Bibliomama

 Welp. Eve took the train back to school on Saturday. Week was too short. Hamilton is too far. I had a fitful, twitchy-leg, broken sleep the last two nights and I am sad and cranky. Eve and I went to Bluesfest for the first time the year she was 12, even though we both have anxiety, especially about crowded places ( Bluesfesting While Anxious , July 2015), and it became a tradition (which, let's be honest, happens with almost everything we do in this family and friend group that doesn't outright suck - our calendar of annual things is fairly crowded, which is cool because we are a family of lazy introverts, except Angus, he works out like five times a day, he's an un-lazy introvert). The day the lineup comes out is always exciting, and the two years it didn't happen because of Covid were weird and we missed it. Well, the lineup came out on Wednesday and it was...not exciting to me. This is kind of disheartening for obvious reasons, and also because a lot of my friends s...

 I meant to take a picture of the library, and/or myself in the library, in my pink shirt for Pink Shirt Day, which I remembered just in time to not put on a not-pink shirt. I forgot. Pros: 1) The other library tech is very chill. I love my library partner at one school, but she's very particular and some of the stuff she requires stresses me out a little bit. This one is basically 'keep the library running, don't let someone with five books overdue borrow more books, otherwise don't sweat it'. 2) There seems to be a lot of volunteer shelving help, so there was nothing waiting for shelving when I came in and I was able to get everything that came in put away by the time I left. 3) There is a library office. I have one at one other school, and not at the other. It's nice to have the option to retreat for lunch and not feel like you're on display for any clubs or anyone that wanders in over the nutrition break or recess. One kindergarten teacher always comes i...

I just sat here typing versions of Weakened, Week-end, Weekend, Week End, then had to google how you actually spell weekend, almost decided not to title the post at all, so here we are. I'm in one of those "but why on earth WOULD I blog right now?" periods, which is where not having much of a structure or schedule or.... here's where I talk myself right out of ever blogging again, along with spending half an hour trying AGAIN to figure out how to type accents on a Chromebook keyboard - raison d'̂etre - did I do it? I feel like the accent merged with the apostrophe. Resumé́? Is that right, or is it a speck on my screen? If it was, all it took was finally hovering the cursor over everything in my toolbar, which is a little embarrassing for me. Eve is on her way home for study break with my sister's family. They got a bit of a late start so they're due to arrive at my mom and dad's at ten p.m. or later. Usually this wouldn't be an issue for me, the i...

 Let's just keep answering questions for a bit, shall we?  I thought about whether it was misleading to say I hadn't worn a winter coat yet this year. I don't think it was, really, although the winter coat I was looking for was my slightly nicer, dressing up winter coat. I have a long red puffy thing, although I'm not sure where that is either.  Canada does get cold, and I do not live in the most temperate of provinces. We've had a relatively mild winter for us up until the polar vortex, but it's been below zero quite a few times.  The issue is me. I don't really get cold. No, that's maybe not true. I don't feel the cold like most people, and I would rather be cold than warm. I'm not sure exactly when it started - I think I was maybe in grad school. I remember I used to go places wearing sweatshirts in university. Anyway, it was long before perimenopause, but perimenopause has definitely made it worse. I've had my thyroid checked a few times ...

 I'm going to have to blog about nothing in particular, because whenever I finish the book review posts I feel a moderate sense of accomplishment, followed quickly by a feeling of lostness and lack of direction. I open my blog and then open a Goodreads tab, and then feel a pang when I don't need the Goodreads tab. Copy pasting all the titles and covers and plotlines is such a nice way to start structuring a post. Now it's just the vertiginous empty blankness.  Oh, wait, I can answer some comments.  Tudor: What the heck? Why does living in a neighbourhood where there's always a gummy on the sidewalk sound both magical and terrible? Is it giants fishing for babies? Lucy is food motivated (just walk in the house carrying french fries and you'll see that), but she's usually very good about not getting into things that are closed or not for her, unlike some of our friends' dogs (Christmas presents. Whole loaves of breads. Entire chicken wings. Oy.) but I guess th...

 Last book post! So I looked at the totality of my reading for the year. I did pretty well with my 'read more women' goal - 81 books by women out of 118, or 69%. For reading non-white women, I stopped paying attention and rather dropped the ball - 15 books by non-white women (13%), and one by a non-binary latinx author. I'm thinking I might only read black authors in February for black history month - I just found a list of black Canadian authors while I was reading about Canada Reads . This year I've actually read three out of the five Canada Reads contenders, which makes me think I should really make an effort to read the other two before the program airs in March. I also realized I was still reading my way through the 2022 Giller Prize shortlist and it was now 2023 and I didn't even know who'd won the freaking prize. It was one of the two I haven't read yet - The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr - which I find obscurely annoying. In sum, I have assig...