In Which Defeat is Only the Tiniest Bit Agonizing

I have a friend who posted her engagement on Facebook a few years ago, and then confided that she felt stupid for having done so when it fell through. I told her she shouldn't feel that way at all, because her real friends wouldn't feel anything but sympathy and she had nothing to be embarrassed about. But I confess that I felt slightly the same way about broadcasting my first job interview attempt in twenty or so years in serene confidence that it would go positively and then.... well....

True, I could have slunk away and licked my wounds in private then. But in all honesty, people, is that ever how I roll? Let's see: depression posts; period posts; condom posts.... NOPE.

It's all very well to say that clearly I was overqualified and they were just afraid I wouldn't stay long. The bottom line is that I put myself out there and they said no thanks. And that stings a little. But it was still a good experience. Before I whipped that application together I was paralyzed at the thought of trying to put together a resumé after so much time. Now I know I can, and I can get a response, even if it's ultimately not the response I want.

Plus, now I can go to my friends' cottage this week-end instead of working. We all went to the bar last night (we do most Tuesdays, I wasn't deciding to chuck the employment idea and just become a barfly) and when they invited us to the cottage I said I would only come if I could get drunk and belligerent and tear up Indigo bookmarks. One of the hosts looked concerned and said I should bring my own because they don't have that many. (Silly. I wasn't really going to do it. One does not rip up a perfectly good bookmark even in the face of cruel rejection).

Also, I was going to have to call Zarah and say, in a good news/bad news kind of way, I can't do our girls' week-end this fall because I have a job. Now it's a bad news/ good news kind of thing. Which is good, because somehow circumstances have evolved to the point where I can only buy bras at this little shop in Barrie, and I need a new one. So, Zarah... call me.

A couple more things that happened this summer:

Zarah and the kids came for Bluesfest:

We all fell even more in love with Melissa Etheridge:

There was a lot of reading:




Oh, and Eve and Alex got haircuts.

Then we got ice cream. Obviously. 

Small Frustrations, Tiny Satisfactions

I generally make it a habit of grabbing my apron from the hook and putting it on on my way into the kitchen no matter what I'm going in there for. I am not a neat and graceful person and I don't enjoy changing clothes several times a day. This was amply vindicated just now when, without an apron, I turned around from the counter and decided to take the lid off the slow-cooker to check the pulled pork and got splattered with hot meat juice, burning a tiny spot on my chest and leaving brown spots on my pink tank top (sorry if this made you gag a little, Nicole). This was annoying, but the pulled pork smelled delicious, which is a not bad little microcosm of this whole day.

Angus talked quite a bit with his guidance counsellor last year when he was offered a spot on the Team Canada's roster for the Oklahoma Junior Sunbelt Tournament, which meant he would be missing a week of school right before exams. The guidance counsellor liaised with his teachers and everybody was quite nice and helpful in making accommodations so he could go and not have his marks suffer too much (we also realized how much he sucks at blowing his own horn since a couple of his teachers were like, "he plays baseball?"). We realized that we'd kind of been underusing the guidance person as a resource too, since she mentioned she could have worked with us to have his first semester loaded with heavier courses since baseball always ramps up from January to June. She said she could help him with that this year, but today when he went down to guidance following the regular guidelines, the person he ended up with could not have been less helpful, and none of the changes he needed got made, and we have to go in again next week. Which is frustrating.

As for me, even just getting ready to look for a job is setting my anxiety on fire, which is stupid, because it's not like we're looking at getting evicted or becoming food insecure, I just want to be a productive member of society and contribute a little to the education fund. But while the decision to wait until after the summer to look was right, I should probably have gotten my ducks in a row in some fashion before now, and I feel kind of dumb and obscurely ashamed for no good reason. I'm also thinking of just applying to work part-time at Indigo until I find something related to my diploma, which would probably be fine, but I'm already stressing about what happens if Matt's away and Eve has basketball and I'm working and I don't even know if they'd hire me yet. Deep breaths need to be taken.

Angus and I both have trouble with uncertainty. The teachers that understood him best in early elementary school would write the day's schedule on the board so he wouldn't have to constantly be asking "what are we doing after this?" Every time I go to the doctor for reassurance that something isn't dire or life-threatening, I know that what I really want is to be told that I'm never going to get cancer or ALS or whatever, and life just doesn't work like that. A year or two ago I came across a phrase that went something like "if it can be helped, there's no sense in worrying. If it can't be helped, there's still no sense in worrying". I'd like to say it changed my life, but it didn't, not hugely, because my neuroses are entrenched and intractable. But I try to remember it.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that something (Lucy, probably) had left a mark on the cream-coloured carpet in the doorway of our bedroom. I took our Bissell Little Green Machine out of the closet. Then I realized that it was cleaning day the next day, and there were a couple of other stains on the upstairs hallway rug (Lucy definitely) and that Matt was about to go away for a week and when he's away Lucy has the distressing habit of crapping on the rug on the landing even when I let her out late and get up early to let her out again, so I probably didn't want to deep clean until after that. And I left the Green Machine on the floor of our bedroom instead of putting it away, and it stayed there for weeks as I kept missing my window and thinking I'd do it soon. Well, today I finally cleared the piles of outgrown clothes and empty shoe boxes off the landing and deep cleaned all the spots I've been meaning to clean, and put the Bissell back in the closet. I think when I closed the closet door I actually said "There!" out loud.

So. Many things are unsettled, but one or two things have been set right. For now, that will have to do.

(On the off chance that the dreary minutiae of my day didn't turn your crank, there are tortoises making love on the Queen of Mediocretia's blog. You're welcome. Or I'm sorry.)

Frozen

I've been feeling a little paralyzed lately, on a couple of levels. First of all, it's minus a million outside. Our street is a series of inches-apart ice speedbumps. I keep losing one mitten out of every pair. Second, my hip hurts. A lot. I go to the chiropractor a couple of times, the pain dies down a little and then flares back up and my sciatic nerve is on fire. I can't figure out what I'm doing to aggravate it or what I should do to make it better (well, I can, but I'm too lazy to go to physio right now so I'm going with internet stretches and complaining for the moment). It's clearly not too much exercise, because I've made it to the gym about once a month since Christmas. So maybe it's sitting. So I stand in the middle of the room looking at all the chairs suspiciously wondering which one is the offending party. Then my feet start to hurt. It's not good.

Then there's the writing thing. Writing anywhere. One of my friends on Facebook posted a status saying it was offensive to post anything "to relieve the negativity" because only privileged people could ignore the negativity. And hey, I get it. I am a privileged person and there's a lot of negativity that I can ignore that others can't. But does that mean I can't ever say anything that doesn't involve politics or resisting?

