Not-Quite-Surly Thursday

Have I mentioned how much I love everyone who reads and comments here, and how I would totally buy you all homes in the south of France if I could? Even though I still don't know if we should get a dog? Because I really really do, and I really really would. And we are completely maybe getting some kind of dog some day.

I picked Eve up at school dismissal to whip her over to piano lessons, then whip her back to the school so I could do my interview with her teacher and then we could work the book fair for the evening, which is always nuts because all the parents come in before or after their interviews.

I had my usual four-minute interview - Eve's enthusiastic, Eve's bright and interested and wonderful and when Eve and Marianna sit close together they talk too much. Check. I went back to wait with Eve for the librarian to arrive and unlock the library. She was six minutes late. There were people lined up and pounding on the library doors like they were high and the last cookies in the world were in there. The school secretary asked if I would be confident opening the book fair alone and I said yes because if I didn't I was afraid they would all pounce on Katy when she came in and chew her down to the bone.

Did I mention that the debit/credit machine wouldn't work inside the library, so every time someone wanted to pay with plastic we (mostly me because I don't get cold) had to go out of the library, around the tables where they were selling school t-shirts, and out the double glass doors into the cold November darkness? And then sometimes the machine would still fuck with me, like "take me outside. Now I'm thirsty. I'd like a pony. Is that five green bars you see? Oh, now it's two red ones. Maybe I'll connect to the wireless and maybe I won't, what are you gonna do about it?" An extremely classy operation, it was. One guy said he felt like he was going to get his books home and discover that there were a bunch of letters missing. At one point the principal said we should try the conference room, and one man yelled across the library to his son "I'll be right back, I'm just going into this room with this lady". So that was awesome.

Anyway. We made a buttload of money for the school. Eve was awesome, both for her math skills and her entertainment value. The kids were awesome. I always feel extremely useful at book fair time. Also, Eve just read the third paragraph of this post because she demanded approval rights if I was going to tell the world that she and Marianna talk too much, and she said "now I know why I want to be an author - I get those skills from you." So that doesn't suck either.

The Thing is, Universe, I'm Easily Confused

On Saturday, Zarah and I were walking to the market in downtown Barrie. I was saying that I sort of thought Eve needed a dog, and I wasn't even necessarily opposed to the idea, but I'm such an inveterate waffler that I wasn't confident it would happen even if it was meant to. I HATE making big decisions. I do endless research, I go back and forth, I hope desperately that the final choice will be taken out of my hands one way or another - trust me, do NOT ever ask me to pick the restaurant unless you want to pass out from low blood sugar.

As we walked into the ATM vestibule, I was saying that I would love to have a dog around when Matt was away, and having to walk something a couple of times a day would probably be good for me AND Eve, and my dad loves dogs but can't have one because my mom hates them, so he'd like it too, but I couldn't get past the crap; I'm finally done cleaning up my kids' crap and something in me balks at the thought of taking in a family member that would NEVER learn to wipe its own ass. Then again, I told Eve that she could have a dog as soon as she was willing to pick up poop, so maybe that would be the turning point.

At this point, a very nice-looking older woman at the adjacent ATM burst out laughing and said she couldn't help overhearing and she had to share with me that she had had all the same reservations about getting a dog and now she couldn't imagine not having hers, that it sort of like how your own kids' crap was less revolting than other kids' crap, and she was the biggest suck for her dog ever.

We thanked her for her input, and as we left the bank, Zarah said "well, if you believe at all in signs from the universe, you HAVE to get a dog now."

Today as I was waiting for Eve to get home, I heard loud, furious barking from outside. My dad had driven Eve home, and he was following Eve to the house to get back some baking containers that my mom needed. And the dog from next door, who usually loves everyone, was in an attack pose looking at my dad, who dogs always love, and losing his ever-loving shit. It was as if my dad had said in dog language, I am here to steal all the bones and all the balls EVER. We all tried to calm the dog down, but it kept looking as if it wanted to eat my dad and bury him, then it grabbed a beer can someone had left on our lawn and took off. My dad shook his head and got in his car and drove away.

Someone tell the universe I don't do well with ambiguity.

Day 12

You know it's a bad NaBloPoMo post day when I resort to day-counting. I know it's a bad brain day when I have to stop and wonder how many days it's been and then I realize the Mo stands for month - IT'S THE DATE, STUPID.

Today I was getting dinner ready in the kitchen and Eve was asking me questions and her voice was coming from a place it doesn't usually come from - she wasn't in the bathroom or at the top of the stairs in the doorway to her room, which is where she's usually yelling from when I'm in the kitchen. I asked her where she was and she said "in here".

She was reading in the reclining chair in the living room. No one ever reads in that chair. No one even sits in that chair. Usually that chair holds Matt's briefcase and/or baseball and basketball crap. She was cuddled up in it with her book and a blanket.

It was like looking through a portal into an alternate dimension.

I listened to some of a program on CBC today about homosexuals and the Catholic Church. The priest on the show said "homosexuals are welcome in the Catholic Church."

Let's all just sit with that for a bit and maybe revisit the issue tomorrow.

Mondays on the Margins: Book Fair Edition

A couple of months ago, Katy the library tech at our school said the principal didn't really want us to have the Book Fair this year.

Uh........ say WHAT?

WHO DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE A BOOK FAIR?

Eventually she said we could have the Book Fair. A couple of weeks ago Katy said nobody had volunteered for the Book Fair. The newsletter is online now, which is great. People were always complaining about getting more than one newsletter if they had more than one kid at the school - having it online wastes much less paper. The only problem is that almost nobody reads it when it's online, so nobody knew we NEEDED volunteers.

So I said no problem. I'll just come every day.

