Behind the Stove

Ice, ice, baby...

2011-02-15T20:29:00.002-05:00

Some of you who know me on Facebook have read this. Those of you who haven't? Enjoy.
++++++++++++

Stepping out onto the ice in full hockey gear for the first time is an amazing and humbling experience. I felt, even without the cheering hordes the Penguins enjoy, like a freaking gladiator entering the arena to the roars of the bloodthirsty crowd. OK, so I have an over-active imagination...maybe it's the feeling an accomplished actor has stepping onto the stage (I wouldn't know) or a teacher standing before a brand new and eager class (I wouldn't know - I have always been a behind the scenes kind of gal). But whatever it's comparable to, it is amazing.

And that was for a scrimmage in a learn-to-play class - imagine the thrill stepping onto the ice at the Consol Energy Center, knowing you can mix it up with the best of them.

Buying hockey gear alone was an eye-opening experience. You don't realize as a mere spectator all the crap that a player lugs around the ice with her. Gloves, elbow pads, chest protector, jersey, padded shorts, shin guards, hockey socks, skates, mouthguard, helmet with face mask, stick - you are covered pretty much head to toe in padding. I didn't have time to go buy the chest and shoulder pads, or the shorts, so I made do with some UnderArmour running pants, and the only jersey I had was a San Jose Sharks one, and I didn't want to antagonize any Pens fans there - I shouldn't have worried, the guy wearing the Islanders jersey would have drawn them - so I wore a grey polarfleece. I was the only person not entirely and properly outfitted, despite it being an "instructional" class. Oh well, time enough to go shop before the next class. I borrowed H's shinguards and my brother's elbow pads and I had my new skates from Christmas, freshly sharpened at the pro shop.I intend to go buy the shorts this weekend; my brother has some shoulder pads in his old hockey bag down in the basement that I can make work. Everyone else had matching jerseys and socks - red, green, striped - I am leaning toward grey myself. Understated and elegant.

Free skate first. I sort of skated around and watched other people until one of the coaches came over and asked if I needed help with anything. First goal - the hockey stop. He showed me how to glide and then dig my blade edge in, to come to that ice-spraying halt inches from the boards.Practice, practice, practice.

And then the whistle blew and we drilled - skating exercises first - crossovers, frontwards and backwards, speed drills, stopping drills. One of the coaches told me to slow down and just concentrate on getting the form right, and the speed would come - that helped a lot. Then they broke out the pucks and we did 2-on-1 drills and shooting skills. It quickly became apparent that I was among the worst skaters. Or maybe I just felt that way. But there were a few instances when one of the guys would very obviously scootch his friend forward to skate with me so he didn't have to. Annoying, but I couldn't really blame them - I know I am not any good. That is why I am taking this class, right?

Then - scrimmage.

The coach selected 6 captains who then selected their teams. Despite the fact that I KNEW I was going to be picked last, it still bugged me a bit. It felt very junior high. I had to remind myself that I had signed up for a hockey skills introductory class, and if the other people were not ok with that, that was their problem, not mine. I was trying really hard, I am an ok skater, and I can only get better, right? After chatting with some of the other people, I felt better. I also realized I was probably a little self-conscious because I wasn't wearing full hockey gear - sometimes you DO want to look like everyone else (I'm talking to you, Mom) - being a tad oversensitive and maybe a little defensive. After that I just tried to relax, hung out with the friendly faces, and played as hard as I could. Turns out I am not an offensive player - not a shock there. But I can be an obstruction just fine, even if the guy bearing down on me at full speed outweighs me by fifty pounds. I feel like my poke check was quite competent, too.

I was one of about half a dozen women - several of the others apparently play on a women's team in Mt Lebo, but one of the women was the one who had told me about the class at the public skating session last Friday. Her name is Sonja, she's been skating for about a year, and she plays a very deliberate and thought-out game. She's not fast but every move is focused. There was an older guy decked out in Pens regalia who was very friendly, a sloppy but fast player, and another guy whose name I forget, a grad student at CMU, who was playing because his lab partner (one of the other women) talked him into it. He's a better skater than I am, but had no clear idea about zones and which positions shift where depending on the location of the puck. Together with a skilled, experienced young guy in some Slavic-looking jersey who directed us around the ice like a conductor, only with his hockey stick rather than a baton, we rotated through scrimmages for an hour. We played till about 11:15, when the rain started coming down harder, and other guys arrived for the 11:30 pick up game.

I was tired, pretty happy, and already looking forward to next week. I have plans to take H out for dinner Saturday night, and then skating at one of the public sessions, so I can practice my hockey stop and crossovers. Who wants to go see a nice movie when you can be out in 10-degree weather?

2010-11-12T13:50:00.003-05:00

I love you guys, and I love this blog, and I love reading.
But I need to take a little hiatus.
Too much going on in real life (nothing bad, not at all, just busybusyBUSY), and I am neglecting this.
I don't want to put it out there unless I am doing my best, and I can't with this forum right now.

It's not permanent, I swear.

And two tips for you before I go:
1) Read Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.
2) Buy stock in Lego before I do my Christmas shopping.

You're welcome.
Love to you all.
See you soon.

There is no trick, only treat.

2010-10-31T21:24:00.004-04:00

From left to right: Terzo as Jack Skywalker. You've never heard of him because Terzo made him up, and he apparently wears blue Christmas socks with fisherman sandals and has powdered sugar all over his sweatpants and it's ALL GOOD. Seg as Anakin Skywalker, but Clone Wars Anakin. Whatever THAT distinction means. Primo as Plo Koon. He's a Jedi. I thought I was going to have to make the mask (swim goggles and a repsirator topped with a raw turkey?) but I bought a cheap mask. Just as well, since Primo took it off approximately every fifteen seconds.

Yoda fell asleep in the car on the way home from his brothers' soccer games and slept through trick or treating. We fobbed him off with some fruit roll-ups and a few snack bags of pretzels, and he was good with that.

Happy Halloween!

Books I'm reading or have read, summed up in one telling line...

2010-10-28T15:16:00.001-04:00

Room - Emma Donoghue.
“I’ve seen enough of Outside. I’m tired and I want to go back to Room.”

All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost - Lan Samantha Chang.
“For each of us, he understood, is born into our own time and eventually the things we held as the center of the world, dearly, unforgivingly, must fade.”

Little Heathens: Hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression - Mildred Armstrong Kalish.
“For us children, building character, developing a sense of responsibility, and above all, improving one’s mind constituted the essential focus of our lives.”

Same As It Never Was - Claire Scovell Lazebnik.
“’It’s like you’re a mom now.’
‘Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.’”

A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style - Tim Gunn.
“Clothes do not exist to humiliate their owners. Please do not force garments into performing psychological tasks for which they are not designed. “

Library run

2010-10-19T12:59:00.000-04:00

Chi Chi Chi, le le le, viva los mineros de Chile!

2010-10-14T10:31:00.004-04:00

"All 33 miners have been rescued. All 6 rescue workers have reached the surface. The mine is clear."

The Countess by Rebecca Johns

2010-10-12T10:13:00.004-04:00

Rebecca Johns's new novel comes out today.
Link here.
Go buy it. And if you live in Chicago, go to her reading, because I don't and I can't. And I am sorely disappointed.

Sulzer Library, Lincoln Ave. 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Buy her a drink for me, wouldja? (But no blood...)

O Canada...

2010-10-06T22:44:00.004-04:00

I packed six books for a week of vacation, and read four. Whew, that was close.

What I packed:
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Phillip Pullman
The Lonely Polygamist – Brady Udall
Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
Up from the Blue – Susan Henderson
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell

What I read:

While Under the Banner of Heaven was a terrific book about fundamental Mormonism, and I love Jon Krakauer and have read everything he's written, because he’s a compelling writer and a meticulous researcher, there’s no denying that Heaven was condemning of its subjects. But I thought Lonely Polygamist dealt with what we consider fringe elements in a matter-of-fact, enlightening, and empathetic way. I never thought I could sympathize with, let alone like, a polygamist man, but I did Golden. And it ultimately helped me make sense of sense how someone you might perceive as normal would wound up where he did, with five wives, 30 children, and a lifestyle that makes his head – and ours - spin. The book made me think about something I thought I had concrete opinions on in a totally different way, and that is never, ever a bad trait in a novel. Udall's Lonely Polygamist was unlike anything I have ever read before. And, honestly, polygamy isn't that far off my long-held fervor for a nice commune.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Phillip Pullman. Jesus/Christ is part of the Myths series which authors include AS Byatt, Margaret Atwood, and Salley Vickers, all great company, retelling myths with a contemporary twist. But this one: Yawn. The intricate and lush writing I expect from Pullman, due to his His Dark Materials trilogy and his Victorian melodramas, is absent in this book. I appreciate that he wrote it in the almost childlike style to mimic the style of the Biblical parables and tales he is riffing on, but it’s boring. And splitting the character of Jesus Christ into twin brothers is certainly an interesting concept but the execution is superficial. There were many gaps, missing details, and inconsistencies -- but of course, many of these are the same missing bits that bother me in the actual Gospels. It felt to me that Pullman wrote this as an exercise, to piss off the church, which he has already proficiently and thoroughly pissed off previously.
The best take on this little book comes from Christopher Hitchens’ otherwise ho-hum review in the New York Times: "It is an attempt by an experienced storyteller to show how even the best-plotted stories can get too far out of hand."

Up from the Blue – Susan Henderson.
In the interest of full disclosure, Sue is a friend. I knew her first as the wife of a college friend whose band I often went to see play, and in recent years, I was lucky enough to reconnect with her. Sue and her husband are one of those couples who seem to have it all together – they are both insanely talented and also insanely nice. A solid debut novel garnering excellent reviews could not have happened to a more deserving writer, in my humble opinion. I enjoyed the book, and it took hardly any time at all for me to stop reading it as Susan’s voice and start feeling Tillie’s. In addition, I really enjoyed the way the time period resonated with me, as a child growing up in the late seventies/early eighties. I did agree with this reviewer on Amazon, about the adult Tillie and her lack of perspective: “What felt missing in this novel was an adult voice - a narration that went beyond superficial story telling.” Adult Tillie was just the same as child Tillie; and we all know that attributes one can forgive in a child can be exhausting, exasperating, and unattractive in an adult. But I really felt the child Tillie, and her agony and curiosity and petulance. I cared deeply about her -- but not at all about adult Tillie.

Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann. See my review from a week or so ago. I am still thinking about this book. That powerful.

Next up: the two books I didn't get to, and A Visit from the Goon Squad. But since I am no longer on vacation, it may take some time.

Also, I have two words for you: Nanaimo bars. You will thank me. Or maybe not. Depending on how much weight you put on...

"You must move forward."

2010-09-29T21:43:00.003-04:00

One of the lovely things about vacation is that I can catch up on my reading. I have been slowly working my way through Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, and, as it is a book that deserves to have time taken with it, it's been slow going. But I lost myself in it the first two days of vacation.
I re-emerged slowly, stunned, dazzled.

While Philippe Petit's walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the World trade Center is the thread running through the book, it is balanced perfectly, like Petit, with the intertwining stories of half a dozen inhabitants of New York City on that hot, muggy day in August 1974.

Additionally, this novel is a love song to New York, and in a strange, roundabout way, a love song to the Towers. McCann writes a postscript about his father-in-law's trip down 57 flights to escape the south tower on September 11, 2001, and this, juxtaposed after the dreamy novel detailing Petit's incredible act of beauty and the ordinary lives touched however delicately by it, choked me up.

"Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change."

dancing with the stars...

2010-09-22T13:30:00.003-04:00

Despite photographic evidence to the contrary, my dad was light on his feet. He danced like a dream. It seems he could make anyone look good - when he and my mother danced together, they moved as one - but it was my dad you watched. His long-limbed grace, his poise, the delight shining on his face, his goofy ear-to-ear grin; he made dancing look like something everyone should do, all the time.

It wasn’t until you tried it that you realized how easy he made it look.
When I was very little, I stood on his feet and he swung me around, pretty much carrying me through the steps. But as I got older, he taught me to waltz, and to polka, and to jitterbug. He taught me to stand up straight and move from my hips, and to let the music tell my feet what to do when, and he taught me the sheer joy of dancing with a partner. A touch of the hand on my back, a slight pressure on my waist, or a grasp of my fingers, and the rest of my body, and especially my feet, knew where to go and what to do, in sync with his rhythm. It was magical – it might very well have been magic.

He had a way of shuffling his feet, knees bent, that made him look like he was flowing water, or maybe just gracefully boneless – I saw him move with the same fluidity and grace when he played basketball with me in the driveway.

As a fundamentalist Baptist, I was not permitted to dance in high school. Not for us the slow dancing of prom. My favorite joke for a long time was, “Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up?” The answer, of course, is “Because people will think they are dancing.”

But in my young and wild single days, a friend and I frequented an Irish bar where, every Tuesday evening, people gathered to ceili dance. Ceili is the folk dance of Ireland, and it resembles clogging, or square dancing, or even Highland dancing. Step dancing, the stiff, intricate footwork associated with Michael Flatley and girls in curls and green velvet, is the next step up – you have to know how to do it to do it right. But ceili is a group effort, perfectly suited to beginners; you leap in, usually with a partner, and if you let the old people who know what they’re doing push you around to your proper spot, you pick it up quickly and then it’s a whiz. The music is infectious and you can’t help but move – I find that I assume there’s something seriously wrong with people who can listen to a fiddler play a reel and not move their feet. It’s all I can do to stop myself from dancing, you know, when everyone else is sitting at the table, demurely sipping beer. It’s also very good exercise; I developed calves of steel and remarkable lung capacity.

My second foray into rhythm was when I signed myself up for a zumba class at the gym about a year ago. Zumba is a fusion of Latin dance and hiphop coolness, all disguised as exercise. I am no Britney Spears, it’s true, but I find that if I just lose myself in the thrumming beat and don’t watch myself in the mirror, I don’t feel nearly as awkward as I am sure I look. Sometimes I fantasize about breaking out my moves at some wedding with an insanely cool DJ who has no aversion to playing profanity-laced, innuendo-laden, bass-heavy dance music.

But I learned long ago to leave the wedding reception before the bride’s dance with her father. I didn’t dance with my dad at my wedding – he had been dead for close to eight years by then. My older brother gave me away, filling in my father’s traditional role perfectly fine, but I couldn’t dance with someone else, for the dance that was supposed to be his. And watching another happy bride dance with her dad, however awkward, makes me ache for my dad. Makes me wish ferociously that he had danced with me at my wedding.

My father-in-law dances well enough, he knows the steps; probably a generational thing. But his dancing is studied, and full of effort. You get the impression that he’s talking to himself in his head as he spins and twirls and guides my mother-in-law. My father’s dancing was effortless.
He was in his element.
He looked dancing like I feel swimming.

Recently I was out to dinner with friends. We sat outside at a tapas bar, and an older gentleman played soft, slow Brazilian jazz. The owner of the restaurant, a tall, slim man with a Brooklyn accent I couldn’t quite believe was real, danced with his wife on the little brick patio, and his loose, light stepping made my throat tighten. He danced like my dad. Controlled but free, fluid and graceful and lithe...I longed to ask him to dance with me. He may very well have, but I was more afraid that were we to dance, I would lay my head on his shoulder and weep.

the elusive mazurka bar

2010-09-20T16:27:00.002-04:00

I just finished The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks. Wynter Morrison makes a return, and now she's co-owner of the Queen Street Bakery, still mixing up delicious-sounding loaves.

Into the mix this time around is thrown a disappearing boyfriend, a mysterious and annoying cake decorator, a bereft apprentice, a foot-dragging ex-husband, and a lovelorn landlord.

The story skips and jumps around a bit, and there are characters I would love to read about in spin-off novels. But the real star, as before, is the bakery. At least for me.

And this time round I was determined to bake a Mazurka bar, the cookie Ellen, the bakery's original owner, is famous for. Turns out the recipe is elusive; according to the blogs and reviews I found, even Hendricks doesn't have one.

So I intend to have a good time trying...I started with this one: from CakeSpy.com, and while it doesn't feature the light, flaky pastry mentioned in the book, it is indeed delicious, especially warmed, with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. The apricots cut the sweetness of the crust just the perfect little amount, and I shamelessly scrape the almost caramelized bits of butter off the bottom of the pan and pop them into my mouth when no one else is in the kitchen.

However, this one also tantalizes: from Yulinka Cooks. Although there's no oatmeal, and I am pretty sure the mazurka bars in Bread Alone contained oatmeal, I am willing to try them. I am a sucker for dried fruit and nuts.

This recipe, from Feathered Nest, is more similar to the first than the second, but the fruit is fresh and goes on top of the crust rather than between. I have a bowlful of prune plums that might be put to work in this recipe someday soon.

I am still Googling and searching my stash of cookbooks and cooking magazines, to round up more contestants. Anyone want to come help me taste test?

There is no proof, Septimus. The thing that is perfectly obvious is that the note in the margin was a joke to make you all mad.

2010-09-16T19:36:00.005-04:00

I am almost done The Baker's Apprentice. It was exactly as I expected. And now I am about to embark on a quest for the Mazurka bar, which the bakery in the novel sells.

Let the Great World Spin is beautifully, carefully written. It is a book with which one must take one's time.

Just started Deliverance this afternoon, and broke out my pretty Persephone Press edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding.

But in the meantime, I am rereading Tom Stoppard's brilliant play, Arcadia.
This man will always be Septimus Hodge to me.

soapbox post

2010-09-14T11:40:00.003-04:00

This annoys the everliving shit out of me.

I was going to write a whole diatribe about why Americans think everything needs to be Americanized, and why the general zeitgeist seems to be that anything remotely European is too foreign and hard for us to cope with, but I am too tired.

I read Let the Right One IN THE ORIGINAL SWEDISH -- well, no, no, I didn't, but I read it ages ago. In the original translation, with the original title, because someone who had seen the original movie raved about it. I liked it well enough. It was a good read.

I will ignore this ridiculous Americanized media tie-in edition, as well as the stupid American remake of the movie.

Just as I will ignore the American remake of the film of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Guess what, America? It's OK to NOT be American. Seriously. The rest of the world has lots to offer, some of it even better than what we have here.

SHEESH.

Everything is never as it seems...

2010-09-12T22:42:00.002-04:00

Books I bought today:

The Baker's Apprentice - Judith Ryan Hendricks. I read Bread Alone because I picked it up off a shelf of a vacation rental a couple years ago. I really enjoyed it. It was comfort reading - full of delicious food and you knew it was going to end happily. I didn't know there was a sequel till I stumbled over it today at the bookstore, where I'd gone with Primo to buy the new 39 Clues book, and for Seg, yet another complete sticker book of something Star Wars. Seg offered to give me his saved up money for part of his book, but considering he helped me sort and put away 6 baskets of laundry this morning, quite cheerfully, I got it for him. I like to do little things like that for my Seg; he is such a kind and generous soul himself.

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel. Can't wait to start this one.

I came home with a hankering to finally read Let the Great World Spin, which I bought ages ago, so dug it up and found my copy of Master and Commander in the process, so both are now sitting on my nightstand.

And I am moving through my pile of Persephone Press books; it's the weather, I crave pleasant domestic novels.

****

Just finished Sara Gruen's The Ape House. While I read it straight through in two nights, I won't say it was an especially great book. There are characters I liked, a few I didn't get At. All., and I don't really care about bonobos. As Katya said, "[It's] not that I want anything to happen to them, [I'm] not interested in reading about them." Precisely. But despite all this equivocation, I am glad I read it. I scored it at the library on the New Books display, so that was a bonus, too.

******

Why can I have a book in my house for months or sometimes even years before I am hit with the burning desire to read it RIGHT NOW? See above, Let the Great World Spin. I like to go bookshopping on my own shelves. The price is right.

2010-09-02T14:07:00.001-04:00

Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tasty Kake...

2010-08-01T19:01:00.004-04:00

It was an oddly blissful week, full of relatives and old friends.

Also, cocktails, lots and lots of laughing, and, um, yes, nostalgic eating of panzarottis and cheese steaks and peanut butter Kandy Kakes. (Can't resist this link to fun facts about Tasty Kakes.)

Lots of other kids for the boys to play with.

Lots of chlorinated water, and plenty of dirt, and tons of Star Wars battles.

Dinners were low-key; having another mother there to assuage my fears that Primo was going to die of malnutrition was wonderful, or maybe it was just the calming effect of the delicious pina coladas she made me. Never mind, the ketchup bottle took pride of place on the table, and the kids ate popsicles all day long, and everyone survived without developing scurvy or rickets.

I haven’t slept that well in years. In fact, why B didn’t come pounding on my door at 8 every morning, I do not know, but I will be eternally, shamefacedly grateful – I slept till TEN on Saturday while she plied my guys with Cheerios and sausage, and how blessed am I to have such a true friend?

The house tumbled with kids all day long, but the cacophony didn’t make me nearly so twitchy as it does at home. Even though I still had to feed and bathe and discipline them (occasionally), the week was relaxing. (The evening sweep of straightening and the preparation of meals goes much more quickly and pleasantly with two sets of hands.)

It does apparently take a village.

The twenty-first century sucks in some ways.

But I can’t hate it too much, because I wouldn’t have been able to resurrect this village of cousins and friends without its technology.

Gulp.

Thank you, Facebook.

You can go home again, but it won't be pretty...

2010-07-25T22:54:00.000-04:00

The house is tan now, not mint green.

The huge locust tree out front, the one that constantly dropped branches and that my parents worried would fall on our roof with every storm, is gone. As are the evergreen bushes that shielded the concrete porch's stark lines and sheltered the crocuses my mom planted, that heralded the arrival of spring.

The side yard, where I practiced and practiced and practiced my running roundoffs, and attempted (unsuccessfully) aerials all summer afternoon, is cemented over, with a giant blue truck parked there.
The red monster truck is parked out front. I wonder how the Glowackis and the Hills feel about that. It's pretty butt ugly and takes up way more than its fair share of space.

