Bibliomama

 We did it! Wait - *checks date to be absolutely cetain* - we did it!  It's not a particularly auspicious day for it. It's grey and wet and dreary in the extreme. I took the minimum dose of melatonin last night and still felt like the air was thick and dense all morning at work. The principal asked me to find her a book and I couldn't - for a completely justifiable reason, both copies were checked out, but I like her and crave her approval (probably an unattractive teacher's pet remnant) and I wanted to put the book in her hands. The other librarian was a bit snippy in an email, or at least I thought she was, it's entirely possible I was misreading her tone. Anyway. I got groceries and went to the bakery and got Starbucks for Eve who was schooling at home today and visited with my parents. Eve texted me while I was there to say they had screwed up her Starbucks order, so I went back and got the proper one. Usually I come home Monday afternoons exhausted, do very sim...

Get it? Because the finish line is in sight and now I'm cramping? Figuratively? I was actually on a Zoom call with the group that I usually cottage weekend with in the fall, and although I have come to hate Zoom calls it was really fun. Then I came upstairs and started to get ready for bed and realized CRAP I forgot to post, so I went back down half naked and my husband reminded me that my computer is called a LAPTOP for a reason (I am bad at laptopping. I always write sitting at the kitchen table. Apparently sitting at the kitchen table half naked is unclassy or something). He worked his ass off putting up Christmas lights and painting and putting up a new light fixture in the kitchen, though, so I left him to watch sportsball in peace. Oh Tudor, of COURSE it is safe to defend silicone bakeware, you know I'm not married to any of my asshole opinions. Are you seriously supposed to put the silicone muffin tin or cake pan on a cookie sheet? I assumed that would interfere with the...

 I almost said Day 29 because we watched a movie last night which we hardly ever do on Friday night so all day has kind of felt like Sunday. I am ever so slightly dispirited right now, only because we are at the point of doing stuff to the house where everything looks like absolute shite, which is a necessary part of it looking better than before but a very unpleasant one. And it's late again, and I really want to do a few more hours' work, but I'm trying not to stay up stupid late anymore. Leaving the kitchen looking like this is haaaard. So I want to thank Suz who just commented on my last four posts all at once and made me smile hard - and everyone else who comments because I feel like you're all walking me through one of the hardest months in the year, and I am very grateful. And also, commenting on a post every day for a month is hard and it's admirable that you're all not just saying "present" and going about your day while I am on my bullshit, h...

 Matt started tearing apart the powder room this morning to get ready for painting - took down the mirror and light fixture that had been up for twenty-ish years and did not go easily, started patching the walls and deciding what to do with the floor. I wandered down for breakfast and he said "I'm thinking of doing something weird with the floor". I said "Okay." He said "apparently you can paint linoleum". I said "okay". It did sound weird, but it's a tiny area and if it went horribly wrong he would be the one dealing with the fallout, so I was willing to roll with it.  Eve was dropped off by her friend after school right then and she walked in and heard Matt say he was going to paint the floor and she looked astounded and said "...is that allowed?" We had a lazy afternoon because everyone has had a busy week - I finished the most recent Lynn Coady book , which always makes me wonder why I don't just spend most of my life re...

 Today I got my winter tires on, got a new phone, worked out, bought a new range, and tried a Popeye's chicken sandwich for the first time. I am happy, sore, tired, and poor.  Matt took the day off, so we considered the round of driving around in the rain and fog and periodically dropping significant sums of money a date day.  I think this is the least amount of time we ever took to decide on a new appliance. We walked into Corbeil and said what we needed and what we wanted - a smooth top, not induction, self-cleaning, convection would be nice -  and sales dude showed us an LG model and a GE model that were both discounted well for Black Friday and in our price range. The LG oven is cobalt blue inside. The sales guy said this is so when you turn the light on you can see the interior through the door better. This is absolutely why I chose it, not because it's SO PRETTY. I think we were in and out under half an hour. So it sucked a bit that our biggest burner stopped w...

 My (and your) yearly NaBloPoMo reminder that it is exactly ONE MONTH until Christmas, Jesus (and I don't mean that in the sense of 'it's your birthday')! So the endoscopy thing turned into a bit of an ordeal, but it's over and I am glad about that. However much the phone call last night lessened my anxiety did not lessen it enough for me to fall asleep before 4 a.m. When I woke up, we were in the middle of a snowstorm. Did I mention that I have an appointment to get winter tires put on TOMORROW? I picked up my dad and it soon became apparent that plows had not been out at all, which was super fun. I had left plenty of time, and the Rav is pretty good in snow even without winter tires, so I wasn't overly concerned, just sort of exasperated - I remember the same thing happening with weather on multiple other occasions where we had to be at the hospital early. I mean, we live in the capital of Canada, it's not like this is statistically significant, but still....

