nothing lovelier

Update!

2011-10-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've moved to

nothinglovelier.com

Please update your links, and come visit me there!

Change of Address

2011-10-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

Blog continued at

nothinglovelier.com

See you there!

30 Day Challenge, Day Two

2011-10-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

What You Wore Today

30 Day Challenge: Day One

2011-10-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait

I have to laugh at this; I really ought to have taken the picture earlier in the day, when I was not grumpy. Oh well, we need grumpy pictures, too, right? My kids think it's really funny.

I got new glasses, and I LOVE them. I have been putting it off for years. A lot of years. And I ordered them online. I'll have to write a review of that experience soon.

My husband will be home tonight, and we're all so glad. We missed you, Scott!

The Sun'll Come Out

2011-09-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

But it probably won't rain tomorrow.

It will be

the first day of October

the first day of October General Conference (see here if you don't know what that is)

the first time I'll be alone with our kids for all those potentially-inspiring-but-probably-going-to-be-missed talks from our church leaders

the first and maybe only time I will "resort to" (kidding, guys) bribing my kids with a game and candy to listen to at least some of conference

the first day of the 30 Day Photography Challenge I am joining and whose title I capitalized for extra official ... ness (see, there's a button over there on the right)

and

the fourth day my husband will be out of town.

which means I may be going a little crazy.

a lot.

Ruff.

2011-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

On today's list:

~~Clean out the fridge.~~ Squish this face.

~~Vacuum~~. Play.

Done, and done.

Women of Faith 2011

2011-09-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

This fall I get to do something exciting: I get to attend the Women of Faith conference in San Antonio, courtesy of BookSneeze. I have no idea what to expect, but I can't wait! I'll post about my experience following the event. Huzzah!

In No Particular Order

2011-09-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

Things that have happened recently:

I took my kids to the park in the 1970s and my son was sucked into the mud, then wiped it all over his face. So I took pictures and over-edited them. The mud was tricky because, as you probably know, it has not rained here in a million years. It is very hot and in places on fire, and the ground was cracked and looked dry. He sank! It was hi-lar-i-ous. See?

In the last picture he is hugging the dog, not a tree. Or something.

Flora fell off the monkey bars. Every day. For two weeks. And the last time hit her head on the platform to get on the bars. Good thing the school doesn't have swings! They're unsafe ... uh .... PS, she's fine. I promise.

I am so tired from attempting to adjust to the whole school thing (hey, I can stay up this late tonight, she was sent home "sick"-she's not, really-and isn't allowed back tomorrow) and, oh yeah, I got sick from all the smoky air, that I fell asleep trying to read. TO READ, people. Unheard of.

Flora was disappointed to learn that I have already heard of, but hadn't told her about:
Rainbow Fish*
Nursery Rhymes, specifically Jack and Jill
The days of the week, specifically starting with Sunday. Hey, I tried to teach her the days of the week, the months of the year and about seasons, but I think I was doing it wrong, and it never took. Whatever.

I went to a baby shower for a friend who threw me a baby shower for Flora and reconfirmed my knowledge that I do in fact know the nicest people. Too bad I'm a lame friend and we see each other once a year or so.

My husband and I went to Parents Night and sat in the tiny chairs.

After experiencing elementary school as a parent, I can now say without hesitation that my own elementary education was presided over by hippies. And I don't mean Mom and Dad. I mean the faculty and staff. The kind of hippies who don't believe in walls. Flora's school has walls. No hippies here, I guess. (Now I have to examine my entire life and figure out if I'm a hippie.)

*I hate Rainbow Fish. For the record. Flora says it's just a cute story about sharing, but all I see is a book about a group of "friends" ostracizing one of them until he "shares" parts of his body (scales, y'all). EEEWWWW.

Fashion Sense

2011-09-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

Exhibit A:

Surely the prettiest girl at school that day:

Exhibit B:

Mistaken for a girl at school that day (but still really cute. That backpack goes everywhere with us now):

Weekender

2011-08-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

Flaunt It

2011-08-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Are we channeling more Zac Efron than Justin Bieber? How should I know, I'm too old ... All I know is, it's hard to cut off a toddler's remaining flippy baby hair. It's too cute!

If You Are a Cheese

2011-07-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

(age only matters ...)

someone's turned two:

he was kind enough to share his presents (after we forced him to):

then there was fun with the party favors:

he loves:

drawing

he loves:

his sister

he loves:

his Daddy

he loves:

water

and this is maybe the best picture in existence

doesn't it look like he's wishing on those stars

i love:

him

(happy birthday)

I Q Test

2011-07-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

For awhile I had a giant NO SOLICITING sign on our door. It was so big that guests made fun of it. But here's the thing-it didn't really work. It was kind of funny to turn and look from the sign to the solicitors and back again, wanting to say, "So, is literacy a requirement for your job??" but also pretty aggravating to try to get rid of the salespeople.

So the sign eventually lost a battle with glass cleaner. I meant to make a new one, but have been oddly free of solicitors.

Until tonight.

And because I cannnot run down the street screaming at this fellow, I will just tell you this. You have to be some kind of genius to try, at 8:45 PM to sell to a woman holding a pajama-clad boy with both a blankie and a lovey, with a little girl hanging off of her, who tells you I AM NOT INTERESTED, AND I WAS TRYING TO PUT MY KIDS TO BED.

I know why my sign didn't work. It needed lights. So the night shift sales people could read it easily. Haaaatttteeeee.

No Animals Were Harmed In the Making of This Post

2011-06-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

Or, um, faces, either.

Booksneeze Review: No Place Like Holmes by Jason Lethcoe

2011-06-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

Holmes, get it? Sherlock? Okay, obviously that's the jumping-off point for this YA novel, and it is s-l-o-w going at first. But, happily, it picks up and turns out to be quite an entertaining and uplifting story about a boy named Griffin Sharpe who is sent to London to stay with his Uncle "Snoops" for the summer. Turns out his uncle lives next door to the famous Sherlock Holmes. The rest? You'll have to read it and see!

Free (e-book) copy provided by Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their Booksneeze program. No compensation was given for the review (positive or not).

Oh That Girl

2011-06-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, these are everywhere. Couldn't resist!

Is it not Mabel's twin??

We're loving the goggles around here!

Booksneeze Review: The Waiting Place by Eileen Button

2011-06-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is one of the BEST books I've read recently (and I've read some good ones, too). Button describes points in her life when she was waiting for something-a birth, a death, a marriage, a bigger paycheck-and shows what was beautiful in those waiting moments. Highly recommend!

Copy received thru booksneeze via thomas nelson publishers. I was not compensated, and I was not required to give a positve review. I mean it!

No-Calorie Lunch in Ten Easy Steps

2011-06-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

Step one: Obtain at least two children. One will not suffice.

Step two: Morning routine. Change diaper, make breakfast, fill cups of milk, warn that if the milk is left on the table the cat will drink it and be sick, and the person who left the milk there will clean up after the lactose-intolerant cat.

Step three: Buy some time. Throw in some laundry, pick up some stuff, feel discouraged by dirty house.

Step four: If and only if it is now well after the two children have eaten an entire meal and at least one snack and have finished all their milk, go in the kitchen. Make yourself the fastest meal possible, eg, a cheese sandwich. Use the last of the cheese. Do not concern yourself with nutrition.

Step five: Holding the sandwich, walk into the living room where the children are ~~watching a video~~ playing with hand carved, imported European pre-mathematics-skill-building toys. Be sure they both see the sandwich.

Step six: Eat one bite.

Step seven: The younger child will exclaim, "I want bite, momma!" and you will proceed to give him half of your sandwich. Which it turns out is "ucky, momma!"

Step eight: The older child will cry out, "HEY! I want a piece of that cheese!" and you will have to say, as you look at the remaining half of your sandwich, "Um, this is the last piece. But he doesn't like it, so maybe he will share with you."

Step nine: Older child smiles winningly and politely asks younger child for a bite of the ucky cheese. Ucky cheese becomes Best Cheese Ever, and goes straight into younger child's mouth.

Step ten: Give remaining half of sandwich to older child.

Everybody wins.

I Won't Say A Word, Not One Word, It's None of My Nevermind

2011-05-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

(fr. The Parent Trap) (the good version)

So nobody really wants any parenting advice (really), right? But here it comes anyway, sort of. I just want to tell you that these are my two favorite parenting books:

Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids, by Kim John Payne

in which we learn that letting go of things and also activities results in organic family time. I love this book.

and

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogel

I read this a few years ago. From which I mainly remember the gist, but also this specific: Mogel quotes a Hasidic saying, "If your child has a talent to be a baker, don't ask him to be a doctor."

Now, don't you want to leave a comment in which you answer the question, are such long titles off-putting? Or do they do some editing for you?

I mean, you could pretty much go to a shelf of parenting books and say, gee, I want one using "the power of less" or "[religious] teachings", or one that fosters "calm, happiness and security" or "self-reliance".

And you'd never have to suffer the time-suck that is flipping through the other titles, such as 101 Ways to Cut Up Your Tween's Food: Guarantee He'll Always Need You, or Stuff I Think About Parenting and Children, Even Though I Don't Actually Have or Know Any, So I Wrote a Book About It, You're Welcome.

Just think, they could all be called "Kids and Their Parents" or "Families of People, Including Children". Or something. See, now we're all thankful for what at first seemed oddly specific titles, because we can see that they're actually helpfully specific.

Booksneeze Review: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Mallach

2011-05-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

My husband works in business and often expresses dismay at the many, many business people who find many, many ways to do business dishonestly. I'd hoped this book would give us some idea of businesses that choose to function virtuously, and how they do so.

It may, in fact, be that book, but I had to just give up on it once I came to the section discussing Mel Gibson's virtuous business practices. Whether I believe Mel Gibson is in fact doing business virtuously is not the issue I have, though.

This is not the first book I've reviewed for Booksneeze (for Thomas Nelson Publishers) which held up celebrities and movies as examples of how to live. I have to say, I just don't understand. I suppose this may seem a good, and probably easy, way to get readers to identify with your book, but it also seems lazy. I am sure that in doing research on virtuous businesses, there must, must be other, non-celebrity examples.

Been Adopted

2011-05-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

By a cat, of course.

There are lots of cats that come and go from our yard (we keep OUR cat inside, and she doesn't even want to escape.)

One of them even, um, died in our yard. (no, I do not know why. it was weird and we were not pleased. also sad.)

I'm not sure what is going on with our home--why is it a cat mecca?

Anyway, this little kitty showed up a couple of months ago and I had to take a few moments to overcome the urge to squash it with love. It looks just like our cat did as a kitten. Like a little black and white cow with whiskers.

I figured it was someone's wandering pet, and left it alone.

After a couple of weeks, I realized it was pretty much always here.

And I saw it living under our neighbor's porch.

I will state, for the record, that I, the resident crazy cat lady, did NOT feed this animal for that whole time, ON PURPOSE, because I don't actually want another cat. I KNOW.

But a few days ago I saw it acting strange in the neighbor's yard. I walked right up to it and it just meowed pathetically and didn't try to run (pretty much the opposite of stray cat behavior 101). I looked and looked and looked at it.

It was starving.

So we fed it ... and it will never go away now. I want to find it another home, but I think we'll soon be finding out if our cat likes being a twin. SAD FACE.

footnotes:
1. no it's not because of the chickens. they are bigger than a cat. unless by cat you mean lion or tiger or something. but a regular, pet-type cat? the chickens could totally take it.

2.also, we have a DOG. you'd think this would deter, but no. they don't care.

3.why are they not living under our porch? weird. possibly because there may be skunks living under the porch. yeah, really. and eew. and eew, again.

4. when i say it was starving, i mean, picture a stick figure with a big cat head, and some fur.

5. can't it find something to hunt? snakes, rats, i don't know. weird. it's pretty young, though.

Ponies > Princesses

2011-05-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Big 0-5

We have ...

The Birthday girl:

One hungry little brother:

"Ah eata cack, mama!" :

A stick horse race*:

Um. Horse? Jumping? :

And a "me, too!" boy:

Finally, we open presents outdoors:

* Flora: "What do you get if you win??"

Me: "The satisfaction of winning."

Flora: ...

Actually, I Think She Only Ate My Patience

2011-05-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Or my tolerance. For pastels and glitter.

I recently asked my almost 5-yr. old girl, "What do you like about Cinderella?"

She said, "She is beautiful and has pretty clothes."

I said, "Yes. Do you like anything she does?"

"What? No. She's pretty and has pretty clothes."

The conversation went on, as I came up with some reasons to like Cinderella (uh ... she's kind to animals, she loves to sing, and she seems to work hard. beyond that, ???).

I just read Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.
by Peggy Orenstein.

Orenstein looks at this culture of Barbie, Disney Princesses, etc, and questions its effect on girls. I found the book, as a book, a little odd--while I like Orenstein's writing (a lot), the book read like a very long magazine article.

But, this pink and princess thing. I am tired of it, myself. And Orenstein has succeeded in galvanizing my wariness (can you even do that? probably not, but I'm so tired that I say, yes, you can, and she did). She gives a clear picture of just. how. calculated. marketing toward kids--little girls--my daughter, and yours, is.

I was wary of the pink wave around us before my daughter was born. I remember some sweet women planning a shower for me and asking if I even wanted anything that wasn't pink. I decorated her room in teal and purple. I felt weird. But I figured she wouldn't care, you know, and pink isn't my favorite color.

Fast forward just a bit and I've got a princess loving, pink loving, nail painting, all things girl, girl. So I think about it a lot. And I don't know what effect these things have on her. Are they all bad? I don't think so. Then again, sometimes she'll ask me questions like, "Mama, can girls use a saw? Can girls hammer things?"

And then I find occasion to saw and hammer. Because, YES. And I tell her that, p.s., remember how your Grandpa was welding the other day? Mama can do that, too.

I sometimes think, as I am sick sick sick of saying to my daughter, "NO, we are NOT buying that (insert name of any product, it probably comes in princess)" that I might not mind so much if the things were confined to the toy aisles. But it wears me out when it's band aids and soap and clothing and food (why do we need to eat princesses?).

Sometimes I just can't devote energy to caring. Sometimes she's wearing pink and climbing a tree, barefoot and covered in dirt from playing in the garden or making mud pies. She loves to catch bugs and lizards and given the opportunity has tried to catch minnows with her bare hands (that, fyi, was precious. love.).

Anyway. It was an interesting read, and I'd recommend it.

Because Mother's Day Is Coming Up

2011-05-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

And on that day, my children will dance around me in a circle, holding hands and singing to me. So sweetly.

But until then, my days are more like this (and "this" is good):

If I ask Flora to do something, there will be four million questions to verify the necessity and purpose of the task, and she will then deem it unworthy of her attention and skip off to "train the dog" in the backyard. Which goes like this: "Hey, git aloooong, li'l doggie" .... some barking (not from our dog. no, really, Clover goes to the fence and stands there until the neighbors' dogs start barking like crazy, then runs off wagging her tail) ... then Flora screams, "I told you to git aloong, li'l doggie, git alooong!". It is hilarious.

