Thirty Days Has November

Last day. It always feels like I should have some big wrap-up 'ending' post, and I don't think I ever do. I don't feel like I covered myself in glory, but it's kind of like when halfway through a canoe trip I wonder why the hell I ever thought this was a good idea, and then at some further point it becomes clear that some things you just do to see if you can do them. You might not do them perfectly (especially if you're in a canoe with a crazy Austrian who periodically takes it into his head to see how well a canoe corners) and they might not change your life, but you commit, and you complete, and you feel a kind of quiet satisfaction, or it would be quiet if the thing itself didn't require you to GO ON TYPING EVERY DAY FOR A GODDAMNED MONTH.

Okay, clearly I'm still a little conflicted.

I am grateful beyond words to all of you for keeping me company through this bleak and bumpy space of days (Steph - you're so cute. Don't ever, ever apologize for commenting on the wrong post, or commenting twice, or commenting "blue clowns make the typewriter choose yogurt" or whatever. The fact that you're taking the time to comment while you're away from home makes me want to buy you a coffee, or tea, or spinach burrito or something - in fact, if I can figure out how to buy a gift card in Canada that works in the states, I will send you one in a Christmas card). I always worry that NaBloPoMo might turn out as a string of commentless, increasingly desperate posts, possibly with pathetic promises to give stuff away or flash my boobs as the month wears on. I consider you all pearls of great price.

I'm hoping we can get a Christmas tree tomorrow and start hauling out the Christmas boxes, although I think the door to the storage space is still choked with Halloween boxes - I always tell myself I'm going to get organized BEFORE December first, because if I wait to start on that day then nothing will actually happen until at least December fifth. I whiled away today in my reading chair with this book and this book and this book (well, those were the ones I read, I was also surrounded by piles of other books - I use one or two of them to prop up my ipad if the book is on that) and I tried to start this book and then I got very sleepy so I played Words With Friends and turned on some music and stood up and did jumping jacks, and then I sat back down and felt sleepy again, and within the space of about ten seconds went from the "no, I slept in, I can't possibly need more sleep, if I nap I'll just screw up my night, I'm going to finish this book today, I'll get up and do something and then come back and read" to an equally definitive "FUCK IT, I'm napping" and the bed was delicious and my white blanket felt like a cloud on top of me and I had the most blissful perfect nap of all time.

I played the piano three times last week. I worked out three times this week. I bought Advent calendars two weeks ago and just now I found them exactly where I thought I'd put them and laid them on the table for the kids to find in the morning. I'm not on top of everything by a long shot, but I'm not lying underneath it all, covered in dusty sheet music and limp strands of tinsel, either.

And that's something.

Batting Clean-Up

I can't think why I didn't mention that my kick-ass awesome day yesterday started with tea with Sarah after dropping the kids at school. Wait, yes I can; it's because I had been to the dentist, where I waited for eighty grueling years for the torment to end (I hate being tipped backwards and lying down. I hate people touching my face. I hate the horrible scritching sound. I hate all that more than I hate the pain, which is not all that bad. And my hygienist is very, very nice and understanding of dentist anxiety and makes it as un-horrible as possible, which is to say still very, very horrible) and then I went to get groceries and then I went home and felt hot and tired and dizzy and realized I hadn't really eaten anything all day because I was nervous about the dentist (although tea with Sarah was an absolutely splendid distraction) and then I went to get Eve and then we went to the mall and then we came home at seven and then I went to get Angus from volleyball at school and then I fed Angus and then I was very, very tired. But anyway, tea with Sarah was lovely and she agreed with me that having a pap smear is preferable to having one's teeth cleaned.

I also didn't talk about The Imperfectionists, which I said I would on Day 27. I wish I had taken better notes. I borrowed it from the library as an ebook and then it expired. I remember that I read a few pages and absolutely HATED it, but I can't remember why. Then I read a few more and liked it much more. It's a story cycle about journalists who work for a small, failing newspaper based in Italy; every chapter is from a different person's viewpoint. I can never decide if this is kind of a lazy, cop-out way of writing a novel, or an ingenious device, or if it's entirely dependent on the individual author, which is probably closer to the truth. Some people thought that many of the chapters didn't ring true, although some were very good. Others didn't like that there weren't more reappearances of characters once their story was gone, which made it seem like the book was marketed as a novel when it was really a book of extremely loosely linked short stories. There were certain moments that struck me in the heart, and overall I liked the book. I wish I could remember what caused the initial surge of dislike.

I've started reading The Shining again. I can't even remember when I first read it, but I think I was very young, and I missed a lot. I'm enjoying the reread very much. I'm planning to watch the movie again when I'm done, but I'm fairly convinced that my opinion of that won't change a whole lot.

Eve and I are watching Rose again next week. Stay tuned.

