my tragic right hip

A bit of exhaustion (a mere understatement), led to a sore throat, being in the company of other ill people, led to a sniffle, a sneeze, a splutter. All of this led to feeling under the weather, caught in a snow storm, a fury of fickle attention to good nutrition, being lazy, being tired, being medicated. Which leads to a cold, a bad cold, an achy cold, a fuzzy head, a heavy chest, a dose of vapour rub, a dash of cough medicine, a warm scarf, a cup of tea, vitamin c, and garlic, nature’s cure. A good night’s sleep, a warm blanket, a good book, a mediocre movie, a long day’s journey spent between the many walls of my house. Will be spending today writing, sleeping, reading and resting in an attempt to led the cold right back out where it belongs, on the side of the street covered in slush, buried in muck, well away from my brittle constitution and my lack of immune system.

The annual Globe and Mail 100 list comes out today, telling us all about the best books published this year. It’s my second-favourite issue of the paper, right behind the truly awesome crossword they do at the end of every year.

I’ve read 6 out of the 100 (Saturday, Three Day Road, The Wreckage, The Time in Between, An Audience of Chairs and The Year of Magical Thinking). I’ve got about another 7 or 8 on my to read list, but they don’t count. I also think it’s kind of funny that neither of the GG winners are on the list: David Gilmour’s A Perfect Night to Go to China nor John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce (which I have read). The Giller winner is there, which sort of shows they kind of got it right, but I still am in shock that Three Day Road didn’t win the GG, it’s by far the best book of the year, IMHO. Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong and the Globe‘s list is way off, but somehow, I don’t think so…

And I don’t see Best Abridging [ragdoll] for Little Women. Heh. Just kidding.

In addition to being the worst songwriter in Canadian songwriting history, it is now confirmed that he’s also a giant a**wipe. And people are still buying Nickelback records? If the drummer played on the record, he should get royalties. Like Chad‘s not making enough bloody money already? And his name is Chad which is preppie for a**wipe anyway.

A couple of years ago, I took a beginner’s knitting class at Romni Wools here in Toronto. For $75.00, and for three Sundays in a row, you meet at the bottom of the store and they teach you how to knit. My friend Sam actually introduced me to the class, after she had gone and found it extremely helpful.

My grandmother tried to teach me how to knit when I was a teenager. She gave up after a while because I was left-handed and couldn’t figure out how to knit in reverse. This time, I’m knitting right-handed and not worrying about being left-handed and trying to figure it out that way. It’s a good exercise for my brain anyway.

My mother, of course, in addition to being a wonderful cook with her own burgeoning catering company, was also a great seamstress and an excellent knitter. People hired her to make sweaters for them. I still have a couple of them. Nothing I would ever wear but they are beautiful. In my quest to know my mother better, to know myself better maybe, I’ve tried to be like her and do these things, more because it helps me remember her than the fact that I’m any good. Because I’m so not good at either sewing or knitting. I think I’m a half-decent cook, but that fact was highly debated this summer at the cottage by my brother and my RRBF.

Annnywaay. I’ve been knitting for a few years now, but haven’t graduated to anything bigger or more complex then squares, well, rectangles if we’re being specific. I can knit scarves and have made one really nice one, but I want to make something more interesting. Like a sweater or a poncho. I don’t do it enough to get really good, but I keep trying, which I suppose is all that matters.

The problem being that I don’t knit consistently enough. I do it in spurts, a bit here, a bit there, so that when it comes time to start a new project (I’m knitting a scarf for an ex-neighbour), that I forget everything. Oh, the basics come back to me, knit, purl, knit, purl, but I can’t remember other things, like how I was taught to slip the last stitch at the end of a row and then what? What comes next? I try purling, it looks funny; I knit the stitch and it looks okay but it’s not the clean ‘ladder’ look that I was taught at Romni. Who knows. I’m just making it all up as I go along. Kind of like when I was in grade 10 and decided I’d make myself a skirt by sewing two pieces of material together and that’s it. And I actually wore it. More than once.

6. So glad that Tom Cruise fired his sister aka “publicist” just in time for this juicy bit of fright night to find its way before the eyes of the unsuspecting public, I mean, his fans. What a wingnut. And why and how is this news anyway?

7. In response to a very loud, shouty email I sent to this fellow about getting unwanted spam, I received this (it’s now my most favourite email EVER):

Thought I bid you good bye – we have no business – no need to
communicate any further – hopefully it’s good bye forever….besides it was just
some friendly advice – I hear a cry for help. You seem like a very very very
angry, tense, moody, miserable person aren’t you – is life that
un-pleasant that you let a little email work you last nerve – you let someone you
don’t even know effect/affect you like that – some more good advice from a
NOW concerned community colleague who shares this city/country/world with
you – I hear they have a lot of good doctors and lot of shiny new pills
that’ll cure this – go visit somebody for that – or try breathing, stretching
and just letting it go, or tai-chi. Whatever you do something but do it b4
you break into road rage or hurt seriously yourself or somebody seriously +
never be a reaction to anyone or anything. have a beautiful life – try
having a more positive outlook to but now your scaring me…..

Dude obviously has way, way too much time on his hands. But, heh! How does he know me so well after such a short period of time. Not.

So I’ll be a band widow tomorrow night as my RRBF heads up to North Bay to play a show. He’s got rehersal tonight, and then he’s away tomorrow night. There are so many things I could do, writing, reading, sleeping—but I’m so bored of being in my house feeling crappy that I wish I could actually leave and go see a movie.

Wow, this blog post is boring even me. I’ll stop now.

1. Is it really too early (10.22 AM) to be eating cheesies?

2. How long should one wait before taking that shower she really should have taken three hours ago?

3. Why, oh why, must every site I turn to give me juicy information I can’t help clicking on about the utter and final demise of Jessica Simpson’s marriage?

4. Is it that bad to want to get all your work done so you can watch The Notebook at 4 PM for the, like, 18th time? Because it’s so not over for me, either, dude, totally.

5. There’s snow outside! It’s winter in Canada! I’m so excited. Yawn.

So Contemporary Verse 2 doesn’t want my poems. They “reviewed [my] work carefully and unfortunately [my] writing does not meet [their] needs at this time.” So carefully that they’ve cut and pasted the form letter into an email addressed, “Dear Poet.”

Kind of reminds me of my rejection letter from UBC when I applied to graduate school—they paid careful attention to my application as well, and then spelled my name wrong on the letter.

At least my Taddle Creek poem is coming out in two weeks. That’s one success for this miserable failure of a year anyway. I’m getting pulled down by the tired, achy, exhausted body…what does that Superman show say: “Somebody save me?”

Okay, now I’m even depressing myself. On to the next journal!

While I was waiting to see my kidney specialist, I finished Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. It’s the story of fifth-grader, Eliza Naumann, who suddenly finds herself the apple of her over-achieving father’s eye when she wins her school’s spelling bee. The book follows Elly’s spelling bee successes right to the nationals, where she comes this-close to winning.

The intimate and delicate balance of Eliza’s family life starts to fall apart against this backdrop of the spelling bee season—and through her experiences studying with her father, her life also changes.

I liked the book a lot, but thought that maybe it tried to do too much, and it became a bit overwhelming towards the end. However, I think she’s incredibly talented, and I’m looking forward to reading Goldberg’s new novel, Wickett’s Remedy. I also have no idea how they’ve adapted it into the movie that’s currently playing…but again, I’m immensely curious.