April 18, 2007
That's some couch
Introducing the new couch– the most exciting item to pass through our door since two weeks ago when we got a salad spinner.
And so clearly things have been a bit dull around here domestically, but it’s all looking up now. The essays are marked and ready to be sent away, and the sun is shining for the first time in weeks. The weather forecast for the weekend is promising. Now reading Open by Lisa Moore, and each story seems like a package wrapped up just for me. And of course, there’s the couch. Reclining has never been so much fun.
April 15, 2007
Home news
Big changes are a-coming around our house and it’s time to let the secret out: we’re expecting a new addition. This is the divide between our youth and adulthood, I suppose, and time for us to face up to our responsibilities, to begin to approach respectability. Never again, our salad days, but this change signifies a new era of possibility– aesthetically and ergonomically.
We bought a sofa. No more will our cheapest-in-the-shop futon be your sole option for asseyez-vousing when you come round. No longer will our apartment be outfitted like a college flat. A sofa: three seater, comfortable, classic. Our sofa: the most grown-up thing we’ve ever done.
And so the sofa was the point of yesterday. Luckily its purchase coincided with our need for a change of scenery, and we took the subway out to Main Street station to choose it. It is fortunate that Stuart and I have the exact same taste (good or bad, though he is less partial to tye-dye than I am) and so we picked it fast: exactly what we wanted. And then we walked the Danforth, all the way from Main Street to Chester to visit Erin-who-we-love. On the way we stopped off at the Chocolate Heaven Cafe (as heard on Metro Morning and as featured in the Globe last week).) We had dinner with Erin at Asteria Soulaki Place and it was the best Greek food we’ve ever had. Oishilicious. Today has moved at a slower pace, but highlights included She Said Boom for book purchases*, and Tealish to replenish our stock.
Book purchases: Happenstance by Carol Shields and Where I Was From by Joan Didion.
We are excited because tonight Curtis returns after two weeks of chaos in the United Kingdom. We are also excited because he might have brought us candy.
April 8, 2007
Woke up this morning feeling fine
Japan was in the news last week, mostly unfortunately through this murder which has been sensationalized by the red-tops in Britain. I appreciated measured responses to the hype here inThe Times. (Judging from reader comments, clearly not everyone appreciated the first article as much as I did. The venom it unleashed was sort of baffling, but then a lot of people don’t like to call racism by its name). More positively, Top Ten Books Set in Japan by Fiona Campbell who has just published Death of a Salaryman. (Incidentally, I’ve only read number 10 but plan to read Kitchen someday soon.)
Lionel Shriver happily reviews Nora Ephron. I want to read Julie Burchill’s book on Brighton. Rounding up responses to Didion on stage. This review makes me so excited to read the new McEwan. I love this: Sunday Morning Music.
Now rereading The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble, for kicks.
I’ve marked thirty essays, and as I’ve only done four and three today and yesterday, the weekend has contained some aspects of nice. Yesterday we partook in lattes over the paper in Kensington, and today we ate our delightful M&S Easter Treats from England. But otherwise, yes, not much has occurred. Life continues on hold. The notable event of the weekend continues to be that I brought a very large object into our home, oh and mustn’t forget the startling revelation (to the sound of Herman’s Hermits) that I dance like my dad.
April 4, 2007
As it is
3 undergradate essays marked, 72 to go. I expect to spend the next two weeks delirious and snacking. In Pickle Me This update news, I’ve elected to return in May to my summer job from last year, because I decided I would have a better summer working and monied than one spent idle and poor. And I’ll surely have lots of chance to be idle and poor once summer’s over. The only bad thing about this is that I am turning 28 this summer, and getting really old to have a “summer job”. This is, however, the last summer job I’ll ever have. Which is something I’ve said so many times before. Oh adulthood, how you continue to elude me…
April 2, 2007
Carry my desk
Thesis=Submitted. Which feels much less exciting than it is. I have this evening for a breath of fresh air before tomorrow when 75 undergraduate papers to-be-marked enter my life, and then after that I have to find a job. But in the meantime, this evening at least.
