Nurturing-Good-Thoughts Thursday

Does it sound weird if I say I think of myself generally as a happy person? I know I complain a lot. I know my serotonin and dopamine levels are frequently recalcitrant. But I also know I have a really great life. Parents, sister, husband, kids, friends - all pretty much beyond reproach (not that I don't reproach the heck out of all of them on occasion). Food, shelter, clothing, more books than you can shake a stick at.

So if I'm feeling a little flat this week, and I can feel the cancer-thoughts sparking like malevolent little fireflies in my head every time I feel an ache or pain, and everything I'm reading seems dumb, and things are just kind of lustreless and wearying, I know it will pass. And so as not to let the whole week go by post-less, I'm concentrating on the things that have made me happy instead of surly recently:

My Dad and Lucy: "I always said I didn't like little dogs. Guess I have to eat my words." Happily, the words taste like puppy snuggles.

Walking around the arboretum with Pam, watching people and dogs and the odd woman dressed as  a Flower Fairy for a photo shoot, and an old man on a rock in Dow's Lake who I thought was peeing but was actually fishing. Whew.

Having a baseball-playing birthday boy who just wants hot dogs for dinner.

These. Duh.

Watching Eve and the school basketball team win six straight games, including the final...

with two of her best friends since birth.

Convertible ride! With Swiss Chalet and Paddington on the other end!

Mother's Day was low-key (boys were away) but nice. Eve and I went to my mom and dad's and I thought while we were there how nice it is to have a family where everyone just really enjoys hanging out together. 

And I took my first bathroom mirror selfie, and it didn't suck.

Fifteen Times Around the Sun

Angus is fifteen years old today.

Fifteen. Three whole hands.

So much has changed.

Wait. What?

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.

Blissed-Out Love Orgy 2015 (With MANY UPPER CASE LETTERS)

So I read at Blogging Out Loud Ottawa (HI LYNN) on Tuesday night and now it's Thursday and THIS is why I can't be a current-events blogger.

My friend Patti (HI PATTI) said about BOLO three (!!) years ago that reading there was a "small jump into a very soft landing", and that being nervous was silly. And I agree, but I was still nervous. But Pam picked me up so I didn't have to find the church or the parking lot or not down two gin and tonics for courage. We had dinner with Nat and Jennifer and Amanda, with so much laughter and loudness (and an incredibly patient waitress) that much of the nervousness drained away (and not just because of the gin), although a big part of me (and Nat) was saying "OR, we could just sit here and while the evening away in beer and idle chatter...."

Then we walked over to the church and tried to wander through the halls quietly and respectfully, looking for the right room. Then a small child bolted out in front of Jennifer and she said (ejaculated, really) "OH JESUS!", so we chucked the quiet part and a woman at the door remarked that we were really putting the Loud in Blogging Out Loud. She had curly gray hair and was wearing pearls all church-lady-ish, and I thought she might have meant it disapprovingly, but she totally dropped the f-bomb on me and Pam later while we were buying drinks from her, so it's all good.

Five - FIVE - of my non-blogging (NON-BLOGGING) friends (HI COLLETTE) drove DOWNTOWN, from BARRHAVEN, to watch me read. I feel like it really needs to be emphasized that they didn't know the event was licensed UNTIL THEY GOT THERE. Helen, my dance-mom friend who, come to think of it, is really just a friend since our daughters haven't danced together - or at all, in any organized capacity- for about four years - drove DOWNTOWN from KANATA, ALL ALONE, and she has driving anxiety just like me, and her GPS crapped out on her so she panicked and had to park in a garage which she hates. Did I mention she was ALL ALONE? I can't draw, I can't dance, I'm bad at math and my sense of direction is for shit, but I ROCK at picking friends.

I had to scan the room to see if enough people would get the part of the post that's only funny if you know me. I thought enough people probably would, so I left it in. And a bunch of people laughed, THANK GOD.

