And the Doctor Says...

That I've got a "touch" of bronchitis. Yay! No antibiotics yet, only if it gets worse, but I've got to use my puffers, which I hate. On the good news front, my kidneys are doing better with my creatinine level coming down to 120 from 131 and my ESR back to normal (it's a sign of inflammation, which in turn is a sign of disease activity). I'm tired because my hemoglobin sinking because of the meds, but I can live with that as long as the disease is going back into remission.

High kicks all around!

I'm starting the next of my abridged versions, so I'll be spending a lot of time on the computer working, which means I'll be wasting time reading Popwatch and watching trailers. In particular, this one over and over and over again.

I don't know what it is about war movies, but I can't get enough of them. Past the terror and past the truly horrifying things that happen in war, I think it's the intense situation that I know I'll never have to experience that I'm drawn to. And it makes me think of my grandfather and great-grandfather who fought in the Second and First World Wars respectively, what they had to sacrifice and how different my life would be if they hadn't been there in the first place.

Now excuse the digression. There are fellows in here replacing our old crappy windows with fresh new ones, and I'm kind of high on the fumes...

Feeling Sick vs. Being Sick

If there's something I've come to realize about being a bionic girl with a big, bad disease, it's that there's a very real difference between feeling sick and being sick.

As I said yesterday, I've got a bad cold. My throat's all swollen, my head is pounding. I'm sniffling, sneezing and coughing, all of which truly suck, especially when next week is so fun with the RRBF's record release and other goodies happening. I don't want to end up with bronchitis or, worse, pneumonia, which tends to happen if I get sick when I'm taking the disease medicine.

Yes, I have bad disease days, where I feel some symptoms, my sinuses hurt, I'm tired beyond belief, but the drop-down-must-get-to-bed cold feeling is certainly not the same as knowing but not seeing the disease eat away at my kidneys.

Anyway. Just a random thought for today.

I Hab a Cwold

My nose is all stuffed up. My throat is sore. My head feels like a balloon. I hate having a cold.

Oh, and the Toronto International Film Festival heats up Toronto this week. And do you know my only celebrity sighting? Dave Nichols of Loblaws fame.

Hard Liquor + Rock Show = Fuzzy Head

When you're bionic, the best thing about a rock show is being able to stand for three or four hours and not be a) tired or b) in pain. It's a blessing. It's a change in your life that you're utterly and completely aware of every second of the day. No, even from the moment six months after surgery when you don't need the cane and you're strong enough to stand on your own two feet.

So I met some friends from my old work yesterday, and because of my crazy diet, I can't drink beer, which pains me. I also shouldn't be drinking while I'm taking the Imuran, but last night being Cuff the Duke's record release party, and coming off of two very hard weekends in terms of working on the cottage, I sort of decided to let go. Armed with more than a handful of gin and tonics, I had a rip-roaring good time that's left me a bit foggy brained and tired today, but in a gloriously good mood.

It was such a fun night, Scarbie Doll met us at the pub, and then we had a drink with the boys before we walked with Nelly over to Lee's for the show. Before getting to Lee's we were asked by a lovely Russian man sitting at Future's to sit and have a drink with them. Scarbie looks so great these days, and she has such a glow about her, it's really wonderful to see.

So we ended up at Lee's Palace rather tipsy (well, loaded, if you must know), and proceeded to dance, jump, hoot and holler through the Cuffy's set. It's a great new record, and it was a great show. And for their encore, do you know what they did? They gave a heck of a shout out to other Canadian independent bands by covering one of the songs from my RRBF's new album. The one that came out on Tuesday. When it was all said and done he quipped, "Well that's that, we can never do that song again!" Heh.

We got home at 2 AM, drunk, watched Coronation Street because we're addicted and fell into bed. Ah, sleep. Ah, the life of a Rock and Roll Girlfriend where all the boys in the band know who you are, but don't really know you. It's a funny in-between life we lead.

Bad Disease Day #31586.5

Seems that no matter how well I'm doing with my diet (Day 3: no sugar, one serving of wheat per day, one serving of dairy per day, lots of veggies, some fruit), my energy levels still don't seem to rise past barely alive. Seems that no matter how I feel in my head, it's so cloudy that working a wonderfully quick work day zaps all of my energy so much so that doing anything other than putting on my pajamas and watching a bad movie is all I can truly accomplish after work.

