Batting Clean-Up

I can't think why I didn't mention that my kick-ass awesome day yesterday started with tea with Sarah after dropping the kids at school. Wait, yes I can; it's because I had been to the dentist, where I waited for eighty grueling years for the torment to end (I hate being tipped backwards and lying down. I hate people touching my face. I hate the horrible scritching sound. I hate all that more than I hate the pain, which is not all that bad. And my hygienist is very, very nice and understanding of dentist anxiety and makes it as un-horrible as possible, which is to say still very, very horrible) and then I went to get groceries and then I went home and felt hot and tired and dizzy and realized I hadn't really eaten anything all day because I was nervous about the dentist (although tea with Sarah was an absolutely splendid distraction) and then I went to get Eve and then we went to the mall and then we came home at seven and then I went to get Angus from volleyball at school and then I fed Angus and then I was very, very tired. But anyway, tea with Sarah was lovely and she agreed with me that having a pap smear is preferable to having one's teeth cleaned.

I also didn't talk about The Imperfectionists, which I said I would on Day 27. I wish I had taken better notes. I borrowed it from the library as an ebook and then it expired. I remember that I read a few pages and absolutely HATED it, but I can't remember why. Then I read a few more and liked it much more. It's a story cycle about journalists who work for a small, failing newspaper based in Italy; every chapter is from a different person's viewpoint. I can never decide if this is kind of a lazy, cop-out way of writing a novel, or an ingenious device, or if it's entirely dependent on the individual author, which is probably closer to the truth. Some people thought that many of the chapters didn't ring true, although some were very good. Others didn't like that there weren't more reappearances of characters once their story was gone, which made it seem like the book was marketed as a novel when it was really a book of extremely loosely linked short stories. There were certain moments that struck me in the heart, and overall I liked the book. I wish I could remember what caused the initial surge of dislike.

I've started reading The Shining again. I can't even remember when I first read it, but I think I was very young, and I missed a lot. I'm enjoying the reread very much. I'm planning to watch the movie again when I'm done, but I'm fairly convinced that my opinion of that won't change a whole lot.

Eve and I are watching Rose again next week. Stay tuned.

Zarah called today because she was laid up with a hip flexor injury and bored, which reminded me that I still haven't said anything about our week-end. It was fabulous. We had her friends over for a clothing swap, and drank wine and ate popcorn and walked around half-naked. We put on sparkly eyeliner and got dressed for a party with other women. One of them was talking to her girlfriend on the phone, and the girlfriend asked if she was going formal, to which the first replied "no, I'm wearing leopard print pants, red lipstick and glitter - I look like a ho", which led us to coin the phrase "Slutty Casual - it's the new Cocktail". We walked to the market and bought cashew corn chowder with cilantro cream for lunch, which I became briefly obsessed with recreating and then totally forgot about until just now. We went out again and walked downtown and shopped a bit and then stopped at a little store that had wild boar shank in a vegetable cassoulet, so we bought that too, because WILD BOAR and also, laziness. We talked and played music and talked and talked some more.

I'm still not ready to talk about the homosexuals being welcome in the Catholic Church thing, but I'm working on it.

Okay. I feel better. Husband is home from Tokyo. Tomorrow I shall be chair-bound and book-buried. Then we can deal with snowy driveways and busted fenders.

Happy week-end, all.