Anyway, if I give her a task, no dice.

But I find her doing laundry and setting the table and helping her brother and making beds and cleaning her room without any prompting. So we're good. She really loves to help, and I'm happy for it.

And then there's Bear, who is nearing two, and showing it. In one day this weekend he got into the cat food, cat litter, gum, and drinking glasses. And ended the day by pouring sweet-and-sour sauce all over himself and a lot of the dining room. Gah. I'm still finding cat food everywhere.

But he also says, "Ah lub ooo, mama" (I love you) and hugs me all. the. time. He's also been trying to help; he got out extra dishes after seeing his sister set the table, and he insists on carrying things for me, and giving me food if he can get to it himself.

So it's cool that we're not the von Trapps the rest of the year.

And, I didn't post my finished drawing yet so here it is:

Mixed Bag

2011-04-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

Today:

Listened to the funniest conversation between my kids. They were in their room and I was in mine, with the monitor on.

She sang him songs and read him his favorite books, and then he said, "Ummm ..... Daddy?"

Starting sentences with "Ummmmm ....." is his new thing, and it is CUTE.

She said, "Oh, you want Daddy? Me, too."

And went to the window to see if his car was here.

She said, "Well, he already went to work."

I heard her climb into his bed. And then, "Mommy went to work, too. And .... I am going to work in a few minutes, so you will just have to take care of yourself today."

He said, "AWWWWW." and fell over (on purpose).

Later we walked to the store, and found two (!) bird eggshells (also a dead bird, but that wasn't so great). One of the eggs was a brown splotchy, swirly egg. Very lucky.

But, very unlucky: Bear fell out of the stroller and got a little banged up when the stroller wheels got caught on a bump in the asphalt while we crossed the street. SADDEST TIME EVER. Poor baby.

At dinner time, I invented a recipe. Too bad I didn't write it down, or measure anything. According to my husband you would want to eat it. I was so excited, I've never made up a recipe. It was a semi-quiche that turned out more like an egg cake with potatoes at the bottom. Yum.

And finally, there was drawing:

My Real Talents: I Show Off

2011-04-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Now I've led you to believe that showing off is my talent. Whereas it is only a nasty habit.

Actually, here's the deal: I am in a drawing class for the first time in, oh, a decade. Which as I am an artist is a very. long. time. Basically the only time I drew anything between that last college drawing class and this month was when I drew with/for kids, and one day when I sketched a portrait (in pink pen!) of my daughter when she was a (sleeping) baby.

Anyway, I'm in a drawing class, and doing a 16-hour portrait of a model. So I've been to two class sessions. At the first, I couldn't start. Just couldn't do it. But the instructor was very nice and helpful and I finally got going.

It was a little embarrassing for me as I'd been introduced to him by a friend as "Lindsey who has a Studio degree from UT", so I felt some explanation of my nerves was in order.

I explained that it had been years since I'd drawn and that my last drawing experiences were different and that I was ultimately more of a sculpture/camera type gal and by sculpture I mean installations not busts so this is really different ...

The other students all seem to know each other and I'm shy and I was concentrating so no one talked to me for the rest of the class, and that was that.

The next week, one of them complimented my drawing and I said, "Thank you!" and smiled, and, um, offended them. And a bit later offended someone else the same way.

And there they are, my real talents: insecurity followed by inadvertently offending people.

But, I think this is going pretty well (8 hrs in) and now I'm supposed to say, for not having drawn for ten years, or something:

I'll repost after tomorrow's class and the final class next week, so I can continue to offend people. I love to give.

To Exercise the Power of Vision Upon

2011-04-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

(Look)

I recently read A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman.

A Thousand Sisters was written by Lisa Shannon, who despite (as she says) having a "great life-a successful business, a fiance, a home, and security", found herself wanting something further. She watched Oprah one day and learned about Congo.

Congo was a place of death, and rape, and war, of children starving.

Shannon found that there was little awareness and little action from the US. She began to raise money for Congo women, running alone at first and eventually founding an organization, Run For Congo Women, to continue her efforts.

And Congo is still a place of death, rape, war, of children starving.

I had no idea. I will admit that I am generally uninformed on world affairs, although I have in the past couple of years been trying to change that. Still, it stunned me that I had no idea. No idea.

For months, I have been working myself up over what I would have called feminist concerns. I won't go into what they were, it's personal and beside the point. And I don't mean to minimize my own problems or worries or needs, but here I am, safe enough, with a happy home and healthy babies. There they are-other women, other mothers-with concerns that I just, simply, do not face.

Once I took a series of photos which involved crawling under furniture. Or jamming the camera and my arm, as far back as they fit, under there, and clicking away. They were beautiful. Maybe I'll show you sometime.

They had these long titles derived from definitions of words describing the way I took the photo-above, under ... you see. The titles were maybe more beautiful than the photos.

And the photos, the titles, were about a way of looking.

Because I read A Thousand Sisters, I am looking for a way to help other women.

I was lucky one day in college to visit a painter's studio. There was a big, gorgeous abstract oil painting hanging in front of us. I looked at it while I listened to a conversation with the painter about her process.

Apparently it involved sitting in front of the canvas and looking at it. For lengthy intervals. Then making a line. And looking. Etc.

I am looking. I am choosing.

To the left are buttons linking to Women for Women International; Run For Congo Women; and A Thousand Sisters by Lisa Shannon.

**edit-There will be buttons, as soon as I figure out how to get blogger to accept them. (?????)
Meanwhile, links above.

Seems To Have Eaten a Smurf

2011-03-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

It Is Not

2011-03-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

The term is waste not, want not.

NOT waist not, want not.

And you COULDN'T care less.

Unless you actually could care less, in which case, nevermind.

This Is Your Brain On Dogs

2011-03-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Question:

Why does my daughter cut all her hair off annually? This makes round three ...

Question:

Why can't the pajamas I made for her (major accomplishment! I finished sewing something!) be clean when I want to take a picture of them?

Question:

Why do my kids make these faces (or fold themselves up) when I take pictures of them??

Here's what I think:

1. the hair, I have no idea. She's a free spirit, I guess.

2. I need to get my camera out more often. Maybe if it's always attached to me they won't even see it anymore.

Unrelated:

Nothing says "happy 6th anniversary, honey" like a nice stinky dog.

So I went out to run errands-groceries, paint chips, misc. stuff- on Saturday and came home with this instead.

Yep. Scott said, "UHH, whose dog is that?"

And I said, "Yours!"

So I am kind of a big deal. Remember this? Dogs are not some of my favorite things. But here we go, again.

Smiley.

Boy Crazy

2011-03-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

About five minutes after Bear was born, people wanted to know

"How is it different having a boy?"

And I would say, "ummmm, he's still a baby so it's pretty. much. the. same."

But.

As he enters that stage of childhood commonly known as terrible,

it

is

different.

Case in point: the husband and I are in the midst of some serious rearranging around here, all in the name of giving Flora her own room. The biggest obstacle is finding space for our "home office", since we do not have another room floating around anywhere. We settled on putting the computer and all its appendages in the dining room for now.

The desk was all set up before 11 pm ... and by 11 am the next day it was BROKEN, dismantled and moved across the room. All at the hands of a 19 month old boy!

He greets people by growling at them.

And that, people, is how it is having a boy (after having a girl).

PS Need I state here that I love that he growls? It's hilarious. Okay, by age three it could be disturbing, but right now? Cute.

Chocolate, Bread, Apples, Cheese, Not Necessarily in That Order

2011-02-13T21:26:00.000-08:00

Today in Sunday school, there was a wonderful lesson which I am not really talking about here, and am (apologetically) going to seriously paraphrase (probably incorrectly), but the teacher talked for a minute about how there are four distinct (New Testament) gospels which don't necessarily need to be chopped up and mixed together--and how if you think of your four favorite foods, you may prefer those separately rather than chopped up and all mixed together.

So I thought of my four favorite foods. Do I have four favorite foods? When did chocolate become one of them? And once my mini-identity crisis passed, I thought, so, my favorites are kind of ingredients. Ish. I mean, there's no "macaroni and cheese" or "sandwich" or "blahblah casserole" or something.

Which brings me to: soon I will be the ~~sad~~ proud ~~owner~~ mother of a kindergartner. Who will need to be at school at some inhuman hour, like before nine a.m. A lot before nine a.m. And who should probably be fed breakfast, rather than, ahem, scavenging for it in the fridge and various cupboards (sometimes there's candy in there! she's caught on!) while I ... workout ... okay, while I sleep a little more.

And that is why I have been reading cookbooks in search of great breakfast recipes. The problem is they have all these ingredients, and these processes. Actually, the problem is me: I don't want to cook breakfast. I want to eat chocolate, bread, apples or cheese, not necessarily in that order. I have actually found and made some great recipes, but they were, I think, one-hit wonders. Come fall, it will be chocolate, bread, apples or cheese.

In case your tastes have reached a more sophisticated level than mine, here's what I've been reading:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

Yes, it is old news, but I keep hearing about it over and over again. I just saw a feature on it in Urban Farm Magazine. I was skeptical about this process of no-knead, refrigerated dough and the claim of five minutes, but it's worked well for us. And I tried a couple of breakfasty type recipes, which we all loved.

Williams Sonoma Essentials of Breakfast and Brunch

This is one beautiful cookbook. I wish I owned it, but luckily the local library has a copy. I haven't actually tried the recipes yet but I've got my eye on quite a few.

Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe

Chai Oatmeal, I'm looking at you. This is an entire (lengthy) book devoted to breakfast. I do own it. Yum.

Feast
Nigella Lawson

I love this book, although I haven't eaten the one recipe I've tried, yet. It's a cake (from scratch! in honor of Valentine's Day! and I only ruined it a little, I think!) which is chilling in the fridge overnight. Have I mentioned I don't, um, bake?

BUT what I love so far is that the book is organized around various special occasion meals. In addition to being the kind of mom who actually makes breakfast I also have this desire to be a better hostess. Too bad watching Leave It To Beaver won't ever teach me how ...

I also read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Which is not a cookbook, and which I cannot recommend for breakfast. It concerns a group of students at a British boarding school called Hailsham. The students are not just away at school, though. The school is their whole life, and three students form a particularly close bond. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy go on to leave the school and enter the next phases of their lives. The book follows them as they go on to fulfill their duties--as clones created to donate organs to "originals" (uh, not clones).

But it also follows them, through Kathy's memory, in and out of love and relationships and life much as we know it. The story slowly disturbed me a la DuMaurier*; I thought about it for days and days after finishing the book.

On a (very much) lighter note, I read Lies I Told My Children , an ebook by Karen McQuestion. I have to admit I mostly chose it because it was inexpensive. Also the title is funny. It's a collection of memoirs about family life, and it was funny, but not hilarious**.

And because you love me so much and therefore are quite interested, I am reading Agnes Grey now. By Anne Bronte, whose existence I now know about because I saw the following video on another blog:

*As in, Daphne. Note to self: why have I still not read Rebecca ????

** Or, it was funny, but not "laugh- at -loud" funny. Which is how a review I read today described a play . I think it was a typo, but I kind of want it to be intentional.

How We Roll

2011-02-06T18:13:00.000-08:00

Still working on flying:

Annual Father/Daughter Dance Night:

Got a haircut:

Annnnnd, a makeover:

Texas Snowman:

Booksneeze Review: Sabbath, by Dan Allender, Bob Abernathy, and William Boles

2011-01-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

I hoped this book would help me find new ideas for and thoughts about Sunday worship. Unfortunately, I found the language confusing and sometimes meaningless. I will be looking for better books on this subject.

I received a free copy of this book through the publisher's Booksneeze books for bloggers program. The review is my own and I was not compensated for it.

Start This Year Off Right

2011-01-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

So it's the first month of the new year.

And I totally stuck dirty dishes in my oven to hide them from guests.

Which is not the worst part.

I had already washed enough to fill up the broken dishwasher-turned-drying-rack.

Which is not the worst part.

That is: most of the dirty dishes wouldn't fit in the oven.

The Forest for the Trees

2011-01-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

Or, How I Took Too Many Pictures and You Probably Won't Look at Them All.

Also, How You Are Just Now Reading About Our Christmas.

I expected to be attacked early Christmas morning for Santa time. Nope. I woke up nice and early so I could read (big surprise), and kept looking at the clock and nudging my husband, saying, "I think I hear them waking up now ..."

Finally, it was 9am, so I went up to their room and found my daughter, wide awake. She was playing quietly in the corner, whispering so she wouldn't wake up her brother.

Me: "Do you want to go downstairs now?"

Flora: "No, let's just play in here."

Me, several minutes later: "What do you want for breakfast?"

Flora: "Oh, I don't want any. I just want to play with my dolls."

Bear woke up, so they played ... and played ... while I tried to convince her we should go downstairs.

Me (excited face): "What are we doing today??"

Flora: "OHHHH!!! ... ... ... We are ... going to GRANDMA'S HOUSE!!!!!"

Me: "Yeah, we are. Anything else?"

Flora: "We can eat there!"

Eventually, she decided she did want breakfast, if it was toast with Nutella, so we went downstairs. Where they made it through all of breakfast without mentioning Santa once. It was probably 10:30 or 11 by the time we actually opened presents. Ha!

This ... is Bear rolling around in the aftermath:

He mostly wanted to play with Flora's toys, anyway:

She got a harmonica:

And he spent time with Mabel:

Here is Flora in her new hat and gloves, and then in her fairy costume

(These are from the night before, with my parents):

And, since we're going back in time, what do you do with your dad on his day off before Christmas? Balloon fight, of course:

This is here because she's so cute it just has to be:

And, our resolutions for 2011:

1. Be a good friend

2. Learn to fly

Books Eighty-Five to .... ONE HUNDRED

2010-12-31T19:55:00.000-08:00

YAY!! I finished this morning.

That's My Son
Rick Johnson

This is meant to be a book to help moms understand what their sons need from them. Unfortunately, I was confused by the repeated references to helping (particularly single) moms with this, and what I thought the "help" turned out to be: your son needs another man to help him become a man. And "don't treat boys like girls", which I have to say I am not sure I understand. Other than obvious things, like, don't make your son wear dresses and makeup and pink bows.

Hopefully I've got time to figure out what it means to mother a boy, and some help that makes more sense to me (and I've got my husband, thankfully) before my boy becomes a man.

Sabbath
Dan Allender, Phyllis Tickle, Bob Abernathy, William Boles

Sabbath worship has been on my mind lately. How to do it, and how do other faiths do it. I hoped this book would explore that, and there were a couple of moments it almost did. Mostly, though, it was a book of semi-cryptic stories and statements that I'd sit and ponder and ultimately decide didn't really mean much to me.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Seth Grahame-Smith

I meant to read this when ... ever it came out, and never got around to it. I'm a pretty big Jane Austen fan, though by far not the biggest, and this take on it sounded interesting.

