The Last Day of the Penultimate Month

 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 simple dinner prep and head to my room to cocoon and read. Today my stupid beautiful new kitchen actually made me want to cook.

Before:

After:

I know it's not exactly Extreme Home Makeover, but it is a marked improvement in my eyes, particularly the vastly superior lighting. I was also really done with the twenty-year-old yellow walls. I do feel it's a bit too much green with the counter tops now, but we'll be changing those at some point. 

So I cooked some stuff and baked some stuff. In addition to wanting to cook in the beautiful kitchen, I also hate messing it up, so it was a bit of a conflict and I had to work to stop myself from not cleaning stuff up before I used it. 

Then I cleaned out more cupboards. I have too many spices. Spices are great, but I'm going to have to come to terms with the fact that I don't have space for three jars of lemongrass, eight different kinds of curry powder, five tins of five-spice powder (maybe I just read the recipe wrong) and am I ever going to use this Dukkah? (Yes I will, I WILL use the Dukkah, apparently it can be used as a magic seasoning dust for a fried egg.)

I think I'm going to get rid of these salt and pepper shakers that I took from my childhood home when I moved to university thirty-one years ago.

I was keeping them on the top of the back of our old range and they weren't my main ones, but I would use the salt shaker when seasoning something on the stove - the pepper shaker is useless, it has two holes and we only use a pepper grinder, but, well, they go together. The new range has no back, which is kind of a good thing, because if there is a surface things can be set on, I am a dedicated setter-upon of said surface. And I am a sentimental person, but I'm also out of kitchen space and trying to learn to let go of things. 

I am always full of hope that I will keep blogging daily for a while now that I have momentum, but I'm sure we all know how that goes. Thank-you for Blo-ing this Mo away with me. 

Day 29 - Ouch, I Have a Cramp

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 heat getting to the batter. And when I got them, Googling wasn't as easy as it is today, so I never bothered. So is a silicone baking mat just like using parchment paper? I'm all for being less planet-killy, but not if it makes my cookies less good. I haven't driven the stuff to Value Village yet, so maybe I will give it another chance. I do agree that getting mini muffins out of the tin is positively punishing.

I woke up with another boulders-crashing-around-in-my-head borderline-migraine. I feel like I haven't been completely headache-free for weeks. I love Ottawa, but I don't think the weather patterns do my head any good. I tried to uncrank myself by taking Lucy for a walk. It didn't really work, but at least I moved my cranky ass around a little, and Lucy met a dachshund she really liked. 

A bathroom organizer? You know, like it goes around and over the toilet so there are shelves for storage? I'm just answering random questions as I think of them now, I've taken some melatonin and things could get freaky.

I've had the song Without Love from Hairspray in my head for over a week now. It's a really good song, but OVER A WEEK. Do you get bad earworms? (feels more like a brainworm, honestly, I swear I wake up with it already playing in my head). This is why whenever anyone asks what album you would take to a desert island because it's your favourite and you could only ever listen to that forever, I just think why would you even pick something you love because you'd end up hating it and cursing it as you strap rocks to your feet and dive to a watery death.

I moved more stuff around today, and put stuff in the car to deliver to my parents tomorrow, and cleared the space in the basement where I start stacking Christmas decoration boxes for Matt to bring up. It didn't really occur to me that renovations were going to run into Christmas decorating, so we actually didn't end up decorating early this year like we planned to, but I think we're over the worst of the carnage, so we can start this week. 

One more day! Maybe I can get One Day More from Les Mis in my head instead, then I can complain about that next week instead. 

Day 28! Wrecking My Home in the Home Stretch

 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, honestly.

There is a bathroom organizer in my family room

The new range is here and it is spectacular. Of course, now I have to throw out the rest of the kitchen because it does not remotely measure up. Not really, but I am moving stuff around to make it look slightly more like I'm classy enough to own this oven. I started to clean out the upper cupboards in my usual fashion, which consists of just moving things around ineffectually and throwing out some expired breadcrumbs, but then I was thunderstruck by the revolutionary notion: what if I switched the middle and high shelves so the past and ziploc bags we need every day or two are easily accessible and the cornstarch and honey and pudding mixes that we need once a week or less were the things we had to stretch up on tiptoe to get? I tried to get my husband to acknowledge that this was a stroke of genius on my part. He saluted me from his crouching position painting the powder room baseboards, which was gratifying until a falling package of spaghetti hit me on the head. This was just validation for my decision, of course. Borderline concussive validation, but I'll take it.

Whimper

I also didn't have to have dinner, because while going through the cupboard I ate some old chocolate, some kind of teriyaki cured sausage, some almonds, some cashews, some peanuts and some pine nuts, and half a package of Squish tea leaves. 

I love my new phone, but I just realized that although my old case fits on it, it covers part of the camera, so all the pictures had a weird blurry corner (or maybe my new phone is haunted, right Suz?) This is not a huge deal, except it takes me FOREVER to choose a new phone case, and I'm terrified carrying around my phone without one. I guess I can carry it around in the old case and just take pictures knowing I'll have to crop a corner off? Whatever, first world problems.