My dad's garden and wild orange lilies are gone, replaced by a huge dog kennel of chainlink, reaching skyward. Exactly how big is that dog, I wonder? It makes our teeny little chainlink fence, the one that protected us from the neighbors' ferocious terriers - ha - seem like a plaything. We would breathlessly leap the fence to retrieve errant balls, with the doggies yapping loudly at our heels.

There is also a giant, faux-gingerbread-y garden "shed," large and sturdy enough to house a small family. I have no doubt it harbors a loud, exhaust-belching (and wholly unnecessary) riding mower.

Old Lady Weston's house is no longer the spooky, Gothic mansion hulking halfway down the block; its porch boasts pretty hanging baskets and the yard a picket fence. The Rosatis' split-level no longer hosts the biggest collection of gaudy lawn ornaments any of us have ever seen; the Teitzes no longer claim a secret, turquoise pool none of us ever swam in.

I don't even know if the Barneys or the Bobos still live here, but the apartment in which my parents lived for the first three years of their marriage is still there, with its gravel driveway into which my mother flung her engagement ring one angry night.

I wonder when the houses all shrunk.
And when the huge, overreaching mulberry tree was chopped down.
And when our "woods" became a scrub patch on the side of the freeway wall.
I wonder if the kids still play hockey in the cul-de-sac, and if there are blockwide games of Kick-the-Can and jailbreak in the dusk. Or if maybe the children are all holed up in Stacie's basement, playing Atari.

But Peggy still offers up home-baked cookies, and Mr Hill is pottering around his garage.

Some things never change.

Day 27, Day Before NJ edition

2010-07-23T11:24:00.001-04:00

On today’s upcoming vacation menu, for (chewy) starters: some nonfiction. William Langweische’s American Ground: The unbuilding of the World Trade Center. I have been a fan of Langweische’s writing since he wrote for “The Atlantic.” He can take what seems like the most prosaic of topics and imbue it with such energy and interest that the book becomes a page-turner. This book was no exception. It was tough to read, but he handled the information in a sensitive, compassionate manner.

First course (pasta): Tender is the Night. I dunno, don’t ask. Sometimes books just leap off the shelf at you.

Main course (meat): The Passage. This is nominally a vampire book – yes, there are vamps, but they could just as easily be zombies or plague or some other great and unavoidable evil. The Passage is much more than a summer blockbuster featuring bloodsuckers. It reminds me of Stephen King’s epic The Stand. I am about three-quarters of the way through it; it is compulsively readable, but it is not going to end well, so I keep procrastinating wrapping it up.

Main course (vegetarian): The Cookbook Collector - Allegra Goodman. LOVE. But then I am a Goodman fan.

Palate cleanser: Brideshead Revisited. I had never read this, can you believe that?

For afters, we have the following books, all of which I saw at Target yesterday and thought, I should read that. But I already own them. Bargain! They join the TBR pile:

The Zookeeper’s Wife - Diane Ackerman
Sarah’s Key - Tatiana de Rosnay
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Vorghese

I did almost buy World War Z but managed to restrain myself.

Nom, nom, nom. (That’s the sound the zombies make, too…)

A Homemade Life - Molly Wizenberg

2010-07-19T19:31:00.000-04:00

I like food. I like cooking it, I like eating it, I like talking about it, and I like reading about it. I like food memoirs. I love MFK Fisher, John Thorne, Laurie Colwin. I enjoyed Nigel Slater’s books, and Ruth Reichl’s sort-of-food-memoirs.
I have cooked my way through Bonny Wolf’s Talking with my Mouth Full and Michael Lee West’s Consuming Passions. So when I first picked up A Homemade Life at the library a year or so ago, I was pretty sure I’d at least enjoy reading it.

The first third is mostly about her charming, idiosyncratic, but loving family. The middle third of the book is situated in Paris where she studies and then teaches for a chunk of time, and the last third is about starting her blog, Orangette, and meeting her husband.

The recipes separate a decent food memoir from a stellar one, and these recipes look divine. The chapter on Molly’s mother’s Christmas cookies made me vow to buy it the minute it came out in paperback, and so I did; I plan to crank out some of the fruit-nut balls this December for teacher gifts. I have at least a dozen other pages tabbed to try: her father’s potato salad, the ginger pear cake, the lemon yogurt cake, her exchange/foster mother’s tuna croquettes, the Dutch baby pancakes. The list goes on.

It’s precisely the sort of food book that makes you want to go rummage through the pantry for something delicious to eat.

Sunday break

2010-07-18T13:14:00.003-04:00

We've been having a very nice weekend.
Friday night we all watched a Thomas movie (even the big boys liked it), and then when the Littlers were in bed, me and Primo and Seg sat around eating Oreos and watching "Cake Boss."

Yesterday I managed to get myself to the gym. But the rest of the day the boys played outside, then we trooped to the pool for an hour, and then ice cream for "dinner," with French toast and fruit for "dessert."

Seg is off on to a birthday party today, and Primo just turned down a playdate with his best friend because he is, in his words, "tired and grumpy." He's lying down, reading.

H is expected home late this evening.

I have been glued to The Passage.

I did haul everyone to Barnes and Noble, to buy the birthday present for Seg's party. I also bought Allegra Goodman's new book, The Cookbook Collector; Molly Wizenberg's food memoir, A Homemade Life (already adding more recipes to the must-try list); and Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, because I am sick to death of coping with the library hold list.

Day 22 - The Wedding Version

2010-07-16T13:34:00.001-04:00

Me.
Four small boys.
Seventy-two hours.
H out of town.

I am afraid it's going to be very Lord of the Flies round these parts for the weekend.

It's going to have to involve an awful lot of alcohol.

Or Benadryl.

But the good news is, I have The Passage to read.

Day 20

2010-07-14T07:36:00.002-04:00

What exactly is it about online friendships?

Is it because you can edit what you say before hitting that Send button? You can be as smart and witty as you want to be, because you have a moment to think before you speak – er, send.

Is it because you rarely meet the person in real life, so the mystery is always maintained, no matter how close you grow?

For example, I adore Suse. We email. We snail mail each other things. We have Skyped, and I have seen her and heard her voice. But I have never, much to my regret, sat next to her at a coffee shop and watched her stir 6 sugars into her coffee or harangue the barista because there's not enough foam on her latte. (I am not saying Suse does that; just that she could and I would never know. Perhaps I should have picked a more hypothetical example.) I have no idea if the fact that I pick my cuticles or constantly run my hands through my hair or curse at old people driving too slowly in giant cars would drive her round the bend, and there is a very good chance that we will never spend quite long enough together to find out.

When I met up with Blackbird, lo, eons ago, we had a mere weekend to catch up and cram in everything we wanted to say; perhaps if we were next door neighbors, that intensity and feeling of, I dunno, being almost in love - you know, like a girl crush - I wanted Blackbird to see only the funniest, smartest bits of me - would dissipate. Of course it must. My next door neighbor, whom I happen to like very, very much, has heard me scream at my kids, and watched me retrieve my paper in ratty old pajamas and unwashed hair, and puts up with having to look at my toy-scattered front yard on a regular basis. And we are still good friends. But the magic, as it were, has long since gone.

Which isn’t to say that Suse and Blackbird don’t know the REAL me; they maybe just know the BEST of me, because I have the luxury of editing myself.

I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I still have friends “in real life;” dear friends to whom I can talk in person and with whom I lounge around and drink and knit and eat burgers. I could not live without them. But often the stupid things that flit through my brain are voiced before I stop myself; I reveal things in ways I wish later I hadn’t. And if I get a bad haircut or have a big zit on my chin, there’s no hiding it. There is no editing “in real life.”

Here’s another interesting thought: I interact mostly online even with one of my closest friends in real life. Gina lives four miles away from me, but we often won’t see each other for weeks on end. But we email and text and call…so is it the case that were this means of communication not available that we would slowly cease to be friends? In this case, I think not – Gina and I have been friends from before the crazy burgeoning of online communication. It does mean I can chat with her during the day as often as I like, at each other’s convenience. And I think that may be one of the keys to the success of online relationships – they are indeed conducted at one’s convenience. As someone who curses every time the phone rings, this is a huge advantage.

(Although I will point out, re: that perceived convenience, that Gina and I may be unique in that, if we have plans, neither of us considers it remotely rude or odd to say, “I don’t feel like going out in the cold tonight, and I’m achy and just want to go to bed.” There is never any recrimination or sulking or anything; it is a true luxury to have a friend one can blow off without repercussions or guilt.)

Via the Internet I have met many lovely people whom I am proud to consider friends, whom I may never meet in real life, and who, honestly, may come and go from within our loose circle of acquaintances. But this doesn’t make them any less “true” friends.

What do you think?

NOTE: NO names have been changed in the writing of this blog post. I reiterate, Suse may very well only take FIVE sugars in her coffee.

water, water everywhere...

2010-07-11T13:46:00.003-04:00

Despite the huge piles of library books cluttering up my bedroom, I have nothing to read.
Last night I cracked open The Bell Jar.

What a writer.
I am not a huge poetry person, but I must check out Plath's poems now, too.

And you should all probably be grateful that we have an electric oven.

Friday, Day 17, summer vacation

2010-07-09T23:33:00.003-04:00

Watched "Lightning Thief" with bigger boys. Abysmal. How could they cut out entire characters? And the dialogue! Blergh...Paul the octopus predicts Spain for the World Cup winner...reading Jen Lancaster's Pretty in Plaid; if you are my FB friend, you will see that ole Jen had nothing on me...but she is very funny...tomorrow's plans: zumba, soccer, watch soccer, soccersoccersoccer is that all I ever think about? Well, you know, hockey season is over...picked up The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life from the library, despite the fact that I can't recall who recommended it and the fact that it reminds me of I Don't Know How She Does It so far...anyone have a copy of Lorrie Moore's Anagrams they could lend me? I can't find it at my library. If worse comes to worse, I will buy it, but just checking...am rereading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business because some guy I email reminded me of Davies and I love him- Davies, not the guy...am craving tomatoes, what does that mean my body wants?...library books: LEGO: A Love Story; Bitter Seeds; Don't You Forget About Me; Food of a Younger Land; MOM: A celebration of mothers from StoryCorps; William Langewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center; Michael Pollan's Food Rules; Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey; George Carlin's Last Words. Capsule reviews will follow eventually. G'night.

Day 15, summer vacation 2010

2010-07-07T13:16:00.000-04:00

Today I had a blazing epiphany at the gym.

The only reason my body should ever expect to have to run a couple miles as fast as it can is because someone got run over by the combine and I am getting them help.

I am built to dig potatoes in the fields, not samba to Latin tunes.
(By the time my hips get to where my feet are, they are supposed to be going in the opposite direction anyway.)

My ankles were designed to be covered by Wellies worn as I muck out the cow and horse stalls.

When Stalin starved out his people, I may have lasted longer than most, but in modern times in America, that cuts no ice.

My Eastern European peasant stock cannot be disguised, much as I may long to be a true gym rat with jutting vertebrae and hipbones.

Not that this means I give up, as my brain rather likes its endorphins.

But it may change the feelings of inadequacy engendered in me by about half of the denizens of my health club.

Day 14, Summer Vacation

2010-07-06T09:31:00.006-04:00

Currently reading Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs.
In this bit, he and his wife discuss their second son's upcoming bris.

'It's not going to hurt,' I told [him], though, of course...I had no idea whether it was going to hurt him or not. That was one of the skills you learned as a father fairly early on, and it had roots as ancient as whatever words Abraham had crafted to lure his son Isaac up that mountainside to the high place where he would bare his beloved child's breast to the heavens, as he had been commanded to do by the almighty asshole or by the god-shaped madness whose voice was rolling like thunder through his brain. It was not the making of a covenant that the rite called Brit Milah commemorated, but the betrayal of one. Because you promised your children, simply by virtue of having them, and thereafter a hundred times a day, that you would shield them, always and with all your might, from harm, from madness, from men with their knives and their bloody ideas. I supposed it was never too soon for them to start learning what a liar you were.

Monday - Day 13 of Summer Vacation

2010-07-05T11:15:00.003-04:00

My dining room is mostly finished.
The painter/contractor (my lovely neighbor) just (just! ha!) has to re-install the double-hung 6-over-1 original window he found miraculously sandwiched between plywood plugs, and then deal with the giant bay window with coffered ceiling. Which is a big job - but most of the furniture can be put back.

The room itself was a huge job - the linear feet of moulding alone made me want to weep with despair. Not to mention the plaster ceiling that needed patching, the uneven plaster on the walls, and the ornate fireplace mantel. He did an amazing job. I can't believe it's the same room.

It is now a warm pumpkin-y, terra cotta-y color, with a white ceiling and cream woodwork, except for the mantel cabinet doors which were stripped down to their original oak so he could find the hinges and glass leading. They look so lovely that I am contemplating stripping the whole mantel, because F assures me that it's oak.
But one insanity at a time, thank you very much.

I need REAL dining room furniture.
Our table and chairs are pale, Shaker-style IKEA pieces, which are just fine. They are sturdy, easy to keep presentable, and have clean, stark lines.

I have a glass-fronted cherry Mission-style cabinet that I use as a china cabinet. Yes, the boys cracked one of the panes of glass, but that's fairly easily fixable.

My grandmother's old cedar chest holds all my table linens. It's pretty, but there's no obvious place for it to sit; however, it has huge sentimental value so I refuse to store it away or get rid of it.

But the main china cabinet is a cast-off from my brother- and sister-in-law that I thought was hideous when they had it in their dining room, yet when they were going to throw it out in favor of a new (even more hideous) set, for some reason H and I said, Sure, we'll take it. It's almost as if we don't believe we deserve new, nice furniture, in our taste. I DESPISE this thing. It's flimsy and battered, and is way too small for our embarrassingly palatial dining room. The room screams for a big, chunky, solid piece anchoring the sconce wall. Instead, this thing wobbles and teeters on its ridiculous little legs and rattles every time someone walks by it.

I. HATE. IT.

To that end, I have spoken to the man who built the bookcases in the bedroom,and we are designing a cabinet/set of shelves, with maybe glass doors and with drawers for all the linens, to fit into the space between the outside wall and the fireplace. It's as if that space was made for some sort of built-in, and if he does even half as beautiful a job as he did in my bedroom, I will be delighted. Besides, think of all that storage space!

But, you know, now that you mention it? You know what else I hate?
All the crap plates and bowls and tureens and jugs and glasses various relatives have pawned off on me when they were clearing out *their* basements.

So I arranged my pretty, beloved things - my grandmother's Depression glass, the Czech crystal friends gave us as a wedding gift or my brother brought back for me from his travels, my treasured and oft-used wine glasses, hand-thrown and glazed pottery we have picked up and been given here and there - in the cabinets and am packing away in the basement, wrapped carefully and labeled, the stuff that I hate but can't in good conscience give to Goodwill because, well, what if my mother-in-law asks someday where the crystal urn Great-great Aunt Ethel gave us is?

As soon as I convince H that a dining room without an ugly green polka dotted area rug is a) easier to clean, and b) much more attractive and elegant, I will be quite pleased with the one grown-up room in my house.

If only I could get the boys to stop sticking things to the walls.
I threatened to beat any child who thought they must attached sticky foam letters to my freshly-painted walls.
Even if those letters spell "MOM."

Friday - Day 12 of Summer Vacation

2010-07-02T20:01:00.002-04:00

******MOVIE SPOILER ALERT*********
"Remember Me" with Robert Pattinson (of Twilight fame) amd Emilie de Ravin
******MOVIE SPOILER ALERT*********
******MOVIE SPOILER ALERT*********

OK, you have been warned.

H was out playing guitars last night.
When he does this, I usually plunk in front of the TV, watch some stupid movie he has no interest in seeing, and knit.

Last night, I watched "Remember Me."

RPatz plays Tyler Hawkins, a 22-year-old New Yorker who is coping with a family tragedy, and trying to be a good son and brother, and who falls in love with the daughter of a cop who unjustly beat him up and has pretty horrific family history of her own. It is NOT a comedy - it is a complicated, thoughtful, actually quite lovely movie about a young man trying to find his way in the world, and Pattinson displays acting skill of which I did not, frankly, think him capable. (Of course, he was also nice to look at...)

The movie was just about over, and I could not puzzle out how in God's green earth they were going to end it. It seemed pretty clear it wasn't just going to be some smarmy happy ending, the rest of the movie was too complex for that....but the smaller tragedy of what happens to the character is compounded by the huge scale tragedy of the day -- it ends on Sept 11, 2001, which you should see coming, looking back - but you don't see it at all.

RPatz's character is waiting for his high-powered father in his offices...the camera pans from him looking out at the city, saying what a beautiful day, and then the camera slowly pans out to outside the building looking at him, silhouetted in a window of one of the WTC towers. And from there...well....

I had a visceral reaction - I felt like I was going to vomit.
I sobbed, and could not stop.

Does everyone else remember sitting in front of CNN or Fox that day, watching live footage, praying and shaking and crying (and in my case, frantically speed dialing two loved ones who worked across the West Side Highway from the Towers)? I felt like that's what we all did, that tragic and horrible morning.

Till now I have pretty successfully avoided any commercial representation of that day on purpose...."Man on Wire" was bad enough and that was just the Towers, not what happened. This was...different. Punch to the gut.

And *I* am lucky, because everyone I love who was in danger at all was safe at the end of that day.
And it still affected me that way.

I am experiencing, in the words of Joke, "hangover" today.

I can't shake it.

I really, really wish I had never watched it.

But then I would have missed an otherwise wonderful movie.
Even the ending, while maybe manipulative, was not trite or overdone.

But I have a very hard time with anyone using the events of that day for any form of entertainment.
I finally stopped sobbing, but my eyes are still swollen today.

I probably should have just watched "New Moon" again.

Day 11 of Summer Vacation

2010-07-01T11:09:00.004-04:00

I am paralyzed.
I need to clear up the kitchen and mop the floor.
I need to put the dining room furniture back where it belongs.
I need to grocery shop.

Instead, I am sitting in my bedroom, putzing around on the computer, eating goldfish crackers straight out of the bag.

I don't want to be climbed on or sat upon or tugged at.
I don't want small boys to put their feet on me.
I don't want to look at one more crayoned picture or listen to one more tediously detailed plot description of a new DS game.
I am tired of having to share everything I put in my mouth or want to look at.
I don't want to be called Mama a thousand times a day, for a thousand small favors.

I want the baby to get his hand out of the cracker bag so I can get mine in.

I may not survive summer vacation.

I do not want to be in my own skin any longer.

I want to be in someone else's skin, some person who is a good mother with patience and spontaneity and an interest in hauling her kids to a museum or playdate.
I want to be the person who doesn't care that the seven year old just spilled a full cup of juice on her freshly washed floor, or that none of the males in her house seem capable of peeing IN the toilet.
I want to be the person who doesn't wish to throttle her husband for coming home early to take a nap, or for getting in her way while making dinner so he can wash his hands at the kitchen sink.
I want to be the mom who doesn't yell and roar and throw things.
I want to be a person who puts on clean clothes in the morning and they stay clean, most of the day, not sullied by popsicle stickiness or diaper residue or snot.

I can't take a vacation because when I do, my husband gets angry about why I need time to myself. I don't know if he actually hates me, but I sure feel like he does.

He works constantly, and I don't feel like explaining anymore to anyone that he loves to work like this but I am burnt out.

I very probably could deal with this by upping my medication dosage.
Or drinking more. Like, starting at 11am every morning.

I hate that I in theory adore my children but in reality wish every last one of them would leave me alone.

I am tired of being me.
I think everyday of David Foster Wallace talking about how he got tired of having to work so hard just to exist everyday.
Not to be happy or fulfilled but just to exist.
I know exactly what he means.

And I am sick of myself.
And I will keep going, and eventually I will snap out of it somehow, and in ten years none of this will matter and I will wish for my children climbing all over me.

But right now, right now...right now I feel like bathing in my self-pity, sinking under its surface and letting it fill my ears and mouth, letting it drown me.

Wednesday - Day 10 of Summer Vacation

2010-06-30T12:59:00.004-04:00

You can have finely crafted posts once a month, or I can just post stream-of-consciousness (a la James Joyce - HA!) slightly more often. I am opting for the second because, well, it's my blog.

I read Brunonia Barry's newest, The Map of True Places, over the past three days. It's a little disjointed, but the characters are nicely drawn and the main character, Zee Finch, is intensely sympathetic. I liked it more than The Lace Reader, but there are some characters from that novel that show up for cameos of sorts in this one, so that's fun.

I am laughing myself simple reading Jancee Dunn's Why is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask I LOVED her But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous, but assumed it was a Jersey thing. Nope. This one is even funnier, and I may be a little bit in love with her family. Seriously, I thought I was going to wake the whole house up last night reading this.

I picked up Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna from the library again; hope I am in the mood for it this time.

But, honestly, everyone I know seems to be having babies, so a lot of free time is taken up with whipping out baby gifts. It gives me a fine excuse to buy yarn but not a whole lot of time for reading.

And tonight I will be going to see "Eclipse," without knitting needles in hand. An unusual occurrence. But I must pay attention to sparkly vampires.

Lazy, hazy days of summer...

2010-06-23T17:26:00.004-04:00

Oh, dudes.
Deb, you were right. And I was wrong. It's not that there's not more time - it's just that I am BRAINDEAD.

I have a gajillion half-read books sitting around.
My Google reader Items to Be read is up to like six hundred.
I have five different projects on the needles.

I have four boys to care for 24-freaking-7.

Some nights, I go out after the boys and H are in bed. I take my book and drive to my favorite neighborhood bar, and order a Pilsner Urquell and some buffalo bites, and watch whatever sporting event is on TV. It's calming, it's peaceful, it's restorative.

I wonder if the bar has free wireless...

Gah!

2010-06-07T23:14:00.002-04:00

Bonk - Mary Roach
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
Eclipse - Stefenie Meyer
Mallory's Oracle - Carol O'Connell

Yep, now you know.
School's out in a week; hope I have more time to blog then...

