Right now

Right now... (an occasional meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"):

Not believing: It's December!!  A little over three weeks to Christmas (and less than that until we travel to be with my family).... eeekkkk.....

Counting: The days until we head out to spend Christmas with my family. (And the days I have left to get my shopping done before then...!) 

Redecorating: Katie's niche at the cemetery. We visited there today and swapped the fall-themed decorations for Christmasy ones. 

Reading:  I just bought & started Jann Arden's new book, "Feeding My Mother," which appears to be part cookbook & partly the story of dealing with her mother's Alzheimer's disease. Jann is a national treasure here in  Canada -- a multi-talented singer/songwriter, writer & media personality (to name a few of the hats that she wears). I was lucky enough to hear her speak earlier this year, and adored her earlier memoir about growing up in rural Alberta, "Falling Backwards" (reviewed here).  

Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace"  (and the TV miniseries adaptation) are still on my to read/view list. 

(Some) other recent purchases/additions to the TBR pile (!):  

• "The Great Halifax Explosion" by John U. Bacon. This happened 100 years ago this month, and -- prior to Hiroshima -- was the largest man-made explosion ever recorded. If you are ever in Halifax, the Marine Museum of the Atlantic is well worth seeing... they have a great exhibit about the explosion (a great Titanic exhibit too).     
• "Sticky Fingers" by Joe Hagan, about Jann Wenner & Rolling Stone magazine. 
• "The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992" by Tina Brown. 
• "It's All Relative:  Adventures Up & Down the World's Family Tree" by A.J. Jacobs. 

(Very much doubting: Whether I am going to meet my goal of reading 24 books in 2017... although I still have a few weeks to go, & I do usually manage to cram in a few books over the Christmas holidays...! I have finished 17 so far;  Goodreads helpfully informs that is 4 behind schedule...!)  

Watching:  Lots of figure skating on the weekends (Grand Prix events;  final coming up shortly). Still watching "Designated Survivor," although more out of habit than anything else (season 1 was much more exciting).  Looking forward to a binge session of season 2 of "The Crown" on Netflix shortly...!  ;)  

Eating:  Very carefully these days, after one too many bouts of gallstone discomfort lately. :p  Hoping to get through Younger Nephew's wedding this spring, and then will talk with my dr about the pros & cons of possible gallbladder removal surgery. 

Drinking: Chamomile tea or ginger ale, when my gallbladder starts acting up. 

Listening:  Christmas music! :)  We are hoping to put up & decorate our Christmas tree this weekend... our usual soundtrack for that activity includes: "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by Vince Guaraldi;  "A Merrie Christmas to You" by Blue Rodeo (beloved Canadian country-rock band) and "Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas" by Ella Fitzgerald. 

Wearing:  My new/recently purchased down winter jacket.... wonderfully lightweight yet still warm. (I kept my older, heavier jacket for really cold days, extended time outdoors & Christmas visits home.)  It looks really cute on me too. ;)  The (quite literal??) downside?  Little feathers. Everywhere. All over my clothes & the seat of the car where I sit. Yikes!!  (I've never had a down jacket before -- is this normal??) 

Buying (besides books, lol):  Christmas gifts!!  The Little Princesses will each be getting an outfit and a new pair of PJs from Gymboree (same designs, different colours), as well as two fondly remembered books from my own childhood: "Ramona the Pest" & "Beezus & Ramona" by Beverly Cleary. 

(Still) wondering:  If/when Aunt Flo will make her next appearance... it's now day 118 (and counting...!).  Technically, I am about 1/3 of the way to 365 days = officially being in menopause. 

Hoping: For a decent's night's sleep, one of these days... :p  

Enduring:  The endless roadwork on the highway that runs directly in front of our building. Traffic here is nuts enough as it is, and this just makes it worse (if such a thing is possible...!).  

Looking forward: To another royal wedding (as well as William & Kate's royal baby!) in the spring! :) 

Feeling:  Startled to realize that it's actually December, a little stressed by my to-do list, but happy the Christmas season is finally here!  

#MicroblogMondays: Royal engagement (pass the Kleenex...)

