Bibliomama

My husband took this week off. We don't have any big trips planned for this summer because of baseball (i.e. Angus playing on the competitive team and Matt assistant coaching and very few baseball-free days, hence the customary appellation 'goddamned baseball' as in 'are you guys going to Gerry and Erica's cottage next week-end?' 'Just me and Eve -- you know, goddamned baseball', 'So what's Angus up to tonight?' 'Goddamned baseball', 'Did you hear about that earthquake in Mexico?' 'Yeah -- goddamned baseball'), so the plan was to get some stuff done around the house and do some family stuff. Stuff around the house: I think a few weeds got pulled (five to seven, I'd say). We plugged in a fan in Angus's room and then an alarm clock in Eve's, because she did an informal poll and realized that two out of three bedrooms in this house had a fan AND an alarm clock and one room which happened to be hers had neith...

I'm kind of a mess. I don't really know why. Well, because I'm neurotic and obsessive and delusional and incapable of appreciating what is by all accounts a very nice life, that's the short answer. Eve and I just played a duet on the piano. We've been away a lot and piano practice has fallen by the wayside so we've been picking it up the last few days. Today she brushed up one of her old songs and then I learned the instructor's accompaniment and we played a duet. It was lovely. That's...what? Like, probably six minutes of quality time. Other than that I've been useless to my children today. No -- worse than useless. Angus asked me to rent The Tooth Fairy on itunes and (sob) I did. I didn't even argue. I didn't even point out that it got a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and that clearly there is something so monstrously wrong about trying to convey the obvious truth that children should be allowed to have dreams and believe in thems...

ERFG, I'm tired and I really just want to go to bed and I'm only here because I'm obsessive and feeling sheepish about the fact that there's been no Biblio and hardly any Mama here lately. So, this . Guy steals a bunch of rare books worth a million pounds, goes to jail for four years, gets out and steals more books, goes back to jail for three and a half years. They call him The Tome Raider which, god help me, I find amusing. Clearly they're not going to call him the Einstein of the book thieving world, although who knows, maybe he just wanted to go back to jail to catch up on his reading. I looked up the definition of 'biblioklept' in a variety of dictionaries and was fairly dismayed to find the pedestrian description 'someone who steals books', not quite conveying the irresistible nature of the compulsion that I always imagine such people must feel. Some people steal them to sell them, true, but some people steal them just so they can have th...

You know when lanes go like this?: What, exactly, is the thinking behind that? Are the planners envisioning some idyllic, utopian world where people will yield and merge one by one while beaming and singing operatic arias? Did they not realize that, in the real world, this type of set-up is an open invitation for assholes to keep the pedal to the floor and go screaming right up to the very end of the ending lane and then gesture helplessly to everyone else to let them in because OOPS! there's suddenly no more road! While the people in the other lane who have dutifully waited to be able to proceed sit there viewing the over-entitled instant-gratification-seeking asshats on the right with an icy hatred that threatens to bubble over into murderous rage at any second, resulting in an unspeakably grisly inside-outing of steel, fibre glass and Standard Canadian Jerk-Brain. Or maybe that's just me? Are you a wait-er or a speed-er to the front of the ending lane? Am I being overs...

We just had the most riculous weather event -- from bright yellow, wet-blanket steamy heat to a sudden fast, hard, dense rain and back again within minutes. Why do I have the distinct impression that Mother Nature just said "hey, all you people who are constantly bitching that it's too cold or too hot -- psych!" (or something a little cruder, but today in my imagination Mother Nature doesn't want to set a bad example). I haven't written about BOLO yet, because the day after we went back to the cottage and resumed killing fish and brain cells in a wirelessless location. But it was really great. As we were driving downtown I was a little disappointed in myself that I wasn't reading, which is kind of good -- I'm starting to crave the adrenaline rush that comes with doing things that scare me (playing the piano for friends and family at my birthday party ; sleeping over at the cottage with twelve other people; reading out loud to a room full of friendly, ...

We're back from the cottage again. At least I am. On the way home we stopped at another cottage belonging to our friends who are moving to Edmonton next week and Eve refused to come home, the little cottage tramp. I went on another GPS adventure coming home (I really need to stop being so certain she's trying to get me lost and leave me for dead) and saw some parts of the province I've never seen before. People on tractors and large, gorgeous swathes of tiger lilies waved at me. Now I'm home, the kitchen is mostly cleaned up, I haven't washed my face yet (I know -- cottage living has turned me into a total non-up-tight free-living slob), and I flung my bra across the room with gay abandon (straight abandon? not that there's anything wrong with gay abandon if that's the abandon that floats your boat). There's a suspicious lack of cooking evidence and a pizza flyer out on the counter - I think I just won't question the boys too closely. I got a ...

Eve and I came back from the cottage last night -- I was desperate for a night in my own bed and Eve needed to see her friend Marianna before she leaves for Greece for the summer. Angus and Matt are in Cornwall for the week-end for a baseball tournament (just got the word that they are undefeated, 5 and 0 for the week-end -- go A-team), so we were planning to have a girls' night, which generally means a movie, a bunch of stories, then she sleeps in my bed. We were both kind of beat from a few days in the sun and a few late nights and a few too many alcoholic beverages (for a seven-year-old she can really pound back the Bud), so we got some dinner and watched The Last Mimzy (pretty good, with a less distressing ending than the story , which I remember reading years ago and being completely freaked out by). We read a couple of stories, then my plan was for her to crawl into my bed and me to have a couple of hours to unpack, do laundry, do some blogging, read the paper etc. The c...

My Blog Out Loud Ottawa post will have to wait, even though I'm seized with the urge to find the address of everyone there and stalk them all separately until they agree to be my friend or present me with a restraining order (no, Sabrina, that wasn't me behind that tree last night). I'm headed back out to the cottage for a few days (I get a bed this time and I didn't even have to arrange a boating accident). Instead, I present you with my two baeball championship gold winners (three guesses which one was more gracious and self-deprecating about it. Hint: it wasn't Eve.)

I'm a bit of a control freak. This isn't a big startling admission, because it's not like I hide it well. I can let my husband load the dishwasher the way he wants to, or pick out clothes for the kids. I can let my kids pick out their own clothes. I can watch someone else make a stir-fry. I can do all these things, but it murders a little piece of my soul, because those other people always do it just a little bit wrong. It's worse in matters of my body and environment. This is where I'm an anxiety wrapped in a neurosis inside an obsessive compulsive disorder. I have to wash my face and hands several times a day. I have to brush my teeth right after eating something. I shower more than once a day. I hate it when it's too hot. I need access to a wide range of clothing because I never know what I'm going to have to drape over my considerable bulk in order to make facing the world bearable. I love my bed, in my room, attached to my bathroom. So mayb...