Off the Cliff

I know intellectually that six days is not the longest I've spent indoors, but I notice that even the knee replacement four years ago only kept me in for seven. Oh dear.

Dreamed of having to leave my dream!house at night to consult a professor? police detective? some kind of expert? because there was an unwrapped mummy!!! under my bed eww yuck. He sent his minions in and discovered that there were actually four of the things so I couldn't go home till they'd been disposed of. Turned on my other side and dreamed of going to what passed for the daycare to see my old friend L who was still business co-ord, but problems kept cropping up and she couldn't get away. So I wandered into the Infant section where my old coworker S was changing a baby. Neither L nor S have been at the DC since the turn of the millennium, or possibly before-- unreliable memory says both left in 1999-- but that baby I remember well. He had no off switch when it came to food and we always had to cut him off after three large bowls, to his extreme displeasure. His umm leavings were in proportion to his intake, which was bad enough when he was still in diapers but disastrous when it came to toilet training. Ah yes, I remember B well.

Woke in cold and started downstairs to see if it was just the thermostat set to moderate or if the vent had somehow got blocked. Furnace came on as I was still descending, but since I was there I steeled myself to check what damage holiday indulgence had wrought. A kilo, which could be much worse, but eventually I must stop drinking Black Russians and start drinking more water. And moving more somehow.

Anyway, went up to Loblaws for pharmaceuticals. No sane person shops on New Year's Eve but it wasn't that bad. Of course there were fields of ridged ice at several street corners and driveways, but that's winter in this here burg. Snow and snowflurries expected all week but will eventually get that book back to the library. And my backup lenses from the Extremely Expensive But Reliable company arrived in good order, so I now have eight weeks' worth, by which time maybe my preferred company will at last get the two boxes of 90 each that I ordered out to me. Knew I shouldn't have ordered two boxes-- absolutely tempting fate-- but I'm tired of having to a) order a month in advance every two months and b) wait on tenterhooks to see if c) they have them in stock or d) if they're on backorder and if so, e) will there be a postal strike that prevents them getting to me? This got old years ago.

Reading-wise, finished Silverlock. Mr. Google cannot in fact tell who everyone is, even though there's a webpage that has some annotations.
http://anitra.net/commonwealth/refindex.html

I believed the forecast that said rain Monday night and thus was disheartened to find snow on the rooftops Tuesday morning. Slidy slush, not quite as bad as two weeks ago. Had to wear new boots which, even with thick socks and gel bunion pads, hurt to walk in. But had last physio session till the new year and bought a turkey dinner at Farm Boy while temps rose to above freezing.

Today was sun and old boots. Debated walking in shoes but luckily good sense prevailed.  There's still a lot of ice at street corners and laneways, and lower back having conniptions for no good reason,  unless boots count as same. But went out for Pauper's Christmas dinner anyway. Turkey was dry, and there was too much of it, but the root veg, mash, and stuffing were excellent as ever. But filling, very filling. My stomach is shrinking, not that it affects my weight at all.

Finished Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, next installment in Huchu's Edinburgh Nights series. Was a bit of a downer to start cause Ropa can never catch a break, but very satisfying by the end. Shall read on when I'm assured I can get to the library without pain.

Still with Petty Treason, the Sarah Tolerance Regency mystery, and a Dr Priestley, The Bloody Tower, which I just know will end up hinging on obscure ballistical knowledge. Dr Priestleys almost always tend to John Dickson Carr levels of odd and unlikely murder methods.

After that who knows? Friday is supposed to be unspeakable and I will be indoors for a while. What I wanted to do was reread Little, Big which should be on the shelves in the front bedroom-- I can see it there clearly-- but I combed them this morning, back screaming like a banshee, moving many ancient volumes back and forth and filling a bag with To Be Donateds, but it's nowhere to be found. 

 Snow, slush, semi-melt: nasty weather, basically. But still went out to physio, shoving the walker through the recalcitrant berms. Something passed along the sidewalks at one point earlier: there were tire tracks a metre wide that hadn't cleared the slush but pushed it to either side, and in the middle a clear patch maybe a foot/ 30 cm wide ie not wide enoough for the rollator. Bobcats don't do that. I don't know what does that but it's remarkably inefficient. Thought the bobcats must have done Christie at least so took the side street over and no, no they had not. Was in fact worse than my street. But I pushed on, noting that-- cult though they may be-- the Jehovah's Witnesses alone had shovelled their frontage, and then the smoke house at the corner. Am sure this expedition counts as exercise, so go me.

Finished, I went over to Loblaws who hadn't shovelled either, obviously thinking the clear path under their overhang was sufficient to anyone's needs, and if one had to push through a sea of slush to get to the walkway, well, too bad. I hope I never have to use a wheelchair, even a motorized one. Of course there's still home delivery, and if Blawblaws persists in not having turkey roll, I may use it.

