Just now, sitting at my desk, working on vacation reconcilitaion and listening to "Guenivere" by Shaye, I had a major revelation.
There was someone I was so angry with for so long. I just realized where part of that came from.
I was mad at her for being like me, with my storied sexual history, and her hiding affairs, and both of us being cheaters. She was meant to be the one who was stable and stuff, and she wasn't. I was mad that she lied to me, yes, and that she used me to further her agenda in her relationships, but I just realized that it was really that I was mad at me, and mad at her for being like me.
You see, until my current relationship, my current marriage, I have never had a relationship in which I was completely faithful. Even in my first marriage, which was an open one, I managed to go outside the rules of engagement, as it were.
This part of the song was something I believed about myself for so long:
"Sorry but I can't help myself
So I can't help you
I'm always searching
For something new
It's in my nature to be untrue"
It's something I still struggle against, and while I know that I wouldn't cross that line again (because trust me if it were going to happen , it would have happened this year), it's something I'm aware of. I get crushes, I flirt with people, but I work very hard at keeping that arm's-length engaged.
I wonder where this comes from in me. It's quite likely that at least one of my grandfathers philandered, and I know that my mother flirted with the idea but didn't follow through. Is it nature? Does it have something to do with experiences I had as a teenager and my resulting lack of self-care? I think the answer is a little of both.
Ultimately, I think I was chasing a fairy tale. People talk about how you don't want to settle, you should wait for the perfect...whatever. I don't think I have settled, although my life is not a fairy tale. That's just as well, since I would get pretty bored up in a tower all day.
"It wasn't just you, it wasn't just this
Maybe I'm looking for something that just don't exist
It wasn't just you, it wasn't just here
I'm not lady, I am Guenivere"
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Camera challenged
I knit a lovely green chunky moebius cowl for my boss over the weekend, and I want to take a photo of it before I pass it on, but it just looks like a lump unless it's on a person. I tried to take a photo of me in it, and that also went badly (not enough light without the flash, WAY TOO MUCH light with the flash).
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
It was a joyful noise
Last night I prayed.
I stood in a baseball stadium with 55 000 other people while Bono sang, The Edge and Adam Clayton played guitar, and Larry Mullin Jr. kept time on the drums. They showed us images of Iranian women and children; protesters bathed in green stage lights while the band played "Sunday, Bloody Sunday". We were gifted with a message from the International Space Station by Frank de Winne during one song, and a message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the lead in to "One". During "Walk On", we were introduced to the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi while the volunteers who helped mount the concert filed across the front of the stage and were thanked for their work.
The roof of the Rogers Centre was open so in addition to the phenomenal light show inside, we were treated to the sight of the CN Tower's nightly light show, which at times seemed to have been programmed to enhance U2's performance. Better than that was the energy, the wind on my face as I raised my hands, and sang, and clapped, and laughed until I cried from the sheer joy of it all.
There is nothing quite like the sound of so many voices being raised together in joy.
"...beauty's religion
And its Christened me with wonder"
-If Venice is Sinking - Spirit of the West
I stood in a baseball stadium with 55 000 other people while Bono sang, The Edge and Adam Clayton played guitar, and Larry Mullin Jr. kept time on the drums. They showed us images of Iranian women and children; protesters bathed in green stage lights while the band played "Sunday, Bloody Sunday". We were gifted with a message from the International Space Station by Frank de Winne during one song, and a message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the lead in to "One". During "Walk On", we were introduced to the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi while the volunteers who helped mount the concert filed across the front of the stage and were thanked for their work.
The roof of the Rogers Centre was open so in addition to the phenomenal light show inside, we were treated to the sight of the CN Tower's nightly light show, which at times seemed to have been programmed to enhance U2's performance. Better than that was the energy, the wind on my face as I raised my hands, and sang, and clapped, and laughed until I cried from the sheer joy of it all.
There is nothing quite like the sound of so many voices being raised together in joy.
"...beauty's religion
And its Christened me with wonder"
-If Venice is Sinking - Spirit of the West
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Failure
Yesterday I stood and watched while my friend went home with her abusive partner and their son.
She had called a cab to go to a shelter. The cab arrived at the same time he did, and although I locked the door, she said to let him in. He took the baby out of her arms, and neither of us could get the baby back without hurting him (the baby, not the father). Once he had the baby, she said she had to leave with him. I hugged her and told her I was sorry. I can't even imagine how she was feeling.
