"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje

I have not read The English Patient, but it should arrive in a couple of days, so I guess I'll just have to be patient (wah-wah). My mother, however, in a wonderful act of literary enablement purchased two books for me about a month ago.

Studio is over. I have one final exam. Let the reading begin!!!!!

Yesterday (Tuesday, Nov. 29), I had a migraine, most likely caused by a serious lack of quality sleep prior to my final project submission in studio and the sudden draining of adrenaline from my system, ditto. I stayed in bed all day and subsisted on gluten-free blueberry waffles and Greek yogurt and hot chocolate.

And I read, Dear Reader! Oh! How I read!

I read Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for weeks, beckoning me with its come-hither book-jacket, seducing me with the promise of what lay hidden beneath said book-jacket, and occasionally falling to the floor in a pathetic bid for attention. After playing hard to get, I finally succumbed to its promises, yesterday.

And promptly read the whole thing.

As expected from a Booker Prize winner, The Cat's Table is beautifully written and (I'm getting ready to use one of my most over-used words, here) compelling. I couldn't put it down. It is, in fact, the reason I took a bath, yesterday, in lieu of a shower: it's difficult to read in the shower, but oh so easy in the bathtub.

I sacrificed hair hygiene for a book! That is not a common occurrence.

The story follows a young boy (Michael) and two other boys who are traveling alone from present-day Sri Lanka to England. They get into all sorts of trouble, on board, and are charmed by the other passengers assigned to sit at the dinner table of least prominence in the dining hall, also know as the Cat's Table.

Over the course of the journey, the reader discovers that the people on board are not what they appear to be: the lonely old (not so old) spinster is most likely an agent for MI5, and the kindly botanist who has a crush on Michael's cousin smokes pot in the hold of the ship. There is a prisoner, on board, who the boys observe secretly when he comes out from the hold at night for his daily walk above-deck, dressed in leg-irons and manacles to prevent the criminal from escaping.

The effects of the journey stay with Michael, later in life, and the story is told from his vantage point as a grown man with one failed marriage behind him, who still clings to the idealized person of his older female cousin, Emily, who perhaps had the greatest secret of everyone on board.

I recommend it. Highly.

On the strength of its impression on me, I even ordered The English Patient (also written by Ondaatje, and winner of the Booker Prize). It should be here in a couple of days, by which point I'll have worked my way through Eugenides' The Marriage Plot, which I'm also enjoying. I'll give a review of it, after it's finished.

Up All Night

Apparently, "Up All Night" is the name of a song by the singularly-named Drake, which doesn't quite have the same ring to it as Cher, or Madonna, or... um... Donovan.

You've probably never heard of Donovan, because he's old school. Sigh...

I've been up all night because my circadian rhythms are decidedly arrhythmic, and I couldn't go to sleep. Fortunately, I had a bit of creative writing to do, so that kept me company. Now, I just have to stay awake until about 9:00 pm tonight so I'll be able to get a good rest in before I start work tomorrow.

TOMORROW.

Tomorrow I will be employed again.

Kind of trips me out, to tell you the truth. I've spent almost 11 months out of the last 3 years in some unemployed state or another, and that's not counting the two months of unpaid leave I took for medical reasons.

And here I was all worried about feeling poor when I go to grad school. Pshaw. I've got this whole ohmyGodI'mpoormom&dadcanIhavesomemoney? thing down pat.

But Ms. StrainedConsciousness, you protest, about what were you writing?

Look at you with your correct sentence structure! No ending sentences with a preposition for you! I'm so proud!

But I digress.

I am writing about, um, fellas.

What sort of fellas? you respectfully inquire.

Um, ones I've dated. And some I haven't. But mostly ones I have.

(around the globe, my ex-boyfriends feel a chill wind on their neck and a sudden feeling of inexplicable panic, and they wonder why).

It all started with a creative writing assignment. I wrote about a middle-aged man (who I did not date) that I met at a restaurant, and we happened to be going to the same movie. We'd had a nice conversation apres dinner, so we sat together at the movie.

We saw Lost in Translation, which was kind of prophetic, because afterward, when he gave me his business card, I couldn't figure out if his interest was platonic, or if he had other intentions.

The creative writing assignment only had one dictate: Evoke a mood of your choosing.

I evoked extreme discomfort and uncertainty, and according to my classmates, I hit the nail on the head.

The story got me thinking about other fellas I could write about. (stupid end-of-sentence preposition) Just recently, I had a spate of creativity, and I've been hard at it for the past few weeks.

Each story involves at least one man who's left some sort of imprint on my life - ex-boyfriends, that guy I had to file a sexual harassment complaint against, etc... - and a few of the stories have multiple guys in them, either because one led to another, or because my experiences with them coincided or had an effect on how I viewed the other/s.

My mom thinks I should try to have them published, and I've thought about it. But then, do I really want my family and all my friends to know everything about my various relationships through the years?

That remains to be decided...

Time to Kill

I am not working, at present. Seeing as I am plagued almost daily by migraines, it's pretty much impossible for me to work. I haven't lost my job, though, and I will get back to the office as soon as I am well again (or, as well as I ever will be). Granted, I'll be hourly when I return, but them's the breaks, and you can't really blame them for changing the terms of my employment, seeing as I require so many days off for medical leave.

So for now, I'm working on my portfolio (always good to keep it updated) and writing.

But Ms. Strainedconsciousness, you haven't been writing much, you chide.

I've been writing stories, Dear Reader, ones that have been locked in my addled brain for years, and that only now have the chance to flow out onto paper (and then into the computer).

