Elderly women, both dead and alive, are haunting me.

Not in a bad way, mind you. Lately I’ve been on about Margaret Atwood, one of my favourite authors—and women. So it makes sense, then, that last night I dreamed of her, and her partner, too, Graeme Gibson. And I’m sitting here now still feeling the camaraderie of our excellent friendship. Lots of laughing and books and warmth. It was a good dream.

On Thursday morning, Colin called me to let me know his grandmother Catherine, who was 91, had finally passed away. I say “finally” because she’d been waiting for it for a long time. She was really ready to go; she felt she’d lived all she could live and had lost interest in pretty much everything, so it was her time.

Obviously, however, it wasn’t, and she lingered for a couple more years. Till she was about 89, she was relatively healthy. She walked, she drove, she had her hair done every week or so, she always dressed impeccably. And she baked fruit pies every weekend, golden, flaky, and temptingly crusted with sugar crystals, which she would take to Colin’s parents’ house to go with coffee after church. She had a heavy Dutch accent, and a sense of humour that slayed me, but that others didn’t seem to notice much. Perhaps they didn’t get it, or thought she was being too blunt. But that was one of the things I enjoyed: she was a woman who unabashedly spoke her mind, as elderly people are wont to do (after all, a lifetime of being tactful becomes wholly tiresome), but what some didn’t notice was the sparkle in her eye. Every time I saw her I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and she me, and she would hold onto my hand as though I was the last person standing. I loved her.

Best of all, she called me Jeff. This was actually for a couple of years at least, out loud and in cards, and perhaps people didn’t really notice because of her accent, or they couldn’t tell because of her flowery writing (I’ve been labelled Steff, rather than Steph, quite often), but one day someone else did hear and corrected her. Maybe Colin’s mom. I never wanted to say anything because I thought it was hilarious and very endearing. I wanted her to have a nickname for me, whether she knew it was a nickname or not. We had a good laugh, when she was told, but I said to her later that she could call me whatever she wanted.

When she ended up in the hospital after breaking her hip and a few other bones in a fall, Colin and I went to visit her. Again, she held onto my hand the entire time we were there, her pale, papery, cool skin soft in my palm. She was very happy to see us but very tired and uninterested in most everything—except bacon and eggs. That’s what she really wanted. Bacon and eggs or “egg toast.” Otherwise, though, she really was finished, ready to give up the ghost then and there.

She wasn’t unhappy or depressing or threatening, she was simply calm and tired. How she felt rubbed off on me and I’ll never forget my realization that if she had closed her eyes and stopped living that very moment, I would have been all right with it. She was so calm and so ready. But it wasn’t her time, I guess. And besides, it wasn’t up to me to give her permission.

This Christmas, the family held an auction (just within the family) of Catherine’s things; the money went to something like World Vision. I chose two of her teacups. The thought of sipping tea from these them, with their history, was really appealing to me.

So this morning, as we wait to go to the visitation, I am sipping Earl Grey in one of her cups, toasting an amazing matriarch and the formidable legacy she left behind. Her family is really huge, and she’s been the head of it alone for nigh on thirty years.

As I drink my tea and since we heard the news, I can’t say I’ve been very sad. More than anything, I feel happy because I have only good memories of this woman. Knowing she’ll no longer be present in body has touched me briefly, but for the most part, I feel very much as though she’s still with us.

Rather than mourn her death, I feel like celebrating her life. Somehow, she seems more tangible to me now than ever.

I just finished watching a rather disappointing movie called Meet Bill, with Aaron Eckhart. Both C and I like Eckhart; he usually makes acting look effortless, but this film left something to be desired. Aside from the not-so-great acting, I’m mainly talking about the story, which left me wanting much more from it than I got.

In a nutshell, it’s yet another story about a man who finds himself in a mid-life slump, in a life that sucks. He’s overweight, hates his job and his boss, is walked all over, his wife cheats on him, ad nauseum. The thing is, I’m attracted to these kinds of stories because I want the character to find redemption, and when they do I find it inspiring.

At the same time, the whole thing made me want to cry because it’s all too real, isn’t it? I mean, it’s the story of too many people’s lives, or at least they live some variation of it. Which is what makes us empathize and ultimately want more from the story. We want the character to ditch his current situation and find direction. We want to see him or her grab the reigns and take charge. In the end, in this movie, he sort of does, but it’s a very gradual and sometimes frustratingly (for the viewer) backward path getting there.

