Dark Days Ahead

It was my monthly check up at the doctor's on Monday. Thankfully, we had an extra-long long weekend and I had the day off. While I was upset at the time, the more I think about the visit, the sadder I get. My kidney function continues to be poor, so much so that he finally gave up the ghost in terms of the CellCept, admitting the drug sort of failed me. Now, I'm back on imuran, which is fine; it's a drug I've taken before and know works, but my creatinine level has never been this high before (it's at 139, a normal level is around 60), and I'm scared of all kinds of things. Not having my kidneys, having to do dialysis, having to have a transplant, being on meds for a long, long time, never being able to have a family, all kinds of stuff that make a tough year even tougher.

A couple of weeks ago, I read this article (link via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind) by Nancy Pate about how hard it is to be a writer when dealing with a debilitating auto-immune disease. I felt better knowing that, of course, I'm not the only one dealing with this stuff, but at least Pace is making a living from her pen still. I've stopped writing professionally with the exception of the abridged classics and wonder if I'll ever have the energy to do anything substantial again.

#32 Tears of the Giraffe

As I've said before, I'm totally obsessed now with Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. I finished #2 last night, Tears of the Giraffe and loved it. The sweet, simple story of the everyday lives of Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, intertwined with the usual detective work of Precious and her secretary/assistant, make for a pleasant, quick but nonetheless enjoyable read.

In this particular book, Mma solves the case of an American boy who had been missing for ten years, giving his mother peace without necessarily ruining the lives of the other people necessarily involved. As always, McCall Smith has a way with characters, narrative and/or plot that make reading these books like floating along on the lake on a hot summer day in July. I'm starting #3, Morality for Beautiful Girls today.

And While I'm Talking About My Ex-Work

It's nice to know that when it comes to Bosses From Hell, there's at least a history to refer to. I wonder why she didn't make this list—perhaps because she's reigning over a teeny-tiny online department for a Canadian broadcasting company. But I'd swear, she's right up there with Leona Helmsley, in fact, I'd say that's a pretty fair comparison.

But I truly have to wonder what makes people act so completely uncharitable when it comes to money and/or the making of it. There must be so much deep psychological baggage with these people to act this way that no amount of success monetary or otherwise would ever make them happy. Man, it makes me glad to know that I'm out of her rat race. Who ever would have thought getting fired would actually be a blessing, especially considering I'm using a good bulk of the money to go to Europe this summer. Now that's karma for you.

They Might Have Fired Me...

...But they can't get away from me that easily. My friend Sue noticed that one of the sites I used to run has got a picture of me up on their features landing page. It's from an old article I wrote a few years back about the history of cottages, which is actually quite fascinating. But there's me in my life jacket looking quite young and semi-cute. And low and behold, they haven't stripped my byline either, will miracles never cease.

Feeling Groovy!

Last night my RRBF played an awesome gig, ahem, those are rock terms, not mine, at Sneaky Dee's for a series called Wavelength. They headlined, the club was packed, the Hylozoists played as well, and it was a veritable cornucopia of Toronto indie rock gods.

Kevin Drew was there, and I'm always amazed that people recognize me as me, in terms of belonging to some extent to my RRBF, but that my face is familiar as well. He gave me a big hug, and said, "Tell him they were awesome. I'm leaving now. Tell them they were great!" Which is very cool coming from the lead singer of one of the most acclaimed indie rock bands around, Broken Social Scene.

There were tons of fun people there, all kinds of friends, and I danced and jumped and whooped and hollered and had a grand old time. I love my new bionic hip. My tummy held court well and I managed to get some sleep. All in all a brilliant kind of day.

War of the Worlds

Well, well, Tom Cruise, for all the fanfare, for all the ridiculous virtual time spent discussing your stunt/not-stunt of a relationship, thank goodness Spielberg had the good sense to make a good film.

We went to see War of the Worlds, having seen almost every other summer film out there, it was all that was left. And you know, I liked it, thought that it was scary, realistic and only got somewhat hokey near the end. In the end, worth the full price of admission. Now can everyone stop talking about how crazy he is and get on with things that really matter in the world?

Oh, and did anyone actually go to Live 8? How was it?

