my tragic right hip

On the best part of the night last night, Tina and I went out for dinner to this little restaurant in her neighbourhood (I’ll fill the name in later, because I didn’t write it down). We had the most wonderful trout with julienne green beans, and then for dessert, I had warm bananas in a pastry with vanilla ice cream and molten chocolate poured all over it. It was absolutely marvellous. This morning, the wonderful friend that Tina, I woke up to two fresh pain du chocolat, my absolute favourite and a delicous cup of tea. You know, I’ve never eaten a bad meal in Paris, it’s brilliant how wonderful it is.

Oh, and we were talking about French Women Don’t Get Fat, and Tina was verifying that a lot of it is genetics, but that the culture over here is just as obsessed about weight and body image as we are in the west. I said it was a diet book disguised as a fancy lifestyle book, and I think I’m sticking to that original observation.

The Eurostar trip to Paris yesterday afternoon seemed like it would be a dream. When I got on and saw that I was surrounded my older couples travelling together, I know it would be quiet. But then, as with most things you tend to idealize by looking forward to so much, my excitement soon faded.

I find the seats and the trains themselves to be kind of shabby for how expensive they are, and being a single traveller, you certainly get a bit shafted—my seat was beside a mirror—the couple in front and the family to my right had much better views.

After being up essentially for a good 24 hours by that point, I was really looking forward to a nap…until the 4-year-old to my right started playing a video game. Thank goodness I brought ear plugs, they’re much better than having a temper tantrum because I’m so tired and can’t take the beep-beep-crash-beep of the Game Boy. What happened to playing a couple of games of cards? All three kids in the family took out the games and started playing even before the train even left the station.

I slept for all three hours of the trip, with a brief stop for lunch, which was lovely hummous followed by a nice dish of curried tofu in pasta. It was yummy, and the saving grace of my journey. It’s worth the tiny bit of extra money to travel upper class on the Eurostar, just to get a nice meal and not to have to eat potato chips and chocolate bars, or even the bad packaged sandwiches. Well, I’ll admit that had a dreamy quality to it, so it all wasn’t lost!

Then, the adventure really began. Tina had given me directions to her house, which is all fine and good, but I decided to take a taxi (she said it would be between 12-20 Euros). Except the taxi driver totally ripped me off. We went on a wild goose chase, pretended not to speak English when I tried to tell him we were totally lost because I’d seen the 12th arrondissment and knew Tina’s apartment had to be around there somewhere. He drove me around in circles for about 20 minutes and the entire ride cost almost 40 Euros, which is just under $100.00 Cdn dollars. Now I was mad, fuming mad! I made him give me a receipt and never tipped him a cent, but should have gotten out of the car and grabbed my luggage and just handed him 20 Euros. Tina’s going to try to get some of my money back. She’s feisty. I have hopes.

Today’s my birthday. I am officially the same age my mother was when she had the accident. My heart’s feeling totally battered and broken, and I miss her so much these days that I think I might just spontaneously turn into a puddle of salty tears. I can’t decide if I want to celebrate the fact that I’m a year older or mourn the fact that she never got to see the world past this age. Thing is, it’s so hard to because you realize that 34 isn’t all that old.

Now I just have to make sure I do something with my life that she would be proud of. These days, I don’t know if she would be, and maybe it’s because I’m just tired from travelling and frustrated with jerkoff Parisian cab drivers who take advantage of people on the day before their birthdays in a country their mother would have loved, if only she had made it to her next birthday.

Today, I’m going to the Musee d’Orsay. Have my Metro tickets burning a whole in my pocket, and have some crisp new Euros of my own to burn.

The first part of my trip, the getting there, is almost over. I’m sitting in an Internet Cafe on the South Bank after taking a walk down the Thames. Wasting a bit of time before I board my train to Paris.

The plane ride was uneventful, if by “uneventful” one means putting up with the whinest, screamiest child I’ve ever encountered on a flight. My seat was awesome, the food was really quite good, and I watched Bruce Willis brood in Hostage. My inner clock’s a bit messed up, but the awful wanting to throw myself under the tube feeling I had the last time we visited London and had an overnight trip isn’t there—maybe I just knew what to expect.