Several years ago - 20, in fact - I came up with a ghost of an idea for a fairy tale of sorts. Later, influenced by reading The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, I refined my ideas, and they started taking shape more fully.

A month ago, I made a first pass at the story, but it had ventured too far from its starting point, from that original idea, and so I scrapped it and started over, stowing the legal padful of scribbles away so some of the ideas wouldn't be lost.

On my second attempt, I blazed through the story in a handful of days, filling a legal pad and part of a spiral notebook, then jumping onto printer paper because I'd left my writing at my apartment and couldn't get to it. Now, all of those pages are typed and printed out, to be revised and added to in copious amounts.

There are additional events and places still to be visited, and more trials and tribulations to be overcome by my character, but we'll get there eventually. I typically launch into writing and then, just as quickly, stop, bored or frustrated because I've worked my character into a situation that she needn't be in. Instead of going back, culling the wheat from the chaff, I just abandon the whole thing.

My invalid author status has a few significant precedents throughout history: Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With the Wind after either an illness or a car wreck, I can't rightly remember. And it's no wonder, really, because lying supine or on my side - the only positions in which my head doesn't pound like a kettle drum - are two of the best possible positions for writing. And I've already got an idea - another long-gestating one - in my head for another story, one I have had for a long time, but couldn't come up with an ending to.

I have an ending, and once I've finished with my current story, I'll start at the beginning of the next one.

At least I'm not bored out of my mind!

All Operators are Busy

At least, I'm busy.

I woke up at 8:00 a.m., startling Major Tom, who stared at me groggily and grumbled at me for waking him up (he's a grumpy old man). I dressed, and drove to Dallas, swinging by Starbucks for a cup of coffee and an apple fritter en route. And I filled up my car with gas. And got it washed.

All before 9:30 a.m., baby. That's right: I'm productive!

I got to my apartment and began straightening up, putting things away. I ironed some pants (I loathe this chore, above all others), reupholstered an ottoman, the usual.

Yup, I now have an ottoman - okay, it's a repurposed vanity stool - that was once upholstered in goldenrod cotton damask, and is now covered in lovely saffron silk. It is currently in my living room, where it holds a metal tray, upon which I can rest a drink when I'm lying on the sofa, watching a movie.

I picked up my lampshades - the ones my mother bought me for my birthday - and squealed with delight when I removed their cellophane wrappers.

The carpet cleaning guys returned my rug, unrolled it, and put my furniture back where it belongs. I then put my lamps on their beautiful chinoiserie tables, with their pretty new lampshades, and oohed and aahed at the results. And decided I need to rehang some pictures, but that can wait until my mother returns from her vacation.

I washed clothes. I washed miniscule loads of clothes. As in, two pairs of jeans, or the equivalent of two pairs of jeans in underwear and T-shirts.

Guess what? There's something wrong with my washing machine. It is still jumping and rotating like a teeny-bopper at a sock-hop, so I emailed my apartment complex about it. And asked them to please tack my carpet back down in my bedroom and replace the porch lightbulb, while they're at it.

I updated my apartment inventory (the spreadsheet of everything I own) and documented the contents of my humble abode with a camera, then printed out the pictures and put them in my firesafe.

And then, I went shopping.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Ms. Strainedconsciousness, and my oh-so-generous mother left me a little cash gift tucked inside a Halloween card before she hightailed it to Santa Fe for her birthday. The card read "Do something fun!"

There hasn't been enough fun for me, lately.

So I went to Northpark and bought a couple of shirts - within the defined color spectrum - and some new jewelry. The shirts set me back $20 each, and the jewelry was $45 for both a necklace and a cocktail ring.

The cocktail ring has an enormous cognac-colored gemstone, and it will look ravishing with my steel-toed boots.

Ha. Haha.

I've discovered that, in addition to not being able to carry heavy purses, wearing heavy necklaces gives me a headache. So I bought a lightweight necklace in matte gold (I don't look all that great in super shiny gold).

I filed some more paperwork. I paid my rent. I put stuff away.

I calculated the taxes I will either owe or be refunded, depending on how the IRS calculator works. I'll either owe $415, or get back $2,000. I'm hoping it's the latter. I can't tell if their calculator defines "federal income tax" as including the social security and medicare taxes, or if it's just the federal income tax. I guess I'll find out in January.

I was productive. It felt good to be productive.

What To Do? What To Do?

In an amazing show of generosity, Oldsmobile decided to grant everyone mid-year bonuses. In other words, this Friday, I get two paychecks.

Nice.

Part of that bonus will, of course, go towards the purchase of a new pair of comfortable work boots, cost be - um - dratted, I need more comfortable footwear for the job site. Yes, dratted.

The rest of that bonus will go towards... I don't know. I'll find out tomorrow.

Tomorrow, a.k.a. Thursday - which might be "today" for some readers, if anyone is reading this blog these days - I go find out if I'll need yet another exciting surgical procedure in yet another effort to stop pain.

Yay, pain! I'm not going to tell you what kind of pain, or where it is, or any of that exciting business, because I don't like to go into specifics, but we'll just say that the pain is painful, okay? And it might be expensive.

Sure, my employer pays all of our deductible for us (did I mention Oldsmobile is incredibly generous?), but it could still end up costing me a pretty penny out of pocket.

Until I find out if I'm going to have to have surgery, I'm not going to spend any of the bonus, aside from on a new pair of more comfortable boots.

But I will, however, be dreaming of the end tables and possibly the lamps that part of that bonus could purchase. Most of it will go into savings. Ms. StrainedConsciousness is trying to be pragmatic. And is speaking in the third person, which she hears helps with pragmatism.