Sweet, sweet summer vacation.

It has been a wonderful start to vacation. Camping in tofino was amazing, sleeping in every morning has been amazing, swimming at the lake every single day. In the summer i truly feel like we live in the very best place in the whole world. The whole town slows down. A constant stream of kids walking to and from the lake, swimsuits around their necks and quiet giggling with friends as they walk up and down the country roads.

The kids are really happy. I had hoped in my heart that once summer came and we spent so much time together that their spirits would be lifted just a little bit and this hard year would finally find some joy in it.

A few weeks ago i had a meeting with the counselor at the kids school. We talked about the atmosphere in my house, the fighting between the kids, my frustrations with their not listening to me. She was great and, as outsiders can often do, gave me some really great advice. So simple, yet i didn't see it. In my desire to make the kids happy i had become a push-over. Trying too hard to be their friend.

She said if i just became an authority figure again, was consistent with rules and consequences, my house would return to harmony.

And magic of magic, it has worked. The kids are listening to me. We are enjoying each other more than ever and the fighting has really subsided. They still fight, don't get me wrong on that one, but they are quicker to try and solve the problem before it erupts.

I see a really great summer ahead of us.

I was joking around with ada on twitter last night about divorce in the age of social networking.

You see, a few weeks ago my ex-husband removed me as a friend on FaceBook. I was crushed. It seemed a silly thing to be upset about, but it was like that final door closing. I was unfriended. We were no longer friends. I pictured photo albums being poured through and my face cut out of family photographs. Trash bags full of photos of my head.

The other night my daughter asked me to look at something she had written on her dad's profile. "I can't we're not friends." She looked puzzled. "Well, add him as a friend." It's important to me to not bring the kids into the drama that ebbs and flows between their father and i, yet i didn't want to lie to her and i didn't want to hurt her. "I could do that, but maybe it's for the best, this way we both get our privacy."

Then there is this blog, there is twitter. I have locked and unlocked my twitter account several times over the past few months. How do i navigate this? How do i say what i want to say, sometimes need to say, without causing pain and protecting my privacy. The answer? You can't. If i want privacy i would have to get off the internet and i just can't do that. The support and therapeutic value of writing, of putting it out there, is too strong for me.

Instead, i will slowly unentangle two lives and six years of marriage that happened online.

1. qualifying for a mortgage

2. finding the perfect house for me

3. driving 600km in five days in my new car

4. fitting all the camping gear in said car

5. a stranger giving me a Thule box for my car upon hearing me chat with the kids in line at the store about how to fit everything and how expensive said boxes are.

*it's all about karma"*

i bought a house today. two weeks ago i bought a car.

this shit is freaking me out.

i'm doing it all by myself.

there is no man there to check and balance with and i'm pretty sure i'm not getting screwed, but rather the opposite, i am rocking this single thing.

Last week toby turned ten years old. We have been so busy with the requisite end of year field trips, a family camping trip and enjoying life in general that i haven't had time to write about him until now.

Toby is the most amazing boy. Long time readers know that he has had his share of struggles. Toby was diagnosed with apraxia of speech at two years old. When he entered kindergarten he was 90% unintelligble to strangers. He went through seven years of speech therapy. This past year we transferred toby from private to public school in order to gain access to more resources for him and get him psycho-educational testing. His tests came back showing him at above-average to gifted intelligence in almost all subject areas. He was also diagnosed with a profound learning delay in reading and writing - a result of miss-firing synapses because of his apraxia.

The test results brought me great relief because i already knew what they would say and it meant that he could gain access to very limited special education resources. He switched to a modified educational plan that included many of his texts and home-reading being done on tape. He went from a grade one level in reading comprehension to exactly on track for grade four in a matter of weeks. His confidence soared at a time when he needed it most.

Toby talks non-stop from the moment he wakes until sleep takes over his tired body. Once he found his words they never stopped coming. He is filled with brilliant and large ideas and an imagination that knows no limit. He is loud and rough and jubilant and moody like most ten year old boys. He is always eager to help me with any job and, when i think about it, has really filled the role of "man of the house" in my home.

Sometimes i wish he would just slow down for a moment so i could give him a big hug and tell him how proud i am of him and how far he has come. I know that this will be the year that all the pieces have come together for toby and he will soar. Happy birthday toby, i love you.

1. my new car that i bought all by myself and has windows that work, heated seats and 4 wheel drive.

2. the stress of getting ready for the first camping trip of the year.

3. the last week of school before summer vacation.

4. lucrative and fun nights at work.

5. making the best and tallest bellini's.

Last night the kids were looking through old photos. They were laughing and giggling at themselves as babies and toddlers. I stopped making photo albums about four years ago, when i got my digital SLR and started putting everything online and on my computer.

Parker was a little sad that there were none of him, but i reminded him that there are about a billion photos of him on my computer. The thought of getting all these digital photos into books is a little daunting.