Grahame-Smith used Austen's text and added zombies. It was funny, though it dragged on, some. I think the opening line was my favorite: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

The Hunger Games

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

all by Suzanne Collins

What I knew before reading: dystopian young adult series everyone had already read. Which is none of my favorite things.

And it's true, I couldn't put them down, and read them all in two days. But. The reason I couldn't put them down was that the hunger games is so awful an idea that I had to find out if there could be a remotely happy ending.

I don't even know what else to say about them. I didn't like the characters, and I didn't like the idea of the games. Whenever I read dystopian fiction, I go crazy trying to figure out if the story is just an exercise (what if ...?) or a warning. I never feel like I grasp the warning, and I never enjoy the exercise.

Understood Betsy
Dorothy Canfield Fisher

This was available for free on my Kindle. That's right, Kindle. Cause my husband is really really nice. And awesome. I was expecting a cd that I'd been talking about, and no, his Christmas gift from me was not awesome. Acceptable, but not awesome.

Anyhow, this was free. And I desperately needed more books to get to one hundred. So this book, written for children in the early 1900s, seemed a good fit. I wasn't expecting much, honestly.

It turned out to be wonderful. It's about an orphaned girl, Elizabeth Ann, who is raised by some older female relatives who pretty much smother her. There's a lot of talk about how they "understand" her, and they want to know every thought and be with her all the time and protect her from everything. They even let her have plenty of exercise in the form of a one-block daily walk.

One day it turns out that one of them is sick and has to be quarantined, and through a mix-up, Elizabeth Ann ends up living on the farm of the dreaded Putneys, relatives the women disliked. The Putneys call her Betsy and teach her to do things she never thought she'd do , like help with dinner.

I loved that "hovercraft parents" aren't new. It was so funny. I think my daughter will love Betsy, too.

The Beautiful and the Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I wish I'd read this right after Zelda. I didn't, though, and I barely made it through. SO boring, and depressing. All I could think was "Is THIS autobiographical?" and feel sad.

Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (P.S. So Does May.)
Barbara Park

First of all, let me state that I love Junie B. Jones. I know not every mom does, but I just do. Bad grammar and yelling and sneaky peeky spying and all. So I loved this book, and I will also recommend Lana Quintal's reading of the Junie B. series*.

Junie B.'s class is doing the Secret Santa thing, and Junie is unhappy with the name she got: May. May is not her friend. May tattles on Junie, and Junie antagonizes May.

Junie B. decides to give May a lump of coal. But, just before she goes through with it, Junie and her friends have a conversation with May which reveals that unlike each of them, May doesn't have a best friend. So she gives her the best gift in the class, instead.

I loved seeing Junie B. Jones struggle with temptation and make a kind choice. Loved it.

*Just not for very small kids, who, ahem, maybe will listen closer than you think and cut off all their hair like Junie after you listen to it together. For example.

Cam Jansen: The Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds #1
David Adler and Susanna Natti

This book seems great for kids just old enough to read a longer story (but not too long). It was a good balance of mystery/danger and adults keeping kids safe.

Magic Tree House #11: Lions at Lunchtime
Mary Pope Osborne

I see this series everywhere, so I thought I'd try one. And after reading it ... the word that comes to mind is tedious. Although I think my kids would like it.

Basically, there's a treehouse that travels through space and time, and two kids solve riddles on their adventures with the treehouse. And there were scientific facts thrown in.

Goldilicious
Victoria Kann

I haven't read Pinkalicious, or Purplicious, yet. But I love Goldilicious. I think I liked it more than my daughter did.

The girl in the book has an invisible (to adults) pet unicorn, Goldie. And the book has some very funny moments, like when Pinkalicious (that's the girl's name) is supposed to come in and is calling Goldie. She says, "Have you become one with the universe?"

I loved the illustrations, too.

Beauty and the Beast

Marie Le Prince de Beaumont

I borrowed a copy of Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et La Bete from the library awhile ago, and after discovering that my cute little girl loves a black and white film from the 40s (in French with English subtitles, no less), I realized I'd never read the fairy tale.

The film is similar to this version of the story, which I find much better than Disney's. If you were wondering.

Do-Over!
Robin Hemley

Hemley goes back to "do-over" dissatisfying times in his life, including Kindergarten and his Prom. The project was interesting, but what made me like the book was Hemley's sense of humor.

Mudhouse Sabbath
Lauren F. Winner

Winner converted from Judaism to Christianity, and this book explores the ideas and differences of Jewish and Christian Sabbath worship.

I wish I knew more (and more) about Judaism. And I am trying to learn more about what the Sabbath means in my own faith and to me as an individual.

I really enjoyed this book and it's a great read if you're thinking about those things, too.

So that's my hundred books for 2010. :)

Christmas Cheer

2010-12-23T00:07:00.000-08:00

Rather than reading, I've been up all night decorating stockings and making notmartha's tiny gingerbread (sugar cookie) houses.

Books Eighty One to Eighty Five and the Lesson of the Day

2010-12-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

The Monsters of Templeton
Lauren Groff

Templeton is a town so idyllic it reminds the narrator of a snowglobe. So idyllic that she had to get out of there, and get far away, and rarely return. She has returned feeling disgraced, and has to live with her mother. The night she arrives, she witnesses something being dragged out of the lake. It is the town's resident lake monster.

As the world watches Templeton to figure out the story of that monster, the reader follows the narrator's journey to figure out her own family's story, and uncover all the monsters there.

I absolutely loved this story. I can't even lend it to you because the day after I finished it I'd already lent it to someone else.

Comfort Me With Apples

and

Tender at the Bone

both by Ruth Reichl

Okay. You already know I love the author, after Garlic and Sapphires and Not Becoming My Mother. And I loved these two books as well.

Both are memoirs, and Reichl is a) a wonderful writer and b) an inspiring woman. Ten stars. Each.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
Terry Ryan

Ryan's mother supported her family (10 kids!) in the 1950s and 60s by winning contests to, for example, write slogans or jingles for various products. Ryan tells that story, and ... wow. Also inspiring.

The Queen of Palmyra
Minrose Gwin

I hoped this would live up to this quote on the cover: "Here it is, the most powerful and lyrical novel about race, racism and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee Smith, author of Oral History)

Maybe I'm just woefully under-read on that subject. But I have read To Kill a Mockingbird. And reading The Queen of Palmyra was not a comparable experience.

I did love the main character, a young girl growing up with little understanding of the times or situations around her. Including in her own home, where her parents are divided: her mother won't allow "the n word" in their home, while her father goes of to secret "club" meetings (the Klan).

The problem I had, over and over, was with the father. He was pretty much every kind of evil imaginable. It was too much for me.

I've got 15 books left. YIPES!!

As for the Lesson of the Day:
If you missed out on all the gingerbread house making fun as a child, and you get all set up to build and decorate one with your child, be sure you buy one for each of you, so that, as my daughter says, "We can BOTH make our chooses." Cause, uh, you might not know just how much you've always wanted to have that gingerbread house fun. And your kid might not have much fun sharing with you. Just sayin.

A Sunday At Home

2010-12-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

I've read four books in two days. I haven't reviewed them because my brain is melting. Church was amazing today, but the awesomeness further melted my brain. Time to process.

In the second picture, you can see where my daughter glued decorations to the mantle while I was reading. That one I haven't been able to remove yet. It was pretty funny. She thought she was in big trouble, but it was so cute I wasn't even upset.

She also has a new haircut, so she can look (sort of) like Ramona Quimby. If you don't love Ramona, I don't ever want to know about it.

In the last picture, they're reading a book I loved as a kid. It is a really weird book. About a dog who lives on a train and something about dumpster diving. WEIRD. Why did I love that? The illustrations aren't cute, either. I don't know what was going on there.

At bedtime, we've been reading Charlotte's Web. If you don't love that, I don't ever want to know about it, either. Also, you should try loving it. Waaay up there on my list of favorites. Which is, you know, a long list.

And, my kids are exceptionally cute.

Books Seventy to Eighty

2010-12-05T00:24:00.000-08:00

Young Adult:

Freaky Friday
Mary Rodgers

So much fun, and a little different than the movie (yeah, I'm referring to the first movie. No remake for me). In the book, the mom switches them on purpose. I love it.

Picture Books:

Scarface Claw,

Hairy MacLary From Donaldson's Dairy,

Hairy MacLary, Sit,

Hairy MacLary's Rumpus at the Vet,

Hairy MacLary's Caterwaul Caper

all by Lynley Dodd

These are of a collection of children's books that I adore. I happened upon another one day in the library, and Flora and I took it home. It is called Slinky Malinki, Open the Door. Slinky Malinki is a (slinky) black cat who's learned to open doors and make big messes while his people aren't home. Later we discovered the rest of Dodd's wonderful books, and Flora fell in love with one dog from the books, named Schnitzel Von Krumm. He's a dachsund with "a very low tum."

Hairy MacLary is another dog, and Scarface Claw is a tough cat who features in several of the books. We've loved reading and re-reading these.

I Don't Want a Posh Dog
Emma Dodd

A cute story with adorable illustrations about a girl who just wants a dog who loves her. Gotta tell you, not the best time to read this around here. Lots of tears about our long-since-run-away dog. Lots of guilt for Mom about how we just aren't getting a dog again any time soon.

Llama Llama Misses Mama
Anna Dewdney

Little Llama is a favorite around here, too. Unless you ask my husband, who hates him. Anyway, this children's book is one of a series and I think they're very sweet. This time around, Llama starts preschool and learns that Mama won't leave him there forever, and he can make friends and have fun. Simple and sweet.

Fiction:

How To Be An American Housewife
Margaret Dilloway

A Japanese woman marries an American soldier and moves to the US after tragic personal events. She has a book called "How to be an American Housewife", and quotes of it preface chapters.

Her daughter grows up without any real knowledge of Japan or her mother's life there. The mother asks her daughter to travel to Japan and help her save her relationship with her estranged family. The daughter takes along her own daughter, and the three women become more connected to each other and their shared history.

I thought this was an incredibly touching and interesting story and one of the best books I've read this year.

The Stuff That Never Happened
Maddie Dawson

The title refers to a couple's painful (adulterous) early marital history, which they've chosen to sweep under the rug. But when it comes back and they're forced to confront it, they discover their relationship is better and stronger than ever. A good love story. I really liked it.

The Sweet By and By
Sara Evans and Rachel Hauck

I mostly liked this book, though parts were too much "romance" for me. But it was also a good love story. Not my favorite, by far. Just okay.

BookSneeze Review: Dining With Joy by Rachel Hauck

2010-11-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

When I began to read Dining with Joy, I got confused. Hadn't I read this book already? Recently? I flipped through the several pages I'd just finished and thought, and stared. Was this going to be a Christian version of Set Up in SoHo?

Yikes. I was definitely not prepared to enjoy this read. I only continued because I was obligated to review it, having received a copy from Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Happily, that obligation turned into a joy (oops, accidental pun). Though Set Up and Dining have similarities (both feature single female protagonists with cooking shows, which, okay, is a huge similarity) they are not the same book. Whew!

Here's how it goes: Joy Ballard's Dad had a cooking show. He unfortunately also had a heart attack, and Joy inherited the show. She's beautiful, personable, and everyone loves her. She also can't cook, but it's her "little" secret. Enter the man: he's a gorgeous, talented chef whose restaurant recently failed. He's hiding out in her small town, and once he's on her show ... well, of course they'll fall in love.

I'm not partial to romance novels, but I loved this book. That's saying a lot. I mean it.

I loved that Hauck portrayed these two single, adult, Christian characters with all their flaws and ethical dilemmas, but they aren't sleeping together. And it's not so easy for them. But they aren't. And that is a little bit of reality, I think.

*A note on how I thought this was a book I'd already read:

Perhaps it says something about our culture that I could choose two books (numbers 20 and 69 out of my 100 for the year) with single female protagonists who have their own cooking shows? Like, anyone could have a cooking show right now? Except me, guys, not me. I'd be all "First I wash my hands, and then every time I touch the food I wash em again, and then I touch my face so I wash em again. And then I looked at something, so I washed them again. And then I had to leave the kitchen to stop my kids from eating each other, no, seriously, there were teeth involved, and then I forgot about food and sat down to watch a commercial. And an hour later we all sniffed the air and screwed up our noses and I thought, geez, someone outside is barbecuing and it really stinks but it turned out that it was really my kitchen. But don't worry, it was only almost on fire, plus after I cleaned it up I washed my hands again. So it's okay, really, it is." And then we'd all eat sandwiches for dinner. Only we'd be out of bread, so instead of sandwiches, I really meant oatmeal. We've always got oatmeal.

**Actually, I can cook, and it's been awhile since I almost burned down our kitchen. It has.

***Also: I received a copy of this book from the publisher. I was (obviously) not compensated for the review, and the opinions therein are mine, all mine. I didn't have to provide a positive review, either. I just liked this book. The end.

Books 65 to 68

2010-11-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

Ray in Reverse
Daniel Wallace

Wallace tells Ray's life story, backward. The book begins in Heaven, where Ray is part of a group called Last Words, which is just what it sounds like: share your last words. And then the group criticizes them. That first chapter made me laugh, but from there the book was less funny and more serious, dramatic and occasionally kind of disturbing.

I didn't really like this book, which was kind of disappointing because I loved

Big Fish
Daniel Wallace

My husband and I love the movie, and every time we watch it one of us says, "Oh yeah, it's based on a book" and then we forget that we'd wanted to read it. Except this last time, when we did read it.

I'm sure you know the basics of the story (same as the movie): Will wants to get to know his dying father, Edward, but all his attempts are met by jokes and stories. He feels like he doesn't really know his father, but maybe he's missing the point.

I think most (okay, I think *all* but I'll say most just in case) parents have those stories. I can think of a couple of my Dad's stories. And I know there are a couple of mine that my kids will see that way. One is totally fiction, and is requested all the time by my daughter. And followed every time by "But really?" and I say yes because she wants me to, wants it to be true even though she knows it's not.

One of the beauties of Big Fish is that what Edward is giving Will is permission to see that the ordinary experiences of life are meaningful and special, if you choose to see them that way. Edward's way of reframing his experiences as a man, a husband, a father, a human, is to tell stories. Stories where he's the hero.

Wicked
Gregory Maguire

I was a little worried when I found that this book was in the sci fi/fantasy section (tangent, why aren't they two separate sections? is it just our library? they're not really the same thing). Not my favorite. But it's good to try something new, right?

Sure. But this just wasn't the book for me.

I actually enjoyed the beginning. Because it's an interesting idea. Maguire tells the story of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch, and there are some great parts. Glinda and the Wicked Witch are roommates in college, for instance.

Overall, though, I was bored. Long sections with political implications and lofty social ideals ... I didn't really try to understand (sorry, book). Also there were a lot of really odd sex scenes, and I am just not the audience for that.

