Pillow Fighting in our Underwear

​At least that's what our husbands think we're doing. 

Five For Friday: The Five Books

 OKAAAAY, okay. I usually save all my book stuff for the end-of-year roundup, but I was aware that it was kind of douche-y not to name the books. Also, there are five of them, so it makes a Five for Friday post! 

1. The one I hated: Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza. I'm not saying it's a bad book. Whether it was just not the book for me or it was the wrong time, I just didn't like it. I don't love when authors play with the whole fiction/non-fiction thing, making themselves a character in the book, although I know some people love it - it just seems a little cheesy to me "Oh, I found this manuscript in an ancient locked trunk" or "Oh, I'm telling this like a story but it's really all true". I am often okay with an experimental format. I probably would have been more into this when I was younger and in graduate school and more open to non-traditional literature that took work and even then left me confused. She is a celebrated author but it read to me a bit like a new writer who is excited about all these new techniques she can use. It just ended up in a whirl of detached penises and shrinking women and detectives who did psychology or maybe psychologists who investigated crimes, and I struggled to finish it.

2. The one that I didn't love as much as the hype indicated I should: Raising Hare: a Memoir by Chloe Dalton. Listen. This was perfectly lovely. I am really happy that the author had an up close and personal encounter with a natural creature during the shitstorm that was Covid. I learned some cool stuff about hares and I absolutely believe that caring for and being engaged with nature in this way is transforming.

I'm just also kind of cynical and snarky, so I was a tiny bit annoyed by how there seemed to be an implication that this has never happened to anyone in quite this way EVER BEFORE. It also seemed ever so slightly like parlaying a lovely experience into a book deal, with some places that seemed pretty padded. A magazine article would have been perfectly adequate. She also goes on quite a bit about how careful she is not to make the hare or its leverets pets, and it's true she doesn't name them or put little hats on them or whatever, but obviously she doesn't just leave them to the vagaries of actual nature either, or there would be no story. There is contact between her and the hares. She bottle-feeds a leveret and the hares 'lollop around her house' and one gives birth in her study. She intervenes to preserve their health and life - and that's great! I'm sure I would have done the same!

There's also a point beyond which you have to examine your own hypocrisy because she is suddenly fairly disparaging of farming or building practices that endanger wildlife, but I'm willing to bet she was still shopping for food at a supermarket, and well....

”If it is possible, as William Blake would have it, ‘to see a world in a grain of sand’, then perhaps we can see all nature in a hare: its simplicity and intricacy, fragility and glory, transience and beauty" - she says this as if it's brand new information when surely it is not? Anyway, most of the world lost their collective mind over how great this book was, so clearly I'm just an asshole, this we all know. 

3. The one I admired intellectually although it didn't bowl me over emotionally: Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer. I must have read about this on the library website and requested it. It's a tiny little thing. I read it before refreshing my memory about it, and my thoughts were that it reminded me of Romantic literature in a kind of archaic way - people said things 'coldly', things were called 'repellent', people would get pale and be suffering which would make them attractive, there were sleeping powders. It reminded me of The Sorrows of Young Werther and Remembrance of Things Past. The writing style was very detached but also sketched a vivid picture of both the action and the interior lives of these people, none of whom were very likable (which is fine, it's not a thing that I require of books I like, I know some people do, zero judgment). When I finished it I looked up its provenance and discovered that it was a reprint of a 1950s book by an Austrian author, which made a lot of sense. It was tiny little thing with a lot of impact packed into its compact form. 

4. The one I really liked: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. The writer has been on my radar for a long time, but I didn't manage to read Babel, so the only other book of hers I've read is Yellowface, which I liked but it seemed like a bit of a throwaway compared to her other books, like she had this thought and tossed it off in a weekend because she is a brilliant achievement machine, she has multiple degrees and has won numerous awards for her multitude of books and she's not even thirty, which is totally fine and doesn't at all make me feel like an utter failure at life who might as well just find an ice floe to drift away on. 

I usually roll my eyes at the "this book meets this book" descriptions of a new book, but I have to admit that "Dante's Inferno meets Susannah Clarke's Piranesi (which I also loved)" is kind of perfect in this case. 

I read most of this one while sitting on my patio in the summer - it is big but so propulsive it felt like it took no time to read. 

I loved the magic system - the chalk and the trying to distract the world for just a fleeting moment. Alice was annoying and kind of a pick-me, but that was the whole point, and her conflict about this was really, really well portrayed, I thought. Also there is a misunderstanding that leads to drawn-out bad feelings, and often I find this dumb and annoying, but here it made sense and worked for me. And the connection between hell and university? The feverish competition, the spending of all your physical and mental and emotional resources on a success that might never materialize? The worshipping of figures that sometimes turn out to be detestable fiends? Oh hell yes. Very much enjoyed. 

(Katabasis is a Greek word that means 'descent into the underworld', and opinions about how to pronounce it seem to vary, with 'Ka-TA-ba-sis' maybe pulling slightly ahead, but 'Ka-ta-BA-sis' also not being completely wrong.)

5. The one I loved: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. I discovered SGJ in 2015 and have scooped up everything that comes across my radar ever since. When my friend Nat  (HI NAT) requested The Only Good Indian on my recommendation and then of course couldn't remember why it came up, she was expecting a book on residential schools and instead got this - 'violent, vengeful horror', which fortunately she liked. He writes horror that has a strong underpinning of social criticism, related to colonialism, systemic racism and generational trauma - but around this he constructs well-crafted and really frightening, really effective stories. 

