Sunday Sundries: Run, Run, Run

Firstly: My deepest and most sincere apologies for not writing a Sunday Sundries post last week. I don't have a good excuse at all, other than that Sundays are family days that tend to consist of getting up-going to my grandad's house-eating-not having internet til the evening when inevitably I just want to watch TV or whatever. Like I said, not an excuse, but just an inevitable chain of Sunday events.

Probably I should write a weekly update post on a day other than a Sunday*, but ehhhh, no.

So, it's been two weeks. I would say a lot has happened, but it kind of really hasn't. This last week I worked extra hours for no overtime pay and pretty much no thanks, and to say that I'm so over my job is a giant understatement. I know it's not the best idea to be mean about your job on the internet, so, you know, no details, but I'm definitely feeling undervalued and SO ANGRY I WANT TO PUNCH THINGS at the moment. So, you know, if anyone knows of anything... *winks significantly*.

But anyway. Since it's the weekend and I'm trying not to think about it, let's talk about the thing that's probably been on my mind the most recently, and that thing is running. 

Totally what I wear to run.

You might not know how ridiculous it is that I want to talk about running. I mean, you might, considering that I write exclusively about reading books and watching TV and movies, all of which are sedentary activities, and none of which contribute to fitness in any way. But you probably don't know just how much I hate(d) running- just the pure, PE style horror of having to run and then being out of breath and still having to run and feeling like you're dyyyying and just no. No.

Things have changed in my mind a little bit over the last year or so- the internet is such a great resource for anything you might be interested in, and there were a few bloggers I already liked and felt an affinity with who started writing posts about running and how amazing it feels, and I was... intrigued. Not intrigued enough to do anything stupid like actually running, but intrigued nonetheless. Enough to put 'attempt to do a couch-to-5k thing' (note the word 'attempt' in there) on my 24 before 25 list, and yes I realise it's March now.

So, last Monday morning, I put on my neglected trainers and left the house early to attempt to do a couch to 5k thing. And I did it. I did 8 minutes more running than I've done since I left school, and I felt incredibly (over) impressed with myself. I ached terribly for three whole days afterwards, but I kept going and, incredibly, it got easier. Which made me feel amazing, and made aching feel like it was a good thing and all sorts of other decent stuff that I never expected to get from running, at all.

Let's be real here. I've just finished week two of the Couch to 5K podcast I've downloaded, which meant running for 90 seconds, recovering for 120 and repeat. I am in no way an experienced runner, and I don't even know how I'm going to feel about the whole thing when I get to stages where I have to run for, you know, longer than 90 seconds at once. 

But here's what I do know. Before last week, I hadn't run IN MY WHOLE LIFE unless someone was making me. After that first run, my ribs hurt more than they ever had, I could barely walk up stairs and, you know, everything hurt. I could have easily given up then, but I didn't and the next time I went, it got easier, and I was suddenly like 'OH! This is how exercise works!' and it was honestly the biggest revelation ever. 

I'm going to stop going on about this now, because there's not a lot more I have to say about it at this point- suffice to say, the basics are: I am running. I don't hate it. It's all good. I will definitely have more to say about this in the future, but I'm happy to leave it here for now. 

*To be fair, I am writing this on Saturday morning, so.

"'I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in general.'"

It's nearly 10pm on Tuesday evening so I'm going to keep this brief(ish- when have I ever been brief?). And really, REALLY there is only one thing to talk about:

WHAT THE FUCK, MR JARNDYCE?!

I actually don't know how I feel about the whole Mr-Jarndyce-wants-to-keep-Esther-near-him-so-he-proposes-to-her thing. I mean, mostly I feel REALLY ICKY and like I want to take about ten showers about it, and also Mr Jarndyce, I thought you were cool. I mean, I get it- They're assuming that Ada will get married eventually and Esther with her gross face won't but she can't just stay there with Mr J on their own because People Will Talk. And this is the Victorian times, so that kind of shit really matters.

