Love In The Grocery Aisle

So, I totally just finished up with my very inspiring writer’s group, and stopped into the grocery store for (I am not going to lie) some rice chips. I am always fascinated by other people’s groceries: what’s in the cart, on the list, how it figures into their lives. The fellow in front of me had an awesome selection, yams, broccoli, spinach, lactose-free ice cream.

And he was as delicious as his items, the perfect chicklit hero, tall, almost-Matthew-Fox, with short dark hair and these sweet freckles. Just seeing him made me want to write a story about an unlucky in love heroine who sees the perfect man in the grocery store (sans list, therefore single, of course) and lives happily ever after.

See, writer’s group totally rocks.

#58 – I Feel Bad About My Neck

Even after finishing Nora Ephron’s supremely cute I Feel Bad About My Neck, I’m not really sure if I’m a fan of hers or not. I’d have to say that I found Hanging Up to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and even if she’s only partially responsible for that atrocity, I’m still going to hold it against her. Her meditations on aging are cute and funny, more like tiny vignettes strung together with Ephron herself as the only common thread.

Roll-your-eyes kind of mom wisdom mixed up with tidbits about the non-joys of growing older, I Feel Bad About My Neck reads more like a magazine you’d read in the doctor’s office than “literature” of the highest order. Which I think is totally fine—it’s all my brain could withstand this week. In some ways, I guess I’m lucky. I’m about half Ephron’s age, so at least I know now to stock up on the black turtlenecks for when I do feel bad about my own neck. It’s bound to happen someday.

Although, I’d be interested to see what she thinks about something other than cabbage strudel and her apartment couches. There’s a sweet chapter on Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (and I agree, it’s an awesome novel), but for the most part, the oh-wise-sage moments are a little too endearing.

Watch out for cute overload: People who spend too much time in front of the computer, “Mouse Potatoes.” Heh.

The best piece of advice: If you’re under 34 put on a bikini and wear it all the time. Don’t take it off until you turn 35.

The second-best piece of advice: Never marry someone you wouldn’t want to be divorced from…now that’s an interesting way to look at love in the modern world.

Flashdance

Oh yeah, I went by myself to dance class tonight. I was terrified. But it was (and continues to be) a wonderful experience. Tonight, the teacher, Helen, involked Martha Graham, “Ms. Graham”, she said, as we did contractions and high releases on the floor. My hip is still totally stiff but I am exhilerated by the end of the 90 minutes.

It makes me want more, more, more. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Other milestones reached? I read 2 books (updates to come), finished the first draft of one of my abridged books and took the last of the prednisone for the foreseeable future.

I am exhausted but elated all in the same breath.

Now, Here’s A Sentence…

…I never thought I would write. My RRHB is obsessed, OBSESSED, with So You Think You Can Dance. It’s on his Faux-Vo list of shows he absolutely must watch. In fact, at this very moment, he’s watching the top 20 contestants compete in pairs (he’s still on the season currently airing on MuchMusic, I think it’s Season 2). We almost missed the beginning of The Wire last night because he wanted to see Stanislav finish his ballroom dance.

October Reading Challenge

Okay, so I read somewhere that one of the challenges floating around is to read 4 scary books before Hallowe’en. Now this is a challenge I might be able to finish. I’m totally including The Ruins on my list because, well, I am. And then I’m reading The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (totally creepy), The Children of Men (I am half-way through and am totally enjoying it—it’s leftover summer reading), and one more mystery, probably The Thirteenth Tale, because I’ve already started it three times (gave one copy away, left another on a plane, have a third at home) and think that it’s about time I finished it.

Like Sassymonkey, I can not go a month without a challenge. And since I failed so miserably at my Summer Reading challenge, I thought I’d make this one easy.

Bleary-Eyed And Tired

I have been abridging since eleven AM. I am on a roll but also have turned bleary-eyed. My fingers are aching. My wrists are on fire, like the poor woman in the commercial. And, I must confess, I’m a little smelly because I haven’t had a shower. But it’s one big push today and I’m trying to get as much done as I possibly can. Tomorrow, it’s back to work. And then I have all of next week off to finish everything up. It seems that time will fly by, which is exactly what I do not want.

Falling Behind

I have fallen behind in just about everything this fall: my abridgings, my own writing, my reading, and I just don’t know where the time goes. Except I do, kind of, television, working, doing stuff, trips, anything but sitting on my ass and doing the stuff I’m supposed to be doing. But now that it’s getting colder, I’m hoping that things calm down a little.

The other thing I’m missing? My annual sojourn of the band widow. For the first time in about 6 years my RRHB is actually home in the fall. He’s never home in the fall. I’m missing the few weeks I have to myself in this season to regroup, figure myself out and get organized for the winter. Hell, I haven’t made a meal plan all summer. What’s wrong with me? AND, I can’t even blame it on my health, because I truly am feeling much better and far, far less diseased.

