy in my mouth, its sweetness filling and savoured.

I remember one day, because I was wearing my favourite dress–a baby pink, A-line flare.  I lobed that if I crouched down my dress would spread outward and cover my feet.  I looked like a pink bell.  I spent those days, in my pink bell dress, laughing.

The days were always sunny, and warm, but not too hot and humid.  I also remember because the freezies we had didn’t melt and become sugary water in blue, purple, pink, or yellow, those colours of the rainbow that taste like colours of the rainbow.  Now, in these summers, water droplets cover the length of the long freezie and make holding and eating one a slippery mess.  I love the cool blueberry in my mouth, and the quite cool sensation of holding something frozen, but keeping dry.  Those days, were a long time ago, and the earth has made so many rotations that it has probably rotated out of that particular orbit.  Alas…. Time changes everything!

One day, many years later, when I didn’t wear the pink dress any more, my boyfriend came over to our house.  It was an ordinary day, except that it would be the first time he came to our house.  I was excited, as he had casually just called on the telephone and said he would be riding his bicycle over and would be arriving in the next half hour.

It was summer, and I was quickly …  maybe I was in a panic….  I was trying to decide if I should wear something a little more suited to seeing my boyfriend, who was quite brand new at the time.  When he had called I was lounging around in an old pair of shorts and just any old t-shirt.  Part of my consideration was what we would be doing.  If we were going to go out for a walk in the ravine….  Then I wouldn’t really have to change into anything “nicer.”  I was not exactly making enough money to purchase all sorts of hiking gear, so, wearing any old pair of shorts and an old pair of sneakers would probably be all I needed.

Being the guy that he was, and probably still is, now, he arrived in twenty minutes.  He rang the door bell, and i rushed to open the door.  I had not changed…  as I just immediately made the decision that I didn’t want my little brother and sister bugging us.  He came in, and had a pop and sat and talked with all of us.  I was thinking constantly of taking off without my little tow-alongs.  My mother expected me to looke after my siblings during the summer holidays sine they were younger, but, they could survive being left alone for an hour without the supervision….  Not that I was especially responsible at the time.

We did take off not long after the pop was finished.  I asked, quite suddenly during a lull in the conversation, whether my boyfriend wanted to go to the river in the ravine with me?  My brother and sister were quick this time…  and I was grateful…..  my boyfriend immediately said quite excitedly that we should go, while my sister and brother said that they’d stay at home.  I didn’t have to be the one who said they couldn’t go.

The ravine and the river were not far away…  within two minutes we could be in a forest of trees and deep into a woodchip, pine needle floor that would lead to a small river that we could follow far, and even get lost in.

My boyfriend had never been to this part of  “Green Space” within the city, and I felt almost lost, surprisingly, as I began to think about how to show him around it.  He made it easy, however, keeping up an easy flow of conversation.  He never once asked where we were going….  As apparently, my statement from the beginning about going into the ravine and finding the river was enough for him.  This made me believe that just going to the river was enough.

There were several places that we could stand at right beside the river, and several places where the river would become shallow enough that standing on the edge we could reach our hands in and literally touch the sandy bottom of the stream. This is where we stopped and stood looking at everything surrounding us.  A few times, my boyfriend picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.  Sometimes it went far enough to go beyond just the middle of the stream.  this was the first time I had seen someone, in the flesh, do the skipping stone across the water.  It was impressive, and I felt in awe of my boyfriend.  I had thought, always, that it was just movie magic, but apparently, anyone could learn how to do it.

As we stood longer at the side of the stream, we began to notice the things just in the water.  Surprisingly, there were schools and schools of tiny fish.  They were silvery, and tiny and darted, faster than the striking of lightening, everywhere.  As soon as I saw them, I was utterly delighted.  I had never thought it possible that there would be life inside the tiny river in the ravine.  It did not seem wild enough to support any type of life.  Where would all the food come  from?

We stood looking down at them, in awe.  Suddenly, my boyfriend declared that they were definitely guppies.  Before this, I had only seen guppies in the pet store.  The ravine river was murky, from the sandy bottom and the slowness of the water which encouraged the water to be become murky with decomposing foliage.  I was very impressed.

We laughed, at the darting fish.  A few times my boyfriend put his hand and fingers in to cause the guppies to suddenly change direction, in an attempt to pick up one of the guppies, but they were incredibly fast.  It was exciting to see the quickness of silver which, given the sunlight, made a quick “spark” with the sudden turn the fish made.