The Fine Line Between Lazy and Ill

A constant battle goes on within myself these days. All at once I feel tired, frustrated, upset and angry because the disease is "grumbling," (in the very technical terms of the doctor). And then I feel incredibly guilty for feeling that way, because what am I really doing with my life? I'm not helping people. I'm not writing the next "great Canadian novel." I'm not really doing anything except feeling sorry for myself and then feeling guilty for not doing enough with this life that was given to me. Perhaps even given back to me when I was nineteen and the disease was at its worse.

Now, with my new bionic hip, I'm not really in pain anymore, and that means I can be more active, except I can't, because I'm both tired and strung out at the same time. On beautiful days like today, even listening to Edith Piaf, planning my trip (T-21 days) to Paris, Ireland and London, I feel like I'm just not doing enough. But what is enough? And what should I be doing with my life? I'm hoping I'll have some answers at the end of the summer.

It's a hard birthday coming up. A milestone, to reach the same age your mother never made it past. My friend, Zesty, said that Madonna had a complete breakdown when she got to that birthday. I'm sort of headed in the same direction. I feel bad because I'm so lazy, rendered relatively incapable of a normal everyday existence by a combination of silly meds and an even sillier disease, and then I feel even more guilty because would my mother really be proud of me wasting my life away—a gift she never had.

It's a hard knock life.

Stuck in the City

Woke up this morning at 4 AM, threw up, and tried to go back to sleep. No cottage for me. Now I'm stuck at home on the couch watching dreck like Shrek 2 on TMN. Is it just me or does that film have just about the worst soundtrack in the history of popular cinema?

To Cottage or Not to Cottage

This morning I woke up feeling okay, feeling like I could handle the drive up to the cottage, the hours I'd have to spend cleaning up all the mouse poop, the buying of the groceries, and everything else I'd have to do. This evening, my stomach can barely handle a can of ginger ale and I'm feeling so tired I don't even know if I can make it out of bed.

Tomorrow is another day. A Canada Day. So I'll see how I'm feeling then and get back to you. If you don't hear from me. I've gone to Cordova Lake.

Sam & Sadie

There's nothing like a wonderful visit in the afternoon with a good friend. Where you see her beautiful, happy, healthy, sweet baby girl giggling, cooing and chewing on her toes. Makes up just a little bit for all the hair falling out of my head in the shower in the morning. Blech!

#31 Faceless Killers

I finished Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers this morning. I've come to the conclusion that mysteries are the perfect summer read. They're captivating and funny, sometimes interesting but always shocking in some way. They are rewarding in the way that Law and Order is rewarding. Thanks to JKS for recommending the book—I couldn't put it down, just like the other mystery I read lately.

Oh, and I gave up on the quest to read the "classics" of literature, in this bloody heat, it's impossible.

So, Faceless Killers finds Ystad (in Sweden) police inspector Kurt Wallander trying to solve a very difficult case. Two elderly farmers are attacked late one winter evening. The husband bludgeoned to death and his wife left for dead with her head in a noose. As the woman expires in the hospital, the last word she utters is "foreign", over and over again. This sends Wallander, a rough and ready cop with a broken marriage and an even worse case of insomnia, on a crazy ride to find the killers. It's a solid book that intertwines the mystery with the ins and outs of Swedish politics, in terms of how the country deals with immigration. Now I'm going to have to look up the rest of the books in the bloody series. Mysteries are even more addictive than chick lit.

Heat = Bad Moods

The city continues to swelter under smog and high temperatures. Walking around downtown everyone complains about the weather and looks miserable. Sitting in a government office waiting doesn't make anyone more happy either. It's strange, how the weather affects people, and how we spend so much of our time figuring ways around it instead of figuring out ways to live in it.

We've got air conditioning so we can close our windows and doors, chill ourselves to the bone and ignore summer. Only now Toronto Hydro is urging people to reduce electricity because it's about to blow—well not seriously, but we're consuming way, way too much these days. I feel guilty just turning it on at night, but my RRBF can't take the heat either, like so many people I know.

We drive everywhere, which contributes to the smog, which makes us need the air conditioning, which drives up the electricity, which makes our footprint bigger, which makes me think of the frog on the log in the middle of the lake, and so on. But it's not so much the driving, as the people who leave their cars idling. The silly morons who are still convinced that SUVs (aka Stupid Useless Vehicles) are needed for the off-roading on Jameson between King and Queen Streets.

And now, all of you in SUVs should drive around with egg on your face. The US are going to destroy a small section of the caribou's natural migration and/or habitation in the north for SIX MONTHS of oil. Six months. Resources that will last for less than half a year will destroy hundreds of thousands of years of natural habitat. What's wrong with you?

