Odds & ends

• My SIL (dh's brother's wife) is now retired!  (Sort of!)  She lost her longtime job three years ago. Since then, she's had a couple of different jobs, most recently as a receptionist at a nearby warehouse. She's been working in the front office, mostly by herself at the front desk, with very few drop-in visitors these days, and so (thankfully) she has been relatively safe from COVID-19 there.  Her last day of work was Friday. 
• I say she is "sort of" retired. She is taking this week off. Next Monday, her daughter-in-law/Older Nephew's Wife/Little Great-Nephew's mom is returning to work after her 18-month maternity leave.  And SIL is going to be taking care of her grandson (Little Great-Nephew). Of course, Older Nephew & his wife also just bought a house,  about an hour north of us here. They take possession in early June, and will move in there (and out of BIL & SIL's house) after doing some painting. One of them will bring Little Great-Nephew to his grandparents' house before heading on to work (both workplaces are closer to BIL & SIL's house than to their new home). (SIL said she would take care of her grandson, but she wasn't going to drive an hour one way each day to do it... I think that's fair!) Crossing my fingers for all of them that all these changes go smoothly!  
• Dh & I plan to drop by regularly this summer to visit (and provide some backup/relief, lol), once our stay-at-home order is lifted, the weather improves (so we can spend time outside) and SIL & Little Great-Nephew have settled into their new routines. Something to look forward to!  :) 
• COVID-19 vaccinations here are opening up to younger and younger age groups. Both nephews & their wives (all between the ages of 28 and 31) are now booked for their first shots -- they'll all have them before the end of the month. Yay!!  :)  
• We've noticed an influx of voices in the hallways lately, indicating guests coming and going and lingering at someone's door -- doubly annoying during a pandemic with a stay-at-home order in place (for the third time in a little over a year).  There's a couple down the hall who have a new baby (we can hear him/her faintly crying sometimes). Dh thinks that friends & relatives come over to see the baby -- they may or may not go into the unit but they stand out in the hallway and talk and admire the little one, and that's why we're hearing their voices so loudly & clearly. I guess that would explain what we've been hearing, but seriously?!  
• Credit to RESOLVE for hosting a great "Kitchen Table Conversation" on "The Many Perspectives of Living Without Children," moderated by actor and filmmaker Tracey B. Wilson and featuring Jobi Tyson from Tutum Global; Justine Froelker of Ever Upward; and Katy DeJong from The Pleasure Anarchist, talking about their childless lives.  Worth a look! 
• Several people have shared this fabulous New York Times article about a woman doctor who is doing some much-needed research on the endometriosis. I don't have endometriosis (that I know of?? -- I have sometimes wondered...), but I know some of you who do. This article is both infuriating (how common it is and how often women's pain has been dismissed), and inspiring. The stories in the comments are worth a read as well.
• I've written before about my interest in genealogy, and I loved this piece I found, "In praise of maiden aunts."  "...these maiden aunts, bachelor uncles, and childless couples often have fascinating stories, and sometimes had profound impact on our ancestors," writes author Andrew Searle Pang, who describes several examples from his own family tree in this article.  
• I wrote about one very important maiden aunt in my own family tree here. 

#MicroblogMondays: Here's a story....

Here's a question for you!  A Facebook friend recently asked why people choose to post "stories" (and should that be "stories" or "Stories"??) instead of wall posts. 

Her main issue was how the stories zoom by so fast, and having to click back and/or hold her finger on it (on her cellphone) to be able to fully take in the whole thing. "If something's worth sharing in the first place, why not let it linger?" she asked. (Good question, I thought!) She also disliked that stories are now showing up in her Facebook feed, and she doesn't always realize it's a story versus a regular post until she clicks on it. (I noticed this recently too!) 

Some commenters agreed, saying they find stories "annoying." Most people said they prefer watching them on Instagram versus Facebook. (IG allows you to cross-post to FB, but not vice-versa, so far as I can tell.) 

Others came to stories' defense and said they enjoyed watching them. Those who have shared stories said they liked being able to share things they've found on other people's stories, and that it's a "tidier" way of sharing memes and other stuff they've found and liked without cluttering up their wall. Small business owners & entrepreneurs said stories are a critical marketing tool for them in helping to build their brands... that they reach and engage their audience (especially younger people) in a much different way through stories versus regular posts. 