When Nat said in our book bingo group that she was reading this one because Obama had it on his summer reading list, I jokily but huffily reminded her that I discovered the author and recommended it to her years before, and said Obama has a lot going for him, he could let me have this. Somewhat amusingly, then, I found the first 80 pages or so a bit of a slog. But once I slipped into the deeply-carved ruts of it, I couldn't look away. 

His books and short stories are scary, yes. They have some bleak humour sometimes. They are also often very sad. The vampire trope can be used so many ways, and here the central tragedy of Good Stab being transformed is that it separates him from his tribe in a way that can't be repaired. The self-loathing and despair of the Lutheran pastor who is told the story by Good Stab in drawn-out spates, is deeply felt also. This book illustrates the way the forming of a country is nearly always tangled inextricably with appalling incidents and weak justifications. This one has really stayed with me. 

So there you go. I would say one, two, three, four and five stars respectively but that would be fudging it a little. I liked Raising Hare just fine, just thought the praise was a little overly effusive. So probably one, three, three and a half, four, and four and a half (I didn't love the framing device for TBHH). Have a great weekend! 

Of Note

 A friend sent me the New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2025" article this morning (not sure if it's paywalled, sorry). I always experience a funny blend of feelings when I see the headline of one of these. Primarily excitement: I love a good list, and I like counting how many books of those mentioned I have read and putting others on hold. There's an undertone of trepidation, because invariably there are many, many books that I not only haven't read, I haven't even heard of them - and I don't consider myself someone who is completely ignorant of the book world. And then there is the merest soupcon of weariness and derision - the tiniest bit, really - because who has done the choosing, and what are the precise criteria, and what does 'notable' actually mean (at least they didn't call it the BEST books of 2025). Obviously there's an element of subjectivity. I always end up concluding that maybe I am just a basic reading bitch, and that's FINE. 

I had read five, which is laughably few and yet is more than in some years. One of them I hated, one of them I thought was over-hyped, one I loved, one I really liked, and one was strange and I admired it. I am currently reading two more, and one I just had to return because it was too overdue.

Honestly, I didn't find a lot to raise my eyebrows at in the list. It seemed like a pretty good mix of fiction, non-fiction, genre, current issues and biographies of significant personalities. I had a good number of them on hold already thanks to Sarah (HI SARAH). I put like twenty more on hold, just as I was getting ready to wind up my 'year of putting all the physical books on hold' experiment, thanks a lot New York Times Book Review.

It was Scholastic Book Fair week at two of my libraries, which is always a heady mix of excitement and chaos. I had two amazing parent volunteers to help at one school, which was great because we didn't think we'd end up having to use the card machine but one parent came in and two teachers and it took me a stupid long time to get it working - tech hates me. But we did a brisk business and the kids were happy.

One major shock was that the posters - which have been five dollars each since time immemorial - jumped to SIX dollars in 2023, and are now SEVEN dollars each. That's a hundred and forty percent jump in TWO YEARS (I think, math's not really my thing). One of the kids repeated this incredulously and I said "I KNOW. This is all on Scholastic, and we completely agree that it is (thinking: I can't say bullshit, I can't say bullshit) NOT COOL." 

Pics of the Week

 My friend Holly used to be just My Friend Kerry's friend Holly, who I heard about many times and always thought wistfully that it would be amazing to actually meet her. Then I DID actually meet her and now she is MY FRIEND HOLLY and she's amazing beyond description. She has three sons and a demanding job and plays soccer multiple times a week and buys carloads of carrots and tampons for charity and takes care of her sick friends' aging parents (seriously, on multiple different occasions) and in addition to all this once drove across town to give me an Advent calendar when she found out I didn't have one (this is in my forties, to be clear). She also has the highest, sweetest voice and yet curses like a sailor, and when we were throwing axes the head axe-throwing teacher lady said "I really enjoy when you swear". 

So not only did she invite a bunch of us to sit in her loge at the National Arts Centre for Un-Silent Night: an Epic Holiday Singalong, but...

She also came dressed as Slutty Mrs. Claus

Today I ran a buying day for the Scholastic Book Fair at my morning school and a viewing day at my afternoon school. My niece Charlotte was texting me from the UK, and wishes me luck on the book fair and then offered sympathy when I was venting after a particularly challenging class had come rampaging through. She sent me this for if any more classes gave me grief.

I have the best friends AND relatives. 

An Un-Monday Tuesday

 Considering that my two main scheduled events were a doctor's appointment and flu and Covid shots, I had kind of a spectacular day. I went to bed early last night and got a pretty good sleep. The doctor's appointment was early and she was on time. I was a little nervous, but not hugely because I really like my doctor and she has a really good record for listening and trying stuff. I had a couple of things I wanted to ask about and they were both addressed really well, and I remembered to ask her for a new prescription for the orthotics I need to order, which meant I won't have to call and wait on the phone for an hour.

Adulting FTW

I also got smiled at by four old men in the waiting room. And I was walking out of the building and remembered that I had left my nice black cardigan on the chair in the doctor's office, exactly like I thought I was probably going to do when I hung it there, and as I turned around to go back, an assistant was walking out with it to find me.