And no wonder Canadians "hate" Americans so much. What's wrong with those people who voted for the oil drilling, how short-sighted are they? How little do they care about the Earth, the animals, the environment. I'm getting so upset just thinking about it, and before you say it, yes, it just happens to be that time of the month.

In Her Shoes

I want to call in sick the day this film opens and go see it with all my girlfriends. If it's one tenth as good as the book, it'll be an amazing girlie movie. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Books I Can't Wait to Read

My stack of "to read" books (if I did them according to height) might not be as tall as the Penguin Classics offer out there right now (link via Publishers Lunch), but it's certainly up there. And in light of the fact that I'll probably never make it through the other list I posted here, I'm moving on to some of the books coming out this fall that I really can not wait to read. They are in no particular order:

1. Elizabeth Ruth. Smoke. I'm not saying this because I did a delightful interview with her over on chicklit, and I'm not listing it simply because she's a friend, but because she's a wonderful writer, and I really liked Ten Good Seconds of Silence.

2. John Irving. Until I Find You. John Irving's books have carried me through difficult times. A Prayer For Owen Meany remains one of the greatest American novels published in the second half of last century. Irving remains one of our greatest writers (I claim him for Canada, if only because I know he often claims Canada for himself), but his last few books have been disappointing. There's nothing that I despise more than reading mid-life crises on the page. (Salmon Rushdie, I'm looking at you, don't duck—they're just words.) Fingers crossed this book brings us back into the fold, and doesn't convince me to stop reading Irving all together.

3. Michael Cunningham. Specimen Days. The Hours—need I say more.

4. Jane Urquhart. A Map of Glass. I took a field trip to see the church she wrote about in The Stonecarvers. I wonder where this book will send me? Somewhere inspiring, I'm sure.

5. Elizabeth Kostova. The Historian. This book is getting so much buzz that I'm almost afraid to read it because I'm afraid it'll turn out like The Crimson Petal and the White, which was quite possibly the worst book I'd read in years. However, this book is about Dracula? How can anyone resist Dracula? Honestly!

Star Gazing

At a trade show for work, I stood in line, like the true geek that I am, to meet Kim Cattrall, and to get her autograph. Overall, after years upon years of watching television, Sex and the City remains one of my all-time favourite shows. So when I saw that she was there, wearing a lovely yellow summer dress and these fabulous yellow pumps, I couldn't be cool and nonchalant—I wanted an autograph.

With absolutely no intention to buy her book, with nothing except awe for absolutely stunning she is in real life, I stood there with the rest of the adoring public for my chance to say hello. She was charming. We complimented her shoes, then she winked at us, and went on signing for the rest of her adoring public. You know, it took all of my self-control to not let my impishness win: all I wanted to do was ask, "So what really happened with you and SJP, and is the SATC movie really on the rocks?" But alas, I didn't, thanked her kindly for her scribble, and went back to work. Sigh.

Oh, and when I was in line for some cucumber maki, Sook-Yin Lee came up beside me and ordered some sashimi. A pale star gazing moment compared to Sunday's luminary flash of inspiration of just seeing Kim Cattrall.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

I made the grave mistake yesterday of biking to my errands. Now that I've bought my tickets for my fabulous birthday trip to Europe (oh, how Victorian of me!), there are a few things I need: travel bag, travel-sized toiletries, and the list goes on. And since the meds are making my scalp really itchy and dry, I wanted to find some nice shampoo that might help. So, I decided to ride my bike. Whew, what a mistake that was—it was 34 degrees in Toronto yesterday, without the humidex. Which meant that I was biking around mid-day in 45 degree weather, in the shade.

Silly ragdoll, you say. Silly ragdoll indeed. By the time I got home, I was dehydrated (regardless of drinking an entire bottle of water), faint, and feeling really overheated. Insane! Maybe it was a bit of heat stroke, who knows, but it turned me into the crankiest, angriest girl I'd been in a long time.

I tried to sleep, and then made dinner, did the dishes and felt much better. The RRBF wasn't much better. After spending the last few days clearing out the rest of the crap from the basement, paying to get all the garbage hauled out of the backyard, then fixing the leaking plumbing, he was so tired that he spent the entire day either in front of the television or on the computer.

