My tribe.

Eventually I will try to link this post to a book I just read that inspired the title of this post. (look at that, saving this original post as a draft has allowed me to do just that! my bar is currently set pretty low about getting this blog/record keeping of random thoughts/books I read back up to date).

I was going to start with saying that I have had an interesting week, but in what I do and in my life, it seems that most weeks are pretty interesting, just saying.

Almost two weeks ago I decided to have an open mind and try the massage therapist at the physio clinic my DH has been going to for vestibular therapy.  Yes, that is a very fancy word for concussion treatment.  Normally I have gone with a personal referral, but this time I figured since DH is here anyways, and my lower back seems to give me grief, and it seems that my left side has done weird things for a while, it would be a good idea to try to do some self-care.

A long story short - the treatment was okay.  The RMT talked way more than I do, and had some interesting things to say. It would appear I am really tight through my glut muscles, and likely have very weak core muscles, especially on the left side which is causing part of my issues. It felt like he was putting me off more to the physio, like I could see him maybe one more time and then whatever. That was off-putting more in the sense of for an hour initial visit, it really didn't feel like we had a plan, or that they had an understanding of me.  I think a few of my points were also missed.  The other part was the almost racial comments made throughout the session.  They were Asian. Frankly I don't give a damn what race you are as long as you are a good person. They made multiple comments about Caucasians, almost negatively, and these were comments about their friends.  I also told them what I do for a living, and they felt they could never do my job because they would feel so many of their clients are entitled, and don't work hard enough and wouldn't be able to do it.

Fair enough.  I have a weirdly stressful job that has strange and beautiful benefits.

I did book a follow up appointment, but I struggled with it all weekend.  I broke the appointment on Monday and decided to go to the physio instead.

See, in my work, I see students.  They are coming to me for help.  I am not judging them by colour, size, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.  In that moment, they are a student, seeking help.  We all have our biases, but I really try to move away from that.  We are also trying to teach our kids about that - we have dear friends that are gay, and they don't even bat an eye about it because it was a conversation and that was it. Still boggles  my mind when I reflect on what a process this was back in the day when I started university and a few friends came "out".

Sometimes not getting what you want is a good thing. I started this post back in February? March? Part of it was a response to what we are going through and going to a RMT and not quite getting what I signed up for but got some great mental processing and a gut check from to moving towards something better and that we are doing as a couple (head and lower back therapy (something to be said about a couple that is vulnerable together by doing physio together) and part as a response to the book I was reading (Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson).

I really enjoyed parts of this book, found some parts dragged a little, and other times it really resonated with me.  I don't generally read a lot of non-fic, but this is one that I would recommend, especially if you are a little off kilter and not quite as normal as your peers, as I think perchance at times am I. I mean to check out her blog more... but then I find that time seems to slip through my fingers like sand in a glass.

Perfect read for a long weekend

I read the Grisha series, and I like it.

Weirdly enough, I loved this book much more! I liked having the multiple characters in a crazy adventure.  The part I find a bit interesting is how many gay characters now show up in YA books. Growing up, you would never expect to see am LGBTQ character, and now they are quite commonplace! It is kind of a neat evolution to see happen. Different voices are important, and moving them away from "other" is even more important.

This was a speedy read, and it is one half of a duology.  I will likely read the second one soon. Good fantasy stuff.

The lure of Africa...

I enjoyed this one. I can't quite put my finger on the book that this reminds me of, but I really liked Beryl's spunk and that she carved her own path across Kenya as a woman.

I think I will need to watch Out of Africa just to see some of these real life characters played out again.

Ruin and Rising

Perhaps when I am merely trying to track the books I read, I can start with their title, as the post title. Who knew.  Saves me from thinking up some masterful title that really is like a flash in the pan.

I enjoyed this series, but I did find that my attention did wane a bit. I started reading quicker, and less impressions were left behind.

 

Better than many!

This one surprised me! I like mysteries, but the popular ones seem to miss the mark IMHO.

This is a great page turner, decent writing, and you aren't quite able to figure out all the parks.

Last post was November? Wow.

Where have the last three months gone?

Likely I will work some revisionist history to fill in some reading gaps, but it is hard to believe that I find myself in the middle of February, finally taking a few moments to consider this thing I still call my blog.

Life is challenging.  It is still sweet, but it certainly requires effort and planning.

So many moving parts, so many ways to stretch, so much you don't realize you can do until you find yourself doing it.

We had a great family holiday in November down to Great Wolf Lodge and Seattle, some amazing side trips in December, like the Polar Express at the West Coast Heritage Railway, saw a play with mom, we cut down our family tree, already these celebrations seem like a long time ago.

