"2B?NT2B?=???"

Shakespeare via your mobile phone. Makes it even shorter and more succinct than Tom Stoppard. And is that necessarily a better thing? I don't know. How much value do words lose when you strip them of their sentences, shorten them to the point of extinction and then pull them out of context?

Slowly Melting = Good Karma

Making it through an entire day of work feels almost like climbing Mount Everest. Okay, I've never actually climbed Mount Everest, so I'm sorry if I'm offending any true blue mountaineers out there. By the time I get home I'm flushed and semi-feverish, or at least I feel that way, totally exhausted and thinking about bed. I put on my pajamas (jogging pants, sweatshirt) and I turn on the television. So. Not. Exciting.

But tonight I had a function to go to for work. Flare magazine had a cocktail party to celebrate their year, and it was a lot of fun, despite my lack of energy. In fact, I had a My Name is Earl moment. I had forgotten to dump my business card into the buckets for the door prizes until the very last second, when Zesty pulled a fast one and dropped it in. And I won a $250 gift certificate for Yorkdale Mall! Bring on the shoes, bring them on!

Perhaps the world is being kind to me because I'm feeling so poorly lately. Who knows? But it was kind of funny.

Side Effects

So I am now officially puffy from the prednisone. The side effect is awkwardly called "Moon Face." Which makes it sound so lovely. In essence, my cheeks are all puffed out and I look kind of like a chipmunk. Kind of fitting for this time of the year.

My skin has also erupted into some strange acne too. Which means, of course, that I'm washing it, using toner, using masks, anything to try and control it. This sometimes results in me picking away it for hours, squeezing things that I should honestly leave alone.

Today, my throat is super-sore, and I've been working from home the past few days to try and feel better. Thank goodness I've got an awesomely understanding boss and workplace. I couldn't cope with it otherwise. There are some small blessings. If I was still working for the Boss From Hell, I think I would have lost it.

I went to school last night, which was fun, but too exhausting. I came home and just about collapsed on the couch. I've made another appointment with the doctor for Thursday to see if there's anything they can tell me about the disease and whether or not it's actually getting any better.

My spirits are falling, and my RRBF keeps asking me if I want the pillow. It's kind of funny, he's such a romantic, offering to smother me so I'm out of my misery. In jest of course, ah, the things we do for love.

It's brutal that I'm too tired even to read. And you all know how unlike me that is...

Wegener's Weekend

There are so many things about the disease that I can't handle these days. The whole psychology behind it, the idea that it's living in my body, working against me, turning my immune system inside out, is hard to grapple with on a daily basis. But more then that, what's worse is not being able to stop thinking about it either. I've spent the past few days at home, working from home, but I have so little energy that even resting this much isn't making much of a difference.

And then you start to get self-critical, blast yourself for watching too many episodes of Felicity that Zip.ca has sent you, and feel guilty for not getting enough work done.

But the truth is that I can barely get out of bed these days and my head is in such a fog that I'm surprised I can concentrate on anything for more than 10 minutes. How do people cope with this?

Wegener's Granulomatosis

If the disease is only 'grumbling' and not full-blown, I'm am afraid to know what a massive attack might look like at my age. I am so tired I can barely move. My sinuses are killing me. It feels like there's a log on my chest. It's all so very strange.

Today I Remember

Today is for my great-grandfather, G.H. Copeland, who crossed the border from Ohio, signed up in Windsor and was shipped off to England. He carried a Ross rifle that didn't work, fought at Ypres (the second time) and Passchendaele. He helped the Allied forces win the First World War.

Today, I think about my grandfather, G.H.'s son, James Copeland. He marched in Italy, lived with shrapnel in his foot and liberated Holland. He spent his war in a tank and came back a changed man for two reasons: his new family and the war itself.

