I had originally planned to write a searing response to Laura Penny’s bitchy anti-chick lit article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail.
Between wondering if there is any other genre out there book reviewers feel the need to smear and then spit on a few times before they even get around to the actual book reviews, and laughing at how Ms. Penny vacillates between intellectual snobbery (I just adore Gustave Flaubert! ) and green-eyed jealousy (where she gnashes her teeth over how much money Ann Brashares, author of the Traveling Pants series, has made) there’s a lot of gold there to mine.
But, honestly, it’s just too damn hot out to get into these tired old arguments again. I must instead conserve my energy to whip up a week-long dinner menu that doesn’t involve turning on the oven and then make the dreaded grocery store run.

Sam: I want some goldfish crackers!
Me: What’s the magic word?
Sam: Presto!
Me: I meant the other magic word . . .

I stopped reading the new Harry Potter book just long enough to go see the new Harry Potter movie.
The book, so far as I’ve read, is great. No spoilers here, but I’m 280 pages in and enjoying it tremendously.
The movie gets a big meh from me, although George (not the Potter fanatic I am) enjoyed it more. It irritates me when the film deviates so far from the book. I understand it’s necessary, that if it was a true version of the book it would end up being 8 hours long . . . but still, it bugs to see the film makers trimming off some of the meatiest parts of the story.
The worst part of the movie was definitely Michael Gambon, the actor they cast as the new Dumbledore. (Particularly when compared to the late Richard Harris, who was a kick ass Dumbledore.) The problem with Gambon is that he is not — emphatically, not – Dumbledore. Dumbledore is not supposed to be a mean old grouch. He’s supposed to be somewhat lighthearted . . . at least, when he’s not facing down the Big Bad. So why does Gambon’s Dumbledore scowl and snap, and generally act as though his sciatica is acting up?
Anyway, must run . . . I still have five hundred pages to read (yea!). My sister has already finished the book, and keeps calling to see if I’m ready to talk about. I’ve been answering the phone shrieking, “No spoilers! No spoilers!” before she can say a word.
By the way, was I the only one who got a little teary eyed when first cracking open the book? The last one . . . sigh. Truly the end of an era.

So I’ve gotten a few emails from readers who were confused at my post, below, on how curly my hair is, since my author photo shows me sporting a nice, sleek, straight bob. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a woman who came to a reading I did last year.

She approached the table where I was signing books. I smiled at her encouragingly. She looked me over critically, then studied my publicity photo, before turning back to stare at me some more.

“You look different in person,” she finally said.

I had no idea if this was a good thing or a bad thing. But I suspected from the way she was staring at me that it wasn’t meant to be a compliment.
“It’s your hair,” she said. “It looks much . . ..” She paused. “Bigger in person.”

“Bigger,” I repeated. I stopped smiling.

“Ummm, yes. You know: wavier.”

“I had it straightened the day the photo was taken,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said. “I like it better that way.”

Ohhhh-kay.

My dad had a similar reaction when he first saw the photo.

“You should wear your hair like that all the time,” he said. “It’s really flattering.”

“To get it to look like that, I paid fifty dollars to have my stylist spend an hour blow-drying it straight,” I said. “It was painful, expensive and time consuming.”

“And your point?” my dad said.

Grrrrrr.

Anyway, yes, these days I do straighten in the winter. (Thank God for my Chi.) But when you live in a hot, humid, sub-tropical climate, straightening your hair in the summer is a losing battle. I could spend an entire hour blowdrying, ironing and spraying it into submission, and then walk out the front door into one of our frequent summer rain showers, and poof, just like that, this happens:

How do I know summer is officially here?

It’s not the 101-degree heat index. Or the fact that I have to make Sam rehydrate after walking the short distance from the car to the grocery store. Or that I have to wake up in the predawn hours if I want to get a run in without risking heat stroke.

No. I only know that summer is officially here when my hair starts to look like this:

A few months ago, my sister called. “I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow,” she said.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Don’t laugh. I want a style where it looks good without my having to do anything to it,” she said. “I want wash-and-go hair.”

And I laughed. Because she and I have the same hair – wavy, kinky, curly, unmanageable hair. The sort of hair that people with gorgeous straight hair always say they’d love to have, but only because they’ve never had to actually wrestle it into a pony tail. And the wash-and-go hairstyle? It’s an urban legend. A fantasy that curly haired women dream wistfully about.

The last time I saw my stylist, she asked how I wanted her to cut my hair.

“I’ve always wanted a slinky bob,” I said. “With bangs. The kind that Uma Thurman wore in Pulp Fiction.”

“Um . . ..” She picked up a lock of my crazy, out-of-control waves, and examined it critically. “I don’t see that working.”

“I didn’t think so.” I sighed. “My hair’s too curly for bangs, isn’t it?”

“We always want what we can’t have,” my stylist said sagely. And then she put down her scissors, got out her pruning shears and went to work de-poufing me.