But. Isn't it waaaay grosser for a REALLY OLD MAN to marry basically a teenager? Isn't it kind of wrong of him to have asked, and just as wrong of Esther to think of accepting? And, most importantly, is this the kind of marriage that involves sex? Because if so, I realllly don't want to think about that.

 Still, at least she'll always have her love of Ada to sustain her: "I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to kiss her." Of course you did, Esther.

In motherly news, WTF Lady Dedlock just murdered Mr Tulkinghorn?! (Not to be confused with Mr Turveydrop again, who is presumably still alive and well with excellent deportment) Did that seriously just happen or did I nearly drop my CLOTHBOUND CLASSIC in the bath for no good reason? I've got to say- I've read many a Stephen King novel where on the back it says something like 'a storyteller in a class with Dickens' and I've always been like 'I don't get the connection', but... I'm starting to get it? In that, I think Dickens is the better writer (in terms of pure words, not in terms of who I want to read more) they're both really really good at managing a large cast of characters without sidelining too many, and at revealing humanity and also, sometimes, at being kind of shocking (spontaneous combustion? REALLY?!)

They're also both great at tugging on the heartstrings, and I'd like to take a little moment of silence for Jo, here.

Oh, Jo, You were such a good child apart from when you gave Esther smallpox and ruined her face. May you go onto a better place where people treat you right and teach you how to speak properly (I'm only being flippant because my heart is broken).

One final thought of my brain on reading Dickens- This is my first Dickens novel, and I feel like I'm already past being scared of him, somewhere near to loving him, but more than anything, as I read I can already tell that I need to read this again. Not necessarily because it's so awesome (and it is pretty great, which is why I've carried on reading it) but because I know that, as I'm concentrating on the story and the links between characters and all that good stuff, I'm missing out on SO MUCH of the writing. I mean, I can see that it's good, and it sounds nice in my brain, but I'm too busy concentrating on other stuff to really appreciate it, which is what the second reading will be for. But let's just say, you know, Dickens is good at writing words and stuff.

WHO WILL BE MURDERED NEXT WEEK?! I can hardly wait to see.

Devouring Books: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Joan Didion is one of those writers who I'd heard a lot about (although I don't know where from), but who I had never actually read (see also: Alice Munro, Charles Bukowski, Zadie Smith, I could go on but you don't want me to...) I have had a couple of her books for a while now, so obviously I thought it would be a good idea to read her memoir of grief over her husband's death while I'm in a fairly fragile state about death and, you know, all sad things.

It wasn't really a good idea. But read it I did, and I actually got a lot out of it. There are no inspiring words about meaningful lives lived, or 'oh wells' of surviving, but instead, a lot of the absolute what-the-fuckery of grieving. The crazy thinking, the running through events over and over and over again in your brain, trying to see how they could have been different, how you could have made them different, and the wilful forgetting that, actually, they won't need their stuff anymore because they're not coming back. It's honest, and raw, and beautiful and devastating, and so different from a typical grief memoir that I can't even deal with it.

So. I took this as my train read one day because it's a pretty light book and I wanted to read some Didion. That first time, I cried a little bit on the train. The next time I read it, also on the train, I cried a little bit more. And repeat for the next couple of times I read it. It got easier as it went on, but it still kind of hurt to read, and it's the weirdest thing, because The Year of Magical Thinking manages to be both an intensely personal memoir about exactly how Didion felt after her husband died, and to say something more universal about death and how it affects us. I still don't know exactly how that happens, but somehow it does, unless, of course, my experience of grief has been similar to Didion's, and no one else has had such an experience, which, you know, I doubt.

I don't really have much more to say about this book, because, I mean, memoir about grief, you get the gist. I don't know if I'd recommend reading it soon after the death of someone you loved, but you know if it's the kind of thing you're going to find useful, and I for one find the majority of my camaraderie in books. Reading is kind of how I work things out, so this was sort of a perfect timing read for me, crying on the train aside. Most of all, it's made me want to read all of the Didion, because I'd really like to read things about her that won't have me crying on public transport, and because she's really a kind of awesome writer.