Yet this is also not unlike most of our lives. We take steps forward and then back all the time. We grab hold of an idea but let go all too soon for fear of failure, success, because of discouragment, or because we discover it’s only a quick fix and not really what we want. I’ve wandered through my life up to now never being certain of what I wanted. I couldn’t decide in high school and I graduated from university after five years and a degree still not knowing where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. I’ve gone from quick fix to quick fix trying to figure that out. I’ve stared in the mirror at bad hair and a less than taut body. I’ve sat on the bed and cried in frustration because “my life sucks and everything is always the same.” This type of thing is all especially hard, I think, for a passionate person.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about death, and about wasting my life before death. I don’t want to pass my existence on this planet insignificantly stumbling along without direction, questioning what my purpose is, wondering where the time went and lamenting that it was filled with the same meaningless shite day after day after day, and waiting for some catalyst to change that may never arrive. I don’t want to be forty, sixty, eighty, wishing my life was different.

There are actually few things I would change, however, when I look back on my life and the choices I’ve made. I don’t regret going to university, even though it caused so much debt we were forced to go bankrupt. I don’t regret my first marriage, even though it caused terrific heartache and deep emotional damage I still struggle with, even ten years later. I don’t regret many of the jobs I’ve had, either, even though I’ve never been able to stick to one for longer than a couple of years. But I do regret one major thing, and that is letting a fear of success or commitment have an effect on many of the decisions I’ve mad, or, rather, on the ability to make decisions. I regret choosing (even unwittingly) to interpret events, things people have said, experiences I’ve had, in such a way that I became a victim of circumstance, and thus making my thinking cynical and negative.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far it’s that my life is really up to me. i know it. It’s probably the toughest thing to acknowledge when you think your life sucks, that it is the way it is because of how you think or the choices you’ve made. It makes you accountable. Everything is a mirror: what happens is a reflection of you. How you think, present yourself, and act determines how people react to you and how events play themselves out.

People may try, but no one can really tell me how to live my life. No one can make my choices for me. If happiness to me means finding purpose in this life and being in my element, and fulfilling that purpose every day as my occupation, then if I want to be happy I’ve got to discern the direction I need to take. Life is not shit and then you die. Happiness isn’t something that either happens to you or doesn’t. It’s something you decide to have.

Some people are happy regardless of their situation. I admire that, but it’s never been me for whatever reason. My definition of happiness is different. It’s being in control. It’s marrying what I’m passionate about with what I do every day. It’s being where my spirit feels at home. I’ve had a taste of that already: I’m happiest making others happy with things I love and know well, especially books and tea. The key is discovering how to create that my own way and make it my full-time occupation. I’m working on it.

I haven’t posted here in a while because of time constraints but also because what free time I have managed to squeeze out of a day (like blood from a stone, it seems!) has been put toward a new project.

While I plan on implementing Brett’s idea of making Biblio real online before I can do the bricks and mortar version, I had another idea as well. Perhaps the two will be melded one day, perhaps not.

Anyway, one late night, or early morning, I can’t remember, I created Bella’s Bookshelves. Bella is short for Isabelle, which some of you may know is my middle name. Steph’s Bookshelves just didn’t have the same ring.

I hope to update it more or less regularly, and I really hope it will force me to prioritize my reading, not only because I want to get back to reading as I used to but also, even mainly, in preparation for when I am the proud proprietress of Biblio. The place occupies my mind now constantly, and a notebook I started on it in 2007 is back out and being scribbled in, along with a copy of Become a Bookstore Owner, complete with CD. It’s a FabJob Guide, no less. And who doesn’t want a fab job? I have to say I was thrilled they chose this as one of their topics!

If you have a favourite bookshop or have a personal library you want to send a photo of, I’ll gladly post it!

I’ve come to love tea enough that I will no longer conveniently buy it from the grocery store; instead I’ll drive a bit farther or seek out the most attractive (judging by looks and atmosphere and clientele and the like) tearoom in town (as my sister and I did in Pateley Bridge). How far would you go for a cup of tea?

If there are any of you who would visit my shop once it’s open, I am happy to assure you that this will not be the path to Biblio. But how on earth to match that utter sense of relief and safety and thankfulness when my customers sit before their steaming cup of tea?

The other day I had an interview at a publishing company to see if I could freelance for them. (It was a fun interview and they really wanted me on board but couldn’t figure out in what capacity: they don’t have an editorial dept.)

