Three Square Books a Day

What a Feminist Learned Today

2010-10-22T19:35:00.001-06:00

Today I learned that when men grow hair on their faces, it's funny, it's adorable, it's endearing, it's wonderful.

Today I learned that when women grow hair on their legs, it's disgusting, it's unspeakable, it should not be discussed in polite company, it puts one off one's lunch.

Today I learned how angry I am, that this double standard should be so casually assumed by so many people.

It seems as though Blogger won't let you embed video any more, so here. Go and watch this. Pay close attention (I'm using my teacher voice right now) to the last thirty seconds or so.

And then, maybe, the next time someone says that leg hair on a human being is shameful and degrading, we can do what I was not brave enough to do today - we can say a massive and collective screw you to the masses who think we are less than human because we are women.

On being thankful for your own damn self

2010-10-08T20:52:00.000-06:00

without any assistance or guidance from you
i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day
i have been stood up four times
i’ve left 7 packages on yr doorstep
forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards i left
town so i cd send to you have been no help to me
on my job
you call at 3:00 in the mornin on weekdays
so i cd drive 27 1/2 miles cross the bay before i go to work
charmin charmin
but you are of no assistance
i want you to know
this waz an experiment
to see how selifsh i cd be
if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover
if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another
if i cd stand not being wanted
when i wanted to be wanted
& i cannot
so
with no further assistance & no guidance from you
i am endin this affair

this note is attached to a plant
i’ve been waterin since the day i met you
you may water it
yr damn self

-ntozake shange

Random, with Angst and Pictures

2010-10-03T12:14:00.002-06:00

I just realized the other day that I've been working my butt off for three years, and I have, financially speaking, gotten exactly nowhere. Three years ago, you see, I was getting child support, and a whack of money from the government (Child Tax Benefit FTW). Now, no more child support, and I make too much money (oh, irony) to qualify for the Child Tax Benefit, and we've taken up riding and competitive swimming respectively, and if we want to keep doing that then our budget (and by "our" I mean "my," because only one of us works in this household, and it sure as hell ain't the dog) is very, very, very tight.

And I know I shouldn't complain, because there are so many people with less than I have, and when things are tight AFTER you've paid for all your bills and expenses and food and extra fun things (riding, swimming) then you have no one to blame but yourself, and I know that September is always hard because of back to school things, but HOLY COW, I would like things to be easier. Sometimes. Just once or twice, maybe, so I can see what it's like. I promise not to get used to it.

Anyway. Moving on.

Fall is, all financial disasters aside, my favourite season. It's the colours, the weather, the fact that it's not dark all the time yet, that golden light we get here over the fields, the excitement of a new school year. The air is cool and crisp and dry, and you can crunch leaves under your feet and smell their spicy scent, and sit in front of your fireplace at night, and wear your lovely knitted sweaters.

Most of all, I love fall because it isn't February.

I have decided that I want to knit a blanket - the Moderne Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Here's someone who's already done it, if you're curious. (If you're curious about why someone might want to knit a blanket, well, I just can't help you there. Some people like skiing, some people like knitting blankets. There's no accounting for weirdness.) I want my blanket's colours to be fallish, even though I made that word up and don't know quite what I mean. Like this, maybe:

Or this:

But probably this, for sure (maybe):

I like the dark spruce green, the sage green of the fields, the dark red and the bright yellow of the leaves changing, the blue blue sky, the patches of green grass that last and last, the water that reflects the long autumn afternoon light, the blush of the sunrise.

Decisions, decisions.

Perhaps I will just go and make a pumpkin pie, instead.

Poem for Saturday - really sad edition

2010-10-02T12:13:00.000-06:00

Dog's Death
By John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog!
Good dog!”

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

It's my blog, I can cry if I want to.

2010-09-22T18:46:00.001-06:00

So I had one of those weird days - this thing happened, this (metaphorical) poke at a (metaphorical) sore spot I have that I thought was long since healed.

Turns out it isn't. It's still raw and oozing and didn't want to be poked at. It hurt, actually.

So on the way home I was thinking those negative thoughts, you know? The ones that say all the things you aren't, all the ways you have failed, all the ways in which you do not live up to the expectations you hold for yourself.

This happens to me all the freaking time.

When I get like this, I make a list. (I love lists; sometimes I will put something on a list that I've already done just so that I can have the pleasure of crossing it off.) The list I make when I'm feeling lost and lonely and like a big fat failure is the list of all the things I can do, all the things I have accomplished, all the successes and the skills I have acquired over the years. The list includes the most mundane things: as long as I'm proud of my achievement, it goes on the list.

The list includes the following things:

I can drive a standard. The person who poked me cannot. Na na na na na na. (Nobody said the list isn't childish)
I can quiet a class of 32 grade 8 students without saying a word.
I am the queen of the knitters. Herewith is evidence: the Citron shawl I knit for my gramma. It is fabulous, and by the end I was knitting a row of 437 teeny tiny stitches and not even feeling the urge for a stiff drink.

I took up riding when I was 34. Not a lot of people do that, although my friend Holly knows a lady who started taking lessons when she was 65 and just did her first show at 72. And I'm not bad at it, either (especially now that I have cracked the canter).
I own my house. Well, the bank owns it, actually, but they let me live here. Me, a single, unmarried person without a second income. They looked at me and though I was a good risk for a mortgage.
I'm raising a boy child. On my own. I did not freak out (much) when I got pregnant, I did not run shrieking for the hills because it was not what I planned. I did not leave; I stayed and did my best and I didn't regret it for a moment. This boy here is my greatest achievement (even more than the canter, actually).

I have three university degrees. Irritating person who irritates me? Oh, they have NONE.
I make a mean pie. Any kind. Bring it on.
I have some awesome friends, one of whom swears that she would totally throw herself on a bee for me. Totally.

And this irritating person, who drove me to publishing a self-aggrandizing list of the ways in which I am fabulous, they do not get to make me feel like less of a great person with one poke. I'm not going to let them.

We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.

2010-09-12T15:04:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking for a long time (since April, actually, did you notice?) about blogging. I find that I have these huge expectations of myself - scintillating content, regularly updated, a few good jokes. At the same time, I have all these limitations: the things that I most want to write about are the things I can't say. All those tangled up stories of life that writing can magically smooth out, but which are not intended for a blogging public. I felt gagged, stuck in the trivial when I wanted to get a few good stones off my chest instead.

Then there's the issue of updating. I've never been good at regular output. The only time I wrote to a deadline which I never, ever missed was when I was an editor, and that ended in a nasty bit of burnout and resulted in a complete life change (and the decision to never write for a living again, which is kind of a shame because I liked it at the time). I'm kind of a sporadic person - something will occur to me as I drive, and I write about it later. Or not. Whatevs.

I never wanted to write one of those navel-gazing whiny blogs: "Woe is me, I weeded the asparagus patch today and my darling hubby took lean ground beef out of the freezer instead of extra-lean, the useless lump" but I've started to think that's what blogging is best suited to. Not so much the existential or the transcendent, but just the everyday. This is what happened to me today. Read it or don't - it doesn't matter.

So I'm back, with this: today I went to Spruce Meadows and saw Eric Lamaze do a clear round on Hickstead, and it was amazing.

Thanks. Come again soon.

Poem on Friday because I'm really busy tomorrow

2010-04-16T18:18:00.000-06:00

This one is for S., who just came down with stomach cancer. Because if anyone is going to be the old woman wearing purple, it will be her.

Warning
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph.

Well, something went "click" anyway.

2010-04-11T19:51:00.000-06:00

I've been working and working on the canter in my riding lessons. Both my falls (and the rather embarrassing half-fall of which we do not speak) happened at the canter, and a few weeks ago I asked to go back on a lunge line and start over. Since then I've been working on strength and flexibility and position and the elusive "quiet hands." (I love that phrase: it's one of those lovely and evocative expressions that you understand perfectly even though it really doesn't make any sense.)

My teacher's been telling me that one day it would all come together - all the things I've been working on would mesh with the movement of the horse, and it would just click.

And it finally did.

But I still can't do this, though.

Waltzing's for Dreamers and Losers in Love

2010-04-06T19:00:00.000-06:00

Some strange and wonderful (or odd, depends how you look at it) things:

1. My new riding helmet arrived. Fits perfectly. If you accuse me of having worried about it, I will deny it.

2. When my dog follows me around, insisting that she is most at home in whatever room I am in, I find it comforting and sweet. When my son does it, I find it extremely irritating.

3. There is a cold spot right between my shoulder blades. No matter what I do, it's cold... right... there. Last night I woke up in a sweat, except for that one spot on my back that feels like a cold draft is going down it.

4. My friend Holly says that people who don't like the smell of horses just aren't her kind of people. I find that I agree, completely.

5. I had my last first date six years ago today. I bet you that guy (another engineer - I just don't learn) is now happily married with 2.5 kids and a dog of his own. I bet he finds it annoying when the dog follows him around, and sweet when his son does.

Saturday Not a Poem

2010-04-03T19:25:00.000-06:00

Because I can, that's why.

Worry, Worry, Worry

2010-04-01T19:18:00.000-06:00

The other day I was driving to get my taxes done and heard this song on the radio - I almost drove off the road, because apparently Rick Fines lives in my head:

You were born in the house of guilt
You’ve been worried all your time
You stay worried all the time
I wish there were some way
That I could ease your mind

You can barely get to sleep at night
Over some little thing you said
Some little thing you said
You worry was misread
But it keeps racin’
Round and round your head

The song ("Half-full Cup") now lives on my iPod, where hopefully I will learn to go a bit easier on myself while listening to it.

So I had that wonderful customer service moment the other day about my broken riding helmet (I didn't land on my head or anything - a screw came loose on the inside, where the strap is attached to the shell of the helmet, I'm thinking it was a manufacturing defect) and now my new helmet is in the mail. But what if I told them to send size Large instead of Medium? I have a freakishly large head, the size isn't on the label, and I can't remember... What if I have to return it cause it's too big? Will that be a hassle, or what?

These, oh faithful readers, are the thoughts that go round and round my head. Scintillating, no?

On the plus side, I went to the doctor today and got some lovely medicine for the sinus infection that has been bugging me all week (Hello! I'm on vacation! Come on in, nasty infections!), and I still have more time off. To do my marking, you know. Also, I have a good friend coming to visit over the weekend, and plans with other friends too.

So the cup is, I suppose, half full after all.

Spring Break - return of the marking

2010-03-30T09:05:00.000-06:00

It's a teacher's horror movie!

Although, to be honest, I haven't done any marking yet. I've gone to the library, and I've dropped off my taxes, and now I'm worrying. It's odd that I would worry about my taxes - I'm a law-abiding person, except for that one stop-sign incident with the cute Mountie, but I'm always convinced that the Canadian version of Big Brother is just waiting for me to make a mistake so he can pounce. Is there a word for that feeling, when you've done nothing wrong but you still feel guilty?

In other news, my riding helmet broke, and IRH is replacing it, no muss, no fuss. There are no words for how much I love good customer service.

AND, today the boy-child rode his bike to school. First time ever. Completely alone and unsupervised. I want to cry, and I'm so proud.

Back with a poem

2010-03-29T09:14:00.000-06:00

Advice to the Young
Miriam Waddington

1
Keep bees and
grow asparagus,
watch the tides
and listen to the
wind instead of
the politicians
make up your own
stories and believe
them if you want to
live the good life.

2
All rituals
are instincts
never fully
trust them but
study to im-
prove biology
with reason.

3
Digging trenches
for asparagus
is good for the
muscles and
waiting for the
plants to settle
teaches patience
to those who are
usually in too
much of a hurry.

4
There is morality
in bee-keeping
it teaches how
not to be afraid
of the bee swarm
it teaches how
not to be afraid of
finding new places
and building in them
all over again.

Also, you should not look one in the mouth.

2010-03-06T19:18:00.002-07:00

Gift Horses

BY JACK GILBERT

He lives in the barrens, in dying neighborhoods

and negligible countries. None with an address.

But still the Devil finds him. Kills the wife

or spoils the marriage. Publishes each place

and makes it popular, makes it better, makes it

unusable. Brings news of friends, all defeated,

most sick or sad without reasons. Shows him

photographs of the beautiful women in old movies

whose luminous faces sixteen feet tall looked out

at the boy in the dark where he grew his heart.

Brings pictures of what they look like now.

Says how lively they are, and brave despite their age.

Taking away everything. For the Devil is commissioned

to harm, to keelhaul us with loss, with knowledge

of how all things splendid are disfigured by small

and small. Yet he allows us to eat roast goat

on the mountain above Parakia. Lets us stumble

for the first time, unprepared, onto the buildings

of Palladio in moonlight. Maybe because he is not

good at his job. I believe he loves us against

his will. Because of the women and how the men

struggle to hear inside them. Because we construe

something important from trees and locomotives,

smell weeds on a hot July afternoon and are augmented.

So close...

2010-02-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

I have been lying low in an attempt to thwart the February Curse. This attempt has been moderately successful: to wit, a relative had brain surgery and did not die! (Interesting to note that if you have a c-section, they keep you in the hospital longer than if you have brain surgery.) On the other hand, I fell off my horse last week, and my boy spent all of today vomiting in various rooms of the house, so there you go. I guess it all kind of balances out in the end, doesn't it?

While blocking out the fact that it was February, I did some knitting: notably, I finished the Anti-February cardigan. (Wow. New blogger thingy for pictures. Strange.)

I love it. (The sweater. Not sure about the blogger picture thingy.) It's a top-down cardigan, in Noro Silk Garden - lovely to knit, and fabulous to wear. Very much Anti-February, as the name suggests.

