Library Loans and Holds

 I started to answer the question at the end of Engie's last post (it's probably definitely not the last post anymore because she blogs Every Freaking Day, HOW does one do such a thing, I do it in November and it nearly kills me, I am agog) and then realized it would be an unfeasibly long comment but a decent-length blog post.

Speaking of Engie (did I mention she blogs, like, a LOT), on this post about the word 'hat', and how it appears in a lot of books (and a bunch of other hat-related stuff), I said that since I read a lot of children's books I was not surprised to find that 'hat' occurs a lot in books, and mentioned one of my favourite children's book authors, Jon Klassen, (look at that, he's Canadian, I was unaware). Klassen writes beautifully twisted books about animals stealing other animals' hats, and reaping the consequences thereof, and also books about animals finding hats, and I don't know what put the hat-bee in his bonnet (see what I did there), but I LOVE them, and they are big hits at storytime.

Well Engie then TOOK THIS BOOK OUT of the library and praised it, and mentioned it on a post where I was sad and said it made her day, which in turn made MY day, but I don't think I had a chance to mention it, so THANK-YOU Engie, you are a good fish and I will never steal your hat. 

For the first time in a while, I put a bunch of paper books on hold with gay abandon and trusted they would not all show up at once.

This was not smart.

I did recently discover that my library has eliminated overdue fines, which is awesome, because I am terrible for bringing books down from my room, stacking them by the door, even putting them in the damned CAR, and still not managing to get them back to the damned library for a few extra days. But I don't want to hoard books for months, so I've still been gulping down paper books at a furious rate. I've always been curious about how things shake out when libraries get rid of fines, and I might try to track down someone I did a placement with to see if they have a view on how it's going. 

Paper Books Borrowed:

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle - Lavalle writes socially conscious horror involving racism and I have loved everything I've read by him.

Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg by Emily Rapp Black - stumbled on this while searching for Frida Kahlo biographies

Sanctuary by Emily Rapp Black - kept reading Emily Rapp because she's a beautiful writer who has gone through some shit.

The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp - I discovered too late that this was too much Emily Rapp to read at one time (my fault, not hers).

These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall - intriguing young adult writer 

The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney - really cool concept, great casual representation of queerness, good writing - I'm a fan. 

I have a bad habit also of loading up the maximum number of ebooks (10) even though it is very rare that I can actually get through all of them before they disappear or I have to try to renew them or put them on hold again, and this also is a kind of book-hoarding that I should not do. I somehow feel the need to create this massive bulwark of books between me and the howling existential void.

Digital Books Borrowed

Leech by Hiron Ennes - weird horror book, reading slowly

The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier - weird philosophical/ sci-fi / many-charactered / won the Prix Goncourt/ just finished and not sure exactly how I feel about it yet

Girl Forgotten by April Henry - going fast, not bad, a little slight

Undersong by Kathleen Winter - first book I've read of hers since Annabel

Sherlock Holmes, the Complete Novels and Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes is a book bingo square this year, and I don't remember loving the actual Holmes works, but everything "holmesian" I've tried as an alternative has been inexpressibly terrible, so here we are

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley - The cover annoys me, I keep reading the synopsis and being annoyed that it states "nightcrawling" as a profession without elaborating - I believe it turns out to be sex work, but I've asked around and no one else automatically went to that either, so I find it annoying that it's just there without explanation. So annoyed before even beginning the read, what could go wrong? I have been really trying to read more black woman authors, which largely has been very enjoyable, but right now it feels like a chore and I'm not sure how to deal with that. (The first few pages are very good, I will probably just suck it up and stop whinging).

I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted by Jennifer Finney Boylan - she co-wrote Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, who I quite dislike as an author, but someone I know liked it so I'm reading this memoir instead.