This all transpired at a friend's house - not even at my own. I was there to care for the homeowners 7-yr-old daughter while she ran an errand. My responsibility wasn't just to my abused friend, but also to my other friends' daughter, to keep her safe.
When the homeowner got back, she called the police and explained the situation: that our friend had spoken to a shelter intake worker that day, who had said that she shouldn't be going home again. That he has a prior history of violence against objects near her (doors, walls, windows). They took us seriously. They said they'd send a car. They got a lot of information from us, and said that they'd let us know the outcome.
We were having tea, a group of women who have known each other for years, friends, and some not-exactly-friends-but-we-can-all-spend-time-together, but all people who know and love the woman I let go home yesterday. We waited until 10:30 for news, but no one called, so we don't know what happened.
I don't know what I should have done differently, what I would do differently if I had to do it over again. I only know that I feel like I failed when it was most important that I succeed.
She had called a cab to go to a shelter. The cab arrived at the same time he did, and although I locked the door, she said to let him in. He took the baby out of her arms, and neither of us could get the baby back without hurting him (the baby, not the father). Once he had the baby, she said she had to leave with him. I hugged her and told her I was sorry. I can't even imagine how she was feeling.
This all transpired at a friend's house - not even at my own. I was there to care for the homeowners 7-yr-old daughter while she ran an errand. My responsibility wasn't just to my abused friend, but also to my other friends' daughter, to keep her safe.
When the homeowner got back, she called the police and explained the situation: that our friend had spoken to a shelter intake worker that day, who had said that she shouldn't be going home again. That he has a prior history of violence against objects near her (doors, walls, windows). They took us seriously. They said they'd send a car. They got a lot of information from us, and said that they'd let us know the outcome.
We were having tea, a group of women who have known each other for years, friends, and some not-exactly-friends-but-we-can-all-spend-time-together, but all people who know and love the woman I let go home yesterday. We waited until 10:30 for news, but no one called, so we don't know what happened.
I don't know what I should have done differently, what I would do differently if I had to do it over again. I only know that I feel like I failed when it was most important that I succeed.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
BBC Book Meme
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of these.
[ ] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[x] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[x] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[x] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[x] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[x] 6 The Bible - God Yes, even all those bleeding begats at the beginning of it
[x] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[x] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[x] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I''ve read two and a half - couldn't get through the last one.
[ ] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Total: 8
[x] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[x] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[x] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller I keep meaning to
[x] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare There are one or two that I haven't read such as "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Rape of Lucrece" but that's about it
[ ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier Half
[x] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[ ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
[x] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[x] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 7
[ ] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[x] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[ ] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ ] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[x] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[ ] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[ ] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[x] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Also, "Through the Looking Glass"
[ ] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
[ ] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[ ] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[x] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[ ] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[ ] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[x] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Shouldn't this be included as part of the "Chronicles of Narnia"?
[ ] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden It's on the bookshelf, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
[x] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 3
[x] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
[x] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown I
[ ] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[ ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[x] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[ ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[x] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[x] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 5
[ ] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[ ] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[x] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[ ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[ ] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[x] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[ ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 2
[ ] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[ ] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[ ] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[ ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[x] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[ ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[ ] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 1
[ ] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[x] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[x] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[ ] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[ ] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[ ] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Great kidlit
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[ ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[ ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt
Total: 2
[ ] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[ ] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[ ] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[ ] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
[x] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[ ] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[x] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I have read some of the stories, but not all of them.
[ ] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 2
[ ] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[x] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[ ] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[x] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[ ] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[x] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Again, shouldn't this be included in the Complete Works?
[x] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[x] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 5
For a grand total of 38.
[ ] 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[x] 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[x] 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[x] 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[x] 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[x] 6 The Bible - God Yes, even all those bleeding begats at the beginning of it
[x] 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[x] 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[x] 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I''ve read two and a half - couldn't get through the last one.
[ ] 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Total: 8
[x] 11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
[x] 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[x] 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller I keep meaning to
[x] 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare There are one or two that I haven't read such as "Troilus and Cressida" and "The Rape of Lucrece" but that's about it
[ ] 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier Half
[x] 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[ ] 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
[x] 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] 19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[x] 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 7
[ ] 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[x] 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[ ] 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ ] 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[x] 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[ ] 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[ ] 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[x] 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Also, "Through the Looking Glass"
[ ] 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 3
[ ] 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[ ] 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[x] 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[ ] 34 Emma - Jane Austen
[ ] 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
[x] 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Shouldn't this be included as part of the "Chronicles of Narnia"?
