It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind...

My name is Babelbabe, and I am a snob.
(hangs head in shame).

Not a people snob (except I don‘t like stupid people). (Sorry, stupid people.)

Not even a food snob – I have been known to indulge in the occasional Pringle “potato” chip (er, should that be “potato” “chip”?) or Sno-Ball.

No, a book snob. I am sure this won’t come as a surprise to most of you.
But usually, I am RIGHT.

Danielle Steele? Check.
Twilight? Check.
John Grisham. Check.

All trash. Badly written trash, for the most part. Formulaic trash.

But.
But today, I stand before you to tell you: I was wrong about Jodi Picoult.

Wrong.
Deep down, to the bone, WRONG. And I am so sorry.

On the recommendation of high school friends (did I ever post about the Every Child Left Behind weekend? I don’t think I did. The name says it all.), I read Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care.

People, I could NOT put it down. I finished it in 2 days. I can’t recall the last time I did that, the last time I carried a book around the house with me, to read whenever I had a spare moment or two.

I was completely captivated. Picoult’s character development was flawless; I cared so deeply about even the unsympathetic ones, and I was able to at least somewhat comprehend their complicated and conflicted reasoning. Her plotting was intricate without being plodding. The book is clearly intensively and extensively researched, without being all “Look how much *I* know!” There were subtle turns of phrase, and even subtler turns of events, all which delighted and made sense within the story. Perhaps it’s because this is my first Picoult, but the ending blew me away. Her novels may be formulaic, but the formula is executed beautifully and, again, subtly. Subtle is key here. It is what separates Picoult from the other hacks churning out novel after novel after novel.

She may be predictable, but you don’t realize you’re being led by the nose until you’re done and the spell is released.

Dudes, I ignored my children whining for lunch to read this book. (My husband WAS home at the time.) I hid in the bathroom, pretending to take a shower, to finish it.
Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?

Now – I am requesting a few more of Picoult’s books from the library today, and we’ll see if she upholds this standard. Somehow, I suspect that she does. I am looking forward to finding out.

"You say it's your birthday (nananananananana)! It's my birthday, too, yeah!"

The trouble with 39 is that it’s the END of something. You’d think 40 would be more traumatic, but as with the end of my twenties, the -9 birthday is the problem. I feel old. I feel old and wrinkled and grey. When you turn 40, you’re BEGINNING something. Even if it’s another decade, it’s a START. Suddenly you’re young again, you’re “only” 40, to the people who are well into their forties already. I know it’s all in the perception – I KNOW this. But I am having a tough time with 39.
Not that I had a tough time with my birthday, mind you. I had a perfectly lovely birthday.

First of all, people, it was sunny and 70 degrees here on Saturday. B.L.I.S.S. Warm enough to wear a skirt and my Tevas, warm enough to open all the windows and blow the winter fug right out of the house.

Secondly, I was permitted to sleep in till eight. EIGHT. That’s bigtime sleeping in round these parts. (This is also how one knows she is entering her fifth decade, and not, say, her third.)

I was greeted first thing in the morning by this guy standing on my front porch.
My very sweet friend P dropped him off early in the morning, and he was welcomed warmly and stood up in the front hall. Seg is the only one who views him with complete equanimity; he walks by, pats him fondly, and says, “Hi, Ed!” The rest of us had at least smallish heart attacks at least once that day, and the baby eyes him with great trepidation and refuses to let go of my leg within a ten-foot radius.

Edward Cullen isn't sure he likes his new adoptive brothers. For one thing, even for humans they don't smell so good, and for another, they're so LOUD. Plus, Edward doesn't GET hockey.

Seg gave me his card almost immediately: How…odd. Edward is smiling. So is Bella. How very strange. And unlikely.
(Also - the red? He explained, "It's blood." Oh. Kay.)
Inside is – not me and him, as I originally suspected, but me and EDWARD. Oh boy. Perhaps an intervention IS in order. (I told him I’d rather spend eternity with him than Edward, and he beamed.)

The boys had hockey playoffs all day (Team Green lost in the first round. Boo!), and then we went to our favorite diner for burgers and chicken fingers and French fries and milkshakes (the boys) and pie (me and H). THEN we all came home and everybody took a nap (Except the baby and me. Wah! Not fair!)

I was given a ticket to a backyard hockey game between the Winston Animals and the Groveland Stuffers. (Now, I am a Schinkadabonketa fan myself, but apparently they got knocked out in the first round also.) (Don’t ask me, Primo made up all the team names a long time ago. I just root for whom I am told to root for.) Once I put my foot down and told the boys I would watch 6-minute periods, NOT 20-minute periods, they broke out the sticks and their stuffed animals and gave me a rousing spectacle of a hockey game. For the record? The Stuffers won, which isn’t surprising since all the biggest stuffed animals play for the Stuffers.

When the mail came, my high school friend J had sent me a copy of my favorite (so far) Georgette Heyer! Do you know how hard it is to find used Georgette Heyers? Almost impossible. But she bid for The Grand Sophy on eBay and won it, and sent it off to me. How sweet is that?!

Round about what would have been dinnertime (but we were all still too full of pie and milkshake to contemplate more food), I opened my “real” gifts: a gift card to Borders, and a gift certificate to the spa, and this volume, which it must have pained my husband greatly to buy:

After the boys were in bed, I went to my friend E’s, and we sat on her porch and drank cocktails and ate tortilla chips, and talked for hours in the balmy spring air. It was lovely. (When I got home at midnight, Flat E gave me a heart attack again, and I took His Vampireness upstairs to my sewing room, where my deftness with a quilting needle will impress him wildly and make him desire my blood. Like, um, Sleeping Beauty, or something. Yeah.)

When I thanked H for a wonderful birthday, he looked at me like I was nuts. But it was fun and busy and it’s always nice to find out how many people care about me. I got awesome, thoughtful gifts, and lots of Facebook greetings and emails and phone calls, and I felt very loved.

My mom always said her forties were her best decade; I am looking forward to mine. After all, I have a year of being 39 to get my act together.

"The third engineer promised to show me the propeller shaft!" *

I keep dreaming about being on the beach with my children, and watching a rogue wave coming towards us on shore, looming ever closer and ever larger. I watch it begin to crest, craning my neck upward to see the foam at the top. I know it is bigger than any wave I have ever seen before, and I know I cannot possibly run fast enough with my children – or even by myself, for that matter – to outrun it. And yet I try, I MUST try. Every single time, I try, and every single time, I wake up before the wave breaks, before we are all engulfed, just at the moment when I KNOW there is no hope.

Yeah, I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me what this dream means.

I can’t recall my life ever being this crazy before.
And it’s not like it’s glamour-crazy, jet-setting and polo matches and charity galas and evening gowns.
It’s not like I am running for VP.
It’s not like I am singlehandedly running a Fortune 500 company or engineering buyouts.

I don’t know what it is.
I find it difficult to believe that only one small baby, despite being the fourth, suddenly created this tsunami of activity. Or one eight-year-old and one six-year-old with friends to see and sports to play. Or one small three-year-old who cheerfully goes along for the ride, no matter what the event.

I know this:

I take the boys to school and pick them up from school. I take them to piano lessons. I take them to hockey practices and games, or stay home and watch the younger guys while H takes the older boys to these things. I take all 4 boys to the eldest’s soccer practices and games. I take them to the dentist and the pediatrician. I drop them off at their friends’ houses or pick up their friends to come to our house. I take the little ones to playdates or the toy lending library or the zoo. I go to the library and the post office and the pet store and the pharmacy and the dry cleaners and the office supply store. I call the plumber and the handyman and the pediatrician and the babysitter and the other babysitter and my mother-in-law and the school.