Then I knit a vest, but I only took pictures of the back. (How much of the February curse, I ask myself, is self-inflicted?)

I'm also knitting a shawl for my gramma. I haven't gotten around to taking a picture of that yet, but the link to the pattern is here. I know I can safely discuss the gramma shawl, because she does not read the blog. ("You write something on the computer? That's nice, dear.")

AND, the top-secret Pirate Mittens for Kathy are done and given, and loved. Everybody say "Argh."

The February Curse did not affect my knitting at all, but it seems to have cast some kind of dark spell on my reading. I only finished one book last week! Honestly! Things are not at all well around here.

And so, in celebration of there being only five and a half more hours of February left, and that I have survived it, I give you the view from my bedroom window at 6:11 this very evening: please note that it is not yet dark.

Spring. It's in the air.

Why are so many poems about love, anyway?

2010-02-14T15:06:00.002-07:00

To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

"Feminist" is not a bad word.

2010-02-12T19:09:00.001-07:00

First, my young onions, go look at this.

Then, once you've had a good slug of something to wash the bad taste out of your mouth, go on over here.

Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry.

2010-02-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Speaking of trips down memory lane, a colleague emailed me this link - you enter an address and it shows you a picture of that street. You can move the little man on the map up and down the block if you want, and see a 360 degree view of the houses. I've looked at every house I ever lived in... funny how the last apartment building I lived in while I was in Montreal still has that "for rent" sign in the front window. I wonder if it's Apartment 5 for rent?

Where does the time go?

But what should we do after lunch?

2010-02-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

Today I got up early (couldn't sleep) and washed the kitchen floor. I made breakfast, and dusted the whole house (except my office, where I pretend I can't see any dust because every square inch is covered with books). I zipped to Sobey's to buy a few things; I zipped home again and made an apple crisp. I did three loads of laundry. I made bread and set it to rise (I love saying that - very "Little House on the Prairie.") I made lunch. I went to a riding lesson, where I did not fall off but did get very dusty. I asked my riding teacher's husband for some advice about a leaking sink. (If I ever get married, it will be to someone like Keith - he is both handy and kind.) I came home, washed my riding clothes, (that was the fourth load), punched down the bread, and started split pea soup. I baked the bread (made it into rolls, sprinkled with rosemary and Maldon salt, cooked it in a cast iron pan), folded and put away the laundry, knit a couple rows on a new project, cleaned my bathroom. I read for a few minutes here and there, and took frequent breaks to admire my newly completed Anti-February cardigan, which is drying and which only needs its buttons to be perfect. I poured a bit of Drano down the non-leaking sink, and loaded up the dishwasher. I made two healthy lunches for tomorrow.

Now my kitchen is clean, my dog and my son are both fed, and I am filled with contentment. And pea soup.

I love weekends. They're so relaxing.

I write poems in copies of Beowulf, too. (Not really.)

2010-02-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

"Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf"
by Borges (trans. by Alastair Reid)

At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.

Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history.

Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all.

Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.

Sometimes you just have to say "amen." Even when you're an atheist.

2010-02-05T17:48:00.000-07:00

This blogging thing is fun, but it can be very, very weird, too. I find myself in conversation with Real Live People and saying things like "well, my friend Screen Name says this" or "there was a hilarious discussion over on so-and-so's blog" and feeling like a bit of a fool. After all, the people who live in the screen of your computer aren't real... are they?

But they are, and I've been fortunate in reading some really awesome writers. One of those is Mrs. Spit, whose blog I stumbled on one day when I was looking for ways to teach my grade 7s about Subjects and Predicates. (I don't know what teachers did before Google. Honestly. Google has made everything easier.) Anyway, the Missus and I don't always agree on stuff, but I love her blog and she frequently leaves thoughtful and kind and intelligent comments on mine, which I also love.

The other day she wrote this post, which I think is one of the most intelligent things I have ever read. And so, without further ado, I would urge you all to go on over and read it, because I have nothing else to add.

Except for a heartfelt amen. (Which, coming from me, is something else.)

Well, now I feel a whole lot better.

2010-02-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

Because none other than Balzac Billy said it's going to be an early spring.

We can all relax.

Beautifully Donne

2010-01-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

THE GOOD-MORROW.
by John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

True Fact.

2010-01-27T19:11:00.002-07:00

After Tuesday, even the calendar says WTF.

Comfort me with Pumpkin

2010-01-24T18:40:00.002-07:00

Let's imagine, hypothetically of course, that you are really, really anxious. Your anxiety, in fact, is so off the scale that you really think it might be a good idea to just get into bed and stay there until it passes. (It's not a good idea, by the way.) Let's imagine that you went to your doctor and she gave you an anti-depressant that works by making you feel so physically wretched that you forget how emotionally wretched you are. (They're definitely on to something there.) Maybe you've spent weeks and weeks trying to find a counsellor, only to encounter answering machines that say no one can talk to you until you're so desperate that you're ready to drive yourself to the hospital, where they would probably have you committed. Also, the answering machines all give the number of the distress line. In case, you know, you're distressed.

And now let's imagine that you got out of bed this morning and your first thought was "I am going to re-arrange the pantry." And so you did, taking every single thing out of it and putting most of the stuff back in a far, far more pleasing and orderly manner. Then your friend called and asked if you wanted to come see her sister's new baby, so you went on over and cuddled a newborn for a while. Maybe when you got home you finished the pantry and decided to make a pumpkin pie. Then you did three loads of laundry and cleaned the house from top to bottom and only had one or two tiny moments of short breath and incipient panic. You roasted a chicken, you ran the dishwasher, you knitted a little on your Anti-February sweater, you read a book, you stayed out of bed.

Maybe you are thinking right now that counsellors and drugs are just fine, but sometimes what you need to do is take complete and utter control of everything around you that can be controlled - not your brain chemistry, not your fear, not your crying in inappropriate places - but your pantry, and a graham-cracker crust, and pumpkin filling, and chicken with lemon and rosemary.

Maybe some days, having a grip on those things (and a wickedly tidy pantry) is just enough to get you through.

Saturday Poem: this one has a great title.

2010-01-23T18:42:00.001-07:00

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare.

The things I do to earn a wage.

2010-01-19T19:13:00.002-07:00

Today my grade 7 classes and I were talking about the Poet Laureate - who he is and what his job is. This led, as one would imagine, down all kinds of interesting paths.

"What do you think he might write about today?" I asked them.

"Haiti!"

"H1N1!"

"Math class!"

and finally....

"The Olympic torch!" [It passed through yesterday on the way to Vancouver, making a fabulous mess of traffic.]

"He might," I agreed. "But what rhymes with "torch"?"

"Porch!" everyone shouted.

I can't help myself - once we start down a path like this I am absolutely unable to stop, no matter how many warning signs I see.

"I bet he wrote one like this," said I:

I saw the torch
From my porch
It was hot
But I was not.

It's one for posterity, so it is.

Brevity being the soul of something or other...

2010-01-17T20:17:00.002-07:00

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

- Ezra Pound

A Poem for Saturday, Oldies Edition

2010-01-16T17:27:00.002-07:00

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th'earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
- Whose soul is sense - cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th'other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th'other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The one I rode in on.

2010-01-13T18:04:00.005-07:00

Our scene is set in the exam room of a chiropractor's office. Not just any chiropractor, either, but one who has known me for a really, really long time. We are engaged in Meaningless Social Chitchat - how's your family, fine, yadda yadda, how's yours, oh great, yadda yadda, keeping busy, five weeks in Maui (no, that was NOT me), too much marking (okay, that one was) and so on.

Chiropractor: Whoa. [Conversation interrupted by a series of snaps as my spine is coaxed back into position] This isn't looking too good. What are you in here for?

Me: muttering something indistinct, having face mushed down in exam table/bed thingy (is there a word for it? there should be)

[Crack, crack, gasp as something that was really tight between my shoulder blades suddenly lets go]

Chiropractor: Pardon?

Me: My neck and shoulders are killing me.

[Crack, crack, crunch]

Chiropractor: How come?

Me: I fell off a horse the other day.

[Snap, crackle, pop - the pop was a really good one, I think I'm taller now]

Chiropractor [laughing]: What on earth were you doing on a horse?

Me:[also laughing]: Jumping!

Chiropractor: Well, good for you. [Raises fancy table/bed thing, for which there may be no word] Are you going riding again?

Me; Hell ya! On Saturday, in fact.

Chiropractor: Okay. Well, come on back if you fall again!

He's a good egg.

When I can't think of anything to write about, I give you a poem so you'll think I'm deep. Is it working?

2010-01-12T19:30:00.003-07:00

Rite of Passage

BY SHARON OLDS

As the guests arrive at our son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the midnight cake, round and heavy as a
turret behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

Ups and Downs

2010-01-11T19:20:00.003-07:00

One day last summer I was in the library (I know, I know). I was waiting for the boy, and they have these lovely squashy chairs in the periodical section, and one thing led to another, as it does, so I was reading.

There were two women standing not too far away and chatting - the acoustics in that library are something bizarre; if you stand in certain spots and have a perfectly average conversation at a reasonable volume, it sounds like you're shouting and everyone can hear you.

They were talking about work; one of them was off to an interview that afternoon, for a part-time job. They were in perfect agreement, these two women, that it was absolutely impossible to manage your family while working more than three days a week. Impossible! Couldn't be done!

If it wasn't for the oddness of the acoustics in the library, I would have snorted.

Because seriously - some of us manage perfectly well with full-time jobs, one income, and a really stupid dog.

Except when we don't manage perfectly well.

Today I taught all six classes and did okay. One kid made a huge breakthrough; one kid took a small step; two classes wrote part of a mid-term; I looked at a book I have to review; I examined my Huge Pile of Marking and decided to put it off for another day.

I forgot a book I promised a friend. I made it under the wire to the vet's to pick up dog food (I was actually there three minutes after closing, but I know one of the vet assistants and she let me in). I managed to scrape together dinner, but I ruined a tupperware container while doing so. I hauled the new sack of dog food in and emptied out the old one and made two lunches, one of which had to be appropriate for "Trashless Tuesday".

My budget for January is managed to the last penny, so of course the boy has a toothache that needs to be looked at, and my neck is sore from my spectacular equestrian moment the other day, so we're off to the chiropractor and the dentist, respectively, later this week. The dog has an eye that looks like it's irritated and might need attention from a Very Expensive Professional soon. Junior just reminded me that he needs new trunks for his new session of swim club. He also brought home a Scholastic book form with a Lego Star Wars guide in it that he proclaims would be "very useful, mummy."

And there are days when I am in perfect agreement with that lady who just couldn't manage her life if she had to work more than 24 hours a week. (There are times when I feel like I put in that many hours in an afternoon.) There are days when I would give everything up: my treasured independence; my solitude; all the things I love about being single; just for someone who would listen to all my worries and say "I know. Me too. But it will be fine. Really."

This was one of those days.

Let us Now Praise Fancy Pants

2010-01-10T13:27:00.002-07:00

When I started to ride (back in June) I wore my battered old Blundstone boots, my less-nice jeans (Joe brand from Superstore, yo), and whatever t-shirt first appeared when I opened my dresser drawer. I was not a fashion plate, but this is actually normal for me, so whatever. I grabbed any helmet in the tack room that would fit me (I have a freakishly large head) and off I went.

When my riding teacher moved to a new facility, the selection of helmets (one in size Freakishly Large) vanished, so I bought my own helmet.

When I was a kid there was a show on TV called "Harriet's Magic Hats." It was about a woman (Harriet) whose niece would visit and try on any of the hats from Harriet's trunk. The act of putting the hat on (bakers hat, farmer hat, artist hat, etc) would transport the girl to an adventure with people who do that work. I loved that show - not only because of its catchy intro (admit it - it's still in your head, isn't it?) but because of the possibility. You can be anyone! In the whole world! And all you need is a hat!

It is a matter of great sorrow to me that there is no teacher hat.

ANYWAY.

Wearing that helmet, I started to feel like a real rider, someone who had a clue about what they were doing.

Then, around September, I noticed that I had long red welts on my calves after riding - the stirrup leathers were rubbing on my legs. Solution? One pair of half-chaps, courtesy of Lammle's Western Wear. (I am a third generation Albertan. All of my great-grandparents were homesteaders. I have never in my life before purchased anything from Lammle's.)

That did the trick, I'll tell you. No more chafing, and a much better ability to grip with my legs (using muscles that I never knew I had, either).

And it was only a matter of time until I went the final step - now I have fancy riding breeches, too.

There's a noticeable difference - I feel more comfortable, and I have a better idea of what's going on with the horse because of what I can feel through my legs. Also, no more rubbing in sensitive places.

So off I went the other day to my riding lesson, all decked out in the same old Blundstones, half-chaps and breeches, a real live equestrian helmet, and the fleece I bought at MEC so long ago that it's not even black any more. I felt like the real deal. I put all the tack on the horse myself, even the bridle (which I've never done before). And I was riding really well, too...

Until I fell off.

Landed on my well-padded arse and rolled.

My dignity is bruised, and my fancy pants are dusty.

But damn, at least I look the part.

Saturday Poem

2010-01-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

If You Knew
By Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Nothing to read here! Please move on!

2010-01-07T20:25:00.003-07:00

Back at work Tuesday
Dog still dumb, boy still busy
When will it be spring?

(Can't write a witty post right now. Settled for a Haiku. Am either frightfully clever or very, very strange.)

