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.

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.

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. 

All-of-a-Sudden VERY SURLY THURSDAY

First of all, apparently my Wednesday should have been a little less wordless, because LOOK AGAIN people - he's been taller than me for years, the funny part is that we're WEARING THE SAME COLOURS. I can't even pull off a decent internet sight gag. Sigh.

This Thursday totally didn't start out surly. My husband was away Monday and Tuesday and baseball season has started and naturally Angus's two games were Monday and Tuesday, I still haven't gotten new orthotics and I needed to get Angus's laundry done and suitcase packed for his grade 8 trip to Quebec City AND I volunteered for Eve's class's field trip to the Science and Tech Museum ALL DAY Wednesday, so Monday through Wednesday were a solo-parenting, running-up-and-down-the-stairs, sweaty, overtired, carbo-loading blur (oh, except I had a lovely walk through the tulips with Pam on Monday, shut up, don't interrupt my rant, right after the tulips things got VERY DIFFICULT). Today Angus is IN Quebec City, Matt's home (until Saturday, when he leaves for a week in Mexico), the field trip is behind me and I had tea at the lovely and pretty and serenity-inducing Thimble Cafe with a fabulous blogging friend and a radiantly pregnant-with-twins friend. I felt pretty, even.

Then I picked up some groceries and came home and then BAM, sudden EXTREME CRANKINESS descended, or bubbled up, or something. I offer you a rosary of small vexations:

I hate that goddamned Happy song. I find it insipid and annoying. I have told this to my kids and they looked at me like I shot Bambi and made hasenpfeffer out of Thumper. So much for a frank and open exchange of ideas.

Angus used my computer for a school project and has infected me with some kind of digitally transmitted disease and now shit keeps popping up and taking over - I try to do one thing and some obnoxious blaring screen demands that I download a new video player, I try to do something else and Kim Kardashian and weight-loss ads eat up the screen -  and I have to call a priest or a nerd or someone.

When we were driving to the Spiderman movie last Sunday my husband was trying to change lanes and this guy wouldn't let him in, and he was on the right and I was in the passenger seat so he was really close to me as he passed us, and I yelled "you deserve that nose!" Then I said "I'm sorry, that was unkind." But now I take it back, plus the window was up and he couldn't hear me anyway so fuck him and his giant schnozz.

photo by Thoth God of Knowledge

Then we passed a giant Tim Horton's billboard and made fun of the "kettle chips...served warm" thing. I mean, come on. They're potato chips. Not fresh-cut fries, not twice-baked potatoes, not made on the premises. Just potato chips nuked in the microwave. Do we look stupid, Tim Horton's?

Then I read a thing on the internet that made me stabbily enraged, which I realized was stupid because it's a fairly small issue and I don't even know why it's a hot-button thing for me, and I have resolved to not write a post about it until I'm in a less assholish frame of mind. I apologize for vagueblogging, but trust me, it's for the best.

I just realized that those two paragraphs both started with "then", even though one thing took place tonight and the other thing took place four evenings ago, which proves that I can't be trusted with a computer or basic chronology right now.

I decided that maybe a little Netflix was in order. But I couldn't find my queue, so I just picked the first scary movie I saw. Big, big mistake. Huge. It was an independent film, which sometimes means quirky and refreshingly non-Hollywood and sometimes means badly acted, indifferently scripted and grating beyond belief. Also, it was really, really gross. There was gross eye stuff and gross fingernail stuff and gross menstrual stuff and so I fast-forwarded through large chunks but watched the end and people, I shit you not, maggots dropped out of a vagina.

So I winged my ipad across the room and picked up a library book - The Best American Noir of the Century. You know what kind of adjectives describe noir fiction? Grim. Nihilistic. Merciless. Bleak. Eve came home from school and asked what was for dinner. I said ashes and despair. She said she'd make herself a grilled cheese.

OH, the other thing is that I've only been reading one book the last few evenings because it's an ebook from the library and it's expiring soon, and it sounded really interesting and I'm only about a third of the way through it and I HATE it so far, and I keep waiting for it to get better and it hasn't. And I'm still constitutionally incapable of quitting a book, so maybe the fact that it will probably expire before I finish it is actually a good thing.

Also, I've been eating crap. A lot of it. While partly standing outside of myself going "what the fuck do you actually think you're doing right now?", with a bemused expression.

So I didn't buy chips while grocery shopping today.

This has the unfortunate by-product of resulting in there not being any chips now.

I hate this day so. much.

Surly Thursday: Infuriating Minutiae

I am a fizzing collection of small bodily irritations. The universe has placed tiny targets on all of my fingernails. A few days ago I smashed my left thumb into the washer, breaking the nail halfway down my thumb. I then managed to jam the tip of a sharp knife right into the wound while making dinner.

Turns out I do a LOT OF STUFF with my left thumbnail. How do I clean under the fingernails on my other hand? Do they just have to stay bacteria-ridden until it grows back? It takes me four times as long to get my left contact lens out - I manage to knock it off my pupil but then it gets stuck in the inner corner of my eye and I pry ineptly at it with my poor, blunt, useless thumb. It sucks.

