a wolf angel is not a good angel

I know I should be sympathetic and all, but:

Lyndsey graduated from college in 2000 with no debt whatsoever. But a funny thing happened on the way to adulthood.

Despite an enviable salary of $43,000 a year and paying only $600 a month in rent for the Arlington, Va., house she shares with three roommates, she’s now $12,000 in the hole and not quite sure how she got there. She doesn’t have a car, a mortgage, a child or even a pet to cut into her cash flow.

[ . . . ]

Lyndsey spent $442 for the week — and $250 of it was spent on meals and “hanging out with my girlfriends”. When she did some more math on the situation, she realized that a whopping $1,000 a month was going to eating out and hanging out.

I mean, with a similar salary I’m spending in a month what she spends in a week, and feeling guilty when I go out for lunch twice in a week, especially if I also go out for dinner once (I don’t know: maybe I should feel guilty, maybe I do overspend). My girlfriends don’t charge me to hang out with them, so I’m saving money there, too.

Walking around in a mall today I felt an odd, very intense memory of quite how sad I was in grad school, quite how lonely.

And the other night, I was talking to a professor of mine from undergrad, and — well, a large bunch of the students in her department are blogging, now (though I think incautiously), and I was discussing blogging, in general, explaining it, carefully wording things to suggest that I would never — and then I said fuck it.

Actually, I *thought* fuck it. I *said* that I had a blog, and then answered all sorts of questions about it. It’s helped my writing. I get so many visitors a day; no, I don’t think it’s weird that a load of perfect strangers read all about my personal thoughts.

I also mentioned how much the post-academic community had helped when I was leaving my grad program. It was something she hadn’t thought about. I have given information about blogging that doesn’t sound like “crazy sad people with no lives”!

Now, I didn’t actually mention my blog’s name, but I also gave enough information about other blogs that I am linked to (I read blogs by professors! I read blogs by linguists!) that I’m sure that if she ever decided to look into bloggery, she’d find me. I also suspect she won’t, but it doesn’t matter all that much.

But it’s weird, because I feel almost protective of the community, or maybe it’s of myself. I don’t always feel that I quite fit in (so unusual for me).

I am trying to figure out what the connection between these two is, and I feel at a loss. Still I am convinced they are connected.

The biggest problem with reading a book you absolutely adored is that every other book ends up disappointing you.

The target webpage offers you a way to buy appliances . . . by colour. (I need something red for my kitchen! A quesadilla maker? A casserole? A coffee maker? Who cares, it just needs to be red.)

I was interrogated about where I was working in Montreal (”where are you working in Montreal?” “a search engine company[1]” “okay”). My friend was not (then again, her passport doesn’t have all sorts of work and student visa stamps for the US). Do my magic dollar store flowers no longer protect me from problems at the border, or is it the lack of shoulder-and-lap-cats?

[1] Well, no, but it’s so much easier to understand than the truth, and it verges on being sort of true.

So I’ve been trying to meet with someone since November. And finally, meeting = today.

Which is fine, except that I had told my grandmother I’d visit today, and I was warned (as it turns out, incorrectly) not to go after 9: I would have gotten there just at 9.

I phoned; I apologised. She’s very angry, though. She’d phoned my father twice today to tell him I was visiting her.

I even considered it — close to 9 would have meant I could have left fairly soon — but decided against it, probably because not going was pretty much what I wanted. Which means I need to visit next week (I’m going away this weekend, though I haven’t heard from the person I’m going away *with*, which is sort of incredibly worrying, because I really need to go, and probably I will just go on my own if need be, which is sort of sad, but).

I feel bad about it, a bit, but also not so bad about it, because I am that kind of a person. I will, however, make her something, which will be all sorts of good for me, because I need to do art more, and a reason to do art more.

Selfish? Perhaps. But in the end, she will see it as something for her, which is what matters, I guess.

I phoned my grandmother today; I’m going to visit her tomorrow. It’s important to my father. And I doubt I will regret kindness, however much I might resent it.

What do you say to an 80 year old woman half-crying on the phone, in the hall outside your office, pacing back and forth and watching the fluorescent lights reflect on the linoleum tiles, pausing briefly when the edge of the light matches up with the edge of the tile? I don’t know why it happened. All I can say to her is that life is unfair. If there is ever anything I have believed about life it is this: it is not fair.

She said she had no symptoms, the doctor caught it during a routine check of her lungs. I wonder if knowing now will give her more time or just time knowing that it’s running out.

I have time to fix things with her. And my guilt is this: I don’t want to be bothered to.

When I got home tonight, my father told me that they found something on my grandmother’s lung. Something on the lung she hasn’t had operations on (so they can’t remove that lung). Something which wasn’t there in November. Something fast-growing and bad.

Twelve months, or radiation which may or may not help, which may or may not extend things. I don’t really know. No one knows, not yet.

Do you want to visit her? No. Yes. No. Phone her, it would mean a lot to her. And I will. Later. Only there aren’t many laters left, now, and we didn’t even do anything for her 80th birthday because at the last minute, she threw a snit and cancelled it, and I was grateful to be allowed to sleep in, to avoid a restaurant incident with them, to avoid seeing them again. How often do I see them — four times a year? Six? And I still make those as short as possible, still try to spend as much time as possible with other people, my mother’s family, instead.

I know: they left eastern Europe in the late 30s, were in an internment camp in the UK, emigrated far away. I know. I should be more sympathetic to them. I can be more sympathetic to my other grandparents. I can stand my maternal grandparents disfavouring my sisters. I cannot stand my paternal grandparents disfavouring my mother.

And of course, the time. We spent so much more time with one side of the family. I see them more. They’re part of why I came back home. I just plain *like* them, and this makes me want to see them more — the healthy ones, the ones I already see every week.

My father is numb, he says. I — I’m all sorts of feelings, mixed up. Sad and guilty.

I’ve been listening to the CBC lately, where I am hearing a lot about northern rights, mining and oil, and devolution. Yukon is further in devolution than the NWT which is further than Nunavut — what? Yukon is way more developed than Nunavut.

As it turns out, devolution is a good thing.

A car with a little warning sticker on the bumper (but not, I believe, PZ Myers):

Squid on board.