I construct approximately 20 pb&j sandwiches a week and pack ten lunches and fix real food for dinners (that no one eats anyway) and nurse the baby and change a dozen diapers a day and swab down bathrooms and pack away summer clothes and unpack winter clothes (and vice versa) and supervise homework and distribute snacks and grocery shop and give the little guys baths and supervise the older guys’ showers. I clip toenails and clean ears and trim hair. I read Pokemon books and Goodnight Moon and Dr Seuss, each night, every night, at bedtime.

I buy them new underwear and new socks and new backpacks and new sneakers and new gloves and new notebooks, and more socks and more notebooks. I buy H new jeans and new sneakers and new underwear.

I buy storage containers for their dress clothes and new markers to replace dried out ones and Playdoh and more Playdoh and power cords for the computer and lampshades for the new lamps and new running shoes. I buy Christmas and birthday presents and stash them away. I fill Easter baskets and make or buy cupcakes and treats for school parties.

I run the dishwasher and unload the dishwasher and load it up and run it again.

I sort the clean laundry and put it away and gather up all the dirty clothes into another mountain of laundry. I start my day by putting wet laundry in the dryer and another load of dirty clothes into the washer, and I end the day the same way.

I ask Terzo roughly twenty times a day if he needs to pee or poop in the potty. I supervise these attempts and then change his clothes and bathe him when he waits too long and has an accident.

I wipe down the kitchen counters and table and wipe them down again when the boys spill juice on them or smear peanut butter or jam on them. I open yogurts and peel bananas and apples and grill cheese and butter bread.

I wipe out lunchboxes and then pack today’s lunch into them.

On days when I have my babysitter, I edit other people’s papers and format their references and check their spelling and then I invoice them and keep track of who has paid what invoice and whose paper is due when.

I do know that I feel like I never have a moment of unaccounted for time.
I am rarely alone.
And when I am, I should probably be sleeping.
I am not complaining.
I am truly just trying to figure out, where does my time go?
Am I mismanaging my time?
Should I punt the fifteen minutes of yoga every morning, to get more done of...what?
To shower every day instead of the every other day I am averaging now?
I need four hours a week to run, and am not managing to carve that out.
I desperately need a haircut.

H got a promotion that we have been waiting on for a while; I am very pleased and proud of him, but his work hours just got longer. He went from 8- to 9-hour days to 12- to 13-hour days. He leaves even earlier so he can get to the gym to swim. He routinely works Sundays now. This won’t be the case forever, but for the foreseeable future, it is.

He has told me, We have more money coming in now. We will get you help. But I don’t even know where to start. What sort of help do I need? A housecleaner? A gym membership with daycare? A regular babysitter? Swimming lessons and a life preserver?
I have never been in this situation before, and I don’t know what would be most useful and most thrifty.
Suggestions, comments, input?
Help?

*************
*Robin Shelby, "The Poseiden Adventure"

"Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"

When did Easter become the new Christmas? When I was a kid, we got an Easter basket full of drugstore chocolate, and jelly beans, and these really cool caramel popcorn bunnies. Each kid got a 1-pound chocolate egg, with filling of choice (mine was always coconut cream), from a little candy store in my town called Duffy’s. And we were allowed to EAT all this crap.

Since we (oh so modern parents) limit the sweets my kids eat, a basket full of chocolate would just be taunting them. I would probably find chocolate-smeared wrappers jammed under the couch cushions (like I used to find Twizzler plastic stuffed down the laundry chute before I wised up and hid the Twizzler box).

Honestly, I wouldn’t even have begun this crazy Easter basket tradition, but my next door neighbor’s kids went on and on about their Easter baskets to my wide-eyed boys, so one Saturday-before-Easter night a few years ago, I made emergency baskets for my (then only) two children – fruit snacks, and Teddy grahams, and some stickers.

This year, hockey cards, and stickers, and new socks (yeah, that’s the way I roll, dudes – but seriously, what do these kids do, gnaw on their socks with their razor-sharp teeth?), and some jelly beans and a few pyramids of Toblerone, and some gel pens and mini notebooks (what did we do before the dollar bins at Target?). And so the ridiculous tradition is upheld.

I don’t mind dyeing eggs – especially since we go to our church to do it. Everyone shows up with their hardboiled eggs, and a few parents deal with dye and stickers and crayons and whatever hot new egg-decorating trend, and at the end of the afternoon, everyone goes home with some eggs and leaves some eggs to be hidden for tomorrow’s egg hunt after the service. With any luck, when a child (and it’s ALWAYS one of mine) overturns a dye pot, it’s onto the linoleum floor and easily mopped up. It’s perfect. (We will be leaving all of our eggs as I am the only one round these parts who will eat hard-boiled eggs. And even I won’t touch the ones that have been sitting outside under the bushes and tucked in tree hollows and manhandled by dozens of snotty-nosed toddlers. Hence, my purchase of four dozen medium size cheap (read: NOT free-range organic) eggs.)

As for Easter finery, *I* will be wearing whatever I can jam my fat ass into. Which probably means the same A-line skirt I wore last year, topped with the same green blouse. Or maybe, my new linen camp shirt from Old Navy (why can’t this shirt come in some other decent colors, like black or dark green?)

As for my kids – my children look like homeless people on the best of days. I doubt we will be trimming their overgrown, rockstar hair this evening. I will be happy if I can get them into decent, collared shirts, and their “nice” shoes (read: fashionable sneaker-y type dress shoes) with a minimum of screaming and tantrums.

And even happier if I can get them to keep those clothes on to go to Grandma’s for Easter dinner.

For which I am making a lemon pound cake.

And taking my knitting along. (I am making this. In purple and lime green and turquoise. For a college friend’s first baby.)

Because the only thing more boring than the “12 Days of Christmas” sing-along we are required to participate in on Christmas Eve? The plastic egg hunt for the kids at Easter dinner.

So, happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it.

Happy Passover to the appropriate people (although, really? Happy? What with the plagues and whatnot, happy is not necessarily the greeting I would choose. IS it Happy? Ah, my friend D to the rescue: Hag Sameyach.)

And as I have decided to begin my own Easter tradition, here: have some David Sedaris: Jesus Shaves.

“The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles - my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.
A bell, though, that's fucked up.”

"May his soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."*

What has been dubbed "The Stanton Heights Tragedy" has been on my mind so much these past few days. New details emerge - horrifically, the 911 dispatcher neglected to mention the suspect had weapons in the house. (Yesterday there was another incident about 6 blocks from me involving a home invasion and the Pittsburgh police and the SWAT team. The poor guys can't catch a break, but I am also telling you criminals out there, now is NOT a good time to be shooting at a police officer in this town.)

All three of the officers were from our neighborhood's zone. It's distinctly possible that one or any of these men responded to my or my neighbors' calls when our vehicles were broken into, or we smelled gas, or someone stole our trashcans (don't ask).

I am doing all I can - holding them in my thoughts and prayers, donating what I can to the families. A friend and I took a cake and some muffins up to the police station yesterday - you know me, my knee-jerk response to just about anything is to bake, and who could use comfort food right now more than the colleagues of the slain officers, who are themselves also always in danger?

**********

Officer Kelly

*******

Officer Mayhle


*********


Officer Sciullo

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

"To protect and serve."
These men could not have done a finer job. Thank you, and may you rest in peace.


**********
*Litany at the Time of Death,
from the Book of Common Prayer,
The Episcopal Church

The Thin Blue Line

I started several different posts last night, after the family birthday party hullaballoo. The cousins and grandparents departed; Seg, asleep on the couch, not feeling well all through the festivities, was finally tucked up in bed; I settled down with a cup of tea.
What was I reading?
How was the weekend down the shore?
Why after all was the end of nursing my babies so sad?
But my mind kept racing. I almost obsessively clicked on site after site of local news stations and newspapers. I kept returning to this:

Gunman Kills Three Pittsburgh Police Officers

In short, Pittsburgh police were called to a domestic dispute around 7 a.m. Saturday, in Stanton Heights (a quiet, fairly safe little community) and when they arrived, the man inside the house opened fire with an AK-47. In the end, three policeman were dead, two more seriously wounded, and the suspect was captured alive. His mother, holed up in the basement, was safe, as were the rest of the family.

