Category: ragdoll rambles

Miss Me?

I’ve been posting like a maniac the past few days over at SavvyReader just to keep the momentum going again after I was away. If you miss me, head on over there, but I finished reading What is the What and have pictures of my new kitchen window that I want to share…so, I’ll be back this afternoon.

Am Sick of Being Sick And Am Blaming The Cab Driver And The TB Tourist

The end of the rope is nigh now that almost a week has passed and the sickness has evolved as such (and for those of you who don’t care, please skip this post):

1. Slight tickle in the throat on the plane + no sleep + massive cold sore = the ominous beginning. When we exited the plane last Saturday at 5 AM Toronto time, my RRHB said: “WHAT is that?” This was followed by a look that can only be described as disgust.

2. Needle on Saturday AM + no sleep = feeling like I’ve been run over by the kind of truck that evens out pavement. Coughing, coughing, coughing, coughing, rinse, repeat.

3. Good night’s sleep + good book + my own bed = waking up Sunday morning feeling refreshed, renewed and actually better. Go visiting, go grocery shopping, do all the laundry. See, I’m better!

4. Coughing + coughing (see above) – good night’s sleep + 250+ emails = feeling worse on Monday morning and call in sick to school. Manage to make it through a whole day’s work but walk home from the bus stop with legs so wobbly I am afraid I won’t actually cross the threshold of our house.

5. See #4 + a fever – any sleep = sleeping in and heading to work late, but feeling actually well enough to make it through the rest of the day and attend every meeting I actually had so far in the week. But have possibly infected entire office. Perhaps not so smart.

6. 5 days of coughing + wicked sinus headaches + runny nose – any solid rest = doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.

7. Ordered into quarantine for Thursday and Friday which means I’ve missed or am missing the following: The Book Lover’s Ball (I was actually looking forward to dressing up like Sylvia Plath in my red dress and Mexican beads), two days of work, lunch with Sam and Chico, and quite possibly The Weakerthans outdoor show at Nathan Phillips Square tomorrow night. But forced quarantine means that I’ve caught up on all the TV on the PVR. Have now seen all the episodes of jPod (which looks, acts and smells a lot like the book, yes, that’s a given, but the feature film Everything’s Gone Green, right down to the set decoration and the secondary characters) and am enjoying it, quite liked Eli Stone, am shocked and dismayed by Paul’s extra-curricular activities on Corrie Street, and was reduced to watching Wild Hogs (absolutely embarrassingly awful) and semi-delighted to see The Science of Sleep, which then led me to searching out Serge Gainsbourg on YouTube and falling into an internet coma (damn you Ethan Hawke, damn you for pulling me back into the spoils of celebrity gossip if only for a second) until I recovered enough to catch up somewhat on my posts since we’ve been back from vacation.

8. This morning: coughing up a bit of blood + meds + exhaustion + good night’s sleep + a dry house = feeling better but not 100% and when will it end? Stupid disease medication. Stupid immune system. Bah! But isn’t the snow pretty?

How is everyone else?

Muddled And Awake

So very many things can happen in a week. And then life interferes with posting. But as I tried to sleep for an hour but couldn’t, I decided to get up and troll the internet. I’ve landed here after much procrastinating, having always promised myself that I wouldn’t blog tired. What are promises if not to be broken?

So, what exactly happened in a week? Well, we went to go see There Will Be Blood, which is very good, and I think Daniel Day-Lewis will win the Oscar.

I saw the Super Fancy Disease Doctor today and he proclaimed (for the most part) the disease in remission. Cause for celebration, absolutely. But not 100% out of the woods. I was explaining to the Super Not-So Fancy Just Yet Intern that I am so tired these days I can barely make it up a flight of stairs. At first I thought maybe I was anemic but my bloodwork is bloody brilliant. Pun absolutely intended. So they’re stumped. Could be the disease, could be adjusting to lower meds, could be just the ills of every day life. All that means is more tests: chest x-ray, more bloodwork, 24-hour pee test (gack), and maybe chest CT if they see anything. Awesome.

Or not.

But maybe I’m just tired of the disease in general and it’s bumming me out. Years and years of meds have absolutely worn me down to the quick.

I’m in the middle of The Outlander for my Canada challenge. More on that later.

We leave for Mexico in two days. I’m already packed. This says nothing about my organizational skills but everything about how much I love to pack. Seriously. I love to pack. LOVE. TO. PACK.

Two burly fellows came today and installed brand new windows. Four of them, including one that will eventually live above my sink in the kitchen. Every woman needs a window above a sink. I can’t remember where that comes from. If someone remembers, please remind me.

Writing class was utterly painful yesterday. So much so that I have taken a severe beating. If black and blue weren’t such a tired metaphor, I’d use it.