No. It doesn't. That's not what she was saying. I was making everything all about me because it was January and everything hurt and everything was gray and any bit of wit or insight that entered my brain was immediately devoured by the gray hurt-monster so the impulse to write anything was slim anyway.

I watched the new Gilmore Girls mini-series on Netflix - not the day it came out, but a few weeks later. I watched the actual series in real time when it was on, and I liked it, but not, like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer like-level. But then Eve started watching the original series so I started rewatching it.
Some thoughts: they eat a lot of junk food and takeout for being skinny people on a single income; they make fun of fat people more than I remember; they use the word 'retarded' - was that still done then? Because I find that surprising; the fact that Lorelai keeps chasing Max around after she jilts him makes me want to throat-punch her; I still love the witty banter; Emily Gilmore quite often veers over the line from uptight rich mother to total bitch; the fact that Lorelai uses the Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Home massacre as a funny dinner-time anecdote seems in really bad taste (I read the book about it between my first time seeing that episode and the second); I adore Lane and I think her storyline got really stupid; I adore Paul Anka the dog; and Lauren Graham dated her tv daughter's teacher in TWO SERIES now, what is WRONG with you, TV writers?

It's problematic, rewatching a series with more than three or four seasons. I start off watching one episode every now and then. Then I start mainlining them until two in the morning. Then by the end I can't read or watch anything else, I just want it to be over and the whole experience verges on hate-watching.

Also, my last placement is finally starting next week, after six months of emails and getting passed around from one type of supervisor to another and interminable legal stuff - you'd think I was asking the Ottawa Public Library if I could put on a three-ring circus in their main branch instead of offering them some free book-shelving and database classification. Anyway, the people I met are really nice, the Stittsville Branch is darling (it has a fireplace!) and I'm looking forward to getting this done.

There. I moved a little. Perhaps a thaw is imminent.

Surly Thursday - Midlife Edition

I haven't seen the movie This Is Forty, but if it's at all realistic I imagine that it's the characters experiencing, at ten-minute increments, things on their body becoming creaky, painful, droopy or non-functional, interspersed with things on their house breaking, leaking, molding or rusting and requiring intervention that costs some multiple of a thousand dollars.

My knee has been a problem since a few years ago when I got the stupid notion that running for fun and exercise (as opposed to only when someone's chasing me with a chainsaw) was a good idea. My shoulder (which I fell on when Lucy tried to kill me on the stairs) complains when I try to put on a coat or moisturize my back (in my memory I used to be able to put moisturizer on my shoulderblade, but I think it's more likely that my thumb used to graze the very bottom of it, and this made it feel moisturized, and now that I can't do that, it constantly feels dry and itchy). My hip is acting up now, I don't even KNOW why, maybe it just wanted some of the attention.

At the beginning of this week, I woke up feeling absolutely wretched. I was utterly exhausted, my arms ached even though I hadn't been to the gym for five days, and my head ached like there were poisoned boulders rolling around inside. I decided I probably had Total Body Cancer and hit social media to say good-bye to everyone. Hannah kindly talked me down and offered the consolation that I was probably just about to get sick, with a huge assignment due, a husband in Florida and a bunch of stuff to drive my kids around to (I'm not being sarcastic, this actually WAS consoling). But no. I didn't get sick. Apparently that was just the feeling of daring to be alive and awake in my mid-forties.

Do I have wrinkles and pimples at the same time? I do. Frequently the zits land on my neck, which is painful and gross. Why is this? Are my forty-five-year-old zits so senile that they've forgotten where they're supposed to go?

Let's not even talk about my periods. Wait, we just covered neck-zits, why would we balk at the Crimson Tide? See this book title? IT DESCRIBES MY UTERUS ONCE A MONTH. I know I shouldn't be so eager to move my status from Mother to Crone, but Jesus, at this point I can't help thinking Yay Menopause.

I know, I know. Consider the alternative. I will just continue my pathetic cycle of three weeks of regular, invigorating exercise followed by three months of whimpering, limping and physiotherapy to heal from the invigorating exercise. On the days when I can't do squats or lift weights or go on long, hard walks, Lucy and I will take a slow turn around the park and remind ourselves that every day above ground is a good day. Well, I will. Lucy will chase squirrels in the passionate conviction that THIS TIME she will ABSOLUTELY catch one, and roll in anything that's vile-smelling or dead.

Because This Mo can Blo Me

Go on, you can say it. We're all thinking it. I've been a sucky blogger for the past few months.

It was summer. Then my mild bipolar tendencies suddenly became less mild for a bit. For the first part of the fall I was full of energy - for getting up early, walking Lucy, working out, cleaning out closets and storage spaces, going out at night. I didn't read as much and I didn't have the focus to sit down and write.

Then came the ugly and inevitable crash. Couldn't wake up. The big assignment I had three-quarters done three weeks early languished unfinished. Had to drag myself to the gym and around the park with Lucy. We had frozen pizza for dinner TWICE last week (granted, on one of those nights there was no one here to actually eat anyway, but still.) Everything hurts. I've become borderline narcoleptic.

(You could be forgiven at this point for assuming that 'bipolar' means 'makes excuses for not blogging in both official languages').

And now it's November. It's cold and dark (except for my husband, who just left for Florida for a week, ISN'T THAT NICE FOR HIM?) and makes me question all my life choices and the cursed change is upon us and I don't know where I'm going to summon the wherewithal to finish my course and find my dining room table and feed my children, but NaBloPoMo is what I DO in November, and  I WILL blog every day. It won't be pretty, and it won't be easy, and there might be no one left here to read it, but it will be done.

Okay, I sat here staring at this for ten minutes trying to think of something witty to add, but how about I don't hurt myself the first day out?

Mondays on the Margins: The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

The other day I visited the Ottawa Public Library's website, as I do every few days, to see what I needed to renew and return. I had to look at my list a couple of times to confirm that, for the first time ever, I only had ebooks out. Nothing to return. Just a bunch of stuff that would go *poof* when its due date arrived and vanish into the ether.

I've had a succession of books come available that I'd been waiting for eagerly. Well, sort of eagerly. They were all books that sounded really cool and different and exciting when I read about them. As we all know, there are two ways this can go (that's total bullshit, there are a veritable multitude of ways this can go, but I'm bad at math and my husband is in Korea and there aren't enough iterations of me to effectively drive everywhere and cook everything and walk everything that needs to be driven and cooked and walked right now so I'm choosing to call it two, DO YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT???); either the book lives up to its hype and you are transported and transformed for a few days and it stands in beautiful book memory as a memorable period, or it doesn't and you feel deceived, betrayed, cruelly mocked and desperate to throat-punch, nipple-twist and hair-pull the reviewer who set you off on this fool's errand. Or maybe that's just me.

