Head in the Clouds

I stayed up way too late reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell -- holy crap. I spent the first few pages thinking I will never be able to finish reading this; the first section is one of those English-man-on-savage-Pacific-Island-in-late-eighteen-hundreds or anyway a long long time ago (I suck at history) and the dialect was nearly impenetrable. I pushed through and that section ends abruptly (mid-sentence, in fact) and a new section begins, years later before World War II. The book is made up of sections that are separate but linked by strange resonances, and it's utterly, utterly brilliant in a bleak, mournful, 'this is the way the world ends' kind of way. And I stayed up way too late reading it. Then I woke up at five a.m. with a screaming migraine. My husband gave me some Tylenol 1s before he left for Angus's obscenely early hockey game and told me to sleep in. A couple hours later I half woke up and heard the kids playing their new favourite game at the bottom of the stairs. There were a few meatball balloons left over from Eve's birthday party two Saturdays ago, and Angus recently had the head-swelling honour of being one of the only two grade four students chosen for the grade five volleyball team, which won first place at the tournament last Wednesday.

So the game? You guessed it. Balloon volleyball. He's rarely in the house these days without batting a balloon around trying desperately not to let it touch the floor, and importuning his poor sister to play with him at neverending length. Variations include lying on their backs and batting it to each other with their feet. Yep -- our very own Balloon Boy.

Anyway, my headache was still in full force, and the hollow balloon-thudding and accompanying smack-talk was slightly irritating, but I liked the fact that they were playing something with each other that didn't involve the television or related electronics, so I stuck my head under the pillow and went back to sleep.

When I was eventually up and showered and sat down to check my email, I found this one from Angus in my inbox:



"sorry that we made so much noise if you heared all the noise when you were in bed.

Angus/eve,"



Say it with me... awwwwww.

Head still hurts. But feeling pretty happy regardless. And put Cloud Atlas on your to-read list.