Raise a Reader? You Can Try

In the summer I had dinner with a friend I was extremely close with in grad school, touched base with when I got to Ottawa, and then fell out of touch with and hadn't seen since Eve was about four, so, a long time. It was amazing - actually never mind, I'll do a whole post on that later. But she has two daughters and neither of them are readers and she said she had kind of a hard time with it until one of them had to say cool it, you're making me feel bad and it's not going to change anything.

I'm not sure how I would have felt if neither of my kids was a reader. I know it's a big part of my personality. I loved children's books and had a collection before I even had kids, and reading to them every day was really fun. Eve moved smoothly into chapter books and is definitely what you would consider a reader. With Angus I read one entire Percy Jackson book with him, and it was great, but after Diary of a Wimpy Kid his reading fell off and it didn't really bother me. During one camping trip a few years ago he pilfered my stack of books and took one and since then has been asking me to give him books for Christmas. I think he still only reads a lot on vacation, but that's fine. Would it have bothered me if neither of them read? I honestly don't know.

I am constantly getting frustrated with myself for not being able to lay hands on old pictures - I started organizing all of them last year and then put the mess away for Christmas and then got horrifically depressed in January and here we are again. Anyway, years ago I took a picture at brunch of Angus leaned over a Harry Potter book intently while absently stabbing at pancakes with his other hand and sent it to his grade three teacher saying 'job well done!' I mentioned this to someone a few weeks later and he said indignantly "she SHOWED THE WHOLE CLASS", but he hadn't mentioned it before then so it can't have scarred him that badly. 

I did love the way Eve and her friends talked about our book-stuffed house. I took Eve and a friend to meet the teacher night in middle school because the other mom was busy, and the friend said to their English teacher "their house has books EVERYWHERE. Eve goes into her mom's room and asks for a book and she just GRABS one out of a pile!" She left out that there are so many books there's no room for anything else to be put away properly, so also a win. 

Eve and I like a lot of the same books, and sharing books with her has been kind of magical. We buddy read some of her books in undergrad, I never have trouble finding books to give her for Christmas, and now she recommends books to me, which is a bit trippy. I gave her my old ipad last year and she got into borrowing library ebooks and loved it because then she could turn off her lights except for the little fairy lights and read in the dark and be cozy. 

We both love Miriam Toews, and she has had the weirdest good luck with finding used Toews books on sale at new bookstores. This is the latest one - is it not just stupidly beautiful? It looks like her lamp and the Coach purse I got her for her birthday last year. 

Last week she told me she was going to put a real actual paper book on hold (I guess she wants to be more like Sarah too) and then sent me this picture. We were on Facetime and I said it gave me a tiny bit of a weird feeling seeing her last name, which is different from mine, on the label. 

I'm also a bit jealous that she has an A name so will also be right at the beginning of the holds, rather than an M name which is always, always on the bottom shelf. Have you tried picking up seven books from the bottom shelf? It is inelegant, to say the least. ALSO Also, it's an Olga Tokarczuk book that she is now reading before me. Is that even allowed? 

I Got Nothing

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Friday

 Struggling a bit with pain and infirmity at the moment. I got new running shoes but my knee is still really painful, so I am getting assessed for new orthotics and buying new boots also, which I would have done at some point anyway, but now I'm doing it not knowing if it will even fix things. I'm also having an issue with my ulnar nerve, which means the outside edge of my left arm and hand are inflamed. This means it's an issue trying to handle books and walk around the library, which, bluntly, sucks.

I got in to see my massage therapist yesterday and she went to town on my legs. I could feel that the muscles around my left knee were looser after. Later in the day I felt really achy and almost drunk, without having consumed alcohol or taken an accidental triple dose of any of my meds (I checked). It's possible it was just a reaction to the intensity of the massage and maybe a delayed reaction from the harrowing drive last Sunday, which I've kind of been waiting for. Since then I've just been really, really tired, and I just remembered that my doctor emailed me that my iron and B12 were low and she had sent some supplements to the pharmacy for me. Did the pharmacy notify me of this? They did not. Did I remember to ask about them when I was just there picking up prescriptions? I did not. I've also been alone in the house for almost two weeks exactly, which tends to make me feel a bit odd by the end.