Coming home people either had shovelled or were shovelling, including in front of the vacant lot that will someday, in the far future, be yet more condos. I thanked the shoveller nicely, who grinned back at me and asked how I was doing. Obviously dire conditions bring out the best in Trawntonyans.

Finished Nancy Mitford's bio of Mme de Pompadour finally, so can put with the donatable books. Charles Finch, The Hidden City and Kashiwaba Sachiko's The Village Beyond the Mist. The last being a veeeery distant ancestor of Spirited Away, the only semi-common element being the character who turned into Yubaba. Also did a fast skim of Witches Abroad as a library ebook because I wanted something to read at the restaurant and Kobo is iffy on the phone.

Also finished the first set of Phantom Moon Tower side stories, some of which are parseable and some of which, um, aren't.

Then bought a couple of Dr Priestleys for the tablet because I need to get back to the bike machine. Though now am tempted to just reread Lords and Ladies and maybe Maskerade. This is hibernating 'line of least resistance' weather, and I have vodka and a comfy sofa. A pity to waste that on, say, the biography of Da Vinci.

It snowflurried through most of the day which didn't stick but did leave the sidewalks a damp leafy mess. Thus I stayed indoors and did very little. A wash of underwear and tops, black and colours mixed which you can do when you wash in cold. Read on in Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour, which I inherited from the parents' library. Am finding it not as enthralling as her one about Louis XIV, mostly because Mitford thinks Pompadour was a nice woman and Louis XV a devoted lover and neither had the nasty fascination of the Sun King and his various mistresses and offspring.

The details of the life and mores at Versailles are interesting enough when talking about things like never addressing anyone as tu when the king was present even if you were talking to a close relative. Very Byzantine. But mostly it's the frivolous amusements of frivolous people who were also jockeying for marks of distinction from the king, like being admitted to dinners in his inner chambers, and heartburning when they weren't forthcoming. The courtiers thought they were living at the centre of civilization,  but it sounds insupportably boring to me. Mitford assures us that the conversation was scintillating, but conversation is a transient thing that doesn't get passed down to later generations unless you have a Boswell handy. 

Up as betimes as S. Pepys could wish (not really: he used to get up at 5 occasionally to be somewhere) and down to the lab where there were only two people waiting and the couple who came in with me: and where my requisition was expired by a scant ten days so, sorry, no can do. Eventually I'll get on to my doctor's secretary and have her email me a form and then get it printed at the library and then try again, but not today because I am peeved. And tomorrow I'm sleeping in till noon.

Finished Dogsbody, which I somehow never read, and a coupla Miles Burtons- Found Drowned and Legacy of Death-- which are bicycle and phone reading. DNFed The Place of Shells which was a bit too Japanese 'no there there' for me.  Am currently reading Embers of the Hand, all about the Vikings-- though I wish I had Inventing the Renaissance handy so I could remind me of why the Greenland settlements failed. Also Masefield's The Midnight Folk because it's an ebook and I never read that either. Leonardo when I have nothing else going and/ or need to stop looking at screens. 

Packed another bagful of leaves, from the side walkway this time. The walkway is a sea of leaves at this season, sometimes ankle-deep. And because they're all from my trees I feel compelled to remove some of them at least so J doesn't have to pay her gardener huge bucks to do it. Or rather, I feel compelled this year: it never bothered me in the past. But in the past I never registered that J had a basement tenant who had to wade through them to get to her entrance.

Downstairs tablet was playing silly buggers and annoying me to the point of thinking maybe I *will* splurge on a Chromebook. Then it suggested I clear my cache and cookies, which nothing prompts me to do when I'm optimising performance. But done now anyway. I might still investigate Chromebooks if I ever get down to the AGO but googling about suggests they only link to printers that are linked to the cloud which mine certainly isn't. The lack of a printer is starting to annoy me, but so is not being able to access my old files on my dead desktop.

Apparently the aurora borealis will be visible tonight in places where it's not raining, which is not here. At least the sidewalks were somewhat dryer than yesterday so all I had to do was wipe the wheels down at each stop, not poke into the housings with a screwdriver like yesterday.

Continue to throw out bits of the dead past for recycle. Am now into the bedroom boxes and their stash of APAs from the latter 90s, which left me feeling oogier than even the doujinshi do. There's a nightmare feel about aspects of those four years.  I know it took me a good year to get over the reverse culture shock and the loose-endedness of not knowing what I was going to do next. Dépaysée is what the French call it and what I was, even if I was also in my own pays. So glad those days are over.

The one thing I can't throw out are the original Takamatsu / Jan episodes of Channel 5, which ran in Animage. Yes I have the tanks and yes I threw out the other eps but those, obscure as they are, I need to keep. Hoping vainly that some day I'll figure out what's happening, though Shibata Ami will never tell me.