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8)

2010-05-23T06:49:00.005-04:00

This rainy, chilly Sunday morning, I wake at around 5 or so. One of my children is sobbing. At least, it’s not sobbing that I have ever heard before from any of them (yes, it’s true, mamas can pick out the cry of her child in a crowd, let alone her own house). But it must be one of them, who else is here?

I was confused when it appeared that all three boys currently under my care were sleeping peacefully (albeit two in one bed – impromptu slumber party). Even though I saw them in bed, I then thought, It’s coming from outside (I know, don’t think I didn’t think that. Cue the axe murderer.) My still asleep brain somehow could handle the fact that despite the fact that I had just laid eyes on all three children IN THE HOUSE, apparently one of them was locked outside, crying.

When I opened the front door, there was a small figure – so small that at first I thought it was a dog – huddled in the middle of my street, sobbing heartbrokenly.

Next thought: someone’s cat got run over. As I approached (yeah, if you’re thinking, Idiot! get in line with my husband), I realized it was one person, a (seemingly) young, teeny tiny girl, sobbing as if her heart would break – or indeed, as if it already had.

Sadly, because we live when we do, in the society we do, the gut instinct that led me out into the street to find a crying child cautioned me against getting too close – that this girl could have a gun or be whacked out on drugs, or be of danger to me – and more importantly, to my sleeping children in my house - somehow.

I spent close to an hour sitting out on the street with her. She never moved, just cried and cried and cried. She repeated things like, “I don’t have anybody! I don’t trust anyone! I have no home!” over and over.

Because I live where I live, there are certain things that immediately pop into my head when a ruckus occurs out on the street, especially in the off hours.

Was she drunk?
(I don’t think she was.)

Was the guy sitting in the shiny new SUV parked behind her her boyfriend, her father, her pimp?
(Turns out the boy was her boyfriend. He was a slight, clean-cut teenager who was somewhere between exasperation, resignation, and amusement with his girlfriend (I think) and her drama.)

Did he have a gun?
(Yeah, I asked her that, and I am not proud, but you know, I wasn’t approaching a strange car without at least some inkling of who or what was in there.)

Should I call the police, the women’s shelter, her mom?
(No, no, no. I got out of her that she was 18. She looked about 10.)

Mostly, she HAD to get out of the street before someone – most likely my newspaper guy – ran her over.

A woman driving home from an engagement party – immaculately dressed, driving a silver BMW – stopped to see if she could help. I was just glad for another face at that point. The boyfriend never emerged from the car (seems he’d been driving around following her as she wandered the streets, sobbing, and had pretty much given up on talking any sense at all into her.) I offered to call the cops, I offered a jacket, I offered food, money for a cab. She just kept repeating “I don’t know anymore!” and sobbing. (Well, once I thought she asked for Cheerios, but I was wrong.)

I had just about decided there was nothing I could much do, if she didn’t want me calling the police. I told her to come knock on my door if there was anything I could do to help, reiterating my earlier offers of phone calls, food, money. I told the very polite boyfriend the same thing. I was about to reluctantly disappear back into my house and let the drama go on without me.

Then, an angel descended. No, not really. But my rector, one of the nicest men alive, and a man of God so he’d know what to do, drove up the street. He didn’t have any more idea than I did, but he was leaning towards calling the police.

Then, before any of us could make a move, the girl unfolded herself and stalked regally down my alley, disappearing. She was lovely, even after crying for an hour, crumpled on the wet pavement.

The silver BMW lady wanted to leave, I could tell. She had been talking out her car window to the boyfriend. He had said that the girl was upset over something (yeah, I wasn’t gonna pry, wasn’t it enough that I had engendered a three-ring circus?) and he’d been driving around, following her, for hours. On one hand, great, she was pulling the Camille act all over the neighborhood at 5 o-freaking-clock in the morning. On the other, that was some serious emotion I saw. Whatever was upsetting her – however trivial or laughable it may have been to any of us – was real to her. (Of course at 18 *I* thought my heart was never going to recover from Michael Madigan loving someone else and not me anymore. So, you know, 18. So young. A child.)

I am still ashamed that my first presumption was that she was drunk, my second that she was a prostitute (are hookers rocking Converse tennis and skinny jeans these days?). I am ashamed that I worried about a gun. I did not do any of these things JUST because both young people were African American; I did it because they were strangers, and gallivanting around my neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, and because I had three sleeping children in the house behind me. If they had been white teenagers, I actually would have been less sympathetic. Which smacks of racism right there – my assumption that a white teenager has resources that a black girl might not have is just as prejudiced. (I still would have asked about the gun. I hate guns. They terrify me. And apparently everyone in the world but me has one at this point.)

All I know is that I heard a child crying and the mom in me wanted to fix it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even really make her feel better. But maybe, sometime, when she thinks about how no one cares, she’ll recall how some crazy middle-aged lady wearing pajamas and a retainer stood out in the wet street for an hour, talking to her, teasing out details of her life, trying to find a way to help.

I even offered her her Cheerios. Thank God I’d gone grocery shopping yesterday.

Jai ho!

2010-05-22T22:18:00.004-04:00

I am laughing out loud reading this:

I am enjoying this second in the series almost more than the first:

Quirky but fun, I'll stick with it to see where it goes:

And I just wept my way through the last chapters of this. Seriously, I need to stop reading books that make me cry.

All that tread the globe are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom.

2010-05-16T09:46:00.004-04:00

Having spent the past hour and a half sobbing, I finally close the book and put it down. My eyes are swollen, my nose is running, and I feel spent.

I go upstairs and check on each of my boys, gently patting their long limbs under the covers, tucking well-loved stuffed animals into the crooks of their arms. I smooth their hair back from their foreheads, I kiss their cheeks, I breathe in their little boy smell.

The book I just finished has put on the table for examination the worst of every mother's fears, and while I am glad I read it, the book will go on my shelf and probably not be opened ever again by me. It is not the sort of book one rereads, despite the true compassion and love I feel for some of the characters.

It is a book that forces me to look at What if? and when it comes to my boys, the only what if I want to contemplate is a happy one. To speculate otherwise feels like tempting fate; although, sometimes, I think of it as protection. Like if I can imagine the worst, it will never, ever happen. Either way, I can't think too hard about this novel, it is too heartbreaking.

Yet I wake up this morning snarly and cranky from lack of sleep and a nagging headache. I find myself grousing at my beloved boys for demanding too much too early, for being too loud, for simply acting like little boys. Oh, the dichotomy of motherhood.

Half Price Books booty. Arrrrrr!

2010-05-14T14:43:00.004-04:00

Magyk, the first Septimus Heap. Primo liked it well enough to ask me to get the next few.

The Amulet of Samarkand, the first of the Bartimaeus trilogy. I haven’t given this to Primo yet. He is travelling with his dad next week, and will need reading material for the plane. (And if you think I am sending library books out of state with that child, you are sadly mistaken.)

Jason and the Golden Fleece - by James Riordan. We are all about mythology these days.

Star Wars 1,2, 4-6 – More plane material.

H.I.V.E. (Higher Institute of Villainous Education) – Mark Waldon. Yeah, I couldn’t decide if this looked stupid or cool. For a buck, I decided to give it a shot. Primo hasn’t finished it yet, though. I started it and still can’t decide if it’s stupid or cool.

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club – Gil McNeil. I love this book. It’s right up there with Raffaella Barker’s Hens Dancing and Summertime for go-to comfort reading of the English novel variety – only with bonus knitting and yarn talk.

Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan. The classic French coming-of-age tale, blahblahblah. I forget where I first read about this. I have a moldy green hardback copy, but this is a compact little QP version. So I can throw away the moldy one.

Keeping Watch – Laurie R. King. One of King’s non-Mary Russell novels.

Until I Find You – John Irving. If you ask me (and you have), Irving jumped the shark about two thirds of the way through Owen Meany. But for a dollar, I am willing to give him another chance.

Model: The ugly business of beautiful women – Michael Gross. Why do I want to read this? I do seem to have a thing for exposes of an industry – think Fast Food Nation, The American Way of Birth and …Death, and most of Mary Roach’s books. Or those books that delve into the nasty underside of the sports of figure skating and women’s gymnastics. They make good reading.

Astrid & Veronika – Linda Olsson.

In Fact: The best of creative nonfiction - (Lee Gutkind, ed.). Sometimes I need books lying around that I can pick up and put down, and pick up and put down, and pick up and put down…this is one of those. Plus, Gutkind teaches at the local university.

A High Wind in Jamaica – Richard Hughes. One of you recommended this to me when I was reading something else that was allegedly similar. Yeah, I know. I’m killing you with details.

The King’s Daughter – Suzanne Martel. Mail order brides and pioneer living. Excellent.

The Mother Dance – Harriet Lerner. Cuz I love reading books that tell me what I am doing wrong. But of course. Also, it makes H crazy to see me reading books like this.

This Day in the Life: Diaries from women across America (24 hours of true life stories). Aren’t there some bloggers we all know in this?

World of Knitted Toys. I have already been apprised of which child wants which animal.

I'm missing three. Huh. That'll teach me to keep my receipts.

But, wait, there's more...

2010-05-11T17:27:00.006-04:00

Despite the cold and the rain and the slog back to my car that took me longer than the actual relay leg I ran, the marathon was a blast. Thank you for your support, both emotional and financial.

On Mother's Day I participated in a Race for the Cure event that more properly could be billed Zumba for the Cure - a bunch of our instructors led a class at the starting line of the race, and a bunch of us zumba nuts danced along. It was fun. I probably should've worn soccer cleats, and a jacket, but it was still fun. It was a lovely way to spend Mother's Day morning.

H and the boys took me out for a Mother's Day brunch on Saturday, to a new-ish, posh-ish little eatery up the street. The food was quite nice, but not especially kid-friendly, even when they TRIED to be kid-friendly (hint: my children don't generally care for goat cheese or sourdough, no matter how you disguise it). Our meal culminated dramatically in a water glass shattering as Terzo drank from it, provoking lots of mouth-washing-out and finger-sweeping with no regard for our fellow diners' sensibilities. I have no doubt that both the waitstaff and the other diners were pleased and relieved to see the back of us.

Also Saturday I took advantage of ferrying Primo to a birthday party to go to a Half Price Books and spend lots of money. Well, not too much - 20 books for $45 bucks. Not so shabby. I picked up a bunch of stuff I have been pushing Primo to try - the first Septimus Heap book, for example. I also scored the novelizations of the original Star Wars trilogy, and the novels of what kids today call Episodes 1 & 2 and us old folks call those abominations that George Lucas inflicted on us after finding out that Vader is Luke's father (what? you didn't know that? sorry.) Anyway, even though the books appear to be verbatim transcriptions of the movies, both Primo and Seg are very much enjoying them.

I prefer to rummage through the clearance racks, even at HPB, rather than pay "full price" (all of $4.98 in most cases) for anything, so I returned home with a grocery bag smorgasbord of literature. I will post a list for you shortly. If you care.

I also had to venture to Borders to buy the birthday gift for the party (Rick Riordan's newest, The Red Pyramid) and found myself somehow emerging, blinking, into the light with the new Anna Quindlen, Every Last One, and volume 3 of the Sandman graphic novels, as I progress in my quest to own (and read, over and over) the entire brilliant series.

You'd think my trip to the library last week, in which I snagged both the newest Mary Kay Andrews AND the new Lori Lansens, AND my requested copy of The Walking Dead compendium, would have sated somewhat my thirst for piles of books surrounding my bed and scattered all over my house, but apparently not.

coming this weekend to a marathon course near you...

2010-04-30T22:38:00.004-04:00

This Sunday I am running the second leg of the marathon relay, with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.

I am going to (briefly) emerge from (relative) anonymity to let you all know about this, and to encourage you to donate to my cause, if you feel so led.

My Team in Training Page

I will bet every single one of us knows someone affected by blood cancer of some sort. It may be a friend of a friend, or a coworker with whom you are not especially close. My friend H is running for her father, and for her young cousin. It might be a young nephew or niece, or an aunt, or a mother. In my case, it is the former principal of my boys' school, a man I met maybe a total of half a dozen times.

We applied for kindergarten for Primo in the spring of 2006. We interviewed with principals and toured facilities and sat in on classes. H came home from an initial tour and meeting at our school, absolutely bowled over by the spirit and dedication evident in every child, every class, every teacher, every project he saw there. This remarkable environment was headed up by Mr. O'Keefe, a smart and compassionate educator who made everything with which he was involved better. He helped make the school into "the crown jewel of the...public school system," and he was tireless in his efforts to make the educational experience for his children more engaging and more challenging. He clearly loved those children, and they clearly knew it, and they loved him right back.

He met my son twice, and each time I was blown away with his level of engagement with Primo. He remembered every detail about Primo, and he really cared what my son needed, and, equally impressively, was interested also in what he had to offer. Do you know what an expectation like that can mean to a child?

Mr O'Keefe passed away last spring, and my son requested that I take him to the funeral service. I did, and I can tell you that while everyone was sad, even in his passing Mr O'Keefe touched each of us, brightening our lives and strengthening our love for our school and its community.

As I churn out my 4.5 miles Sunday morning, I will think of Mr O'Keefe. He may not have been my best friend, or a friendly neighbor, but he was someone incredibly special who was taken from us much, much too soon, by a disease which one day, I hope, will be curable.

Name? Austin Danger Powers. Sex? Yes please!

2010-04-28T16:54:00.003-04:00

The Dangerous Stuff from the Toffee House.
I was given a free sample while shopping at a charming little stationery store last week. Then, when the owner discovered it was my birthday, she nicely gifted me a half-pound bag of The Dangerous Stuff.
She knew EXACTLY what she was doing...
I am pretty sure their secret ingredient is crack.

Ohioans and fifers and mares, oh my!

2010-04-25T20:15:00.004-04:00

I am waiting for the two year old to fall asleep (the four year old conked out in his brother's bed about an hour ago) so I can go downstairs, eat potato sticks from a can, wash them down with a rum-and-Coke, read The Walking Dead, and watch "2012."

No, H is not here. What makes you ask?

(PS Lots of vomits round these parts this past week (on the part of my children, that is). Lots of good reading, though, and also, some delicious chocolate/candy addiction. If I ever find my camera cord, I have knitting p0rn to show you, too. More later. xoxo)

“What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy”

2010-04-18T22:16:00.003-04:00

OK, so old Voltaire has been dead for several hundred years and yet his wisdom lives on in me.

I turned forty today.
My mother used to tell me that the forties were her best decade.
I think I understand why.

Myself, I have a good husband, four dear, healthy, lovely children, a house and a neighborhood I wouldn't trade for anything, smart, funny, loving friends (both IRL and on the 'nets), and I can rest assured I will be able to pay my student loan bill every month - a lovely feeling.

Said husband conjured up for my birthday dinner pizza from my favorite place, a delicious chocolate raspberry cream cake, and one of the Sandman graphic novels I did not yet own. (Last night he took me out for an amazing sushi dinner. It's been a veritable 48 hour celebration.)

My body, despite its lumps and flubber, is strong and fit, and heck, in the past ten years bore and nourished four children quite handily.

In my thirties I became a runner, taught myself to knit, and took up zumba (in that process becoming enamored of wholly inappropriate hip-hop artists young enough to be my teenagers) -- and in the next decade, I have plans to learn to rock climb, play women's ice hockey, and continue to improve my skiing form.

My life is coming together.
I am slowly growing comfortable in my skin.
I realize life can change, and will continue to be full of ups and downs, surprises and adventures both large and small, excitement and boredom and happiness and love. I realize there may be great grief in my future, but I rest assured there will also be great joy.

I received this heartwarming and thoughtful email from an acquaintance who is growing into a real friend:

Congrats on completing your 40th year!

Enjoy the day, the week, the month--enjoy it all! Really. Why not?

Ten years from now even Quarto will be in middle school, yes? It will come fast.

Along the way, more blessings and wonders and surprises than you can imagine. In those ups and the inevitable downs, friends and neighbors will always be close by. As we are now.

This birthday--as on each day--you are our gift. And we celebrate!

Happy Birthday!

And I think I am finally old enough to not give a crap what people think of me, not even about how I spend my hard-earned money. So I just placed an order for several more Persephone books. Happy birthday to me!

Someone at Amazon loves me.

2010-04-16T17:57:00.004-04:00

Amazon Assist for Firefox? Best thing EVER.

No longer do I need to navigate between tabs (WHAT did we do before tabbed browsing?) to look for a book I read about on someone's blog. I have the little toolbar at the bottom of my screen, and voila! I pick the book I want, and if I wish to read more, Amazon opens that record in a new tab.

For that matter, WHAT did we do before Amazon?

"This is Ground Control to Major Tom..."

2010-04-14T22:59:00.008-04:00

Capsule reviews:

The Girl Who Chased the Moon – Sarah Addison Allen

Another enchanting novel from the author of Garden Spells (but stronger and more cohesive than Sugar Queen, in my humble opinion). I loved the characters – our lovely heroine, Emily Benedict, who returns to her lost mother’s hometown to discover her mother’s secrets but live her own life; Shelby Vance, Emily’s giant, reclusive grandfather; Julia Winterson, the lonely baker with secrets of her own. The story is straightforward but woven with enough magical threads to keep you guessing and entranced. And I feel it's only fair to warn you that it makes you hungry, too.

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd – Jim Fergus

Little Wolf, the leader of the Cheynne Indian tribes, proposes to President Ulysses S Grant that 1000 white women be given to the Indians as brides, to bear and raise mixed race children within the Indian tribes; he contends that this action would bond the Indians to the whites and promote peace. President Grant reacts with outer horror and shock, but secretly approves a plan to recruit the thousand women from prisons, brothels, mental institutions, and tenements. May Dodd engineers her escape thusly from the mental institution to which her socially rigid family had committed her, and travels west, to marry the chief himself and live among the Cheyenne. Her journals tell her life’s story, and her adventures going westward and living with the tribe. This is a work of fiction, but it could easily be read as truth, so clear and real is May. I have no idea how I didn’t read this book when it first came out; it’s a debut novel that more than pleasantly surprised me.

Nanny Returns – Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Krauss

The Nanny Diaries broke my heart at its end, and you’d think I’d have learned, but no. I WANT Nanny to swoop in and save Grayer X (and, in this book, his younger brother Stilton) but instead a combination of mature, compassionate decisions on Nanny’s part and some heavily coincidental but nevertheless satisfying happenings in the lives of Mr & Mrs X wind up leaving me brokenhearted again. Every child deserves the unconditional (if at times smothering : )) love that they give us. I may yell at my kids and I may crave a few hours of alone time, but I adore my boys and play with them and listen to them and don’t care if they get dirt on my clothes or muss up my hair. I’ll take maple-syrup-sticky fingers patting my cheek in love and chocolatey fingers clutching mine any day over a perfect coif and unblemished manicure, and I’ll never understand why you’d have children if you felt otherwise. Apparently neither does Nanny. A satisfying sequel to the only other book of McCaughlin’s and Krauss’ that I liked.

I am wrapping up The Forgotten Garden and have the newest Maisie Dobbs waiting. So, you know, hang around...

"I am a Jedi master, you idiot!"

2010-04-09T16:33:00.003-04:00

So, I went to the "new" library today, where my two year old ran around like a crackhead (me, arms loaded with books, in hot pursuit), undressed in the middle of the reading room, and pressed the alarm button in the elevator. They may never let me return. (I am picturing the head librarian dramatically pointing east, telling me to run away and never return, to the bullet-riddled wasteland of the OTHER library branch.)

But I had forgotten that *this* library participates in the Bestsellers program, which means they have stacks and stacks of all the newest books.

After finding for Primo the next three Alex Rider books and a bunch of Star Wars graphic novels, I snagged Emma McLaughlin's and Nicola Krauss's Nanny Returns, which I have a real reluctance to read, since the ending of The Nanny Diaries broke my heart -- but I'll read it anyway; and Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed, since I am one of those people who enjoyed Eat, Love, Pray and I want to read more of her whackadoodle exploits.

The only book that could have truly completed this trilogy was Julia Powell's Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which I am DYING to read because, hello? Luuuunatic! Plus, I want to find out what her amazingly long-suffering husband winds up doing.

(Which reminds me, I read somewhere that Elizabeth Gilbert's first husband is writing a book. The marketing campaign I imagine for that one amuses me no end.)

But instead, I picked up my reserved copy of Anne Rice's Out of Egypt (shut up) because a friend recommended it after a conversation about Christianity and Easter and (wow, this must be the whacko post) Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ."

It's gonna be a good reading weekend.

Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness. - Thomas Bulfinch

2010-04-07T15:54:00.002-04:00

I am reading real, grown-up books, I am, but this past week, my son's copy of The Lightning Thief was lying right. there. and I didn't want to get up off the couch, so...I started it.
And sat up waaaaaay past my bedtime last night reading it.

I don't think it's a poor man's Harry Potter.
I do think it's grounded pretty firmly in Greek mythology and as such is working within a known universe, but using a new twist, which really...works.
I think Riordan is a good writer - funny, succinct, with little flourishes that make you go, "Huh."

Primo wants to see the movie but I don't want to. I want to finish reading the series before clouding it with someone else's (let alone the prosaic and didactic Chris Columbus's) view of this world.

In other news, I am so seriously tired that I am starting to wonder if I am perhaps anemic. If I didn't know it was not physically possible, I'd be terrified I was pregnant, that's how tired I am. Y-A-W-N.

It's summer here. Which kinda bites, since none of my summer clothes quite achieve the level of comfort, both physical and sartorial, that my yoga pants do.

And I am about to turn forty.

Maybe THAT'S why I am reading children's books.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

2010-03-30T14:09:00.003-04:00

I am fortunate enough to live in a city with a pretty dang terrific public library system.

