flemmings | Entries tagged with reading

It's been a couple of week since I woke up with my glutes or flexors or whatever in spasm, and I hoped that particularly debilitating fubar was over. So of course that's what I woke up with today. And because I absolutely had to get up to Loblaws today, because snow starts on Sunday, I nuked it with double whammy muscle relaxants, and then went up to pick up the prescription relaxants I ordered before Christmas and haven't needed because it's been a couple of weeks since I woke up with everything in spasm.

I half suspect the cramps are due to IT band tensing up, or quads, or both. This is why I roll around on tennis balls a lot, and would use my theraband roller except it's too long and awkward.

Two things I don't understand in the (American) male psyche: Hemingway worship and a fascination with the civil war. Hemingway is just (shrug) dick lit, not something I encounter in my daily life unless I go looking for it. But the civil war, particularly Gettysburg, exercises my acrostic compiler to an annoying extent. Every book of his has at least one puzzle, if not two or three, devoted to Gettysburg. Of course, he likes to excerpt Dave Barry as well, also someone I can live happily without. But Laino is prolific and there's nowhere else to get my acrostics from. Eventually I trust I'll have had a surfeit of him and will stop doing acrostics, but that sort of requires me to get my brains back so that I can do something that isn't mindless time-wasting.

The dead days are certainly that this year. Grey, dank, rain/ snow/ freezing rain. Both knees scream when I stand up, both elbows scream any time, and there is no health within us. Because I'm nearly at the end of my antibiotics I had a g&t this afternoon, which accomplished nothing but make me cruise skipthedishes and order in from a cheap hamburger place. Which was fine for the moment but otherwise... accomplished nothing.

One of those articles that Chrome likes to give you had links to Victorian detective fics, all available at Gutenberg, and I spent a happy hour or so with warm beanbags and the case files of a master criminal. DLed links to two others, one a disappointing 'ghost finder' detective where there are no ghosts, the other a female detective who solves cases through female-type means ie pretending to be a servant and talking to the servants. Did not save the link to the master criminal archive and now Chrome has changed its recs and History assures me I never clicked on the link in the first place.

Probably time for some Buddhist reading since my thoughts grow dark and eschatological.

My outdated desktop continues to annoy. If it's not clock errors, it's nanny 'this website cannot provide a secure connection'. It's quite secure enough for tablet so what's yourr problem?

Ditto Charles Dickens. I get it, Chuck: Law Bad. Law is responsible for poverty, chid abuse, starvation, and suicide. May have to start JS&MN just to read someone who isn't being paid by the word.

Got down to cellar to do laundry. Very owie because of back and unoperated knee. Everything that used to hurt is ramped up to 10 these days and I wish I knew why.

Reading the later stories in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio which I either never got around to or have totally forgotten-- the latter, I think, since the earlier ones ring no bells either. And am struck again at how un-unheimlich Chinese ghost stories are. Ghosts, fox spirits, corpses: all domestic as a sock, in Auden's phrase, if that's what he said- my text is downstairs and Auden's estate have kept most of his poems off the net. And I mean domestic quite literally, because all these ghosts and foxes and even corpses seem to want is the love of a good man and a household to look after. A world away from the creeping menace of M.R. James, this.

Those spasming hip flexors or glute muscles or god forbid sacroiliac joints had a spectacular flare-up this morning. Being inclined to blame shortened ligaments for this, I've spent the day with foam rollers and tennis balls, trying to soften up all the owie areas of my left leg, of which there are still many many. I hope to avoid a reoccurrence, since nothing is more debilitating first thing on waking. Far more painful than anything surgery related, for sure.

Wretched night last night. Took an antihistamine because I was sneezing in yesterday's unseasonable temperatures. Took the regular muscle relaxant for low back pain. Made me wait till midnight, yawning, to avoid 6 a.m. wakings. Warmed my beanbags and crept into my cozy duvet nest and Did. Not. Sleep. Could not sleep. Turned on light after two hours of this, read some more of InterestingTimes, turned off light, lay down. Know I slept some because I rolled out of a dream into blank-eyed wakefulness at 5 and finally got up at 6 anyway.

Went to get staples out. Incision started bleeding with the first three or four. Apparently the edges aren't lined up properly, though there's stitches underneath keeping things together. Sight is not as grisly as ohh that hernia repair back in '04 but knee is soggy swollen and he kept poking it. Anyway, he left a bunch of staples in and said come back in a few days, which shall do. Then they put sterile sticky tape over each staple and gauze pads over those and paper tape over those, which is fine but that paper surgical tape doesn't stick very well and I know it will come off as soon as I start doing my exercises. Luckily I have a plethora of knee braces (and how odd not to be wearing them 24/7 as I have for the last however many years) so one of them is now holding everything in place.

But the rest of the day was a washout, of course. Cold front coming through with high winds meant every joint ached, and in spite of plunging temps I'm still sneezing. Napped in the early evening and shall hope for sweet deep sleep tonight.

The trouble with going to bed at 11 is that I wake up at 7. And am awake at 7, now that my body doesn't seem to want to do the sleeping in for hours routine any more. Can't think why. I'm doing much more than a week ago- even washed dishes yesterday- but so it is. Result is I'm heavy-eyed and tired by mid-afternoon.

It's been at least two years, probably more, since I climbed stairs in anything but foot-step, foot-step pattern. It will take time to get out of the habit. But the fact that I can now do step-step-step, even holding the handrail just in case, is immensely cheering. Haven't tried going down the same way but that's a matter of time.

I thought in my convalescence that I'd reread JS&MR, but brain said all it could handle were mysteries. So I read mysteries. Only today I rousted out my copy of Bleak House and waded in. Pre-net my subvocalizing self never registered how very much Dickens was paid by the word. It registers now, but now I have no compunction about skimming his description of fog, his description of Chancery, his description of Lady Dedlock's menage, and the Foreword which spoilers a major plot point in the second paragraph. Reads very nicely that way, and I can remain unruffled by how pleased Chas D is by his own invention, which otherwise would try me grately.

(What I wanted was Our Mutual Friend, but bookstore didn't have a copy, alas.)

My diet for the last ten days has been carb-heavy, mostly oatmeal for breakfast and peanut butter and jam on whole grain bread for everything else. Did have some chicken veg soup I made pre-op, but didn't really care for the taste of this last batch.To correct the nutritional deficiency, I got some raw veg and hummous dip in my grocery order yesterday. Alas, my system has grown unaccustomed to such healthy food, so I'm back to crackers today. Crackers are Triscuits, also part of my self-indulgent order (which included cheese and mint chocolate and turkey bacon) and I may go on ordering same because they are so salty and good.

I continue with the good days and bad. Today was good and I went eight hours on my morning meds without quite noticing it. Still think things may be less stiff/ achey once the staples are out of the knee.

Have read all the Christianna Brands that the library has in e-format and am embarked on one of Elizabeth Peters' avatars. I like Mrs. Bradley because, unusually for an English writer, she clearly likes young boys, a number of whom feature in various volumes, portrayed sympathetically whatever their roles may be.

Yesterday was a total write-off, not only because it was raining but because my right side everything went sproing and I could barely move. Hip flexors and glutes, mainly, which sometimes complain but not like this. So it was beanbags and muscle relaxants all day, meaning I dozed periodically and finished Mr. Currelly furnishing his museum with a lot of coincidental luck and a lot of wealthy friends. Pirate Bishop White didn't turn up until page 245. Currelly admires Pirate Bishop White who, he says, once held off not one but two Chinese warlords intent on sacking the town of which he was bishop. This might or might not be true. I mean, Currelly also believes the story that it was Armenian activists intent on bringing down the Turkish government that started the Armenian genocide.

One can't expect someone born in the 19th century to question whether it's a good thing to amass goods from other cultures for the edification of one's own, but at least he thought it was for edification: since people can't go to China to see how wonderful Chinese culture is, we'll bring Chinese culture here. Sacking of summer palaces aside, at least some of the works he brought here were sold by mandarins anxious to raise cash to get them the hell away from the warlords. Others-- like the famed Buddhist reliefs-- were sold by starving monks whose food had been confiscated by said warlords. So you might argue for some sense of preservation there.