We have also had this snow event that started on December 5th and really is only now starting to relent. I never thought I would get tired of snow.  I have.  Our west coast snow wore out it's welcome before Christmas and is rapidly melting now under an onslaught of tropical rain. I am over this snow.  It was exciting, then troubling, and then it took out my dear husband in our driveway.  Concussions suck.  Especially for all the reasons you cannot see. That changed my relationship with our snow this year.  Carving away the snow angel in our driveway, gulping away tears.  Yeah.  Snow doesn't seem so much fun in those moments.

West coasters also don't know how to drive in snow.  So driving down the "hill" was interesting.  We don't seem to get it right for calling snow days... either they are anticlimactic, or when they do get called, it is well past the point of safety and you have to get around the folks that are scared shitless and the wankers that think they can drive the same in the snow as they do every other day.  Makes for some great commutes.

It is hard to make time, take time, carve it out for all the things you want to accomplish in a day.

I am trying really hard to find some balance - watch some good shows, finish some baby blankets, organize our house a little better, god forbid get some exercise...   Let's see if some good intentions can get at least some book posts done.

new series..

Once again, reworking my reading history.  Hence the very short reactions to books I read months ago that I am posting in a mad panic.  This is a Canadian author from out east (looks like mainly Quebec) and this is the first book.  I enjoyed it, the characters aren't perfect, and young, and charmed. I think I could bite my teeth in to more.

consistent

Really, there haven't been many Rankin's I haven't enjoyed. I enjoy the Rebus books.  I like having read so many of them, and the weaving of the plot lines.  It is interesting watching characters age, and how priorities and thoughts shift. Needless to say, I will read more of these.

Those pesky humans.

Loved it.

“And I knew the point of love right then.
The point of love was to help you survive.
The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was.” 
― Matt Haig, The Humans

So wonderfully different

Deliciously different.

This may be billed as YA, but I loved it.  Such a novel take on fairyland and adventures.

A book 2 that was more enchanting than book 1???

I love these characters and the concepts are so wildly different.

From all the trilogies it seems I have read in the last few years, this is the best book 2 I have read in a long, long time.

Damn.  Now I have to wait for book 3.

Four Londons, you say?

Fantasy has been such an enchanting genre for me this year.

Again, a truly novel surprise.

A book and a movie...

You know, I am randomly assigning dates to books I have read in the last few months in an attempt to at least track the books that have been impacting my psyche.

This was nice.

The movie was nice.. except for maybe the tree boobs that tried to squish one of our main characters.

Not as captivating as some of the YA fantasy I have been reading, but okay.  This doesn't quite sell you for this one, but it kind of feels like 13 year old girl stuff. Not in a bad way, just not as intriguing as most of the other stuff I have been reading.

Better than most

If you want a mystery, a bit darker, Tremblay is a talented writer.

Having read many of the popular fodder types in this genre, I think this is a step ahead and ultimately not as bleak of a novel compared against Gone Girl or Girl on the Train.

Although well written, I had a harder time getting in to this one .. however I think that is more due to the other types of books I am reading than this one itself.  Hopefully that distinction makes sense.  I am more on a fantasy kick and this one was just way out there compared to what I have been reading.

Thinking women you say?

Another enjoyable read.

This has been a part of a great fantasy kick.

Still grateful.

This has been a strange, strange year.  It has been hard to catch my balance.  It has been a year of things going right, things going sideways, and things just not going as planned. 

We have travelled that path of a shunt failure again.  The part that makes it so much easier to bear and get through is that it really wasn't as bad as last time. I just read the post I crafted 5 years ago, and so many words are the same. I am grateful I blogged about the experience to fill in the gaps that memory takes away.

This time Brandon's shunt failure wasn't as bad - and we caught it earlier (I think).  A similar pattern of a headache that comes, and then goes.  It started second day of Grade 5, so it looked like a stress headache.  Then it calmed down... then he had a hot bath, got a headache spike, vomited, and got better.  Thursday was okay, again, the neurosurgeon fellow said it could be a shunt related event, or it could be stress, since a bunch of parents of kids with shunts had been calling so far this week (stress of school starting again and all that). Woke up at 12:30 am on Friday morning with intense headache pain, and I knew we were heading in.

If we got to Children's Hospital at 8:45, we were in the ER by 9, a CT scan at 10, then a shunt series of x-rays.  These showed that the tubing his body had broken, so it was obvious what the next steps were.  Although scary as hell, at least this time Brandon was never out of his head in pain.  The advil and tylenol did work.  He was alert until he went under for surgery, and then we were already on the road to recovery. It helps having a day surgery and not a night surgery, and the recovery was better, even if the surgery was a little more complicated because they had to fish out the broken piece of tubing.

It is crazy to be distant from what happened to type it out.  

It is hard being tough on the outside, telling your story, and people telling you that you are "so calm" and "how are you doing it".  You don't have a choice (IMHO) and you do the best you can and put on a false front.  Sometimes other peoples reactions make it harder because they are horrified by what we have gone through - and it sounds hollow when you say this time is and was easier because it wasn't as bad as last time.  This doesn't make it easy, it just means last time was really, really, really bad and this time everything happened quicker in terms of surgery and we got to recovery quicker.