If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe by Jason Pargin - 

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell - Loved Hamnet and Judith, intrigued by the fact that this is apparently based on the poem My Last Duchess

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline - I am regretfully realizing that I just don't think Cherie Dimaline is for me - people who I generally share book opinions with really liked The Marrow Thieves and this, and I admire the concepts but the writing for some reason does nothing for me. 

I have 21 books on hold, but I think I won't even go there right now. I use the library almost exclusively unless there's something I decide I really want to own (I tried to achieve zero growth by getting rid of a book every time I buy a book - results have been mixed), but I still probably need to exercise some restraint.

Oops, I'm almost late for my job interview. 

And THEN

 As if the long weekend hadn't already reached peak awesome, Angus had been cajoled into flying to Miami for a week with two high school friends who just graduated, and he was flying out of the Toronto airport on Tuesday morning which meant he would be an hour and a half from where we were on Monday. So instead of going home Monday, Matt (the platinum-level hotel member guy) got us a hotel room by the airport for Monday night so we could hang out with Angus for the evening.

I hadn't seen him since Christmas, so this was really nice.

He's been pretty much kicking ass at adulting, but we figured out that he was not terribly well versed in the whole "flying with liquids" thing, and as a result, he ended up flying to Miami with the tiny bottle of Oil of Olay from my toiletries bag while I came home to Ottawa with his giant bottle of Cetaphil moisturizer.

While we were in the elevator going down to the restaurant I tried to take a selfie, and Matt was in the wrong place so we could only see the back of his head.

So when we were going back up, after a few drinks, we tried the selfie with me looking at the phone and them looking in the mirror.

We all agreed it was profoundly disturbing.

Vessels and Vegetables

 On the Sunday of the long weekend, we put all the various groups of people together.

First Matt and I drove an hour or so away to see my nephew's rowing competition. We were really happy to get to go to one of his events, since our various siblings have watched a LOT of baseball in support of our kid. 

It was a hilariously poorly organized event - Timothy had only found out the night before that he had a hotel room. We didn't know where to park, we didn't know where to stand, but we were there, and we saw boats with people in them, and we were happy. 

Then we brought the big kids over to Jeremy and Laura's house for a giant Indian food feast. I love how these pictures kind of sketch out the mingling of the groups.

(I feel like Lydia is rocking big "BBC Dad's daughter Marion" energy in this next one):

My sister-in-law Sarah and I were admiring some of the artwork on the walls. There was one in particular that we kept getting stuck on what the caption meant.

"I love you Brokie? I love you Brockle? What could it be?"

Lydia came in from the back yard and we asked her. She looked at us as if we were being mind-bogglingly simple, and said carefully "I love you broccoli". And, um....

Sarah and I  - ninetyish years and three advanced university degrees between us - looked at each other, and were ashamed. Also, is that not the most terrifying broccoli you've ever seen? Like, broccoli that bites you back?

I promise I will have exhausted this weekend in like two, max three, more posts.

Early Birds and Surly Swans

 So we left Eve and her friends to their own devices on Saturday for some family time. Matt's youngest brother and his wife are doctors who live close to where Eve goes to school (Laura actually works right at the university on some days). Matt's middle brother and his wife and their kids are professors who live in Alberta, a couple of provinces away, but are on sabbatical and living roughly halfway between us and the other brother, so we wanted to capitalize on this to have a rare three-brothers meeting. 

On my side of the family it's just my sister and me, and our kids are like four stair steps - 23, 22, 20, 18. They were great friends and it was wonderful having them grow up together, but it did mean that once they were all grown there were no more littles. So I am fairly self-congratulatory about the fact that I had the good sense to marry a man with younger brothers who would have kids at nicely staggered intervals. Eric (middle brother) and Sarah have Timothy (17) and Fen (13 I think). Jeremy (youngest brother) and Laura have Lydia (6) and Mitchell (3 - sorry, three and three-quarters, he is firm about that).

Lydia and Mitchell

Mitchell was quite taken with Uncle Eric's hat, and was either wearing it or putting it on someone else for much of our time together.