As for reading, I reread House of Many Ways since DWJ doesn't stick in the memory, and also Enchanted Glass, which I thought was her short stories but isn't. Several Desmond Merrions on the tablet and phone. Heir to Murder, A Smell of Smoke, Murder M. D. Dipping into the Leonardo biography but All Those Painters! besides the fact that it dates to 1988 and the author's speculation about the character of Da Vinci's mentor Verrocchio, based on his portrait, are nullified by the fact that said portrait is now firmly identified as one of Perugino.

Started The Place of Shells which has that 'translated from the Japanese' feel to it, because it is. But it led me down a rabbit hole looking at Soseki's Ten Nights of Dream, of which there is a bilingual edition on Kobo if I find my Japanese copy too obscure, and I do, which then led me to look at a new translation of Mon/ The Gate with an introduction by Pico Iyer, which I read. Iyer says it's not what Soseki says but the things he doesn't that count,  which means I will never read Mon, thank you, because I am not Japanese and can't pick up on stuff not-said when it's text. Iyer compares Soseki to Ishiguro, and I see what he means. He also compares him to Murakami and I disagree completely, at least where style is concerned. Murakami I find refreshingly straightforward. But he may have been talking about the haplessness of both authors' characters, which, well, maybe.

Made an autumn veg soup today from this recipe
https://www.recipetineats.com/country-harvest-root-vegetable-soup/.

Added the water too early but otherwise is good and filling and doesn't use stock, so the sodium levels are what I want them to be.

Also did some minor housekeeping like vacuuming side bedroom and swiftering the kitchen floor. Some day I'll do major stuff like vacuuming the whole downstairs but not today.

Got House of Many Ways when I went to pick up Cinder House and read it in a sitting. Since I've only read it once in the annus horribilis 2011, I had no memory of it at all. But then had to reread Castle in the Air and, being the lazy lump I am, got the ebook from the library instead of going upstairs and rooting about among my dusty shelves. I may have read that one twice but of course, as with all DWJ books, I remember nothing of it. Ten pages from the end my tablet ran out of charge so I had to finish it in paper. And it doesn't read at all well in print. Weird. But also, the who is who, or who is what, unentangling at the end is, if possible, worse than Howl's Moving Castle. I may have to make a memorandum of that for next time.

Though I'm beginning to worry about how reading these days feels like dreaming: once finished it's done, leaving little in the memory. If you asked me what I read this year I could probably name the detective story authors, but anything else? I know I read Terra Nostra and Inventing the Renaissance because both are big books, but forgot that I'd read the equally weighty JS&MN; knew I'd read Emma and Persuasion but not Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility; totally forgot rereading the last five (six?) Rivers of London and all the Paarfi. Maybe I should go back to making lists.

Thoroughly frustrating half hour spent trying to renew my Ontario ID online, starting with a drop down menu of services required that erases one's choice once entered and then clucks with disapproval and tells you to select a service. I'm only doing this because Service Ontario sent me a notice-- mailed who knows when--  that my ID was going to expire next birthday. So is my health card, so first I try to renew that online, and finally get it to accept the request, and then am told Nope, cannot renew online. OK, will renew my ID. Nope, cannot renew that online either. Alright, will book in-person at a centre. Yes well. Bay St can fit me in Oct 30 at 8:15 which no, not doing that. Next opening Nov 21. Other centres have nothing till December. So shall go in a month. Only up side is that they'll give me paper replacements until the card comes in, if it comes in, what with Christmas shutdown and postal strikes.

Turned the heat on for 15 minutes to take the refrigerator chill off the house. Might bump the thermostat up to 16 or so tonight since tomorrow we gave a scheduled outage mid-day while they replace wires or hydro poles or something on the block. The latter, I fancy, since they did this up the block a few weeks ago. 

Given the volume of Cecil Ten-names, I suppose it's inevitable that he would drop the ball occasionally. The last three of his I read failed to hide the clues sufficiently. If a woman is found seemingly dead and half an hour later is seen chatting merrily, you know there's been a substitution. If two women are said to resemble each other sufficiently for people to sometimes be confused as to which is which, you know that's Chekov's plot point. If a character once served on a jury that found a man guilty of murder, you know that the people being murdered randomly were also on that jury, and the seemingly benign character who denies one of these people's convinced testimony about an occurrence is pretty certain to be the formerly convicted man. So am rereading one of the library's Rhode's that impressed me first time and so far so good, though *of course* this loutish man and that shrewish woman are villains because people's faces always betray their vile characters. Like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, say. There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face, Cyril. And a bunch of Golden Age writers, and not a few Japanese ones as well: though given how seemingly psychic the Japanese appear, I might give them the benefit of the doubt.

Why do I keep sleeping in to noon? And not even going back to sleep, but uninterrupted ten and eleven hour stretches? It isn't even that cold anymore.