Photo from Flickr by Gene Han

I have a paper cut that's actually a cut from the lid of one of those plastic clamshell salad containers, which I think we can all agree is MUCH, MUCH worse than a paper cut, on my left index finger (wait, is that the finger beside the thumb? The Peter Pointer finger? That one). My other thumb hurts in a sort of indiscriminate maybe-it's-the-skin, maybe-it's-the-ligament way. Plus the whole hand aches, I think from trying to hold my ipad to read in the hospital waiting room - stupid heavy ipad. Stupid weak hand.

Getting into the truck after getting groceries today I broke the nail on my right thumb and right ring finger.

Other things that have annoyed me this week:

1. Toilets without lids

2. Loblaws, who always has plantains when I don't need them, not having any plantains on Monday when I needed them.

3. Loblaws, who had a bin full of cilantro on Monday, not having any cilantro today when I needed more.

4. The guy who keeps making smart-ass comments on the email for Collette's birthday party, but won't say whether he's actually coming, despite my repeatedly asking. He's dead to me. I'm going to find out what all the foods he hates are and put them on the menu. If he shows up, I will NOT smile welcomingly at him.

5. The half-a-foot-deep puddle at the end of my driveway that I keep forgetting is there and having to stand in to unload my groceries.

6. My husband clearing his throat incessantly after dinner every night.

7. The series finale of How I Met Your Mother. Or maybe not. I'm still deciding.

8. The rash on Angus's face. REALLY? The poor kid just got a prescription that's been working for his face and found out he's getting his braces off next month, and now he has to deal with this shit? NOT COOL, Universe.

9. The slightly too-wide neck on the purple shirt with the sharkbite hem that I ALMOST totally love, except every time I put it on I remember that the neck is too wide and I can't figure out exactly how to position it on my shoulders and it makes me feel like there's too much of the wrong kind of skin showing, so it's eighty percent really flattering and twenty percent not, and I can never decide if I should get rid of it or not.

10. The pork roast I bought at Loblaws on Monday that had a best before date of tomorrow but reeked to high heavens when I pulled back the plastic wrap today. They gave me my money back, but I had to return it and I still keep phantom-smelling rancid pork.

11. Perhaps I should give some thought to frequenting another grocery store?

Anyway, Eve and I had a rather hilarious time grocery shopping and clothes shopping for her at Winners, which I will tell you about tomorrow, so none of this is really that surly-making. But it's Thursday. And goddamn, this paper-plastic cut stings. And I need help taking out my left contact lens. Who's coming over?

Unsurly Thursday

I'm not remotely surly today, but I also can't think of a post title (I suck so badly at SEO optimization, I might as well title every post DO NOT READ: DEVOID OF ANYTHING INSPIRING, ENTERTAINING OR REMOTELY TIME-WORTHY and have done with it). I've had the loveliest week, which is weird since it's January and typically I'd be eyes-deep in the Slough of Despond. It's been cold and the roads have been not great, so aside from grocery shopping and ferrying Eve to acting class and piano I've been mostly hermitting, while baking, cooking, hanging on Twitter with fabulous people, reading and making another embarrassing blunder in one of my courses but who cares? I blamed the children for my witlessness, and the instructor has kids too so she was on board with it.

I read a couple of articles on Book Riot recently that referred to my issue about Orson Scott Card and whether I should see Ender's Game: No, I Won't Read Your Book if I Think You're a Monster, and Why It's Important to Keep Reading Books by People Even if They're Monsters. Which is kind of a bad title, isn't it? It sort of makes it sound like all people are monsters, or all people who write books. Shouldn't it have said Bad People? Anyway, it didn't clarify my position a WHOLE lot, but it made me think of more Stuff to Say About It. Which I've now forgotten in the time it took me to track down the articles and link to them.

Okay, truthfully, I had remembered the first title as No, I Won't  Read Your Book If You're a Monster, and my point was that it would more properly be No, I Won't Read Your Book If You Qualify as a Monster According to My Principles, which is kind of what it DOES say, so that took some of the wind out of my sails. But reading it, and the other article, did make me realize that walling myself off in some pristine place where I only read books written by nice, nice people doesn't really sit right with me. I like the quote from the second article that "reading a book by someone isn't my 'vote' for that person as a human being". The first article made sense to me; I sympathize with her point, but I don't empathize with it. Eve went on a Roald Dahl tear last year - read every single one of his books, then his autobiography, then did her speech on him. When the author of the first article asked something like How can you read your child Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and later have to explain that Dahl supported Hitler and hated Jews? Well, I can talk to her about the fact that some people have some really wrong ideas about how being different makes you inferior, and sometimes it will surprise you very unpleasantly when it's someone you thought you would like who has those ideas. The way we talk about anything else, in other words.

There's also the issue with the second article, that reading a book by someone who holds views you find reprehensible isn't necessarily getting to 'know your enemy' - they likely don't set their views out in plain language, if it's fiction they're writing. But if someone writes literature that seems to embody kindness, and graciousness, and generosity of spirit, even when they personally don't seem to embody these things, it does show that people are more than one thing. So yes, if someone is proved to have committed a crime, by all means I am for their conviction and imprisonment. If someone thinks homosexuality is criminal or disgusting, I will argue against that to my last breath. But will I refuse to read their books? No, I don't think I will. Because that won't change their mind, and it might contribute to closing my own.