And, because this wasn't really a review, some quotes for you:
"In both England and the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was 'to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had ever happened.'"

"In each of those long illnesses the possibility of death had been in the picture... Yet having seen the picture in no way deflected, when it came, the swift empty loss of the actual event. It was still black and white. Each of them had been in the last instant alive, and then dead."

"We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

"We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know."

"I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for many people, if indeed I had never breathed."

I feel like we didn't get masses of action in this part of Bleak House, but we got some extra connectiony stuff that was worth knowing- Mrs Smallweed was Krook's sister! Esther knows who her mum is now! Spontaneous combustion is apparently real!

Because it's Monday evening (Monday evening! I'm writing this on Monday evening!!) thought isn't really a thing that's happening, so YOU'RE GETTING THE BULLET POINTS. You're totally welcome.

• The Smallweeds annoy me by their general presence, but it did make me laugh when Mr Smallweed couldn't find anything to throw at the Mrs, so he threw Judy. I mean, poor Judy and all, but still. LOL AMIRIGHT?
• I think I kind of skimmed over the Bagnets last week when I was reading, but you all seemed to love them, so when they came back I was like 'ok, pay attention, me' and then I found them totally charming. I love how Mr Bagnet lets Mrs Bagnet do his scolding, and also this, which is weirdly romantic: "I'll tell you what. The old girl's weight- is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight-in any metal- for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is far more precious- than the preciousest metal. And she's all metal!"

• Dickens does an amazing job of describing what it's like being ill. I mean, thankfully I've never been as ill, or for as long as Esther (touch wood) but even if you're ill for, say, a week, it's perfect and accurate and just yes: "the usual tenor of my life became like an old remembrance."
• "I could read the letters that my dear wrote to me every morning and evening, and could put them to my lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her." HOW INCREDIBLY STRAIGHT OF YOU, ESTHER. Can Esther and Ada just get it together, please?
• It makes me so sad when Esther's like 'its a good job Woodcourt and I never got it together, cause I'd have to break up with him because of my gross face now." I just... You are more than your fucking face, Esther! Have some self-esteem, fucks sake.

• "O how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of and pressing me to her faithful heart."

• Fucking Richard needs to sort himself out. Now. I have accidentally discovered what happens to Richard when I was trying to find something else out (I may or may not have googled "Are Esther and Ada in Bleak House totally gay?") and I can't say it surprises me, BUT it makes every time he's around SO FRUSTRATING. Just ARGH, focus on something else!
• I honestly didn't understand a word of Esther and Guppy's conversation... Something something she has to forget he proposed or something? Yeah, that sort of went over my head, which I think was the point?

To summarise: More lesbian shenanigans, women aren't any more progressive about body image now than they were in the Victorian times, and I am heartbroken that Lady Dedlock doesn't want to see Esther anymore. I hope this will be remedied by the end of the book, for I want Esther to have her mummy. Which is totally reasonable.

A Really Quick Monday Mundries

Guys! Sunday and Monday morning seem to have gotten away from me just a little bit, and now I have twelve minutes before I have to leave for work. Seems like the perfect time for tiny weeny updates about stuff:

Right Now, I Am:

Listening to: A loooot of Simon and Garfunkel, which makes a change from the usual loooot of Joni Mitchell I've been listening to. But not that much of a change. Damn I miss the sixties.

Reading: I've been working my way through Bleak House (I'm actually going to write my post tonight! Ready for tomorrow! This has not yet happened for this readalong) and also through The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which is taking a lot of emotional strength to read. Which I don't really have. So I've been crying at it, is what I'm saying.

Eating: (this isn't right right now, right?) I always eat much hummus so lunch is a vaguely healthy hummus and salad sandwich, and a quinoa salad which I actually thought ahead and made last night. Might be getting used to this taking care of myself thing...