To balance out the whining, an anecdote from after my massage, when I was driving around doing errands. There's an amazing woman in my neighbourhood who does outreach with unhoused people and collects donations of various kinds for the bags she hands out - packaged snacks, clean socks, blankets, etc. Last year in honour of Nicole's Tiny Secret Festive Season, I gave away Christmas soaps and little decorations on my Facebook community giving group. This was fun, but with the state of things this year I thought I would consciously collect more useful donations to drop off at this woman's donation point which is near my Wednesday school. On the way out to my massage I grabbed a pair of warm socks and mittens I had put aside, and then picked up some snacks while I was grocery shopping and bagged it all together.

It was bright and sunny, which was doubly noticeable because the sun hasn't been out for so long. As I drove into the townhouse complex and parked, there was a bright ray of sun directly on my windshield. I could see a dumpster in the space between two units. Then I thought I could see someone bent over going through the dumpster. This seemed like a horrifying thing to happen upon, although I did think I could just offer them my bag of food and mittens and socks. Then I realized no one was actually standing beside the dumpster but.... dear God, was someone IN the dumpster? But not struggling and not dead, because wasn't that an arm lolling out, with the fingers wiggling in a leisurely manner? 

No, it was not a person in the dumpster (thank fuck). It was a squirrel hanging full-length out of the dumpster preparing to jump down, which looked like an arm. It finally went, which broke the illusion. Then it took off before I could even offer it a mitten or a pepperoni stick. Rude. 

In Which I Try to Be More Like Sarah

 Oh stop laughing, I know I'm nothing like Sarah. What I am is still in my Year of Pillaging the Library on the Regular, which I started after Sarah read the newest Kate Alice Marshall book before I even knew it was a thing, and she said she researched new books and tried to be the first in the hold line, and I thought 'damn, why am I not doing that', and I realized I was shying away from anything I had to physically go to the library for, and then realized this was dumb, so started haunting the New Arrivals lists and putting a million books on hold, with predictable results...

Apologies for the longest run-on sentence ever. Anyway, it's been insane and also delicious. I go to the library every Wednesday after my afternoon school, and return two or three books and pick up seven or ten new ones. Every couple of days I check my account so I know the order I have to read them in - what's overdue first, what's coming due next, what has people waiting for it, etc. I haven't had to return anything without reading it, and I haven't kept anything for more than 21 days overdue (which is when my account gets suspended until I return it). In the past this has stressed me out a bit, but right now it's very enjoyable, it feels like a well-ordered process, and well ordered processes are few and far between in my life.

If I was feeling at all like this was a weird, inadvisable thing to do, I read an article or post recently - dammit, I did not bookmark it and cannot find it - where a librarian was saying 'Borrow all the books! Borrow them even if you don't think you'll read them! Give them a vacation from the library!' It's one of those screamingly obvious things I still needed to be reminded of - more books being borrowed looks better for funding requests. If a book isn't borrowed, it risks being weeded. So yes, I am bringing these books home and letting them sit beside and on top of books they usually don't associate with, and this is all right and good. 

Book dance party!

It's been a thing of joy. I feel like I'm bathing in beautiful words and sentences, with brilliant metaphors and allusions and synecdoches splashing up over the edges and blooping me in the face.

I have mentioned here that I sometimes regret the first time I set a reading goal on Goodreads, because it sometimes gets weirdly in my head, but now that I've done it I can't make myself not do it. I sometimes consult Eve on what she thinks my goal should be - only sometimes, because I often like to pick odd numbers like 111 or 99 or 103, and she hates those - she likes round numbers and multiples of five. She usually sets her goal around 20, like this year, so she suggested that I set mine at 120, seeing as I'm not trying to do a master's degree in biochemistry - so I did. Then her housemate Zoe was over at our house - Zoe is fearsomely goal-oriented and competent and I kind of think she should be running the country. When I mentioned that I was shooting for 120 books because Eve was going for 20, she burst out laughing, and we finally figured out that she misunderstood and thought I was flexing on Eve rather than following her suggestion. 