[ ] 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden It's on the bookshelf, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
[x] 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 3
[x] 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
[x] 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown I
[ ] 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[ ] 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
[ ] 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[x] 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[ ] 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[x] 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[x] 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[ ] 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 5
[ ] 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[ ] 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[x] 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[ ] 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[ ] 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[x] 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[ ] 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 2
[ ] 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[ ] 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[ ] 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[ ] 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[x] 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[ ] 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[ ] 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 1
[ ] 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[x] 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
[x] 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[ ] 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[ ] 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
[ ] 76 The Inferno - Dante
[ ] 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Great kidlit
[ ] 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
[ ] 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[ ] 80 Possession - AS Byatt
Total: 2
[ ] 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[ ] 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[ ] 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[ ] 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mxistry
[x] 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[ ] 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[x] 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I have read some of the stories, but not all of them.
[ ] 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 2
[ ] 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[x] 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[ ] 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[x] 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[ ] 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[x] 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Again, shouldn't this be included in the Complete Works?
[x] 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[x] 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 5
For a grand total of 38.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Calefaction
There is something about baking that does good things for me.
I am not a good enough baker that I can bake without following a recipe. I enjoy the process of looking through my books, or searching for a recipe online. I choose cookies, or muffins or a cake, based mostly on how good the picture looks, and what I already have in my pantry. I will substitute if I don't like or have one of the ingredients. You will never find a raisin, current or any candied fruit in anything I bake, and I am against maraschino cherries on principle. Next I assemble all the ingredients and tools that I will need. It took me years to remember to turn on the oven at this point - baking has finally taught me to think ahead a bit. I enjoy the measuring, the stirring, the kneading. I love the chemistry that makes three separate things (butter, sugar and flour) in to one (cookies). The part I enjoy the least is the cleaning up, but my husband has taught me to do that as I go, which really does make the whole process much simpler. Finally, I love the anticipation of the final product. The smell as it bakes, getting to poke it with a stick to find out if it's done, trusting that even if it looks a little funky, it will taste good anyway.
I am not a good enough baker that I can bake without following a recipe. I enjoy the process of looking through my books, or searching for a recipe online. I choose cookies, or muffins or a cake, based mostly on how good the picture looks, and what I already have in my pantry. I will substitute if I don't like or have one of the ingredients. You will never find a raisin, current or any candied fruit in anything I bake, and I am against maraschino cherries on principle. Next I assemble all the ingredients and tools that I will need. It took me years to remember to turn on the oven at this point - baking has finally taught me to think ahead a bit. I enjoy the measuring, the stirring, the kneading. I love the chemistry that makes three separate things (butter, sugar and flour) in to one (cookies). The part I enjoy the least is the cleaning up, but my husband has taught me to do that as I go, which really does make the whole process much simpler. Finally, I love the anticipation of the final product. The smell as it bakes, getting to poke it with a stick to find out if it's done, trusting that even if it looks a little funky, it will taste good anyway.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Three things
1. Fred got his EI payment today so I went and bought cream (among other things) and I have enjoyed coffee for the first time in three days. Nectar of the gods.
2. I finished knitting mom's silk socks, while watching some of Season 5 of Buffy. I had forgotten just how annoying Dawn was.
3. We are finally using up gift cards tonight. We're going to the Keg to celebrate our 2nd anniversary (a couple of days late). Snails and steak and lobster, here I come!
3a. Hooray for awesome bosses who give recognition in gift card form, or our anniversary dinner would have been the pork chops we had for dinner on Monday.
3b. Fred's anniversary gift from me was a copy of Hit Parade magazine detailing the Top 100 Hard Rock bands of all time. I figured he'd get more enjoyment from it than from a card, which was only three dollars less.
4. I'm really crap at sticking to my own guidelines...
2. I finished knitting mom's silk socks, while watching some of Season 5 of Buffy. I had forgotten just how annoying Dawn was.
3. We are finally using up gift cards tonight. We're going to the Keg to celebrate our 2nd anniversary (a couple of days late). Snails and steak and lobster, here I come!
3a. Hooray for awesome bosses who give recognition in gift card form, or our anniversary dinner would have been the pork chops we had for dinner on Monday.
3b. Fred's anniversary gift from me was a copy of Hit Parade magazine detailing the Top 100 Hard Rock bands of all time. I figured he'd get more enjoyment from it than from a card, which was only three dollars less.
4. I'm really crap at sticking to my own guidelines...
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