Category Archives: Diary

Yes, Virginia, I’m Still Anti-Social

We just got back from buying groceries, and for kicks my husband tossed a box of Sugar Crisp into the basket. We opened it when we got home for a quick nibble while we put the groceries away, and dear gods, it’s just the taste I remember from the isolated encounters I’ve had here and there in the past. How on earth to kids get away with eating this candy for breakfast? I’d ration it out as a treat, or dessert.

Although I had a wonderful class on Saturday discussing films, I’m still in that odd anti-social mood, complete with persistent headache. I’m not fit company for man or beast, as my cats have plainly shown me. The light hurt my eyes all weekend too, which was absolutely no help when it came to trying to read or sit down at the computer. This may or may not have something to do with removing and washing the front windows. The amount of filth that came off them was absolutely disgusting. I’m betting they haven’t been washed in well over two years. The light quality has certainly changed in the living room.

And in an effort to help strengthen my bad wrist, I picked up a 2 lb weight at Canadian Tire yesterday. I’ve been doing over and underhand curls with it while I read, and it feels great. My husband had to remind me to work the other wrist too, just to balance things out. We’ll see how things develop.

Yup. Doing some serious withdrawing, in case you hadn’t noticed. These are the highlights of my life.

Did I mention I woke up at 3.30 AM and decided to research Norse deities, since sleep was denied me? And that I received my new Medicare card in the mail?

Teaching Again

I taught another workshop last night. Since registration has been terrible since the beginning of the year, this is actually only the second public workshop I’ve led in the past five months. It was nice to be back.

Also nice were the fees I collected. After paying for rental of the space, I have enough to relax, stop by the secondhand bookstore around the corner, and think about having a lime soda without feeling guilty regarding where the dollar-fifty ought to be going instead. The money’s not the reason I teach, and I’ll never make a living from it, but it’s a nice perq.

On Coincidence

I had the joy of spending Victoria Day outside with a few good friends at a spontaneous picnic. Simple pleasures: roast chicken, a few different kinds of fresh bread, warm strawberries, grapes, cool drinks, and total relaxation. All stresses were forgotten as we nibbled and laughed and played with my lovely goddaughter, who had more energy than the adults lazing about. Plus, I got a bit of sun, which, if you’ve seen my milky-pale skin, is a blessing. I no longer look like a creature of the night.

I happened to stop in at the secondhand bookstore around the corner and brought home quite the find: a copy of Connie Willis’ Lincoln’s Dreams. I’m a huge Connie Willis fan. I am not, however, a fan of charging $9.99 for a two hundred page book, and for some reason I never picked this one up when it was cheaper. (Actually, I know the reason: I’m not a Civil War fan.)

Well, apart from being immensely smug about scoring a Connie Willis book secondhand, I discovered that this book fits right in to my life at the moment. It’s not about the Civil War. (Well, sort of, but it’s a means to a different end.) It’s about dreams.

Now, I love how Connie Willis examines the whole what-is-real perception of reality, and time-travel, and life vs death. At this particular point in time, however, when part of my attempt to solve my sleep problems involves recording dreams, this particular book becomes even more fascinating. Especially since I’ve started noticing that every once in a while, I “dream true” – I’ll write something down in my notebook when I wake up, and a couple of days later something very much like it happens in the real world.

There’s no such thing as coincidence, I’m fond of telling my students, since everything’s connected by energy of various sorts. I’m also a Jungian, which means that I subscribe to that whole collective unconscious idea. I also think that our human concept of time is a construct to make our lives easier, sort of like democracy. So, why can’t someone start picking up the dreams of a man involved in the Civil War? What’s to stop me from having the odd dream about something that (in our childlike perception of “linear time”) hasn’t happened yet? Why does man stubbornly insist that memory only stretches backwards, because he has experienced it? We know the future exists, because today was yesterday’s future. By extension, we’re living in someone’s past.

Mankind places a lot of weight on what is verifiable by sensory proof, and yet is incredibly subjective about other concepts that require faith. Some are inviolate – of course it’s true, even though it cannot be proven – and others are flatly dismissed without even a second thought – that’s impossible. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how uneven we are, and how strongly we’ll defend certain ideas, yet obstinately push away others. Man’s a hypocrite. A loveable, frustrating, contradictory, inconsistent hypocrite.

Offhand

After an hour and a half break to take an Advil, make and eat dinner, and have a glass of wine, I’m back at the computer. Hey, don’t try to stop me. I’ve been restless and not-work-y for the past ten days; let me work while I’m happy to work!

Besides, it benefits two parties: the employer who needs this freelance work done, and me, because my work makes money so that I can buy more books. (This is serious. I’m currently in the throes of Egyptian and Norse mythology heaven, and I’ve got a list of titles I want as long as my arm.) Plus I’m multi-tasking: while one page loads, I’m searching out new links with the other.

Eventually I’ll stop, and I’ll watch Buffy or something. Speaking of, was anyone else left a bit off-balance by the Angel season finale? It was great, and tied up loose ends while preparing for a new season, but I guess I’m just too used to mass violence and cataclysm on Angel these days. There was surprisingly little cataclysmic action in this episode. It made for a nice break for the characters, of course – who, come to think of it, were left as equally off-balance.

Hurtling

Apparently this one of those days where I work non-stop and make up for the days when I can’t face the computer.

My eyes hurt after four hours at the computer. And I really ought to make tea and have breakfast. Or lunch, evidently, now that I look at the clock…

More Powerful Than You CAn Possibly Imagine

Never underestimate the power a single lightbulb can have. No, that’s not a pun; I’m serious. Yesterday I picked up two of those new-ish GE Reveal lightbulbs, the ones with a faint blue-violet tint to the glass. I put one in the light that hangs over my computer, and there’s a world of difference. It’s much more like natural light.

My next trip to the hardware store will involve the purchase of a club-pack of these things to put in every single socket in the apartment. I’m not kidding.

My husband made an official date with me to see Matrix Reloaded tomorrow after I teach. I anticipate much gleeful geeking out with colleagues next week, just as much geeking as X2 got. Well, maybe not; Matrix Reloaded doesn’t have Hugh Jackman, after all. Keanu’s just not in the same league, you know?

Puttering

I’ve had a busy couple of days: renewing my health insurance card and my driver’s license, doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, lunches and barbeques, and a full-blown Beltaine ritual that was a bit late but wonderful nonetheless. (Kudos to my husband for solo-leading a ritual for over twenty people for the very first time, and for giving me shivers when he read the Charge of the God.)

In various waiting rooms, I began and finished Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Forest House, which I hadn’t read since it came out. I remember being disappointed with it at the time, and I can’t understand why, now. Perhaps because I read it directly after I finished The Mists of Avalon, which is altogether a very different book.

We’ve finally constructed and arranged the various bits and pieces of furniture we picked up at Ikea this weekend (hot tip: if you have to go to Ikea, do it at 9 AM on a Saturday morning. There is no one there. No one. It’s spooky.). We now have a pantry, and a cabinet under the bathroom sink, and a cupboard to store our towels. The best of all: we have a hanging iron rack for our pots and pans. I’ve always wanted one of these.

I still feel restless, and I can’t sit at the computer for more than about fifteen minutes at a time, which rather limits the amount of work I can get done. If it were sunny out, I wonder if I would feel more focused, or just as unsettled.