I had more stuff to say, but I'm tired and the kitchen is a mess and Angus needs a smoothie. Just to prove how unsurly I am, I've started forcing myself to put on a big fake maniacal smile when things go wrong - if I break something, or do something dumb, or leave the van when I'm in a hurry and I've finally gotten where I'm going and then have to go back and unlock the van door because I've left the lights on. Because sometimes smiling even a fake smile makes you feel better, and even if it doesn't I take some comfort from the fact that if anyone's watching I probably look really scary.

Surly Thursday: Fear and Loathing at the School Barbecue

So I had a doctor's appointment early Wednesday morning. I made it early because I knew I was going to get weighed and I wanted to go without eating. This was a stupid, stupid idea. It was stupid because I know I've lost some weight and I shouldn't have been so hell-bent on the doctor's scale showing the most possible weight lost, and it was stupid because I live in a suburb that's reasonably far from downtown, which is fine in off-hours when the traffic is normal, but during what we like to call "escape from Barrhaven" when everybody's going to work, it takes an insanely long time to get there.

So I left an hour early for a drive that should take twenty to twenty-five minutes, and I was late, and stuck in traffic, and having a panic attack. I made it in around twenty minutes late, and managed not to burst into tears in the waiting room, and the doctor still saw me. And my weight loss was duly recorded and praised, but it was rather unfortunate that I was also there for a blood pressure check.

My doctor suggested strongly that I increase my medication dosage since my anxiety seems to be riding a little high. YA THINK? So to sum up - fuck you, fucking anxiety, you are HARSHING MY BUZZ.

After the doctor, I sat in my van and took some deep breaths. Then I drove to Starbucks and met The Maven and Sarah. And, well, I'm not going to talk about that now, because it makes me unable to stay surly. I drank a bunch of tea and basked in their awesomeness and we talked and laughed and interrupted each other and said no, you go first, and talked some more and laughed some more and the people that were there trying to get work done probably cursed us in their heads and wished we'd shut the hell up and two and a half hours flew by like nothing.

Thursday I started getting stuff ready for my birthday party on Saturday, and did an assignment and a quiz for my course, and it all would have been lovely, except it was the day of the effing school barbecue, which I used to be able to just not tell my kids about, but as soon as Eve was old enough to listen to her friends and read the memos she was bringing home I was screwed.

It shouldn't be that bad. I know a lot of people at the school. Some of them even like me. The weather was nice although it was supposed to be raining. It was only two hours long. Why does it strike terror into my heart and make me loathe all of humankind?

I'll get to that in a moment. I have to add that, as I was backing the van out of the driveway and talking to Eve about something, there was a horrific clunk that scared the hell out of us. I realized that, now that the huge snowbanks that made backing out terrifying are gone, my husband decided to move the basketball net from his truck's side of the driveway to my van's side. So while I was trying not to hit his vehicle's mirror with my vehicle's mirror, the mirror on the OTHER side of my vehicle whacked the basketball net. My reaction was somewhat disproportionate. I mean, it's possible - probable, even - that he wasn't expressly setting me up to wreck the van and feel like a total failure as a competent driver and human being. It's possible he was just trying to move the basketball net away from the tree. Regardless, it was a less than auspicious start to the whole ordeal.

We picked up Eve's friend whose parents weren't able to take her. We walked down the street to the school.

So here's the story. It's a big school. There are a lot of people. You think that knowing a good number of people should mean that you can find someone to talk to - maybe more than one person! - but the truth of it is that most years I end up wandering around feeling fat and awkward and lost and alone while Eve runs around getting hot dogs and freezies and going on bouncy castles with her friends. It's in a wide open field, so the sun blazes down relentlessly for the entire two hours. There's loud annoyingly perky music playing. There are about six picnic tables for about eight hundred people. I saw my friend's kids, then I realized she'd sent her husband instead of coming herself and felt a brief flash of total hatred for her. Then I couldn't find Eve and her friend for a good half hour, wherein I went from "it's cool that at least I don't have to stay with them the entire time because they're old enough to go by themselves and you know nothing's going to happen with all these people around in a contained area" to "jesus christ, I'm going to have the only kid who ever disappeared in full view of the entire school, out of a contained area". And just as an extra little bitter garnish, I realized that my husband usually doesn't come because it's baseball season and there's always been a game on barbecue night. But this time there WAS no game, and he was just sitting home in blissful silence and coolness and non-fat-social-leper-weirdness. After having put the basketball net right where my mirror would hit it. Then I found Eve and her friend.

You can imagine how well things went when I got home. Just kidding. Mostly. I do it because Eve has a great time, and I know that as a parent sometimes we have to do things we don't like for our kids. I just sort of fail on the part where we're supposed to do it halfway graciously.

Off to the drugstore. Hopefully as a side effect, the anxiety meds will also treat the overwhelming tendency to be a petty cow.