Today was some better, after vigorous stretching and rolling on foam rollers and tennis balls, enough that I walked to acupuncture and back, which was probably a bad idea. Also wrote out a holograph will on a form that I bought decades ago, since the dates all start 19. But now I need two witnesses to sign in my presence and each other's, which is a slight nuisance since people come to my house in singletons and it's not that easy going to my neighbours'. Requires going up steps. However, I suppose I can manage it. I also seem to recall, from my younger brother's law classes, that holograph wills with no witnesses have been admitted to probate, like the guy who died out in the wilderness and wrote 'all to Minnie' on his shirt before doing so. And of course, one hopes it won't be needed in the near future.

Read Isherwood's A Single Man. Not sure how autobiographical it's supposed to be, hence not sure if I should congratulate Isherwood on showing himself plainly, warts and all, or to wonder why he chose to write such an unpleasant protagonist. A bit too much of Generation of Vipers there-- the evol wimmenz taking all the lovely young men and turning them into husbands and then fathers and leaving none for poor Christo-- sorry, George to enjoy. Life is so much better at the gym where there are no evol wimmenz and all the men can be friendly and open and not competitive in the least.

And how the hell does one pronounce Geo anyway? Proof that the protagonist is really Christopher shortened to Chris.

I have happy memories of reading Takuboku's poems in Sad Toys and Romaji Diary lo these 30+ years ago, so I settled in for a happy reread. Alas, the Suck Fairy has visited and left her calling card. The poems may still be alright but Takuboku was a git even by Meiji standards. Self-absorbed, narcissistic, irresponsible, self-pitying, and of course a horndog. Actually, can I think of a Meiji intellectual who wasn't a git? No one comes to mind. Like, back in shogunate days guys, at least samurai guys, were trained to be devoted to their lord or their clan or duty or honour. Come Meiji and some people suddenly decided to be devoted to nothing but their own sweet selves. I suppose under both systems guys treated their wives badly, on the automatic assumption that women exist for men's convenience. But I don't have to read them doing it.

Turn back to Currelly and find him frolicking among the great. Petrie is a marvellous conversationalist but a dry lecturer. Weigell has a nervous breakdown from tunnelling into pyramids underground. Theodore Davis suborns 'dear old' Gaston Maspero. And of course Currelly excavates at Deir el Bahri, finding a gold-plated tomb, supposedly that of Tyii except the mummy is a guy, and generally serving as the model for Radcliffe Emerson. Even back home, there he is hobnobing with people who in my day had become University of Toronto landmarks: Burwash (Hall), Massey (College), Gertrude Lawler (Building), McLennan (Physical Labs). Like reading about Waley's young manhood: when there were giants abroad in the land.

Herodotus is getting to the boring bit ie the actual Persian wars, and anyway I can't keep anyone straight given H's tendency to interpolate backstory, so I turn to my other Wee Free Library find of last summer, I Brought the Ages Home. And am at once reminded why pre-70s Ontario was such a claustrophobic place. All Canadian biographies of that era begin like this:

"I was born in the village of Exeter, in the county of Huron, on the eleventh of January, 1876, the morning on which the first train of the new railroad, the London, Huron and Bruce, came through Exeter from London to Goderich. My mother was Mary Treble, of the Trebles of Vognacote, Devonshire. and my father, John Currelly, was the son of Thomas Currelly, who had settled in Durham County, and was of the ancient gens Corelea of Rome. My father's mother was Jane Doney, sister of Thomas Doney, an engraver who spent most of his life in Paris, and later came to the United States to do a series of historical portraits. The elder brother worked in Paris until a nervous breakdown made it necessary to bring him back to Devonshire. As my great-grandfather was moderately well off, he was advised to bring the poor shaking boy to the new world. where, it was assumed, the quiet forests and all the wonderful developments that were being talked about would probably cure him. Unfortunately he died soon after they arrived."

Ie 'Lest anyone should suppose I am a son of nobody, I may say our line is an old one, related to the Trebles of Vognacote, Devonshire (where?) and tracing our ancestry to the gens Corelea of Rome (what?), and bitheway we had this obscure artist in the family as well whose brother (?) had a breakdown and died in Canada.' If you don't declaim your ancestry, however obscure, in Anglo Canada, how will people know who you are?

Thank god for immigration.

Otherwise I find myself in a peaceable psychological backwater, very pleasant for as long as it lasts, where I'm quite content to do my exercises three or four times a day, especially when I can intersperse them with the stretches my pilates woman showed me that may succeed in opening up my hips. I even began the chair pilates exercises again, hampered only slightly by the disappearance of sound on my upstairs tablet-- for that site, at least, because youtube plays just fine. Fortunately it's closed captioned, since I'm not a fan of people's voices at the best of times.

The wind blusters about the house but before it rained I got to the Christie St coffee shop that makes the amazing smoked salmon bagels with what I took to be dill mayonnaise. Only it's not: it's cream cheese whipped with olive oil and lemon juice and dill, and delish. I hope the place is a money laundering operation because there's never anyone in there.

In the Eat More Veg dep't, I bought baby artichokes and have concluded that there's really no point to artichokes, young or old. Almost worse than pomegranates.

And then there's the cozy comfort of the latest 100 Demons, to which I shall return shortly.

I should hire a cleaning service but instead I buy a new vacuum cleaner, one that supposedly works better than Dirt Devils.

There are good joint days and bad ones, and this is a bad one, but because it's also garbage day I vacuum the downstairs (with that unsatisfactory Dirt Devil, yes) and swifter the kitchen floor and do a load of laundry and then go and do Pilates, which guarantees I'll be crippled tomorrow.

DHL in its OC Teutonic fashion sends me multiple emails on top of multiple texts to say my package is in transit, that it will be delivered today, and that it has been delivered, but at least I now have the new 100 Demons.

I have my own Torontonian reasons for disliking Jo Walton nearly as much as I dislike Margaret Atwood, but Among Others was compulsively readable. Of course it left me with a book hangover and mal de mer, but then it would.

Mystery writers, don't write romance. Please please please don't write romance. But of course they do. Can't bloody stop them.

Which is to say, Barabara Mertz is wearing on me. Ramses is a psychopath. ('My best friend is looking at The Woman I Love! I want to tear his heart out!') Nefret might as well be a Japanese heroine. '(We spent the night together and next day I saw him looking at another woman, oh woe alas it is All Over, I must run away and immediately latch on to someone else he loves me no more!') And the quiet civil young man is the villain because of course he is. Quiet civil modest young men are insufficiently manly and must be up to no good.

Heat on tonight. Is now autumn for however long it lasts.

Lows are only in the midteens and highs in the low 20s so I don't know what this desire to have the heat on is all about. Maybe beause it's so clammy? Whatev, I'm still chilly.

If I refrained from biting on chocolate covered almonds I'd have saved me ssveral hours and a good two hundred dollars. A quarter of that was cabs because today the streets of TO were all parking lots. Work from home, you guys. The air was so much cleaner when you did.

Being awake at 6 this morning, I fell asleep at 7 this evening so my night will be late. This is why I want to find my ativan stash.

Elizabeth Peters has succumbed to the same syndrome as her namesake Ellis. Is there a charming modest well-mannered young man on the scene? That's your murderer. I thought she was going to subvert the trope in her latest, but no. Villain all the way. At least she's not quite as cookie cutter as Cadfael (disgusting older man, sweet young female married or engaged to same, bumptious rough diamond, charming young man, 1 is the victim, 2 +3 will end up together, 4 is the murderer) but enough of the time she is.

Last week's acupuncture left me limber for three days but then the mug came back. Yesterday's acupuncture seemingly accomplished nothing: knees grind ferociously lst night and all today. Again, I blame the humidity of this warmer than usual September. Warm Septembers are notoriously hard on the body even without arthritis, and it seems we're in for a warm autumn, period. Think of it as the maritime effect: people in the maritimes seem far more prone to debilitating rheumatism and arthritis than elsewhere. Too much water in the air, I say.