My doctor's office has moved fairly recently - this was my first visit to the new office - and the new one is close to the main mall we always go to when we mall, which is not that often. But I ordered new Docs, thinking they were exactly the same style and size as the ones I have, and they were not, and I needed to return them. I judged that I had just enough time to get to the mall, return the boots, grab a couple of Christmas shopping things, and get to my vaccine appointment.

Returning the boots was quick and easy. Eve asked for pajama pants for Christmas and Victoria's Secret had a forty percent off everything sale, so I got her a really nice pair. I also got some Twisted Peppermint foaming soap for the powder room because I am behind on Tiny Secret Festive Season. Then grabbed a gift card for the child I'm shopping for in the community giving group.

I was on time almost to the minute for when I needed to leave for my vaccine appointment, but I really wanted a Mango Hurricane. I decided to throw caution to the winds and assume that they would still take me if I was a few minutes late - this is really, really unlike me. And because all the guardrails were off, I said "can I please have a small Mango Hurricane - actually, screw it, can I please have a large Mango Hurricane" - the lovely teenaged girl must have thought "oh, you're a wild woman."

So here I am, bopping through the mall, with my Booster Juice and my Bath and Body Works Christmas soap, like the whitest white girl who ever white girled. I got to my appointment five minutes late, and of course this only meant I had to wait a few minutes less than I would have. The pharmacist said I could do two in one arm or one in each, and I told him to just put them both in my left. The Covid shot went in fine and then the flu shot went in and I gasped and might have said what the fuck, and he burst out laughing and said ha ha, that's why I do the other one first. 

I wandered around the store for my required ten-minute wait, and picked up some Advil, some makeup, some chocolate and a couple of frozen pizzas. I went to the counter with a teetering pile, and the woman said "are we doing a bag?" and I said "no, I believe in myself!"

And she gave me nothing. Nothing! She broke the unbroken string of people treating me like a delightful gift in their day! 

Not gonna lie, it was a bit of a blow. I did not let it harsh my buzz.

Bits and Bobs

 I'm trying really hard not to use post titles like "I Think I Can, I Think I Can" or "Crawling to the Finish Line", because I know I'll go back to past Novembers and find the exact same post titles. Does anyone feel like they're finishing strong? I've felt pretty good from a blogging perspective this month this year, but I am running on fumes at this point.

I am also still reeling from Engie revealing that her library makes people go to a desk and show their card to an actual person to retrieve their holds. What? Why? At my library it's a few rows of shelves in the middle of the main room, and you just find your label - the first four letters of your last name and the last four letters of your library card - and take your books. The machine won't let you check out books that are on hold for someone else so that's not a concern - wait, Engie, do you have to go to a real person to check OUT your books too? Doesn't that just unnecessarily make more work for the library staff? Okay, obviously it's fine, I just really like to dart in and out of the library without anyone seeing or commenting on my pile of holds that can barely fit in my arm-span. What's it like for the rest of you? Am I making too big a thing out of this? It's quite possible I am.

When Angus was in a growth spurt, more than once he gallumphed up the stairs and bounced off both walls to the point that he knocked pictures off. I found this simultaneously infuriating and amusing. Today I chucked a giant package of Costco toilet paper onto the stairs and knocked off the Eve of those pictures where the letters are made out of objects found in the world - like this except mine was from a craft show and I'm a little crestfallen that you can get them on Amazon now - and the frame cracked. Matt has already repaired it once and thinks he can repair it again. Embarrassing, though - I don't even have a growth spurt to blame it on. Well, not one I want to admit to. 

What is Dubai chocolate and why is it suddenly everywhere?

I know habits are very hard to break. I have several habits I have tried to break and have either not successfully broken or have found really really really difficult to break. There are two that were much easier than I expected them to be. The first one was leaving only one space after a period instead of two. I was finally convinced that since I was no longer typing with a manual typewriter there was no reason for the second space. I though it was going to take forever to learn the change. It wasn't hard at all. The other one was not scrolling on my phone in bed when I wake up anymore. I have a weird relationship with sleep and I really never wake up feeling rested, and a few months or a couple of years back I started looking at my phone thinking it might be a nice way to wake up gradually ("oof", Eve winced when I told her this, "rookie mistake.") It was not. It was just an earlier start to doom-scrolling, and my hands would go numb, and I would be even more frustrated with myself by the time I got up. So I decided to stop and just... did. I still scroll more than I would like, but at least I've pushed it later in the day?

Two down, four hundred and ninety thousand to go.

Someone named Julie2343 who sounds like she should be a bot but is not suggested I read The Correspondent on my post about sending postcards - just finished it! I love a good epistolary novel. I love the word epistolary. I don't love the word epistle, though. Not sure if it's the way it sounds or my religious trauma. I'm tired. 

Raise a Reader? You Can Try

In the summer I had dinner with a friend I was extremely close with in grad school, touched base with when I got to Ottawa, and then fell out of touch with and hadn't seen since Eve was about four, so, a long time. It was amazing - actually never mind, I'll do a whole post on that later. But she has two daughters and neither of them are readers and she said she had kind of a hard time with it until one of them had to say cool it, you're making me feel bad and it's not going to change anything.