Whatever, I woke up at noon and did manage to do a wash and get it on the line. Where it still sits because the day was cloudy and cool and nothing got dry. Sun tomorrow which may do the trick, or I shall simply hang them from the stair rails.

Otherwise was all couch potatodom all the time. Finished my Charles Lenox hardcover and bought a bunch of Golden Age mysteries on Kobo, all by the same author using various aliases. John Rhode is Miles Burton is Cecil Street, NB. 

Wishing an easy fast to those fasting.

I continue to trun manga from the boxes but have now reached the box with BL magazines,  and umm uncategorizable publications like In Deep, which are pretty much hentai plus kink of various descriptions. Bought them because my fave djka did stories for them but sheesh, I can't believe the things I read 30 years ago. All those huge-busted blushing schoolgirls.  This is why I put the bag with books inside the recycle bin, not on top like you're supposed to.

Finished a couple of Charles Lenoxes and nothing else. St. Death's Herald arrives in ebook so have started that. Terra Nostra is at last getting interesting in its final section and not a moment too soon because I was getting sooo weary of El Señor and his moribund religious rambling.

Unusual to have this much thunder this late in the year but yeah: storms Sunday night, Monday morning, and Tuesday night, more rain forecast tonight and tomorrow. But the garbage is out and the leaf detritus got into a bag, and the downstairs is vacuumed even if I didn't get to the kitchen floor. Also have vodka and kahlua to see me through the muggy owies attendant on same. Ages back my cousin said the secret to losing weight was black Russians and cheese dreams (American cheese slices- ugh-, tomato slice, bacon if desired, on top of white sliced bread, under the broiler until cheese blisters-- cheese slices don't melt-- essence of non-food but still the comfort food of childhood.) The missing ingredient in that was was 'unhappy love affair' which in my case I have not got. But weighed myself this morning after chickening out for over a month and discovered that I'm five or six pounds down instead of up. Prudence suggests that the indulgence of last week simply hasn't registered yet on my slow metabolism, but gardening and housework counts as exercise and I've been doing both.

Finished only a Charles Lenox, Burial at Sea, and a mystery by that guy with four or five pseudonyms whose real last name was Street, though I think this one was under the John Rhodes moniker. Continue on with Terra Nostra, wondering how in heaven's name I read it not once but twice in my 30s; dip into Walpole occasionally; have another Lenox on the tablet and a hardcover mystery from the library; am close to getting the sequel to St. Death's Daughter and will drop everything when that comes in.

And will continue to sleep with the window AC because it's cool and dry and our overnight temps are nothing of the sort.

When I went to the laundromat the other day, I couldn't find the hot water detergent. I assumed I'd just put it in a safe place the time before instead of its usual place, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I had a vague memory of putting it on the table on the front porch before going off to do something else, meaning someone swiped it. Which is odd because porch pirates are rare on this street. Maybe I just forgot it at the laundromat, which also seems unlikely, though less unlikely than a porch pirate. Luckily I still had a box of Sunlight powder that I'd half considered throwing out because liquid works better. But anyway, I now have more scentless eco-friendly hot water detergent.

Cooler today but still muggy, so I sweat considerably when sweeping up seedlings this evening. But half the front path is done at least, and tomorrow is supposed to be actually cool,  so I may get this finished before Monday's rain reduces it to muck. We need rain, I know, but Monday is also a dentist day and I wish it would rain some other time.

Finished The Lotus Palace and sent it off to the 'one person is waiting' so she can have it on the weekend. But if I'd realized it was a Harlequin I wouldn't have started it in the first place. I mean, perfectly respectable for what it was doing, but the ratio of mystery to romance was heavily in favour of the latter,  and I wanted a lot more of the former.

Braved the cellar stairs and got a wash put through. Whether it will dry on the line is another matter given how the promised sun disappeared after an hour. Cloudy and humid does not conduce to Dry.

Have been cooking a russet potato for three days now. This because I do the 'bring to boil, put on lid, turn off heat' thing, which prevents the potato from going all soggy. But evidently it also prevents the potato from cooking. Finally got it soft enough to mash, though my potato masher has vanished who knows where.  Very nice, but that was my allotment of butter and cream for the week.

Should put on a pair of long-legged trousers tucked into socks and sweep up the linden's sheddings out front, because doing so in my 'humidex of 27' summer pants will get me mosquito bites all over my legs. Doubt very much that I will, though.

Finished Point of Hearts, a very satisfying Astreiant novel, and nothing else. Have a Tang-set historical novel on the e-reader, which must read because it's one of those 'ten people are waiting' library books. Have also a dead tree Charles Lenox that I forgot I had a hold on. Beaver on through Terra Nostra which is better than The Tale of Genji only in that it has paragraphs that go on for pages, not Murasaki's sentences that do the same. Except that Genji translators break up the sentences and the TN translator did not. Have also The Portable Machiavelli off the shelf upstairs and would actually rather be reading that. Would help if I'd buckle down and read any of these instead of watching Tiktok videos.