One of the books that came up in this queue was The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: "It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter." 

Aliens! Galaxies! An enigmatic corporation (those almost always turn out to be evil). Dangerous illness! Typhoons, earthquakes, crumbling governments! Sounds earth-moving, does it not?

And... it's not that it was bad. It wasn't bad. It just was very.... earth-standing-still. What I said in my review was that it was very realistic, and some people like that. I'm forever coming out of movie theatres and hearing people complain that what we just saw "wasn't believable". Believability isn't really a relevant criterion in my book - it's fine if that's your thing, but if it's original and imaginative and funny or frightening or so sad you want to sit down and weep until you lose consciousness, put it up there, I WILL BELIEVE IT. This was almost too believable. It read like a documentary of these events if they'd actually taken place, which would be all I could reasonably expect if they HAD actually taken place, but since this was fiction, I would have appreciated more of a creative spark. What I got was this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and the aliens are weird and inscrutable, which is not that surprising really, being as they're aliens, and more stuff happened, much of it depressing and unpleasant, the end. 

Then there was Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, not to be confused with The Book of Speculation which was in the list at the same time and has just come available, and I have no idea what THAT's about, but THIS was about a marriage, an affair, a woman who reminded me uncomfortably of myself ("Was she a good wife?" "Well, no.") a child, and a lot of ordinary stuff involved in all of those - "common catastrophes", "the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love", etc. It's written in a listy, aphorismy, stripped-of-all-extraneous material kind of style, and while reading I wondered if it was maybe easier to write a book this way, just concentrating on the pithy, sharp points of dialogue and exposition without the tedious connecting bits like describing what people look like or getting them from the kitchen to the living room. I don't know if it is easier, but in this case it worked brilliantly for me - I had to restrain myself from highlighting the entire thing. It was like she was admitting that things can get absolutely horribly bad in a marriage and a life, but if you keep your mind open to the strangeness and comedy and humanity of it all, it's - well, it's still horribly bad but you get a great book out of it. 

Which brings me to The Library at Mount Char. But now it's Tuesday, and I still can't find my keys, and my husband is still in Korea, and I haven't blogged for two weeks, and I almost got into the wrong car in a parking lot earlier, and I have to go cook something or order something or something. So hey, look, another book post where I don't actually review the book. That makes me charmingly quirky, right? I'll do it tomorrow. I promise. ("Was she a reliable blogger?" "Well, no.") 

Bluesfesting While Anxious

Before I had kids, I went to Bluesfest regularly, usually with a friend (my husband isn't really into live music. It's okay, he has a lot of other good qualities). It was downtown so I would bus nearby or to my friend's place and we would walk over. I saw John Hiatt, Buddy Guy and Saffire and the Uppity Blues Women (they were great musicians and hilarious - one of their songs was called Silver Beaver, and it's about pretty much what you'd guess from the title - and while I was looking them up to embed the link I read that one of them died and now I'm sad) and The Blind Boys of Alabama and a bunch of bands I didn't even know or can't remember now.

We moved to even more of a suburb. We had a couple of kids. Bluesfest moved somewhere a little less accessible and I stopped taking public transit and got less comfortable with it. Bluesfest got much less Blues-packed, but that wasn't really a factor for me - I like the blues, but I understand that the festival has to attract a wide demographic to sell more tickets. It fell off my radar a bit, it always took me off guard when it started in early July, and whenever I thought about it, I would think "I have to go back someday" but I kept not doing it. Until last year when Alison and I saw Styx and Foreigner in the pouring rain, followed by a double rainbow.

This year I was determined to make myself go. I thought I should bring Eve to at least some of it, since she likes music, and we like doing things together, and it would be the summer! Yay! Mother-daughter adventure, live music in the sun! I told her we could go see Iggy Azalea if she wanted to, and she was stoked. I bought us both passes at a good price the first day they were available. I felt all smug and cool and culture-consuming.

For about four days. Then I realized that Eve and I both have tendencies towards anxiety, and we both kind of hate crowds, and we're not that great with really loud places. Also, I don't love driving, especially downtown, especially when I don't know exactly where I'm going, or where to park. And I also hate hot weather, and Bluesfest is in Ottawa, in July. And as it got closer, I realized my husband wasn't even going to be home to walk me through the route I should take and possible parking spots - he was going to be in freaking Detroit or Dallas or some other city in the states that begins with D, and I was going to have to do this TOTALLY ALONE, except for my kid who I would probably scar for life by screwing up and driving the wrong way down a one-way street, or parking fifty blocks away and not getting to the festival site until all the music was done, or just sobbing in absolute terror.

Basically I looked at myself in the mirror going "THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU???"

School went on. School ended. Zarah came for a week and that distracted me. Then she left and I spent half a day in full-blown panic. I actually thought I might have to cancel.

But here's the thing. This is me at the beginning of every canoe trip, and dance, and party, and any event where I have to leave my reading chair and my house and my comfort zone: Why am I doing this? Who thought this was a good idea? I can listen to music and look at nature and make up witty quips at home. Why didn't I stay there?

The first night I had to breathe exaggerated deep breaths on the drive down and literally almost threw up.

The second night, I put on the dress I wanted to wear. I opened the door from bedroom to the hallway and Eve said "you look pretty!" I said "I feel like I'm showing too much of my boobs." She shrugged and said "enh."

The third night I took a couple of her friends who had tickets and met my friend Nat, who is WAY too cool to listen to Hedley but hung out with me out of a mixture of friendship and pity, with which I am TOTALLY fine. 

And partway into the experience, I remembered what I always realize: Sometimes you just have to get out of your house and do stuff. Because the world is big and inside your head can get very small. Because amazing opportunities will present themselves. 

Because you'll meet people who are a little different. 

Because you'll hear a familiar line of music, or fall in love with an unfamiliar one, or see an amazing view, or navigate a new stretch of river, or stretch a new set of muscles, and inside your head will get a little bigger. 

Because you'll be All Out of Love, Lost in Love, Making Love out of Nothing at All, and Every Woman in the World.

Because you'll find a seniors' centre that offers their parking lot as a fundraiser, and you'll know that most of your friends will refuse to pay for parking on principal, but you don't give a flying fuck because now you know exactly which address to punch into the GPS every time you drive down, and where to park, and how long a walk it will be (not long), and after Iggy Azalea (who is surprisingly very sweet and whose music is much less noisy and unintelligible than you assumed it would be, even in the second row) your daughter will sigh ecstatically and say "You don't even know how happy I am right now."