I'm not sure how I would have felt if neither of my kids was a reader. I know it's a big part of my personality. I loved children's books and had a collection before I even had kids, and reading to them every day was really fun. Eve moved smoothly into chapter books and is definitely what you would consider a reader. With Angus I read one entire Percy Jackson book with him, and it was great, but after Diary of a Wimpy Kid his reading fell off and it didn't really bother me. During one camping trip a few years ago he pilfered my stack of books and took one and since then has been asking me to give him books for Christmas. I think he still only reads a lot on vacation, but that's fine. Would it have bothered me if neither of them read? I honestly don't know.

I am constantly getting frustrated with myself for not being able to lay hands on old pictures - I started organizing all of them last year and then put the mess away for Christmas and then got horrifically depressed in January and here we are again. Anyway, years ago I took a picture at brunch of Angus leaned over a Harry Potter book intently while absently stabbing at pancakes with his other hand and sent it to his grade three teacher saying 'job well done!' I mentioned this to someone a few weeks later and he said indignantly "she SHOWED THE WHOLE CLASS", but he hadn't mentioned it before then so it can't have scarred him that badly. 

I did love the way Eve and her friends talked about our book-stuffed house. I took Eve and a friend to meet the teacher night in middle school because the other mom was busy, and the friend said to their English teacher "their house has books EVERYWHERE. Eve goes into her mom's room and asks for a book and she just GRABS one out of a pile!" She left out that there are so many books there's no room for anything else to be put away properly, so also a win. 

Eve and I like a lot of the same books, and sharing books with her has been kind of magical. We buddy read some of her books in undergrad, I never have trouble finding books to give her for Christmas, and now she recommends books to me, which is a bit trippy. I gave her my old ipad last year and she got into borrowing library ebooks and loved it because then she could turn off her lights except for the little fairy lights and read in the dark and be cozy. 

We both love Miriam Toews, and she has had the weirdest good luck with finding used Toews books on sale at new bookstores. This is the latest one - is it not just stupidly beautiful? It looks like her lamp and the Coach purse I got her for her birthday last year. 

Last week she told me she was going to put a real actual paper book on hold (I guess she wants to be more like Sarah too) and then sent me this picture. We were on Facetime and I said it gave me a tiny bit of a weird feeling seeing her last name, which is different from mine, on the label. 

I'm also a bit jealous that she has an A name so will also be right at the beginning of the holds, rather than an M name which is always, always on the bottom shelf. Have you tried picking up seven books from the bottom shelf? It is inelegant, to say the least. ALSO Also, it's an Olga Tokarczuk book that she is now reading before me. Is that even allowed? 

I Got Nothing

​

Friday

 Struggling a bit with pain and infirmity at the moment. I got new running shoes but my knee is still really painful, so I am getting assessed for new orthotics and buying new boots also, which I would have done at some point anyway, but now I'm doing it not knowing if it will even fix things. I'm also having an issue with my ulnar nerve, which means the outside edge of my left arm and hand are inflamed. This means it's an issue trying to handle books and walk around the library, which, bluntly, sucks.

I got in to see my massage therapist yesterday and she went to town on my legs. I could feel that the muscles around my left knee were looser after. Later in the day I felt really achy and almost drunk, without having consumed alcohol or taken an accidental triple dose of any of my meds (I checked). It's possible it was just a reaction to the intensity of the massage and maybe a delayed reaction from the harrowing drive last Sunday, which I've kind of been waiting for. Since then I've just been really, really tired, and I just remembered that my doctor emailed me that my iron and B12 were low and she had sent some supplements to the pharmacy for me. Did the pharmacy notify me of this? They did not. Did I remember to ask about them when I was just there picking up prescriptions? I did not. I've also been alone in the house for almost two weeks exactly, which tends to make me feel a bit odd by the end.

To balance out the whining, an anecdote from after my massage, when I was driving around doing errands. There's an amazing woman in my neighbourhood who does outreach with unhoused people and collects donations of various kinds for the bags she hands out - packaged snacks, clean socks, blankets, etc. Last year in honour of Nicole's Tiny Secret Festive Season, I gave away Christmas soaps and little decorations on my Facebook community giving group. This was fun, but with the state of things this year I thought I would consciously collect more useful donations to drop off at this woman's donation point which is near my Wednesday school. On the way out to my massage I grabbed a pair of warm socks and mittens I had put aside, and then picked up some snacks while I was grocery shopping and bagged it all together.

It was bright and sunny, which was doubly noticeable because the sun hasn't been out for so long. As I drove into the townhouse complex and parked, there was a bright ray of sun directly on my windshield. I could see a dumpster in the space between two units. Then I thought I could see someone bent over going through the dumpster. This seemed like a horrifying thing to happen upon, although I did think I could just offer them my bag of food and mittens and socks. Then I realized no one was actually standing beside the dumpster but.... dear God, was someone IN the dumpster? But not struggling and not dead, because wasn't that an arm lolling out, with the fingers wiggling in a leisurely manner? 

No, it was not a person in the dumpster (thank fuck). It was a squirrel hanging full-length out of the dumpster preparing to jump down, which looked like an arm. It finally went, which broke the illusion. Then it took off before I could even offer it a mitten or a pepperoni stick. Rude. 

In Which I Try to Be More Like Sarah

 Oh stop laughing, I know I'm nothing like Sarah. What I am is still in my Year of Pillaging the Library on the Regular, which I started after Sarah read the newest Kate Alice Marshall book before I even knew it was a thing, and she said she researched new books and tried to be the first in the hold line, and I thought 'damn, why am I not doing that', and I realized I was shying away from anything I had to physically go to the library for, and then realized this was dumb, so started haunting the New Arrivals lists and putting a million books on hold, with predictable results...