This company also has an impressive three-floor open-concept art gallery (oooh, I could have spent thousands if I had had the cash, and that would have been on only two pieces! Check out Brian Lorimer, pieces “Missing You” and “Forest in Yellow,” although I also love “Alone in a Big World” and several others. Heck, I love all of them) and an ad agency. While there, I picked up one of the ad agency’s rack cards.

Seemingly unrelated, but not

I also just finished reading a critic’s review of Audrey Niffenegger’s recent novel Her Fearful Symmetry, in which the critic actually, appallingly, used a certain dreaded term for the book. If ever my novel was described as such, I’d likely cry, for what does it mean anymore, given out so unthinkingly, so unoriginally?

The two together

One of the things that most perplexes and vexes me is the repetitive use of certain terms and images in order to set something apart from whatever is similar. This in itself is utterly oxymoronic (how can you be unique if you’re the same as everyone else?) but no one seems to notice, or at least they seem unable to do anything about it. Particularly guilty, in my mind, are copywriters for advertising companies, and book critics.

If one more ad or design agency is declared fresh and innovative, in the sense that they are unlike any other, while displaying splashy images of fruit and water or fruit in water, particularly apples and citrus, and if one more book is dubbed a veritable tour de force, I shall truly have no choice but to believe that there are regretably no more original thoughts in this world and that we are doomed, doomed, to read or look at nothing new. The fact that this problem is rampant in mostly the creative fields completely boggles my mind.

I have a weird and wonderful sense of history repeating itself, or something akin to that. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know my first encounter with Tolkien and The Hobbit was in grade three, when my 23-yr-old teacher Mrs. Henderson, on whom I had a giant crush, took us out to the cemetery next door (I went to a Catholic school that was situated next door to the church of the same name), where we all gathered under a large tree and she ceremoniously opened a large format hardcover book covered in plastic and began to read.

If I thought I was in love then, I was mistaken. Under that tree, surrounded by mossy headstones on midsummer afternoons, I adored Mrs. Henderson and I love her still for fostering my love of hobbits and the magical land of Middle Earth. Those books have been formative for me.

So imagine my absolute delight when the very same book was discarded from the library years later and my mom brought it home for me!! And then imagine my absolute horror when the friend I lent it to lost it. And THEN imagine my wonder when, years later, this boy named Colin VanderMeulen produced the very same edition, only softcover, from his personal collection of books. I think I proposed to him then and there.

And now, almost 10 years later, imagine this: Colin-boy and Lucy-girl lounging on the couch across from me, their backdrop my wall of books, and me, copy of Tolkien’s and my beloved Hobbit in my lap. I’m finally reading it aloud to my little family!

Really. Can there be anything better?

This site is getting changed around a bit. Again. (Stop laughing, Friar!)

Although EditQuest has got more traffic on this blog than it did on its own, I’ve found it difficult and restricting to have it on my personal blog. Thus, I plan on getting EQ back on its own, with its own design, so I can be free to do what I like with this blog both with the design and content. I hope to do that very soon. I’ll still link to EQ from here, though.

Bear with me as I get all this stuff sorted, will you, please? I hope that once I do I’ll be content enough for a very long time to leave well enough alone.

A main reason for my constant changing here has been boredom and a lack of focus. But a lovely chat with the hubby over tea and coffee (he had coffee, I had Lady Grey) this morning in the living room, a rare and wondrous occurrence, has given me the impetus I need to begin grounding myself with some sort of resolve and deciding what I truly want to do with my life.

It was so exciting and validating to hear what C had to say. First he said he had had an idea about me going to see the parents of a friend for advice on what to do about Biblio. These people are millionaires because they once owned MacDonald’s, which they sold, and now own a chain of pizza places. They would certainly have experienced input as to how best to pursue my business idea. (Who knows, C pointed out, maybe they’ll even like your idea so much they’ll fund it.) I’ve already been to see the local business consultant people and it was that brief meeting that freaked me out and convinced me I could never do this, even though my proposal was good. I’m ready, though, to explore other options.

I wish I could have recorded what C said to me; it’s quite interesting and pleasing to hear yourself described in a positive way by your significant other, I’ll tell you. Knowing that person observes you in such a way and pays attention to what he or she sees is so cool!

All the time he’s known me, C said, he’s seen me irrevocably committed to and passionate about one thing—books. He recalled my time working at Chapters, how I had always prattled on about what books had come out and what was going to come out and how excited I was. He remembered how I gushed to the customers about the books I loved and how I made them fill their baskets with novels because of my enthusiasm, and how every moment of the day I had free I had my nose in some new book. I studied books for five years in uni, I’ve worked in a bookstore, libraries, for a publishing company. I constantly keep up on what’s being published and by whom. I collect books. I know books. I have a good background with which to start.

