Category: ragdoll rambles

…to ridiculously sad songs at work because your mascara will run, people will ask you what’s wrong and then look at you funny when you say you’re just listening to the radio. Aw, Sufjan Stevens, you sure know how to weep your way into a girl’s heart.

We’re in the city for the long weekend and it’s a very strange experience. Of course, the weather’s perfect, absolutely gorgeous and bright. The lake would have been just glorious. In the end, it’s probably for the best. Our tomatoes have the starting of what looks like blight, so I’ve got to deal with that today. There’s a lavender pot that I haven’t replanted yet that’s so wilted I’m fearing for its life, and I need to weed like crazy.

I’ve been searching online for how to deal with my poor, sick plants. It seems that weather might be the cause, that or bad seeds, or just too many things planted in the garden (that’s definitely my fault [although the tomato plants have loads of room]). Next year we’ll need to make sure we put the tomatoes in a different place. Although right now it looks like only one or two plants are affected, and so I might just sacrifice those for the health of the rest. I’m afraid the tomatoes won’t be great this year, but we’ve been so lucky with the quality of the zucchini and cucumbers, and the rest of the garden is growing so beautifully, that I’m not too worried. It’s all good learning for next year, right?

What’ll also be good about staying in the city is getting a long, laundry list of things done around the house: cleaning up the outside, clearing away some of the junk from the garage, tidying up, sweeping, all the stuff we never seem to have time to do. Add to that my ‘work,’: the next Classic Starts title, a freelance copy assignment, some leftover editing, the new story, and if I can cloister myself in my office for most of Monday, I should get a great start on all of it.

I’m also so behind in terms of my reading. Usually the summer is when I catch up, long days spent by the lake deep into some giant tome. But instead, I’ve been gardening up a storm, visiting, playing Scrabble, talking with my family, spending time with my nephew, and I feel a little out of sorts. I’m convinced it’s because I can’t actually concentrate on any book with any kind of depth. So, I forced myself out of my rut this morning and finished two stories by Alice Munro, and hopefully I’ll finish Runaway by the end of the weekend. That’ll put me back on track. Right?

There are days where I wish I was back to being quite anonymous. That way I could say all the things that are swirling around in my mind right now about work, about life, about the glorious weekend we just had, without worrying who might read it or who might see it. It’s not that I have to confess. I need to vent. I need to rant a little about how I’m tired of certain things (and, I’ll admit, certain people in my workplace). But who doesn’t go through the same stuff every now and again? The feeling annoying with people you work with, the feeling invisible at work, the frustration with the work. And it’s not like it happens all the time or everyday. For the most part, I’m incredibly thankful to have such a great job, and to work with the people that I work with, but today is an exceptionally rough day and I’d much rather be at home watching Mad Men.

But really, would this job be any better? Perhaps not.

An Alternate Title: The 18 Pound Challenge

The rain has been unceasing the past few days, which was actually a blessing considering I hadn’t watered the garden for the couple of days leading up to the big storms over the weekend. Storms indeed. Stormy moods, stormy weather, stormy clouds in my head, but I managed to shake some of it off this evening after work. The elation of being of the medication has been followed by a period of a bit of panic. There’s not a single part of my health that’s unaffected by the disease, from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair (mainly grey; nicely covered), and it’s tedious sometimes worrying about it all. The latest? My cholesterol remains sky high, despite having already lost some weight and not really eating anything that causes said heights. The result? The doctor has ordered me to lose a total of 18 pounds. It seems impossible. I’ve been fighting with my body for months, years even, and the pounds just stay stuck like tree sap to a window.

However, now that I’m off the drugs, I’m convinced that at least it’s a goal I can achieve. Now that the methotrexate is no longer wreaking havoc on my system, hopefully my body will just rebalance itself. He’s given me three months to lose the first five and if I can make that goal he won’t put me on the medicine. That’s a good motivator. I really need a break from medicine. Four years and then some is a long, long, long time.

Soooo, after a week I’ve already lost about three pounds. That’s just from cutting out sugar and biking to work. And hummmmm, stopping the meds maybe? My Super-Fancy Disease Doctor will never admit that the meds are the sap in the tree-sap-to-window ratio, but it’s something I honestly believe. We’re also making a conscious effort to eat a little better and not snack as much. At least if I can make it to the 18 pounds, I can forgive the disease even for a little while and simply concentrate on living my life.

