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When I was out for brunch a few weekends ago with a friend, we were talking about how, inevitably if you’re out in your sweatpants running errands, haven’t washed your hair and are wearing no makeup, the order of the universe will ensure that you’ll run into every single person you know.

It’s the law of ‘letting yourself go.’ At least, that’s how I’ve been thinking about it. Now that I’m puffy from the meds (a little still, but not so bad) and have chubbed out, of course, my life decides that now is the perfect time for a high school reunion. Over the course of the two nights, I saw no less than five people I had known in high school, all of whom I’d been just recently back in touch with.

And you know, as overwhelming as it kind of is, it’s certainly really wonderful too. I’ve kind of figured out that plenty of life happens: people get older, they have families, jobs, lives, but they never fundamentally change. All of the reasons why I loved and adored these people in high school are still there; it’s as if the spirit inside you, to use a totally cheesy metaphor, like a moth to flame, hovers towards people who you know will love and respect you right back.

I once had a totally ridiculous psychic who lived near my stepmother’s sister in a housing complex in Mississauga read my cards. Yeah, not even tarot cards, but regular old playing cards, which is fine. Not a single thing she predicted was even remotely close to being correct (that I can remember), with the exception of one thing: “Oh my gosh, look at all those friends you have, there are so many of them and, wow, they really love you.” Heh. I knew that it was total hogwash, but it was nice to hear. And I kind of wanted to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy—as any good psychic reading should encourage you to do. Ha!

Annnyway, I’ve sort of gotten over my own insecurities of how awful I look these days because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Well perhaps “getting over” might be pushing it, “sucking it up and still going out” might be more accurate. Because if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t have seen everyone on Friday night, wouldn’t have laughed, wouldn’t have danced around (with my pants on, no need to scare anyone), wouldn’t have remembered why it’s so fun to go to a rock and roll show in the first place, and would have been at home eating popcorn and watching all of the Batman movies on TMN.

And all in all, my RRHB’s shows at the Rivoli were great. It’s the first time in a long time that I left the disease at the door when I got my handstamp and felt like a regular person, well, a regular Band Wife. I dressed up because I knew I’d be seeing people I hadn’t seen in forever, I had my nightly 3 beer limit, which for someone who doesn’t really drink all that much, it was the perfect amount. Both FemBots shows were lots of fun, on Friday night there was a great crowd with hot dancing girls, which always makes a rock show great. Last night there weren’t as many people there, but the show was still good.

It reminded me that not only am I lucky to be alive but I’m kind of lucky to be me in a strange sort of why-did-the-universe-put-me-on-this-earth sort of way. Because it was a great to know that life pulls you and pushes you in certain directions, it gives you ridiculous diseases and all kinds of other tragedies, turns your head inside out so you feel awful, but it also gives you back some of what you thought might have been foever lost.

Annnd that’s enough of the feel-good, hippie, Ragdoll’s in touch with her feelings, bugger-ass post.

After a whirlwind week of work conferences, my head is spinning and I’m totally exhausted. I know, stop me when you’ve heard something new.

Annnywaay. If you’re out and about in the city tonight, come and see my RRHB play at the Rivoli.

I’ll be surprised if I’m still alive after this weekend: last night, work cocktail party (details TK), tonight, RRHB show, tomorrow night, birthday dinner then RRHB’s show, Sunday afternoon, my cousin’s baby shower (whee!).

Yes, I’ve had a nap. Yes, I’m resting until I have to go out (around 10 PM), but goodness, I was so antisocial and kind of lonely when he was away on tour, now that he’s home, it’s a feast or famine situation. I’ve got social situations coming out the wazoo.

Today marks the second day where I’ve been feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck. My throat is sore, I haven’t been sleeping, my mind’s been racing, I’ve been fighting with my RRHB (just wait until we’re in person and I can tell you what his definition of our relationship is. Oh. Yes.), and feeling desperately tired.

It’s strange, after they found my blood, I felt a lot, A LOT, better. But the past couple days have been so stressful with our big work conference and having to be certain places by certain times (with no breathing space), that I’m falling back into bad diseasy-grossness (how’s that for made up words).