Most significantly, he said he felt sure, from observing me in my different jobs, that I should be buying and selling books, not signing them out for people, not repairing them (as cool as I think being an antiquarian book expert and restorer would be. I stole the idea from Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, an excellent novel). He didn’t think editing books was what I should do, either. For now it’s okay, but obviously, with the waffling back and forth I’ve done over the years, it’s not IT.

Books and me are intertwined, C observed rather poetically. That was one thing I could say was consistent all of my life, one thing I should know for sure. And it wasn’t true that I couldn’t commit to anything: I’ve had the idea for Biblio for three or more years now and he reminded me that I can’t stop thinking about it, fleshing it out in my head, imagining it so perfectly I want to cry in frustration that it doesn’t actually exist for us to go there. I have to admit, the thought of it, picturing me so clearly doing it, makes my heart pound.

And in the end, he said, who cares if you  change your mind? All you do then is sell the business. Or who cares if we want to move from Belleville? You sell the biz and move on and open another, or you have two. It’s okay to change your mind, he said. But you have to commit to something at least for the time being or you’ll float around feeling frustrated forever.

The conversation we had left me feeling pointed in a certain direction because I found myself constantly agreeing with what C said. First I need to convince myself that just because I can’t see all the options, establishing Biblio is not impossible. There are several options, and if I decide that I’ll never have the money to open my bookshop tearoom, I’m closing off those I don’t yet know about. Second, I need to prepare. My sister actually has her master’s in coffee and tea (she passed with distinction, I add!) and this is something I think I should look into. I also need to flesh out my business plan further, or rather finish it: I stopped at the financial part because I got freaked out.

Anyway, I won’t bore you. But I thought I’d put this on paper, so to speak, because that seems to make things more concrete. And now, since it’s after one in the morning, I’ll sleep on it, too.

I sip my tea the way you’re supposed to when tasting it (did you know you’re supposed to slurp?), but only because I’m trying to drown out the song on the radio. I am sitting conspicuously at my desk at the clinic, grossly aware of the diminutive elderly patient waiting across from me and the embarrassingly inappropriate and bitchy demands of “Give it to me right” coming through the radio here in the common room. This is when I realize that drinking tea at work is not at all the same as drinking it at home.

Part of it is the ugly forest green mug I’m using, which I associate with seriously ill people getting IVs. I usually serve them water or tea in these mugs; the room often smells off and their disease stares me down like a butch. And I’m very particular about what I drink tea in—at home I mostly use either bone china or pottery. It depends on the kind of tea. I really have to remember to bring in my own mug, but a brand-new one altogether. One I buy especially for here. I don’t like to mix work and home in any way.

That said, it’s really mainly my agitated state of mind that’s affecting my tea drinking here. Never mind the ugly mug, or the completely different atmosphere from home: those are a given. If I was sipping loose leaf from the queen’s tea service here things wouldn’t be the same, even though I sometimes sneakily change the music from rauchy pop to zen and, when no one’s in, burn a little incense to clear the air.

No, the lack of proper taste, materials, and atmosphere isn’t the only thing causing my discontent during tea time today. I’m bone tired, for one, and I can’t seem to shake that. It’s a no-brainer, of course: I’m working way too much (editing has been fantastic lately) and going to bed at least two hours after I feel I need to.

And all this is making me once again consider what I’m doing with my life. (Are you tired of me doing that yet?) I mean, now we’re in 2010 and, damn it all, it feels the same!!

WHAT DO I WANT? I wish to God I had a clearly defined goal, something I could unreservedly commit to. This is why I never make resolutions. I can’t even decide what to resolve! The only thing that makes me feel any sort of right is opening up Biblio, preferably in Yorkshire but anywhere nice, I guess. Now there’s a place I could drink tea and enjoy it! As time goes by without an inkling of my ability to do that, I become aware of feeling otherwise goalless, which is somewhat akin to feeling homeless—or rootless, rather.

It’s not that I lack ambition but more so that I can’t seem to find anything that really, truly interests me, at least to do. I do enjoy editing and I’m hearing more and more that I’m quite good at it, which is always nice. And I would rather work from home or have my own successful business, so I guess what I really want, if I can’t have Biblio, is to be able to get my editing flowing so well I don’t need a second job.