Auld Lang Syne

2009-12-31T14:57:00.002-07:00

This is the time of year you're supposed to spend summing things up: this was good for me, this was bad, this I want to change. Even though I don't like new year's (it's part of the general hate I have on for winter and all its festivals) I still feel the societal urge to Make a Resolution! to Go Forth! to Lose Weight! (What is it about January 1 that makes everyone want to be thinner?)

So this is how I shall sum up my year:
1. I have a great job that I love.
2. I have made some excellent, rocking new friends, some of whom even knit.
3. I have lived in my very own house for a whole year. That means the warranty is up and I can now sit very quietly and wait for the whole thing to crash down around me.
4. I've read a lot of great books, but not as many as I would like to have read.
5. I spent a whole summer with my boy.
6. I am taking riding lessons to fulfill a life-long wish (yay me!)
7. There have been no major disasters, in spite of my anxious waiting for something really bad to happen. Just goes to show, I guess.

And this is how I will go on:
1. Keep the job. Be better at it.
2. Keep the friends. See above.
3. Don't panic. Everything will be fine. See above.
4. Read more.

(Heh. Number 4 is going to be fun.)

In the last decade I've had a baby, and raised him all by myself. I've gotten more education than any human being needs, and had some really cool jobs. I'm in a place now that I never ever imagined I would be in...

I wonder what the next ten years will bring?

Yesterday and Today

2009-12-30T11:08:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I fell down the stairs TWICE, spraining a different ankle each time. I now walk with a slight limp.

Yesterday I made a lovely brisket in the slow cooker, while the dog looked on and begged with every fibre of her being that, just this once, I would drop it.

Yesterday I got the car washed, which turned into a bizarre affair that ended with me receiving a free $12 wash as well as the $8 wash I paid for.

Yesterday I made an appointment for a hair cut, did a pile of marking, and had a riding lesson. I talked to my gramma about her birthday, and I got all the way down to the bottom of the yoke in my sweater, which always feels like half-way done to me, even though it isn't. I went to the bakery, I cleaned the bathroom, I did laundry, I took all the Christmas music off my iPod. I prepared and served three healthy meals. I cleaned off my desk, shredding or filing the huge pile of papers that usually sits beside my computer.

It was a shockingly productive day.

Today, I have taken out the garbage and done some worrying. I intend to knit and read and not think about New Years or Resolutions. I may buy milk if I get around to it.

Or maybe I won't.

It's over now, we can laugh about it.

2009-12-28T14:34:00.004-07:00

I have been hiding in the house, writing my manifesto.

And knitting:

It's a top-down raglan cardigan in Noro Silk Garden, chosen because the colours are so fabulous - the exact opposite of the colours of winter (the sludge on the floor of the garage, the salt-grimed car, the six minutes of daylight). Also it's light and warm and soft, which is just what I need.

I found a group on Ravelry that is doing a Cowichan sweater knit-along over the Olympics. Now I am morally opposed to the Olympics for a number of reasons, not just the way the real live Cowichan knitters have been treated. The dilemma thus remains: do I knit a Cowichan-inspired sweater out of solidarity for those knitters? Or do I do what I usually do and ignore the Olympics altogether?

Something else to ponder while I stay inside and hope for spring.

Weekends are for Poems

2009-12-13T11:29:00.002-07:00

It's cold outside. There are bears. I'll be knitting, and reading the Guernsey Literary Something Pie Thingy. Looking forward to it.

Here is a poem.

Staying Power

BY JEANNE MURRAY WALKER

In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside to the yard and question the sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can't go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I'm focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't there

that makes the emptiness flare like a forest fire
until I have to spend the afternoon dragging
the hose to put the smoldering thing out.
Even on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they've found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which—though they say it doesn't
exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's
a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.

You don't want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.

Source: Poetry (May 2004).

Je me souviens.

2009-12-06T18:22:00.003-07:00

Because today is December 6.

Because I am a woman, because I spent five years walking the halls of Concordia University, just down the road from the Polytechnique, because I am a feminist.

Because, twenty years on, we live in a world where this still happens.

Je me souviens.

Light a candle.

Saturday Poem

2009-12-05T10:34:00.001-07:00

Animals
by Frank O'Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

The Snow, it Snoweth Every Day

2009-12-04T19:02:00.002-07:00

We are here in the middle of a winter storm, and a real doozy at that. It took me a long time to get home - I have been driving for 17 years and never been so afraid on the road. At one point I was going down the highway at 40 kilometers an hour, in second gear, white-knuckled, with my four-way flashers on. There was an especially memorable moment that ended with me on the shoulder, stalled, inches from a ditch.

But I made it home, the boy and I had curry for dinner (the Santa parade he was supposed to take part in this evening was cancelled) and now we are snug in our little house, with the fireplace on, and new knitting to knit.

In other news, I've been tired all week - I remember being this tired just before the tattooed man at the blood donor clinic watched a drop of my blood float bravely in that blue stuff they use and said "dude, your iron is seriously low." Perhaps I shall eat a steak, just for the hell of it.

I have marking to do (yuck) and books to read (hurray!). I've been working on Hunger, a young adult book that is the sequel to Gone. Sadly, all the things that were bugging me by the end of Gone are the focus of Hunger, so it's a bit of a slog. Thankfully, I am also rediscovering the old Inspector Banks books I haven't read for years. I'm especially thrilled when I come across the original receipts (I bought most of them in Montreal when I was in university and seriously poor, but still managed to carve a bit out of the beans and rice budget to get a British detective fix) and remember where I was then, and what I was doing.

Things sure have changed since then, but on a snowy night all that matters is a good book, and home. That hasn't changed at all.

Things that will be different when I rule the world: a short list

2009-11-29T19:32:00.004-07:00

1. Winter. It is dark now by 4:30. This is simply not acceptable. It makes me grumpy (well, more grumpy).

2. Marking. I brought a big box home for the weekend and didn't touch it. I hate marking.

3. My dental coverage says it's 100%, but it is only 100% of what the insurance company figures it should cost, not what it actually does cost. The next time I take the car for an oil change, I'll tell the dude at the garage that, while he figures it should be about $50, I figure it should be about $20, so that's all I'm paying. Wish me luck in that.

4. Christmas. It is stressful and expensive, and because it is, in fact, a religious holiday, it's a little too... churchy for my taste. When the boy is grown up and gone, I am going to check myself into one of those luxury hotels in the mountains for the whole week and not hang a single freaking ornament.

4b. Also, it starts too soon. I can see three lit trees in the complex next door from my window. This is not okay.

4c. And I just finished a bit of deadline knitting, and I hate deadline knitting. Knitting is what I do to relax, dammit! It's the one thing in my life that doesn't have a timetable attached, and that doesn't charge by the hour. Deadlines take all the fun out of it.

5. I will be able to get my Master's degree and they (that's the imaginary group of "they" which is responsible for things like dental coverage and Christmas) will pay me.

6, All books will be as good as The Time Traveller's Wife. And all spellings will be Canadian.

7. Everyone will be equipped with an "undo" button for those moments when something unkind or careless or stupid comes out of one's mouth without warning, and hurts someone. I could have used one last week, actually.

I think I have a slight touch of that Seasonal Affective whatsit. Perhaps I should spend a few weeks in Mexico on a beach in an attempt to get better.

Or I could just wait and see what happens when I rule the world.

A Poem for Saturday

2009-11-28T19:44:00.002-07:00

This be the Verse
- Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Warm!

2009-11-26T18:08:00.003-07:00

As the Flying Spaghetti Monster is my witness, I'll never be cold again!

Dear reader, I have had a bitch of a week.

Boy and I got our flu shots on Monday, and Tuesday I felt awful. The lady on the help line said, essentially, "there there, dear, just drink lots of fluids and take it easy."

As bloody if. The only fluid I wanted by then was gin, and I don't think that's what she had in mind.

I called the furnace repair dude on Wednesday morning, when the furnace refused to miraculously heal itself and was blowing out cold air for hours on end. (I've come to the realization that I'm in the wrong business - furnace repair dudes charge $84 an hour, which is (ahem) quite a bit more than I make. Also I don't get overtime.) One new part later, it is once again warm in my house! (I know, 18 isn't that warm, but I just got home and had to take the picture before I realized how silly it is to take a picture of your thermostat to put on your blog. I have some postmodern angst.)

And to top it all off, I am having one of those weeks, when I'm behind on everything, struggling to keep up, and feeling like I'm really very bad at my job and should be sent back to wherever it is I came from.

On the plus side, though, there are 16 more working days until the Christmas break.

Do you think if I told him I was, after all, doing my very best, Santa would bring me one of these?

Maybe next year.

Life IS pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

2009-11-23T19:00:00.003-07:00

This seems like scraping the bottom of the barrel, blog-fodder-wise speaking, but the other night as I was ready to go to bed (about 7:35, you know) I was in my bathroom washing my face. I'd taken off my glasses, and I was squirting a bit of soap into my hand (one must cleanse one's T-zone, even at this age). I always forget that the soap pump has a tendency to clog, so when the soap didn't squirt out I got closer, and pushed harder, and ended up with a jet of soap (tea tree oil and something else organic) straight into my right eye.

It. Really. Hurt.

Then my eye swelled up and turned all red and burned for a while, before returning to normal.

Which is all a really weird story which has nothing much to do with anything else, except that I got my flu shot today and now my arm hurts too.

It's a world of hurt, is what it is.

Might as well face it, you're addicted to knitting.

2009-11-22T09:57:00.006-07:00

The stripey scarf stripes on....

... and on....

.. and I find myself smitten. A friend looked at it and said "No offense, but the beauty in this scarf isn't the knitting, it's all about the yarn." I think that's the fun of it - you keep knitting not because knit one, purl one is so freaking exciting, but because you want to see what the next colour change will be, and how it will look with the row you're just knitting. Riveting, I tell you. Riveting.

Here's the baby hat....

The little one should be born any day now. I love the colour - that's Debbie Bliss Cashmerino I got on sale; less than one skein. Good choice, I think, for a little boy born in November.

The furnace seems to be working again, the anxiety is slightly less, and a Sunday of doing Not Too Much of Anything beckons. I think I'll knit.

In which I appear to have lost my blogging mojo

2009-11-21T19:35:00.004-07:00

Some things that have kept me from Le Blog lately:

1. Work. Lots of it.

2. An actual social life. Very small, but visible nonetheless. I suspect that this "social life" (please picture Dr. Evil saying "laser beam" while making those little quotation marks with his fingers) will continue up to and including Christmas, after which it will fizzle out.

3. Knitting. Still haven't finished those mittens, but made a baby hat for my long-lost cousin Liz, and am in the midst of one of those stripey Noro scarves that are said to be highly addictive. Seems to be true.

4. Worrying. About my furnace blowing out cold air today, and having only one of its two blinkey lights flashing while it did so. And then suddenly fixing itself. Who knew that home ownership was such a pitfall of anxiety? Also worrying about global warming, my parenting ability, and whether I'm too hard on my students.

5. Riding. Have ridden over jumps and not died! Also, am "canteriffic." (I made that word up just for the occasion.)

6. Reading. I finally figured out the do it yourself holds feature at the local library. This resulted in my boy and I placing holds on 3,465 books, and then in the library calling us 3,465 times and having to make 3,465 trips to pick up the books. (Today they called me to come and pick up the copy of The Arabian Nights which I had placed on hold. This might be part of the space-time continuum issue I am having (see the Spontaneously Self-Repairing Furnace Debacle as evidence) because I did not actually place a hold on The Arabian Nights. Could I possibly have an evil twin who goes around impersonating me and generally messing things up? Or am I in fact doing all this in my sleep? The questions, they pour down like rain.)

7. Worrying. About Christmas, and how I will afford it, and if something really is wrong with my brand new, highly expensive, very efficient furnace. About my friend whose grandmother died, and who is sad right now. About the noises my car makes, which may be related to the Flux Capacitor or the Canooter Valves. Hard to say which. Also worrying about whether my reluctance to put up Christmas decorations of any sort means that I am really a bad person.

8. Hiding under my rock. I am having an overwhelming urge to become a hermit.

9. Worrying about the Wonder Dog, who has started coughing. Unfortunately, she is not coughing into her sleeve in the prescribed Alberta Health and Wellness manner, despite my in-depth coaching on the issue. A coughing dog is very weird. Perhaps I could slip her into the vaccination clinic when the boy and I go? Do you think they would notice?

10. Also, last but not least, blogging inertia seems to feed on itself - I feel guilty about not blogging so I don't blog. It must work for me on some level, or I wouldn't do it.

And that's all. I sure hope the mojo comes back soon. (But I'm kind of enjoying the social life.)

On Setting the Bar Low

2009-10-27T18:51:00.002-06:00

L and I have been friends for a long time. It's one of those unusual friendships - we live in different parts of the country, she in the Centre of the Universe and I in God's Country. We met by phone calls: I was editing the magazine in which the organization for which she did PR was frequently featured. We had these long conversations, I remember, full of jokes and laughter and sharing before we got to the business part of things, and we became friends long before we ever met.

But meet we did, 10 years ago now or so, and we were just as good friends in person as we were on the phone. When I was pregnant, she was one of the first I told. My son's father left me soon after I told him about the pregnancy, and L was nothing but supportive of me, every day of those long lonely months. We spoke more while my life moved on, past that job and into others, as I re-imagined myself and my life, as I became a mother and as I moved into becoming a teacher. Her life changed, too: she got married to a lovely man, and they had two beautiful, bright sons, both a little younger than mine. We met again a couple of years ago, when I was in Toronto to see my brother, and we took our boys to the museum where they stared up at us, two women laughing together like the old friends we are, before running off together to play.