Surly Thursdays

You know what I hate? Those articles in the paper where people outline their diet and fitness habits and then get critiqued by 'experts'. They're almost always people that are goddamned near perfect anyway, and then the experts stomp in and say "that half a muffin you have every two weeks is basically cake - poisoned evil cake," or "okay, you ran twenty-five miles and did weights before you taught that spin class, but when you get off your own bike to correct your students' technique your not getting the full cardio benefits of the workout". I also read about this woman who wanted to lose weight so she "started with baby steps: she started running, kept a food diary and eliminated sugar from her diet". ELIMINATING SUGAR FROM YOUR DIET IS NOT A FUCKING BABY STEP!

Enh, I can't really keep up the surly. I've had wicked insomnia all week and yesterday I woke up with my neck and upper back muscles completely seized and I have my period and the weather is seriously crappy. But it's been an easy week. Tuesday was supposed to be busy, but piano and guitar got cancelled because the teacher was sick and then softball got cancelled because of epic thunder-raininess, so Eve and I stayed home and I got a blog post and an assignment done. Yesterday I visited Baby Rose again. On the way home from our visit last week Eve said "my hands still smell like baby!"

*         *         *

It's very hard to maintain your surliness in the face of tiny fingers and that thing where she seems determined to stretch her face to the absolute boundary of where a face can be stretched.

Last night I had book club. We discussed (rather animatedly) Patti Smith's autobiography, Just Kids. Half of us thought it was wonderful and inspirational and indicative of her intensity and passionate artistry. The other half of us thought it was pretentious and name-droppy and that she could have given some indication that she was aware that a lot of her success was due to simply being in the right place at the right time with the right haircut. I think there's no doubt she had talent and guts (moving to New York with nothing), and I was really interested in reading about her time with Robert Mapplethorpe, and there was definitely a certain voyeuristic thrill in reading a lot of this. I just didn't feel she brought a very keen intelligence or analysis to bear on any of her experiences - it sort of made me think of Homer Simpson saying "it doesn't MEAN anything, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened".

Tonight baseball got cancelled because of yet more heavy rain. Matt and Angus went to see Iron Man 3 with their rare free time. Eve and I watched the season finale of Once Upon a Time. This is Eve's assessment of season finales: "Wah, wah, we're all gonna die! We're all gonna die! Smooch smooch smooch. TOO MUCH KISSING."

It's nice when your ten-year-old daughter can hold up the back end of a Surly Thursday for you.

Surly Thursday or a Reasonable Facsimile

Yeah, I'm faking it because you can't be authentically surly when you're dead inside, but Clara was looking forward to surliness and I adore Clara and I'm stalled in this assignment until my husband gets home and shows me how to make a concept map in Powerpoint.

Things that would make me surly if I still had feelings:

When the Rideau Canal was still open, Alan Neal was talking on CBC about the no-pickup-hockey-games rule that the National Capital Commission instituted. The reasons given were 1) it's dangerous and disruptive with so many people skating and, more importantly 2)the kind of 'static weight' generated by these games, as opposed to the 'moving weight' of people simply skating could cause the ice to sink and result in dangerous skating conditions. Neal concluded the piece with "what do you think"?

What do they think? Who gives a crap what they think? Are you going to ask them what they think about the rule about not knocking over liquor stores too? It's been determined that this is something that could shorten the canal skating season or result in injury, but let's all vote? Stuff a beaver tail in it, Alan Neal.

It's silly to get surly over a column in the newspaper, right? I always kind of know even while reading and feeling pissy that this writer needed to fill their column inches for the week, there's a good chance they're exaggerating or even just making stuff up, and that it's likely that my outrage is, in fact, the intended effect. And yet....

There was a column in the paper this week or last bitching about people bitching about winter. You know, we're soft, we're whiny, we should suck it up and embrace the chill, celebrate the upper-body-workout given by shovelling a foot and a half of snow, etc. etc.

Suck it, Pollyanna. Complaining about winter is a Canadian birthright. Sometimes I wonder what it's like living somewhere without winter. Are people always happy? What do you lament about in January if it's sunny and warm and you can leave the house without girding your loins in gore tex and sorels? I don't expect to ever find out. I live here, and it's unlikely that I'm ever leaving. I'm partial to many aspects of it. But right now, backing out of my driveway is an act of blind faith. The main intersection at the end of my street only has one lane clear, so if someone is coming around the corner as I pull up I have to drive up onto the snowbank in order not to get scraped by the other vehicle. My skin is raw, and Vaseline Intensive Rescue lotion has suddenly started smelling like something unpleasantly male and biological to me. Sure, there have been a handful of days where I've gotten out and frolicked in the snow or enjoyed the bracing frigidity, but mostly it's a slog. It's not tragic, and it's not insurmountable, but it's wearing and it's my winter and I'll complain if I want to.

