"Childbirth classes neglect to teach one critical skill: How to breathe, count, and swear all at the same time." ~ Linda Filterman

First: the baby update. Saw the doctor yesterday, all seems well. We spotted the little bean with its itsy-bitsy heartbeat – even with the crappy office ultrasound machine - although since I am not sure about the dates, the doctor thinks I am actually due later in February than we originally thought. Since I have had three normal, uncomplicated pregnancies, they are not as concerned about my “advanced maternal age” (God, how I despise that phrase!) as they might be if it were, say, my first. Now H and I are trying to decide when to tell the boys. Preferably sometime before I file for Social Security benefits and my AARP membership comes due.

Second: the RSS feed update. David, did you get the whole post? Lemme know.

Now, the book update:

I finished Baker Towers last night, and I have to say, I LOVED this book. Thanks for the recc, Gina. I enjoy complicated family sagas, and this one was a goodie. It reminded me a bit of Rebecca Johns’ Icebergs although the actual plots and geography differ greatly. They are both books you can get lost in, if you like. While H took the kids to his mom’s for the fourth time in five days (I don't even want to see people I LIKE that often), to play baseball with their cousins, I stayed home, finished off my book, and ate cheese, pretzels, and chocolate for dinner. (What? Chocolate and cheese are dairy! Calcium and protein, my friends. Calcium and protein.)

I then started Ian Sansom’s The Case of the Missing Books, which is going to be an incredibly light read but most entertaining. Israel Armstrong completely cracks me up, and I can’t wait to see how he resolves the issues with which he is faced. The scene in which the locals give him directions to Balleymuck via Balleygullable made me howl. It might help him if he grew a backbone, but the story wouldn’t be nearly so amusing then.

Due to the general Internet disgust and confusion over the movie version of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, and Lazy Cow’s indignation more specifically, I am about to check this book out of the library and read it tonight.

So the project to read down my TBR shelves is coming along swimmingly: both Baker Towers and Missing Books hail from TBR Land; however, I can anticipate having to buy the next Ian Sansom, which will shoot my intentions straight to hell. And after all the light fiction, I may be in the mood for something like The Children’s Blizzard next, or maybe some nice Russians. I’ve never read The Brothers Karamazov, and it IS sitting on my shelves.

"So tired, so tired, so tired, so tired, so tired." - Ozzy Osborne, "So Tired"

I am so tired.

I could write a post about people who plan adult birthday parties for weeknights when they are on vacation and others are NOT, and yet others are obliged to attend. But I am too tired to be bothered.

I could write a post about how much my mother-in-law annoys me, with her constant need for validation for every little thing she does and says. I’m sorry, the pasta was inedible and I am too tired to lie about it. And if you sprinkle crushed Ritz crackers and shredded Velveeta on top of broccoli, you have rendered unpalatable a perfectly fine vegetable.

I could write a post about patrons who incorrectly impugn my considerable abilities as a research librarian. But frankly, I am too tired to politely point out the error of their ways and content myself with snarking to you about it.

I could write a post about the squickiness level of the research I am doing for a freelance assignment. But I am too tired to figure out what my non-disclosure agreement covers, and what it doesn’t.

I could write a post about how if *I* had spent thousands of dollars on a boob job and tummy tuck, I would eschew Peter-Pan-collared gingham shirts with Winnie-the-Pooh appliqué, and high-waisted, pleated shorts (let’s face it, I eschew all these things anyway). I think I am too tired to consider what I would wear, other than Old Navy’s low-waisted cargoes.

I could write a post about how my six-year-old is driving me absolutely batshit with his mouthiness and whining and neediness, and how my four-year-old needs a volume control, and how I think The Baby may have roseola. But I am too tired to do much other than throw waffles at them for breakfast and push them outside to play.

I could write a post about how happy I am that my big brother is coming to visit over the holiday. I am really too tired to cook for him, but fortunately he really won’t care.

I could write a post about the war of words waged on the neighborhood email list, regarding whether or not children and dogs should be permitted to splash in the park fountain. I am NOT too tired to point out that we all survived fountain- and pond-splashing, tree-climbing, bike-riding without helmets, and playing Jailbreak in the street till after dark.

At least I appear to be too tired to bother being nauseated, so that’s something.

“Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.” - Dan Salomon

I started Jennifer Haigh’s Baker Towers last night, based on Gina’s recommendation. So far, so good. I like the characters; the strength and complexity of Rose especially appeals to me. I hope it continues to be as interesting.

