Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

Reading

Yes, the jacket looks fabulous, and the only way I could possibly like it more is if the back was just a tad more tailored just below the shoulder blades. It’s nice to have something pretty and new because I have been feeling remarkably unpretty for a few months now.

So far it has been a week of mailbox joy, because in yesterday’s post a box of discounted books arrived. Lots of YA short fic, including a copy of the collection known as Swan Sister, which has nothing to do with my work in progress. The titular story was so moving that it made me cry, but then, apart from being well-written it was about a little baby who doesn’t live very long, and I’m hypersensitive to fragile little things in hospital incubators. Also in the box was the copy of Starhawk’s The Earth Path which I’ve been meaning to get since it came out (thanks for the reminder, Fearsclave) and Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier which I read most of before bed last night (it’s that good, as I expected it to be, and now I have to order the second one quickly). And for the boy there was Kitten’s First Full Moon, a book which I saw before he was born and wanted to get for him, but found the published price a little steep. I wanted to wait for the paperback but there’s still no sign of one despite the fact that it’s a Caldecott winner, so when I saw it listed on my favourite discount site I ordered it for him. He loves it, and has brought it to HRH and I to read a dozen times since yesterday afternoon. I’m glad it’s a hit.

I’m also reading Murder Must Advertise, and why has no one ever handed me one of Dorothy Sayers’ books before? I adore her writing style, and the mystery part is nicely buried in character interaction without being ignored or poorly constructed. I’ve added her to my list of authors to look for when I am in secondhand shops, which is all too infequent. (GingerGirl recommended a couple of her titles to get me started lo these many years ago, but alas, I never found them when I remembered to look. Why is it so hard to find classic mysteries, new or used? And I miss you, Ginger, wherever you are.)

I’ve been struggling with a headache off and on these past couple of days. I’m hoping it’s the change in weather.

I can feel a ruthless purge of accumulated Stuff coming on. I have no idea when it could be done, however.

Right. To work.

Mailbox Joy!

Not one, but two cheques!

Payment for work done is a lovely thing. That’s one of the hard things about this business: you put in a lot of work, and only see a lump sum somewhere down the line. These aren’t large, but any money is good money.

Not as lovely was the parcel pick-up slip in the mailbox. The postman didn’t even bother to ring. It’s dated Friday, when I was home all day; the time is marked only “PM”; and the ‘other’ box is checked as the reason. At least s/he had the decency to not claim the delivery was attempted but no one was home. Likely s/he was running late and decided to drop the last parcels at the postal counter instead of actually trying to deliver them. Whatever — it is the lovely lovely black velvet Edwardian-style jacket I got for a song on eBay! Huzzah! I will pick it up tomorrow on a walk with the boy.

Full weekend: a thoroughly enjoyable show of The Mikado on Friday night, brunch out on Saturday with the Preston-Leblancs, brunch in on Sunday morning, psankya egg-decorating early Sunday afternoon, a great visit out to spend time with Karine, Adam, and boys late Sunday afternoon, and an excellent, excellent Sinfonia concert Sunday night. My view of the celli was blocked by the person in front of me, and I found I could appreciate the music as a whole more since I wasn’t watching what the cellists were doing. I wasn’t ‘working’, in other words. Now if I could just switch that analysis mode off at will when I’m reading books….

Tuesday

After an entire frustrating morning of having my Owldaughter server down, it’s back. A slew of spam has just been released through my site-related e-mail accounts, but not a single bit of e-mail I was hoping for — namely, shiny and effulgent messages of “We loved your editing test, please work for us!” from at least one of the handful of jobs I’ve applied for over the past two weeks.

