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.