Me, me, me

Happy Halloween!

My favourite holiday is here! And it's a bee-yootiful day, sunny, mild -- and the coloured leaves are still on the trees, so the world look fabulous.

My kids both had parties today at their respective schools (pre-school in the case of the little one). They wore costumes and I hope they have fun. I was so excited for them. But tonight's the main event, trick-or-treating.

We live in a great neighbourhood, in every way. It's very kid-oriented, with loads of young families and four elementary schools within a 7-minute walk. The streets are wide and lined with enormous old trees, sidewalks are wide, and there are parks everywhere. Kids play in big groups out on the street. People know each other because our kids all go to the same schools and play in the same parks. It's a lot like where I grew up, but way cooler (in a way) because it's only a ten-minute drive or half-hour public-transit ride from the center of downtown.

And it's a great neighbourhood for trick-or-treating, of course. Just about every house has some decorations up, and some go all out and create elaborate vignettes that are truly inspired. And they're not stingy with the candy, no sir!

So, needless to say I'm looking forward to this evening, for myself but mostly for my kids. They'll have lots of fun. Isn't there something wonderful about trick-or-treating? It's a time when you can go to anyone's door, and they'll welcome you and give you candy, but more importantly, give you smiles and a feeling of community.

Even if I didn't love the decorations, costumes, cool weather, jack o' lanterns, I would love Halloween just for the fact that trick-or-treating still exists. To hell with "safe Halloweens" where the kids wander around some auditorium and get candy from various kiosks. It's the time to wander around your neighbourhood and ring your neighbours' doorbells and feel good about being outside at night, at home where you live.

I must be lazy

Generally speaking, I don't think of myself as a lazy person, because when I need to be, I can be super-efficient and pretty tireless. Then I collapse. But when necessary I'm a friggin' dynamo! Honest!

I would never have said I was a high-energy sort of person. But really I'm beginning to think I'm actually lazy as well.

Why have I come to this conclusion? Well, I've long suspected that my desire for a "balanced" life, where home and personal life have equal or more time than work/professional life is actually a deep resentment at having to work for others. Also, I admire people with hobbies, who create and do wonderful things in their spare time, and enjoy themselves immensely doing it. Yet I don't have a hobby, despite repeated attempts to cultivate one. (discarded hobbies: needlepoint, knitting, gardening, blogging, ukelele-playing, choir, and more!)

Let's be honest here: I don't have a hobby because I'd rather sit on my fat ass and read a book or watch TV, god help me, than do something more constructive.

I seem to be doing things all the time, so much so that I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time. But at the end of the day I don't have much to show for it except a tidy house (% of day spent tidying: ~30) and clean, happy kids with homework done and lunches made. Big deal! A monkey can take care of its babies and keep house (well you know what I mean). Why haven't I accomplished more? Why don't I know how to read and play music? sew? knit? make bookshelves?

Why aren't I writing, at the very least? It's my dream, supposedly. Why am I doing nothing about it?

There can be only one answer: I must be lazy.

Don't hate me.

Come again another day

Rain.
Low clouds blinding the skyscrapers.
Hunched shoulders and wooden faces.
Cold feet.
Closed mind.
Put a leaf in a small river and watch it canoe down University street.
A crack in the wood.

Who needs comments?

Well, I replaced the template that I totally f-ed up and things are looking a lit-tle better now. But I don't have commenting. That should be okay though; nobody reads this anyway!

Well, good news today. No headache so far. I had another sleepless night but without the pain, and I actually kind of enjoyed my insomnia, comparatively speaking.

So still no progress on the costume front. I simply don't have time to work on it, and I fear that I will end up going in some lame costume, like a "dead hockey player" or something stupid like that. (No offense to people who've done that, but really, how lazy can you get?) A friend here suggested going as someone from "Survivor", which would be pretty easy and an au courant take on the classic Castaway costume.

The other day we were driving around looking at people's Halloween decorations, and we saw an alien hanging from a tree. D. and I agreed that aliens are not really a fitting part of the halloween pantheon. Then D. said "Whatever happened to the Mummy? Howcome we never see him anymore?" And that gave me the idea that it might be funny to go as a mummy, if I can manage it. When I mentioned the idea to a friend at work, she asked "How will you go to the bathroom?" So I think this idea requires a little thought. But I like it! And it would have a funny twist, because a lot of my friends will be finding out that I'm pregnant at this party. Get it? Mummy...pregnant? Har har?