There ya go. I won't be perusing the sci fi/fantasy section again for a good long while. And maybe not without a guide.

Manners Matter
Hermine Hartley

I'll be honest: found this book in a bargain bin at the grocery store. 99 cents. So, I didn't have high expectations or anything.

And I didn't really like it. I'm keeping it because it's structured in brief sections that I think will be good for my kids when they're older (short attention spans).

Personally, I'd take Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt, or even Miss Manners, any day.

But, it's true, manners do matter.

These reviews are brought to you by the flu. The flu has me stuck inside on a lovely fall day, the kind of day that I've been waiting for all through the sweaty Texas year. Sigh.

BOO!

2010-10-31T20:28:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated yesterday at a Trunk or Treat.

She was an owl, he was peas in a pod (see below)

Every once in awhile she'd ditch the hat and he'd ditch some of the peas.

There was plenty of carnival-style fun, and of course lots of junk food.

Yum!

ps I made her costume.
pps I did not make his.

Thank You

2010-10-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

Open the Door

2010-10-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

I've been reading and seeing and hearing a lot about bullying lately, and this is what has been on my mind today.

I was a Girl Scout for about 4 years as a kid. One year, we camped*.We slept in a big dormitory-style cabin. A cold cabin. In the woods. We found a dead mouse under the sink. I think someone found a peacock feather outside.

We were practicing the "buddy system" for safety. My buddy** was Leah. When we'd been paired up, I smiled weakly at her and felt sorry for her. Leah was friends with most of the troop, I think. I know she was friends with a girl named Kori. This troop was not a place where I was loved. You know what? It wasn't even a place where I was sort of liked.

There were no bathrooms at camp. There were truly, disgusting, scary, stinky outhouses. Yellow, paint peeling. Dark inside.

We were standing in line for the outhouse, in twos. Leah was in one, I was waiting. I was probably daydreaming, so I don't know what led up to this--it doesn't matter. Kori, a girl beloved by the troop, was laughing. They were all laughing, as Kori locked Leah in the outhouse.

I stood there.

She pounded and screamed and cried.

I thought, "Where are the leaders?"

I looked around. The leaders weren't coming.

I said, "Let her out."

They were still laughing.

I was scared of them.

What is interesting about this to grown-up me, is that I don't remember who finally let Leah out. Did I unlock it? Did I repeat "Let her out" until Kori did? I don't know.

I do remember my fear of that group of elementary-aged girls. I do remember staring at the outhouse in disbelief. I do remember my heart-pounding hope that someones mother would walk around the corner and fix it.

I remember standing there.

When I think of this experience, I wish I had unlocked the door right away. And I hope that, now, the right thing to do might come easier to me. I hope that I choose courage over fear.

But sometimes I don't. Sometimes, I stand there.

Sometimes, I'm the one locking the door.

I don't know what makes any one of us lock Leah in the outhouse, except that we aren't thoughtful, we aren't kind. So often we aren't even trying.***

*yes, one year, one time, we camped. boyscouts it was not.

**names changed.

***or we are ... trying to be mean.

"We Do What We Must, and Call It by the Best Names" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

2010-10-11T23:57:00.000-07:00

For all the usual reasons*, and maybe because I didn't learn too much from Free Range Kids, I'm giving my kids new names on the blog.

She = Flora

He = Bear

If you happen to know their real names, DO NOT use them in the comments. Should you do so, I will be forced to delete them, as I am too lame to figure out how to just hide them. Right now. Maybe later. Anyway, just call her Flora, and call him Bear.

Thanks.

* 1.potential creepies out there
   2. as they grow up, maybe they won't appreciate being "online"
   3. in the future, when they are googled for job interviews ... let that be in their own hands
   4. all the creepies out there

We Can't Really Do That, Can We?

2010-10-09T00:38:00.000-07:00

When I put the kids to bed the first time tonight, they both wanted me to hold them.

He cried, she begged.

"Nope," I told her, "since Dad's away, tonight I'm holding your brother."

Then she requested that we build a machine to make two mommies so they could both hold kids, and two daddies so one daddy could stay at camp and one could be home, "and no one would know he was even gone!! Even though REAL daddy would be here with us!"

BookSneeze Review: You Were Made to Make a Difference by Max Lucado and Jenna Lucado Bishop

2010-09-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

This is another young adult book. I loved it! It has an appealing cover and overall design (you know you like that in a book, too). It includes short stories about teenagers making a difference in the world by finding ways to help other people. Which ought to inspire anyone, of any age. Read it and help someone!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher the opinions expressed in this review are my own and I was not compensated for them nor was I asked to make a positive review this run-on sentence is also my own and no reflection of the publisher or the authors of this book.

The One Where I Massacre Muffins

2010-09-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

Part One: Sleepover

Flora had a friend sleep over for the first time. There were some very funny moments. After collapsing into sleep around 10 pm, the girls woke up at 6 am and "quietly" came down to start their day. All their sneaking and "whispering" woke us up, and we listened to their conversation as they went to the kitchen to get something to eat.

One said, "Turn on the light."

"No, you do it."

"No, you."

"No, my Mommy will wake up, you do it."

*click*

The garbage disposal came on.

"GASP" from both girls.

Then they found the light switch and went on to the food.

Which is another story.

Part Two: Start At the Very Beginning

Saturday night I decided to make some muffins for Sunday breakfast. I wanted to try a new recipe (are you worried? me, baking? you should be worried). I found one in Deceptively Delicious*. It was called "Blueberry Cheesecake Cupcakes". It contained both blueberries and squash. Also cream cheese.

Cream cheese is what I really wanted.

I followed the recipe.

Mix the blueberry puree with other batter ingredients, it said. With a mixer, it said.

Blueberry "puree" (juice) flew all over the kitchen.

Mix filling ingredients until creamy, it said.

The filling became cream cheese/squash soup. Really more like broth, in fact.

Grease muffin tins, preheat oven ... At some point here it dawned on me that there's not a picture of these cupcakes that "kids love!" in the cookbook.

I looked at the other, beautiful, pictures in the book.

I contemplated the navy blue goop plopping into the muffin tins. And the cream cheese broth was meant to somehow congeal into a "soft filling"**.

Uh. Oh.

I baked them anyhow.

Scott and I tasted them.

YUCK.

Also, they are concave.

See Scott.***

See Scott say, "I will eat them all."

See Scott eat almost all the cupcakes.

See Lindsey leave two especially drippy cupcakes on the counter.

See cream cheese broth on the counter.

See navy blue dots all over the floor.

See four navy blue cupcakes on a kid-accessible shelf in the fridge.

Part Three: He Likes It! Hey Mikey!

Flora and her friend saw the mess I left on the counter. We could practically hear them look at the mess, look at each other. The fridge opened.

"What do you think those were?"

"I don't know ... "

*chewing*

"Hey, these are good, let's eat them."

Part Four: Sorry About the Mess

Just as it dawned on me that these cupcakes weren't pictured in the cookbook, something moved near my hand.

And ... a roach ~~crawled~~ ~~ran~~ ~~skittered~~ flew out of a drawer across the counter and under the measuring spoons.

Thankfully I was finished with them.

Scott is the official roach getter around here so he tried to get it, but it ran (or whatever) behind the stove and wasn't heard from again.

Because I was too disgusted, by it and the muffin disaster, to go looking for it.

Plus, it will probably be waiting for me, enjoying the blue mess, when I go back in the kitchen tonight.

* I really like the cookbook. I really don't like the recipe.

** Paraphrasing.

*** Scott: a husband deprived of snacks, especially of the baked variety.

Wanna See Some Family Pictures?

2010-09-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

Great, but first you must know about my undying love for Audrey Hepburn + Albert Finney in Two For the Road.

Happy sigh.

And second, a list of the three most vile things, ever:
1. Cat pee
2. The smell of cat pee
3. Cleaning up cat pee

Sad sigh.

Now, you may see the pictures:

We had to switch from a free-standing highchair to a sort of booster seat with tray to prevent someone from climbing over the edge. Again. And getting (another) bump on the head.

He seems to enjoy sitting in a chair that is like everyone else's chair. He also shrieks to announce the injustice if his snacks/meals/toys/everything is not exactly like his sister's. And he says "MY bear" and "MY diaper". These things give me a strange sense of foreboding.

Flora has been letting me do her hair for church. Like, once a month. Or something. See how much she likes it?

He's a keeper.

We went to the lake for Labor Day and roasted marshmallows. Flora and I wore matching (very unattractive) headbands. You are not going to see a picture of mine.

She's a keeper, too.

Yep. That's my family.

Reasons this is a great picture:

Bear is tasting a rock.

Scott is making .... some sort of face.

These facts are not related.

Flora built a birdhouse with my Dad.

For my birthday, I bought ~~Flora a trampoline~~ sanity.

The end.

58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63

2010-09-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

58. Olivia Kidney
   Emily Potter

The first in a series, this book follows Olivia Kidney through life at her new home, a haunted apartment complex in New York City. She is new in the building, where her father works, new at school, and lonely. Olivia unknowingly befriends the ghosts in the building, thinking they're alive. She is nearly kidnapped and robbed, she saves a life, she is obsessed with seances and carries around a book about contacting the dead. The book she carries is the great mystery of the book; why does she have it and love it so much? The answer is that her brother, who owned the book, died recently. She wants to contact him but hasn't been able to.

I hoped when I found this that it would be a book Flora and I could read together. Nope. I think she might like it when she's in elementary school, but I didn't care for it.

I don't know if it's because I went into it hoping to share it with a preschooler, or if I would have felt this way anyway, but I found it excessively sad and morbid.

I didn't feel that way about the entire Lemony Snicket series, though, so maybe I'm just a moody reader?

59. Going Back to Work
   Mary W. Quigley &
   Loretta E. Kaufman

I think about work all the time. The meaning of the word. The work I'm doing, the work I'm not doing, the work I'd rather be doing. Work I could maybe do but not love. Work I wish I'd be good at. Work I know I'd be good at.

I have several years (weird) of staying home behind me, and however many ahead. Someday, soon or not, I will have a job with hours and paychecks and the works, again. And I really like to be prepared.

So, when I think about work, I like to evaluate my talents and skills and dreams and see what pops up. I've been grateful for this time for so. many. reasons. One is that it's giving me space to figure out if what I wanted pre-family matches what I want now and what I want for later. And I recognize, now, that there are a lot of possibilities. Which is tremendous. (I hate that word. Do you hate that word? But it really is.)

This book emphasizes the possibilities, a lot. And it also scared me. Cause the reality of the mom thing plus the job thing? I didn't really understand that before. But the authors put it all on the table: does your husband understand that math? do the two of you have a plan for the chores and everything else that will have to be dealt with? do you have three backup plans for your backup plan (hello, emergency child care/sick days/early outs)? do your kids understand what "mom will be working" means? how do they feel about it?

From deciding what path to take, to interviewing well, to ... all that stuff I already mentioned, it's in this book. I loved it. And it scared me. In, you know, a good way.

60. The Bradshaw Variations
   Rachel Cusk

I love a book about a real, imperfect marriage. Especially one that works out anyway, somehow. Not happily ever after, but, somehow. Somehow through the millions of things that go wrong and the ways that circumstances and individuals and relationships can change. This book follows the way that choices change circumstances that change people, or at least reveal unexpected things about them. And then it ... lets us see where they are.

Actually, it involves several members of the Bradshaw family, though it sort of focuses on Tonie and Thomas. Tonie has been promoted at work, so husband Thomas leaves his job to care for their daughter. Meanwhile, he learns piano. His brother, Howard, and Howard's wife, are also central characters, and both Tonie's and Thomas's parents are important as well.

I also love to find that other people have been thinking about something the way I have, and can put my thoughts into words better than I could. So I have been thinking about how privacy and intimacy of families and homes is precious and huge and personal. And so easily misunderstood.

Rachel Cusk puts it this way, here (and I hope I'm not misunderstanding her):

To set it up, Howard's wife sees her mother- and father-in-law arguing and then her mother-in-law hits him on the head. Of course, Howard's wife* is disturbed and a little frantic until she realizes

"it was not, as she thought, an emergency. What she saw was much worse: it was intimacy."

61. The Creative Family
   Amanda Blake Soule

Love this. It's all about ways to include creativity in your family's daily life. I agree with Soule that it's important to have mental/emotional and physical space for your children to be creative at home. LOVE.

62. The House of Mirth
   Edith Wharton

I think this book merits an in-depth analysis I'm not prepared to give. Just to warn you.

My scattered thoughts: I identified with the main character, Lily Bart, to an extent. Don't we all (or most) need to find a way to live happily? I mean that "live happily" is not likely to find us.

And Lily is looking for a way to live happily. She's also not sure what "happily" means, I think. Does it mean compromising ethics and morals for money and security? Does it mean living alone (unmarried) and poor (unmarried)? She only sees two options: married and financially and socially secure, or unmarried and poor and lonely.

But, just when I hoped she was either going to choose to make her own happiness, or else the guy she's meant to be with was going to come around and marry her ... she dies??? WHAT?

And that, was basically my experience of The House of Mirth.

63. The Unnamed
   Joshua Ferris

Before I read this book, I tried to read two others. One offended me (rare but true) and the other bored me and was not my idea of great writing (semi-rare but true). Then I started The Unnamed: finally, a real book!

The story is kind of parallel to The Bradshaw Variations, but with a truly fictional twist. Tim and Jane are a fairly happily married couple with one daughter. Tim is a very successful lawyer who works too much but loves his family. He has a problem, though. A "something" that makes him leave his office and walk. And walk. He can't stop, until it lets him. And Jane is always there to pick him up, from wherever he is.

It's a disease-or something, undiagnosed and undetectable to medical professionals-that goes into remission and comes back suddenly. Finally Jane can't take it anymore, and copes by drinking. A lot.

She works through that and he works with the walking, but they lose the life they created together and have to find a way to work all that out. I thought their experiences and choices later were interesting.

* "Howard's wife" has a name. I just can't recall what name she has.

Hanging Around

2010-08-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

Book Fifty-Seven

2010-08-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

Suite Francaise
Irene Nemirovsky

The story of this book is amazing. Nemirovsky, a Ukrainian Jew living in France, wrote this historical fiction about World War II during World War II. Nemirovsky wrote the two (unfinished) novellas in Suite Francaise in a notebook. She was arrested, sent to Auschwitz, and died there (in 1942) .

The notebook remained in her daughter's possession till 1998 when she (Denise) decided to look through it before donating it to a French archive (see Wikipedia entry on the book). She found the novellas and they were published as Suite Francaise, which became a bestseller.

I don't know how to describe the book itself ... moving. Just, moving.

BookSneeze Review: Wild at Heart:Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul

2010-08-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

Eldredge is coauthor of Captivating (with his wife, Stasi). The flap of the book jacket of Wild at Heart promises that inside the book, you'll learn about how "every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue."

