"It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring..." *

I am NOT doing NaNoBloPloMoBlowPop.

I will continue to blither as desired (by me), but am not committing to everyday.

I do have several posts, as always, floating in my brain, including one which may spawn as much vitriol as the infamous dog post, and may cause most of you to wonder that I have any friends at all.

If anyone is still reading.

But not today.

Today Terzo and I are overdosing on Diego, eating some pumpkin pie, going to the grocery store, and being boring. I am feeling VERY anti-social.

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* "...is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order." ~Ann Beattie, Picturing Will, 1989

"Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night." *

I just ate a Reuben sandwich as big as my head and may not move for a month. But it’s all ok because I went to the OB yesterday where I discovered I have lost another pound, bringing my total to 12, and got yelled at for forgetting to schedule my ultrasound. Poor neglected fourth child.

The trick-or-treating went fairly well, barring the moment when I threatened to make them all stay in because they were whining and not listening to me as I pulled a damn superhero costume pretty much out of my ass. I have one word for you: Plastics. No, kidding. Safety pins. Which I suppose is two words, but God, they saved my life and I may never sew anything ever again. Or at least not anything that only has to last for two hours. I also had to let go of my control-freak self and allow Primo to design his own Harry Potter costume, and you know what, his idea turned out pretty well so I have learned a lesson. Namely, more Valium, less control.



I made Jess’s butternut squash soup for dinner but H and Sarah Louise ate most of it before I got around to pureeing it in the blender. Oh well. It was a thematic dinner – orange soup and black bread. Pumpkin pie for dessert. After a nod to dinner in the form of grilled cheese, milk, and gherkins, Primo ate a Three Musketeers, a bag of M&Ms, some Sour Patch kids, and God knows what all else. Seg ate some candy and then complained that his stomach hurt so came home and ate toast and milk. Terzo ate anything he could get open, including an Almond Joy that (I think) was run over by a car, and the non-edible gooey eyeballs given out here:


The pumpkin creativity on display was wonderful:



This one looks disturbingly like my father-in-law:



I think these were funny:



This was my favorite:

Once home, the boys rooted around in their treat bags to check out their loot, but we had to hurry them upstairs to bed. After all, today was a school day. But first they had to put notes on their jack-o-lanterns so that the Great Pumpkin (otherwise known as Mom) would know whose was whose.


Even though I carefully explained that *I* was the Great Pumpkin, and he's not like Santa because Santa is REAL, the boys were delighted by the idea of the Great Pumpkin coming on Halloween night...with books. What can I say, I had a gift card and a twenty-percent-off coupon set to expire tomorrow...and if *Santa* thinks I am sharing any more gift cards or coupons, he's got a second think coming.

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* Steve Almond

"The truth is that there's more book reviewing available to the average reader now than at any point in decades." *

Marvel 1602- Neil Gaiman; Andy Kubert; Richard Isanove.
I love Gaiman. I love him even more now. This comic – excuse me, graphic novel - is for all the Elizabethan scholars out there; definitely even more enjoyable if you have the slightest inkling about superheroes, including my favorite bunch of mutants, the X-Men. I gobbled it down in one night, like a giant bowl of delicious ice cream, and then handed it off to my superhero-conversant husband who is currently loving it as well.

Summer Reading – Hilma Wolitzer.
I whipped through this book in an evening. I didn’t care in the least for the character of Angela, the bookish, academic spinster who leads the book group in the novel; I found her wishy-washy and annoying. Lissy, the rich and spoiled young trophy wife summering at her estate in the Hamptons, was all right, if not really developed at all; there could have been much more there if Woliitzer had chosen to expand on it. (The casual toss-off plotline regarding Lissy’s beloved nanny was disappointing, there was so much more to delve into there, and I would have liked to see Wolitzer do so.) But I really grew to like and very much enjoyed the development of Michelle, Lissy’s locally-born and -bred housecleaner; she was down-to-earth and practical and had unplumbed depths which were actually revealed and allowed to grow. I liked her determination and spunk, I liked how she came to terms with how she chose to live her life.
I would like to be friends with her.