This is one of the things I remember about L, and one of the reasons I cherish her as a friend: we were on the phone one day just after a sensational news story had broken - a mother somewhere had left her toddler out in the snow on a night where the temperature had plunged well below -30. The little one had frozen, literally, solid, which was a good thing because it meant she could be thawed out slowly, and manage somehow to survive virtually unscathed.

"You know," said L to me over the phone, "that's the secret to parenthood. Just set the bar really low. As long as you don't leave your baby outside to flash freeze, you're doing great!"

I laughed then, and I often think of that conversation and laugh even now. I think L had a point: we have such crazy expectations of ourselves as parents that sometimes we just need to give ourselves a mental shake - as long as I have not accidentally locked my two-year-old outside overnight in February, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much.

So when a colleague loaned me "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, that's what I was thinking. The book is one of those stories of unutterable sadness: poverty; destitution; abuse; neglect. It's an autobiography, and the scenes of those children going from day to day without a bite to eat, cold and poor and essentially abandoned by their parents, turned my stomach. But all the way through, I kept thinking of L and her advice to set the bar low: I have never been rich (or even close to it), but my child has never gone to bed without his supper. He has never had to dig through the garbage cans at his school to get some lunch because there was no food at home. We have shopped in second-hand stores, but not because there is no other choice. We have never had to leave our home in the dead of night, one step in front of a landlord. Bill collectors have sometimes called my house, but they have never been looking for me.

I have never had a lot of money, but I had a life that is rich in other things.

Including my accidental, lucky, cherished friendship with L.

How I Will be Spending My Weekend (since I brought home a bunch of work and we all know how I feel about marking)

2009-10-23T18:44:00.003-06:00

How to Knit a Poem (Gwyneth Lewis)

The whole thing starts with a single knot
and needles. A word and pen. Tie a loop
in nothing. Look at it. Cast on, repeat

the procedure till you have a line
that you can work with.
It’s a pattern made of relation alone,

my patience, my rhythm, till empty bights
create a fabric that can be worn,
if you’re lucky and practised. It’s never too late

to pick up dropped stitches, each hole a clue
to something that might be bothering you,
though I link mine with ribbons and pretend

I meant them to happen. I make a net
of meaning that I carry round
portable, to work on sound

in trains and terrible waiting rooms.
It’s thought in action. It redeems
odd corners of disposable time,

making them fashion. It’s the kind of work
that keeps you together. The neck’s too tight,
but tell me honestly: How do I look?

Open in Case of Emergency

2009-10-20T17:38:00.002-06:00

Today was much better; thanks for your comment (Mrs Spit!) and for your emails. Today I was not stuck in traffic, or in meetings; the photocopier did not hate me; my beloved offspring did not lock me out of anywhere I wanted to be; the wonder dog (while still stupid) was not perceptibly stupider (more stupid?); no kids had panic attacks in my classroom; and my mental health stopped crumbling away into oblivion.

So, an improvement.

On the other hand, I'm still behind on just about everything.

Oh well, we keep on keeping on here chez Artsy, no matter how far behind we get.

Yesterday, while waiting on the Wonderful Opener of Locked Doors (hi Doug!) to unlock my car, I had a thought. (Not the homicidal kind, those don't count.) There, on the passenger seat of my car, along with my bag, cell phone, leftover lunch, city street map, gas receipt, to-do list, and reusable grocery bag (as well as a few CD cases, most of which had their liners pulled out), was my book. The boy's babysitter laughed at me a little - "You know you can't read and drive at the same time, right?"

Well, it was news to me.

I always have a book. I bring a book to my riding lessons, when I know I won't have time to read. I bring a book to work, where there is never ever ever even a spare second to open it; I bring it to the dentist, where a nice man pries my jaws apart and drills bits of my teeth out before taking all my money away; I bring it to the garage where they change the oil and generally inspect the Crapalier on a regular basis.

No matter where I go, there's a book.

Because if I don't bring one, that's the day I'll be stuck on the highway for three hours waiting for a tow. That's the day there will be a record snowfall and NONE of my students will arrive and my marking will all be done, along with all the paperwork I'm behind on (as if). That's the day when everyone will fling up their hands in dismay and say, collectively, "to hell with it. Let's just read our books for a while, and maybe have a cup of tea or something, until things settle."

So you see why I bring my book places. (Sometimes, if I'm being honest, there's more than one book. Because if I'm waiting a long time for something, I might finish the book! And need something else to read!)

But I'm wondering now, as I contemplate the confession I have just made to the whole wide world and everyone, am I the only one? Surely not. What, dear internets, do you bring with you to open in case of emergency?

Dear Today,

2009-10-19T19:47:00.002-06:00

You sucked.

That is all.

Sincerely yours,

Me.

PS Getting my boy to lock the keys in my car when I picked him up at his babysitter's house when I was already an hour late getting home? That was a stroke of genius. The cherry, as it were, on the cupcake of my day.

Now I'm going to go drink some wine and count down the minutes until you are over.

"It's Dead, Jim" and other miscellany

2009-10-16T19:18:00.004-06:00

Last night my DVD player died a spectacular death (its last words? "No DISC..."), leaving me no choice but to worry myself to sleep rather than be lulled into slumber by the flickering lights and lulling sound track from the greatest soporific I know: television.

Now, I am not exactly a TV person, as some of you know. I've still got the 20 inch old hulking set I bought when the boy was a baby; none of your wall-mounted surround-sound flat-screen jobs for me. I have no cable, and peasant-vision doesn't reach me out here in the boonies, so I don't even get the CBC. TV has almost always sent me directly to sleep, especially in times of stress, when otherwise I just lie in bed and worry about things I have no control over.

In fact, now that I think about it, my tendency to fall asleep minutes into any movie is partly why I learned to knit. I wanted to know how that Harry Potter movie ended, so I needed to do something with my hands while I watched.

Anyway, I don't have much of a plan at the moment, because I secretly want to be the kind of person who can airily claim "Oh, I don't even have a tv!" while the truth is that I do, in fact, want to be able to watch a freaking movie at night after the kid goes to bed. Surely I've earned a little brain-dead time for myself!

So, naturally enough, I stopped at the book store on the way home and spent the money that could have gone towards a new DVD player on books. (What? They were having a sale!) I bought Juliet, Naked so I can keep up with the Well-Read Hostess, and I picked up the sequel to The Hunger Games at the library, so I'm pretty well set for reading material, at least on Saturday.

Sunday, though, will have to take care of itself.

(And, in keeping with the "other miscellany" part of today's post, I read The Book of Negroes by Laurence Hill last weekend and loved it. The friend who passed it on said that it was published under another title in the US - Google tells me that title is Someone Knows My Name. I find this most curious. Also, I like the Canadian title better. That is all I have to say about that.)

Why isn't "knat" the past tense of "knit?"

2009-10-14T19:14:00.006-06:00

Inquiring minds want to know!

I've mostly finished one (and only one) Newfie Mitt for my mom - a birthday gift that I'm not letting out of the bag, because my mom is so far away right now that she can't even reach my blog.

Funny story about the mitten. I was watching the boy swim yesterday, while finishing off the top of the mitten. There was a lady sitting beside me who was staring, absolutely agog, at my knitting. Turns out she's in town to visit her brand new tenth (!!) great-grandchild, and, having recently taught herself to knit, was curious about how the mitten went together. I told her it was dead easy, and then I gave her my pattern.

Yep. So now I have to finish the other mitten, not to mention the thumb on this one, having parted with my only copy of the pattern.

In other news, I finished the boy's much desired sweater off yesterday. He wanted it in stripes: "black and yellow stripes, mummy, like a bee," and that is exactly what he got.

Me? I got a headache.

Next up is the other Newfie mitt, obviously, as soon as I can lay my hands on another copy of the pattern. This altruism thing sometimes bites one on the ass.

Holy Timewarp, Batman!

2009-10-12T11:04:00.004-06:00

Overheard the other day:

Middle-Aged Woman the First (with teased bottle-blond hair, wearing a sweatshirt with a kitten applique): My daughter's getting married!

Middle-Aged Woman the Second (with teased bottle-brunette hair, wearing a sweatshirt with a cartoon character applique): Finally! How old is she now?

MAWTF: She's twenty-three. She waited a long time!

MAWTS: Did she ever. Who's she marrying?

MAWTF: Oh, a very nice boy from Drayton Valley. They're going to live out there.

MAWTS: That's nice. Does she have a job in the area?

MAWTF: No, she might look for something after the wedding, but we're focussing on that right now.

The conversation fades away, while Artsy's head quietly explodes....

Seriously. Twenty-three? Twenty-three years old is a long time to wait before you get married? What century is this? And what, pray tell, would happen to a woman who passed the best-before date of 23 years old? Maybe she would end up like me - independent! Educated! Unconventional! Not particularly interested in getting married! Set in our ways! (That's what my gramma says about me - and she does have a point.) A spinster!

I remember when I was 23 - I got my dog that year, and that was the very limit of what I could handle. A marriage at that age would have been an absolute disaster.

I suppose there's only one thing to be done: never tease or dye my hair, and resist the lure of sweatshirts with appliques on them. That way lies madness.

In which October Comes In like a Lion, and I Overhear a Funny Conversation

2009-10-07T19:00:00.002-06:00

It's snowing here, dear hearts, and there is no heat in the school, for the foreseeable future.

This is good because I get to wear all my fabulous knitted sweaters, and also the "Fetching" fingerless mitts I knitted for myself.

This is bad because... well, because it is snowing.

Yesterday I heard the best conversation among a group of grade nine girls. It went a little something like this:

Girl the First: Did you go out with him? He is so hot!!!

Girl the Second: (giggling) No, I didn't go out with him... but Girl the Third did!

Girl the Third (giggling): Only once!

Girl the First: No! It was more like three times! And he's so hot!

Girl the Third: I know!!! But we only went out, like, twice!!

Girl the Second: You know who else is hot? Boy the First!

Girls first and third: Oh my god! He is so hot!!!

[Things continue in this vein for a few more minutes, after which a short silence falls upon the group. It is broken by this:]

Girl the First: You know what would be cool? A slide that went, like, from your bedroom, to, like, the kitchen.

Girls second and third: Oh my god! That would be so cool!

Say what you will about teaching junior high: I never overheard anything that hilarious when I was working for White Rednecks Inc. I love my job, mittens and all.

Keeping On

2009-09-29T19:14:00.000-06:00

Mother to Son
Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor-
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Dont’ you fall now-
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

I Came, I Saw, I Cantered

2009-09-28T18:58:00.002-06:00

I went to art school when I was 28. (It seemed like a good idea at the time, really, it did.)

I remember my first drawing class: a bunch of us in the studios with the huge skylights, a still life set up in the middle, easels on which to rest our drawing boards, pads of paper clipped to them.

"Draw!" said the teacher, "draw what you see."

And me? Oh, dear reader, I was beside myself. I was never any good at drawing (I'm still not, even though I finished that damn art course) and I could see quite clearly how I would frame that still life as a photograph, but had no idea how to draw it, how to capture it in charcoal on newsprint.

Where, I asked myself in dismay, is the book? How can I learn anything at all without a book? What does he mean, "draw what you see?" Somebody point me to the bookstore, I'll learn all I need to there.

Writing school and drawing school are very different: when I was learning to be a writer I was told to put everything down on the page, and edit later. In drawing school, you have to start lightly and build up gradually - the opposite of what I was trying to do.

It was not the first time I would be contrary like that.

I've been taking these riding lessons, even though they're costing a lot, and I love them. I'm pretty proficient at a posting trot, and now I usually only put one piece of tack on the horse upside down, or backwards. This is progress, oh yes indeed.

And a few weeks ago, my teacher said it was time to canter. "It's okay!" she said, "You can do it!" I could do it, in fact, but I couldn't steer or stop, both of which are rather important (at least in my humble opinion). Then she put the horse on a lunge line so I didn't have to worry about steering, (after a near miss with a parked car and a paddock gate) and that made me really dizzy and not much more successful.

I thought to myself, where the hell is the book? Where can I read about this? How can I possibly understand how to do this if I can't consult some kind of text first?

I don't think I can adequately express my disappointment, no, my utter dismay, that there is no book for this kind of stuff. There's no parenting book, either, which is awful! How am I supposed to know how to raise up a boy person, without any kind of manual? And teaching? Don't get me started. (A professor at university, when asked about classroom management, shrugged the question off. "If there's inquiry in your classroom," he said, "discipline will never be a problem." Ass.)

So there's no book. There's no experienced voice telling you what to expect, what to do next, how to make everything work with the minimum amount of damage, to yourself, to other people.

But I've managed so far, I think. I finished the BFA, my boy shows few signs of becoming a psychopathic serial killer, and (best of all) last week I cantered. (Hold the horse to a slow trot, squeeze with the outside leg, lean back, hope for the best. Don't panic.) I'm sure it seems like a small victory to you, but right now it feels enormous.

And I did it without a book, which, to be perfectly honest, is nothing short of a miracle.

Today is Cancelled Due To Lack of Interest

2009-09-23T19:13:00.002-06:00

I have lots of stuff to blog about... Sadly, I have a cold (for real this time - last week it was just teasing me, but about 10:30 this morning it steamrolled through my classroom and flattened me) and I am unhappy.

Now go talk amongst yourselves for a while. I'll be drinking tea and blowing my nose.

Stiff as a Board and Bright Green

2009-09-16T19:05:00.002-06:00

This link is because it's easier than writing a Whole! New! Post! and also because I have called four sets of parents this week, two of them today. Also, I may be getting a cold.

