Bibliomama

What else? Oh yeah. When Angus plays baseball in the summer and comes home and takes off his uniform we often play a game we like to call 'Blood or Snack', as in "is that where you got popped in the nose, or is that red popsicle?" Today I went to my Mom's and they had made borscht and frozen it and she gave me some to take home, but I honestly don't know whether to eat it or use it as part of a Halloween costume: Also, a shot of my favourite family Halloween costume this year: my friend Susanne, with her husband Paul and Doctor Mabel.

So I've been wandering around feeling crushingly fatigued and restless and irritable and wondering what the hell is wrong with me and then I thought, well DUH, I'm an introvert. And all the carousing and merriment and ever-so-mild debauchery of late has plumb drained my aloneness tanks to virtual emptiness. Even this week, when usually I'd be alone for a few hours during the day, got eaten up by errands and plans that necessitated my rubbing shoulders with the human public to an absolutely exhausting extent. So, Montreal. With two friends from high school who now live in Halifax - three of us, down from the usual six due to the vagaries of family and employment. Anne Marie is a doctor and, it has to be said, a massive weirdo who I adore, even when she's haranguing strangers or service personnel. Sheila works at the BIO and even though I made her describe her average work day for me in excruciating detail, I still can't remember exactly what she does. She is also ...

Things are a little hard right now. Firmly in the 'first world' kind of hard, though. My dryer's busted. It stopped working just as we had decided to buy a new one BUT also just as Matt left for a week and a half in Japan, so we couldn't go shopping for a new one right away. We also couldn't go shopping for a new one the day after he got back from Japan because I left for Barrie to visit Zarah for the week-end. We're going shopping for a new one tomorrow, but who knows how long it will be before it gets delivered. In the meantime, you can't move in the basement without being slapped in the face or  caressed around the knee by a cold, clammy piece of reluctantly drying fabric. I hang a lot of things to dry anyway, but adding in having to hang sheets, towels, socks, underwear and dish cloths has made the process quite a bit more unwieldy. It's tiresome, but it's only tiresome because I'm accustomed to the ridiculously convenient way I usually do it...

Should blog. Don't feel like blogging. Anybody want to blog for me? I just spent half an hour noodling around on the internet trying to find the title and/or author of a book I read that I really liked, so I could check if the author had anything more recent. I realized, as I was googling, that all I can really remember is that the main character was an alcoholic female police detective. I can't remember what the mystery was or even what the setting was - Hawaii, maybe? So perhaps, in the event that I do remember which book it is, I should just reread that book instead of looking for a new one. In related news, I am not going to divest myself of the hundreds of books in my house and just keep a dozen or so, on the assumption that, by the time I work my way through all of them, I will have forgotten enough about the first one that it will then be new to me again. Matt is telling us about wandering around a park in Tokyo where they have designated spots in which you are allow...

So clearly my sleep machine hasn't improved my memory yet. I just realized that I've been calling and emailing my husband thinking that he's still in Baltimore (where he was last week) and thinking it's weird when he doesn't get back to me right away (because after all it's in the same time zone). I realized five minutes ago that he's actually in Japan. When people ask me where he is and I can't immediately remember if it's, say, Tokyo or Shen Zen or Germany or Italy, I usually just say "who cares, he's equally useless to me in Ohio or Okinawa", but usually I'm at least on the right continent. Then I almost pulled one of these again, thinking I had to get my assignment done before I left to visit Zarah next Thursday and then realizing I was a whole week ahead of myself again and next Wednesday is the seventeenth, not the twenty-fourth. I'm thinking I might need to write a letter to myself every morning and put the date at the...

1) A stand of sparkling silver birches behind a lower tier of red sumac on the side of the highway. 2) The flyers distributed by the kids for their nightly show in the attic: the "unvaling" of Eve and Charlotte's music video stylings, a news "brodcast", and a play about the Emperor of Japan and the Queen of England having tea together. 3) My Dad, slumped awkwardly on the futon in the attic before the show, saying "this isn't comfortable at all. I want a better seat next time". 4) My niece Charlotte in a top hat with her hair tied under her chin, being Abraham Lincoln. 5) Eve dressed in a magician's costume, trying to produce a rabbit from a hat but producing french fries instead, saying "I'm a little embarrassed now. For my next trick, I will make a little girl disappear" and running away. 6) My nephew Jonah sitting upright in a chair with a brown fuzzy blanket wrapped around him, fast asleep in front of the baseball gam...

I went to pick up Eve from school and came home with what feels like a nasty, tangled yarn-ball of upsetness in my stomach. I will herein attempt to untangle these grimy strands of emotion - lucky you. Eve has had four teachers thus far: her English homeroom teacher, who she adores; a French teacher, who she likes; a male science teacher who she triple-extra-special adores; and a music, art and dance teacher who she really likes. Today she came out of the portable looking extremely downcast and handed me a letter informing us that science and music, art and dance will now all be taught by the French teacher, due to 'increased enrollment'. 1) This sucks. She was so excited to have the science teacher, who has taught Angus and who all the kids love. He had her all fired up. About rocks. Seriously - we were walking home from my Mom and Dad's the other day and she explained the entire life cycle of a rock to me, and then said her favourite rock was obviously sedimentary bec...

"Part memoir, part manifesto, Julie Devaney’s profoundly honest new book should be required reading for anyone who may ever have to visit a hospital – which means, in effect, everyone."  Quill & Quire Her weakest moment spawned a crusade for change. Julie Devaney takes us on a journey through the health care system as she is diagnosed and treated for ulcerative colitis. In and out of emergency rooms in Vancouver and Toronto, she’s poked, prodded, and abandoned to a closet at one point, bearing the helplessness and indignities of a system that at best confuses a patient into silence. Raw, harrowing, and darkly funny, Julie Devaney argues convincingly for fixes to the system and better training for all medical personnel. As she recovers, she sets out to do just that: setting up a gurney on stage at workshops and conferences across the country to teach Bedside Manners 101 and to advocate for repairs to the system. Part memoir, part love story, part revolutionary manifesto,...