One can't complain. I have my friends. Someone spoke to me only yesterday.

Starbucks closed so I cannot get a caffeine fix: Boo!
Free parking: Yay!

Holiday weekends when the only thing open on campus is the library: Boo!
Having to go to work this morning where it’s cool and quiet: Yay!

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A new (to me) blog to check out, via Say La Vee, (and I stole her list idea, which I shall post as soon as I feel it’s complete. Of course as soon as I post, I will think of many other things I love and hate, and that are much cleverer than those I posted. It’s always the way; same with those clever little email surveys that make you ferret out fifty odd facts about yourself. No sooner have I sent it on and read other people’s than I realize how boring my answers were. Welcome to my life.)

Also recently discovered: Half.com’s book department. Oh my god, I could go nuts and probably will someday soon.

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My mother-in-law and I may finally have something in common. I gave her a Rosamunde Pilcher novel to read recently, The Shell Seekers. Her usual reading tastes run to Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, and sometimes Maeve Binchy. Mine do not. But I love Rosamunde Pilcher’s big novels: Shell Seekers, September, Coming Home, and Winter Solstice. Despite her romance-novelist name, she is a good writer who weaves meandering and delightfully detailed big stories, with interesting and complex characters. Her plots are not predictable, but also not outrageous. She reminds me a little of Joanna Trollope – although I should say that the other way since I like Pilcher more. Her books are big fat comfort-food books, and I highly recommend them for winter reading, curled up in bed under a comforter with a cup of tea, or, alternately, lying on the beach with an iced tea close to hand. My MIL enjoyed Shell Seekers, and then read its sequel-of-sorts, September. She called me at work Thursday while she was babysitting at my house, to find out where the others were, so she could start a new one. I felt irrationally happy; I wish for a MIL who loves me and with whom I can hang in the kitchen and talk and drink tea and be friends. After ten years of marriage, I am fairly certain that’s not going to happen, but at least I managed a bit of that connection and I am truly glad. She was well into Winter Solstice by the time I got home from work Thursday evening, and she seemed to be enjoying it.

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I read my favorite Winnie the Pooh story to the boys last night, “In which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in.” Eeyore is bounced into the river by Tigger and interrupts Pooh’s and Piglet’s game of Pooh Sticks, and then they all try to figure out how to get Eeyore out of the river. I just adore Eeyore’s dry wit and sarcastic humor, and they shine in this particular story.

My favorite line from the story, useful in many more situations than you would imagine:
“Bouncy or coffy, it’s all the same at the bottom of the river.”





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Stopped at a traffic light on the way to daycare, Simon asked me why the light wasn’t making noise. I asked him what he meant. He said, “At your school (Pitt), the traffic lights make noises so people can cross the street.” So, in Oakland, the traffic stops all four ways and a little beeper makes a cuckoo-sound, so the blind people can safely cross a very busy intersection. This is what he was remembering. I explained that not every intersection had that, and that they were mostly in Oakland because there is a sort of school for the blind there. Simon absorbed this information and then asked me, “How do they do their art projects?”

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Two quick things:

I saw the new boobs for the first time yesterday. For those of you not intimately involved in the ongoing saga, my Perfect sister-in-law got a boob job and a tummy tuck last February. I must admit to boob envy; they are lovely. I want *my* shirts to be filled out that way, just slightly straining at the buttons of my cute little madras top. But alas, I think her butt needs work now. I suppose once you start down that path, you never stop?

Also, speaking of jello cake (we weren't but I digress...) my MIL made an atrocity of a dessert last night. Seems it is French vanilla ice cream mixed with chocolate pudding, poured on top of crushed Ritz crackers and topped with Cool Whip. Unbelievably vile. I've had something similar made with coconut pudding and that was better. Now I really want this cookbook. Do you suppose she'd take it amiss if I gave it to her for Christmas?

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I am taking votes. Next book to read:

Captain Correlli’s Mandolin
Vanity Fair
Son of the Circus
David Copperfield