Watching: BREAKING BAD. So much Breaking Bad. It's probably a good thing I have a job and things to do, otherwise I'd probably be watching it exclusively. On Friday night, I watched 5 episodes, which meant staying up til past two, which, combined with waking up at 8am the next day (I don't know why...) was not a good idea. Also worth noting: My housemate isn't allowed to watch Breaking Bad with me again because he called Skyler a bitch and I can't deal.
Also watching: My Mad Fat Diary (so amazing), The Great British Sewing Bee, and Girls. I'm pretty happy with TV at the moment, even though it means I'm reading hardly anything.

Making: A mess? Aw, no, well I made some brownies last week (gluten free! So rich. Get the recipe off Bex) and just this morning I made a lasagne for my dinner. I haven't sewed or knitted anything for so long, though, need to get on that.

Planning: To sort my life out. Looking for a new job, re-starting hobbies, all that good stuff. Also planning around times where I could possibly be watching Breaking Bad instead of doing other stuff.

Feeling: Up and down, really. Fairly down yesterday, because Sundays are still hard (I cried at James Bond, so that was a new low), but today, not so bad. Still just taking each day as it emotionally comes.

Loving: TiVo, being back in my old-new room, and the promising emergence of spring. Come on spring, you can do it!

Wanting: A few impossible things, and an iPad-mini. Not long until my birthday!

Thinking: About how to fit more reading into my days. Main thoughts: the day being longer. Which is happening all the time!

Looking forward to: Spring (clearly), tonight's lasagne, and having a new baby in the family (not mine. My cousin's. But yay!)

What have you been doing, lovely ones? Would you like to come over and share my lasagne? <-- Totally not a euphemism. Tell me all.

Devouring Stephen King: Dreamcatcher

"And oh man, why was the world so hard? Why were there so many spokes hungry for your fingers, so many gears eager to grab for your guts?"

The first time I read Dreamcatcher many many moons ago*, I haaaaated it. I don't know if I hated it to the extent that I ended up hating it in the following years, when the memory of the plot and characters and everything had faded so that all I could remember was a feeling of hatred towards the book, which intensified and got nice and hatey, but you know. I definitely hated it.

You could say, then, that I was dreading reading it again. Or, not so much dreading as, wanting to either avoid it forever or read it as quickly as possible so it was DONE. And I didn't have to read it, you know, ever again. However. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, if only because I had a thing where, in my state of misery, I really wanted some comforting reading, and apparently, having read 40-odd of his books makes Stephen King comforting rather than terrifying. Just the way he intended it, I'm sure.

Ahem.

And yet. Just because I didn't hate this book as much as I thought, doesn't mean I'm going to be really nice about it. Because I just can't. Admittedly, there are things I appreciate now more than I did when I first read it (where I appreciated nothing), and there are some really King-ian elements that I want to talk about, but on the whole... No. This is a novel based around an invading alien species who spread through shit-weasels. What this boils down to, really, is SO MUCH description of farts and shitting and burping and oh god, the bodily functions, I just cannot.

It's not that I'm being a prude! It's just that, the constant description of bodily functions takes what should be a terrifying situation (vaguely antagonistic alien invaders) and makes it ridiculous.** There comes a point in one's life when they're reading Dreamcatcher when you have to say no. No more. I can't read about anymore farts and stuff. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME, STEPHEN?

And it's not just that. The major problem Dreamcatcher has, I think, is that there's very little story for the number of pages you have to read. I mean, there are kind of two narratives that split into three somewhere in the second half of the book, but the first half is pretty much just figuring out how they got to this point, and the second half is pretty much just a big chase scene. It's difficult to explain how many fewer pages there could be unless you've read it, but trust me, there could be a LOT fewer pages.

But. There are some redeeming features of this book. Firstly, I find it interesting that King wrote this not too long after he was hit by a car, after which he had an excruciating recovery, because there are so many descriptions of pain and its effects on the mind and all that other good stuff. That was an interesting little glimpse into the interesting part of the King psyche, the other parts, I assume, being mostly interested in farts and shit and stuff.