Workman was supposed to come this afternoon but his project went overtime so he's coming tomorrow at 10, which is still too early for me but I knew he wanted to come at 8. There *have* been days lately when I was awake at 6:30 or 7, with infinite leisure to do my exercises, but it's not something I can count on, since it's usually connected to the side effects of antihistamines.

Library hold finally showed up, the one that was 'in transit' for a puzzling three weeks. Which meant limping to the library and back. 'Walk as much as you can,' the surgeon said. Well, I can't, actually: I can barely manage my three daily bouts of exercise. Exercise now makes things hurt more, not less. And anyway I seem capable of reading only Agatha Christies. Luckily the library has any number of short story collections, now that I've read all the novels.

Early morning storm with quite civil rolling thunder woke me at 5 or so. Thunder in this town only too frequently acts like those planes in the air show, cracking the sound barrier and rattling the windows. Then went back to sleep for a pleasant dream about Stephen-or-was-it Rob?at work (or was it a totally different gay guy?) and his impressive five storey Dutch style house, and a trans male child who used to be at our daycare (they're not, as far as I know; they're the child of our city's most prominent trans activists) and some very lovely old friends whom I've never met. And now the day is calm sun and clouds from a different era- 2000, I think. A time when August wasn't a teeth-gritting endurance test and September an anxious hell of new babies one per week, howling and inconsolable. This is only the second year I've been free of that and now I can barely recall what it was like.

Mr. Google tells me that my knee turning exercise is to be done while turning the whole leg to the side, which makes it infinitely easier to do.

Otherwise spent the werkend reading Agatha Christies, the first and last Poirots. Evidently I'd never read Curtain- Poirot's Last Case before. Makes a high note to go out on.

Roofers being slated to come today and workmen in general being dismissive of my street's 'no outside parking before 10' rule, I was early to a doped bed and early to rise when I heard the crash bang blam of a dumpster being unloaded. Half-wondered where they'd put it-- there are many cars parked on the street at 9 a.m., but it sounded a bit loud to have been deposited on next door's semi-landscaped front yard. (It's mosty wood chips but there's a band of greenery at the sidewalk edge: irises in theory, quackgrass in practice.) But I was busy with my stretch and strengthen routine so didn't get up to check. And then comes a text from He-NND the owner, saying the company got their bookings confused and won't be coming till the 16th. By which time it might have stopped raining. Or not. And as for the crash bang blam, deponent knoweth not.

Too hot to go out today and house cool from overnight use of the window AC (and am wondering if that has to come out for the roof to be done, but no one's said anything so far) so I stayed in and read Golden Age mystery short stories. Editor of these anthologies apologetically notes when authors are reflecting the prejudices of the time, but omits the truly hair-raising examples. So far it's been one Japanese character with slightly imperfect English, and an Australian police detective who's half Aborigine and thus a genius tracker while his white half allows him to make rational deductions, and whose existence alone is a bit blinkety-blink from all I've heard of 1930s Australian attitudes. Well, and Sayers of course with her lisping Jewish money lenders, but that's a known pitfall of Sayers and not the least of her sins, by me. (Sayers like L.M. Montgomery is an arch-Hideous Example of the suck fairy at work. When Agatha Christie said in exasperation how much she loathed Poirot and then asked Sayers, Don't you get tired of Wimsey?, Sayers would never have answered yes, because she was besotted by him.)

Walked to the library to get my holds. Seriously have to wonder if walking will ever be a pleasure again.

Looking through my LJ for something else, discover that I read Nightbirds on Nantucker some seven or eight years ago. Remembered absolutely none of it when I read it a week ago except for an odd sense of déjà vu when I got to the mammoth cannon.

I was thinking that July was a very fast month in which nothing happened, but that's just July mind. In fact I socialized twice! and walked more than I have in months. Not that it's done the slightest good. Of course it's also been chronically wet, which might be why my knees have been worse than any time since April.

There was a kids' magazine in the 60s called Jack and Jill. May still be around, for all I know. What I remember of it is the stories about Baba Yaga and her chicken-footed house and her cat. Wrinkle was that Baba Yaga was, though curmudgeonly, definitely a Good Guy, in my cloudy memory an ur-incarnation of Granny Weatherwax. Apparently the stories were collected and published, but good luck finding a copy.

July being July, reading is all genre all the time.

Huchu, The Library of the Dead
-- would have liked a bit more library, but the down-to-earth ghost-talking protagonist and the Zimbabwean magic was a blast. I don't know Edinburgh at all (no, not even with yoinks many Rebuses under my belt), but I'm sure this would be great for sensaplace if one did.

Brennan, Tropic of Serpents
-- the not!dragons really don't interest me that much, and neither do the 19th century social mores. I read this for the A/U Judaic religious references. Granted, for goyisch me, it's a matter of spotting the references in the first place and then figuring what they relate to in this-world, but still fun.

Aiken, Nightbirds on Nantucket
Dangerous Games
-- Aiken reads fast. Am pleased that I can still get through a book in an afternoon. Also fond of Dido Twite.

It turned dry and cool overnight after yesterday's muggy deluge and I figured I wouldn't get a better chance to go to the end of the street for my blood tests, the ones that should have been done in March (no- too much snow) and June (no- too much rain.) So off I trundled, breakfastless, and got that done, cheering myself with the thought of a Baskin Robbins ice cream afterwards. Only afterwards was still too early for them to be open: pandemic has evidently thinned the number of people who show up at the lab midmorning, because usually at 10:30 there's eight or nine guys waiting, sometimes in the hallway. OK then, I'll go round the corner to Tim Horton's for a doughnut and coffee. It wasn't conscious virtue that made me substitute a breakfast muffin instead: more that a muffin and egg and cheese seemed more satisfying. And as I sat outside in the cool breeze, was accosted by my s-i-l's daughter, also coming from blood work, though why here when she lives way out the Danforth I don't know. Haven't seen her since Charistmas of 2019, which I can now scarcely recall.

Then. since it continued cool and pleasant, tackled that other oft-postponed chore, cutting back the lianas that want to take over the garden. Particularly the ones coiling about the AC unit, and also cut back what I could of the mulberry which has been loving this wet warm summer to the tune of two feet in two weeks. And oh dear god did everything seize up in my back and leg and everywhere. Dragged bag of cuttings down to the street, leaning on my hiking staff all the way as knee went click click click bone on bone. Then bundled up garbage for tomorrow and put that out and oh dear god did my back spasm as I was doing so. Gloom doom despair all round. Went and bicycled for a scant half hour, sweating mightily at the new resistance, got up and-- my knee was happy and my back was happy and I put the organic garbage out no problem at all. If bicycling will keep my knee happy then I shall bicycle three times a day.

I think I finished a Dick Francis last week, skimming a chunk because I remembered too late that this is the one where a nice character gets killed. Am still reading Library of the Dead which is proving oddly slow, possibly because the author isn't saying stuff I know already, which is what lets me read fast.

I'm reading Herodotus and Don Quixote. Herodotus is much more fun. That copy I picked up the other week is a revised translation with up to date footnotes (mostly to works I have no way or intention of acquiring) and chatty old Herodotus is just as amusing as he was fifty years ago. Don Quixote-- oh dear. Am two hundred pages into a 1000 page translation and it's all 'DQ meets someone/thing on the road, thinks it/they are giants/ monsters/ other knights, attacks and gets his ribs broken/ teeth knocked out/ some other damage, Sancho Panza gets it worse, hahaha isn't this amusing? over and over and over and over. Eight hundred more pages of this. And this is the height of Spanish literature.

I mean, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to read either this or Proust, I'd probably read this, because something new *might* come up, whereas Proust will just be Marcel eaten with ridiculous jealousy for a thousand pages, and I really can't stand that. Been there done that through all of Budding Grove and half of The Captive and no thank you very much.

