Bibliomama

Photo from Flickr. By Tristan Nitot . I was going back to the gym today. In January I don't go to the gym. I used to keep trying, but there's this thing where I stop being able to visualize myself doing something, and then I can't do it. I would think "tomorrow I'm going to work out and then get groceries". Then I'd wake up in the morning and a metal perimeter security barrier would slam shut in my mind and I'd be paralyzed until I thought "okay FINE, I'll just get groceries and then I'll walk on the treadmill" and my brain would un-vapour-lock my body. I know, I know. Whacksack of nutjob with sprinkles. This period of gym-not-sium extended until the end of March this year because of sickness and a slightly delayed winter depression. I keep the membership because it's a few dollars a month and I always know I'm going to want it again for most of the year. So last night, as I surveyed my arm flab in the mirror, I though...

This was my friend Lynn 's comment on yesterday's post about Vampires in the Lemon Grove : OMG, I READ THIS BOOK. It's quite major for me to be discovering I have read something, in the recent past, that other people are actually reading too! I AM RELEVANT. That said...I did not love it. I really, really WANTED to love it. This is exactly my kind of author and my kind of writing. And I agree, the Antarctic story was divine. But I think I have some sort of personal failing when it comes to short stories. I just always feel like I'm left wanting more. Like there was some deep and mysterious point I was supposed to get, but did not. I always feel left at loose ends, like there was no conclusion and then I wonder if I missed something, and then I feel dumb. I especially did not like the last story, the one with the scarecrow. It was just so, so horrifying to me, the way they treated that boy and then were only punished in the vaguest of ways, and even then, only ...

I raved about Vampires in the Lemon Grove in my year-end book round-up, but I haven't done a review that I felt really gave it justice. THEN I read St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves in January, mostly on my ipad while walking on the treadmill, and it was JUST AS MIND-BLOWINGLY GOOD (well actually St. Lucy's came first, so I guess I should say that Vampires in the Lemon Grove is just as good, retroactively, or something).  And I've been meaning to write this review for weeks, but I was sick, and then I was other sick, and then I was sad, and then it got to be this big huge insurmountable endlessly-deferred task, even though I'm not getting marked on it OR paid for it, and now I'm wondering if I should just chuck the whole thing. *goes and eats oatmeal cookie* Okay, fine, I'll give it a shot, and I'll try not to just use gushy superlatives. I felt pierced by these stories - each one was like dreaming a beautiful, strange, frightening dream t...

I'm still feeling a little too scattered to nail myself down and do a book review post, but here is a quote that I loved from a book that I loved - Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee:  "And you might think a name is just a name, nothing but a word, but that is not the case. Your name is tacked to you. Where it has joined you, it has seeped into your skin and into your essence and into your soul. So when they plucked my name from me with their spell, it was as heavy as a rock in their hands but as invisible as the wind, and it wasn't just the memory of my name, but me myself. A tiny part of me that they took and stored away." I think this is a lovely description of how people really grow into their names. And why it seems so weird that we get to pick names for our babies. And why it's so jarring when someone changes their name.  A couple of weeks ago, when I was stuck in a deep hole with nothing but dirt and black water everywhere I looked...

Pam and I went to The Works for lunch today. This was the sign outside. We were cowards. ************ Okay, so I've got this lingering tubercular cough (a guy in one of my graduate seminars called me Violetta or Camille interchangeably for one whole semester). I can't really use my CPAP when I'm coughing. My husband took off for San Francisco for March Break. And it's fucking cold. So much for the suckage. Here is the good stuff: I watched the hilariously inappropriate and inappropriately hilarious movie The World's End with the kids. Once Angus knew it had people from Shaun of the Dead in it there was no other movie happening that night. It was awesome. Please don't tell Children's Protective Services. We went tubing to the same place we went last year . It was a little warmer than last time so the tubing conditions weren't as perfect, but we still had a blast. I love how our giant boys turn totally goofy on the hill. I loved...

I tried. I really tried. I kept my head up through January. I couldn't get to the gym, but I walked my little walks on my little treadmill and shoveled the driveway without complaining and then it was February and there was Eve's birthday, which was good, then a bunch of throwing up, which was bad, but then I was better, so last Monday I cleared off a bunch of crap from the coffee table behind the couch and sorted and recycled and jettisoned and I was all set to keep going, and then I got some kind of coughing death plague so clearly the universe WANTS my house to keep being a tip and now it's motherfucking mercury-plunging nipple-scraping goddamned cold again and I'm DONE, winter, DONE - consider the white flag waved. I told both my instructors that I was sick last week, and they both gave me extensions on my assignments, which I ended up not needing. I had another one due yesterday, though, and this time I took the extension, for I think the first time ever. And I d...