Because your husband will say "you should be proud of yourself, in some silly little way", and you'll say "uh, yeah, but not quite", and he'll say "sorry, I was trying not to be condescending" and you'll say "then you're doing it wrong", but it will be okay, because, yeah, it was kind of silly and little, but you did it. And next year you'll do it again. Hopefully minus the Kanye, because, *visceral sudder*, gah, the sweaty heaving mass of humanity you had to drag Eve through to get to the exit after Hawksley Workman? NOT pleasant.

Mondays on the Margins: Batting Clean-up

I keep trying to assure myself that when my reading focus goes off it's a temporary thing, but sometimes I worry that it's just an increasingly present phenomenon related to aging. Today I've decided that it's cyclical - even if the scatterbrained cycles come around more often, they will always pass. That's what I'm sticking with for now.

So, as I mentioned in this post, I've been having trouble finishing books. Starting them comes easily enough, middling them consists of bits of reading interspersed with other books, too much Netflix and lurking on social media, and then I realize I haven't marked a book as read on Goodreads for way too long, panic slightly, sit my ass down and finish something. Lather, rinse, repeat. I showed at book club with the book unfinished TWICE already this year, which is very unusual for me (I'm still working on digesting The Inconvenient Indian in small, spaced-out bites). Sometimes I'm not-reading for more defensible reasons - I just finished two fairly demanding courses and with Eve sick and the boys away all week-end I could have devoted many hours to the reading chair in between nursing duties, but I made myself walk Lucy and spend some time outside both days - but mostly not.

Happily, since we're talking nearly two months ago, I have managed to finish the books in the aforementioned post, so I thought I'd report back on them.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: I found it as utterly captivating all the way through as I did in the beginning. A lot of reviewers complained that not enough happened, which I acknowledge as a valid criticism, it just didn't bother me. I did think once or twice that some of it was almost a cheat because writing about magic is easy, but again, I didn't really care - I've read that it's being made into a movie (no great shock) and it will be really interesting to see the vision rendered cinematically. I read it slowly over a long period of time and every time I picked it up again I was just as happy to fall back into the world. Not something recommended for people who like plot-driven books with a lot of action.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel: I was able to renew the ebook after it expired, so I went back to it. It was probably my favourite of the fairly few steampunk novels I've read, especially with regards to characters. The zombie romance when it got going was quite charming, although the series worldbuilding seems to be sticking with the logical fact that, not to put too fine a point on it, zombies can't get erections due to lack of blood-flow (unlike in the series iZombie, which I love, but come on, if zombies are getting it on we need some kind of anatomical explanation to justify it). I'm not feeling any urgency to pick up the next book in the series, but on the whole it turned out better than I expected.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst: Huge disappointment. A really promising plot and setting that completely fizzled out, and a protagonist that was so limp and without agency that by the time she actually did something I could not have cared less. The reviews are pretty polarized on Goodreads, so go ahead and try it if you were already going to.

Emergence by David R. Palmer: SO FREAKING GOOD. I had to read it very slowly, interspersed with other books, because of the style (and possibly the print, *whimper*), but it completely bore out its early promise. I just realized I said I would review it "more comprehensively", so I'll wait and do a whole post on it.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain: After reading this, I now have on my reading pile "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" and "Under the Wide and Starry Sky" which is about Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, so I guess I've been shaken loose from my 'no fictional novels about actual historical characters' rule for the time being. Except that when you find certain things about the book really annoying - like how Hemingway and Hadley call each other by unbearably cutesy nicknames - you're not allowed to be annoyed at the author because they have some dumb excuse like it actually happened in real life, *eye roll*. Overall, really enjoyable.

Tuesdays on the Margins Because Reasons

So I saw my (rather dreamy) eye doctor and he thinks my contacts are giving me pink eye because of microscopic areas of inflammation in my eyes, possibly left over from when I was really sick over Christmas. So, eye drops. Then my ears got sore and I couldn't hear very well, so I went to the doctor, and she said I have an ear infection because of poor fluid drainage, possible due to who the fuck knows. So, ear drops. And (TMI alert), the nasal prongs from my CPAP have given me a blister inside my left nostril. So, laying off the CPAP for a few nights (who needs to sleep and breathe at the same time, let's not get greedy). And yes, first world problems and yay Canadian health care and all that crap, but perhaps you'll forgive me if I feel a bit like the seven plagues of Egypt have descended into my head. I'll keep you posted on whether locusts start flying out of my throat.

So my reading focus has been less than stellar. I keep starting new books and not finishing them. I keep reading YA and feeling like weeping when I contemplate tackling anything challenging. I can only read on the ipad once Lucy's in her crate, or it disturbs her (thank god I didn't get a dog before there were ipads). Which is fine, I have a crapton of books on my ipad, but making decisions is not my strong suit at the moment.

So, here are a few reviews of the partiality of the books I am reading at the moment.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: I bought this for my friend Janet for her birthday because she wanted to read it, and then she didn't love it. She passed it to another friend, and I finally remembered to ask for it when I was at her house, and then didn't touch it for a few months. I finally picked it up even though I didn't really feel intellectually equipped to read it (see above), but I'm finding it completely entrancing so far (not very far, see above). I'm torn between loving the setting and the writing, and being desperate to find out what happens next, and being sickened by the cruelty with which the two children are being used, and being afraid to find out how it all ends.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel: The main character's name is Nora Dearly, ha ha so clever. I think I borrowed this ebook on a whim from the library, and it is kind of interesting: The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria, high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. But it's also reminding me that I very rarely like steampunk as much as I want to or feel like I should. Also, I was promised a zombie love story, and I'm not seeing how that's going to happen. Of course, I probably have to read more than forty pages before complaining.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst: I think my friend Sue recommended this author, so I borrowed a couple of her ebooks. So far this is totally intriguing - the character is some kind of magical girl in some kind of non-magical Witness Protection Program, and I have no idea what's going on, but in that delicious way where you feel like when you do figure it out, it's going to be mind-blowingly cool. The only thing bugging me is how mean the female marshall is to the girl. Did anyone else watch In Plain Sight? I loved that show. The female marshall is like Mary Shannon but with only the bitchy parts and none of the heart-of-gold and humour. And also, remember how her partner was a marshall NAMED MARSHALL? That never got old. 