Farthing – Jo Walton.
Very much in the style of Dorothy Sayers, or maybe even Josephine Tey. Not really much of a mystery to the book (if you are looking for clues and brilliant detective work, this isn’t where you’ll find it), so much as an exploration of characters, stereotypes, and what can happen in the world when you’re not paying attention – a good lesson to be had, in the form of an engrossing, enjoyable novel, for all the Americans who have stuck their heads in the sand and are ignoring our present political idiocies and the upcoming elections. I am looking forward to the sequel, Ha’penny.

Still working on Messenger of Truth - know from experience this will take a while, however enjoyable; The Street of a Thousand Blossoms - am downright loving this, cannot possibly fathom it tanking in the last two hundred pages.

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*Blogger Alex Massie, writing on The Debatable Land

"Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things." *

Does your house have ghosts? It’s nice to see CNN covering all the hard-hitting news stories of the day…

This article was a follow-up to this one: Poll: Third of people believe in ghosts. The sentence in this one that utterly confused me was this: “The most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services.” Um, nothing like covering all your bases?

The local paper also had its share of ghost stories today. ‘Tis the season…

I myself have never seen a ghost. (I never hope to see one. But this I tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself...) Anyhoo, I have never seen a ghost. I am torn between wanting to see one, and being grateful that the spirits have never chosen to reveal themselves to me. Because I am a big fat wuss, and would faint straight away, and what fun is that for a ghost?

Sure, as a kid, I did the stupid things we all do: the Bloody Mary chant at the bathroom mirror in the dark, “The Monkey’s Paw” related at dusk so you were scared to venture off your own porch, “Johnny, I Want My Liver back!” told at countless sleepovers.

Once, at the old house (which really wasn’t that old and not nearly as big and creaky as this one), Primo and I were playing in his room at the top of the stairs. The cat was staring out the door, and then Primo turned and said, “The gas mask lady!” and returned to whatever he was doing – disemboweling the laundry basket’s contents, no doubt. I was frozen – do I look, and risk seeing something, or ignore it? I looked, and there was nothing there that I could see, but both the cat and Primo saw…something. (The gas mask lady was a reminder of one of my stupidest parenting moments EVER: H and I took a toddler Primo to an anti-war march with us the previous autumn. Fine. Until the extremists wearing gas masks and dressed as corpses wandered past, and gave Primo nightmares for weeks. He was obsessed with the gas-mask-wearers in particular, and asked a hundred different questions about them. So yes, when he blithely announced, “The gas mask lady!” a shiver went down my spine.)

When we first moved into our current house, bought from the estate of the man who used to live here, I often felt a friendly...not even presence, it wasn’t that strong. It was more a benevolent glow, that someone/thing was happy that a family was living in and taking care of this house. The old man had been sick for a long time, and the house had been allowed to grow dilapidated and shabby (which is precisely why we could afford it). I am not saying that Henry’s ghost was pleased as punch that we replaced the main sewer stack and completely rewired the entire house in the first six months we were here, but I did get the feeling, traipsing around, surveying my new domain at night, that we were wrapped in warm, fuzzy feelings somehow. It is a feeling that has eased up in the past year; perhaps we are not fixing up fast enough, or perhaps Henry got tired of waiting for us to do something really amazing like point the outside of the house and took off for a better place, but at any rate, it’s a good solid house, and we are happy here.

You know, my maternal grandmother was born and raised in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains. She had a touch of something supernatural – she had dreams that came true. Sometimes scary or traumatic ones, but just as often, harmless, happy dreams, resulting merely in a pleasant sense of déjà vu.

My mother was a tad more dramatic. She claimed to have experienced a ‘time-slip’ at the palace of Versailles, similar to that claimed by Anne Moberley and Eleanor Jourdain, and, later, apparently multiple other tourists.