He also shot a web at me, the little pipsqueak



Jeremy was on his own with the kids for the weekend. There's nothing quite like seeing a superstar cardiologist brought to his knees by a couple of children. When we were leaving for the nature walk, he couldn't find Mitchie's hat. We were all out on the driveway when Lydia banged out of the house holding the hat, saying "did you look under the COUCH, Daddy?" 

Lydia had decreed that we would do the Cherry Valley walk, which is a trail along the Grindstone Marshes in southern Ontario, maintained by the Royal Botanical Gardens. 



It was amazing. It felt like walking through a Disney movie, like a bird was going to swoop up and braid your hair or dust your kitchen or something.  At one point Lydia had her little pink binoculars up while she was watching a Cardinal and she had to drop them because the bird was too close.



Lydia was wearing a dress and jacket that belonged to Eve roughly 18 years ago, so that was cool and a little trippy.



There were some ducks



They were unaware that these extremely fast-swimming swans were about to seriously fuck up their day.



There were some other geese, with babies



We were aware that they would probably not love us being near their babies, so we sent Matt in to draw their ire while we snuck by with the kids. There was a lot of hissing. I feel like this really captures how this particular goose felt about us.



This was me very nearly getting an awesome shot of a bird catching a peanut that this dude threw in the air. When dude saw my jaw drop, he assured me that the first time he threw a seed and a bird caught it he fell to the ground in awe. 



Then Jeremy yelped "Mitchie, where's your hat?" and Mitchie replied serenely, "It's in the backpack, Daddy."



Seriously. Disney movie (probably because people feed the animals, which you're not supposed to, and we didn't, but we reaped the guilty benefits).



When we were done, someone suggested ice cream. Well, Uncle Eric is very funny, so actually he said he knew Lydia and Mitchell didn't like ice cream, so he suggested we should look for a broccoli stand or a kale parlour. 

Apparently Dairy Queen is not Canadian, although I haven't seen any in my (admittedly not very wide-ranging) American travels - no shade, but Sweet Frog doesn't scream "ice cream" to me in the same way, but whatever. Anyway, most of the Dairy Queen places these days are little restaurant-type places, as opposed to the old-school hole-in-the-shack DQ we had when I was little. But we found this retro outfit nearby.



Doing the hungry dance



Teaching Mitchie the hungry dance



Then Jeremy took the kids home and the rest of us went to grab stuff to make hamburgers and salad for dinner, and after dinner went back to our hotel hoping that we had tired the kids out sufficiently to help Jeremy and Laura, who was working for the weekend. It was a fairly magical day. 

Summer School Study Partners

 We had the most glorious May long weekend involving a confluence of several groups of awesome people. I can't help thinking this is going to be quite boring for anyone who isn't me, but I want it in my memories and thinking about it makes me happy.

Eve has been in Hamilton alone in her student house doing organic chemistry and some kind of biology (I keep asking her and resolving to remember what kind of biology and she tells me and I immediately forget again) in extremely compressed fashion. On her second day in the house, some asshole barged in (right after her landlord had left, so the door was unlocked for five minutes) doing the whole "my computer says my phone is in your house" scam. I think men often rely on women's desire to be agreeable for this, and they use it to roam around your house seeing if there's anything worth stealing. Fortunately Eve doesn't have a huge desire to be agreeable, particularly to men, so she said "get out" and slammed the door. NOT the best way to go from living with six other people to living all alone.

She managed to get over this and has been enjoying some aspects of having the house to herself - having the whole fridge available, being able to set up on the couch and watch tv while doing notes -- but her friends have been home from various other provinces and that's been hard, although they Facetime long and often. 

So I scooped up two of them and brought them down to drop at her house for the week.

The trip was super-fun, even though we listened to the same Lana Del Rey song the entire way.

I love these kids, and I could easily spend double the time listening to them be witty and wise and hilarious. I didn't even mind that I was probably going to end up getting Marianna's cold.