On the way out, a woman told me she loved my post and my hair. Of course, we all know intelligence and creativity is so much more important than hair, so the compliment on the post meant much more. Of course. (I am a sad, vain, petty creature).

Photo credit: Nat Hanson

I'm pretty sure that last year the podium covered everything from the boobs down, so I really just worked on looking good from the boobs up. I'm trying really hard (and mostly succeeding) not to let the 'oops-I-forgot-I-need-to-stop-being-so-fat' part of the evening overshadow the fizzy ginger-ale bubble joy.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. BOLO is awesome. And the waitresses at the Black Bear Pub are hot. The end.

Mondays on the Margins Newbery Post: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

You know the great thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines? No urgency or unpleasant repercussions if you get busy and your husband leaves the country a lot and you lose the will to live for a few months. This is also probably the bad thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines. Anyway.

Not a clue how I missed this one on my first pass through childhood. Lynn (HI LYNN) lent it to me a few months ago, but I've been watching too much Supernatural and reading too much after Lucy goes to bed (which means ipad only) to attack the pile of actual books lately. Yesterday I got home from dropping Angus at basketball, went upstairs and declared that I would read the book at the top of the first pile my eyes fell on. And it was this book.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH won the Newbery Medal in 1972. It's a great story, with strong characters and a fantastic plot that has suspenseful intrigue and strong motherly love and duty, as well as some quite dense moral questions. What I think I loved most is that, although it's clearly targeted at juvenile readers, the writing doesn't talk down to children AT ALL. In the description of young Timothy Frisby's illness, Robert O'Brien uses terms like 'hypochondriac' and 'delirious' without overexplaining them, and this continues throughout the novel with descriptions of farm work, forest geography,  laboratory procedures, power tools and and basic physics. This reminded me of how there was outrage expressed on social media at one point about words related to the natural world such as 'almond', 'blackberry', 'minnow' and 'budgerigar' had been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in favour of terms such as 'broadband' and 'mp3 player'. Was there just an assumption back then that children would know about this stuff, or would ask their parents? I feel like a book written right now wouldn't make those assumptions. Of course, I could be totally tripping. There is also death and lack of closure on one thread (Justin? Justin, come back!). I just really felt like Robert C. O'Brien told the story he wanted to tell without trying to dumb it down or make it more marketable, and I love that the Newbery committee rewarded that.

I haven't seen the movie either, although I'm ninety-five-percent sure it was sitting on a shelf in my best friend's living room when I used to go over there all the time. I have it on good authority that Justin, the rat described in the book as "alert, dark gray in color, and extraordinarily handsome", is extremely crushable in the movie (and I completely had a thing for Goliath from Gargoyles, so I'm not judging). I have also been told that NIMH stands for National Institute of Mental Health, although this is NOT revealed in the book, which nearly made me blow a gasket (I LIKE TO KNOW STUFF, OKAY?)

On Goodreads, the book's title is modified with The Rats of Nimh #1, but apparently the only #2 book was actually written by the original author's daughter, and the reviews are somewhat uneven. There's also a second movie, but the consensus seems to be that it was an abomination, and the description I found keeps changing the name Frisby to Brisby, so my hopes are not high. Unless.... wait..... the original movie seems to call Mrs. Frisby Mrs. Brisby too, WTF, all is ashes, why? Was Mrs. Frisby too reminiscent of a .... frisbee? And how do we all feel, just by the by, about the fact that she doesn't get to have a first name? Mrs. Frisby or Mrs. Jonathan Frisby, or Mrs. Jonathan, that's it. I mean, yes, she's all about the family, but.. Alice Frisby? Jane Frisby? Catherine Emily Frisby? I guess maybe good old Robert C. wasn't catering to women's libbers either.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and for the next few weeks I'm going to have a really hard time doing anything permanently harmful to the mice that keep getting into our garage. "Here, Mrs. Frisby, have a tiny blanket for poor little Timothy". I'm sure that will wear off in time.