My favorite supernatural claim by my mother, though, remains this one: My father died in September 1987, and in an unseasonably warm January in ‘89, my mother went to visit the grave and clear up the Christmas wreathes and flowers. As she worked, a bee buzzed around the headstone and the general area. Several times the bee dive-bombed her, and buzzed insistently around her head, but it never stung her. She grew increasingly exasperated and finally she snapped, “Oh for God’s sake, Sam, leave me alone!” and the bee buzzed away. To her dying day, she claimed that damn bee was my father’s spirit, making her as crazy in death as he had in life. (As if she needed any help, right? I know…)

I am of two minds about supernatural phenomena: on one hand/mind, I firmly believe there is incontrovertible evidence proving their existence. On the other hand, my rational brain says, “Pah! Balderdash! Pshaw!” and other old-man expressions of disgust and dismissal. This dichotomy however does not prevent me from reading, being scared by, and thoroughly enjoying a well-written ghost tale, occasionally.

The very first book I can remember scaring the pants off me was Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. You may think me very silly but to this day, I can’t look out of the bathroom window at night without a little shiver. Call me nuts, but you go read it and then tell me it doesn’t have the same effect on you.

The Shining scared me to death too, and I can’t go into the bathroom at night without a split second of, “Oh God, what if there is a dead woman in the bathtub? PLEASE don’t let there be a dead woman in the bathtub…”

(I am beginning to see a pattern here – but c’mon, I am pregnant, I pee six times a night!)

A little closer to home is Ghost Stories of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, penned as a sort of senior thesis by Beth Trapani. This is the sort of book that is really only fun to read if you are familiar with the local stories and real estate. I used to work at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and took a couple classes at CCAC’s North campus, so it was fun to read about the haunting in those places – after the fact.

Mostly, I tend usually to steer away from scary books, as believe it or not, I really don’t enjoy being scared. I am home often enough by myself at night that I see no point in frightening myself with stories of specters and poltergeist when I am nervous enough about real-life burglars, home invaders, and vandals wandering the streets of the city. The dog growling at something I can’t see, or the cat looking intently at a distant point, is enough to make me uneasy. Is someone stealing the porch furniture, or smashing my tomatoes, or, God forbid, cavorting with the undead in the alley? (The undead might be an improvement on the occasional drug dealers...)

The fact is that, once Halloween passes, the menace in the air will disappear, the spookies and creepy-crawlies will retreat for another year, and everything will revert to its usual non-supernatural scariness: drug dealers and burglars and John Ashcroft, oh my.

But you know, if you have any creepy stories to share, please do. It’s not Halloween yet, and I could use a good fright. And I don’t just mean the glimpse I catch of myself in the mirror in the morning.

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* Dracula, by Bram Stoker

"Eating in Germany is easy because there's basically one kind of food, and it's the wurst." *

Last night H took the two older boys up the street to a local restaurant we want to support as much as we can, to their little Oktoberfest celebration. Because of its late start, and because of the fact that the restaurant is in fact an Indian restaurant, I chose to remain at home with The Baby, eating pizza and watching a Wiggles video. H came home pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food – wurst and sauerkraut and the like, finished off with apple streudel and German chocolate cake. I satisfied my sweets cravings with the last piece of gingerbread (what? I baked them all an apple cake before I ate the last piece…)

I was supposed to have lunch here today, with old friends from my bookstore days, but I have been coughing so much and so hard that it seems to stimulate my gag reflex and defeat my pee-controlling muscles, and really, I couldn’t go out for a nice lunch and risk spewing TB bacteria everywhere AND peeing myself. It just wouldn’t be seemly.