Warm September leads to brain melt. Dentist calls with an opening for tomorrow at 11:45, I say ok, half an hour later am unsure if it's 11:45 or 12:45 or surely not 10:45. Tomorrow is also garbage day so hope the trucks come at their usual 9-something and the street is clear by 10:45.

Warm September also makes things hurt, but filled a third bag with seedlings and dragged them all to the front sidewalk.

Finished Weirdstone, am reading Gomrath, finished Charles Lenox 3 and started on 4. Desultorily reading a collection of Chinese cheng'yu, (usually) four character proverbs, idioms, sayings, whatever. These are about plants; I have other volumes for animals etc. Won't remember them but at least I've seen them once. Of course reading them suggests I should start reviewing kanji yet again because of the 'dammit I *know* that one but can't remember its meaning' factor (which is always different in Chinese but-of-course.) But warm September: can't be arsed.

Here in the autumn Ghost Tide I'm taken back almost 60 years to first year uni. I wish I'd kept my Fine Arts textbooks-- and can't think why I'd have abandoned them-- because I'm all kinds of nostalgic for black figure pottery and archaic Greek statuary. Though, when I google, I find several kouroi and korai that hadn't been discovered back in '67. Semper aliquid novum, I suppose.

There was a weather advisory for strong gusty winds today but, nothing daunted, I braved the chronic wind tunnel down by Formerly Honest Ed's and found them nothing to speak of. Had sushi and sussed out calendars at Midoco: nothing to speak of either but still early days for them. Will probably, eventually, go the AGO and see what they have but not today thanks. The mugginess of September is death on elbows and I would rather not go out more than I have to. The linden is shedding, again, and I half-thought about sweeping it up, but it can wait too.

Still, I did need to shop at Fiesta before the late Friday and weekend crowds get in, so off I trotted again, observing the piles of cloud that herald err whatever it is the gusty winds were supposed to blow in.  I thought it was a cold front but south westerly winds do not herald cold fronts around here. Rather splendid in their summer! Hasui fashion nonetheless. Got enough salad to get me through the weekend (Ontario organic because the other organic is American) and pricey walnuts for my cholesterol ('packed for this Canadian company' but hailing from who knows where), paid, headed for door, and realized why the cashier had been exclaiming It just came from nowhere!! 'It' being a wall of water cloudbursting from, well, nowhere. So much for your 5% PoP, weather channel. And stopped as suddenly as it started and the sun came out to set everything steaming. But shall not be shovelling up seedlings today.

I can't Britpick because not Brit, but things still bother me. Alright, so Charles Lennox likes coffee in the morning. Coffee has been in England since the 17th century and I just came across Elizabeth Bennett pouring it out while another young lady pours the tea. But when a Victorian couple are going out to friends for an evening,  not even to dinner as far as I can tell, would their hosts ask them to bring wine? Somehow it just strikes me as unlikely.

It's being a perfect Labour Day weekend, first time in living memory: not too hot, not too cold, deep blue skies, occasional white clouds. So a pity I stayed in all yesterday, hiding from the air show, and only went out for a massage today. But did read a murder mystery in which, amusingly, the murderer was Emma Woodhouse near as dammit. I notice this time that Mrs. Elton is appalling, not merely because she's appalling, but because she abrogates to herself position and privileges that Emma thinks are hers by right. Umm yeah, 'a disposition to think too well of herself' indeed. But I'm not sure Austen means that in a social sense as well as a personal one. Maybe Austen thinks Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield really should be the queen bee of the village. Lord, but the 19th century English were as nice and finely graded in their social ranking as the Japanese, though at least in England you didn't have to decide which form of which verb to use with which people.

Granted that female hysteria is a running sub-motif in the book, I'm still of two minds about Miss Bates. I hate talkers because I hate to be talked at. Talkers take the position 'I want someone to talk at, you're going to be it, and what you want doesn't matter.' Drives me batty. But Miss Bates is always in company and is always talking at everybody, which maybe mitigates it somewhat? but still. If she knows it gets on people's nerves, why doesn't she just stop? At home I can imagine she'd drive Jane up the wall. Highbury is criminally forebearing when it comes to selfish horrors, like Mr. Woodhouse. And that, I assume, is also part of the class system?

The massage today did that odd thing where it makes my bad knee worse,  so I will see if I get to laundry tomorrow, either at home or at the laundromat or both. As also the back yard with its vines and unwanted bushes. Thursday will rain, which may start the long rains of autumn,  so must be done soonish. 