Took the Heathrow Express to Paddington, than the Underground to Waterloo, left my bag in “left luggage,” and walked along toward the Waterloo Bridge, and back again, now I’m off to the station—I don’t want to miss my train.

It’s funny. I was a bit scared on the subway, but there were so many people, all of them just getting on with their days, their lives, pushing forward because that’s just what you do. Then, I took a deep breath and fell into a young man wearing navy jogging pants and running shoes trying quite hard to look like Donnie Wahlberg. Just like every other day.

As the tradition continues, our 3rd Hillside was quite excellent, with the exception of course, of my ever-increasing allergic reaction to the sun. Here are the top 10 reasons why Hillside rocked this year.

1. The Guelph Conservation Area / Lake.

It’s really a lovely place to have an outdoor festival. The surroundings are beautiful, and you feel nothing but peace and calm, despite the heat, despite the crowds, despite the awful port-o-potties.

2. The Program

There was an excellent line-up of acts this year, the RRBF’s band graduated to the mainstage this year and actually opened Hillside. They played a great show and had Guelph’s own “Crying Out Loud” choir come up and sing back-up for a number of songs on his new album. That night The Lowest of the Low played, and then The Weakerthans, with the RRBF pitching in for a number of songs as an auxiliary member, quite a night for rock and roll. Oh, and Cuff the Duke played too, they rocked, as per usual. I’m not a huge fan of The Arcade Fire, but it was an interesting spectacle, they don’t really live up to the hype, but the RRBF says they’re much better in a smaller venue.

3. Being the Rock Girlfriend

Means that you get a sparkly green wristband that gives you all access. This wonderful privilege means that you can hang out backstage and see Canadian rock legends like Sam Roberts, who is very short, but remarkably handsome. Oh, we were born in a flame.

4. Excellent Food

Well, the backstage food wasn’t totally awesome this year, but the vendor’s always have excellent goods, especially Mapleton Organic Ice Cream.

5. Staying in a Hotel vs. Camping

Um, yeah, the last Hillside where the RRBF played we camped. What a giant mistake that was, especially considering Hillside pays for a hotel for the night that he plays. Annnywaay. We camped amidst a really annoying hippie drum circle, massive orgies going on around us, and totally drunk knuckleheads that use all the toilet paper and puke. So this year, I refused to camp—we stayed at the Travelodge instead, a nice cool room with a semi-comfortable bed and a shower that hits you like a hurricane, so much nicer to go back and spend another hot day outside watching great music.

6. Swimming

See #1. The water was beautiful and ear infection be damned. I went in anyway. Even if the rash came back fierce afterwards, I still loved being in the water. Damn it’s nasty, my arms look like they’ve had some sort of blistering poison poured all over them. Stupid disease.

7. Hanging out With Sam, Sadie and Jay

Babies are so much fun! Especially when they giggle and coo, and smile and laugh, and play with a plum and kick their feet to the music. And visiting with Sam and Jay is always a pleasure—it’s something I should do more often.

8. Hanging out With the Peeps

Which is always fun because the RRBF’s friends, who I guess by this point are my friends too, but whatever, it’s been seven bloody years, are smart, witty, funny, and really fun.

9. Laughing at the Non-First Aid Tent

So the hippie-loving, all-inclusive nature of the Hillside Festival certainly doesn’t expect anyone to get sick. I went to see if they had any antihistomines for my rash and the fellow said, “We don’t really have anything. I can offer you some ice.” Wha? Oh, if you break your leg, here’s some ice! If you fall and scratch yourself, help yourself to some ice! Heh.

10. Sundays at Home

Driving home late at night, smelling the grass and the fresh air, feeling tired but still kind of excited and then getting up today and getting ready to go to Europe!

T-minus about 6 hours until I’m on the plane and bound for London-town. I’ll keep you all posted as well as can be expected as I visit Paris, Ireland and London.