Oh, on another subject: Movie suggestion!! I really liked Topsy Turvy, which I borrowed from my local library last weekend (I love libraries so much, I can't tell you.). It's about Gilbert and Sullivan at the period in their career together where they created The Mikado.

It's so good, for the realism and subtlety of the acting and the period details. You watch it and you feel like you know what it was like to live in the 1880s. This is such a rare thing in period films, I wonder whether directors ever even strive to make it feel real. In Topsy Turvy it's done with seeming effortlessness. The acting is exquisite, the kind of acting that makes you realize that "okay" actors whom I like, like Gwyneth Paltrow or John Cusack or Al Pacino (though I haven't liked him in a film for a long, long time) are really not doing it right.

Anyway, check it out. It's cool. Gotta go pretend to work.

For some reason I can't change the template. Urgh!

Help!

My blog has gone crazy! I tried to put commenting capability on here, which kinda worked, but after I pasted the code in from the comments provider's site, I got this weird effect on my blog, where the font gets progressively tinier as you scroll down the page.

What the ...?

Is there any kind, smart person out there who can figure out what's wrong with my code? My willful ignorance is finally catching up with me.

Is hurt

Headaches. The bane of my existence. They suck the joy out of life and make the smallest tasks difficult and depressing.

For the past two months I've had a headache every day without fail. Sometimes it goes away for a short time after I take acetominophen, but it only comes back a few hours later. The worst part (I think) is that I have them in the middle of the night, and I lie there in pain trying to sleep, at my lowest ebb, trying not to cry with self-pity and sheer exhaustion.

My poor husband is very patient, but I know he must get tired of having a wife who is always in a fog of pain and self-focus. I try to bring myself out of it for my kids, and to do my share of the work of running the house and caring for our children, but I'm just not myself, and it shows.

A couple of weeks ago my daughter asked me to draw pictures of three things I love and three things I don't like. One of the things I didn't like was headaches, which I represented by a sad face with pain lines coming out of its head. When my daughter saw it she looked at me with such a sweet, compassionate look on her face and she leaned over and kissed me. Even my four-year-old son asks me if I have a headache when I look tired.

I'm sick and tired of it. I've lived with these damn things my whole life, as far as I can remember, and I'm fed up.

I'm generally a very happy, contented person, and when I feel good I love everything about life. All the more reason to wish these accursed headaches would leave me and let me be myself. I know I'm lucky to be healthy in general, and these are a good reminder of what people with chronic pain or illness have to endure. I feel great compassion for them, and for the people who love them.

More money

I try not to worry about money very much, because things just seem to have a way of working out, and we're not stupid with our money, but we're not terribly savvy either.

But today I am a little worried, because listening to the news this morning we were hit with the double whammy of impending hydro rate hikes and school tax increases.

We are now homeowners, as of two years ago, and our little house has brought us untold joy over these two years. But I knew that owning a house would mean that we would fall prey to all kinds of tax grabbers over the years, and the timing of this particular double hit is bad.

We'll see how it all comes out in the wash, of course, but I think we're going to have to start putting a little money aside to pay off the school tax bill when it comes. The Hydro hike is just another incentive for us to invest in a wood stove, something we've been talking about seriously for a while now. We can't afford it, but I think we will find that it is worth getting into a tiny bit of debt for, because we will probably save in the long run. And think of the enjoyment it will bring us!

As for the school tax, well, I don't mind paying taxes, generally speaking, but with two kids actually in school I would love it if I could feel that some of those school taxes might actually go to the schools and the kids in them. This is a preposterous idea in the case of the English school board, because it gets very little funding from the government, for alas, we are but a small minority population.

With me as the sole wage-earner our family is just barely getting by, but we're pretty frugal and so we actually feel like we're doing okay. We can go out for a cheap meal once a week, we get videos once a week, and we don't lack groceries and we pay our bills in full and on time. But like so many people we're one paycheck away from ruin, and that's not good.

Well, time to tighten our belts, I guess! No more Indian take-out, and we can get our videos from the library until we've seen them all. Well, maybe we can do the take-out thing every two weeks... if I buy all my clothes second-hand. Sounds good to me!

Stay tuned to see whether we will be ruined, or whether your plucky heroine will learn to transform old curtains into school uniforms!

Countdown to Halloween

I'm starting to get pretty excited about Halloween. I love this holiday, and like to put some effort and imagination into decorations and costumes. This year I'm at work more, so I'm a little late in getting started. Also this year, however, I'm invited to a costume party. Yay!!