Slept to noon for no good reason and dreamed of being in Florence, at a hostel, trying to wash my underwear while some ill-natured girl hogged the washers or wouldn't give me change or something. I was down to my last two pairs of underpants and asked the woman who ran the hostel, who was our business coordinator from the daycare, where I could buy new ones. But underwear was the monopoly of an Italian noblewoman, a Marchioness who wouldn't let just anyone buy underpants. That was really not worth sleeping in for.

Ohhh Emma, Emma. Pearl clutching at the very idea of people of different classes dancing together! How can we tell who is Topp if we so promiscuously mingle together?

Then came
Brother Elias, scowling, to his side,
Small-souled Elias, crying by book and candle,
This was outrageous! Had the friars no pride?
Music at deathbeds! Ah, the shame! the scandal!

Though now I have to wonder, what exactly is meant by elegant in Austen? Jane Fairfax is elegant but what does that mean in a purely physical sense? Who do I know who is elegant? E2R I suppose, by default, but otherwise--- no Trump spouse, obviously. Michelle Obama? Uhhh. Mh. Margot Fonteyn was, but dancers have to be. I'm inclined to say most French women, just going by what I saw 40 years ago, but I can't isolate wherein exactly the elegance lay. And I won't even try to imagine what was meant by elegance of mind.

Have been trying to make the Persian dish of dill beans and rice, and conclude from the online recipes that, in the words of a long ago friend, all ethnic cooking is designed to keep women in the kitchen. No I am not going to steam my rice, thanks ever so. But if I try this again, will use lima beans, not the many-shelled favas.

Otherwise tackled the side bedroom and vacuumed up many dust elephants,  so go me for that.

The Christiest Baptists, in the course of constructing lord knows what (a wheelchair ramp for some of it) have removed the pollinator garden on the verge of their property, which was nowhere near the current construction. Boo hiss Christiest Baptists. Especially as I'm prepared to swear that they took down an old tree on the property, only to replace it with six saplings, which a) is a requirement of the city's when removing trees, and b) have as much chance of surviving as the perpetually dying saplings up by Loblaws.

Now if they had the wisdom of serpents, they'd have sold off the front half of their humoungous lot for housing. 

Equally the Ghazale restaurant in the Hot Docs building has vanished. I thought the new owners might have turfed them out, but the new owner is an anonymous philanthropist so maybe not. I'd have thought the foot traffic on Bloor would have guaranteed its existence but it seems they moved over to Walmer north of Bloor.

Started on Inventing the Renaissance. The fact that the Dark Ages weren't was common wisdom when I was an undergrad fifty-some years ago, but it bears repeating. Also good to learn the newer meaning of the term ie periods where written records didn't survive. And of course, if you read any history at all-- as letussay background to Dante-- the fact that the Renaissance happened against a constant background of war, civil and otherwise, chronic violence, plague, and famine, is just a given. It's all in Cellini, all in Cellini: bless me, what *do* they teach them at these schools? Well, not Cellini, or even Dante, for sure. I suppose even a concern with the happenings in the Renaissance is a kind of privilege these days.

Well yes, that humidex was certainly hot, largely because of the blazing sun that we haven't had to contend with for a few weeks. I mean, I'll take it over smoke any day, but the smoke certainly made a difference to the temps. On the plus paw, a midday wash dried in short order on the line; on the minus, once again did not get out to the library to return holds, nor did I bag up the vines in the back yard. Now that dusk approaches and it's slightly cooler I could, but dusk also brings the mosquitoes out so here I am, indoors still.

Across the street neighbour with the strollers had a wading pool out front and the hose on and his two kids cooling off. So now I know they have two kids, which I was never certain of: a preschool boy, maybe rising four, and a toddler girl of 18 months or so. Front yard because the back faces the burning west, and my guess is it lacks any sort of shade tree. The Sicilian influence is still strong in this 'hood: trees are supposed to earn their keep and anyway, grape vines are better. Though I observe that NND's tulip tree is now a proper tree after four years of being a spindly twig, so Strollers could well plant a tree of their own.

Also Inventing the Renaissance suddenly appears in transit, a good four weeks before I could reasonably expect it, and that will probably knock Terra Nostra on the head while I beaver through it, because of the umpty many other people who have it on hold. Of course, could be that it's just too heavy a book for the dog days and that's why I have it so early.

And of course there's still Return to Dragon Mountain to finish, even if Zhang Dai begins to wear on me. Also sent me haring down the side path of Tao Yuanming whom I hadn't heard of in spite of him being evidently so famous. I mean, I may have, because Home Again and its lack of carriages in front of the house rings bells, except I think I'm thinking of somebody else referencing him, even if I can't remember who. 

The weekend did see me finally putting books out on the front sidewalk. Saturday Whoever only took two of the art books, but when I put them and a whole bunch of others out front again, Whoever took them all and, more importantly, left me the box they were in. Which is not always the case, even if I also provide bags (cloth, from Walmart, copped from someone else's front yard freebie) to facilitate carrying away. 