Matt had been in Korea and was getting back the same day I was heading down, so he flew back to Toronto instead of Ottawa and was going to take a bus or an Uber the hour or so from the Toronto airport to Eve's house. I wasn't sure if he would be there when we got to her house.

He was.

It's hard to properly articulate how magical I find this group of five friends (three-fifths represented here). They seem like they should be fictional - every time someone says John Green's books aren't realistic because "teenagers don't talk like that", I think "okay, you haven't been hanging around the right teenagers". They are so much more self-aware and self-possessed and socially conscious and insightful than I or anyone I knew was at the same age. I was always wary of trying to be my kids' 'best friends', but I ended up with fairly neurotypical kids that didn't have learning difficulties or personalities that led to conflicts, which I fully recognize is completely down to luck, so I kind of DO get to be a Cool Mom (in that they treat me like one, not that I really think I am one. I don't think I've ever been a Cool Anything in reality).

Two of Eve's roommates had said Marianna and Jackson could use their beds, and left linens. Camille who lives in the attic left them this lovely sign note.

My mom had sent a giant box of baking, as she usually does. My dad's contribution is that he makes a double batch of pancakes and wraps them up and Eve eats them two at a time for breakfast. On the way down at McDonald's Marianna ordered hot cakes, so I knew she would be happy. I asked them to take pancake pictures so I could show my mom.

I also saw the white board in the kitchen, which had some really sweet messages on it along with the chore reminders.

We went off and did some family stuff and left them to their own devices. The next day I went to pick them up and take them grocery shopping.

This is their Grocery Shopping Pose

We went to the checkout and the kids went to the end to bag the stuff. I told Jackson that the heavy stuff should go on the bottom because these kids are very, very smart but not always the most practical. I was looking away and then I heard the checkout guy say to another employee "could you grab another bottle of maple syrup?" and I thought "oh no" and then Marianna said "the bottle was really slippery!" The checkout guy said "it's okay, happens all the time" and Jackson told Marianna "he's just saying that to make you feel better". I told the checkout guy they're gifted in other areas. He said it's okay, it's all going in his book. 

Before we left we took them out for lunch at a pub around the corner. I told Eve I like this picture because the background is a nice colour and they each have a picture growing out of their head. 

Next in my Long Weekend Post Trilogy tomorrow. Or whenever I feel like it. 

Corneas and Kidneys and Fire, Oh My

 I've been trying to lean hard into "isn't it great that my winter depression lifted, ha ha, life is so good, things are happening, summer, whoo-hoo", and well, no. Or the thing where I don't blog until I feel better, but also no. I am feeling kind of crappy and (consequently, maybe?) crappy about myself. I am more tired than I should be, and my back hurts and all my shoes are lacerating my heels even when they didn't before, and my allergies are terrible so I feel sort of sick all the time, and I also really hate my hair and can't figure out when to get it done, and things are just hard, and that's okay to say, right?

I need the air pressure on my CPAP adjusted, further to my sleep study from last June. This has not been able to happen yet because my machine is the first one I got ten years ago, and when I went in for it to be adjusted it wouldn't take the adjustment. The machine is under a recall, so I'm supposed to be getting a new one, but Phillips has been spectacularly unresponsive, so it still hasn't happened. This probably goes some way to explaining the fatigue, and also the increased allergies, since the CPAP helps my tiny airways function better when it's working.

I have pretty sensitive eyes. I've learned not to squeeze them tightly shut, as I've instinctively done when water hits my face or something, because it always feels like there's grit under my lids. On Monday after making dinner my contacts felt suddenly really uncomfortable, and after I took them out my right eye still felt like there was something in it. This happens regularly - my usual routine is to put in some polysporin eye drops, which have a mild anesthetic, and close my eyes for a few minutes. Usually this works. This time it didn't. I didn't know if there might be a piece of contact left in, or if I'd just scratched it badly somehow. We tried to get into my eye doctor but they had just closed - receptionists were still there, so they gave me an emergency appointment for the next morning, at the same time that I was supposed to be at my dad's nephrologist appointment with him (he has idiopathic kidney failure). Fortunately, this was the first time the appointment was on Zoom (somewhat less fortunately, I was not at all confident the software would work). After that I had promised to take my mom shopping.