I will save the editorializing.
I am heartsick.
This sort of thing does not happen in Pittsburgh.

But this sort of thing just did.

And three men who were doing their jobs, with dedication and honesty and integrity, are gone from this earth.
They leave behind grieving wives, small children, a fiancee.
Families, friends, colleagues.

A community who weeps for them.

"Take a sad song and make it better..."

My little Segundo is 6 today.

My April Fool's baby.

His was the easiest labor, the easiest delivery, and probably the best story (We were rear-ended at a stoplight on the way to the hospital at 11pm. H was practically dancing with rage in the road, I have never seen him so angry. The poor teenage girls who hit us were too frightened to get out of the car. I just kept timing contractions; they were 7 minutes apart at the stoplight, and by the time I got to the hospital 6 blocks away, they were coming every two minutes. I slept through labor, all night, before he was born at 9am-ish, and when I pushed him out, he was so ready to emerge into this world that he practically hit the far wall.)

He looks like his dad, but with my fair coloring. He is my only baby to stay blond. He has intense blue eyes, and a sharp, pointy nose, and long legs, and he is beautiful.

He is sweet and steady and slowly beginning to feel his way through his world, dealing with his at times overbearing older brother, and his oh-so-charming younger brother. He delights in the baby. He is gentlemanly and kind; the gravitas he displays is beyond his years.

But he can laugh. Oh, he can laugh. He loves potty humor, and silly puns, and stupid knock-knock jokes. He was the only one intent on fooling me today.

He can be stubborn, even downright contrary. But he is merely testing the waters, as any healthy young child should do.

He is smart; his excitement when he figured out he could read was delightful. He is a dedicated artist, and an earnest musician. Watching his piano lessons this past year has been a joy. The way he squares his skinny shoulders and lays his fingers on the keys makes my heart clutch in my chest. He practices just about every morning, not only without complaint, but eagerly.

He will be the son who cares for me in my old age (should I be lucky enough to get that far). He will do it willingly and happily, and I pray I am never ever a burden or embarrassment to him. All I need to put a smile on my face is to picture him running out of school, flying down the steps and slamming into me, into my arms for a hug, with laughter and joy and love.

Oh, how I love him.
Happy Birthday, my sweet darling boy.
The day you were born was one of the happiest of my life.

*************
*"Hey Jude," The Beatles

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

Badger wanted to know if I planned to further review In the Woods. At first I thought I would, but the difficulty of discussing what bugged me about the book is that it directly affects spoiling it for people who haven’t read it. So – I won’t review it per se. I will reiterate that it was a heck of a good read, and it kept me guessing (in some aspects) right up to the last page. The more straightforward mystery’s solution was obvious, but I think that was the author’s intention. I would definitely recommend it, and I am looking forward to reading French’s The Likeness, which features the most likeable character from this book.

Now to real news: I am going away this weekend. By myself (that is, without children or husband). Some high school friends with whom I reconnected via Facebook are getting together – where else? – down the shore. (Have I mentioned ever how much I miss the ocean, living 400 miles inland?) I have known all of these girls since high school, and a couple since kindergarten. Most of us are mostly SAHMs, a couple working part-time to keep sane, make some money, and keep our hands in our fields. One of us has 2 kids; 2 have 3 kids; 3 have 4, and one supermom has 5. You could check any or all of us into the Motel 8 on the Turnpike and I wager we’d be content.

I am baking a coffee cake and a coconut custard pie, and stocking up on munchies and a breakfast casserole, as we are all chipping in to feed everyone (although we do intend to go out also. Because, hello? The beach? Seafood!). I am very excited, despite the fact that I am not going to get a (much-needed) haircut before I leave. I am anticipating even the six-hour drive – peace and quiet and my music, NOT the Wiggles or “Philadelphia Chickens.”

Suse, dear, I am taking a knitting project (a poncho for my 12-year-old niece in fluffy pale pink yarn), and just in case, extra needles and yarn, in case anyone wants to learn. I plan some morning runs on the beach. I am taking a movie to share (what else? “Twilight.”)

But as always when I go away – what am I taking to read? Well, first, I am taking a bag of books to share – stuff I have doubles of, or stuff I won’t reread. (This still leaves me with approximately 2K-plus books jostling for bookcase space (or in the bedroom, floor space, sigh).)

But to read: I am wrapping up the third Cazalet family volume, Confusion (and hoping book four, Castng Off comes today. Not likely, alas.) I am still stocked, with volume 11 of the Fables graphic novels, War and Pieces; the newest Maisie Dobbs, Among the Mad; Mary Doria Russell’s Dreamers of the Day (someday I WILL read this, I swear, although I must note that this book is more well-traveled than I am), a library book called The Birth House (recommended by my friend who likes reading about midwives. In the to-share bag for her goes Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice and Gay Courter’s The Midwife); and a book lent me by a friend who borrowed my copy of Monsters of Templeton, Ahab’s Wife.

So, you know, when I am not eating or napping or giggling or snoozing or talking or sleeping (sense a trend here?) or drooling over Edward with my other Cullen-obsessed friends, I have options.

Always keep your options open. That’s what I have learned in the 20 years since high school.

****************
*Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz...

The crocuses are up, and it’s the first day of spring! (It’s cold but it’s spring!)
My Amazing Appliance Guy is coming to finish fixing my oven upstairs! I think I’ll bake a Victoria sponge in celebration of spring.

I finished In the Woods, and was not as wowed by the ending as I wanted to be, as I was by the rest of the book. I bit off my nails getting to the end, though!

I am halfway through the third book of the Cazalet Chronicle, Confusion, and just ordered the last, Casting Off. I am also, sort of surprisingly to me, enjoying The House on Tradd Street.

And tomorrow the DVD of Twilight is released!
Yes, I pre-ordered it, shut up, so it should be here SOON!
Squee! I feel like I am 13 again (only with a healthy sense of the ridiculous)!

See!

"If you go out in the woods today, You're sure of a big surprise."*

I'm sorry, I'd write a real post about our party (successful), or some new books I snagged at the library (cheap!), or the psycho wife of a friend I had to block on FB (Sheesh! Grow UP!), or the boxes of books that appeared at my door (thanks, Sueeus! You are a sweetheart!) - but I am burying my nose in this till I finish it, I have no fingernails left, or both.


***************
*"The Teddy Bears' Picnic"

"Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities."*

True story:

H said, and I quote: "It would make me the happiest man in the world if the molding in the dining room was all the same color. Like, for Saturday, for the party."

And I looked at him and said witheringly (albeit 24 hours later, after I had come to my senses, and after I'd bought 26 pounds of corned beef): "Does it not make you the happiest man in the world that your children are dressed in clean clothes and fed and go to school on time? And that your dinner awaits you each night? Oh, and that I AM COOKING FUCKING CORNED BEEF FOR 80 PEOPLE ON SATURDAY? Even though I have 2 dissertations to edit this week? Huh?"

To which he replied, "How come YOU are the only one allowed to exaggerate?"

And then I killed him with a sharp paring knife and ate his liver with a nice Chianti.

The End.

Fecking Irish.

******************
*Lord Dunsany, whoever that may be when he's at home.

"N is for Neville who died of ennui..."

Well, a fat lot of good YOU are.

I expected an answer.
The right answer.
An answer that made me say, "Why, yes, yes, that is the very book I was thinking of, published within the past year or so and with practically an identical cover."
But, noooooooo.
I still love you, but honestly, people, I am a wee bit disappointed.

Kristin, I, too, immediately thought of Monsters of Templeton but we all know that I need hardly any excuse at all to further trumpet my love of Monsters.
Not so much, see?