There is a fabulous main branch in a gorgeous old building near the universities, and a number of smaller branches all over the city. The collection is expansive and what one branch does not have, another does. If no branch has a book you want, the ILL department will get it for you, usually at no cost. Until recently, no fines were charged for kids’ materials, and the fines were something insane like 15 cents a day on adult books. Just this year the fines went up, and they began charging fines for children’s materials. I can’t blame them in the least – the budget woes are enough to make a library patron weep. So now fines are something like a quarter a day for overdue books, and they charge for all kids’ materials, which, since I live with Mr. Oh-was-I-supposed-to-return-that-book-sometime-this-year? (and I am not talking about H) means I frequently fork over large amounts of cash to my appreciative librarians. But it’s all for a good cause, which we use with astonishing frequency and almost always successful results. If I didn’t have this amazing library, I would buy way more books than I already do, which is saying something.

Our closest branch closed last spring for renovations. It seems renovations turned into gut the whole dang building and start from scratch, and it’s STILL closed. It’s scheduled to re-open this summer, but unless the plans include al fresco reading rooms, it doesn’t seem likely.

The next closest branch is a lovely library. It’s a smaller collection than I am used to, but it’s in a beautiful old building, and it has a huge, sunny children’s room with a nice train table and some arm chairs where my kids can play while I steal a few minutes in the grown up stacks to find something to read. The staff there has welcomed the closed branch’s clientele with warmth and enthusiasm, and while they won’t hang onto my holds for me until I can show up to get them regardless of the date I am SUPPOSED to pick them up (oh, Suzy my Favorite Librarian, how I miss you), they are happy to hold them a day or two longer if I call specifically.

But: here’s the catch. (There’s ALWAYS a catch.)

Theat next closest branch is in a not so nice part of town. A part of town that I am, quite frankly, not entirely comfortable driving through . A part of town in which I make absolutely sure I have locked my van doors. A part of town in which, were I unfortunate enough to have to live there, I would not be comfortable throwing my kids outside to play all the time the way I do now. It LOOKS fine. It usually IS fine. Except when it’s not. It was the epicenter of the gang activity in the 1990s, activity which has seen a renewal and increase in the past year or two. And this past weekend, an elderly woman, a local resident, was shot by a 15 year old boy, who was trying to shoot someone else who had shot one of HIS friends last year. He was firing an illegal (but of course) handgun off a railroad trestle into oncoming traffic and managed to hit this woman who was walking home from the library.

My (city-born and raised) husband has never been especially happy with my decision to go to this branch, and take the boys there. He lived here in the early ‘90s and remembers all too well the cesspit this neighborhood was.

My argument has always been, But we live IN a city. Things can happen ANYWHERE. And while there was a shooting just outside my house last Labor Day, on a beautiful sunny summer day when my boys were riding their bikes in our alley, you can somehow rationalize even that – after all, to not rationalize that event means selling a house and uprooting a family from a community and friends and schools…but this. This I can change. We don’t HAVE to go to this branch. Even though I feel fearful and hopelessly, glaringly middle class and, and, I admit it, WHITE, letting this scare me off.

We can travel a few more miles up the road to another branch, in a more upscale, fairly wealthy (and admittedly predominantly white) neighborhood. Where some horrible things have also happened in the past few years, but none quite so random. None that couldn’t be avoided by watching my kids closely and not walking down the street at 10pm and …I know I am rationalizing. But the thought of me ignoring my husband’s concerns, and ignoring the news reports of this innocent bystander dying at the hand of an idiotic teenager with access to illegal firearms, and endangering knowingly my children, who are my life, my heart…I can’t do it.

The only one agonizing over this is me.
Just so you know.
I’ll bet the library staff almost expects its white clientele to hightail it up the road to the next branch, and I think that is what’s bugging me.
I don’t want to be that person.
I don’t want to be that person, so one of my boys doesn’t grow up to be that person.
And yet it’s for my boys that I am becoming that person.
Once again parenthood has managed to turn my perception of myself on its head.

Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication. - Mike Krzyzewski

2010-03-28T12:17:00.005-04:00

It's that time of year again: March Madness. I am, always have been, and will forever remain a loyal Duke fan. Go, Blue Devils! They play Baylor at 5pm tonight. Since I will be partaking in an early Easter dinner (my brother-in-law and his family are in town this week, not next) AND there is a concurrent Penguins game, I may not actually get to watch it. No matter, we all know who wins. (Coach K, my crush on you has abated somewhat but I still love you.)

And as usual, along with NCAA happiness comes The Morning News 2010 Tournament of Books. Each year, I enjoy perusing the list, seeing what I need to read, and hearing lots of opinions on the ones I already have. Is there a purer joy in life than talking books?
This year's long list (usually they only release the sixteen competing novels, so this longlist is a fun first):

The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood - Haven't read. Need to. Have I ever read a less-than-stellar book from Atwood? I have not.

The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker - Baker will always have a special place in my heart for Double Fold. I should read this, althoough his past fiction has left me less than enthused.

Rage, Sergio Bizzio - never heard of this. I have to go spend some time on Powells or Amazon after I write this post. Anything I leave completely blank below? Assume this comment goes there, too. I have some work to do.

The Women, T.C. Boyle - really, all I need to know is when did he become TC instead of T Coraghessen?

Await Your Reply, Dan Chaon

Trouble, Kate Christensen - one of you lovely people is a big Christensen fan - Bearette? I really need to check this out.

Little Bee, Chris Cleave. Ooch. Helluva book. But I am still conflicted about my feelings regarding it.

Fever Chart, Bill Cotter - love the title. The premise interests me, as does its comparison by several reviewers to John Kennedy Toole's brilliant and hysterical Confederacy of Dunces.

Four Freedoms, John Crowley

Everything Matters!, Ron Currie Jr.

Spooner, Pete Dexter - I liked Paris Trout, so I find myself drawn to this. Plus, one Amazon reviewer says this about Spooner: "It's like reading Garrison Keillor through a glass of blood: relentlessly dark, yet ultimately affirming." How do you resist any book described thusly?

Homer & Langley, E.L. Doctorow - he's as prolific as Joyce Carol Oates. Which fills me with suspicion. However, the subject matter of this book compels me to read it.

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, Apostolos Doxiadis

The Believers, Zoe Heller

Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving - Really? Irving jumped the shark three books ago, as far as I am concerned. And yet I probably will check it out at some point, just for old times' and Garp's sake.

The Book of Night Women, Marlon James

Under the Dome, Stephen King - my first reaction is, REALLY? Stephen King? But I enjoyed many of King's earlier books (Salem's Lot is one of the scariest books I have EVER read), and many people I respect have read - nay, devoured - this and loved it.

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver - see Atwood, above.

Big Machine, Victor Lavalle - the cover is migraine-inducing, and the story sounds like something Dave Eggers would wax rhapsodic over. I'll more than ikely pass.

Chronic City, Jonathan Lethem - I like Lethem. I appreciate his inventiveness and his playfulness with the written word. I find his characters endearing. I will read this. Altho I suspect Motherless Brooklyn will always be my favorite Lethem.

The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon - this isn't even available in the States till September. Grrrr....

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann - wow, this book is EVERYWHERE suddenly. It's being considered for my book group, and since I just watched a fabulous little film called "Man on Wire," about Philippe Petit, the man who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, this book is just about perfect for my mindset right now. Doesn't hurt that it's getting great reviews...

Ransom, David Malouf

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel - This looks intriguing.

The City & The City, China Mieville

Manituana, Wu Ming

A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore - I have to point out that this is getting
uniformly disappointing reviews. And much as I like Moore's writing, too much of it at once can be stultifying.

Miles from Nowhere, Nami Mun

Once a Runner, John Parker - yeah, I'll read this since I consider myself a runner of sorts. Despite my 12-minute-mile pace.

Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips - another book suddenly appearing everywhere I read about books.

Generosity, Richard Powers - Didn't he write The Echo Maker? Y.A.W.N.

Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon - seriosuly, is he still alive?

Wetlands, Charlotte Roche - yeah, I can tell you right now I won't read this. Sorry. I couldn't stomach Palahniuk either.

My Abandonment, Peter Rock

That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo - fine enough book, but Russo has written much better.

Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie

The Help, Kathryn Stockett - I predict this book will become required reading for, if not high schoolers, at least African American and women's studies classes at universities everywhere.

Far North, Marcel Theroux - I do dig post-apocalyptic novels.

The Alternative Hero, Tim Thornton - I like Nick Hornby well enough but do we really need more novels in the vein of his?

Brooklyn, Colm Toibin - I had this out from the library just a week ago. But I am going to admit here, before you all - I am sick of reading about the Irish. After Angela's Ashes, I tell you, I gave up. The Irish people were turned into a franchise, and it sickens and bores me. The Irish put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us poor mutts.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower - I don't usually do short stories.

This Is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper

My Bird, Fariba Vafi

The Book of Fathers, Miklos Vamos

The Informers, Juan Gabriel Vasquez - I wish it had a more original title, but it looks like a terrific book.

A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert

Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls - Oh, good, did she conjure up some more half-truths and self-indulgent "reminiscences"? Gah.

The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters - creepy, and good. A upside down look at class relations in England, and beautifully written.

Sag Harbor, Colson Whitehead - I never read The Intuitionist, even though it was popularly and critically acclaimed. I own it, but it just never grabbed me enough to pick it up. However, this novel looks completely unlike Intuitionist, and it looks like something I would really enjoy.

Lowboy, John Wray

Discuss among yourselves, please.

We interrupt this month...

2010-03-25T11:06:00.002-04:00

for a new laptop.
(I know.)

Should arrive today -- spending the day watching the doorstep, listening for the doorbell. I feel like I am in junior high again.

Meanwhile, I knit and read and fold laundry and cook and...wait, was that the doorbell? Sigh.
You see?

Soon. Soon.
And then I will enlighten you with my opinions on The Reading Group, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, more Vampire Diaries, and the hilariously named One Thousand White Women.

Wait - did I hear footsteps on the porch?

So be easy and free, when you're drinking with me, I'm a man you don't meet everyday...

2010-03-17T14:53:00.002-04:00

Happy St Patrick's Day to you!

The party was a success; I only have about 3 pounds of corned beef left over (but let's not talk about the 7 pounds of boiled potatoes in my downstairs fridge, k?); I am now addicted to these amazing cold stuffed potatoes someone brought to the party that have about a gajillion calories per bite but I DON'T CARE. Even though this week has been so busy (pediatrician appointments, school events) and I have been so tired (see: party: 80 to 100 adults, 40 kids, clean up of), that I haven't been to the gym since Monday morning. (Hello, darling chlorinated water, I hear you calling me, I am just too swamped to heed your siren call right now, my warm, blue love...)

I also seem to have reading-related ADD. I can't finish anything.

I am a third of the way through The Children's Book and am currently bogged down in all the politics. I know Byatt will make it worth my while, she always does, but for now it's kinda slow going for this tired old brain.

I was all set to return Suck It Up to the library, but the first three pages made me laugh out loud several times, so it is riding around in my car with me.

I am three-fourths of the way through The Summer We Fell Apart; I like it. Much, much more than I expected to. It came pretty highly recommended, but by someone whose taste I am not entirely familiar with, so I just wasn't sure. I am glad I am reading it. I just wish the characters were not so damn pathetic, every last one of them. The only one who doesn't send me right over the edge, or doesn't make me want to slap him to attention, is the crazily alcoholic brother who can't get his shit together. You know, the one I should hate and pity. Books are weird.

I picked up Elizabeth Noble's The Reading Group in a flying visit to the library (which I made to pick up Fade); I laid down on the couch for a few minutes yesterday afternoon, picked up Reading Group, and then promptly blew off everything I had to do till it was time to pick up the boys from school.
So far, SO good.

I have delusions that I will read lots this upcoming weekend (my second Annual Every Child Left Behind weekend with my high school pals), but realistically, I know better. If anyone can get us to shut up, we might all get some reading done, but that's really, really not likely. Good thing I can knit and talk, though...

It's enough to make you a vegetarian.

2010-03-12T15:18:00.003-05:00

There are a gajillion people descending upon my house tomorrow for our annual St Patrick's Day party. (If you didn't get an invite, it was merely an oversight. Come on over!) I have 25 pounds of corned beef sitting in my downstairs fridge, that I will start cooking early tomorrow morning.
I just got over a 24-hour stomach ick. During which time the thought of all that corned beef is probably what made me puke.
I still plan on going to zumba tomorrow morning. Because I am MUCH nicer and together after I have sweated buckets and danced like a dork for an hour.
Just finished a good little book, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. Short review: I liked it. Long review to come.
Just started (finally!) AS Byatt's The Children's Book. LOVE.
Am also enjoying Marilyn Johnson's This Book is Overdue! I am hardly her target audience, however - I already know how cool librarians are.
I am debating belonging to a book group again. The one I am invited to join read The Elegance of the Hedgehog last month, and is reading What is the What this month. Next month's contenders are Let the Great World Spin or Still Alice. Of course, once I join, we'll be reading The Shack. I just know it.

Off to scrub potatoes.

As if you could outrun me!

2010-03-08T22:26:00.006-05:00

“Perhaps she’ll find that real darkness is more to her taste than feeble twilight.”

Damon, the bad vampire brother, says this to Stefan, the good vampire brother, about Elena, the woman they both want – Damon mostly because she’s Stefan’s (but of course) and Stefan because…I dunno…she smells like bacon just like Bella? Stefan never really gives a really good reason, other than that she looks like his long-dead (like five centuries ago) paramour…

Yes, I am reading The Vampire Diaries.
(No, I have not watched the TV show. I have no interest in watching the TV show.
I mean, look at them: dork, tease, bigger dork. Also, vampires do NOT wear cowboy boots. EVER. Trust me.
Or pleather.)

I whizzed through The Awakening and The Struggle. I…like it. I don’t quite know why. Elena isn’t especially nice or interesting in any way; the secondary characters are dull as dishwater, the good vampire is oh-so-angst-filled, and the bad vampire is campy, like Johnny-Weir-as-vampire. (Huh. Now that I write that down, it makes sense. It would NOT shock me to discover that Johnny Weir IS a vampire.)
The writing is SO MUCH better than Twilight (way to set that bar, I know…).
In fact, that brings me to the quote I started with - “Perhaps she’ll find that real darkness is more to her taste than feeble twilight.” Heehee, I said to myself, clever dig at the OTHER vampire book.

Two pages later, Damon shows Stefan how much more powerful he is – first, he rips a sapling out of the ground and flings it, roots dangling, across a clearing. Then he disappears and reappears in a treetop. Then he disappears and reappears again, silently and quickly, right next to his brother, hissing in his ear about being so strong and fast and, you know, VAMPIRE-LIKE.

You do not have to have seen the movie as many times as I have (18?) or even read the book as many times (only twice) to recognize this scene.
From Twilight.
When Edward tries to scare Bella out of being in love with him. He leaps around and rips up trees and dangles from tree branches, all the while sneering, “As if you could outrun me! As if you could fight me off!”

So then I checked the copyright date.
The Vampire Diaries are copyrighted 1991.
That’s right.
Almost fifteen years before Twilight.

Stephenie Meyers says she hasn’t read many vampire books.
She says she dreamt the whole Twilight saga.
I am not saying she is lying.
I am just saying, I find that scene VERY odd.
Because frankly, it’s not like there are a ton of other similarities – if nothing else, Smith’s vampires appear to be enjoying some sort of sexual activity, unlike poor repressed Edward.

But, similarities or no, my heart will always belong to Edward.
I don’t WANT to outrun him or fight him off.
Show me your awesomeness, sparkly vampire boy.
Stefan, go back to high school.

“And now this pale swan in her watery nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.”

2010-03-01T21:52:00.004-05:00

It’s been a week. I’m sorry.
I have been a little preoccupied with skiing in the most glorious conditions ever seen on an East Coast mountain.
H took me away for a long weekend – ostensibly for our 15-year anniversary but in reality because I may have been This. Close. to a nervous breakdown if I didn’t get out of the house and away from my children for longer than 2 hours.

I know you’d be happy to hear that I read and read and read, curled up by a roaring fire and sipping whiskey.
But I didn’t.
Instead I spent the majority of my day whipping down a mountain, snow blowing in my face, mist carried on winds so stiff that they practically held me up. Not that it especially hurt to fall down in THREE FEET of fresh powder (practically unprecedented conditions on the East Coast ski circuit). It was kind of hilarious on Friday watching people who clearly knew how to ski apply the proper amount of pressure on the proper edge of their skis to turn or stop on the packed, granular snow we are used to, and instead just stop dead, skis buried in snow, and fall over…
Sunday the mountain was engulfed in fog. I couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of me, but I still managed to ski for four hours.

H got on skis for the third time in his life; he took a lesson this time, and spent several mostly pleasant hours skiing on Saturday with me.

Every day, I skied all day, met up with H for a swim and a hot tub (probably the germs from the petri dish of a hot tub are what caused this lovely croupy cough I am currently enjoying), and a dinner fit for a longshoreman, accompanied by many cocktails. I fell asleep often before my head even hit the pillow – no reading or knitting accomplished. But the skiing was invigorating and glorious and joyful.

However, I did bury my nose in Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves last night. I HAD to finish it. I HAD to find out what happened, and how the mystery unravels. I am one of those people who loved The Historian - you either loved or hated that book, there seems to be no in-between – and I think The Swan Thieves is even better. Kostova tells the story of painter Robert Oliver’s obsession with a long-dead female Impressionist painter from several points of view, using his psychiatrist’s investigation as the instrument. I can only compare the way I felt about Kostova’s characters to the way I felt about AS Byatt’s Christabel Lamotte and Randolph Henry Ash – I WANT Beatrice de Clerval to exist. Kostova describes her work in such clear detail that I felt almost as if I could see the paintings in my mind – but I wanted to physically see them, to examine their subjects and brushwork and studies and sketches.

It’s cleaner than The Historian, by which I mean edited more severely, the story is completely engrossing, and the writing is sublime. I never felt that the story was sacrificed for the author’s desire to just write pretty sentences, either: everything she writes is so evocative that I felt it was the only way it could be expressed. Like this line, which delights me in its perfect description: “She ate like a polite wolf, using her knife and fork with grace and putting away an enormous plate of chicken and couscous.” Or this: “I came out onto a stony beach, the slop of water and sea wrack, the bubbling tide, among grey fingers of land.” (Can’t you just SEE that shoreline? Haven’t you BEEN there? I have.)

The plot is somewhat contrived (as was The Historian’s), but I could swallow the coincidence and the jiggling of plot points to make everything fit, because the book’s sum was greater than its parts.

To market, to market...

2010-02-21T23:18:00.002-05:00

I bought Primo a copy of Percy Jackson's The Lightning Thief a while ago at the thrift store. He tried to read it but asserted that it was too scary, so it was lent out to someone and has never been seen again.

NOW, of course, Primo wants to read The Lightning Thief, because he wants to see the movie but he, purist apple that he is, wants to read the book first.
Now I am a sucker for people wanting books, so I borrowed the book from The Boy the last time I was at Gina's. Primo whipped through it in a little under two days.

He wanted to read more. I know how that feels, to want to keep reading a series of books until you come to the end. So when the library hold list was like a hundred people long, I stopped at Borders on Friday, my day sans children, and bought the next three books. (I also picked up the seventh Ricky Ricotta book for Seg, so he wouldn't feel left out, although he has picked up Lightning Thief, is not in the least frightened by it, and is enjoying it immensely.)

I had a lovely potter round the bookstore and bought some stuff.

For moi:
Dead Lucky by Lincoln Hall. Yeah, I like reading about crazy mountaineering adventures while curled up on my couch under a blanket.
The White Tiger. It won the 2008 Booker, need I say more? I am a SUCKER for the Booker. Even after reading Line of Beauty.
This Book is Overdue!. By the author of the very enjoyable Dead Beat, and about librarians. How could I NOT buy this?

You know how sometimes you go to the bookstore and despite money burning a hole in your pocket, there's nothing you want to buy? (Oh, it's rare, but it DOES happen, even to me.) And other times you go and could stagger out with an armload of books? This time I could have gone home with an armload but I controlled myself somewhat.

Especially since H had just given me for Valentine's Day a BOOK. A book he picked out himself. A book I think I might enjoy. It's called Odd Mom Out, by Jane Porter, and it looks funny.
He knows the way to my heart - especially since he paired the book with a nice bar of good dark chocolate. Nice man.

My Family and Other Animals

2010-02-21T12:14:00.004-05:00

WHOSE FAULT IS THIS?

Yes, yes, I am yelling at you.
Kim, was it you?
Because, dammit, woman, I have WORK to do!

I can't just sit around all day reading books that make me laugh out loud, and sometimes, laugh till I cry.

THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
Are you pleased with yourself, missy?
Are you? Huh?

UPDATED: Well, how embarrassing. Thank God it was Kim and not someone who might expect dignity and decorum from me. Turns out it was Pip at Meet Me at Mike's. I can't really yell at her as I "know" her in a much more dignified and/or reserved manner than I do Kim (that is, I am pretty confident she, if she even knew who I might be, would still labor under the delusion that I am a mature, responsible adult.) Kim, however, long ago lost such delusions, but fortunately she is also quite possibly my twin separated at birth.

And finally Winter, with its bitin', whinin' wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.

2010-02-18T10:15:00.006-05:00

We are riding out our third 2-hour delay this week. We didn’t have a 2-hour delay yesterday – because school was closed.
School was closed all last week.
And yesterday. Did I mention that?
Today’s 2-hour delay was greeted with groans and crying from my two big boys – a 2-hour delay cancels their planned field trip today. But also I think even they are getting bored.

I am not necessarily bored. I’ve tried to keep the boys busy with sledding, shoveling, movies, chores, science projects, board games, library books…right now they are running the short-track speedskating for their Animalympics. I think Primo’s bear Champ just won his heat.

I have been baking and cooking healthy meals (and not so healthy – French toast for breakfast this morning). I’ve been knitting and keeping up with laundry, but have given up on the state of my house. I have been reading some good stuff – Elizabeth Kostova’s new book The Swan Thieves, Dedication by the authors of The Nanny Diaries - more detailed posts to follow.