As it turns out, we got more volunteers, which thank god because I love the Book Fair and I COULD go all day every day and today flew by and the library is my happy place, BUT my introvert energy tank is empty and I fed my kids leftover Chinese food and no vegetables for supper and I am brain. dead.

I sold erasers that look like lunch boxes, makeup compacts, video game controllers, moustaches, guitars and licorice.

I sold long sticks with a hand on the end that were meant for teachers to use as pointers for whiteboards but were being bought by children for the sole purpose of whacking each other.

I was paid fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for two books - in nickels and dimes.

I said "okay, I can hold the Super Ear for you, but only until four o'clock."

I said "please don't bite the eraser, it's not made of actual food" more than once.

I said "no, nothing is free" more than once.

I almost hugged a little boy who came in, closed his eyes and said rapturously, "I can smell the books!

I experienced total brain-lock while trying to perform a fairly simple subtraction. I think actual smoke came out of my ears. We usually have calculators. Tomorrow I'm bringing a calculator.

I bought Eve this book and this book and a few other books. Then I let her buy a poster with puppies on it. I guess I was weak from all the math.

Eve came in for the hour we were open after school. She's better at math than I am, so she was helpful. We were looking at books and she picked one that Katy said was really good but had a few inappropriate words, and Eve said "that's okay. I'm an inappropriate child." Katy said that was understandable considering who her mother was. Before we left, Eve did a killer version of Walking on Sunshine with one of the stick-hand-pointer things, which had Katy and me practically on the floor, although that was maybe partly fatigue. And math.

I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed. With a book. I think that's fair. Ha.

I am spent

I'm home from Zarah's. I had a fabulous time. The last couple hours of the drive were miserable and I'm exhausted and half-blind and in bed at ten to eight after scrambling to find something appropriate for Eve to wear to sing at the Remembrance Day assembly tomorrow. I didn't schedule a post for today because I thought I would be able to write one tonight when I got home.

I was wrong.

But the Book Fair starts tomorrow. Stay tuned.....

Qualms and Quandaries

My friend Collette and I took our kids (her three, my two) to see Ender’s Game on Tuesday evening. Collette and I and her two boys, both avid readers, had read the book and all placed it in our top ten list of all time. A few months ago, I was talking to Collette and since she had once said she would never pay money to see another Mel Gibson movie, I asked how she felt about paying money to see a movie based on a book by Orson Scott Card, to which she replied “huh?”. After I filled her in, she added something like, “did you have to tell me that, you bitch?”

It’s a funny thing, the artist verses the art thing. Works of the most heart-stopping beauty and magnificence can come from the most reprehensible of human beings. I find it mystifying that writing that to me has always seemed suffused with the utmost kindness and generosity of spirit, comes from an intelligence that believes wholeheartedly that homosexuality is the gravest of sins.

Another friend consoled us with the fact that Card had made all his money off the movie up front, and that ticket sales wouldn’t put anything extra into his pocket. He also said that he has no difficulty divorcing the art from the artist, so he would have experienced no moral dilemma either way.

I’m honestly not entirely sure where I stand on the matter (I’m sure that comes as a great shock to everyone). If I buy a book by Orson Scott Card, I’m endorsing his writing, not his views on sexuality, right? Should I boycott every author who holds an opinion I find objectionable? Every movie starring an actor who’s gotten drunk and spouted racist slurs? I did publicly state that I would never eat at Chick fil a – by the preceding logic shouldn’t I be saying that if the chicken was good enough I would eat it even though the place was owned by bigots?

On the whole, I would say it does make a difference, however unquantifiable. I can’t say I won’t ever buy a book by Orson Scott Card again. I don’t want to refuse to read or see anything made by people I disagree with, because that furthers no one’s growth. I guess I need to think about this some more.

As for the movie, it wasn’t blow-your-mind wonderful, but it wasn’t as big a disappointment as it could have been. Some of the exposition was pretty ham-handed, which was partly regrettable and partly understandable, given the time constraints. The two boys who read the book and the boy and two girls who hadn’t all said they really liked it. Harrison Ford was good, Asa Butterfield was really good, and Angus and Eve and I couldn’t get over the fact that Bonzo Madrid was played by Rico from Hannah Montana. 

Wonder

I went in to the school library on Tuesday to shelve books, as usual. I also helped the library tech staple Book Fair flyers, with the help of an absolutely charming 6^th grader named Anna. She told us at length about some of her favourite books, including Rules, Out of My Mind and Wintergirls (“I love books about characters with disabilities or diseases!” she exclaimed, with completely unabashed sweetness and sincerity.) This reminded me that I have to tell you, and all my friends and family, and everyone else I meet ever, that you must not miss reading Wonder.

It’s one of those books where you keep hearing the hype and you think the book can’t possibly live up to the hype (similar to how I thought “oh come on, there’s no way The Bloggess’s book will make me laugh OUT LOUD”, and then my husband stormed downstairs to sleep on the couch) and then it lives up to the hype and more. For me, anyway – if there’s one thing we’ve all learned here, I think it’s that different people can love each other and NOT love the same books, although if I’m totally honest I have to say that there are people I now think an infinitesimally bit less of now, but I try not to dwell on it.

It’s a first novel. If I think about that too much, it makes me weep. It’s SO FUCKING GOOD. It’s deeply moving and revelatory without being preachy, it’s beautifully written without being flowery, it’s funny and honest and the characters are wonderful and the way the family deals with things reminds me a lot of the way my family deals with things. I love it. I LOVE it. Katy, the school librarian, let me borrow it from the school library over the summer, and I wanted Eve to read it to, but she didn’t get a chance, which is fine because I’m buying ONE copy at the VERY least. 

Read it. Get your kids to read it. If you don't love it, that's fine. Just don't tell me.