 Slept like crap, but had a good day. Picked up Pam (who you may remember from such posts as this and many others that I can't find right now and I have to get to bed - but she's the apple to my core, the cream to my ice, the soul to my less, and I love her) and went to Manotick - charming little town about ten minutes away that has some cute little stores that we weren't sure were open, but also a Giant Tiger, which we were confident was.  Even though the Giant Tiger is spitting distance from my doctor's office, we had trouble finding it. We kept going to the street where we thought it was and it.... wasn't. Then we'd say "maybe the next street?" and it was quite a few streets but oh well, we got our steps in. We bought some thermal socks and pajama pants and Christmas decorations at Giant Tiger, then went to a couple of the small cute stores and bought some fancy balsamic vinegar and Christmas present stuff.  (Back when we could hang out like this i...

 Okay, point taken about the Elton John thing. I still don't like it - if it was a general song about mourning a woman that would be one thing, but actually replacing someone's name will never sit right with me - but I understand that he was both mourning and likely under pressure from the royal family, and that would be a hard thing to push back against.  At work I strayed nearer one of the reading groups than I usually do and a couple of kids started asking me about a Three Billy Goats Gruff book and I was talking to them while the teacher was getting organized and then realized that she was waiting for the kids to start their reading work and I was hijacking six-year-olds because I'm so desperate for human contact in the library. She was kind about it. I picked up Eve from school and we stopped and got the mail and she suddenly burst into tears because she realized she wouldn't be getting her yearly Christmas card from Nana Barb addressed to 'Miss Eve Adams'....

 I think it's safe to say I'm quite firmly over my previous "oh, I love the seasons, I'd miss them if I lived somewhere more temperate" phase. I am grateful that the snow held off as long as it did this year, but less impressed that it decided to make its first appearance a really memorable give-it-your-all one.  Glancing back over my archives makes it clear that I complain about the snow not often, but reliably. Please enjoy past snow rants here and here . Random thoughts I had today: What did you think of Elton John rewriting Candle in the Wind for Princess Diana's funeral? I thought it was tacky in the extreme. It was a lovely song about Marilyn Monroe, and then Diana, who I believe he was personal friends with, died, and he just, like, substituted her in a song that was written for someone else? Did you find it a loving tribute because there were similarities in the way fame and the public were damaging to the two women? Or did you think that, maybe, som...

That’s it. That’s the post. 

 I've really got nothing tonight. There comes a time in every NaBloPoMo where the exuberant optimism of "I"m doing it! I'm blogging every day! I'm creating amusement and wonder out of NOTHING" morphs into checking my drafts folder hopefully and coming up with "Lenin's foot" and "Big saucy bangers".  Let's see what Eve has for us.  well, there’s this: Don't remember what that was about, but I hope I told her that she used it right. I think I've mentioned that Eve and I, in addition to sleep issues, also have gut issues. I'm still okay with lactose but she's become increasingly intolerant, which sucks big time.  (This tweet always cracks me up) I mentioned that she might want to try using Metamucil, so she came down and took it off the top of the fridge and started reading the label. "Ooh, 'fiber therapy' - Imma tell this all my problems" "do not interrupt medication - wait, this is medication?...

 I'm having the kind of day where when you sit down you feel like weeping with relief. I'm afraid I've done something terrible with my resolve to walk every day. I have this thing where I am an immensely lazy procrastinator but I also have a touch of OCD, so if I can trick myself into developing a habit then I will carry on with that habit even when I am very tired and unhappy about it. It doesn't matter how late it is or how drunk I am, I WILL floss my teeth before falling into bed. I can't leave my bedroom in the morning without making my bed, no matter how late I'm running. And now it appears that if I get home after working and running a bunch of errands and I've been on my feet too much and everything hurts, I STILL have to take Lucy for a walk if the weather is halfway decent. And then I feel kind of glad that I did it. Dammit. So most of the surly-making crap revolves around mail this week. Angus's contacts were hung up in customs for a week and t...

 I think I've made it pretty clear here that I am not what you'd call a "neat freak" or a "compulsive organizer" or a "natural housekeeper" or even "someone who should be allowed to own a house". I fall more on the "embrace the chaos" side of the scale (or "slovenly slacker" if you ask my mom). Part of it is that we just have too much stuff, and all the bookshelves make it hard to find space for the other stuff. Part of it is that I'd rather read than clean. Part of it is... actually that might be all the parts. A couple of times a year, though, like I said, this madness comes over me and forces me to attack the mess, which results in a lot of just picking up parts of the mess and moving them from place to place, and then getting rid of less of the mess than I intended to and putting the rest of the mess in little boxes in a new place, then congratulating myself all out of proportion to the actual deed. Right now I...