Jess, I did what any logical person would do and checked the Wikipedia entry on Carson Ellis.
(Shhh, don't tell my librarian friends.)
(Ooops.)
This is her first book cover, BUT her website and her blog are quite lovely, and I had a great time perusing them. (Also, weirdly, I had just heard the most horrifically Godawful and harrowing song on our local indie radio station and when I finally figured out what/who it was?
The Decemberists.
The Rake's Song.)

So, despite Ms. Ellis's slacking on more book covers (I don't really mean that, dear), all is not lost. Even though I KNOW that these, neither of these, are THAT book, these are acceptable suggestions: Check 'em:

The inimitable Delta offers this: I had a sudden flash: a light blue/teal cover and the same twirly ribbon thing with words. Like it was from a template or something. I am thinking a book of children's poems or short pieces. A thin paperback. Like something I would have ordered from the Uncommon Reader when the boys were little. And maybe even passed on to YOU!!!
And wow, is she good! I found this on Primo's bookshelf:
John Ciardi's You Read to Me, I'll Read to You.


Which cover made me go, "Huh." How could I NOT have seen THAT before?
'cause, look:

And this:

Yeah.
Edward Gorey.

I see it.
Am I the only one?

Someday soon I will write a post on my inordinate love for the odd Mr. Gorey and his strange creations, and the totally awesome biography of his I read called Ascending Peculiarity, which is the most fitting biography title EVER. But now I must sleep. I am missing an hour, and I know it's here somewhere...

**********

The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Edward Gorey

“If your great umbrage would care to meet my high dudgeon at 12 paces, I would be happy to entertain you at dawn.”

The third 39 Clues book came out today. Unless you are an eight-year-old boy, or the parent of an eight-year-old boy, I don't expect you to realize the import of today's events. It seems to be, at least to Primo, somewhat akin to the Harry Potter mania. But without costumes. Or maybe Webkinz, without the little animals, and more...cerebral.

From Powell's:
The 39 Clues is Scholastic's groundbreaking new series, spanning 10 adrenaline-charged books, 350 trading cards, and an online game where readers play a part in the story and compete for over $100,000 in prizes.

The 39 Clues books set the story, and the cards, website and game allow kids to participate in it. Kids visit the website — www.the39clues.com — and discover they are lost members of the Cahill family. They set up online accounts where they can compete against other kids and against Cahill characters to find all 39 clues. Through the website, kids can track their points and clues, manage their card collections, dig through the Cahill archives for secrets, and "travel" the world to collect Cahill artifacts, interview characters, and hunt down clues. Collecting cards helps: Each card is a piece of evidence containing information on a Cahill, a clue, or a family secret.

Pret-ttty darn cool, eh? Primo dived headfirst into the Internet phenomenon of this series, aided and abetted by his mother, who understands all too well the desperate desire to read a new book RIGHT. NOW. DAMMIT. (In fact, his mother even rescinded her homework-before-all-else rules tonight and let him finish the book before tackling the homework.)(And let him use HER laptop to register his new cards. Greater love, blahblahblah....)

When at B&N this afternoon (yes, I made a special trip, shut up, you would, too), the lady who works the kids' section (but seemingly knows only what the little cover blurbs and PW says about most children's books, which I find distinctly odd) recommended Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society. Now I don't need to know if it's good, because I already bought it and intend to read it before passing it on to Primo to keep him occupied for a few hours; what I need to know, and I need you, my 'netties, to help me with, is this:

Recently, at least, within the past year, maybe, I read an adult book with a cover screamingly similar to this. And yet I can't dredge up from the soggy depths of my brain what book it was. Helllllpppp. Meeeeeeee. Help! before my brain drowns and all prior knowledge with it.

Because it's driving me CRAZY.

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

*Benedict Arnold (The man was surprisingly snarky and amusing.)

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”*

Random, random.

I am happily reading two involved books at the same time – Michael Lee West’s She Flew the Coop and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Marking Time.
Michael Lee West’s books always take me by surprise; they seem lighthearted and happy, what with the snarky Southern women and delectable sounding recipes sprinkled throughout, and they are often very funny, but they also often deal with serious life-or-death issues, and the culmination of events often smacks you in the face with reality.

Elizabeth Jane Howard’s books are for anyone who read the Penny Vicenzi Lytton family books, or Rosamunde Pilcher’s “big” books, and enjoyed them. The first one in the Cazalet series, The Light Years seemed to take me forever to read, but I gobbled down the second (I am just about finished) in less than a week and just ordered the third (of a quartet).

I am also reading the strange but intriguing The Partisan’s Daughter, which is so completely different from the only other Louis De Bernieres I have read (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) that I feel like I am reading a book by a different author.

***********

The two older boys and I got in what may well be the last round this winter of ice skating. H’s cousin generously gave s some of the free passes he had won to the downtown rink. It was freaking cold and we were in what amounts to a wind tunnel, but it was not crowded at all and the ice was in good shape. My skates need to be sharpened desperately. I am a pretty good skater and may opt out of my run Wednesday when the babysitter comes for an hour on skates instead. I won’t be able to skate outdoors for much longer.

*********

Our annual St Pat’s party is approaching, and I can’t find my file from last year that reminds me how many pounds of corned beef I need to feed 80 people. Grrrrrr. I have a sinking feeling that the document was on my hard drive that was wiped away when my computer died this summer.

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

We found an amazing appliance repair guy who fixed my cook top griddle and my oven, both of which are over fifty years old. Because of the way the appliances are integrated into the cabinetry, and because any major kitchen overhaul is on hold for a good long while if not indefinitely, it was my deepest desire this year, for Christmas, to have someone make my oven work.
Because cooking dinner with your only working oven in the basement bites the big one.
Especially when your baby sits at the top of the basement steps, sticking his little arms frantically through the cat door and wailing piteously until you return from the depths.

So my upstairs oven works. Yay, me! Now I can bake real chocolate chip cookies.

Next gift: calling the carpenter to build bookshelves for the stacks of dusty books piled around my bedroom floor.

Actually, my next gift is to take the money H gave me for Christmas to spend at Half Price Books and compile a rather large order from Persephone Books. A blogger who shall remain nameless (but who is insanely generous and has a really cute new-ish baby boy) sent me, as a lovely and completely unnecessary thank you for some minor things, a gift voucher for two Persephone Books. (I KNOW! Could anyone have given me a more thoughtful gift?) I spent a glorious afternoon perusing the catalog and trying to decide. In difficulty of choice, it completely blew past the cheese counter at the import store, and also picking candy at the chocolate shop. (In fact, my thought process regarding my choices might be worthy of its own blog post.) But I was even more excited once I factored in that H gave me that money specifically to spend on books, and he did say HPB because that was where I have been book-shopping, bur I don’t think he’d care if I spent it at Persephone instead.

As long as I really do get those bookcases built...

************
*Leo Tolstoy

"I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty."*

I have a lot of shoes. Especially for someone who is not especially girly.

I have sexy silver strappy high heels (that I haven’t worn in, oh, eight years).

I have businesslike black and brown pumps (you know, the ones that kinda resemble penny loafers with chunky heels).

I have an elegant pair of Paul Green black Oxfords that cost me a remarkable sum of money and due to my ensuing four pregnancies no longer really fit me – but I refuse to give them up.

I own an embarrassingly large number of running shoes, all Adidas and in varying stages of wornness.

I have any number of summery shoes – brown strappy sandals with a wedge heel, several pairs of plain black flipflops, pink Mary Jane Crocs, Tevas from my college days, and brown Keen Mary Janes that go with everything, make my legs look really trim and muscular, and are on my feet (if I must wear shoes) constantly from about April till October.

I have Doc Marten boots, and LL Bean boots, for snow. I have Uggs for cold. I have both flat and heeled dressy black boots. My flat boots are kind of boring, with a buckle round the ankle and a zip up the side. But my heeled black boots – my heeled black boots are calf-length, microfiber, square-toed, and incredibly sassy. Just pulling them on makes me feel fun and flirty and hothotHOT.