Zarah called today because she was laid up with a hip flexor injury and bored, which reminded me that I still haven't said anything about our week-end. It was fabulous. We had her friends over for a clothing swap, and drank wine and ate popcorn and walked around half-naked. We put on sparkly eyeliner and got dressed for a party with other women. One of them was talking to her girlfriend on the phone, and the girlfriend asked if she was going formal, to which the first replied "no, I'm wearing leopard print pants, red lipstick and glitter - I look like a ho", which led us to coin the phrase "Slutty Casual - it's the new Cocktail". We walked to the market and bought cashew corn chowder with cilantro cream for lunch, which I became briefly obsessed with recreating and then totally forgot about until just now. We went out again and walked downtown and shopped a bit and then stopped at a little store that had wild boar shank in a vegetable cassoulet, so we bought that too, because WILD BOAR and also, laziness. We talked and played music and talked and talked some more.

I'm still not ready to talk about the homosexuals being welcome in the Catholic Church thing, but I'm working on it.

Okay. I feel better. Husband is home from Tokyo. Tomorrow I shall be chair-bound and book-buried. Then we can deal with snowy driveways and busted fenders.

Happy week-end, all.

Gray Thursday?

The whole concept of Black Friday eludes me. I mean, Boxing Day makes a twisted, horrifying sort of sense, I guess - you just bought a bunch of stuff for other people, then you go buy a bunch of stuff for yourself, and it comes in...boxes...or something (I don't shop on Boxing Day either). But Black Friday? That sounds like a plague or something. Crap, it just occurred to me that if I Google 'Black Friday' I might discover some extremely good reason why Black Friday is called Black Friday.

I'm not doing it. Can't make me.

Anyway. There is no way in hell I will be crashing through anybody's door at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. BUT Eve needed a Christmas outfit and some pants that fit for the winter, and I needed some goat milk lotion from Crabtree and Evelyn (shut up, I totally needed it) and Angus was staying after school for the evening to referee the grade seven volleyball tournament. And it's Thursday, NOT Black Friday.

Yesterday Eve said "so you'll pick me up after school?" and I said "Yes". And she said "and we'll go straight to the mall?" and I said "Yes." And she said "....in my pajamas?" And I remembered that her class was helping with the JK class's Teddy Bear Sleepover (cutest thing EVER, they've been doing it since Angus was in JK - the kids bring their teddies to school, they lock them in the principal's office overnight and when the kids get to school the next morning the teddy bears have broken out of the office and made a big mess in the classroom; Angus's teddy bear was making paper airplanes - Eve's was half-buried in the bead bin) and told her I would bring her some clothes.

Turns out a lot of places at the mall already had stuff on sale, AND it wasn't full of crazed bargain-hunters. AND I hate the mall less when Eve is with me because she thinks everything is AWESOME and EPIC and she laughs at my jokes and people smile when they see her petting all the fuzzy sweaters.

We went in the pet store and squealed at the adorable sleeping kittens. An older couple came up to us and the woman said "excuse me. I have a question. I don't know you, but..." and I was briefly terrified that we were about to have a horribly awkward encounter, but they just wanted to know what size pants to buy for their granddaughter who was the same size and age as Eve.

At one point Eve said "so there's extra small and extra large. I'm trying to imagine what extra medium would look like".

At another point she said "OMG (yes, she said the letters) I thought that mannequin was a real person who was TOTALLY STYLING. No one could ever wear that outfit now because that mannequin rocked it so hard."

We found a drop-dead gorgeous Christmas outfit at H&M - my jaw literally dropped when she came out of the change room. We had dinner in the food court. Eve got complimented twice on her t-shirt. We held hands and made fun of silly clothes and skanky clothes.

I got my teeth cleaned this afternoon, which I hate more than almost anything in the world, and it was STILL a kick-ass awesome day.

Day 27

It snowed. I told Angus if we got 20 centimeters of snow I wouldn't be able to drive him to volleyball practice at seven. So he got up at six and shoveled the driveway. So, okay, I drove him to practice. Then he called me after second period and said there were only six kids in his class, and could he come home? So I said yes.

Meanwhile, the buses for Eve's school were cancelled. I used to send the kids when the bus was cancelled, and then at some point I decided that I wouldn't, not every time - not for any really good reason, there are a lot of walkers and the classes usually aren't that empty, but they never get REAL snow days like we got because of the weird funding formula that means the schools stay open even when the buses don't go, and I am a big fan of periodically playing hooky and not driving in heavy snow. But today she said "but would you MIND driving me?" Well no, because Angus already shoveled the driveway. And I have my parents' car, which has snow tires, while my Van of Shame is parked in their garage and they are soaking up the sun in more hospitable climes.

So I made soup. And worked some more on the Christmas calendars. And fed Angus every hour or so when he wandered up looking for food. And walked around in the snow a little. And decided I could make it to book club because the roads were okay now and I couldn't go last month because Matt was away then too, and Eve had African drumming so I was going to just bring her with me and go late, but then she got sick so I couldn't. I said "I really don't want to miss two months in a row" and Eve said "well, they wouldn't really care, would they?" and then her eyes got big and she said "do you think they'd kick you out?" And I said ha ha, no, of course not, and then I thought crap, they wouldn't kick me out, would they?