What I came away with, however, was the impression that Eldredge believes that what every man really, really wants is to be the hero a movie.

Among the movies whose plots are re-hashed for your inspiration are: Gladiator. Good Will Hunting. Braveheart. A River Runs Through It. (The Matrix is mentioned in passing.)

There were moments when I got a glimpse of what Eldredge was aiming for, but they were few and lost among the many pages of movie reviews.

And Then He Was One

2010-07-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday cupcakes, with a side of "picture face". Nom nom.

He made that face for every picture. LOVE IT.

Books Fifty thru Fifty-five

2010-07-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Winifred Watson

I saw the movie, with Amy Adams and Frances McDormand (love.) and it made me really happy. I'll get to why in a moment; the film really kept the spirit of the book. Anyway, what really touched me was this moment in the special features where the author's son is speaking of his mother and says something about how she wrote-well, thought of- the dialogue for Miss Pettigrew while she was doing the dishes at home.

Doing the dishes.

The only things I can remember thinking while doing the dishes are:

"We're on our way, we're on our way, on our way to grandpa's farm" ... you know, the kid's song. That was while I taught preschool and it was always. stuck. in. my. head.

And, "I DO NOT WANT TO DO THE DISHES." That's what I usually think. Then I plan what I'll do next, like make dinner or clean the floors or something.

But what if I wrote a novel, in my head, while I washed them? What if I wrote a story? What if I just, imagined something?

At the very least, I think I'd be less stressed. I bet the dishes wouldn't be such a chore.

So, the book.

It has some "controversial" things, drug use, unmarried affairs, cursing, plastic surgery, etc. But it's partly to create a contrast between Delysia and Miss Pettigrew. Delysia, whose real name is Sarah, is a singer and is used to creating herself all the time; she doesn't live a very moral life. Miss Pettigrew is a not-very-talented governess who is shocked by all the things Delysia regularly says and does, and I think, had been used to judging others-harshly-by the morals she's had all her life.

Miss Pettigrew comes to work for Delysia through a mix-up, and because she's out of regular work and has no home, is desperate to keep the job. She ends up performing various tasks which test her confidence and skills. She's surprised to learn where her talents lie, and finds that the people she's judged so harshly might have something to teach her.

It's not, I think, an unusual story. Don't we usually find that people surprise us and have something to teach us? But, it is a very sweet story, and I really loved the characters.

Changing My Mind:
Occasional Essays
Zadie Smith

This book had, I think, the very worst cover I've ever seen. Like it belonged on some psychedelic rock album or something. I'm not sure why I even picked it up, but I am glad I did.

I was going to quote from it to tell you why in detail, but it had to go home to the library before I had to pay for it.

It is, obviously, a collection of essays by Zadie Smith. I happen to love essays. They're like non-fiction short stories.

One was about her family at Christmas. She summed it up by saying something about how Christmas is "the story of what happens to your family when everyone has to stay in the house together." Loved it ... who doesn't have a story about that?

Another was an essay about reading, and she quoted someone ... I think it was Nabokov (here's where I run into trouble. Don't hate me if I'm mistaken! Just read the book and quietly mock me behind my back, okay?) ... saying that the only way to really read is to ... reread.

Maybe next year I'll re-read.

The Kindergarten Wars:
The Battle to Get Into America's Best Private Schools
Alan Eisenstock

I have participated in and overheard and heard of many conversations about kindergarten recently. Flora will start school next year. It's on my mind.

I'm not personally aware of anyone I know sending their children to private school. Some parents send their children to a charter school (kind of a public private school), some homeschool, some try public and switch to homeschool, some send them to public school and tell horror stories, and I have to say-- I haven't heard any mom of a school-aged kid say anything positive about public schools. Can't think of a single thing.

The families (mostly the mothers, really) in Eisenstock's book don't have anything positive to say about public schools, either. So they apply for private school. They have the money, for the most part (and the one family in the book who does not, is a single parent minority family assured by experts that money won't matter for them). They have sent their kids to the best preschools, and done their best to turn their kids into some sort of superheroes.

The book goes into detail about the application process, the crazy effects on some of the families, and a lot of behind-the-scenes of the acceptance process.

Which is all very interesting.

But what's really been on my mind, is where am I sending my kid?

We looked into the school district before moving here. It seemed great. You know, in theory, before I was facing dropping off my child for hours and hours five days a week.

Before I heard other moms lamenting the structure, the teachers, the playground equipment, the discipline.

Before my husband came home from a Scouting activity (he's the Scoutmaster) having spoken with a friend whose children attend a local charter school. "It sounds really great," he said, and went on. Shorter days, smaller classes.

My mom said, "When you were in school, everyone just sent their kids to the nearest school, and that was that."

I looked up the charter school. It made me anxious. It is also quite a drive. Assuming she'd be accepted.

I've been thinking about this for weeks, and here's what I think I think:

My kid needs the best education ....", huh.

-I don't even know what the school is really like. I only know what other parents don't like for their families.

So, public school, here we come.

The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters

A well-written detailed novel meant to be a ghost story. Only creepy or frightening if you're very scared of being bored to death.

Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire

Rafe Esquith

Esquith taught? teaches? in a troubled school in LA. And apparently worked like crazy to turn it around for the kids in his class.

And that, is great.

But. Once I got over thinking that, I saw the moments in the book that said, "In my other book, I talk about how I did xyz ..." and I got the idea that for whatever reason (hey, maybe he put it all into his class, I don't know) this was a way to make some money. And also it seemed patronizing.

But maybe it's just me.

Free Range Kids

Lenore Skenazy

I'm loving this book. This idea.

Let your kids make (age and developmentally appropriate) decisions and have (ditto) freedoms and (ditto) experiences. And know that they will be okay. And feel less guilty and scared and paranoid and lonely.

It started when Skenazy let her son ride the subway by himself, wrote about his experience, and was asked to appear on TV. Thereafter she was known as "The Worst Mom in America."

Like anyone could even know that.

The book includes such *crazy* ideas as letting your kids-when they are ready to do so-walk to school.

Apparently schools, and a lot of parents, don't like that idea.

Anyway, it's got me thinking about how I want my kids to feel about life, the universe and everything. I want them to NOT be scared of, oh, say, walking to school. I want to not be scared of walking to school.

So This is Love

2010-07-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

BookSneeze Review: A Girl's Guide to Life by Katie Meier

2010-06-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

I had low expectations for this book. The title is so ... cheesy. I had visions of after-school-special style dialogue.

And, there is some of that. As I read, I tried to think, "If I read this as a teenager, would I like that or would I roll my eyes and walk away??" Verdict: I think it's okay. Maybe a little eye-rolling, but maybe not walking away.

Otherwise, the book has advice on various subjects: texting, sexting (!!! I didn't have to deal with that as a teen), dating, religion, fashion. As a mother of a girl, I appreciated that the author encourages girls to really think about these things--and from a Christian perspective.

Four stars.

And now, the FTC disclaimer:

I was given this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers, and was not compensated or required to write a positive review.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

2010-06-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

Some photos from our fun in the shade of our yard. We built a tent, found some cicada ... remains (shells? skin? don't know much about them) and forgot it was a balmy 190 degrees out.

Let's Judge Some Books by Their Covers: Books 42 thru 48

2010-06-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Memoir Club

Laura Kalpakian

The cover looks like this:

The cover makes me think of ... gossip, boring parties with fancy women who play bridge, and the smell of coffee (never liked that smell).

And in spite of it, I really liked this book. It's about a group of women who meet in a memoir writing class which eventually morphs into a club. They become good friends, deal with their past difficulties and experience new difficulties and a tragedy, together.

Princess Academy

Shannon Hale

The cover of the edition I read:

I didn't look very closely at the cover when I picked it up. I was looking for it, specifically, from the library, and the only impression I got was: dark, muddy colors, blah.

But looking at it now, it's kind of cute.

I didn't like the book very much, though I think I would have loved it as a younger reader. It is a young adult book. I think Flora will like it when she's older.

A mountain town in some kingdom is turned upside down when told that all their daughters in a certain age range must go to "princess academy". The prince will choose his bride from their class when they've learned how to be proper princesses.

I was bored with the story, but I liked the ending. No, I will not tell you how it ends. You'll have to read it yourself.

Jane Austen Ruined My Life

Beth Pattillo

Here's the cover:

I liked the cover immediately and maintain that I still do; it's a great match for the title, and together they tell you exactly what you're gonna get with the book.

So maybe I'm not justified in saying: I expected more.

I've read a couple of other books by Pattillo. They weren't my favorites, but they were good "chick lit" (for me). They were Heavens to Betsy and Earth to Betsy, sort of Christian romances.

But. Jane Austen Ruined My Life.

I hated the characters. I just wanted them to shut up. When I finished the book, I looked at my husband and said, "I can't believe I read the whole thing."

Like I ate a whole cake by myself, or something. A gross store-bought cake with more frosting than cake. Yuck.

A few days later, Scott and I watched 500 Days of Summer. And I hated it, too. Whiny guy blames girl for all his problems even-though-she-was-totally-up-front-with-him-about-her-intentions? Sort of a mirror image of this book: whiny girl blames ex-husband for all her problems even-though-she-should-have-seen-it-coming, everyone-else-did.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Rebecca Miller

Here's the cover of the edition I read (pre-movie, I guess):

I was looking for this book, as well, so I didn't care about the cover at the time. I'd read about Robin Wright (Penn? divorce?) and the film, and thought I'd check out the book.

There's the title, and the wave behind/over the running woman ... pretty much gives you a sense of what's going on inside.

I expected some profanity/vulgarity--check and check. That being said, I loved this character, Pippa Lee.

The story starts with Pippa, in her fifties, and her older husband moving into a retirement community. She is adjusting to this life (or not), and goes to lunch with a younger friend who I guess gets her thinking about her earlier life. The story then moves back to tell you about Pippa's younger years. This is where the ... uh ... difficult material comes in. BUT I will say, it was more along the lines of "sometimes there are really awful things in a person's life, which s/he deals with by: blahblah" than "hey, I know you want to read about really skeevy people, so here ya go".

Anyhow, what I loved about Pippa was that although she made some crazy bad choices and although she was put in some awful places, she married this man and had babies and loved them all. And it didn't turn out all pretty and nice, but I liked this character who could make awful decisions as well as really hard, good decisions.

I'm rambling. I just liked the book.

The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

Sandra Newman

The cover:

Um. I don't know, it looked interesting to me. Like a shiny new, something. New and shiny. I guess I collected it.

I didn't understand this book. It was a very difficult read; it's structured in numbered lists, but not always, and ... I just really didn't figure it all out. Partly because it has so MUCH profanity that it was a struggle to read any of it.

So. Yeah.

Her Fearful Symmetry

Audrey Niffenegger

I have seen two covers for this book; the other has two of the characters on the front and I think gives a better idea of the content. But, it's obvious that it's a "scary" book, yeah?

I usually don't like this sort of thing.

Also, I hated The Time Traveler's Wife with all my heart. At least, what I read of it. I couldn't even give it a chance.

However, I enjoyed Her Fearful Symmetry so much that ... I don't know what. So much that you can, too.

It's one of those things, though, where if I tell you much about it, it will be ruined. So ... briefly? It's "about" twins who go to live in their dead aunt's flat in London and learn about family secrets and ghosts.

Also, there is a kitten. I can't stop thinking about that kitten.

Pippi Longstocking

Astrid Lindgren

Okay, here's where the game ends. I read some ancient edition from the library. But I wanted to read the new version illustrated by Lauren Child, of Charlie and Lola fame. So, go look at that.

But, oh, Pippi! I somehow managed to never read this as a kid. Must've been when I lived under that rock.

I did listen to the first couple chapters on cd, but the narration was not very exciting, so I just read it instead. Also I read faster than the cd can be listened to. So there.

My favorite parts:

"Pippi was indeed a remarkable child. The most remarkable thing about her was that she was so strong ...Why, she could lift a whole horse if she wanted to! And she wanted to."

and later, when she has a party with two friends and they make cards for everyone, assigning a sort of dinner partner to everyone-including the horse:

"So Tommy, at Pippi's dictation, wrote:

'The horse will have the pleasure of remaining in the corner where he will be served cakes and sugar.

Pippi held the card under the horse's nose and said, 'Read this and see what you think of it.' "

So much fun. I'm going to find out if Flora thinks so, too. We're off to read it together.

They Have To Go To Bed By Day

2010-06-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

I remember lying in bed, staring out the window in my bedroom at a branch against the blue sky, waiting ... and waiting ... to fall asleep. An impossible task, with all that light, s l o w l y going dark. Especially once school was out for summer; why couldn't we play later? There was nothing to get up for.

The poem Bed In Summer was one of my favorites-- "In winter I get up at night/And dress by yellow candlelight/In summer quite the other way/I have to go to bed by day" etc.

On the other side of parenthood, eight pm is eight pm whether the sky is blue or black. Of course my children do not understand, and will absolutely not fall asleep until it is dark out. The baby wanders around the crib crying and holding onto his sister's cast off stuffed animal*, then passes out after it's dark. Big sister will need to eat a second, third, fourth dinner, or will sneak out of bed and appear behind me in another room. Once it's dark, she stays in bed.

What this mostly means is, we're all tired.

And I sometimes fall asleep during the day.

And then I can't sleep at night.

And when I do go to sleep, I have really intense dreams and wake up all confused. Example: I had some sort of dream about wolves (werewolves? I don't exactly remember), and woke up curled around my cat, petting her foot. Not very gently. She was purring. I don't let her sleep by my face**. Ever.

The end.

*Flora prefers dolls, but Bear loves stuffed animals. She has always carried "her babies" around like real babies, singing to them, etc. Bear gnaws on the stuffed animals. Both cute.

**I used to love to cuddle with the cat. What changed? First, I don't like animals after I've had a baby. For ... oh ... two years or so. Second, I am frustrated with the cat for waking me up, night after night, begging me to feed her. We're talking three am here. Not happy. Recently, I kept waking up to her on my pillow, acting weird. One night I finally woke up completely and figured out she was ... trying to pee on my head. Pee. On. My. Head. There ya go.

Books Thirty- Four through Forty-One

2010-06-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Rosewater and Soda Bread

Marsha Mehran

The sequel to Pomegranate Soup, this continues the story of three Iranian sisters in a small Irish village.

It was ... not great. Kind of like the ten-years-later reunion of your favorite TV show. Which you watch and feel nostalgic and kind of enjoy because you loved the original show so much.

House of Sand and Fog

Andre Dubus III

I have one friend (hi, Jenny) who I remembered liked the movie (did I make that up?), and one who told me (hi, Liz) that she tried to read the book.

So, I read it. And I will say ... I "liked" it. There must be another word. I was affected by it. Maybe?

This is one intense, and bleak, story. Yikes. What is that movie where everybody dies? Kind of like that.

