Yoga Made Me Cry

For the past couple weeks my life has been so busy that I’ve felt like I might crack in two. Weekends spent with not one, not two, but sometimes three and four social commitments; work days crammed full of meetings, lunches and actual work; evenings filled with chores, classes, homework, writing, and sometimes abridging, I feel outside myself these days because I’m not used to the frenetic pace of it all. Even with catching that bad cold a couple weeks ago, my life refused to slow down, with the sickness sort of evaporating itself up inside another busy day complete with brain fog instead of real rest.

And then last night I kind of had a break through. I was at my Pilates Fusion class, a combination of pilates and yoga taught through Liberty-Movement Studio in Liberty Village. Over the last two weeks it’s just been me in my class, so I’ve been getting somewhat private lessons from Elle, who is a magnificent teacher. She tailored the workout to me, with a lot of hip-openers, to try and get at the permanent problems with my tragic hip, and wow, did we ever hit a nerve. I started to cry. In class. While lunging. Sniffling like a baby. Tears. Rolling down my face. Elle said it was because muscles have memory, and they were releasing their scar tissue. But goodness, it was a freeing kind of feeling, as if my body, little by little, with the biking, the pilates, the yoga, the dancing, is finally recognizing the toll the disease has taken and decided to let it all go in one big breath last night.

Regardless, I’m calmer today. I’m letting the quickness of it all kind of wash over me and work through my to-do lists carefully, with as little stress as possible. And will ride my bike slowly home tonight after dance class as if I don’t have a care in the world. I’m frustrated, still, that I can’t lose any weight, but I’m guessing that it’s probably just another thing my body doesn’t want to let go, hanging on to the disease for dear life because it’s existed in that state for so many years, it just doesn’t know how else to be.

But I’m slowly learning that change doesn’t happen overnight as much as I’d like it to. Funny how it doesn’t take long at all to contemplate change, to even make the decision to change, but it takes a hell of a long time to put your thoughts into actions and actually see the results.

Thursday Is Link Day

Well, I’m dead sick with a bad cold that travelled from my brother to my husband then to me. I’ve read a couple books (#36, Town House by Tish Cohen [lovely, delightful and funny] and #37, Flyte by Angie Sage for What Would Harry Read) and am in the middle of a really fun kids book called Skulduggery Pleasant by an Irish author, Derek Landy. It’s another titled for WWHR, and once I’m done that I’m hoping to get back to some of my reading challenges, fingers crossed.

Annnywwaaay, some interesting things around the web:

1. A Harry Potter theme park: is it really necessary?

2. BOOKED! It’s pretty exciting that Book Expo Canada, our annual trade show and conference, has opened up to the public in the form of this 3 day festival. I’m not sure if I’ll be attending too many events because I’ll be working the show but if you love books there are some great authors coming to town. Speaking of which, Toronto Life has a great contest to win tickets to see Gore Vidal.

3. Gabriel Garcia Marquez celebrated. I’ve started Love in the Time of Cholera and am enjoying it immensely. It’s so nice to hear of thousands turning out to see an author and, well, unheard of really.

4. Barnes and Noble recommends Paulette Jiles’s Stormy Weather. Like Oprah’s Book Club and Heather’s Picks: does anyone read books that are recommended by the big book stores? I’m curious to know.

5. I heart BoldType, it’s just so classy. Check out their newsletter, gor-geous. And they’ve suggested The Raw Shark Texts as a Beach Read, which is so fitting in an oddly ironic, conceptual fish kind of way.

That’s enough for now, I think. Stupid cold. It’s making my brain fuzzy.

"Sunshine Makes Me High"

A young girl exiting the Yonge/Bloor subway stop had that on her t-shirt, and it kind of made my day. She might have been a serious wacko but I preferred to envision her as a young, delightful woman who truly sees the value in a beautiful day.

Other things I am thankful for today:

1. Bike lanes: It may be like the Daytona 500 within the thin white stripe, but it sure beats battling giant SUVs and maniacs on cell phones outside the lines.