Emergence by David R. Palmer: I read this in a list of great but little-known post-apocalyptic books, so I ordered a crappy secondhand copy of it, which I carry around in my purse for when I'm in waiting rooms, and it's getting progressively more and more beat-up and losing little pieces, but it's AWESOME. The main character is an 11-year-old girl genius who, through an improbably set of coincidences ends up virtually alone in the world after a nuclear exchange. The whole book is written in shorthand, with no articles or pronouns. This is surprising in a couple of ways: first, how fast you get used to it, and second, how much funnier or more heartrending certain statements are when stripped of articles and pronouns. I will review this more comprehensively when I've finished.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLean: I was dimly aware of this for quite a while but not really interested - I don't really see the point of this kind of fictionalizing of actual historical characters. Do I recall why I went ahead and borrowed the ebook then? I do not. Do I recall why I started actually reading said ebook? Sort of - I think I opened Overdrive, and it was the only adult book on my bookshelf, so I forced myself to read a few pages and got hooked. It's not stunningly beautiful prose, but it's very readable, and I'm enjoying the evocation of the jazz age. I'm half reading it just ignoring that the characters are real people, and half enjoying the glimpse (even fictionalized) of Ernest Hemingway before he was Ernest Hemingway (it's so weird sometimes to think of famous people as only their first name; Ernest. People called him Ernest. That seems so wrong,). 

There are a couple more on my Goodreads currently-reading list, but these are the ones I'm actually reading every day or two right now. If I try to start anything else, somebody slap me. 

Too-Tired-To-Be-Surly Thursday

I'm tired of winter. I don't mind the cold all that much, but even that's annoying because I can't wear a winter coat in the car because I get too hot, so I just throw it in the backseat in case I get stranded somewhere (I'm heat-intolerant, not stupid) and wear a sweater, and strangers keep asking me where my coat is. And my hands get hot if I wear mittens too long, so I take them off and then my skin gets so dry my knuckles bleed because there's no moisture anywhere in the city. I went into Pennington's yesterday and was trying on a shirt and the lady knocked on the door and asked how I was doing and I said fine, except I'm afraid I might spontaneously combust from all the static. When she handed me my bill an actual spark flew between our hands.

I'm tired of all the stuff in my house. I keep cleaning and reorganizing and throwing stuff out and giving stuff away and I STILL can't get it to look the way I feel like it should look. When you walked in the door of the house I grew up in, if you looked around there were clean surfaces and well-placed furniture (ugly floral-patterned beige - it was the seventies, after all - but well-placed) and, I don't know, rake marks in the rug. It was neat and tidy. I don't think I've lived anywhere tidy since I moved out of that house. Why can't I achieve tidiness? Is tidiness just not my destiny?

I'm tired of my hair. For a while I had figured out what to get my stylist to do with it and it was pretty good - not great, but pretty good. Then either I stopped explaining it properly or she stopped understanding, or my hair underwent some weird middle-aged metamorphosis so it doesn't work anymore, and I'm a loser who can't do my hair again. I will never achieve a polished look. Granted, I was never going to work on Wall Street anyway, but I'd like to feel like if I DID want to work on Wall Street, it would be my lack of ambition or inability to do simple arithmetic or tendency to cry when yelled at that would hold me back, not my stupid hair.

I'm tired of wearing a bra. I don't like not wearing one either. I wish my boobs were removable. Yesterday I drove Angus to  school, then went to the eye doctor, then went grocery shopping, then came home and shoveled the driveway before going in, which meant I was still wearing a pretty bra. The pretty bra's underwire ends scraped the skin beside my underarms raw before I was finished (refer back to: I'm tired of winter/ no moisture anywhere in the city). I finished shoveling, went in, took off my bra, got the dog and took her outside to pee. The dog, who has whimpered and shivered and cried to go back in every single other time we take her outside, suddenly decided that OUTSIDE IS AWESOME and we should go prancing down the street and frolic in snowbanks and sniff chunks of dirty ice. Which was all well and good, except I thought we were just going out for a minute and now I was walking braless down the street towards my neighbours who were out shoveling their snow. And no, I wasn't wearing a jacket (refer back to: I'm tired of winter and never wear a winter coat). I explained to the dog that Anna and Elsa were frozen and not ready to be introduced to the neighbours and dragged her back home.

I'm tired of solo parenting. Only one more untidy, unpolished, polysporin-on-my-knuckles-and-armpits sleep before my husband gets home from Japan.

So This Happened

The first story in Jeanette Winterson's collection The World and Other Places is called The 24-Hour Dog. I used to be uniformly smitten with everything I read by Jeanette Winterson, and the first time I read this collection I still thought she was one of the most original and imaginative writers ever. I still think a lot of her writing is inspired, but I've also come around to acknowledging that critics who call her pompous and overblown are not always entirely wrong.

I don't know if the unnamed, ungendered narrator in the 24-Hour Dog is supposed to be Winterson - it certainly seems like it could. The narrator captures a lot of the broad strokes of dogness beautifully: "I made him walk on a lead and he jumped for joy, the way creatures do, and children do and adults don't do, and spend their lives wondering where the leap went"; "This was a little bit of evolution that endlessly repeats itself in the young and new-born thing. In this moment there are no cares or aeroplanes. The Sistine Chapel is unpainted, no book has been written"; I looked at him, trusting, vulnerable, love without caution. He was a new beginning and every new beginning returns the world. In him, the rain forests were pristine and the sea had not been blunted."

She keeps the dog for a day and then returns him to the farmer because "he has found me out". The experience is too intense and the dog will be happier with "children and ducks and company", but he will not be "the kind of dog he could have been if I had met him edge to edge, his intensity and mine... What would I have done? Taught him to read?"

Holy hell, what kind of pretentious bullshit is that? It's a dog - it was never going to quote Shakespeare, and you gave him back because he howled all night and you like your sleep.

That said, I lay awake the first night Lucy cried piteously (not for all that long) in her crate at the foot of my bed, Matt on the couch downstairs, Angus in the basement and Eve down the hall with earplugs behind a firmly closed door, and I felt that same rush of terror and self-doubt and "why did I think I could do this?" that I felt when we brought Angus home. People do this all the time, but I don't deal well with change, and the kind of change that disturbs the night tends to tweak my anxiety/insomnia trigger. I was scared.

But she's not a baby. She's a dog. A small dog. Sometimes she leaves unpleasant substances around the house, but it's a small amount. Those babies that I brought home and was terrified at being responsible for are big, strapping people that can take on a lot of the responsibility for this furry little pain in the butt.