So I slept for a few hours this morning after dosing myself up with vitamin C tablets, and then I got up, did some actual paying work, went to the grocery store (I was out of white cooking wine and baby wipes. And fermented black beans, but I think I have to go to the Strip District for those), and went to the library where I retrieved my latest batch of holds: Summer Reading - Hilma Wolitzer; Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers; These is my Words : The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901: Arizona Territories – Nancy Turner. I was hoping Jo Walton’s Ha’penny would have been in too, but it’s still ‘in transit.’

I returned The Lightning Thief; I wasn’t all that crazy about it, and it was a little too scary for Primo. I read the first chapter of The Nubian Prince and had to return that, too: it made me (even) sick(er) to my stomach.

I cooked the baked salmon and Brussel sprouts with bacon tonight for dinner, and then had a little fit of first pique and then weepiness because my children not only refused to eat the pasta and sauce I made for them (knowing that being even in the same room with, let alone being asked to ingest, the salmon and sprouts might do them in), but proclaimed how icky and yucky it was. And H got mad at me because I yelled at them, and I threatened to leave and go have dinner somewhere else in peace, and said I liked it better when I worked Thursday evenings, and then H took his dad and Primo off to the benefit symphony concert at the local high school.

I am looking forward to my cup of tea, a big chunk of apple cake, and finishing up Farthing, which is a remarkably engrossing book. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how it is going to end, and I cannot wait to find out.

And I have no desire whatsoever to return to my desk job, because then I would miss THIS:

And this (he was a mite cold, watching his brother's hockey game):

I was cold too, because he had just knocked over my entire mug of fresh, hot tea, and stolen my jacket. But I still am glad I don't have to miss any more.
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* Dave Barry

“My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be..." *

It’s a cold, rainy day – perfect for hanging out in the attic, playing with trains. And when you’ve built the entire island of Sodor, then it’s time to set up the little IKEA tent and watch Terzo push his little plastic trucks in and out, and in and out, and in and out, of the tent door for an hour while I lie on the futon and reread for the gazillionth time The President’s Daughter. (What with Ellen Emerson White FINALLY coming out with a new book about Meg and her family, at the end of this month, it seemed like a good reread.)

We just walked up to preschool in the drizzle and fetched Seg, and now I am on my way upstairs with a picnic lunch – nothing fancy: pb&j sandwiches, pretzels, apple slices, chocolate milk. We will lunch in the tent (those of us who fit – in other words, NOT ME), and this afternoon I will bake a spice cake I haven’t tried before from Michael Lee West’s Consuming Passions, and make some baked salmon and a pan of Brussel sprouts with bacon and Yukon Gold potatoes for dinner, and the boys will play Battleship and Clue Jr. and Pokemon, and the rain can keep drumming down on the roof.


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* Robert Frost

“The White House: I don't know whether it's the finest public housing in American or the crown jewel of the prison system” *

OH, YAY!!!!

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* Bill Clinton

People who count their chickens before they hatch act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly, it's impossible to count them accurately.

My first real non-work work day.

It’s pouring rain and I am happily ensconced in bed with my cat, my laptop, and my APA manual, editing a dissertation chapter, and sending out a few invoices, and fitting in PTA duties among the paying tasks.

Next, I must spend some time fighting with the new version of Microsoft Word. I hate Microsoft. I DESPISE Microsoft. The interface for Word 2007 is completely non-intuitive. I can’t find several features I absolutely rely on, and mostly, I hate that Microsoft has appropriated XML, which is inherently structured to be non-proprietary, and created this monster of Microsoft-XML proprietorship. Damn Bill Gates. I don’t care how many small children from Third World nations he pays to have inoculated; he’s a power-hungry, control-freak, raging pain in the ass.

I offer you this in lieu of actual content (courtesy of Sarah Louise, who turned me on to Savage Chickens):


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* Oscar Wilde

"If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball." *

I wandered around the disappointing new-ish Borders the other night – you think I’d learn, I NEVER find anything I want there. And it has all the charm of an inner-city basketball court – cement, steel, the only thing missing are those little spiky barbed-wire thingeys on top of the chainlink. Let's not even mention the surly baristas.