In that case, then, I need EditQuest to be redone (siriusgraphix will be doing it!) and given its own site again (though it has received more traffic from here than where it was before), and I need to contact more people regarding subcontracting, and dedicate more time to finding more clients. I need to sit down and decide just what I want to put my energy toward and how I am going to do that.

By the time I get ready for England this year, I need to be sitting full time in my proper place for tea.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly a day can change? Probably we pay more attention when it’s a great day that abruptly becomes shitty, but today was not that day for me.

I have been fighting a cold and exhaustion and I was certainly in no mood to go back to work so soon after Christmas. I have editing deadlines to meet and 11–7 at the clinic is not really my favourite shift.

It was a good thing Colin had already scraped off the car and shovelled the driveway because I was dragging my ass out of the house at precisely the time I was due at work. The driving was slow and though I tried to speed things up, no amount of cursing was going to make the half-wit in front of me care that I was late and therefore drive faster than 30km an hour. Poor baby Jesus. His name was used a lot this morning!

Needless to say, I arrived at work simultaneously riled up and tired. But something weird happens to me as soon as I step through that office door. I’ve made a rule for myself that I never take a bad day to work, and that seems to have stuck without me making much effort. Even though I was mad enough to spit, instead I made my boss laugh when I described to her why I was late. She seemed to brighten up herself and forget her frustration as she was trying to book a ticket to Florida online.

And then she said, “Well, to brighten up your day, I brought you a little something. I wanted to give you a special extra thing [she'd taken us to lunch a few weeks prior as our Christmas gift], because, well, you’re the best receptionist I’ve ever had.”

My jaw dropped. And then it dropped further when her card revealed a quite substantial gift certificate to Chapters. I was so thrilled I actually jumped off the floor and did some weird Elaine dance kick. I thanked my boss profusely and excitedly and she made everything even better by saying it was well worth it.

After chatting about our holidays (because the first patient had cancelled and we had time), we got down to work, but my day had changed so significantly by then—a burst of sunshine on an otherwise dreary, stressful day.

But it wasn’t over yet. To top it off, my time at the office lasted all of three and a half hours, since most of the patients cancelled due to bad weather. I left almost four and a half hours early.

Although I can’t stop thinking about my boss’s surprise gift and how much it means to me, I also can’t help but think about how much such a thing can really alter someone’s output. I drove home in an excellent mood after putting my best foot forward in getting as much as I could done beforehand. I totally believe in random acts of kindness, and my boss’s thoughtfulness has made me feel very inclined to pass on the good will, if even in some small way.

Today is Boxing Day, as you know, and I’m still discovering how quickly a festive season can pass, just like that, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

It feels very wrong to me.

Today my eyes are red-rimmed and tired. It is 6:41 pm and I’ve had a small breakfast, a small lunch, a few cups of tea, and still no supper. I’m (still) in my pyjamas. I feel down and exhausted and empty, not unlike the feeling you get when your best friend has just left after a fun-filled sleepover.

On Christmas Eve C and I and Lucy and my parents (they were with us for a few short days) drove to Barrie to have Christmas celebrations at my sister’s house. Four of us even made it to midnight mass, which I haven’t done in years. We were ten people altogether; only my sister in England and her family were missing. There’s always someone missing, but we did make videos and take lots of photos to send and I read aloud her card and emails from overseas. It was a good time. But we drove home last night because I had to work today to keep on schedule.

I miss my parents, I miss my family, I feel upset that already—ALREADY—the days off are over, and I go back to work at the clinic on Monday, and back to attending to deadlines, the stress of which never really left me. So short a time not working I feel I haven’t had it.This is why I’m tired and down, not because of the holiday toll, though it was emotionally draining for me.

I think people should get two weeks or more off work for Christmas. I wish it were possible. In fact, my personal grown-up Christmas wish is that Christmas could be officially two weeks long, no working at all, everyone in my immediate family plus the kids in a huge house. Then we do all the meals prep together, even shop for gifts together, and there’s no driving back and forth and bickering over who gets to see whom and so on. It would be so ideal Thomas Kincaid would paint it.

I’ve been told I have unrealistic expectations of life. And the depression of that is hitting me today. Christmas is over. Religiously, I guess it’s not (we were always taught that Christmas is not only one or two days ), but I am also struggling with religion, among other things.

Today has passed the way the time with my parents passed, the way Christmas passed. The hours went by so fast I felt like Scrooge on hearing the quarters chime—confused that I had somehow lost a day.

I don’t want to edit papers today. I’m so blue that all I want to do right now is curl up with the dog and C and sleep as though I hadn’t a care in the world.