Teh Sicque is still dogging our steps in this house. After dealing with HRH being under the weather for the past handful of days, and Liam dealing with whatever it is that almost-twos deal with (like molars you can’t yet see and frustration with limits and the desire to brush tiny teeth seven times daily and disinterest in food other than crackers and the need to watch a movie over and over and over again when we’re limiting TV time), I find that today I’m quite tired. Liam’s regular Monday with the caregiver was switched for today, and I’ve done some writing, but it’s going so very slowly and I’m fighting deep physical exhaustion. I’ve eaten twice since breakfast, but I’m still flopsy. I’m loath to go curl up under the afghan and doze because then I’ll feel like I’ve lost the day. I don’t even have a good book to read, although last night I pulled Patricia Wrede’s Snow White Rose Red off the shelf to be reread when I finished the latest Nora Roberts fluff with which I was distracting myself. Actually, I don’t really want to read, which alarms me.

I’m also experiencing stupid little crises centered around how I feel like I’m only pretending to be a real writer, and if I’ve published three books shouldn’t I feel different, and have more to show for it? And if/when my fiction gets published, will that better validate my work in my own eyes? Who knows. The mice in the wheel that powers my brain can take a break, though, because I feel like I’m chasing my own inadequacies in circles today.

If it weren’t minus 33 with the windchill out there, I’d go for a walk to clear my brain, get a drink, and perhaps treat myself to an Easter Creme Egg.

I have no idea what to do for dinner this evening. My meal creativity ran out last night.

Back to work. I’m going to start skipping scenes in Pandora and expanding the ones that exist in note form. I’ll go back and bridge them later, when I have the energy to write transitions properly.

Naturally

HRH: Home in bed. The gastro has struck back with a vengeance.

Liam: Home. There is unpleasant roommate upheaval at the caregiver’s.

Me: Oh look, a rush editing job just landed in my inbox.

*headdesk*

Thank goodness we had a nice visit with the ADZO crew yesterday to have provided me with some sort of break. Liam discovered sledding and loves it with a violence heretofore reserved only for Mermy and Thomas.

Also: BSG? Well done, destabilising the viewers.

Checklist

Number of family members the gastro has hit since I succumbed to it Wednesday night: Three.

Number of family members fully recovered: Zero. We’re all still a little off. HRH seems to be the worst off, but it hit him last.

Interest in food in general amongst family members: Zero.

Number of meals we should still eat: All of them. Plus grazing. Except see above.

Annoying conversations with downstairs neighbour in which I was told “you make a lot of noise, you know”: One. This from the woman who lets her alarm clock go off in the morning, loud enough to wake us up, and then leaves it going so we can’t fall back asleep. The woman who vacuums at midnight. The woman who leaves her television on all night. (Her living area is right under our bedroom.) This really, really infuriates me because (a) we are not loud people to begin with, and (b) we go out of our way to live in the front half of the house so that we minimise disturbance in the back half, under which she lives. I am thoughtful; she is not. And we get crap from her? Although HRH told me that apparently she complained about the noise to the landlord when this apartment was vacant before we moved in. And she told me that she heard the baby crying before we had brought him home from the hospital. So it shouldn’t bother me, because she evidently isn’t living in the same reality everyone else is. But it does. The injustice of it has ruined my weekend; I can’t shake my resentment.

Annoying conversations with downstairs neighbour in which I was told “you call my name a lot”: One. Same conversation, actually. This bit rendered me pretty speechless beyond, “Ah, no. No, we don’t call your name. Ever.” More proof she’s not living in the same reality. I don’t know whose voice she’s hearing, but I wish they’d encourage her to relocate.

Number of new movies seen in the past two days: Two. Impromptu, and Howl’s Moving Castle. I appreciated the Miyazaki for its designs and how it interpreted Sophie’s shifting age, but the book by Diana Wynne Jones upon which it’s based is so much better.

Hours spent planning out the end of The Moments of Being Pandora: Four, this past Friday. It was an excellent work day. I’m excited about the story, and I’m looking forward to filling it out now. Swan Sister gets set on a side burner while I make a drive to get a finished draft of Pandora. I’ve already done a basic edit on the existing three-quarters of the book, so another fourish chapters should end it. Then I can look at the entire thing properly as a unit.