I also went through the stuff from the oven drawer because the new one is much less deep. It's just as well, honestly. Did anyone else ever fall for the silicone muffin tins and cake pans thing? They're non-stick! They cook evenly! THEY'RE FUCKING FLOPPY AND USELESS. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put stuff that's going to be heated to 350 degrees in something that can't hold it's own goddamned shape? I'll keep the baking mat but the rest of that shit is out of here. 

Thus I have just confessed to spending my entire Saturday washing muffins tins and moving noodles around. Try not to hate me because my life is so glamorous. 

Day 27

 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 reading Lynn Coady books. We read Mean Boy for book club many years ago, and I think it was the first Can Lit book I had ever read that didn't have incest or child abuse in it and it felt like the harbinger of a new age. 

Then we ordered Vietnamese and watched The Happiest Season. My social media feed was all abuzz about it a few weeks ago - the Big Gay Christmas Movie - and people were worried that since it was Hulu we wouldn't get it in Canada.

Possible Mild Spoilers for the Kristen Stewart Lesbian Christmas Movie:

It was ... fun. If I'd stopped to think about it beforehand I probably would have realized that it was going to be difficult to make the whole "my girlfriend brought me home for Christmas but is pretending we're only roommates" thing really funny. I felt a bit like I did watching The Birdcage - the crucial mistake for me is that the filmmakers have the son ask his dads to pretend to be straight so he can introduce them to his fiancé's conservative parents. If the dads had found out about the parents and offered to pretend to be straight, I could have gotten on board more easily. 

So a lot of what was supposed to be funny just came off as terrible and mean. I also felt like the writing could have been slightly better - some of the banter was funny and some of it felt like it was trying too hard. Granted, this is likely because post-West-Wing tv era all banter must be Peak Funny or it feels lacking. I asked Eve if she was enjoying it and she said "relax, Mom, it doesn't have to be amazing, it just has to be gay. Are the hetero Christmas movies all good?" Touché. And then subsequent scenes sort of redeemed things a bit, and in the end I was won over. It was funny knowing that Victor Garber, who plays the conservative dad, is gay in real life. 

Midway through the movie Eve said "oh my god, if you're painting the FLOOR, you can just, like... pour paint on the floor. On purpose."

Something the mother in the movie said reminded me of a friend in university telling a story about some older woman who at some point realized that her children still had a lifetime of new experiences ahead of them and nothing new was going to happen to her. Even at the time this sounded like bullshit to me (we didn't stay friends for long after university) because, well, it was bullshit. I started a new job at 47. Matt's grandmother had her first art show in her seventies. Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first book at 65. As long as you're willing to stay open and curious, new things can keep happening to you literally until the day you die. A nice bonus is that (I find) you give fewer and fewer fucks about being embarrassed or doing things wrong the older you get, so most of those new things are just fun. 

I think one of our new things might not actually be painting a linoleum floor though, because Matt's decided to go another way. Eve might just pour some paint on the floor for fun before we rip it up, though. 

Day 26: Non-Surly Thursday

 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 working right before Christmas, but it worked out well that it was right before Black Friday, and this is the range we got when we got the house twenty-one years ago, so it has served us quite well (I think, honestly I really don't know how long a range should last, but given the plague of built-in obsolescence these days two decades seems not bad).

I did look briefly at the gas ranges - I know 'real' cooks prefer them - but I don't think I'm ready to deal with feeling like I'm about to blow myself up every time I want to boil an egg. Some neuroses I'm working on - some I'm just comfortable living with at this point.

The staff member who took the Rav from me this morning and told me when to pick it up could not have been lovelier. Ditto for the gentleman I dealt with when I picked it up - he did look at the paperwork and say "oh, give me a second, someone didn't close this out properly" so I was briefly concerned, but it turns out that Simon just didn't process the paperwork for our tires to be stored for the winter, so everything was fine (well, not for Simon, he was definitely in trouble). We even got a complimentary car wash, so I drove my extremely shiny black SUV home through the foggy, snowy landscape like some kind of middle-aged, perimenopausal, safety-minded, environmentally-shaky super-hero. 

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and happy week-end to everyone else

Day 25: Maybe I'll Skip Taking My Blood Pressure Today

 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.

Drop off went fine. I was pleased to see they had to set up a shelter for people that have to wait outside in line for Covid screening, but we didn't have to stand outside, there were only three or four people ahead of us, and as soon as we got in I told them my dad needed a wheelchair and an aide went and grabbed one and took him away.

My plan was to sit in the nicely sheltered parking garage and read until my dad was done. 

The nicely sheltered parking garage was full. Sigh. 

I drove around and found a side street and read for a bit, turning the car off until it got too cold and then turning it back on again. And waited. And waited.

I had thought he wouldn't be long, because when I had my endoscopy we were in and out in forty-five minutes, and with Covid I had heard that appointments were moving even more quickly because they didn't want people hanging around the hospital. As usual with this kind of thing, I was wrong.

At the hour mark, I was getting a bit jumpy. I had thought it was great that I didn't have to wait in the hospital, but now I had no way of knowing if he was just waiting to go in, if there was some kind of problem, if he'd reacted badly to the anesthetic and everything had gone catastrophically wrong...