I am also now enjoying Robyn Davidson’s Tracks; I still don’t really understand her dysfunctional relationship with Kurt, the man who teaches her to train camels; I think there must be more there than she is letting on, but otherwise I find myself caring very much about her animals and her adventure.

My little brother gave me A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian for Christmas two years ago, based solely on the title, I am guessing. We are half-Ukrainian and quite proud of it, although neither of us speaks a word. (Well, actually, I can say “I love you” in Ukrainian, but as you might imagine, it doesn’t come in particularly handy, well, ever.) I started it the other night and like it, although it reminds me very much of Lily Brett’s You Gotta Have Balls which I didn’t especially like.

I just requested The Shadow of the Wind from the library, despite my self-imposed moratorium on library books. I am trying to read down my TBR shelves, God knows there’s enough of them. But I’ve had my eye on Wind for ages now, and Lazy Cow’s recc sealed it for me. (And by the way, I am thrilled she is back! I missed you, LC!)

I generally help out at our church by doing whatever needs to be done, and yesterday there were six boxes of donated books that needed to be shelved for the book sale. So I did it. And – the privilege of working – I scored a signed (sixth) edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn!
And a lovely 1932 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.
And an adorable little Russian Fairy Tales volume from Peter Pauper Press, which publishes some of the quirkiest and most interesting little books around. I own a copy of Comic Epitaphs published by them in 1960, and it's a rollicking read.

It was a good haul. All for the low low price of five dollars. I feel like I should give them more, but those are the posted prices. As long as I don’t turn around and try to sell them, I think I can live with my conscience.

And now we are off to visit the newly-remodeled neighborhood coffee shop, and sip some latte (me), and eat some sfogliatelle (all of us).

Happy Monday!

“I do not know how the third world war will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth...rocks." - Albert Einstein

Ok, today might not have been the best day to start reading Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now.

Blazing car rammed into Glasgow airport

Controlled mayhem on London streets

"We're very very busy, and we've got a lot to do, and we haven't got a minute to explain it all to you." - BusyBusyBusy, Sandra Boynton

I FEEL as if I have been very very very busy. (But if I have, God knows what I have been doing.)

The two older boys have been at day camp every morning this week. They come home suntanned and hot and sweaty and tired and RAVENOUS. They eat like longshoremen and still I can count their ribs and see each vertebrae. I prescribe more ice cream.

We made popsicles out of orange juice with the new fancy-schmancy popsicle molds, and I dipped chocolate-covered frozen bananas, a remembered treat from my childhood that perhaps would have been better left as a fond memory.

We went swimming Monday afternoon (the intrepid Terzo tried to run away from me and jump in the big pool, and my sweet Seg showed me how he kicks his legs, learning to swim), but Wednesday afternoon we got rained out by an awesome thunderstorm. We all sat on the front porch and watched the rain pour down in sheets, and the lightning zap one of the big old oak trees near our alley. And then we had to run around the house mopping up under windows with towels, because I wasn’t quick enough closing everything up when the hail started.

Wednesday was also the day I lost my mind and vacuumed and then mopped all the floors on the first floor.

Terzo and I have gone grocery shopping TWICE.

But we also visited the train table (and the coffee bar, natch) at the local bookstore.

I worked (a new freelance venture) yesterday morning, and went into work yesterday evening. In between, I took a nice long nap, and afterward I stopped at my favorite neighborhood bar for buffalo bites. The food took FOREVER to come out, but my waitress was a sweetie pie. I sat and read Pardonable Lies and drank my Coke. It was all good.

This morning The Baby and I took a leisurely stroll, examining ants and stones and leaves. We collected sticks. We said hi to doggies and neighbors, and waved to buses and construction vehicles. We discovered that the neighborhood coffee shop is still not open (they are renovating and were meant to be open Thursday). Today, though, they were serving coffee from airpots out front, and the owner produced a doughnut for the very pleased Terzo. We sat on benches on the sidewalk and kibbutzed with everyone walking by. We met some new neighbors with their nine-month-old son, and caught up with some old neighbors, who have had a lovely new baby, who is four weeks old. Terzo charmed the pants off everyone. As always.

Primo has a friend coming over this afternoon, to play Stratego and hockey. His t-ball season wraps up tomorrow with a Parents-versus-Kids game.