So, I'm about to go and lie down, choose one of the upteen books I'm in the middle of, and try to stay awake until 9 PM. It's a challenge this diseased-life, I'm telling you. And it's so overwhelming to hear what's happening in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf area, that I feel lucky just to be warm, dry and financially secure enough to donate some of my money to the Canadian Red Cross, which is what I'm going to do before I lie down on my clean bed and have a rest. There's not much else I can say about the tragedy, and my words would pale in comparison to what's already being said on blogs around the world.

Just note: the difference between "looting" and "finding" shouldn't be defined along colour lines, shame on you reporters, shame on you.

#45 The Wreckage

Michael Crummey's latest novel The Wreckage tells the story of Wish Furey, a young man from Newfoundland, who falls in love with a precocious and determined 16-year-old girl named Sadie (short for Mercedes). The bulk of the action in the novel takes place in Newfoundland during the Second World War. The most poignant source of conflict between the two lovers is their religion, with Wish being Catholic, and therefore an outsider, and Sadie being Protestant, their relationship is doomed from the start.

As fishing accidents spurn the story along, a conflict between Wish and Sadie's mother, then her brother, forces him to flee. He joins up and is soon shipped off to fight for the Brits, eventually ending up in a Japanese PoW camp. Sadie runs away from home, but arrives in St. John's only to find Wish gone, and she vows to wait for him.

Interspersed into the love story is the story of a Canadian-born Japanese soldier who eventually becomes one of the most vicious prison guards working at the camp where Wish ends up. The vicious nature of Nishino seems at odds, even in the context of the war, with Crummey's delicate, wonderful language. It's a contrast that resonates throughout the book, and he has a gift for some of the most beautiful metaphors I've read in a long time.

The willful, fully drawn natures of each of the three main characters comes across like a cup of strong coffee. Sadie breaks her vow, Wish misleads her into thinking he's dead, and Nishino finds himself unable to serve his country in the manner he feels is appropriate, each character experiencing the undeniable fact that life never turns out the way you expect it to.

Fast-forward forty years, and Crummey catches up the characters at this point in their lives. The second half of the novel isn't as tight as the first, but the end is completely satisfying and The Wreckage is quite an addictive read. Highly recommended even among the riches of this fall season, which for Canadian publishing, seems ever-golden.

No Offense, But...

...is there anywhere the Black Eyed Peas won't play? And by the way CBC, get your sh*t together and bring back your staff already. Enough of this bare bones website crap that my tax paying dollars are usually ridiculously proud to support.

The Return of the RRBF

So last night we capped off an already busy weekend (his folks and family up at the cottage, lots of work at the cottage) by racing home and then racing to Soundscapes for his in-store. As I've said a million times, my RRBF has a new record that was just released yesterday called The City. His band, FemBots, played last night to celebrate the record in the store and it was quite fun.

I made the mistake, however, of sitting to close to him, which meant that every time he made a rock face or a rock move, I giggled. Which in turn made him mouth to me, "Don't laugh at me!" and then refuse to look at me again during the half-hour performance. I felt bad, for a second, and then giggled again because it's funny to see someone you live with day in and day out, picking his nose, scratching his bum, screaming at the traffic, standing up in front of a crowd of terribly interested teenagers with his eyes closed swaying to his music. I love him dearly, but it's funny to me.

Now magazine gave the record 5 Ns as I said before, and today, the Adam Radwanski in the National Post said, "Quite possibly 2005's best Canadian album to date, The City will give the Fembots their deserved place on the national stage, if there is any justice."

If there's any justice indeed.

So, the show was fun, and then Soundscapes gave them each $30.00 in merchandise as a benefit to playing. He said, "What should I buy?" I said, "The New Pornographers." And then he proceeded to make fun of me a) for wanting the record and b) for then going ahead and buying it with my own damn money after he refused. Then he made fun of me in front of the cuties from Cuff the Duke, which embarrassed the crap out of me. Ah, being a girl.

I Never Knew They Were Out of Fashion?