Did I mention I'm a little neurotic?

On top of all of this, I had to pee. 

We were now at the hour and a half mark. I drove down to the main street, thinking I'd look for a restaurant or something to dash in to, and then realized my friend Tanis lived right there. I parked and texted to find out if she was home and if she would let me use her bathroom if I wore a mask. She let me come in and gave me hand sanitizer and made me tea and showed me cute little knitted things and distracted me really graciously for forty-five minutes or so. Just as I was calling for a second time trying to get an update, the hospital called.

Everything was fine, of course it was. He had just had to wait for an hour before going in. He was perfectly content because I had put his phone on the hospital wi-fi when he was in, and it reconnected automatically (he didn't know this, he just was pleasantly surprised that he had wi-fi). I didn't need to text Matt twice asking for reassurance. I didn't need to sit in my car freaking out.

But how not to do this? I don't know how to not be who I am.

Tomorrow I go to get winter tires put on. I'm sure it will be a perfectly smooth process. What could go wrong? 

Day 24: A Giant Gingerbread Tiger Would Be Really Cool

 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 instead of, well, you know)

(I don't buy decorative signs, but if I was going to...)

Then we went to a Gingerbread Store. An ENTIRE STORE MADE OF GINGERBREAD. Okay, not really, but it smelled like it was made entirely of gingerbread, and it was full of gingerbread cookies and gingerbread house kits and giant cookies and giant houses like this:

Then I took Pam home and went to buy more paint because we needed more paint and I just found a coupon for thirty percent off paint and it happens VERY RARELY that I find a coupon for stuff I actually need right when I actually need the stuff, so this was very exciting (don't judge my life). The paint guy was really nice and helpful, and not condescending even when I accidentally asked for a litre instead of a gallon. 

I knew exactly what colours I needed, but man, do you ever just get swept away by paint swatches, and their insanely whimsical names? 

These are called Alchemy and Fervent Brass, you guys. ALCHEMY. And FERVENT BRASS.

I managed to restrain myself, but barely. Matt is taking Thursday and Friday off because it's American Thanksgiving and he's been working insane hours and the American business will be quite this week-end, so we should be able to get a good chunk of the rest of the painting done.

I have to take my dad for an endoscopy tomorrow and I'm anxious. I was trying to talk myself through it, leaning hard on the fact that 1)it's at the hospital my dad was in for two weeks earlier in the year and I know it very well now, including the parking process and 2)it's my dad, not my mom (I'd say don't tell her I said that but honestly, she'd probably agree). The biggest hitch is that he can't stand or walk for too long unassisted, so I was trying to figure out how to drop him off and have him wait for me while I go park and come back and grab a wheelchair for him. Matt suggested I call the hospital and ask, and after some knee-jerk resistance (because something about my husband suggesting stuff sometimes makes me a jerk, with...knees?), I did. The person I spoke with said that actually I could pull up to the door and bring him in and someone would take him in a wheelchair up to the procedure suite and I could just wait in the parking lot until someone called me to come back and they'd wheel him back out to me. Because they don't want me in the hospital with him, because Covid.

That's.... so simple. And easy. Who knew that calling the place you have to go and asking for instructions would actually.... work? (My husband, yes, he's been adequately praised, rest easy.)

So I'm about seventy-five-percent less anxious now. I'll let you know how it turned out. 

Day 23

 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'. "Wow, that came out of nowhere. What the hell?" she said, and we had a brief discussion about grief and scared the hell out of Matt when we both walked in sobbing. That's okay. I think we're processing things in a healthy manner. 

Our first Christmas card was from a university friend that we haven't seen since Angus and their first son were babies, so twenty-ish years. It was a great example of what I plan for my own cards this year - hopeful and loving, but realistic about how hard this year has been. It's kind of surreal to think of last Christmas when my sister and her family were here and we were just beginning to hear about the coronavirus in Asia - Matt's knowledge was a little more advanced because he travels there so much and has close business relationships. We kind of knew it was probably coming here, but didn't really believe it. I fully acknowledge that compared to many people we have been very lucky, but whoa. What a year.

I've done a substantial amount of online Christmas shopping. It's like a devil's bargain every time I see "enter your email to get 10% off your first order!" Can I unsubscribe later? Sure, but will it really take? Should I just pay the extra ten percent and not tell them where they can spam me for the next four hundred years? Won't I probably just have to enter my address while checking out anyway? Should I just suck it up and GO to the actual mall, which gives me the vapours even in NON-Covid times? It's a conundrum.

Speaking of online shopping, I have been much better at filing all my email receipts in my 'receipts' folder so I can keep track of them, but I should really sit down and figure out exactly how many rolls of washi tape and pairs of funny socks I have coming in before I order any more. 

What's on your Christmas list? What are you buying your - I almost said teenaged boys but then I realized I don't have one of those anymore I have a twenty-year-old GROWN-ASS MAN. Hold me. 

Day 22: It's Fucking Snowing

 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, someone who has written upwards of 400 songs could maybe have arsed himself to pen one more for his friend's funeral?