And I’m back covered in a rash from head to toe about to jump into bed before I go to the airport tomorrow for my European odyssey. More tomorrow!

Well, I was back at the doctor’s today. In addition to feeling horribly sorry for myself, I now have an ear infection. Wha? Who knows where it came from or why it happened. And trust me, every single person from doctor to pharmacist asked, “Have you been swimming?” Um, no—there’s no way I’m putting this tubby ole ass of mine into a bathing suit this summer, my scars need to heal!

Oh, and creatinine update: it’s slightly down at 126, which is really a lot better than 139 or whatever it was the last time I went in.

Well, at least an ear infection is better than a black eye. Won’t be nice for the plane ride though.

Sophie Kinsella’s latest book, The Undomestic Goddess lives up to every cliche that could ever be said about those kinds of books. It’s chicklit to the core, complete with the proto-feminist workaholic right down to the hunky gardener that Samantha Sweeting, the protagonist, falls in love with.

Her writing reads so well, and Kinsella has a great gift for creating fabulous female characters. But maybe she suffers from the fact that she’s so successful rather than perhaps benefiting from it. What she needs is a really good editor (I call this the Margaret Atwood Dilemma) who isn’t afraid to say, “This plot needs some work,” not “your book is so fabulously wonderful and will make us all a pile of money,” which it will, but still, perhaps not the point?

There are so many holes in the plot of this book (high powered lawyer makes a huge mistake, causes her a partnership in London’s best firm, lawyer runs away and ends up as a housekeeper…and then falls in love) that it sort of ruined the book for me. And I’m not talking about the see-through nature of most of these books, how easy it is to see what’s going to happen from half-way into the first paragraph, it’s seemingly more than that in this case.

Kinsella brings in characters only to drop them, never to be heard from again. She creates these energetic scenes and then can’t write through them well enough not to rely on the cliches that seem to pepper every other paragraph. She creates these heart-stopping situations (something about a poor legal contract that her new employers are about to sign) and then never talks about it again leaving me wondering what the hell happened, and then she’s off on the next tangent, rolling into the inevitable conclusion right down to the pap of an ending that involves, ahem, a train and someone, ahem, chasing after someone else. Ew.

It would be nice to say the she’s maturing through her novels, this being, what the fifth or sixth? But what seems to happen is that her books seem to be getting more and more derivative. Yeah, the whole lawyer-goes-slumming chicklit plot was already done by Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes, which is by far the better book.

Now, I read this book in about three hours, what does that say about me, and about The Undomestic Goddess? Visit your local library for chicklit, don’t waste your precious book buying dollars. Or start a chicklit club, and each girl buys one book and then trades. Because they are like sugar, probably not very good for you but impossible not to eat when you’ve got that craving.

Dear Alexander McCall Smith:

I (heart) you. Every page of The Kalahari Typing School For Men made me care even more about characters that I already love. Every time Mma Ramotswe solves a case, cares for her foster children or speaks reverently about her father, I swoon. Soon I’ll have finished all six books and then will be left with a gaping hole of nothingness to be filled in pale comparison by some books I have yet to meet.

Sigh.

…a brand-new side effect for the new medication, extreme exhaustion. If I could prop my eyelids open with a toothpick, I would.

Seriously, shut up Leah McLaren and your useless column (link via bookninja.com). Like bookninja, I too find it hard to make it to the end of your ridiculous “articles.” And, please, if only ALL of the problems in the world were as trivial as the ones you ramble on about week after week, holy solipsism batman.

You know, having just gotten another contract to write an abridged classic, I feel nothing but lucky for my good fortune. Never once do I sit around thinking, “Oh what a burden to have to write this book, oh what a troubled life to have to sit and be a creative person for the majority of the hours I spend toiling away being fantastic, rich and spoiled.” I mean if someone PAID me to write a novel, I’d be pleased as punch, and not to mention the suckers, ahem, like me who once they finish something will have to actually work her ass off to get it published. What reality is she living in, I mean really?

Nothing but ire McLaren, nothing but ire.