2. Swearing: Does this need any explanation?

3. Tish Cohen’s Town House: Such a delightful book to be reading yesterday in the early evening.

4. The end of the television season: The pressure, oh the pressure, of keeping up with all the shows. It was just too much. Now I’m glad that it’ll be a good few months before the serious dramas start and we can mindlessly wile away the hours watching the spectacle of So You Think You Can Dance. Awe-some.

5. My RRHB: For doing all of the chores so I could write all day yesterday. And, do you know what, I did! I managed to send 31 pages to my mentor and have approximately 80 pages of the second draft of my extra long story.

6. Dance class: I don’t care that it’s a beginner class. I don’t care that sometimes I get the steps wrong and am the chubbiest girl in the room. The teacher is wonderful and the class is just so much fun.

7. Organic chocolate: Again, does this really need an explanation?

8. The word “sigh”: It says so much in an email.

9. Facebook: I am obsessed; some people I love getting in touch with, others, meh, but it sure makes your inbox look busy considering they send you an email for just about everything. It might get tired, but for this week, I’m still chilling with my pokes, my peeps, and my photo albums.

10. Lesley C.’s University of Guelph Sweatshirt: I’ve had it for over 10 years now and really should return it but it’s the most comfortable piece of clothing I (sort of) own. I wore it all day yesterday and I think it was part of the reason I got so much done. That and the RRHB was ill so he hogged the TV all day so I couldn’t procrastinate by watching Step Up AGAIN even after I totally made him watch it with me on Saturday night. So deliciously bad—you can’t even know.

Shhhh, Sleeping Rock Stars

My RRHB was in Windsor and London the last two nights, and now he’s asleep, along with their drummer Nathan Lawr (who is also a wonderful musician in his own right) who is crashed out on my couch.

Normally, if you had a regular house that wasn’t being renovated, there would be other places for you to hang out, like downstairs. But because we’re all crammed upstairs, I’m sort of trapped here on the computer waiting for them to wake up. And considering we’re supposed to leave for the cottage in an hour, I’m getting desperate to jiggle the bed a little and step away from the celebrity gossip. There’s only so much trash I can fill my mind up with before feeling slightly dirty myself.

I’m also pleased to say that two nights of really good sleep have brought me back to rights in terms of the past week. Last night I watched The Good Shepherd and barely made it through before crawling into bed at 10 PM. I also finished reading Claire Cameron’s debut novel, The Line Painter, which is #34 for the year.

What A Week

I can barely believe that it’s Saturday again. The week flew by at light speed and I haven’t even been home long enough (other than sleeping) to update anything. So, because today should be spent writing so I have something to send my mentor by the end of the weekend, I’m updated via a quickie list. Had I had time this week, all of these would have been separate entries, so I apologize for the brevity.

1. This was the week of author events through work. I attended four of them in three days. The first, a forum to launch Michael Chettleburgh’s Young Thugs, was very interesting. I even learned that there were Irish gangs in Toronto in 1850. Another thing for my list to investigate because I think it would make a cool story. Then I went to two different events for Daniel Handler: a Lemony Snicket cocktail party, and an event at the Andy Pool Hall to celebrate his novel Adverbs. But my favourite was the underground club party for Richard Flanagan, author of The Unknown Terrorist, where Russell Smith mildly insulted me before carrying on his way and doing a superb on stage interview with the author, who, by the way, read Chekhov as preparation for writing about the women in his novel. That made me want to take him out for dinner and listen to him wax philosophical for hours.

2. Gilmore Girls is over. I managed to watch the last episode but only after begging my RRHB to remember to tape it before he went off to his second job on Tuesday. I was chatting over email with Kate who pointed out that it’s actually kind of ironic to see every single episode of a show and then forget to tape the very last one. She’s right, but I was just so busy this week that a number of things slipped my mind. I felt very ho-hum about the finale. Even though the show has absolutely gotten off track as of late, I’m still not 100% convinced it should have been over. And how they dealt with both of the relationships, Luke and Logan, was ridiculous. Regardless, it’s one less hour of television I’ll have to keep up with in the fall.