Due to the whole 'emptying two library shelves every week or so' thing, I was coming up on my goal fast by the beginning of September. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I usually try to make my first book of the year special in some way - it's always a Frances Hardinge book if there's a new one, or something that is auspicious in some way. I try to do the same thing for the book that brings me to my goal. But then I was transcribing book notes - I used to use sticky notes or book darts to mark passages I wanted to remember, but that got really unwieldy, so now I take a screenshot if it's on my ipad or take a picture if it's a paper book, and then I type them up when I have time. I usually write the title of the book on the screenshot or take a picture of the book cover, but sometimes I forget and I come to a passage and have no idea what the book is. I look at successive passages, I rack my brains, and then I google, which usually works if there are names, and sometimes does not and I have to live with the mystery. This time I was able to find out what the book was, but when I looked in Goodreads I had not marked it as Currently Reading or Finished. And when I did so now, I was suddenly at my goal, which was a bit anticlimactic. 

I am coming up on the point where I am going to have to self-defensively suspend all my holds, given that I have returned three or four books and retrieved eight to ten books on hold the past two Wednesdays. I've never been one to blame a bartender for continuing to serve drinks to a drunk person, but I did look at the holds shelf this afternoon and for a second I imagined myself complaining "I was over-served!"

This is a finite experiment. I have books on my shelves at home and on my Kindle that I have been ignoring. This isn't sustainable. I have a measly two kids and half a job and I own zero pairs of barrel jeans and I do NOT look adorable in leopard print and I, sadly, am no Sarah.

I do wipe my bathroom down every morning before I leave, though. 

In Which I Try to Be More Like Jenny

 By running? Like, at all, at any speed, for any distance? Hahahahahahahaha hahahahaha.

No.

I did try to start running a few years ago. Wait, no, many many years ago. I didn't hate it. I mean, not as much as I thought I would. But my knee started complaining hard early on. My friend told me to go to  The Running Room because they would do whatever they could to help you keep running. They didn't, really, just listened to what I was feeling and said "yeah, that's probably not great." My knee clicked audibly while I was walking up stairs for years, and is the first one to start showing signs of arthritis now, so along with the whole problem of my boobs threatening to give me a concussion, that means running isn't going to happen.

But I did finally look up Caroline Girvan's Dead Bug workout (which I'm pretty sure I saw mentioned on Jenny's blog first, although I can't find the reference now).

What a great name, right? It's not a Skinny Girl anything, it's not a Beach Body thing, it's literally what I feel like while working out. And I've been really looking for a good core strength workout because I always feel so crooked and it feels like any improvement in my core would help. 

Can I do it with weights yet? Nope. Can I even finish it every time (it is very short)? Uh-uh. I do it until my sciatica starts pinging and then I stop. But it feels like a really good combination of effective and difficult-but-not-punishingly-so. Sweat drips off me while I do it. I usually do yoga first and then put it in at the end, or do it after my walk. 

I've read multiple articles lately about how important strength training is as we age, for maintaining metabolic rate and muscle mass, increasing mitochondrial function and stimulating the creation of new, healthy mitochondria ("For fuck's sake, now I have to worry about my mitochondria?" my friend Nat said, and yeah, relatable). I was in a good gym routine including weights before Covid, but I haven't been able to get back to working out off-site. Fortunately there were some things that I was already doing, and I'm trying to add in more. The Dead Bug workout I can do on my back, so it doesn't hurt my bad knee or my bad hands.

Thank-you Jenny! I guess I would slightly rather be reminded of you while running on a seaside path with the wind in my hair rather than wiggling on the floor like an overturned cockroach, but we work with the tools we are given!

