A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #110 A Half-Century
Jesus, I’m old.
Dear Internet,
Yesterday (June 12) was my 50th birthday. The weekend was pretty chill: J (formerly TEH) and I went to our local bar on Saturday and drank. A lot. We then walked to a local place for ice cream sundaes. I went to a piercing place down the street and got my ear jewelry put back in and got a new piercing as well. Sunday was pretty relaxing with my usual telly watching with friends and then fancy steak dinner with J that evening.
A pretty good sliding into my 50th.
My Canadian niece and nephew sent me flowers today, my MIL gave me a gift card for books.
I bought
I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene: Actress, Writer, and Rebel Victorian by Helen Batten
A Curious History of Sex by Dr. Kate Lister (She runs @WhoresOfYore on Twitter)
I’m buying eBooks with my gift card, and I have about $20 left to spend. I’m having a hard time deciding which books to buy! I have three libraries to plunder for eBooks (GRPL, LFPL, and Up North) plus I’m on NetGalley which does advance reader’s copies of e and audio books. Getting my hands on something to read anytime of the day is not an issue. The books I’m buying are ones that are not available at one of my libraries (Lister, Batten) or I want to add it to my collection (Fitzgerald).
(If you feel like doing something for my birthday, I would appreciate it if you donated to Bluegrass Pug Rescue. It’s where we got Thursday and a few bucks can make the world of difference to a pug.)
Speaking of which, last summer I got this hair up my ass to read nothing but Fitzgerald or Hemingway and blog about it. I whipped up a blog and a Twitter account and then did…nothing. Oh, I started listening to the Nick Adams stories (“They were called conducting the conversation on a high plane.”) and I think finished The Sun Also Rises (not sure as I read a lot last summer) but never got beyond that. When he was younger, Hemingway’s family had a place near Petoskey which is a few hours from our cabin so there is a lot of Hemingway interest in the area and that put the impetus of the project in my head.
The hair has gotten more ticklish and what I’m going to do is swap from Hemingway and Fitzgerald to authors of the Lost Generation which ties in with what I’m reading now as I’m plowing through Woolf’s Orlando. Any who, ideas are a plenty and when I have more about this project, I’ll post here.
Another 50th birthday gift to myself was getting my first colonoscopy last week. That was not…fun though it is highly recommended. I was hopped up on laxatives, PowerAde, and magnesium citrate all day Sunday. After downing an entire bottle of Miralax mixed in with PowerAde at 18:00, I ventured into the bathroom about 19:30 and more or less didn’t leave until 2:00. What became an irony of ironies, our shower backed up (not from me) which turned out to be from the condo next door who have been having problems with their toilet that the backed-up into surrounding condos. J couldn’t keep a handle on. Every time the shop vac was filled with water, more came in. An emergency call to the plumber resulted in them working until 3:00 next door and keeping us awake. I had to wake up at 6:30 to get to the hospital and I was so tired that when they started to put me under, I went out like a light.
They found a polyp which was benign, so I don’t have to go through with this for another 7 – 10 years. Thank god.
I’m now on the “get a colonoscopy” train. If you’re old or getting older, you need to get one. And if you have breasts, get a mammogram, too!
Tomorrow (14th) is my meeting at Norton’s for the fat girl surgery. I’m nervous and anxious about the prospect as it’s a 2.5 – 3.5 hour long appointment where I meet everyone but the surgeon. I have very little on what to expect. Dearest friend, who is waiting for their surgery date, has a totally different experience than what I’m going through so I cannot even look to them for comparison. The co-worker that I like is interested in surgery, so I am to report back to them when I get back into work tomorrow.
I can say if anything r/wls has taught me is that the process can take months from start to finish and I’m feeling pretty confident I won’t end up with surgery until sometime early next year. I’m okay with this. I’m kicking myself, but gently, for not having completed the paperwork earlier this year and instead waiting until spring was around. However! I mentally wasn’t in a place to work on nearly 30 pages of the application while working on work projects and finishing up my classes at Oxford Cont Ed. Just zero brain power to deal with anything other than the aforementioned. If it’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of therapy, finally, is to not run myself ragged. It took over 30 years to learn it, but no one ever said I was a fast learner.
Things I Recently Wrote
If you read #97.5, you’ll recall I’ve ditched the We’ll Read Anything Once (Twice If We Like it) book review blog for a newsletter of the same name.
What I’m Reading
FINISH A FUCKING BOOK LISA BEFORE STARTING A NEW ONE.
The 7/12 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle An Agatha Christie-esque locked room mystery
Reputation Mean girls with Jane Austen thrown in
Dissolution Lawyer turned sleuth in Tudor England
The Historian A 700 page tomb of the retelling of Dracula
The Book of Life All Souls #3
Girls to the Front Oral history of Riot Grrrls
Black Loves Matter Essays that intersect on love, romance, and media through the lens of Black authors and creators
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl A contemporary retelling of Woolf’s Orlando
Orlando Virginia Woolf’s modern take on fluidity of gender and sex
The Widow Queen 10th C Poland. A princess used as a pawn to form alliances, but she has other plans
Go Ask Alice The unforgettable “true” story of a teenager spiraling out of control
Lonely Boy Tales from a Sex Pistol
Anger is an Energy John Lydon’s life uncensored
Wonderful Thing
While never really gone away, the Sex Pistols are having a moment thanks to the new semi-doc, Pistol on Hulu. Based on the book Lonely Boy by Steve Jones, Pistol looks at the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols starting with the formation of the band with Jones and Paul Cook and later adding in Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) and Sid Vicious. Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later), it’s a romp through mid-1970s Britain and the beginnings of punk where we’re introduced to the luminaries of the era including Chrissie Hynde, Siouxie Sioux, and Vivienne Westwood. I’m attempting to track down The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle but it has so far been impossible. Friend Will recalls seeing it on laser disc back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s at the record shop he used to frequent. I was able to procure the soundtrack (as well as Never Mind the Bullocks and another record) from discogs and those are winging their way to me.
In Sid and Nancy, there is a seen where Sid (Gary Oldman) is walking down a long flight of lighted stairs onto a stage where he belts out a punk version of My Way, the Sinatra tune. When I saw the movie, I decided then and there this was the song I wanted played at my funeral. Many years later, desperate to hear it again, I could only find the Oldman version. Little did I know, until now, Vicious’ My Way is all over YouTube from The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle as well as all over Spotify on the various compilations. Who knew!
(Rotten is having none of Pistol thank you very much.)
I’ve purchased Lonely Boy and checked out Anger is an Energy.
Without Sex Pistols there would be no Joy Division, Britpop, or Elbow.
Get vaccinated! Vote in the primaries! Boop a dog’s nose!
lisa x
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!