Water Water Everywhere

I hope all the people who whined and grumbled and beat their breasts about the water ban know that I totally blame them for this apocalyptic rainfall - I'm well nigh certain that Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom and bitchiness heard them and said "YOU WANT WATER, YOU PUNKS? I'LL GIVE YOU WATER". We're in week three of the spring baseball season. The kids should both have played six games so far: Eve has played two, Angus has played one. My husband, who coaches Angus's team, has had to have his belt and shoelaces confiscated. Every time he opens his computer and yells "Nooooooooo!" I know they've cancelled another game because of the danger of losing a kid in a pit of slime, or of the entire diamond floating away and ending up somewhere around North Bay. It's not good.

I was going to call this a List of Things that Have Made Me Smile Lately, but then I typed that out and it made me throw up in my mouth a little, so let's just call it Things That Have Mitigated the Suckage Somewhat.

1. This book. I actually bought it thinking it was non-fiction, although when I realized it was a novel and reread the back cover copy, I don't know what gave me that idea. I'm a Jewish groupie - I mean I'm a groupie for Jews. Or Jewishness. I find Judaism fascinating, especially as I read more and learn how far back into history the tradition of blaming the Jews for every crappy thing EVER and generally hounding and harrying and torturing and executing them reaches. I keep wanting to throw up my hands and go "what the hell?" and then realizing that better minds than mine have tackled this problem unsuccessfully.

Anyway, this book. I can't even pinpoint exactly why I loved it so much, except that I just recently realized that I sort of like it when I finish a book feeling like it was all kinds of awesome while being uncertain what, exactly, it was about. I felt this way about The History of Love - most of my book club did, actually. Once we started talking about it we realized how difficult it was to figure out when and in what order events happened and what was real and imaginary and all the connections, and yet we all agreed that it was a deeply transporting and fulfilling reading experience. 

This book was the same. It juggles storylines and characters - at one point it took me half a chapter to realize that the grandfather was the same character who was a college student two chapters before. It write about playing and listening to jazz in a manner that actually feels effective. It twists up the experience of being Jewish with the experience of being African American into a heady, contentious whirlpool of - I don't know - self-righteousness, entitlement, accusations, comparisons, areas of demarcation and overlap. There is the question of whether good people can be good artists - musicians and writers specifically - or whether genius excuses a certain level of bad behaviour and mistreatment of lovers and family members. There are moments of insight, but no trite scenes of 'redemption.' I didn't race through it - it was like very good dark chocolate that I kept stashed away and every so often I would parcel it out to myself, and it was always richly satisfying.

2. This CD. I got it in university and the other day I realized I had never gotten any of it onto my ipod so I searched for and found it. I remembered a party I was at last Christmas where one of the other women had had someone tell her she resembled Jane Siberry and when she saw a picture of her she was deeply offended. I think Jane is quite striking actually, but this woman was kind of a nutbar so I just found her pissiness kind of amusing. (That's unkind. I can understand not wanting to look like Jane Siberry. She did, though.)

And this verse, from Calling All Angels:

Oh and every day you gaze at the sunset with such love and intensity 

It's almost as if you could only crack the code you could find out what this all means

Oh but if you could do you think you would have traded all 

All the pain And suffering

Ah but then you'd miss the beauty of the light upon this earth

And the sweetness of the leaving.

Yeah, I know. One track of my mind thinks "oh don't be ridiculous. Most of us would trade all the pain and suffering for a twinkie. Plus, haven't you been listening, there's NO LIGHT ON MY EARTH right now". But the other track thinks "what a beautiful way to think about it."

3. Leftover ice cream cake from Angus's birthday.

4.My purple tulips from Pam. We have vowed that we will venture out to partake in the beauty of the Tulip Festival on the first sunny day (Pam politely requested that I stop phrasing this as "if the fucking rain ever stops we're going to see the fucking tulips, got it?")

5.The Big C. Cancer sucks. Laura Linney is fabulous.

6. Mom of the Perpetually Grounded, who figured out who was stealing my bubbles. I'm hot on the little bastard's trail. I will have my bubbles back!