Off the Cliff

I think it was the cough syrup. The codeine-laced one that stops the allergy strangle-cough and that sometimes when I least expect it gives me the serene happiness of souls in heaven. But I was, well, serenely happy all afternoon, a placid content that went well with the warm sun and and cool breeze and blue skies and all the busy folk out on Bloor pleasantly aware that tomorrow is a holiday hurray. I can sort of see how the world would look if I weren't doped and it looks... OK, but  mundanely familiar, not timelessly magical. I had a couple of bao buns before massage at the little Taiwanese place around the corner and it felt all 'brave new world that has such cooking in it.' As if I'd never had a bao bun before. Would have liked to take some gyoza home with me but they're frozen and I take a long time to get from that corner to my place. Thaw and refreeze is not recommended.

Naoko my masseuse is accablé about the state of my upper arms. Apparently I have no muscle in the right one, which I am willing to believe after last winter's attempts to shovel snow. No idea what happened to it: it's not like my legs where there's a definite reason for the wastage. Maybe hefting babies kept them in shape, though I don't remember me doing much hefting the last two years I worked. Anyway she thinks the arm weakness contributes to the truly owie elbows so back I go to the tennis elbow exercises I had before, and stopped, because they hurt. Now I must do them very minimally and maybe in time some strength will come back. Though seriously: given how they have to support my weight on the walker, they ought to be stronger than that.

When I ran into Elmtree's mom the other week she was putting stuff out on the Front Lawn Dollar Store, and one item was a thick stack of Times Literary Supplements. I took the lot-- at least a year's worth-- and have been reading them of an evening because neither of my library books holds my attention. (One is Black Water Sister and I'm wondering why I find it so slow after her Sorceror books and the wonderful Spirits Abroad.) I should try them with the table bicycle which I've been neglecting in favour of walking to various coffee shops hem hem. My brother still brings me New Yorkers which I slog through largely from FOMO. I should just look at the cartoons and recycle the rest, because the TLS is much more congenial right now. It talks about books and English personalities; the NY talks about politics and American personalities (grifters and criminals often as not) and I know which I'm more interested in.

 Tomorrow is a holiday, even in these unusual times, so I had to go get my prescription  from Loblaws today. If I hadn't been crippled I'd have checked to see if there were frosted 40 watt bulbs in something less glarey than the 'daylight' ones I got last time. There are no incandescents to be had these days but maybe they make soft light halogens? Otherwise I have no quarrel with halogens or LEDs, which god knows are cooler in the summer, but the light is do ugly.

This week is looking to be a mad whirl of sociability, in that the electricians come Thursday, Friday I have an appointment to get the new Zen Cho from Bakka, and Saturday I have an appointment to get my library book. Life under lockdown: even if the province is in stage two opening, there's still no one to talk to.

Forecast is for 30C weather  right through the middle of July. Hurray for window AC and summer duvets, and the pleasant float in pleasant coolness every morning. The rest of the day is a loss, but at least there's the float. (Hadn't realized just how heavy the feather duvet is, and how it hurts my knee to kick it around as I roll to my other side during the night. Also its damnable tendency to fold up so that after I'm on my other side it somehow becomes triangular, and I flail in vain with my owie elbows looking for the fourth corner.

I conclude that the only way to combat the inequity of early morning shifts and appointments is to get so drugged/ drunk the night before that one falls asleep at 8 pm, wakes three hours later, takes out lenses, turns off lights, and goes back to sleep again. Then I wake naturally at 6 something, which allows me to do exercises, have breakfast, take meds, and be at work at 8:30 or whatever. This worked like a charm last night: an antihistamine and a muscle relaxant and a long rainy day with cabin-fevered infings got me happily to sleep well before nine. But I doubt tonight will work as well, since I had the day off and spent it erranding and seeing doctors and acupuncturists. Though I *did* chop some more off the hedge as well as the honeysuckle vine down the street, which is 30% deadwood and is cracking the concrete hydro pole it's growing around, and which catches at my hair/ hat as I ride my bike down the sidewalk to where my street starts going in the right direction.

Anyway, happy sunny day saw me getting opioids of choice from doctor and Zen Cho's latest from the one Indigo Books that had it, so I could use my Indigo book token from Xmas. (People don't call them book tokens anymore. You have to say 'gift certificate' now. When did that happen? And is 'book token' a Britishism? It's what they were called in the veddy English Toronto of my childhood.) Had less luck with my other efforts. Called the arborists who will get back to me eventually rather than same day, is the difference between booking in April and booking in June. And my attempt to return wrong kind of socket computer mouse for right kind was forestalled by store being out of mice. I deal with a local spare parts guy rather than big box, because he's local and a friendly maritimer and was a sanity saver when I was going through trauma eight years ago. More mice expected by Friday, by which time I may also have bought new Birks as well.

But first there's a 9:30 to 6 day tomorrow to be got through. Bed soon, I think.