3. I finished reading Chantal Simmons’s Stuck in Downward Dog. I got a little teary at the end, and it was refreshing to read a chicklit novel where ‘getting the boy’ wasn’t the central focus of the story. I liked how the book was more about a journey for the character into herself versus a more stereotypical journey into the right relationship. Anyway, that’s book #33 for the year. I’m also halfway through about a half-dozen other books that I’m hoping to finish this weekend up north while my brother and RRHB are watching Pan’s Labyrinth.

4. Yesterday afternoon, our summer hours started. I had some work to finish up so I didn’t leave right at 1:30 PM, but I did manage to make it to an afternoon show of Away From Her, Sarah Polley’s directorial debut. Based on Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Down the Mountain,” I felt like it was a solid adaptation, if Polley did take some liberties with the story’s point of view and tended to sentimentalize where the author had been tack-sharp. I found some aspects of the film a bit overly dramatic but Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie were just so good that I was willing to overlook the bits of the movie that just felt too forced. Grant reading “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife” really? Regardless of how much I love that poem, the can lit overtures in the film were a little, well, eye roll inducing. But I don’t want that to deflect from the fact that Away From Her is a film I would highly recommend as counter programming to the glut of American multiplex blockbusters hitting the streets every week or two.

5. I saw yet another specialist this week about some lady problems I’ve been having. Needless to say, a lot of what I’m experiencing is probably a side effect of the methotrexate, which doesn’t make it any easier to take. I’m also getting frustrated because I can’t seem to loose a single pound. Eating better, riding my bike, dance class, pilates, and still over the course of the last few months, I am the same chubby -bloated sick-looking girl I was when I started. I’m very frustrated about all of that but I have to say that if it’s the medicine at least I know that I’ll be off of it in the next six-to-eight months and maybe then the weight will start coming off. I can’t stand looking at pictures of myself though, which is annoying because everyone and their uncle seems to update Facebook with a million different albums. Anyway. I really liked this doctor very much and feel like she’ll be extremely helpful when it comes to this particular problem that won’t seem to go away. I have to say that even now that the disease is in remission technically, I’m dead sick of all the treatments. It’s been three years of different medications, difficult side effects, and I’m just plain tired of it all. And the mood swings with everything else combined has just about caught me by the fray of my last rope.

The Death Of My Reading Challenges

I am desperately trying to hang on to my reading challenges these days. But I’ve got so many books to read for work that I might have to call it quits on both: Around the World in 52 Books and 1001 Books until I’ve got more time.

I’ve also finished #31 for the year, Magyk by Angie Sage. It’s a book for kids that I read for our What Would Harry Read? promotion. I love the idea of imagining the reading lives of imaginary characters. It’s a super-cute theme that should get people talking, if only to imagine what other characters would read.

Like what would Elizabeth Bennett read if she were alive today and reading in this century? What would Dean Moriarty have in the back pocket of his jeans? If Trip Fontaine were real, would he read? If you had a favourite fictional character: what do you think would be on their bookshelves?

Anyway, I’m going to try to keep on top of my ‘for me’ reading but I have a feeling it’ll get buried well beneath all of the books that now teeter on the top of my TBR pile from work. It’s an embarrassment of riches, that’s for sure.

Trouble, I Say, Trouble

The older I get, the thinner my skin seems to grow. I always thought that as the years racked themselves up as lines appearing above your lip, beside your eyes, that little things would stop bothering you. Hearing about things, being teased, people making fun of you, but for some reason, all of this affects me more today than it ever did in the past.

I’ve never been one to take criticism well. It soaks into me, like liquid into a paper towel, and I feel it all, each painful word. Nothing rolls off me, it all sticks like glue, and I realize I’m using a lot of metaphorical language, but hey, at least I’m not pulling a Candace Bushnell.