Strange thing this heat, we beg for it all winter and then when it comes around it's a bit too much for us to take. Ah, the subtle irony of living in Canada with its extreme fluctuations.

The good news is that we didn't drive the car yesterday, I didn't take any extra bags for shopping and tried not to turn the air conditioning on until we absolutely had to. I'm still trying to be a better person for the environment, but it's hard.

Today's the beginning of a big conference for work, so I'll be at work this afternoon and all day tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Stupid Disease #4576

Fridays are the worst days. So tired. So frustrated. More tomorrow when I'm feeling better. Sigh.

The Da Vinci Code Watch

As Dan Brown's book remains a bestseller well over the two-year mark, I've been watching with a morbid curiosity all the crazy stuff that pops up from this work of fiction.

I read this article (link via bookslut) by Christopher Hitchens, who hated the book, generally echoing the consensus among, ahem, learned individuals that the writing is terrible (I got part-way through and then tossed the book into the corner screaming).

This woman created a cute comic, riffing on the book. Someone's now writing a biography on Dan Brown (link via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind). And some other fellow is really peeved that the publisher isn't going to publish the book in paperback and time soon.

Let's not forget the numerous television specials or useless amount of ink spilled on whether or not the theories found in the novel are true. Ahem, it's a novel people, A NOVEL!

On the one hand, I'm thrilled that one book has spawned this much attention. It's making people read, which I'm always thrilled about—maybe someone who hasn't read a book in a long while will read this book and then be encouraged to read something else, something perhaps not written by Dan Brown. But on the other hand, there's something in me that wishes the world would just wake up and realize the book is a terribly written product of someone's imagination, and not take it so seriously—that is until Tom Hanks stars in the movie in the summer of 2006. Sigh.

Virtual Wasteland

Everyday I get about 25-30 emails that aren't junk mail per se, but various newsletters that I've subscribed to for "research" purposes. And one of the newspapers in the UK that sends me a note every morning had this to day, "Standby: Britain: The waste that fuels our energy crisis." The article talks at length about how everyday electrical equipment is a source of energy waste by leaving things on standby. And it got me thinking, about Live 8, about my ecological footprint, and about how the world is now, more than ever, geared to a throw-away society.

When did the world change? I remember having an environmental conference when I was in my last year of high school, at the very least a decade ago, where we urged the world to think about its consumption of oil, the use of Styrofoam and how important it is to recycle. Now, I see commercials for throwaway toilet brushes—because the simple old-fashioned toilet brush has become ungainly and inefficient?

Now, I drive to work the majority of the time. I could take the transit, but it would take me close to two hours to get to where I needed to go. Yet, I feel increasingly guilty about driving, that price of gas, or oil in general, is making the world a sick, greedy place.

I turn off my lights, but take a shower every day. I planted a garden to help with the smog, but have to water it every night. I ride my bike on days when I'm at the downtown office, but we drive to get groceries almost every weekend. We use cloth bags, but so much of the food is pre-packaged. And I'm not even going to think about the medical waste involved in the research to find drugs for my disease.

How much has the world changed since I was naive and thought that by the time I reached this age, people would actually start caring more about their environment and less about their comfort. It's a melancholy thought, but I struggle with it all the time. And now, I've got to go water the garden.

My Friends, The End

The last session in my poetry class happened on Tuesday night. Few actually showed up, but it was a good class, and we all got to workshop our poems. Now, the question remains whether or not I can find the courage to send the series out. Who knows?

Oh, then the teacher invited me to come for a beer, and in my infinite wisdom, I decided I'd rather be home watching Corrie Street. Bah! I'm a goofball.

Goodness me, do I love a good virtual showdown. Neil Pollack wrote about the death of his persona in the NY Times. Then, Dave Eggers replied on McSweeneys (links via bookslut).

Remember the heyday when Dave Eggers and Neal Pollack would show up at the Horseshoe half an hour late, weird diagrams and fake superhero costumes in tow? Remember how we all swooned when Dave told the stories about his brother Topher and the tragic deaths of his parents interspersed with crazy stories of meeting whales in kayaks? Sigh. Somehow, the pretension of all of that just couldn't last. It was like Shift magazine, too hip for its own good.

But again, I guess the debate rages as to whether or not Eggers' form of self-publishing empire is still relevant and whether or not his website still matters, because Neal Pollack's piece was in the, ahem, NY Times.