my tragic right hip

I have crashed. Completely. I’m so tired and achy and feeling so gross that I can barely stand up. I’m trying to finish my Book A Day challenge for today, but I might have to get started again tomorrow. I’m am not looking forward to seeing the doctor tomorrow. Not one bit.

Yesterday was a crackerjack day in the city. I’m guessing the spring forward time shift might have affected people in a strange way, including myself. Having been totally exhausted from the film shoot on Saturday, I got up kind of off kilter, far too early (5 AM, cat wanted out), and then switched the clocks. Then I got ready to go see my Movie of the Day (#6), Thank You For Smoking, with some friends.

As I get on to the streetcar, some half-cracked woman was there wearing way too much makeup and oddly mismatched clothing was ahead of me. She refused to move inside the car and stood there beside the driver. I had to slide around her to drop my ticket in, only I’m carrying a book and a knapsack, so of course, I drop the book and one of the zipper-thingys on my pocket breaks so I’m all discombobulated.

I hear the driver say, “Miss, you need an extra ten cents,” but I don’t assume he’s talking to me because there’s a crazy lady standing right there. But then the crazy lady says, “You need to put in ten cents.” Even she gets it. I don’t. They changed the fares and I need an extra ten cents with my ticket. Ohhhhh. Okay.

Then, as I exit at Museum station, I hear a super loud crash just to my left and see two people get into a car accident. They both stepped out of their respective cars so thankfully they were all right but holy crap the woman was mad. She started screaming and yelling and all kinds of stuff. Traffic stopped on Avenue Road, obviously. And since I didn’t see anything, just heard the loud crack, I didn’t stick around. I felt guilty for about a nanosecond. Why is that?

Movie A Day mini-review: Thank You For Smoking is okay. It’s a smartish-satire with a great performance by Aaron Eckhart. Katie Holmes sucks, but thankfully she’s not in it that much; and I’m tired of her in these “she’s the hot one” roles because, frankly she’s just not, she’s droopy. Overall, I liked it, but thought that it didn’t deserve the applause at the end.

And some people in our audience enjoyed it a lot, you know those guys that scream, “Look at his face!” as if we all couldn’t see it stories and stories in front of us at that very moment. Okay, I know booming grannies are older and deserve our respect, but come on, when you arrive ten minutes late to the movie (after the previews), then take another ten minutes to figure out where you’d like to sit, all the while having a conversation at full volume, decide to sit in the middle of an already seated row and then continue to chatter away as if you’re having coffee at the King Eddy, you deserve to be harshly shushed. Please. We respect you, we do, we just don’t want to hear from you—in the middle of the movie…

Annnywaaay. So, then I went off on my quest to find a pair of Livs boots, because they’re crocheted (how cute is that?). I went to four or five different stores with no luck. They’re all gone. Upon my travels I walked by Yonge and Bloor and saw that it was all corded off with police tape because someone lit themselves on fire in a Tim Horton’s. At first they thought it was a terrorist attack, but now they suspect he either wanted to commit suicide or simply torch Tim’s.

So to sum up, one embarrassing moment on the TTC, one fender bender (luckily no one was hurt) and one tragedy where a man felt that it was better to light himself on fire than finish that cup of coffee. Talk about a manic Sunday.

Yesterday, I think I might have found my calling. Kate graciously allowed me to be the Assistant Director on her short film that we shot yesterday. I had a clipboard people. And a stopwatch. And I got to say, “Lock it down, we’re going for picture.” Which was quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in a long while. I spent the whole day being giddy and giggling.

Considering I’d never done the job before, and really had no clue what I was doing, I’m super relieved that it all turned out so exceedingly well. Making a movie has long been on my life list of things I’d like to try to do one day (the others include being in a rock video [done, I was in my RRHB’s first video briefly], writing and publishing a novel [so not close to being done], being an extra [not done], and so many more that it would be imprudent to list them here). I love movies, watch them all the time, and totally enjoy seeing the complex and fascinating process behind how they get made.