I was over at a friend's house and she was saying that her son was out on a date with a girl, and she was totally exasperated at the way she'd wanted her kids to hurry up and grow and now all of a sudden here they were, grown. And it's true. Actually even if you DON'T want them to hurry up and grow it's true. So I'm trying not to wish this away. I'm taking a sleeping pill now and then so I won't be lying awake waiting for her to need to go out. I'm enjoying watching tv with a lapful of warm puppy and trying not to worry about what else I should be doing. Last night I put her in her crate, went to get ready for bed, and when I came out of the bathroom both her and my husband were snoring happily.

She's a baby. She's a ridiculous upheaval in the routine. She's a rallying point for the family. She's a dire threat to my bath mat. She's a new beginning that returns the world.

She's just a dog. We're keeping her.

Day 23

I don't feel good. I woke up yesterday with seized neck and upper back muscles. So I took some painkillers and then I felt nauseous. Today my back is a little better but I'm still kind of nauseous, and I'm afraid to take anything for my back OR for the nausea. And now I feel like the week-end has slipped away in this haze of pain and sickness and I didn't leave the house and I'm sort of sad and worried and icky.

On Friday the kids had a P.D. Day and Angus went to a movie with two baseball friends. He called at around four and asked if I would pick them up and drive them all home. I could have told them to take the bus. But I wasn't doing anything especially important, and my dad would have done it for me at the same age. The two other boys are funny and quick-witted, and Matt calls them Team Shit-Disturbers but I find them sweet. They both thanked me multiple times for the ride and one said "it's so sad now how it gets dark so early", and I wanted to clasp him to me and weep empathetically into his hair.

I finished Dreams of Gods and Monsters - well, first I started, and then realized I had to reread the first two books, which I don't always do although I almost always wish I had (unless I waited until the whole series was published to start). And mercifully the first two were instantly available as ebooks from the library. So I read them, and then I restarted the third, and then I finished it, and it was wonderful. Although I'm kind of sad that it's over.

I also remembered that I had stopped watching The Big C halfway through Season 3, and started watching again, and I still love it, but now it's almost over, and it's a show about cancer, so over really means over. Perhaps not the wisest viewing choice for this time of year.

It turns out that most of my book club was at World Trivia Night, which reminded me that I have book club on Wednesday and had totally forgotten to locate and read the book AGAIN. So I bought it on my Kindle. It's short and I will be able to finish it by Wednesday. I hate it. It's silly, shallow with pretensions of profundity, adolescent, tries to use sex and bodily functions as shocking devices which just seems pathetic, and generally it's the worst published thing I've read in a long, long time. At least it doesn't make me sad. My comments so far are: "Jesus Christ"; "Because you're an asshole"; "Um, no."; "Jesus Christ again."; "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST." Should make for a spirited discussion.

Last night I was reading in my chair and Eve was reading in my bed. I started nodding off. It was eight-thirty. I knew I should get up and do something or I would fall asleep and then screw my night's sleep up even more colossally than it's usually screwed. Instead I crawled under the covers beside Eve and closed my eyes while she stroked my hair and played me a lullaby of quietly turning pages.

I've spent worse Saturday nights.

Surly Thursday: Microscopic Version

You know when small stuff bugs you, and it's small, so the fact that it bugs you also kind of bugs you?

Crabtree and Evelyn has discontinued my very favouritest body lotion in the whole entire world. I can't use stuff that's too greasy or I just end up needing to wash it off - I can't even go near body butter just because of the name - and I can't use stuff that's too strongly scented because it gives me a headache, but I like a faint pleasant scent. This lotion was perfect - soothing but not gloppy, with a really nice light scent. The salesperson at the C&E said a bunch of people had been asking for it and it was always extremely popular, which makes the whole thing perplexing as well as annoying. I bought this instead, and it's okay, but slightly heavier, and the scent is nice enough but kind of disappears as soon as I walk out of the bathroom, plus Eve hates lemons so I keep thinking I'm going to be repulsive to her while wearing it. And yes, I am aware that this is the Firstest of First World Problems.

Photo credit Chris Hawes

Eve was on a field trip to some kind of conservation area a few weeks ago and it was raining. They were walking down some stairs and a boy ran past her, knocking her down so that she fell backwards onto the stairs. She's been having lower back pain ever since. I don't really think the teacher needed to call me or anything, I'm just sort of inarticulately upset about the whole thing - why was the idiot boy running on slippery stairs (because grade six boys are idiots), why didn't anyone make sure she was okay (because she doesn't typically kick up a big fuss when she gets hurt because she finds it embarrassing), and, as someone who has experienced back pain for years, I keep thinking is this going to go away or continue to plague her into the future? Will she one day be thinking, everything was fine until I fell on that field trip? And yes, I realize that I am catastrophizing and proportion-blowing and there's no reason why I should be crying while typing this, and it's just November and dark and the very air just seems to be peering at me and finding me wanting. Mostly it's just a stupid thing that happened that is making me feel crummy.

I also feel like we've attracted some kind of financial evil eye curse thing. A month or so ago we got a flurry of notices from Revenue Canada saying we owed a huge amount of money. They also seemed to think that we hadn't filed tax returns for the last five years, which isn't true, so it will probably get sorted out in time. Then, last Saturday when I was at the comedy club, at some point between my paying for my ticket downstairs (with my credit card) and paying for my drinks upstairs, someone used my credit card for an internet purchase of a $1500 microscope. Visa has to open an investigation, and it will probably be sorted out, in time. This means I have to be patient and unhysterical and accept that the problem is not instantly fixable, which I am bad at.

On the other hand, the fact that there's $1500 dollars on our credit card that we didn't spend doesn't mean we can't buy our kids Christmas presents. And the house across the street from us caught on fire on Monday night and is probably a write-off, while I am still sitting in my own kitchen, which is messy but unburned. And I have friends with cancer. So I am aware that, in the grand scheme of things, these are small problems.

Small problems that would seem even smaller if I smelled faintly of lavender and goat milk. Dammit.

Day 8

I'm going out with a group of friends to a comedy club for my friend Janet's birthday tonight. I'm having vexatious, near-paralyzing intrusive thoughts, and my hair, in the run-up to my haircut appointment this week, is nearing Medusa-like proportions. Basically, I'm a mess from the neck up.

I'm hoping to laugh my troubles away tonight, and/or soak them off in a hot tub , with an option on burying them under an extremely jury-rigged coconut raspberry layer cake.

See you tomorrow.

Chicken Soup for the Cranky Sleep-Deprived Soul

I went to bed early last night to start my solo-parenting stretch with enough sleep. At 6:30 I felt like the day had gone on forever, and I took a sleeping pill, so I figured eleven wasn't an unreasonable time to expect my body to cooperate.