Stephanie Kallos’ Broken for You is the sexy black boot of my bookshelf. You can recommend it to people knowing that if they read it, they will not only like it, but it will move them, it will make them think, and it will cement their perception of you as a discerning and intelligent reader. It does all the work for you.

But Kallos’ new book, Sing Them Home? Is the brown Keen Mary Jane. Just opening this book every night was a pleasure. It went with every mood. I hated to see it end, much as I am dreading the eventual demise of the shoes I wear nonstop for six months of the year (In fact, I really should just order another pair or two right now.)

Yeah, this metaphor is a little strained, I know. It sounded better at 3am when I was dazed with sleep and with an infant attached to my breast. But when I turned the last page of Sing Them Home? I wanted more. I wanted it to keep going on and on and on, this saga of the Jones family and the town of Emlyn Springs and its inhabitants. I wanted to know who got married, who died, who had babies, who went away to school. I just simply wanted it to continue.

If that’s not one of the nicest things any reader can say about a book, I don’t know what is.

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

*Imelda Marcos (Who else?)

"There is a world of difference between domesticity and domestication." *

I love getting mail. Birthday, anniversary, and Christmas cards; notes from my elderly aunts; little treat packages from various points on the globe; even the bills give me a weird frisson of pleasure, reveling in orderliness and organization (of course, it's H's problem to pay them and balance the checkbook, so I would bet that he doesn't like them at all). I especially enjoy receiving magazines. I only subscribe to a couple - Newsweek, Brain, Child, the now (sadly) defunct House & Garden (Dominique Browning, this means you can have time to write another book now!), and the also now (sadly) defunct H&G substitute, Domino.

My point about my love of snail mail is twofold.

First, the mail this week brought me an eagerly awaited gift to myself, the new Persephone edition of DE Stevenson's long out-of-print Miss Buncle's Book.

When I was a small-ish girl growing up in NJ, I read all of DE Stevenson's gentle little romances. Every one was set in England, in a cosy world of afternoon tea and housekeepers and vicar's wives, and all of them end happily. They are the perfect comfort reading - like A Secret Garden or A Little Princess for adults. Miss Buncle's Book was the first half of a two-book omnibus (the second half was the sequel, Miss Buncle Married) that I checked out of my local library probably every few months. I read it over and over again, and I couldn't have been the only one because the library copy slowly grew more dilapidated until it finally fell apart and was removed from circulation.

Miss Buncle, a spinster living in the small rural village of Silverstream, writes a novel about her village and its inhabitants. The book, written under a pseudonym, is an unexpectedly runaway bestseller. When the citizens of Silverstream begin to recognize themselves in the book, the fun truly begins. (The only thing that could have made this book even more perfect would have been if Stevenson had seen fit to pen Barbara Buncle's actual novel for us, too.)

I searched for a copy of my own for years and years. It's been out of print for so long that any copy that turned up on Amazon or half.com was exorbitantly expensive. But recently, the wonderful Persephone Books republished it, and I now own my very own beautiful copy of Miss Buncle's Book.

Which brings me to my second point: I couldn't remember where I'd discovered Persephone Books. I thought I'd seen them in an issue of Domino, because I often see lovely things in that magazine that I then long to own. Persephone's elegant editions would fit into its stylish pages quite nicely.

But some casual conversation with Suse, and some research consisting of wandering through the pages of another book I quite like, and I realized I had run across them in Jane Brocket's also-cosy The Gentle Art of Domesticity. She has more than one photo of Persephone novels, their dignified yet charming dove-grey covers making them stand out from their more gaudily colored bookshelf companions. In one photo, if I recall correctly, she even has a stack of the beauties, on an end table or nightstand, and I instantly coveted that sedate pile of books.

Their fronts are quiet, but their endpapers are gorgeously vintage.

The typeface is simple and elegant.


I even love the numbers on the back, which at the same time press home the point that I own ONE of these, and - groan - there are at least EIGHTY MORE I need.
I want.
I covet.

Persephone Books detail, in novel, poetry, and biography, the everyday lives of women. From the Persephone website: "Persephone prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women." The books are "readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget." (There is a neat little piece on how Persephone finds and/or picks its books here.)

They are pretty, oh so pretty.
And they play well with others.


My one little grey book makes me feel, just for a moment, that I too could pull off the gracious living depicted in the pages of the style and decor magazines that will no longer liven up my mail delivery once a month.

************
*Jane Brocket in her lovely The Gentle Art of Domesticity

The Victoria bushfires in Australia have left a trail of tragedy in their wake - the death toll is 131 and still expected to rise.

The fire jumped an insane distance in moments and wiped out the entire community of Kinglake (you can see the photos on CNN, it WILL break your heart).

Please, please go donate to the Red Cross to help the thousands left homeless.
http://www.redcross.org.au/default.asp
(FYI, $25 American equals about $16 Australian dollars, at least according to the XE conversion website).


My dear Suse, and Penni Russon from Eglantine's Cake are safe (I think the rest of my Aussie blogger friends are in Sydney...). I worry about other Melbourne bloggers...my thoughts are with you all, and my heart hurts for what you are going through.

Be safe, and please keep us posted.

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."*

I went on a Stewart O'Nan spree when I first discovered him. I started with Prayer for the Dying, which appealed to me at first due to its plague theme. (Do you know anyone else who regularly reads the Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report?) But what a ride! Nail-bitingly suspenseful, inevitability worthy of Shakespeare's tragedies, haunting, eerie cover art - and it made me cry too. I don’t think a book has affected me so much since, except for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. (And since both books deal with similar themes – mainly, the often futile battle against inexorable evil - that doesn’t surprise me.)

Then I tackled Snow Angels. Very good as well, a little less polished, a bit more teen-angst-y due to the age of one of the main characters, a completely different book, but the same spare, elegant writing and gripping storytelling.

Wish You Were Here was gentler and not as focused, but more involved with characterization.

I was wowed by my find, but for some reason didn’t follow through by ordering from Amazon, or the library, the rest of his novels. However, I was recently thrilled to stumble over his newest, Songs for the Missing, at a dashing visit to my library last week. It boasts all of O’Nan’s usual detailed but natural storytelling, compelling characters whom we get to know almost uncomfortably well throughout the book’s course, and an occasional plot twist that you never see coming but that makes all the sense in the world. O’Nan doesn’t write thrillers, or police procedurals, but I often perceive those elements in his novels.

Of course, due to total lack of sleep and consequent brainlessness, I have set aside Songs, just for the moment, in favor of rereading Book 4 of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. It just goes better with the Cherry Cordial Hershey Kisses I have been snarfing down in a spate of what I like to refer to as “survival eating.” When my brain functions return to their regularly scheduled efficiency, I will pick up Songs again. And now I have to go, because I am This. Close. to experiencing brain bleed from the now-healthy, perkier-than-ever, and endlessly nattering three-year-old.

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

*Joseph Conrad (Did you know Conrad wrote his brilliant novels in his THIRD language? I consistently find this fact utterly amazing.)

Open letter to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and the Pittsburgh Board of Education

Mayor Ravenstahl:

I am sure you are aware of the planned delay scheduled for Pittsburgh Public Schools this upcoming Monday, February 2.

I want you also to be aware that, happy as I am for the Steelers, this is in no way appropriate, and I am livid, and disappointed beyond belief, with the people in charge of my child's education.

I am the parent of a second-grader and a kindergartener in the Pittsburgh Public Schools system. My children have had at least three previous snow/cold days this winter, and at least a couple delays. Inconvenient though these may be, I fully understand the necessity of keeping our students safe, warm, and protected from the elements and/or hazardous road conditions.