Apologies for the longest run-on sentence ever. Anyway, it's been insane and also delicious. I go to the library every Wednesday after my afternoon school, and return two or three books and pick up seven or ten new ones. Every couple of days I check my account so I know the order I have to read them in - what's overdue first, what's coming due next, what has people waiting for it, etc. I haven't had to return anything without reading it, and I haven't kept anything for more than 21 days overdue (which is when my account gets suspended until I return it). In the past this has stressed me out a bit, but right now it's very enjoyable, it feels like a well-ordered process, and well ordered processes are few and far between in my life.

If I was feeling at all like this was a weird, inadvisable thing to do, I read an article or post recently - dammit, I did not bookmark it and cannot find it - where a librarian was saying 'Borrow all the books! Borrow them even if you don't think you'll read them! Give them a vacation from the library!' It's one of those screamingly obvious things I still needed to be reminded of - more books being borrowed looks better for funding requests. If a book isn't borrowed, it risks being weeded. So yes, I am bringing these books home and letting them sit beside and on top of books they usually don't associate with, and this is all right and good. 

Book dance party!

It's been a thing of joy. I feel like I'm bathing in beautiful words and sentences, with brilliant metaphors and allusions and synecdoches splashing up over the edges and blooping me in the face.

I have mentioned here that I sometimes regret the first time I set a reading goal on Goodreads, because it sometimes gets weirdly in my head, but now that I've done it I can't make myself not do it. I sometimes consult Eve on what she thinks my goal should be - only sometimes, because I often like to pick odd numbers like 111 or 99 or 103, and she hates those - she likes round numbers and multiples of five. She usually sets her goal around 20, like this year, so she suggested that I set mine at 120, seeing as I'm not trying to do a master's degree in biochemistry - so I did. Then her housemate Zoe was over at our house - Zoe is fearsomely goal-oriented and competent and I kind of think she should be running the country. When I mentioned that I was shooting for 120 books because Eve was going for 20, she burst out laughing, and we finally figured out that she misunderstood and thought I was flexing on Eve rather than following her suggestion. 

Due to the whole 'emptying two library shelves every week or so' thing, I was coming up on my goal fast by the beginning of September. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I usually try to make my first book of the year special in some way - it's always a Frances Hardinge book if there's a new one, or something that is auspicious in some way. I try to do the same thing for the book that brings me to my goal. But then I was transcribing book notes - I used to use sticky notes or book darts to mark passages I wanted to remember, but that got really unwieldy, so now I take a screenshot if it's on my ipad or take a picture if it's a paper book, and then I type them up when I have time. I usually write the title of the book on the screenshot or take a picture of the book cover, but sometimes I forget and I come to a passage and have no idea what the book is. I look at successive passages, I rack my brains, and then I google, which usually works if there are names, and sometimes does not and I have to live with the mystery. This time I was able to find out what the book was, but when I looked in Goodreads I had not marked it as Currently Reading or Finished. And when I did so now, I was suddenly at my goal, which was a bit anticlimactic. 

I am coming up on the point where I am going to have to self-defensively suspend all my holds, given that I have returned three or four books and retrieved eight to ten books on hold the past two Wednesdays. I've never been one to blame a bartender for continuing to serve drinks to a drunk person, but I did look at the holds shelf this afternoon and for a second I imagined myself complaining "I was over-served!"

This is a finite experiment. I have books on my shelves at home and on my Kindle that I have been ignoring. This isn't sustainable. I have a measly two kids and half a job and I own zero pairs of barrel jeans and I do NOT look adorable in leopard print and I, sadly, am no Sarah.

I do wipe my bathroom down every morning before I leave, though. 

In Which I Try to Be More Like Jenny

 By running? Like, at all, at any speed, for any distance? Hahahahahahahaha hahahahaha.

No.

I did try to start running a few years ago. Wait, no, many many years ago. I didn't hate it. I mean, not as much as I thought I would. But my knee started complaining hard early on. My friend told me to go to  The Running Room because they would do whatever they could to help you keep running. They didn't, really, just listened to what I was feeling and said "yeah, that's probably not great." My knee clicked audibly while I was walking up stairs for years, and is the first one to start showing signs of arthritis now, so along with the whole problem of my boobs threatening to give me a concussion, that means running isn't going to happen.

But I did finally look up Caroline Girvan's Dead Bug workout (which I'm pretty sure I saw mentioned on Jenny's blog first, although I can't find the reference now).

What a great name, right? It's not a Skinny Girl anything, it's not a Beach Body thing, it's literally what I feel like while working out. And I've been really looking for a good core strength workout because I always feel so crooked and it feels like any improvement in my core would help. 

Can I do it with weights yet? Nope. Can I even finish it every time (it is very short)? Uh-uh. I do it until my sciatica starts pinging and then I stop. But it feels like a really good combination of effective and difficult-but-not-punishingly-so. Sweat drips off me while I do it. I usually do yoga first and then put it in at the end, or do it after my walk. 