Chocolat

Joanne Harris

After comparing Pomegranate Soup to the movie Chocolat, I discovered that it is also a book. And rediscovered that I am still, always, a few years behind the times.

I will admit, when I saw the movie however long ago, I didn't love it. It was goofy, flimsy--there wasn't enough depth to even make it "fun" for me.

But I thought, after reading both books by Mehran, that maybe more of the same would be fun. And it turns out that the book, though I wouldn't call it L iterature, you know, capital L, was touching and interesting and suspenseful.

Recommend!!

The Girl With No Shadow

Joanne Harris

The sequel to Chocolat. I enjoyed it, though the magic was a bit much sometimes.

It's funny, action scenes make me nervous and make me cringe and make me sick, but this book had the kind of mother-daughter tension (ie, the teenage kind) that is a million times worse for me. Seeing as I have a daughter.

When she was an infant, we had a neighbor with a teenage son who once looked lovingly at me holding Flora and said, "OH ... it's so easy to keep them safe at that age."

At the time, I thought that was an odd thing to say, but as she approaches school-age ... I'm apt to agree.

Recommend!

Of Men and Their Mothers

Mameve Medwed

This is the story of a divorced woman, mother of one son, who continues to have conflict with her ex-mother-in-law and later enters a relationship with a man whose mother has died. And meanwhile, her son comes home from summer with his dad and announces that his girlfriend will be living with them. In his bedroom. Weird, yes?

Not particularly profound, but actually kind of a lovely story, in the end: she takes on this girlfriend when the girl's parents disown her and provides her with support and stability even though the situation is ... well, not what most parents hope for from their children.

What I liked most about that was the idea that, as a woman, a mother, a person, this character took a step back and recognized she didn't control other people's actions and choices. I hope that situation is an extreme, really hope it, but there are so many ways I have to remember that as a mother/woman/person.

Goody Hall

Natalie Babbitt

I read this in probably under an hour; it was wonderful. Read it, read it!

The characters are a eccentric, the plot is absurd, and it's quite short (it's meant for ages 10 and up). I loved every minute of it.

Goody Hall is a grand house with very strange inhabitants. A strange-looking man named Hercules comes to town and gets work as the tutor at Goody Hall. Antics ensue. Happy endings for all.

Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist

Liz Kessler

Another children's book, third in a series about Emily, who is part mermaid, part human. I will probably buy the rest of the series for my daughter to read when she's older, but it wasn't so great for grown-ups. The conflict in it (Neptune is angry! No more inter-mer-human marriage! Emily saves the day!) was too simplistic.

The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood

And then there is ... too much conflict. Maybe I am woefully undereducated in mythology, but this was a tough one to finish. I didn't expect so much gore.

Atwood reworks the Penelope story, telling it from P's perspective along with the voices of the twelve hanged maids from the original.

And I'm thinking, now, that maybe the unexpected gore is a good thing. Why should it be a nice story, when the women tell it, if it's not a nice story? Maybe it's just the story. Even if I don't like it.

The Long, But Illustrated, Summary of Recent Days

2010-05-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

Chapter One:

The Six Degrees of What I'm Reading

1. Go to the New Yorker's Book Bench blog to read Simon Rich on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

2. See Yoga Pose May on Carrots 'N' Cake blog and then see the blog Getting By, Dreaming Big for someone who has achieved my own-shh!-secret wish, to be able to do a shoulder stand. I found all of this through another blog, The Joy of Yoga.

3. Over on Book-a-rama, see a post called Happy Birthday Daphne duMaurier.

4. WashingtonCityPaper.com had a thing about Ruth Reichl last month.

5. There was a bit about Zelda Fitzgerald and style at thestylenotebook.com (last month as well).

Just for fun, here I am with 20's style makeup:

6. Baylor University acquired a journal by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Chapter Two:

Books Twenty-Nine and Thirty, Thirty-One, -Two and -Three

The Joy of Yoga

ed. Jennifer Schwamm Willis

My son is 10 months old today! And still, when I catch myself stressing about the weight I haven't lost yet, the energy I don't have back yet, all the things I meant to do but haven't done since I was pregnant, I say to myself, "Hey, it's okay. I just had a baby."

dot, dot, dot

But. It's a little true. What I think I mean, is, "I haven't recovered yet from having that baby."

Not so much physically as ... well, everything else. Which brought me, via my wonderful mother-in-law, to acupuncture. Which is bringing me around to things I can do myself. Like, yoga.

I already enjoyed yoga, but I have renewed excitement going forward from reading this book. It is a collection of essays on yoga by various authors; many (maybe all) of them mention something about "attentiveness" or "mindfulness" or "being in the present". And maybe that sounds really hippy-dippy to you, but still.

But still, I have days when I can't focus on any simple thing, like playing with my kids, or getting a real lunch made for them, and I want to look back on this time of seemingly endless at-home-ness and remember ... something. Something happy.

So in the interest of something happy, I love this quote from Donna Farhi in The Joy of Yoga:

"When we get hooked into striving toward where we think we should be and how far we ought to be able to go, in truth we are somewhere else all the time. We are in our fantasy, our ideas, our concepts, and our judgments. There's not much room in there to perceive and appreciate what's actually happening. Even when we feel pain, even when we face great difficulty, we can take refuge in our practice ... Each day as you step onto your mat, make a decision to enjoy just where you are right now. Take a few moments, too, to contemplate how fortunate you are to be practicing this wonderful art ... If you are standing on a yoga mat and have the time to practice even fifteen minutes, you are a fortunate person."

Here's to someday doing a shoulder stand ... :)

The House on the Strand

Daphne duMaurier

Have you read Enchantment by Orson Scott Card? The House on the Strand reminded me of it, a little ... only darker, maybe. And really, Enchantment should be reminiscent of Strand because DuMaurier came first.

DuMaurier wrote Rebecca (what I was actually looking for, at the library. Alas, not a single copy on the shelves right now) and The Birds.

This one started slowly, and for some reason I thought the male narrator was a woman, but then it got interesting, mentioned "my wife", thus clearing up my confusion, and ended by really scaring me.

The narrator takes a drug that sends him mentally back in time and he deals with various problems caused by that. I can't go on or I'll spoil it for you.

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life

Mameve Medwed

I'm a sucker for long titles involving historical figures, I guess. But ...Meh. I wanted to love it; it was okay.

I learned that EBB had a cocker spaniel named Flush, and that Virginia Woolf wrote a book about the dog.

Basically: Abby, the narrator, is an ivy-league dropout turned antiques dealer who finds a treasure which she takes on Antiques Roadshow, and her life is turned upside down. Involving money, fame, and most of all love. Oh yeah, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home:

No-Nonsense Advice That Will Inspire You to Clean Like the Dickens

Thelma Meyer

My acupuncturist usually has this bottle of Mrs. Meyer's Basil scented hand soap in the bathroom. I am in love with this thing. It smells amazing.

I also enjoy a good how-to-actually-clean-your-home book every once in awhile. So I saw it in the library, and here we are. I will be buying this, soon.

Mrs. Meyer apparently raised nine kids and I really liked a) her cleaning advice, and b) the anecdotes about her family. They remember something happy.

Pomegranate Soup

Marsha Mehran

This was an especially quick read, because I LOVED IT.

Have you seen Chocolat? I hope you liked it, at least a little (I thought it was okay), because this is similar, sort of. And I'm recommending it. To you.

Except it's about three Iranian sisters living and cooking in Ireland and how they make a home in this little place in Ireland.

And there are recipes, which I'm dying to try.

Chapter Three:

In Which the TV is Disconnected

This. Is. The. Last. Straw.

It's Saturday afternoon, and I, having stayed up much too late reading, am very very tired. My husband stayed up almost as late ... doing something computer-y, I think, and is equally tired. The kids have not been sleeping well, for various reasons, most of which I have not figured out yet. They are tired, too.

Everyone naps. It's bliss.

Everyone wakes up. Scott and the baby are playing upstairs, I'm in bed listening to them on the monitor, and I hear C. coming downstairs.

Cue the TV.

I go in the bathroom. Here comes C.

"Mommy, I'm watching something funny on TV."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

"It has these funny dolls with ugly red hair that sticks up, and they are FUNNY."

Um. Now wheels are turning.

"Oh-kay. They're funny ..."

"Yeah."

"What are they doing?"

"Driving."

"They're driving? not anything else?"

It's become clear to me what it is she's found on TV.

"No," she says, wrinkling her nose, knowing I will say this:

"Turn that off, please."

It's on a commercial, but she's turned on one of ... four? five? all-spanish stations which we cannot delete from the converter box (how is that possible? maybe we're just too dumb?) and which show much more ... interesting ... fare than the other channels in the mid-afternoon on any given day, but especially on Saturday. When all the other channels have, say, golf, on.

The commercial ends and there it is: she's found Seed of Chucky.

In the past, she's changed the station and found what I suppose were soap operas, with people in very "compromising positions" and which I can only assume became more compromising after I'd changed the channel or put in a movie or just turned it off.

This time, I unplugged the box. And I don't think it's coming back. I'd rather watch Nim's Island four hundred times a day than ever ever see Seed of Chucky in our living room again.

Chapter Four:

Cause She's Four!

Post-Birthday Dance Celebration:

p.s. yes, we have been painting. yes, that is an orange wall. yes, it is a beautiful, glorious, orange wall. the end. oh yeah, and a craigslist couch. and a brown wall. and a pack n play. and a really great four year old. too. really the end.

Book Twenty-Seven + Miscellany

2010-05-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver

I really enjoyed this novel. It's historical fiction, and I wasn't really that excited about reading it; I'd heard Kingsolver on NPR and decided to try it.

Harrison Shepherd, the main character, is a child of an American father and a Mexican mother. His mother runs off to Mexico with another man, taking Harrison. Eventually the story involves Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Trotsky.

I don't know how accurate it is as historical fiction goes, but I still found the story engaging.

Miscellany:

This is year #4 (out of ... 4) that I have ruined Flora's birthday cake the night before her birthday, and will have to do it again day-of. The universe wants me to use cake mix.

The universe wins.

Flora's favorite phrase: "Last one there's a rotten egg!"

People in public find this very amusing. I find it amusing when she announces that she's the rotten egg.

Bear's favorite phrase: "UH-UH"

Flora was dancing to the Caribou song "sun" in the car. She said, "I'm dancing with my whole body!!" and people kept waving to her.

Bear prefers music from the fifties. He bounces. It's very cute.

I sat in the car (parked in the driveway) eating ice cream and listening to the radio and heard the Talking Heads song No Compassion, with these lyrics "What, are you in love with your problems?" Which made me laugh while I ate ice cream, and think about how sometimes I read other blogs and want to ask that. Never my own, of course ...

BookSneeze Review: The Right to Lead by John C. Maxwell

2010-05-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

This is a "gift book", which in this case means a sort of miniature coffee table book. It's nice looking, full of quotes and stories on leadership. It's meant to inspire, but was hit-or-miss for me, because a) the quotes from the author's other books were not that inspiring, and b) the stories only inspired me to search snopes to see if they were true.

My favorite quote:

"I am only one, but still I am one.

I cannot do everyting, but still I can do something.

And because I cannot do everything

I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

-Edward Everett Hale

I received a copy of this book free from Thomas Nelson publishers through their BookSneeze program. I was not compensated and was not asked to write a positive review.

Books Twenty-Three, Four, Five and Six

2010-05-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Jean-Dominique Bauby

Bauby was forty-three years old, working as editor of French Elle magazine, when a stroke left him with "locked-in syndrome". After a coma, he was able only to use his left eye to communicate, blinking to indicate which letter he needed while someone read out the alphabet.

This is how he communicated his memoir. An entire book, with his left eye.

And his story, his storytelling, are eloquent, moving. Bauby tells us about his body, unable to move, and his mind, active, and the ache to speak, to touch. His blinking along to visitors patient enough to have such a conversation.

There is a moment when he describes Father's Day with his two children; he plays hangman with his son and he struggles with the game, and begins to cry over the loss of the simple act of touching, hugging, his own son.

I have heard several mothers talk about how, on bedrest during (or after) pregnancy, they itch to perform the smallest tasks, to be the one to find the shoes, to make the food, to listen to their children or spouse, to clean. I know that this is maddening-to lie there and want to get up, to call out "they're in the closet" and not be heard ... and I know the gratitude and the relief when it's over, and how it all goes right back to normal (why can't they find their own shoes?? and can't you be quiet for just two minutes? and what can I make for dinner tonight ... ).

And I am grateful to have that normal back, too. I'm hugging them extra tight. Go hug yours, too.

Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories

Lauren Groff

Groff's collection of nine short stories explores women's lives and choices and experiences. Which I didn't even notice till I was all finished reading. Apparently there are bird themes in all the stories as well; I'm going to read them all again to find them.

I love short stories. They're my literary bff's. And I found this collection just wonderful. Dark, but wonderful.

Now, the title. My husband thought it was creepy. I thought it was great-it's why I picked up the book. Plus, I have spent too much time with kids; I pictured ... cupcakes? with birds on them? fondant birds. Like at my baby shower ...

But, his impression was more accurate. In the last story, Delicate Edible Birds, there is a scene of a dinner party eating ... delicate edible birds. A delicacy, which I hoped was fiction, but is not. According to the oracle, I mean, Wikipedia, (quoting Wine Spectator magazine):

"For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets has been the eating of the Ortolan. These tiny birds—captured alive, force-fed, then drowned in Armagnac—were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God."

Okay. Truly. Horrifying.

But I really liked these stories (and for the record, the heroine of that story does not eat at the dinner party and is just as horrified as you are.).

The Wednesday Wars

Gary D. Schmidt

This is a YA book about an American boy coming of age during the Vietnam war. But the Wars of the title are with his teacher. Every Wednesday, because the other members of his class are at Catholic or Jewish religious instruction, he is the only (Presbyterian) student left, and his teacher "tortures" him with Shakespeare.

There are some lovely moments, as Holling Hoodhood (what. a. name.) learns to love Shakespeare, to love his family, to love himself.

There are some funny moments: an escaped pair of rats, Holling's "cursing" a la Shakespeare.

There are some slow moments, but overall I like this one.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I told you, I love short stories.

After reading Zelda, I decided I would read more of Fitzgerald's work (only Gatsby till now).

I found this book at a used books store, dove right in, and found some very odd typos. I don't know if it's some sort of knock-off, pirated thing, or a public domained thing, or an unedited early release thing, or what, but it is strange.

Like this, the final sentence of Bernice Bobs Her Hair, in which Bernice is carrying her bag and running off:

"Then picking up her staircase she set off at a half-run down the moonlit street."

...

Anyhow, I loved the stories, though they were often depressing, and there are so many of them that it added up to a lot of depressing. I recommend any of them.

Especially The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, of which I will say two things:

First, it is NOTHING LIKE THE FILM. I did not care for the film, and now I think I hate it. The story is touching and funny and troubling and I only found the film loooong and ... stilted? emotionally anemic? something uninspiring.