As we grew tired, slowly, we suggested to each other, as we stood up again, by the side of the river, that we should go home.  My boyfriend dried his hands on his pants, and we turned around and started to head home.  This time I  did not feel myself looking everywhere in a scattered manner, to try to find something to say or to do.  I felt that my boyfriend and I had had a happy afternoon.  As we slowly walked, by boyfriend reached for my hand, and we held hands, lightly, walking without intention, out of the ravine.

We were holding hands, me in complete contentment and thinking that I had a cool boyfriend, when he let go suddenly, and running towards some thicket of bushes and trees, he picked a bunch of daisies, and offered them to me.  I was surprised by his gesture and accused him of vandalism and thievery of public property, causing the both of us to laugh.  I accepted his bunch of daisies anyway, reminding him that I had a backyard full of them at home already.

We were not a couple for more than a year-and-a-half, and i have not seen him since, but this particular afternoon is an afternoon I will forever remember, it being so pleasant, the sun being up, the way things worked without effort, and the way I didn’t feel as if I was always looking at the future and wondering if there would be future, given the sad circumstances.

I am someone who saves the things I love.  And that afternoon is saved, with the daisies and the silvery guppies.  And the memory of a kind boyfriend who made being a teenager exciting, and something that felt safe and full of being in love.

A Day At the Cottage

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I am thinking back to late last summer.  I am sure it was late August, and how I was driving, alone, in my car.  It was not an accident that I was alone …  And dangerously so, since the time was at the night when evidence is easily lost.  But I was not thinking of criminals accosting me just as the lucky innocent one.  I was lost in thought of the day I had spent just three hours north of Toronto at a lake-front cottage.  The fact that I was also dangerously close to the limit of blood alcohol allowed while operating a motor vehicle, did not occupy my mind or my thoughts.  I actually did not feel intoxicated.

Well, I am sure it had passed midnight.  Just before I got into my car to drive off, I could hear the crickets.  The lake gave off a warm breeze, and the smell of fresh water, as it carried a fleeting scent of wood ash from our open fire just on the shore.  We were lingering on the lawn, talking, refusing to let go of the perfect day that had miraculously been made to happen.  A lot of slow words, sudden laughs, smiles, and shifting weight, back and forth, as the group of us lingered.  We were tiring, but let the energy of sun, drink, food, and fire keep us going.

The radio was tuned to Public Radio….  The talk was long over with, and now, the music of musicians, daring and experimenting, and creating the sound, the phrasing, the pause, the surprise, of some of the jazz-like instruments used for finding musical pleasure….  Well, that was what was on the radio.  I wouldn’t know if the musicians were in fact intoxicated….  But it sounded like it.

As I remember, and mention again, I was alone in my car.  It was comfortable, having been heated by the sun all day long, the interior was now cooling in the cool wind blowing from the speed of the car on the highway.  I kept looking at the speedometer even though I kept an even pressure on the gas pedal.  It was accompanied by my gaze along the highway.  There were not, few cars, but there were in fact, quite a few cars out with me.  There were many, many trucks, out when there was less congestion.  These were the things that frightened me.  The size of the trucks, the sound of their working engines, and the fact that passing a truck felt like King Kong brushing up against me.

I was in this state, probably at three in the morning.  I did not have any pressing engagements the next morning….  And, being on vacation, I was looking forward to quiet and relaxation.  I thought I would catch up with reading, with music, with friends, and with a few new recipes that I could try in the space of a few hours.  I was thinking these thoughts, again.  The first time and the last time I had thought and reviewed my list of vacation activities was the week beforehand when I was in my office at work.  Then, I was full of hope and optimism at the coming time and I was congratulating myself on organizing myself so well so as to have everything I was planning, working out well.

I would be home in an hour.  And I was feeling relaxed, which, coincidentally, was allowing me to stay awake at this unusual hour.  As I got closer to the city, there were fewer cars on the road.  Since the highway is smoother and there is more space, I began to become brave, and stepped on the gas pedal a little deeper to rush home.  I was feeling the lateness and the more than almost twenty-four hours since I last slept.  I did note to myself that I could very well pay a speeding fine of half the cost of the food and drink spent during the day, but I also thought that I would like to be at home soon.  So, foot on gas pedal, radio on loud, and a racing heart accompanied me down the last stretch of highway towards home.

The day was great.  I loved being close to earth.  Thinking about it now, six months later, I will mortgage my home three times over, and, even, if all there is left on that lake is a piece of rock, I will buy that piece of rock, and build my cottage on it!