This Is The End

Yesterday was my last day of work. It was the last time I’ll need to take the car to the outer limits of Mississauga, too. So, I’m happy that I’ve just decreased my ecological footprint. As of next Monday, I’ll be taking the transit every day, walking after work, and in the summer, riding my bike. That makes me feel much better. I made a donation the other day to Tree Canada to offset some of my carbon emissions, but I still felt guilty every single time I got into the car, especially in the dead of summer, with sweat rising up off the asphalt, the earth burning up underneath me. Anyway, it’s over now, the daily commute.

For the first time in a long time, I actually left a job versus the job leaving me. Almost every experience in my adult life has been the other way around. I worked in magazines for many years before getting into the web side of things; and both of the magazines I worked for folded, which meant I lost my job twice in less than a year. In the first case, I had worked for three years on contract, which meant I got no package, no severance. I didn’t even get two weeks notice. The second magazine went bust after my only working there for eight months. In that case, despite how broke they were, we all still ended up with two weeks severance. This all happened during and just after my years in grad school as I was finishing up my Master’s degree with massive amounts of debt. I lived hand to mouth, paycheque to paycheque, constantly worrying about money and how to get the bills paid.

So leaving was always by signaled a time to panic. How was I going to pay the rent? How was I going to afford groceries? Each new job hunt was like a pressure cooker: it had to happen and it had to happen fast. And when I got fired from my old-old job by the boss from hell, it was met by a mini-nervous breakdown. I paced the hallways of our newly bought house convinced that we were headed for the poorhouse because my RRHB had recently lost his job as well. I think it was the most stressful period of my life.

And then things got under control. I had good spin on the story: evil empire firing a poor slightly disabled girl who was still recovering from hip replacement surgery. Girl with serious and scary disease thrown in the gallows of stress by a wicked witch who wanted nothing more than her own success and to punish anyone who spoke ill of her behind her back. Who was going to smell like a sweet Jo Malone perfume at the end of that story? Through some of the contacts I had made by working for the evil empire, I found my last job. And it was lovely. The people were lovely, I was working for and with books, which I adore. I kind of found my calling, I think.

So yesterday was bittersweet. I am sad to be leaving. I am thankful for the opportunities that I was given, for the people I’ve met, for the books I’ve read. But I am also totally thrilled for the new challenges that I’ll be facing at the end of the month. My new job is a combination of what I did for the evil empire and what I did up until yesterday. It was an opportunity I did not, or could not, turn down.

But I was also proud of myself that I made a decision based not on desperation, not on the basic need for survival, but for myself. As Oprah as that moment felt, I also feel somewhat vindicated. For the longest time, I felt put upon, depressed from all the tragedy in my life, frustrated that no matter how good I thought I was, terrible things kept happening to me. Some of what I felt just turned out to be life lessons: that you need to rise above certain things, hold your head up and work hard. Some of what I felt turned back inside me and caused things like depression and disease: that bad things happen to bad people, and illogical thoughts persisting, I must be the worst person on earth, so what’s the point of doing things that might make me happy, that might make me well adjusted.

So now with my week off, I have no stress. I’m not under the gun. I’m going to write my stories, take long walks, go shopping, maybe donate some more money to compensate for the fact that I would really like some new shoes, see movies and relax before I get back into the daily grind.

And I’m all about being well adjusted and taking deep breaths. Because my life might not be an episode of My Name is Earl, but it kind of feels that way, with all the good karma finally making its way back into the palm of my hand.

Downtown

The roads, as you well imagine, are a mess. This morning I got the car stuck in a snowbank coming out of the laneway behind my house. And when I tried to turn on the car, it wouldn’t work.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t panic. Instead, I calmly got out, walked the few houses over to our front door, and shouted, “RRHB, I need your help.” We dug the car out and I was on my way.

My new office? Yeah, it’s downtown which means I’ll calmly sit on the streetcar as it rumbles along plowing all of the snow in its way in two days time. I really, really hate driving.