Years ago, I could recognize the moments when I was feeling particularly immoblized by the outside world as times when I was probably entering into a phase of depression. But I haven’t been depressed (unless it’s drug-related from the prednisone) for years. And that got me thinking: maybe the meds have permanently altered how my brain functions. Maybe they’ve made me a dour girl who can’t take a joke and whose feelings get hurt at the slightest touch, especially by people I hold the closest to me.

Most days I can get by without wanting to hide away from the world. Most days I can get dressed and get outside and walk with my head up and feel confident that I am good person and that people like me. Most days. But then it’ll all come crashing down without any notice, and I’ll be stuttering and stalling, refusing to leave the house, wearing my dirty pajamas, crying for no reason, feeling sorry for myself—all kinds of days pass like that, in almost-depression limbo.

It takes me a long time to feel comfortable. It takes me a long time to overcome my frustrating shyness and actually feel confident in social situations. I know a lot of people who know me would say that’s not true, but it’s how I feel on the inside, sick to my stomach and held so tight that there’s nothing for me to do except swallow all those feelings and wait for them to resurface as the disease.

Today is not one of the good days. But tomorrow, well, like Annie says, it’ll certainly be sunny, and if I could just learn to roll with it a bit better, maybe it would all come just that little bit easier. Who knows?

I know one thing that’ll cheer me up: watching Georgia Rule, the train wreck of a movie I have to see tonight for Chart. Heh.

My Other Car Is A Bike

So I’ve officially started riding my bike to work each day. It’s been three summers since I rode every day. The last two I couldn’t ride to work each day because my office was out in the suburbs. The summer before that, it was too painful to ride because my hip bone was essentially melting in its socket.

But now, all that has changed! I pumped up my tires and started on my merry little way Monday morning. There’s something really quite beautiful about the city at that time of day, even though the people driving the cars are mental, the traffic is really annoying, and the roads are a mess, it’s still refreshing to be outside in the air and the sunshine, peddling your way from one place (home) to the next (work).

I had a boyfriend who once told me that muscles have memory. In some ways, I know this to be true, when I’m in dance class and the teacher does something like say a grande plie, my body knows exactly what to do from years of study when I was younger. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the muscles still move in the same way; they might remember, but they’re certainly not strong enough to pull it off, like, at all. So my grande plie looks kind of lopsided and funny, especially because my hip is still so awkward.

So, it’s kind of the same with biking. It’s obvious that I know how to ride a bike, but I’ve been so scared to get back on the daily two-wheeled commute because I figured I wouldn’t have the energy and/or the stamina to handle a long-ish (say over 30 minutes) trek from my house to downtown. I had to psyche myself up for it all weekend, and kept saying, “the only way to do it is to do it.”

It’s embarrassing, I know, and I felt like a Nike ad just saying it over and over again in my mind. But now, after even just two days, I feel like a pro. This morning I even gave someone the hairy eyeball for parking their giant minivan, with the engine still running, in the bike lane on Harbord.

I feel better already and I even slept better last night. I have more energy and I’m even looking forward to a longer than usual ride home this evening, as I stop in on yet another book event. Fingers crossed my hip stays healthy and the disease likes this level of energy. By the end of the summer you probably won’t even recognize me.

My Days As Band Widow Part Next

So, the RRHB has been away for the past week. Usually, when he’s away, I bury myself in the house, but this week has been different. Here’s a breakdown:

1. I’ve been eating like Lorelai Gilmore, which includes toaster waffles, homemade pizza and things I can cook in the microwave.

2. The girlie factor reached a new peak when I went to a delightful birthday party at MAC cosmetics on Bloor Street. I learned how to do a ‘smoky’ eye and bought a lot of makeup.

3. Yesterday I watched really cheesy movies on W Network, faux-voed so I didn’t have to watch the commercials: One Fine Day and Out of Sight. I think it was George Clooney night or something. Shockingly, they were my best options when Cars is the feature on TMN. And this is the epitome of lazy: the last thing I felt like doing today was bringing movies back to the video store. Who has the time to do that?

