Life These Days: Scriptus Prep

 

 

We are getting ready for Scriptus! Scriptus is the annual Toronto pen show, which is taking place at the Reference Library tomorrow, Sunday, October 26th.

 

It is wild, as always. Also somewhat worryingly not wild, as we fluctuate between having more than we can handle and wondering how everyone else is handling more than we can handle. Jon, Brendan, and team are packing up boxes, making lists, organizing the credit card thingy, price-tagging, labelling, and their other various and endless tasks. It feels like we are more disorganized and underprepared than ever, or maybe we are just approaching infinity. I ordered the helium balloons. We all contribute as we can.

 

But what a thrill to look forward to Scriptus tomorrow, a day filled with people and pens and eating snacks under the table. This has turned out to be one of the kids’ favourite days of the year, when they get to hang out with the team all day and drink an unsupervised number of juice boxes and run amok between library shelves.

 

Every year Scriptus is so much fun, but in a way, most of the fun is just hanging out and seeing everyone. We used to agitate and worry about whether or not we had enough tables or enough exciting launches or enough deals and sales, but now I feel like we’re just joining in the fun, and hoping for the best. We’ve been ruminating in a low-stakes kind of way, and I’m really looking forward to seeing some new things on our tables and some old favourite things as well, and wandering about with my three turkeys and seeing what else is new.

 

 

 

 

 

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In other news, we are continuing on, through the slog and the delights and the tiny surprises of life. Chicken officially qualifies for “senior” discount cat month at the vet which is both pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. The vet tech tried to assure me that age is just a number, but it seemed like even she wasn’t really convinced. I spent my morning at Service Ontario where the Service Ontario clerk in front of me had to call the Service Ontario hotline while I waited with my expired driver’s licence in hand, like some sort of governmental inception. I’ve been decluttering some of my books and filling up these Free Little Libraries with them while also finding some really amazing treasures in them, which has been sort of counter productive but  mean, who can deny the magic of the free book economy in action.

 

The other day, while Caleb was at one of his various life-enriching activities, I took the girls to the No Frills down the street, for I am nothing if not a highly efficient machine of productivity. As I was coming out of the supermarket, my $1 deposit yellow cart with the rogue front right wheel, totally laden down with groceries/the oppressive cost of my groceries/my existential dread, I began swerving down the slope of the parking lot as I tried to pivot my non-pivoting cart. At the exact same moment, an innocent man was also coming up this incline, and I watched with apprehension and confusion as my cart began to slowly swerve into him as he attempted to slowly swerve out of my way, speeding up as it became clear I was not in complete control of my cart.

 

A metaphor for life, involving gravity and the cost of berries.