But really, I just want to curl up in a fetal position in the bottom of a nice bottle of rum - or under my down comforter would do in a pinch - and have someone wake me when the snow melts.
Sometime in July is my guess.

The cats are the only ones with any sense.

UPDATED: I just got everyone in the car to take them to their respective schools and my van won't start. Scramble, scramble, got everyone rides. Now I lie on the floor and weep; my frustration knows no bounds right now. Don't mind me.

"My wandering foot gets to itching..."

2010-02-13T12:29:00.002-05:00

This man is Charles Ingalls, right?
Pa is kind and calm and utterly practical.
He is the cornerstone of the Ingalls family.
He takes care of everyone.

I loved Pa when I was a little girl, happily watching the TV series of "Little House on the Prairie." I wanted to be Laura. (Didn’t every little girl? I mean, NO ONE wanted to be fussy, smug Mary, did they? Like everyone wants to be Jo, no one wants to be Beth…c’mon, you can tell me the truth…)

Stuck in the house last week by several feet of snow and without my van, I reread my Little House books, starting with the one in which the Ingalls family moves reluctantly into town from their claim shanty for the winter. Pa reasons that the train will continue to bring supplies into town, so they will spend the long, hard, cold winter snug, warm, and fed, in town. Alas, the almost-daily blizzards trap the townfolk in their houses and prevents the train from getting through – there are starving families and there’s no fuel for warmth, until those intrepid Wilder boys go to buy wheat from a farmer out on the vast, snow-covered prairie. They barely make it back before the impending blizzard, but they do, and their wheat saves the day. Eventually the winter ends, the supply train gets through, and we leave the Ingalls family happily scarfing down salt pork and cornmeal mush (I think my husband would have died of palate boredom as a Little House denizen…he can’t even stand to eat the same meal two nights in a row, let alone for months on end…)

After finishing The Long Winter, I happily started right from the beginning, Little House in the Big Woods. I moved with the Ingalls family from the woods of Wisconsin, to Indian territory in Kansas, to Minnesota and Plum Creek, onward to De Smet, South Dakota. As I happily read through each book, I began to realize something: Pa has some wanderlust going on. Some delusions of grandeur. Some “the grass is always greener…” tendencies.

For example:
When he discovers the government has messed up the boundary lines of his homestead in Indian territory and he will be forced to move, he throws a bit of a temper tantrum and packs up his wife, his children, and their belongings into the covered wagon, and moves the VERY NEXT DAY, lighting out for greener pastures.

Moving to what he himself terms “the land of milk and honey” of Minnesota, he builds a house completely on credit, only to have grasshoppers eat his wheat crops, forcing him to take a job managing a hotel for his sister’s husband. Even then, with money coming in and the family living in town and enjoying the social life and educational opportunities there, he can’t wait to go stake a claim on the prairie in the Dakota Territories.

Money flows through his hands like water: he buys a plow only to abandon it because it’s “too heavy” to move; he trades horses, oxen, and cows like little boys trade baseball cards; and he brags to Caroline of the silk dresses and fine house he will build her, when his ship comes in (in the form of wheat crops). And yet the constant refrain, throughout all the books, is his desire to never owe anything to anyone: he insists they must not be beholden to anyone for even the littlest thing. Being and having good neighbors is all well and good, but all thoughtful deeds or the smallest gesture of kindness must be repaid promptly and in equal measure.

In short, although Laura sees her Pa as the paragon of virtue and knowledge, Charles Ingalls is self-absorbed, delusional, and ever-restless. I started to feel sorry for Caroline, who, like many sensible women, was taken in by a twinkling pair of eyes, a charming manner, and promises of a better life. She makes the best of things, because she has to. She loves him, because he is charming and roguish and lovable. But is he stable? A good provider? The man she should have settled down with and had babies with? Not necessarily. She is uprooted over and over again, along with her children, and lives in sometimes ridiculous and dangerous conditions, because Charles can’t stand to be trapped, to be stuck anywhere, among too many people, for too long.

Charles Ingalls, Ne’er-Do-Well on the Prairie.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son...

2010-02-11T09:34:00.003-05:00

Who does Mia Wasikowska LOOK like?

I can hear the actress's voice - kind of low and hoarse...
I can picture her with this SAME expression on her face.
I just can't pinpoint who it is.
Note: It's not Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett, or Mary Stuart Masterson - all favs of mine But, nope, not them.
It's...????
Help!

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Then it's just fun.

2010-02-08T21:40:00.004-05:00

It stands to reason that I would enjoy reading novels about the publishing industry.
I love feeling in the know, getting the details of how a book get published, feeding my long-abandoned dreams of getting to read thru the slush pile for fun (I know, I KNOW.)
Olivia Goldsmith's The Bestseller is probably my favorite, although Judith Krantz's I'll Take Manhattan comes close (and the sex scenes are better).

Blind Submission, the latest entry into this rarified realm (snort), is the story of Angel Robinson, who begins the novel as a bookseller and avid reader, and then lands a job as the assistant to the head of a literary agency. Think The Devil Wears Prada (but the boss isn't quite so senselessly insane), only with books.

So, I actually have no idea where I got this book - I think it's a review copy, and it's been sitting on my nightstand for some time now. I really enjoyed it though - despite its sometimes clunky writing, improbably plot twists, and predictable ending, I just really liked following Angel through her days, watching her interact with authors - famous and wannabe, her nutty boss, and her flaky co-workers. Maybe I just enjoyed living vicariously through her, but sometimes that's ok too.

There's nothing wrong with a straightforward, fun book that for whatever reason grabs you and makes you want to keep reading.

"Well, there's something you don't see everyday."*

2010-02-07T09:45:00.004-05:00

Looks to be about 18 inches of snow out there. Roads are pretty bad, and we are still considered in a state of emergency. However, the only emergency I am feeling at the moment is the fact that I am almost out of chocolate.

(UPDATED: and I need a set of size 15 dpns! Argh! Pencils could work, yes?)

************
*Dr Venkman, in "Ghostbusters," upon seeing the giant Stay Puft marshmallow Man

I am JUST saying...

2010-02-02T22:36:00.001-05:00

You know you're a mom when the pajama pants you find abandoned in the bottom of your bed have Thomas the Tank Engine printed on them.

Those icy fingers up and down my spine...

2010-02-02T15:19:00.001-05:00

Capsule reviews of (mostly) recent library books:

One DOA, One on the Way - Mary Robison. Will someone else please read this book and tell me what the hell it’s about? Because I am not smart enough, nor do I care quite enough, to decipher its meanings. I thought it was nicely written, but just…just…WTF?

That Old Cape Magic – Richard Russo. Russo is back. Somewhat formulaic but not totally pat, and back to his quiet, hilarious, cutting, slice-of-life brilliant self. Back to his pre-Empire Falls (his most overblown book - well, until he wrote Bridge of Sighs) self. Thank the Lord (and his editor).

Beautiful Creatures – Teenage vampires/incubi/supernatural weirdos, but without Edward, so what’s the point? Next…

Remarkable Creatures – NOT the same as Beautiful Creatures, you sillies. This is Tracy Chevalier’s lovely historical novel about Mary Anning, a Victorian woman responsible for many important archaeological finds of the 18th century, causing science to revamp its views on extinction and society to revamp its views on God.

Of Men and Their Mothers – Mameve Medwed. Fairly improbable storyline (I say as the mother of not-yet-teenaged-sons), but a fast, fun read, and with a touching bit of subplot about mothers and their potential (teenaged) daughters-in-law.

Dewey…some cat who hangs out in a library…blahblahblah… – Really? WHAT was I thinking? Who cares?

The Story Sisters - Must. Finish. This.
The Help - Also this.

The ONLY problem I am having with those last two is that I picked up, totally on a whim, an unsolicited review copy of a novel that has been sitting round here for a few months, and it’s a real page-turner that I have no desire to put down. More on that later.

I'm sorry, was I saying something?

2010-01-31T13:38:00.002-05:00

Well, that went well for what - 4 weeks?
Here I am, 5 days after the lame Hoffman post (so lame it has ONE comment) and I still:

- haven't finished that book
- haven't finished Beautiful Creatures (and probably won't)
- haven't started a single one of my Persephone books
- haven't even cracked open The Blythes are Quoted despite its quick-like-a-bunny delivery
- have to return most of my library books unread because - oh, look! Something shiny!
- ripped out another cowl THREE times (wrong yarn, wrong needles, lost and then made a stitch somewhere, leaving a gaping hole
- stared at the yarn for Gina's housewarming gift but have yet to even cast on
- knit the tricky first 12 rows of an adorable baby hat, put it down, picked it back up and proceeded to knit it backwards, so where all the smooth pretty knit stitches should be, were all lumpy, bumpy purl stitches.

If this is what I am like at almost-40, God help me in my eighties.
If I make it that long.

Crazy is as crazy does.

2010-01-26T11:36:00.002-05:00

I am about halfway through Alice Hoffman's new book, The Story Sisters.
I have reached the following two conclusions:

1) The eldest sister is batshit crazy, perhaps driven there by a horrific event in her past or perhaps born that way. Hard to say. But she's beyond disturbed; she's deranged. Possibly psychotic.
And there's only so much magic you can wrap "deranged" and "psychotic" in before you just start looking a little silly.

2) I am beginning to wonder if anyone in this book makes it out alive.

Will keep you posted.

“People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.”

2010-01-24T09:37:00.005-05:00

Dance o' joy! I LOVED The Historian and look! Elizabeth Kostova has a new book out.
(Also, interview with author via Joshilyn Jackson's Faster than Kudzu.)

Also, check this:
A sequel to The Little Princess!
By Hilary McKay!
Hilary McKay rocks, and I can't wait to get my hands on this.

Or, for that matter, this:
That, my friends, is the ninth and final installment of the Anne books by LM Montgomery.
I. KNOW.
I didn't know either.
Turns out I have to order it from Canada because...why? I don't know.

The same stupid reason I have to go through all sorts of ridiculous interlibrary loan or online ordering rigamarole to get Penni Russon's books, instead of just walking into the local bookstore and buying them off the shelf? Publishers in the States are short-sighted and stupid and only want to publish John Grisham's crap books?

*********
*Bjork.

Girls on film, girls on film...

2010-01-21T21:12:00.013-05:00

No, not really. A cat or two, lots of brothers, some yarn...no girls. Sorry. Move along.

For Christmas I gave Seg a camera. I didn't follow my gut; instead, I followed the advice of a well-meaning but ultimately deluded salesman, and the camera I gave Seg was craptacular. Until I can stomach the thought of purchasing either a) a digital camera for him, or 2) a new digital camera for me and gifting him with my old digital camera, I have granted benevolent permission for him to use my camera whenever he likes. It sits in its case on the hall table downstairs, and he may use it whenever and for whatever he likes. He doesn't need to ask; he does need to tell me when the batteries die.

I was trying to get a couple of photos of my latest knitting projects, to log on Ravelry and post on Facebook, and when I downloaded my photos, I also downloaded several weeks worth of Seg's efforts. Oh. My. God. People. He may not be the next Annie Leibovitz, but he's awesome and has an amazing sense of humor. I was howling out loud at some of his shots - whole photo shoots of his brothers posing and posturing and playing, and Seg must have just kept snapping away. I will keep him supplied with fresh batteries for the rest of his natural life.

Now, of course, after that build-up, can I post these photos? Nah. They're, most of them, full-on face shots of my guys, and I'm just not comfortable with that level of exposure. I'm sorry. But I can share a bunch of random photos that I asked him to take for me, or ones that feature members of the family whom I can rest assured will never, ever complain about their photo being plastered on the Internets - you know, like the cats. So away we go...

He LOOKS innocent but I assure you, HE IS NOT.

For his birthday Primo received a cool little game called Bananagrams. He doesn't so much dig the game itself as he does arranging the letter tiles on his dresser. There is always a letter of the day, and sometimes, more meaningful messages.

Primo's cat. He's dumb, but now that we've spent a fortune on fixing his cat manparts so he can pee out kidney stones whenever the heck he feels like it, he better stick around. This is the final photo in a veritable photo essay on "Septimus: The Boy Cat Who Pees Like a Girl." (Yes, essentially we paid a buttload of money for our cat to have sex reassignment surgery.)

Some book p0rn for you. Six new ones were my lovely Christmas gift, ostensibly from H, but selected, ordered, wrapped, and unwrapped by yours truly.

This is the photo you can click on to enlarge so you can see the titles. Go on, I know you want to. It's exactly what *I* do when other people post photos of piles of books on their blogs.

And some office supply p0rn for Badger. This was, and I quote Primo, "the second best present ever." If I'd known he was so easy, I might've been tempted to skip the DS. (But, really? Nice call, Aunt D. Incredibly thoughtful and right on the money for my fussy little scribbler.)

THIS is what happens when you allow your child free rein with your camera. (That rat's-nest of hair? Me. The blondie next to me? We call him Oedipus.)

The whole POINT behind this post: my first cowl ever. Knitted for H's cousin's daughter who is in the Peace Corps in Jordan, where apparently they don't heat houses, ever. So, it's kind of cold. This should help keep her warm, and it keeps your hands free, without any fussy scarf knotting or whatever. Knit with James C. Brett Marble Chunky in Denim, on size 13 needles.

Liked the cowl so much, I immediately cast on a second, as a gift for Peg from The Palmyra Sliver, who is in town for work, and with whom I have dined and drunk beer two nights this week. She's lovely, and we felt as if we'd know each other forever. Which weirdly, we may have, as it turns out she lived six houses down from me on my little dead-end street in New Jersey for one year in high school. Knit with Malabrigo Twist in Sotobosque, on size 11 needles.

Unlike my Seg, I neglected to take any pictures whatsoever of said beerfests.

We have decided how sad it is for others that they cannot appreciate our genius.

2010-01-19T22:34:00.002-05:00

Does anyone have any idea why I requested this from the library? At first I thought it was a mistake since I picked up Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures (more on this later) at the same time. But I don't think so -- it looks like a book I would like to read. But I have positively no recollection of requesting it or the faintest idea what prompted me to.

Anyone who tells you that bearing and rearing small children does not turn your brain to mush is a liar.

"Every day of her life she would be at some point damp, then drying, and for one solid time, wet."

2010-01-15T13:50:00.007-05:00

She was not swimming for fun or exercise or habit. She had never joined a swimming team, not even in high school. It was like the air for her: she was amphibious.
“Wet,” from Passion and Affect, Laurie Colwin

Every Friday night of my childhood, with my aunt and brothers, I swam at a grotty little city YMCA. The water was dark green and murky, and you couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. Afterwards, we would struggle to pull jeans up wet legs and tuck our sopping hair into scratchy wool hats, and go home where my dad would make us big cups of hot tea with honey and lemon. After my aunt was mugged one Friday night coming out of the Y, we switched to a suburban YWCA and my aunt would take us to Wanamaker’s for some candy after swimming.

My Aunt K taught every single one of her numerous nieces, nephews, and smallfry relations to swim. Some of us took to it like, well, like fish to water. I took courses and swam races and qualified as a lifeguard; I feel as if I have been swimming for my whole life. I am as comfortable – possibly more so – in the water as I am on earth. In the water I feel sleek and strong and confident. Probably because in the water I AM. I can swim for an hour or two at a time. I think I must have been some sort of fish in a former life. Often I have wished for gills (a la Kevin Costner in "Waterworld"). How lovely would that be, to swoop and swim and stroke underwater without having to come up for air? Bliss.

I swam a slow, easy crawl, out to the float and past the markers. I felt my body move easily through the water. I was a fish, a whale, a creature that belonged in water. There was perfect sympathy between me and the lake…It was wonderful and terrible. I had never swum so well, I could not bear to stop. Life gives few moments of such ease…I was not going to stop. My happiness, for the moment, was boundless. I thought of Mr. Jacobowitz – I pretended he was swimming next to me like a big, friendly seal. I savored the silver taste of lake water in my mouth and swam, arm over arm, to the destination before me.
Geraldine Coleshares, in Goodbye Without Leaving - Laurie Colwin

At summer camp, we would get up at 5am to swim some mornings. (If you could churn out a half mile or a mile, you earned a badge and some serious street cred.) Often we were allowed to swim after evening vespers, too. This in addition to any lessons we had in the morning, and afternoon free swim. Sometimes, instead of the pool, we would take out the canoes and jump in the creek.

I swim outside, in the outdoor city pool or friends' pools. Four hundred miles inland, I yearn for the ocean, and when I am near it, I can't bear to not be IN it. I love swimming at the gym, where the pool is surrounded by windows, when it’s cold and snowy outside but warm and steamy inside.

When I am stressed or sad or angry or depressed or whatever, I get in the pool. I usually swim lap upon lap, front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke. I kickboard. I float. I dive. Chlorine cures most ills (including my yearly winter sinus infections). I emerge from the water cleansed, spent, and totally calm. Usually pretty happy, too.

But when the sun cuts through the atrium and the steam rises up from the pool, the water takes on a bright, edgy haze and I lose myself. I watch my shadow crawl across the tiles below and don’t feel the pain of doing as many as 50 sets although all the other Dolphins bitterly complain. All I feel is the sweet shuddering relief with each breath I draw and the relentless silence of my mind. I don’t mention these bouts of timeless love of the infinite universe to anyone…
Pip, in Swimming, Nicola Keegan

Nicola Keegan’s Swimming is a disjointed book – it examines a teenaged life through the lens of a swimming pool – there’s a lot left unexplored and unsaid, and Pip Ash is not an endearing character. But I respect her toughness, and I empathize with her love of swimming, and the water. She was born to be in water. It is the only place where some things make any sense at all.

After all, we spend the first nine months of our lives swimming round in a warm little amniotic paddling pool. I guess some of us never really let go.
***************
"Wet," from Passion and Affect - Laurie Colwin

Haiti

2010-01-14T18:46:00.002-05:00

Remember how the Europeans said in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, "Today we are all Americans"?

Today we are all Haitians.
Except most of us have more cash.
Pray - donate - do what you can to show you care.

Mother in law...Mother in law...She worries me so...

2010-01-10T22:37:00.003-05:00

Katy asked me a bunch of questions that I never answered. I am sorry, Katy, especially since the first question might have required more urgent attention!

What is the best advice/number one suggestion you would give for dealing with a mother-in-law that not even her son particularly likes and lives about 2000 miles away?
Even if your husband doesn’t especially like her, she did give birth to him. She gets a point or two just for that, right? So, be sure to send Christmas and birthday cards. When/if you visit, just grit your teeth, bring a nice hostess gift, and try to relax as much as you can – it won’t last long. And, most importantly, be grateful she’s 2,000 miles away.

I hope this helps. In-laws are tough, even if you adore them.

How did you know what to name your babies when they were born?
My oldest son is named for my father who died when I was a teenager. I always knew that if I had a son, he would be named after my dad. I THOUGHT we were going to nickname him Sam (as my dad was), but it didn’t fit: my fussy little guy is the perfect Simon.
Our second son was named in honor of John Lennon. H denies this now, but we even considered, very briefly and stupidly, Lennon. I lobbied a bit for Maxwell, since “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is my favorite Beatles song, but there are way too many Maxes and I am glad we went with Jude.
Our third son is named for my father-in-law, but he is never ever Jim; he is James or Jamie. We thought his name would actually be Angus James, but he didn’t LOOK like an Angus at all, so we reversed them and now we’re glad we did.
The fourth – heck, we were fresh out of names. We just liked Luke. It had always been a contender, and it’s time had come. Besides, Lukifer is the perfect nickname for him.
You just KNOW when a name fits a baby. Seriously. It sounds nuts, but you do.
And now we return to our regularly scheduled baby pseudonyms, and will never speak of this again.

Why don't we live in the same neighborhood? Would I still think you were cool if we lived near each other?
We don’t live in the same neighborhood because you skedaddled out of Pittsburgh upon graduation and I stayed and now I am married to a Pittsburgher so will more than likely never leave. As for the second question: I dunno, maybe. I hope so. We could hang out and knit together...

What is your opinion of rain? Did having kids change your feelings towards precipitation?
I love rain. It gives me the perfect excuse to be lazy.
I have actually always loved rain. Bright sunlight can give me migraines. (But for that matter, so does change in the barometric pressure.)
But having kids makes you think about weather differently. For example, this crazy snow we’ve gotten this winter, while delightful, wreaks havoc with my plans for myself when the chilluns are in school. Due to snow delays and closings, my kids have been home a good bit, and on top of the snow, it’s been frigid, really too cold to throw them outside for any length of time. However, I do get to take them sledding and skating, so that’s fun. I guess I am realizing that, with my little guys around now, I prefer snow precipitation to rain precip.

I hope that all helps. I’m sorry it took so long.
And now I am going to bed with a chocolate croissant and The Birthing House, which might be very creepy or very silly, I haven’t decided which yet.

I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.

2010-01-08T17:27:00.003-05:00

My little brother knows me far too well.
A big box from Amazon arrived yesterday containing everyone’s Christmas presents from my brother and his wife.
The boys received really neat games.
H got a book about the failure of big business (he and D discuss the strangest things but hey, I am just happy *I* don’t have to talk about them).
I received this delightful and attractive little tome:
I love this kind of thing; these bits of arcane knowledge about the natural world make me feel...empowered.
I think in another life I would have made a perfect midwife-healer sort of character:
1. I am superb in a crisis.
2. I have a stomach of iron.
3. I generally want people to leave me alone.

And the thought of using feverfew to ease my migraines, or lavender to destress, is intriguing to me. Especially if it works.
I feel positively medieval deploying my little bottle of Rescue Remedy.

Many of the most sympathetic characters I enjoy in fiction are midwife/healers.
Or, as the more skeptical in their lives term them: witches.