Annnywaaay, shaking off the glums was impossible yesterday so we bunkered down and watched a world of Law and Order repeats before falling asleep. I’ve started to read How to Be Single and it’s simply okay. But more on that later once I’m actually done. But today, shaking off the glums was accomplished by hitting the garden out back. The weeds! The weeds! The weeds! But also, the growth, the growth, the growth. I’ve been re-reading chapters of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tonight just so we can deal with the overload of zucchini (in pasta, grilled this weekend, in muffins, in cookies). And above? The massive zucchini I harvested today compared to the ones that you’d usually find in the grocery store. One of these things is not like the other, indeed.

What’s growing? The beans (all three varieties), the squash, the cucumbers (I had two for dinner; they are delicious), the watermelon, the tomatoes, two teeny cherry tomato plants, the winter squash, the calendula (one lone plant, but still!), the rapini, and I think some of the basil (at long last). We’re overgrown in the lettuce department but I’m eating it every morning for breakfast (cashew butter and lettuce on a bagel) so at least I’m making my way through it. And the tomatoes haven’t even started to ripen and I’m already thinking about how I’m going to have to convince my RRHB that we’ll need to can a bunch of sauce this fall (a whole bunch of photos on Flickr).

I had promised myself that I would grow out of hating gardening. And when I peeled back the heavy, prickly skin of my cucumbers and chopped them up so I could eat their cold, lemony goodness, I knew it was all worth it. The dirty nails. Pulling the weeds. Planting and replanting. Because it’s so true, it just tastes so much better when it’s grown in your own backyard.

Packing up my bag moments before Zesty picked me up for a trip to Costco (the first time I’ve been in many, many years), I through an electrical gadget in there beside my wallet thinking it was my blackberry. Indeed, it was my Sony Reader. Very helpful for lineups, not so great for phone calls. Very indicative of the fact that I have too much technology in my life. Isn’t that grand?

Seems I can find less and less time to post here these days with the craziness of summer, and then we go up to the cottage for the weekend, which means even less time to post. However, I think I’m going to go back to my page-a-day challenge (I have a couple of projects in mind), and that should get me going here too. Here’s a list, anyway, because I have a headache and feel life can only be in short form when one has a headache:

1. I’ve been reading Jane Urquhart’s Away and absolutely loving it.

2. TomGreen.com kept me awake and alert this week at work. I wish they had TomGreen.com radio, too, and not just TV.

3. We are obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance. My RRHB more so than me. But yesterday when they had the Alvin Ailey troupe perform, I was gobsmacked. A major American dance troupe not relegated to PBS, Bravo or TVOntario. It’s amazing and I hope it continues to spotlight dance in this way for the masses. Although I’m not 100% sold on the whole “contemporary” as a format — I think I’d love to see them all have to perform a piece of classical modern choreography, something from Merce Cunningham or Martha Graham, something that can show the masses where contemporary comes from.

4. A very good friend of our family passed away this week, and the funeral was yesterday. Up until my mother had her accident, the two of them were thick as thieves. The same, but different, neighbours but also kindred spirits. Us kids grew up together. And even though much time has passed since I’d seen anyone in the family, it doesn’t mean that I am not profoundly feeling the loss. A friend said that it’s maybe a little bit of me losing yet another connection to my mother. And it is that, for sure, but it’s also the loss of someone who had a powerful influence upon me when I was a child. It’s also knowing what her daughter is going through right now, as I said in an email, all that empty space and unfinished sentences, where your mother used to be — it’s not something you get over.

5. Headaches suck more than any other kind of everyday ache.

We’re off to the cottage. I’ll be up north until Canada Day. I’m closing in on my Canadian Book Challenge. I’ve been awake for about a bajillion hours. Today I went to the dentist (gross) and discovered that I’ve been brushing my teeth the wrong way my ENTIRE life. You think someone would have told me by now. Oh, and I need to floss. But who doesn’t, right?

Annywaaay. Life doesn’t seem to be slowing down and I have little time for anything these days, no posting, no reading, nothing except working and travelling, or so it seems. Maybe there will be wireless at the cottage at long last.

Then you guys will get sick of me.

It’s almost 1 AM and I’m not necessarily wide awake but I sure am unable to sleep. Reading hasn’t done the trick and so I’m making lists. Fingers crossed that works.