In Which I Try To Be More Like Engie

 By walking my dog three to four times a day? No.

By training my dog to walk and behave and do a dance move or two? Also no.

(can't even train her not to jump on my face while I'm doing yoga)

By conscientiously tracking my workout, budgeting, correspondence and other goals, like a conscientious adult? Are you quite mad.

(Okay, I have actually started tracking my exercise in the notebook on the table in my yoga room, when I remember.)

Mostly, I have been sending snail mail ("You mean... mail?" my smart-ass daughter asked. "It's a useful retronym" I retorted. She maintains that if I don't say email anyone would know I mean mail mail. Hmph).

I had just gotten into a  really good routine of writing a postcard or card four or five times a week, then stamping and addressing them all to send on one day. And then Canada Post went on strike again. *sad trombone*

Oh, first I sent a really cool Octopus postcard to Matt's uncle's wife, who was with us at the Vancouver Aquarium when we saw the most active and charismatic octopus ever.

Then I got it back because I forgot to put a stamp on it.

THEN Canada Post went on strike again.

Sigh.

BUT Canada Post has now gone to rotating strikes, and Suzanne got a postcard I sent, so things are moving.

Did I get really into this idea and buy way too many postcards?

No, I don't think so.

I love email. My hands are weak and painful at this point in my life and I can type so much faster and longer than I can write. But a paper letter or postcard is a precious thing, and I want to put more of them into the world.

Oops, forgot to link to Engie's blog.

Thanks for Asking! (literally)

I guess we're in The Back Nine of NaBloPoMo, and winter has arrived here in Ontario, so the fact that my blog vigour is flagging somewhat is not terribly surprising. I do have a few posts that I worked on ahead of time, but for today I'm going to answer questions about the names posts, because it's an easy post and also because I see that it's a little weird that I just dropped that fact about my dad's last name and didn't elaborate.

Not that there's a whole lot more to tell, but I do agree that it's unusual, except that it was 1940 and my grandparents lived in Stony Rapids, Saskatchewan, which is identified as a 'hamlet', is less than a 100 km south of the Northwest Territories with a sub-arctic climate, and in the 2021 census had a recorded population of 219. They were absolutely literate - my grandfather was a voracious reader, as is my father - but I just don't think anyone had the energy to get exercised about this clerical error. As far as I know it never caused any issues (definitely fewer than having to give Angus "Robert" as a first name, not that I'm bitter and bring this up every chance I get). One of my husband's favourite stories about my dad is that when he moved to the city for high school he thought it was weird seeing people on bicycles in the streets in the summer - the only time they could ride bikes in Stony was in winter when the river froze.

San's question about whether Angus liked his name also made me stop and think - Eve has stated on more than one occasion that she likes her name, which makes me so happy, and I knew that Angus had talked about people liking his name in baseball, but I don't think I had ever actually asked him. So I texted him, and this is how that went.

I'm really happy San asked! Two for two how cool is that? I don't have strong feelings about my own name, particularly since family lore is that I was named after, not a cherished relative or literary reference, but Lady Allison who was .... a horse. 

We would get talking about baby names, unsurprisingly, in playgroup. Collette named her first boy Jacob and the second one Ben, and both turned out to be number one name choices in that year - if I remember correctly she had had the name Jacob as a favourite forever, and caved to her husband on Ben, so she was less than thrilled in both cases. I guess I was kind of shooting for names that would be recognizable but wouldn't have four in every class, although who cares, really. I love the name Emma and in Angus's grade two class there were only six girls and half were named Emma - I still love it. I didn't find out the gender for either kid, but I was pretty set on Angus for a boy. Rachel or Isabel were strong contenders for a girl, but when Eve was born suddenly I thought she was an Eve. I think she's only ever met one of two other Eves (there were a few more Evas). Obviously if Angus was on the east coast or in Scotland he'd be one among many. As it is, it's just him and Jody's bunny.