I was just reading about how in Ancient Greece, homosexual relationships were actually privileged over heterosexual ones - women were kept confined to the house and only considered valuable for procreation, and it was considered more natural for men to prefer the company - emotionally, intellectually and sexually - of other men.  I wonder if there were men who preferred being with women but had to hide it the way homosexuals have had to in the more recent past. I find some twisted humour in imagining this, although of course it's mainly just really sad. 

Well, there were two, so technically "thoughts" was accurate. My blood pressure readings have been much lower since a friend gave me some tips. Turns out that holding your arm as tense as a steel baton while thinking "I'm dying I'm dying I'm dying" is not conducive to accurate or non-alarming results. 

Hope everyone has a good week. I am working, taking my dad for an endoscopy and getting my snow tires on. And I might venture into a *gasp* actual mall. 

I’m Drunk

That’s it. That’s the post. 

Day 20: More Butt Stuff, Accidentally

 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?"

"hang on, appetite suppressant is the FIRST THING LISTED - is this going to make me skinny?" (I've been using it for years, so demonstrably not)

I was laughing partly because she's funny and partly in shame because I realized that I ingest stuff like this WITHOUT READING A SINGLE WORD OF THE INSTRUCTIONS.

I have this weird tic of sometimes not being able to start a show even when multiple people recommend it and I myself know that, based on my usual preferences, I will almost certainly love it. I'm not trying to be difficult, I genuinely have a mental block about it until finally I overcome it and - surprise - almost always love the show. One example is Fleabag - everyone keep saying it's great, it looks great, I adore Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I actually watched Crashing, in which I think she plays much the same character. Half the time I was cringing in horrified disgust, the other half I was wheezing, in actual danger of dying from laughing so hard. I found it kind of funny that the first friend to recommend that I watch Fleabag with Eve was shocked and a little horrified when she heard that Eve knew what Pornhub was (because she told me that Pornhub was offering free subscriptions to people in lockdown and thought that was nice) but, when I did actually watch the introduction of the first episode of Fleabag, it's all about butt stuff and ends with the phrase "Do I have a massive arsehole?" (said in an adorable British accent). 

I can still watch it with Eve. Because we text stuff like this to each other:

Oh, that's probably what that other text was about too. Sex Education is another show I should have watched way before I did. That and Never Have I Ever were tied for Best Show Ever in my mind early in lockdown. 

I can't think of a good way to end, and if I wait for something to come to me I'll just end up wandering away and leaving another post unfinished. Have a great week-end, everyone. Except you, Covid, have a bad week-end, you're not invited, nobody likes you. 

Day 19: Surly Thursday, the Mail-it-in Edition

 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 then finally released and they wouldn't deliver it the first day because no one was there, even though that's why I SAID no signature. Turns out they wouldn't deliver it because there was a whopping stupid duty on it because of the stupid border. Angus's girlfriends wonderful mother took care of it for us, so now Angus will have contacts and we owe more peanut butter and ketchup chips than we can ever repay. So mailing stuff to the U.S. via Canada Post sucks, and mailing stuff to the U.S. via UPS sucks. What should I try next? Anyone have carrier pigeons?

Then I got an email from Indigo saying a shipment had been delivered. Christmas shopping for me consists about eighty percent of Indigo shipments, and then a couple of trips to actual Indigo, and then one or two other stores. I sorted through all the Indigo shipments and realized that this specific one had NOT been delivered, to our house or our mailbox. I emailed Indigo, but by the time they got back to me the nice lady from the same number and a sort-of-the-same street name one crescent over had brought the shipment which had been delivered to her. This reminded me of the time I spent five minutes arguing with the pizza guy on the phone that he was NOT in front of my house because I was IN MY HOUSE looking out the front window and there was NO ONE THERE. The streets are Summerwind, Windhurst and Westwinds - not the brightest. Better than when we lived in the middle of Indian Road and Indian Grove on Indian Road Crescent (the road so good they named it twice) - but not by much.

THEN I tried to order a sweatshirt that Angus wanted and ordered the wrong size. Happily, they got back to me right away and fixed it.

So I'm not, properly speaking, surly at the moment because everything got resolved. I'm just having my  usual late-November pre-Christmas feeling of things getting away from me and things slipping and it's dumb, because that's not supposed to be the point of the holidays and my kids are always happy and grateful with whatever we get them and my mantra is supposed to be "do what you can and let the rest go". And we got our flu shots the earliest we ever HAVE this year, so there! And Angus got his even before that (I'm assuming this is because of his uber-responsible and great-at-adulting girlfriend, but I'll take it). 

But my memory? Holy shit, guys, I wrote most of this post, went and watched tv, started to get ready to go upstairs at a reasonable time, realized I hadn't finished the post, thought "I'll get my ice water ready to take upstairs and then finish it" (This is more of an ordeal than you might realize), went upstairs with my water and realized I hadn't finished it AGAIN, and here I am, uggggghhhhhh. 

I'm also frustrated with myself for continually staying up too late and then having huge regrets and sleeping badly. Here is a relaxing picture of Eve and Lucy to help me not do that tonight. 