Although I came to Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice and Matilda Bone as an adult, I also would have loved them as a junior high schooler.
The novels of Alice Hoffman are rife with these witchy women, replete with their profound knowledge of plant lore and the supernatural: the Sparrow women in The Probable Future, Seventh Heaven’s Nora Silk, and most famously, Gillian and Sally Owens in Practical Magic.
Sarah Addison Allen’s lovely Garden Spells follows in the Practical Magic vein, and Claire’s use of her horticultural expertise is blended almost seamlessly with supernatural elements.

Other midwife/healer characters in literature I love include the reserved yet ferocious-in-love Dora Rare in Ami Mckay’s The Birth House; the stubborn, wily, and fiercely independent Hannah Trevor in Margaret Lawrence’s Hearts and Bones; and the more relaxed and intuitive Misha in Lillian Nattel’s wonderful River Midnight.

I’d make a great witch.
Equipped with all the right books now, too.

Веселого Різдва і з Новим Роком

2010-01-06T11:15:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow is Ukrainian Christmas.
Because I am half Ukrainian, and my boys therefore are a quarter Ukrainian, we observe this tradition, just as my mom did when I was a child.

The Christmas tree remains up and decorated until tomorrow evening. All the other decorations and lights have already come down but leaving the tree up is nice, and I find that there are no tears from the boys upon ceremonial observation of this last vestige of the Christmas holidays. (Note the traditional spider web ornament.)

I baked a snickerdoodle coffee cake. It’s not grain pudding, true, but it’s also more likely my guys will enjoy this more.

I have a couple of books to wrap up for each boy: a coloring book, a couple novels I think Primo will like, that sort of little thing. I know they hope each year I will cave and get them a BIG gift, go out with a bang as it were (requests have even been made this year for Nintendo games), but I resolutely observe my personal imprint upon this tradition and give them books.

My mother used to cook halupchi for dinner on the day; I am thinking stuffed eggplant might be an acceptable substitute in these near-meatless parts.

It may be a little silly, this haphazard celebration of what should probably be a solemn holiday, but it keeps me in touch with my heritage, and I feel I am honoring my relatives and ancestors whom I admire and love, and it wraps up the holiday season nicely, in a low key way. It precludes that dreadful feeling of “Oh, all the nice stuff is over now!” and lets us down gently.

Khrystos Razhdaietsia!

"It’s the sort of novel Laura Bush might curl up with in the White House solarium if it were not about Laura Bush."

2010-01-03T22:54:00.004-05:00

How does someone who seems like a nice, down-to-earth, NORMAL woman like Laura Bush wind up married to George Bush, and as First Lady of the United States?

I didn’t know what to expect from Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel American Wife; I actively disliked her other books. But from the first page of this one, I was drawn in and kept engrossed. I know it’s a novel but I still felt that American Wife slowly revealed to me in perfect, sense-making clarity who Alice Blackwell, and by extension, Laura Bush, was. I mean, there has to be something more there, than just some robotic, plasticine Stepford FLOTUS. I can sense it, and I don't think I am the only one.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I was not, am not, and never will be a George Bush fan. I mean, look at the man - he's a buffoon. He's a child. But I like Laura Bush. I probably disagree with much of her politics, but I think she seems like a nice person. Maybe too nice a person to hang out with me, even. And I don't know how someone like her, someone with a quiet sense of class and decency, winds up with someone like him.

In addition, the fact of the matter is that I want the President of the United States to be smarter than me – and I’d be shocked to find out that George Bush is. But it would not especially surprise me to find out that Laura is at least as smart as me.

And of course, the fact that she’s a librarian immediately conjures kindred-spirit leanings.

The book reveals a quiet, moral, intense, and very private woman to the world. One with whom I found myself sympathizing. One whom I admired and liked and wanted to defend. But I think the most amazing revelation in the book wasn’t how I came to feel about Alice/Laura, but how through explorations of and meditations on Alice’s thoughts and ambitions and opinions, I came to understand Charlie Blackwell/George Bush a little better. This honest take on Charlie Blackwell’s political clumsiness, a quote almost at the very end of the book, explains perfectly just about everything I don’t get about George Bush and his presidency:
“Being president is for him like taking a ninth-grade English test on The Odyssey, and he’s the kid who did most of the reading, he studied for an hour the night before, but he’s not one of the people who loved the book. Besides, he’d always rather crack a funny joke in class than offer a genuine insight.”
(American Wife, p. 525)

Sittenfeld has written a stellar novel, one which I didn’t want to put down, and one which cast some light on the perplexing leading players of current events. If she doesn’t exactly solve the puzzle, she gives us a few useful clues about how to perhaps approach the solution, making me eager to both see what she comes up with next and to enthusiastically recommend this book.

And if I haven’t convinced you, maybe Maureen Dowd can.

I know I'm not getting this right - this book was eye-opening. It was riveting and I can't believe how much I liked it. And how much I liked Alice/Laura, despite her ridiculous husband.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! and gie's a hand o’ thine! And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught, for auld lang syne.

2010-01-01T10:19:00.002-05:00

As I write this, it is snowing again.
This makes me inordinately happy. Even though last week’s snow is grey slush and the grossness prevents me from wearing my new Uggs 24/7. I must put on the wellies when I go outside. But still snowflakes bring out the little kid in me.

The boys are downstairs squabbling.
The baby's diaper needs changing, and I have already mopped the bathroom twice this morning.
H is STILL home.
I generally am not a wife who complains when her husband works a lot (as is usually the case) or when he’s home on vacation. And it’s not his presence, precisely – it’s simply that the holidays, and all of us home, and some protracted bouts of various gross illnesses have me longing for routine and a clean, decluttered house that smells of something more pleasant than Clorox.

And I was forced to pry the D key cover off, and now I look like I am typing everything on the white trash equivalent of a normal laptop.

And it’s only the first!
Hmmm. Perhaps it is going to be a looooong year…

So. Enough of that. [Moving briskly to another subject, perhaps accompanied by a hand clap of some authoritative sort.]

(Hmm, it isn’t all bad – I did have a delicious dream last night about Robert Pattinson and pirates. Seriously. Not all bad, indeed.) I mean, it's hard to be wholly pessimistic when RPatz looks at you like THIS.

Last year I took an almost unprecedented-for-me step of NOT keeping track of my reading activity. The tracking and tallying of books was cramping my reading pleasure, and there’s just no list or analysis or spreadsheet worth that price. Of course, I am not and never have been a linear, organized sort of reader. I more often than not have two or three or six books going at once, and I finish or not according to whim. I do NOT feel compelled to finish a book merely because I started it – life is too short. Uber-librarian Nancy Pearl’s rule of thumb works well for me: you read the first 50 pages, and if you aren’t engaged, put the book down.

However, while I read what I wanted when I wanted, willy-nilly, and in fact, actually sacrificed some reading time to my newfound knitting passion, I miss being able to talk about the best book I read in the past year, or the worst, or the most compelling mystery, or whatever. I still maintained my “Books I want to check out” list, in spreadsheet form this year. The problem with it being a spreadsheet living on my laptop is that when I most need it – at the library or bookstore, usually – it’s unavailable. But the little purse notebook always seems to get lost or destroyed. I am toying with the idea of maintaining the list on the Notes tool of my primitive cell phone. Perhaps more on this later.

This morning I dug out the few old blank books in which I maintained my TBR list and various reviews, and without much forethought took my new favorite Sharpie and my favorite blank book – a nice, thick number with a black leather cover and a tidy elastic band to keep it all together - and inscribed “2010” in bright blue across the first blank page.
Under it, the title of the book I finished last night – yes, this is cheating, but it was a GOOD book.
Under that, in pencil for easy erasing, the titles of the six – SIX! – books I am currently reading. This reckoning will take place every few weeks, just to give me a loose idea of what I am reading (and finishing or not finishing). The pencil lists are informal and will not be erased or updated, but as each book is finished, its title will be added to the list with the blue Sharpie.

That’s the plan.

I am not going to promise to blog every day. It’s just not a feasible undertaking what with my four small annoying children and/or my husband’s grumpy looks every time I flip open my laptop.
I am going to change my tag strategy and probably be much looser about post titles/quotes. Or at least their attribution.
But I will try to post more regularly.
And be as interesting as possible.
I also promise not to discuss any bodily fluids requiring Clorox clean up after this post.
I think those are resolutions I can keep.

Happy 2010, and may the new year and new decade bring you peace, love, and lots of great new books.

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

2009-12-31T11:23:00.002-05:00

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...

2009-12-24T22:30:00.003-05:00

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..."

2009-12-23T14:07:00.002-05:00

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.

2009-12-18T12:38:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-12-15T15:03:00.003-05:00

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.*

2009-12-07T18:37:00.002-05:00

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...!" *

2009-12-01T21:06:00.002-05:00

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

"The water is your friend. You don't have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move. "

2009-11-22T14:32:00.002-05:00

Our big old house is most decidedly not haunted. BUT: when we first moved in and I would wander about at night after the boys were asleep, I often felt a warm, benevolent presence. I assumed it was 1) my overactive imagination, or 2) the previous owner who had died a very modern and apparently pain-free death from old age at a local hospital and not in our master bedroom. Either way, it was, as I said, benevolent, and eventually, once it became clear that we were staying and taking good care of the house (far better care than he had been able to, for that matter) and seemed intent upon populating it with lots of raucous and messy little boys, the benevolent, warm presence dissipated. After all, with all the mess and chaos around here, who has time anymore to wander round the halls wallowing in a ghostly presence? Not I. I need my sleep. And apparently, so did Henry (the previous owner).

I FINALLY finished The Little Stranger after I resorted to carrying it with me all day and reading it in completely non-creepy places like my pediatrician’s waiting room and the lobby at the gym. Because I found if I read it at home, especially last week when H was out 4 of 5 nights, I kept hearing all sorts of noises – noises I couldn’t seem to just blame on the cats, and the boys were all asleep. I would hear footsteps and rattles and snorts and all sorts of deliciously, horrifyingly creepy odd noises. So I was forced to stop reading it by myself, in my old, drafty, shadowy house. Especially since Henry no longer was around to watch out for me.

So to banish the thought of wet gurgling voices from the laundry chute and wafting cold drafts, I dove quickly into some not so creepy reading.

I picked up Robertson Davies’ The Cunning Man one night last week, because it was handy in a stack by my bed. And the thing about Robertson Davies’ books are that they are so convoluted and dense with details and tangents that often by the time you’ve reached the end, you’ve forgotten all of the beginning and lots of the middle, so he’s perfect for rereading. I am currently three-quarters of the way through and enjoying it just as much as I did the first 2 times I read it.

I also am rereading (albeit unintentionally since I didn’t remember I’d already read it till about halfway though) Mary Kay Andrews’ Hissy Fit. Good, fluffy fun, often with a mild little mystery thrown in. Andrews’ characters are more often than not antique dealers, or at the very least, interior designers or other people who have good reason to frequent antique auctions and estate sales, and considering that the only new pieces of furniture in my entire house are the TV and the dining room table, I find myself sympathizing greatly with them and often wishing I could tag along to the garage sales and junk shops…

Speaking of, I picked up a bunch of books at the local thrift shop last Thursday and immediately immersed myself in Julian Fellowes’ Snobs, which is sort of funny in an abstracted, Thatcher-era England kind of way.

I bought a bunch of books for the boys, including Dave Pilkey’s first six Ricky Ricotta graphic novels, and a pile of Children’s Illustrated Classics.

And also, for me, a weirdly delightful illustrated picture book of the saints, with strange little crayon-y drawings of each saint and a cheerfully obtuse blurb about his or her life (and bloody, painful death, where applicable).
E.g., this lovely little story re: Saint Agnes: "When the emperor saw she was not afraid of pain, he had her clothes stripped off and she had to stand in the street before a pagan crowd."
Or this gem about St Cecilia:
"The judge condemned her to be smothered by steam. But God protected Cecilia. Then the judge ordered a soldier to kill her with a sword. He struck her three times but did not cut off her head. She fell down, badly wounded, and for three days she remained alive." (Does anyone else hear the voice from Austin Powers: "I'm badly wounded..." or is that just me?)
Peaceful little bedtime stories, no? (Of course, when I was a pre-teen, I was oddly obsessed with Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which was available in our church's library for all to read. But this was the same church that loved to detail the torments of hell to grade-schoolers, so take that for what it's worth...)
All in all, well worth the buck-fifty it cost me...

In other news, the dread Christmas shopping is upon us.
But first, Primo’s birthday.
A friend very kindly gave him a Game Boy this summer, but I am discovering that Game Boy games are obsolete and practically impossible to find. All the games Primo really wants are Gameboy Advance games. So I am currently torn between (among?) 1) buying a used Game Boy Advance and the attendant games, 2) buying a Nintendo DS with which all Game Boy Advance games are compatible as well as, obviously, all the DS games, and 3) refusing to buy any game or gaming consoles at all and hopelessly abandoning my children to the outdated 20th century.

***********
* ~Aleksandr Popov

"...the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night..."*

2009-11-14T21:39:00.004-05:00

Something Missing, by Matthew Dicks, is a strange and compelling little book - much like its main character. Martin Railback is a thief: he supports himself by stealthily entering the homes of his carefully vetted "clients" and stealing whatever he needs: a half-bottle of laundry detergent here, a box of cereal there, a roll or two of toilet paper, a book of stamps. Things most people would never notice missing. His thoroughness and his obsessive-compulsive tendencies lend themselves to the success of his chosen "career." But after he is almost caught one day, he throws caution to the winds (well, for him), and begins to interfere in the lives of his clients, people whom, after all, he considers practically family. Martin reasons, If he can make people's lives better, why shouldn't he? For a common house thief, Martin is a remarkably likeable and engaging guy, and I was surprised how thoroughly drawn into his story I became.

And now for something completely different:

*************
*I Thessalonians 5:4

"We're never getting off this island, Richard."

2009-11-04T18:21:00.005-05:00

Sophie and Kristin asked the most frequently asked question: how do you choose what to read?

I read a bunch of blogs (a quick smattering: Pickle Me This, RubyRed Books, Make a Note). I get reccs from friends whose reading tastes I know and trust (often from their blogs – Jess, Suse, Katya) but also friends from the coffee shop or fellow librarians. Sometimes I just wander the library (usually the library) and pick up whatever looks good – I do this at the bookstore but usually with a pen and paper so I don’t have to BUY everything. Every couple months I run the names of my favorite authors thru Amazon to see if they have anything new coming out. And when I worked in an actual library, it was even easier. Every book that crosses my radar that might interest me gets entered into an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop. But I also have a little notebook I carry in my purse. I have even been known to text myself with book titles.
It’s an organized sickness.

I also find that I must be in the proper mood to appreciate the right book. Which is why I didn’t dive right into the newest Audrey Niffenegger, for example. My brain wanted fast and furious action, and so it was thrilled with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But after that maelstrom of emotion, I was ready for something calmer (albeit just as disturbing). This is why I have dozens of books on my TBR shelves, because you never know what mood may strike at 3am. And sometimes if I am in a slump, I reread an old favorite (Rosamunde Pilcher’s “big books" and Raffaella Barker’s Hens Dancing and Summertime are prime for this).

“…and then of course, there are the problems with follow-through if I actually get something home...”
Don’t let me fool you. For all the reading I do, there are dozens of books sitting on my bookshelves/floor/nightstand, etc. awaiting my attention. More often than not to be ignored for some fly-by-night newcomer…

Paula asked, Have you read The Lace Reader? Did you like it?
I have, and I did enjoy it. I followed it up with The Birth House though and for some reason constantly confuse the two.

sueeeus said...
Have you read Shantaram, and did you like it? (Long, but I liked it for the most part.)
Haven’t read it, and in fact had to go look it up on Amazon, but it looks good. So I will put it on my list.

Have you read Fraction of a Whole, and did you like it? (Tedious, but I eventually finished it. Parts made me laugh, but the tedium outweighed the rest.)
I haven’t read it, but and also had to look it up on Amazon. It doesn’t strike me as the type of book I enjoy.

What about The Housekeeper and the Professor? (Loved it.)
This looks fascinating. I think I will get this to read. The premise sort of reminds me of Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room.

And Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime? (Loved it.)
Really liked this. Read it in the “trilogy” of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn and Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark, as suggested by Badger. Who was right, as always.

(I can read 4 books to your 47,212. How on earth can you read so much??!!!!)
I breathe, I eat, I read. Oh, and I neglect my children.

And now for something completely different, but also from Sueeus:
Are you a bar soap or body wash person?
I like body wash. I will be eternally bitter that SoftSoap stopped making their Milk & Honey bodywash. Bastards.

What's your favorite 70s music?
You're not serious? I don’t know. I listen to a lot of hip-hop crap from my zumba classes (Pitbull, Lady Gaga, etc.), and a lot of stuff like Coldplay and Radiohead because my husband digs them too. I don’t actually like music usually. I have noise issues…

Rachel:
I'm not a follower, but I read all your posts...and here in Australia we got AS Byatt's Children's Book months ago. I still have it sitting in my to-read pile, and felt guilty everytime you mentioned not being able to get it!
Feel guilty no longer – I have my very own copy sitting on my nightstand not being read right now too.

mouselegs [I LOVE that name, btw]:
I'm sure I have questions but can't concentrate with all the shouting (school holidays here). Maybe next week, when there is only one shouting, I will be able to think again.
I anticipate not being able to form a coherent thought until mine are out of the house permanently. In like, 20 years.

Jess:
I'm sure you've mentioned this before, but favorite pie and recipe? And is there a story behind having a basement oven?
Coconut custard pie. Yum. Recipe here.
And the story is that when we moved into our house 6 years ago, the upstairs oven had one setting: Broil the Shit Out of Something. Have you ever tried to broil chocolate chip cookies? No? Well, I recommend you don’t. We had brought out old range with us, and we hooked it up downstairs next to the functioning gasline, as an interim measure. Well, the interim lasted till last spring, when I finally got my upstairs oven fixed. I would never try to bake anything tricky like a soufflé in there, but for cookies, roast chicken, etc., it’s fine, and it makes scones remarkably well since they requite such high heat. And that is...the rest of the story. (Did anyone else read those Paul Harvey book when they were young? I loved those…)

Eleanor told me how wonderful my blog is (she’s so sweet, if delusional) and adds: Now that I've taken care of that... a question...If I tell you that I've tried to read the 1st 30 pages of "The Children's Book" 3 times already but kept falling asleep would you still love me?
Darling Eleanor, I would love you even if you told me your favorite book was Lace, followed by Lace II, followed by Flowers in the Attic.

Elizabeth:
1. Where do you store all your books?
Do you keep them all, hand them off to friends, donate, hoard?
I used to be manic about keeping every last one, but in the past few years, I have come to just want the ones I really love or use around me. My very favorites for the most part are in lovely custom-made look-built-in shelves in my bedroom, which were a Christmas gift from H. I have two filled cases in the living room for both my and H’s books. Most of my cookbooks live in a case in the hallway just outside the kitchen. I have a wall lined with shelves on the landing up to the third floor, for all the cheesy paperbacks and travel guides and things that I don’t want to get rid of but also don’t need to display. I have more cases in the third floor office for our computer books and H’s linguistics books and things like that. All my knitting and crafty books are in a smallish bookshelf in my sewing room. The boys each have big bookcases in their rooms for their books, and there’s a bookcase in the third floor playroom for my childhood books that I think they’d like to read someday. In other words, the books are everywhere.
I like to be able to lend out books, and I often buy duplicates intentionally if I run across favorites priced cheaply, so I can give them away. But if I have a book near and dear to me, I usually won’t lend it out, except to Gina.
I usually donate a few bags of paperbacks to our church’s annual book sale, and I sell some at Half Price Books (for example, I just sold all my pregnancy and baby books. And then bought more books with the proceeds.)
Clearly I am a sick woman.

2. Have you thought of writing one?
I have two “novels” sitting in my bedroom right now. One is an outline, a lot of research, and some random chapters. The other is just writing, but it fills about half a notebook. More likely than not, neither one is ever going to see the light of day.

3. How is Flat Edward holding up? Is he going to be replaced by Bill or Eric?
Flat Edward is hanging out in my sewing room. He can never be replaced by any other vampire. However Eric grows close to my heart the further into Charlaine Harris’s novels I get.

4. Did you ever get into the Outlander series?
I read the first one and really liked it (although I admit to some appallment (is that a word?) over the wife-beating scene, and how cheerful Gabaldon was about it.)
But I never read any more. I guess I didn’t see how much more she could possibly have to say, since the first one was like a thousand pages long.

5. My word verification: morusle.
What's the first thing that comes to mind?
Perusal, a small moral or morsel? Am I the only one who plays these silly word games?
I for some reason went to mollusk. So no, you are not the only one. Not by a long shot.

Stomper Girl: Not sure if you read crime fiction (as opposed to True Crime Fiction) but if you do do you have some favourites?
I love Josephine Tey and Elizabeth George, and I like Minette Walters’s earlier stuff. Am enjoying discovering Val McDermid, although she’s very gory. I also have recently discovered Ruth Rendell, who writes psychologically tense novels which just happen to have a perfectly plausible and exciting mystery embedded in them. I am quickly reaching the conclusion that the woman is a genius.

Julia wants to know:
…do you have a favorite A.S. Byatt book, and if yes, which one is it and why?
My favorite AS Byatt book is The Virgin in the Garden. The characters of Alexander and Frederica develop and mature throughout the quartet, but in the first novel, they are so young and vulnerable, and I love learning something else about them every time I reread. The twining of present day (in the book, 1950s) with historical events, and the way in which Byatt draws parallels, intrigues me no end.

Also, do you like Margaret Drabble as well?
I have read one Drabble (The Witch of Exmoor, about which I remember exactly nothing. I know I should read more, as she is Byatt’s sister and it’d be nice to discover another such brilliant author.

And finally, very interested to hear what you think of The Children's Book. I read it last month and am still cogitating over my reactions.
I haven’t started Children’s Book yet. Trying to read Byatt with 4 children around is like, I don’t know, trying to perform brain surgery in the center ring at a circus. My time will come. For now, owning it is enough.