Snow in our backyard: Around three feet? It was up to the crossbeams on the swingset when we went to bed after the storm on Friday night; it’s compacted a bit now. Still, that’s a lot of snow. There’s only about a foot of fence showing above it.

Number of time I’ve seen a plough on our street in the past two and a half days: One. Our lovely wide street is now a single lane. The piles of snow at the end of people’s driveways are around eight feet high. Very exciting if you are under fifteen. The removal crews can visit our neighbourhood any time now. They haven’t even touched 90th Avenue.

We’re off for a visit with the ADZO crew this afternoon, or Liam and I are, anyhow, despite the fact that I think it would do HRH good to get out of the house.

What I Read This February

Duty and Desire by Pamela Aidan
Enna Burning by Shannon Hale
Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomlin
An Assembly Such As This by Pamela Aidan
These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Still Life, by Louise Penny
Blade of Fortriu, Juliet Marillier
Vivaldi, Michael Talbot
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, Patricia MacLachlan (reread)

Weekend Recap

We just bought a dozen fish at the pet store. Well, we paid for a dozen, but the saleswoman liked Liam so much that she slipped an extra one into the bag, to make a baker’s dozen. (What a baker would do with goldfish is something about which I do not want to think for too long.) We are having a Bad Day, which is hardly surprising as the boy needs a day to recover from a long car ride, and he only had one day in between recovering from the drive down and starting the next one. In fact, it feel somewhat like a sick day in our house, as we are all being very good to ourselves (long car rides are no fun for Mama and Dada, either). So new fish are a treat. Also? A dozen are cheaper than four. Feeder goldfish are our friends, yes indeedy. And the death rate won’t be as noticeable with a whole school like this.

Liam travelled both ways very well in the car, but wow, when he’s had enough, that’s it, he wants out RIGHT NOW. He became very distressed on the way down when we were on a long stretch of highway and he needed to use the bathroom, which triggered a meltdown even though he was wearing a diaper instead of training pants against this very kind of eventuality. When not in the car Liam was very charming to everyone with lots of “hello” and “bye-bye”, and pointing out “people!”. While we were there he discovered the Canada geese who fly back and forth all the time, and thus spent a lot of his walks with his head craned back, waving at them and saying “Bye-bye birds, bye-bye. Go go go!” He also finally saw the moon in the daytime sky, and gave us that “You SEE, I KNEW you were holding out on me with the whole ‘moon at night, sun in the day’ crock you had going!” look when he pointed it out.

Finally following through on an idea I had a while ago, I went out to a craft store in Oakville and found two small needlepoint kits. I’ve almost finished one already. It’s really remarkable how much technique one retains from doing a single small needlepoint project twenty years ago. I got small kits because I didn’t want to overextend myself and ruin my fledgling desire to start needleworking again. It was hard to find a needlepoint kit at all; counted cross stitch appears to be all the rage right now, and while I love the look of finished cross-stitch there is nothing less fun than keeping track of numbers by referring to a chart and counting squares on blank cloth, thank you very much. I wanted these needleworking projects to be fun and relatively mindless, so I made sure the kits I got had pre-printed canvasses instead. I started the first one, a 5 x 5 ” crescent moon for Liam’s room, on Sunday at noon when I brought it home; I now have all of the main design completed (modified, naturally, because the moon had a face and I hate moons with faces) and a third of the background filled in. Go me! It helped that I have discovered that I can do needlepoint in the car without triggering motion sickness, which made the trip home much more enjoyable. (And there is only one person out there who will understand this: ADZO, needlepoint is my bowling.)

My mother can still wield a mean set of shears, as she demonstrated by cutting my hair as she used to do when I was six. She cut three and a half inches off my hair, and I feel so very much better. I’ve been trying to find time/freedom from the small one for about a month now in order to go get it trimmed, because I have been hating how very dead the ends were and how much they tangled. Amazing how much better the loss of four inches of hair makes one feel.

So there you have it: we are home, and relatively sound of mind and body.