So, pencils are once again hip. Who knew? Oh wait, or is it the puzzle that's hip? And when do you think the mystical "powers that be" will come up with a dummed-down Hollywood version of Sudoku?

Ireland Redux

This is one of my favourite pictures from Ireland, in Derry, well, in "free Derry." It's the site of Bloody Sunday. I love the murals in Northern Ireland, and love that the tradition is continued still. They were busy painting over Gerry Adams when Tina and I walked along Falls Road.

The Cottage "Weekend Update": My bionic hip rocked so hard this weekend. I picked up 5 bags of concrete, each weighing 66lbs. SIXTY-SIX pounds. My legs hurt like hell, but I did it. And then I re-arranged my grandmother's cottage in the "heritage" format (translation: put the furniture back to the way it was when I was a kid). And we cleared out a bunch of garbage. My lovely RRBF (in addition to receiving 5 Ns in Now magazine in terms of the review of his latest record), painted some of the windows for me. Ah, cottage life. It's a vacation no matter how long you can get away for.

The Last Long Weekend

Is almost upon us, I'm heading up north to spend the weekend with my RRBF's family at my cottage. Hopefully, I'll get some reading done! And maybe some writing too. Enjoy the sunshine. Fingers crossed I don't end up with a rash.

Ripped From the Headlines, Well, Sort Of...

A few things that occupied my mind for a milli-second today:

1. Why didn't they stay broken up and not release what's certainly to be an album full of the worst lyrics ever written, as OLP typically do: "She wishes she was a dancer / That she never heard of cancer." How can they keep a straight face? Or am I supposed to be deep in thought meditating on the irony in his words? Give. It. Up.

2. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe seems destined for civil war or something equally terrifying.

3. Stephen Harper looks like a knucklehead in this picture...and it probably won't help him win the favour of the nation either. Alberta's sweet, sweet "extra" cash be damned.

4. Sadie Frost really doesn't want to have her picture taken, and I don't blame her; it's not like her life isn't hard enough these days. You know?

5. I'm enjoying the blog war between Warren Kinsella and Globe columnist Carl Wilson. Boys with keyboards are funny, and punk, don't forget punk. I don't know if I'll read Kinsella's book, but I'm glad that books like that get written, if only for the fact that they're keeping the dream of punk alive. And not to take sides, but dude calls his blog "Zoilus," that alone makes me think I'd rather side with Kinsella. What does it mean, ohh, how deep, a made up word. Yawn.

Fall TV Whee!

As the leaves start to change, a collective sigh across the city brings out cloistered sweaters, and ladies everywhere hold on just that one minute longer to open-toed shoes, I celebrate by doing some high kicks in my living room for the start of fall television.

Banished from my ever-flicking fingertips are the terrible reality television and schlocky mid-season dumpers because the real fun is about to begin. Now the challenge remains whether or not a) I'll be sick of watching television by October or b) the shows all start to suck in their second (or third, forth, etc) seasons.

So I present a special 5 Things I'm Obsessed With These Days post:

1. My Name is Earl. Jason Lee saddles his kids with crazy-ass names, but I heart him, and I'll watch this show with crossed fingers hoping that it'll actually be funny instead of just appearing mildly comic in the trailer.

2. The return of the WB shows. Although my love for the WB has definitely waned this year, I'll still watch Gilmore Girls. And if Luke and Lorelei don't get married, well, there's precious little happiness left in this cold, cold world. And I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that I love What I Like About You. Not so much that I'll tape it if I'm going out on a Friday night, but I'll definitely avoid leaving until after the show is over. It's sad, I know.

3. ER. Now, I know the show has lost some of it's vigour in its old age, but I've seen just about every episode over the last five or so years, and dedication like that just doesn't come easily to someone as scatterbrained as me, so I'm in it for the long haul.

4. The season-opener of Alias. Hum, what to say, what to say...okay, just a couple of words: car crash, fake identities, pregnancy and J.J. Abrams—it's a recipe for success (I hope).

5. The Wire. Okay, it doesn't start until 2006, but every month brings me that much closer to my favourite show coming back on the air.