I was out most of today, but before I left this morning, I caught the announcement of Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle, and their brief photo op at Kensington Palace. (I plan to watch the TV interview later.)  Much to my surprise (and dh's bemusement), I found myself getting emotional and wiping my eyes as I watched the happy couple give huge smiles for the cameras, show off Meghan's ring, and then exit, arm in arm.

"Why are you crying??" dh asked.  I couldn't quite explain -- I wasn't quite sure myself. But when I thought about it, I could think of several reasons why I might have reacted the way I did.

First, I love royal weddings (who doesn't??) -- I don't think I've missed one since Princess Anne's (her first marriage in 1973, when I was 12). Another wedding, another link in the chain extending back into my past.

Then I realized just how long I've been watching royal weddings (eek), and how many. And I suddenly felt very old. :p

I thought about Harry's parents' wedding, and everything that came after that -- and how happy Diana would have been to see this day. Diana was the same age I am -- meaning that, in a different life, Harry could have been my son. (Gulp.) I thought, briefly, about my own little girl, who will never be a bride, and the lifetime of milestones that we've missed out on with her.

I thought about how, not that very long ago, a marriage between a British royal prince and a divorced, biracial American actress could never have happened. I thought about King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, and Princess Margaret & Peter Townsend, and how far we have come since those days.

And I guess I was happy to see Harry happy, and finally find the right girl, after several previous romances didn't work out.

(And, quite possibly, I'm just a sentimental sap, lol.)

Congratulations to the happy couple! :)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

Odds & ends: The aches & pains edition ;)

• American Thanksgiving is always kind of an odd day to be online, when you're a Canadian and already had your turkey and pumpkin pie and declarations of gratitude a month & a half ago. I kept refreshing my tab pages yesterday for new Facebook and message board & blog posts that never popped up, people south of the border being otherwise occupied with food, family & football. ;)  It suppose it's a little how non-Christians might feel on Christmas Day. ;)  
• I banged my head on Wednesday afternoon -- I bent over to pick something up as we were going into a store -- and brought my head up on the handle of an automatic door that was closing.  OW.  
• I'm feeling a lot better today, although it still aches now & then.  
• Besides an ice pack and ibuprofen when we got home, I decided to try the Peppermint Halo essential oils roller by Saje, which is supposed to work miracles on headaches.  I don't know if it really helped, or if the minty tingling just distracted me (lol), but it did feel good & smell nice. 
• This is not the first time this has happened to me (although it's far from the worst):  
• (1) The first time I remember being hit in the head was by a neighbourhood kid with a baseball bat (accidentally) when I was about 6 or 7.  I remember crying and going home -- but kids are resilient, and hey, I was walking and talking, so I guess I was fine. 
• (2) The second time was when I was 18 & the car I was in -- being driven by my friend's dad -- was rear-ended, giving both her & me whiplash, and I banged the back of my head against the edge of the backseat/on the back window ledge of the car. I suppose we should have gone to the hospital to get checked out, but we were en route (and already late) to the closing ceremonies of the Canada Winter Games -- and, being young and foolish, we didn't want to miss it, so my friend & I hailed a cab while her parents stayed with the car to sort things out with the other driver & with the police. I remember my head hurt so bad that night I wondered whether I was going to wake up in the morning. (Spoiler alert: it's almost 40 years later. I did.)  
• (3) 13 years ago, almost exactly at this time of year, I was vacuuming the bathroom in the basement of our house. I was bent over to get into the corners behind the toilet, brought my head up & cracked it hard on the knobby end of the towel rack. I watched the Grey Cup (Canadian Football League championship game -- this year's is on the this weekend) that afternoon with an ice pack pressed to my head. It ached for days afterward. 
• (4) 10 years ago, dh had one of those "club" things that locks onto the steering wheel of the car to deter theft. He was taking it off & swinging it around to drop into the back seat of the car -- at the same moment that I happened to lean over in that direction. CLUNK. At first, I didn't think it was that bad, but within a few minutes, I realized it hurt. A lot. I probably should have had dh take me to the hospital to get checked out -- and I did get checked out by our family dr a few days later when the aching still hadn't subsided. He was a former professional baseball player, and he didn't seem too concerned. Nevertheless, it was months before that achy feeling disappeared.  (That was the worst.) 
• Today, we know a whole lot more about concussions and their lingering effects. I'm not an athlete, and I know people who have had far worse concussions. But I also know that the effect can be cumulative and effects can still show up years later, which does worry me sometimes. :(  
• Between my allergy to tomatos and my gallstone issues, it's getting increasingly hard to find stuff that's "safe" for me to eat, especially when we eat out.  I think that, in the new year, I am going to have to bite the bullet & (a) investigate having my gallbladder removed and (b) get another referral to my allergist & do an oral challenge test. 
• It's been almost 10 (!!) years since I started having issues with eating tomatos & tomato products (ketchup, salsa, tomato sauce, etc.). I last saw my allergist not quite two years ago, and had some scratch tests and bloodwork done that (promisingly) showed little reaction to tomato. The next step was probably to do an oral challenge (i.e., slowly eat a tomato in increasing-sized portions in her office while being monitored for any reaction), to determine whether I'm still tomato-sensitive (I did one about five years ago and, encouragingly, I managed to eat almost an entire tomato before a hive popped up) -- but that was right around the time we moved, and I never did follow up.  
• I'm just a little leery about having my gallbladder out, because (a) I've never had surgery of any kind before (unless you count having my wisdom teeth out?) and (b) my great-grandmother died of complications after gallbladder surgery when she was just 44 years old. Granted, that was in 1928 and in a small, rural hospital -- I think medicine has probably come a long way since then. Plus she had NINE CHILDREN to look after (the oldest was 26 & the youngest was 11 -- my grandfather, somewhere in the middle, was 16), plus her husband, two hired men and a farmhouse. No running water or modern conveniences in those days, either. As my mother sometimes says, no wonder she died young...!
• I recently bought a pair of Skechers shoes after hearing rave reviews from several people, including both SIL & dh.  They make all kinds of running shoes, etc.  The ones I got are slip-on canvas walking shoes. OMG... So. Comfortable!!  My feet are nowhere near as sore & tired now when we come home from walking around a mall (on those hard concrete/tile floors) for a few hours. They even have wide widths, which is a must for me. :)  

