When Your Head's Not in the Game

 So I had a rough night Sunday heading into Monday. I don't know if this is common with migraines, but one feature of many of mine is that it isn't readily apparent that I'm getting a migraine. I just have this nagging feeling of things not being right, like maybe I'm getting a stomach bug, and why is my mouth so dry, and I get really irritable. Even though this accumulation of things should make me think 'migraine', it's often hours before it does. It's somehow an annoying feature of this syndrome that its nature makes it unrecognizable.

So I woke up Monday morning and just felt Bad. I used to be cranky any morning I had to wake up early, and to forestall just being a bitch across the board I would not talk much. I've gotten over that - having kids sort of makes it necessary- and my husband and I generally chat amiably while getting ready and then as I drive him to my mom and dad's, where he drops off the dog and either takes their vehicle to work or walks the rest of the way. Monday morning I was sullen and silent and stabbed the radio button off spitefully when I started the car and it came on too loud. Matt got out of the car, grabbed the dog carrier and said "have a good day". I muttered "don't fucking tell me what to do", but I waited until after he'd closed the door.

I made it through the work day and did some errands and picked up Lucy and visited my parents, then came home and decided to actually cook dinner. I made sheet pan chicken thighs and cauliflower with a balsamic sauce, and I mixed everything and laid out everything and put it in the oven and for some reason I put on the exact time the recipe said and then just walked away and trusted that that would work. Why? I NEVER do that. I ALWAYS put less time than the recipe says and check on it.

I was at the kitchen table writing out Christmas cards when I suddenly got a whiff of burning smell, and then a delivery man rang the doorbell and Lucy lost her mind, and I had to deal with the delivery and Lucy just kept barking, and then he left and I had burned the shit out of a whole meal for the first time, like...ever, maybe?

I was feeling like this maybe just wasn't my day. I put the sheet pan on the top of the stove and texted Matt that I had just burned dinner and he should not walk in the house and say "is there something burning?" if he valued his life. Then I typed "you can eat perogies", which he had bought the day before. Except it autocorrected to "you can eat peroxide". When I saw that I started laughing so hard I couldn't catch my breath, which reminded me how dry my mouth was, and then I started crying a little, and THEN I realized that I had a migraine (and texted my husband that 'peroxide' was a lot more hostile than what I was going for).

So if I accidentally wrote anything profane in a Christmas card that comes your way, I apologize.

Christmas Car(d)nage

 I love sending Christmas cards. I hate sending Christmas cards. My (non)system for Christmas cards is so ridiculously chaotic, I keep telling myself I need to amend it, and yet I do not.

I assume the normal way to do Christmas cards is to buy a box of Christmas cards for that year, or order a certain number of a pre-printed card with family photos? I am bad with tech and for some reason I don't want to send the same thing to everyone, so instead I buy any box of cards that catches my fancy near Christmas or after Christmas. Then I sit at my table with a giant varied pile of Christmas cards and look at my list of addresses and sort of go by vibes on which person gets which card.

And the photos. Do I narrow it all down to one great family pic, or put three or four varied ones on a card? Ha ha ha ha no of course not. I get a selection of wallet photos printed and then again, based on which members of my nuclear or extended family the card receiver is familiar with, I pick a few relevant photos. 

It's DUMB. The past couple of years the photos have gotten here late, this year I can't even remember where I ordered them from so I can't even track the order. I also always have way too many, so if you get a Christmas card from me it will be full of small random pictures from last year or three years ago or ten years ago - feel free to throw them out, at least this way I don't have to. 

I also like to keep one card from every kind of card I send. 

Clearly I am a fan of the stylized triangular Christmas tree. I also like the Little House in a Dark Woods theme, or anything with snow.

Some of the quirkier choices. 

I have mostly stopped buying cards with glitter. I am like a magpie, but it's annoying for other people and probably not great for the environment. 

I am of the firm opinion that Christmas card envelopes should be red. Unfortunately I often forget about this when buying the actual cards, or the design of the card persuades me that it's worth the trade-off. But seriously. They should be red. 

I started writing and addressing cards Friday night without organizing anything, in the midst of an insane allergy attack. I got ten done, but it was not a joyous experience. Today, for the first time in many years I actually took everything out of the Christmas card bag and the Christmas card box I haul all the stuff around and separated out the cards I am keeping, the cards I can send, address labels and, oh look, on the plus side sometimes I discover a forgotten treasure trove of stamps.

Score!

Everything is sorted into old Christmas card boxes, and I feel quite a bit more serene sitting down to do the rest, except for the part that my system is still kind of bonkers. And with Canada Post still doing rotating strikes, a lot of them are probably going to be late, which is fine, I guess (it's NOT FINE, I don't WANT them to be late, *stamps foot*) 

Oh well. For a change, the snow started hours after my husband got home rather than minutes after he left (he's been gone three weeks out of the past four, I should perhaps begin calling him my 'occasional lodger' instead). 

The tree in the wreath ornament from my last post is from All Through the Night, a crafter that makes figures out of cotton muslin which are then sprayed with an adhesive. They are at a craft show I go to every year, and my mom has bought many of the angels for Eve which I will photograph when I get to that box. I had already made a purchase one year and then saw the wreath and had to make another purchase because I had to have it. 

Wanna See Some Giant Balls?

 I went for a walk! I wore a winter coat! And a thing that went around my neck sometimes and around my ears other times. And real mittens, with fleece inside. The temperature is officially at 'my face hurts' level. But it's also sunny and I kind of love it, it feels a bit like pouring grapefruit juice through your head from one ear to the other. We had such a long weird fall that when the wind whipped up you were liable to be smacked by a current of madly whirring snow AND a clutch of elm keys. 

