if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life....

What does one read while wrapping up the chore that is moving?

Something light. Something brain candy. Something about someone who, you feel, could sympathize with you.

For example, you would not want to read Austen. Those girls never had to move a thing. Rich they weren't, but poor they weren't either. (Except Fanny in Mansfield Park. She might understand the pain of cleaning a bathroom floor that can never ever look clean.)

Biographies in general, and of any formidable politician specifically, would be all wrong. Jean Chretien definitely would not start to cry because the shelf over the kitchen sink fell down when you were dusting it. Neither would Sylvia Plath -- and yes, a volume of her complete diaries remain on my to-do list from a summer past.

(By the way, I have a feeling the heroine of any piece of self-respecting feminist literature would not have to call a man over to fix the whole shelf problem. Possibly the heroine of a chick lit novel would, but then it would go to the gutter rather quickly. Ew.)

And so, moving is a time to pull out your Weiner.

Jennifer Weiner, that is. (Excuse the bad joke. I'm really, really tired, and this will likely be my last blog entry for about a week.)

The heroine of one of Weiner's latest books, Goodnight Nobody, lacks confidence and common sense and, well, smarts. But she's quirky. And hilarious. When she finds a mom in her neighbourhood dead in the kitchen, she sets off to solve the mystery on her off-hours. Kate barely has time to take care of her three kids, let alone clean her house, or solve a murder mystery. But she's sleuthing, and it's hilarious, and the woman would feel my pain.

(My obnoxious, misplaced pain.)

Mixed up with memories of a crush gone bad from years before, the book's a light read. And it's sort of startling how Kate's marriage is a backdrop to the whole thing, but it's difficult to tell whether she's happy in it or not. Her husband is little more than a bit character, similar to Vera on Cheers....

One morning's wedded bliss:

".... What was his job?"
Ben turned his back on me, tossing last night's shirt into the closet, where it would join the knee-high pile of clothes I'd been meaning to take to the dry cleaner's for the past two weeks. Possibly three. "I'm running out of shirts." This remark was delivered under his breath, at a volume just loud enough for me to hear.
"I'll drop off the dry cleaning this morning." I hopped out of bed, bent over, and scooped dress shirts into my arms, hoping that the view would entice him to stay a few minutes longer.
"Insurance," said Ben. Score one for my black silk underwear. (p. 132)

It's like everything Desperate Housewives was supposed to be, but a helluva lot more witty.

And did I mention it could scare a girl off of having kids from 100 miles away?

movin' on up (wherein the blogger finds treasure)

I am sure that, somewhere out there, someone is diligently packing their things, moving out of their apartment on time, and then reliably unpacking their things and putting them in their new proper places. There must be responsible adults out there somewhere.

I imagine these are the same people who keep their fridges stocked with fruits and vegetables, and never find themselves slowly opening tupperware that's been sitting at the back of the shelf too long to remember what was inside. (Shrimp. Ew.)

These are also the same people who do not get sidetracked by their own stuff as they pack and unpack.

I am not one of these people.

So I offer you my latest discovery among my belongings:

"'Miss Anne Shirley,
Green Gables,
Avonlea, P.E. Island.
DEAR MADAM: We have much pleasure in informing you that your charming story 'Averil's Atonement' has won the prize of twenty-five dollars offered in our recent competition....
Yours very truly,
THE ROLLINGS RELIABLE BAKING POWDER CO.'

'I don't understand,' said Anne, blankly.
Diana clapped her hands.
'Oh, I knew it would win the prize--I was sure of it. I sent your story into the competition, Anne.'
'Diana--Barry!'
'Yes, I did,' Diana said gleefully, perching herself on the bed..... Diana was not the most discerning of mortals, but just at this moment it struck her that Anne was not looking exactly overjoyed. The surprise was there, beyond doubt--but where was the delight?
'Why, Anne, you don't seem a bit pleased!' she exclaimed.
Anne instantly manufactured a smile and put it on.
'Of course I couldn't be anything but pleased over your unselfish wish to give me pleasure,' she said slowly. 'But you know--I'm so amazed--I can't realize it--and I don't understand. There wasn't a word in my story about--about--' Anne choked a little over the word--'baking powder.'
'Oh, I put that in,' said Diana, reassured. 'It was as easy as wink--and of course my experience in our old Story Club helped me. You know the scene where Averil makes the cake? Well, I just stated that she used the Rollings Reliable in it, and that was why it turned out so well; and then, in the last paragraph, where Perceval clasps Averil in his arms and says, "Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfilment of our home of dreams," I added, "in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable."'
'Oh,' gasped poor Anne...."

[Anne of the Island, by Lucy Maud Montgomery, pages 114-115]

moving sucks

These are the lies I tell myself with shocking regularity:

1. There is nothing wrong with spending $4.80 every day on cinnamon dolce lattes.
2. I am always five minutes away from wherever I need to be. Unless I need to take a cab, in which case I am just 15 minutes away. For example, "I'm leaving in the next five minutes, and it'll take me like two seconds to walk across the High Level Bridge."
3. In the summertime, it is unnecessary to dry my hair. That's what the sun does.
4. I have very few things. Moving them from Point A to Point B shouldn't take longer than, say, a day. And I only need, like, four boxes to carry everything.

