It’s freezing! What makes the bone-chilling damp worse is that I Skyped with friend Lynn in Montpellier yesterday; it’s 30 degrees in the south of France, she said, she’s wearing little tops and going to the beach. Ah well – this is the price we pay for living in this fine country. As I’ve always said, if the Canadian climate were better, we’d be overrun. Only the brave survive here, even in early October.
Bruce and I had an impassioned discussion about the New Yorker today, as he was installing my new external hard drive which is named MacSwell, and I was still going through files and throwing out 35-year old bits of paper. I told him I’m so swamped by the New Yorker that I’m considering letting my subscription lapse. I adore this magazine, but there it is, once a week, shouting, “Read me, read me!” while seventeen back issues, eight other magazines, three newspapers, twenty-two backed up internet sites and twelve books also shout.
“What is wrong with our lives that we don’t have time to read the New Yorker?” cried Bruce.
Time time time. Where does it go? Wednesday was Carol’s class at the Y; a week had gone since the last class, but it seemed like a day at most. Time is the greatest luxury, it seems, at this stage of life.
Someone has created a four cornered box to show our life choices, with, at each corner, Work, Family, Health, Friends. If you want “success,” it posits, you can have three of the four, but not all of them. If you want “real success” – fame, I guess, or wealth – you need to give up two of the four. And I know that I have put my family and friends first and spend time at the Y at the expense of my work, whereas others have kept family and work at the expense of health and friends. Is this a particularly Toronto/big city pattern? In small towns, are the choices as stark?
And what about Angelina and Brad, or Stephen Lewis and Michele Landsberg, who seem to have all four? Is this because they are cyborgs? No, come to think about it, we don’t really know about their health …
All I know is that I feel myself running, running on the spot with my lists clutched in my hand, as if I’m on a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction. This is crazy. Stop and breathe, girl. Bruce is having a nap right now. That sounds like a good idea.
Tonight some television, for once. A new Law and Order at 8, and later, the Flashpoint episode which may feature my kitchen. TV is the greatest time-waster of all, but sometimes it’s a luxurious necessity, and a new Law and Order, especially when it’s cold and dark outside, is definitely one of those times.