Beth said...
Have you ever finished a book and then hugged it, or am I the only one who does that?
No, you are not alone. I have been known to sleep with said book under my pillow (Hens Dancing); alternately, I have gotten up out of bed and put said book outside my house or in my car because it could not stay in my house One. Minute. Longer (Salem’s Lot).

Penni said...
Okay, if someone were to hand you a girl baby and a boy baby, what would you name them? (I am name obsessed). Would you keep the babies?
(I am very curious where Penni intends to find these babies...Hmmm.) I am name obsessed too. I own way more baby names books than any one person probably should. I also am fascinated by the psychology of names.
If it were a boy – oof, this is tough. I think I used up all the boy names I liked.
If, God forbid, I were to have another boy baby, I would – all other things being equal and with my husband’s opinion mattering not one whit – name him either Eamon or Mark.
If it were a girl – well, if I’d ever had a girl baby, she would have been Eleanor. So I will stick with that. It was my mother’s middle name, and I think it’s lovely and elegant. (She threatened to come back and haunt me if I ever used her first name, which she despised (it was Elsie, which I think is actually sort of cute…))
And yes, I would keep the babies. I mean, why not? I already have the world’s most chaotic household, what’s two more babies? But someone else would have to sleep train them.

If you had to write under a pseudonym what would it be?
Kate something...something hyphenated. Kate Parker – something.
There. Clear as mud. Look for me: Kate Parker-Something.

What is your favourite thing about blogging?
All the cool people I have gotten to “meet,” some in real life.
And all the cool people whom I “meet” and then get to read THEIR books and talk about them on the blog (ahem). There’s something recursively exciting about that process!

Katya:
Do you like Margaret Atwood? If so, have you read Oryx and Crake? Did you like it? I keep hearing it's awful but feel like I have to read it because I want to read The Year of the Flood which sounds kind of sequel-y.
I usually enjoy Atwood immensely (Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, I even liked The Blind Assassin and most Atwood fans panned it). Her scope and range are mind-boggling. However, I did not especially like Oryx and Crake. I am dreading picking up Year of the Flood, which I fear I must, since I own and have read everything else she has written, because I think I am going to have to reread O&C and I most emphatically do not want to.

I think this might have been asked, but what book have you hated the most? For me it was Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City.
Hands down Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full. I threw it away in an airport garbage can, I hated it so much. I didn’t even want to leave it on the airplane because I couldn’t inflict it on someone else.

ssheers asks the hardest question of all:
What are your five favorite books?
And then she followed with:
Above, I asked you "What are your five favorite books?" Feel free to modify the question any way you want: go ahead and give us your six or ten or 100 favorite books or change "favorite" to "desert island-worthy" or just tell us the five (or six or ten) books that you've read recently that you enjoyed.
I am such a glutton for books, I will answer ALL of these.

First, the easy question, books I have read recently that I enjoyed. This is marginally more difficult than usual because I stopped keeping a list of what I’d read. I find it freeing to not keep track. I was tired of being stressed about something that is the primary love of my life.
So, off the top of my head:
Friday’s Child - Georgette Heyer. Think fluffy Jane Austen.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larson. Riveting, once I got past the first 30 pages of boring financial crap. Lisbeth Salander made it all worth it.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club - Gil McNeil. Add to my list of comfort reading. Sequel comes out in May.
Aunt Dimity’s Death - Nancy Atherton. More comfort reading. Sweet and quiet.
Abide With Me - Elizabeth Strout. One of the most under-recognized authors of the day, if you ask me. (Although she did win the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge.)
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly. Think Caddie Woodlawn tackles the scientific world.
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakuaer. Fascinating stuff. What I plan to have in my hand the next time those nice young boys in black pants and white shirts ring my doorbell. I have some questions…

Also, I am really, really enjoying Audrey Niffenegger’s newest, Her Fearful Symmetry. Like, look forward to curling up in bed and stay up way too late reading it enjoying.

My five, no, six, no TEN favorite books (sort of…I played fast and loose with the “book” concept) (also, please note: I could revise and switch and add and subtract books to this all day long, no joke, AND it is not necessarily in order):
1. Possession/The Virgin in the Garden
2. Satanic Verses
3. Stones from the River
4. Roller Skates
5. The Sparrow
6. Emma & Pride and Prejudice
7. The Sandman graphic novels (Volume 7, “Brief Lives,” is my favorite in the series.)
8. Hens Dancing/Summertime
9. Miss Buncle’s Book/Miss Buncle Married
10. The Cunning Man

My ten desert-island books (see note above):
1. My Riverside Shakespeare
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. The Bible
4. Complete works of John Donne
5. Possession
6. Satanic Verses
7. The Divine Comedy
8. The Sandman graphic novels
9. War and Peace
10. The Michelin Green Guide to Florence

Desert island books differ from favorites because one never knows how long it will take to get rescued – you’d hate to run out of reading material.

I know I missed some questions; I swear it won't take me another week to get to them.

The Devil: We have work to do my loathsome toad. Smeck: Evil work? The Devil: No, knitting. Of course evil work!

2009-10-25T22:23:00.003-04:00

Bearette24 asks, Are you answering these questions in your next post? I read your blog, but I don't have the Google follower gadget thingy.
Well, Gott in Himmel, why ever not? It will change your life. Or at least your blog-reading habits. But in short, I will answer questions in this post and then the next. I thought I’d split ‘em up by Book-related and Not, but I am not sure it will be that discrete.

Dearest Suse asked:
How is your knitting going?
I keep knitting Meathead Hats. Hat after hat after hat. I especially enjoy creating or picking out the little decoration at the end...My shawl languishes bedside. And just today I became completely obsessed with knitting rag rugs and sliced up a dozen old t-shirts. Am I insane?

Do you like green yarn? Worsted weight, approximately 200g's worth? Dark green or light green?
Green is my favorite color. Dark is nice, but so is light. And I love yarn. But of course. I just bought more today. And snuck it into the house and then logged it all on Ravelry and photographed it. In other words, I spent hours of my life playing with yarn today. See how sick I have become? I hope you’re pleased.

Have you a quilt on the go?
I do. I always seem to. This one is only in the planning and cutting stages right now. It’s for my niece who is about 2. It’s very pink and green and floral, and it may be the most “designed” quilt I have ever done. I really really like it so far, and hope she does too.

Are you around this weekend for a little Skyping?
Sunday? Saturday is impossible. (Gah! Where did my weekend go??)

My word verification is chokilat. What do you think of that?
It’s a sign from God saying, send Babelbabe more chocolate Timtams.
What? You asked.

Yes, Badger from Texas, what is your question?
I have questions! What book(s) have you just NOT been able to finish, after more than one attempt?
Please don’t hate me.
Life of Pi.
Sophie’s World.
Underworld.
Anna Karenina (although I have read most of this, just not in order).
And I fear The Elegance of the Hedgehog is going to join that list.

What has the weather been like up there?
The weather was crappy and cold and rainy-verging-on-snow-and-sleet until two days ago when the sun came out, the mercury rose, and it’s been a lovely week/end of Indian summer.

Are the leaves pretty yet, or are they done already?
Mostly the leaves are just changing. The maples especially are in full fall glory.

Do you like apple cider?
I love apple cider. I even have a favorite brand from a local farm. But cider mixed with things like cranberries is an abomination unto God.

What are your boys going to be for Halloween?
My boys originally wanted to be esoteric Pokemon characters but over the weekend they changed their minds and want to be a ghost (Terzo), a vampire (Seg), the Grim Reaper (Primo), and the baby is a mummy. (Haha, get it? The baby is a...oh, never mind.)

Which do you prefer: taking the kids around the 'hood to get treats, or staying home and passing out treats yourself?
I *prefer* to hole up in my bedroom in the dark and drink vodka till it’s all over.

Janet demands to know, and with good reason as I have been putting this off forever because, really, who wants to drive across Pennsylvania with four children by herself? Not I. Especially. When are you coming East to visit us and introduce us to your little hooligans?
Now that I’ve answered the above question (the Halloween one), are you sure you WANT to meet the hooligans?
I am hoping to get home in the spring, or whenever my next ancient relative dies, whichever comes first.

Blogger daysgoby said...(How much does it crack me up that each of you is labeled “Blogger.” Like I didn’t know that. )

What book do you keep beside your bed?
Hahahaaaaaa. Singular? Lemme see, there right now: The two Mason-Dixon knitting books. The newest Fables graphic novel, which H brought home for me this afternoon. The Girl Who Played with Fire. Her Fearful Symmetry which I started this morning. Two weeks’ worth of Newsweek. A couple blank books, full of things like random scribblings, Christmas planning lists, and work research notes. And any other books moving up the TBR queue.

What's your favorite thing to do in the winter?
I love ice skating. Love it. I used to skate two or three times a week pre-children. I also like to ski but it’s expensive and much harder to do, with or without children.

Are you happy living where you are, or would you rather be more citified/rural than you are now?
I adore where I live and would not trade it for anything. The only thing that would make it better would be a bigger yard – but I can live with our small one for everything else good here. (Although if we ever won the lottery, I’d buy the duplex next door, knock it down, and promptly install a fire pit and some chickens.) We are only blocks from several parks, so it’s not a huge big deal.

What type of conversationalist are you? Do you hang back, sip your coffee and nod a lot, or jump in and chat?
I never, ever, ever shut up and can’t seem to help myself. I often leave a conversation and ten minutes later become convinced that my partner in conversation is cursing me and thinking, “What an unpleasant, talkative, and rude person.”I console myself that I am fairly amusing, most times.

Do you have any pets?
I have 2 cats. They are brother and sister; the girl is Emmy and the boy is Septimus (named after Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia). Seppie is pretty sick right now, so I am hoping he is ok. And we are due for another goldfish (the last one was named Jasper; the next will be named Emmett).

What's your favorite thing to do that you don't write a lot of blog posts about?
Swimming or running. Although I do have a blog post somewhere in my Drafts folder all about swimming featured in novels.

I think I will wrap up this round with some questions from the Queen, Blackbird, whom I haven’t actually talked to in far too long.
Do you have any Winter plans for you and the boys? I'm always impressed with your trips to the zoo/parks/coffee shop.
Don’t be – if I just sat at home with them, we’d all be dead sooner rather than later.
There is a whale exhibit at the Natural History Museum Primo wants to see, and the boys are asking to go check out the Heinz History Center because of the Pittsburgh Penguins (hockey type) exhibit. There are also new penguins (the birds) at the Aviary. I owe them all a trip back to the art museum, which they loved the first time. Otherwise, we go to the library, I go to the gym where they hang out in the daycare and watch Pokemon cartoons, and we spend as much time as possible up at the park until winter closes in. We have lots of Halloween activities planned (parties, bonfire, parade, in addition to good old trick-or-treating), and hockey championships coming up...

What's going on with those boys anyhow? I feel like I'm not up to speed on them.
Primo is rocking 3rd grade. He is getting into computer game design bigtime, and I am having a tough time keeping him in books. On the other hand, his lack of bulk is not helping his hockey or soccer career, and as the games get more aggressive and competitive, and the other kids grow bigger, I am afraid he may have to look for another sport to play. I am also terrified our sick cat is going to die, which would KILL Primo. He adores that cat and is terribly worried.
Seg continues to come into his own in 1st grade, although I have had no fewer than 4 teachers pull me aside to tell me how different my two boys are. As if I was unaware. Please. If I hadn’t actually given birth to both of them, I myself would swear one of them was adopted. He is playing soccer and hockey, too, and his piano lessons are coming along beautifully. He plays with both hands now, with chords and runs and all kinds of complicated musical stuff I have never and will never understand. He is also reading much more than he used to, he is currently engrossed in the newest Wimpy Kid book.
Terzo is a love but channels my maternal grandfather, which can be disconcerting. He also has a startling and, frankly, scary propensity for fierce tantrums (or as my pediatrician terms them, “heroic.”) He is in preschool 4 mornings a week now, when I miss him very much.
And Quarto is a never-ending source of frustration and amusement. He moves at the speed of light, enjoys flinging trains at people, and refuses to actually USE his somewhat extensive vocabulary. He does, however, bark at every dog we encounter.

What's doing with the house? No reno projects to report on?
The house continues to fall down around our ears. We have installation of storm windows scheduled for the next month, and I am getting bids on a bunch of interior painting. We talk a lot about the kitchen redo, but never seem to actually ever get to it. Now that the oven upstairs works, who needs new countertops, I ask you?

Do the kids like to read as much as you do? C'mon, one of them MUST hate it.
I don’t think Seg is rabid the way Primo and I are, but that’s ok. But the baby shows signs of being as crazed as me...

Would you consider attending BlogHer 10? I can name at least four bloggers who would LOVE to meet you and, without your kidney cooler, could be easily convinced that you are a darling.
I. Am. There.
(Have you got room on your lawn for a smallish tent?)
I am sure no one would be convinced I was a darling, with or without the kidney cooler, but that’s ok. God, I could use the laugh…do you remember how much we laughed in Bethlehem? It was extraordinary, I am still surprised we didn’t do ourselves harm.

And on that pleasant note, I draw "Part I, Questions You Didn’t Even Know You Cared About," to a close. Thanks for awesome questions, and for making me feel so loved (awwww…..) I will answer the rest as soon as my hoodlums give me another straight twenty minutes of peace.

*******************

*"God, the Devil, and Bob"

"You like me! You really like me!"

2009-10-24T10:33:00.003-04:00

Aw, you guys. I feel so loved.
(Per Debi's instructions : ))

I am splitting up the questions into two posts: one book-related, and the other not.
Will probably do the non first...

In the meantime, I have a favor to ask, as I use the power of the Internet for good.

A friend's son (hi, Janet!) is doing a project at school and it's got something to do with the fifty States. He is trying to get postcards from all fifty states (huh, I wonder if he needs Guam?). I am emailing a bunch of you (Liz, Blackbird, Velma, Joke, Badger) because I know where you live, but if any of you live in a state from which you'd be willing to send a postcard to a cute and hardworking kiddo, lemme know via email and I'll send the addy.

Because apparently some other kid's mom already has all fifty states and DC, and I hate over-achievers.

Thankyouverymuch.
You rock.

***************

*Sally Field

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”

2009-10-21T20:13:00.003-04:00

I can't help but notice I lost a "follower."
I only had 6 as it was.
Was it something I said?
Something I didn't say?
Was it my lack of stunning photography/amusing (or not) stories about my children/mundane taste in reading material?

I was GOING to maybe, kinda sorta, possibly jump on the Kim/Suse/Blackbird/Badger bandwagon and open the field for questions, but then I realized I have regressed to junior high and am, frankly, terrified that not only will no one want to ask a single question because who the hell cares, but actually, that no one is even reading.

So.
Um.

If you wanna ask something..., even something sorta silly or whatever , you can. You know, if you want to. But you don't HAVE to.

I already have the crickets cued up.

************
*Lloyd Alexander

I always look for a woman who has a tattoo...here's a gal who's capable of making a decision she'll regret in the future.*

2009-10-19T21:17:00.001-04:00

30 pages in, I didn't get it.
Financial mysteries bore me, and I was ready to quit.
Besides, the translation is clunky and awkward.

35 pages in, I met Lisbeth Salander.
And I am still reading.

****************
*Richard Jeni

“Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.”

2009-10-14T22:12:00.002-04:00

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Understood Betsy were both resourceful, clever, funny, smart girls with minds of their own but also with a huge capacity for love and family. I read the books over and over again, I treasure them as an adult, and I still think I would have been great friends with each girl. I wanted Aunt Miranda to come round and decide to love me, I wanted Uncle Henry to make me maple syrup candy on fresh-fallen Vermont snow, and I wanted Cousin Ann to help me discover my inner strength and courage.

Elizabeth Enright's Melendy books (The Four-Story Mistake; The Saturdays; Then There Were Five; Spiderweb for Two) entranced me. The Melendy family is delightful. They fight with each other just like a REAL family, but they also adore each other and have the most awesomely fun adventures ever. Their affection expands to include their dog, their housekeeper Cuffy, the handyman Willie, and the stately, elderly Mrs Oliphant. I figured if they could adopt Mark, they could certainly adopt me – after all, Randy and I were practically the same age! I grew up with two brothers, one younger, one older. I never actively longed for a sister - but then I met Randy and wanted HER as my sister.

Despite the fact that, unlike the above books, Hilary McKay’s novels (Saffy’s Angel; Caddy Ever After; Indigo’s Star; Permanent Rose (and there’s a new one coming out this spring, Forever Rose)) are set firmly in modern day England, complete with modern-day ills – the Casson family’s mother is a thoroughly distracted artist, their father lives away and eventually shows up with a girlfriend - the flavor is much the same. The children are charming and scrappy and funny and fiercely loyal to each other, and to their wingnut parents. As so many of their friends did, I could have slipped right into the warm, messy, friendly chaos of the Casson household.

Janine Boissard’s lovely (and hard to find!) novels chronicle the lives of the Moreau sisters, growing up in France with a nurturing mother and a fiercely protective father. I remember noting that French teenagers are much more sophisticated than American teenagers.

I adored Trixie Belden and her friendly parents, rambling, comfy house, and propensity for solving scary-but-not-dangerous mysteries. Why could I never find any mysteries to solve in my safe little suburb? Hmmm?

My favorite Anne of Green Gables book is Anne of Ingleside, the one in which Anne has a gajillion children tumbling happily around a big old house. I’d fit right in, of course I would, Anne (and Susan) would love me as she did Rilla and Nan and Walter and the rest.
.
And sometimes I even dreamed of finding out I was Rose’s long-lost girl cousin - Uncle Alec would adopt me, too, and I could live in the Aunt-Hill, and he could make me eat porridge and brown bread and ride ponies and throw away my corsets. (I had a bit of a crush on Uncle Alec.)

Even though I had a family and a home of my own, something in each of these books made me long to be embraced by these characters, to become their friend, and to be welcomed to their homes and into their family. I wanted to be a real part of each of these families.

Last night I read Jeanne Birdsall’s second Penderwick book, The Penderwicks of Gardam Street. The first, simply titled The Penderwicks, didn’t do a lot for me, truth be told. The plot was ridiculous, the book's events absurd, and the ending completely unsatisfying. Nevertheless, I liked the girls. A lot. I loved Rosalind’s devotion to her family, Skye’s stubbornness, Jane’s creativity, and Batty’s resourcefulness. (Do we ever find out what Batty is short for??) I loved the way they functioned as a unit, and the way they helped each other and their dad.

I did not immediately read the second book when it was published but when I stumbled upon it at the library last week, I picked it up. Birdsall doesn’t do it *again* – actually, this second book is far and away BETTER than the first. Yes, the plot is predictable, but the girls are charming, inventive, silly, and downright delightful, each trying to figure out her place in the family and the world at large. Yet again, I’ve found a family I want to adopt me.

************
*Matt Groening

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

2009-10-08T21:19:00.003-04:00

So first I bought this:
Then I bought this, having waited impatiently for months for it to come out in the States:

But then last night, about to crawl into my toasty warm bed with a bag of almond M&Ms, what did I pick up off the shelf? This:

Which I am, sort of to my chagrin, enjoying immensely. I almost got rid of these Aunt Dimity books that had been my mom's (she had maybe 4 or 5 of them) but I couldn't bring myself to...now I am glad I didn't, because I NEVER would have picked this up at the library or bookstore...

***************
*CS Lewis

"We're plastic but we still have fun!"*

2009-10-05T22:34:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year, and while I don’t really know the Pulitzer like I do the Booker, it sounds impressive enough, yes? (The Road, Lonesome Dove, and Middlesex also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but then again, so did March. Y-A-W-N.) Olive Kitteridge was a great little book – it reminded me on one hand of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (which I believe I mentioned before) which I started to reread while in WV; OK was a much more subtle, even devious novel than OK -- but the premise is almost identical.

Once I finished OK, I recalled that I had read Strout’s Amy and Isabelle, and that it had surprised me by not being some sort of Jodi Picoult/Anita Shreve/Oprah Book Club novel and instead was a slow-moving but nicely written novel that I enjoyed very much -- but also don’t recall much about.

Strout has a book there in the middle, called Abide with Me, which I promptly ordered form Amazon in a book buying frenzy: “It’s only ONE CENT!” Never mind that shipping is 4 dollars, the book was only one cent! I am almost finished with it, and it has that same deceptively slow-moving plotting and backwards character development that OK has; in other words, you’re reading along, lulled by some quiet, almost morose storytelling when WHAM! some simple detail is dropped into the story oh so casually, and it blows up the whole story in your face. So then you readreadread, to see what else is going to happen next ohmygod….wash, rinse, repeat (but in a good way).

In other words, Elizabeth Strout should hurry up and write another book; I want to know what’s she going to come up with next.

In the meantime, I have the newest Audrey Niffenegger on my nightstand, which I hope to finish before AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book FINALLY comes out in the States on October 6. Which is, holy crap, TOMORROW. Ok, so that’s not gonna happen, I guess. The reading, not the release. I wonder if I can manage a trip to both the library and the bookstore tomorrow…there are books on hold at the library that I must pick up, if they haven’t already been shipped back from whence they came…and even if I can’t read The Children’s Book right away, I need to hold it in my hot little hands and be able to stare lovingly at it sitting on my bookshelf.

***********
*"Paparazzi," Lady Gaga. It is to my possibly everlasting shame that I discover this song which I have grown increasingly fond of, is by the dubious Lady Gaga. I blame my newfound horrible taste in music (Pitbull, anyone?) on zumba.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."*

2009-09-28T11:26:00.004-04:00

Some of my closest friends are people I met (and in some cases still only "know") online.

The Internet presents whole new way of interacting with friends and keeping in touch.
It keeps me sane on days when I may feel very alone at home with small kids, to be able to Facebook (it is so a verb, shut up) and read blogs and email and chat with other women who are there now, too -- or have been there and survived.

Cari is a woman whom I emailed a couple of times, usually about running; I read her blog from time to time and kept up on her life. We were by no stretch of the imagination close friends -- but she was an amazing mom to three beautiful kids, and a real ray of sunshine.