I get that. 

But I have mixed feelings. 

It took me a long time to start watching the stories on my Instagram feed. I didn't "get" what they were all about, and it seemed like it was just one more thing I had to deal with/scroll through. Once I started looking at them, I realized that some of the content in the stories was different from what was in the main feed... and I certainly didn't want to miss anything posted by some of my good friends and relatives. I currently follow about 450 accounts on Instagram, and some of them are VERY active on stories -- some post literally dozens of snippets every day. That's a lot of time spent watching or advancing through stories every day! (I tend to watch them in IG far more than on Facebook, for some reason -- and apparently I'm not alone in that.) And the "deadline" -- the need to get through the stories before they expire -- makes me feel pressured. 

Stories from some of my favourite brands or "influencers" are one thing (and I do enjoy some of this content -- for example, I find @gocleanco 's before & after cleaning videos mesmerizing!).  Personal stories are another thing entirely -- and one user's in particular, lol.  ;)  My MAIN complaint/reservation about stories is that Older Nephew's Wife uses FB & IG stories almost exclusively for her social media posts -- which means we get 24 hours max (and often less -- because we do have to sleep...!) to enjoy any photos and videos she posts of Little Great-Nephew before they disappear...  And sometimes it's a week or more before she posts something else. It would be nice to be able to go back to them later and watch at our leisure. It's especially maddening when COVID-19 prevents us from seeing him as often as we otherwise might and taking our own photos. Someone suggested taking screenshots -- which we do -- but those don't adequately capture the full experience -- or cuteness :) -- of the videos. I don't know WHY she uses social media this way -- and I suppose we could ask her/tell her how we feel -- but I don't want to make her feel bad or feel that she has to do something just because we're annoyed by it. She is, after all, our nephew's wife, not our own daughter or daughter-in-law!  And she's the mother of said Little Great-Nephew -- we want to stay in her good graces, lol.  

Plus, I have an issue with impermanence, lol. Okay, I know nothing lasts forever, especially on the Internet, but I have a general tendency to want to hang onto things. I'm a packrat, even in my virtual life...! 

You might guess that I don't use stories myself. (Or at least I haven't to date.) One friend confessed they've only ever shared stories by accident -- I had to admit I'm in that camp too. ;)  I think I might have shared one deliberately once to enter a giveaway. Part of the reason I've never used stories is I honestly don't know what the heck I'm doing when it comes to posting one. Maddeningly, social media doesn't come with instruction manuals. All those special little effects -- the captions (in different fonts), the stickers, the music, the polls, the tags... How do people do these things??  (I suppose I am showing my age here... younger people seem to have an instinct about how these things work, and certainly less trepidation about just diving in and using them.) (I also suppose there is such a thing as Google, lol...)  

So -- Instagram &/or Facebook Stories -- yay or nay? Do you use the "Stories" feature on these apps/sites? Why or why not? 

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

Crazy or grieving? (Mary Todd Lincoln was "one of us")

Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, tends to get a bad rap. People have called her "crazy" and point out that she spent some time in an insane asylum after her husband's death.

A new exhibit at President Lincoln's Cottage -- a Washington, D.C., museum I had never heard of! -- makes the case that Mary was not crazy -- she was a bereaved mother. Moreover, the exhibit places the Lincolns' grief "alongside the stories of modern-day bereaved parents and their kids, showing their similarities across time." 

Think about it! "In her lifetime, the former first lady lost her husband to an assassin’s bullet and three of her four children to disease. Her lengthy, public mourning defied conventions of the day and led to criticism and questions about her sanity," says a fascinating Washington Post article about the exhibit.  

The cottage was a kind of summer White House -- a refuge where the Lincolns could escape the heat and humidity, relax and grieve the loss of their son Willie (who died in February 1862 of typhoid fever, age 11) in peace. 

"The trauma of child loss shaped both Lincolns." says the museum's website about the new exhibit. "It seeded new fears they carried until they died. It deepened the limits of their emotional and mental endurance. It changed the character and course of their lives. And, the stigma of grief transcends time and place as families continue to struggle under the societal pressures of mourning the death of children in modern society." 