I did spend some time hunkered in front of the graphic novels section, speedreading through Neil Gaiman’s The Last Temptation. Gaiman may be a genius, but he clearly phoned that one in. Hey, we all do it occasionally.

So instead of Borders, I spent the next afternoon at my beloved B&N. I bought a paperback , illustrated copy of Stardust, and the newest Titanic book for Seg’s Christmas haul. I wanted to buy a copy of Marvel 1602 but neither store had one in stock. I will get it from the library instead.

Speaking of, H went out yesterday afternoon to run some errands – wine store, post office, the library – because he COULD, what with me not being at work and all - and he picked up my holds for me.

The Nubian Prince - Juan Bonilla
The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan
Farthing - Jo Walton

I spent some of yesterday reading Messenger of Truth, the latest Maisie Dobbs. Have I discussed this with you all before? I really enjoy Maisie, but I cannot sit down and read one of the books for more than an hour at a clip. It’s not that they are boring - I always return to the current installment eager to see what happens next, but I can’t get lost in them. Is this a fatal flaw, or should I just be grateful I enjoy them in the end?

So H took himself off to his wine-tasting club last night, I hunkered down in bed with tea, a box of Kleenex, and The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, which true to My Favorite Librarian’s word, sucked me right in.

I was ready to sleep about ten, but needed something to sooth me a bit, so read the first few chapters of Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice. It is so completely different from the other two I have read - Catherine Called Birdy and Matilda Bone - that it sort of threw me for a loop and I read almost half of it. It’s not as personable, the main character not as engaging, as the others. Which doesn’t mean I don’t like it, or Beetle, the protagonist. It’s just not as cozy and lighthearted and amusing; it’s grittier, and more real, somehow. I am not explaining this very well. You could just go read it, it’ll take you all of an hour.

Anyway, I finally went to bed at eleven and when I woke up this morning to H making the boys pancakes downstairs, I rolled right over, snuggled back under the comforter, and finished off the last twenty pages of The Haunting of Hill House. It was one of those books which made me wish for a writers’ sealed envelope at the back (like The Eleventh Hour), explaining and revealing all the secrets. Because I *think * I know what it was all about, but I also am sure I must have missed something. Those of you who have said the same, please email me and help me out. I won’t say anymore here, as I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read it, but I am thoroughly perplexed.

I know this post will make at least Badger’s brain hurt – three books at once! But I will finish Midwife’s Apprentice today, so then it’ll only be two, and that’s way more manageable, yes, Badge?

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*Phil Jackson

"This world of words and meanings makes you feel outside something that you feel already deep inside." *

Wilco was incredible.

We were in the fifth row – I could pretend the whole time that Jeff was looking at ME. In fact, when he scolded a woman in the third row for sitting down, and she retorted, “I’m PREGNANT,” most of the other people we knew at the show, who weren’t actually sitting with us, thought he was talking to me.

He played a two-and-a-half-hour set, a nice mix of all his stuff, including big hits, and most of the new album.

Highlights for me: “On and On and On,” “Impossible Germany,” “Hate It Here,” and “Heavy Metal Drummer.”
He did not play “California Stars;” he DID play “Kidsmoke,” which is the only Wilco song I actively dislike. Oh well.

Jeff’s put on a bit of weight, and was dressed in his usual frumpy attire complete with hat, and resembled no one so much as Bilbo Baggins. But he was in a very good mood, and his guitar players were awesome (is Pat Sansone like what? Twelve? Thirteen?), and my God, he played for TWO AND A HALF HOURS.

After the show, everyone else was heading out for more drinks; I could not have kept up with these people when I was in prime drinking trim (college), let alone now. But we are old and boring, so H and I headed home, for a cup of tea, an apricot hamantaschen, and a chapter of Maisie Dobbs (for me) and Terry Pratchett (for him).

What a great night.


*
"On and On and On," Wilco, from Sky Blue Sky