A Peek Inside My Mind (I'm So Sorry)

 There is a terrible, terrible stage in my depression (unsure about others) where I have attained a very precarious balance and I am mostly okay, or would be if I kept my eyes on my own plate, so to speak, because I am most dreadfully prone to the most heinous kind of jealousy if not (this entire post will NOT be in the writing manner of an eighteenth century spinster's diary, I promise. I hope).

With every book or blog post or Facebook status I read, I feel like everyone I know has navigated their life better, like every decision I made has been disastrous, like HOW did I not know that was how I should have done it all? All the sports I didn't learn, all the trips I didn't take, all the languages I didn't speak, all the children I didn't have, all the avocados I let go mushy. It's not that it really gets dug in anymore, because I know what's happening, but it is frightfully unpleasant (what is wrong with me) in the moment.

This morning I woke up naturally (day off - part time job I love, so lucky). I was up late reading a couple of really good books (love of reading, access to so many books, incredibly fortunate). Eve texted that she had a cold which was a drag, but she was dragging herself to the library because she has an exam in two days, and she was wearing a cardigan and cute camisole over a pair of Angus's old pajama pants which basically looked like pants (my children are so hilarious and enjoyable, a gift beyond measure). Then I picked up my phone and opened Facebook.

My sister in law had posted about going skiing with her husband and son and posted beautiful wintry family pics. How lovely. They are an active, wholesome, socially conscious, beautiful, admirable family and I love them.

And oh, my soul was consumed with bitterness and ill feeling. Why am I not on a ski slope, inhaling the bracing winter air? (Well, I live in Ontario and the snow is gone and I went downhill skiing once and I was terrified, went down the last hill at breakneck speed backwards and vowed never to return). And from there - why didn't I take my children to Paris? (Angus played competitive baseball from the age of 12, which somewhat hampered our travel, and led to him going to the Little League World Series, having a really cool college experience and getting basically his dream job, do I regret that? Probably not). Why didn't I get a high-powered job that used my intelligence to its full extent? (Because my husband had a job with international travel that meant we both couldn't work full time and I got to stay home with the kids. Do I think that was the wrong thing? Not remotely). Why didn't we go live in a foreign country for a year and let our kids soak in another language and culture? (I don't know, this is just getting stupid, nobody does everything).

Did I let my kids watch too much tv? Yes, but I also read to them from our multitudinous collection of picture books many, many times. We never took them skiing - wait, we took them tubing! Sarah, did you take your kids tubing? (If so, awesome, I assumed so, if not, IN YOUR FACE, just kidding, I'm having a moment, sorry). We took them skating and put them in skating lessons until finally, watching Eve inch her laborious way across a balance beam that was four inches off the ground, we had to acknowledge that she has her mother's lack of balance and give up on that. And biking. She's a decent basketball player. Yes, I've lost the plot entirely. I didn't just sit in the house with my kids watching tv for twenty years is the point I'm trying to make, I think. 

I let myself stew for a few minutes then texted a friend to talk me down by saying things I already knew but somehow they are more believable when someone else says them. She said it often looks like people have better lives from the outside (true). She said many people think my life looks great (probably true). she said many people post selected pictures to make people envy their lives (plausible, but definitely not my sister in law). I said why don't we live somewhere pretty and mountainy? She said we literally live a half hour drive from Gatineau Park. 

I have vastly underused our proximity to Gatineau Park, and this is a real, tangible, regrettable error. We took the kids for easy trail walks a few times. We drove through with my parents to see the pretty fall leaves. I went on a really nice hike with a friend who does hiking  once. But we should have been out there at every available opportunity. But you know, life gets busy, inertia, and I'm terrible with directions and could never quite figure out how to get myself there and go on a hike without never being seen again.

But shit happens. And I still have legs.

I asked my friend if she would go on a hike with me in Gatineau Park. She said "so we can post pics that will make other people jealous?" I said "YES, OBVIOUSLY, I mean no, to revel in the beauty of nature."

I did some yoga and dragged my dumb ass out for a walk. It wasn't the most appealing of circumstances. It's gray, and the snow is gone but nothing is green yet, and it was windy. I still think it managed to blow some perspective into my head, along with the dirt it blew into my eye.