But anyway, both those are on hold because the library book that came in yesterday isn't Dick Francis, it's The Library of the Dead, with twenty other people waiting to read my copy so I must get on with it. Am amused to see the cover blurb is from Incandescens. How you know that you've arrived: you're on the front cover and Ben Aaronovitch is on the back.

Had a Johnson cocktail last night. System took exception to it some hours later, is why I was awake at 5 a.m.. Well, that and possibly a thunderstorm as well, that blew in blessed cool grey weather. Refused to get out of bed until after ten: possibly I did go back to sleep for a little there because four hours is really not enough to operate on.

Went to the daycare for a baby shower for one of my favourite staff who is alas taking eighteen months off. This with two other staff away with recurrent back problems and recovery from chemo. And I half wish I was able-bodied again because I like to feel needed, and half know that it would be dog to its vomit all over again so be grateful for crippledom. (I don't mind being crippled. I mind being crippled and unable to bicycle safely or walk without support, meaning I no longer have the freedom I did last year.)

Reason it's dog to its vomit is that, after fifteen months, nothing feels changed at all once I'm in the building, even though there are now umpteen protocols to be followed and more paperwork than you can imagine. There should have been a sense of time having passed at least, but no. This happened when I came back from Japan after fifteen months there since my last trip home. I felt that I'd just picked up exactly where I'd left off- except that I also felt it was still January of '95 instead of April of '96 and that the intervening fifteen months simply hadn't happened at all. Except this time I notice my socially feral reflexes: so not used to talking to people any more.

Did I finish any books this last week? Dodger, yes. And a collection of detective stories, Bodies from the Library, vol 2, that contains an unpublished Peter Wimsey story found in someone's private papers and a Margery Allingham radio play. Right now I'm reading another Campion, The Beckoning Lady, which is most peculiar-- filled with a dozen characters that are never properly introduced and all of whom are just, well, weird. There may be a reason for at least one character's weirdness since people keep asking what's wrong with her, but we haven't been told what that reason is so far.

So for sensible reading I'm rereading Thud, and a good thing too.

Didn't rain today so I got the sandwiches I was craving yesterday though they'd have gone down better yesterday because today I wasn't really in crave mode. But is also cherry season so I got a bag of those. Real crave today is for something sweet, preferably pastry. I could happily eat half a red velvet cake. Instead I have Greek yoghurt and frozen blueberries.

Finished an Albert Campion, am currently reading Dodger, have no ambitions on any front because even though it's a tad cooler today, it's still muggy and dank and I ache all over.

Someone on the FFL was reading Dick Francis' To the Hilt of which I had only vague memories and, by the look of it, no copy of my own, even though I could see its cover clearly sitting in the pile on the shelf. Got a library copy and polished it off in a day or so. In fact I'd forgotten virtually everything of the plot except for the gay-I-assumed private detective kicking in the Badnasty's balls. The UST I'd detected on my first read wasn't as obvious this time. But then again, someone else on the FFL was talking about how the disability of disabled characters in Victorian lit is always a plot point, and cited Lucy Yolland in The Moonstone, whose limp had made her hate men. Whereas I had always read Lucy as gay and in love with Rosanna, and her animus towards Franklin is precisely because Rosanna is in love with him.

Being all down about the apparently increasing weakness in my leg, decided that what leg needs is more exercise, so took my rollator out for a walk this afternoon. Only four blocks but found that if I concentrate on walking heel-toe (which is not how I usually walk) I can indeed move quite well. And anyway, I'll have to practise walking like that after surgery so might as well get into the way of it now. Bonus was that I got to visit the Wee Free Library across the street-- and no, I haven't been able to cross the street in months-- and copped a copy of Herodotus which might be a fun reread. I'm sure I have a copy down in the basement but it probably smells of the mildew of ages.

Also took the copy of I Brought the Ages Home, memoir of the guy who established our own Royal Onatrio Museum. Memory says Currelly was something of a pirate-- he was certainly in cahoots with that other pirate, Bishop White-- though you can't prove it by anything in the ROM's literature. The attitude apparently being 'hey there's a revolution happening and the government in chaos, grab those artworks while you can.'

All last summer I kept the windows in the side bedroom closed but still smelled the workers' cigarettes. I still keep the windows closed and still smell cigarettes but my next door doesn't smoke. Most peculiar.

Finished Pamela Paul's My Life With Bob which I learned about from a double crostic puzzle. (Bob is her Book of Books, a list of everything she reads starting just before her senior year in high school.) It's a fun book but a puzzling one. She reads everywhere- on the road, in the hospital, at home. She takes three or four books with her to any country she goes. And she writes the titles down in BOB, twenty to a page, and at the end of twelve years has filled twenty-five pages. So 500 books. Over twelve years. Either I've finally met someone who reads more slowly than I do, which is scarce possible, or- and on the evidence- she reads nothing but door stoppers. Buddenbrooks, Anna Karenina, The Magic Mountain, War and Peace. She did read The Hunger Games after giving birth to one of her children, but that (and her book club reading of kidslit and YA) comes much later. Mind, I spent chunks of my 20s reading Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot and Cao Xueqin and Genji too, so I suppose it's A Thing.

Spent the last two days ereading books and doing nothing else.

Yesterday was prime rainy season weather- not hot but muggy and humid and grey and given to rain. Today was muggy and humid and sunny and therefore steeeamy, so was also sit in front of the fan and don't move. Thus have finished the fifth Vinyl Detective book, which I didn't know existed until someone in the FB RoL group mentioned it has a cameo appearance by one of said Rivers. Today I romped through a Campion and started another, so go me. Also swifteted kitchen floor, did my bicycling and kanji which I notably did not do yesterday, and put out the garbage. Garden waste and garbage pickup Thursdays always happen early so must go out the night before, unlike recycles which famously comes somewhere between 1 and 3, always when I'm headed to acupuncture. Was of two minds whether to put out my small bag of trash or save it for next time, but a good thing I did, because two weeks ago someone dropped a doggie bag in my garbage bin after pickup and, I assume, closed the lid so my kind next door, who brings my bins back along with her own, wasn't aware of it. The pong was something else. Shall have to put bleach or something in it after tomorrow's pickup.

I have a copy of A Tale of Two Cities which turns out to have been edited, and a copy of Don Quixote that is complete and unabridged, and I was desultorily reading through both of them when I wasn't reading the memoirs of an Australian who married into a traditional Japanese family. But now Sovay has reminded me of the existence of Albert Campion and I have two of her ebooks on the tablet. Alas, the library doesn't have the intriguing-sounding Look to the Lady, or not in a format I can deal with, since I don't do audiobooks.

(Even with editing, Dickens is still very Dickens eg Mme Defarge's eyebrows. But it started out very nice, making me think how much better Dickens is than Wilkie Collins. Oh well.)

Rummaging through the ever unsatisfactory summer trousers. There's a short-crop linen pair I forgot I had, possibly because they were too tight last year. They're still not loose 5 kilos later, which is a nuisance. Neither are the scrubs and thin blouson pants bought 10 kilos ago. Never believe dollar store labels. That's not an XL even by Indian standards. So I have in essence still only one pair of reliable hot weather pants, suitable for sweating into.

Getting up at 9:15 instead of going back to sleep makes for a long, if productive, day. Laundry and dishes and bundling magazines for recycle tomorrow, and a chicken slow cooked in the crockpot, and two sessions with the bike because I want to lose another two kilos so my summer pants will fit when summer comes. Since I'm hoping the 30C of the next three days will prove a blip.

Finished?

Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune
-- very nicely done but wish I had it in paper. Wish also I had the sequel again but there's a line up for it at the library. Maybe when stores reopen, whenever that is.

Minekura, Saiyuki Reload Blast 1&2
-- May 18 '08 was when I read Kenren's death and May 18 '21 was when I read Dokugakuji's. This would be easier if there were more stories, but it seems that one episode in 2019, first in 2.5 years, was the last installment.