Have I mentioned my body is kind of an asshole?

So this morning I dragged my ass out of bed after not nearly enough sleep, and instead of seven feeling like eight it felt like five, and packed lunches and got ready to go to the gym and grocery store with Pam. I was sleepy and stuffy and dopey and I did not feel good at all.

We went to the gym (third time in a row with no excuses obstacles or unforeseeable events preventing us from getting there). We walked on the treadmill. We watched that debt show that's almost as good as I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant for snarky schadenfreude ("We can hardly pay our rent and we buy a new turnip dehydrator every season and I only wear silk and we never do our taxes, but we're half a million in debt? HUGE surprise!"). We did weights, even the ones we don't usually do and we have to read the instructions and keep doing them wrong.

We went down to the grocery store and I told Pam to remind me that I had to get chicken soup for Angus because it wasn't on my list. We backtracked several times because we forgot that mascarpone would be with the fancy cheese, not the Cracker Barrel in the last aisle, and I didn't believe Pam about where the pineapple was (sorry Pam) and then we saw the bakery wall of doughnuts that was self-serve. I thought to myself "Angus is home sick" and I thought to myself "Eve is so sweet and helpful when Matt's away", and I thought to myself  "consoling and/or rewarding your kids with food is a recipe for disaster" and then I thought to myself "don't be such a judgy bitch" and bought them each a cookies and cream doughnut for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON.

Pam and I agreed that it would have been better if we had never noticed the bakery wall of self-serve doughnuts. On the plus side, we do both have very bad memories. For example, I still forgot the fucking chicken soup, and Pam forgot to remind me. So she took me to the drug store on the way home, for chicken soup AND Angus's prescription, which I managed to remember was there.

Our check-out girl at the grocery store was hilarious - she gave me a plastic bag for the doughnuts, and then while I was trying to bag the rest of my stuff and Pam's, every time there was a bread item she would bark "pastry bag!" so I had to bag all of our bread together even though we were going to different houses - okay, she was hilarious AND a little scary.

I bought a poppy and stuck it on my gym bag, because I am patriotic, but I never wear a damned coat. I've already poked myself in the side and the leg while swinging the bag around. Also, in a few weeks when I'm wondering where the hell the restaurant gift cards that I bought Angus for Christmas went, somebody remind them they're in my gym bag, kay?

Our check-out guy at the Bulk Barn was funny too. And we noticed that we were getting a really good return-smile ratio for all the people we smiled at. And I got home and drank some green juice and it wasn't too gingery, which it sometimes is.

And I feel pretty good.

April, June and NaBloPoMo

YES, I'm doing NaBloPoMo again.

NO, I'm not feeling confident or inspired.

YES, I've sat on my ass all day reading which seemed like a great idea at the time because my husband's leaving for a week and a half in Japan at 6 a.m. tomorrow and I'm conserving my strength.

NO, it does not seem like a great idea now.

YES, I have multiple ideas for posts and several drafts.

NO, I don't feel energetic or un-lazy enough to actually make those ideas and drafts into posts.

YES, I'm looking forward to reading posts by my friends who are doing NaBloPoMo and discovering a few new blogs from the blogroll.

NO, I'm not sure I can deal with the corresponding inevitable writing envy.

YES, I do think I tend to slack off blogging in October and then count on NaBloPoMo to whip me back into shape.

NO, I don't mean to make this a pattern of behaviour.

YES, I am hoping hard that Eve is especially prolific with the funny, witty, bloggable Eve-isms this month.

NO, I'm not proud of that fact.

YES, I should do an easy Halloween post right for today but I'm too lazy to go and get my phone and edit and download the pictures so I'm going to do it on a much less Halloween-appropriate day instead.

NO, there's nothing you can do about it, it's NaBloPoMo, I will be posting about the most asinine, out-of-date and irrelevant crap you can imagine and calling it good. I dropped a cracker earlier and didn't bother to pick it up because I was sunk deep in my reading chair with a book and a sherpa blanket and a pillow and it seemed like too much trouble to unfold myself and look for it. This type of thing will shortly comprise an entire blog post. With adjectives, and pathetic fallacy.

YES, I do sometimes think there's something wrong with me.

NO, I've never been to Iceland.

YES, I've run out of things to say about NaBloPoMo.

NO, there are no pictures in this post.

YES, I suddenly realize that I've become terrified of publishing posts without any pictures to break up the text.

NO, I'm not going to go look for a picture of a November calendar page now.

YES, okay, I might, but I'm not going to add it to the post.

NO, I'm not a giant-ass liar.

YES, okay, maybe I am.

Art bv Amanda Cass

Surly *cough wheeze* Thursday

Things that are making me surly this week:

1) This goddamned never-ending plague of never-endingness. I'm grateful that I got through Matt's school reunion and the wedding and Blissdom before I got sick, but I would VERY MUCH like to be DONE BEING SICK NOW, please. I just talked to my recovering-from-abdominal-surgery-sister who I didn't visit after Blissdom because I felt the plague coming on and didn't want to introduce it into her open wound, and I had to hang up because I eventually couldn't get any words out in between the hacking. My voice sounds like I've been swallowing sandpaper due to sucking on my inhaler every half hour (it sounds something like this). And the snot, god, the snot - is there an actual god of snot? Oh look, here's a Japanese storm god born from the snot of his creator's dripping nostril. Maybe that's why it's been rainy and dark all damned week. 

2) It's been rainy and dark all damned week. I was at physio today and the chirpy sugar-averse physio tech was rhapsodizing about we need the rain to wash everything clean. Stow it, sister, my hair looks like I've been combing it with the same sandpaper that wrecked my voice, and the fall leaves are all wet and sad lying on the street. 

3) I think the rain and snot have sludged up my memory beyond repair. I either forget to put on deodorant or forget that I HAVE put on deodorant and put it on five times - so I'm spending four times as much money on deodorant and I STILL smell less-than-fresh half the time. Also, yesterday I made tea for me and Pam and I put milk in hers and then I put milk in mine, to keep her company or maintain a nice symmetry or something, not because I WANTED milk in my tea. Then I kept forgetting there was milk in it and drinking it and wondering why it tasted weird. 