#57 – Lullabies For Little Criminals

A friend gave me this book while we were in Winnipeg because I left my copy of The Thirteenth Tale on the plane (yet another in a long line of problems plaguing our otherwise totally awesome trip). Now, I never leave home without more than one book, like, never. I hate being stuck reading something that I might not like and not having any options. Generally, this means I have books stashed all over the place: in suitcases, carry-ons, purses, RRHB’s backpack, you name it, I’ll put a book in there. Of course, this time, the only time I leave the house with one book, is the moment I choose to leave my book on the airplane from hell. Whatever. I was stranded with nothing to read. It’s like being left out from your favourite party, not having a book, and I really hate that.

Annnwwaaay. Instead of going to a bookstore, said friend loaned me Heather O’Neill’s first novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. Set in Montreal, I’m thinking in either the late 1970s or early 1980s, the novel tells the story of Baby, a girl who turns 13 over the course of the story. But this is no average bildungsroman, as Baby’s journey takes her as far away from the normal kid on a bike, Hollywood troubled teen, as you can possibly imagine. Her father, Jules, who was only 15 when she was born, is a heroin addict; totally incapable of parenting, even after he gets out of rehab, Baby is forced to grow up on her own, painfully noting time and time again, about what not having a mother means to a girl that age. Her own mother, who we hear very little about in a concrete way until the end of the book, died when she was a baby.

The novel falls into the cracks and crevices of the seedy Montreal streets as Baby and Jules move from one rundown apartment to the next. Constantly in and out of social service situations (group home, neighbour’s house, juvie), Baby has no one to guide her, and making her own way truly isn’t making anything better, as she falls into a terribly destructive relationship with a pimp named Alphonse. And every time Baby makes a bad decision, your heart breaks just a little; she’s smart, she’s beautiful, but she has no chance or opportunity to take a different path.

O’Neill’s writing tumbles down into simile upon simile, which sometimes had my head spinning, but it’s so lovely and absolutely engaging that it didn’t matter to me that it might be a little bit too much. The story rushes along, sometimes breaking back into Baby’s memories, and almost crashes into the redemptive ending, like the end to a really good rock song. Of the 50-odd books I’ve read this year, this one got caught in my throat (all motherless daughter stories do, dammit!) and I related to it on many levels, not because I had anything in common with the protagonist, but because O’Neill does such a good job of creating her world that you immediately empathize with Baby, all you want is for her to succeed. I’m not going to spoil the ending, in fact, I’m not going to say much more at all, except for a first-time novel, it’s pretty damn outstanding.

TRH Movie: An Unfinished Life, Pride & Prejudice Redux

Okay, I’m not feeling too well, as you’ve probably gathered from the lack of posts and the, ahem, too many trips to the ladies, so last night as my RRHB went out for his usual Wednesday night drinks, I stayed home supposedly to “work.” I wrote one sentence, quite a good sentence I thought, a metaphor about how this man (who knows what man or what character) is slow to love like a car that takes time to start (okay it sounds cheesy when I write it here) and then put the pen down, gathered up the cat and watched two girlie movies in a row—on a school night, gasp.

The first An Unfinished Life has been on the Faux-Vo for a while gathering dust (along with Water, Wallace and Gromit and a few others) and after the stern talking to I got from said RRHB about allowing said films to gather said dust, I decided to watch it, J-Lo be damned. And it was meh. But I have to say, I enjoy Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman, and I’d watch them in just about anything. You can tell this was adapted from a slow, writerly novel, one that I have not read so I can’t comment on the page-to-movie translation, because the film is slow yet precise, just like good literature. It’s a bit too over-told, especially the bad boyfriend “girl doesn’t deserve better” storyline that J-Lo seems utterly drawn to (how many movies has she been in where her fellow knocks her about, seriously? enough already, we don’t believe it, you could kick their asses with your bitchy looks anyway and no one believe your “acting”). Also, the overwhelmingly obvious bear as symbol (yawn, and didn’t Brad Pitt kill that thing, like, years ago?) of Robert Redford’s past locked up and needing to be set free was tiresome, but I got a bit teary at the end.

Then I became an absolute mess; the weeping and gasping for breath kind of puddle as I watched Pride and Prejudice for the, um, third time. I can’t help it—that film is like girlie crack, it’s a sugar high when I’m off the sweets, and I bawled like a baby in between pausing for the aforementioned visits to the bathroom (is that TMI?). Annnywaaay. I erased it just so I wouldn’t sit down and watch it a half-dozen more times and therefore get absolutely no abridging work done this week, which honestly is so hard-going that I’m getting quite disheartened about the fact that I’ll probably miss my deadlines.

I picked hard books this time around. Dummy.