my tragic right hip

Well, I’m the same. Isn’t that a treat? But it’s good actually, still very anemic, still don’t know for sure if it’s disease or meds, still off work (until April 10th) and still so tired I’m actually looking forward to the rest. But at least I’m not worse, my kidneys are in good shape, my lungs are super clear and once the anemia goes away, I’ll have energy too.

I go back and see him in 10 days and that’s when he’ll start me on the new disease drugs. At least there’s an end in sight to all the crazy medical drama. At least I have to hope there is…in the mean time, I think I’ll continue my ‘old man’ exercise program and hit up the mall.

Hey, I might be chubby and puffy, but at least I’ll have some new spring clothes for when I go back to work.

In an attempt to quell my sick-time-at-home boredom, dear Kathleen forwarded the What Musical Are You Quiz over to me.

Shockingly, I’m “A Chorus Line,” whereby the fancy answer guru let’s me know that I’m “wild, kinky, and love dance. Music is my life. [I]’ve had a dramatic past, but again, who hasn’t.”

Odd how true it’s ringing right about now. Have I spent too much time inside? And more importantly, what musical are you? Inquiring minds want to know.

Can one ever get bored of watching movies? It’s not likely in my household, but after the overload I’ve subjected myself to over the past few days, it might be the case. Now that the Oscars are over, all of the nominated films from last year are making their way into the video store. Of course, with little else to do, I’ve become quite a regular at Rogers. Thrilling, I know.

This past weekend, I watched A History of Violence, which I quite liked. It was like a tidy little morality play only with more gore. The script was tight and clean, but I thought William Hurt chewed the scenery and Maria Bello was kind of miscast. I also watched Good Night, And Good Luck (man that comma bothers me), which I loved, loved, loved. It’s full of such good tension brought on by tight shots and constantly burning cigarettes, the performances are subtle yet nuanced and the script, oh, the script, so good.

Then, yesterday I went to see Capote in the theatre. Now seeing so many of the films that were nominated for Best Picture, I’m still so stunned that Crash took home the prize. All three of the films I watched over the weekend were better acted, better scripted and better shot than Crash. But whatever, it doesn’t matter.

But the one thing that drove me nuts about Capote? Philip Seymour Hoffman’s bloody dirty fingernails. You’re telling me that Capote, so obsessed with his clean cut looks, well dressed physique and impeccable grooming, would wander around Kansas with the dirtiest fingernails I’ve ever seen on film? I don’t think so. Was there no makeup person around to take a look at his hands and perhaps take a nice swipe under the nails and tidy them up? It drove me crazy. And yes, it’s probably a sign of the prednisone. Hey, at least I can recognize the OCD before it gets really bad. Heh.

You know, I always feel like Alanis when I use the word irony to describe certain aspects of my life with the disease. But I’m never sure if I’m using it properly. Funny how two degrees in English don’t make me any more confident in terms of using the tricky words.

So, one of the side effects of the prednisone is sleeplessness. So not only does the drug make you puffy and chubby (it increases your appetite and therefore you gain gobs of weight, including awful water weight), but it also keeps you awake and makes you psychotic. Both times I’ve used prednisone in the past to treat the disease, the drug has made me nuts. I call it the ‘prednisone crazies.’

The second time the disease flared when I was in my mid-twenties the drug made me so wacky that I was hearing voices and wanting to jump off high rises. It took me two years to crawl out of that depression. Luckily, I’m in a much better ‘place’ to deal with the prednisone crazies, in that I know what they are and how to recognize them before the black dogs descend and I start scrubbing the bathtub with a toothbrush and a bottle of bleach.

Annnnywwaaay. As it’s been well documented, my blood went missing a few weeks ago, and as a result, I’m severely anemic, which makes you tired. Really tired. Like so tired you can’t walk to the corner tired. Right, so the only thing you want to do is sleep, but the damn prednisone is keeping me awake. The result? I’m a bloody zombie: I can’t think, can’t remember my name most days, have trouble even writing a sentence. So I’m wandering through my days like an extra in Dawn of the Dead. I just lie in bed for hours, my braid whirring and whizzing, weight of the world on my shoulders, wishing I could sleep. But I’ll say one thing for sure, when you wake up at 6 AM every morning, you feel the full pressure of the amount of hours in a day.

Now for the big question, is that ironic? Probably not, it’s probably just my plain, damn bad luck, damn you Alanis for making me all confused.

If I was feeling up to it, I’d be out celebrating by drinking cider and Harp. But I’ll have to be content with thinking about how I was in Derry in August, enjoying a pint at an awesome pub inside the old city walls, listening to the band, chatting with a fellow that looked like that Kevin kid from American Idol, hearing the story about the notes framed and posted up behind us on the wall, thinking about the idea of freedom, and all the other good stuff from my trip last summer.