Now, what to wear? Hubby and I want to do a couple-costume of some sort. I'm always thinking of great costumes when I don't have a party to go to, and now that I have one, I can't think of anything! I wanted to go as Wonder Woman, thereby living a lifelong fantasy (When I was little I used to do a lot of spinning around, flinging off my glasses and letting my hair tumble out of a bun. Broke many, many pairs of glasses that way.). But I don't think I can do the Wonder Woman thing this year, for reasons which will become obvious to all my friends soon enough.

I would love to be one of those clever women who knows how to sew on a machine. Of course, not having a machine that knowledge might not avail me anyway.

I'm trying to convince my kids to wear costumes we already have in our "tickle trunk". there are some great costumes in there. My daughter wants to be a witch, which I think we can manage pretty well. My son said he wanted to be a prince, which made me happy, but now he's changed his mind and says he doesn't want to be anything. Geez!! Last year he was a Formula One driver with a totally cool costume. All our Italian neighbours loved it, giving him extra candy and shouting "Shumacher!" at him. He liked the candy.

It's all fun. I can't wait to carve my pumpkin and roast the seeds and turn off all the lights and put the candles in the jack o' lanterns for the first time. Wooooooo! It's so fun. I gotta get me one of them sound effects records to play when the kids come over for candy. We always did that at my house when I was little. And my sister Amanda would dress up like a scarecrow and sit slumped in a lawn chair on the porch, like those fake guys that everyone has, but then, when the little kids would approach...Wah! She'd scare the crap out of them. It was great, and it always worked.

Last year we decorated with a "Wizard of Oz" theme, with a melted witch with a baby monitor inside for screams, and the Wicked Witch of the East's legs and feet sticking out from under the house like it had fallen on her. Brilliant, really, if I do say so myself.

Ooooh, I just had an idea. Maybe I'll go to the party as Glinda the Good Witch. I love she.

If I knew how to set up comments, I would invite suggestions. Sorry I'm so inept!

What the...?

I just wrote a long post, brilliant of course, and somehow it got flushed. I don't know what happened but instead of being posted it disappeared. I don't know anything about how this blogging thing works -- maybe it's stored somewhere -- but I don't know how to find it. Damn!

Anyway... There's a horrible story in the news today abut a little girl in Toronto who seems to have been abducted from her bedroom.

Whenever there's a story like this the same thing happens. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, obviously disturbed on a deep level. Then I have to exorcise the demon idea by engaging in a violent fantasy that mirrors what happened, only with me catching the bad guy and killing him or handing him over the the police (or both!). It's the only time when I think any kind of violent thought, and I've always felt slightly guilty about it, until I realized that I need to do it, perhaps to reassure myself that I can have some effect on the chaotic and unpredictable world.

Of course I know intellectually that I really don't have any kind of control over such things. I'm sure this little girl's parents never could have imagined she could be taken from the house while they slept. My midnight fantasies don't guarantee anything except that I will be able to return to sleep feeling some kind of better.

book club update

Here is the list of books that our book club members suggested at our last meeting:

Elizabeth: The Lovely bones by Alice Segal
Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

Irene: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey

Dina: The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton
Interpreter of Maladies by ______ Lahari

Rebecca: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Maggie: The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver


We are reading Dina's first choice, the George Singleton book, for our next meeting, which should be within the next couple of weeks!

rainy day people

Today is a dreary day. We've got that combination of heavy rain, wind and uncomfortable cold that makes it difficult to do anything outside, even walk to the bus stop.

But I'm lucky. I don't have to go anywhere today. I'm only working four days a week and I can pretty much decide for myself which day in the week I take off. I took today off because I wanted to go on my son's field trip to get pumpkins today, as a parent volunteer. Well, unfortunately that's cancelled because of "inclement" (I love that word that's only used in schools!) weather. My poor little guy. That's the second time he's had a trip postponed in the last month. But I guess that's what it's like when you live in Canada. Anyway, he doesn't seem to mind too much.

So maybe I'll take the kids to a movie this afternoon as a special treat, and maybe I'll go out to my local library this morning and get myself a couple of good books. Or maybe I'll just sit around in my cozy housecoat and eat peanut-butter toast and drink tea all day. Naah. That's not gonna happen. But it's nice to do it even for a little bit, when everybody else is scurrying off to work.

If only we had a fireplace. Hmmmm......

Happiness is a warm coat

It's cold today. But I'm happy because that means I get to wear my new coat!

