a wolf angel is not a good angel

When you have something about “Montreal” in the show, consider doing what we call “research” on this city.

To wit:

• teens don’t really go to a place where the drinking age is *higher* to get drunk — I mean, sure, people go to NYC, but it’s not to get drunk, which you can essentially do once you’re 14 here;
• you cannot get into McGill straight out of high school in Quebec. Will. Not. Happen;
• in any case, it’s *really easy* to get in, as a Quebec resident: people aren’t impressed that you got accepted there;
• and furthermore, there’s no such thing as early admission there;
• MUN-treal, not MAWN-treal. MUN MUN MUN.

I didn’t *mean* to go to the library ( . . . today, I did plan to go tomorrow), but there I was, a block away, and there was a book on hold, and sure I didn’t have the books I wanted to return but . . .

The upshot: I just took out 8 books, bringing my current total out to 25. 2 are books on tape, which I have to finish copying to the computer. 4 I have already read, and 1 is a computer book, so I only have 18 books to read. Which is fine, but I never want to read the ones that are due *first*.

The knowledge that my mother is coming over — unlike any friends or even houseguests — inspires me to do a really (comparatively) thorough job cleaning up. This is because my idea of pretty much ok is her idea of barely livable, mostly due to my aversion to floor washing. (Planned: a swiffer purchase, along with Becky Hirta’s trick.)

Actually, my place was getting pretty bad, and I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do anything about it (desperation rears its mighty head). I know there is some connection between depression and lack of cleanliness, but I am never clear which direction the causal links go. (Probably both.)

The problem is, Canada Post is loathe to update its tracking, so often I’ll not find out anything about a package — other than that it has shipped — until after it has been delivered. But I have books! Books coming soon! Free books! And sure, I have a pile of a dozen library books to read. (I just finished On Beauty, which left me whateverish; I have just started Until I Find You.) And I have some books-I-own to read, too, and no upcoming vacation to save these for.

Amusingly, other than 2 books (a book by an author I liked, magical realism in Jewish Iran — I do not remember the title or the author; a science fiction book — I think it’s called Spin), I keep forgetting what I ordered. It’s like a surprise gift! So surprising I do not know when it will arrive! (It will arrive at my parents’ house, though, because for some reason they make me trek out to nowhere to pick up mail, and my doorbell continues to not be.)

I still cannot find one of the library books I am missing.

Is your blogging persona more serious than your real life persona?
Yes, absolutely. (At least — I think it is? I don’t know now. Ack!)

Do you think that your blog could ruin your career?
No, but I think it’s a risk I don’t want to take. Employers prefer to hire saner people, on average, I think.

Do you use a pseudonym out of fear?
Not really. Employability wasn’t my main concern, being randomly googled by acquaintances was. (Many people in my field blog, but it’s usually about work and work-like issues.)

What is the biggest drawback to writing pseudonymously?
Sometimes I feel somewhat silly signing something wolfa or wolfangel. Wolfangel always seems so girly, though the number of people who’ve called me “he” suggests that other people don’t find it girly.

Has anyone stumbled on your blog and found it accidentally?
Yup. Sometimes I have admitted it, sometimes I have avoided it (I do not think that person still reads, but am not sure). These are the I-think-it’s-maybe-you people — there are people who knew absolutely, too.

Have you outed yourself to any other bloggers?
Yup. Based on memes here, you can figure out my (very common) first name. But I’ve given my full name to lots of people, addresses to some (postcards!), and met a few others (I like meeting people). This is made easier by my total openness about where I live.

Has your blog allowed you to experiment with writing?
Yes. And in a way, it’s allowed me to come back to it, via a backdoor. The “blogs” I had before this — on opendiary, when it first opened, which I still have saved, and which are sort of pretentious — were fairly quickly discarded. This is coming on three years now. I’m not sure if that’s an experiment — I don’t really do much experimenting in writing styles or forms. But it’s practice, though I am not practicing for anything more than further blogging.

Why do you use a pseudonym?
To avoid the google factor. I don’t, as other people have mentioned, particularly care if someone who blogs and read blogs, finds me and recognises me. And realistically, people who knew me a while ago wouldn’t recognise me from my blog unless we interacted mostly via writing. (I’ve been recognised by my writing style, amazingly enough, though not on this blog.) But I don’t want bored ex-classmates and coworkers to know quite this much about me. And by now I am used to it, and it’s nice to give myself a little distance from myself.

jo(e) made this one up!

More discussions about moms, and where they do and should work, and what is and isn’t feminist, from Dooce. I have no stake here: I don’t have kids, though I might, one day — one never knows — and I know that, if I had the entirely free choice, I wouldn’t work, not fulltime. (No choices are entirely free, obviously, and I don’t in any way have this choice anyhow.)

But she asks: what did your mother do? Did your mother stay at home? Did she work? And how did you feel about what she did? If you could change anything about what she did what would that be?

My mother worked until we got my sister, then she stayed at home for a while, worked again, stayed at home. She now works — from home — and loves her job. (She has generally enjoyed her jobs, as has my father.) Apparently when she decided to stay at home when my sister was a baby and I was almost 5, I told my carpool, very excited, that my mother would be at home all the time. I do not remember this, it’s just a story I was told.

What I do remember is loving my babysitters so very much. (Except a babysitter I had later, who was verbally and — though I don’t remember this — physically abusive. I actually have an amusing-ish story about this. Well, amusing to me, but I have bad taste.) I remember being *so excited* when I got to visit my mother’s office.

And now — both my parents say they wouldn’t stop working their current jobs if they won a huge lottery. This is what I’d hope for: that you have the chance to do something you really love.

So I ran across this page. And — well — what *is* it?

So I was looking up some things people search for — people search for *really weird shit*, weirder by many orders of magnitude than the periodic searches that led to this blog posts reveal.

But I was looking up one which was less weird, and probably came after some tv show described it: scurvy. And see, I know why med students are all hypochondriacs, because I was sitting there horrified at the idea — nay, the *fact* — that I must have scurvy.

I have had, for quite some time, all the needed ingredients to make my beloved apple-cheese quiche.[1] But I have been afraid, so afraid. But for the first time in I cannot recall how long, I made a pie crust that didn’t tear as I tried to roll it out, or flake itself into flakey oblivion. (Tasty oblivion — the pie was always edible after, but the crust was so sad.

No more! I made a pie crust, and it was *perfect*. The curse — whatever the curse was, who’d curse someone’s ability to make pie crust? Isn’t that a weirdly specific and not particularly evil curse? Well, in any case — the curse is lifted! It is quiche day today!

[1] Well, not flour, oddly.

This morning, I could not flush a tampon. Oh no! I need my toilet to be able to flush properly. But it was flushing fine — lots of water moving, toilet paper went down, just not this tampon. I tried a lot of times, because water conservation is nothing when I have plumbing issues, and it never worked. I finally fished the tampon out — this is unpleasant, but primarily because it’s winter and the water in the toilet is just barely melted. Then I tossed in another — unused, this time — tampon. It flushed! So did another one, later.

I cannot figure out what was wrong with that first tampon. But tomorrow is garbage day, so it is gone *anyhow*. Goodbye, sucker.