perfectly crazy - me and Sam Bee

Ran into dear friend Richard yesterday, riding his bike home as I walked to Ryerson for the second last class of term. "So I read that your life is perfect now!" he said.

Hmmm. Is that what it sounds like, after my heartfelt piece a few days ago? Perfect?! I think not.

This morning, after a very intense dream - yet another about being on stage and not knowing my lines - I was awakened by an urgent phone call from my son. Due to take his prize-winning flight to Barbados in a few weeks, he discovered that his passport has expired, was at the passport office when it opened where they told him he was presenting his Registration of Birth, not his Birth Certificate. Where's my birth certificate, Mum? he wanted to know, as I awoke. No idea. I made coffee and searched through papers as he arrived by cab, Hurricane Sam, frantic, exhausted. I found the website and applied online for an emergency re-issue while he filled out masses of forms, quickly made me breakfast and, as I delivered lectures about getting some sleep and taking care of yourself, hugged me tightly and vanished.

The phone rang; my daughter - the formula she uses for Ben is on sale at Shopper's but not at HER Shopper's, if I'm around a Shopper's could I buy some she'll send me a picture of what she needs? And then I realized, I have to arrange for transportation right now for my aunt who has two appointments this week and no one to take her there. Several phone calls to Ottawa, finally successful. And then my student Helen arrived, to go over the massive manuscript I'd finished editing on the weekend, an hour and a half of intense discussion. As she left, Wayson called: "I'm on my way over." Wayson and I have a friend who's a jeweller, and whenever we need repairs or watch batteries, we go to Elaine, but unfortunately she's far away, inaccessible by bike. So Wayson drove me to Elaine's to pick up the chain I'd had repaired and to leave a few other things; on the way back I ran to get groceries - so great to have a car. He came in for tea and a chat, and by the time he left, at 2.30, I was limp. Had not had one moment of peace since being awakened.

Some people live like that all the time. Unimaginable. For them, the stress never ends,whereas for me, the flurry was over and I just had to recover - sit here responding to emails and checking websites. Checked in with my friend Kerry Clare's blog, to the left; she has posted an essay she recently wrote for an on-line magazine that I read and loved and am posting here, for your day's pleasure. A beautiful, funny, moving piece of writing.
http://plentythemagazine.com/2016/03/02/if-you-wanna-be-my-lover/

While Wayson was here, I was showing him recent photographs of Anna's boys, and then at the end of the new ones, iPhoto jumps back a year, and there I was setting off for Paris. I showed him all those shots of Paris, then London, Florence with Brucie, Cinque Terre, Nice, the Alps, Montpellier, Paris again - what a dream life. But how glad I am this year - British Columbia. A complete absence of Caravaggio, yes - but mountains and sea and friends.

P.S. Just read this and must, reluctantly, agree with its premise - http://www.salon.com/2016/03/01/please_give_samantha_bee_the_daily_show_they_squandered_jon_stewarts_legacy_by_giving_the_show_to_the_wrong_host/
- that Samantha Bee's new show Full Frontal, which I am now addicted to, picks up from Jon Stewart in a superb way that Trevor Noah does not. He's genial, he's handsome, but he doesn't seem to care that much. Whereas Sam Bee cares, oh yes. I wish she wouldn't use crude terms, as she often does, but her heart is so obviously in the right place and so are her brain and her mouth. And so is her show. She has said that as a mother of 3, she didn't want Jon's job. She's doing a magnificent job with what she has, filling a void that needs, in this time of terrifying insanity, to be filled. Brava, Canadian woman.