And then, I was sitting having lunch during said conference when a woman I work with was telling me about her brother who also suffered from Wegener’s Granulomatosis. Notice I say “suffered”? Well, he got so sick and no one noticed that the disease killed him. He was only 36.

So as bad as I feel, as gross and tired and frustrated and angry and sad and mad and fat and pimply and crazy and upset and exhausted and achy and depressed and psychotic and overwhelmed and sick of being sick I am, I am lucky enough to be alive. That’s so easy to forget when I’m tunneling down the Sorry-For-Myself Street after a long day working in publishing and having all kinds of great people around me that I love and that love me.

I am lucky to be alive.

I am lucky to be alive.

And now that I’ve fulfilled my J.D.-inspired “sensitive” post. I’m going to go back to the couch and watch any and all episodes of Law & Order (any variation; I’m not picky) I’ve got on the Faux-Vo.

You know, when everyone has flocked down to Mexico because the big giant wave that first sank New York City, then froze, and then got really, really cold? And then Dennis Quaid had to come rescue me and then we got all busy in the back of the dog sled…oh wait, that’s not what happened.

Annnnywaaay, I’m guessing that a lot of people are going to be a lot happier now that it’s legal to hang on to some, ahem, substances, for personal use.

Now, dope I can sort of get, but heroin and coke? I can see that it would make William S. Burroughs happy (if he were still alive), but aren’t they dangerous drugs to be legalizing? But hell, what do I know? I’ve never done either and ever since I smoked so much dope that I barfed for two days, I haven’t had any of that either.

I am interested in what happens though: will crime rates go down, will tourism take a hit, will it actually encourages people with problems to be safe and maybe get the help they need? But I’d also be curious to see what kind of lobbying took place for it to happen at all. And more interestingly, what George W. has to say about it, because you know once Bushy has spoken, ole Harpy won’t be far behind.

Why be hatin‘?

But really, this is kind of funny:

URL (as pronounced “ERL”): Few things invoke more contempt for humanity than someone who pronounces URL as “erl.” It’s an acronym, not a word you douche! Between people who say “erl” and programmers who pronounce char (an abbreviation for character) as “chär” (with the “ch” pronounced like in “chart”), I get so pissed that I just want to saw my arms off.

And notice I’m not using quotes.

Ever since I’ve been a child, I’ve sort of half-lived in my own imagination. I make up my own dreams when I can sleep, going over sky-high situations that would never happen: what if I was Wonder Woman, what if I met Ethan Hawke, what if… Well, you get the point.

More often than not, the silly little dreams would involve boys, but as I’ve gotten older, married my RRHB, they’ve morphed into illusions of financial freedom. For the past few months, I’ve been fantasizing about my next royalty cheque, imagining it being a one-way ticket to quitting my job and moving to Paris, writing full-time like Henry Miller, buying bread, cheese and pain au chocolat. And because the last one was such a surprise, like winning the lottery, I sort of half-expected the same thing this time around.

Alas, it’s not to be. While still a wonderful and joyous thing to receive a cheque in the mail for work that I did over four years ago now, the reality is the cheque won’t fulfill all the silly little fantasies I’ve made up in my head over the past six months (Okay, granted, I did go overboard, like moving to Paris, taking a year-long road trip through the States, finishing our house completely, quitting my job and writing full-time).

And I know it’s kind of silly, because I made up all the stories in my head myself, and have only my over-active imagination to blame, but I’m trying hard not to be too disappointed. It’s funny, all of the things in my life that I’ve always wished for outright (damn you Barbie Dream House, damn you!) have never come true. Everything good and real in my life has come from hard work, and I don’t resent that one bit; it’s made me the person that I am. That’s where the danger of dreaming comes in, it’s an impossible irony of being a girl with too great an imagination; real life is always letting me down. However, I now have less than six months until the next royalty cheque. And we’ll see if I can keep my daydreams in check or if I get carried away and am already packing my bags to Europe. I’ll keep you posted.