We have two picnics to choose from for Fourth of July, and my older brother is coming to visit. H and I are going to a baseball game at the lovely PNC Park, to help celebrate his brother’s 40th. Zoo camp is the week after next, and swim lessons start last week of July.

I have twelve pints of blueberries from Hammonton, NJ, in my downstairs fridge, destined for pie, and a quart of “lusciousberries” (they look like plain old strawberries to me) from our CSA that are crying out for shortcake. I have to go find a recipe for kale, shred the kohlrabi for pancakes and zucchini for casserole for dinner tonight, and refill the popsicle molds.

God, now that’s only eighty degrees, I LOVE summer.

"It's too darn hot, it's too darn hot." - Cole Porter

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country – Ken Kalfus. If the two main characters were not the most self-absorbed narcissists I have run across in fiction (right up there with Claire Messud’s Emperor’s Children whingers), I might be able to stick out this book. Parts of it are affecting – the scene where Marshall escapes from the South Tower is downright harrowing – but OH. MY. GOD. how I hated horrible Marshall and his equally horrible wife. And felt so sorry for their poor, sad, damaged children. Although NOT for the stupidly-named Snuffles.

Aftermath, Inc. – Gil Reavill. Most definitely not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Crime writer Reavill learns the ins and outs of the bioremediation business – cleaning up crime scenes, suicides, and non-biological hazmat sites like meth labs. I personally found it fascinating, but then I am weird and we knew that.

Tracks – Robyn Davidson. Gina asked me why anyone would want feral camels. I am fifty pages into this book and am still not sure. Are camels the only way to cross the Australian desert? I like the parts where Davidson talks about her trip and its preparations; less so her navel-gazing about her solitude and anti-socialist tendencies.

Circle of Quilters – Jennifer Chiaverini. I really enjoy Chiaverini’s books but they must be read in installments, as if they were published monthly in some magazine. Otherwise, they just get too precious and too ‘then-she-did-this, -and-then-she-did-that, -and-then-this-happened.’ Plod, plod, plod.

A Place of Execution – Val McDermid. You know, I liked this book. I am very sorry that McDermid did not really leave the door open for a sequel, as her detective George Bennett was a truly likeable guy and I’d love to see more of him.
Was it scary, as claimed? No. It was disturbing in that one of the main characters was an unchecked pedophile, but it wasn’t very scary. Of course, I have never been terrified by Shirley Jackson either, to whose work this story bears glancing and uneasy resemblances.

Pardonable Lies – Jacqueline Winspear. I am thoroughly stalled on number three of the Maisie Dobbs series. As thoroughly stalled as I am in the Laurie King books.

The Great Stink – Clare Clark. Uncle.

This Organic Life – Joan Dye Gussow. I cannot get into this, mostly because the author annoys me dreadfully. Oh, poor pitiful you, struggling to live in a gorgeous restored Victorian, the house “everyone else seems to want,” whose idea of downsizing for retirement is buying a historic if decrepit house on the Hudson River and then being forced – forced, I tell you! – to demolish it and rebuild.

Bloodletting and other miraculous cures: Stories - Vincent Lam. The main characters in this collection of stories are just fucking grating. Ming is a self-absorbed frigid little tease with delusions of grandeur, and Fitz is a pathetic sad sack excuse of a man. I WANTED to like this; after all, it took our ILL department some serious effort to track it down for me. I felt obliged to like it. But all I keep hoping for is a tidy little murder-suicide and a quick end to Ming, Fitz, and their sad little lives. Unfortunately, that course of action - hell, any action - woud require gumption, which our characters are horribly lacking.

On my bedside table: Miracle in the Andes: I am fairly certain Nando Parrado didn't do any whining, and if anyone deserves to, God knows he does. And Baker Towers, because Gina liked it. But I want to finish Tracks first. I need to understand this love affair with the camel.

"'Then, madam, I suggest you dry-clean her.” - Alfred Hitchcock

I was in the shower this morning, and the two older boys come tearing up the steps. "Mom! Mom! Mom!"
"What (the *^&%$) do you want?" I shout, shampoo in my eyes.
"Terzo got my oatmeal!" Primo wails.
"Were you done with it?" I ask.
"Yeah."
"What's he doing with it?" I ask, envisioning oatmeal-crusted kitchen, dog, etc.
"Eating it."

Is it me, or do I just fail to understand the crisis?