my tragic right hip

I’m not ashamed to admit how much I miss having new episodes of Sex and the City to look forward to. For a while there, Bravo was airing marathon sessions of six or so episodes in a row, and I Faux-Voed them all, because they made perfect tv watching when the WG-fatigue hits in the early evenings.

And one of the most surprisingly wonderful things about the disease, is that I have energy in the mornings. Not while my blood was missing mind you, but now that it’s been found, I actually wake up chemically rested (I’m taking sleeping pills because the prednisone keeps you awake) with energy at a decent hour.

This morning, I woke up at 7:30 AM and cleaned the house, well half of the house, the other half will have to get done throughout the week. Then, I went to brunch with Sam, and yesterday, I had lunch with another girlfriend. And it’s that sitting around, eating, with a good friend that makes me so happy that I have energy. Anyway, having brunch two days in a row made me think of Sex and the City and how much I miss the show, and all kinds of other good stuff.

Yesterday, being Earth Day, I sat down and wrote out some revolutions that I was going to try to stick to. And it shocked me, as I walked around shopping on Saturday afternoon, when I told people that I didn’t want a plastic bag for my $11.00 t-shirt because it was Earth Day, that no one a) really cared or b) even noticed.

Here’s a sample of the conversation I had buying said $11.00 t-shirt:

Ragdoll: “I don’t need a bag, just a bit of tissue paper.”

Idiotic Store Clerk: “That’s good!” [Insert horsey giggle here] “We don’t have very many!”

Ragdoll: “It’s Earth Day, so I’m trying not to collect any plastic bags.”

IDC: “It’s your birthday! That’s nice.”

Ragdoll: “No, it’s Earth Day.”

IDC: “Congratulations! This t-shirt’s a real bargain…”

Honestly. That was my conversation.

Next up I went to the super-expensive department store and bought some super-expensive, yet all natural perfume (thanks for the tip Indigo), which won’t make me sicker and will still leave me feeling pretty. Again, I had a funny conversation about Earth Day as the lovely and charming clerk deposited my gorgeous bottle in a lovely box with tissue paper and ribbon. I didn’t take a bag though, which was something anyway.

My revolutions mainly consist of little things I can do, turning the heat down or off, using the halogen light bulbs, cutting down on what I consume and how I consume it, taking public transit when I’m not working out of the city (which I do all the time) and walking more.

The idea of Earth Day, however, didn’t stop me from shopping, which I am slowly becoming more and more afraid I might be addicted to. Sigh. Not the idea mind you, the actual shopping. It’ll be good when my RRHB stops touring because once he’s home I know I won’t have two days on my own to wander around downtown after brunch looking longingly at shoes I’m trying to rationalize spending $400.00 on.

Normally, I choose books to read based on a number of things: I read a good review; it’s an author I like; there’s a movie coming out; it’s a classic; someone’s recommended the book or I’ve heard a lot of buzz about it. In the very, very rare instance I’ll read a book based on the cover, which is why I read Sarah Armstrong’s first novel, Salt Rain. With such a gorgeous green cover, it felt extremely relevant to be reading the novel on Earth Day of all days.

Armstrong’s from Australia, and like Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly, her novel also transported me to a world quite unfamiliar to my own. Set in the valley of the Australian backcountry, where they have a rainy season and farmers are used to extreme flooding, Salt Rain tells the story of Allie, a 14-year-old girl whose mother has just gone missing in the Sydney Harbour.

Allie’s aunt, Julia, Mae (her mother’s) younger sister, takes her back to the farm where they were both raised. The complex family relationship countered with the volatile nature of the environment (the floods) balances a dense and sombre novel. While the crux of the Salt Rain revolves around Allie finding out about the truth of her birth, the prose, thick like the rain forest, with level after level of metaphor, works remarkably well with the simplistic storyline.

As much as the book is Allie’s story, her quest to find her father and to know the truth about her mother, it’s also about Julia. The two women find their way around each other, navigating the steps of their new relationship, as hard as that is when its defined by bloodlines and death. As Allie sits in opposition to her aunt most of the time, Julia faces her own demons in her family history. She’s letting the farm go back to nature, planting trees instead of harvesting them, and feels the wrath of her grandmother and uncle. How the two women come to an understand that eventually leads to a quiet revolution in both of their lives is both touching and necessary.

And for a novel I picked up on a whim, I was so pleasantly surprised by Salt Rain that it kind of took me aback. It’s nice to see something so beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, actually be that way too between the covers.

For anyone actually keeping track, there are spoilers below, so if you don’t want to know what happens in Anybody Out There? Marian Keyes’s latest novel, don’t read this mini-review.

Okay, with that out of the way, I finished Marian Keyes massively huge latest novel (it’s 592 pages, feck, I know the type is huge, but come on), in record time. Yes, it’s chicklit, so it’s easy to read, but I think too because her books have become so predictable to me (I’ve read so many of them) that I kind of hoovered through it instead of savouring the book, like I did with the other novel I read this weekend.