But to schedule a school delay because of a football game (however "important" and exciting it may be)? The event is the NIGHT BEFORE, not during school hours (not that I personally think that would be ok either, but that's neither here nor there.) I am beside myself with anger and astonishment. We are tacitly condoning any sort of immature behavior that would affect parents' and employees' ability to do their jobs the next day- to get their kids to school, and to transport and teach our students. Worse (in my opinion), we seem to be expecting this sort of behavior from people to whom we entrust our children, and I for one think it's insulting to my sons' fine teachers and aides to assume they can't be responsible enough to perform their jobs the next day.

How can PPS continue to try to lure parents to the public school system, using, among other things, the Pittsburgh Promise, improved test scores, and incentives such as the IB program, and then delay school because of any or all of the above reasons? How do you expect the students to take our efforts as engaged parents and educators seriously? What sort of example does this flagrant disregard for the importance of education set for our children?

Also, we must consider the impact a school delay has on many parents who struggle to obtain adequate childcare for legitimate delays. To force a parent to juggle these issues for a football game is insulting.

In addition, my son will miss, for the third week in a row, his scheduled gifted education program. I plan to look into how these district-enforced absences impact his IEP, and perhaps the tax dollars received by the district due to the services they are supposed to provide due to those IEPs.

I have emailed everyone in charge I can think of and asked them to consider canceling this delay. I have asked them to please consider impressing upon our children how very important it is to be mature and responsible about the privileges of education.

And you as Mayor of this fine city should know that if you intend to continue to improve Pittsburgh's public school system, this sort of disregard for educational standards is completely unacceptable.

Thank you.

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

Dear 'netties:
If you wonder where I am, I have spent all my creative energy firing off angry missives similar to the one above to everyone I can think of who might have anything to do with the above insanity.
Perhaps when my anger has cooled (and the Steelers have won), I will have some energy to write actual posts about things like BOOKS.
Perhaps.
Or I may need a nap.

Later,
BB

"Good housekeeping lies at the root of all the real ease and satisfaction in existence."*

I am thoroughly enjoying this book, curling up in bed with it at night and pretending I have any amount of time to work on MY gracious living.

***********
*Harriet Prescott Spofford

"The American people are hungry for change."

And today it starts!

Congratulations to our 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.


I am beside myself with joy and excitement and optimism.

“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”*

Everything was going swimmingly until I realized that there was a breach in the deep end. The water must have seeped through the plastic seam - next year I will spring for a solid piece of plastic. This year I had to make do with 2 long rolls of 10' width each. But I let the water freeze solid overnight and will resume - one hopes successfully - filling today. It certainly is cold enough - it's so cold my guys are off school.

H wanted to know how deep is deep enough? (I believe he was envisioning our water bill...) I think 6 inches will do it. A line level could have solved the depth question - for example, if our yard were only an inch off end to end, I could have built the thing with 2x4s. I used the widest boards available at Home Depot (2x10) since I didn't level more accurately. But once the first layer is frozen, it will (one hopes) seal the end, as it were, and therefore the water will find its level and fill the whole shebang.

Unfortunately, the outdoor spigot is frozen solid - how do I know? Because the hose snapped in two while I was trying to take it off and it was full of ice. Hose-shaped ice. Also unfortunately, that was my longest hose so there's some jury-rigged hosiery going on outside as well. And I had to figure out a way to run the hose up from the laundry room in the basement without leaving the doors wide open to the subzero temps...'cause what would suck more than the rink not working? My laundry hoses freezing.

I'll keep you posted as to when you can come over to skate and slurp hot cocoa liberally laced with kahlua. Yeah, kahlua. Did I mention we are staring down the face of a four-day weekend two weekends in a row now? Yeah. Top up my kahlua, please.

**************
*Elbert Hubbard (NO, NOT Elron. Sheesh.)

"In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed."*

I was VERY busy this morning.
And as soon as H comes home with a new hose and a pressure coupler for the basement faucet, we can fill this baby and then...
let the skating games begin!


************
*Ralph Waldo Emerson

"For argument's sake, let's say I'm not smart."

If I were a vampire…

I’d bite you in the morning, I’d bite you in the evening…all over this land…wait, no, that’s just me not able to help myself, sorry.

Let’s try again.

If I were a vampire, I would, as Edward Cullen points out somewhere in the third book, have an awful lot of free time. They don’t need to sleep or eat or go to the bathroom. (I wonder if they need to shower?) I would have an eternity, without any distractions, right?

I would have time to read every book I have ever wanted to read – hell, I could finally finish Anna Karenina. For that matter, I would have time to learn Spanish and Russian, so I could read War and Peace and Love in the Time of Cholera not in translation.

I would have tons of time to write – but oddly, probably not as much to write about, or the ability to be as truthful or introspective as I might now.

I would have all sorts of time to knit and quilt. I’d be an expert. (Suse, is that your secret? Are all your perfect and charming knitted adorables a result of you being one of the Undead?)

I could listen to a lot of music. I have proof that vampires like Radiohead, and in fact, if I were to discover that Thom Yorke was a vampire, it wouldn’t shock me hardly at all. I would probably never ever have to listen to “Philadelphia Chickens” or a Wiggles album ever again; there is a noticeable dearth of vampire toddlers.

I would have time to bake all I wanted, but without the inclination to sample the goods, what would be the point? I suppose I could “swallow manfully” (as Edward does his wedding cake, and, boy, is that a phrase you ever expected to hear in relation to Edward Cullen?), but again, what would be the point? This is a problem for me. I know Bella doesn’t want to give up human sex, but I? Wouldn’t want to give up human brownies.

BUT, theoretically, I could eat all the baked goods I wanted (if I ate) - vampires are by necessity physically lovely, and have you ever heard of a fat vampire? I would have all kinds of time to run and swim and skate and bike, like I try to do now to stay fit and – no, not beautiful, maybe marginally-less-repulsive, but I am sure I could not uphold an unnecessary exercise regime. I considered running marathons as a vampire, and socking away my winnings (doesn’t one of the vampires consider that in one of the books?), but there’s the sparkly skin-in-sun problem there…and eventually the other marathoners would catch on, don’t you think? Basically, what I am saying is that my being a vampire would probably not change my fundamental laziness.

Two things I could not do if I were a vampire:

I could not have babies. Any more babies. I am okay with that. See next point.

I could not hang out with my husband and/or kiddoes, lest their luscious scent tempt me to kill them. (Their luscious scent of what? Baby poop?) And dudes, seriously, it’s hardly their delicious smell that makes me want to kill them – one more snow day, yes; yummy scent, not so much.

One more random vampire thought – I chew my cuticles, often till they bleed. Yes, I realize, bad habit, blah blah blah. What would Edward have done if Bella were a dedicated nail-biter? A ripped hangnail could have sent him right over the edge. Inquiring minds want to know…

What? You didn’t think I was engineering world peace or considering the next Secretary General of the UN while I was plodding out my three miles around the reservoir on weekend mornings, did you?

**************
*Bella Swan, "Twilight"

"So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness."*

Random random:

1. Can I tell you how pleased I am that today didn't turn out to be a snow day?

2. The difference between the first child and the fourth child: Quarto is sitting on my (admittedly filthy) kitchen floor right now, shaking the contents of his morning bottle on the floor and swishing them around the tiles with a grubby little paw. He crawls through the damp mess once in a while for good measure. But he's quiet and smiling and isn't getting stuck in the undersides of the kitchen chairs. So instead of distracting and preventing and clearing up the milk (and probably giving said baby a bath AND mopping the floor, both of which I would have done with Primo), I shrug my shoulders and keep playing WordTwist. Yeah. See how much my mothering skills have...um...improved?

3. I went to see "Twilight" again last night. I haven't seen a movie in a movie theatre since the second Harry Potter, and now twice in two weeks, and THE SAME MOVIE BOTH TIMES. I don't think I need an intervention yet but possibly soon.