Brandon is humbling.  His recovery has been swift.  He is still himself, still a Bruins fan, still smart and funny and my boy.

Our doctors are amazing. I am grateful we live in this time, we these kinds of resources that can save my son. I think I am starting to almost relax again, because his scars are already healing, and he looks healthy, and he is already frothing at the bit to do his normal stuff again.

How many encores are enough?

I think I am only a month late.. but I finally watched the Tragically Hip's final show that was broadcast on the CBC.

As a busy parent and full time employee, I sometimes forget the music in my life.  Not only has the world lost some amazing musicians this year, but Canadians have seen two beloved bands retire (for lack of a more fitting term).  SOTW will always be first, but The Hip occupy their own, beloved space. Each group reminds me of different times and different people.  Both were such soundtracks to some really key years of my life. It is crazy that Alzheimer's is robbing us of a lyrical poet, slowly and tragically, and brain cancer is threatening the life of another, equally gifted poet.

How do you craft a fitting tribute, but to just feel thanks for all the music.

Thanks for the songs you wrote, performed, loved.

Thanks for the memories, and the melodies that are left behind.

Music moves you in ways other things don't. It gets in places, and makes your eyes sticky sometimes.  It is like a smell, or a breeze, evoking memories, and creating more.

New toes.

Usually if I am talking about toes, it is about my summer toes and how much I actually enjoy having my toes painted. It is a small thing that makes me happy.

Random thing having a kid with CP that drags his foot and you have made him knitted socks - it he can wear through thick rubber KEENs.. imagine what he can do to a natural fibre like wool and nylon.

Hence, check out his new toes!!! I couldn't find the leftover ball of yarn from when I originally knitted these bad boys up... so I went sideways and used up some other old balls because.. WHY NOT.  Amazing what happens when you let go of a few things, some magic can happen!

I really didn't know what to do for a while when I realized that Brandon had worn holes in the top of his socks. I kind of needed to get over my shock (maybe this wasn't best sock yarn choice for B but we went for colour choice) but I figured out back in the good ole days... you would have darned the holes.  So I went one full step further and just cut the ends of his socks off... found a loop that was untouched, and started again from there. I am sure there is a life lesson buried in here.  After the first sock was fixed.. B walked around with one sock, literally all day. Any doubts I had about fixing them, out the window.  Love comes in many forms.  This is one of them.

Go Big...

 A highly quotable book, this.  If I am on a fantasy kick, I would also have to admit to being on a bit of a YA kick.  There is some kind of magic roaming through different genres far and wide and trying to pluck out some gems.

This human condition thing is an interesting beast.

I really enjoyed this book.  A different kind of heroine - at once, many different things: self aware of her size, confident, insecure, beautiful, funny, nasty, emerging into an older version of her self (AKA growing up).

It is great to see so many different voices, and how important they are to find.  I was going to say as a young person, but hell, I am in my 40s and I enjoyed it and got something out of it... so it really isn't about age.  It helps to hear different voices, different selves growing up, being insecure, making mistakes, being pulled in too many different directions at once.  I didn't always like Willow, but we aren't meant to. She pissed me off sometimes and I wanted to smack her.  I wasn't always comfortable - as a person who has never been small, there are some things written in this book I have definitely thought.  I also love how female friendship is handled in this book, and power struggles, and how important honest communication is.

How hard is to quiet that voice in your hard? We all have that harshest critic that questions whether or not we are good enough.  It is harder when you don't quite fit the normal mode, or the average.  Yes, I can hear that voice saying to me but HEY, what is normal anyways? I would also say normal is whatever your experience is of this thing called life... but there are some experiences that are outside of what is generally experienced.  Like when Willow says she hates going to a mall because 90% of what is inside won't fit her.  There is truth in that statement. I can't say I like going to the mall.  Select stores, maybe.  I hate many things about the mall, feeling inadequate because the clothes in the trendy stores don't normally fit doesn't help.  It is why I will never purchase lululemon clothes.  Their whole thing that they aren't for fat people, and their small sizing and big pricing.  Beauty comes in every size, and even folks who have some extra padding can be active and want some quality yoga pants.  Even if I was a 10 or even a 12... owning a pair of lulus isn't the hill I am going to chase.

This is a quick, fast, enjoying coming of age novel from a larger gal down south in pageant country.

Full on fantasy kick

I don't think I saw this one coming.. but I seem to be reading a lot of YA and fantasy novels this year.  They seem to be filling some kind of need - or perhaps this is an offshoot of the books that I am reading with my kids.

This is a cool idea - what if dragons exist, form deep bonds with humans, and we use them in warfare?  Enter this novel, during naval battles between Brits and the French in the time of Napoleon and Nelson.  A very different take, and quite enjoyable as a summer read.