Reading now?

Perennially A Radical Act, occasionally interrupted by a few pages of guanxi. I really should give that one up: I don't think I'm learning anything from it and it's sooò academic.

Next?

I have a Joan Aiken ebook which might do but I'm really tempted to read Hobbes' Leviathan out of sheer orneriness.

Yesterday after Monday's acupuncture was a complate washout. Kept waking all Monday night with knee pain, which is why I remember having that recurring dream of killing someone for no reason whatsoever, only in this case I purposely travelled to their home town to do it. Then the keener buyer company from Japan saw fit to text me at 8 a.m. to say Hey guess what your book is on its way!! and wanna click links so you don't have to sign for it? Of course they also sent me three emails to the same effect, which is kind of overdoing things. But if their projections are correct, Saiyuki RB 3 will be here next Monday, which is certainly efficient. And by way of indicating that maybe Japan is opening up, vol.1 came from honto.jp in a mere six weeks, which is better than the three months they were running last autumn.

And I hurt all day in every joint and managed my exercises and kanji by the skin of my teeth. Today I'm fine, for current values of fine. Might even make it to the laundromat.

But have figured out why I'm so reluctant to shower in the evenings. By the time I'm ready for bed, the 5 p.m. meds have worn off but I don't like taking them at night when I don't have to move. So removing knee braces and then getting them back on is, literally, a pain and half the time I don't. So yeah. Shower in the morning after breakfast, though I never used to understand why people did that.

Reading is a bust this year. Not at all like last year's steady march through the bookshelves. Possibly because I have two hours less during the day but mostly I think because futility is getting to me. And a bit because nothing on the go really grabs me. The French Revolution is generally up there with reading about the Khmer Rouge in the 'I would prefer not' department. The methods were certainly similar. But equally, I finished The House on Vesper Sands, which should have been quite to my tastes- Victorian London, mysterious doings, murder mystery- and, well. Fine as far as it went but ultimately left me cold. Maybe I need to read something Japanese for a complete change of pace

Hm? Is DW down or not?

Hard to tell with the persistent grey skies but I'd guess 9/10s of my blossoms have scattered, turning next door's yard into a Yayoi Kusama installation. Two doors down still glows mightily white but green begins to appear at the tips, meaning the end is near.

Finished?

Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
-- well, at least I've read it now

Two RoL graphic novels on an ebook app, Action at a Distance and The Fey an the Furious
-- time fillers, pleasant but not memorable

Reading now?

O'Donnell, The House on Vesper Sands
-- ebook that came in and must be finished for the waiting masses

Parry, A Radical Act of Free Magic
- bicycle reading, even if a bit large for comfort. Does indeed read better ìn dead tree form.

Next?

Might finish The Woman in White one of these days. Was skimming through The Scarlet Pimpernal for Reasons, but my copy is falling apart and I was reminded of Baroness Orczy's anti-semitism and really I'd rather not.

April is an achy month, end story. OTOH I've stopped drinking g&ts and therefore dropped a kilo. I'm not sure that gin really does work as an analgesic so I hope to continue not drinking g&ts for the foreseeable future. But a glass of vermouth does help the owies some.

My nurse friend called me yesterday to see what I was up to. I've written to her but didn't want to text or call because new baby = do not do anything to wake mother. Baby is almost four months now and cooed and gurgled into the phone as we were talking. But cell phone conversations are an exercise in frustration. I'm sure I lost half of what she was saying just because of the technical inadequacies.

Finished?

Pratchett, The Colour of Magic
-- boy was that painful. Partly reading on the tablet, partly just early Pratchett.

The Medieval Murderers, The Tainted Relic
-- aside from the basic unlikelihood of a bunch of Christians believing that a Muslim's curse could taint the blood of Christ? Uh, yeah.

Reading now?

Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
-- before I can forget what happened in TCoM. At least it's dead tree, which reads faster

Collins, The Woman in White
-- bicycle reading. Being a little slow. Am not down with the eeevil mechanations of eeevil Italians.

Next?

Will some day get to A Radical Act of Free Magic. If I ever get my brain back.

Latest self-torture is going to all the cake places advertised on FB and not ordering lemon madeleines or strawberry shortcake or hazelnut torte.

Complicated dream last night, or rather this morning after predawn bathroom trip, of being on the Tokyo subway at night, but the trains didn't come for a long time and when they did they were empty and the darkened stations had no names and I couldn't find a conductor to tell me where I was and then we came above ground into the grey day and it was the Paris subway that finally let me off somewhere near the Eiffel Tower where my dorm was. And as I was dozing in bed there the cleaner came into my room even though I had the Do Not Disturb sign up so I had to get up and get dressed and suddenly my dorm room was my bedroom at the family house and I was pulling identical red velour costumes out of what I vaguely remember as my sock drawer.

Finished?

Waggoner, The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
-- I do like Waggoner's universe, a generally genial place with happy ever afters, also civilized trolls who set the fashion for humans and plenty of official ways to create found families.

Savit, The Way Back
-- blurbs liken him to Pullman and Gaiman. I cannot be having with Pullman under any circumstances, and Gaiman is hit and miss for me, is possibly why this left me no-there-there-ing. I appreciate the Jewish centredness, which we could use more of, but I was maybe expecting more of a Hasidic ethos to it, as one does when wonder-working rabbis are involved. But in the event it felt more Pullman than Buber, with a certain coldness in the approach.

Gaiman, Stardust
-- hit or miss. I remembered nothing of this from my first read seven years ago, and such is Gaiman's 'see me not' quality that I remembered little of the beginning by the time I got to the end.

Reading now?

Besides the perpetual tomes, which go slowly, two library ebooks that need finishing:

Pratchett, The Colour of Magic
-- still want this in dead tree because I've forgotten what happened in the first half before I had to send it back (other ebooks to finish with even more people waiting)

Gooden, The Pale Companion
-- Elizabethan murder mystery series, a player in the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Up next?

A Radical Act of Free Magic

I have a falling-apart copy of The Bull From the Sea down in the dining room, which I leafed through as I was bicycling today. I'd half-expected the Suck Fairy to have got at it, and of course she had. What a git Theseus is. I suppose I should admire Renault for presenting him in all his gittishness, but he makes for revolting reading now. That's me for a shower then.

It's supposed to snow tonight, which is not unheard of in April. The cherry blossoms are half-out on my tree. I trust they will survive, as they survived the snow last May. Meanwhile I hurt all day which is getting to be par for the course with me. But April is an achy month even without snow, so maybe I'll feel better next month.

Dreamed an actual coherent ghost story last night, most of which stayed with me on waking. I was staying at a kind of northern cottage, or a house in the lake region, with an old man and woman, and everything was fine until she wanted me to move downstairs to another room. And after that they started acting weird in ways I couldn't define until the cops showed up, led by a black guy, and they started poking and knocking on things. There were corpses inside the hollow trunk of a tree that grew inside the house- 'maybe 150'- and the old man certainly and his wife maybe were also dead. But then the old man's wendigo spirit took over the head cop, whose eyes went milky, and that's when the phone woke me up.

The phone was probably another scam call and not the dentist I assumed it was, because there was no message. Some time thereafter I got a call from the accountancy firm, who has my return ready. 'So can you come and get it?' My sweet summer child, there's a pandemic on and you're at the ends of beyond and your letter said this would all be done online. But that was the chief accountant's letter and this was one of the underlings. She's going to courier it to me and it will arrive 'some time in the next five business days' oh joy. Because I will be out Friday and out Monday. 'Is there some place they can deliver it instead where someone will be in?' Sweet summer child, no. We do not all have concierges or workplaces, not in the current pandemic-have-you-noticed. So I hope they call the number I provided before attempting a delivery.

Finished?

Gaiman, Neverwhere
-- the best of Gaiman's oeuvre, I think. Everything else of his is not quite quite for some reason.

Reading now?

The Medieval Murderers, The Tainted Relic
-- sort of a samplar of various medieval murder writers, generally undistinguished. Though I'm checking out the one who writes Elizabethan players.

Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets
-- academic study of guanxi, the Chinese version of コネ I think, the grease that oils the social wheels. Heavy-duty bicycle reading.

Gaiman, Stardust
-- because I remember absolutely nothing about this. So far, it's Gaiman does Mirrlees.

Next?

I suppose I could reread The Princess Bride,

Time sense is quite gone this month but I suppose I'm pleased to discover that it took me two weeks to dispose of that gin, not one. And I really need to stop the g&ts, not merely for calorie reasons but because it costs an arm and a leg to get the stuff delivered to me, since I'm no longer limber enough to stand in line at the LCBO and walk around inside it. Another reminder of how I've decrepited since last year.

But in spite of decrepitude and gusty spring winds I got to an actual bookstore again, in the belief that Doug Miller always has loads of early Pratchett because everyone always has loads of early Pratchett. Only of course he doesn't. My requirements have been badly out of sync with his stock for the last year or so. But I did get The Light Fantastic even if he had no copies of The Colour of Magic, and also a buncha probably disappointing mysteries. I don't know why I keep buying Ian Rankins when his gangsters annoy me so much, but every now and then I want to read an Ian Rankin, so now I can. Bright blowy cold spring is made for fluff mystery reading, and everything else I have is so very much not. (Mabinogion, Montaigne, Metaphysicals, or the 400 page fantasy whoppers on my tablet that are always undecided if I can make sense of them or not.)

My acupuncturist can drive and has offered to chauffeur me to one of the gov't's mass inoculation sites if I can get an opening some day when she doesn't work. The gov't sites, unlike the pharmacies, don't use the A/Z, which is still sounding iffy to my ears. 'The blood clots have been in younger women, like under 60, so get the shot because you have more risk of getting Covid than of getting a blood clot.' Err, no. My risk of Covid is practically nil because I don't interact with anyone unmasked in an enclosed space for more than a minute or two at a time. Might be different if I were facing surgery any time soon, but the earliest will be May 21, and I am not sanguine about cases dropping enough to allow electives. Not when we're still well over 2000 a day *and* venues opening up again.

That high anxiety activity known as Getting Tax Stuff Together ends with the usual panic stations when my 2020 propery tax statement vanishes. In fact all my property tax statements have vanished (we get two a year) except the 2021 interim bill even though I never ever throw them out. But before I go online and see if the city will tell me what I paid I tear apart all the various paper repositories in the house because I know I found the final statement in one of them and left it there, reasoning that if I moved it I'd never find it again. Yes well. Was in the side bedroom, and why it was there is anyone's guess because what was I doing with it?

However. That's that sorted.

Finished?

Kij Johnson, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
-- as I say, if people feel moved to write correctional Lovecraft, fine, but even second-hand Lovecraft leaves me in a bad mood.

Reading now?

Waggoner, Unnatural Magic
-- so far so good. Would read better in paper

Ellery Queen, Calamity Town
-- I think fictional Ellery has laid hold of the wrong end of the stick. Shall find out in 150 pages if he does

The Metaphysical Poets
The Mabinogion
-- desultory reading

Next up?

Might go back to The Woman in White, might not.

We've been hitting double digit temps the last few days, mid-teens. Not hot hot, but enough to ensure spring smells. The nights are still furnace-on cold, below freezing. All set to change by Friday but nice for the moment. I was out yesterday but in all today. Brother visited, which was pleasant: I become much more rational with a little human interaction. Grocery delivery came. Handed the guy a tip in an envelope as I do, and he said, 'Thanks. I'll put this in the raffle we have once a year.' Which I suppose is a way of sharing the wealth, though you'd think an equally-divvied pot would be fairer, as I'm given to understand that some people have stopped tipping delivery persons entirely.

Canadian Tire takes six weeks to deliver their orders, even using a deicated delivery service, but the filter for my Dirt Devil finally arrived and it now vacuums much more efficiently than it did. So I vacuumed the kitchen and downstairs, which I need to do sevetal times a week now, thanks to my peanut eating habit.

Coupla ebooks arrived on the tablet so I started the shorter of the two, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe. Was recommended by someone online is why I put a hold on it, but I probably should have googled it, or simply been faster with the resonances, because I was well into the thing before I realized we were riffing on Lovecraft. Riffing on Lovecraft only works if you've read Lovecraft ie we're writing fanfic here and for that you need to know the canon. But by me Lovecraft is simply... unnecessary. Surplus to requirements. Serves no purpose. If everyone just forgot his existence in a wave of global amnesia, the world of fantasy would be not a whit the worse off. No one reads The Castle of Otranto or William Beckford any more (English majors aside, and even that may have changed since my time), so why do people still read Howard's bloated magenta prose? especially since Walpole and Beckford actually wrote better than he did.

Oh well. De gustibus... After all, there are people who read Dan Brown. There are even people who *can* read Dan Brown, which boggles the mind.

Rollatored to the supermarket today. Knees were not happy at all, neither were elbows. I suppose I should be grateful that my back at least was OK with it since it wasn't for a long time: or earlier this week, come to that. I do wonder how much exercise I have to do to make a difference. Months and months, evidently. And possibly things have just deteriorated past the point where strengthen and stretch can make a difference. Gloom gloom gloom.

However I did finish Plutarch and am partway through The Colour of Magic on my tablet, since I've never read it. Fine as far as it goes but there's so much better to come. Like Interesting Times, which it appears is what I thought The Last Continent was. Those one-time Pratchetts were all read a baker's dozen of years ago, when things were so much better than they are today.

Half an ativan unaccountably failed to put me to sleep but did loosen the muscles up so that I awoke relatively limber. Two hours in the dentist's chair took care of that, but it was nice while it lasted.

OTOH I swear there's a special feature cab drivers use that renders one's phone mute because this is the second time this week a cabby has called me from precisely the wrong location, and though I had my phone in my pocket on 'ring and vibrate' I registered nothing. But when I say I'm at 2 Carleton there's no point you sitting in front of 8 Carleton behind a truck so I can't see you, calling me up to demand where I am in cellphone garbled blabbidyblah. Equally, when I say King and University on the University side, why are you sitting a block away at York St? Why, because that's the main entrance for the building at King and University and the dispatcher said nothing about 'waiting on the University side.' This is why cabbing it is such a fraught activity and I hope I'm done with it for a bit. Though with the gales of March/ April being as they are, there's no guarantee.

Finished?

Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
-- still have a hold on the first volume but this novella is fun.

Pratchett, Reaper Man
-- not intentionally, but read on the fifth anniversary of his death

Plutarch, On Friendship
-- or whatever its title is. Mostly about false friends/ flatterers which, as I say, is a breed the common person is not likely to encounter. Two more essays and I'm done with this, and a good thing too because the book is falling apart *and* smells strange.

Mabinogion, The Lady of the Fountain and Peredur
-- oogie. Then started Culhwch and Olwen and dear god you if thought the Catalogue of Ships was bad... Can't see me going farther with this.

Reading now?

Gardner, ed, The Metaphysical Poets
-- let's get this straight: I do not like the metaphysical poets, those clever-clog snots. By me they write the most unpoetical poetry it's possible to write. As Gardner says, "...the constant complaint of its critics is that it confuses the pleasures of poetry with the pleasure of puzzles. ...its lovers have always a certain sense of being a privileged class, able to enjoy what is beyond the reach of vulgar wits." Of course Peter Wimsey always has a volume of Donne about him, just to demonstrate how superior he is.

But I read this to have it read after umm 45 years maybe? and as I'm slogging along through the earlier metaphysicals I suddenly find myself in very familiar territory. It says it's Southwell, Mary Magdalens Complaint at Christ's Death, but here in the middle:

O true life, since thou hast left me,
Mortell life is tedious,
Death it is to live without thee,
Death of all most odious.
Turne againe, or take me with thee,
Let me dye or live thou with mee.