 You frequently come across entertaining stuff while putting books away in the library, particularly if you're easily amused and short on sleep: Or perplexing stuff: Jujube.... robots? Or wtf stuff: " Sloan is a hunter. So she shouldn’t be afraid of anything. But ever since her mom left the family and she lost hearing in one ear in a blizzard, it’s been hard to talk to people, and near-impossible to go anywhere or do anything without her dad or big sister within eyesight — it makes her too scared to be on her own. When they leave her home alone for what should only be two nights, she’s already panicked. Then the snow starts falling and doesn’t stop. One of her neighbors is hurt in an accident. And the few people still left in Rusic need to make it to the river and the boat that’s tied there — their only way to get to a doctor from their isolated Alaska town. But the woods are icy cold, and the wolves are hungry. Sloan and her group are running out of food, out of energy, and o...

 I wasn't going to blog tonight. I'm tired and I have the halfway-through-NBPM-blahs and my eye hurts. I got up on time to get to school fifteen minutes early because our school makes the slightly questionable decision to close the parking lot to entry between 8:15 and 8:45 because kids walk through it. I had to keep a careful lock on my eyebrows when I was first told this - maybe they could, I dunno, just WALK AROUND the parking lot? No? Okay. My shift starts at 8:30, so either I get there just over fifteen minutes early and park in the lot, or get there on time and park on the street (fine when the weather is nice, less good when the weather is bad and people are driving around after dropping their kids off at school). This year I have permission to move my shift fifteen minutes later every second Monday so I can drop Eve at school, so then I can also park in the lot. But she didn't have school today, and I figured I'd go early and finish early. Everything was going s...

 So I woke up this morning - with a blinding headache - and Facebook informed me that it was my mother-in-law's birthday. Aside from all the crying, I find this kind of interesting. I have heard people say that they sometimes feel sad on anniversaries after someone has died even when they don't realize until later that it's an anniversary. I wonder if this is why I've been thinking about Barb so much this week. I kind of like thinking that we still carry people we love in our bodies this way, so that we feel them even when we don't know precisely why.  This was from when we were visiting Barb and Bill at their summer house in Florida over March break a few years ago. We went to the Saturday market chiefly to see dogs. If the dog was in a carrier or a stroller (more common than you might think) Barb would just say "can you take him out?" so we could have full petting access. And everyone did.  I like the new colour on the walls much more today. I want to te...

 We have the first coat of paint on the entrance and hallway, so naturally I am feeling immense colour regret right now. I am trying not to panic, because this almost always happens - Eve says she likes the colour, and assures me that she had the same reaction painting her room, which looks fantastic. I don't know. I didn't want to go all white and beige, but I'm a little afraid that by going with a green I kept us in the nineties colour palette. At least there will be fewer colours and better flow. And we can always repaint. I am panicking. I will stop. I got the results of my bloodwork. My bad cholesterol is a little high, but the doctor needs a blood pressure reading to interpret the numbers. I borrowed my dad's home blood pressure monitor. This was very stupid. I have now taken my blood pressure fifty times in the last two hours and actually it doesn't matter what colour I chose because I am about to drop dead. I thought I was being clever avoiding having to go ...

Tonight was World Trivia Night which I have done with the same team for -- goes away for a long time to check past posts -- TWELVE, TWELVE YEARS, MWAH HA HA HA HA - since 2009 , the first year I did NaBloPoMo, which was the first year I started blogging. These were all weird things to try that turned out rather splendidly, all things considered. We were happy that we could still do it this year, even if virtually, but as the day got closer I was less and less enthusiastic about trying to do it over a computer. Some of the people on my team I only get to see once a year and I really enjoy that annual face time. Also, as far as computers go, you know me - I know when one's upside down, but that's about the limit of my expertise. It turned out better than I thought, though. The platform they used was pretty intuitive and it was easy to see and hear my teammates. They kept ten categories but had only five questions instead of ten in each, which seemed like too few, but then we got ...