The garbage pickup came early, or early for a recycle day, so my taxi didn't have to wait while the mastodons lumbered up the street; and my taxi came exactly when he was supposed to,  for a change, so the worst of my usual fears went unrealized. Was of two minds yesterday evening about transitting to the dentist but took the better part of valor, and was justified by the amber-coloured air in the morning. Actually today turned out to have better air quality than the last few days, and I had no trouble walking over to the University leg of the subway after my appointment. Still nearly went through the wrong gates at Queen's Park and  had to be redirected by one of the helpful attendants the TTC has placed in the stations to aid wandering American tourists, of whom there are many in and around Caribana weekend. 'Miss, Miss, I think you'd be better taking the elevator over there': since I'd forgotten that the elevators are indeed over there to the left and not past the main gates to the right.

But occurred to me as I was looking out over the TO landscape from the 15th floor dentist's office that the haze-filled sky was not unfamiliar from my childhood. Toronto in the 50s and 60s was equally polluted. Fewer cars, of course, but higher emissions. 'And everyone smoked!' my dentist added, and boy, did they.

Finished that Charles Finch mystery, and a couple of Inspector Lamb mysteries (Miss Silver without Miss Silver) and The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Also some JS&MN fics from AO3,  well enough in their way but not scratching my itch. A former yaoista must not complain that people write yaoi about unlikely charas because no one is unlikely in yaoi-land, but Norrell is truly not my first candidate for sexy fun times.

I should finish Zhang Dai and start on The Gates, but all I want to read in these housebound sofa-sitting fan-blown days is Persuasion. Even though Anne Elliott is really, oddly, getting up my nose. I suppose if you're constantly being ignored and taken advantage of by your relations, you can one-up those relations by reflecting how superior you are to them in taste and refinement and the elegance of your mind: and give them improving advice designed to make them, basically, less themselves. Oh, and warn them about scheming women worming their way into your family's good graces. Really, Anne, why do you care if your father marries a scheming woman? The two are perfectly suited to each other for a start, and it's actually none of your business to continue, and like the Carlyles, marrying each other will only ensure that two people are miserable rather than four. Or is Anne worrying that her own inheritance will be reduced by the addition of a stepmother? An Austen heroine with a mercenary motive? Perish the thort!

Well, maybe that's going a bit far. But really, Anne is sounding an awful lot like Mary Bennet to me. Is also of course one of Austen's Hideous Examples of what the cribbed cabined and confined existence of the Regency lady does to that lady's soul. Seriously, if all Austen's heroines are going to read completely different to me now than they did when I was 25, I may end up rereading Mansfield Park, which I swore never to do. Who knows? I might find that censorious twit Fanny an utter delight now.

Any good intentions I might have had for this blessedly cool day got scotched by an air quality warning and the general stinky eye-scratchiness of it all. Did a wash in the basement and did not fall down, or even up, the stairs. Clothes are now hanging from the chandelier and draped over the railing in the upper hallway, because I wasn't going to put them out on the line in the kind of air we're having,  or the current humidity.

Air cleared enough in the late afternoon so I got to the super for tomatoes. But that was the sum of the day's achievements.

However I found something to ease the JS&MN regrets, and should have thought of it a week ago: The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Leavens the occasional lumpiness of both Zhang Dai and Horace Walpole.

We are still in what feeble Canucks call a heat wave. Didn't go out at all yesterday and only up the street today. Otherwise I sit on the sofa and read. Sanity should return to the universe on Thursday and maybe I'll go back to my bicycle machine then. Left knee is swollen and sore, and if the heavens refrain from monsooning tomorrow I shall see if my physio can do something about it. Otherwise not until Friday.

Have been drinking cold coffee. Bought condensed milk to try with it, which was close but no cigar to Vietnamese coffee. Works better with 10% table cream and ordinary sugar. Have read my last Miss Silver and have no more brainless tablet reads. Back to Zhang Dai it is.

Mercury is in retrograde: my tablet has gone wonky, the Libby app on my phone won't open my book, and the email I sent my money woman seems to have got lost in the ether. This happened with the old one as well. Maybe I should start calling her instead. 

Finished Northanger Abbey, a leisurely reread. Since I remembered the what but not the how, I was subject to embarrassment squick in the last chapters, but Austen was kind to my sensibilities. Probably should reread Persuasion next.

Continue with The Way Spring Arrives, skipping some of the essays, though the one on translation suggests just how much I'm missing. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a favourite with me precisely because I know who it's talking about. And I know, from what various friends have said, that there are probably a million allusions in the original that either can't be translated or that I simply don't know. Maybe I should go through those slim volumes of Chinese sayings I bought ages back and find the equivalents of 'Meng's mom moves three times' as applied to, I don't know, birds or food or something. Which won't help with the present volume, of course.