No, almost certain not. Then again, it's November, and I am twitchy and paranoid. It's better that I went.

This was the book. I'll talk about it some more tomorrow. If I remember.

I have to go to bed now.

I always lost at hide and seek too

The prompt for today is "tell us about the last thing you hid".

When I got home from Zarah's, I had two shopping bags that had presents for the kids in them (mostly for Eve, because pretty much everything Angus is getting comes from Best Buy or Evoshield, not quaint little shops in downtown Barrie). I was exhausted from the drive, and I stuck them in a corner of the living room, intending to deal with them better the next day. Five days later, I realized that they had been sitting there, not particularly well closed, right next to where Eve practices the piano every day, and she hadn't looked in them. I realized this because she reminded me that they were there, and asked me if I could move them because she was having a progressively harder time resisting the temptation to investigate.

And that is what kind of kid I have.

Perfect Days are Overrated, Right?

So, coming off a week where I felt like absolute hell and couldn't fall asleep before two a.m., I was heading into a week of solo parenting without even MY parents for back-up (how's Costa Rica, Mom and Dad? said with only the faintest undertone of bitterness) and feeling a little nervous.

BUT, I took half an Ativan and a Benadryl and a few puffs off my inhaler last night, went to bed earlyish and slept hard with only a couple wake-ups from 11:30 to seven. Made lunches, got kids to school, went to the gym, got groceries, cleaned out a cupboard containing eleven boxes of stale crackers and made chicken stock and curried crock-pot beef and croissants (okay, the croissants were frozen in a box and I just let them rise and baked them, IT COUNTS, MOTHERFUCKERS.) Had dinner with the kids, watched The Simpsons with the kids, helped Eve practice piano, then worked on my Christmas calendars.

It was a good day. Compared to what I was expecting, it was a great day. It would have been a goddamned near perfect day if not for the small fact that, after dropping Eve off at school, I drove into a side street to wait for Pam to walk by after dropping Laura at school so we could head to the gym. I overshot where I wanted to be and backed up slightly.... into a huge, deeply-planted sign that I SWEAR wasn't there a minute before. And cracked off a piece of my bumper. And made a couple of kids goggle at me like I had descended from the sky in a cape and tights. And completely lost my composure.

Pam was nice. She offered to go drinking with me instead of to the gym. We decided that no bars were
probably open at eight-thirty a.m. and went to the gym anyway. She also said, "Look, if you think of it as a percentage based on all the times you back up and DON'T smash into a sign, the numbers are really in your favour". She also didn't judge me when I said I needed pudding.

My husband was nice. He texted "Shit happens. Don't worry about it." Of course, he can't see the damage from Tokyo. I should probably try to get it fixed before he gets home.

Eve was nice. She said "if it makes you feel any better, some kids at school were talking about some guy they saw driving around who drove into a sign and his WHOLE BUMPER fell off." Me: "...." Her: "OH MY GOD, WERE THEY TALKING ABOUT YOU?"

Last week-end when Angus was in Toronto for volleyball he left his prescription face-washing stuff behind at the hotel and we thought at first that the new refill wasn't going to go through our insurance and we'd have to pay full price for it. He was really upset and wanted to pay for it himself, and I said "look sweetie, we're a family. Sometimes Daddy and I do stupid crap that costs the family money too. It happens - there's no point beating yourself up about it." I guess I just modeled that extra well for him today.

Maybe I should stop dissing November. Also, if I hadn't been headed to the gym I would have just driven home with my unblemished vehicle, so I should OBVIOUSLY stop exercising.

Deep Sigh

Do I always doubt that I'm going to finish NaBloPoMo at this point? I could go back and look, but I don't feel like it. I probably always doubt that I'm going to see the end of November at this point. I probably always think I have cancer of the eyebrows or some similarly exotic wasting disease. I'd go to the doctor, but I can't see putting myself through a phone call and the drive downtown just to sit on an exam table and say "I feel weird".

Further to the last couple of posts and the comments: I didn't like The Shining (the movie). I'm quickly realizing that I'm in a very small minority on this count. I'm not sure if it's because I read the book first, although I strongly suspect that is the case. I agree that Jack Nicholson's performance was admirable, but I just didn't feel like it captured the spirit OR the letter of the book, and the things they changed seemed senseless and I found them enraging. I think maybe I should reread the book and then watch the movie and read Doctor Sleep and then report back. At the very least, maybe I can help Hannah decide whether or not it's safe for her to read Doctor Sleep.

On the bright side, my fabulous friend Pam brought me this tea when I was sick last week and now I'm trying to figure out if I can ship some to everyone I know. Even my tea-hating "lips that touch tea will never touch mine" daughter is currently having some with a hefty addition of milk and sugar. This also reminds me that I froze a chicken carcass a couple of days ago, and I can make chicken stock for the soup from paragraph one of this post this week.

One more week. Books and hot liquids. We can do it.