4. I will say that "Twilight" is THE sexiest movie without any sex in it I have ever seen. EVER. And Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen makes me swoon like the geeky 13-year-old girl I definitely was and still feel like inside.
(Excuse me as I go hunt for my retainer, which I am pretty sure I left on my lunch tray in the cafeteria. Yeah, I was one of THOSE girls.)

5. Things that amuse me no end:
The way Terzo pronounces Byron the train “Bye-RON.” As in, "Bye-RON wants some ice cream but Thomas won't share."
Which reminds me of another amusing thing: the way he also says “Byronicles” instead of "Bionicles."
Yes, I have the cleverest children on the planet. I know. What?

6. I bought a bunch of yarn yesterday; my local yarn shop was having a bit of a sale. I don't even need to knit anything with it (but I will); I could just sit and run my hands lovingly over it and get my money's worth that way. Suse, darling, this is ALL YOUR FAULT.

7. Badger brought it to my attention that Haven Kimmel has a new novel, Iodine. But according to Amazon, it's a departure from her usual style. And I love her usual style so much that I own everything else she has written. So, I will buy it (because I like giving authors I enjoy my money) and I will read it, but if YOU don't like it? Don't hold it against me.

8. I am also reading Perri Klass's Mercy Rules and think it's a terrific novel. You'd like it.

9. I am shocked and amazed that neither the cats nor the baby have even attempted to dismantle the giant and intricate Hot Wheels structure H and the older boys built in the living room last night (after I went to the movies to feed my vampire jones). Shocked and amazed, I tell you.
The tracks were a Christmas gift I forgot to give them on Christmas, so they unwrapped them last night as we celebrated Ukrainian Christmas. (Drooling over hot, gorgeous vampires is a new Eastern European holiday tradition, didn't you know?)

10. I am awaiting my Beloved Babysitter so I can ostensibly run away to edit a dissertation about...something that adults write dissertations about...but really? I will finish the third Twilight book. Because if Edward doesn't bite Bella SOON, *I* may die.

******************
*Sidney Poitier

"What whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for."

Here we are again: another nasty winter, yet another child to pass his germs along to me, and said child causing even less sleep than I had before thought humanly possible to survive. (Does that sentence make sense? I am not sure, and equally unsure that I care...)

And I would like to announce my annual bout of hurty ears/swollen glands/feels-like-broken-glass-when-I-swallow throat. (See this post. Wow, I was quite a good bit funnier when I only had three children, wasn't I?) Since I seem to have been pregnant for the past eight years (or at least close to it), and since I have had three different primary care physicians run away from the practice I went to, I have no doctor.

I briefly considered, while hauling three of my four children to the pediatrician THREE times in the past two weeks, begging my dear Dr R for antibiotics for ME (I don't care if it tastes like cherry instead of orange, even, see how easy I am? How could he resist?) but I managed to manfully act like an adult and just procure a thousand and one prescriptions for my germy, snotty, cough-y children.

After shivering through the night Sunday, I thought about the new urgent care center that just opened right across the bridge. The one that is on the way to the grocery store, the one with oodles of free parking right outside its door, the one with a doctor in attendance twelve hours a day. And this morning, after self-medicating with Motrin and Excedrin and whiskey-in-tea all last night, I hooked a quick left instead of continuing past Go to the grocery store and handed over my brand spanking new insurance card (MY co-pays went up this year, you?) and was seen by a bona fide doctor (although at this point I don't care if he only played one on TV). He poked around in my ear and said what every doctor who has ever done that says: "Huh. Adults USUALLY don't get ear infections. Oh. But, I see..." and wrote me a lovely scrip for amoxicillin. He also recommended judicious use of Sudafed, but hey, judicious schmudicious...

And know what? The words "Magic Swizzle" NEVER passed his lips.
Must be because he was older than 18, or maybe 'cause he was a REAL doctor.
Or maybe I am scarier than ever.

**********
*Irish proverb (natch)

"He looks at you like you're something to eat."

I have been brainwashed. And I am not talking about my Facebook obsession any longer. I am talking about my Twilight problem. Yeah, I have a little Twilight problem.

A friend lent me the first book – and shockingly, despite its somewhat repetitive prose and mundane heroine, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Stephenie (note the “e”) Meyers isn’t so adept with normal people, but her vampires and their history, myths, and legends are fascinating.

I sealed the deal by going to see the movie. I was leery of the casting at first, but Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) warms up and emerges into his role about twenty minutes into the movie, by which time I was crushing so badly I felt like I was 13. His eyes, people! My God, those eyes. Kristin Stewart as Bella is just lovely, and Charlie is perfect, although so much sexier than I anticipated. The bad vampires – Laurent, James, and especially Victoria – are incredibly perfect. I wasn’t sure about Peter Facinelli as Carlisle Cullen, but he pulls it off. His obvious love for his family is what clinches it for me, as well as his remarkable self control. It can’t be an easy feat to work in the ER as a bloodthirsty vampire, and I do like a man with self-restraint. A tortured soul with self-restraint? Even better. All the vampires were fine – Alice was especially adorable, even if Jasper had a bit of that Edward Scissorhands vibe going. The scene when Edward brings Bella home to meet his family, and they are all chopping vegetables and grating cheese to make her an Italian dinner, even though they have no need to eat human food? Priceless. Possibly my favorite scene in the whole movie.

The movie is better than the book (and oh so pretty); the movie somehow makes Bella a real person, not just a whining, obsessive nitwit (which is definitely how I feel about her in the book, even halfway through the second one). And the special effects are quite nice to look at - the scene where Edward shows Bella his super vampire skills is unbelievably sexy. There's something about a man trying to convince you not to love him...

That whole obsessive relationship thing that people squawked about? Doesn’t bother me. I mean, yeah, it’s maybe a little creepy that Edward watches Bella sleep, but she wants him there, and really, what the hell else is he going to do all night? Why the heck not? Aren’t there worse rules to break – such as sucking the blood of humans? Or murdering a bunch of humans to get to the one you want? What did bug me - at least in the book, the movie handled it much more subtly -were all the stupid excuses Bella conjures up to explain all her injuries. It was too reminiscent of excuses one hears for domestic abuse - even though that’s so not what is happening. In fact, Edward is indeed the last character in the book who would ever harm Bella – but also the most likely, should he ever lose control.

Here’s my new take on the Edward Cullen phenomenon: Everybody wants the bad boy. But in this case, the bad boy is also the very, very good boy (I mean, can you get much better than a vampire who is dying to sink his teeth into you but won’t because he loves you?) which makes it exponentially more romantic. (See: Mr. Rochester - if he hadn't been fooled by Bertha's family into marrying someone destined for insanity, he wouldn't be such a romantic figure - he'd just be an asshole.) So Edward's “bad,” (I mean, he’s a vampire for Pete’s sake) but we can love through that because deep down, essentially, he's GOOD.

So would I argue that Twilight is akin to Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? You know, I just might. I read Jane Eyre as an adult, and enjoyed it tremenedously, but it follows the same story arc - only Mr Rochester has a crazy wife, not venomous teeth. Wuthering Heights? Throughly, completely overwrought and full of angsty, melodramatic characters who wander around pointlessly on the moor, with not a whole lot of character development anywhere. How is this so much different than Twilight?

The writing in these classics is obviously so very much better, I am not arguing for the quality of Twilight's writing. Is Meyers a good writer? She’s adequate (although, as my friend A points out correctly, each book does get better - at least the writing does.) But honestly, the book reminds me of nothing quite so much as the long serial novels my best friend in seventh grade and I used to scribble during boring math classes.

My enjoyment of the books and Meyers’ take on her supernatural creations, and my crush on Edward, has been fed by the draft of Midnight Sun available on Meyers’ website; it is a take on the first book from Edward’s perspective, and it enlightens us as to his (admittedly bipolar-esque) behavior, and more of his history. It develops his human side by elaborating on his vampire side, also nicely highlighting Meyers’ strengths.