I've read multiple articles lately about how important strength training is as we age, for maintaining metabolic rate and muscle mass, increasing mitochondrial function and stimulating the creation of new, healthy mitochondria ("For fuck's sake, now I have to worry about my mitochondria?" my friend Nat said, and yeah, relatable). I was in a good gym routine including weights before Covid, but I haven't been able to get back to working out off-site. Fortunately there were some things that I was already doing, and I'm trying to add in more. The Dead Bug workout I can do on my back, so it doesn't hurt my bad knee or my bad hands.

Thank-you Jenny! I guess I would slightly rather be reminded of you while running on a seaside path with the wind in my hair rather than wiggling on the floor like an overturned cockroach, but we work with the tools we are given!

In Which I Try To Be More Like Engie

 By walking my dog three to four times a day? No.

By training my dog to walk and behave and do a dance move or two? Also no.

(can't even train her not to jump on my face while I'm doing yoga)

By conscientiously tracking my workout, budgeting, correspondence and other goals, like a conscientious adult? Are you quite mad.

(Okay, I have actually started tracking my exercise in the notebook on the table in my yoga room, when I remember.)

Mostly, I have been sending snail mail ("You mean... mail?" my smart-ass daughter asked. "It's a useful retronym" I retorted. She maintains that if I don't say email anyone would know I mean mail mail. Hmph).

I had just gotten into a  really good routine of writing a postcard or card four or five times a week, then stamping and addressing them all to send on one day. And then Canada Post went on strike again. *sad trombone*

Oh, first I sent a really cool Octopus postcard to Matt's uncle's wife, who was with us at the Vancouver Aquarium when we saw the most active and charismatic octopus ever.

Then I got it back because I forgot to put a stamp on it.

THEN Canada Post went on strike again.

Sigh.

BUT Canada Post has now gone to rotating strikes, and Suzanne got a postcard I sent, so things are moving.

Did I get really into this idea and buy way too many postcards?

No, I don't think so.

I love email. My hands are weak and painful at this point in my life and I can type so much faster and longer than I can write. But a paper letter or postcard is a precious thing, and I want to put more of them into the world.

Oops, forgot to link to Engie's blog.

Thanks for Asking! (literally)

I guess we're in The Back Nine of NaBloPoMo, and winter has arrived here in Ontario, so the fact that my blog vigour is flagging somewhat is not terribly surprising. I do have a few posts that I worked on ahead of time, but for today I'm going to answer questions about the names posts, because it's an easy post and also because I see that it's a little weird that I just dropped that fact about my dad's last name and didn't elaborate.

Not that there's a whole lot more to tell, but I do agree that it's unusual, except that it was 1940 and my grandparents lived in Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan, which is identified as a 'hamlet', is less than a 100 km south of the Northwest Territories with a sub-arctic climate, and in the 2021 census had a recorded population of 219. They were absolutely literate - my grandfather was a voracious reader, as is my father - but I just don't think anyone had the energy to get exercised about this clerical error. As far as I know it never caused any issues (definitely fewer than having to give Angus "Robert" as a first name, not that I'm bitter and bring this up every chance I get). One of my husband's favourite stories about my dad is that when he moved to the city for high school he thought it was weird seeing people on bicycles in the streets in the summer - the only time they could ride bikes in Stony was in winter when the river froze.

San's question about whether Angus liked his name also made me stop and think - Eve has stated on more than one occasion that she likes her name, which makes me so happy, and I knew that Angus had talked about people liking his name in baseball, but I don't think I had ever actually asked him. So I texted him, and this is how that went.

I'm really happy San asked! Two for two how cool is that? I don't have strong feelings about my own name, particularly since family lore is that I was named after, not a cherished relative or literary reference, but Lady Allison who was .... a horse. 

We would get talking about baby names, unsurprisingly, in playgroup. Collette named her first boy Jacob and the second one Ben, and both turned out to be number one name choices in that year - if I remember correctly she had had the name Jacob as a favourite forever, and caved to her husband on Ben, so she was less than thrilled in both cases. I guess I was kind of shooting for names that would be recognizable but wouldn't have four in every class, although who cares, really. I love the name Emma and in Angus's grade two class there were only six girls and half were named Emma - I still love it. I didn't find out the gender for either kid, but I was pretty set on Angus for a boy. Rachel or Isabel were strong contenders for a girl, but when Eve was born suddenly I thought she was an Eve. I think she's only ever met one of two other Eves (there were a few more Evas). Obviously if Angus was on the east coast or in Scotland he'd be one among many. As it is, it's just him and Jody's bunny. 

Come See Me In the Good Light

 Yesterday I watched the documentary about Andrea Gibson, the non-binary poet who was the Poet Laureate of Colorado in 2023 and who died of ovarian cancer in July of this year. The documentary was directed by Ryan White, who I don't know, and produced by Tig Notaro, who I love. Notaro's tv show One Mississippi was about her mother dying while Notaro was still recovering from severe health issues, and yet it is still billed as a comedy.

I did not love Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking. I'm almost unwilling to admit that, so many people thought it was a masterpiece (I see I was too chicken to even rate it on Goodreads). I didn't think it was bad, but it didn't get under my skin the way When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi or The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs did. I don't think it's any secret that I tend to treat every subject, even very serious ones, with some kind of humour, which is true of my wider family as well. I realize that humour can be a deflection technique, but I don't think that's all it is. I have trouble remembering quotes, but one by Martin Amis sticks in my head: "A writer is someone who is harassed to the point of insanity by first principles." I don't even think this just applies to writers, but to anyone who stops now and then and thinks about things. Everything in the world, everything about human life, is so strange if you think about it all the way down. And from the time we're very young, we all know that at some point we're going to die. And, like Eleanor Shellstrop says in The Good Place, because of this, "we're all a little bit sad, all the time". But also there is snow, and sky, and your kid saying smushmallow instead of marshmallow, and the fact that you look really dumb in hats, and people falling into shopping mall fountains, and it's impossible to maintain that sadness.