 

Day 18: Can You Die From Too Much?

 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'm in an extended period of housecleaning compulsion. We cleaned out Eve's room as she painted, then I did my bathroom, then my closet, then the dresser by the front door, then the front closet, then the sheet music in the bench by the entrance, then we painted, then I started on the living room. My hands hurt. My feet hurt. My back hurts. And I still can't make myself stop. I mean, what the hell? I'm used to the not-being-able-to-stop thing when it's one more chapter or one more episode or one more cookie. One more chore? What fresh hell is this, stupid traitorous suddenly-productive slight OCD? 

Last night I was limping around late doing stuff and Matt told me to stop and go to bed. I said I had to capitalize on this wave for as long as possible. He said he thought I was underestimating my ability to stick with it. I said "sure, why would the forty-nine identical years before this one be a convincing example?" and went to clean out the cracker cupboard. 

It's not all bad. We're trying to scale back on Christmas presents, so maybe I'll go the regifting route. Surely I have untold treasures concealed in the depths of my cupboards. I'm sure someone would love

A ceramic dragon-i-corn

A super-ugly moustache-decorated tiny bowl and a ladybug sticker

A thirty-year-old Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Are there any women in here? Hang on, I'll check. No, of course not. Fuck it, Imma burn this sucker.

A pine cone.

Why did I have a pine cone in a drawer? 

Right, then. I'm going to go upstairs, ostensibly to shower but probably to rearrange the entire linen closet. If I die with a broom in my hand, I'm going to be so pissed off. 

Day 17: Fun With Letters

 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 out of time. That’s when the wolves start hunting them."

What the hell? The oldest kids that use this library are TWELVE. This reminds me of when my dad took me and my sister to see the movie The Wilderness Family. We were young and had maybe ten other movies to compare it to, so we got home and my mom asked how it was and we were like enh, fine and my dad exploded "it was the dumbest thing I've ever seen! There's an avalanche, a pack of wild dog, a fire, and the mother has pneumonia!" I mean, if all the crops came up beautifully and the winter was temperate, what kind of boring-ass movie would that be, DAD?

Sometimes things are alarmingly topical. After my dad fell, I kept laughing/cringing every time Matt told someone my father had "had a fall" because it made me think of this play I once saw where an old man in a nursing home complained about people using that phrase.

Look what came across my desk:

And just LOOK what was in it:

Seriously?

This one keeps turning up, which this year just seems almost frighteningly on the nose:


Can I get an Amen?

I didn't even bother opening it the first few times. I finally did, and, rather predictably,

It's just an alphabet book. Sigh. 



Okay. Fine. There's probably a book for every letter of the alphabet. Not the most imaginative way to get a twenty-six book deal, but points for cleverness. So there's, like, "my 'a' book" and "my 'b' book", and it makes perfect sense, and I should just get over it and stop being so immatu--

Oh COME ON

Day 16: Red Eyes and Reefer Madness

 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 swimmingly, except when I went to put my contacts in. Remember me complaining about the vexatious right lens on Thursday? Well, I guess the left one felt left out, because it was the squeaky wheel this morning. I finally got it in so I could see, but it felt slightly scratchy. I left it in, which was a stupid decision. It was uncomfortable all morning, and I probably have a mild corneal abrasion now, but I got to park in the goddamned parking lot. 

OH MY GOD, why did you let me go on about this? In case you're not all dead from boredom, I will poke some gentle fun at the stuff I was cataloging today. It was a box set of booklets, posters and teaching guides on the Evils of Drugs. Which, fine, but guys, it's so cringe-y. No kid is going to look at any of this and do anything but snicker. I should have taken pictures of the posters. The set is called The Truth About Drugs. The posters are like "They told me Ritalin would help me study. They told me half a tab of E would be fun. They told me weed wouldn't lead to harder drugs. ...... THEY LIED". 

Plus, the publisher is called Foundation for a Drug-Free World. What? A drug-free world is a TERRIBLE IDEA. I took three drugs today alone, and without them my life would be much, much worse. The whole thing conjured up a bunch of men in plaid pants and sweater vests sitting around going "we gotta come up with something to get our kids off the pot." 

OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU GUYS, I just googled Foundation for a Drug-Free World, I don't know why, I generally have no compunctions about sharing unsubstantiated and possibly erroneous information with you, but IT'S A DIVISION OF THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. Geez, the blanket "drug-free world" makes sense now. I possibly need to have a word with the main librarian? What the heck, ma'am? If I start seeing picture books about Engrams, I'm out. 

I am only posting this picture so the post doesn't publish with a preview of that stupid Christmas card picture again. This is a tree on a path that I walk sometimes. I find it aesthetically pleasing. Right now I feel like someone took a stick from it and poked me in the eye. Good night, I am going in search of a patch. Arrgh. 

Day 15: Happy Birthday, Barb. Wish You Were Here.

 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 text her pictures and have her tell me it's wonderful. I want to show her that we hung Nana's painting over Eve's bookshelf in her redone room and it goes perfectly. I want to pick out something pink to send her for Christmas. I want her to not be gone. 