The other column was about how people shouldn't sneer at ereaders or the people who love them. Which is a fair point, except when people with ereaders are snotty and sneer at people who are still reading those laughably antiquated things called books. The columnist says she still wants to own beloved books or first editions, but for a flimsy paperback she'll just download it onto her ereader for a few bucks. Uh, yeah, I don't own all the flimsy paperbacks I read either - I get them from the library, for free (fuck off, this is NOT the place to ask how much I pay in overdue fees). Other people have written about how giddy they are about getting rid of all their books and then replacing them on their ereader. Uh yeah, okay, so you've now paid for the books twice but now yay! Your collection is now portable. And invisible. Clearly this confers some kind of superiority. I didn't particularly love the Kindle I had for a few weeks before I gave it to my mother, but I could completely see their appeal and understand why people liked them. Douchebags who think their way is the only way? Turns out I'm still against them. Maybe I'll write a column about it.

Surly Thursday

Thesauruses (thesauri?) tend to make me surly. First of all, I have this irrational feeling that if I use a thesaurus, it's kind of cheating. It's not really a hundred percent my own work any more if I have to get a word consult. But more than that, doesn't it often turn out that using a thesaurus doesn't really work? I was writing an assignment and looking for a synonym for 'celebrate', as in 'celebrate diversity', but I'd already used 'celebrate', and didn't want to use it four more times. But 'beat the drum for diversity' really didn't seem appropriate. Neither did 'blow off steam' or 'carouse' or 'ceremonialize'. And 'drink to'? Yes, my marketing assignment was really going to fly with my brilliant plan to organize a book club for elementary school students wherein we all 'drink to diversity!'

So yeah, this course. It's called "Library Marketing and Advocacy". Except it just started being called that - last term, before they reworked the entire goddamned curriculum for Library and Information Technology Diploma, it was called "Client Services". I looked at this course title back when I started the program, and I thought "that course is going to be a walk in the park where I just write nice little papers about courtesy and treating clients with respect and delivering great customer service and bullshit like that". And I bet it WOULD HAVE BEEN if I'd taken it a couple of term ago. Bugger. BUGGER! As it is, my husband had to talk me down off a ledge last week as I was starting this assignment, because the only thing that freaks me out more than computer database work is anything that smacks of (shudder) SALES. I could not sell water in the desert. I could not sell potato chips to stoned people. I could not sell pasties to Rihanna. I do not possess the Marketing Gene.

And then people hurt my feelings on Twitter. And then people hurt my feelings on Blogger. And then people on Facebook made fun of string cheese, and people, the fact that I can have a cheese string and fifteen almonds at three-thirty is the only thing preventing me from committing shawarmageddon or a cheeseburgerpocalypse all over my Weight Watcher points right now, so just BACK THE FUCK OFF MY DELIGHTFULLY STRINGABLE DAIRY PRODUCT, WILL YA?

There's a package of chicken breasts in the fridge. I think if I have to cook it I'm actually going to kill myself.

Hannah's Surly Thursday post can be found here. So proud to be Spreading the Surly...

Hark the Surly Angels Sing Thursdays

I'm not actually feeling surly today, or not much. I did take Eve to get a flu shot at a Rexall pharmacy where there was one pharmacist and one counter-person working, and then spend an hour or so in Loblaws, so the surliness opportunities were multiform, but I imagine I'm feeling like a lot of other people: happy and grateful about my life and sad and dispirited about some stuff that's happened to other people. Also, wishing that Nan hadn't told me about how doing NaBloPoMo killed her first blog, and, naturally, still pissed off about the cancellation of Firefly.

Still, I'd hate to disappoint anyone who came here in search of surliness, so let me just send out a pinch of snark to that woman on Twitter today who tweeted "Really? No one has experienced this?" I was concerned that someone needed help with a problem, and also curious because geez, if there's one thing the internet has done for all of us is to show us that there is almost NOTHING you can confess to - alcoholism, resenting our children, strange sexual practices, nun bashing - that won't elicit a perky piping up with 'me too, me too!' from a wealth of supportive friends and strangers; so I clicked the link. Turns out it was just that she had an article up on Yummy Mummy that no one had commented on. So naturally that must mean that no one else has experienced the thing she was talking about, not that, I don't know, a large number of us are busy baking pine-needle shortbread and making candy-cane wreaths and searching for the perfect violent video game and shit because of a fairly sizeable holiday which is occurring a few days from now.

Also, the people that haughtily sniff at businesses who say they will donate to causes based on retweets or mentions, because they should just donate money without tying it to self-promotion. Um? Capitalism? Businesses in the business of making a profit? Sure, it would be nice if they would just give money out of the goodness of their collective businessy hearts, but if they're willing to give away money which they're under no obligation to give, I'm okay with them getting a little advertising out of it. And for Christ's sake, how hard is it to click retweet anyway? Sure, take companies to task for unsafe working conditions, or even unreasonable returns policies. Saying they'll donate money if we will, literally, lift one finger? Maybe take a breath.

End surliness. One more day of school, unless this Epic Storm lives up to its billing. Christmas tree is decorated, all of our mailed packages have arrived at their destinations on time, and whoever I've forgotten to mail a Christmas card to at this point is getting it in January. We find out tomorrow if my nephew can get the pins out of his arm then or if they'll be here on the twenty-ninth instead of the twenty-eighth. Either way, it's Christmas and I'm not travelling, so I'm all good.