I am so grateful to my friends Jennie, Britt and Bronwyn, as well as my husb Stuart, each of whom read through the whole thing during the last two weeks and alerted me to copy errors so numerous I am ashamed of myself. They are acknowledged in my acknowledgments, of course. And the book itself is dedicated to Stuart, naturally, reading, “This story is for Stuart, who carried my desk home on his bicycle.” True story.
Once upon a time Stuart and I lived in a one-roomed box. This was not the first place we’d lived together, of course. Previously we’d spent six months sleeping on an inflatable mattress in a ramshackle house with holes in the roof. The box felt like luxury in comparison, and we were very happy there. Sunshine came through that window absolutely beautifully. And one day I set my sights upon a desk. A desk which we had no room for, but I needed a space to sit and write all the same. Such space doesn’t come easy when you live in a box. And so Stuart agreed, and we bought a little desk at Muji. A little desk that weighed a tonne, and we didn’t have a car. We lived about a half hour walk from the city centre, and my clever husband devised a method wherin the desk was balanced on the seat and handlebars of his bike, which worked perfectly unless we weren’t going straight. But it was certainly better than I could have done, and I admired his might all the home, walking my pink bicycle beside his blue one. And the desk just fit, under the ladder up to our sleeping loft. And it was there where I learned how to sit down and write, which is 75% of everything. And it was then when I realized that here was a boy who would do anything to support me, and that I was tremendously lucky.
March 28, 2007
The Republic of Spring
As a symptom of springtime, I’ve been oddly compulsive lately. I’m not sure if that’s the word I mean, but I saw a picture of a horse recently and now I’m determined to ride one this summer. I’ve never ridden (rode?) a horse in my life. A similar obsession has taken me over regarding Carol Shields. Now I’ve always loved Carol Shields’s work and she wrote the one book I could classify as a definitive favourite, and her short story collection Various Miracles is a masterpiece, I think. I could go on and on here. I intend to reread The Republic of Love soon. And I’m currently reading Carol Shields: The Arts of a Writing Life, which is inspiring, interesting and wonderful. The quote below from Anne Giardini came from her essay (she is Shields’s daughter, and her beautiful piece is about sharing a love of reading with her mother). I think that as a woman who writes, and as a woman in general, there is so much to be learned from the life and work of Carol Shields. Like Laurie Colwin, I think, Shields was a writer who could capture joy.
Further signs of springtime, last night I could be found drinking too much wine on my front porch. We had to go in once the sun was gone because it was too cold then, but before that the world beyond the porch had been swarming with joggers, dog walkers, a skanky couple making out against a fence, neighbours, strangers, cats, cyclists, cars with the windows down, hipsters, nerds, babies and the elderly. It seems like everyone else was just as eager to get outside as we were.
My husband is on holidays this week, and we’re going out for a sushi lunch. Sugoi.
March 11, 2007
Other Springs
Late Morning March
The air through the open window is the same
as when you breathed for what you don’t believe in now
and such anachronistic miracles are dizzying
separating you from local time.
I remember every spring that came before this
linked in the smells the city makes.
The armature of scattered selves
fastening you to year-to-year.
I posted this poem last year, and wrote it many years before that. And while I don’t think it’s a particularly good poem, and I don’t even write poems anymore, it says everything I want to say about this time of year, so I feel no need to say it another way. Because there is something so evocative about spring time. I think one’s senses become primed after months of hibernation, and so walking around there is so much to see, notice and revel in. And it takes you back to other times you felt that way, other springs.
