New kid on the blog

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be blathering on about a blog that only has three posts in it, but this one looks like a keeper. Remember just before Christmas when I was crowing about being featured in the sidebar of a Toronto Star article on the Momosphere (Ann, I still love that word) in general, and my idol Jen in particular?

(pauses for breath – crikey, that’s a lot of links in one paragraph)

Well, the Andrea Gordon, the reporter who wrote the article, just started her own blog under the Star’s banner, and I wanted to say welcome and good luck.

10-pages-in book review: A Long Way Down

One of the best parts of the holidays is having a little bit of extra time for reading, once the chaos that is Christmas abates. By sheer luck, my turn in the queue for Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down came up after a wait of several weeks just in time for me to indulge in a little holiday reading, and I’m just far enough in to offer the latest in my ongoing series of 10-pages-in book reviews .

Even if you don’t recognize Nick Hornby’s name, you’ll recognize the titles of some of his books that have been made into movies: Fever Pitch , High Fidelity , and About A Boy. I have to admit, I’ve never read any of them, but High Fidelity is one of my favourite movies – mostly because I have a thing for John Cusack. But when I realized that the same person had written all these books, I had to take him out for a spin and check out his goods for myself. And that’s how a literary crush is born.

But back, for a moment, to the book. A Long Way Down is the story of four people whose lives, on an ordinary day, would likely never intersect. But this is no ordinary place, and no ordinary day. It is, in fact, New Year’s Day, and our four protagonists meet on the roof of a 15-story building in London, where each of them have come to commit suicide.

The story is told, by turns, through each of their eyes in a first-person narrative. Hornby does a wonderful job of making each character’s voice distinctive, so you never have to flip back to the beginning of a chapter to see who is speaking.

Martin is a smart, bitter C-list celebrity, a former breakfast television host who has become more infamous than famous after getting caught having a fling with a fifteen year old. He says of his suicidal tendencies: “On New Year’s Eve, it felt as though I’d be saying goodbye to a dim form of consciousness and a semi-functioning digestive system – all the indications of a life, certainly, but none of the content. I don’t even feel sad, particularly. I just feel very stupid, and very angry.”

JJ is an American who had aspirations to be a rock star but finds himself delivering pizzas. He quotes Oscar Wilde but can’t utter an entire sentence without using fuck as an adjective or an adverb. He tells us, “The trouble with my generation is that we all think we’re fucking geniuses. Making something isn’t good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something; we have to be something. It’s our inalienable right as citizens of the twenty-first century. If Christina Aguilera or Britney or some American Idol jerk can be something, then why can’t I? Where’s mine, huh?”

Jess is a wild and unstable young woman. I know her type so well, and yet am having a hard time describing her. She inhabits the polar opposite of my life of stability, sunshine and acceptance. She is shallow and thoughtless, and says whatever comes into her head. When another character mentions being engaged, Jess is shocked by the concept: “You did? Really? Okay, but what living people get engaged? I’m not interested in people out of the Ark. I’m not interested in people with, with like shoes and raincoats and whatever.” People with shoes and raincoats don’t deserve respect in Jess’ world.

And finally, there is Maureen, a middle-aged woman who has spent the last 20 years of her life as a single mother caring for a severely disabled son who can neither move independently nor communicate with her. Her innocent naivety born of inexperience is a foil for Jess’s overly well-informed naivety. In considering JJ, Maureen thinks, “without knowing anything about him [I thought] that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren’t they? I know they didn’t invent gayness, because that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion.”

(Sorry for the extensive quoting, but really, I could go on for days pulling lovely little bits out of this book.)

Their lives intersect on the roof, where each has come to commit suicide – some with more forethought than others. Distracted by their shared misery – misery being about the only thing they have in common – the unlikely quartet find that the moment for suicide has passed. Suspended in a strange limbo of thwarted suicidal intent, detached from the painful reality of their lives at least until the sun comes up, they band together for a kind of quest, and set off into the darkness of New Year’s Eve to find the fellow who has broken Jess’ heart. Really. When you read the book, you’ll get it. By turns madcaply comic and painfully insightful, it’s a moving and unforgettable story.

I officially have a crush on Nick Hornby now, in much the same way I have a crush on Douglas Coupland. (Is it weird that I don’t have much patience for chick lit, but am developing a thing for lad lit?) Hornby and Coupland are, in fact, very similar writers. They have the same ear for dialogue and eye for quirky characters, and both have their finger firmly placed on the pulse of modern culture. They both use humour and pathos to evoke how it feels to be alive and watching the world in the twenty-first century. Where Coupland’s work clearly echoes his own Canadian-ness, Hornby’s book is infused with what he referred to in a Guardian interview as “English miserablism”. I love this term – it captures perfectly the distinctive flavour of this novel and its characters.