But most of all today I think about my grandmother, Janet Mardon, a war bride, born in Angel in London. The story goes that she met my grandfather during an air raid, falling in love in the dark, almost instantly. They got married in a fever. She wore an expensive wedding dress she sort of inherited (she was a seamstress) when the wealthier woman's nuptials got cancelled. My grandmother came to Canada on the Letitia, landed at Halifax, and then took a train to Toronto with my aunt, a toddler.

After I lost my mother, my grandmother became a beacon of strength in my life. She lived a hard life, but she loved us too. She was proud, fierce and beautiful to me, a role model on the importance of family and the fury of love.

Today I'll close my eyes and remember the mud, the horror, the terror of the First World War. The bravery of my great-grandfather and hundreds of thousands of young men like him. Today I'll close my eyes and think of my grandfather meeting happy Dutch faces waving ribbons upon their arrival. Today I'll close my eyes and think of my grandmother walking the streets of a bombed London wearing her Wren uniform, helping out where she could, building the strength that defined her character for years to come. Lest we forget.

My Boyfriend's Back...And There's Going To Be Trouble?

There's a strange adjustment period when my RRBF gets back from being away on tour. Of course I'm glad to see him, but after about a month by myself, I'm also set in a new routine. So it's strange when he's back and I'm all grumpy because he's in my way, but not in my way. And he's all out of sorts because he's been on the road for a month and not used to going to bed, getting up and going to work.

But because now I'm so tired from the disease, and barely making it through the days, I'm glad he's home, if only to help me get through my life for the next little while. It's the small mercies.

Next step: our non-wedding in December.

Je Suis L-a-a-a-me

So I had my first story workshopped last night in class. It was gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. My fellow students are quite amazing, and all really good readers, which means they put the story through the gears and it will be the better for it. But I am so super-sensitive that it's almost impossible for me to not take everything personally.

Here's what I discovered:

1. I make up lame names. For some reason, the male protagonist is called Christian Meadows, and the female protagonist is called Eve. Yes. Christian Meadows. Eve. I did not even see the problem with it when I was writing it. Perhaps I should be writing Harlequin romances instead.

The names will need to be changed.

2. My sentences are too long. And I love long sentences. But shorter might be better, hence I'll have to edit. We all know how I feel about editing.

3. I am no genius. This is of no surprise to anyone. Heh.

On the whole, it was a very positive experience, and one I'll be repeating six or seven times during the course of the class, but ouch—if I could only get over my pathological shyness and actually not take the constructive criticism to heart. It hurts. Like a band-aid that comes off too early. Ouch.

Jarhead

I bit off more than I can chew this weekend. I'm so tired and achy tonight that I'm glad I'm finally home and can put on my pajamas. I'm actually all shook up, and not in a good way. First off, I went and had brunch with some friends, which was nice, and not too stressful. Then, I worked for a while on my book for Sterling. Then, Wing and Glark picked me up and we went to see Jarhead.

Welcome to the suck, indeed. Despite a solid cast with excellent performances by just about every young man there, despite some innovative and interesting direction, despite a story that's actually kind of timely, despite all this the movie's still terribly mediocre. Nothing happens. Now, I know that's sort of the point, all the build up, hundreds of thousands of troops in the Gulf, and then a war that only lasts for 4 days, but still, something should have happened.

Instead, we get a sort of stream of consciousness film that plays more like it should be on stage than anything else. And it got me thinking, about how it's Remembrance Day next week, about how war has changed so much in my lifetime that even the glorification of it has been deconstructed to the point where it's hard to see the ins and outs of obvious right and wrong. Sam Mendes had a chance to make a statement with the film. He didn't take that chance. He played it real safe, sort of flew under the radar so much that the movie isn't about war; it's not about the oil; hell, it's not even about the soldiers—it's a coming of age story wrapped in the context of war that works as an allegory for Swofford's (Gyllenhaal's) broken soul. And you know, what's even worse is that the film isn't bad, it's just seriously mediocre.