This and the next two verses I know as a song by Thomas Morley that actually reverses the order of the stanzas. And works very well as such, but the rest of Southwell's poem doesn't fit the tune at all. I mean, maybe all the metaphysicals need is a musical setting to render them palatable?

Next up?

Many things on hold in both e- and paper format, and I could make some of the latter active. Or I could go on rereading Pratchett.

Have been neglecting the kanji study for a week or so. Got back toit today and feel more like myself. Also did two sets of bicycling because I've been eating take-out-- pizza, dumplings, club sandwiches: starch and fat, basically-- and need to undo the damage. Ontario is well into its third wave and I'm not betting on elective surgeries being allowed next month, but the working theory is surgery in 6-7 weeks.

Otherwise have been reading sections of the Mabinogion, the later romances- Owain and Peredur- rather than the earlier Four Branches. My recollection is that the Four Branches are 100 Demons-style unheimlich/ fantoddy, but so are the romances. Talk all you like about Norman and Christian influences, the bare Jungian bones show through the knightly trappings. Come to that, the knightly trappings are pretty strange too: all these warriors hanging about the woodland challenging anyone who shows up, all these maidens in castles bringing the warrior armour and horses, and the way Peredur and other knights keep falling in love with different women and winning their love and then... going off and doing it again. By my count Peredur has four 'she whom I love the best's at the very least.

Went to get my laundry last night and discovered that electrician had left his lamp hanging off a hook in the not-ceiling of the basement. Emailed his boss and said I'd leave door on latch for him to get in, to avoid having to limp downstairs answering doorbells when I've just woken up and can barely stand. 'It's a safe neighbourhood,' I said. Woke 9ish, did exercises and stretching, downstairs for breakfast at 10, check email while eating my oatmeal. 'Thanks for telling me,' says boss, 'I'll send him over at 8.' Blink blink. Either my air purifier or my muscle relaxants ensured I didn't notice a thing, though electrician passing through might explain why my backpack had fallen to the floor. But that backpack is badly balanced and quite capable of falling down all by itself,

Was supposed to have a root canal today but no, he needed more time and also wanted me started on antibiotics, so it's tomorrow. Which is a pain because it's a different location, way downtown, and I hurt rather a lot today. Used the walker to negotiate the office building and my but people do give you extra service when you do that. But then I had to get the antibiotic scrip filled, and walk home from the drugstore, and so I hurt even more. Maybe I'll indulge in another half ativan...

Finished?

The Last Continent
-- the UU guys are really not as funny to a Canuck as they are to a Brit. Though god knows, in my day we had wall-to-wall Brit staff in the Classics dep't (I'd say Oxbridge but the medieval Latin guy was Irish from a red-brick place) and Pratchett's breed is not unknown to me. Is maybe why I don't find them funny.

Reading now?

Reaper Man
-- still more academics, even in a Death book. Witches would be better

Plutarch, On love, the family, and the good life
-- to have it read. Usually I like Plutarch who's nicely mundane, but right now he's talking about the Flatterers, a breed that must have died out, because for sure I don't know anybody who carefully studies other people's tastes in order to ingratiate himself in their good graces. Maybe you have to be rich... but frankly, the modern ethos of Me First militates against any kind of Me Second thinking.

Next?

Not a clue, though I think I never did read Pratchett's first two. Don't even think I own them.

Everyone else's life is being so traumatic just now that I'm trying to be grateful that the only thing bothering me is that the plumber somehow got my metal shower hose twisted about in such away that the shower head won't stay facing out, as it has for the last fifteen years, but wants to turn its face to the wall, thereby rendering it useless as a shower. I've fixed it in place with electrician's tape so it now functions just fine as a shower but can't be used to wash the under bits that showers don't reach. This is why we can't have nice things.

Clearly I was stressed about the plumber because today my system decided to rebel against, oh I don't know, could be any one of several things it's been known to rebel against: pad thai or Johnson cocktail or peanuts or wine or some combination of same. Which is fine. I need to stop the daily gin even if I hurt so much without it. Put braces on elbows and curl up under the quilts with bean bags.

As for reading Wednesday-

Finished?

Duckworth, Carolingian Portraits
-- deadly deadly history: doctrinal disputes* and internecine backstabbing. Enlivened only slightly by the Charles and Camilla saga of Lothair II and his wife and his mistress. Wife was in fact twice widowed before marrying him, he'd already had several kids with his mistress, wife couldn't have kids, Lothair tried for an annulment or a divorce such as several of his relatives had indulged in, most notably his great-grandfather Charlemagne, but his uncles and his uncles' tame churchmen (Hincmar, who does not come across to me as the shining light Duckworth thinks him) were having none of it. The fact that Lothair had no legitimate heir was exactly as his wicked uncles liked it: 'more land for us!!' Empire fell apart because the Carolingians couldn't stop coveting their brothers' territory long enough to put up a united front against the Vikings, the Magyars, the Saracens, the you name it.

*I have always maintained that you can't argue theology in Latin because Latin is just too damned vague, and several of these disputes prove my point. You have to argue in Greek, which at least has articles, but once you start arguing in Greek there's literally no end to it.

Reading now?

The Woman in White showed up in a crossword puzzle the other day and I thought, in my loose-ended fashion, that it might prove diverting. Alas, I'm not particularly diverted, except by the pencilled marginalia some appreciative previous owner has added, admiring Collins' more purple passages.

I tried rereading Neverwhere and I tried rereading The Napoleon of Notting Hill , but I'm in a 'man delights not me nor woman neither' mood, and both Gaiman and Chesterton are quirky enough to bug me.

Reading next?

Maybe I should reread some of the Pratchetts I've only read once, like Reaper Man or Monstrous Regiment.

Lying in bed as is my habit, because it's warm and I don't hurt, and thinking gloomy thoughts about knee replacements, or more pecisely rehab after knee replacement, phone rings. Is surgeon's office booking for March and do I want a date and by the way he's retiring in early May. The question turns out to be moot because they want people to wait six weeks after dental surgery, so it's late April at the earliest. Which is partly relief and partly here we go again. What's with the retiring professionals?

Mail then brings me a letter from the accountants that my retired accountant has referred me to. Forms to fill out and mail in the not-enclosed envelope no matter what they say. Which will require getting stamps which requires being able to negotiate sidewalks. Oh well. Spring is coming, I should be able to bike long before I have to send all my stuff to them, even before I have all my stuff to send. They're in Scarberia, which will be a hefty chunk to courier, because even were I mobile, I wouldn't take it in myself.

Mail also brings revised forms from the insurance company, that still say my pipes date to 1910. People.

On a whim and because it's sitting there for some reason, put on a Patarillo CD for my biking time. This takes me back to when I was reading and watching Patarillo, the late 90s, so I read my Patarillo fic on my phone, which takes me back very precisely to 1997 and calls up certain oogies from that time. I respond by dumping several stacks of Patarillo manga in a clear garbage bag and putting it out for tomorrow's recycle pickup.

Reading wise, I've finished only Okorafor's Ikenga. Montaigne and the Carolingians drag, especially the latter. Carolingian scholars, all wound into knots on points of Catholic doctrine, squabble like fannish schoolgirls, while the kings keep trying to grab their relatives' land for themselves. Bunch of ragamuffins indeed.

Electrician comes tomorrow at 10 which means being up at 8:30 or so in order to be breakfasted and mobile and able to negotiate the basement stairs. I usually use ativan for this, to guarantee sleep of some sort, but I'm down to my last half tablet and need to keep it in case someone else- dentist, surgeon- wants me to be somewhere at 9 which means getting up at 7. Nor can I rely on the beeping snow plow that woke me irrevocably on Friday at 7:15 nor the three hallucinatory ringing phones that woke me at 8:15 on Saturday. (The world is not kind to nighthawks. Electrician wanted to come at 8.)

Could ask my new doctor for some more ativan but think I must ask her instead for more opioid cough syrup. Am looking at root canal and crown just as the spring allergy strangle cough makes its reappearance, and it's always worse when I'm supine. Tooth went ballistic last night but I hope, fingers crossed, that was because sinuses were stuffed and that saline rinse will keep it quiet for the next two and a half weeks. Would have been ten days but they wanted me in at, yes, 9 a.m.