I Have Drunk Deep From the Well of Culture. And Rum. With a Bourbon Chaser.

Saturdays around here don't tend to be a beehive of activity. There's usually some kind of sporting event, for one kid if not both, early in the day, and then some down time and we catch up on Modern Family (Matt and Eve and me), Person of Interest (Matt and Angus and me) and/or House of Cards (Matt and me - Angus hung around for part of one hoping for some kind of salaciousness and almost died of boredom; not a future politician, I guess). Saturdays after Matt has just returned home from a week overseas are usually reserved for stumbling through the required activity and then adjourning to the couch (him) and the reading chair (me) for some recovery time.

As things shook out, he was scheduled to get home from France Friday night, after a week in California and a week in Asia not long ago, but Eve's spring Glee recital was on Saturday morning and I had NAC tickets for Saturday night, AND then we found out that Collette's birthday dinner was reserved for Saturday night also. So I took Collette out for dinner last week, and figured that Saturday I would go to the Glee recital, the NAC event, then stop by Collette's for a civilized drink before heading home to sleep the sleep of the virtuous and well-rounded.

I bet you can guess how well THAT worked out for me.

First, Matt's flight got cancelled. He was rebooked on one that was scheduled to land in Ottawa at 11:30. The recital was at 12:30. We figured it was going to be a Disney-movie-type-thing, except he would probably arrive seconds AFTER Eve performed, not before. Eve was fine - she felt bad that he felt bad, and I said I would try to record it. My mom was coming with us, and Eve's teacher, because she is just that awesome.

The recital was fantastic. Not in the way that Glee the television show is fantastic, because they're all professional singers and actors who are just playing regular kids. These were regular kids who had the balls to sing in public. They weren't all great, but they were mostly quite good (my kid was the best, duh). And their two songs (Break Away and Price Tag) were bookended by ballet and tap performances by five-year-olds, and how better to be bookended than by a dozen little pink-gowned blissed-out darling children reveling in the sheer joy of being small and pink and dancing on a stage? And then at the end we found out that Matt had (by breaking a land-speed record and three traffic laws) actually made it seconds before Eve's class went on. So that was awesome.

Then I went to see Shane Koyczan with a couple of book club friends. Honestly, I bought the ticket in the spirit of trying something a little new, and I wasn't sure how into it I would be, especially given that I was exhausted. I wasn't sure if it would be too earnest, or if I would find it like the symphony where my mind drifts and I can't stay focused on the performance, or if, as my friend Carolyn said, we might get trampled in a mob of besotted hipsters.

It was phenomenal. It was spectacular. It was fantastic, and I say this from the bottom of my cynical, middle-aged, shriveled little heart. It was earnest in the very best way, but the emotional intensity was liberally sprinkled with profane hilarity, and my ears couldn't look away. I can't find most of the poems online either because I can't remember what they were called, or because they're new, but he did this one (without music, which I actually prefer), and don't feel bad if you don't feel like watching it because I almost never watch videos embedded in blogs either, but it's very good. And I have to say, everything he said rang so true, except that he still doesn't go to beaches or public places and hasn't had many relationships, because I have to think that this dude gets so much ass flung at him he must not be able to catch it with both hands and a net.

Then I went to Collette's. Matt had gone to the birthday dinner, which was heroic in the extreme since he had probably been awake for over twenty-four hours now, so he kissed me and went home. And I had a beer. And then the whole night turns into a hazy haze of WTF punctuated by flashes of OH DEAR GOD, and there was a bottle of rum with a kraken on it and some kind of weird hop-flavoured bourbon, and a lengthy, serious discussion about elbows. Then I was towed home like a salvaged galleon through the streets of Barrhaven by three friends who wouldn't let me lie down on someone's lawn for a rest no matter how much I begged. And I slept the sleep of the debauched and repentant.

How was your week-end?

Wordless Wednesday (except I forgot to post it): Naptime