Surly Thursdays

I actually had a pretty nice day. I went to the gym - oh wait, no I didn`t, I had a headache and it was snowing so FUCK THE GYM. I made a hair appointment and recorded some cds onto the computer so I could donate them, and then I was all I`m gettin`shit DONE today and then I tried to watch Criminal Minds but it didn`t record because my PVR is all judgey and stupid. So I went to the library to shelve books and then Eve came in and sorted the picture books and ran around the shelves and made fun of silly book titles and it was like when she used to come in after morning junior kindergarten and we`d hang out in the library except it`s a new younger library tech now and she`s less cranky than the old one, who admittedly still was lovely to Eve, and once you hang around the library for a while you see how one could get burned out and short-fused, because man, the kids, they are loud, and you tell them not to run and they walk two steps and start running again as if they think they just turned invisible or you`re too stupid to keep watching or something. And they can`t find the Geronimo Stilton books, or the Guinness World Book of Records books, or the inventions books, and then you lead them right to them and then they decide they`d rather read about lemurs or origami and it`s just all very annoying after a while. This is why I go in late in the day and finish after everyone else is gone and a few teachers are practicing choral music at the piano just outside the library and people are leaving for the day and it`s relaxed and holiday-ish. Angus`s grade six teacher from last year stopped in to say hi on her way out. Eve was very bitter that the teacher talked to me in English and her in French (force of habit). She said ``It`s after school hours - I`M ALLOWED TO TALK ENGLISH``.

I had a random memory today of one of the first times Matt came home with me to my parents`old house. It was summer and we were playing badminton in the back yard and while he was backing up to try to hit, he fell over a planter and knocked out the flowers. I thought my Dad wouldn`t care, but he was actually kind of peeved. Matt and I were both pissed at each other for not falling all over ourselves to take the blame. His position was that my Dad had to like me no matter what. My position was that the guest always got off easier. Looking back I can`t help but think what a couple of whiny suckholes we were. Geez, way to stand up for your woman - your pathetic badminton-playing had some collateral damage, own it, man. Way to stand up for your man - clearly my superior sporting skills were to blame, I should have stepped up. And Dad, Dude, it`s a few petunias - suck it up already.

Also, I was wearing shorts and a sports bra and my boobs were ADORABLE.

NOW I`m surly.

Surly Thursdays or whatever shut up I've been posting for twenty-one days straight

I'm cranky. No-good-reason, hair-trigger, don't-fuck-with-me cranky. Is it just me, or are some times just more difficult to fix in the mind than others? Eve has singing lessons at 6:30 on Wednesday evenings, but for some reason I always think it's six. I have dinner ready and remind her to brush her teeth, and we're ready to leave, and then I realize it's not until six-thirty, and we live about four seconds away from her teacher, so we're way too early. Except tonight the teacher wanted to do it at six, and all day I've been confused because I'm actually right, but then I'm not usually right, so am I really right? Then Eve came home with a sore throat and a fever and it didn't matter anyway, so FUCK.

Also, fuck the fucking people with their insisting on being served a fucking meal every fucking night. I'm sick of cooking the same four things over and over, and when I try something different why on earth is it a meatloaf with oats and milk in it? And why did I buy not enough ground beef and forget to reduce the other ingredients accordingly so it turns out a barely loaf-shaped mushy oat-y mess? Actually everyone else ate it quite happily (once I buried it under a blanket of melted cheese), but I thought it was icky. My husband was a fan of the idea of meat loaf, and suggested that next time I just try adding a little more... meat. So fine, but FUCK.

You know what would be really different? If someone on a TV show went through something traumatic and then said "Wow. You know, that car accident/ watching my partner get murdered/ war really messed me up. I probably shouldn't be trying to perform any complicated or stressful tasks right now, and I think it would be really good for me to talk to some kind of professional". Because it's really not original anymore, the whole "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm totally good being a policeman or doctor or whatever and then AFTER I do something unbelievably reckless and disastrous consequences occur, won't it be a heartwarming dénouement when I finally walk into that psychiatrist's office?" It's old. It's tired. It's annoying.

To cap it all off, I left a comment today in which I used 'they're' instead of 'their'. FUCK.

I'm going to bed. Or out for a cheeseburger. I might bitch-slap someone denying their PTSD on the way.

(Embracing the) Surly Thursdays

I am not a good person. Oh, I'm generally nice and polite to everyone, but this is only because I suffer from an unfortunate surfeit of empathy, and if I was mean or rude to anyone I would just have to experience the tiresome effect of being able to vividly imagine how that made them feel, and it's just not worth the effort. And sure, I adore my family and friends and I would do anything to help them out or make them feel better, within reason, right after The Vampire Diaries, but I'd throw them all over for a guaranteed extra two or three good hair days a month.

But I'm not a good person. When I'm alone and driving around, I'm filled with rage and hatred for all the stupid drivers who don't have the good sense to just get the fuck out of my way. And man, there are a lot of stupid drivers. The ones who won't pull up far enough when they're stopped at a red light to let the right-turning people turn right (see, I always pull up far enough, because otherwise I just have to vicariously experience the vein-throbbing head-explosiveness going on in the car behind me). The ones who gaily swerve from lane to lane because look! A rainbow! A cow! The ones who come to a full and complete stop, which hey, I respect, because I've been doing the full and complete stop ever since this post, BUT then after they've stopped, they don't just go. They inch cautiously forward into the intersection as if some purple-motorcycled freak is going to appear out of nowhere and plow into them. Because yes, I do mean when the intersection is COMPLETELY EMPTY.