This is not, to be clear, a real attempt to justify my life, or fishing for people to reassure me about it. I did some things right. I did many things wrong. Most things I just did, because you just do, don't you? I am drowning in privilege and maybe I could have leveraged it better, but there's no point in revisiting all that now. This was just a way to trace the scorching trail of this line of brooding that would be fascinating if it was happening to somebody else. And as usual, after writing it out, I feel better. 

Clearly I did something right, anyway.

Strange Cheesefellows. Or Something.

 I'm getting worse and worse at posts that AREN'T just random. 

My husband was away for multiple weeks again, and it's been a bit of an adjustment for him to get home and try to supplant my new bedmates.

I guess this gives me official book slut status? My husband and I are working through it.

I guess I realized that different libraries would have different borrowing and hold limits, but some of them WOW. Like Maya - THREE HOLD LIMIT? WHAT? Like do the people who run that library not understand reading? 

So to sum up, at my library you can have: Ten ebooks or audiobooks out on Libby, for three weeks each. You can technically renew them if no one is waiting, although sometimes it still doesn't let you, and only once (I think); Two books out on Cloud Library (express ebooks), for one week, no renewals (but there's a workaround where you can return it and immediately borrow it again, and I'm not sure why they haven't closed that loophole); Unlimited paper books (I just looked this up), three week loan period, renewable up to FIVE TIMES if no one is waiting. If people are waiting, you have a three week grace period with escalating email requests for return, and past that you get charged for the book and your account gets suspended until you pay the charge or return the book and they take the fine away like it never happened (I know this gives some of you the vapours, but I just cheerfully bring it back and say "walk of shame!" when I hand it to the employee, who is always very grateful to receive it; There's more but those are the ones I care about. Oh, I can't find a limit on paper books you can put on hold. I'm up to about 80, so I'm guessing there isn't one unless it's 100. Should I test this? 

This was exhilarating:

Eve's library, in a different city but the same province, has a limit of ten items on hold overall, which seems RIDICULOUSLY low. But they also have a 'skip the line' feature for ebooks, which I don't quite understand but she showed it to me so it does exist. 

Pat and Engie - I LOVE hearing that I'm not the only person who plays Libby ebook jenga - 'wait, if I move this up I can finish it and then borrow this one, oops, I have to marathon this one before it disappears, should I pause this hold or just read it?' Except the turning off the wi-fi or airplane mode thing that some people use to delay returning library ebooks has never worked for me. 

I'm really enjoying the current rhythm of reading my stack of paper books. I sit down with three or four and read thirty to fifty pages a time of each one. At some point if one is narratively energetic I will finish it and keep incrementally progressing on the others until it's time to add in another one again. I do have Jennifer Egan's The Manhattan Beach Project as an ebook and I was considering returning it and waiting, but then I started it and it's really good, but due tomorrow, so there's going to be some power reading in between turkey cooking and biscuit baking. 

Suzanne - no shame on that comment, in my experience kids are incredibly bloodthirsty little motherfuckers, and I was really ready for anything when I cracked open Vivant ou non-vivant. 

It's Easter weekend but I don't do church anymore and my kids aren't home so aside from dinner with my parents tomorrow we are having a chill few days, which is welcome. Eve went to the dentist in her university town for the first time last week and found out she had to get two little fillings and a bigger one this week. They had a lot of trouble getting the plates in her mouth for x-rays and she said "yeah, my mom has a clinically small palate, so that tracks" which is funny. Then when she was there getting her fillings she said she felt like she could bring out the flex that 'yeah, I had my wisdom teeth out awake' and they were like 'whoa, all four?' so she felt like a dental badass. They also had voting stations on campus, so she got three fillings and did her civic duty. 

I made mac and cheese tonight because I recently found out that my husband's colleagues gently mock him for always ordering mac and cheese if it's on the menu on business trips. But since I haven't made it often - at all, maybe - I didn't account for the fact that now we have a sort of ridiculous amount of mac and cheese right before we are due to have a sizeable amount of Easter leftovers. 