Have a good laugh, on me.

Sidetracked, yet again.

2009-09-14T19:22:00.003-06:00

What I really wanted to write about today is how September is second only to February as the Official Longest Month of the Year. I mean seriously. It's not quite half done yet, but I'm quite sure that it is never going to end.

Then I slipped and fell while on the internet, and found this, which I provide for your perusalment and enjoyage. (There's some dropping of the f-bomb in this. If that offends your delicate sensibilities, then kindly don't click. There. I warned you.)

The Fish

2009-09-11T19:34:00.002-06:00

She felt like a deep-sea fisherman, like a character in Hemingway who spoke only in the briefest phrases and yet whose motivations were as clear as the fathoms of deep water below. She was fishing for a husband by showing how helpless she was, how much in need of rescuing. She had given a lot of thought to her choice of bait, she had wondered about men and watched her friends as they paired off happily and walked down various types of aisles, coming back paired off, two by two. It wasn’t the independent ones, the unconventional, the difficult who made that symbolic walk. It was the quiet and kind girls she had grown up with, the gentle young women who always took it for granted that they would marry, use the phrase “my maiden name” and have a couple of small blonde children. She chose not to think of what she was doing, of all the implications of helplessness and of how she suspected it could cease to be a ploy and become a real handicap. She thought only of the sun, the waves under her boat (the possiblity of storms), the tension of the line in her hands and the focus of her effort, the sea beneath and all its danger. The possibililty of reward, or renown.

One afternoon, a hot day in summer, no wind, no thunder to clear the air, she strung her hammock up between two elm trees in the back yard and lay back. For once she did not have a book open in front of her, she put a bare foot down to the ground and let her big toe push against the cool grass and rock the hammock gently. She was thinking about this obsession with finding a husband and settling down.

The night before she had dreamed of weddings, she had dreamed that everyone around her (all her friends, her family, the people she worked with) was getting married while she tried desperately to get away, avoid their pity because she was the last one not attached, the only one not loved. In her dream she heard their demands to be a bridesmaid, a caterer, a master of ceremonies, a toast-giver (in the dream the word she heard was “toaster” which dismayed her then and amused her now). She closed herself into a room with a locking door, ignored the knocking from the outside, held her aching head in her hands and cried. Her only solace was her refusal to admit entry. Everyone but me, she thought. Everyone but me.

Lying back in the hammock with her eyes closed in the dappled shade, she felt tired, probably because of the weather, the oppressive heat and the bronze glare of the sun, and because of her dreams, all the running and crying she had done while she slept. I do want to be rescued, she thought. But in a different way. From a different sort of danger.

She realized, in this moment of reflection and half sleep, that had used the wrong bait, thinking he would be attracted by her offer of her body, of all that went along with that, when he was not, it wasn’t a complex need enough to satisfy him, it was (she was) too easy. Wrong bait, too soon, she thought. Shame crawled over her skin like lice. She felt as though there were bits of herself, tiny pieces of a treasure she could never recover, scattered around a beach somewhere, being picked up and turned over and flung away like dull flat stones to skim the waves and sink away to nothing. Wave battered, sand washed, jetsam.

The rocking of the hammock slowed as she thought about the ways she had tried to show her need – the sudden inability to light a match or use a tool, the practical uselessness and feigned helplessness. She thought, why? Why are there all these games; why don’t they tell us the rules so we know if it’s okay to have a toolbox in the cupboard and know how to change a lock, or if only the basic skills (driving, baking) are acceptable? It was like going to the wrong job interview, every single time. She felt as though the basic essence of who she was, a competent woman, a fully formed individual with some small value if only to a couple of people and her dog, was all wrong. She hadn’t got the memo. She didn’t know about the dress code. She was being left behind, waving and calling as the procession moved past, oblivious.

And that’s what it came down to, not really to keep up with her peers, her friends and relatives who had baby showers and wedding showers and bachelor parties and receptions and whose conversations included an awful lot of the pronoun “we,” but just to move on. To let momentum move her closer to the next place in her life, so she wasn’t always living out this same pattern – catch and release, catch and loss, catch and miss.

The hammock swung, the shade dappled her closed eyelids and her unguarded face, she dreamed about catching a fish in the ocean, she felt the weight of it on her arm, aching and pulling, she held it aloft in triumph at the end of the struggle and wondered what she was supposed to do with it, anyway.

The Fish
Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Something I Wrote in my First Year of Teacher School, Which Purports to be about Knitting but is Actually About Teaching

2009-09-09T19:27:00.004-06:00

I’ve started work on a new knitting project. It’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done – more so even than the turning of a sock heel, which is spoken of in whispers and legends, but which really isn’t that tough. I’m knitting a shawl, gossamer-like, lacy, made of a single skein of silk/wool blend, hand dyed in a rainbow of colours. The skein contains 1250 yards of yarn – that’s more than a kilometer of thin, soft, colourful yarn. I spent more on this single skein than I have on any other single knitting-related purchase to date. (In my own defense, I bought the yarn before the dog got sick and the clutch on the car packed it in. Clearly I tempted the Gods of Financial Ruin.) I believe to the core of my psyche that the knitting and the wearing of this shawl will make me a better person. When I wear it, I will be the kind of person who has Matching Accessories. My shoes will transform magically from three pairs of Clarks, Blundstone boots, brown Crocs and a pair of Birkenstocks to… well, whatever people who care about shoes wear. I will be a better person in this shawl: kinder, more considerate, less critical of people who misuse the possessive apostrophe.

So I started, as one does, by knitting a swatch to see if I got the guage right. This is important: after the guage swatch, I’ll cast on 112 stitches and knit 110 rows to make one section of this shawl. We ain’t talking about a scarf here, this is the real deal. This is KNITTING. While knitting said swatch, I did several things: I fantasized about the New and Elegant Artsy who will drape herself in this piece of wearable art; I admired the fabulousness that is the wool (some more); and I decided to tackle the dreaded yarnover.

A yarnover, referred to in a pattern as “yo”, is the stitch that makes the little lacy holes in knitting. Apparently (according to my mother, who is not necessarily trustworthy in such matters, because she's been knitting since Jesus was a cowboy and I have not) it’s dead easy. I got out my huge knitting bible and turned to the page (with diagrams) called “yarnovers.” Very carefully, I brought the yarn to the front of my work, inserted the needle, wrapped the yarn around the other needle, and knitted a stitch. Aha! I have defeated the dreaded “yo”! I am worthy of the Elegant Shawl. The transformation has begun, soon I will wear lipstick and go shopping for no good reason!

When I got to the end of the row I realized I now had one extra stitch. Damn. I went back and took that extra stitch out. I re-examined the knitting book. Surely I had done the yarnover correctly – where was the extra stitch coming from? I tried it another way, no joy. I knitted on and attempted another yo in the next row. Still the extra stitch. I thought about calling my grandmother (whose knitting mantra is “don’t think about it too much, just follow the instructions” – clearly she doesn’t know me at all) but it was past her bedtime. It was past mine too, but I cannot sleep with a problem like this standing between me and Elegance.

Fortunately, I have more than one book about knitting. (I know. Control your shock, please.) Off I went to a secondary source. I looked up “yarnover” in the index and turned to the correct page. I had to get my poor sick old dog up to get at the book (bottom shelf of the bookcases in my room) but it was worth it, I thought. And right there, in a neat little box, was the commentary on yarnovers. “The yarnover,” it said blithely, unaware of how long I’d been trying to make a lovely little lacy stitch on my guage swatch, “is a quick and easy way TO ADD A STITCH TO YOUR KNITTING while creating a lace effect.”

Oh CRAP.

So this has, of course, led me to commentary on teaching. This is what I have learned through my struggle with the yo that stands between me and Girly-ness:
1. Consult secondary sources whenever possible.
2. Sometimes a mistake isn’t a mistake.
3. An extra stitich isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
4. Sometimes you have to learn by doing, and no demonstrations by female relatives on imaginary needles (or lectures about imaginary classrooms) can replace the actual experience.
5. Don’t think about it too much.
6. The only zen at the top of the mountain is the zen you brought with you.
7. I will probably never be Elegant.
8. That’s okay.

And for the record, two and a half years have passed since I wrote this piece, and not only do I wear that shawl regularly, but I am the master of the freaking yarnover. I will not be defeated by knitting, oh no I will not.

Person, Place

2009-09-08T19:40:00.005-06:00

Dew has soaked everything. I could wash my hands in the ferns, and when I pick a leaf off a maple branch I get a shower on my head and shoulders. through the hardwoods along the foot of the hill, through the belt of cedars where the ground is swampy with springs, through the spruce and balsam of the steep pitch, I go alertly, feasting my eyes. I see coon tracks, an adult and two young, in the mud, and maturing grasses bent like croquet wickets with wet, and spotted orange Amanitas, at this season flattened or even concave and holding water, and miniature forests of club moss and ground pine and ground cedar. There are brown caves of shelter, mouse and hare country, under the wide skirts of spruce.

My feet are wet. Off in the woods I hear a Peabody bird tentatively try out a song he seems to have half forgotten. I look to the left, up the slope of the hill, to see if I can catch a glimpse of Ridge House, but see only trees.

Then I come out on the shoulder of the hill, and there is the whole sky, immense and full of light that has drowned the stars. Its edges are piled with hills. Over Stannard Mountain the air is hot gold, and as I watch, the sun surges up over the crest and stares me down.

Ladies and gentlemen, Wallace Stegner.

I like Stegner for a number of reasons. For one, his family was homesteading about the same time mine was; but while my folks were further north, his were down in the Porcupine Hills. When I read Stegner, I know what things were like for my grandfather, growing up on a quarter section near Cereal, Alberta in the early days of the twentieth century. My grandfather is long, long gone, as are his contemporaries, but the narratives of Wallace Stegner survive, untouched.

Another thing I like about him is how well he writes about place. There are some authors who are just gifted with the ability to make setting leap of the page. To make a spot, which exists only in their imagination, so real that you want to go there. You know how sometimes people will urge you to "find your happy place?" (Yes, actually, I did have rather a trying day.) I must admit that the happy place I choose to go in my mind is often from a book. It's a kitchen, maybe, or a walk like the one Stegner's hero is on in these opening pages of Crossing to Safety.

But honestly - doesn't that seem like your happy place, too?

The Plot Thickens

2009-09-07T19:54:00.004-06:00

The other day I read a book review that said nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important in a book than character. If you have compelling characters, the reviewer asserted, then you can do whatever you want with structure, with narrative, with plot, and the reader will come along willingly.

That's an interesting idea. It reminds me of what Anne Lamott wrote in her book "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life". (Yes, of course I have a shelf of books about writing. We are very meta here at the Artsy Homestead.) She writes:

...we want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing games or being coy or manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability. (Unless a major characteristic of his or hers is coyness or manipulation or lying.) We do not wish to be crudely manipulated. Of course, we enter into a work of fiction to be manipulated, but in a pleasurable way. We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.

For Lamott, too, writing fiction is about character, first and foremost. Get the main character right and all the rest will fall into place.

I just finished reading The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. (The inside jacket blurb makes one of those annoying assertions so common in literature for teens, which seems to be pulled from a tabloid headline: Compelling Parallels to Today's World! Perhaps the copy writer thinks we are living in ancient Rome.) The Hunger Games is a book which is driven, for the most part, by plot. The main character, Katniss Everdeen, is one of two tributes sent from her district to the Capitol, where she will compete in the Hunger Games, a sort of odd virtual reality Survivor game where the last person alive wins untold riches. The trials and tribulations that accompany Katniss through the Games are the meat of the story, and character, while touched on briefly, is not the driving force.

Anne Lamott has more to say about character:

If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn't really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds you attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal. When you have a friend like this, she can say, "Hey, I've got to drive up to the dump in Petaluma - wanna come along?" and you honestly can't think of anything in the world you'd rather do. By the same token, a boring or annoying person can offer to buy you an expensive dinner, followed by tickets to a great show, and in all honesty you'd rather stay home and watch the aspic set.

I need to say that, as much as I enjoyed The Hunger Games, I would not drive to the dump in Petaluma with Katniss Everdeen.

So, having read both the excellent review that praises the art of characterization, and a novel which is all about plot and story and suspense, I am left wondering: which is better? I have read character-driven novels that changed my world (The Diviners, best Canadian novel of all time), but I can't think of a story-based novel that grabbed me in the same way, although many of them have diverted me for an afternoon or two. I suppose that one thing leads to another - I find it interesting that we are always, in all our interactions with other people, looking for stories. (Who are you? What do you do? Where do you come from? Tell me about yourself? These are all questions we ask when we first meet a stranger; these are all questions that beg for stories as answers.)

I suppose that the two things go hand in hand to a certain extent: once you know all the stories, then you can start to piece together character; and once you know character, all the stories make sense. And honestly, that's good enough for me.

This is Just To Say...

2009-09-06T20:12:00.001-06:00

That I am so glad it's a long weekend.

Language Makes Us Human

2009-09-05T10:01:00.004-06:00

Some of my students are not, to put it mildly, thrilled about taking French.

Learning a new language is difficult, it's frustrating, and it makes you want to throw reference materials at the wall, howling about subjects, and objects, and verbs, and how absolutely infuriating it is to not know what someone is saying to you, or how to answer back.

My response to my students is to tell them that learning a language opens doors. It changes the way you see the world, it makes you a better, richer person who can look at things differently, who understands things on a deeper level.