Does any of this sound familiar? (From the Washington Post article:) 

The modern bereaved parents in the exhibit, who are anonymous, describe a society that is in some ways even more uncomfortable with expressions of grief than it was 150 years ago.

“I think society expected me to just move on,” says the mother of Jacob, who was murdered when he was 6. “I think it is still a surprise for some people that we still talk about her so freely,” said the mother of Abby, an only child who died at age 17 five years ago. “I think they are confused as to why we are still talking about her, assuming reflecting on her life, and death, only accentuates the pain.”

[Callie Hawkins, a bereaved mother who works at the museum and helped to create the exhibit] encountered this discomfort when she presented the project to some colleagues. “Isn’t it going to make visitors sad?” they worried.

Yes, it will,  Hawkins replied. And that’s a meaningful experience.

Read the article!  And, if you're in Washington D.C. over the next year or two (and hopefully COVID-19 will subside enough by then to make such visits possible!), you can visit the exhibit at the cottage museum too. :)  

*** *** *** 

Early in my blogging career (January 2008), I saw another article about another museum exhibit that got me thinking about the fine line between public perceptions of bereavement and insanity. Read about Ethel Smalls' suitcase here. 

I wrote then: 

There but for the grace of God and about 70 years difference in attitudes toward mental health go I. 

I know that just about all of us, from time to time, feel misunderstood by the people around us, and yes, there are days when I feel like I'm going out of my mind. I've even consulted a therapist from time to time. But so far, nobody's tried to commit me to an insane asylum. At least, not yet...

*** *** *** 

While writing this post, I was reminded that today is International Bereaved Mothers Day. I don't have a lot to write on the subject, but wanted to acknowledge that "regular" Mother's Day can be difficult for those of us who never got to bring a baby home (to the point that I refer to that "other" day as "Voldemort Day" on this blog -- That Day Which Will Not Be Named, lol). Be kind to yourselves today, this week and next Sunday!  

 

"What's Not Said" by Valerie Taylor

"What's Not Said" by Valerie Taylor is the May pick for the NoMo/Gateway Women book club, where we read & discuss books where pregnancy/babies/children/parenting are not major plot points. 

As the novel opens, Kassie O'Callaghan, a 54-year-old marketing/advertising executive, is on the verge of leaving her husband of more than 30 years, Mike Ricci, and moving in with Chris Gaines, the hot young lover she met five years earlier on a solo trip to Venice. Unfortunately, her meticulous plans go awry when Mike winds up in the hospital, and she learns he has chronic kidney disease -- has had it for the past several years, but hasn't told her about it. And that's not the only secret he's been keeping from her. Chris has a few secrets of his own too... 

 A few of the reviews I read on Goodreads used "soap opera" in their descriptions of this book, and I don't disagree. There is plot twist after plot twist after plot twist -- secrets and lies (and more secrets and lies) and miscommunication galore -- almost to the point of ridiculousness. (Also plenty of steamy stuff, for those who like it.  ;)  )

None of the characters is particularly likeable (and we get to view events from all three perspectives).  I did like Kassie's best friend Annie, and I did appreciate that, in a youth-obsessed culture, Kassie & Mike were an older, childless couple in a long-term relationship, even if it wasn't a happy one.  (Kassie had a miscarriage early in their marriage and we learn that Mike was reluctant to bring a baby into their lives, which drove a wedge between them.)

This wasn't a long nor difficult read, and I will admit that it did keep me turning the pages, just to find out what would ultimately happen.  It's the first in a planned three-book series (the second expected in August).  Not sure I will be picking up any of the sequels, but I will look forward to our book club discussion about this one! 

Three (3) stars on Goodreads. 

This was Book #24 read to date in 2021 (and Book #1 finished in May), bringing me to 67% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 13 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2021 tagged as "2021 books." 

Right now

Right now...* 

*(an occasional (mostly monthly) meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"). (Explanation of how this started & my inspirations in my first "Right now" post, here. Also my first "The Current" post, here.)

April was Month #13 going on 14 of living with the COVID-19 pandemic.  In last month's "Right Now" post, I wrote: 

The region where I live (near Toronto) came out of lockdown on Feb. 22nd (and there are some businesses in Toronto & Peel regions that STILL haven't been allowed to reopen! -- hair & nail salons, gyms, no indoor dining at restaurants, etc.). However, case numbers are almost as high as they've ever been, including a huge surge from the new, more contagious variants -- and it's almost a certainty that there will be a THIRD shutdown/stay at home order soon... sigh... 