"Meow! My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols" by Ann Moses

Googling articles about David Cassidy's sad passing this week, I stumbled on an article on CNN.com with a very familiar name in the byline -- albeit one I hadn't seen nor thought of in well over 40 years.

Ann Moses worked for Tiger Beat magazine (and eventually became its editor) in the late 1960s & early 1970s. In those pre-cable, pre-Internet years, monthly magazines like Tiger Beat, its sister publication Fave, and New York-based rival 16 Magazine, were the main connection that teen & pre-teen girls like me & my sister had to our idols.  Stuffed full of glossy photos and breezy stories with headlines like "Davy's Life Story!"and  "Shhh... 24 Hours with Dino, Desi & Billy," these publications fed us critical information such as David Cassidy's favourite colour and Bobby Sherman's thoughts on going steady. (Serious journalism this was not.)

"Meow!  My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols" details Ann's years of hanging out with and writing about the biggest teen idols of the day, including Paul Revere & the Raiders, Dino Desi & Billy, the Monkees, Bobby Sherman (who wrote the foreword for the book), David Cassidy and the Osmonds. Still a teenager herself when she started working for Tiger Beat in 1966, Ann became a regular fixture on the sets of our favourite TV shows, such as "The Monkees," "The Partridge Family," and "Here Come the Brides," cooked chili for the Osmonds at her apartment, and was in the audience when Elvis made his famous comeback special in 1968. In her spare (!) time, she dabbled in somewhat more serious journalism with a regular column in England's New Musical Express (NME). 

In short, she was living our dream. :)  

Those were simpler, much more innocent times, when a handwritten note could get you backstage to interview the Dave Clark Five for your college newspaper, and when you could share a hotel bed with a member of Paul Revere and the Raiders & not even have him try to kiss you. As you might have suspected, though, most of the guys Ann wrote about were not quite as squeaky clean as they appeared to be in the pages of the magazine. Wives, live-in girlfriends and babies were kept hidden or very much in the background. David Cassidy's dog went by "Sheesh" in the pages of Tiger Beat, but his full name was actually "Hashish." "We were in the business of making dreams, not crushing them," Ann explains.  She smoked pot with members of the Raiders and later Peter Tork of the Monkees, lost her virginity to a former Mouseketeer, and had her heart broken by Maurice Gibb of the BeeGees -- on her 21st birthday, no less.   

