Bibliomama

 In fact I'm feeling quite a bit better. I was crazy anxious about going to my Thursday school yesterday, because I had only started a few weeks before, then was sick the week before March Break, then there was March Break, so I felt like I was starting the routine all over again. I've talked about this before, and I don't know if it's common to depressive episodes or if it's just a weird fun thing my brain does - it's not that I don't WANT to do something, and it's not that I'm not confident that Regular Me can do it well. It's this feeling I get like I will start going through the motions and I just... won't be able to make the right moves or say the right words. Like there will be a bunch of second graders staring at me and I will freeze and be unable to move.  Anyway, I got up and got dressed and drove to the school, and once I was there it was fine, which it usually is, as long as I can get myself out the door. I read in French to the 2/...

 The scene: My family room, Ontario Family Day week-end, February 2022 The circumstance: My sister and her family visiting, having picked Eve up for study break on their way through Hamilton. It is the last day or two of the 2022 Winter Olympics. The players: Wanda (Grandma), Ian (Poppa), Jody (my sister), Andrew (my brother-in-law), Charlotte (my niece), Jonah (my nephew), Matt (my husband), Eve (my daughter), me. General conversational din Charlotte, checking her phone: OMG, have you guys seen this thing about the Finnish skier with the frozen penis?  Everyone: What Matt: I heard it was so cold they actually shortened the race, so it must have been really cold. Charlotte: but FROZEN PENIS Eve, checking her phone: hang on, it was the SECOND TIME? Is he the only one this happens to? I bet it happens all the time but no one talks about it. I bet the other skiers are like DUDE, STOP GIVING INTERVIEWS ABOUT IT. Jody: The first rule of Frozen Penis Club is we DON'T TALK ABOUT FROZ...

 I'm just going to ramble for a bit because I fell in a hole and now I'm at that point where there's an insurmountable wall between me and blogging (and most other things), and waiting until I have a coherent post is going to mean never blogging again. I know everyone is feeling the immense cognitive dissonance of trying to live a normal life while various things on fire keep drawing our attention. But what do you do? Sit there staring at the fire? After we protest, and send money, and agree that it's all horrible and unfair, what else? Stop moving, stop living, stop finding joy in anything? My mother's parents are Polish, and she was born in Austria as they were fleeing from the war and spent her earliest years in refugee camps. She doesn't remember that, but she remembers her parents talking about it. How for the first little bit, you're on the move, maybe carrying a suitcase, your clothes still clean, and it feels weirdly like a vacation, but you keep rem...