They're coming to take me away, haha...

Badger has cause me to consider doing Blog365 in 2010.

Perhaps having to churn out stuff rather than agonizing and pretending to craft could serve my blogging well.

Or not.

I don't know.

At any rate, happy new year and drive safely tonight.
Thanks for being my Internetty friends.

PS I may just quit writing altogether if I can't fix my defunct D key...

Merry Christmas to all...

I am feeling a little melancholy this Christmas Eve.
I am missing my parents.
I am missing my stupid big brother.
I wish my little brother lived closer.

But I have my boys, and H, and my friends, both real and Internet.
I am healthy, my boys are awesome, I got to sing lovely carols this afternoon, and after I play Santa, I plan to curl up in bed with a mug of hot tea and a creepy vampire novel (Let the Right One In).

A peaceful and joyous Christmas to you.

Love, BB

"I don't want a lot for Christmas..."

I should be
wrapping
baking
vacuuming
packing
knitting.

But last night, I picked up the new Harper Connelly.

So I am reading.

And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing right within your heart.

• Am currently burning the 28 CDs of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander to my computer. I assume it will make some lovely listening while I knitknitknit.
  
• However, I also am enjoying listening to Anna Karenina via LibriVox. I have tried to READ AK any number of times; the listening is much pleasanter.
  
• All this audio goodness is to help me knit the four baby hats my husband asked me to knit for baby-having coworkers. He asked last week. He wants them before Christmas.
  
• It was a good excuse to go buy yarn I might not otherwise: a pale pink alpaca/silk blend, and some gorgeous Malabrigo silky merino.
  
• At least one of the hats I am knitting is the pink ruffly dealio in here.
  
• It's already so adorable I could scream.
  
• I am also knitting the umbrella edge beanie in here. I am just not sure in what color yet, although I have some gorgeous soft turquoise-y blue Malabrigo worsted lying around...
  
• I am reading actual real live hard copybooks. I swear.
  
• I am totally in love with Lillian Nattel's River Midnight. Engrossing and complex and human. LOVE this book.
  
• I want to own this, as I will reread it.
  
• I also started Kate Jacobs' Knit Two last night. Oh, how I want to love these books, like I love Gil McNeil's Beach Street books.
  
• But I don't. They are cold and detached. I don't LIKE any of the characters. She's like Jennifer Chiaverini with all the schmaltz but none of the redeeming heart.
  
• I am doing my own Christmas shopping, mostly at Persephone Press. Will keep you updated on my selections.
  
• I am also buying myself a lovely pair of chestnut short Uggs boots.
  
• I think.
  
• Unfortunately, all the Amazon packages flowing into the house these days contain gifts, not goodies for me.
  
• I bought H this and this for Christmas. Just today.
  
• Our tree is bought and up. It's easily nine feet tall, and smells gloriously like oranges. The tree guy says this is typical of Douglas fir trees.
  
• Outside lights are up, framing our front door, and the rest of the decorations will go up this weekend.
  
• Baking for teacher gifts will commence this evening. I am leaning towards lemon slice.
  
• Kim gave me the world's best lemon bar recipe ever. I think they're festive enough for Christmas gifts...
  
• The boys completed their shopping at the school store, and all mysterious packages are sequestered in my bedroom.
  
• I hear we may get a few inches of snow this weekend.
  
• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
  
• THIS is more like it.

All the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not.

We got out the Christmas books today.
Seg is sprawled on the living room floor, engrossed in The Littlest Angel.
Primo couldn't wait to get his hands on Four Sides, Eight Nights.
And Terzo keeps looking at the book that plays "Jingle Bells."
Requests to have The Polar Express read out loud tonight have already come.

H is bringing a tree home tonight.
I have most of my shopping done, and the boys' lists, carefully annotated, have been mailed to the North Pole.
Caroling in the churchyard is this evening.
I have started thinking about what to bake for teacher gifts, and have already gorged myself sick on cookies at least once.

So why do I still feel like this guy?

Whether your quiver is large or small, you are welcome.*

Oh dear.
I miss you all.
But what with H’s expanded hours and the Fourth Child Who Is Kicking My Butt, I am lucky I have enough brain power to even read, let alone blog about what I’m reading. Bear with me, I will try to do better.
Um, right after Christmas.

I just reread Gil McNeil’s The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club in preparation to read its sequel Needles and Pearls. Not yet out in the US, it was sent to me by a kind friend who sort of accidentally ordered it from a UK bookshop. Equally as charming as the first, the plot takes a couple unexpected turns, but it still qualifies as feel-good reading, and it inspires me to knit more.

I am thoroughly and surprisingly enjoying the weird little novel by Jonathan Miles, Dear American Airlines. Begun as a letter of complaint to the airline during an unexpected and extended layover in O’Hare Airport, Bennie Ford meanders through his life, his relationships, and his personal epiphanies. It’s an odd conceit for a novel but it works, and Bennie is a complicated but sympathetic man.

I also finished Tom Perrotta’s The Abstinence Teacher, but since I read it, weirdly concurrently, with Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, I think I will save my thoughts about that bizarre juxtaposition for another post.

Moving onto Raffaella Barker’s autobiographical Come and Tell Me Some Lies and Lillian Nattel’s engaging The River Midnight.

My husband asked for my marked-up copy of the Persephone Press catalogue, so I am anticipating some lovely, dove grey volumes among my Christmas gifts.

And I just requested a buttload of YA novels from the library today, after catching up on Jess’s blog.

I am going to die before I get to read everything I want to, aren’t I?

*******
from the Quiverfull website (www.quiverfull.com)

"I...uh....you, you can't do - - - I mean, you just....what do you think...you can't...!" *

Oh, dudes.
The cookie mall.
I hate the cookie mall.
Not that I have ever BEEN to the cookie mall.
But I have to bake for it tonight, and I don't want to.
I WANT to curl up in my cozy bed with my new copy of New Moon and bone up on the Volturi, and then move onto my new copy of Eclipse, to refresh all the vampire's back stories.
Shut. Up.
It's been a loooooooooong day.

At least I am not watching "Twilight."
Again.

************
*Bella, as living proof that vampires make you stupid