If you need me I'll just be over here with a shovel for my books AND my cheesy noodles. 

All I Do is Read Read Read No Matter What (WHAT)

Remember a while ago when I took a tip from Sarah about researching new books coming in to the library and racing everyone to get to the top of the holds line? And decided to buck my trend of only borrowing ebooks because usually the new books only have paper copies at first? Anyone want to know how that's going?

Like this:

Plus four books at the library for pickup right now and two in transit. Every Wednesday after work I go to the library and return whatever I've finished and pick up the new books. We'll see how long I can keep this up before I cry uncle and pause the rest of it. 

It's always interesting when you put books on hold based on recommendations from numerous sources, so you never really know what you're getting. Last week I got this tiny, beautiful little gem.

It was an incredibly effective, subtly unsettling, cutting story packed into a short space of words. 

I did not love this book, but I was frightfully amused at the fact that I have this bookmark from the adorable little bookstore down the street from Eve's house (for two more weeks, *SOB*), and will only use this bookmark in books about bookstores.

After brunch on the weekend, since I was out anyway I stopped in at Indigo even though it was pouring rain and gale force winds. I was in a car already and there was a bookstore, what was I supposed to do? Did I buy another book, even though I have a full roster of library ebooks, a pile of library paper books, an Alexandria's worth of books on my Kindle and oh, the books on my bookshelves that I haven't read yet?

No, I did not.

I bought two. (It was buy one get one fifty percent off, I had no choice).

They're Canadian! My brother-in-law and his wife know Richard Van Camp and sent me one of his books that was really good, and this one is so pretty. 

The other one I think I will read and then give to one of my libraries. So, you know, altruism.

This one gave me pause at work on Monday. 

Alive or not alive? Is it going to be dead geese or dead children? Please be dead geese.

Oh. Oh, I see. Fine then. Still seems a little weird, but we have a French picture book called L'autoritarisme, so clearly French children's authors have some hefty takes on concepts. Oh, I just looked that up and apparently it's about bossiness, not dictatorships. That's embarrassing, but less confusing.

I feel like I've told my story about my bedside pile of books here before, but not for a while and it is currently relevant again. I always have a giant pile of books on my bedside table, which my husband mocks me for often and at length. I usually have a glass of water on my bedside table also. One time a few years ago we were flipping the mattress, and Matt said he had it so I let go. Then he lost it. It was falling towards my bedside table and the glass of water, which wouldn't be a huge deal except my CPAP machine was also there and electronics + water = not good. We both watched in horror as the mattress fell.... and landed balanced on the pile of books with the glass of water safely sheltered underneath it. Boom, books are magic life-savers and I should keep buying them, who knows what will happen if I stop. 

Just Some Stuff

 I'm not doing so great at answering comments in real time. I've tried, and then sometimes they format awkwardly so you can't tell who I'm answering, which is annoying. Also, I often read the comments at work and I can't answer them from there, and you know, remembering to answer then when I get home....

Anyway, some answers to recent comments:

To Tudor - yes, I have watched Deadloch, enjoyed it. I have made a note of Wild Cards and might watch that too. My friend Sarah read the post on Facebook and reminded me of the show Somebody Somewhere which I strongly recommend to everyone who can access it - it's hard to describe but basically it's about regular people and I have both laughed until my stomach muscles spasmed and ugly cried watching it ("a spot of gentleness in our hard world" said one Substack). I also love that Bridget Everett is larger than your regular tv show star but that's not what the show is about, which is more unusual than it should be.

To Steph and Engie - Angus flew home in December for Christmas, then drove to Rochester in early January for a bachelor weekend, then drove back to Hamilton to switch cars with Matt, then flew back to Charlotte from Toronto, and had no issues any of those times, but he's a white male twenty-something, so I don't really think this is indicative of anything. We might be going to visit him in May (yeah, this does make us huge hypocrites, but I want to see my kid, *shrug emoji*), will report back.

Elisabeth - Angus is loving the maple syrup candle, which I bought on your recommendation, so thanks again!