I had to pick my Dad up at the hospital after his cataract surgery on Monday. I know this is a tired subject but why, oh why, do they make the place you have to go when you're sick, already ill at ease in the world, and prone to disorientation and confusion, so completely baffling and forbidding? I mean, in this situation there was no dire illness or fear of death, and I STILL came out of it feeling like I'd run a marathon through a forest fire.

Tuesday I went to the mall because Wednesday was Angus's grade 6 leaving ceremony (isn't that a weird thing to call it? I respect that they want to get away from the 'graduating from everything' wave, but it makes me think of those science fiction stories where everybody on the planet has to die at the age of sixty or something. If they started putting wreaths of flowers on their heads I was grabbing my kid and getting the eff out of there) and we realized on Monday that, although he had a number of nice, presentable shirts and a roughly equal number of nice, presentable pairs of of shorts, none of said nice, presentable items looked remotely un-idiotic when put together.

I hate the mall. By the time I left there were (I can hardly type it)..... sweat marks on the back of my shirt.

Wednesday was the leaving ceremony. More on that later.

Last night I was reading the paper. There's a column in our paper written by Craig and Mark Kielberger (I'm not googling anything about this for spelling or accuracy, read with extreme skepticism), who have been activists for world peace and justice and clean water in Africa and stuff like that since the age of three or something. For all my snark, we must all agree that these are good, good people. So people write in and ask them stuff about activism and social causes. The letter I read last night was asking if edgy campaigns such as the "I love boobies" bracelets (one of which my son got for his birthday - not from me - and wears proudly_ and the "fuck cancer" t-shirts are effective, or if they put people off. Craig and Mark talked a little bit, in a fairly measured way, about the woman who started the fuck cancer t-shirt campaign. But at the end of their column they said they thought 'messages of hope and inspiration' were the best way to go for social causes.

And now I want to bitch-slap Craig and Mark Kielberger.

Not a good person.

Surly Thursdays OR How Sometimes I'm Just Not That Bright

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will not be surprised by my confessing that I'm fairly wishy-washy, I suck at confrontation and I just want everyone to get along. On the one hand, I think I'm fairly good at looking at issues from several different points of view; on the other hand, sometimes I sort of admire people who have a solid opinion and are not going to be swayed no matter what.

One of the things I've been trying to improve at is speaking up when I disagree with someone. In the past, I've let statements go by without challenging them either because I didn't feel like I could marshal my thoughts well enough to state cogently why I disagreed, or because I was just too chickenshit. But I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with taking that road - it feels cowardly and dishonest. So if I read a statement on Facebook or a blog post that I disagree with, I will often say so in my comment, as respectfully as possible. For the most part, this has not resulted in any negative experiences and it feels like a tiny bit of growth, so that's good.

Do you know Sandra? I like Sandra. She's kind and self-deprecating and hysterically vulgar, and she has killer abs (okay, I don't 'like' her for that so much as 'feel a bitter, coruscating acid-like envy', but whatever). She has a lot of followers and gets a shit-ton of comments on every post. Her followers like her a lot. Have you noticed that when this happens with a blogger, a sort of phenomenon takes over the majority of the commenters that dictates that every comment must be not just positive, but overwhelmingly positive and supportive and complimentary? "Oh my God, you are the funniest person ever and I love you more than I love my own children!!!!!" "I just laughed so hard my spleen came out my nose!!!! How are you this funny???? Your family must just sit around and laugh at you all day every day!!!!! And also, whoever you hate, I hate them even more than you and I will track them down and kill them with nail scissors!!!!"

I'm not claiming that I'm not often guilty of similar behaviour. When you read a post that articulates something that you suddenly realize has been floating vaguely around your own psyche, and renders it both clearly and comically, it does make you feel like you've found a soulmate, and I often love immoderately on my favourite bloggers in my comments too. But I try to be wary of being swept up in the 'if you hate them I hate them' wave without considering whether I do actually hate the person/corporation/cohort in question. Sandra recently wrote a post about an unpleasant and frustrating parent-teacher interview she had with her son's teachers. People were sympathetic, which is great, BUT, a lot of the comments on this post seemed to insinuate that not just THESE teachers but ALL teachers were unintelligent, uncaring, too quick to medicate and just general douchebags. So this was my comment:

Wow, is this a gathering of people who love to bash teachers anonymous? Or not so anonymous? One of my issues with bloggers who get big is the commenters who love them SO much that they will not only agree with anything they say but will go orders of magnitude further just to prove their loyalty – not only are THESE two teachers bad, ALL TEACHERS ARE HORRIBLY AWFULLY BAD. I would be livid in your place also, Sandra, and I’m glad you have so many supporters but geez, people, take a breath.

Pretty innocuous, right? A couple of teachers actually responded that they appreciated this comment, and no one seemed to find it offensive, so good.