This sucks. Zero out of ten, would not recommend.  

Day 14: What's a Suitable Palette for Musings on Mortality?

 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 to the clinic. I should have gone to the clinic. Have you heard of the Framingham Risk Score? It's something that can be calculated based on your bloodwork and other factors to estimate your risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next ten years. Not sure how they calculate how likely I am to have an actual stroke every time I HEAR the words 'Framingham Risk Score' right now, but someone should look into it. 

Not gonna lie, I am struggling a bit with the whole mortality thing right now. I know I have been very lucky that I haven't lost anyone very close until the past few years, and I am kind of a grief neophyte. Every memory I have about anything right now seems to remind me of my mother-in-law, and her parents, who we were very close with even before we moved to Ottawa (they lived about an hour away for years, and then about an hour away differently when they moved to the nursing home). I am acutely aware of the fact that my parents are older, so I feel like I should spend more time with them, which is great, except it's November and a global pandemic, so I can go over and have a drink and a chat and then at some point it becomes a little awkward with them wondering if I'm ready to pop off home and me going "no, but we have to CHERISH THESE MOMENTS AS A FAMILY BEFORE YOU DIE. Is there any more tonic?"

Angus is a college student, but he is also a grown-ass adult. Like, he could get married and have a kid tomorrow and it wouldn't be that weird. It would be weird, because I would be a grandmother, but it wouldn't be, like, all our friends gossiping and judging our parenting failures weird. 

As I go through the house, things that I have been keeping for years in case I needed them suddenly seem either ridiculous or sad, because I've missed the window to use them. I'm glad I can get rid of stuff, but it means I'm at a whole other stage of life, that much further along the road. I feel a bit like life is one of those carnival rides that I get on and then I'm terrified and can't catch my breath and I'm afraid I'm going to lose a contact lens and I wish I'd worn a more supportive bra, and then just as I get in the groove and settle down and start to enjoy it, it's over. 

It's okay. It's like Eleanor from The Good Place says. All humans are aware of death. So we're all a little bit sad, all the time. I just need to keep it from taking over. Like always when I start to spiral, I need to stop thinking about the next however many years whizzing by, and just stop and focus on a fixed point. And that fixed point should probably not be a doughnut.

What is a Group of Turkeys Called?

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 started and realized that if they'd tried to do ten we would have been trivia-ing until two a.m. I pity the poor tech support people acutely.

The presenters would come on screen and say repeatedly that while they were on, everyone's mike and camera were muted. In between them speaking or presenting questions, you could see and chat with your teammates. There was also a team chat window to the side. They said this every time they came on, multiple times. In the last five minutes of the night there were still people in the general chat saying "I can't see or hear my team when the presenters are on. Weird".

I maintained my usual streak of answering the stupidest questions: "No no, the answer is NOT Pop Tarts, it is TOASTER STRUDEL." I also outed myself as having watched, at various times, Beverly Hills 90210 (only the original - I don't even know if that's better or worse) and the Drew Barrymore masterpiece Poison Ivy. In earlier years I might have hesitated to volunteer this information, or to yell "Ulysses S. Grant" when we were trying to remember who the tenth president was (He was the 18th president, this was very, very wrong, I'm trying to believe my team isn't on the chat right now laughing at me and planning to find a replacement for next year). 

I also did an office shift at my favourite school today, which was fun and less lonely than my regular work day. The principal looked a bit frazzled (what principal isn't this year?) and at noon he said "lunchtime! I think I've earned it." and then went and grabbed his lunch bag and said "I don't know what I'm so excited about, it's just a stupid sandwich". I think next week I have to bring the principal cookies. 

I will now refrain from saying anything cheery about the fact that it's Friday the 13th because there are still twenty-four minutes left and I am not a fucking idiot. Good night. 

(p.s. It's a rafter. A group of turkeys is called a rafter. You're welcome)

Surly Thursday: Keep it Above the Waistline, Sunshine

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 some more primer, then I walked Lucy, then I took Lucy to the vet. She was not impressed at having to be in her carrier when the clinic's resident cat was lounging on the counter and strolling around like it owned the place because, well, it owns the place. I opened the zipper a smidge so I could pat her head, and then a someone brought a giant lab out from the back and she made a daring attempt to leap out of the two-inch opening and make sweet love to the lab or possibly mount a valiant but brief and doomed attack - I narrowly foiled this exciting endeavour, then brought her in to the exam room. She had to get two shots in her left rear flank and then have her temperature taken rectally - have you ever heard a dog literally bark "what the fuck?" because I have now. After a little more butt stuff, we went home where she proceeded to flop around huffily for the rest of the evening.

"Who was that lady and why was she so obsessed with my ass?"

Today Eve had a haircut after school, so I picked her up and we got End of Quadmester french fries in between.

That was fun. Wait, I am not doing well at being surly. Okay, what IS making me surly right now?

My right contact: I've always had more of a problem getting my right contact lens in than my left. I don't know why - presumably my right eye is even more wonky than my left. The past few times it's been worse than ever, requiring three or four tries, and in between I feel panicky and worried that it's never going to go in properly again and I won't be able to see or I'll have to wear my glasses and they fog up when I'm wearing a mask and it's all terrible.