The other scary winter driving story? A couple weekends ago when I went to the spa with my stepmother? I got the car stuck on a snowy hill when it started rolling…in the wrong direction. Soon, I was barrelling backwards down the hill and couldn’t slow down. For the very first time in my life, you know what I did? I used the emergency brake. After all, it was an emergency.

Come to think of it, I didn’t panic then either. But I was a bit nervous on the roads today, with the Curse of St. Valentine’s looming over my head and all.

Ann Equals Awesome

This morning at work we had a breakfast for YA superstar Ann Brashares. I’ve read and loved every one of the books in the Sisterhood series, and so it was a real pleasure to see her in person and have her sign a copy of the latest book Forever in Blue.

First off, she’s absolutely gorgeous, and had just come from her appearance on Canada AM, so the first thing she said was something along the lines of ‘that explains all the makeup.’ (And I’m probably paraphrasing).

She spoke for a few minutes and then someone asked if she wrote the books chronologically or if she wrote each character separately. And, in fact, it’s the latter. Brashares has colour-coded cue cards for each character and maps out what’s going to happen to each of them in one fell swoop. She spends as much time as she needs with each one, notes out all of their scenes, and then spreads out the cards all around her house to plot out the book.

It was inspiring to hear her speak about her creative process. She writes the books in that way because she feels that every character deserves her full attention, which I was fascinated with because it’s not the way that I write at all. I might try it though considering she’s finished, ahem, many books and I’ve never completed a one!

And Carmen is her favourite character, which sort of surprised me. But when I went up to talk to her and get my book signed, I told her that Bridget, being a motherless-daughter herself, had a special place in my heart. She also asked me a lot of questions about me and what I did at the company etc., etc., and I said, “I’m not here to talk about me!” And then we laughed. As a writer, she told me, she’s always more interested in other people’s lives than speaking about her own. Delightful, I say, absolutely delightful!

On the whole, she’s just wonderful, well-spoken, intelligent, everything you hope and expect an author to be…

Organic Beer…

…doesn’t give you any less a hangover.

Sigh.

Shhhh. I have news.

Yesterday, I quit my job. Not to worry, I have another one to go to in about three weeks, and I’m super excited about it.

I mean really excited.

Hence the imbibing of St. Peter’s organic beer until the wee hours.

And now, I hurt.

So I’ve been listening to my new favourite songs and trying to do the dishes for about forty-five minutes. There aren’t that many dishes. It’s just hard to, ahem, stand up.

If you’re wondering what my iTunes is cooking this morning:

1. A Mirror Without, Royal Wood
2. Under Control, The Strokes
3. Jolene, Dolly Parton
4. Snow (Hey Oh), Red Hot Chili Peppers
5. Save It For Later, English Beat

Oh yeah, that’s inspired me to re-write the first sentence of my long story about seventeen times. It keeps getting longer and longer with more commas, lots of adjectives and a really interesting metaphor that I can’t wait to try out on you all.

Happy Saturday!

I. Can’t. Stop. Smiling.

Readings Dot Org Indeed!

Last night Zesty and I braved the cold to attend a truly spectacular evening of readings at Harbourfront. Part of their weekly series, last night Vikram Chandra, Colm Tóibín and Neil Smith read from their new works. Of the three, Toibin, of course, stands out, the headliner who read last, he honestly brought tears to my eyes.

Sacred Games is a huge (and I mean massive) novel by Chandra, who read first. His readings were a bit dense but they did capture my interest both in terms of their subject matter (modern-day, crime-addled Mumbai), and their descriptive value. The third reading, of the passages the author selected, was by far the best. I’m not sure if it’s enough to pull me up and out into the novel, but there was a bit about women and marriage in his passage that grabbed me by its plaintive ache and sort of held on.