4) I think I'm adversely affecting the books I'm reading. I've been trying to read this, by an author whose previous two books were really good. The fourth night I picked it up, I realized I wanted to do anything else in the world but read this book - like, things involving garbage, or rats, or algebra. So I put it down. And then I read this, which seemed like it should be right up my alley, and all I could think was that I was SO SICK of books about family members keeping secrets from other family members and only giving hints enough to make damned sure that the person will do whatever they have to to find out what the secret is and then horror, panic, tragedy, the end. Of course, I also get really annoyed by books when someone keeps a secret and whoever finds out the secret is enraged that the secret was kept and swears that they'll never forgive the secret-keeper, because usually there's a perfectly good reason for the secret being kept and chances are you have secrets of your own so take a freaking breath and stop being so judgey.

5) I can't decide how I feel about secrets.

6) My PVR recorded Castle instead of Forever on Monday. Okay, I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel now. There are probably more things that are clearly and justifiably surly-making, but I've forgotten them. I'm pretty sure I'm wearing deodorant, though. 

Pain is Inevitable. Suffering is Optional.

Photo by Boemski

For the past few months I've been going to physiotherapy twice a week, with exceedingly bad grace. Back in the spring, my husband was run off his feet between work and baseball, so I did all the backyard clean-up and gardening myself. My left arm was sore afterwards, but I assumed it was just normal-exercise-sore, like after weight-lifting, and waited for it to get better. It didn't. Every time I lifted something, even a glass of water or a book, with my left hand, burning needles shot down my left forearm. I waited until the kids went back to school and booked an appointment. While I was there, I figured I'd also get my physiotherapist to have a look at my right shoulder, which I hurt while working retail in Toronto many, many years ago when we were too poor and carless to bother with any medical appointment that wasn't an emergency.

Yes, please ask me how badass I felt sitting there explaining my two injuries as "over-exuberant gardening" and "old bookstore injury". I thought about making something up, but I didn't manage to put the finishing touches on my Merchant Marines story before my first appointment.

Photo by Tangled Frog

It's a drag. It takes four times as long as a chiropractor appointment, and I already have trouble fitting those in. I love my physiotherapist, but the technician she had when I went for my knee is on maternity leave, so she has a new one, who I don't quite love. She's young, and Eastern European, and has some very strong and, to me, quite objectionable views on feminism (she thinks women shouldn't chew gum or wear pants, or be stronger than men in front of men), and animal and insect rights (she thinks you should let animals and insects take over your house, because they were their first) and whether it's permissible to shake someone's can of Coke without their knowledge when you object to the drinking of Coke on the grounds that it is 'poisoning yourself' (she thinks it is). I think it would be a waste of time to get into a debate with her about any of these issues, but the ten minutes while she's applying ultrasound therapy to my brachialis go very, very slowly. Then there's the fact that the deep massage to break up inflammation actually makes both arms hurt more coming out than they did going in. In theory, I'm all for short-term pain for long-term gain. In practice, it kind of bites.

So I was there on Tuesday. It was crowded. I was sitting with ice strapped around my left bicep and heat laid over my right shoulder, reading my physio book of the moment, which means whatever small, light book I can hold in one hand and I leave it in my purse to read at physio over successive appointments, so on top of everything else, the tech keeps saying "wow, you're a really slow reader".

I was startled from my reading by a gruff, old man's voice booming "This must be a miserable place to work!" Someone asked him why he would say that, and he bellowed "No one's smiling!"

My first thought (after 'what's my dad doing at physio?) was "Dude, why would anyone be smiling? This is the opposite of fun."

Everyone had been startled from their reveries, and I looked around. Across the aisle from me was an extremely fit-looking woman with a perfectly cut bob, lying on her stomach with suction cups on her back. Beside me was a teen-ager in booty shorts (said without disapproval - if I looked like that in booty shorts I would be sitting here typing this wearing booty shorts) with acupuncture needles in her lower back, texting on her phone. From behind a curtain, I could see a strong-looking physio guy with a shaved head massaging someone's foot with absolute concentration. And I thought, maybe I shouldn't complain about taking two hours out of my week to be touched by kind and capable hands. Maybe I should try to see the ultrasound tech's passion and conviction instead of her youthful wrongheadedness (although let's be clear, if she tries to shake my Diet Pepsi I'm taking the bitch down). Suddenly the whole thing seemed like a sweet, tender tableau of human frailty and connection. I've always loved the quote that says that when all is said and done, we're all just walking each other home, and it's not the worst thing if some of us are limping and other are offering a supportive arm. Here we all were, still breathing, trying to feel better, headed in the right direction.

Photo by エン バルドマン

And at that moment, everyone was smiling.

Blue Monday. And Tuesday. And all the other days.

So last week was tough. I was recovering from my second mysterious barfing plague in two weeks, my husband was in France, and Tuesday evening it started raining and didn't stop until Friday afternoon. It wasn't that there was so much to do - there were two baseball games and a school barbecue to deal with, but none of them actually ended up happening, because of illness (Angus's) or weather. It wasn't that I fed the kids leftover macaroni and bacon on Monday and ordered pizza on Tuesday and then made chicken souvlaki on Wednesday and made them eat it for the rest of the week.

Photo credit John Beales

It was that I was doing everything while dragging these shackles around. You know, the depression shackles, the ones that clank around behind you and make every step a huge effort, while hollering lie after lie. You're ugly. You're useless. Nobody loves you. Your kids wish they had a better mother. They also whisper a few things that are probably true. You will never be totally free of this.

Sometimes there's no way out but through, right? Even though I tried to open the curtains in my room and pulled the whole curtain rod down. Even though I spilled every container of juice I reached for.  By Friday I felt like I couldn't move. I had a long-overdue haircut booked for 12:30. I took the kids to school and took a shower and sat in a chair to read but I could hardly turn the pages. I fell asleep reading. Later I fell asleep under the hair dryer. But hair has to be cut, kids have to be fed, husbands eventually return from France, and I only have one book club end-of-year dinner a year (it's a hence-the-name thing).

I forced myself out of the house. I kept fake smiling until my smile felt less fake. One of my book club friends said, at one point, "she's strange. She works hard during the week, but then on Saturday she'll just sit in a chair and read all day and not interact with anyone!" I said "yeah, what a freak." and everyone laughed, and it was okay because suddenly I was basically okay with my book-freakiness again.

Just so this post isn't all about my pain, here is our book club list for the forthcoming year:

Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy

All the President's Men and/or Crazy Town

How Should a Person Be, Sheila Heti

Crow Lake, Mary Lawson

The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier

The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

The Beautiful Mystery, Louise Penny

And now I can see that last week was tough, because I'm in a different week. And today I had to water the flowers because it hasn't rained for a couple of days. And I feel a little lighter. And it's okay, because if I was totally free of those periodic shackles, my life would probably be way too easy.