Thank God For the Library

Ever since my Harry Potter marathon reading week, I've been sticking my nose in books more and more lately, especially since every couple of saturdays I go with my Mum and Gramma to the library.

This time Gramma got left behind. I forgot that I left the phone downstairs until three this afternoon, and by then I think she had pottered off to the library without us. Mum is currently returning all her messages and slagging me to everyone she talks to.

On my holiday I read a book about the evolution of serial killers throughout history; Colonize This, a collection of essays by feminist women of colour; Sex Changes : The Politics of Transgenderism (dude, was that the title?) by Patrick Califia; My Dangerous Desires by Amber Hollibaugh; Romanitas, a book about if the Roman Empire was still a huge superpower; The Hours by Michael Cunningham, and After Dachau, which was really scary because it's about if the Nazi's won and destroyed everyone who wasn't Aryan.

Now I'm about to read S/He by Minnie Bruce Pratt, Fast Food Nation, My Parents Were Holocaust Survivors, Why Bad Things Happen To Good People, Mental Health for Urban Indians, Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, and Ishmael. I'm also re-reading Stones From The River because it's one of my all time favorite books, but it's giving me some vaguely Nazi-esque dreams. Just the other night I dreamt I was a blonde blue eyed woman running from the SS thinking "But I'm a German Aryan citizen!" and I had to go into hiding.

I got addicted to Djarum Black clove ciggys on my trip, part of the appeal was that I had contracted what we thought was a cold but evidently was the flu, so I was coughing with regular cigs but not cloves.

Here is me at Arches with a clove (I hope Megan doesn't mind me linking this).



Note the rotund tummy and apparent disinterest in anything beyond The Clove.

I found them here in town, but they are THREE times the price in the States.

I also found out that since I got the flu, it fuct up my eustacean tube and made my middle ear fill up with fluid, which meant I was terribly deaf in one ear and made meeting the mumbly husband of a high school friend all the more difficult to interpret. So now I have to hold my breath, plug my nose, and bear down like I'm going to poop. The indignity.

Which brings me to an old silly story about me, a cute lab technician, and the embarrassing medical issue.

I hadn't found a decent doctor in Vancouver for a couple of years, when something went awry with my nether regions. I had pinworms for the first time in my life. So I went to a Medi Clinic and they sent me away telling me to take Combatrin and it would clear up. So I did, and I still had a dreadfully uncomfortable feeling. So I went to a real clinic and they wanted a fecal sample. It's a really gross process to collect because you basically saran wrap your toilet and take a dump on it and then spoon it up.

But at the lab, there was the cutest girl. And all I had to offer her was my crap.

The clinic called me after the tests came through to tell me I had Salmonella, and judging by the tests I had had it for a fairly long time. This began a medication regime and weekly poo trips to the lab, same cute girl, same old poop in a cup. I did once go on a date with a cashier I picked up at Safeway, but somehow it seemed unseemly to flirt with someone I kept giving shit to.