Neil Smith read about half of the first story from his Bang/Crunch, the collection that’s launched him as part of Knopf Canada’s New Face of Fiction this year. Tall, thin, impeccably dressed, Neil Smith’s reading was humourous and intriguing at the same time. The story, about a premature baby and her mother, and by extension her sperm donor of a father, was funny, insightful and urged me to read more.

But, as I said above, the true highlight of the evening for me was Tóibín. Wow. He sauntered on to stage looking like a middle-aged English professor in his jacket and thin tie, and his face has such deliciously deep creases that you could even call them folds. He started to speak immediately as he stepped behind the microphones, telling lovely stories about music festivals, troubles in Armagh and a trip to Australia. At first, you wonder where it’s all going, and then he read “A Song” from Mothers and Sons, and you slowly, as the narrative unfolds, realize that he’s showing you all of the inspiration for this particular story. I’m telling you, it brought tears to my eyes. Tears.

TRH Movies – A Triple Header

So I’ve been on the ‘oh my gosh I have to watch all the Oscar-nominated films in one go’ streak lately. It’s not that I’m going to do well in any awards night polls because, well, I never do—I always vote from the heart, which is the kiss of death in those types of contests.

Annnywaaay.

Children of Men
On Saturday afternoon, the RRHB and I went to go see Children of Men with Tara and Dave. Many, many people have been raving about how wonderful this movie is and about how it truly should have been nominated for Best Picture. I can certainly see why. Based on P.D. James’s novel of the same name, the film takes place in the near future after the human race has, essentially, ended—all women are infertile. Society is barely functioning. England is exporting all of its immigrants. Eerily familiar bombs are being detonated in coffee houses. Violence and civil disobedience are everywhere. In short, it’s on the verge of apocalypse. And so soon! The film is set twenty years from now, which is one of the reasons it scared the bloody crap out of me.

Clive Owen plays Theo Faron, an alcoholic, downtrodden London office worker who finds a shadow of his former self when he’s enlisted to help his underground-movement-leader of an ex-wife smuggle some important human cargo out of the country. It’s a bone-chilling and brilliant movie that should have gotten a lot more kudos than it did. Where’s Clive Owen’s love? He holds the movie together, from start to finish, and man, is the movie the better for it. Add to the mix superior art direction, brilliant editing, a wonderful script and man, you’ve got a superior piece of film work. And it’s not often that I rave, rave, rave about a film. The crucial test is whether or not I’m still thinking about it days later, and I am.

Half Nelson
Okay, I’ve never downloaded a movie from the internet before. But, and I’m not saying who, a certain someone I know and love does it a fair bit, and he grabbed Half Nelson the other night. The two of us, perched on desk chairs and eating lasagna for dinner, watched this utterly captivated picture from start to finish on the computer. I felt guilty the entire time.

Ryan Gosling plays Danny Dunne, a junior high school history/social studies teacher and aspiring writer with more problems than the usual Mr. Smith standing at the head of the class. A functioning addict who uses the kids like an anchor holding him on board his own life, Danny is a total mess when he’s not at school. Like one of those truly tortured souls who can’t possibly be meant for reality, he develops an oddly patriarchal and somewhat inappropriate relationship with Drey (Shareeka Epps). From the first, tragic minute when she discovers his fatal flaw, the two dance around the issue of his drug use, until the penultimate moment where Drey, when confronted with the cold, hard truth of the life she’s in the middle of, is forced to leave her childhood behind far sooner than she probably should.

Gosling’s performance is haunting and hectic, full of addiction ticks that aren’t remotely stereotypical but the product of a man whose talent is so compelling it almost steams off the screen. He is so magnetic that your body tingles when you watch him. And Shareeka Epps shows such wisdom in her own performance that the pair of them are both captivating and, yes, heartbreaking at the same time.

I truly think that Half Nelson might be my favourite movie I’ve seen this year (I’m using ‘year’ in terms of Oscar-nominated pictures, of course).

Music and Lyrics
Another film I had to review for Chart, this film, a fun, whimsical romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant turned out to be kind of charming and almost funny. And, seriously, watching it just for Hugh Grant’s dancing was enough for me, more to come on that one when I write my “official” review.