And then. The part that really makes it worth reading, the part that, in general, is the best part of a Stephen King book, is the friendship part. Even though it's kind of shoddily done, even though deaths aren't properly grieved at any point and friends seem to be sacrificed willy-nilly, the parts where King describes the main group as children are the parts where Dreamcatcher comes anywhere close to his usual magic. There's something Stephen King does with childhood friendships that I would match against anyone who's done the same thing, probably ever, and that's the saving grace here.

But it's not really enough. For me, there's too much army crap, too much blah blah blah and not enough story, and far, far too many shit weasels.*** It's troubling to me that people could read this without an extensive King background and think 'fuuuck, this dude sucks', and it's troubling to me that THIS is what he came up with after he nearly died. Not something incredibly profound (even though it tries to be at times). Shit and farts and burps. I just can't, really, in the end. 

*Which I say because, you know, I can't remember when I read it.
**I would say hilarious, but it's not even funny toilet humour.
***Note: ONE is too many.

"The only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man."

SO MUCH to talk about in this section, so little time.* SO MUCH SCANDAL AND OTHER GENERAL SHOCKING THINGS, cue leftover WILKIE readalong gif:

 Ok, the way I sees it, there are three majorly important things to talk about from this section:

1. Lady Dedlock and her 'secret': Ok, I'm feeling totally smug about this one because GASP, Lady Dedlock is Esther's mother? WHO KNEW? Oh yeah, that was ME. Vindication feels so good. I hate that Guppy is seemingly going to blackmail her (is he, like, going to say that he'll reveal her as Esther's mother unless she makes Esther marry him? Cause how is that going to work?) and that's how we found out, but I love being right. I actually fist pumped when I read that, so yeah.
2. This weird disease: So poor, poor Jo caught some kind of strange illness, then Charley (oh! Charley. God bless Mr. Jarndyce and his wonderfulness) caught it and it's apparently going to disfigure her, and then Esther caught it and it made her blind? WHAT IS THIS, THIS IS NOT A REAL ILLNESS.** I'm assuming Esther is going to pull through the blindness because she's writing a book but who knows, maybe she's just dictating it to someone.
3. Mr. Krook spontaneously combusted: But seriously, what am I even reading?! What is this?! I think this is important, not to the plot in any way, but in knowing that Dickens was a great believer in spontaneous combustion TO THE EXTENT that he included it in his book to make a point. And I can't overstate how gross I found the whole 'the air smells fatty' thing that preceded it, because ewwwww.

And yes, it is true that these are all events from the parts of the novel I have read today, but that doesn't make them any less important. Let us also discuss the fact that, for a moment there, when she was talking about Mr. Woodcourt's mother, I thought Esther might be straight, but then she went and shattered that illusion with sentiments like this:

"I wrote her a long letter, saying that she made me anxious and unhappy, and imploring her, as she loved me, and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that, she came beneath the window, even oftener than she had come to the door; and, if I had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love it then." 

If anyone marries at the end of this book but Esther and Ada, I'm going to be so annoyed...

Right, what else is there? I think I might be in love with Mrs Snagsby just because she's an incredibly ridiculous person ('my husband is doing something I don't know about. THAT PEASANT BOY MUST BE HIS SON!' and so on), I think Hortense might be a little bit gay for Esther: "I will serve you well. You don't know how well!", and I think Mrs Jellyby needs to be slapped just a tiny bit. Or at least to go back in time and be sterilised before she had any children. WHY DOESN'T SHE CARE HER DAUGHTER IS GETTING MARRIED, YOU CAN CARE ABOUT MORE THAN ONE THING AT ONCE OMG.

Important questions:

• Will Esther ever regain her sight?
• Will Lady Dedlock ever not be bored by everything?
• What exactly is the difference between Mr Tulkinghorn and Mr Turveydrop and why do they confuse me so much?
• Will Mr Bucket come back, because I liked him and the diamond brooch he apparently wears?
• Will I even finish the chapters before Tuesday evening?

Only time will tell, dear ones!

 

*because I want to watch some Breaking Bad and other general non-Dickens things and it's already practically 10pm.
**Ok, apparently it's smallpox? Which sounds pretty nasty, glad I don't have that one. Yeah.