So I ugly cried through a lot of the Andrea Gibson documentary, predictably. And, a little less predictably but not totally, I also snort-laughed and cry-laughed. It is physically painful to watch the point where the scan results are positive, and it looks like they might live, because we know she didn't. It's equally painful to see the point when they realize the cancer is everywhere. And then there is beauty and hilarity and profanity, and the quote I mentioned on Jenny's post yesterday, that "happiness became easier to find when I realized I didn't have forever to find it." 

By Any Other Name (Game?)

 I'm tired and my knee is really sore and I'm just going to phone this in by riffing on my comment on Julie's latest post. She asked if we had anybody famous in our family line.

We are supposedly related to the MacAskill giant, who was born in Scotland and moved to the east coast of Canada. The last name is spelled differently from ours, but, fun fact, my father's surname was misspelled on his birth certificate and is different from his parents'. I'm actually kind of glad, because I like the look of McC more. When I was little we had a can opener with him on it. I didn't name Angus after him, but my dad had said he would have named a boy Angus if they had had one. Then he was born and he was this big red squalling thing and seemed to really fit the name.

Matt's family has a tradition where the first male grandchild is named Robert. He himself is the first male grandchild, so his name is Robert Matthew. In university he lived across the hall from a guy named Mark with his same last name, and HIS real first name was Robert too, which I found hilarious. I didn't love the tradition (and it has been confusing as shit and ended up in big screw-ups in travel and at the pharmacy so I have been soundly vindicated), but 1) it was important to my husband and 2) it meant I got to pick Angus as the ACTUAL name.

People often commented positively on Angus's name (when we were at the doctor's office once and he was called in, this man said "Angus! I LOVE that name!" then glanced at his pregnant wife's expression and said "....but we're not going to use it" kind of glumly, which was hilarious. But I had no idea that apparently Angus Adams was an amazing baseball name. When he was in the Little League World Series and ended up on TSN, one newscaster said "Double A - I'm calling him Double A!" and someone reading the list of names said "Angus Adams - sick name!" So, they're welcome I guess? The Canadian finals were in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, near Cape Breton, so they day-tripped to see the statue. 

The whole concept of choosing your child's name is so crazy, when you think about it. You give birth to this whole new person and just randomly choose something to call it? And there's, like, an approved list, or you can choose to freestyle and open yourself up to a world of judgement (rightfully so, in many cases). I understand why it can be difficult for parents when a child wants to change their name for whatever reason, but it also makes complete sense that they should be able to choose a name that suits them better. Why should they have to keep this collection of sounds we applied to them when they were barely a person? 

Now I'm just rambling. Going to ice my knee and cry my way through the rest of the Andrea Gibson documentary.

Five For Friday: The Multi-Media Edition

 1. Apparently a Terminator movie happened in 2019 and I MISSED IT? I loved Terminator. I loved Terminator 2 even more. After that I think it's definitely diminishing returns but I hung in there. I didn't even hate Genisys (sorry). I watched half of Dark Fate last night and finished it tonight. Linda Hamilton reprised her Absolute Baddest Bitch and it was glorious. 

2. I had picked up a library hold and then been baffled about why I had reserved it - British political satire? That does not sound remotely like me. These books either make me feel too dumb to get it or the satire is too broad and it's just cringey. This was not that. It was thoughtful, natural, frightening and propulsive. Each section was so different from the previous one, but before I had time to notice I would be completely swept up again. It was about trying to find your way at different stages of your life, deciding how far you would go to defend your beliefs, developing relationships and shifting realities and mysteries of various descriptions. I loved it. 

3. My brother-in-law's book launch! Not much will get me out on a rainy and cold November evening after working in two libraries and facing myriad grade one-to-sixers with plenty of attitude (even to the gorgeous Library and Archives building), but my husband - the author's actual brother -  is in Singapore, so I had no choice but to represent. My BIL is a law professor and constitutional law scholar whose big giant head shows up on CBC quite often, and he and his History Prof bestie wrote a big important book about the internment of Japanese Canadians during the years surrounding World War II, and how the law was used shamefully to perpetrate this injustice. It was a great discussion and both authors were very well-spoken, although the history prof had arguably the better socks. 

4. I just got home from seeing a little theatre version of The Spitfire Grill with some friends - one of the cast members was a colleague of my friend Janet. Since apparently the biochemistry grad department is not going to stage a musical for my daughter to start in this year (rude), it was nice to get a small musical fix. 

5. Geez what do you people want, I practically have culture dripping off my fingertips right now. 

Surly-ish Thursday

I have nothing locked and loaded today, but it is the thirteenth day of NaBloPoMo and it's the first time I'm kind of blanking, which is kind of awesome, really.

Last Thursday I said I had deleted my Surly Thursday post because it was too petty and dumb and Sarah and Suzanne said to text them the pettiness, which I would have if it was some kind of delicious gossip or witty takedown, but it was just boring whinging about my sore knee and my stupid hair. 