I guess that's why I'm disappointed. There are boys, Canadian boys, American boys, over there now dying senseless deaths, and Mendes filled up his film with a hell of a lot of quasi gay porn and bombastic male posturing. Perhaps that's what it was really like, but then that makes what's happening today even more futile. And with the current war in Iraq turning out to be more like Vietnam than even Bush himself gathered it could, I'm disappointed that in this day and age of media cynicism, the likes of Michael Moore, and the big Hollywood machine, that Mendes didn't stand up and shout at the top of his lungs with this film. Who knows? Maybe he did and I just missed the point. Oorah, indeed.

Now I'm overtired and feeling really quite ill. I wanted to get more done on my book, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. There's always tomorrow.

Spare Cash?

Somehow I don't think that this was what the Barenaked Ladies had in mind when they listed off all the things they could and/or would do if they had a million dollars.

The next step in this utterly ridiculous "joke" is to then film a reality television show that exhibits all the crackpots who actually take him up on the offer. Oh. Wait. Maybe he's making a movie out of it all instead.

But it's all art for art's sake, isn't it? And in that sense, the ridiculous becomes the sublime because to have it any other way would mean the entire system would collapse.

So Glad I Went

Life always surprises you at the strangest moments. My cousin's wedding was wonderful, and I had a great time. The food was incredible, and it turned into a celebration of the best order.

I am very glad I stopped feeling sorry for myself. My eyes are still sore and puffy, though.

Totally Frustrating Day

I woke up this morning with a red, puffy and irriated eye. It pretty much kept me up half the night. I spent the other half tossing and turning. There are books, clothes and pillows on the side of the bed usually occupied by my RRBF. It was an awful night.

Today my cousin is getting married. The wedding is very small, just a handful of people at a restaurant, but I wanted to have a productive day before I went. I got three pages, if that, written on my latest book for Sterling. The rest of the day was spent trying in futility to rest. The first time I went back to bed, the neighbours were building something: loud banging, the odd power tool. The second time I went back to the bed, the cat wouldn't stop whining for his dinner. I gave him said dinner, then he whined some more—for more dinner. As if. Oh, and I did I mention the loud rock music coming from next door and the phone ringing?

My eye is still red and sore. I've got new clothes to wear, but no nice shoes and I was too tired to go shoe shopping. Between the meds, the sore throats popping up like bad ex-boyfriends, the absolute frustration with feeling so weak and tired all you can eat all day is frozen waffles but being utterly unable to sleep, and the complete and exacting sadness from the disease on the whole, I'm having a rough day.

#56 The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees follows the life of Lily Owens, a young white girl growing up in South Carolina during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Living with an abusive father, T. Ray, and cared for by Rosaleen, her black housekeeper, Lily has never known the truth about her mother, who died in a shooting accident when she was four. Lily killed her, and has lived with the grief ever since.

A number of events drive Lily and Rosaleen out of town. Armed with a few possessions of her mother's, including a honey label with Tiburon written on the back, Lily and Rosaleen make their way there. Lily hopes finding out who makes the honey will help her find out about her mother, and it's this goal that finds them living with a trio of sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. Lily's instincts are correct—there is a connection between her mother and the sisters, but it takes much of the book to work it all out.

There are so many reasons why I liked this book so very much. Kidd's prose is sparse, but direct, lean without a hint of aggression, and simple without being simplistic. The story is tight too, the whole book happens over a summer, but it doesn't feel rushed or forced.

And it's about a motherless daughter searching for the truth about herself and her mother, so it drives hard into my own heart like the last few hours of a road trip when you're so close you can taste being home. Lily finds so much more than she thought possible, first love, a home, kindness, honesty, truth and a sense of purpose.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

Prime

The weather has turned so very strange in the past couple days. It's super-hot for November, more like the end of September, and people are turned out in the oddest ways. I saw a man tonight at the movies wearing a French-inspired black and white striped long sleeved shirt with a pair of black racing shorts. This was his date attire. He got up this morning, felt the sun come in through the window and decided to cross dress between Lance Armstrong and the mime on the corner in Montreal.