Amazon Takes Down The Long Tail…

…By one ridiculous email after another.

This morning I opened up my email to find yet another useless ‘if you like this you’re sure to love this’ email from Amazon.ca. First off, let me say that I heart Amazon and do use their site all the time. What I find frustrating is the very odd computer program that matches up the likes and dislikes, which obviously doesn’t know its head from its motherboard’s a**.

And I quote:

We’ve noticed that customers who have expressed interest in Snow by Orhan Pamuk have also ordered Still Life With Husband by Lauren Fox. For this reason, you might like to know that Lauren Fox’s Still Life With Husband is now available in Hardcover. You can order your copy at a savings of 37% by following the link below.

Okay, here are all the things that are wrong with this:

1. I did not order Snow, I merely browsed the title while doing research for my Around the World in 52 Books. Amazon should not be recommending books based upon browsing, it makes me feel like my every single movement is being watched, categorized and then pounced upon. It makes me want to destroy my profile and never shop there again.

2. Seriously? Still Life with Husband? Compared to Nobel-prize winning Pamuk? Here’s the description:

Yes, it’s an affair novel, but file this adroit but placid debut under chick lit for early marrieds—the ones who are not sure they want to be on the baby-house-‘burbs track. At 30, Emily Ross is a Milwaukee freelance writer with a part-time job as assistant editor at a medical journal called Male Reproduction and a marriage to “steady, staid” Kevin, a technical writer she met in college. Kevin, “innocent and intolerable,” wants a baby and a house. Emily is ambivalent and bored. A few pages in, Emily meets David Keller, a dark, good-looking writer/editor at the local alternative newspaper, and starts an affair. Things, as expected, do not go well, but Fox’s voice is steady, moving easily between comedy and drama.

They’re comparing Snow, crimes against Turkishness-Amnesty call out serious-type writing to chicklit, and not just any old chicklit, but vapid, trite and obviously clichéd chicklit.

I’m all for the terribly abused and over-used long tail philosophy of marketing, but the problem remains that Amazon is attempting to harness what should just come naturally: a person making connections through books and finding new authors based on external recommendations. This recommendation system shouldn’t be some computer program that’s matched up two books that wouldn’t be caught dead being catagorized together on a table if the bookstore were any less virtual. Obviously, there’s a problem with the circuitry. And for now, under no circumstances will I be ordering Still Life with Husband.

Write Around Town Debuts

Lots and lots to update on, not the least of which is one more book down from the 1001 Books list, Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, a visit to the spa, a night of 24, and two movies (Music & Lyrics and Children of Men).

But for now, if you’re at all interested in literary events in Toronto, I’ve started to write a monthly column for Experience Toronto called Write Around Town. It’s the first one, so it’s a bit rough around the edges, but I’m excited about it and am looking forward to having something fun to write every month for someone other than myself!

A Bird In The Hand

Last night, despite feeling utterly under the weather, I headed out in the cold to my first Sweater class at Knitomatic. I arrived, of course, without needles, but luckily there were some in the store I could use and, after I did my gauge swatch, it was a good thing I hadn’t bought needles because I work tight so I needed to go up a size anyway.

We’re knitting a raglan sweater in the round, which I’ve never done before, so I’m excited about it. I’ve got this rich grey wool with lovely white strands through it that looks very old fashioned. I think it’ll make a grand sweater.

The owner of the store has a lovebird named Pluto. He’s really sweet and affectionate and took quite a liking to me. At one point, he was perching on his owner’s water glass, after dropping himself in more than once for a quick drink, he looked and chirped at me until I paid attention to him. I held out my hand so he could jump on. Then, he hopped up to my shoulder and trilled in my ear as I chatted with him.

And then he pooped on my new coat.

Heh.

It’s good luck, isn’t it? When a bird poops on you?

Anyway, I’m taking it as a sign that my sweater will turn out brilliantly.