Yesterday we walked around as if in a time warp. The weather wasn’t even particularly good, but I wore a vest instead of a winter coat, and we could hold bare hands instead of gloves. And we stomped around places I used to know before I knew Stuart, and at the same time the weather and how we spent our time reminded us of passing Saturdays in Nottingham, and quite a few things happened that were exactly like in Japan. And so yesterday, which was a magical lucky day, we relived all our springs at once.
We got up early and I got three hours of work in, just so I would be happy for the rest of the day. We went up to Bloor and went out for lunch sets at Thai Basil, and then searched for treasures in the bargain basement at BMV Books. After that we went to Whole Foods, with a basket in tow so we wouldn’t look conspicuous, and went up and down the aisles eating free samples amongst the beautiful people. Our basket stayed empty. We went back to Bloor Street and looked at clothes after that, and got depressed because beige seems to the new black. (And we saw Pickle Me This reader Erica G. at the Gap. Hi Erica!). We went to The Cookbook Store next, and bought the three recipes books we don’t yet own by our beloved Jeanne Lemlin omnibussed in hardover and on sale for $13.00. What luck! I showed Stuart The Toronto Reference Library which he’d never seen before and he was quite impressed. And then he got new shoes, which he loves and they’re wonderful, and we got a box of cookies and a chocolate bar as a gift with the purchase. (?) We had tea/coffee at7 West after and looked at the paper. Walked home, and then had just about an hour to relax before going out again to the Jonker/Lev’s for dinner– but there was magic on the way, of course. The Bloor-Danforth Line had been diverted and we got to see Lower Bay Station! And then the rest of the night proceeded absolutely splendid, with good food and fine company.
Today is a little bit shorter, but yesterday stretched on so long, I am not bothered.
February 24, 2007
Injurious Reads
Everyone is right. Disgrace is wonderful. And Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford is impossible to take in morsels– I keep binging. Now reading Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin. Upcoming: The Library at Night.
I had a reading-related injury today when I read whilst brushing my teeth, paid too little attention to the latter activity, brushed too hard and and now my poor sweet gums are ailing. Reading is a dangerous business really. Sometimes holding the book makes my elbow ache.
I just came back from a splendid dinner at the beautiful new home of Natalie Bay whose fine company made the evening fly by. We’ve lived in all the same countries and so we spend most of our time talking about things no one else can stand to hear about. Which suits us well. And we’re off to Peterborough for the weekend, and the temperature calls for brass monkeys.
Further, Tide Simple Pleasures has rendered our apartment redolent with something slightly synthetic, but we like it. It smells better than we do. And, all real pleasure this week has been brought to us by crumpets.
February 18, 2007
Don't eat things you find
Today was a rather bookish Sunday, as Stuart devoured Chart Throb and I turned page after page of To Kill a Mockingbird to get to its magnificent end. Oh Atticus. When I read this book ten or eleven years ago, the precocious children impressed upon me, but the greatness of their father got lost in adultland. This time around he was the centre he was meant to be. Again, that this book is extraordinary is hardly news, but it’s nice to be reminded. And afterwards I baked banana scones from this recipe. I used whole-wheat flour instead, but they were absolutely exquisite. Oh, and last night we watched Rocky II. We loved it.
February 13, 2007
Self Portrait
We’re tired at our house, which is what happens when we both spend the night having dreams in which we are struggling to sleep. And so for today, in lieu of coherence, Pickle Me This brings you me waiting for the tub to fill. Turban-headed because if my Japanese life taught me anything, it was that a bath sans shower is foul. And I like this image because it incorporates four of my favourite things: books, baths, big mugs of tea and Stuart (for it is his robe after all). Happy All The Time was a splish-splash delight.
Today in the post was a letter from Bronwyn, with whom I’ve defied Laurie Colwin’s quote from Happy All The Time: “Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed”. (That said woman is Bronwyn and not me should be revelatory to nobody). And her note contained the news that she has subscribed me to the London Review of Books, which is sort of like having pennies rain from the sky. I’d say life must be mostly good, with friends like that.
And I think Lucky Beans is one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen.