Two weeks ago or so my 97 year old aunt had what looked like a stroke, even though the wonders of modern medicine could find no proof of it. But inability to move one side of the body, speak, or swallow looks enough like a duck that we'll call it that. She regained a little movement in hospital but mostly spent her time sleeping. I was waiting for my cough to get better before going to visit her- *I* know it's allergies but hospitals aren't so forgiving- and had intended to do it Monday afternoon, which I theoretically had off except then I was feeling the daycare fever coming on me. So fine, maybe Wednesday. But Monday night my cousin emailed us all to say a room had miraculously opened up in a terminal care facility in the town where she lives, 40 miles away, and Aunt Margie was whisked away by ambulance Tuesday morning. So somehow I need to get to St Catharines, but does the GO system give me schedules? No, they want to tell me the next three buses leaving at the time I choose, but not what runs when through the day. They're giving my aunt 'weeks or months' so I need to do this soon.
( Wednesday )

Breezy day, high cloud cover, unbearably muggy indoors, unbearably hot in the sun, but very pleasant out on the bicycle. Still, the non-heat has heat's usual effects: uncertainty in the gut, odd aches, fuzzy-mindedness. All changes once I find myself in coolness; like Pratchett's trolls, I can think again. More, I find myself turning back into me.

So, what happened last month? To answer that requires me to consult my daybook. July is always a write-off that refuses to stay in the memory unless it throws a cold spell, which this year it certainly didn't. There were several mild dry silvery days, not unlike today, on one of which I had my ducts cleaned. There was a Sunday of civil European rain. There was an utterly splendid sunny Wednesday where everyone said 'Oh, if only it would be like this all the time!' but which left no other memory. It thundered frequently the last week, and threatened to do so a lot of the rest of the time. I read a bunch of Christies, a couple of Pratchetts, and two Zen Chos. There were a number of post-work achey drunken evenings at Thai Basil, which makes very good cocktails that require pricey food to cushion them, and many more sedate lunches at Next Generation Sushi, which only serves wine (and beer and sake, but no hard liquor, which is a pity. You want drinks in this town, the accompanying food will be either fried or prohibitively expensive, and occasionally both.)

And that was July and now it's gone.

What have you just finished?
Sorceror to the Crown. Review in Bakka said it clearly could have been longer. Yes, exactly. A Jonathan Strange type novel needs Jonathan Strange type largeness. (Mind, look how long JS&MN took to write: not everyone has that kind of leisure, esp not when they're a full-time lawyer as well.) Sorceror needs more space for the characters to expand into because almost all of the characters could happily be expanded. In omniscient third, preferably. This might give us a little less unremitting Everyone Hates Zacharias except his Two True Friends (one of whom doesn't count.) A little more variation in people's response to him would work a fair treat.

What are you reading now?
Peony in Love by Lisa See. Delighted that what I thought would be a fairly ordinary social novel set in Qing China (riffing off Red Chambers but of course) just turned into a ghost story. I await developments.

What will you read next?
Probably a very bad idea, but License to Quill is on its way to me at the library. "License to Quill is a page-turning James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe during history's real life Gunpowder Plot." Oh dear oh dear.

Possibly some solid bread and butter reading like The Poetic Edda or Piers the Plowman, books acquired to be read on long cold winte evenings, which is what we're having now.

Something vaguely malaisy has had me since yesterday- being woken at 8 am by a text should not result in aches and exhaustion for the following 36 hours. Then again, could be weather- snow, pressure changes, temperature changes, the lot.
( Cut for Wednesday meme )

Dear afrai. Always with the succinct summation of stuff I've had a woolly sense of but couldn't summarize myself. ( Cut for the unpleasantness )

Ah. My tooth hurts. The emergency dentist last night said it's an inflammation, not an infection, and prescribed me anti-inflammatories which I'll start once I establish that no, aspirin does *not* work.
( Cut for dental stuff )

Meanwhile I realize that the proper person to turn up to tell a hearty yarn to Dan and Una is Jack Aubrey, but that's a double gainer I'm not going to even try. Pasticheing Kipling's narrative style is possible but pasticheing O'Brian's conversational style inside that is not, or not for me.

I would not be so fastidious as I am for a kingdom. No, really. Does anyone else here care where their fandoms come from? I do, damn it.
( The importance of provenance )

My bunnies were brought a Fisher-Price toy from Israel that sings and talks and flashes and whistles as all F-P things do, but in Hebrew. Turn it on and it says Ze ha zman le man gimot- Now it's time to sing and play, I believe, in a sickly-sweet school marm voice. I of course heard that as Ze has manly man gemot, which my language-addled head now renders as Ze has (in its possession) manly man. (Japanese Anglo-Saxon verb motsu- Past tense: mochten- Past participle: gemot) No it doesn't. I mean yes it does (Konoe, Waki) but they're not the main couple or even a couple at all. But- Ze has manly man gemot, and I can't get either the line or them out of my head.
( Rats )