In the high nineties today...

Last night after their baths, the naked boys were jumping on the beds like crazy people (their normal routine). Simon stopped jumping and asked Jude, “Jude! Do you know who you look like?” Jude stopped jumping too, stood for a moment considering, and replied solemnly, “Jude!” The kid slays me.

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As a treat sometimes, the boys get to watch a few songs from one of Dan’s music DVDs – a couple songs from Yellow Submarine, or, last night, a couple of songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We watched By the Way and Scar Tissue (as they get older, I can see we are going to have to censor, but at the moment no one seems able to understand the lyrics – or am I kidding myself?). Although, due to More Cowbell and Simon, I am becoming increasingly familiar with their music (which I like very much), I have never, not once, seen the Red Hot Chili Peppers in any sort of live performance – until last night. Can I just tell you that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are the *sexiest* band I have EVER seen? I don’t mean good-looking or individually sexy – their performance is just incredibly breathtakingly sexy. Yowzah! I found myself quite uncomfortable watching with my two boys.

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I am reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It’s on one of Anna Quindlen’s infamous lists of books – this one was her list of Ten Modern Novels That Made Me Proud To Be A Writer. It was written by John Fowles in 1970, but it reads like one of the 19th-century novels near and dear to my heart. It’s a strange sensation to read a book you know was written in the past thirty years, but which is skillfully and perfectly written to read like a Thomas Hardy novel.

I finished Crescent last night, and I cried and cried. It bogged down in the middle but I picked it back up after a week off and finished it in one sitting.

I think for the moment I have given up on trying out new books and will just concentrate on reading oldies but goodies, or rereading things I liked the first time. I don’t have the concentration or the patience right now to try to find a newly published book that engrosses me. It does seem a waste of perfectly good reading time, but it seems to be working. And did I second-guess myself when, during my first maternity leave, I spent all those weeks gobbling up every single simple-minded Ed McBain written? No, I did not, and it was ok. My brain did not completely shrivel, and it was perfectly entertaining.

So after TFLW, I may reread another Robertson Davies, or Atwood's The Blind Assassin. We'll see.