Husband has been away for 12 days. In the middle of the first week I briefly felt like I was in the middle of a weird Kafka nightmare, or a simulation that was slipping. Like, did I ever actually have a husband and kids, or was that just a dream. There's a psychopath running the country next door. It was April 8th and outside looked like this.

I mean seriously, what the entire frosted fuck

I had purposely scheduled social time so I wouldn't hermit and get all weird like last time. I went to bar night. I had brunch on the weekend with three fabulous women. 

There was a fruit salad that looked like it cost a mortgage payment.

There were raspberry crumble bars that I would cut a bitch for. 

I made spinach egg and cheese bars. They took four cups of cheese, which still didn't make an appreciable dent in the horrifying block of cheddar I bought at Costco last week. I should shred and freeze some. Or have nachos at every meal until Matt gets home. 

We took some bad selfies, and then Kerry's husband got home and took a pic for us. Kerry said "do you even remember all of their names?" and I said in all fairness we were probably just an amorphous perimenopausal blob in his mind. 

Today I had physio and returned two things at two different stores, which always gives me an immense sense of accomplishment. I mean, it's just getting my own money back, but on occasion I have NOT managed to get my own money back, so it still feels like making money. 

I haven't been able to partake in the Cool Bloggers Walking Club every day because of a buggered up knee, but I do when I can. 

Five(ish) For Friday

1. I bought myself some flowers at Farm Boy last week to put on the table by my computer, and it was immensely cheering. This week I was there, and when I went to the cash the bouquets in front of it were $25. I was stuck between "things cost money, beauty is worth paying for" and "25 is a little steep." I decided I wouldn't get any this week, then as I was loading my groceries I turned my head, and across the aisle were ten-dollar bouquets that were just as nice (maybe older?). I looked up all the tips for getting flowers to last longer and they're doing well so far, and they make me so happy every time I look at them.

2. When we went for lunch last week and then Bath and Body Works, Pam and I mocked Sonia gently for buying eight hand soaps. Then I got home and kept looking at the shades-of-pink candles behind us in our selfie, and THEN I got an email saying the three-wick candles were half-price, and friends, mock on.

I'm a tiny bit angry about the silver lid

3. I actually made something from one of Suzanne's Dinners This Week post, after saying dozens of times that I was going to. A modified version of the Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma, with what I had in the house plus sweet potatoes and the lemon-garlic yogurt dip I had left over from the couscous bowls. As it was cooking, I went out to the garage to get something, and when I opened the door to come back in, the house smelled amazing. Again, ridiculously proud of myself. Lucy also really liked it.

Not a food blogger

4. Angus came home for Christmas with only a carry-on, because he was going from here to a friend's bachelor weekend in Rochester and then driving back to Canada to fly back to Charlotte (if you want the long version: we were stuck trying to figure out how this was all going to work logistically because we didn't know if he could rent a car here and drive it over the border and back. After long deliberation, Matt decided that Angus would drive our car from Hamilton to Rochester. Then Matt got a one-way rental in Ottawa, drove Eve back to Hamilton, met Angus at the Hamilton airport to drop the rental, drove Angus to the Toronto airport for his flight, and then drove home. I still can't quite believe it all worked out like it was supposed to).

Anyway, because of this he didn't take most of his Christmas presents home, or a couple of framed things he wanted for his wall. I boxed them all up, but then Matt went away for three weeks in January and February and I just wasn't physically able to get the packages to UPS by myself. Then when Matt was home, Angus was renewing his visa and told us that we should hold off until that was done, even though there was a 97% chance that it would go through. Because of this he just received the box yesterday, and I got a series of delightful texts about it.

I find it impressive that he already got the pictures up rather than propping them up against a wall for six months. I guess picture-hanging procrastination isn't a heritable trait.

5. I've been having trouble finding something to watch on my own. Matt and I are watching Severance, which I find clever and also claustrophobically terrifying. Jody (HI JODY) and I are watching season 3 of Reacher on Wednesday date nights, and looking forward to season 3 of The Gilded Age. But when I sit down on my own I can't settle on anything. Everything looks too dark, or too light, or has too many episodes, or too few, but mostly nothing is quite RIGHT. This is usually where I think "why is there nothing good on" for five seconds and then realize that it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me. It's not quite winter and not quite spring and I'm just enough out of my winter depression to be looking around and wondering what the hell I've been doing with my life for the last three months (surviving, mainly, but come on, I was raised Catholic, that's not enough). 