It was a long, long day though. But it’s certainly got me thinking about how I’d love to do it again. Making call sheets, assisting the director, organizing people, and still sort of being involved in the creative process was a fun way to spend a Saturday I would have otherwise just been at home. And because it was such a small set, I ended up doing a lot of other jobs too: transport, craft services, some PA stuff, and it was all fun. And I learned a lot too, about gaffers and lights and dulling spray and how much film to use and how to say “rolling” and to gently nudge people in the right direction when they’re taking too long and to joke with the crew and to laugh and all kinds of other things.

Now I’m super tired though because I’m still not sleeping from the prednisone, and my feet hurt so much that I’m not sure I’ll be going anywhere or doing anything today the exhaustion is that deep, but what a grand time I had. I can’t wait to see the final product. I know it’s just going to be fabulous.

When my writing seminar ended the other week, our teacher sent around a note afterwards that stemmed from something one of my classmates had said when we all went out afterwards for a drink (cranberry and Perrier, sigh, my life is so boring!). We were talking about the inner life of a writer, what to reveal, what to keep hidden.

A lot of us were saying we write about other people in our lives, in veiled form of course, because that’s what seems to come naturally. In the note, he told us to try and be brave enough to reveal parts of ourselves that we don’t find easy to break open for the whole world to see. That’s where the good writing will come from, deep inside your own fear and inhibitions.

I guess that’s kind of like the idea behind the blog, a glimpse into the girl behind the girl, if that’s at all interesting. Why I’m thinking about this very early on spring forward Sunday? Well, I went out for a little while on Friday night to a reunion of all of my old chums from my last job.

That job spoiled me for life. Not in the fact that it was the best job I’ve had or will have but more because of the fact that I loved, respected and admired the people I worked with so much. I miss them. I miss the environment. I miss caring about a project so deeply and putting your heart and soul into it and knowing that you’ve built something great.

But what the whole thing made me realize is that I’m still not over the whole bloody firing situation. This goes deep, deeper than the actual event, deeper than the idea of being told you have to leave something that you love, and right down into a lot of my own insecurities and issues.

The old VP showed up. In a way, I hold him responsible for a lot of the crap that happened. Not in the sense of my own personal poor behaviour (the ridiculous emails, the acting like a mean girl, the childish temper tantrums), but he’s the one that hired the Boss From Hell (and then she promptly got him fired as well), and sort of was the worst captain of our already sinking ship. Thing is, I couldn’t talk to him, didn’t even really want to be polite and say, ‘hello, how are you doing, what are you doing?’

I wanted to see everyone else. In fact, I loved seeing everyone else. But I don’t know what it is in me that can’t let this go. I’m so hard on myself, so hyper-critical, that I look upon it all as one big failure. And I’m also still so angry with myself that I let the situation get so out of control, that I didn’t see how bad it actually was and try to make it better.

In the end, I internalized all of the stress about the situation, which, in turn, my body turned back into the disease. And I know how wrong it is to blame some poor, clueless, fired VP for some of that, but I just couldn’t help it. A small part of me wanted to scream at him and say, ‘Look around at how many lives you impacted with your ridiculous and utterly awful decisions. Stand up and take responsibility for your failure. Accept the fact that you messed this up and as a result all of these great people had to make major changes in their lives.’

But you know, in the end, I also got to thinking about how it was my life and I had the power to change it. I could have left that job, but I didn’t. I could have been a better person and climbed up above all of the crap, but I didn’t.

It’s been almost a year and a half since I lost that job. And for most of that time, I’ve been trying to build a new career at a great new employer, and things are going well. But the fact of the matter is I’ve also been battling the disease all this time too. Things aren’t necessarily going as planned there either and being off so much because I’ve been so sick for so long isn’t going to help me get to where I want to go.

Which leads me to the whole point: forces in my life have always led me to change; it’s never been the other way around. I’ve spent the better part of my life just dealing with the tragedy in it and I think it’s about time I turned a corner. It might be a good day, being spring forward and all, to do some changing of my own. Now the only question remains how. A bit of spring cleaning for the soul, if you will.

Things are humming along with one week left in my exile on illness street. A couple of tasks I’ve accomplished and crossed off the list in the past few days:

5. Get groomed – essentially get my hair done. I haven’t had it cut or coloured since before the non-wedding. I’ve also made an appointment to tame my ridiculously overgrown eyebrows. They’re frightening these days.