(I REALLY hate being right in this case.)  I started trying to write a summary of the rollercoaster ride and twists & turns this province has experienced over the past month (alone!), but gave up when it started reaching "War & Peace" length (and I'm only slightly exaggerating)...!  It's one of those things that needs to be seen/experienced to be believed.  

Suffice to say the provincial government doesn't know what the frack it's doing and basically has been throwing things at the wall to see what will stick. It took months & months of begging from the medical experts before they FINALLY agreed to a paid sick leave plan last week for those workers whose companies don't offer one (just three days, when most experts were asking for 10 to 14, to accommodate the recommended length of quarantine). Daily new case numbers reached an all-time high of 4,812 on April 16th, and the seven-day average only just dipped back below the 4,000 mark again this week.  Hospitals are jammed, and ICUs are at capacity. The patients being admitted are both sicker and younger.  Tragically, a 13-year-old girl living one town over from mine (one of the hardest hit regions in the country) died at home last week:  her mother was already in the hospital with COVID;  her father hesitated to take her to the hospital because he was afraid she would get transferred to another hospital far away (a possibility), and because he thought that since she was young, she would bounce back. She didn't.   

At the moment, we are under our third lockdown/stay-at-home order of the pandemic, scheduled to last until (at least) mid-May.  Almost everything is closed, including all non-essential retail (curbside pickup only). For the first time, however, larger "essential" stores, such as Walmart and Costco, are restricted to selling groceries and pharmacy items only (something other provinces have done, but Ontario had not yet).  All schools are closed (at-home learning only again). The provincial government has continued to resist closing down most construction sites and non-essential factory production -- so several local municipalities (including Peel Region and the City of Toronto proper) have taken matters into their own hands and have ordered any business with five or more cases of COVID-19 to close for at least 10 days.  

Meanwhile!  Vaccination efforts FINALLY began to ramp up (albeit the rollout has been messy). Dh & I happily received our first shots of AstraZeneca on April 5th (and BIL & SIL got theirs the following day). We likely won't get our second shots/become fully vaccinated until at least mid-July (the current protocol is that second shots come four months -- yes, FOUR MONTHS (16 weeks) -- after the first, in order to give more people the chance to get that critical first vaccine, with at least some protection against the virus).  As of yesterday (Friday), 32.4% of Ontarians have received at least one dose of vaccine, but just 2.5% have received both ( = fully vaccinated). In Manitoba, my parents and my sister's partner both received their first shots recently (Pfizer), my sister's boyfriend got his earlier this week, and she will get hers tomorrow/Sunday. Yay!! 

On top of dh's usual (once or twice weekly) trips to the supermarket for groceries and for takeout dinners on Saturday nights, this month, we went (together -- with some trips including multiple stops): 

• to the pharmacy on April 5th to get our first vaccines!! (see above)
• to the supermarket (after getting our shots).  
• to see Little Great-Nephew (oh yeah, BIL & SIL too!  lol), twice (earlier in April, pre-new lockdown), including once (maskless, on April 6th)to stay with him while his grandparents got their first vaccines and his parents were at the lawyer's office about their new house. 

Otherwise, we've continued to stay close to home (both by edict & by choice). 

*** *** *** 

Reading: I read 7 books in April (all reviewed on this blog, as well as Goodreads, & tagged "2021 books"):

• "Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No" by Kate Kaufmann
• "The Bright Side" by Cathrin Bradbury 
• "The Princess Saves Herself in This One" by Amanda Lovelace (poetry) 
• "I Had a Miscarriage" by Jessica Zucker 
• "Lady in Waiting" by Anne Glenconner
• "Shang-a-lang" by Les McKeown (lead singer of the Bay City Rollers, who passed away last week). 
• "She I Dare Not Name" by Donna Ward.

This brings me to 23 books read so far in 2021 -- 64% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 12 books ahead of schedule. :)

Earlier this month, dh decided that Goodreads was stressing him out and so he stopped tracking his reading there. Last week, he went back on again. (Recall what I said about his social media use in a previous post...!)  By mid-February, he had already blown past his 2021 Reading Challenge goal of 24 books; by the time he stopped tracking, in early April, he'd read 49 (!).  He's now at 52 (and likely higher, if he counted the books he read in between). 