I haven’t been this excited about a book since The Time Traveler’s Wife. Hornby is such an excellent writer that I’m disappointed I haven’t discovered him before now. I could go on – there’s so much more to say. Except I have to get over to the library Web site and reserve a few more of Hornby’s books, because I’m going to need a really good book when this one is done.

Stardust @ home

This is the most nerdy kind of cool. I love stuff like this.

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Computer users are being invited to join the hunt for minute grains of stardust a NASA spacecraft should return to Earth this weekend.

The Stardust spacecraft should land in Utah early Saturday, carrying in its hold a sprinkling of grains of interstellar dust scooped up during its seven year mission. Researchers are seeking the public’s help in pinpointing the submicroscopic bits of dust, leftovers from stellar explosions perhaps millions of years old, in photos they plan to place on the Internet.

In 2004, Stardust passed through the tail of comet Wild2, picking up samples of the cometary dust that makes the comet’s tail visible. Researches now have to analyze the interstellar dust collectors for evidence of submicroscopic particles using a high-powered microscope. From the Stardust @ Home Web site:

Finding the incredibly tiny interstellar dust impacts in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) will be extremely difficult. Because dust detectors on the Ulysses and Galileo spacecraft have detected interstellar dust streaming into the solar system, we know there should be about 45 interstellar dust impacts in the SIDC. These impacts can only be found using a high-magnification microscope with a field of view smaller than a grain of salt. But the aerogel collector that we have to search enormous by comparison, about a tenth of a square meter (about a square foot) in size. The job is roughly equivalent to searching for 45 ants in an entire football field, one 5cm by 5cm (2 inch by 2 inch) square at a time! More than 1.6 million individual fields of view will have to searched to find the interstellar dust grains. We estimate that it would take more than twenty years of continuous scanning for us to search the entire collector by ourselves.

So they are seeking volunteers to download a virtual microscope and copies of the images to share the workload. Not just anybody can play. You have to pass a test (I can see what I’ll be doing this weekend) and complete some Web-based training to qualify before registering for the project. The payoff? Anybody who finds one of the anticipated 45 or so interstellar dust particles will be named as a co-author of the scientific paper announcing the discovery of the particle. Way wicked cool. I mean, I’ll do anything to get my name published.

Quite a few years ago, I took a course in astronomy. One of the things we talked about was interstellar dust. It is one of the most primal building blocks in nature – the Sun, the Earth and even we are made of interstellar dust. (Okay, semantic quibble, but I guess the Sun is not made up of interstellar dust, but stellar dust. But, you get my point.) Whenever you see a meteor, a ‘shooting star’, you are likely seeing a minute particle of interstellar debris burning up in the atmosphere. Except it doesn’t burn up completely, it just becomes microscopic dust that settles down and comes to rest all over the Earth, including on your coffee table.

Which is a really great excuse not to be too quick with that can of Pledge. Because you wouldn’t want to disturb something so fundamentally beautiful as interstellar dust, would you?

An uplifting experience

It’s been maybe eight or ten months since I stopped nursing Simon. And just now I’m getting around to retiring my maternity bras. (Boys beware, there be girl talk ahead.)

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, let me tell you about nursing bras. They are stretchy, they are soft, they are as comfy as your favourite jammies. And, after two years of use and abuse, there’s about as much elastic left in them as there is integrity in election advertising.

Maternity bras are not about giving you a better silhouette, they are not about making the melons look firm and ripe. They are about giving a squalling baby easy access to his lunch while still providing enough support that you can run down the stairs without poking your own eye out. (And, if you are less than a D cup, no offense, but I’m not talking to you right now. I’ve always wanted to be able to wear one of those adorable little camisole tops in lieu of a bra, or one of those cute cotton numbers with the matching panties. That’s not a bra, that’s a toy. I’m talking about industrial strength bras here, bras with a real job to do.)

So the comfort factor is a large part of the reason why I’m still wearing maternity bras almost a year after I finished nursing. (After having two babies in two years, my pre-maternity bras are no longer an option. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean.) Another major factor is sheer laziness my busy and fulfilling daily schedule. But the real reason is, I hate bra shopping with a white-hot burning passion.

I’ve always hated bra shopping. No matter what kind of mood you are in when you start bra shopping, you will leave the experience feeling bulgy, saggy and demoralized. Bra shopping undermines self-esteem like the worst kind of ex-boyfriend. You can take 50 bras into the changeroom and none of them will fit. Some fit okay over the ribs but pucker under the arms. Some give you torpedo boobs. (Ah, the google traffic that phrase will bring.) Some give you muffin-top bulges over the cup. Some dig into your side and grate on you like your mother-in-law’s voice. Some cut into your shoulder so deeply you can see bone under the grooves. There is no perfect bra, there is only good enough.