The novel continues the story of the Walsh clan, now with Anna, the second youngest daughter, who is home in Ireland after something traumatic happening to her. Um yeah, the trauma? [Here’s the spoiler part] Is a car accident that kills Anna’s fresh husband Aidan, and leaves her scared, injured and a 33-year-old widow. But we don’t find that out until we’re well on the way of being two hundred pages into the novel. Of course, I’m saying to myself, “Oh, she’s been in an accident and her husband is dead, which is why no one’s a) talking about him or b) slagging him off because he’s not there with her, helping her recover.”

But on the whole, it’s kind of annoying, not knowing. I mean, I understand that Keyes is trying to capture the shock of it all; the veritable other world Anna lives in until halfway through the book when she fully comprehends the fact that her lovely husband is dead. But to some extent, I also felt strung along, like “just tell me what happened already.” You know?

There’s a lot in this novel to like if you like Keyes; it’s very much more of the same, the same cute prose, the same cute storyline, but there’s a lot that doesn’t need to be in here (did I mention it’s almost 600 pages?), like her sister Helen’s crazy private investigator subplot, and sometimes, the chicklit-ness of it all kind of got to me (I know, I’m asking for it, aren’t I). However, it was a band widow weekend, so it was a very appropriate book. Yet, after reading and loving Pride and Prejudice so much, and taking a look at all of the very worthy and huge books I have on my shelf, I might take a break from chicklit for a while.

And then again, it’s summer, and what’s better for summer than a sweet, pink book about romance and happy endings?

With my RRHB safely off to his show in K-town, I am blissfully entrenched in my band widow weekend mode already, and it’s only 5:56 PM on Friday night. Oh, I’m not ashamed to say I’m already in my PJs, am halfway through the latest Marian Keyes novel, and will be watching the 9 PM airing of The Interpreter on TMN. I might even throw in a couple episodes of my new favourite show, Pepper Dennis, that are fabulously waiting for me on the Faux-Vo.

Then, it’s all brunches, Banff stories and Friends with Money, with a quick trip to the osteopath planned for tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already run all the errands (groceries, cat food, office supplies) and, with the exception of the house cleaning, which I will do at my leisure, I’ve got nothing but free time staring me in the face.

The short, weekender trips are much easier to take than the long-ass three week stints in terms of being a band widow. It kind of makes you appreciate free time and hanging out with yourself. Even if that self is exhausted, puffy from medication and terribly chubby at the moment.

Ahhh, bliss…

And if you live in Kingston, go see my RRHB play tonight. You’ll have a good time. I promise.

This is who I am, perhaps who we all are, keepers of the absent and the dead. It is the blessing and the burden of being alive…None of us are orphans if everyone we’ve ever loved has died.

I can honestly say that Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly is unlike any book I have ever read. Not in the way she tells Lilly’s story, backwards and forwards, past and present, between her time spent in Ethiopia and in London, a white Muslim in a world that constantly forces her to the outside, but in the story itself. What little I do know about Ethiopia comes from images on the news: years old pictures of starving children, Sir Bob’s concert, flies landing on open eyes and the rounded, distended bellies of children.

And perhaps that’s my own ignorance, I mean, of course that’s my own ignorance, which is why I am moved by this book so very much. It took me into a world so different from my own that it’s impossible not to think about how narrow our own lives are here. Perhaps that’s not the right word, but that’s how it feels, my world of comfort and complete meals, warm clothes, clean sheets, shoes.

I’m always one to tell people that suffering can’t be compared. That pain is pain and people feel it equally, nothing that hurts should be discounted because someone beside you has suffered more or less than yourself. Yet, this book put my life into perspective, or maybe gave me the perspective to feel so much for the main character, Lilly, displaced more than once by her skin colour, her gender, her beliefs, her love for an adopted country and a man who went missing with the revolution.

Told with a voice keen with longing and strength of character, Lilly, a white woman, half British, half Irish, ends up an orphan in North Africa. Raised by a Muslim man, strict in religion and the teachings of the Qur’an, she makes a pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she finds that being white and a woman excludes her from continuing her education. Banished to the home of a poor, ex-lover of the sheikh (the man she was sent to learn from), Lilly slowly finds her way in her new adopted home and eventually falls in love with a young, idealistic doctor named Aziz.

Revolution, war and religion all combine to make it impossible for the two to marry, and Lilly eventually must flee Ethiopia as Halie Selassie is deposed. She spends the next years searching for Aziz from London, where she now makes her home and her living as a nurse. As a truly displaced person, Lilly’s story is both moving and addictive. Once I started this book, I couldn’t put it down. Good thing my RRHB still has about a billion hours of TV to catch up on, or else he might have been perturbed at me spending hours lying in bed, imagining dry, dusty streets, damaged and broken ideals, inapprehensible suffering, and the deep-seated joy and peace in simple honest beliefs.