Current read(s): 

• "What's Not Said" by Valerie Taylor (our next NoMo/Gateway Women book club pick). 
• "Katherine's Marriage" by D.E. Stevenson (my DES group's current selection under discussion, previously read and reviewed here, and a sequel to "Katherine Wentworth," reviewed here and here)
• "Chronicles of Avonlea" by L.M. Montgomery (currently under discussion by my LMM Readathon FB group -- previously read & reviewed here)  

Not being counted as an April read, but previously read and discussed at an online/Zoom meeting of my "Clever Name" book club held earlier in the month: "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett. We'll be talking about "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman (which I already read & reviewed here --and thoroughly enjoyed!) at our May meeting (date TBD). 

Coming up: 

• "Summerhills" by D.E. Stevenson (for my author fan group, once we finish "Katherine's Marriage" -- a sequel to "Amberwell," which we read and discussed last year). 
• "Us" by David Nicholls, which has been in my TBR pile for a while, but has been moved up -- there's a four-part TV version that will be shown on PBS, beginning on June 20th. :)  

A few recently purchased titles (in digital formats, discounted):   

• "Outlawed" by Anna North 
• "And Furthermore" by Judi Dench 
• "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry 
• "The Great Believers" by Rebecca Makkai

Watching: I started watching two new shows on PBS on Sunday nights this month:  

• "My Grandparents' War," sort of a variation of "Who Do You Think You Are?" in which British celebrities explore the stories of their grandparents' lives during World War II.  Unfortunately, there are only four episodes (starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Carey Mulligan). I don't know if they're planning on making any more, but both dh & I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
• "Atlantic Crossing," based on a true story about how the Norwegian royal family fled the country after the Nazi invasion of 1940, how Crown Princess Martha and her three children wound up spending the war as refugees in Washington, D.C., and her friendship with  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Some of it's a bit contrived (e.g., FDR's secretary, Missy LeHand, is jealous and resentful of her boss's relationship with Martha, and Eleanor is a bit of a sourpuss), and some of the details have obviously been embellished beyond historical fact, but I'm enjoying learning about a part of WWII history that goes beyond the usual British/American-centric narrative that we're used seeing and hearing about. 
• At the end of episode 2, there's a very moving scene that had me reaching for the kleenex box -- set in a stunning fjord (supposedly in Finland), where a small boat is taking the Crown Princess and her children to a ship that will take them to safety in America. They are trying to hide their identity, but some Norwegian fishermen recognize them, stand up in their boats and begin singing the national anthem. One by one, sailors on the other boats follow suit. Martha acknowledges them by holding up her young son (Prince Harald, the future/current King Harald V), and he waves to the men in the boats as they sing. This really did happen! 
• The show reminded me of a children's book I read and loved as a kid -- "Snow Treasure" by Marie McSwigan -- about how the Norwegians managed to smuggle millions of dollars in gold bars from the national reserve out of the country, right under the noses of the Nazis, by using children on sleds as cover. Also based on a true story!  Anyone else ever read it? 

We also watched Ken Burns's three-part documentary, "Hemingway," about the famous writer, also on PBS this month. (I've never read much Hemingway -- but "The Sun Also Rises" was, I think, the first novel I read in my first-year university English class -- 20th-century literature, I think it was called.) 

I stayed up to watch the Oscars (again) -- even after I considered setting the PVR and watching my regular Sunday night shows instead. 

We recently stumbled onto (and started watching) reruns of "Soap," which I watched faithfully when I was in high school in the late 1970s... it now comes with a content warning!! lol  It was very controversial in its time, and some of the content is politically incorrect these days, but it was a groundbreaker in many respects (for example, the character of Jodie Dallas, played by a young Billy Crystal, was one of the first openly gay characters on prime-time TV).  

And the first two episodes of season 4 of "The Handmaid's Tale" aired Thursday night on the CTV Drama channel (formerly known as Bravo -- three episodes were released on Hulu in the States on the same day). Part of me wonders (not for the first time) just how many times June can ALMOST escape Gilead?? -- it's getting a little monotonous.  But I've come along this far, so....  