Angus's contacts, to maintain a theme: He is due to run out of his daily contact lenses before he gets home, so he asked me to order him some more, with plenty of notice for a change, thank goodness. His optometrist's office ordered them to be shipped to us so we could ship them to him. First they were back-ordered so didn't get here for two weeks. Then I shipped them by UPS, who said blithely that they would be there today, when really what they should have done is looked at the label and said "well, they're going over the border, so really, who the fuck knows?" So apparently the FDA or FBI or whoever-the-fuck is presently examining them, and once they're released THEN UPS will deliver them within two business days. 

My hair: it's stupid. That's all. 

Someone I unfollowed because I assumed after she voted for Trump in 2016 that she had come to her senses, but it became increasingly clear that, after all his fuckery, she was still a Trump supporter (hawking Goya chick peas on Facebook to own the libs). This shouldn't still be making me surly, I was moving on, but every now and then I think about it again and get re-pissed off. 

Tomorrow I'm working an office shift at the school I was surplussed out of, which is great because I want to see everyone, but I haven't done a proper office shift since last year so I'm worried about not being able to do anything right. 

So not a bad week, over all. Closer to having nice new walls, some good solutions to deal with Eve's anxiety, and a gentle reminder that both Lucy and I are on the chonky side and should be mindful of our diet and exercise. But only one of us had to have our anal glands expressed. 

Day 11

 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. 

Answers to Some Questions

 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 for the younger kids, a selection based on stated preferences for the older - and they only read the books in class. They come back and we let them sit on a table for three days before re-shelving (I think this is a bit of an over-careful measure, but that's fine). So I still don't get to see the kids. I love my library, but it is lonely work. The library at this school is also at the end of a long, long building, so I don't even really get walk-by waving opportunities. If I was there full time I think I would be really depressed. It is what it is. I'm still grateful to have it.

Are the kids at my work school doing online learning? - As far as I know, some have chosen to stay online, but many have come to school, and the ones that do come come every day. It seems to be working well. We've only had one case of Covid, and no high-risk contacts. So that's good.

How did the Bamboo cotton face pads I bought from the Net Zero Company work? - I mentioned on Facebook that I was going to buy these to replace the disposable ones I use every morning and night with my toner. (Side funny note: someone in the comments said their son refers to these as "tampon pringles"). I am fairly satisfied with them. They are a nice texture and do their job well. My one complaint which sounds kind of dumb is that they're actually a little bit too big. They're just that much bigger than the ones I use so that I find it hard to wipe my face with them without the edges flopping all over, if that makes any sense - I don't have the same control. I usually hang my head down and use them that way, whereas with the other ones I could just stand normally. I also bought two sets thinking I might give one as a gift, but I have to have the two sets in rotation or I run out while I'm washing them and have to use disposable ones for a few days. I put the dirty ones in the drawstring net bag every day and every few days throw them in with my sheets and towels and underwear hot sanitary laundry load. So far I am guiltily secretly happy when they're all in the wash and I have to use the old planet-killing ones, but I'm not buying any more of those, so hopefully I will just get used to the new ones. Odds are good, because every time they change Facebook I'm like YOU BASTARDS I SHALL NEVER DARKEN YOUR DOOR AG -- wait, this is fine, whatever. 

It made me think about how the decision to use stuff that is better environmentally is a real balancing act between money and convenience and conscience. I'm willing to pay a little more and be a little bit inconvenienced in order to do something environmentally better, but only so much. It took me forever to remember to bring my cloth grocery bags in with me, but now that I have I hate it when I don't have them and have to get plastic bags. I have some beeswax food wrappers, but I still default too often to tinfoil or plastic wrap. I bought a couple of reusable ziploc bags that don't work well at all. We use cloth napkins, and that was a pain at first but now it's second nature. So it's basically just chipping away at the plastic use little by little. The Net Zero company has reusable toilet paper on their website and that is a HARD PASS. 

That's all the questions and answers I can think of. Thank-you for coming to my World's Boringest Ted Talk. 

A Very Monday Monday

 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 had met in the library on the first day of school asked me how I was doing and I almost wept with gratitude. Today my back was sore and I was finding it painful shelving books on the lower shelves, and this made me feel crappy that I only work one day a week and can't even do that well. 

I concentrated on tiny good things. This school has beautiful new library carts that are shiny purple, and pushing them around makes me feel like an honest-to-goodness librarian. I held doors open everywhere I went - in the school, at Indigo buying a friend a birthday gift, at the grocery store - and people were sweet and grateful. I went to the bakery I always go to after work to get chocolate scones for Eve and Matt and a croissant for me, and I thought of it as supporting a local business instead of buying too many carbs. At some point I realized I had a migraine coming on, and then everything made a lot more sense.