Things That Disgust Me

Stupid spammers—do they actually think that anyone's going to click through from the comments to their ridiculous web sites?

The internet is such a magnificent tool, a way to spread information, a source of entertainment, a place for me to express myself, but it's also a cesspool of the lowest common demoninators of human society.

All I have to say is shut up stupid-ass spammers. F@#k you and your penile enlargements, melon-breasted women, dish networks, strange African communications and everything else I never need to hear about.

#44 The Hungry Years

William Leith's memoir is a cutting, acerbic, smart, fascinating look at one man's struggle with obesity and weight loss. Recently, the Globe and Mail featured Leith's book in their Summer Reading Series, and then my friend Zesty wrote a very thoughtful post about the book on her own blog last week. Needless to say, the book has been "in the news" (in terms of my small circle of online wanderings, of course).

Ads for Leith's book were all over London when I was there, great big posters with huge letters explaining how it was the "confessions of a food addict." Explaining with a sub-title, how this book wasn't about "the" diet, wasn't about the latest, greatest get-rich-type scam in terms of losing weight, but about one man's struggle to come to terms with his own struggle with the scales.

The very first chapter of the book finds Leith on the fattest day of his life. And, like Leith, I've struggled on my own with extra pounds these last few years of my life; like Leith, I wake up every day on the fattest day of my life. Now for a former girl who wouldn't be caught dead eating anything bad in public, a girl who thought that the best thing about being deathly ill in high school was getting to be super skinny, that "pretty" ex-dancer and/or girl about town, it's really disheartening to wake up everyday knowing that you are a tubby, chubby version of your former self.

I'm not fat per se, but I am overweight for my height, like so many "average" Canadians, and like Leith, I have an unhealthy relationship with the food like potato chips, candy and/or breads. I know I'm addicted, but I just don't have the energy to change my eating habits. And on top of that, I'm now commuting to work, so I'm not even biking that much anymore. In the end, I'm afraid the next time I get on the scale, I'll be well above and beyond my fattest day ever.

Annnyyywaaay. Back to the book, it's a really great read, not unlike My Year of Meats or Fast Food Nation, it's a hyper-personal, nonfiction look at the diet industry and its gurus, with the majority of the action surrounding Leith's interview with Dr. Robert Atkins, of the Atkins Diet fame. On the cusp of finishing the book, licking the salt and vinegar off my fingers, remnants of the latest bag of Lays to grace our household, I've decided that I'm going to once again try to change my eating habits.

Every couple of months or so, I try to give up eating sugar, both for the health of my poor, overworked kidneys and so that I can train my body not to look for the insulin jump it's come to consistently crave starting every day at about 10 AM. These days, I'm dying for a chocolate bar barely after even putting a foot to my tiled floor at 6:30 in the morning. It's too much. Sure, I can make all kinds of excuses and, like Leith, can find all sorts of psychological and physiological explanations for my own food addictions, but when it comes right down to it, a commitment to being healthy means so much more than remembering to take my meds every day (which is always a bloody struggle).

I love books that make me think, that give me lots of ammunition to make a change in my own life, but more than that, make me feel less alone when it comes to facing a mirror that reflects a lumpy, dumpy aging version of myself. In the end, it's really up to me whether or not I actually have the conviction for change. So, starting September 1, I'll keep you posted in terms of how well the no wheat, no refined sugar annual attempt at eating better actually goes.

Mini-Break

Flying down the 401 in the hot Sunday sun, makes me think of Bridget Jones, of all characters. When she and Daniel Cleaver take their "mini-break" and naturally runs into Mark Darcy, her whole life sort of crashes into what was supposed to be a relaxing vacation. That's kind of what life is like at my cottage. It's wonderful and beautiful and even a bit magical, to spend even a minimum of 26 hours away from the city is a treat, and you always feel like you've had a vacation.

But it's also family property, which I love, because it means that there are always all kinds of people crashing into my weekend. This time it was the first boy I ever kissed, and I see him at least once a year, but it's always funny to see people you've known all your lives. They seem to understand you so well, despite not seeing you on a regular basis, well, ever any more.