Listening:  I caught up on the last couple of most recent episodes of The Full Stop podcast -- including one with author Kate Kauffman, one with Jody Day, celebrating Gateway Women's 10th anniversary, and one with just the three hosts chatting, which is always fun to listen to!  

I follow supermodel Paulina Porizkova on Instagram, and I listened to an interesting (and very frank) conversation she had recently with Ashleigh Banfield about aging, the death of her estranged husband Ric Ocasek of The Cars (and the fallout from that, including finances), and more. (I gather it was aired on TV;  there are video clips available, but this link is a sound file of the entire conversation -- or almost the entire conversation;  it cuts off rather abruptly at the end.)  I was thrilled to see her at the Oscars as Aaron Sorkin's date, looking gorgeous as always! 

Following: Bruce Arthur's columns in the Toronto Star about the pandemic and how the Ontario government is (not) handling it. Unfortunately, they may be behind a paywall, but if you can read them, they are excellent.  (And scathing, lol.)  

Buying (besides books, lol):  Ordered some (more) essential oils from Saje to replenish my supplies (I previously ordered some, including some Christmas scents, during from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales last November. Haven't been to a store in more than a year now, and probably won't be for a while still.  

I also ordered a nifty squeegee/window cleaning kit, as recommended by my house cleaning guru on Instagram, @gocleanco. ;) It was on back order when I ordered it, but should be here in a few weeks. I can't wait to try it out on our balcony doors, and maybe even on my nemesis, the shower cubicle!  

And I ordered some chequebook registers. I don't write many actual cheques these days, but I still keep track of all our debits & credits/deposits -- what's going in and what's coming out -- in a paper register (and balance it every month or so). (Hey, my dad was a banker! And I worked as a teller at a credit union one summer while at university, too -- at a time & place when we were still using paper debit and credit slips...!)(And yes, I CAN get it to balance! -- sometimes...  lol...) When I was working, I would just go downstairs to the bank branch and request one from one of the tellers. Even before I lost my job (summer 2014), it was taking longer and longer for them to hunt one up for me. 

Then we moved here in April 2016. I went to two different branches of our bank here, trying to explain what it was that I wanted to clearly bewildered young tellers, raised in the age of Internet banking, who had never heard of such things. Thank goodness at the second branch an older teller overheard me and came to my rescue. Apparently the branches no longer stock them (!), but she was able to order me a bundle via the bank's website. The last one from that batch is almost completely filled in... I found where to order new cheques on the bank's website, but not the registers. I wound up ordering some from (guess!)  Amazon.  Hopefully they'll last me at least another five years. Apparently some people now use Excel for this purpose, but I'm not very well versed in that program. Sigh... 

Celebrating: Dh's 64th birthday, mid-April  :) -- his second during this pandemic. This time around, I managed to buy him a proper birthday card (pre-lockdown) and (Eating/Drinking) we baked a chocolate cake (from a mix we had on hand in the cupboard, with icing from a can... it was still pretty good!). 

Mourning: The death of yet another one of the Bay City Rollers, the boy band of my youth -- my sister's favourite, lead singer Les McKeown, at the way-too-young age of 65 (on top of bassist Ian Mitchell last fall, age 62, and founder Alan Longmuir in 2018, age 70). See my recent post, here. Humming:  BCR tunes in the shower since then! 

Enduring: A last blast of winter, with snow flurries two days in a row last week (followed immediately by temperatures in the high teens)(Celsius = mid-60sF).  This past week has been mostly grey & rainy.  Gotta love Canada in the spring...!  

Smelling: Cannabis. :p  It's nice to be able to open the balcony doors now that the weather is starting to be nicer -- but some people are obviously using the opportunity to sit out on their balconies and indulge. (More noticeably so than the previous springs that we've been here since the stuff was legalized.) Sigh... 

Wearing:  Brought out the short-sleeved T-shirts when the weather turned warmer -- only to have to add a cardigan when it got cold again. (Soon! Soon!!)  

Trying (and failing):  To get up the motivation to start walking again regularly...!  

Wondering:  If and when things will ever return to some kind of normalcy. :(   It's been a very LONG winter/year!  

Wanting:  The people I love to stay safe while the new virus variants run rampant and vaccines slllloooowwwwwlllly roll out...  