Feeling Linkish

In consistently trying to keep SavvyReader interesting (you can tell me if it’s not; I won’t be offended), I’ve been trolling the web for links today. Not all of them related directly to work, but I still found them interesting:

The Guardian posted a list of the 10 Best Lit Blogs a while back that led me over here where I discovered yet another cool reading challenge. Oh, and I didn’t know that 2008 was considered the International Year of Planet Earth. I might just sign up to read Krakatoa too.

People are apparently proclaiming classical music, somewhat like the novel, dead. As a girl who listens to CBC radio 2 on an almost daily basis, I’m not 100% convinced this is true. And I’m glad this guy doesn’t think so either. But goodness, I remember taking a philosophy of music course in university, and wow, what a mistake. Our prof was crazy (at one point he fell OFF the podium and broke his arm) and I was absolutely not cut out for that kind of “theory.” Give me Descartes any day.

This best of list is completely unlike any other I’ve read for books in 2007.

And poor Tom Wolfe. Yawn.

Okay, I’m officially linked out for today.

Sunday Morning Distractions

Procrastination in the form of avoiding reading internet celebrity gossip has since discovered these things:

1. Ray Charles sings “(Night Time Is) The Right Time”. A song I heard in the diner yesterday during brunch with Sam and Sadie and couldn’t remember where I had heard it recently. If by “recently” my brain means two years ago when we watched the movie Ray. I have since downloaded the song from iTunes, another glorious diversion, along with Ruth Brown’s wicked “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean.”

2. Impressive coverage with impressively impressive magazines about fifth and final season of The Wire. A Hot Document from Slate. A Hot Read on theAtlantic.com entitled “The Angriest Man in Television.” The most annoying writer in the history of television criticism weighs in and says nothing.

3. The VON sent nurses to the Yukon to help the miners. Faith Fenton accompanied them and wrote articles for the Globe. Further clicking reveals a book published by my own company.

4. Next week’s episode of Friday Night Lights looks so good.

5. Dave Grohl cracks me up. And when Britney Spears shows on up CBC.ca, that means it’s news, right, and not gossip? But, seriously, shut up Dr. Phil, I can barely believe you’re remotely interested in her mental health, and I can foresee a “ripped from the headlines” episode of Law and Order in the works the minute people wake up and start paying the writers. Sigh.

It sucks me back in every time.

TRH Ramblings Version ’08

I might have mentioned that I’m a band widow this week as my RRHB is up north recording. It’s been a productive time. Managing to keep to my page-a-day challenge, and being in the middle of approximately 5 books, many of which I intend to finish before he gets back, it’s nice to have some alone time, even if I do get a bit lonely. And I also haven’t been sleeping all that well, and only managed about four hours last night — even so, I’m surprisingly not cranky. Instead, I woke up ready to write a list about all of the things I am thankful for on this gray, rainy Saturday morning:

1. Last night’s episode of Friday Night Lights. I watched it in real time after I put my nephew to bed (I was babysitting), which only reminded me how much I hate commercials. There were so many reasons to like what was happening: the way Lyla reacted to her mother’s engagement, Tim’s experience with being the boy who cried wolf too many times, how he flourished in a sense in a family environment, and how it was Coach that made the mistake. But what I liked most of all is the fact that the show doesn’t turn to stunts to drive up the ratings and melodrama, like, ahem, others. While there was a tornado in town, it didn’t become the centrepiece of a ridiculous rescue mission. Instead, it was a source of conflict when Laribee was forced to bunk in with Dillon for football practice. But more so, it was the everyday tragedies that followed that really drove the story forward. I was up for the good portion of last night thinking about the idea of everyday tragedy. Damn you FNL (but in a good way).

2. Hearing a song that you weren’t expecting and having that make you dance around your writing room singing “You’re my wonderwall.” And then putting it on repeat. And maybe repeating it again, oh and listening to Neko Case in the car on the way home from brunch.

3. The power of imagination and text messaging to keep you company when you’re so tired you can barely think.

4. Going to the movies in the afternoon. With gift certificates.

5. Brunch. This blog. And Q-tip. In that order.

New Year’s Revolutions 2008

So I had some good New Year’s Revolutions last year. And I think I managed success with a few of them, and so I’m integrating this year’s into my check up with Revolutions 2007:

1. I am two-thirds done a giant draft of the novel, and am quite further ahead then where I was last year. This Revolution will continue this year — I want to get one good, readable draft done of what I’m no longer calling “the long story” but actually owning up to the fact that I’m trying to write a novel.