Started but on hiatus is a Victorian-set mystery, A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch. Pleasant, but Spring has several people waiting for it and I must finish it first. Should probably send it back for the nonce because the earlier volumes might come in in the meantime. This one is something like vol.6 and was the first available.

The library didn't have a dead tree or ebook version of The Masquerades of Spring, just the audio which, no, not with Aaronovitch and his infinitely confusible white bread names. Hardcover was some hideous price so I bought it from Kobo. And a good thing too because dead tree would have me tearing my hair out. The names are bad enough even with a search function, but the action defeats me completely. I still don't know where that blasted saxophone came from, much less which version of its origin is fiction and which fact. Doubtless this has something to do with my occasional inability to parse text on screen, but maybe the action really is that twisty? I suppose three rereadings might straighten it out but am not hopeful. OTOH it's a lot less silly twit Wodehouse pastiche than I had feared, so otherwise an enjoyable read.

This morning's dream was again of AJC and an apartment she rented and a disabled-indeed, moribund-- roommate we had to get down the stairs somehow. Segued somehow into a rewrite of Autumn Term, with Nicola home for half-term thinking how different everything looked after three months at school. Of course she'd only been gone for half that time, but dream!Nicola didn't know that.

Ah well. I have a new toilet. Of course the old one was a proper disabled model and a 'right height' one is lower but still doable. But I hadn't registered that it was also elongated and this is a round front, hence shorter. Still doable but would be more so if I were 30 lb smaller. And this was the cheapest model in a ten inch setback but still, with Watermark's pricing and taxes, several hundred dollars more than I'd expected. I thought the booker was overly optimistic when she said it would only take 30 minutes so they wouldn't charge me the 'automatic 2 hours' service fee (they owe me an hour from last time because that literally was 30 minutes). Took the guy over an hour so I was dinged for 2 hours. Watermark is excellent in all ways but god do they cost.

However I did discover that the wobbliness of my upright walker is down to me not clicking something in place, so I might actually start to use it some time. It's maybe only an inch/ 2.5 cm wider than the other but that little makes it too wide for most places to handle easily, like my house. And of course there's still the lack of a proper basket.

However, found the solution to the too hot/ too cold dilemma at night is, oddly enough, to use the feather duvet, not the lightweight cotton one plus a blanket at the end of the bed to keep my feet warm. My feet are perfectly comfortable under the duvet and my shoulders don't feel the chill from the fan blowing on them, and last night I slept without the many wakings that the previous arrangement had involved.

I finished Stone and Sky, very happily, and JS&MN wishing there was more. Still delighted that Stephen, even when he becomes a king and puts his old life behind him, still chides his subjects as if they were unsatisfactory footmen. But still don't understand why the gentleman's darkness didn't end with all his other spells. Maybe so that the two magicians would go on inventing new magic, undisturbed by domestic cares?

Also read a Hilary McKay, The Time of Green Magic, on the recommendation of I forget who on the FFL. McKay is the only writer I know who does happy families. And I finished, finally, a reread of Broken Homes, and still couldn't put my finger on Lesley's turning point.

Nothing on the go but another Inspector Littlejohn for bike reading. It will be cooler by Friday and I may discover something to my taste.

Laundromat achieved but I'll have to go back soon because socks. Oh for the days when I didn't wear socks in the summer. Oh for the days when I felt safe on the basement stairs. But it won't hurt to do laundry in hot or warm water once in a while. 

Chuffedness of the day was resetting the cordless phone's time, which had unaccountably vanished after a recharge. Chuffed because the manual was exactly where I thought it would be and the instructions clear, so go me. This after I didn't go to recycle Sunday because the bag of batteries wasn't where I thought it would be and I didn't locate it until much later.

Reading-wise, finished Saint Death's Daughter and sent it on to the waiting hordes. I liked it well enough, even if at times it reminded me of de Bodard's Aztecs. And I still wonder at the cover blurb promising love, tenderness, and joy. I mean yes, there was that too, but only after you'd waded through an awful lot of  carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, accidental judgments, and a ton of casual slaughters amounting to genocide. Game of Thrones may be worse but only because it's longer.

Currently on the go are:

The Odyssey in the ancient Penguin Classics translation. If I ever do read Wilson, it might be an idea to know what she was working against. Because frankly, Odysseus is a dweeb, a fact I evidently ignored fifty years ago;

Damned, latest and last? of the Scarlet Revolution series. Should have reread Elusive to remind me where we are but I got immersed and have not got lost yet;

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, partly as fallout from The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, partly because a big thick book is good sitting in front of fans reading. Am finding the Stephen/ Lady Pole sections much harder going than the last two times. The Gentleman fits very nicely with Ima Ichiko's observations on the habits of youkai (ie their values are very different from ours) but though this is true, what's nauseating about the Gentleman is that he recalls the worst examples of humanity. I will note that my last reread was ten years ago when the world seemed still to be a sane place.