Loving:  That I seem to have found my reading mojo again. (For now, anyway...?!)  

Feeling: Like I'm languishing. Not looking forward to (eek) Voldemort Day. The ads and emails have been flooding my TV screen and email inbox for a few weeks already, since Easter.  

But, it's May!  Yay!! 

"She I Dare Not Name" by Donna Ward

"She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster's Meditations on Life" by Donna Ward came highly recommended by Jody Day of Gateway Women. Donna, 67, is a regular, wise presence at the chats for childless "elderwomen" that Jody organizes every quarter/season. This book, first published last year in Australia (and gradually making its way to other parts of the world), is a memoir in the form of a series of essays about Donna's life, and how she came to find herself in her 60s with neither husband nor children.  

I loved this book overall, and could relate to a lot of it -- albeit not everything in it.  We're both childless-not-by-choice, but Donna is single; I've been married for 35 years. I'm Canadian;  she's Australian (although she spent parts of her childhood in America and Peru), and her references & descriptions were unfamiliar and slightly exotic (I found myself looking up many unfamiliar terms -- bluestone house, jarrah doors...), reminding me of just how much I don't know about this distant part of the world.  Donna studied the classics and ancient history at university, and there are many references throughout the book to mythology (the ancient Greeks & Egyptians, in particular) -- some I dimly knew and others I did not. Perhaps a better knowledge of these myths and the characters in them would have added to my understanding & enjoyment of the book. 

I'll admit it took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did, I didn't want it to end. The prose was stunning -- lovely and lyrical, punctuated with some amazing, sharp observations about single life versus married life with children. My e-copy is littered with bookmarks.  

4 stars on Goodreads.  

This was Book #23 read to date in 2021 (and Book #7 finished in April), bringing me to 64% of my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 36 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 12 books ahead of schedule. :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2021 tagged as "2021 books." 

#MicroblogMondays: Oscars edition

So, after moaning in my last post about "not feeling it" for the Oscars ceremony this year, I wound up watching anyway. ;)  I am nothing if not a traditionalist, lol.  

I'm still not sure whether I'd have been better off watching my usual Sunday night shows, though. As I commented to one friend on Facebook, the venue (a renovated Union Station in Los Angeles) was gorgeous but the usual buzz was sadly lacking. 

Part of the fun of Oscar night is reading the reviews of the show the next morning, and best/worst moments lists.  Some of the best ones I found include The Globe & Mail, The New York Times, and both a review and a best/worst list from Entertainment Weekly. 

To summarize some of my own feelings about the evening: 

The good: 

• While I'm not sure the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag should be retired yet, it was nice to see the increased diversity of the nominees/winners this year. 
• There were some lovely, heartfelt speeches, but I particularly liked: 
• Best Supporting Actress winner Yuh-Jung Youn of Minari (especially her callout to Brad Pitt, lol). 
• Thomas Vinterberg, the director of the Danish film that won Best Foreign/International Picture, who expressed his grief over the death of his 19-year-old daughter. 
• Tyler Perry, Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award winner.  
• Frances McDormand, urging everyone to return to the movie theatres "soon," a reminder of what the evening is (supposed to be) about. (Not sure about the wolf howl, though?!  -- apparently it was a shoutout to a team member who died.)  
• It was nice to see the two Humanitarian Awards presented (Tyler Perry, and the Motion Picture & Television Fund, celebrating its centennial this year), in a year when we could all use some reminders about kindness and humanity. 
• Dresses:  
• Halle Berry (gorgeous colour). 
• Marlee Matlin (who looked fabulous overall).
• Regina King (loved the colour & rhinestones, but not the shoulders, which gave me the feeling that she was going to take off & fly).
• Carey Mulligan (although I wish her dress had been an actual dress and not a full ballgown skirt with a bandeau top). 
• Maria Bakalova -- although I was afraid her breasts might pop out from those narrow fabric strips covering them, lol.  
• Viola Davis. :) 
• Paulina Porizkova (there with Aaron Sorkin?!).  