I got home, put away groceries, cooked some noodles and took some chicken out of the freezer so Matt and Eve would have dinner, dragged myself upstairs into a cool shower, and laid down. I had a monster headache-killing (partly) nap and a bunch of really whacked-out dreams. There was a giant department store where there were sections called "Drama" and "Toilets of the World" and "Anger". I had an argument with my mother who said I shouldn't be sleeping during the day WHILE I WAS SLEEPING DURING THE DAY - so meta. I was drinking wine but I kept forgetting a glass or the wine bottle and the kitchen was far away and I kept having to walk all the way back. I drank something that was really good, but then I noticed it was blue, and the label said Hawaiian Punch, and a guy walked into the kitchen and I said penitently "I fail at drinking". There was an exploding truck. 

And then I woke up. And now I'm here. And so are you. How are you? 

So WHAT if It's There?

 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 realized that reading about climbing in horrible weather conditions doesn't really compare to seeing it on screen - the freight-train-speed wind, the ice, the chapped skin, the snow blindness - it was one thing to read about it, but I was convulsed on the couch in empathetic discomfort watching it. I'm still not sure about the ethics of it, which kind of couples with the dubious ethics of Everest tourism. I can just barely wrap my head around deciding you want to climb a giant-ass mountain, even though high altitude basically wants to kill you, and in all likelihood you will be trying to perform an arduous physical feat while feeling like you have a really bad flu - if you do it on your own. But strapped to some poor Sherpa, being shuttled up the mountain in a giant line of people like it's a ride at Disneyland? Does that not take some of the glory and shine off it? Not to mention the thousands of oxygen bottles, all the trash and the actual dead freaking bodies that the mountain is now littered with. 

I looked up whether this event led to a decline in people signing up with companies to climb Everest. It didn't. That was the deadliest year on Everest to date, but there have been worse years since. Both tour company leaders are portrayed as passionate and honourable in the movie, but there has been some speculation from people who were there that the rivalry between the two led to at least part of the disaster. 

It was interesting - in a non-detached, horrified way - to see the depiction of the way that people can convince themselves that if you just want something bad enough, you can overcome your physical limits. Maybe it's even true sometimes, in very specific situations, but clearly in many others it's just not. The people that survived have all kinds of reasons why they did, and I get that, but I think mostly it just comes down to dumb luck. 

What do you think about the lure of mountain climbing? Does it call to you at all? I turned to Matt at one point and said "I just realized I'm not even tough enough to star in the MOVIE of this event". I definitely don't have that need for adrenaline that makes people risk their lives, or push their bodily limits, or train for months, or not eat Cheetos every day. I love a good hike with some elevation, but it should last no more than two hours and should end at a pub where they serve good poutine. 

Day Seven - Home Maintenance and Pretty Lights

 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 the little table before sorting which ones can fill in the empty places on the bookshelves.

Pro tip: books get VERY VERY GROSSLY DUSTY when you stack them instead of shelving them. Oof. The dust bunnies. The sneezing and wheezing. 

On the bright side, I found a book, far down one of the stacks, that I went to a book launch for, met the very nice author who was a friend of a friend, and then promptly lost for five years when I got home. I was torn between feeling happy and disgusted with myself, which is something that invariably accompanies these twice yearly bouts of Tasmanian devil-like housekeeping. For the rest of the year I just walk around happily oblivious to the squalor. Then suddenly it's all FRONT AND CENTER IN VIVID HD and I'm like WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? ARE WE ANIMALS? THIS WILL NOT STAND. While the rest of the family hides and waits for the inevitable return of my usual blinders.

Then I read for a bit, then I picked up Pad Thai from a Vietnamese restaurant (I'm quirky like that) and went to my friend's backyard where we sat on the patio wrapped in fuzzy blankets and talked about our awesome children, people we like, people we don't like, horny adolescent rabbits and horses, narcoleptic and otherwise.

It was a really good day. 

Fridayyyyy

 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 rest of the time; the school population was split into two cohorts, so only half of the kids are there on any given day, and only in one room to limit exposure. If you think it sounds weird, it is.) the very day that the Starbucks Christmas drinks come out. 

Here also is Lucy, who didn't know what was going on but wanted to be a part of it.

Eve is now flopping around the house proclaiming how tired she is. Seems to me like that takes more energy than it's worth, but okay.

In the Eve Being Funny category, we ordered pizza for the first time in a while and she opened the pizza box and said "when did Pizza Pizza pi - oh my god, I almost said Pizza Pizza pizza - when did Pizza Pizza get so THICK?" Then she looked at the wing box and said "tamper proof seal? What the hell - I was never worried about my wings being tampered with before. Should I be now? Also, I'm pretty sure if I can open it it isn't actually tamper-proof". Then she found out that Angus is going to be home for quite a long Christmas break and said "well he took Physics first, he has to help me". I said "but he hated it" and she said "that's not my problem" and I said "it a little bit is because-" and she said "oh, if he's bad at it?"

Matt is exhausted from working exclusively by phone call - there is emailing too, but mostly so many phone calls, which I totally believe is exhausting, I need a nap after I make a doctor's appointment. Tomorrow we're going to try to do more house stuff, but tonight we are stuffing ourselves with carbs and lounging. 

Happy week-end. I will leave you with this inspiring thought - why were there so many blades in the dresser I just cleaned out?