Cari passed away this past week after bravely and steadfastly fighting cancer. She lived an active and vibrant life and leaves behind a family, friends, and probably countless online connections.

My thoughts and prayers for strength and peace are with her husband, Melvin; her three children, Cameron, Max, and Ella; her mom who kindly updated Cari's blog to keep us all posted in the past few weeks; and all of her friends IRL and online.

Cari, the world is a sadder and darker place without you.

************
*Dylan Thomas

"This is not the time for complacency or over-confidence."

2009-09-23T18:54:00.005-04:00

I am skedaddling out of town.
The G-20 summit begins in Pittsburgh tomorrow.

And while I have a bizarre interest in its goings-on, apparently the city of Pittsburgh is not quite up to the challenge. My kids' schools are closed, as are most museums, cultural attractions, many libraries, and most downtown companies.

And with Yom Kippur on Monday (a Pittsburgh Public School holiday also), I was staring down the barrel of five days with my children at home, more or less by myself, since H works not-Downtown -- so he can actually get to work.

So we're getting the heck out of Dodge.

It'll actually be nice to escape the perpetual sound of these, which have been hovering over the city all day now:

There's already been some interesting activity:
(Those are Greenpeace protesters rappelling from the West End bridge this afternoon.)

Good times, yo.

P.S. What am I taking to read? Nicola Keegan's Swimming, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death.

******************
*Gordon Brown, on G-20 cooperation

"We believe it to be one of the strongest lists in recent memory...a span of styles and themes that make this an outstandingly rich fictional mix."*

2009-09-13T10:23:00.003-04:00

In short:

Persepolis/Persepolis 2 – Marjane Satrapi.
The first book was wonderful. The second, not so much; she seemed like she was merely capitalizing on the success of the first.

Little Bee – Chris Cleave.
This novel will stick with me for a long time. Little Bee is an enigmatic yet strong character. The story was almost fable-like in its execution, or maybe that’s how I dealt with how disturbing it was.

Harm Done – Ruth Rendell.
The Water’s Lovely – Ruth Rendell.
Rendell is a master. Her mysteries are never about the actual mystery but about being a human.

Dark Places – Gillian Flynn.
Totally unpredictable, unlike Sharp Objects (or maybe I am just not the brightest bulb…). Her character development is much stronger, too, even if the writing is somewhat scattered at times. There ARE unexplained parts, but nothing too nagging. A very satisfying read.

And you know what makes me craziest about this: Longlist announced for Man Booker Prize 2009?
A.S. Byatt’s novel, The Children’s Book, isn’t even available in the States till October.
Bet we could get our hands on the new Dan Brown though.
Sheesh.

**************

*James Naughtie, chair of the Man Booker prize judges (I just wanted to use his name, I admit it.)

The fundamental job of a toddler is to rule the universe.

2009-09-10T11:59:00.002-04:00

Oh for pete’s sake, people, I am BUSY. What do you want from me?

Oh. You hadn’t even noticed I was absent?
My bad.
Sorry.
Nothing to see here, move along.

I am no longer editing dissertations. Which also means I no longer have a babysitter two days a week. This is better for everyone, trust me. (Except, you know, people who read my blog. Because I am no longer in front of my computer all day twice a week.) Most clients pay a lot of lip service to the concept of me working only 16 hours a week, on 2 consecutive weekdays, but in reality I was emailed and called all hours of the day and night, including weekends, and I found myself snarling at my children and ignoring my family to get work done – most of which was probably underappreciated. I was stiffed by one client, and fired by another because she was not my priority, and I had had it.

My dear beloved babysitter was making a two-bus trek across town twice a week because she loves me and she loves my boys, but now, if something crops up, I can always take them to her house and she’ll watch them whenever I need her. So I can, you know, go get a massage or whatever. (Ha. Like that’s likely. In fact, H just asked if I really needed to pay her to watch Q on Terzo’s first morning of preschool. Since the other option is my MIL, who is getting elderly and doesn’t like to watch Q if he’s awake, and since it’s not likely he’ll sleep from 830 am till noon, that option is not an option.)

The two older boys started school, and Terzo starts next Monday (I will cry even if his incessant chattering makes my ears feel like they’re bleeding), and then I will be home alone with one small child for half the day and two small children the other half of the day and oh, what shall I do with all my free time? Perhaps I will blog more consistently. If you’re very very lucky.

Because now that I no longer have to spend my evenings correcting bad grammar, I actually have some time for both my WordTwist addiction and my book addiction. I have been reading. Lots of cool stuff. So brace yourself.

That is all.

Wait, no it's not:
P.S. I think my children have sucked all my funny out. Along with my snarky and my smart. I am not deluding myself when I say I used to be quite a bit more clever. Now I am all, "Insert Blog Post A into Blog Reader B..."
Someday the funny will return.

*****
*Lawrence Kutner

“At least you'll never be a vegetable - even artichokes have hearts.”

2009-08-27T22:08:00.004-04:00

In the good old days (read: pre-kids), I would take 5 or 6 books on vacation with me, and read 4 or 5 of them. What I was reading on vacation often required much more consideration than what I was wearing (although I must say, the little shift dress I picked up on a whim at Target the day before we left? PERFECT beach dress. Cool, comfy, and cute enough to go out for dinner or sit around on the deck with cocktails.).

I took 6 books with me this past vacation:
The second 39 Clues book, One False Note
A Ruth Rendell mystery, The Water’s Lovely, which I was already halfway through.
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
The latest Charlaine Harris/Sookie Stackhouse novel
Swimming by Nicola Keegan
And Under the Banner of Heaven which I was also already halfway through.

I managed to finish the 39 Clues book one afternoon while the boys were in New Haven with H.
I managed about half of the newest Sookie one evening down the shore, when all the other adults fell asleep.

And that is it.

Man, vacation is not what it used to be.

Even my knitting took a vacation – I got lots done on the Hogwarts scarf while in the car (8 hours to CT, another 5 (DON’T ASK) down to Stone Harbor, then almost 8 back here), but otherwise, after one ridiculous day when 1) I thought I would get to sit on my beach chair and knit, and 2) said knitting got covered in sand, I gave up.

I spent one evening leafing through all the magazines in the beach house; Mrs S reads all sorts of good stuff and gets great catalogues as well. So, of course, I now have a list of other books I have to read….

What I’m reading now:
Little Bee - Chris Cleave. This book was almost too cutesy about itself; the flapcopy reads:
“We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book.
It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.
Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:”
And then it goes on to a VERY brief admission that there are two women characters in this book and they meet at one point and then at another. And that is all.
But now that I am drawn into the book (100 pages in), I don’t care. It’s charming and wrenching and beautiful; I might be in love.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. This reminds me VERY much of my all-time favorite childhood book (and one of my just plain favorite books ever), Roller Skates. Calpurnia might be almost as wonderful as Lucinda Wyman.

Plenty: One man, one woman, and a raucous year of eating locally, from the originators of the 100-Mile Diet. The guy is a great writer; it’s a really intriguing topic, and so far, I recommend it.

What I got from the library but may not get to:
A Great and Terrible Beauty. I am not sure I am really in the mood for more vampires just now.
The Scenic Route. This was one of the magazine lists and I jotted it down, but I just happened to see it at the library yesterday. Eh. Seems more like a poor (wo)man’s Eat, Love, Pray, but I could be wrong.

What I bought today (oh, let me go off on a tangent and sing the praises of Half Price Books’ clearance shelves. I almost never even look at the regular priced stuff anymore unless I am looking for something VERY specific. Nevertheless, I did almost buy Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother – I don’t care if she is a train wreck, she’s a fine writer; and Gil McNeil’s The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club, which might be one of the most delightful and comforting books I have read in a long time and which reminded me very much of my beloved Hens Dancing):

Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem. Because Lethem is a genius, and I need to reread this. I almost put it back, but then I opened it randomly waiting in line, and laughed out loud at the lines I read. Sold.
HomeLand - Sam Lipsyte. Um, why did I buy this? Looks good but can’t remember exactly how or why it crossed my radar.
City of Thieves - MUST get past gross revenge scene to appreciate the rest of this beautiful and haunting little novel.
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn. Ok, ok, I’ll try this AGAIN.
With Bold Knife and Fork - MFK Fisher. Always fun to read about food, from a master.

And what I ordered yesterday:
Knitalong. Because I need to make my little nephew a purple Meathead Hat.

And also, these dance sneakers.
Because I appear to be taking this gym/zumba thing seriously.
If I start wearing off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, someone slap me.

**********
*Amélie Poulain, whoever the heck that is

"By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class."*

2009-08-16T16:11:00.006-04:00

**************
*Anne Morrow Lindbergh

NAGA~ BERSA~ATJ

2009-08-11T22:05:00.004-04:00

Quick, quick, like a bunny...

Damn these kids. Primo has me unscrambling anagrams for his 39 Clues fixation.
Anyone know Russian geography better than I do?
And now I have to read the dang things. Grrr.

If you are a Raffaella Barker fan(Hens Dancing, Summertime) (and I am), you will like Gil McNeil's The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club. However, looking at that now I've typed it, I have no idea where they got that title.

Has anyone read Chris Cleave's Little Bee? Should I read it?

**********
*This is the one I totally cannot get. I THINK they are all Russian cities, but possibly not...is this cheating?

"They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."

2009-08-04T09:58:00.002-04:00

For you, a smattering of bookish thoughts.
I can barely form a coherent sentence these days: who has time to think straight? You’ll have to make do with this for the moment.

I caved and bought the newest Sookie Stackhouse; I couldn’t wait for it from the library. I haven’t started it though. It’s sitting tantalizingly on my nightstand. (Yes, since you ask, I was also the sort of child who hoarded her Halloween candy until her brothers’ candy was all gone.) I also bought the third Harper Connelly (and read it in an evening) and the first Lily Bard book, which also waits on my nightstand.

I borrowed a few anthologies from the library with Sookie stories in them: “One Word Answer” from Bite, which gives some of Hadley’s backstory, and “Dracula Night” from Many Bloody Returns. It was pleasant to have a Sookie fix while I steeled myself to spending twenty bucks on the hardcover Dead and Gone. (Eventually, I used one of the boys’ Easter B&N giftcards from their grandmother instead. Because THAT is the kind of mother I am.)

Richard Russo has a new book out; as I haven’t managed to slog through Bridge of Sighs, I doubt I will be running out to spend 30 dollars on the newest. I love love love his earlier books, but his last two were spotty at best. Philippa Gregory tackles the Plantagenets: The White Queen is released in late August. A Touch of Dead, billed as “Sookie Stackhouse: The complete stories” is released in October, as is the next Harper Connnelly book. And of course, A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book has an October release (finally!) here in the States.

Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven sat on my TBR pile for well over a year, but once I picked it up and started it (why is it you need to be in a certain mood to want to read and to enjoy certain books?), I couldn’t put it down. Fascinating stuff. Fundies are crazy, no matter which religion they are affiliated with.

I just started Ruth Rendell’s The Water’s Lovely. It’s one of those books that you THINK you have twigged from the beginning, but as it’s Ruth Rendell, I am quite sure I do not. I am sure I will enjoy the ride.

Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (thanks for the recc, Jess!), Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty, and Maggie Sefton’s Knit One, Kill Two wait for me at the library. My local branch is closed for 18 months for renovations, so I have been going to the next closest, in a kind of dicey, economically challenged neighborhood. At first I was a bit nervous, but the building is positively lovely (high ceilings, lots of marble and warm, rich wood), and the staff are incredibly sweet and totally happy that the East Liberty patrons are coming there for the duration. H doesn’t want me to take the kids there, as the neighborhood is somewhat well known for its gunfire and other crime, but I am happy enough to point out that the microbrewery where he picks up two growlers a week is only two blocks away from the library, and the middle-class minivanned people who buy beer there don’t let the thought of gunfire stop THEM.

And there you have it.

30 days till school starts.

************
*Cole Sear, "The Sixth Sense"

"It’s all this mistaken notion that if we avoid everything, we’ll avoid risk."

2009-07-26T14:27:00.005-04:00

In the past week of summer vacation, I have permitted the following activities:

My eight-year-old stayed at home to play computer games while I and the three Littlers walked a block up to the little neighborhood market to buy cheese for dinner sandwiches that night.

My eight-year-old and six-year-old walked to the vending machines at the pool from the playground sort of next to the pool, to buy treats for themselves and their brothers after swim lessons. Then they went back again because Seg punched the wrong numbers into the vending machines and wound up with peanut butter crackers instead of a bag of Skittles. My friend M and I stayed at the playground, chatting and watching our Littlers play in the dirt and run around.

The three older boys roasted marshmallows and flung wood onto the fire, and traipsed around the woods collecting feathers and walnuts and leaves, and slept outside in a tent. I sat on a porch swing next to the fire with a bottle of Straub’s and my friend A and talked (when I wasn't bogarting their burnt marshmallows).

The two older boys and their friend rode their bicycles and scooter around and around the block and up and down the alley playing some sort of tag they made up involving Harry Potter and much loud casting of spells (their extremely common use of the Cruciatus curse might give me pause for concern...)

The three older boys ate popsicles on the front porch while I put the baby down for a nap upstairs.

The two older boys took my coupons and went and retrieved items I needed in other aisles of the grocery store while I waited for the damn fishman to give me my order.

The two older boys continued playing a game in the van (windows down but vehicle locked, of course, parked DIRECTLY in front of the coffee shop and with several people we knew sitting at the tables out front) while I ran into the coffee shop to pick up a (pre-called/ordered) latte.

None of these sound completely crazy, do they?

I mean, really REALLY beyond-the-pale crazy?

Because they are activities that have been a little tough for me. A little tough on my over-protective, overactive mothering instincts. Activities that frankly fly in the face of the helicopter parenting most of us practice (or are expected to practice) these days. While the boys were on the porch, I envisioned – I dunno – Jack the Ripper? White slavers? A slavering pedophile in a panel van looking for his puppy?

Yes, we live in the city, which means I lock my doors and car at night. I will not allow my children to play in the actual street. I am cordial but distant with strangers walking up and down the street.

But *I* grew up riding my bike where I pleased, and was pretty much left to my own devices most of the summer, and a lot of the rest of the year. (Remember this post?)

We kids ran up and down and IN the street, and we built treehouses in the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac (which incidentally backed up onto a major freeway, separated from our street by a cinder block wall and little else). We played hockey and kickball in the street ("CAR!"), and I was allowed to walk not only to my friend Roseann’s house at the end of the street, but to my friend Stacie’s house, across the previously mentioned highway (there was an overpass). I was permitted to walk down the street the other way to the pond, to fish and skate and to hang out with my friend Stephanie. I was permitted to ride my bike anywhere I could pedal it, which often included the 7-11, the movie theatre, and the ice cream store (all roughly within a mile radius).

In addition, I was sent away every single summer for weeks at a time to camp (and loved every blessed minute of it), where I had a large posse of friends I didn’t see the rest of the year; we ran around in the woods (sometimes in the middle of the night), canoed and kayaked and played in the creek; we climbed all over a ropes course and in the trees like monkeys; we camped outside, built large fires, learned to shoot a bow-and-arrow and a BB gun, and swam miles in the freezing cold pool at 5am to earn meaningless badges.

I was not only permitted but EXPECTED to walk the two long blocks to the bus stop and take a public bus three miles home from school in the winter months, when my mother didn’t drive due to snow (my older brother was with me most days, and this didn't start till I was in second grade). (One memorable snowy day, when my brother was not in school for some reason or another, I fell asleep and missed my stop. The bus driver turned around at the end of the route and drove me to my doorstep.)

I was a Free Range Kid.

Before the days of 24-hours-a-day news channels trumpeting every single missing child (and even some not really missing), before the days of Stranger Danger programs and the prominence of organized sports, before the days of your kids’ friends all living in the ‘burbs to which you must drive, I think most of us my age (39ish) were.

After reading Lenore Skenazy’s wonderful and reassuring book Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, I feel like a new convert.

Lenore Skenazy is passionate about her cause: Giving children — and their parents – freedom. For the kids, it’s the freedom to play outside without grown-ups, to make mistakes, to climb trees, to walk to school alone, to frolic. For their parents, it’s giving them the confidence to let go of irrational fears that make them to want to place their children under lock and key or 24/7 surveillance. Or both. (from Picket Fence Post.)

The zeal with which I am now actively trying to develop my children’s independence must necessarily (and wisely) be tempered by a number of factors. For example:

- Their ages –would I send the three-year-old to the vending machine alone? I WOULD NOT.

- By their personalities and common sense - Would I leave the six-year-old home alone for half an hour? I actually might, since my six-year-old is the most responsible of all my children – it might depend on where I was going, and how he felt about it.

- And by MY common sense: Would I drive my twelve-year-old to the local mall, along with a friend, and leave them in charge of three younger siblings, including a three-year-old? Boy, for all my zeal and independence-building, I sure would not. (I have an eight-year-old and a three-year-old. I would not trust them at a large public shopping mall with anyone but me, and sometimes I even wonder about me.)

Skenazy allowed her then-nine-year-old to ride the subway alone. For this feat of mothering confidence, she was interviewed all over national TV and vilified by lots and lots of plastic talking heads in the media. She discusses this reaction in her book, and she then goes on to discuss why we have become such a fearful and overprotective society. She backs up her strong opinions with solid empirical evidence, citing, among others, David Finkelhor, head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, and several prominent NY pediatricians (her own included). She cites numbers at a dizzying speed, debunking many of our long-held and weirdly cherished beliefs re: stranger kidnapping, online predators, cell phone use by children, and the need for toilet locks (I personally gave up toilet locks when I couldn't get one open at an, er, critical moment. Thank God we have two bathrooms). Her tone is friendly but firm; her writing style would seem most at home in a mommy blog (I don’t think that’s an insult, is it?).

I may be a little bit in love with her and her ideas, and if we lived in the same city, I would so find her and make her be my (enabling and supportive) mommy friend.

Would I let my nine-year-old ride the subway alone? Perhaps, if he’d grown up in NYC and was used to riding the subway with me and it was daytime and he didn’t have to switch trains...see how it goes? You have to use your parenting instincts and skills to make the best decision for you and for your child.

But you also must stretch a little, take a few chances – let them spread their wings and attempt a solo flight. Because eventually (dear God, I hope and pray) they grow up and move out and must do their own laundry, and believe it or not, little Junior needs to know how to turn on the stove and live in his own place and ride the subway to work at some point.

*******************
*Lenore Skenazy

"I shall gather myself into myself again..." *

2009-07-21T21:54:00.002-04:00

I don’t like you.

Actually, I do, but it may seem like I don’t.

While I do indeed have several lovely and fun friends who go out and drink with me, or knit with me, or just hang out with me, I usually prefer to be by myself. I don’t require company to go get a beer, or to eat dinner out, or to see a movie, or to go shopping for yarn or clothes or books.
I really enjoy being alone.
The people for whom I forsake this aloneness are very few.
And I generally don’t do it for long, if I can help it.

Fortunately my husband is not too different, and we have our own separate lives (in addition to our mostly pleasant life together, that is, with our beloved, if demanding and perpetually going, children). I go out to browse a bookstore or the yarn shop, or to get a cup of coffee by myself, or run or swim for a long, solitary, fulfilling, time on a regular basis. We have separate bedrooms, and have for years. We both like our space, and our solitude.
I more than like it – I require it.

It’s not my fault. I get skittish and short and cranky if I am with other people for too long. Especially if I am with other people in a smallish space, and especially especially if there are other people there whom I don’t care for.

I have always regarded this as a personality flaw. Obviously, there is something fundamentally wrong with a person who so often disdains the company of the very nice, funny, smart people whom I am lucky enough to call my friends. I know I am VERY lucky that they put up with me and this oddity of personality. (Perhaps this is because many of my friends share this quirk to some degree?)

But, again, I can’t help it. My brain is wired this way. I need chunks of time to be by myself, to recharge my batteries, so I can venture out into polite society again.

And – again – I always thought of this somewhat shamefully, as a giant pointer to everything else that is screwed up in my weird brain. Until my dear friend A lent me her copy of Anneli Rufus’ Party of One – The Loner’s Manifesto.

Oh my God, the revelations.
The chapter on the emotional wrench of mandatory participation in family holidays.
The pages on eating alone. On enjoying eating alone.
The commiseration about how one can adore one’s children but at the same time need to be away from them, away from their constant, never-ending demands.
This simple explanation of what I go through just about every day:
“…time shared, even with true friends, often requires loners to put in extra time alone, overtime, to recharge. It is a matter of energy: As a rule, loners have less for the social machinery, the talk and sympathy. Our fuel runs out. That is what nonloners don’t understand about us, what they cannot see. We do not choose to have such tiny fuel tanks. These can be quite inconvenient. They are why we seem rude, when we are, why we seem bored and often are. Spaced-out and often are. Running on empty.
Not heartless. Not unappreciative. Not fools. We know the rest of the world has big tanks. We know they don’t know.”

And this:
“They [nonloners] do not understand that what we have to give is not always what others have to give…being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.”

I have disentangled myself from several friends over the years who don’t get it. Who don’t understand why I don’t want to spend hours chatting on the phone, or seeing them every day. That I value their friendship and their time and all the things they can offer me (and selflessly do), but need some space. (Let’s not even venture into the thorny arena of my spotty and convoluted love life and ex-boy/girlfriends.)

Rufus explores the existence of the loner in film, in art, in literature. She delves into the plight of the loner forced to work in an office environment (cubicles ARE the devil’s handiwork). She examines the friendships and romantic relationships of the loner. She even discusses the miracle of the Internet, the boon of loners everywhere. (It’s much easier to find other loners online. Hi there! I’ll be going now…)

I read half of this book this afternoon, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
I may be sick, but there are other sickos just like me out there.

Reading this book was as good as therapy.

It’s ok to want to be alone.
It’s ok to enjoy your dear friends and then hole up for some solitude.
It’s ok.

Or at least – ha! irony! – I am not alone.

***********
"The Crystal Gazer," Sara Teasdale