Second, as a preface to the story is an explanation from the author of how it came to be, including this:

"The story was published in Collier's last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati:
' SIR-- I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic I have seen many peices of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of stationary on you but I will'."

(Spelling original. Though with this book, who knows. ) That makes me laugh and laugh.

In Between the Books

2010-04-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

We visited the Botanical Gardens:

I've been working in our garden (no pics right now), where I finally pulled (well, dug out) the weeds that were, yeah, taller than our daughter.

Aaaannnnndddd .... Flora drew a picture to commemorate Earth Day:

On the left, Earth; the circle in the middle is " a new planet", and around the planets are various aliens, connected by a string "so they won't get lost". I. Love. This.

Book review: Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge

2010-04-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I signed up to review books for Book Sneeze, a program by Thomas Nelson Publishers where they send free books to bloggers to review.

The first book I chose is Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul, Revised and Expanded by John and Stasi Eldredge.

Essentially, the authors want women to understand that they are daughters of God, with lives of purpose and power. That is a wonderful message, and one I've heard so many times from leaders of my church.

I did not care for the way they gave the message sometimes-there were many, many references to Lord of the Rings, which may be great if you like Lord of the Rings (we're talking the movie, here) but ... I just don't particularly want to be like the characters from said movie. And their message was repeated a LOT.

Otherwise, it was maybe a three out of five stars. It was good, but I've heard their message stated in, I think, clearer language and in ways more meaningful to me.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Books 19, 20, and 21

2010-04-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Girl With the Glass Feet

Ali Shaw

My dream come true: I walked by the "new books" shelf, and The Girl With the Glass Feet was sitting there, just for me, and I didn't even have to go to the trouble of requesting it, or waiting, or anything. Huzzah!

Fairy tales: they're controversial (see here, here and here), many of them are violent (see here) and disturbing if you are disturbed by that sort of thing (come on, I know you are), and usually, I think, good triumphs over evil, and they end with happily ever after. For some of the characters.

The Girl With the Glass Feet is about Ida, the Girl, and Midas, the boy she meets. I loved them, they're wonderful, but

spoiler alert, sort of

maybe it's just the string of "realistic" books I've been reading-- but oh dear, I just really wanted that happy ending. No such luck.

Nonetheless, I really liked this book. Read it and I'll discuss it with you!

Heidi, this one has a romance, etc. try it!

Set Up in SoHo

Dee Davis

Okay. Every once in awhile I try a "chick lit" book. And I am consistently disappointed. Not my thing, I guess.

Honestly, I thought this book was just awful. AAAAwful. With four capital A's.

The dialogue is painful, the characters are stereotypes (girl in the Big City! her gay friend! the rich man she reluctantly finds herself in love with! and don't forget the bad boy she has to get over first!) and oh, my, goodness, their lifestyle(s? they're pretty much all the same) are straight out of a tween's daydreams.

However.

I did finish it, and was surprised to find that I was smiling.

Because .... it has a happy ending.

Remarkable Creatures

Tracy Chevalier

I spotted it on the new books shelf, as well, and thought I'd try it. I read The Girl With the Pearl Earring a few (+ a few more) years ago (liked it, but thought the film was more interesting. ouch.)

Chevalier switches between narrators: first, Mary Anning, a girl who was struck by lightning as a baby but survived and is a fossil-hunting prodigy, and then Elizabeth Philpot, an unattractive spinster who befriends Mary and goes fossil hunting with her. To simplify, a lot.

I found it difficult to finish the book, as the changes between narrators were somehow less than obvious to me (despite very clear changes in their language. maybe I'm just dense).

The characters didn't hold my attention, either, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I turned the last page of the story ... and found in the afterward that Mary and Elizabeth were real women.

Which has me thinking about this a little more:

-again, with the evolution debate (see The Ingenious Edgar Jones) but this time, with real-life women right in the middle of it

Still, this one's not a favorite.

Revenge of the Nerds Texans

2010-04-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung, and so on the side of (almost) every road, you'll find someone photographing their family in the wildflowers. Wildflower. The Bluebonnets.

When my family moved to Texas, I was 12. I did not, did not, did not find bluebonnets interesting, or wonderful, or a good reason to drive aimlessly around the Hill Country staring at them, or climbing around in them to provide a snack for fire ants. Also, I didn't want to be photographed in them while I fought with my siblings. We were generally fighting.

But, my parents drove us around to see them anyway. I don't think we ever took any pictures in them. Probably due to the fighting.

Once we passed a line of people waiting to take pictures (or buy pictures?) of their kids on a Longhorn (do you capitalize that? only in Texas? I feel like it's necessary) in the Bluebonnets (ditto?).

Fast forward 17 (!) years:

An American Flapper

2010-04-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

~~Seventeen~~ Eighteen:

Zelda

Nancy Milford

"I had no idea of originating an American flapper when I first began to write ..."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have a crush on The Great Gatsby. I read it annually. It's difficult to even articulate my relationship with that book; the only other thing I read the same way is Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea. I think it's a way of marking time. I read to remember who and where I was the last time I read them, and the time before that, and all the times before that.

I do not know much about F. Scott Fitzgerald, though ( or L. M. Montgomery), and when I found a copy of Zelda at Half Price Books, I felt curious about his wife.

Milford explores Zelda's early life, her marriage to Fitzgerald, and everything else, in detail; but I was struck by two things. First, the struggles Zelda had with her husband because of her own talents and over the use of shared experience to tell stories. Second, she spent many years of mental illness and fighting to live outside institutions, and then died in a fire in one of those institutions.

Many letters between the two are quoted, and that intimacy exposed to ... anyone, may be (part of) the reason I was disturbed by their argument over autobiographical "material" for their writing. Zelda never became an accomplished writer, or an accomplished ballerina, as she'd wanted; but Scott was already an accomplished writer. He based many female characters on his wife and on her life; he was credited with creating "flappers". It became more disturbing when Zelda, from an institution, wrote something that included stories from their life together, and Scott prevailed upon the institution to stop her.

At the time of her death, her husband had already died; before his death, they had only communicated through letters, not seeing each other for over a year.

I left this book with sadness that stayed with me for days.

Current Events

2010-04-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

Eating Cake, and a Good Idea Trapped in a Bad Book

2010-03-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

Marie Antoinette

Antonia Fraser

Most movies just aren't appealing to me, but I remember wanting to see Marie Antoinette ... in 2006 when it came out. So I waited four years and saw it in January, this year. I loved it. I loved the costumes, the colors, the everything, pretty much. I even watched the special features by choice, instead of enduring them at the request of my husband (most movies appeal to him, and he finds the special features fascinating; I usually find them unbearable).

Sofia Coppola's film was based on Frasier's book. I found it interesting that the film depicted Marie Antoinette, her husband and their family members as human instead of horrible, evil, peasant-squashing royalty. I bought the book, and started it, and realized ... I haven't read this sort of non-fiction, the historical sort, since college. To be honest I think I only skimmed the ones I "read" then.

And ... wow. I finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Attitude! before I got anywhere near the end of Marie Antoinette.

Anyway, aside from my difficulty finishing it, it was at first pretty much what I'd hoped for: Marie Antoinette, the teenage bride, the teenage queen, at first loved and then hated--and of course, we know the ending: execution by guillotine.

Right off, Fraser deals with the infamous "Let them eat cake". Marie Antoinette did not, in fact, say this, and is not the only French princess accused of it. For example, one Marie-Therese apparently said it 100 years before Marie Antoinette.

Actually, Marie Antoinette made efforts to be charitable to the French in need. There were many other lies spread about the queen, including accusations of lesbianism, infidelity, questions about the paternity of her children. She was also nicknamed "Madame Deficit" for wasting money on clothes and houses.

A lot of that information was depicted in the film, but the film ends well before Marie Antoinette's life is ended, and the book goes on.

At some point, mobs broke into Versailles to take her life, and the king's, and she hid, as did her two children (the prince was very very young), and the family was eventually taken by force to Paris while revolutionaries decided what to do with the government of France. They attempted to escape, but did not succeed, and were imprisoned, at first together, then in two separate towers (Marie Antoinette and the children in one, the king in another).

Awful things happened to this family, including the killing of Marie Antoinette's friend, whose head, on a stick, was taken first to a hairdresser, to be made recognizable to the queen, then paraded past the queen's tower to horrify her.

The prince was taken from his family, to live with another couple who beat him and forced him to drink alcohol. During his mother's trial, he accused her and his aunt of sexually abusing him.

Finally the king was executed and Marie Antoinette put in prison. And her life ended with a "trial", then the guillotine.

I felt sick reading about all of that, and thinking of the horrible things we do to each other on this earth; but I'm also thinking about how much we just can't or won't understand about each other, and what could happen if we did. Would much evil be avoided, or would much good come about?Or would we see how awful we could all be, but aren't because we've chosen to be better?

The Birth House

Ami McKay

I wanted and wanted to like this book, but I just can't. The idea is great, I think: a woman called to midwifery lives in a house which will become "the birth house" (kinda like a birth center I suppose, but way-back-when, and in someone's home).

I found it especially interesting because the author lived (lives? I don't know) in what was once a birth house, and, apparently, even made a documentary about it.

I want to see the documentary.

I don't want to even tell you about this book.

I skipped some of it because, although sex scenes don't necessarily bother me, unnecessary, and unnecessarily graphic sex scenes do bother me, and I just didn't think they added anything, anything, to the book.

I didn't like the characters. They were more like caricatures, really, so if you picture a hippy-dippy wise old midwife working against "the man", there's one of them; and an evil, hated, handsome and big brute, womanizing wife abuser? there's another; and the girl/woman/called to midwifery who thinks she's not beautiful but maybe really is, then marries the abuser but really loves his brother-oh it just went on and on.

I think this book was attempting to make a statement about the history of medicine as an establishment particularly where birth is concerned, and that's great, but it's not a balanced statement here. The midwife in the book "just knows" things, and the doctor is an evil misogynist who ignores things that would be obvious to anyone with any knowledge about birth. It's so extreme that I could barely read it.

One star for effort!

Fourteen

2010-03-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

attitude!

Katherine Davis Fishman

Subtitled: eight young dancers come of age at the ailey school.

Fishman follows eight teenagers over a year at The Ailey School, searching for answers to questions about talent: what are the benefits of early training in a field? what role does family play in success (immediate and long term)? what about "late bloomers"? does talent trump plain hard work, or vice versa?

The Ailey School, located in Manhattan, is the "official school of", in Fishman's words: "the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, arguably the most distinguished modern dance company in the world."

Because Fishman explores those questions about talent in the dance world, she also explores some questions about the dance world: how do boys and girls experience that world differently? what does working in an ensemble mean (as opposed to, for example, the work that musicians or artists may do alone--although I think that's a weak point, having spent plenty of time working with other artists to make my own work and theirs, and my husband, the musician, is in a band ... with other musicians* ...) to the dancers as individuals and to the social environment? how do the dancers handle the potential for injury? can they take the pressure of the dance world? and so on.

Not being a dancer, I found the information about the dance world interesting; but I've mainly been thinking about the book as a parent, since it is also very much about teenagers.

My daughter has been incessantly begging me to let her take a gymnastics class (I'm looking for the right one) and her desire to do this was a surprise to me. She loves movement and music, but still gymnastics never occurred to me. Dance, sure, music, sure, but never gymnastics.

So what if (yeah, yeah) that's really important for her to do? Will it matter if she starts before she's even in elementary school? Would she gravitate to it anyway later? Will she have more confidence starting earlier?

I am not suffering delusions that my kid is destined to be an Olympic athlete; maybe she'll take a tumbling class and hate it. And that's okay. Maybe she'll just like it for fun; maybe she won't have talent, after all ... but I would hate to miss an opportunity for her to start early in whatever area her talent is.

Or ... maybe if I start my kids out early on something, they'll burn out earlier too.

Anyway, I hope I know how to help them find their way, whatever that turns out to be.

*I suppose it's a stronger point if "painter" is substituted for "artist" and "classical pianist" is substituted for "musician".

Disaster Time

2010-03-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

Er, uh ... Lunch time.

I fed Bear some of his lunch, and then, after crying hysterically something that sounded an awful lot like "Ah Doooooit!!!", he proceeded to feed himself his lunch.

He ate a few bites (pretty impressive, he knows how to use the spoon, which is in his other hand, out of the frame) but mostly he just screamed while tears streamed down his very very angry/sad face.

Food fell on him: screaming, tears.

Spoon not full enough: screaming, tears.

I looked at him, I spoke to him, I helped him eat: etc.

Even his beloved crackers weren't solving any problems. Poor little guy!

Twelve and Thirteen

2010-02-25T23:19:00.000-08:00

The Ingenious Edgar Jones

Elizabeth Garner

This book, about a boy born to a servant class couple working at Oxford, was strange to me. At first I liked that about it, but eventually it began to feel creepy, and finally there was a point where it lost me.

Edgar Jones story begins with his parents awaiting his birth. His father is employed by Oxford and was in fact raised there, as an orphan, and worked his way up to being a guard. He believes that he's an integral part of the community of Oxford, when of course no one else there sees it that way. His mother was the daughter of a tavern owner who, as she anticipates the birth of a baby she KNOWS is a girl, is beginning to suspect she didn't make such a great marriage after all.

The father sleeps days and works nights, and Edgar is born while he's at work; the mother is aided by a strange woman who it turns out is a neighbor and is shocked to find her baby is not a girl, but a boy with a streak of hair that stands straight up, all along his spine.

Edgar grows up to apparently disappoint his father, although he's really frustrating him more than disappointing him, by revealing to him all the ways his world view is mistaken, and therefore destroying his satisfaction in that view. And in his job. And marriage. And pretty much everything else.

Finally, through a very complicated series of events, Edgar is arrested, and his mother discovers she has unwittingly helped that same neighbor (who helped deliver her baby) engage in criminal activity.

Up to this point, I very much wanted to know what would become of them all.

And then it lost me.

His father, in a panic over the outcome of his life, the universe and everything, runs and runs and runs ... and turns into a gargoyle. The story had been strange in an interesting way before this, and it continued to be so, after, but this one section was too much. It was supernatural in a story whose details couldn't accommodate it.

The book also has this thing going about creationism vs. evolutionism which was interesting, but mostly only interesting to me because it was set in the 1800s. Personally, this is not my favorite topic (though my husband recently brought home a documentary starring Ben Stein, called Expelled, which was about that fight as it continues, and it was, I admit, also interesting.)

Maybe the gargoyle foray was meant to connect to some aspect of the "supernatural" about the religion of that character. Anyhow, it really didn't fit.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Muriel Barbery

I am possibly the last person to read this book recently.

Just kidding, but once I had read it, I googled it and then I felt like I was the last person to read it.

