May 12, 2006

Solutions

What with working and all, I don’t have time enough for reading (all I want to read). It’s troubling and I want to petition to extend the day to thirty hours. It’s especially crucial, and I have started to read newspapers and magazines again after swearing them off this winter to do my homework. My Walrus arrived today, which was exciting, and I just started Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel, which is as wonderful as everything Hilary Mantel writes (oh my British lady writers- how I do love you!) Oh, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was absolutely beautiful and fascinating, and so much like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, even though the two books are so fundamentally different. Anyway, my supper dishes need washing and my book needs reading, and I just don’t know which option is going to win in the end.

Things I have been thinking about include how wonderful the trees are in this city, in my neighbourhood in particular. I’d forgotten they came in so many colours. And the blossoms! Saturday morning I was reading a book on my front step, and every few seconds a blossom of every variety would fall into my open pages. I’ve recently fallen in love with the idea of books as objects embedded in the natural environment, so you can see how that was cool. Another thing I have been thinking about is the overuse of the word “solutions”. It’s ubiquitous in all those lifestyle magazines like Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living that a) make you feel like a bad person and b) make you feel like you could be a good person with just the right shelving unit. I think I recently saw a magazine entitled “Solutions”. And what bothers me about all of this is the implication that life itself is a problem.

Speaking of problems, in exciting news, our doorknob fell off and if we shut the door we can’t get out. All residing in our household look forward to seeing how this pans out, and what solutions are in store.

And tomorrow is Friday, the third weekend of my summer. The first Weekend Summer Adventure was the Library Bar Experience, last weekend was the Drunken BBQ and this weekend we’ve got the Great Cabbagetown Adventure in store- if it stops raining. Yea, Riverdale Zoo! Yea, Goats!