This coat is one of my new favourite things. I found it in a second-hand clothing store in Kensington Market the last week of September. I was in Toronto on a week-long training course, and my hotel was just around the corner from the building where the course was. Stupidly, I didn't bring a jacket on the trip, so I had to scurry, freezing, from hotel to building and back and basically avoided going out otherwise. That was for the first few days, and just my luck, Toronto was plunged into a cold spell with temperatures of about 3 C. After those first two days I decided enough was enough, and on our lunch break on the third day I jumped in a cab and went to Kensington Market.

I saw this coat in the second second-hand store I went to. I passed it by a couple of times and tried on other things. The reason I passed this one by was because it's pink, and I just don't wear pink, for whatever reason. Well, it kept catching my eye, mostly because of the Inuit embroidery on it. So I tried it on. It fit perfectly; I could tell right away it'd be super warm, and it looked good on me. Also, I know I'll never see another person wearing the same coat.

So I bought it. I even haggled the lady down by ten percent and got it for $45, which is a steal because it's in perfect condition and it's made really well. So now when the cold winds blow I say "Blow winds! I've got my pink coat and we're ready for ya!"

Now I've got to find the perfect hat and scarf to go with it. I'm thinking black or dusty blue.

Could I be any more silly and superficial? I'll be profound and intellectual on my next post; Promise.

Here's an unoriginal thought (not the last you'll see here): Meeting are a complete waste of time. Luckily I'm not important enough to have to go to many of them, and every time I do have to, I think about the Onion "article" about the happy temp. The piece ends with a quote from this happy temp worker saying something like "The secret to happiness is getting as far away from that fucking brass ring as possible".

I couldn't agree more. I have ambitions, but they are definitely not in the direction of managing lots of people and having an executive title. Those poor bastards who do are not the happiest people around. You know who are the happy people I've noticed? Artists, writers, musicians and people of their ilk. People who are "freelancers" and are really free in a way that others are not. I'm not saying that working in an office automatically destroys your soul. But there's something wrong with it as a way of life. One of the saddest things I see around me are those little bumper stickers and signs saying "I'd rather be fishing". Shouldn't things be structured so that you can go fishing if you damn well feel like it? Presumably you wouldn't do it all day every day. You'd still be a contributing member of society. But you'd be happy too.

At the moment I am working in an office, but it's temporary and it's actually very creative and fulfilling work. And thankfully there seems to be more and more of that out there. Our generation and the one after us are looking at work in a whole new way, it seems to me. I think it's very healthy, and the time when society conforms to the wishes of the people should only be a couple of generations behind!

Woops II

Okay, I don't know how to make a link. Just got to www.theonion.com and look on the home page for the story about the MacArthur Genius Grant.

Woops!

Let's try that link thing again:

BOOKER MAN

DBC Pierre has won the Booker prize. I think this is a cool story, but then again I haven't yet read the book, Vernon God Little.

The story about this writer is that he was an insane addict up until a few years ago. His friend let him stay at his house and he sold it and spent all the money! He also hatched a crazy plan to go and find Monteczuma's gold in Mexico, and conned people into giving him thousands of pounds to finance the project! I love this guy!

Pierre says he'll use the 50 thousand pounds in prize money to pay back some of those pesky debts. He's kicked the drug habit, and now he's won the Booker. What fabulous success. Not every addict gets such a reward for kicking. Let's hope he can stay off the dope.

That last sentence reminds me to put up this link: Look for the story about the MacArthur Genius Grant.


I certainly want to get Vernon God Little now. Maybe it's in my wee local library. I can't afford inflated post-Booker prices.

Oh, BTW...I will be using this blog to take care of matters concerning the Million Book Club. We've been without a central presence on the web for a while now, so that is partly what this blog is about.

I'm back. This is my second try at blogging, and I'm not sure why I'm doing it again. My last blog was supposed to be a family one, and it didn't work out very well, with me doing almost all the posting. Frankly, I got sick of talking about myself all the time. It seems like a narcissistic pastime. I still feel that way, but I'm going to give it another try, if only as an experiment in writing.

I hope that I can post on a daily basis, being frustrated with blogs that are updated once in a blue moon. But hey, who knows what'll happen? I'm hoping that this will serve as a journal for my own interest. With a little luck it may prove interesting to one or two others who want to check up on me every so often -- sisters, far-flung friends, stalkers etc.

Tune in later today for some scintillating blog-content.