It's been a busier week than usual, which is to say not really busy, but Eve and I are easily overwhelmed women, so it feels very busy. In between everything else I am painting the entrance, hallway and powder room, so the coming-in and going-out part of the house is full of ladder and dropsheets and rollers and paint cans, and none of our shoes and keys are where they normally are. For someone who is frazzled even when everything is in the proper place, this is less than ideal. Eve and I had doctor's appointments over the phone yesterday, which is fine, we don't even have to drive there and our doctor could not be lovelier. We were still both prostrate with anxiety beforehand and practically dead of adrenaline withdrawal afterwards. She was only about fifteen minutes late calling, but those were fifteen minutes of do we have the right date? Is the phone ringer on? What were we going to ask about again? Does this look infected?  Anyway, it all turned out fine. Then I did so...

 I'm going to refrain from posting stupid details about my stupid life on Remembrance Day. Not sure what to do instead. Matt's grandfather - my very favourite veteran - is gone. Can't call or email him or take him to dinner at the Legion and be horrified when he heckles the peacekeepers. I wish there were no wars, but there are wars, and I would be really bad at fighting in them, so I appreciate the people who do, however messy and power imbalanced and problematic that whole deal ends up being. 

 Today is much better than yesterday but I'm still feeling a bit off. I'm going to answer some questions that people asked or that I imagined they asked, in no particular order. Was my migraine caused by weather? - Probably? I've had major headache and allergy issues since we moved to Ottawa, which apparently is not uncommon. Major temperature changes are a known migraine trigger, and the past week has seen some of the most drastic temperature fluctuations ever. I had to take a fuckton of codeine and I can still feel the edges of it.  How is the library working right now? - For the first few weeks we didn't circulate books at all. We always have tons of cataloging to catch up with, and there were books coming back from last year, so there was always something to do, but it was the work we usually do at the end of the shift when all the circulation stuff is done. Now we are circulating books, but just by putting boxes of books together for each class - a random selection...

 It's been a weird day. I got up and went to work, and about an hour in I realized I was feeling out of sorts and bad about myself, which hardly ever happens at work. It is extra weird this year, when it's already a little weird only working one day a week at a school. When I have classes I always say I am very close with a very small segment of the school population. This was different with my school that I was surplussed out at - I was very friendly with the principal and vp and office staff, partly because the office was right across from the library and partly because they're just very friendly and we got along well. The vice principal is a wonderful, wonderful woman who used to be the vp at my kids' elementary school when they were there.  So this year with no classes, I just go about my work and sometimes feel like a ghost wandering around the library. Once last week I went into the staff room to put library notices in teacher mailboxes and a new teacher that I ha...

 I just watched the movie Everest with my husband - it's the movie version of Into Thin Air by John Krakauer, which I read when it came out and hit the shelves of the little bookstore where I was working.  They're both about a disastrous Mount Everest expedition in which eight climbers died - Krakauer was a journalist that was there to write about Everest tourism. He was originally only supposed to be at base camp, but talked his editors and the climbing leader into letting him climb all the way to the top. The book was riveting, and I had sort of meant to watch the movie once I heard there was one, but had never gotten around to it. A friend mentioned it last week, so I asked my husband if he wanted to watch it tonight. As it began, and familiar, likable actors were portraying people that I knew were not going to the make it out of the movie alive, I felt a bit weird. Why was I watching this when I already knew what happened? Was it just exploitative? A little further in, I...

 Still unseasonably warm. I was planning to spend the day painting, but Matt wanted to do some patching and filling (more than he wanted to show me how to do it), so I spent a couple of hours doing other tidying jobs and then went to have dinner and hang out in a friend's back yard because hello, 21 degrees in November (this afternoon I was feeling happy that everyone else was so happy but not really thrilled with experiencing underboob sweat the month before Christmas, but it's very pleasant for the evenings).  I have a very basic IKEA bedside table against the closet door that doesn't open where I have four stacks of books that don't have another home. I've realized that about twice a year I have an inexplicable manic surge of energy for cleaning, reorganizing and purging that disappears as fast as it comes, so I have to capitalize on this odd phenomenon while I can. Today I actually picked out more than a dozen books to get rid of, and then dusted the books from ...

 We are all limping into the week-end. For much of lockdown I was distressingly devoid of energy - didn't exercise, didn't do much around the house, didn't even experiment with sourdough starter (although I did bake a buttload of biscuits). For the past few weeks while back at work (a little) I've been slightly better. I'm getting a walk in most days (I said slightly - I keep eyeing my weights and my squishy arms, but baby steps, right?), I've gotten a few household tasks out of the way and I've made appointments and actually attended them. But by Friday I am wiped with a capital wah.  So here is a picture of Eve - when you finish grade 12 Biology (which you started eight weeks ago - oh right, Ernie asked about the quadmesters: most high schools here split up the semesters into four quadmesters so kids have two courses at a time instead of four; you do one course one week and one the next; you go to school every other day from nine to one, then online the re...