Good things

Since I know you're all on pins and needles, let me just update you on my glucose tolerance test.

I came home to a message from my midwife's office: Please call. Which, in my brain, instantly translated to: Your numbers were high, you have gestational diabetes, you are going to need to start treating yourself with insulin and see a dietician, and also, your baby will be fourteen pounds by your next appointment and we will need to schedule an induction STAT, and also, you suck.

I don't know, I just assumed. I didn't remember them actually calling me to tell me I passed when I was pregnant with Suzannah. I thought they just told me at my next prenatal appointment or something -- no news is good news and all that.

So I called them back, and the nurse wasn't at her desk, so I had to wait. During my eight minutes and fifteen seconds of waiting, I sent Matt a couple of hysterical instant messages at work -- something along the lines of, I'm sure I failed, they're going to bully me into doing terrible and unnecessary things to my body and my baby, I suck, they suck, everything sucks.

He responded mildly, "Baby, I'm sure it's fine -- let's just assume they're calling back to tell you that you passed." He's just so reasonable sometimes. It's kind of maddening, really.

The phone rang. I snatched it up.

"Hi, Shari. We got your numbers back."

"AND?"

"They're totally fine."

Well. I knew that.

So let me share the other things that have made this a really great Tuesday:

--a vanilla rooibos tea latte on my way to school

--getting a wicked amount of grading done today

--blustery fall weather

--which means that I can finally wear the cute sweaters I picked up back in early August

--and Suzannah can wear her new pink sweats, which make her so huggable. More than usual. I can't stop cuddling her. And also, she says she has "comfy pants like Mama." LOVE IT.

--waffle fries with our veggie burgers (I have a serious thing for waffle fries)

--buying tickets for Kyanne and me to go see MARGARET ATWOOD read from her latest novel, The Year of the Flood

This last one is huge. This is my rock concert. Sherman Alexie is reading from his latest collection of short stories the night before, and normally I'd be all over that, but two consecutive trips to Town Hall, on school nights, during a week in which I have a prenatal appointment in Tacoma and a trip to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms -- well, it's a bit much. Besides, I've seen Sherman Alexie a handful of times now, and all of my books are autographed, and I've had my picture taken with the man. I love Sherman Alexie, but, you know, he's not MARGARET ATWOOD.

I have loved Margaret Atwood since I was nineteen years old, when I first discovered The Handmaid's Tale -- the first book to keep me company during my summer in Alaska after my freshman year of college. And whatever, everyone has read The Handmaid's Tale, and it's not even my favorite Atwood, but it will always be my first, and I have such clear memories of reading it, shivering in my fleece pullover while the wind raged outside my shoddy little room at Rainbow King Lodge. (Wait, what? You haven't read it? Then what are you doing here, reading this useless blog? GO GET YOURSELF SOME ATWOOD. RIGHT NOW.) Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride were both airplane reads that stuck with me long after I climbed off the plane. The Blind Assassin is one of my favorite books, period -- my favorite of hers, so far. Lady Oracle was a purely wonderful Spring Break escape several years ago. The Penelopiad is razor-sharp, funny, and haunting. I love her essays. I love her shorter pieces in Good Bones and Simple Murders. And I should probably reread Oryx and Crake, since The Year of the Flood apparently picks up where that one leaves off, and I haven't read it since 2003.

Margaret Atwood on The Year of the Flood (via amazon.com):

I’ve never before gone back to a novel and written another novel related to it. Why this time? Partly because so many people asked me what happened right after the end of the 2003 novel, Oryx and Crake. I didn’t actually know, but the questions made me think about it. That was one reason. Another was that the core subject matter has continued to preoccupy me.

When Oryx and Crake came out, it seemed to many like science fiction--way out there, too weird to be possible--but in the three years that passed before I began writing The Year of the Flood, the perceived gap between that supposedly unreal future and the harsh one we might very well live through was narrowing fast. What is happening to our world? What can we do to reverse the damage? How long have we got? And, most importantly--what kind of "we"? In other words, what kind of people might undertake the challenge? Dedicated ones--they’d have to be. And unless you believe our planet is worth saving, why bother?

So the question of inspirational belief entered the picture, and once you have a set of beliefs--as distinct from a body of measurable knowledge--you have a religion. The God’s Gardeners appear briefly in Oryx and Crake, but in The Year of the Flood, they’re central. Like all religions, the Gardeners have their own leader, Adam One. They also have their own honoured saints and martyrs, their special days, their theology. They may look strange and obsessive and even foolish to non-members, but they’re serious about what they profess; as are their predecessors, who are with us today. I’ve found out a great deal about rooftop gardens and urban beekeeping while writing this book!

Another question frequently asked about Oryx and Crake concerned gender. Why was the story told by a man? How would it have been different if the narrator had been a woman? Such questions led me to Ren and Toby, and then to their respective lives, and also to their places of refuge. A high-end sex club and a luxury spa would in fact be quite good locations in which to wait out a pandemic plague: at least you’d have bar snacks, and a lot of clean towels.

In his book, The Art Instinct, Denis Dutton proposes that our interest in narrative is built in--selected during the very long period the human race spent in the Pleistocene--because any species with the ability to tell stories about both past and future would have an evolutionary edge. Will there be a crocodile in the river tomorrow, as there was last year? If so, better not go there. Speculative fictions about the future, like The Year of the Flood, are narratives of that kind. Where will the crocodiles be? How will we avoid them? What are our chances?

If you've never read Atwood, I think fall is the perfect time to start.