I got my hair cut yesterday and because I’m afraid of the fact that it’s all going to fall out again (as it does with every new medication), I got it cut really short. However, I did step out of my comfort zone and dye it very dark brown with slightly reddish highlights. It’s very dramatic and I’m not sure if that was the right decision but hey, it’s only hair dye. If I hate it next week, I’ll dye it back.

14. Finish uploading my music library back on to iTunes. Download the rest of the suggestions that friends have sent. And if you have any idea of songs I might like to write to, please send them along, I’m currently taking requests…

Done and done! It took forever, but my iTunes is now 1477 songs richer, bring on the party shuffle!

In the end, it my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum is the story of the life of Ruby Lennox, from conception to old age, told in a fury of first-person that captivates you the minute your eyes hit the page.

I’m too tired now to give a full review, or even a half a review, but suffice it to say that I really loved this book, and it’s no wonder, judging by how much I enjoyed Case Histories. The Book A Day challenge lives for another day. But I must admit I’m getting a bit burnt out.

Great article by Mark Daniell about my RRHB’s band. Enjoy!

There were two passages from The Night Watch that I wanted to share, but last night I was so tired and just wanted to put the Book A Day to bed, that I didn’t include them in my post.

In the first, Kay, an ambulance driver at the height of the war in London, comes home at the end of a particularly gruesome shift. Her lover, Helen, is already asleep:

At last she grew calm enough to finish her cigarette and sit more comfortably. When she was perfectly steady, and sure the express train wouldn’t come back again, she’d go to bed. She mightn’t sleep, for an hour or more. Instead, she’d lie and listen to Helen’s steady breathing in the darkness. She might put her fingers to Helen’s wrist, and feel for the miraculous tick-tick-ticking of her pulse.

I marked that paragraph because I do the same thing, not the whiskey drinking and smoking, but I do often sit with my two fingers on my RRHB’s wrist listening to his pulse. I don’t even know when or how I started it; it’s something I do just to reassure myself that he’s there, alive, ticking, literally. It’s something that makes me feel safe, which is why this resonated with me so much. Kay, the strongest woman in the book, suffers silently for the most part, so true to herself in a world that wasn’t necessarily ready to accept her, but still so valiant and brave to save every piece of it that she can.

The second passage that I marked has to do with Viv, a pregnant girl whose lover is a married soldier:

The window opened on to a courtyard. She could hear typing, the ring of telephones, from rooms on the floors above. If she listened carefully, too, she could just make out, beyond those sounds, the ordinary sounds of ignore Street and portmanteau Square: cars and taxis, and men and women going shopping, going out, going home from work. They were the sort of sounds, viva thought, that you heard a thousand times, and never noticed—just as when you were well, you never thought about being well, you could only really feel what it was like to be healthy for about a minute, when you stopped being sick. But when you were sick, it made you into a stranger, a foreigner in your own land. Everything that was simple and ordinary to everyone else became like an enemy to you. Your own body became like an enemy to you, plotting and scheming against you and setting traps…

How perfect is that quote for what my life is like these days?

I’m back on track this morning, as I knocked off Liza Palmer’s Conversations with the Fat Girl in about two and a half hours. There’s really nothing to the book, which is why it was so easy to read. Maggie, the ‘fat girl’ in question learns to love herself over the course of the novel as she pursues the boy of her dreams, finds herself a fabulous new job and finally ends a toxic friendship with her formally obese best friend Olivia.

There’s nothing new here and the writing isn’t remotely remarkable enough for me to read another of her books. Even though the easy reads are necessary for the Book A Day challenge, I’m beginning to think of them like television, good for a bit of time wasting but not really worth the investment.

In good chicklit, there’s an overarching sense of a stereotypical story looked upon in a very unusual way, some spark that keeps you interested in the characters and their outcomes. In this book, there was none of that; it fell flat, regardless of how hard the author tried. I wouldn’t even recommend this book for a plane ride. As my mother used to say, “It’s a toilet novel.”