Then, when that doesn't work, I tell them that they have no choice, and they need to suck it up.

For a long time, I wondered if it was just me, if I was the only one who felt this way about words, and language; the only one who cared this much about learning how to communicate in a different tongue. Then I picked up Kate Grenville's book The Lieutenant.

The book is about a young man, an astronomer in the British Marines, who goes along with the First Fleet in 1787 to New South Wales. While there, he forms a friendship with a young aboriginal girl named Tagaran and begins to learn the language of the Cadigal people.

And then, as they say, everything changed.

He had thought himself superior to Silk [another soldier], who was innocent and smug in his belief that there was a precise unambiguous equivalence between words, and that one could exchange them as one might trade a Spanish dollar for two shillings and five pence. Now he saw that he had done the same. He had made these lists of verbs, these alphabets, these pages stretched like a net: other inflexions of the same verb.

But learning the Sydney tongue was not like that. Both the language and the act of learning had burst out of the boundaries he had tried to put around them. Proof of that was what he had just done. The press of the unknown had made him invent a new language, even newer to him than the Cadigal tongue: the language of doubt, the language that was prepared to admit I am not sure.

What he had not learned from Latin or Greek he was learning from the people of New South Wales. It was this: you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you. His friendship with Tagaran was not a list of objects, or the words for things eaten or not eaten, thrown or not thrown. It was the slow constructing of the map of a relationship.

The names of things, if you truly wanted to understand them, were as much about the spaces between the words are they were about the words themselves. Learning a language was not a matter of joining any two points with a line. It was a leap into the other.

To understand the movements of the celestial bodies, it was necessary to leave behind everything you thought you knew. Until you could put yourself at some point beyond your own world, looking back at it, you would never see how everything worked together.

This is what I try to say to my students. I expect that they're too young, that all they see right now is the brick wall of a foreign language in front of them. I hope that one day they see what the narrator in this book sees: how language connects us as nothing else can, and how making that leap into the other means that we are never, ever the same again.

Do not try this at home.

2009-08-30T10:54:00.003-06:00

I was walking the dog this morning when my very strange neighbour roared up in his car.

Remember his car?

He pulled up in front of his place (no, silly, not on the driveway, right in the middle of the road, of course), revved the engine a few times, popped the hood open, and then got out to do some kind of mechanical adjustment that will keep the thing gasping for a few more months.

Which is when I noticed that he had decided not to wear shoes that day. For reasons known only to himself, strange neighbour was driving around the neighbourhood wearing rollerblades.

All is lost

2009-08-29T23:42:00.001-06:00

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Yet Another Short Post....

2009-08-28T20:29:00.003-06:00

This one to tell about one of those crazy teacher moments, when my grade 8 French class walked in (they were my grade 7s last year) and I knew all their names, and they knew me, and they were ready and eager to get started, and I looked around at all of them (taller, more mature, grown closer to the people that they are really meant to be) and felt this surge of something that could only be called love.

Someone (Iris Murdoch?) said that you shouldn't get married until you can't believe your luck. These wonderful kids are all part of my life, and I quite simply cannot believe my luck.

How can you tell?

2009-08-26T19:35:00.004-06:00

Sign at the camp site I visited last weekend (without my camera, alas):

"Before check-out, all fires must be distinguished."

I am proud to say that my fire was extremely distinguished. It looked rather like this:

Aaaaaand.... the knitting goes on

2009-08-24T20:43:00.002-06:00

This is the next thing I'm knitting. Because, seriously - a sweater and a poem? A poem by Charles Bukowski, no less? It simply does not get any better than that.

I shall call it my Bluebird of Happiness Sweater and it shall be mine and I shall love it, my precious.

In other news, I went back to school today - kids are back later this week. Now I know that this makes me a complete geek (and some of my work friends read this blog and can now mock me mercilessly) but this is the best job ever and and I can hardly wait to start a new year. For one thing, the French department has doubled and I really like my counterpart. For another thing, a teacher from last year has returned, and I am thrilled. Also, I'm going to be so much better now - after all, I'm twice as experienced as I was this time last year.

And there's no marking yet, so really everything is ideal.

Forget what that sappy Christmas carol says: people, this is the most wonderful time of the year.

Enough with the angst, already; what are you reading?

2009-08-21T18:42:00.004-06:00

I suffer from intermittent bouts of loneliness, which I stubbornly refuse to treat, but which leave me absurdly sensitive to all mentions of my condition in books.

I was reading "Iris and Ruby" by Rosie Thomas, which is about a granddaughter (Ruby) and her grandmother (Iris) who are in Cairo (where Iris lives and to which Ruby has run away) when the middle generation, Ruby's mother Lesley, appears. The three women are in the courtyard of the house in Cairo, talking about the upcoming Christmas holiday.

It was a winter's day. The parallelogram of sky overhead was pewter grey, but the garden offered shelter from the cold as well as the heat of summer. Iris sat wrapped in blankets, her stick laid beside her chair.

Lesley bowed her head. "I understand. But you see, Mummy, I have to go home to Andrew and Ed because we do have Christmas; Ed's still a little boy, really. But I am torn because I don't want to go and leave you when you are not strong, and I don't want you to be lonely."

Ruby looked quickly away, up at the needle points of the minarets that now seemed almost to pierce the heavy clouds.

"Lonely," Iris repeated, in a voice that sounded as cold as frost.

Lesley persisted, unwisely. "Yes."

Iris's fingers tapped on the wooden arm of her chair. "It takes some initial determination to be alone. After that it is easy."

"But..."

"Perhaps you are the one who is lonely."

Ruby drew in a sharp breath and stole a look at her mother. Lesley sat very still. There were tight lines drawn from her nose to the corners of her mouth. "Perhaps," she agreed.

No one said anything else and raindrops suddenly scattered on the tiles.

"Let's see you indoors," Lesley murmured and went to help Iris to her feet.

Two things strike me as interesting about this passage: first of all, it's how loneliness is perceived, as the worst possible outcome. What is it about our society that we think being by yourself is the worst thing? It isn't; but being seen as a lonely person is pretty awful. The sickly pity, the refrain of "Eleanor Rigby" hummed along in the background. (Ah, look at all the lonely people! Where do they all come from?)

The second thing that made me notice this little scene in what is, after all, a pretty big and very engaging novel, is the difference, shown by language but not pointed at explicitly, between being alone and being lonely. It is, I have often believed, quite possible to be alone and not at all lonely. The opposite is also true: I have been in several relationships where I was gasping from loneliness, when I wasn't supposed to be and couldn't admit it. ("You couldn't possibly be lonely, now that you've finally got yourself a boyfriend!" people would have said, refusing to see what is apparent if it doesn't fit with what they believe.)

I also believe quite firmly in what Iris says: It takes some initial determination to be lonely - although sometimes, like greatness, loneliness is thrust upon us.

After that it's easy.

I suppose I do have a grudging respect for copyright laws, after all

2009-08-19T20:24:00.003-06:00

I wanted to put the whole poem up (High Windows by Philip Larkin) but I really love the last bit best, and I do keep posting poems in flagrant disregard of copyright, which is even worse seeing as how I too am a writer and don't like it when other people put my stuff on the interwebs without asking me.

So here it is, anyway, and sorry, Philip.

I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

And all manner of things shall be well.

2009-08-17T21:56:00.004-06:00

That was Julian of Norwich's picture on the last post, by the way. She was a British mystic-type person who is credited with the line I ended on: "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." While the picture and quote from a very religious person like Julian of Norwich might, at first glance, seem odd on the blog of a very dedicated atheist, let me just say that I believe in finding comfort wherever you can, and I have always found that quote to be profoundly comforting.

The teacher dreams have stopped. I'm on to dreams about losing my house, which are still disturbing but which frequently accompany anxious periods in my life, so at least they're familiar. The devil you know and all that.

The sun came out again after all. When I walked the dog last night the stars were incredible - dippers (big and small), milky way, all manner of constellations which I cannot name. It was stunning. I thought that, if you looked at the stars long enough, surely all your worries would go away.

And sure enough, this morning was bright and clear, and then I learned that my cousin had a baby girl today, and now I know for sure that everything is well, and that Julian of Norwich was quite right, after all.

Intro, with Whining

2009-08-15T10:48:00.003-06:00

I have been having Teacher Dreams. Last night's were particularly vivid: I was late for every single class, and I hadn't prepared a single thing because I was busy chatting with the other teachers, catching up on our summers, et cetera. So in I would wander, late, to a class full of bewildered adolescents. Then I would try to get a seating plan in place, but the kids weren't interested because they were already sitting where they wanted to be sitting, and since I was late anyway who the hell was I to tell them where to sit? In one dream I was in my old high school, where I did a stint as a student teacher, but they had given me a storage cupboard as a classroom and it didn't even have desks.

Then (strange how all these different dreams were one) my grade 9 French class came in, with a textbook they got from the teacher before me, which I didn't use and had never seen. They were complaining about what a crap teacher I was last year, and when I looked around, there in the back was a man I taught ESL to a few years ago, who was one of the most difficult people I have ever known. (To be fair, he had been a doctor in his own country, and when he came to Canada as a man in his 50s, not only did no one recognize his achievements and general wonderfulness and the superiority of his gender, but he had to take English classes from some woman who thought she was the boss of him. Damn, he was irritating.)

So I wake up all edgy every morning, thinking about how I'm not ready for this year to start, how I'm running out of money and how long it is until pay day, how the sun hasn't shone in days, how there is a social occasion approaching which I positively dread, the arguments I have had with people who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that, right or wrong, this is how I feel, and the absolute impossibility of keeping going like this, all alone, with 250 students ready to start depending on me and all the while there I am, late, in a closet.

But... the sun will come back. The days will pass and I will be paid again. The money will stretch as far as I need it to stretch. Being alone has not killed me to date and so will probably not kill me now. I will be organized on the first day of school, because I am, deep down, an organized person.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Two by Freaking Two

2009-08-14T11:26:00.002-06:00

The world is made for pairs. Everywhere you go, there are two of people: a co-signator, a partner, another. An other. There are no cars made for one person, no restaurant tables, not very many activities. There is a huge group of people who think that going to the movies by yourself is the height of social failure.

The things I do are meant for individuals. Knitting, for instance, requires only one person (albeit a person with two hands, which may bring me back to the “world is made for pairs” thesis, but nevertheless). Riding, as I was thinking yesterday, is for one person. You would look really silly with another person sitting on the saddle behind you, clinging on for dear life, while you do all the things you need to do on a horse (post a trot, shorten your rein, stretch out through your heel, lift your shoulders). Likewise walking, although certainly an activity that can be enhanced by the proper companion, is something that I would just as soon do alone, at my own pace, with perhaps a dog to keep me company.

I would rather do things for singles.

Ballroom dancing is something that can only be done by pairs. If there’s one of you, and there’s been one of me for every day of my thirties, then you are the wallflower, you are the extra, you are the pity dance, you are the one who came without an “and guest” because you couldn’t find one. (Or because the hosts realized that you would be alone anyway and so didn't even offer you the choice.) You make polite conversation instead of inside jokes. You concentrate on your feet because you know that everyone is watching that person, that freak who walks with only a shadow, who isn’t connected to anyone. You have to be really sure not to screw up, because there is no one who will ever, ever catch you. Everything you do depends on only yourself. You are awkward in every single (hah, there’s that word again) thing you do because the world is set up for two of you, and you are only one.

Only one.

A Little Larkin for when Things are Difficult and There Is No One to Talk To.

2009-08-13T22:36:00.000-06:00

Aubade by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

In Which the Generation Gap Rears its Ugly Head

2009-08-13T09:31:00.005-06:00

The boy was watching Season 2 of the Muppet Show on dvd this morning. I loved the Muppets when I was a kid, and I'm pleased to report that the show is still very, very funny.

So it starts out with the signature Kermit line: "It's the Muppet Show, with our very special guest star, Elton John!" and there comes the Piano Man himself, with much more hair, and some crazy flamboyant costumes, much slimmer than he is now. His first number was "Crocodile Rock" and after a while he sang "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," (in the picture above he's singing "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" with Miss Piggy) and I had to sing along because I had the Greatest Hits on tape when I was in high school and listened to it on my walkman all the way from Chicoutimi to Montreal on a train (9 hours), with Simon and Garfunkel on the flip side of the tape. (No, dears, I was not cool even then. I know; it's shocking.)

And then my son, my darling child, the hope of the future, says to me:

"Hey mummy, have you heard this guy before? Does this dude have a CD out?"

Oy.

It has come to this.

2009-08-10T13:42:00.002-06:00

Today at the used book store, I bought a book I already have.

The Excruciating Dilemmas of Daily Life

2009-08-07T09:20:00.002-06:00

As the countdown begins to the new school year (only 17 more days of vacation - sob!) I have paused to reflect on the terrible, agonizing decisions I have had to make over the past few weeks.

Should the boy have swimming lessons at 9:30 or 10:00? IPod on Shuffle, or on a playlist? Library before swimming or after? Riding lessons on Tuesday or Wednesday? Clean the house today or tomorrow? (Actually, the answer to that one is tomorrow. Always tomorrow.) And the most difficult, the one that has caused me the most lost sleep and mental anguish, is this: reading, or knitting?

It is a matter of constant sorrow to me that I can't read and knit at the same time. There comes a day in a person's life, though, when they have to choose: Peanut butter or chocolate? Fixed rate or variable? Rock or country?

I believe that, while my plan for world domination has not yet come to fruition, I have solved the reading/knitting dilemma to certain extent.

I have chosen to read about knitting.