The bad/bizarre:  

• The small audience and social distancing made the ceremony possible, but it killed the usual buzz from the packed audience. The reactions seemed muted. It just didn't seem like the Oscars. 
• Next to no clips of the nominated films & performances!  They are a big part of why I watch the Oscars. As the Globe & Mail critic wrote: 

Having the award presenters rhapsodize about the nominated work is a nice touch, but the decision to largely exclude footage of the actual films and performances is, if not a slap, then an annoying and unnecessary flick in the face of the nominees. This is an especially weird decision given that general awareness of this year’s films is at an all-time low. Maybe if home audiences actually saw a glimpse of the movies that were being celebrated, they’d be that much more inclined to check them out.

• Where were the other special/scientific/honorary awards?  I know they stopped presenting them at the main awards show a few years back, to help save time (they now get their own special celebrations) -- but they usually at least mention who the winners were and show a few clips. (Or did they do this during the pre-show, as they did with the performances of the nominated songs?)  Why show/present the two Humanitarian Award winners, but not these others? 
• The In Memoriam segment. I know people are always complaining about who's been left out, but speeding up the pace to show a different person every two seconds is not the way to go... if you blinked, you'd miss someone. It seemed kind of disrespectful. :p  
• The whole last part of the show, including: 
• The decision -- at 10:45ish, with three major awards left to present and possibility of actually finishing something close to on time, to inject in a bizarre quiz segment that was obviously completely set up to give us the spectacle of Glenn Close demonstrating "Da Butt" and getting bleeped by the censors. A few of the critics I read actually liked it, but I could have done without it. If you're going to pad the show between handing out awards, show more clips!!  
• The decision not to reveal the winner of Best Picture at the end of the evening. Apparently this used to be the norm... 70-80 years ago. The last time Best Picture was not the final award presented was 1971, when an elderly Charlie Chaplin made a rare appearance to accept an honorary Oscar (and I'm old enough to remember that night -- it was something special!). Best Picture should always be last, unless you have someone with the stature of Charlie Chaplin to close the show. 
• I think Chadwick Boseman was an amazing talent and his death at such a young age (43) was a tragedy. I haven't seen any of the nominated films/performances this year, so I don't know whether he deserved the Oscar more than Anthony Hopkins. But I disliked the feeling that the entire evening was being manipulated toward that Hollywood ending. Boseman was the last person shown in the "In Memoriam" segment, and I fully expected that Best Actor would be the next award presented (with him winning) -- so I was shocked when they went straight to Best Picture. It was obvious that Best Actor would be last, with Boseman's presumed posthumous win an emotional climax t othe evening. And then Anthony Hopkins was declared the winner -- and he wasn't even there, in person or on camera, to accept. So the evening ended on a completely flat note. (I don't blame Sir Anthony -- he's 83 and it was the middle of the night/very early morning, UK time!)  A good lesson for future organizers...! 
• Said Entertainment Weekly:  "Best Picture should come at the end for so many reasons, and now we know the main reason is that someone will always be there to pick up the trophy." 
• Dresses:  
• Laura Dern's feathers.
• Zendaya's stomach cutout (even if she has a washboard stomach, it just looked odd to me).  
• Andra Day -- the top was fine, and the cut-out on the side of the bodice didn't bother me the way Zendaya's did -- but I kept wondering where the other side of the bottom of her dress was??  
• Glenn Close. Nice colour on her, but the tunic over pants did nothing for me. 

I also had to agree with the Globe & Mail writer who wrote

Maybe it was the fact I was watching from the cold, cruel, largely un-vaccinated land of Toronto, but staring at beautiful celebrities – sometimes masked, sometimes not – mingling at L.A.’s Union Station under the California sun was a jarring experience. On the one hand, here’s hope that a normal world is just around the corner! And maybe even Carey Mulligan will be there to greet me! On the other: God, this was a cruel exercise for those who aren’t even allowed to get near cherry blossoms or tennis courts, let alone get dressed up for real-deal socialization... 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apparently employed an army of epidemiologists to help pull the evening together (glad they all had so much spare time), and most everyone in attendance was (from my understanding) vaccinated. All of which made the evening’s mask instructions, as delivered by King at the top of the show … peculiar. “When we’re rolling: mask off. When we’re not rolling: masks on.” So either the masks were a complete farce in the first place given current CDC guidelines, or COVID is only a thing during commercial breaks, or …??? But hey, I’m in a country where rapid tests still aren’t even a thing, so I defer to Hollywood’s handling of the situation. 

Did you watch? What did you think? 

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