All of which makes it nothing short of a miracle that I found myself in the unmentionables section of a department store the other day on my lunch hour, having been drawn in by a plethora of red “40% off” signs. Having only the vaguest idea what size I might actually be but caught up in the moment, I started grabbing boxes willy-nilly. I grabbed some with underwire; I grabbed some with lycra; I grabbed some that were white and I grabbed some in radiant jewel tones. I must have tried on a dozen bras and you know what? I found two that I loved. Not just liked – I heart these bras.

Who would have guessed that it was possible to have a bra that is comfortable AND provides support? I stood in the fitting room looking at myself in the mirror, thinking ‘Oh, they’re supposed to be way up there?’ Who knew that even after two babies, your nipples don’t have to hang out with your navel?

You know what the best part is? When your ta-tas aren’t sagging down to your waistline, even a striped turtleneck looks pretty good!

International Delurking Week!

Hey you! Yes, I’m talking to you, the one who drops by here almost every day and never says a peep. You read, you leave a digital footprint, you go, and I have no idea who you are.

Guess what, today is your day. As read on Mimilou, according to Papernapkin, it’s International DeLurking Week! (Actually, they said it was National DeLurking Week, but we’ve crossed the border and now it’s an International incident.)

So drop me a note and say hello. If it’s your first time here, or if you drop by every day – whatever, just click on the comment link and have at it.

You know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it. Don’t make me beg, I really have no shame…

Blogging for profit

What do you think about getting paid for blogging? I mean, most bloggers I know would jump at the chance (me included, of course). It’s the holy grail of blogging, a paid gig.

But at what price? I’ve been wondering about blog ads like AdSense. Have you ever thought about signing up? With more than 100 hits a day, I’m sure I’d make at least a dime, maybe even a quarter, each month. Actually, I have no idea what the rates are, but it can’t be too much because even my favourite bloggers don’t seem to be all that much closer to the retirement chalet in Provence.

What do you think of those ads? I have to admit, when I see a blog has ads it immediately knocks my opinion of the blog down an infinitessimal amount – nothing that interesting stories well written wouldn’t overcome. But, I am a bit of a snob that way.

And yet, I’m also not independently wealthy, and a part of me wonders why I wouldn’t want to have a few extra pennies each month. Anybody have any experience, pro or con, with blog ad programs? I really don’t know much about them at all.

And what do you think of blogging for profit? Do those ads change your opinion of a blog?

Speak, for I have nothing worth saying today.

Puppy love

Beloved called me at work last Friday after he dropped the boys off at daycare. There’s a little girl named Madison who is there two of their three days, and has been for at least two years now. Beloved said as soon as they came in the door, Madison was saying, “Take off your coat and come and play with me, Tristan!” She was practically dancing in her enthusiasm.

I “awwww”ed appropriately, and promptly forgot about it. That afternoon, I was on pickup duty. I had Tristan’s coat, boots and hat on and was struggling to do the same for Simon when I noticed Tristan and Madison standing by the front door, holding hands and smiling serenely.

After I picked my jaw up of the floor, I caught Bobbie’s eye and asked her how long that had been going on. She gave me one of those, “I am as surprised as you” looks and said they’d been like that all day.

His first girlfriend, and he’s not even four. Truly, is that not adorable?

It’s the blissfully innocent smiles they had on their faces, not looking at each other but standing side by side staring off into space that is so exquisitely cute. I remember my first crush. (Don’t roll your eyes – my blog, my sap. Deal with it.) His name was Mark Neci-Ghirri or something like that, and we were in the first grade together. My mother still tells the story of how I came home one day and announced that when we got married, Mark and I would come and live with Mommy and Daddy.

Tristan hasn’t mentioned Madison at all this week, so I’m wondering how things are going over at Bobbie’s place today. I’m hoping she comes from money – it’s about time somebody in the family learned to marry for money instead of love. She seems like good daughter-in-law material, though. He could do much worse.

Ten-pages-in book review: The Penelopiad

Time for another 10-pages-in book review. I’m a little less than a third of the way through Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, but it’s a surprisingly quick and easy read and if I don’t write this now I’ll be done the book soon.

The Penelopiad is one of the first three books in an ambitious series called ‘The Myths’ from Canongate Books. According to publisher Jamie Byng, “From the outset the idea was to approach topclass writers from all over the world and invite them to retell any myth in any way they chose. And in turn their myths would be published all over the world… By my calculation we will publish the 100th myth in this series on March 15th 2038.” I love the idea of retelling myths and finding relevance for the modern reader.

That’s exactly what Margaret Atwood has done. Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, hero of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. The Penelopiad is her story, from her unhappy childhood (her father tried to drown her) to her marriage to Odysseus (he won her in a footrace, after drugging the other competitors), her lifelong rivalry with her cousin (the beautiful and infamous Helen of Troy), and her struggle to manage the household for 20 years while Odysseus runs off to fight the Trojan war.