In terms of financial freedom, I guess I’ll have to go back to the tried and tested method of actually saving my money instead of spending it, which means I’ll have to stop shopping. No more new shoes for Ragdoll. So, as of today, the strict financial budget that allowed me to splurge on those shoes in the first place comes back into play. I suppose it’s my own version of the Debt Diet.

And just to reiterate, once again, I’m incredibly blessed and delighted to be lucky enough to be receiving royalty cheques at all. I’m thankful for the work, I’m thankful for the opportunity, and I’m especially thankful for the cheque that came today—I’m merely pointing out a flaw in my own character, something I already know about myself that I need to take some steps to change. Sort of like my ongoing New Years Revolutions and obsession with To Do Lists, the ever-evolving commitment to becoming a better rounded person. If that makes any sense at all.

I picked up Sebastian Junger’s latest nonfiction work, A Death in Belmont, on that very afternoon where I wasted my hard-earned money on Plum “No Plot” Sykes. This is the book I should have been reading; this is a book that deserves to be bought.

Junger’s story of how his family came into contact with the man who eventually claimed, and then denied, that he was the Boston Strangler, is fascinating. An older woman, Bessie Goldberg, was raped and then strangled in the affluent suburb of Belmont where Junger and his family lived. A black man, Roy Smith, who was cleaning the Goldberg’s house that day, was charged and convicted of her murder. Years later, a manual labourer, Al DeSalvo, eventually comes under suspicion of actually committing the crime, meaning Smith was innocent.

Junger’s book attempts to find absolute truth where none truly exists, who really killed Bessie Goldberg? Was Roy Smith innocent? Did Al DeSalvo kill her? It’s murder mystery with no happy ending (all of those involved are now dead; any evidence has either been destroyed by time or the necessity of space), and without any clear indication of the truth being uncovered any time soon, all he can do is hypothesize about what might have taken place, from all sides of the story.

As much a conversation about race as it is about the truth, as much an investigation of how far the legal system in the States has changed since the early 1960s as it’s about the idea of wrongful conviction, A Death in Belmont is my favourite kind of nonfiction, the kind that reads like fiction.

Although, I’m not convinced, like a lot of nonfiction, that it’s not just an extended magazine article with a lot of extraneous details thrown in, on the whole, Junger has a great tone to his written voice and I even didn’t mind how he used his personal ties to the story to pull everything together (Capote would be horrified! The use of the first person! Argh!)

Much more entertaining than Plum “Harlequin Can Kiss My Ass” Sykes.

I’m only mildly embarrassed to admit:

1. Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” is currently the most-played song on my iTunes. Now, there is good reason for this—being a band widow means pop music may flow through the veins of this house. Once my RRHB gets home, it’s forever banned from the airwaves. I take full advantage of this by listening to it very loud and dancing around in my underwear. Yes, I said, I’m mildly embarrassed to admit these things.

2. I can’t stop eating barbecue rice chips. I’m obsessed. And they’re not real chips, so it’s not that bad, right? Damn prednisone.

3. I can’t stop thinking about Pride and Prejudice. I watched the Keira Knightley film again on Friday night and was obsessed looking at the differences between Austen’s original (now that I’ve read it) and the adaptation. A couple of things really bothered me: Keira’s posture and the way she stroked Darcy’s legs at the end of the film; oh, and the fact that she was always wandering around in her bedshift. As if. And then, if I wasn’t obsessed enough, I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary. Again. For, like, the millionth time, just to see the similarities there as well. All I have left is to watch the PBS mini-series that everyone keeps raving about. I’m only 10 years off the bandwagon on that one. Talk about being tragically unhip.

So that’s how I’ve spent my weekend? You?

I know I’m not doing the Book or Movie A Day challenges anymore, but I like the way the titles look.

Sigh.

Annnywaaay. I went to see Friends with Money this weekend with Wing Chun. It’s taken me a while to post about the film because I’ve been thinking about it so much and it took me a while to elucidate exactly why I liked it. And it comes down to one thing: it’s about women, women of a certain age, going through womanly things. Oh, it’s all clear now, isn’t it?