I have had the kids for almost three weeks straight, with a night here and there at their dads. He has been travelling and there have been the birthday parties at my house. I'm a little pooped, running a little short on energy. But, i persevere.

Yesterday we went swimming in the lake after school, then for dinner at my restaurant. Eating at my workplace on my day off is not always my first choice, but the kids love going there. It's a treat for them.

After dinner we went back to the lake and we all swam around and ran along the logs as the sun set. It was really fun. Too often, i sit on the beach and supervise instead of jumping in - brrrrr - and splashing with them. I was so glad i did last night. It perked me up, woke me up and let me laugh and scream as i tried to negotiate the rolling logs.

It also gave me enough energy to give bedtime a good effort. A rousing reading of "Where the Wild Things Are" and then dancing to the song they played in the trailer for the movie. As an aside, the movie looks so good. I am more excited than the kids.

After they were asleep i checked eliza's fairy house as seen in the photo above and read her daily note. "dear juniper, i am so happy. you are my best friend. i love you. eliza." I love her little fairy life. Her "fairy" writes her back teeny tiny notes and gives her little gifts. She is always the first up in the morning and i watch her as she opens the front door, peaks out to see if there is a note. When there is she runs out and grabs it and then spends half an hour writing a new note. This week she even made her fairy a skirt out of lilac leaves and a sparkly ribbon.

Good days. Good days.

1. wearing smocked tube tops for the first time in thirty years and feeling just as comfortable in them now as i did as a little girl.

2. laughing, really laughing, with a good friend.

3. thinking about going to chicago next month and visiting the museum again.

4. having my kids through the weekend and not having to work.

5. late, late nights at the lake - swimming until the sun sets at 10pm.

A while ago, late at night, fueled by a need for revenge i placed a profile on a dating sight. I left it there for about eight hours, or one sleep.

As, i've said before i'm really not interested in dating.

Within minutes of placing my picture and a profile that said "i'm not interested and i'm taking this down in the morning," my inbox started beeping with messages. In that one night of sleep eighteen men added me to their favourites and asked me out on a date.

I pictured a room in a Monty Python movie filled with men in varying degrees of dress sitting at their laptops and someone rang a bell and yelled "Fresh meat!"

I've been thinking about the difference in the way men and women are treated when a marriage ends. The different things we do. The ways we cope.

this is the worst night i ever had

Women want to swoop in and help the fallen man. Make sure he is okay, that he is handling all the extra work. Bake a casserole. Talk about their single friends.

Men want to take him out for a beer, make sure he is hanging in. But nothing to intimate. A toast to better chicks.

you won't be happy with me

Women are scared of me. I could be you. They have an idea of how hard it is, but don't want to acknowledge it.

Men are scared of me.

Someone else's might not have made me so sad

Men run fast to a new relationship. Desperation. Validation. Sexual need. I don't know.

Women retreat. Work on creating new families. A new kind of family life. Jump in to work and finances and stability. Trying to recreate what a man provided.

* "100,000 Fireflies" Superchunk and awesomely covered by Magnetic Fields.

Yesterday my baby girl turned twelve years old.

Being my first, my oldest, tristan holds a special spot in the family. She is the one i rely on to help out, to make fighting this tide of children a little easier. And she is easy. She is such an amazing girl.

She is so easy to be around and parent. She does well in school, does well in every activity she tries, has an amazing sense of humour - she loves life.

Together we share a passion for books and sleep. We would be perfect roomies.

Tristan had a bit of a tough year this year. Middle school showed such promise to her, but led to her first experience of being shunned by classmates. She also broke her leg very badly in september which did not help. She ended up going back to her little private school in november and has been thriving there.

She is the lead in her class play and cracks everybody up with her theatrics and improv.

For her party we went to a tree top adventure/zip line place and she was disappointed that they had to go on the lower course. I hate to see her sad so i bought her a ticket to the "Canyon Zip." I didn't actually "look" at the course she was going to do before she did it and when i watched her run toward the platform my stomach leaped into my chest and straight out my mouth. The thought of her zipping along a wire several hundred feet in the air was a combination of all my biggest fears into one horror show i paid for and was about to watch.

Tristan, on the other hand, had absolutely no fear and smiled and laughed the whole way and screamed as loud as she could to her friends as she zipped by "HARRY POTTER IS BETTER THAN TWILIGHT!!"

I love my girl so much, she makes me smile every single day.

It feels like when i have the kids with me all is right in the world.

Yesterday i bought a badminton net for the backyard. Toby and i set it up and then we had a mom versus kids tournament well into the sunset and finished reluctantly when the mosquitoes threatened to eat us alive.

It was one of those great evenings. We haven't had nearly enough of those. It's so easy to get caught up in the rush and whimsy of the day only to run out of hours before you get to the good stuff.

School is so close to being over i can taste it. We have been in the lake every day since saturday. We've had ice cream and loungy afternoons. We've booked our first camping trip scheduled to depart the hour school gets out for summer.

Almost three months with all day together. It is in those months that working nights seems very okay.