As promised, will bore you out of your mind with some more entries and glimpses into my life as a teenager, growing up in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.

August 3, 1990

Baby-sat at Lumax’s. Got $25. In the evening we were going to go to the Homecoming but decided not to.

Ugghhh so this baby-sitting gig at Lumax’s was a going concern when I was a kid/teenager. Mrs. Lumax posted a wanted ad in our paper, looking for baby-sitters. My mom decided to answer that ad and offer up the services of my older sister Corinne and I. The Lumax’s lived out in the country, like us, and only about 5-6 miles away. I’m not even sure why we disliked baby-sitting there so much, but we did and when they would call one of us to ask to baby-sit we would be fighting over who would go. Because neither of us wanted to.

The little girl was in Kindergarten and on our bus route and sometimes after a long day and hour long bus ride home, when we dropped her off, the dad would climb up the three steps of the bus and ask Corinne and I to get off the bus and baby-sit. With no warning. It was terrible lol.

Usually the days there were long, like twelve plus hours. When we arrived there would be three-ish days of dishes piled up to do. No exaggeration. That was the first chore. Often there was laundry to wash, dry and fold. Probably other light household chores too, I don’t remember, besides looking after, feeding and amusing the little girl and baby boy. This is the same boy from my story about catching the vomit in my hands by the way.

The parents farmed and ran a PMU barn (pregnant mare urine), which was collected then and used for making birth control or something? I’m not even sure. So they were in and out of the house all day.

Other odd jobs I was asked to do while there to baby-sit their kids was pick all the dead crab apples off the lawn so the mom could cut the grass. So fun.

One other time I remember her asking me to go out to the barn and fill some trough with water, for the horses.

Usually between nine and ten pm they would drive me home and I was paid usually around $20, always in a cheque.

August 3, 1991

Read most of the day. Jim and Sherri came to say goodbye. They are leaving for home. Have to baby-sit at Karen’s tomorrow. Dad and Larry went fishing.

Most likely was reading Danielle Steele back then, I was obsessed with her books. Mom would go to town usually once a week for groceries and often we went to the library as well and I remember my life one summer being just a revolving door of different Danielle Steele novels. Pretty sure I couldn’t read one today. But you look at the world differently when you’re fourteen.

Jim and Sherri were the people from Michigan, Uncle Jim, who I wrote about last week. He and a bunch of guys came and stayed in our yard every fall for a week to hunt geese and ducks and this particular summer, he conned his wife into coming up to see us for a holiday.

August 3, 1992

Gramma and Grampa S came. Suntanned a bit. Corinne and Gena and Laurie and I went to Wellman Lake. Swam a bit and suntanned. Slept in the tent down by the river.

My Gramma and Grampa Smith were my mom’s parents and they lived in Alberta, two provinces away and so we really only got to see them once or twice a year.

Corinne and Gena are my sisters and Laurie was some distant relative of ours. She came with her grandparents I believe, to see my grandparents that summer. She was around the same age as my sisters and I so she was pawned off on us to entertain while they were visiting. She was from somewhere around Toronto I think and had never been to a farm before so she was pretty thrilled with our rural little life.

I don’t remember going up to the lake with her but I do remember that night we pitched a tent on the riverbank and slept down there. My parents live near the river so it was just a quick walk with the old canvas tent to get down there. Keep in mind, the riverbank is all pasture so we were basically fenced in amongst the grazing cattle.

I recall the mosquitos being horrendous down there and the tent was that really old fashioned kind with the metal poles that were colour coded and it took some time to set up.

It was really hot and muggy that night and morning. We woke up to mosquitos buzzing and some of the cows licking the walls of the tent. I can’t imagine what Laurie must’ve thought lol. If she knew what the Beverly Hillbillies were, she would have probably compared us to them.