No, really, it’s about four friends, each with very different lives and very different problems. One is wealthy and happily married (Joan Cusack), another is happily married but extremely unhappy (Frances McDormand), the third is unhappily married (Catherine Keener) and the last is just plain troubled (Jennifer Aniston). Each woman openly, even freely admits that they might not be friends now if they weren’t friends already, a long-lasting kind of knowledge about one another informs the performances of all four lead actresses, and truly makes the film feel like you’re watching a slice of their lives instead of a celluloid world.

At one point, Jane (Frances McDormand) simply stops washing her hair because it hurts her arms to keep them up there. A perfect and honest picture of depression, and despite the fact that everyone’s worried about her, she still manages to be a good friend to Christine (Catherine Keener) when her marriage finally breaks down. In the middle of it all is Olivia (Jennifer Anistan), who has quit her job as a teacher and become a maid. Franny (Joan Cusack) revolves around them all like a strange sort of life coach, trying to fix everything and buying expensive tables at overpriced benefit dinners so they all can be together.

And just to bring it all back to me (I know, I’m sorry), the film made me think a lot about how much I’ve been contemplating life in general these days. A very poignant Jane bemoans the fact that she’s now in her forties instead of just turned forty, and that’s kind of how I feel these days too. I’m in the next stage of life, whatever that may be, too old to live like I did a decade ago, but too young to hang up my dancing shoes forever; I’m still treading water in terms of imagining what life has in store for me.

In a way, I’m a late bloomer (it takes me forever to do things; we didn’t even get married until now and we’re 34), and sometimes I think it might be because I wasn’t sure I’d even make it this far. A little part of me was always convinced that I’d never live this long, my mother lost her life at thirty-four, the same age I am now, and I always saw that as the end. Now that I’m half-way through the year, and ready for another birthday in a few months, I can’t help thinking that I’ve never even considered that life actually moves past that age.

What do I do now? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? How do I face it all? What makes me happy? Why does it make me happy? It fascinates me that one line from an 88-minute long film sets me off on a philosophical and psychological journey that probably won’t end with the close of this sentence.

To sum up: it’s a great little film, mandatory viewing with a group of equally lovely and amazing girlfriends.

Okay, I know I vowed to read less crap, but when I left the house yesterday and actually forgot a book (which meant that I lost an hour of valuable reading time on the commute to and from work), I had to buy something to read. So, I bought The Debutante Divorcee by Plum Sykes. I mean, I couldn’t waste a perfectly good streetcar ride, oh, I don’t know, looking at the scenery, could I?

And wow, what a ridiculous book. I mean, ridiculous. I mean, even Candace Bushnell looks like high literature in comparison.

The paper thin plot revolves around Sylvie Mortimer, freshly married and already abandoned on her honeymoon when she meets Lauren Blount, heiress and the debutante divorcee of the book’s cover. The two become fast friends and in a whirlwind mess of fashion, parties, and ridiculous situations, they do what simply amounts to a lot of nothing.

The “conflict” in the novel comes from Sylvie wondering if her ultra-fab TV-producer husband is having an affair with a devious woman in their jet set circle. Shall I ruin it for you? Oh, come on, it’s not like you’re actually going to read this book are you? Of course you’re not. So, yeah, he’s not having an affair it’s all a big, say it with me, misunderstanding. Yawn.

You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that British chicklit is just so much better because it’s not ultimately obsessed with fashion, fur (I KNOW, the horror) and the rigid ideals of beauty. When you place a book like The Debutante Divorcee next to any one of Gemma‘s books it’s lacking a certain sense of reality. It’s like reading Danielle Steele, only more ridiculous if you can imagine that. There’s a difference between something being romantic and something being utterly vapid. The Brits understand that; it’s why Bridget Jones did so well, and it’s why the Plum Sykes and Lauren Weisbergers of the world will sell books, but are missing the magic.

And the dialogue, good lord, if I met a man that spoke like Hunter, Sylvie’s husband, I’d have to kill myself figuratively and bleed all over the pages in protest. With all the “darlings” and “sweethearts” and jewels and yachts, I was yearning for something, anything that approached a real emotion in this novel. And, like this world Plum creates, it simply doesn’t exist.

Sigh. I hate it when my brain is so tired all it can handle is dreck, but I resent myself so much for it in the end.