I was leveled emotionally by all of this in complete disproportion to the actual circumstances. I went into my shower and howled. Then I took a deep breath and we figured out that Angus (who was here for a few days) would drive me to the eye doc and Matt would stay home and do the nephrology call with my dad. 

When I saw the doctor, she put contrast drops in my eyes and looked at them, and said that the issue seems to be that because my allergies are so bad there are a bunch of bumps on the underside of my eyelid, and taking out my contact irritated them and caused them to scrape against my cornea (eeeeee gross). She gave me a prescription for drops to calm them and told me not to wear my glasses for a week. 

I got home just as the call started (and Matt did have to run tech support, so it was probably for the best that he stayed home to help). The news was good - my dad's kidney function is low but stable, and we're not at the point where we have to talk about dialysis. At this point, the nephrologist (who is a pretty chill, funny guy) said my dad's kidneys will probably outlast him, although he advised against having a heart attack or getting hit by a bus. My dad said he'd take that under consideration.

Matt had told my mom I'd hurt my eye so I wouldn't be taking her shopping, but my day off was already in shambles, and the thought of having to postpone and find another time was more daunting than actually going, so we went. I don't love malls at the best of time, and my mother (customary disclaimer, love my mom, she is generous with us and our children, she has baked a million banana muffins and cookies and I'm so grateful to have her in my life) - well, at this point it's not hard to fill the Taking Wanda Shopping Bingo card: 1) There's nothing good in any stores 2) The stuff online isn't in the stores 3) I'm disgusted 4) I don't need anything anyways (then why, why.... never mind). Anyway, I managed to find her two tops to go with the pants she had brought to try to match, and then she bought Angus a toaster because she had found out he didn't have one (because he's kind of a dumbass, he lives five minutes from a Target, but whatever), because she is good and kind and only a little bit infuriating. And we had a perfectly nice time, and then my parents came over for Chinese food because Angus was heading back to New York on Friday.

The rest of the week was fine. The air conditioning was even finally on in the libraries. I just felt like I couldn't quite catch my breath and like I should be doing more, but all I wanted to do was come home and hide in my room and read, and I felt guilty for feeling like this because I have no kids at home and I don't work that much, and it's not winter anymore. That meme where the person says 'let's be productive!' and their brain says 'no' and the person says 'okay then, relaxing it is' and their brain says 'no relax, only guilt'? That.

I thought I had a three-day migraine a couple of weeks ago, but from what I'm hearing from friends now, it may have been a weird virus. This may just be a hangover from that. But you know sometimes it's a relief to admit that you're sick and just go to bed and stop trying to smile through the pain? I kind of felt that yesterday when I told Matt and my Edibles and Hot Flashes FB messenger group that I was feeling bad and ashamed because of feeling bad and bad because of feeling ashamed.

And now half the province is on fire after half of other provinces where I have family and friends being on fire, and outside smells like we're in a campfire, and we can't go out without masks, and I'm angry at all the politicians and CEOs who got us here, and angry at myself for not doing enough and not really wanting to sacrifice my lifestyle, and I still don't really know what to do, but I'm doing some more concrete reading and donating, and together with that, what is there to do but still love our people and try to walk bravely into whatever future there still is? But before that I'm going to call the salon, because I am superficial enough to want to walk into the future with my hair looking better than this. 

I don't like posting without pictures, partly because it's visually dull and partly because when I post to Facebook the algorithm then chooses some random picture. So I have included pictures from the aviary that Eve walks by in Hamilton, and a funny picture she took on campus.