my tragic right hip

So even though my Summer Reading challenge has catapulted into a steaming pile of nothingness, my Page A Day has carried on quite well. Here are the stats:

Word count: 36,431
Page count: 162

Not so bad even if much of the story is filler until I can do some much-needed research. I’m going to try to finish a draft that I think will come in around 225 pages and then start editing and re-writing.

Whee!

Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica (yes, yes, I KNOW, not on my Summer Reading list, let’s just give up the ghost now on that, ahem, agenda) came highly recommended by Crabby Kate, who enjoyed it a great deal. I read this book on Friday, after a particularly gruelling few days of writing myself, where I added about fifty-odd pages to my latest story. The point? That my mind wandered a lot during the tale, which probably has more to do with my own state of mind than in Gaitskill’s storytelling.

Veronica follows the life of Alison, a once young and beautiful model whose life and career is left in ruins after an accident. During the almost-height of her success, she befriends an office worker/”fag hag” whose tempestuous relationship has left her with AIDS and a broken heart. The novel tracks the peaks and valleys of their odd friendship as it develops Alison’s story, from high school dropout to Parisian runway model, from New York fashion model to West Coast victim, as she comes to terms with her own illness, hepatitis C. The novel has no conventional storyline, no true narrative held together by the constraints of time, but it seems to work as a series of memories that serve to take the reader from one page to the next.

The discombobulated state of the narrative obviously echoes Alison’s own fragile psyche, and being a girl with a disease herself, I identified with the “sick” part of the book: Veronica’s slowly decaying body, Alison’s tattered wreck of an arm from a car crash, both of their diseases a result of choices they made, but not necessarily on their own—more a sign of how desperately unhappy they both were, that unhappiness somewhat tying them together in the end.

It’s a terribly melancholy novel, but I didn’t really mind that considering I watched Before Sunset and Shakespeare in Love to balance out the feeling of wanting to dive off the dock and never surface in the evening after I finished the book (“Oh, baby, you’re going to miss that plane!”, LOVE IT), all in all I think it truly deserves the kudos its received (National Book Award nomination, etc.). Not as fascinated by the life of an ex-model, or by modelling in general, that whole “Gia-on-paper” bit is a tad overplayed, the book is a consistent example of creative writing at its novelistic best.

My week up at the cottage has been super productive. I have written 156 pages on my story, made a very small start on my next abridged novel and have gone swimming every day. My crackberry works in some places enough to text my RRHB, which is cool and I’ve watched a few of my favourite movies.

Today I am sitting in The Windmills Cafe in Kingston. I haven’t been back here since I graduated from university 10 years ago. Funny thing too, the last time I ate here, I had food poisoning. And when Hannah went back to complain for me as I threw up for two days, the fellow TOOK A BITE and said, “Seems fine to me.”

Ah, Kingston.

Oh so I’d like to think. So far, my goal of writing a Page A Day has been going okay, even though I can’t remember now where I started, but I’m at 91 pages and have over 20,000 words. That’s the longest I’ve consecutively written in my life. Generally I write series and series of short stories that never link together into anything remotely resembling a longer piece. Anyway, the longer I sit here, the more that I seem to write, even if it feels like I’ve wasted an already gone day.

I should be packing. I should be pulling the weeds out of our massively overgrown vegetable garden. I should be reading or working on my pages or starting my two new books or redeeming my iTunes gift certificate Zesty gave me for my birthday.

What am I doing instead? Reading spoilers for Gilmore Girls next season, catching up on bad celebrity gossip and reading way, way too much into my horoscope for this month.

And yet, I feel so guilty for doing, well nothing, even though we’ve been so bloody busy so far this summer and haven’t really stopped to well, even grocery shop (which, when I told my RRMIL [rock and roll mother-in-law] that we hadn’t bought groceries in close to a month, she gasped, audibly), that I should be catching up on something—and yet I can’t pull myself out of this chair to even wash my face or brush my teeth.

Now aren’t you embarrassed for me?

Yes, I know this book isn’t on my Summer Reading list, but I’ve been so brain dead I wanted some chicklit. It’s the story of Dora, a 35-year-old, almost-twice divorced woman who lives in a book-induced stupor and, for many reasons, this novel doesn’t ever really get off the ground for me. In fact, I have precious little to say except I quite agree with John Allemang’s Book A Day review.

I’m heading up to the cottage tomorrow for a week and a bit—fingers crossed I get some real reading done up there.

So, the headline for this article in the Canoe books section is: “Reference books offer useful info.”

Huh. You’d think that was, well, the point or something? I mean OF COURSE they do they are REFERENCE books. That’s the only reason THEY EXIST. Sigh.

Aw, you have to be a true Kevin Smith fan to love this movie, which I am, which I did. And it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by it…I didn’t laugh so hard I peed my pants like when I saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but I did find myself giggling like a silly fool and gasping at a couple of the truly shocking moments. And it’s nice to see Jason Mewes so tanned, fit and healthy-looking.

Clerks II has an indie feel to it, lots of cameos, not much of a storyline (Dante and Randal BFF, they break up, they’re BFF, there’s a love triangle, we see Kevin Smith’s wife’s boobs, Jay dances), but it was sweet, and even kind of generous in a strange sort of way. And you know, not to spoil it, but doesn’t every movie need a good throw down over the counter of a Mooby’s with Wanda Sykes? Oh yes, I think it does.

If I have one small criticism is that I’m getting a little tired of the boy-who-refuses-to-grow-up storylines that seem to be dominating so many of the men in my age group on screen. I think EW had something about that in the magazine this week. Especially after seeing the atrocious You, Me and Dupree, if I ever hear, “30 is the new 20,” or “40 is the new 30,” one more time, I will not be responsible for the hair I might rip out. What’s wrong with acting your age, which isn’t the message of this movie (rather, be who you are and be happy that you can, well, be happy), but I mean really how many aging playboy/partyboys can there be in the current mainstream?

But I guess that’s sort of what this movie has in common, to some extent, with The Break-Up, which was kind of Vince Vaughn’s character’s evolution out of that whole man-boy trap. Because in the end, it’s nice to see how the ten years have actually changed the men in this movie, beyond the (slightly) thinner hair, beginning wrinkles around the eyes and world-wearied expressions.

Do you know what that means? Well, neither did I until yesterday when a Polish edition of my abridged version of Little Women showed up in the mail. How awesome is that?

Can I now refer to myself as “Ragdoll, Blogger and International Author”? Or is that just a tad too pretentious?

Okay, remember when I said that having ecoli in my pee was the grossest medical thing that ever happened to me? Yeah, well, not even two weeks later, let me tell you—something even grosser.

I threw up IN MY SLEEP the other night.

And I woke up feeling totally off centre and right disgusted. And it wasn’t a dream because, well, it wasn’t (and that’s all I’m going to say about that).