The other day I went to a little knitting/weaving place not far from here. It's run by this teeny tiny leprechaun-type guy, who used to be a teacher, with a bluetooth thingy stuck in his ear, big round glasses and long flowing grey hair. He has a small shop that is full of yarn, and spinning wheels, and equipment for weaving and spinning and knitting, and books. (He has all of Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries in stock. I am not thinking about that right now.)

Here's the thing about the books, though: you pick out the one you want, and then he goes and gets you a brand new copy from the depths of his stash. One that has never been touched by human hands. One that is pristine. He does that with knitting needles, too - it's very interesting.

So anyway, the other day I went in search of yarn - mitten madness has begun chez Artsy, and I needed a couple of skeins of worsted weight in nice colours. Of course, being me, I browsed for some time among the books, and found this one: "Two Sweaters For My Father" by Perri Klass. I have a previously undisclosed fondness for books about knitting: essays on the noble art, personal reflections, funny anecdotes. They're not exactly thick on the ground, but a couple spring immediately to mind: one edited by Annie Modesitt called "Cheaper than Therapy"; and one at the local library (whose title escapes me) about knitting through sorrow and change. It seems to be a universal theme: knitting is more than just knitting, it is soothing, it is solace, it is creation, it is warmth, it is challenge, it is everything you need it to be.

Perri Klass's book was full of essays she's written for knitting publications over the years, and includes an essay she wrote for the New York Times Magazine back in 1992, about knitting through meetings and lectures and classes when she was a medical student, intern, resident, and finally a fully qualified pediatrician. The quality of writing is fabulous (turns out she's won a boatload of prizes for her writing) and the stories were all excellent. I couldn't pick a favourite if you asked me, but I did appreciate one essay about how knitting goes well with murder mysteries - in particular, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. "The scarf [knitted by Miss Marple during the investigation] after all, we might imagine, is rather like Miss Marple herself: feminine and traditional and even maybe just a tiny bit ditsy to look at, but strong, well-constructed, warm, and highly serviceable." I like the idea of being strong, well-constructed, warm and highly serviceable. Seems like a good thing to be.

She goes on to write "Knitting goes perfectly, in so many ways, with books that are themselves constructed as sophisticated puzzles, complex patterns full of twists and turns. When you come to the end of such a novel, you look back and appreciate all the most elaborate zigs and zags, all the places where the pattern turned inside out, or where the individual twists suddenly wove together into a remarkable braid that you hadn't been expecting."

So you see? Sometimes you can combine your favourite things: raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Mint and chocolate. Warm woolen mittens (in red Lamb's Pride bulky) and the stories of Perri Klass.

People And The Odd Things Up To Which They Get

2009-08-05T10:25:00.002-06:00

I have a secret fascination with people who do weird things. (I spent the August long weekend knitting a pair of mittens - I know about people who do weird things.) I particularly love it when people do peculiar things and then write books about the experience. A timely example, of course, is the book, about to be released as a movie, about the lady who decided to make all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking over the course of a year. If you haven't read the book, please do. It's hilarious. (Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell)

Only slightly less well known, however is a book I bought in Victoria: Reading the OED: One man, one year, 21,730 pages by Ammon Shea. Yes, you guessed it, it's about a dude who read the entire Oxford English Dictionary (the 20 volume, 150 pound version) over a year.

It is very, very funny, as one would expect a book about reading the dictionary to be.

Although I laughed many times while reading the book, I marked this page, where the author is talking about why he does not choose to read the OED on a computer:

You cannot drop the computer on the floor in a fit of pique, or slam it shut. You cannot leave a bookmark with a note on it in a computer and then come upon it after several years and feel happy you've found something you thought you had lost. You cannot get any sort of tactile pleasure from rubbing the pages of a computer. (Maybe some people do get a tactile pleasure from rubbing their computers, but they are not people I have any interest in knowing anything about.)

Reading on a computer screen gives you no sense of time or investment. The page always looks the same, and everything is always in the same exact spot. When reading a book, no matter how large or small it is, a tension builds, concurrent with your progress through its pages. I get a nervous excitement as I see the number of pages that remain to be read draining inexorably from the right to the left. The fact that this will happen twenty times over as I read the OED does not in any way diminish its appeal.

I've never sat down at a new computer and, prior to using it, felt a deep and abiding need to open it up and sniff it as deeply as I can, the way I have with many a book. To me, computers all smell the same, and their smell is not a nice one. And though a computer will inarguably hold far more information than even the largest of books, sitting down at a computer has never provided me with that delicious anticipatory sense that I am about to be utterly and rhapsodically transported by the words within it.

I've never looked across the room at my computer and fondly remembered things that I once read in it. I can while away hours at a time just standing in front of my books and relive my favourite passages by merely gazing at their spines. I have never walked into a room full of computers, far from home, and immediately felt a warm familiarity come over me, the way I have with every library I've ever set foot in.

And to that, my friends, I have only one thing to say: Word.

The Boy is Back in Town

2009-08-03T10:42:00.002-06:00

He came home! He's an inch taller, and he came home without his hat, without his toothbrush, and with someone else's underwear in his bag, but he is home now.

I know because yesterday morning as I slept soundly away, he put his face close to mine and said, quite clearly: "Mummy, we don't have any more apples. And I have a cold!"

Then he added "and also, I love you."

I'm so glad he's back.

The Many and Varied Uses of the Common List

2009-07-29T17:11:00.006-06:00

Many years ago, back when I was young, I came down with a very bad case of broken heart. It was awful; I was only 22 or 23 and I had no idea I could hurt that badly and still breathe. The fellow in question had been part of my life for more than three years, and he left our apartment because he was done with me; he had found someone new, someone better, someone else.

When I was done crying, I cleaned. I cleaned every inch of that little apartment; I scoured the hardwood floors every week with hot water and bleach, I dusted every available surface, the Easter-egg purple bathroom gleamed. There was no clutter in that apartment; even the linen closet was tidy.

When I was done cleaning, I made up a Good Riddance list, in which I detailed every single thing about the man and the relationship that I would not miss. Toenail clippings in the living room? No more! Dirty socks on the floor? Begone!

It was very therapeutic.

So now I find myself, many years later, with my heart unbroken, alone without my son. And because I miss him like all getout, I cleaned the house to within an inch of its life today, and now I am making a list of the good things about having this time by myself:

1. Food. I can make any dish that pleases me, no matter what it is. The boy does not like macaroni and cheese, so the other night I made a big dish of it and no one, not a single person (or dog, even) said "ewwwwww, it's slimy, I'm not eating THAT."

2. More food. Raspberries. In season. All for me. No sharing. Enough said.

3. Time. I can get up whenever I please, go to bed when I like, and no one will come into my room and say "Good morning, sleepyhead!" when he thinks that I am rested enough.

4. More time. If I want to have breakfast at 11:00 and dinner at 7:30 (because that is when I am hungry) and no lunch at all, then That. Is. What. I'll. Do.

5. Ditto going out: the other night I walked the Wonder Dog down to the library in the cool of the evening, spent a lovely half hour not looking at Asterix, Geronimo Stilton, or Hardy Boys books, and browsed contentedly for a bag of discards (for two bucks!) afterwards. Then I strolled on home, under the shady trees, as the sun went down, in the quiet.

I think it's kind of like the first weeks (or months, even, ahem) after you move out on your own. You go a little crazy from the freedom, and do things like reverse the days and nights to such an extent that getting to your 11:00 French class is almost impossible (not that I ever did that. Oh no sirree, not me. It was an 11:30 German class, in fact.)

The truth is I miss my kid like crazy, and I'll be glad when he's home.

But in the meantime? I'll be eating raspberries while reading a book. Don't try to stop me, either.

In Which Our Intrepid Reader Has a Rather Smelly Mishap

2009-07-28T13:49:00.003-06:00

Please note: this image is not representative of how I look while on a horse.

Had a riding lesson this morning- I am glad to say that, while I may not be improving, I am not getting any worse either.

After the lesson I was brushing the horse off in a stall. She moved a little sideways, and stepped on the toe of my boot. I was stuck, moving backwards, and off balance when she moved around towards me. I lost my balance entirely, and fell backwards, boot still under the horse's hoof...

... and landed, oh gentle reader...

... right in a pile of horse shit.

It was actually quite funny; I was soaked right through my jeans, and had to put a blanket down on the seat of my car for the drive home. The minute I walked through the door every stitch of clothing went into the washing machine, and I had a lovely warm shower with lavender soap.

When my boy has swimming lessons I'm surprised he doesn't swallow the whole pool, because he can't stop smiling. That's the way I feel when I'm riding - I grin like a fool all the way home.

With the windows open, of course.

I am a bad, bad blogger.

2009-07-27T09:42:00.003-06:00

So it's summer vacation, when every day seems like a Saturday (except without the laundry). I've been reading like a fool, but not much in the edifying department, more along the lines of the Complete Oeuvres of Maeve Binchy and J.K. Rowling and random choices from the paperback racks at the library. I've knitted up the entire Central Park Hoodie, but it's too hot to wear it. I'm knitting a sweater for the boy ("black and yellow stripes, mummy, like a bee"). I am avoiding the amazon.ca site where my wishlist lurks, tempting me while I try to save money.

Speaking of the boy, he went off to camp yesterday, leaving me with the vague feeling that I should be doing something useful. But no! I am updating my iPod and looking forward to my next riding lesson.

I am tidying my office and organizing it still further (I tend to keep things in my patented Piles of Crap system, which requires periodic maintenance. You know, where I go through the Piles of Crap and throw things out that I should have thrown out before they became a part of the pile. It works for me, people, or I wouldn't do it.)

I am cleaning out the boy's room - he also uses the Piles of Crap system.

I am not freaking out when I get letters from the bank saying "You owe us $1200 in property tax, how would you like to pay?"

I am trying to keep the wonder dog cool, even though she insists on wearing that silly fur coat wherever she goes.

I am making jam, and going swimming, and worrying about my boy, far away from me for the first time, and (also for the first time) without his beloved Teddy.

And that, dear reader, is why I am Too Busy To Blog.

Pity me, please.

George! You didn't jump in the river after all! How sensible of you.

2009-07-10T17:13:00.003-06:00

The title of this post is brought to you by the movie the boy and I watched yesterday, while the rain poured down and while my muscles gradually stiffened into long strings of pain as a direct result of another riding lesson.

I love learning things, I really do, but I'm a smart cookie (if I do say so myself) and learning things is easy for me.

Book-learning things are easy, actually. I am not very coordinated, physically speaking, because of a tendency to view my body as nothing but a slightly awkward, unreliable, and poorly-designed transportation system for my brain. But no, I am going to learn to ride this horse, or die trying.

My sympathies are actually with the horse.

And, in case you haven't noticed, I have been so busy doing nothing that I don't want to write anything on the blog.

If you're looking for something to read, though, Sarah Dunant's new book "Sacred Hearts" was fantastic.

O, Canada

2009-07-01T19:26:00.002-06:00

I have not been in a blogging kind of mood lately.

I have been reading pulp fiction, and drinking beer, and finishing school (it's done!), and hanging out with my boy, and making jam, and making plans, and making a mess. I have been having nasty arguments with people, and worrying about things that are out of my control and which will more than likely resolve themselves in the next while, anyway.

Also, I have been learning to ride a horse, which is going better than you might think.

I have been eating nachos in a bid for emotional comfort, and spending money on my dog (who is much better now, although she remains very high-mileage and in need of some work on her transmission).

I have been not answering the phone, and meaning to buy a bike, and watering my plants every morning.

I have been knitting the right sleeve of the Central Park Hoodie and wondering what to do with a boy for two months of holidays.

And then I remembered two things: I started this blog a year ago, and I am loving it; and it's Canada Day.

When I worked in the funeral home, I once commented on the number of people who had July 1 as their birthday. Strange, I thought, that so many people from Asian countries were born on the same day...

Not so, said my boss. Sometimes people coming in to Canada know the year they were born, but not the day. They get to pick a birthday, and so they choose either January 1 (because it's my gramma's birthday, of course) or July 1. I find that fact extremely touching.

So happy birthday, Canada - go have a beer. On me.

Not in Kansas Anymore (or southern Alberta, either)

2009-06-22T19:12:00.019-06:00

We went away for a bit, and look what we saw:

Take my word for it, trees like that do not grow on the short grass prairie.

And roses! Growing outside! Like it was no big deal!

I had a Georgia O'Keeffe moment:

And my grandmother had a moment of her own:

The boy met a hermit crab:

And I got all artsy with my camera, as I used to do back in the day when I was living on student loans and hope and pretension (that would be... oh, let's see, last year).

I admired a bridge:

And a lighthouse:

And my boy...

...ran down...

...the Neptune Stairs...

...without falling. (Well, he fell later, but that's another story. Actually, it's not a story at all. He fell because he's a boy and boys fall.)

Why did we do all this?

The best reason possible:

My mom got her Master's degree from Royal Roads University in Victoria, and we all went out to celebrate with her. A good time was had by all, and we couldn't be more proud. ("I went to my mom's convocation," I told a co-worker. "Oh," she said, "so that's where you get your complete lack of ambition.")

Congratulations, mom. You done good.

What a Crock!

2009-06-14T19:52:00.005-06:00

Almanzo ate the sweet, mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy. He ate the ham. He bit deep into velvety bread spread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust. He demolished a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist. And he ate plum preserves, and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. He felt very comfortable inside. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie.

