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Posts tagged memories

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Need to feel kind of badly about yourself? Read your report cards from grade 8

I had to move a bunch of boxes out of my aunt’s basement (aka free storage) last night. This morning I’ve spent the last hour going through my “archives,” including report cards my parents saved (from grades 1 through 12). After reading years and years comments about how I’m “outgoing” and “smart” but “need to put more effort into finishing assignments IN TIME,” I wonder how these teachers would feel knowing I’m in such a deadline-based profession.  

Filed under my life Memories growing up school

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Dinner Dance. The epicentre of Metis nightlife. It happens once a month, every year. In recent years - when adulthood has demanded that we sacrifice our summers and choose the few days we make the trek up (down?) the river - it’s the August dinner dance my friends and I have chosen to attend.

Every year means a ridiculous theme (pirates, hats, Indian summer), a baked potato and an overabundance of dancing and liquor. And the memories we take away are forever water-coloured and provoke endless laughter. 

This Saturday August 13th (ie. tomorrow) will be my 10th summer of dinner dances (as we’re only allowed to attend this club function when we’re the legal drinking age - 18, God bless Quebec). It’s Western themed and already I can’t wait to see what duds we’ll all turn out in. What’s most fun for me though, is to look back at how we’ve grown since those early drunken dinner dances and come to appreciate each other and this one night a year that we get to spend together in reckless abandon and celebration. 

Filed under Metis Metis Beach dinner dance memories my life photos my photos

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This morning I’m setting off to Metis Beach for ten days of pure bliss - aka vacation - where this is the view I’ll see from my grandmother’s back veranda when I drop in for a glass of wine before dinner. If you know me, you know Metis is home. My 0,0. The place I go every year to once again remember my true self. The small town that’s been a fixture in my life every summer since 1983 - when I was born during a July heatwave and, two weeks later, whisked off to Metis by my parents who couldn’t sit in Montreal any longer. And I’m lucky this year to get ten days, but anyone who knows Metis will tell you it’s not enough. Neither is two weeks. Nor a month. I miss the childhood freedom of summer that allowed for “the season” in Metis-sur-mer. Late June to almost September. When you went through four seasons of weather and were all the better for it. People return from Metis to their city lives on a huge high that usually plummets to the deepest low in under 24 hours. Because regardless of how blessed we were to be there for however amount of time we had this summer, we are desperate to return at once. It’s a truly awful feeling. But I don’t have to worry about it for ten days.

This morning I’m setting off to Metis Beach for ten days of pure bliss - aka vacation - where this is the view I’ll see from my grandmother’s back veranda when I drop in for a glass of wine before dinner.

If you know me, you know Metis is home. My 0,0. The place I go every year to once again remember my true self. The small town that’s been a fixture in my life every summer since 1983 - when I was born during a July heatwave and, two weeks later, whisked off to Metis by my parents who couldn’t sit in Montreal any longer.

And I’m lucky this year to get ten days, but anyone who knows Metis will tell you it’s not enough. Neither is two weeks. Nor a month. I miss the childhood freedom of summer that allowed for “the season” in Metis-sur-mer. Late June to almost September. When you went through four seasons of weather and were all the better for it. People return from Metis to their city lives on a huge high that usually plummets to the deepest low in under 24 hours. Because regardless of how blessed we were to be there for however amount of time we had this summer, we are desperate to return at once. It’s a truly awful feeling.

But I don’t have to worry about it for ten days.

Filed under Metis Metis Beach memories my life summer vacation my photos

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Snails and a childhood in Bermuda

      Me in Bermuda, age 4

My mother loves to tell people the story of my early days of education. We moved to Bermuda when I was 2 but I didn’t go to kindergarten/pre-school for a year or so after. When I did, it was to a wee school called Small World (as in, “it’s a small world afterall,” which really has just set the theme for my entire life but that’s not the point of this story.)

Anyway, allegedly on the first day of school we were told a story about a snail. This story provided me with a wealth of artistic creativity apparently because every subsequent day after for months after I would bring home my artwork from school with my artist’s note written on it by my teacher: “Joan says this is a picture of a snail.”

As the years rolled by, the story of Joan and her snails was often retold to people as a source of endearing amusement - by all of us: myself, my sister and my mother. And I further the snail history with odd knick knack presents in the form of snails to this day. (The most recent one I can remember is about 4 years back when I was off on a pottery shop expedition with friends and had to choose something to paint and what-not. Having not enough artistic talent to decorate a tile, plate or mug, I spotted a snail that seemed to fit the bill both in price and skill level. Mum unwrapped it for mother’s day just a month later and it now sits on her dresser.)

Which is why it’s so fitting that my younger sister would send me a link this afternoon with the following:

JOAN! scroll almost all the way down here and see what Kate painted on her easel!!!!

      Catherine Middleton during her LA visit, Getty images

(For your convenience - and my amusement - I’ve attached a few more photos (from Getty/WENN.) 

      Catherine Middleton during her LA visit, Getty images

      Prince William and Catherine in art class, Getty images

Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, and I have an identical skill level when it comes to art. And it would seem she and her husband are as much amused by it as my family and I are; which is why I’m sitting here staring at these photos and wondering what the story behind her snail is.

Filed under Prince William Catherine Middleton royal tour my life memories Bermuda snails Margot family duke and dutchess of cambridge

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When I was 10: The internet was waiting for the top 40 countdown to come on the radio, taping the songs you were waiting for, then listening to them and pausing every 5 seconds to write the lyrics down.



SO JEALOUS KIDS TODAY HAVE ITUNES AND GOOGLE AND AREN’T WASTING 50% OF THEIR LIVES WAITING FOR CASEY KASEM (via kellyoxford)

Totally my life at 14. 

Filed under my life memories

Notes

Matthew Morrison announced he’s joining the NKTOBSB tour.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I love Glee, but I do not want my 1990s-2000s summer-fun-nostalgia concert infested with Matthew Morrison. No. No. No. No. No.

I bought those tickets in the depths of winter with the giddiness of my 15-year-old self cheering me on. New Kids on the Block - not entirely my demo but I know the hits. Backstreet Boys - owned (still own and dance around to) every CD. This was the concert I never got to see when in high school. And I lucked into BSB joining up with NKOTB and going on tour at the time in my life where I have a job and can afford floor seats. When they released their joint single this spring, I was even more delighted that I’d splurged on the tickets.

And now Matthew Morrison and his CRAP (sorry, but it is) album are going to stink up the stage. Someone make him tour with Buble instead - it’s a similar demo. He totally just Shuester’d this concert for people. What a downer.

Filed under matthew morrison NKOTBSB memories music concerts Glee