Calling all writers. The key to everlasting success in terms of keeping the creative juices flowing? Getting up really bloody early and then doing “refreshing” exercises during your peak thinking periods.

Yeah, that’ll work. Harrumph.

If I make it through the day without collapsing from exhaustion it’s a good thing. If I get two sentences that are worthy with a brain that can’t remember one thing as it travels from room to room, it’s am even better thing. But maybe I’m missing the point, maybe I need to be more disciplined…Oh, and maybe that’s where all my blood ended up. Perhaps it flowed on over to Dan Brown. Maybe after he’s done with the trial I’ll ask him to return it. Lord knows he can afford to buy some more.

Wow, this book took me forever to read. M.G. Vassanji’s epic story of Vikram Lall, a Kenyan-born Indian man who rises up through the ranks to become the country’s most wanted, won the Giller in 2003. As much the story of a post-colonial Kenya and its struggle for independence as the story of Vic’s life, the book covers roughly forty years, following the protagonist from youth to middle-age.

Vassanji interweaves the story of Vikram Lall, his family and some close friends with the social and political changes in Kenya before, during and after independence. Mainly Vic’s voice is used as a gateway to the stories of his sister Deepa and Njoroge (the love of her life and an African), and the Lall extended family (grandparents, parents, Mahesh Uncle). The history of Vikram is both physically (his grandfather was a labourer who built the railroad) and metaphorically (how he finds himself ‘in-between’ worlds despite being born an African) tied to Kenya. Vassanji relays this in many ways, through the amount of detail paid to everyday life in Africa, the food they ate, the places they went, the life they led, as well through the distance the narrator keeps from both what he’s seeing and the life he lived.

It’s a difficult book to read for that very reason. So much of the story is told at arm’s length, something I’m sure my creative writing class would cut apart, but it works on so many levels that keep the epic scope of the book tied so closely with the experiences of one man who absolutely refuses to experience anything fully.

In the end, I’m glad I read it because I am deeply interested in the perspective of life in Africa during the time after the British empire disbanded its colonial stronghold, and the book’s bittersweet tone will probably have me thinking about it for days afterwards. And not just because I’m stuck at home being sick and tired and spaced out.

So today I learned that my gorgeous new bag has another use: it’s big enough to hold the “sample” of the 24-hour urine test I had to do this week. What a quiet irony to my life. I mean, hell, if I have to go to the hospital with a day’s worth of pee, it might as well be in style.

We all know this already. But how hilarious is it that some kid is heading to California for the summer and has no idea what his job will be? Honestly? That makes me want to apply to work for Google right now. Mystery jobbers like mystery shoppers, maps of everything, scanning books, developing offline ‘solutions’, where’s it all going to end?

Do you think Google would hire me? A semi-sick, semi-blogger with good writing skills and a mad love for the internet?

David Bach’s “Finish Rich” philosophies, appearances on Oprah and well-timed practical advice have made him a superstar. I read one of his books last year and found it more profoundly annoying than anything. Plain common sense wrapped up in cute buzz words and self-discipline. But I like to read money books, or rather, books about how to manage your personal finances (maybe because money manager is my self-appointed role in our marriage), so I read The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner in about thirty seconds.

It’s a practical book that explains mortgages and all the other good stuff involved in utilizing real estate as an investment. I was looking for some solid advice as to how to own (or plan to own) a vacation home (cottage, condo in Paris, ah, dare to dream) but the book’s not really about that. It’s primary message? You have to live somewhere so you might as well own where you live. It’s secondary message? Don’t sell your first house, but rent it out if you can afford to. See, good, practical advice.

But my biggest problem with the book and with the cookie-cutter approach to finance that so many of these self-appointed ‘gurus’ proport to have remains the lack of a holistic approach to money management. Resources are looked at in terms of dollars and cents, and not in a more ‘what am I contributing to the world’ point of view. Not that David Bach is an anti-environmentalist (he often has chapters on charity and giving), but so far in my life I’ve only read one book about money management that looked at the human costs as well. Sam Lamb lent me the book and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, but I’d like to go back and read it again, just to be reminded that every dollar you earn has a true physical cost attached to it, and that’s worth something far more than the interest ING Direct is paying me on my life savings.

In the end, I’ll still read books about money management, still be annoyed by them, take what I need and be glad that I spent the two hours learning (or being reminded) of how finance works, because it’s important. But I’ll always be doing it with the idea in the back of my mind that I’d love to end up a poor, starving novelist one day, if only I could dare myself to give up the stability of a two week paycheque and the small comforts of cable television.