The story ends with Ann's departure from Tiger Beat in 1972.  Even though she loved her job and was extremely well paid, she quit when she learned the (male) editor of Rona Barrett's Hollywood, another magazine from the same publisher, was making twice as much money as she was, even though (thanks to Ann's leadership) Tiger Beat was making far more money.  (The excuse, of course, being that he was married and had a family to support.)  Perhaps my one quibble about the book is that I'd have liked to learn more about her post-TB life. We do learn that she and her second husband adopted two sons, that she now lives in Arizona, and that she still gets together occasionally with Laudy Powell and Sharon Lee, two other TB-ers whose names I well remember. 

I downloaded this book from Amazon to the Kindle app on my phone last night and finished reading it this morning :) -- one of the speediest reads I've had in a long time. It's not a long nor complicated book, and it might not be quite as interesting to anyone who didn't live through those days, but it was a fun nostalgia trip for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. :) 

This was book #17 that I've read so far in 2017, bringing me to 71% of my 2017 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I am (still!) currently 4 books behind schedule to meet my goal. :p  ;)

"I woke up so sad this morning"

"I woke up so sad this morning." This headline on a Globe & Mail article summed it up nicely for me (and also cleverly twisted and incorporated a hit Partridge Family song to boot). 

I started crying last night when I heard that David Cassidy was dead at the far-too-young age of 67.

As my dear penpal of 40 years commented on my Facebook post, "That sound you hear all over the world is the little teenage corners of the hearts of millions of women in their 50's cracking a bit at todays news."

She & I first "met" in 1977 through our mutual love of the Bay City Rollers (!).  But before the BCR, before Donny Osmond -- and LONG before New Kids on the Block, or NSync, or Backstreet Boys, or One Direction, or Justin Bieber -- there was David Cassidy.

I was 9 in the fall of 1970 when "The Partridge Family" came on TV.  My sister & I were enthralled, with the show, the music, but most of all, with David Cassidy. That hair!  That smile!! Those dimples!! That whispery, seductive voice!  We couldn't wait for each weekly episode.

Around that same time, my parents bought us a cassette tape recorder, a fairly new gadget back then.  There were no such things as VCRs or PVRs back then, but we would prop the microphone up close to the TV speaker on a stool and tape episodes of the show, then listen to them later again and again, memorizing the dialogue & the songs.  (I think I can still recite passages from "Danny & the Mob" and "A Knight in Shining Armour," which guest starred Bobby Sherman, one of the other big teen idols of the day.)

My aunt & uncle gave us the first Partridge Family album that year for Christmas, and my sister & I pooled our allowance to buy the next couple of albums too, as well as umpteen issues of Tiger Beat, Fave & 16 Magazine. We shared a room back then, so we didn't have to argue over who got the posters. ;)  My mother wouldn't let us tape the onto our bedroom walls ("it will ruin the paint!!"), but the door was stained wood and less susceptible to tape marks -- and so we had a big poster taped up there. I kissed it every night before I went to bed -- at least until poor David's paper lips started to wear away from the moisture. ;)  I was convinced I was going to marry him. Never mind that he was 11 years older than me, or that he was in California & I was half a continent away in Manitoba.

"The Partridge Family" ended after four seasons, and David moved on to other things. So did I. But I still smiled whenever I heard about him or saw him on TV, or caught an old Partridge Family episode in reruns.  Even just a few weeks ago, I found myself humming some old Partridge Family songs in the shower. I'm sure it's been well over 40 years since I listened to one of their albums, but somehow, I still know all the words.