Anyway, I made myself press play on something called Mid-Century Modern, because I love Nathan Lane and it kind of looked like a gay Golden Girls. Three gay best friends move in to one's California house after their friend dies, and Nathan Lane's mom is played with impeccable queenly gives-zero-fuck-ness (fucklessness?) by Linda Lavin. It was delicious - mostly not very subtle, but very funny with good heart. Then in the second-last episode (bit of a spoiler, but obvious if you look at the episode summaries), Sybil Schneiderman dies. I was a little bit angry, like I was when they killed off Alan Arkin's character in The Kominsky Method - yeah, people get old and die, but when the actor isn't actually dead, why kill their character? God plays God, you don't need to. Then I had a terrible feeling, and I googled (somebody tell me to STOP GOOGLING STUFF) and Linda Lavin actually DIED during filming, and when she was diagnosed with cancer she told them to write it into the series. I mean, as life stories and endings go, it's pretty good - she was 87, fabulous, worked at a job she loved pretty much up until she died. But still. 

6. Shit, I ended on a bummer note again. I am still trying to get snail mail out at the rate of more than one card a week. This is my second for this week.

7. Also I just saw this online and it made me laugh. And now I have an inexplicable urge to watch Donnie Darko.

Rain nor Snow nor Sleet or Whatever

We have a community mailbox that's around the corner and down at the end of the other arm of our crescent. Some people find this really annoying because they grew up with to-the-door mail service, but I grew up in a little town where the post office was about a five-minute walk, so it doesn't really bother me. I do really dislike (and Eve was incensed by) the weird makeover they gave our bank of mailboxes a few years ago, where they made each individual box wider and much less tall, and the mail slot is halfway down the bank instead of at the top and much narrower. Maybe people were stuffing inappropriately big stuff in the mail slot? I don't think I have a pic of the old one because it was pre-cell-phone.

Anyway. When the kids were little, it was part of our routine to walk to the mailbox, in a long, meandering, staring-into-puddles and picking-up-sticks-and-acorns fashion. At some point they realized that sometimes fun stuff came in the mail. I had to temper their expectation by telling them that usually it was just junk. This resulted in Eve saying, after I pulled out the wad of mail and examined it, "dust dunk?" She has found this hilarious ever since, because she says she remembers thinking that she was pronouncing it perfectly and is bewildered by the auditory processing that takes place. Obviously we still say it if we pick up the mail together.

When we were ambling around the little stationery store in Westdale with Zarah a few hours before the musical, I picked up a box of cards and said something about sending 'snail mail'. Eve said "oh, right. That means, like, not email, right?" and when I said yes, she said she found it a little odd that we used the term snail mail, because if anybody said they were just going to mail something she wouldn't assure they meant email. This made me stop and think - I guess we don't need to say it, but at some point the retronym came into being and it's just fun to say? 

Remember in December when Canada Post went on strike and I was really sad that I couldn't send my usual whackload of Christmas cards? And I told myself I would send cards after Christmas, while knowing full well that my Christmas exuberance would taper off into January depression and it would almost impossible? It's so hard to imagine in December what I'm going to feel like in January. And then one day in late December, I felt like the actual light outside changed, and I knew I wasn't going to escape.

Anyway. I still have the Christmas cards out and originally I thought it would be amusingly off-kilter to just send Christmas cards, but I don't think I can, so I got out non-Christmas cards and put a basket of cards and writing stuff on the chair beside where I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop. And I am ever-so-slowly getting cards sent out. 

Naturally Engie is lapping me. Is it inspiration or competition? Jk, I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting actual mail among the 'dunk'. This has been a particularly good week, with a postcard from Suzanne yesterday and a card from Engie today - I'm making myself wait until after I stretch and shower to open it because I just walked Lucy after rolling out of bed and I am gross.

Does it matter that my wifi password is visible here?