I am looking forward to reading the next two books, and even more looking forward to going to see the movie again. Which is, as the cashier at the box office informed us, geared to target the 30-something mom demographic. I feel oddly flattered. Or should I be insulted? I don’t care. I’d like a small popcorn, a small Coke, and Edward Cullen, please.

*************
*Mike Newton to Bella, about Edward, "Twilight"

"Somehow or other it came just the same!"

Yikes. Christmas Eve - it's grey and rainy here, with highs predicted in the 40s, so no chance of snow.

Three of my four boys are coughing like 80-year-old emphysematic men. The nebulizer adds a not-so-pleasant white noise hum to the proceedings.

My brother is expected this afternoon. I am prepared to stuff him full of turkey and wild rice stuffing and jam squares and gingerbread. I was going to make his favorite rum balls but I got overwhelmed - I knew when I was contemplating having the boys roll the rum balls for me that I had truly lost my mind and I punted on those.

Nonetheless, it's Christmas Eve, and somehow that old magic has wormed its way back into my heart - it may skedaddle while I am choking down a plethora of overcooked, cold seafood at my mother-in-law's "Feast" of Seven Fishes. People, tuna salad has NO PLACE on the Christmas Eve table. But for now, I have presents to wrap, and some last-minute gift deliveries to make (the people who make my coffee for me deserve a nice tin of cookies, as well as my friendly and protective mailman), and a Christmas Eve children's service at 430.

To my friends who are celebrating this year with new little people around: enjoy, and kiss that baby for me. The little ones lend a whole new delightful aspect to this holiday.

To all my Internet friends, you are dear to me, and I wish you all the merriest of Christmases.

"My secret weapon is PMS." *

Is THIS a surprise to any of you? Not to me, uh-uh. I mean, I like my husband and all, but c'mon, folks...we are talking sanity here...(it wasn't till halfway through the article that I realized the option to give up neither was, well, an option.)

In other, not-so-controversial news, both Stephanie Kallos (Broken for You) and (of slightly less importance) Wally Lamb have new books out. I bought the Kallos in hardback, following my usual strategy of giving my money to the authors I want to keep writing (some of you, I am thinking I had better just start writing you direct checks, hmmm?); I may buy the Lamb, but more likely will wait for the paperback.

Otherwise, I am reading Twilight. Shut up. A friend recommended I give it a second shot, and while I still find the heroine wildly whiny and annoying, and it reminds me of nothing so much as those serial novels my best friend in 7th grade and I used to write surreptitiously in math class, I can't complain that it's boring. Oh, no.

I survived Primo's birthday weekend, and am now heading determinedly into Christmas, head down, teeth gritted. Bring on the holiday merriment, goddamnit!

***************
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"How can you be so stupid? How can you be so cruel?"*

I am awake this morning without a baby attached to me, or a toddler peeing in my bed, or a five-year-old worrying about polar bears, or...well, you get the idea. I am awake. Alone. In the kitchen, on my SECOND mug of hot tea. Pleasantly full of Italian bread and apricot jam.

Today will be better than yesterday was. I swear. I won't yell at my boys for asking for orange juice while I am buttering their toast, or requesting whipped cream on their hot chocolate while I slap together the eleventy gazillionth peanut butter sandwich of my motherly existence. I won't yell at them for asking for a red vitamin instead of a purple vitamin when they KNOW DAMN RIGHT WELL, GODDAMNIT, THAT THERE ARE NO RED VITAMINS LEFT ANDIAMBUYINGMORETODAYISWEARFORGOD'SSAKE!

I hate when I make them stare silently into their cereal bowls and stolidly zip up their jackets and trudge out the door to another day of school, instead of their being silly and loud and loony. And I want to chase them down and cover them with kisses and hug them, and cry.

I wonder if it's right or wrong to tell them that my brain doesn't always work right? Would this help them, or make it worse? It doesn't help ME, but then again, it's my brain.

I showered last night. I swallowed my pills. I slept. All these things have to matter. Yes, the holidays are upon us, but I am taking a deep breath and trying to ride it out. (I will resort to my illicit Valium stash if absolutely necessary.)

Today I have to go buy a new toaster. I should be able to handle this. How difficult can buying a toaster be? (I mean, after I return the one I bought last week because it burns all my toast - but isn't deep enough to burn the full slice...poor planning. Where was Product Development when this decision was made?)

I have a weekend full of odious...I mean, holiday events, sandwiched and stacked and draped all over each other. Full of people and pleasantries and cute singing children and cooing grandparents...oh God, I am tired already.

I'm fine. I really am. Just overwhelmed and dreading all the family holiday crap. Not my immediate little family (I actually love Christmas morning and attending hoopla with my boys). It's all the other obligations that drive me round the bend, that make me want to crawl into my bed and stay there with the duvet over my head till sometime 'round Valentine's Day.

Why didn't I just enter a convent? Or go quietly crazy like Mr. Rochester's wife, so I could live peacefully in the attic? I'll bet they didn't make HER come to Christmas Eve dinner at the in-laws'.

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

*Jane to Mr Rochester, "Jane Eyre" (1996)

"It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

This?

Turned into this. And after I make another rectangle, I will attempt to connect them into a poncho for my niece. All you expert knitters out there, do NOT laugh. Or if you must - and I don't blame you - do it quietly. Thank you. My knitting ego is very fragile at the moment.

Also, I have to finish the poncho, and this by Christmas, so posting may be as light as it's been, until maybe just before Christmas.

Just be glad I didn't discover plastic canvas, or everybody'd be getting toilet paper cozies or something.

"Man shall not live by bread alone..." *

If you don't eat anything all day because you are worried your stomach is still recovering from the Plague this weekend, and then decide to have tea and a couple of slices of toasted, buttered, and apricot-jammed fresh Italian bread for a snack at 4pm, and your baby downs an entire slice of such treated bread himself - don't...um, what? Were the heck was I going with this? You wouldn't BLAME me, because this is delicious and almost good for you. Anyhoo, oh, yes, BREAD.

We have the best Italian bread ever, baked by a teeny bakery in the pseudo-burbs, called Mancini's. My mother-in-law will argue for Sanchioli's (but OF COURSE she's wrong, it's too mushy and soft), and I know people who swear by Rimini's (too crispy-crusted and oily), but I am here to tell you that Mancini's is the BEST. Period. End of discussion. (My baby would tell you the same but his mouth is full of bread and jam right now.)

Which brings me to my second point. (Ha! Like how I did that, acting like I HAD a point?)

Bread Alone by Judith Hendricks.
Wynter Morrison, once a promising baker's apprentice and talented breadmaker, is ditched by her obnoxious executive husband and takes off for Seattle, where she supports herself by working as a baker's assistant.

That's the bloodless synopsis. There are crusty (ha! I kill myself!) work colleagues and devoted old friends, and a quaint old apartment she makes her own, and a couple random quirky characters, and of course love interest(s), but really, all you need to know about this book are the following two facts:

1. It is perfect vacation reading. In fact, it is so perfect that that is where I discovered it. It was sitting on the bookcase in the rec room at our vacation cabin rental, next to the fine literature of Danielle Steele and Frank Peretti. (There was also a remarkably extensive collection of Silhouette romances.)
I picked it up on a lark on Saturday morning and gobbled it down in two days, which, with four boys, and hiking and fishing and making S'mores and birthday celebrations going on around me, is fairly impressive.

2. This book will make you hungry. Very hungry. I ate an entire Trader Joe's Pound Plus bar of milk chocolate with almonds, and the rest of the pan of Terzo's birthday brownies, in two days while reading it. So prepare yourself.

But with Mancini's (NOT Rimini's or Sanchioli's).
Just Mancini's, and, maybe, a little apricot jam.

***********
*Matthew 4:4 (King James Version)