I remember struggling through The Iliad and The Odyssey in school. Matter of fact, I think I gave up and read the Coles Notes of The Odyssey to get me through the exam. While I’ll read just about anything, epic poetry has never been something I’ve enjoyed. I studied ancient mythology from dozens of perspectives in my academic career (I was a liberal arts student, after all), but no telling of these stories was ever so interesting, so compelling and so real to me as this version.

The story is told first person by Penelope from her current home in the afterworld, in a dry tone that is by turns imperiously detached and conversationally witty. You can’t help but laugh when she talks about the gods having sex with mortals: “To watch some mortal with his or her eyes frying in their sockets through an overdose of god-sex made [the gods] shake with laughter.”

Penelope’s unique perspective from Hades gives her insight into our modern world. She tells the reader, “More recently, some of us have been able to infiltrate the new ethereal-wave system that encircles the globe, and to travel around that way, looking out at the world through the flat, illuminated surfaces that serve as domestic shrines.” In Hades, she inhabits the past and the present simultaneously, making her voice resonate with the modern reader.

Hers is not the only perspective on the retelling of the Homeric myth, however. Every so often, Penelope’s murdered maids take over the telling, interrupting with skipping rhymes, poems and ballads. They are not so much a greek chorus as a chorus line, as cheeky as Penelope herself.

I got this book as a stocking stuffer, and that’s just about as perfect an origin for it as I can imagine. It’s light reading on a heavy subject, an enjoyable telling of a well-known myth from a fresh perspective. It’s clear Margaret Atwood had fun in turning Homer’s epics inside out, and I enjoy her work most when she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

And oh, how I wish I could turn a phrase like she does. That alone makes this book worth reading, just for the sheer joy of seeing words strung together with such effortless beauty by someone who truly has the gift.

100% arrogant!

As seen at Angry Pregnant Lawyer

Starving Artist
You are 42% Rational, 42% Extroverted, 36% Brutal, and 100% Arrogant.

You are the Starving Artist! You are more intuitive than logical, and are primarily guided by your heart and emotions. You are also very introverted and gentle. Of course, this does not mean that you do not have an ego. In fact, you are surprisingly arrogant for someone so emotional and gentle. This is why you are best described as a starving artist. You are very introspective and quite sure of yourself, as any accomplished artist is, yet your views are impractical, guided by feelings, and overly gentle. You probably find math, logic, and similar intellectual pursuits offensive to your artistic sensibilities, and you prefer the open-endedness of artistry because then you know you can never truly have a wrong answer. So really you have no reason to be arrogant, you big doofus, because the skills you value (emotion, spirit, art, etc.) in yourself are valuable only on a subjective level, meaning your arrogance is purely masturbatory. In short, your personality is defective because you are arrogant, introverted, introspective, gentle, and thoroughly irrational…posessing most of the traits needed to be a starving–and useless–artist. So get out there, write a few short stories that are allegories for the spirit, and starve!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Capitalist Pig.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Haughty Intellectual, the Televangelist, and the Emo Kid.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well.

The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

The great escape

When I stepped out of the shower this morning, Beloved was still dozing and I could hear Tristan talking to Simon. I poked Beloved and reminded him that if he left Simon in his crib too long, Simon might take it into his head to crawl out of it – something we have thus far avoided.

I am in denial over the fact that Simon might some day move from his crib to a bed. In fact, I dread the day. We turfed Tristan from his crib when he was 20 months old, entirely because we needed the crib for Simon’s impending arrival. At the time, he seemed plenty old enough, and he made the transition without complaint. He loved his big boy bed.

Except he wouldn’t stay in it. I was 11 months pregnant (or so it seemed), still working, it was Christmas, and Tristan would be running around the house every night from midnight until 3 am. It was, in a word, horrendous. It got so bad, and I was so desperate for sleep, that a few times I made sure everything was safe, checked the baby gate at the top of the stairs, and locked my door. I’d find him asleep on the floor outside my door when guilt woke me up a few hours later. Bad mommy memories.

I am therefore endlessly grateful that although Simon is a monkey in almost every way, and manages to find trouble other kids couldn’t conceive in their wildest dreams, it hasn’t yet occured to him that he might be able to escape his crib.

All this flashed through my head in a heartbeat this morning as I wandered down the hallway, following the sounds of Tristan and Simon’s laughter. Tristan had turned on the light in Simon’s room, and I nudged open the door to see both of them, plus an assortment of Thomas trains, in Simon’s crib. Together.

Trying very hard not to shriek, I explained to Tristan how climbing into Simon’s crib was a very very very bad idea. “But Mommy,” he said, his blue eyes wounded, “I was just trying to make Simon happy.”

Sigh.

Maybe it won’t occur to Simon that the ingress is an egress too?