So I shall pretty much repeat what "they" would say:

1. It is French. (Translated, for what it's worth; if you read French, read it in French, of course)

2. It is philosophical. The author is a philosophy professor.

3. It gets off to a slow start, but you must stay with it because

4. once it picks up, you will probably love it.

The story is told in sections, alternating narrators: one, Renee, is a concierge at a chic building, who spends her time educating herself and is therefore an expert on things such as Tolstoy; the other, Paloma, is a young girl who lives with her family in that building and, finding nothing worthwhile in her life, is planning to kill herself--but till then she's spending her time searching for beauty and meaning in the world and people around her.

There is this amazing moment near the end that forced me to put the book down. The story was engrossing at that point but that wasn't what did it. It was, rather, that one page ended with the sentence "And what happens next is"

*turn the page*

And then you find out what happens next (and what happens next actually shocked me, which hasn't happened since I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time and came to the part where Lydia runs off with Wickham).

I loved that the page turn is a punctuation in the text and in your hands.

Otherwise, I came to really love the characters and remembered that I know nothing about philosophy. Cringe. Wish I did. But probably not enough to learn about it right now. I'll put it on my "someday" list.

If I recommend this book, will you read it and make me not be the last person to read it in the last couple of years?

Nine Ten Eleven

2010-02-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

I Feel Bad About My Neck

Nora Ephron

This came out quite awhile ago, and I'd wanted to read it, forgotten, remembered, so on.

It's a quick read and funny, about being a woman and aging.

There is a wonderful description of being captivated by reading as a child (of course I loved that) and stories about her life in New York; and advice about entertaining and feeding guests (like, don't feed them fish, it's eaten too quickly).

I enjoyed it. But I think you may need to be in the mood for a sort of New York humor and it might help if you like her films. (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle)

The Mermaid Chair

Sue Monk Kidd

(author of The Secret Life of Bees)

A woman (Jessie) who grew up on a small island gets a phone call to come back to the island and take care of her mother, who has done something ghastly*, and the people close to her mother fear for her sanity. She goes, and unravels the mystery of her mother's actions as well as her feelings for her husband; their relationship has been strained, at least for her.

There is so much to this story that I cannot tell you if you ever want to read it, since it would really ruin it for you.

But-the title: there is a monastery on the island with a "mermaid chair", which is precisely what it sounds like, a chair with mermaids on it. The chair is in honor of a saint, said to be a mermaid before she was converted.

The story focuses more on the affair Jessie has than I cared for, though (spoiler alert?) her marriage prevails in the end. However, I really love the idea of a saint who used to be a mermaid.

First of all, what an idea. I love that someone thought of that. It's very interesting.

Second, I have to confess that I just love mermaids. I have a print of one in my home, I have Christmas ornaments of them, and as a child, if I found sequins, I thought they came from mermaids.

Third, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with the book**, Charlotte loves the print we have of a mermaid, and she loves to make up stories with me, so we tell this story of how the picture is of me and I used to be a mermaid. Charlotte is fun. She really loves that idea. (We did this before I read The Mermaid Chair, but I think it made me like the book more)

*to herself. And it really is ghastly.

**Heidi--this one has some romance. But ... maybe not the kind you'd like, since it wanders off into adultery before coming back to fidelity?

Garlic and Sapphires

Ruth Reichl

I loved this one so much, I can say, emphatically, read this book.

I read a favorable review somewhere out in the internet, put it on my list and when I checked it out from the library, I looked at the cover a little doubtfully. A book about her life as a food critic, really? Would I find that the least bit interesting?

Well. Yes, it turns out.

The book opens with a conversation between Reichl and a stranger on a plane, about food. The stranger, apparently, knows all about Reichl's work as critic for the LA Times (I think? may be the wrong paper) and that the NY Times is courting her to take the job with them.

So, she does take the NY job, and goes to the restaurants in some serious disguises. She discovers how "regular", non-critic people are treated at restaurants and reviews them accordingly.

I love thinking about the characters she took on, partly because I've been daydreaming about going some place where I have no connections and pretending to be someone else just to see what it's like (why does it work like that? I thought about it and the universe gave me this book, I suppose). But really--even reading about her disguises instead of having my own ... I thought about the way I interact with other people and how they react to me/how I react to them, and I'm still thinking about what it all means.

Book Reviews Numbers Seven and Eight

2010-02-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

I came away from this book with the impression that what is really important about it is it's role as a portrait of American life in the 1950s, but what resonated with me were the characters' relationships.

I used to be under the impression that when my relationships had gone awry, it was due to some fatal flaw in me that meant I'd never get them right ... and then, I got married. And have discovered that there is no universal "getting it right". There is, however, a lot of getting it all wrong, and learning from it. So the wrong can be okay, if there is progress.

Revolutionary Road opens on its characters trying, sort of, to get it right. And continues on with them getting it so very wrong.

I wanted to dislike the husband, Frank Wheeler, but I kind of liked him instead. He is not a hero, and he's not a model husband; he's just sort of a flawed guy in the book with a flawed wife (April) and their flaws eat their relationship and destroy their lives.

These are big flaws: infidelity, for one. Somewhere in there they seem to mostly give up on trying to have a happy (peaceful? loving? I'm struggling for the word) marriage and instead try to be happy by themselves while also being married. I don't think those two goals are actually mutually exclusive, but I know that marriage doesn't feel happy/peaceful/loving when spouses are more selfish than not.

I experienced this book as maybe the opposite of Dan in Real Life, but with the same conclusion: love is messy. It's just that in Dan in Real Life, the love is messy in the other direction.

The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World
E.L. Konigsburg

This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I just sat still in astonishment when I'd finished it. I'm a bit afraid to review it, in case I can't convince anyone else to love it, too.

First off, the title--! I love it. Don't you?

And the book ... is about Amedeo, a kid who moves to a new, small town after living in New York city. He befriends William, whose mother handles estate sales, and they work together on Mrs. Zender's sale.

Amedeo discovers an artwork that links Mrs. Zender's late husband and Amedeo's friend Peter's family to the nazis. Her husband was a nazi, and Peter's family was killed by them.

There is a moment where one character says that "ninety percent of who you are is invisible". And I loved thinking that over while I read it. It is really such a beautiful and engaging book. I can't do it justice by summarizing it.

Sunday Dinner

2010-02-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

Where we ate: my parents' house.

What we ate: ricey cajuny stuff and stir fried vegetables.

What I said: "This mushroom looks like a little squid."

What Flora said: "I don't have any mushrooms." Frowny face.

What Flora said after I gave her a mushroom, as she twirled it around and gazed at it nostalgically: "We used to bounce on them. (looong pause) And hide under them."

My favorite part: we. Not, "I", but we, cause, you remember when we used to do that.

BookIt!

2010-02-02T21:04:00.000-08:00

Remember that? If only there were a pizza at the end of all my reading now ... yum.

Mommy Grace

Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman

I have been desperately racking my brain to recall this one very specific thing I loved about this book, but it is gone, gone, gone.

So.

The book is subtitled something like "Erasing Your Mommy Guilt", and because I somehow didn't notice that it was a Christian-based book, it was a nice surprise once I began reading. Although, my very favorite parenting book is The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. Anyhow, this time I was curious to see how the author used Christian teachings to "erase Mommy guilt."

Which brings me back to this one thing I loved ... and have lost. I guess I'll have to read it again!

One other thing I liked: the book reminded me that prayer is powerful. It is. In big ways, in small. I forget that.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Ripley Underground

Ripley's Game

Patricia Highsmith

"Psychological thrillers" are not my favorite, and I'll admit I read these largely because I want to read The Talented Miss Highsmith, a biography of the author.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a young unsuccessful man in New York who falls into a trip to Europe to convince an acquaintance to come home to his family; he murders the guy instead and steals his identity, until a series of events force him to be himself again to avoid being caught for the murder. Lots of violent and "psychologically disturbed" behavior.

And he gets away with it. Hence, Ripley Underground. Which involves Ripley and a group of friends faking paintings of a dead artist (no one knows he's dead). And more murder.

Ripley's Game has Ripley coercing a man, who he felt insulted by, into murder for the Mafia.

Those are seriously glossed over summaries; there's more going on in the books, but I'm struggling to get past the violence and figure any of it out. It reminds me of watching CSI ... couldn't put them down because I had to know how they ended. But I enjoyed the books, which surprised me.

Reviewing Books With More Words Than I Expected

2010-01-31T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

It's a book club darling, and therefore I'd generally avoid it*, but I heard an interview with Kathryn Stockett on npr and wanted to read it. I also wanted her southern accent**. Incidentally.

To gloss over, well, most of the plot, it's "about" the lives of Southern black women working as domestic help for Southern white families while segregation was in full force and civil rights was not.

The (white) author grew up in the South in a family with a black "domestic"***. She said in the interview I heard that she worried about her black characters' voices in the book, wanting them to be correct and knowing she couldn't have gotten them quite right.

I don't know if the voices are right, but I did love the characters Stockett created. I loved their bravery; they face uncomfortable truths, then dangerous situations, and work together to right at least some portion of a very great wrong in the world at large.

Once I started it, I couldn't put the book down. I stayed up even later than my baby did just so I could finish it all at once.

* book snob

** do I have one and not know it?

*** is that supposed to be more polite than saying "maid"? i don't get it.

Not Becoming My Mother

Ruth Reichl

Oh, mother/daughter relationships. I could say only that, and if you're in one, you'd know.

I expected this book to be funny. Granted I knew nothing about it before I read it but something about the title, I think, led me to believe it would be funny. Maybe in an "I vowed never to be like her, but now I am and I finally understand her" sort of way?

It is not funny. There are some sort of funny moments, but it's not a funny book.

Reichl wrote the book after her mother died, as a tribute to her. She goes through her mother's notes and letters and discovers, of course, who her mother really was, as a woman and as a mother.

Reichl's mother grew up in time when marriage was "necessary" to women, married twice, had two children, and was unhappy with no work outside the home and no work, really, in the home, either, with appliances and "help". She didn't succeed socially (food poisoning dinner parties), she didn't succeed in her family's eyes (Reichl tells a story in which, as a Brownie, she seems mortified by her mother's actions as Leader), and Reichl comes to see ways her mother was teaching her daughter to live differently and hopefully happier.

My thoughts on this book are difficult to congeal, but here are a few:

1. I find that in general any big decisions of family/motherhood are controversial. I stay home with my kids, and I have been "grilled" about that many times. I've also been complimented on it, sometimes by people I'd never have expected it from. I know women who truly love "staying home", and women who love their jobs, career ... Personally, I have days I am happy to be home with my kids, and days when I would love to go to work, to get paid, to be on the other side of that particular fence. But I choose being home, now. I don't feel forced to make that choice, and for that I am grateful.

2. I took Flora and Bear to the pediatrician recently, and while S. was getting vaccines (see? another controversy), a nurse asked F., "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Flora replied, "A mommy!"

The nurse said, "Well, but you can be something else, too. What else would you like to be?"

And I have forgotten what Flora said. My mind raced--first of all, she sees what I'm doing and likes it, and hey, that's pretty gratifying; second, is that a good thing? beyond my ego, am I shortchanging her somehow by not doing "more" right now?

I believe in what I'm doing. I believe in mothering. I know I matter in my kids' lives. And I find it wonderful that my little girl knows that too, but what if she never marries? or can't have children? or wants to do something else? Will she have the confidence to do it, if I'm not doing it now?

I think the only answer to that is that I'm not doing it all, at the same time.

3. Once there was a guest lecture on Feminist art at college. After the lecture, a (female) professor asked me, "Are you a Feminist?" and I didn't want to say yes. I answered to that effect, and she asked "Why not?". I said, "I don't know what that word means." Discussion ensued in class. I was a pretty good example of the other students' answers.

Am I a man-hater? No. But I was afraid that was what someone would hear if I said the word Feminist.

The professor said it meant being "for" women.

Yes I am.

PS I'm sure that a more detailed definition of Feminist would disqualify me. this is getting tricky to write about.

Big Fat Goalie

2010-01-26T23:51:00.001-08:00

I like to make goals for a new year, not Resolutions. Resolutions are always capitalized and therefore must include some form of torture--partly in trying to comply and partly from the guilt of "failure". Like, This Year Our House and Yard Will Always Be Clean. Or, This Year I Will Never Yell.

Is it really failure if the Resolution is pretty much impossible?

Because, two kids + two parents + one cat + three chickens = messy house/yard. And ... never yell? Who am I kidding? (myself. kidding myself.)

I used to make Resolutions. Then I had a baby. And I learned that with little people depending on me I really do Have To sleep, and I really do Have To eat, and I really really Have To try not to go crazy. This took some time to accept. But after many many "failed" Resolutions, I finally decided that it didn't work for me, and it was time to be a little easier on myself.

In recent years, I've made goals like, "Exercise sometimes" (done), "Learn to bake bread" (done), "Learn to sew" (that's a recurring goal; but lately I've been surprised to sit down at the machine and actually know what I'm doing--progress!). So around November, I asked myself what I'd like to learn or do or try this year.

And I was happy to find that I want some pretty basic things: Have a routine (bedtime, wake-time, etc). Exercise more times. Make art. Cook new things. And Read, a lot.

I have so far ignored most of those, but I got to work right away on the reading. I decided I would read 100 books this year; around 2 books a week-not too tricky, even with all the diapers and lunches and freeze dancing taken into account.

I'm up to eight, and I have things to say about them, but that will have to wait because it's 2:30 am and I'm considering a Resolution about sleep (motivation by guilt ...)

One Upped

2010-01-11T12:17:00.000-08:00

When I was small, I had an imaginary friend.

Now, I already had a little sister, a cat, and at some point a dog. We lived in Yoder. Look it up.

I didn't need another little girl to play with, and since I'd probably already contracted toxoplasmosis, I had an inordinate love for the cat. (Thanks for explaining that, RadioLab. Check out the Parasites episode.) I don't remember much about the dog.

Yoder was pretty much the middle of nowhere, at least as I remember it. Our dog was fond of chasing the neighbors' cows.

The sum of all these experiences: my imaginary friend was ... a cow.

A tiny cow, unnamed, "lived" in the house. Ate cat food from a tiny bowl, water from another, in the bathroom. I dragged around a ratty piece of yarn, yellow, I think, as a leash.

When we moved from Yoder, I released the cow (why would he-yes, the "cow" was a he-move with us) by putting my hand out the window, letting go of the yarn.

The end of my imaginary friend.

I think a tiny imaginary cow is pretty awesome. But I've been outdone by Flora's imaginary friends.

Grisa (rhymes with Lisa) is a little girl like Flora who she sometimes calls her sister. But the best* part-Grisa is dead. And "she doesn't like it when people laugh at her", says Flora.

Yesterday she announced another friend, Randall. A girl, with brown hair and brown skin, and "is part of the earth". Randall lives at the north pole, so they don't get to play.

*I really do like this. And Flora was very specific-Grisa is not a ghost. But, you know, don't laugh, just in case.