People shouldn't tell lies. Specifically, they shouldn't tell themselves lies.

I have left packing and moving to the last possible minute. And even when I am supposed to be packing, like now, I find myself easily distracted by Facebook, my own blog, diary entries written when I was 19, and, the lowest of all shoulda-been-packing moments, Age of Love.

Anyway, turns out I have lots of stuff. And this, the least adventurous of any of my moves -- this weekend I move my crapload of stuff from one floor of my building to the next courtesy of Alberta's shocking economic boom, which wooed my landlords into selling their condo -- is still a really big pain.

And, like every other move I've ever submitted to (five in the last five years thanks to an 18-month transit between Ottawa-Niagara-Edmonton), I am appalled by the number of books I have collected over the years.

Seriously. Has there ever been a book I've said no to at a bookstore? I am ridiculous! I have whole piles of to-read books, that still have not been read, and still I buy more.... I tried to carry armloads of books from my old apartment to my new, but then realized that would take me 45 days. So now I definitely need more than four boxes to pack all my stuff.

Don't even get me started on how much cookware I've somehow accumulated. Or how disgusting it is that a grown woman (me) has only dusted as often as her mother has come to visit her in the last two years.

to be continued

I have alluded to this before.... I need little breaks from Stephanie Nolen's masterful 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa.

I need these breaks because the stories hurt to read. I know I often talk about pain in reading, but these true stories are more painful and hopeful and truthful, I think, than any piece of journalism I've ever read before.

My need to take these breaks scares me. I'm sure it says something about my own weaknesses that I have to take my eyes away from the stories every so often, that I need to read something else in bed at night after a handful of nights reading Nolen's work.

Could I go to Africa? Could I look and look and look and not take my eyes away?

There is darkness to be seen on Edmonton's streets, in places like tent city or even when I walk to the grocery store. I don't look away then, but this is not the same. Obviously.

I am just eleven chapters into Nolen's book, and I am so impressed with the equal compassion she shows to the truck drivers who could be blamed for spreading HIV as she does the women and children who are so often the victims.

But so far, two stories have struck me. One, just three pages, that I finished this morning. She ends it so:

"Mfanimpela was thirty-four that day we met again -- a few months older than I. And he had outlived his entire family." (p. 149)

Another, of Tigist, a 14-year-old girl in Ethiopia left since 2002 to take care of her orphaned younger brother, 10-year-old Yohannes. Nolen asks them what they would do if they had more money:

"When his sister was out of earshot, he confided, 'I'd use it to take care of her.'

And when Yohannes had gone back out to run with his friends in the street, Tigist watched him from the doorway, her head against one slim-fingered hand, and she said it too. 'If we had more, I would try to take better care of him. I have to take care of him.'" (p. 43)

* source of photo

something easy

There's something about summer. The heat sends you back in time to nights at the drive-in, the sun setting slowly over the mountains, and some really bad music blaring over the car stereo.

I'm listening to Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy right now, sending me right back in time to Grade 11 or 12. Around the same time my best friends and I used to to be in love with a guy that worked at the Dairy Queen. Is there anything better than ice cream and crushes? Well, we weren't all in love with him, just one of the girls was, but I'm fairly certain we helped his ego along as a group.

Anyway. Summer is a tough time to concentrate on anything, let alone blogging or excellent novels or well-written books examining important issues.

Half the time, summer is really when I start re-reading all the "classics" on my bookshelves.

Like this gem, described as "a jaunty tale of love and murder" by Publishers Weekly. No concentration needed at all for a slightly naughty, always hilarious book of one woman's perfect life reduced to a cheating husband who is murdered, the lusty return of her high school crush, and gentle battles with her eight-year-old daughter. I love Crusie for the women she creates, who don't need to be saved and don't want to be married, who embrace themselves before all others.

For those who long to travel at this time of year, I offer up Sarah Smith's Chasing Shakespeares, an adventure in Shakespeare and academia. I know, sounds a little dry. But the dialogue's quicker and wittier than A.S. Byatt's Possession, and it's more a romp than a love story. And who doesn't want to romp when it's this hot? Besides, it makes one imagine a time when London would have been all muddy and dirty and 1600s-ish.

Last of all, for my friend Erin, I submit Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a touching story that frankly makes me think more of snow and winter boots than summer (thanks to the movie, really), but is perhaps the best of all romps. Yes, a comment on the American Civil War. But also a tale of love and decision-making and doing what's right for you, not what people expect you to do. Who did not want to be Jo? I wished my brother would dress up with me and play out the ridiculous stories I created. (My brother wished that I would participate in his band. We met halfway by turning the fridge box into a newspaper office.) I loved her pre-feminism feminist mom. And I wished for Laurie -- especially when I realized he looked like Christian Bale. I cried and cried at the end.

What to read now? Something cheap and paperbacky....