Annnywaaay. I went to see Prime tonight with Wing Chun. You know, I was totally afraid that it would be another complete let-down, but it wasn't. It's not a great picture by any means, but it's solid, and has a funny script. Bryan Greenberg (ah, Jake!) is super-hot, and Meryl Streep is excellent as per usual. Uma's a bit flat, but I'm not her biggest fan (Kill Bill obviously excluded).

The film turns the whole May-December romance stereotypes inwards as a much older woman (37!), just divorced, falls for a very young man (23!), and they have a complex, but rewarding relationship. He's in love for the first time; she's in love after a very long time. The one problem? His mother is her therapist. But it's not slapstick, even though it could be. It's kind of tender and sweet, and it shows how love sort of happens and then you have to deal with the fall out. I liked it even better than P.S., which has the same theme: young artist falls in love with older, influential woman.

Hell, and Bryan Greenberg is super, duper, duper hot. I don't care what EW says.

So, It's The Other Way Around?

Is it wrong of me to think of this as somehow anti-Canadian in some way? I can understand how thinking that Harry Potter might have some sort of fallout for the Winnipeg band in terms of how huge a machine it actually is, but is it really going to adversely affect their careers in any way? And so what if it does?

The whole thing reeks of money grubbing to me, but that's just me—I suppose they're really worried about their artistic integrity. But that's a big supposition, in my opinion...

Oh. My. Eye.

Ouch. This re-design sort of scares me, and was it necessary?

Aw, He's So Famous...

That someone put him up on wikipedia. How cute is that? He'll be so happy to hear that Austin Powers is number one and he's number two. So. Cute!

#55 When in Rome

After having a pretty interesting discussion over at Chicklit about the genre chicklit, I decided to knock back an easy read today: When in Rome by Gemma Townley. I heart Gemma Townley. She's totally underrated in terms of the phenoms of chicklit (Sophie Kinsella, Melissa Banks, Lauren Weisberger, Ms. Weiner, Ms. Keyes, etc), but I think she rises to the top, for more reasons than one.

1. The plots might be predictable, but they're never contrite and don't have obvious holes, like so many books I've read in the genre lately.

2. The heroines often have the same problems (two boys, one love; bad job, like shopping) as many chicklit books have, but they seem to rise above and use their wits to get them out of situations vs. their acumen when it comes to men.

3. She's a fun, flirty writer, and that's hard to achieve.

4. There are a lot of cute pop culture references that I love, and that seem to fit, which means they don't feel forced in any way. They just work. Like in this book, the heroine, Georgie, is obsessed with Roman Holiday. It just feels right for the character, even when she ends up in Rome and cuts her hair off, all stereotypical products of a good Audrey Hepburn movie, but it works both for the character and for the book.

5. I love books that I can read in two subway rides: one to work, one home from work. It's a minor pleasure in a busy life.

The Shakespeare Debate

One of my favourite quasi-academic topics is Shakespeare, or rather, the debate surrounding his identity. Who was that masked man, allegorically, of course? Bookninja sent me over to a fun article in the NY Times this week that puts forth a newish-oldish debate about Shakespeare's religion, and that he was a closet Catholic. Considering he wrote in Elizabethan England, that's actually kind of interesting to think about.

If I had any inclination to go back to grad school, I might actually think about examining some of his plays in light of the theory. How differently might they be read? I know, it's early in the morning. Just ignore me if I've already put you back to sleep.

Oh, and just for fun, here are a couple of articles I've written about the Shakespeare question, two of my favourites: one from my old work and one on Chicklit.

Happy Halloween?

We had one kid come to our door last night. One poor lonely little ghost with a plastic pumpkin. I almost gave him the entire bowl of candy because who wants it hanging around the house?

I suppose it's my own fault, considering I had an appointment during prime Halloween trick-or-treating time. But still, one kid? Now I'm stuck with 150 pieces of candy and no RRBF to eat them.

Next year I'll do it up right. Maybe I'll even remember to change the outdoor light bulb so they know I'm sitting there on the steps with a big bowl of candy for them.