2. The weight thing…I have since discovered that it’s probably the methotrexate that’s stopping me from losing weight. I biked, had a dance class, did pilates, yoga, walked, stopped driving everywhere, and even made a very conscious effort to eat right, and I lost a whopping six pounds in total. And then I tried to not eat very much at all, at least a third of what I was eating before, and managed another two pounds. Lastly, I had a long conversation with an old friend who is also taking the meds, and she noticed the same thing, dieting, exercising and still gaining weight, so that convinced me even more that it’s the drugs and not me. I am still going to try to be as healthy as possible this year but realize that there’s not a lot I can do while I’m in my 4th year of taking meds for the disease.

3. Up next is something of a personal nature. I am going to try and be less judgmental of people. It’s something I do all the time, make quick decisions about who and what people are before I really know them. We had a house guest for the past couple days and he said in passing, “You know, it’s truly hard not to judge people.” and I turned to him and said, “It’s actually an impossibility for me.” Maybe I’ll be able to do as well with that as I’ve done with complaining this past year. And I’m adding in the whole stopping celebrity gossip here too. Because it’s kind of the same thing — I’m being judgmental when soaring through intimate details of stranger’s lives.

4. I failed miserably at watching less television. But I did manage to read a heck of a lot more books this year, so I’m assuming that came from TV time. This year I’m going to keep up with my page a day challenges and keep reading. I’d like to get to 100 books this year. I made it to approximately 90 this year (including the Harlequins), which isn’t bad at all. It’s only 10 more.

5. Lastly, I’m going to keep better track of things, budget better, and not be so messy at home so that our weekly cleanups take hours more than necessarily because I pile all my clothes up when I get home from work. We’ll see how that one goes. I have a few very particular things I’m saving for, and I want to make sure I’m not being frivolous with money. That’s much easier said than done.

First Lines Meme

I am absolutely loving many things about my new computer, not the first of which is being able to blog while watching television. Lame, I know, but when you’ve got a cold and have Faux-voed old episodes of Alias to combat the writer’s strike, anything’s entertainment. So, I’ve been making the rounds of the many blogs I haven’t been able to keep up with over the last few weeks because things were so crazy between work and life. Quite a few of my blog friends have done the first lines meme, and so I thought, in the spirit of developing my own set of new year’s revolutions, it might be a good place to start.

January 2007: It’s oddly fitting that this book straddled by 2006-2007 reading; it’s possibly the best book I’ve read in ages. (About Kevin Patterson’s Consumption.)

February 2007: Last night, despite feeling desperately under the weather, I headed out in the cold to my first Sweater class at Knitomatic.

March 2007: 1. There is a lot of snow outside.

April 2007: I’m glad to be back from conference—it was a long week.

May 2007: There’s nothing like sunshine…and a royalty cheque to brighten up your day.

June 2007: Well, Michiko Kakutani apparently vehemently disliked On Chesil Beach, calling it “a smarmy portrait of two incomprehensible and unlikable people” (link via Baby Got Books).

July 2007: Massey Hall in Toronto was the last stop on Wilco’s Eastern Seaboard tour (dunno if that was the ‘name’ of the tour considering how totally un-rock sexy it is).

August 2007: I’ve been at a work conference since Sunday, and haven’t been home a single night this week to really blog, so here’s a quick catch-up…

September 2007: Just a quickie post to say that I am utterly engrossed by Mad Men.

October 2007: When I rode my bike into work this morning, still happy that even though it’s October, the weather doesn’t necessitate a heavy wool “biking” (translation old and crappy) sweater just yet, it was so foggy that it reminded me of Dublin.

November 2007: Before reading any further, let me remind everyone about Kate Sutherland’s marvelous All in Together Girls, it’s a book of literary, some linked, some not, short stories that mainly take place in Saskatchewan.

December 2007: I emerged from the boardroom momentarily to get a cup of tea yesterday.
We’ve been in sales conference since Sunday.

Oddly, three entries concern sales conference, which isn’t all that strange considering they’re always at the end of one month and bleed into the beginning of another. A few books, one knitting class, an obsession with Mad Men, some biking, and some complaining. Sure seems like my life.

Have Cold Will Photoblog Instead

The stupid cold hangs on for dear life, which makes me think that perhaps it’s not a passing fancy kind of illness, but something with legs, and I am not prepared for that in the least.

It was snowing the other day just the kind of flakes that I love: big, awkward, sticky, and melting before they even hit the ground.
I tried to take a picture but the camera doesn’t quite catch them in the right way. Regardless, they made me happy, in that way seeing snow from inside can make you happy, if only for a moment before you turn on the TV to realize the writers’ strike is still going strong and your Faux-Vo is almost empty and the only Ethan Hawke going is Snow Falling on Cedars.
Ah, the week Between Christmas and New Year continues.