4. That was the first night I had actually been home. This week has been crazy: book launches, pilates, dance class, birthday party, more yoga, a bit of shopping. I think I collapsed on the couch and didn’t move until I went to bed last night and slept until NOON today. I never do that. Ever.

5. Today I’ve got a lot of writing work to do but not before I make the house presentable. When all you do is come home, dump your stuff, and go to sleep before heading off to work and/or social events the next day, things start to get out of control. The clothes chair is about to collapse.

6. Apparently, I got things so wrong with my Hot Docs reviews. The Swaziland documentary, Without the King, which was mediocre at best, won a Special Jury Prize. Oops. And the director of Forever, Heddy Honigmann, was given an Outstanding Achievement Award, with her work featured in a retrospective throughout the festival. Even the RRHB who is a huge documentary watcher thought Forever was boring as all get out, but heck, maybe my lesson from all this is that I’m not a documentary reviewer. Who knows? Congratulations to all the winners.

7. I ate a bit of sugar yesterday for the first time since giving it up in February. I honestly thought I might have been on drugs—it was crazy. I’ll probably not try that again. I feel so much better when not eating sugar (well, not white sugar, I’ve been eating maple syrup and all natural sugars), that I’m probably going to stick with it for at least the next few months.

8. I remembered to take my needle. Generally, the RRHB hounds me because I forget and just wouldn’t do it. See, I can act like a grown up, I can!

9. Despite all of my efforts, I have managed to save a lot of the television shows we watch together for when he gets back tomorrow night. Even though it’s the season finale of 30 Rock, it’s still sitting there, waiting for its cherry to be popped and it’s taking a lot of will power. Going a week without Liz Lemon, it hurts. It does.

10. Did I mention I slept until NOON today. Absolutely strange. Okay, back to listening to all my music, cleaning the house at my pace and doing a lot of writing this afternoon because I need to get my pages to my mentor by the end of next weekend.

Monday = Hot Links

I have recovered from my grumpy day yesterday and did manage to see a bit of the sun while cleaning my porch and destroying the burgeoning ant colony on our front stones (which I can’t wait to be rid of; both the ants and the stones). And because I’m going to choose not to blog about either book I read, especially not Lipstick Jungle because there’s only so much one can say in a positive manner about Candace Bushnell…

Oh, heck, I’m just going to critique one thing, writing cliches is one thing, but constantly calling attention to them by saying, “She knew it was a cliche, but she couldn’t think of any other way to describe it…”, is just plain lazy. You’re a writer, and that’s your job: to find another way to describe it. But I digress, and it didn’t stop me from reading the entire 400+ pages despite how frustrating I found the novel.

Annnywaay.

A few links for high kicks:

1. Someone at the NY Post is very grumpy about Michael Chabon’s new novel. I’m certainly going to read it. Are you?

2. Margaret Atwood writes a touching, beautiful piece about her mother in the Lives Lived section of today’s Globe. Catch it now before it goes behind the wall.
(props to Zesty for the link).

3. There’s a wonderful essay by Hermione Lee in the NYRB called “Storms Over the Novel,” which includes a deliciously catty quote from Heidegger. I will always remember by second-year university class on Existentialism for two reasons: 1. We had a multiple choice exam which saved my ass because I scored near perfect after almost flunking out of the class (it was a hard year for me) and 2. For making me question Heidegger because he was a Nazi. Now I have another reason to always examine his philosophy in context, should it ever come up again in my life: he hated novelists. Heh.

4. Knopf’s poem of the day comes from Langston Hughes. It’s marvellous. Treat yourself.

5. CBC’s Words at Large has a spectacular section on Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, Divisadero. Once I finish up with The Road, this book is next on my TBR pile, when my copy arrives, of course! I love, love, love the audio they did in support of the title, and if you’ve never heard Ondaatje read, you are in for quite a listening experience. Goosebumps people. Goosebumps.