Loose-endedly, am reading Duckett's Carolingian Portraits to have it read. Not rivetting reading; distinguished only by the fact that she calls the royal Pepins, Pippin, which makes for a nice mental picture.

Dentist appointment today, in spite of flailing through snowdrifts to get to cabs, at least got me a good half hour of conversation with the hygienist about European travel and languages and whatnot. Also alas got me a referral to a very pricey specialist for a root canal on the troublesome back molar. 'The root's dead which means it's decaying and giving off gases that will cause you more pain nado nado,' so OK yes I suppose I must. Was hoping it would just calm down and stay calmed.

What bugs me most about my knee is that it can never decide what kind of brace it wants. I'll be going along happily with a sleeve brace and then all of a sudden it's Noooo don't cover me up Imma twinge at you with every step if you cover me up!! So I go for the open brace and it's Noooo not that brace I want the *other* brace the one that supports the IT band Imma twinge at you with every step if you don't support my IT band!! And sometimes it's just Imma twinge at you with every step no matter what you do. Especially when snow is in the offing.

Finished?

Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium
-- thank god

Phelps, Belles Saisons: a Colette Scrapbook
-- I know not all Frenchwomen are Colette but like her, all the Frenchwomen I know are provided with as much amour as they can handle. The single woman is hard to find over there. This argues the presence of willing partners ie other people who need to be in relationships, which again I have not found to be the case over here. I couldn't handle it now but I think I could have when I was younger if I'd had a plethora of partners to choose from instead of the unwilling and the uninterested and the frankly dull as ditchwater.

Reading now?

Montaigne, desultorily

Okorafor, Ikenga
-- turns out I can so too read on the tablet if it's YA. Fun and fast.

Next up?

Hm. Probably another deadly non-fic doorstopper until my various ebook holds come in. Can't think what would be fun.

Finished Pursuit of the Millennium yesterday, which left me in a scratchy bloody-minded mood. A steady succession of narcissistic megolomaniacs, all of whom preached mass slaughter to their followers, or else wound up slaughtering their followers themselves, and who invariably ended up beheaded or burnt alive after the region's population had been decimated in the wars to get rid of the megalomaniacs. Nobody in their right minds would want to live in northern Europe in the sixteenth century, largely because your life was likely to be brutish and short.

Also no one will behead the current narcissistic megalomaniac, or even impeach him.

More calmly today I started on Belles Saisons: a Colette scrapbook, which is photos of Colette and her circle with biographical tidbits. Glorious days, those. Natalie Barney, Liane de Pougy, Mathilde de Morny... those women had style.

Buoyed by my shopping trip last week, today I rollatored the equal distance to the laundromat to wash my duvet cover. Then walked the two blocks down to the super, did a shop there, walked back up to put my duvet in the dryer, and home to put frozen stuff in the freezer. And that, as far as my knees and elbows were concerned, was it. But I still had to go back to the laundromat and come home, cursing all the way. I moved more last year when I was working, is the only reason I can think of for this debilitation. So of course I need to walk more now and if I can't walk (snow) then I need to move more in the house (housework.) What I want to do is go from bed potatodom to couch potatodom and back, and I mustn't. Glum.

Last finished?

Milne (yes, A. A.), The Red House Mystery
-- these mysteries that I'm assured are Best In Show and classics are well enough and a pleasant change from my other reading, but not knock-socks-off

Reading now?

Everything else. Cohn is still with the messianic movements in Germany, Montaigne is still Montaigne, and Kipling.... I would have finished him by now but his autobiographical sketch, Something of Myself, made me me want to go play Addiction Solitaire and read Facebook instead. Between 'my good friend the far-sighted Cecil Rhodes', the what-about-ism of 'people criticize England for exploiting India but what about the 16 year old drudges they pay a pittance to fetch their bathwater up three flights of stairs, what about them, huh?' and the classic 'The Irish are born haters, they hate everyone, that's the only reason they hate us, obviously', I conclude that I wouldn't want to make Kipling's acquaintance. Add to that his utterly opaque descriptions of various things like the Boer War, where you clearly have to know what he's saying to know what he's saying, and if the elisions and obscurity mean nothing to you, well clearly you're not one of the elect. Pity. I used to think well of him.

Next?

More of same. And there is no health within us.

The wind is up and so my house is cold. Was going to take the rollator shopping today because I'm almost out of tonic water but... the wind is up and it's cold outside. Also the back molar got inflamed yesterday so I took a tylenol2 for it and my insides are telling me how very much they don't like codeine any more. My tiny boots arrived from Wherever and they fit (left as always tighter than the right) and while they're lighter than my clodhopping boots they're still pretty clodhopper, so I don't know how well I can walk in them. Maybe tomorrow, which will be above freezing, though the sidewalks will be an obstacle course of wheelie bins.

Have finished nothing. The selection of Kipling stories is pretty much OK but the last third of the book is poems and the poems include the cringeworthy ones like Fuzzywuzzy and Gunga Din and The Ladies and *of course* The White Man's Burden. And the others are very much For god's sake stop writing dialect please please please.

Got through Montaigne on education and am almost through On Friendship, feeling a little sorry that the man never registered that no, actually, he was in love, and friendship as he conceived it Isn't Like That.

As for The Pursuit of the Millennium, it boils down to 'all millennial leaders were Donald Trump and all millennial followers were Republicans'. I'm sure there are Republicans who'd rather be burnt at the stake than recant and admit the election was fair.

I haven't been able to buy cold water Tide laundry detergent all year. Have been using regular, which has a way of leaving powder trails on my black clothes. (Can't use hot water because my machine leaks if I do.) Finally found cold water pods which are better than nothing, though being an impatient Torontonian (like New Yorkers, always in a hurry) I hate the 'detergent first, wait till it's filled with water, add clothes last' schtick. But it should cure the salt stain syndrome. Only at what a cost! They don't advertise the pods as being scented but they are, they so are. My clothes are hanging on wires in the laundry room in the basement at the other end of the house: and the smell creeps up the basement stairs, turns around and creeps up the first floor stairs, and tickles my nose here in the side bedroom.

We won't mention the adult-proof ziplock bag the things come in. 'Close bag after use', they say. God no. I can't be spending ten minutes trying to get at my detergent every time I do laundry.

Discover my local Thai/ Italian/ burger/ nandemoii restaurant allows you to pay the delivery guy in cash. This is a relief because I misread my VISA statement in December and nearly maxxed out my card in January. Thus must limit my purchases. Thanks to those silver stocks I do have money, but it's in an account that isn't set up to be used online and is thus useless for paying bills. Was going to get it set up last March yes well. Anyway, celebrated with penne pasta (a no-no) and Malaysian vegetables (a yes-yes). And bicycled an extra half hour to balance the calories.

E-book finally came through on Libby after two months hold, The Bone Shard Daughter. I read a chapter, checked the stats, and sent it back to the six people waiting for this copy. No way I can read a 400 page fantasy on the tablet, especially not a secondary world fantasy. Like Black Leopard, Red Wolf, I need words on a paper page to parse the thing at all. And like the James novel, I want to get it from Bakka but Bakka wants me to pick up my purchases. So some day when the roads reopen and I can bicycle. It's not like Ihave nothing to read in the meantime.

I can understand why a letter from Singapore would take the better part of two months to get here (and Zan, if you're reading, thank you so much for the pretty cards and the pretty dragon) but today I also got a Christmas card from the states postmarked December 22. The election was over in November, guys. What took you?

Did Kipling really write an inordinate number of weird tales or is it just that this collection has them all? The illustration on the spine is The Phantom Rickshaw, and so far there's also "They" and The Mark of the Beast and The House Surgeon and The Return of Imray. (But not, luckily, A Madonna of the Trenches, or The Luck House either.) Somehow I thought Kipling had written book after book about the army in India, but evidently not.

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