I'm in a pretty good system for decorating. My aim is to get up the stuff I like the most without also having a bunch of bins and boxes also decorating the main floor, so I go down every couple hours and bring up one box, take whatever I want out of it and bring it back down before bringing up another one. I do this all very carefully because I have a constant fear that I'm going to break my neck falling down the stairs when Matt's not here and not be found for days - wait, I guess if I broke my neck it wouldn't really matter if I was found for days. Except for Matt, that would be unpleasant for him. 

Anyway. 

My favourite pieces are out.

The card stocking is up. It is reminding me that I am way behind on my Christmas cards, which is lame because I was so excited that I could actually mail some this year, but oh well, we do what we can. 

There's nothing on the tree yet but it's nice to have it lit. I don't know about you, but my philosophy in December is 'give me all the crap that lights up and give it to me NOW'. I will probably put the generic ornaments on before the kids get home, and then we'll have our decorating session and photo shoot where they put all their personal things on.

I am going to share the most ridiculous thing that is making me so happy right now, which is the result of a not-great thing. So I mentioned that my running shoes and my boots and orthotics all needed to be replaced at once, which is annoying financially but we can afford it, so, grateful. I got new running shoes, got fitted for new orthotics, and remembered my friend Nat had generously given me a pair of Docs that didn't fit her well. 

Both my old running shoes and my old Docs were really tough to get on. I know it's hard to think about how you put on shoes when you're not doing it, but if I'm standing up I lift the shoe up, stick my foot in, pull the back mostly on and then rely on putting my foot down to get it the rest of the way on. This didn't work with my last pair - I would have to bend down or stick my foot on a step or something and really crank my thumb in to not let the back fold over and drive me insane. Similarly with my Docs, it was a real struggle to wrestle them on. I would often be driving to visit my parents and pick up Lucy after work and actually cringe at the thought of having to get my boots off and then back on, with my feet tired and sore after working all day.

BOTH my new Asics and new Docs slip on like a dream. I guess I got a slightly different style of Asics, and Nat's boots are a slightly different style. And oh my goodness it makes a disproportionally big difference to how easy it makes getting ready to leave the house. I used to feel so frustrated and ungainly and like this must somehow be related to being too fat (my feet being too fat? I don't know, self-loathing is complicated). 

Comfort and Joy!

Oh, and lest I be accused of click-baiting...

This is the First Day of the Rest of Your December

 I always post the day after NaBloPoMo is over, and then I think, with adorable optimism, "maybe I will keep posting every day! What a good way to think deeply about more things and write more!" I will leave it to your good sense to assume whether or not that has ever worked out.

I had an amazing weekend but didn't get a lot of sleep, so I came home after work and sat on the couch for a bit and then got up and tried to address some things I wanted to get done. Matt put up the tree before he left for Phoenix on Sunday (we finally said goodbye to buying real trees and got a Costco tree last year and I love it), and put the garland on the stair rail. So there are fun sparkly Christmas lights, but a fair bit of mess around them. I wanted to clear off the dining room table, get all the bags that are at the top of the stairs to the basement with all the Christmas shopping I've done so far and take them downstairs, maybe clean out the dresser by the front entrance because I like to stow small Christmas presents in there so they don't get lost, and maybe bring up a few Christmas decoration boxes.

So far I have cleaned off about a quarter of the dining room table, then cleaned out one drawer of the dresser and laid out all THAT stuff on the table, cooked some Asian noodles and stir-fried beef and broccoli (but not eaten any), and brought up zero boxes. And my knee and back hurt and I'm tired.

It's fine, right? I mean, I know it's fine. I don't really feel the Christmas panic I used to sometimes feel at the beginning of December. The kids aren't even home until the 19th. I want to get some decorations up in time to enjoy them for a bit, but I should do that in a way that does not make me feel exhausted and overwhelmed, because that is a prime example of Defeating One's Purpose. But goodness gracious is it STILL difficult to figure out a good balance between doing enough to make the season feel festive and magical (I was grocery shopping today listening to Christmas carols thinking "Does the kids jingle-belling and everyone telling you 'be of good cheer' REALLY sound like 'the most wonderful time of the year?) and not so much that by December 20th I'm collapsed in a heap of glitter, cookie sprinkles and scotch tape, snarling and brandishing a candy cane threateningly at anyone who approaches.

I am also sort of watching the last Mission Impossible movie, because Angus rented it yesterday on our account (from Charlotte) so I figured I should watch it while we have it, and also marvel at the weird-ass gifts technology has brought us. It's... loud. I didn't really get into the first few, but then when Angus would come home we often went to see one together and I gained more of an appreciation. We had been mocking how Tom Cruise kept coming on the screen before other movies talking about how cutting edge these movies were, and then I said to Angus one day "so I read the review for the new Mission Impossible movie and ... apparently it's really good, and pretty cutting edge." Right now I'm thinking maybe I only like MI movies when I see them with Angus?

I'm going to go eat some stir-fry while I ponder these various matters.

30 Days Has November

 Usually I try to end NaBloPoMo with something a little more auspicious, but I was at a cottage weekend and then went to see Wicked with a friend after getting little to no sleep last night, so I'm going to phone it in, and visit everyone and wrap up tomorrow. Had a fabulous time with the same girls I've been cottaging with every November for, um, wow, a lot of years. Here's a more detailed post with better photos from three years ago. It was a very women-of-a-certain-age gathering - we talked about who was divorced and having great sex with someone they met on Tinder and then we compared pill organizers. You know you're at that age when you wake up and the Amazon cart you can't remember if you pulled the trigger on contains joint health supplements and shampoo for thinning hair. I can't think of many people I would rather get old and cranky (-ier) with.

Thank-you to San for corralling us all this month, it was so much fun hanging with my regular blog people and meeting some new ones. It's December in two and a half hours and I'm hardly paralyzed with fear at all. 

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!