That's from Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Farmer Boy. I like that book mostly for the descriptions of food - all those piles, and mountains, and cream, and velvety crispness! At the same time, I feel an almost physical pain for the women who had to prepare all that food, three times a day, with absolutely no modern conveniences to help them out. No rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, no 2 for 1 Pizza place down the street, no microwave, no freezer. No internet for recipes, no fresh herbs in deepest January, no nothing that you didn't grow, preserve, store and prepare all on your own.

Also, no fat people, because second only to the descriptions of food in this book are the descriptions of manual labour. Oy vey, those people worked hard.

Having said that, I am a bit of a fool for this old-timey stuff. I made jam a couple of summers ago and loved it. (I'll be making it again this year - if you and I are friends, this is what you're getting for Christmas. Resign yourselves.) I knit, as you all know, like a fool. I make pie from scratch, regularly enough for my boy to say "Oh no, not apple pie again!"

And guess what I'm making now? Guess!

Here's a hint:

Want a close-up?

Still nothing? Okay, I'll tell you.

Sauerkraut, baby! Oh yes, cabbage and salt and the wonders of fermentation, added to this groovy old crock, and I will be swimming in sauerkrauty goodness.

I can hardly wait.

In other news, here in the world of Uber-Geekiness, I have finished the fronts and the back for the Central Park Hoodie, which is still blue and cabled and a delight to my shriveled up and decidedly odd little heart.

Ain't it lovely?

I think I may need to get out more.

Stirring Things Up

2009-06-12T18:32:00.002-06:00

I do not support religion because it demands that we give up our most important human asset, the ability to question. It demands that we simply believe. Isn't that true of any dictator, of any totalitarian society? Insofar as social development is concerned, nothing is of greater importance than the human function of questioning... Questioning led to the development of civilization.
~Vladimir Pozner

I don't know who Vladimir Pozner is, and I'm too lazy on a Friday night to ask the Google, but I like how the man thinks.

The Challenge

2009-06-08T20:07:00.003-06:00

I did this when I was young and stupid and childless, with nothing but a few houseplants and a bad boyfriend hanging around. The results, as one would predict, were disastrous.

I wonder how hard it would be to do it again now?

Suck it up, Princess

2009-06-08T19:48:00.002-06:00

So back when the boy child and I lived in the big city, he played soccer in a neighbourhood league. We lived in a fairly affluent area - I was the token poor person - and the kids he played with were.... I don't want to say spoiled, but certainly indulged. Pampered, even.

If one of those darling children should look even the slightest bit strained during a practice, mummy or daddy would be on the cell phone, dialing up a personal massage therapist and ordering the emergency air ambulance for an immediate evacuation to the nearest urgent care centre. Dear little Madison or Lauren or child-with-an-oddly-spelled-first-name would be sitting on the grass, out of breath, while her parents (who had long since lost the ability to use the first person singular) would be bellowing on about how their precious child's future as a professional soccer player/Supreme Court judge/nuclear physicist would be damaged beyond repair by this injury, and could we please get the plastic surgeon on the line right away?

Out here in the sticks, things are different.

The other day a kid on the boy child's team was sitting in the middle of the field crying. His mother, from the sidelines, bellowed "Are you bleeding?" to which junior, between sobs, shook his head.

"Get up then!" his mom shouted. "You're blocking the game!"

Me? I grinned to myself and went back to my knitting. (And when the boy child was bleeding later on, the coach slapped a dirty band aid on him and offered to amputate if necessary - the rusty saw was just behind the seat in the truck.)

I like it out here.

Sleepless

2009-06-07T19:51:00.004-06:00

Back in teacher school (you know, a year ago) they liked to get us to do these self-examining things: "Why I Am Becoming A Teacher" in 500 words or less (the program is very big into inquiry. Inquiry is good. We love inquiry. See how well it worked?). One of the things I said, if I recall correctly, was that English is a subject I love with a passion: if I could get one other person in the world to love it too, then my work would be worthwhile. All we want, after all, is to do work that is meaningful - what could be more meaningful than getting kids to love books?

Even as I was writing that piece, though, I was thinking to myself yeah right. Every teacher thinks this. Everyone wants to do good but most people just don't. This is not one of those cheesy teacher movies. Don't get your hopes up.

But then the other day one of my students came up to me and said "I'm tired today, and it's your fault."

"Really?" I said, wondering where this was going. It wouldn't be the first time I've been blamed for something, actually. Junior high kids are really good at trying to convince you that their problems are in fact yours.

"Yes," she said emphatically. "I never used to read before, but you got me into it and last night I couldn't put my book down and go to sleep. I love this book and it's your fault."

This is what I have to show for myself as I approach the end of my first year as a teacher. I made someone love books. I couldn't be more pleased.

Congratulations! You may be a winner!

2009-06-05T17:53:00.003-06:00

Look what my junk email spat out today:

We hereby bring to your notice that a Diplomat with a consignment that was to be delivered to your residence has been stopped by us.This is as a result of the United States of America security measure to avert and combat any form of terrorism and money laundry through the sales of illegal drugs locally and internationally.

During our investigation, we found out that the consignment contained the sum of US$3.7 Million which upon further investigation revealed that the fund is your inheritance.

We have done our due diligence and have confirmed that you are legitimate beneficiary of the fund, and it is no threat to National Security.
Consequently, your consignment will be deliver at your residence by the diplomat without delay after all protocols have been duely observed .

During our interogation on why this fund was not tranfer to your bank account, the diplomat revealed that some people want to divert this your inheritance fund, so he decided to act fast by moving the fund through this means. So We hereby advise you to discontinue any further dealings with any other person.

However, before the delivery is made we need you to reconfirm the following information, so that the delivery will be made accurately.

Full Name:

Residential Address:

Date of Birth:

Occupation:

Telephone/Mobile Numbers:

We await your response.

Regards,

Thomas S. Winkowski
Assistant Commissioner,
Office of Field Operations.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Clearly someone out there (Thomas S. Winkowski, Assistant Commissioner, himself, perhaps) believes me to be a sucker. Don't you love the spelling mistakes, and the grammar faux pas as well?

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind taking a look at that diplomat. A diplomat could come in mighty handy around here. You know, for heavy lifting and whatnot.

(I had a whole different post planned for today, but this was too good to resist.)

(Also, the party was good. Really good, in fact.)

Coming Into my Prime

2009-05-29T18:45:00.003-06:00

Today is my birthday, folks.

Here's the "before" picture:

As for the "after" picture, well, the party's tomorrow night, and there will be beer. That's all I'm going to say about that.

And in honour of the anniversary of my birth, a poem.

FERN HILL
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

This is what a feminist thinks like.

2009-05-28T18:47:00.004-06:00

The other day in English class we were talking about the movie (and the book) Twilight. The students know that I don't like the books, and we've talked about that kind of thing before. (I used it as an example for critical thinking about literature: it's okay to say you hate Twilight. It's not okay to say "because it's stupid" and think you're done. You have to give thoughtful reasons to back up your opinion.)

This time it was a little different: "Who would you pick," a girl asked me, "a werewolf or a vampire?"

"Neither!" said I. She looked a little shocked.

"Come on," she said, "Choose! Edward or Jacob!"

Now one reason why I don't like Twilight is because of the attitudes of the main character, Bella. She is a girl who cannot live without a boy (in this case Edward, the vampire). She doesn't think she's all that special, so she's very flattered by his attention. Before long he is watching her at night without her knowledge. She ends her relationships with her friends to be closer to him. In the second book she gives up her college fund because if there is no Edward in her life she doesn't see the point of continuing on with school. That's when she falls in with Jacob (he would be the werewolf), because she cannot live without the attentions of a man in her life, and Jacob is that man.

She has to choose. Werewolf or vampire.

To me this is not choice.

I have known women who have lived like this. They give up everything for their boyfriends; some of them drop out of university the minute they get their Mrs. degree. Some of them never get to university; some of them take dead-end jobs so that they can support the guy while he goes to school. They are so focused on making sure that they are in a relationship at all times, that they forget about their relationship with themselves, and with their future.

Then what happens is the relationship ends. He walks out, or she does, or something bad ends things for them, and she winds up working the night shift in the 7-Eleven while her kids sleep so that she can earn enough money to pay for the crappy basement apartment they're living in until she can find a new man.

Which she inevitably does. Werewolf or vampire. Same difference.

Sometimes that second choice works out: she now has a new man and can devote her entire being to him. She feels complete. Sometimes it doesn't work out, and she does the whole thing again.

"Which would you choose?" ask my students, their brilliant young minds, their untold potential, their glittering futures. "Werewolf or vampire?"

And I say: I choose neither. I choose to get a lot of education, because no one can take that away from you. I choose a career that is fulfilling and pays enough for me to support my own children. I choose to be whole in and of myself. I choose to not feel like I'm incomplete without a man in my life, I choose to live like a fully realized human being, regardless of what society thinks people of my gender should do.

I choose myself, and I choose (for lack of a more elegant phrase) to have a choice: I will decide how my life unfolds. I will not allow anyone to tell me who my friends are or what my future holds, or to destroy my life because he leaves.

And it scared the shit out of me to see my students look in disbelief and say "But you have to choose! Werewolf or vampire!"

What will become of us, if these are our choices?

In the beginning was the word...

2009-05-25T18:17:00.005-06:00

Language fills me with joy. There's nothing I won't say, or write, or talk about. As an English language teacher, I actually feel that it's really important to talk to kids about all the words in English, whether we consider those words to be good or bad, so they know that "shit for brains" is not a good thing to call your boss. (I have a couple of stories about when I was learning French, and kind people took the time to explain that what I thought was a gentle tease was in fact quite offensive - I'm glad they did and I think of myself as returning the favour.)

We have even had something similar to this conversation, about all the various permutations of that most unsayable of words.

I just started reading Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels among threatened languages, which is enlightening in the extreme. I am privileged to be a native speaker of the world's most prevalent and powerful language, and nothing makes me appreciate that more than reading about places where language - the one thing that makes us truly human by connecting us to our past and our culture, who we are at the deepest level - is disappearing.

Here's one of the things Abley says that has really made me think:

"Yabbering" and "jabbering" are interesting words. They show up all over the English-speaking world whenever a speaker feels like sneering at animals or a minority people. Look up "jabber" in the Oxford English Dictionary, and you'll find quotations in which the term applies to monkeys, Flemish servants, seabirds, and Jews. It often betrays contempt, the dictionary observes, for "the speaking of a language which is unintelligible to the hearer."

My ESL students talk among themselves in their own languages all the time. I want them to speak English in class, but I have explicitly told them (and their parents as well, through interpreters if necessary) that speaking one's native language at home, as much as possible, is absolutely crucial. Your first language is your foundation, I say, and if your mother tongue corrodes then you can't build anything strong on that foundation.

I've sometimes thought of that Babel of languages in my classroom as jabber, but never, I hope, in a derogatory way. Reading this book, however, is making me think about all the ways in which we use language as a tool for power. As the teacher, I already have a lot of power. Taking away a student's expression, by calling it by the same word as we would historically use for an animal or someone who is below us in every way, is a terrible thing to do. I don't want to become one of those crazy politically correct people who discuss "person holes" rather than "manholes" and other linguistic monstrosities, but if language is our greatest tool and our most fearsome weapon, then we need to treat it with respect.

So at the end of the day, I don't think I'll be saying "jabber" again really soon. (Unless I should encounter a Flemish servant in my daily life; then, of course, we'll have to see.)

PS. This is another fun video, on the joys of swearing, which I heartily endorse. Cause it's British and Brits make me laugh.

Let Down.

2009-05-24T19:40:00.001-06:00

So I picked my boy up from his Camping Adventure, and the first thing he said was "Can gramma come over tonight?"

I am chopped liver, oh yes I am.

In other news, I found myself asking the dog what she was doing, and waiting for an answer.

This is what my life has become.

What I Have Been Up To, In Pictures

2009-05-23T18:16:00.012-06:00

1. Got my sump pumped (which sounds dirty but isn't) by two lovely plumber guys named Marty and Eric, who are neighbours of my boy's babysitter's parents (I love small towns). I am now officially high and dry, for about half of what I figured it would cost me.

2. Was offered (and accepted, immediately, with something approaching glee) a permanent contract at the school where I am now, teaching more or less the same stuff, for as long as I care to continue.

There's no picture of that, but damn am I pleased.

3. Broke the knitting curse and completed most of the back of the Central Park Hoodie. I love cables, with all my teeny tiny heart. (Please note the flawless ribbing.)

It's bluer than that - the yarn (because I know you're dying to know) is Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed. In blue.

I love cables (did I already say that?)

The best part of this sweater (besides the yarn and the colour, which I love) is the cables.

4. When I wasn't knitting or being a teaching all-star, I organized the office. Remember the before picture?

This is what it looks like "after":

Obviously, I still need a few things. Like a desk. I also need to hang up my degrees - that's them in the corner. You know, so I know that I really know what I know I know. You know?

I think I need more books, too. I'm sure I could fit more in there.

5. My boy is gone camping this weekend with friends, and I am beside myself with missing him. (I've also realized that I talk to my dog a lot.) But when I'm not missing him I'm doing lovely things like listening to music and making lunch that is not grilled cheese, and not laughing at knock-knock jokes, and taking walks wherein no one says "my legs are so tired, we have to go home right now- and can I ride my bike when we get there?" It's nice.

I also went and got me some flowers for the front porch (that's lavender, baby):

... and some for the back porch too (herbs - and flowers. I am a fool for pansies):

6. Read several good books but didn't write anything about them. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

7. That's about all I can tell you - but wait till you see what I have planned for next week. (I live a very exciting life. Just ask my dog.)