I buy the same brand of running shoes (Asics) every year and a half to two years, because I know how they fit me and I can order them online and they fit my orthotics. This is a great system, except sometimes I lose track of how long I've had the most recent pair, and when they fail they fail fast and hard. So my knee was much recovered, and then in the course of two walks it was suddenly horrible, along with my lower back. I went to physio and he poked and prodded and massaged and shockwaved my leg, but I walked a lot on the weekend and it was pretty bad. My new shoes are here, and the walk today was much better, so hopefully that will be on the upswing.

My hair is so weird. My hairline is strange, it's half straight and half bumpy, it's either straight and flat or big enough to take out a bookcase if I turn too fast. If there was one thing I could magically change about my appearance I know most people would guess it would be my weight, and it probably WOULD be, but I would have to think long and hard about not picking the hair. I mean, theoretically I could lose weight, but I'm stuck with this stupid hair forever or until it all falls out. Who came up with the concept of hair anyway? What deranged sadistic mother-effer put us together with two arms and two legs and variable junk and this weird noodly stuff coming out the tops of our heads? 

Do you delete bad pictures of yourself, or keep them? Back in the olden days we had to get the pictures printed and THEN look at them and see how bad we look. Now we can see immediately, which is a mixed blessing. I have recently realized that I was forcing myself to keep all the pictures of me even if they were terrible and made me feel bad. And I don't mean group photos where everybody except me looks fine. I mean just selfies where I was trying to see if I got my lipstick on right or whatever. I was suddenly aware that I didn't actually HAVE to keep every picture of myself, and realized that I kind of had this refrain in the back of my head saying 'the good pictures are lying, this is what you really look like so deal with it.' But I don't actually have to? I think I feel a weird sort of low-grade shame that I only think I look good when my hair is done and I've filled in my hairline a little and I have a bit of makeup on. And if I were, say, shipwrecked and didn't have access to my hair and skincare stuff I would be much less attractive.

How silly is that? Like, if we were shipwrecked we would in all likelihood be more preoccupied with finding food and water and building a raft or a signal fire, or plunging deep into the forest to resurrect some elder goddess that would unleash a curse on mankind or something. It's fairly unlikely that we would be looking around at each other thinking wow, did she ever need that mascara, her lashes are practically invisible. (Okay, I do feel bound to confess that even if we were starving and dehydrated I would probably be bitterly envious of the women whose hair still looked good after it got wet, even as I was going into convulsions. I can only be who I am).

So I am going to stop forcing myself to keep and look at bad pictures of myself because ain't nobody got time for that. 

Here is a two-year-old family pic where I actually liked my hair. I also liked those very expensive glasses, which I lost while camping that summer. I keep saying I'm going to replace them but I keep wearing my older much less flattering ones because procrastination forever, right? 

A Critical Mass of Jody-ness

I appreciate that the comments yesterday were helpful and supportive, rather than pointing and laughing, which, let's be clear, would have been totally justified.

It was fine. I felt a little hopped up for a couple of hours but I was able to read and write. My eyes and mouth were dry, but I'm not sure they were that much drier than usual - I did drink a lot of water. My sister (also Jody, how fun is that) assured me that this was a pretty good medication to make this mistake with, especially if it was only once. On the up side, my allergy symptoms were nonexistent for the first time in weeks = I asked my sister if I should just take six times the normal dose every day since it was so effective. She said no.

I sent her stuff like this all day. It is super fun being my sister. 

Continuing on with the subject of how awesome Jody is, I fear I have to tell you all something distressing. We went to the One World Bazaar a few weeks ago, like we always do, and I drove us. We did our usual wander, our usual finding of animal figurines that resemble Jody because they are angry (once Eve and I were dropping off a birthday present to Jody; we were going to a scary movie later that night, and she was explaining why she couldn't come. She asked us "when you think of me, what is the first emotion that springs to mind?" We both said "Anger?" and she was inordinately pleased (the subtext was that being scared makes her angry).

I was wearing a dress I had bought quite a while ago and couldn't decide how I felt about. It was a maxi dress, which I always like the look of, but since my boobs have started their downward slide I feel like my legs are my best feature, plus I'm not sure I'm tall enough to carry them off. I wore it thinking I would ask Jody's opinion, because I was confident she would tell me the truth, much like Collette always does (we were once in Toronto staying with a friend of a friend to go to Wicked, and I walked in the room and said "does this necklace go with this dress?" Collette looked up from magazine, said "yep" and looked back down. The friend's husband said "that was kind of perfunctory" and I said "yeah, but if it was bad, she would have looked up and said "nope" and looked back down." So anyway, Jody said she liked it, and then a random woman at the bazaar also said she liked it and that it looked good on me, which probably means she overheard me saying  I knew it was a nice dress but couldn't decide if it was good on me. So that was kind of her. 

After the bazaar (we have to use 'bizarre' when we text each other about it because we are infantile, and I live in fear that I will type the wrong one on here by accident) we went down the street to the tiny little Burgers and Shakes that has been there forever. We usually go grab milkshakes on our way home (chocolate for her, cherry for me). The parking lot is also tiny, and there are sports fields in the same location, so there was no place to park except between two big trucks on a grassy hill that slanted downwards. I backed in and asked her if I needed to straighten out and she said "no, you're fine." When we got back to the car, this is what I saw.

Now HOW am I ever going to trust her again?