Then I saw a new post from Sandra in my blogroll entitle "The Blogger Who Gets Big". I thought, uh-oh. Then I read the post and then I read the comments which said a bunch of things about rude commenters, haters and 'nonintelligent misinterpreters' and said that they should shut up and blow themselves and a bunch of other stuff. Then I got upset and commented again and said Dudes, I wasn't being rude, and I wasn't even disagreeing with Sandra, I was disagreeing with all the people who can't distinguish liking someone's writing from over-agreeing with them to a loony degree (I'm paraphrasing). I was frustrated. I was tired. I was confused about how saying that Sandra was a blogger who had gotten big was insulting. I was confused about how a comment that didn't use any bad words or direct anyone to ingest fecal matter was negative or rude. I said my piece then I went up to bed.

Then I laid in bed awake for a while. Then I realized that I'M A TOTAL MORON. She didn't quote my comment in the post. She didn't link to me. She didn't even mention me. She used the first phrase from my comment and then wrote about what that made her think, which is totally legitimate, and then a few commenters made an assumption that it was a negative comment and jumped all over the theoretical commenter, whereupon I outed myself as the theoretical commmenter like a giant idiot, when I could have just shut up and gone to bed fifteen minutes earlier. Maybe I'M the narcissist.

Sometimes blogging is really weird.

Surly Thursdays

I was a little afraid I wasn't going to be able to summon up a decent amount of surliness, what with my awesome week-end and my extremely painful and stubborn lower-back condition resolving somewhat. Fortunately, then it rained for four days straight and the tendonitis in my right elbow resulted in me using my left hand more which now causes a burning pain to shoot up my left arm every time I move that thumb. Also, my husband left for Australia yesterday and last night my enormous eleven-year-old son hurtled into my bed whimpering in terror because it was raining so hard he couldn't sleep and he was afraid we were going to get flooded (by which he didn't mean the basement might get a little damp, naturally - he was envisioning the army having to airlift us off our roof. Maybe we should stop letting him use that Worst Case Scenario toilet paper). I kept murmuring reassurances, and then just as I would close my eyes and start to drift off he would yelp "was that lightning? Was THAT lightning?" This morning he stumbled downstairs bleary-eyed and said "Sorry for what I did last night. It wasn't a good thing for either of us."

So tomorrow's a P.D. day, I have four kids all day, I have an assignment due by midnight and it hurts to type. Plus I'm supposed to scale rope bridges and zipline and shit on Saturday - who needs two good working arms for that, right?

Nevertheless, I am still thankful. That my daughter has just learned about the sixties and is wandering around saying "Let's change it up, man! It's like the sixties, man! You have to say 'man' after every sentence, man!" That my son kept guffawing at the jokes about 'genitals' in the Big Bang Theory and then looked at me and furtively asked "does that mean balls?" That no one really wants me to stop being snarky - even the universe, clearly, because right after I wrote that post I went to get my hair done and cracked a trashy magazine open and there was Toni Braxton, big as life, talking about her sons - Denim and Diezel.

Thank-you, Universe. Message received.

Surly Thursdays

On the off-chance that you're also feeling like crap - or even if you're not - go read this. It will either make you laugh and forget how crappy you feel or it will make you laugh until you feel even more headachey and barfish, but it will be worth it.

I'm off-kilter. I know, considering how seldom I am actually on-kilter, that statement is practically devoid of all meaning. I must be doing not that bad, though, because I've had a nagging headache, stabbing lower back pain and a sort of medium-queasy stomach for four days now and it's taken me until about an hour ago to develop the theory that it might be some non-specific full-body cancer (and by 'develop the theory' I naturally mean 'become totally convinced').

I got called a smart-ass by Amber a few days ago. You know, Amber? The nicest person in blogging? Once she was talking about how she believes in activism but she finds it intimidating to put herself out there, and most commenters were like 'yeah, totally, me too', but one was like 'then you're a cowardly lazy BAD CITIZEN and you should probably just crawl in a hole', and Amber said to this commenter that maybe she could dial it back a bit because she wanted her blog to be a safe and comfortable place for everyone. Dude, she makes her blog safe and comfortable EVEN FOR DOUCHEBAGS. When douchebags come to my blog I want them to be stabbed in the eye with the spiky hurtful crazy (uncertain how this is different from anyone else who comes to my blog, but the intent is different). And she called me a smart-ass (can't really blame her: she tweeted something like "there's not much that a sunny day can't make better" and I tweeted back "except maybe a drought".) So I'm thinking this is something I might have to work on, because it's literally like I CAN'T STOP MYSELF. And I just read a post by someone the other day about how she's now choosing to focus on the positive and be happy, and not everyone is pleased about it, but she's tired of negativity and complaining and snark.

Tired... of SNARK?

It occurs to me that I may have developed a snark dependency. I don't think I can get through the day without snark. I don't know if I want to live in a world without snark, and that's not good, right?

Okay, I'm going to try to go snark-free for the next few hours. I'll let you know how it works out. And Amber, if I run into any douchebags, I will do my level best to make them safe and comfortable. Because I think it would be good for me to be a little bit more like you and a little bit less like me.