All in all, I'm exhausted, but in a good way. The RRBF's family will be heading up north with us for the long weekend, and I made sure my grandmother's cottage was immaculate, with new bedding, all vacuumed, and completely tidy. Funny thing is, someone else could crash into next week and all the hard work would be ruined. Oddly, if that happened at home, I would probably peak, but because it's the cottage, it's just something I'm used to.

How I Hate Revisions

The strangest thing showed up in the mail, well, I guess it's not all that strange, but it's an invitation to a university reunion taking place during Homecoming Weekend at Queen's in Kingston.

For the most part, I hate rewriting. In fact, I hate most things that involve going back and re-doing what you've already done. Maybe it's why I've never finished anything substantial in terms of my own writing—I have no trouble finishing up projects I'm assigned to do, so if someone assigned my own novel, told me I'd be graded, I'd probably finish it. But I'd never go back and re-write it, at least substantially, anyway.

And that's sort of how I feel about class reunions. They had one at my high school a while back, and I didn't go because, well, I'm just not all that interested in reliving my "glory days." For the most part, they ended up with me being diseased, half-crazy and quite in need of serious amounts of therapy, which I didn't receive until well after I'd finished university, where I'll have to admit, the same pattern sort of repeated itself.

So I guess, with all the bad press high school and university got in the scope of my ever-longer life, it's no wonder the last thing on earth I'd like to do is re-live it ten years later at a kegger during Homecoming. Am I wrong in thinking that way?

The Cliche That Must Not Be Written #1

Here's the thing. Writing a book is hard. Writing a good book, even harder. And finding a good editor, well, that must be the hardest. Because I just took a quick, ahem, break and started to read, The J.A.P. Chronicles. And before I even got past page five, came across the following cliche: "Neither of them slept that morning. First they ate pancakes and eggs at an all-night diner..." oh yes, it gets worse, "They made love until noon, his white hands moving over her with slow, exhilarating skill, his lips finding places even she didn't know could be kissed..."

Blech.

Live Update

Between this week's conference, taking care of my aunt, and the change in the weather, it's been a strange couple of weeks. Things are always different when you're not at home, and I was only back from vacation for a couple of days before leaving again. Once you're back, you need to play catch-up with your own life, try to talk to friends you haven't seen in a month, get back into the groove of the regular day, find time to read—all things I haven't done much of since I got back.

Weather changing always makes me slightly melancholy. Perhaps because it's a concrete example of time passing, of things moving so fast that it's important to slow down and breath every now and again. After being forced to leave my last job, a topic I've been over about a bajillion times since I started this darn blog, my whole world just changed. I was no longer the "BMOC" and have sort of started again, sat back and tried to not be so angry that it all happened. It's the bane of my existence, dealing with things in life that are sort of thrown at me, things like the disease, things like getting "reorganized" out of the job I thought I was pretty darn good at, things like losing my mum, that sometimes I find it hard to take control of my own life. Perhaps that's why I needed to go away this summer. In retrospect, it was so healthy to spend some time by myself, even if now everything is back to normal and I'm forgetting I was even gone in the first place.

#43 An Audience of Chairs

An Audience of Chairs, Joan Clark's magnificient novel, is one of the best books I've read all year. I read it while in Lake Winnipeg on vacation and almost finished the entire book in one sitting. The book follows the life of Moranna MacKenzie, a wild, precocious child who grows up to "Mad Mory", a woman living alone in Cape Breton in her father's semi-abandoned farmhouse.

The novel tells the story of Moranna and her battle with mental illness, in the form of manic depression, although the disease is never qualified. As Moranna falls in love, gets married and has two beautiful girls, her life starts to come apart at the seams. She can no longer handle being either a mother or a wife and slips into a deep psychosis.

Her husband takes the children away and Moranna spends the next thirty years trying to find them. It's a beautiful tale of love, loss, and motherhood, one that made me cry at the end because of its simple message of forgiveness. Joan Clark is a rare gem in Canadian fiction, her writing reminds me of both Margaret Laurence and Hugh MacLennan, both in its richness and its ability to create characters with deep tragic, yet still human, flaws. I read Clark's Eiriksdottir last year and also enjoyed it, and am on a quest now to read Latitudes of Melt, because I think it too will be a wonderful novel.