I suppose his death shouldn't have been such a shock. He'd announced that he was suffering from dementia earlier this year :(  and a few days ago, we heard that he was in critical condition in the hospital.  But coming on the heels of the deaths of so many of the other musical and cultural icons I grew up with (Glenn Frey of the Eagles, David Bowie, Prince, Kenny Shields of Streetheart, Tom Petty... and, earlier this week, Malcolm Young of AC/DC...), it was just one more blow, one more piece of my past gone. And his death was especially personal in a way those others weren't.  It was a shock to realize he was 67 -- how did the eternally youthful David Cassidy get to be 67??!!  (More to the point, how did I get to be 56??!)  Even so, 67 isn't really that old...

"The stuff we grow up on is formative. So when a star we grow up watching or listening to dies, a part of our foundation, even a teeny bit, gets chipped away," the Globe article concluded. "It's something we become more familiar with as we age, even if it's a feeling we don't ever really know how to deal with.

"And this is something, I'm afraid, there is no cure for."

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

• Sorry for the downer of a previous post... albeit it did feel good to vent a little. ;)  What can I say, it's November...! 
• We got out of the house this weekend, which did wonders for my mood (even though the weather was crappy).  We went to an event at a nearby art gallery where I hold a membership, then into the pretty little village where it's located for treats at Starbucks. Then to BIL's house to play with Older Nephew's puppy (always a mood-booster!), and from there to the mall to walk around, shop & have dinner. 
• The mall had all its Christmas decorations up, and Santa was holding court. Now I'm starting to feel Christmasy!  
• Season finale of "Poldark" was on TV last night... including no fewer than three pledge breaks interrupting the show. Ugh. I love PBS & I know it depends on pledge breaks, but couldn't they put them before & after the show, especially when it's something that's SO anticipated??  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

Struggling

A childless-not-by-choice friend, in a similar line of work as me, recently messaged me for my opinion on a work-related matter. We talked about work and I mentioned that this was always our busiest & most stressful time of the year there -- and that I DO NOT MISS IT!!  ;)

And I don't.

But afterwards, I was thinking about how empty my life is sometimes, especially since I don't have work to fill my days anymore, and especially since we moved -- that whole "Is that all there is??" feeling. I don't miss the stress of work in the least -- but I miss the people (well, some of them... ;)  ) and the routines that filled my days. I miss being downtown, at least once in a while.  I don't miss our house (surprisingly), but I sometimes miss the old community.  It's not like I had lots of friends there  (because I didn't), but it was closer to my one good (retired) friend from work, and I was more likely to run into someone I knew casually there, KWIM? There was a comfort level there that I have yet to develop here. I could get dh to drive me 10 minutes to the GO station, or even just hop on a bus nearby & be downtown in the city in 40 minutes, if I wanted to go to the big mall there, or to an exhibit at the museum or art gallery or whatever. I was even steeling myself to try to start driving more again. I do love our condo, but I feel kind of trapped here sometimes, and a bit fish-out-of-water-ish. The traffic is NUTS, so driving is back on the backburner again, and while the transit is improving, it's not there yet.

I'm not often truly bored -- I do try to stay busy with writing on my blog & doing genealogy research & reading, etc., and dh gets restless if we go more than a day without getting out of the house, at least to Starbucks ;) -- but lately, I HAVE been bored & restless. I can go for days & days without having a meaningful conversation with another adult besides dh.

My own damned fault. I keep saying I'm going to find a yoga studio, find a book club to join. I've even considered returning to church -- for the social benefits, if not for the prospect of eternal salvation. ;)

But I haven't.

It's nice being closer to BIL & SIL & family here -- but they still have their own lives, they still work, and so they're busy. They have been really great about including us in stuff, especially re: our nephews' weddings (the one last year & the one coming up). I went out with SIL a few weeks ago to help her find a mother of the groom dress, and then we went shopping for one for me -- and it's so nice to feel included. But it's not my kid's wedding & never will be, and sometimes it's hard when I think about it that way.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that this melancholy feeling descended on me shortly after the recent time change, with the increasing darkness -- and coldness -- and the approach of the child-and-family-focused holidays. Or that Katie's due date came a few days later (the 14th). Or that my midlife/(peri)menopausal hormones seem to be acting up more than usual lately. (Damned hot flashes...)

Or maybe it's just because it's November. ;)

I'm sure this will pass. It usually does. The sun just broke through the clouds briefly, when I was typing that. :)  That really helps too. :)

Vent over. :)  (For now. ;)  )