As bittersweet yet inspiring as strong coffee in the morning and as satisfying as a swim in the lake after a long summer day, Sweetness in the Belly truly captured my attention.

I don’t care what anyone says. I’m still dreaming about giving up my day job.

Last night I had one of the most surreal evenings I’ve had in a long, long time. A friend of ours is visiting from London, and she came over to see us before she heads back across the pond on Friday. At first the plan was to make dinner at home, but my RRHB wasn’t interested in making pizza and salad for a guest, so we went out.

I was so tired (gasp! me! tired! shocking, I know) and grumpy from working (not being the job makes me grumpy but because it was a bit too much yesterday) that the last thing I wanted to do was go out for dinner. I wanted to kick back in my sweats and hang out for some old fashioned gossip with Elyssa.

Annnywaaay. We went to a local restaurant called Mitzi’s Sister. Just as we sat down, I noticed a couple of cute kids playing and thought, “it’s nice to see families out in the neighbourhood.” Then I didn’t give them another thought. We started our conversation in earnest, discussing our days with Elyssa and chatting about Mitzi’s Sister when I heard someone say, “Ragdoll? Is that you? I recognized your voice!”

Well, it was Mark, this fellow my RRHB and I went to high school with. In fact, one of the greatest memories I have of high school is watching Mark and my crazy ex-boyfriend playing imaginary snap (with no cards) at my kitchen table at my fifteenth birthday party with my grandmother. My grandmother loved Mark and always talked about how handsome he was. I don’t know if he ever knew that.

So he says to me, “Holly’s been looking for you!” Now, Holly was one of my closest friends in high school, in grades nine and ten there was a group of us who were pretty much inseparable, and she and I spent a lot of time together. But as these things go, you grow up, people move away and you don’t see them anymore. But every now and again, I’d run into someone who’d say, “Oh, I saw Holly and she wondered how you were,” and we just never connected. So, I gave Mark my card, we all chatted for a bit (it was his lovely family I noticed) and we went on with our dinner.

Until five minutes later when Holly, beautiful Holly, showed up at the restaurant. It was magical, wonderful and truly one of the most surprising evenings I’ve had in a long time. I haven’t seen her in probably close to fifteen years and it was so absolutely fantastic to see her again. In fact, the “reunion” of old friends has been quite a trend in my life lately. Just the other weekend, Zesty and I had brunch with some of our other old high school friends who we haven’t seen in forever, and that was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time too.

And it got me thinking that the universe is an extremely powerful thing. Holly had been thinking a lot about being a mom and all the stuff that happened to me just before I got to high school (my mom’s car accident), and wanted to see me. Then, we find out that we live within blocks of each other and her cousin actually lives around the corner from me and my RRHB.

But also that I’ve been having an extremely hard year with the disease and trying to get healthy, and I think the world is sending all this wonderful stuff my way just to let me know that everything’s going to be okay. And the best thing is hearing about other people’s memories, how it makes you think of things that your mind had long forgotten (apparently, I was a fried egg for Halloween one year, heh!). But most importantly it’s to remember that there was a reason you were drawn to these people in the first place and that energy doesn’t go away despite living in different places, days, months, even years passing, and it made me giddy just to sit there talking to her.

The world is truly a magical place.

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”

-Lizzie Bennett to her sister Jane

For some reason, I thought I had read this book already once in my lifetime. After seeing the latest movie version and umpteen other related films (Bride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones, etc.), I guess I knew the story so well I just assumed I’d already read the original.

I was completely mistaken. From the first delicious sentence, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” I realized that I’d never been down this path before. Now, I’m hooked. All I want to read is Austen, non-stop Jane, just like The Jane Austen Book Club, but obviously more interesting than that silly book.

Now, I know there’s nothing new I can say about Pride and Prejudice; I’m not even going to attempt to because I’m sure everything worthy about the novel has already been said. What I will say is that reading Pride and Prejudice was an experience of unadulterated bliss. I spent every spare moment over the Easter long weekend with my head in the book, much to the detriment of my poor RRHB.

And one thing I did not expect was how funny the novel is, quite like reading Restoration comedies; I actually laughed out loud on more than one occasion. And despite knowing the story backwards and forwards, I exclaimed, “Oh, no, Wickham!” when Lydia ran off, squeezed out a couple tears when Jane and Bingley finally got together, and gasped when Lizzie saw Darcy on her visit to Pemberley. Imagine that—a book written two hundred years ago might just be one of the best books I’ve read all year. It has so thoroughly influenced modern fiction, and especially genres like chicklit, that I’m so glad I actually got around to realizing that I’d never read the original. Ahem, I guess there’s good reason why it’s called a ‘classic.’